by Mary Gordon
Her father pretended to slap her, then kissed her on both cheeks.
“What will become of you? I ask myself. I suppose you will have to live with your father forever.”
Maria smiled her pious smile and looked at Joseph, as if they two knew the truth. But Joseph looked away. Over Maria's shoulder he could see his mother.
They drove four hours to the monastery, speaking easily of things, of school and politics, of Dr. Meyers's days in Europe, of his promise one day to show Joseph Chartres.
“One day you may decide that you would like to go away to school. Remember, you have only to ask. I know what it's like to be a young boy. You can always come to me, you know, with any problem.”
No I cannot, he thought, you are sending me away. The home you call yours I called mine. And now I have no home.
“Thank you,” he said, and looked out the window where the rain was turning the gray pavement black.
A lay brother named Brother Gerald showed them to their room. Two iron beds and on the green walls nothing but a crucifix.
“Well, no distractions. That can certainly be said. Better a bare room than an excrescent display of Hallmark piety,” said Dr. Meyers, flipping the gold clips of his suitcase. He hung up his shirts and put his shaving kit out on the bed. “And now to supper, whatever that will be. Certainly not as good as what your mother cooks.”
Why had his mother told him? Every second now, he had to wait for Dr. Meyers's words. Each bite of food might bring those words closer, every step around the grounds. Each time Dr. Meyers laid a hand on Joseph's shoulder, he was sure it was the time. But Saturday went by, the early Mass, the Rosary, Confessions, Vespers, dinnertime. And when it was his turn to speak to the retreat master, Joseph sat dumbly, listening to Father Mulvahy talk about bad companions and the dangers of the flesh. He knew what dangers of the flesh were. They could make you lose your home. He thought about the garden, deep in shadow. He thought about Maria and his mother's words. Perhaps he should ask Father Mulvahy if she'd told the truth. But he did not know how.
“Joseph, I have something difficult to tell you,” Dr. Meyers said, Sunday after Mass, when Joseph thought the time was wrong. Fresh from Communion, polished by the glow of silence, of the Sacrament, they walked to the refectory alone.
“In some ways, Joseph, you are like my son. I've always loved you as a son. And because I love you as a son, I fear for the salvation of your soul. I pray for it, I pray for it every morning, as I do for my own daughter's.”
Dr. Meyers kept his hand on Joseph's shoulder. Their feet made ugly sounds in the wet grass. He thought of Maria, of the gift of her ideas and words. He thought of the gold star, the secret gift nobody knew she gave him. Was his living in the house a danger to their souls? It could not be. Dr. Meyers must have got it wrong.
“Your nature, Joseph, is not passionate, like my Maria's. Nevertheless, you are a young man now. And to put difficulties in a young man's path is a cruelty I hope I would not be guilty of.”
You are guilty of the cruelty of sending me away. Of separating me from everything I love. Of sending me to live alone, in ugliness and hatred with the mother whom I cannot love.
Joseph nodded soberly when Dr. Meyers said, “I thought it best,” and ended with the news of his gift to Joseph and his mother of the house.
“But you must never be a stranger, Joseph. You are like our family. Our home is yours.”
But you have sent me from your home, my home. I have no home. There is no place for me.
“Thank you, sir,” he said.
“You're a good boy, Joseph,” said Dr. Meyers, squeezing his shoulders. “For you I have no fears. But what will happen to Maria?”
He felt his spine light up, as if a match had been struck at the base. A hot wire went up into his skull, and then back down his spine.
“I think she'll become a nun,” said Joseph, looking daringly at Dr. Meyers.
Sadly, Dr. Meyers shook his head. “Think of how she is. There is no convent that would have her.”
Joseph felt his throat go hot like melting glass. It could not be that what his mother said was right. It could not be that they knew the same thing, his mother and Dr. Meyers, knew this thing he and Maria did not know.
