Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  He glared at the child, at its brainless faith in the world as a kindly place, where upon reaching out one was steadied by powers gigantic but benign. It hadn’t yet learned that one wasn’t welcome to lean on others. Perhaps, thought Francis, the crashing down of a fist onto those fragile fingers would bring home the lesson, which could never be learned too early in life—still there remained the sickening vulnerability of the child to contend with. It tottered and clung, its tiny translucent hand flexing in an almost celestial incapacity on the giant knee. It lacked even strength to plead for its life; all simply it trusted the knee would be merciful. Francis stood up in a rage. Even so, the child neither fell nor—idiot!—felt any part of Francis’s ill will, though its mother’s gasp of reproach sent him striding down the car and out onto the ramshackle platform. This wasn’t the right stop. No matter, he would walk the rest of the way; and down the stairs he went, shuddering with anger at everything he knew.

  The streets were empty, and were not. Footsteps kept drawing closer. In the vitrine of a pharmacy knives and scissors wavered towards him through flawed panes. Rounding a corner, Francis made out far ahead the dim treetops of the Common and headed for them. Now human figures began to detach themselves from doorways; others came walking, bearing down on him. He fought a desire to peer into their faces. When they had passed he heard them stop, humming softly or whistling, turning like tops. Once he saw a tall shadow revolve against a building and set slowly out in his direction. His heart pounded. Before long he couldn’t distinguish desire from terror. In the dark turnings of the Public Garden a woman called to him. Within a thicket a boy lit a match and smiled. Farther on, leaning over a railing, a figure considered its image in water. Somebody at least was looking elsewhere—but how could one see for the lapping of the little waves?—and then the figure turned, an old man with his clothes open, beckoning. Francis hurried past. He understood what had gone on in the hearts of those who now and then were found dead in parks at dawn, grass-stained, anonymous.

  Back in the hotel he found a light burning in the foyer of their suite. Lady Good’s door was shut, but not Mrs. McBride’s. Was it so early she hadn’t yet come in? His watch read five minutes to twelve. It could have been three in the morning. How was he ever going to sleep? Francis undressed and went into his bathroom, locking the door.

  While the tub filled he watched his body in the mirror that backed the door. He couldn’t feel that it was his. It belonged to Xenia, to Jane, to a whore whose name he had never known; it belonged, no less, to Vinnie and Benjamin, of whose love it was the only living reminder—disturbingly marked with the two flat rose-brown eyes set in the chest, the navel, the patch of hair, the thing, a desolate pallor of skin encircling, dividing. Unlike the face, which did belong to him, hanging white and worried above it, his body had no meaning. Like a hieroglyph, a sun or a ship, it signified something quite apart from what it represented. It felt warm to his touch, full of life, while his face and the hands that obeyed his face were cold, passive, drifting with the body’s currents of desire, anger, and fear.

  His bath was full. He sprinkled it with a handful of pine-scented salts. Before dipping a foot in the water he unlocked the door—it had never been his wish to die—and looked about one last time. There was the mirror, the razor, the towel. He took from his finger the little gold ring with the owl, kissed it and set it upon the basin. Presently he heard—but from where?—the voice of an old man whispering Ecco, Signore! and the razor was placed in Francis’s hand. Paint the town red! Up to his neck in warm water now, almost afloat, he used his last defense against the flesh. The blade was very sharp; something began easily to separate, then to resist, tougher than a thong of leather. The water, so dazzling clear when he began cutting, turned red instantly. Porta fortuna! He could no longer see what he was doing, or tell, when the severe pain overcame him, whether or not he had succeeded. He cried out once, and lost consciousness.

  15. House after house came into view, each very like the next. It shocked her to see how much building had been done. On the cramped lawns, barely shaded by saplings, children were playing with pets. So much activity, so many lives!—she shook her head, a bit puzzled and sickened by the sight. Didn’t people know better than to put up houses, bear children, let kittens live? Hadn’t they learned, during the how many years since Vinnie’d last left New York? Now especially, when it was crucial for Defense that people not live in tight communities, why, the whole country had turned into one endless suburb!

  Outside a high wind blew, she deduced from the dance of laundry on lines. As the train sped by, house after house wheeled slowly, rank upon rank, to follow its passage wide-eyed. Knowing no motion or singleness of their own, they were staring directly at Vinnie, the solitary, the city dweller hurrying now between cities in a gray “off-the-rack” dress with cotton roses, yellow, at her throat. And as they stared they slowly backed away.

