Sherbrookes: Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness (American Literature Series)

by Delbanco, Nicholas

  The roadside is heaped with brown snow. He listens to the eleven o’clock news and turns left on Route 22. The houses here have woodsmoke spreading from their chimneys; the restaurants have closed. There are school buses in the school’s front parking lot, however; a police car idles in the main street of New Lebanon. He stops and folds back the map. He is hungry; he will stop at the first open diner and get himself something to eat. The temperature is minus twelve; the towns bear names like Pittsfield and Chatham and Lebanon Springs. He is farther north already than the Catskills and the Berkshires; he approaches the Green Mountains and the villlage in its foothills that Maggie circled for him twenty years before.

  This is a new map, of course; the roads have changed. Route 7 is being enlarged. But he traces the map’s routing and sees, as clearly as if printed there, a red circle drawn in crayon around her house. Andrew shuts his eyes. The world he watches daily is the world of fashion—a swatch of iridescent mediocrity beneath his gloved right hand. He stares at this dark central spot.

  II

  On the wall behind the silver chest or there above her bed, using whatever wide whiteness the house has retained, in the laundry room when she folds sheets, on the bare peeling plaster of the stairwell to the cupola that Ian has been promising to whitewash now for months, by the greenhouse door where straw hats hang, filling the space between pantry shelves even, on oilcloth, she sees as if in continual rerun (the hand rifling back through the photograph album, lending by its motion motion to the fixed still sequence, knee raised till it offers the semblance of stepping) that night again: fire and slime. The inside of her eyelids unfurls like a furled screen. Maggie plays it over whenever she closes her eyes.

  That night: the flame she saw beyond the window that Ian assured her was coming from town, was nothing, was somebody’s bonfire maybe set at dusk in some place like the shed field to keep warm—it had been Hallowe’en and someone was scaring the kids. So she heard shouts and whistles, saw flashlights bobbing, but was herself so racked and screamingshe could not distinguish fear from celebration, the volunteer firemen from those who came to trick or treat—and sees it that way now again, though in flashback and from an angle she had never known, lying in her own bed three thousand feet from the barn, the wind in her direction while Boudreau escaped.

  For that had been the cause of it, Maggie came to learn. Their hired man fell asleep in the hay, knocking over in his stupor the kerosene lantern he carried, drunk, half-naked in the straw because his clothes were soaked. Or maybe just his pipe ignited chaff; his beard caught fire, they speculated, and everything caught fire though he’d had the sense to run—the corolla of his face hissing and popping and sparking like some ignited scarecrow’s—and dive into the frog pond and be saved. All utterance was screaming then; the doctor in the hallway had been called to help Boudreau instead, whose jaw had been so badly burned they had to knock him out. The men with hoses by the barn and lead lines to the pond would yell their orders so she swore she heard them from the house—though Ian said it’s nothing, nothing, hold your breath, breathe deeply, don’t worry, you’re doing just fine.

  Therefore when she shuts her eyes to see Hal fling himself like a ship’s anchor overboard, she sees it both outlined in flame and doused, snuffed on the instant—sees Hattie also where he wallows, lying in the cattails that she’d breasted hours earlier to die before Boudreau could fish her out, then threw himself back in to live. He did live, she visited him in the hospital, later, Hal lay bandaged and unseeing, swaddled as her child had been and not a whole lot more competent; they fed him intravenously for weeks. His mouth had burned so badly it hurt him just to moan. Or maybe that was what he said in order to earn silence, peace while they waited to question him, time to consider what answer he’d make. But meantime, for those weeks while he lay in his hospital bed and she in her bedroom, she thought about it also and told lan not to ask. Let’s not bother him, she said, with the details of the bottle the insurance adjuster discovered. What valuation could they set on one hay barn to set beside and overbalance the years of Boudreau’s service; why trouble him in his time of trouble further than need be?—let’s let the man heal. The Sherbrookes lost a single barn, but the outbuildings were saved. The carriage barn and sugarhouse and smokehouse and Toy House and silos still stand; he did the haying, didn’t he, she asked; it’s his hay and profit we lost.

