by Mary Gordon
A problem now arises: How do you describe endurance, silence, in the language of the fairy tale? And how do you say that in the midst of her silence there was talk, a paradise of talk, a wilderness of talk, about everything else? And how do you describe his fine bright eye: a bird's? a horse's? For you, the craftsman, this will be a difficult problem. Perhaps you will have to leave all these things out of the fairy tale and put in their place definite, visible action.
In the fairy tale, something definite must happen: It is in the nature of the narrative. In the fairy tale, she will weep. The girl will weep in the woods and someone, someone old or magical, will hear. Something will happen, something outside her, so that her intention of silence will remain pure, and yet he will know. Something dramatic will happen, so that she can remain silent, but he will come to her, to her deathbed, to her bed of leaves, knowing.
Even in the course of the fiction we are familiar with, there is one central event around which the story centers, around which it fans, like a peacock's tail. You should be searching your narrative for a central event, a significant event. In the fiction we are familiar with, it is possible that the central event will be an event in the mind: a decision. For example, it would be perfectly consistent with the rules of fiction and with the character of the girl as you have created her, if you have her decide not to act but to keep her love a secret. You can refer back to the scene of the husband and the wife at dinner. You can depict the girl watching the wife afraid to eat anything until her husband has eaten something first, then giving him half her dinner. You may describe the fear that that engendered in the girl: you may discuss the fear that may exist in the heart of a strong person in the presence of vulnerability. You may mention, here, the girl's sense of superiority: she would, she knew, never wait to see what anyone was eating before she began to eat. And you may include here her sense that, being stronger than the wife, she was more able to bear loss.
The central event of a fairy tale often involves loss. The theme of the quest is also prevalent. In the fairy tale, for example, the girl can go to the man for help because she has lost something magical: a comb made of pearls, a ring in the shape of a lion's head. And they will search in the woods until it is dark, and then they will lie down with the animals.
In a story that is not a fairy tale, the difficulties in getting them into the woods alone may be distracting. He is married; she is married, so you can see the implications for your narrative. In addition, the image of a couple in the woods may be comic or prurient. And besides, the girl has decided that nothing of that nature will happen. You must convey that her decision involved some sorrow, but you must not say that the girl is weeping: it is not consistent with her character. You may make the wife weep; you could create a moving scene in which you describe the wife, combing her beautiful hair, weeping. Only you have decided that the girl will remain silent. So there is no reason for the wife to weep. But you may depict the wife weeping anyway: it will be beautiful and consistent with her character.
And the man? The man loved them both, each according to what he believed she needed, each according to his needs. The girl he loved in a paradise of talk, a wilderness of talk, and his wife he took to him, flesh to flesh. If we were to end the fairy tale, this would be a happy ending: each having what she needed, which was what he thought she needed: each happy. But, in realistic fiction, this apportionment will not satisfy the character of the girl as you have created her.
Perhaps even in the fairy tale, apportionment will not be enough for the girl, and she will turn into a kind of witch, stirring her love in a dark pot, over and over, with things from old nightmares: heads of animals, curious mangled limbs, herbs that are acrid, dangerous. Even this could lead to an event or an ending: the girl could bewitch the wife and take the husband. But you want the girl to be the hero of the story, and now the girl has become a witch, so you can see the problem for your narrative.
But the problem is not insuperable because the form of the fairy tale, unlike the realistic form, allows for the possibilities of transformation. So you can depict the girl transformed from a girl to a witch, and then you could transform her back to a girl, sadder, more silent, perfectly beautiful in the woods, having learned in her witchhood the language of animals. You can have her send the man and the wife off, having cured them of their enchantment, and leave her in the woods, full of secrets, full of lore. This will compel the reader with the attractions of the supernatural.
It is possible in realistic fiction as well to create the witch as hero, but you must place her in another moral context, and you cannot call her a witch. The use of multiple contexts is an option of the writer of the fiction we are now used to, but you must be sure that your values are clear to the reader. You must create a context in which you extol the values of silence and endurance. You must make the reader interested in the girl's interesting and understandable hatred; you must make him sympathize with her fear and her sense of superiority. You will praise the girl for swallowing her power like a spell she wants to forget, for loving, in spite of herself, the beautiful wife, frailly combing her beautiful hair by the window. And this is the image that will stay in the reader's mind. Of course you can see the problem for your narrative.
You must be sure that the reader can only interpret the story as you would have it interpreted. If you have written a fairy tale, it may be possible for the reader to find everyone a hero: the girl, the man, the wife. All may live on, each inhabiting his particular beauty. But if you are not writing a fairy tale, the center of your fiction is the avoidance of action, the will, steadfastly clung to out of love and hatred, not to change, but to be silent. This may be interpreted as cowardice or bravery, depending upon the context you have created. If it is cowardice, the wife will be the hero of the story, because the reader will have seen her do nothing cowardly. And if it is bravery, the reader will still remember the wife, sitting at her window, frailly combing her beautiful hair.
