by Sharon
"Someone did intervene. When he was fourteen years old, the state took him away from his parents,"
This second silence was deeper, stretching like the milk-white bands of light that broke through the drapery folds. Dun shadows divided the brightness, ringing him in bowed bars, fanning in flat petals on the carpet. When she thought of it, she searched out a clean handkerchief and blew her nose. Getting to her feet, she went to the glass table, lifting the syringe. She turned it over, a glinting dart in her palm. It was nearly weightless, the surfaces arctic and unfriendly. Withdrawing the plunger slightly, she sniffed the minute fluid residue and then touched the tip of the needle, trying to imagine the rupture of spirit it would take to make human beings drive such a thing into their own flesh. She saw him watching Tier and set it down.
"If you could learn how it is to have Jesus in your heart, you could feel this way all the time, without drugs," she said. It was no surprise to her that he laughed. It would be that way, the Bible said. In their pride,, they would mock.
"Why is it, Susan, that every time I begin to foster the idea that we might be able to connect on some rational level, you say something like that? If you're around long enough to need it, come to me and I'll give you one hundred fifty milligrams of the best Jesus you ever had."
Steadfastly neutral, if skeptical, in spiritual matters, it was neither mockery nor reverence that led Alan to choose "Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring." It was simply a piece of music that he was familiar with, and though he didn't play Bach often, the melody had come to him when he walked into his room and saw the late-afternoon sunlight on the piano. So he played it. It wasn't particularly to his taste. It was the kind of thing he kept for people who said, can you play anything off the White Album? What do you know by Van Morrison? I don't like classical musk. When he played the Bach, they would listen and say it was pretty, and ask what it was called again, and then forget. Except for Joan, who called it "that thing about desiring." Next time they wanted to hear it they'd ask him to play that piece, you know, that one, and try to hum a few bars as if it were a lick from "Yellow Submarine."
The piano sounded especially nice. There were days when the piano sounded nice; other days it wasn't as nice, and he was never sure if it was him, the air temperature, the humidity, an imperceptible glitch in the tuning, or a combination of factors human and atmospheric. There was always a secret dimension in music.
It was unusual too for him to look around the room while he played, but today he did, and his gaze fell on that absurd rabbit. He interrupted the Bach abruptly and played the opening bars of "Here Comes Peter Cottontail." The rabbit stared at him.
"I see you haven't figured it out. Confusing, isn't it?" Alan gestured learnedly at the piano. "You have before you a quadripedal creature of questionable zoological origin, possibly order Atiodactyla. Caveat: Don't copy that pronunciation; I'm not sure it's correct. So what is this? It has a complex and highly variable vocalization, but it neither eats nor sleeps nor walks around." He stood and ran his hand over the gleaming woodwork. "At least I've never seen it walk around. When I'm gone, who knows?" He smiled and tapped the piano decisively. "Maybe it's stuffed."
He poured some red wine, taking his time, thinking to open the window, to take off his shoes and socks and toss them in the bedroom, concentrating on preserving his emotional poise, as he had since leaving the set two hours before. One had to face these things with aplomb. Yes, he'd said on the phone to L.A. I hit him. If you want to replace me, fair enough. There had to be concern in the voice, enough to let them know he was still rational. But there had to be confidence there, too, and the whisper of a threat. Ride me about this and I may decide I don't want this picture that badly, and then what would you do? Wilde playing the role of the indispensable director, messages weighed to the last dram, never overplayed. Never waffle. Bluff and die with your boots on. He'd learned to play poker from Dash. You're going to need this, boy, Dash had said…
He wandered back to the hutch, the goblet loosely clasped in his hand, and gazed down at the rabbit. "You might remember that you were recommended to me as good company. Can we be frank? As company I'm afraid you rank right up there with a house fern." The rabbit put its head to the side to deal with an apparent itch in one droopy silly ear. "Heavens! Signs of life. I stand corrected. Oh, are you going to wriggle your nose?" He dropped his voice. "That's cute. That is so damn…" He watched for a while before getting down on his knees to open the hutch, scratching the furry creature behind its lop ears. Then he relaxed on the carpet on his back, his knees bent, the wineglass by his hip, the rabbit on his chest regarding him thoughtfully as he stroked it. "I don't know if anyone's told you this before," he said softly, "but it was a very bad choice to be a bunny. You should have been something else. Maybe an astronaut, or an accountant. If I hadn't come along, you just might have been eaten." He ran a fingertip down one of the long ears. "Do you fully realize how sick it is to be raised by one's predators?"