  Nor did she see Hattie in her box. They kept her from that also where she lay. So now in her mind’s eye she pictures the weed-covered woman, age scrubbed from her by water like the dirt lines from a palm, hair rinsed, pulled back, extended like some lady underneath a parasol on beaches in daguerreotypes where white is yellow and black, brown. Ian could have offered arguments when the Boudreau family promised to leave: this is home, the burns will heal, are half-healed already judging by the bandages; you pulled Hattie from the pond and we're grateful, we'll make it up to you: stay. But when Boudreau emerged again, they did not talk about it, keeping an embarrassed silence while his wife said they were quitting, heading for the Alagash to try potato farming.

  The barn burns like a gas jet, steadily, straight up. Maggie sees it that way when snow makes the meadow a screen. The sugarhouse and carriage barn and Toy House where Judah would sit—the ring of buildings around the Big House that face the four directions—form her picture’s frame. Yet the firewood fails to ignite. Hattie lies in the middle of the circle, and her sheets are sodden. Maggie grips the doctor’s arm so fiercely he winces; Dr. Rahsawala, his round face gleaming like a new brown penny in a pool, says, “Not to worry, A-okay. What will you call it, have you decided, Mrs. S., what will be the baby’s name?”

  He bends to her, enlarging, but she makes no answer. She sees it in the bathroom tiles: one woman kills herself because another woman will give birth, and the number of the Sherbrooke clan therefore stays the same. She does not like to think this; there are certain topics it is safer to avoid. But it’s like a childhood game of avoidance—missing the third piece of paving, avoiding the lines of the pavement, or trying not to think about the word “rhinoceros.” No sooner does she try to ignore it than “rhinoceros” is all she thinks: a great horned warty thing that lumbers up from the swamp.

  Hattie killed herself because the baby was not Judah’s, and would bear the Sherbrooke name with no born-Sherbrooke blood. It was as simple as that. She was eighty-two years old and, except for cataracts, in perfect health. She never had married or moved from the Big House because no other name or holdings would suffice. Her pridefulness was absolute, but it had been impersonal—as if she set herself to be the household guardian, a witness to the probity of Sherbrookes since they first settled in Vermont. She organized family archives, filing letters from her great-great-uncle and photos of Ulysses S. Grant. When Calvin Coolidge rode one morning in the Sherbrooke barouche, she knew his coachman’s name. Judah used to claim that she knew laundry lists from 1900 by heart; she took her relatives to bed at night like hot-water bottles.

  “You’re making fun of it,” she’d say. “But you’re as proud as I am, Jude. Less willing to say so, is all.”

  That too is true, Maggie thinks. She might believe in progress or the chance of new beginnings, but Judah’d seen the Great Depression and a series of recessions and the way the world went around. He was twenty-five years older, after all. What she had called discovery he called repetition; it’s why the world’s a circle, Judah said. You can whistle till the cows come home about the way things are changing and have changed; all it means is maybe there’ll be no more cows. Don’t blame the cobbler for his last if the last’s made out of plastic and the leather’s synthetic or the stitching needle’s tin; don’t blame a shoe for its fit.

  “That’s a nice baby, Margaret. A beautiful baby.”

  Maggie had smiled. “Well, thank you, Louise.”

  Elizabeth Conover patted her hair. She wore glasses on a ribbon around her neck. “Takes after you,” Elizabeth said. “How much did she weigh?”

 
“Five pounds, eight ounces. If she’d weighed any more I’d have burst.”

  “I bet you’re glad though. Proud.”

  “Yes.”

  Louise bent closer, leaning over the shapeless thing in blankets. “Eyes just like her mother’s. Your mouth too.”

  “All babies look like Winston Churchill,” Maggie said. “Or maybe W. C. Fields. I think she favors Churchill.”

  “Such clear skin. A beauty.”

  Elizabeth Conover straightened. “Her father would have been proud.”

  “He always wanted a daughter, Judah did.”

  Maggie cleared her throat. “Not so you’d notice.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Not so I noticed.”