Once you have decided upon the path of your narrative and have understood its implications, go back to the beginning of the story. Describe the house.
The Thorn
If I lose this, she thought, I will be so far away I will never come back.
When the kind doctor came to tell her that her father was dead, he took her crayons and drew a picture of a heart. It was not like a valentine, he said. It was solid and made of flesh, and it was not entirely red. It had veins and arteries and valves and one of them had broken, and so her daddy was now in heaven, he had said.
She was very interested in the picture of the heart and she put it under her pillow to sleep with, since no one she knew ever came to put her to bed anymore. Her mother came and got her in the morning, but she wasn't in her own house, she was in the bed next to her cousin Patty. Patty said to her one night, “My mommy says your daddy suffered a lot, but now he's released from suffering. That means he's dead.” Lucy said yes, he was, but she didn't tell anyone that the reason she wasn't crying was that he'd either come back or take her with him.
Her aunt Iris, who owned a beauty parlor, took her to B. Altman's and bought her a dark blue dress with a white collar. That's nice, Lucy thought. I'll have a new dress for when I go away with my father. She looked in the long mirror and thought it was the nicest dress she'd ever had.
Her uncle Ted took her to the funeral parlor and he told her that her father would be lying in a big box with a lot of flowers. That's what I'll do, she said. I'll get in the box with him. We used to play in a big box; we called it the tent and we got in and read stories. I will get into the big box. There is my father; that is his silver ring.
She began to climb into the box, but her uncle pulled her away. She didn't argue; her father would think of some way to get her. He would wait for her in her room when it was dark. She would not be afraid to turn the lights out anymore. Maybe he would only visit her in her room; all right, then, she would never go on vacation; she would never go away with her mother to the country, no matte
r how much her mother cried and begged her. It was February and she asked her mother not to make any summer plans. Her aunt Lena, who lived with them, told Lucy's mother that if she had kids she wouldn't let them push her around, not at age seven. No matter how smart they thought they were. But Lucy didn't care; her father would come and talk to her, she and her mother would move back to the apartment where they lived before her father got sick, and she would only have to be polite to Aunt Lena; she would not have to love her, she would not have to feel sorry for her.
On the last day of school she got the best report card in her class. Father Burns said her mother would be proud to have such a smart little girl, but she wondered if he said this to make fun of her. But Sister Trinitas kissed her when all the other children had left and let her mind the statue for the summer; the one with the bottom that screwed off so you could put the big rosaries inside it. Nobody ever got to keep it for more than one night. This was a good thing. Since her father was gone she didn't know if people were being nice or if they seemed nice and really wanted to make her feel bad later. But she was pretty sure this was good. Sister Trinitas kissed her, but she smelled fishy when you got close up; it was the paste she used to make the Holy Childhood poster. This was good.
“You can take it to camp with you this summer, but be very careful of it.”
“I'm not going to camp, Sister. I have to stay at home this summer.”
“I thought your mother said you were going to camp.”
“No, I have to stay home.” She could not tell anybody, even Sister Trinitas, whom she loved, that she had to stay in her room because her father was certainly coming. She couldn't tell anyone about the thorn in her heart. She had a heart, just like her father's, brown in places, blue in places, a muscle the size of a fist. But hers had a thorn in it. The thorn was her father's voice. When the thorn pinched, she could hear her father saying something. “I love you more than anyone will ever love you. I love you more than God loves you.” Tfa'nf went the thorn; he was telling her a story “about a mean old lady named Emmy and a nice old man named Charlie who always had candy in his pockets, and their pretty daughter, Ruth, who worked in the city.” But it was harder and harder. Sometimes she tried to make the thorn go thint and she only felt the thick wall of her heart; she couldn't remember the sound of it or the kind of things he said. Then she was terribly far away; she didn't know how to do things, and if her aunt Lena asked her to do something like dust the ledge, suddenly there were a hundred ledges in the room and she didn't know which one and when she said to her aunt which one did she mean when she said ledge: the one by the floor, the one by the stairs, the one under the television, her aunt Lena said she must have really pulled the wool over their eyes at school because at home she was an idiot. And then Lucy would knock something over and Aunt Lena would tell her to get out, she was so clumsy she wrecked everything. Then she needed to feel the thorn, but all she could feel was her heart getting thicker and heavier, until she went up to her room and waited. Then she could hear it. “You are the prettiest girl in a hundred counties and when I see your face it is like a parade that someone made special for your daddy.”
She wanted to tell her mother about the thorn, but her father had said that he loved her more than anything, even God. And she knew he said he loved God very much. So he must love her more than he loved her mother. So if she couldn't hear him her mother couldn't, and if he wasn't waiting for her in her new room then he was nowhere.