Why did they know and never tell their children? They were cruel, the both of them. The cruelty he thought was just his mother's, Dr. Meyers shared. He might have thought that he kept silent out of kindness, but it was not kindness. It was fear.
But Joseph knew what he would do. He would get Dr. Meyers to send him away to school. He would not see Maria. He would write to her. And his letters would make her think of him in the right way. Make her think of him so she would love him, want to live with him, the body life, and not the life that rose up past the body, not the life of Sister Berchmans and the white-faced nuns. He would make her feel that only with him could her life be happy. He would make her want to marry him before they went to college. He would do that so that she would never know that they would never let her have it. He would marry her before she could find out that because of her blood they would keep back from her her heart's desire.
“I would like to go away to school,” he said to Dr. Meyers.
“Of course, Joseph,” Dr. Meyers said. “We can arrange anything you want.”
Delia
People talked about how difficult it was to say which of the O'Reilley girls was the best-looking. Kathleen had the green eyes. She came over by herself at seventeen. She worked as a seamstress and married Ed Derency The money that she earned, even with all the babies— one a year until she was thirty-five— was enough to bring over the three other girls. Bridget had black hair and a wicked tongue. She married a man who was only five feet tall. She had no children for seven years; then she had a red-haired boy. Some believed he was the child of the policeman. Nettie was small; her feet and her ankles were as perfect as a doll's. She married Mr. O'Toole, who sang in the choir and drank to excess. She had only daughters. Some thought Delia the most beautiful, but then she was the youngest. She married a Protestant and moved away.
In defense of her sister, Kathleen pointed out that John Taylor looked like an Irishman.
“He has the eyes,” Kathleen said to Nettie and to Bridget. “I never saw a Protestant with eyes like that.”
“Part of the trouble with Delia all along is you babied her, Kathleen,” Bridget said. “You made her believe she could do no wrong. What about the children? Is it Protestant nephews and nieces you want?”
“He signed the form to have them baptized,” said Nettie.
“And what does that mean to a Protestant?” Bridget said. “They'll sign anything.”
“He's good to the children. My children are mad for him,” said Kathleen.
“Your children are mad entirely. Hot-blooded,” said Bridget. “It's you have fallen for the blue eyes yourself. You're no better than your sister.”
“He's kind to my Nora,” said Kathleen.
Then even Bridget had to be quiet. Nora was Kathleen's child born with one leg shorter than the other.
“There was never any trouble like that in our family,” Bridget had said when she first saw Nora. “It's what comes of marrying outsiders.”
John Taylor would sit Nora on his lap. He told her stories about the West.
“Did you see cowboys?” she would ask him, taking his watch out of the leather case he kept it in. The leather case smelled like soap; it looked like a doll's pocketbook. When Nora said that it looked like a doll's pock-etbook, John Taylor let her keep it for her doll.
“Cowboys are not gentlemen,” said John Taylor.
“Is Mr. du Pont a gentleman?” asked Nora.
“A perfect gentleman. A perfect employer.”
John Taylor was the chauffeur for Mr. du Pont. He lived in Delaware. He told Nora about the extraordinary gardens on the estate of Mr. du Pont.
“He began a poor boy,” said John Taylor.
“Go on about the gardens. Go on about
the silver horse on the hood of the car.”
Delia came over and put her hands on top of her husband's. Her hands were cool-looking and blue-white, the color of milk in a bowl. She was expecting her first baby.
“Someday you must come and visit us in Delaware, when the baby's born,” she said to Nora. She looked at her husband. Nora knew that the way they looked at each other had something to do with the baby. When her mother was going to have a baby, she got shorter; she grew lower to the ground. But Delia seemed to get taller; she seemed lighter and higher, as though she were filled, not with a solid child like one of Nora's brothers or sisters, but with air. With bluish air.
Delia and John Taylor would let her walk with them. She would walk between them and hold both their hands. Their hands were very different. Delia's was narrow and slightly damp; John Taylor's was dry and broad. It reminded Nora of his shoes, which always looked as if he were wearing them for the first time. They knew how to walk with her. Most people walked too slowly. She wanted to tell them they did not have to walk so slowly for her. But she did not want to hurt their feelings. John Taylor and Delia knew just how to walk, she thought.