  “Oh, that was just his way,” Elizabeth maintained. “I knew him longer than you did, my dear. Not better, of course, I'm not saying that. But I can say for certain Judah Sherbrooke wanted daughters. I’m certain of that as can be.” Elizabeth patted the crib. “He used to tell me way back when—before you were married, before you’d even met, I daresay—daughters would be fine. A ladies’ man . . .”

  Louise agreed. Maggie had smiled at them, feeling her mouth stretch. These were her first visitors, ten days after Jane had been born. Her pregnancy had been an ill-kept secret, but a secret nevertheless. At first she could not believe it; then she believed the baby would fail to come to term. It seemed too strange a joke, too much of a biological accident; she’d seen no one but the family and Dr. Rahsawala for months.

  Jane had been born three weeks early, the night of Hattie’s death. By pretending, later, she was late, Maggie made it possible for lawyers and neighbors to label the child Judah’s. The weight of five pounds, eight ounces, for instance, could herald weight loss in the womb and not Jane’s prematurity. She never called her Judah’s girl nor countenanced such chitchat about her father’s fighting spirit and the same cleft chin. But Maggie did not gainsay it either and therefore endorsed the white lie. When Elizabeth Conover and Louise Hutchens came to call, she had received them politely. They bustled about the nursery like customers for a layette—fingering, assessing. They brought blankets and a rattle and a windup mouse that played Brahms’s lullaby and twitched its tail.

  “She’d break his heart, this little thing,” said Louise.

  “Yes.”

  “And Hattie’s. What a shame she didn’t live to see her niece.”

  “Yes,” Maggie repeated.

  “It breaks my heart to think about it. So much sorrow in this family when there should be rejoicing.”

  “So many deaths,” Elizabeth said. “It’s like the Kennedys. It makes a person think.”

  “I try not to think like that . . .”

  “There’s trouble attached to each blessing.” Elizabeth went on, undeterred. “Triumph and tragedy. That’s what I’ve been thinking about, ever since you mentioned Mr. Winston Churchill’s name. That’s his phrase, if I recollect. ‘Triumph and tragedy.’ ”

  “What the Lord giveth He taketh away,” said Louise.

  “I need to feed the baby now.”

  “Of course. We shouldn’t stay too long.”

  “We didn’t mean to,” said Louise. “We’ve overstayed our welcome.”

  “No. It’s just I’m very tired still.”

  “You ought to have some help here.”

  “Ian helps.”

  “I mean a nurse. A trained person to take things over every once in a while,” Elizabeth said. “Helen Bingham knows a nurse.”

  “We’ll think about it,” Maggie said. The baby snuffled, sucked in air. “Thank you for your visit. And the gifts—they’re exactly what we need.”

  “Should I have Helen call you?”

  “No. Not now. Not yet.”

  She did indeed hire a nurse, three weeks later and for the first months. She used an agency, however, that provided trained personnel from New York. They had the perfect candidate, they said. And since she didn’t have to deal with Helen Bingham’s curiosity or face someone who’d known Sherbrookes since before she came to town, Maggie welcomed such assistance. It would help.

  Then Eleanor Mason arrived with her Mexican Hairless, Lassie. She proved officious. Her hair was blue as Hattie’s had been, and as tightly curled. She was a licensed child nurse, she explained, what the English call a governess or nanny. And as far as she, Eleanor Mason, was concerned, the word governess was fitting: it meant you had to fix things and arrange them just so. Who ever heard of governors, she asked, that governed only one part of the state—it mattered what her charges ate, mattered how the kitchen had been cleaned and whether it was clean. She didn’t mind telling Mrs. Sherbrooke that some of the great names she’d worked for (names that made people stand up and notice, names like Vanderbilt and Whitney and others she’d as soon not mention) kept their kitchens no cleaner than stables and therefore encouraged disease.

  Miss Mason sniffed, loudly. She reeked of disapproval, trailing it after her presence like toilet water; she made Lassie roll over, lie down. Her charges were entitled to a cleanly, germ-free house—and if her charges didn’t care or were too rich or ill or used to it to notice, she, Eleanor Mason, noticed anyhow: taking care of children meant you also took care of the mop. Drafts mattered. They mattered all the more in winter, what with the snow coming on. In a rickety old house like this one, you kept the windows open though you thought you’d nailed them shut.