  Her imagination peopled every house with a mother and child. Time and again, under green roofs with aerials or red roofs with gingerbread, a scene evolved between them. The mother would be standing at the head of a dinky little stair that led perhaps to the cellar, calling down to the child who had disobeyed her, or shortly would. Was there something damaged at his feet? Had she herself lived through such a moment? The scene asked of her some really exact feeling, but her mind kept wandering, toppling over dully, or playing like lightning on a deserted house, too brightly and too briefly for any sense to be made out of it.

  Nevertheless she faced the scene, straining until her mind’s eye hurt. Vinnie had always faced things, with a kind of beautiful fatality. You had never seen her turn away. No matter what gale life thrust her into, she bore it, a sister to those weathered mermaids on the prows of whalers. In between had come spells of tense and watchful calm—the eight years between her father’s death and Ben’s first proven infidelity; the thirteen years between their divorce and the ringing of her ivory-white telephone today, at seven in the morning. Disaster brought her to life. She had had, that day years ago, only to see the familiar script, smell the scent with which Natalie Bigelow had drenched her disgusting letter; she had only to hear, today, the strange British voice repeating, “Mrs. Tanning? Mrs. Tanning? This is Prudence Good speaking. You may not know who I am …”—although of course she did know, and knew at once, as on that other morning looking down into Ben’s handkerchief drawer, knew with a sense of canvas being hoisted and yardarms creaking that more would follow. The houses dwindled in her wake, the depths raced beneath her. It was another voyage, and what would be left of her at its end, already worn silver here and there with age?

  “Is this what I was created for?” cried Vinnie, silent and apprehensive among the fleeing vistas. “Tell me,” she went on, addressing no one, “because I’ve got to know. The very last thing I want is to be dependent on others. I have my own room, my own habits—if that’s not little enough to ask! Just tell me this is my duty and I’ll do it. Don’t be afraid! I’m not, I can face it. Just tell me! I’ve got to know!”

  What troubled her was that something lagged behind. Something refused to be dislodged from her familiar gray room, from between the pages of Time (“I don’t trust it but it puts me to sleep”) or from the needlepoint garlands she’d stitched to cover her little provincial chair. Here and now, ridiculous as it sounded. Vinnie missed the assurance that anything belonged to her. This wasn’t her chair she rode in; it wasn’t her view, her window, her world. Her mind had outstripped her feelings. Miles from port, the wooden mermaid kept glancing back with misgivings, for the ship seemed not yet to be under way.

  It was exhausting not to feel, not to know what you felt. Three hours later, in Boston, Vinnie stepped off an elevator. Somebody led her into a sunny parlor full of plants and empty chairs, asked her to wait, and left. Before she could decide where to sit, a tall, badly dressed woman strode through the open glass doors, crying, “Dear Mrs. Tanning, how do you do? His condition’s still serious. But we think the tide ha
s turned.”

  The woman put an arm round her shoulder. “No,” Vinnie said distractedly. “Tell me right out, don’t be afraid.”

  “He’s been given a second transfusion. The doctor will talk to you presently. Now, what have you had to eat?”

  She had had nothing, wanted nothing, but Lady Good rang for broth and toast, and only allowed their talk to continue in earnest after the traveler had lowered the cup from her lips. “First of all,” she said then, “I love Francis. Almost as much as I love Benjamin. You won’t be offended by my saying that?”

  “Not at all. You mustn’t spare my feelings,” replied Vinnie in a dry whisper, as if Lady Good had confessed to an impropriety.

  The Englishwoman bowed her head. “I can’t help it, I feel I’m partly to blame. He wasn’t himself yesterday, but I had no inkling. I kept talking throughout lunch like—”

  “You mustn’t!” exclaimed Vinnie, her eyes filling with tears at last, her mouth working.

  “—like the silly woman that I am—while he—”

  “Hush!” Vinnie leaned forward. The vision of another person’s emotion had roused and defined her own. The situation lost its dreadful strangeness. “You mustn’t think that way! Francis has told me all about you, how much you mean to Ben, so please! Please!” Her words, for all the good will they conveyed, carried a certain implied reproof. Francis was her son. If anyone blamed herself it would be Vinnie who did so, without flinching—not Lady Good. “Look!” She blinked back tears and blew her nose, then, gently taking the other woman’s wet chin in her hand, raised it until their eyes met. “I can bear it. Can’t you do the same, for my sake?”

