Once I made that realization, it was a little easier for me to come up with something that resembled human reasoning. I reasoned for about two hours, and then the phone rang. It was a tentative-sounding Harry Bordeaux.
“Jonathan?”
“Harry?”
“I do hope you’re not going to be unreasonable about this.”
“About what, Harry?” Silence. A silent Harry was hard to imagine under any circumstances, but under the prevailing circumstances, there seemed to be a likely explanation. I asked: “Harry, is Joanne with you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right there, and I expect Joanne still to be there.”
Lee opened the door. As usual, she had more than enough to say, but her first sentence was to the point: “Joanne’s asleep in the bedroom, Jonathan. She’s had the most elaborate meal of her life, and she’s been the calmest person in this overpriced, overfurnished hutch—which isn’t much of an accomplishment, considering the hysteria factor we’ve been wallowing in. You have a perfect right to produce an automatic weapon of some sort and line us all up against the wall. Inexcusable bloody meddlers. On second thought, empty the slop pail on us. On third thought, take your lovely child and subject her to your love—and I’m not saying it might not be a touch outlandish—but my point is that we have no right to expect you to impose our particular kind of outlandishness on the child. Obviously I’ve written the dissenting opinion, but I’ve written it forcefully.”
Lee had been standing with me in her apartment’s little foyer. She had her hands on my arms, and she blocked the short hallway that led to the living room. Over her shoulder I could see Harry and Nanny Joy, who were standing together in the distance, looking subdued but ready for combat. They also looked older and less attractive than they had ever looked to me before, but that was probably the result of anger affecting the eye of the beholder. No one seemed eager to talk, and I thought of just collecting Joanne and leaving. But I wanted to know what it was that had made them do this crazy thing.
“I’m not going to stay long,” I said. “Why don’t we sit down, and then why don’t you tell me why you abducted your ex-friend’s daughter?”
As I expected, Harry was going to do most of the talking. “You’re wrong on two counts, Jonathan. We’re still your friends, and it was hardly a matter of abduction. It was an innocent, friendly act.”
“Sure, Harry. But I’m glad I’m not going to be around when you decide to work up an unfriendly act.”
“Let me explain, dear boy.” Harry’s “dear boy” had the wrong tone. There was more condescension in it than silly affection. He started his explanation. “Jonathan, no one is saying you don’t have a right to abandon a successful career and a comfortable, enviable situation. You’re in love. I understand that; I’ve been there, Jonathan. God knows, love is worth some sacrifice.”
Harry looked over my shoulder and smiled insincerely. I turned and saw that Lee was standing a few feet behind me. She answered Harry’s smile with an “Oh?” stare, one eyebrow raised and her head slightly tilted. Harry quickly looked back at me. “If you were just going back to the land and would ask your old friends up to grub about for wild strawberries once in a while, we would be delighted for you. However, you’re not headed for a bucolic paradise, but a nameless rural horror, by all accounts.”
“Where do you get your accounts, Harry?”
“From Joanne; and from Joy, via Joanne and you.”
“And what do the accounts add up to?”
“Supernatural morbidity.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Specters, ghosts, ha’nts, whatever. We’ve seen evidence of that.”
“So? You were charmed when you were getting ten percent of the evidence. I think there’s a better case for greed than for morbidity.”
“We’re just getting to the morbidity. Can you give me a reasonably straight answer to this? Do young girls get killed in this place you’re headed for?”
“Young girls get killed everywhere.”
I wasn’t too happy with my answer, and apparently Nanny Joy wasn’t either. She took over the questioning. “Jonathan, are you putting Joanne’s life in danger by taking her to this place?”
It was time for me to be a little less evasive. “I might be,” I said.
Harry took up the chase again: “You might be? Don’t you think you ought to be sure?”
“All right,” I said. “I am sure. There’s a slight chance that I’m endangering Joanne.”
Harry said: “I won’t ask you what kind of danger it is. But give me an idea of what the odds are. A thousand to one, a hundred to one, two to one?”
I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. How many girls below the age of six were living in Childgrave? Probably not more than a dozen. I really had no idea. Maybe there were just one or two. The situation sort of implied that there wouldn’t be too many. Maybe there weren’t any. That might explain why Joanne and I were being invited to live there. Harry was waiting for an answer. “I don’t know what the odds are,” I said.
Harry rolled his eyes. “My God,” he said. “How can you gamble with your child’s life when you don’t even know the house rules?”
“At least I’m giving her a chance, Harry. You probably don’t remember, but I once told you that unless we take chances, we don’t have anything.”
“When was that?”
I wished Lee weren’t in the room. “It was when you had a chance to have a child of your own. Before you reduced the child’s chances to zilch—before you had it killed.”
Harry looked more somber than I had ever seen him look before. “Oh, Jonathan,” he said. “Unfair.” I turned my head slightly to see how Lee was reacting. She was leaving the room. By the time I looked back to Harry, his face had turned a couple of shades redder. “Not only unfair,” he said, “but a bit popish, isn’t it? Have we been attending Confirmation classes?”