After only two weeks, they went back to Delaware.
“She's too thin entirely,” said Bridget.
“She's beautiful,” said Nora. Her mother clapped her hand over Nora's mouth for contradicting her aunt.
Delia never wrote. Nora sent her a present on her birthday, near Christmas. She had made her a rose sachet: blue satin in the shape of a heart, filled with petals she had saved in a jar since the summer. She had worked with her mother to do the things her mother had told her would keep the smell.
Delia sent Nora a postcard. “Thank you for your lovely gift. I keep it in the drawer with my linen.”
Linen. Nora's mother read the card to her when the aunts were to tea at their house.
“Fancy saying ‘linen’ to a child,” said Bridget. “In a postcard.”
“She has lovely underthings,” said Nettie.
“Go upstairs. See to your little brother, Nora,” said her mother.
“When they came back to New York, he gave her twenty-five dollars, just to buy underthings. Hand-hemmed, all of them. Silk ribbons. Ivory-colored,” said Nettie.
“Hand-done by some greenhorn who got nothing for it,” said Bridget.
Now Nora knew what Delia meant by linen. She had thought before it was tablecloths she meant, and that seemed queer. Why would she put her good sachet in with the tablecloths? Now she imagined Delia's underclothes, white as angels, smelling of roses. Did John Taylor see her in her underclothing? Yes. No. He was her husband. What did people's husbands see?
She was glad the aunts had talked about it. Now she could see the underclothes more clearly. Ivory ribbons, Nettie had said. Delia's stomach swelled in front of her, but not as much as Nora's mother's. And Nora's mother was going to have a baby in May, which meant Delia would have hers first. March, they had said. But Delia's stomach was light/hard, like a balloon. Nora's mother's was heavy/hard, like a turnip. Why was that, Nora wondered. Perhaps it was because her mother had had five babies, and this was Delia's first.
When her mother wrote to Delia, Nora dictated a note to her too. She asked when John Taylor's birthday was. She thought it was in the summer. She would make him a pillow filled with pine needles if it was in the summer. In July, the family went to the country for a week, and her mother would give her an envelope so she could fill it with pine needles for her Christmas gifts.
March came and went and no one heard anything of Delia's baby. Nora's mother wrote, Nettie wrote, even Bridget wrote, but no one heard anything.
“She's cut herself off,” said Bridget. “She hasn't had the baby baptized, and she's afraid to face us.”
“First babies are always late,” said Kathleen. “I was four weeks overdue with Nora.”
“Perhaps something's happened to the baby. Perhaps it's ill and she doesn't want to worry us,” said Nettie.
“Nothing like that used to happen in our family,” said Bridget, sniffing. “Or anyone we knew in the old country.”
“What about Tom Hogan? He had three daft children. And Mrs. Kelly had a blind boy,” said Nettie.
“If you'd say a prayer for your sister instead of finding fault with her, you might do some good with your tongue, Bridget O'Reilley, for once in your life,” said Kathleen.
“If she'd of listened to me, she wouldn't be needing so many prayers,” said Bridget.
“God forgive you, we all need prayers,” said Kathleen, crossing herself.
“What's the weather in Delaware?” said Nettie.
“Damp,” said Bridget. “Rainy.”
“They live right on the estate,” said Kathleen. “They eat the same food as Mr. du Pont himself.”
“Yes, only not at the same table,” said Bridget. “Downstairs is where the servants eat. I'd rather eat plain food at my own table than rich food at a servant's board.”
“Will we not write to her, then?” said Nettie, to Kathleen mainly.
“Not if she's not written first. There must be some reason,” said Kathleen.
“It's her made the first move away,” said Bridget.