Perhaps five minutes passed before someone knocked on the door. Whom would they send? Not Joan. There was protocol involved. This was important—the first person to speak with him after. It would be Ben, probably, apologetic, bustling, stern if he thought he could get away with it, and trying to give no appearance of being comforting, which might be badly received. He must look a little deranged in this posture. Should he put the rabbit away? No. Give Ben a good scare. He smiled.
"Come in and join us for a glass of wine."
He heard the door open. Then, "I wouldn't care for wine. Will you have me anyway?" Susan.
Her voice, unexpected, intimate in tone, went through him like flickering heat.
Coming in, she couldn't help but smile, seeing him there cozy on the floor with a rabbit on him, the informality unlike him. He got a lopsided grin. His grin grew; so did hers.
"I'd have you under any circumstances," he said calmly. "I've had a hard day, running amok."
She could hardly think of a single reason to keep up the smile, much less laugh, but she did both, and he did, too, though it wasn't easy, lying on his back. Reasons for things weren't easy for her to see anymore. The air was too filled with feelings, bright, demanding feelings that she could almost see, biting into the very oxygen she was trying to breathe.
He was laughing as if he weren't going to quit soon, the rabbit jouncing with the rhythm of his chest, and he had to put it down to the floor. When he could, he said, "Do you think I've taken a step or two toward ruining my reputation as a model of composure?"
"You did real good on that."
"He's a martial-arts expert. I never could have landed that punch if he'd been expecting it."
"I don't know about that. I think you could give a pretty good account of yourself in a ruckus." Getting back to reasons, there wasn't a reason on earth for that to set them off again, but it did. Sometime in the middle of it all, he gasped out, "I never forgot my professional responsibilities for a minute. I want you to know that the last thing that went through my mind before I hit him was, Oh, no, I shouldn't hit him in the face. I need his face in a closeup in the next scene." They laughed at that until they had tears in their eyes and their stomachs were hurting—at least hers was; they were laughing as if they'd run out of sense, out of ways to make sense out of anything.
When it was over she was dizzy and breathless, and the way he was looking at her made her breathless too. The air was still thick with feelings, different ones now. And there wasn't a thing either of them could do about it anymore. Laughter remained with him like the whispered fragrance of a sachet, but his eyes revealed his curiosity.
"When I called the office they said you'd gone home."
"No," she said. "I went to see David. I thought you might like to know—he did apologize, after a fashion."
He got that objective look of his, the one that covered up his thoughts. After a short pause he said, "I can imagine the fashion."
"He said it was nothing personal."
"It never is, these da
ys. They get themselves wired and run over you in a car, it's nothing personal., They bomb your village, it's nothing personal. I'd like to know what ever happened to old-fashioned, honest malice."
"I guess the devil got a lot smarter."
He smiled, the corners of his mouth stretching into their charming tucks, and it occurred to her that he didn't believe in the devil. She'd bet the devil would get good and frustrated trying to get some respect out of Alan. He conjured his own devils on film, where they could be captured and controlled.
He was starting to get up, she wasn't sure why. Maybe it didn't suit his notion of being mannerly, to be on the floor like that and have company.
She put out her hand. "Just stay. You look comfortable. I'd only planned to put my head in the door for a minute. If you re resting, I don't want to interrupt."
His smile became inviting, his eyes more so. It was the expression she could never get away from in her mind.
"Rest with me," he said.
She was torn for a moment. She wanted to stay with him; she wanted to escape to the security and peace of her own home. His smile gave her no peace, not anymore. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been able to look at him without the inside of her heart twisting in all directions.