Nanny Joy tried again. “Never mind about whether Harry and Lee did something wrong,” she said. “We’re talking about whether you’re going to do something wrong.”
“According to Harry, there’s no need to worry about that. Harry told me once that nobody knows what’s right or wrong. Didn’t you, Harry?”
Harry sighed noisily. For a minute or so, everyone looked at Harry, and no one spoke. I had never been very good at following Harry’s thought processes. I knew that he made quick decisions and that he often made quick reversals of decisions. He almost never gave reasons for his actions or opinions. I got the impression that he usually just went with the flow of things, guided by an inexhaustible supply of optimistic energy. But the death of children can exhaust anyone’s optimism. I supposed that in some complicated way, it was the loss of his child-to-be that had made Harry react so strongly against my portraits of Gwendolyn Hopkins and my decision to move to Childgrave.
Harry sighed again and then surprised me by producing a smile. I don’t know what he had been thinking about during his minute of silence, but apparently my arguments—which hadn’t seemed all that convincing to me—had overcome his anger and opposition. His smile broadened. “You’re right, dear boy. We must take chances, and we mustn’t pretend to know what’s right or wrong. I’d forgotten that.” Harry got up and came toward me. “And one should never forget that.” Harry leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “The moment has arrived for an au revoir sip or two.”
Harry left the room. I looked at Nanny Joy. She wasn’t ready to give up her anger. Harry came back with a tray full of large snifters. Lee was behind him, carrying a bottle of cognac that was covered with ribbons and blobs of red wax. Harry poured, and Lee distributed. When we each had a glass, I raised mine to Nanny Joy and said: “Good luck in your new love.”
Nanny Joy sobbed and smiled and said: “Oh, shit, J
onathan.” She started to cry.
We drank.
Joy raised her glass to me. “Good luck in your new love.” I smiled, and then I started to cry.
We drank.
Harry raised his glass. “To love, which brooks no right or wrong.” He started to laugh.
We drank.
Lee raised her glass. “May the odds smile upon us.”
We drank.
I collected Joanne, and after a lot of kissing of wet cheeks, we left.
Nanny Joy spent the night with Lee and Harry. I spent the night with unclosable eyes and a rapid pulse.
About five o’clock, I stopped pretending to sleep. I took a hot shower, wondering when I would have my next one and trying to decide how important that was. I sat amid packing cartons, luggage, and abandoned bits of furniture until Joanne appeared. She was smiling like a prima ballerina taking curtain calls. She noticed that her father was having trouble managing even a rueful smile.
“Aren’t you happy, Daddy?”
“Yes, I’m happy, sweetie. But I’m a lot of other things, too.”
“Don’t be those other things. We’ll have a fireplace and a new mommy. We can get all snuggy.”
“That sounds good.”
“There will be only good things. Everything will be good.”
“Don’t expect that. There are always bad things, sweetie.”
“Not in Childgrave. We might even talk to the angel.”
Joanne was no longer using the “Chilegray” pronunciation. I hoped that was a sign of a new maturity on her part. But her eagerness to talk to the angel didn’t seem like progress. I said, “Don’t think too much about the angel or your friend Colnee. That’s not why we’re going to Childgrave.”
“Then why are we going?”
“Because Sara lives there and we love her.”
“But Sara loves the angel.”
I decided that I would love Sara but not her angel. I would love her and tolerate her angel. Joanne could make up her own mind on the subject.
Martin Golightly and Roger Sayqueg arrived in a large van, bringing with them some of Mrs. Coleridge’s homemade doughnuts and their own high spirits. I made coffee, we dunked for a while, moved possessions (including Joanne’s dollhouse) into the van, and drove away. I left the coffee grounds in the pot.
The four of us squeezed into the driver’s compartment, with Joanne sitting on my lap. Martin and Roger took turns driving, sharing what they obviously thought of as a pleasure rather than a chore. It was also obvious, judging from their lack of interest in the other cars on the road, that they hadn’t done a lot of driving. They weren’t careless enough to be frightening, though, and I began to relax after a few minutes. Joanne started making forays into neighboring laps, and we had a friendly but not very talkative trip.
Martin and Roger talked mostly about themselves. Each of them seemed to be interested not only in the other’s body but also in his own. They weren’t obnoxious or consciously sexual about it, but they couldn’t help lapsing every few minutes into discussions of muscle tone or chapped lips.
At a couple of points I wondered what role Martin and Roger played in the religious activities and goals of Childgrave. Were they trying to achieve some kind of sanctity? Or were they, as it seemed to me, simply devoting themselves to their own pleasure? Was it permissible in Childgrave to live a life of uncomplicated worldly pleasure? For my own sake, I hoped so—but I doubted whether anything was uncomplicated in Childgrave.