“If something was wrong, we'd hear. You always hear the bad. She must be all wrapped up. Probably the du Ponts have made a pet of her,” said Kathleen.
Nora remembered that lohn Taylor had said that on Mrs. du Pont's birthday there was a cake in the shape of a swan. And ices with real strawberries in them, although it was the middle of November. And the ladies wore feathers and looked like peacocks, Delia had said. “They're beautiful, the ladies,” lohn Taylor had said. “You should know, tucking the lap robes under them,” Delia had said, standing on one foot like a bird. “God knows where you'd of been if I hadn't come along to rescue you in good time.” “You've saved me from ruin,” lohn Taylor had said, twirling an imaginary mustache.
Nora remembered how they had laughed together. lohn and Delia were the only ones she knew who laughed like that and were married.
“Do you think we'll never see Delia and lohn again?” said Nora to her mother.
“Never say never, it's bad luck,” her mother said. She put her hand to her back. The baby made her back ache, she said. Soon, she told Nora, she would have to go to bed for the baby.
“And then you must mind your aunt Bridget and keep your tongue in your head.”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Nora. But her mother knew she always minded; she never answered back. Only that once, about Delia, had she answered back.
When Nora's mother went to bed to have the baby, the younger children went to Nettie's, but Nora stayed home. “Keep your father company,” her mother had said. “At least if he sees you it'll keep him from feeling in a house full of strangers entirely.”
But even with her there, Nora's father walked in the house shyly, silently, as if he was afraid of disturbing something. He took her every evening, since it was warm, to the corner for an ice cream. She saw him so rarely that they had little to say to one another. She knew him in his tempers and in his fatigue. He would walk her home with a gallantry that puzzled her, and he went to sleep while it was still light. He woke in the morning before her, and he went away before she rose.
Bridget made Nora stay outside all day when her mother went into labor. She sat on the front steps, afraid to leave the area of the house, afraid to miss the first cry or the news of an emergency. Children would come past her, but she hushed them until they grew tired of trying to entice her away. She looked at her hands; she looked down at her white shoes, one of which was bigger than the other, her mother had said, because God had something special in mind for her. What could He have in mind? Did God change His mind? Did He realize He had been mistaken? She counted the small pink pebbles in the concrete banister. She could hear her mother crying out. Everyone on the block could, she thought, with the windows open. She swept the sand on the middle step with the outside of her hand.
Then in fro
nt of her were a man's brown shoes. First she was frightened, but a second later, she recognized them. She did not have to look up at the face. They were John Taylor's shoes; they were the most beautiful shoes she had ever seen.
“Hello, Nora,” he said, as if she should not be surprised to see him.
“Hello,” she said, trying not to sound surprised, since she knew he did not want her to.
“Is your mother in?”
“She's upstairs in bed.”
“Not sick, I hope.”
“No. She's having another baby.”
John Taylor sucked breath, as if he had changed his mind about something. The air around him was brilliant as glass. He looked around him, wanting to get away.
“How is Delia?” said Nora, thinking that was what her mother would have said.
“She died,” said John, looking over his shoulder.
“And the baby? Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Dead. Born dead.”
“Do you still drive a car for that man?” she said, trying to understand what he had told her. Born dead. It did not sound possible. And Delia dead. She heard her mother's voice from the window.
“I'm on holiday,” said lohn, reaching into his pocket.
She was trying to think of a way to make him stay. If she could think of the right thing, he would take her for a walk, he would tell her about the cars and the gardens.
“How've you been, then?” she said.
“Fine,” said lohn Taylor.
But he did not say it as he would have to an adult, she knew. He did not say it as if he were going to stay.
“Nora,” he said, bending down to her. “Can we have a little secret? Can I give you a little present?”
“Yes,” she said. He was going away. She could not keep him. She wanted something from him. She would keep his secret; he would give her a gift.
He reached into his pocket and took out a silver dollar. He put it in her hand and he closed her hand around it.
“Don't tell anyone I was here. Or what I said. About Delia, or about the baby.”