  “Ah, you’re braver than I!”

  The little shrug with which Vinnie disclaimed this insight only illustrated the truth of it. “Tell me what you can,” she said. She fixed her gaze on Lady Good’s flat, creased lips.

  “Well, of course,” she heard as they began to move, “the person we have most to thank is Mrs. McBride. Without her he would surely have bled to death. She’d been to a late film with her cousin, you see, and had no sooner come in than she heard a moan from his lavatory. The ambulance was there in a matter of minutes.”

  Vinnie held up her hand, struggling to speak. She recalled now that Lady Good had said “transfusion,” but it hadn’t registered yet. Hearing on the telephone no more than that Francis had made an attempt upon his life, Vinnie had assumed him to have swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills. In this one way she had often imagined her own suicide. “Bled …?” she finally brought out.

  “Dear Mrs. Tanning, how thoughtless of me! Of course you’d not have known, would you? I somehow took for granted—”

  “It’s not your fault,” whispered Vinnie. “Give me a moment, though, before you go on.”

  Within her range of vision stood a plant that had stalks covered with pink bristles, and big triangular leaves, greeny brown, each of which seemed to have split open to reveal a jagged form, membranous and pink. It wasn’t a plant she would have chosen for display in a hospital. Now I’ll be sick, she thought. The idea of cutting had always appalled her. She had never doubted that the prick of a needle could put the princess to sleep for a hundred years. If Francis as a child ran to her with the slightest rose-thorn-scratch on his hand, something would rise in Vinnie’s throat; she grasped her own hand in a panic of empathy. Oh God, she thought—for there would be scars as well, at his wrists no doubt where cuffs might easily slip back to reveal them, perhaps even at his throat—and her hand flew to her own throat and its thornless roses. Until now Vinnie hadn’t thought to ask, how could he do this to me?

  “All right,” she nodded nevertheless. “Mrs. McBride found him. She’s Ben’s nurse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she say—?” Here Vinnie checked herself. “You were there, too!” she exclaimed, confronting Lady Good with the fact.

  “Yes, I was there.”

  Vinnie’s curiosity left her. She refused to profit by another’s advantage. “Has Ben been told?” she asked instead.

  “No. He’s here in the hospital, on the floor above, as a matter of fact.” Lady Good proceeded to tell all she knew about the radioactive medicine. “At nine o’clock this morning,” she finished, “I peeked in his door—only the nurses are allowed to go into the room—and waved and chatted, naturally, as if I were just there to say hello. I’m sure he could tell nothing from my face. Dr. Samuels said it would be most foolish to upset him at such a time.”

  Well then, Vinnie would bear the full consciousness by herself. She touched Lady Good’s arm. “Do me a favor, Prudence, dear—may I? I think of you as Prudence—and get some rest. You’ve had none all night.”

  “I have, though—from two o’clock till just before calling you, at seven. The doctor gave me something.” Lady Good looked helpless. “He said there was nothing for me to do.”

  “Well, you’ve been wonderful, believe me.” Too late Vinnie caught the note of dismissal in her words. “Or is there,” she added, embarrassed, “something else I should know?” It crossed her mind to question Lady Good about recent circumstances that might have driven Francis to will his own destruction. That she didn’t came in part from her conviction that it was nobody’s business but hers—neither Prudence’s, nor the doctor’s, nor even poor sick Ben’s. Her upbringing had taught Vinnie to be humiliated by violence of any description. You couldn’t discriminate. It was wicked to murder, but no less so to be murdered; it gave rise to speculation, it hinted that the victim had knowingly roused an immoderate passion. If some ugly motive lay behind Francis’s deed, she prayed he hadn’t been so foolish as to betray it in front of outsiders. It would be a painful enough thing for her to live alone with.

  But Francis, she knew and thanked God for the knowledge, didn’t go around shooting off his mouth. He was blessed with tact and judgment far in advance of his years. Often, indeed, Vinnie would have preferred him to be more open about himself, to tell her what he was doing, what his friends were like. She recalled in particular one afternoon when, just back from abroad, he’d fallen from a real animation into a silence, a sullenness. A cold hand closed upon her heart. She had let herself forget, till then, how he could injure her. Still, as Francis no longer confided in her, she assumed he confided in no one. Useless, for instance, to ask Lady Good where he had spent the previous evening, and with whom.