  Maggie only half-listened at first. Those first four months she hardly even heard what Ian said to her, much less some chatty stranger. She walked as a somnambulist might walk, waking only to Jane crying in the crib beside her bed. Eleanor said this was wrong. No mother in her condition should have to wake up three times nightly for the sake of an infant she, Eleanor, had been hired expressly to feed. “You take it easy, dear,” she’d say. “You leave all this to me.”

  She bathed Jane after lunch. The child was placable, attentive, and Eleanor took credit for each smile. She clipped Jane’s toes and fingernails, bending over her charge in the light so that Maggie felt shouldered aside. “Her mother doesn’t know what to feed her,” she overheard the woman say on the phone. “If it wasn’t for me, that poor little darling would starve. Imagine. Trying to feed her creamed carrots at this stage, and being surprised she spits up. And leaving her all wet in that diaper. If it wasn’t for me—and her brother, Mr. Ian, I have to give him that . . .”

  One night Jane scratched herself. She woke up bleeding, unperturbed, but the scratch was near an eye. The welt was one inch long. Eleanor said she’d trimmed the nails on Friday and this was only Monday, and no other baby ever had grown fingernails so quickly—but Maggie raged, implacable, till Eleanor said, “Well, Mrs. Sherbrooke, if that’s how you feel . . .”

  “That’s how I feel,” Maggie said.

  “Is this a dismissal, dear?”

  “It is.”

  Miss Mason gathered her things; it had been the end of the month. Her sister needed help in Westerly, and she herself was sixty-five—too old for this kind of trouble. She’d had enough of cranky folk who thought because they raised a child or two they were more expert than the experts. Because you built a bookcase would you try to build a house, she asked; because you made a dress one time would you set up in business? She had letters from the Vanderbilts and Whitneys and others she’d as soon not name that praised her competence; babies scratch themselves and have been scratching themselves since time began and will go on doing so no matter how often you cut back their nails. She had been planning to give notice anyhow. And now she’d used the word, said Eleanor, now they were finally having this conversation, she couldn’t help noticing things in the house: how poorly they’d been managed. If Mrs. Sherbrooke wanted Jane to grow up sad and wrong, why she should just continue doing what she’d done.

  The Mexican Hairless was sick. It gagged and heaved. The nurse was trying to salvage some sort of dignity from the dismissal, but her dog was trembling and her suitcase would not shut. She struggled to preserve
her precarious hard-won disdain; she tied up the suitcase with cord. The way some people treat you, Eleanor said, it’s enough to make you sick; it’s not the way a person ought to treat their dog. She’s sorry if she spoke her mind, but she’s a plain-speaking person, always has been and will stay that way: a knife that won’t cut melted butter is the sharpest one you’ve got. And she’d rather go to Westerly where value given was value received than stay with those who don’t appreciate her one single additional night.

  It had made Maggie sad to see the woman go. Such garrulity was harmless, after all, a way of filling up the space that silence made. So when Miss Mason left (setting out in her Volare like an unloved upright Mary Poppins, telling Ian that the drive was hard on Lassie, harder than he’d ever guess because the motion made her frantic, all that high-speed humming and exhaust: dogs’ ears are sensitive, that’s why she seems so nervous now, their sense of smell is acute, they know a lot about the world without having to see it) she kept Jane in her bed.

  That night, at midnight, she awakened to a full moon outside her window and a caricature cheese-face imprinted on the pane. A squirrel chittered in the eaves; she heard the freight train shunting down by Eagle’s Bridge. Her daughter slept, untroubled, surrounded by pillows. There were flowers on her sheets. Moon shadows invaded the room. They formed rabbits and skeletal shapes—the magnified figures of twigs. Maggie can remember thinking, as clouds scudded past and the furnace clicked on, as the clock continued in a different register, Help me, I’m falling apart.

  Helen Bingham said, “She’s wonderful. Wonderful, really.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m not exaggerating. I’m not the kind of person who exaggerates. So lively, such a handful . . .”

  “That’s true enough,” Maggie said.

  “I marvel at it. So alert.” Helen Bingham turned to Jane. “Come over here, will you.” Jane came. “How old are you?”