Her whole body prickled like awakening flesh as she sat beside him, facing him, settling her violet skirt around her knees. He looked too tempting this way, nice and clean and a bit golden in the slanting sunlight. It hadn't surprised her particularly that he didn't look upset. It wasn't his way to show such a thing. Alan was that way to an extreme degree. She was glad his eyes had lost the sleepy look they'd had on the set after he'd hit David. Enraptured pain, Joan had called it. Now his eyes were light with introspective humor. He seemed to be deriving some amusement from the way she was looking around his room. She had never seen it before, and though it was pretty and full of luxury, she'd as soon have had it plain.
In the center was the piano. Though musical instruments were not things they had, she'd seen one before when she'd delivered eggs at the home of an English neighbor. She remembered it as warm and homey, like an old cabinet, much different from the magnificent one before her, its wide polished surfaces gleaming in the sun-wash. She saw the keyboard was uncovered.
"Have you been playing?"
"I was awhile ago. Then you know what happened? I had this scrap of a memory. A dream I had when I was a kid, about my piano."
"What happened in the dream?"
"The piano used to come into my bedroom and look at me while I was sleeping. It'd be wandering: through the house looking for me, and there'd always be this one funny part when it found my bedroom door. To get through the door, it had to stand upright on its spindly hind legs and edge in sideways. Then it tiptoed over to the bed and it would just kind of watch over me while I slept, until it grew tired too. And then it crouched down on the rug by the bed, and the keyboard turned up in a smile, and it went to sleep…" His voice became suddenly tight, soft. "Don't do that, Susan. Please. Don't do it."
She had wanted desperately to hide it, staring down at her clasped hands, concentrating, trying to crowd her mind with everyday matters. A tear had fallen anyway, striking her wrist. It was a large tear, big enough to be embarrassing, falling with a splash, fracturing into fragments as chaotic as the hot commotion inside her.
"You're wrong to think it's pity." Her voice was warm and thick and strange. "The sadness isn't for you. The sadness is for the little boy you were."
She had been half-expecting him to touch her. Instead he seemed to avoid it. He stood up after a moment and went to the piano. When she looked up, he was seated on the piano bench, regarding her steadily. The blue-green eyes had become friendly and sustaining, all traces of the earlier momentary panic neatly erased.
"I'm sorry, Amish. I can't permit you to feel sad. Consider it a forbidden emotion. For one thing, when you're sad, I can't think straight."
A second swift tear streaked backward across her cheek, marking a damp spot in the hair over her ear.
More gently still, he said, "Everyone has something. Everyone. It's not so terrible. I had more armor than you imagine. Don't let knowing about those years affect how you feel about me. It wouldn't be fair to you. It's over. It's been over for a long time. I was unhappy for a while, but even that gets to be a way of life. You lift yourself out of it in stages. You get used to it. Things go on. You get up, go to work, go to school, do whatever you have to. You have a place in those things. You have that structure, even when you start wondering who you are. In time, your personality starts coming back. It's a miracle. Same you. Same sense of humor. Same values. Same intellect. Except that it's you without emotions. You don't feel anything anymore. There's no pain. The nerves are cauterized. It's a relief."
In his way, he meant to comfort her, she knew, but she could only listen with horror to his objective description of the slow destruction of his human responses. He had learned to cope with it in the only way he knew.
They sat and looked at each other, in tension for a time, and then the tension passed, and they were content to sit like that together with each other, to hold each other in sight.
Not knowing why, she said, "I wish I could feel what you feel."
"No. It wouldn't be good for you."
"I wish it anyway."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
The uncanny tension crept back in a new form, one she couldn't quite understand. Her muscles felt tender and alert, and there was a sting of warm blood in her throat. To distract herself, she gestured toward the piano.
"I'd like to hear how it sounds."