  Jane’s name, however, was already jotted down in a little notebook Dr. Samuels carried. This cheerful person came upon them now, just as Lady Good was agonizing over whether to tell Mrs. Tanning what she hadn’t yet heard. He solved her problem by shooing her blithely away, begging her not to start a jealous scene; all he wanted was a private word with her companion. “Are you sure it’s Mrs. Tanning?” he went on, taking Vinnie’s hand to show he was joking. “Why, she looks more like that young man’s sister! And stop worrying your pretty head over him. He’s coming along elegantly!”

  Alone with Vinnie, his tone changed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he smiled. “I’m not a comedian at heart.”

  She couldn’t hide how much this put her at ease. The rough humorous attentions of certain men filled her with disgust.

  “I’m a doctor of the old school,” he continued, sociably reminiscing. “At my age I can’t be anything else. Oh, I use up-to-date methods. What I’m doing for Ben might be called revolutionary in a modest way. But I’m old-fashioned in that I never really got the hang of the so-called psychiatric approach. I’m not proud of that one bit. I’m just admitting it to you because you look to me like a perfectly lovely and intelligent woman who never got the hang of it, either.” He grinned and slapped his knee. Vinnie smiled in spite of herself, thus proving Dr. Samuels equipped—if only accidentally—to deal with a disturbed mind. “Now,” he said, “with a patient like your former husband we have the plain human problem of persuading a man who’s been spoiled all his life by getting his own way—” “Spoiled rotten,” Vinnie put in with a sensible but weary shake of the head—�
�persuading him that, while he’ll never be as well as he once was, he’s not nearly so ill as he’d like to think.”

  “He’s always lived by charm,” sighed Vinnie. “Now he’s begun to see that charm isn’t all, and he’s like a little boy, he doesn’t know what to do. I honestly think Francis is more grown up than his father will ever be.”

  “I wish I knew your son better,” the doctor resumed after a thoughtful pause. “I had no clear picture of him (that’s how psychiatrists talk) during my stay at the Cottage. I was saying, Ben’s state of mind is an easy one for an old fuddy-duddy like me to handle. Most states of mind are. Then one comes up, like your boy’s here, where I have to admit right off the bat that I’m beyond my depth. I just don’t trust myself to see into the motives.”

  “Neither do I,” declared Vinnie gratefully. “He’s always been way beyond me. I guess you and I are both in the same boat.” With a sweet smile of complicity she let one hand rest on his starched white sleeve.

  It didn’t surprise her that, whatever there was to find out about Francis, the doctor, so far, hadn’t succeeded. In fact it rather pleased her, as though her son had made a vital scientific discovery or written a book nobody could understand. It didn’t mean that she, once in the room with Francis, wouldn’t know—mothers always did know. But outsiders lacked such sharp eyes. Behind her pleasure, if it was pleasure that Dr. Samuels had been so hard put to produce in her, lay the fear of his prying out something—she couldn’t think what; it waited, vague and awful, a skeleton in her closet, something bare, grinning, of which any medical man had been trained to recognize the littlest finger-bone. She resorted now to a tried and true social blackmail, one that worked not only in Savannah but up North, in the following way. Meeting for the first time—especially under painful circumstances—a lawyer, a college professor, a traffic cop, Vinnie would start to practice a democracy unorthodox in its purity. She would look, say, a minister straight in the eye and speak to the human cipher she saw there, sweetly but firmly ignoring whatever a lifetime in the Church might have bestowed upon such a man, some understanding of good and evil, possibly, or gift for comforting the bereaved—to say nothing of his investment with divine authority. Soon the minister would be feeling, with her, that his most casual allusion to Scripture was a blow below the belt. Vinnie held the unspoken opinion not that you should modestly hide your light under a bushel, but that you should have no light to hide; and much as this attitude infuriated her in her friends—“They don’t read, they don’t think, they sit all day at the card-table!”—she found it indispensable in any crisis involving a professional man. Right now, like a kind of Circe, she had set about transforming the all-seeing doctor into the man—the decent blind insignificant man, belonging to her world and to no other. But Dr. Samuels hadn’t lost his sprig of moly—given him by the god whose caduceus was the very emblem of practiced medicine—and it was with a sinking dismay that Vinnie took in his next words.