When she came home she showed everyone the statue that Sister Trinitas had given her. Her mother said that was a very great honor: that meant that Sister Trinitas must like her very much, and Aunt Lena said she wouldn't lay any bets about it not being broken or lost by the end of the summer, and she better not think of taking it to camp.
Lucy's heart got hot and wide and her mouth opened in tears.
“I'm not going to camp; I have to stay here.”
“You're going to camp, so you stop brooding and moping around. You're turning into a regular little bookworm. You're beginning to stink of books. Get out in the sun and play with other children. That's what you need, so you learn not to trip over your own two feet.”
“I'm not going to camp. I have to stay here. Tell her, Mommy, you promised we wouldn't go away.”
Her mother took out her handkerchief. It smelled of perfume and it had a lipstick print on it in the shape of her mother's mouth. Lucy's mother wiped her wet face with the pink handkerchief that Lucy loved.
“Well, we talked it over and we decided it would be best. It's not a real camp. It's Uncle Ted's camp, and Aunt Bitsie will be there, and all your cousins and that nice dog Tramp that you like.”
“I won't go. I have to stay here.”
“Don't be ridiculous,” Aunt Lena said. “There's nothing for you to do here but read and make up stories.”
“But it's for boys up there and I'll have nothing to do there. All they want to do is shoot guns and yell and run around. I hate that. And I have to stay here.”
“That's what you need. Some good, healthy boys to toughen you up. You're too goddamn sensitive.”
Sensitive. Everyone said that. It meant she cried for nothing. That was bad. Even Sister Trinitas got mad at her once and told her to stop her crocodile tears. They must be right. She would like not to cry when people said things that she didn't understand. That would be good. They had to be right. But the thorn. She went up to her room. She heard her father's voice on the telephone. Thint, it went. It was her birthday, and he was away in Washington. He sang “Happy Birthday” to her. Then he sang the song that made her laugh and laugh: “Hey, Lucy Turner, are there any more at home like you?” because of course there weren't. And she mustn't lose that voice, the thorn. She would think about it all the time, and maybe then she would keep it. Because if she lost it, she would always be clumsy and mistaken; she would always be wrong and falling.
Aunt Lena drove her up to the camp. Scenery. That was another word she didn't understand. “Look at that gorgeous scenery,” Aunt Lena said, and Lucy didn't know what she meant. “Look at that bird,” Aunt Lena said, and Lucy couldn't see it, so she just said, “It's nice.” And Aunt Lena said, “Don't lie. You can't even see it, you're looking in the wrong direction. Don't say you can see something when you can't see it. And don't spend the whole summer crying. Uncle Ted and Aunt Bitsie are giving you a wonderful summer for free. So don't spend the whole time crying. Nobody can stand to have a kid around that all she ever does is cry.”
Lucy's mother had said that Aunt Lena was very kind and very lonely because she had no little boys and girls of her own and she was doing what she thought was best for Lucy. But when Lucy told her father that she thought Aunt Lena was not very nice, her father had said, “She's ignorant.” Ignorant. That was a good word for the woman beside her with the dyed black hair and the big vaccination scar on her fat arm.
“Did you scratch your vaccination when you got it, Aunt Lena?”
“Of course not. What a stupid question. Don't be so goddamn rude. I'm not your mother, ya know. Ya can't push me around.”
Thint, went the thorn. “You are ignorant,” her father's voice said to Aunt Lena. “You are very, very ignorant.”
Lucy looked out the window.
When Aunt Lena's black Chevrolet went down the road, Uncle Ted and Aunt Bitsie showed her her room. She would stay in Aunt Bitsie's room, except when Aunt Bitsie's husband came up on the weekends. Then Lucy would have to sleep on the couch.
The people in the camp were all boys, and they didn't want to talk to her. Aunt Bitsie said she would have to eat with the counselors and the K.P.s. Aunt Bitsie said there was a nice girl named Betty who was fourteen who did the dishes. Her brothers were campers.
Betty came out and said hello. She was wearing a sailor hat that had a picture of a boy smoking a cigarette. It said “Property of Bobby.” She had braces on her teeth. Her two side teeth hung over her lips so that her mouth never quite closed.
“My nam
e's Betty,” she said. “But everybody calls me Fang. That's on account of my fangs.” She opened and closed her mouth like a dog. “In our crowd, if you're popular, you get a nickname. I guess I'm pretty popular.”
Aunt Bitsie walked in and told Betty to set the table. She snapped her gum as she took out the silver. “Yup, Mrs. O'Connor, one thing about me is I have a lot of interests. There's swimming and boys, and tennis, and boys, and reading, and boys, and boys, and boys, and boys, and boys.”
Betty and Aunt Bitsie laughed. Lucy didn't get it.
“What do you like to read?” Lucy asked.
“What?” said Betty.
“Well, you said one of your interests was reading. I was wondering what you like to read.”
Betty gave her a fishy look. “I like to read romantic comics. About romances,” she said. “I hear you're a real bookworm. We'll knock that outa ya.”