"All right." He rose and went to the piano, looking down toward his slightly cupped palms, studying and flexing his fingers before he laid them on the keys. When the first notes came, she started, unprepared for the piano's life, its resonance, unprepared for how he would look, his face captivating in its prayerlike concentration. His long-boned, tanned bare foot worked the pedals; his fingers moved with grace over the keyboard, calling up dazzling, unfamiliar tones that shocked her with their beauty. When they stopped, the room fell into a hush.
He looked back at her, his gaze whimsical, but without ambiguity, and her heart began to beat quickly, like a gosling's.
"Again I have to apologize, Susan. I don't seem to be able to go on like this indefinitely. I've got to carry you into the bedroom and make love to you. Or else I have to take you home."
She didn't say anything. Words couldn't get hold of her thoughts or her feelings. Nothing seemed to exist in the world beyond her need to have his body close to her and his hands stroking over the warm places on her skin. So she said nothing at all, only sat and threw the whole thing in his lap, although she knew it was unwise, and not very kind or practical.
He waited with that otherworldly patience he had. And when he realized at length that she would not speak, he slowly closed the lid of the piano, smiled at her with such gentleness that it drew a third silent tear from her, and drove her home.
Chapter 16
It was the first time she'd allowed him to do this, to take her up in his car, even though he always offered. For one thing, the community would have raised hob if she'd been seen zipping here and there in a car with an English bachelor. Another thing was, she liked the independence of coming and going on her own. She took the buggy sometimes, or she walked or rode, becoming part of the sunshine, or the pearly gray of cloudy days. She could hear the birds in the morning and again in the evening, and how the wind changed. You couldn't hear much in a car, only road noise and the engine. "The hum of the engine" was the phrase she'd read m books. She told him it didn't sound like a hum to her, more like a roar, and he gave her back a comical look, the kind he gave to tease her when he thought she was being kind of out-of-date.
The discomfort persisted in her muscles, though she tried to make it leave, but she and Alan could still talk together pretty well. She worked to let friendly words cover the urgent needs an
d unsteadiness that lashed at her continually inside. His inner struggles were hidden under the flawless polish of his manners. Knowing him better now, she could see some evidence of strain. It was impossible to figure out how much it cost him to keep the facade intact, but she sensed he'd do it as long as he was able. That was the thing. She wasn't sure anymore what was going on in his mind. She could only see shadows and guess at substance.
She could have asked him what he was thinking, but the idea of laying too much in the open disturbed her. Even the thought of asking him was an English one, something she'd learned from them. On the set she had heard Alan say to this one or that one: "Are we communicating?" It meant, saying things right out. They had great trust in words. That was the hard thing to understand. On the one hand, they believed words had a tremendous power to solve problems, that somewhere there were the right words, almost like a spell, to make any two people get along and understand each other. On the other hand, they were careless with words, throwing out anything in anger, using harmful words without a thought. Words were nothing, words were everything.
It wasn't the way she'd been brought up- There was a lot in her family that was never put into words. Many things. She thought about the times when there was a break in the harmony between her mother and Aunt Mary. It only happened maybe once a year, at most, because her mother was easygoing, but there were times when Aunt Mary would want to do things her way, or she'd be fussy about this or the other, and Mother would put her foot down. There was no yelling, and no harsh words were spoken; her mother just said how she wanted it to be and that was that. Then they'd both be quiet for a couple of days, not talking much to each other, and before long it would blow over and they'd be friends again, back to getting along and enjoying each other and sharing things. But while they weren't on good terms, no one said they should sit down and talk it all out. They wouldn't have done that. There were things they just didn't say. It must have bothered Aunt Mary sometimes that she lived as part of a household where another woman, no matter how goodnatured, would always govern. But she never said so. It didn't sit very well with Mother that Mary had to have things just so, and that when she was out of sorts she got sharp with the children. But Mother kept that to herself. It was hard to believe that if they talked things out, things would change for better. They'd both have the same natures afterward. They'd both carry on with things the same as they always had, except that, if they'd talked about it, they'd have hard words and hard feelings to get over. Her mother and Aunt Mary didn't complain or try to change each other; they only let be.