For instance, as we drove to Childgrave that day there were a couple of instants when Martin’s genial expression faded and his eyes gave some indication that they had seen things that were less than pleasureful. I remembered the portrait he had done of Sara—a portrait that made me wonder whether little girls were the only ones who became victims in Childgrave. But Sara had assured me that the town had no unusual customs except the ones I already knew about. Martin’s painting of Sara represented only his personal view of her—a view influenced, I assumed, by some pretty strong and unusual emotions.
But despite his occasionally unsettled glances, Martin made no pronouncements and offered no warnings during the drive to Childgrave.
Sara came out of the house and opened the door of the van for us. Her face was pinker and her hair paler than I had remembered, and her beauty seemed to have gained a new quality that I was happy to think of as lascivious. But whatever Sara looked like, she didn’t look like someone who was a few hours away from becoming a bride. She was wearing a gray wool skirt and a bulky black sweater. The sweater looked as if it might have been the sort of thing that merchant seamen featured during World War II.
Sara’s first hugs and kisses went to Joanne. I elbowed my daughter aside as subtly as I could and sent her into the house. Then I took over the greeting duties. My wet mouth against Sara’s ear, I said: “I thought it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding.”
“We’re beyond luck,” Sara whispered.
I didn’t say anything, but it occurred to me that we were going to need some luck—some good luck. Or, at least, Joanne would need it when the Easter lottery took place. I was too much involved in trying to promote some uncomplicated worldly pleasure at that moment to follow up on my thoughts, but there was time for me to realize I had become a gambler and that I was calculating the odds. I was beginning to feel confused, and I was glad for the chance to put my pleasures and calculations aside for a few minutes when Sara suggested I help Martin and Roger unload the van.
As we worked, Martin’s expression occasionally showed the disturbance I had seen earlier. Obviously, I wasn’t the only one in Childgrave whose consciousness was being given an unpleasant nudge once in a while by something below the surface. Then, while we were carrying a trunk into the house and there was no one else within earshot of us, Martin said, “I’m a fraud, you know, Jonathan.”
“What kind of fraud?”
“Every kind. I’m not gay, for example. Or at least, not very gay.” Roger joined us to help with the trunk, and Martin stopped talking. It wasn’t a conversation I wanted to abandon after that particular opening remark, and I arranged after that to be alone with Martin as much as possible while carrying the few remaining things into the house.
I puzzled over the “not very gay” remark until Roger left us and Martin whispered: “I’m playing dead on the battlefield.” I looked at him quizzically. “Don’t think I’m trying to be unpleasant,” he said, “but it was on my honeymoon with Sara that I realized that the joy of sex—or of heterosex—wasn’t worth the possible consequences. I couldn’t take the chance that Sara and I might have a daughter and then have to face the lottery.”
Martin’s confession was interrupted again as we joined Sara in the house. I wondered whether she noticed the touch of strain that had been added to my adoring gaze. Martin and I put down the boxes we were carrying and started back to the van. “So, to put it simply,” he said, “I’m a coward.”
“Is Roger a coward too?”
“No. He’s gay.”
“And you’re not just pretending to be his friend?”
“Not at all. He’s a good companion. I needed companionship, and people seem to find gayness easier to accept than celibacy.”
We picked up more boxes as a young couple passed us. They smiled a friendly greeting at me. I let Martin start back to the house alone. I stood watching the couple walk down Golightly Street. Beyond them lay the cemetery and the looming figure of the angel. My body temperature seemed to drop a degree or two. But I didn’t feel unhappy.
And I realized for the first time in my life that I possessed a certain degree of courage.
Before I could develop that thought, Mrs. Coleridge appeared. She was looking as delighted as her dignity would permit, and her costume was remarkably festive. She wore a
satiny beige dress with rows of little strings around its loose waist, and her skirt was short enough to reveal most of her surprisingly unflawed calves.
I settled in the sitting room near the fireplace and waited to find out what was on the agenda. Joanne, Sara, and Evelyn were having a conference in the dining room. I sat and indulged in three kinds of admiration. I held my hand up. There wasn’t a sign of a tremor.
Mrs. Coleridge took Joanne off to prepare for the festivities. Sara led me up to her (our) bedroom. The room was the same as I had remembered it, but the bed had been exchanged for what was obviously the masterwork of a furniture maker who had been fond of either sleeping or dalliance. The bed dated from a time when king-sized had to do with more than length and width. It was a setting for immoderate activities; it could inspire hibernation or nymphomania. Canopied, four-posted, and fitted with tapestry curtains at the sides and foot, it could make a person think that one third of a lifetime was not enough to spend there.
“It’s a present from the people of the village,” Sara said.
“A thoughtful present.”
“They’re thoughtful people. You’ll like them, Jonathan.”
I wondered whether I would like them. One of the things that appealed to me about living in Manhattan was that you didn’t have to like people; you just had to tolerate them. Tolerance was more in my line than bonhomie. I said. “I guess I’ll have to like them.”
Sara put her hands in mine. “You don’t have to do anything, Jonathan. That’s why I brought you up here—to give you a chance to change your mind. You don’t have to marry me. Most people would think I’m overpriced.”
“I’ve always been a big spender, Sara.”
Childgrave Page 30