They're burning the couch.
35
TUNES OF TINVALIN
Tunes of Tinvalin was printed on the tab of the file folder and typed across the first sheet of paper inside. There r were about fifty pages altogether.
ALONG THE ROAD
The little black bird
With tennis-string claws
Perched on the old gray dog.
Slowly the bird
Stepped up and down
The back of the dog.
And then the bird
Stopped at the place
Where the tire had run.
And ate his dinner.
And on the following page:
Ceaselessly it searches the man's heart
Simply for pleasures of the flesh.
But he trembles at the notion
That it searches for a greater food.
He need not worry,
For the maggot has no eyes.
And on the next:
FOR A SOMEBODY
love's
a yes for
a thing with
a nobody
but Love's
a thing with
a yes for
a somebody
so Life's
a thing for
a sum of
a body nowhere
Hmmm, e. e. cummings, Charles thought, and looked up; Tim was across the bedroom, upright in an old kitchen chair, cracking his knuckles, clearing his throat, and growing more nervous with each page Charles turned. Charles was worried that he'd been wrong to ask to read these. Tim had shown them to their father earlier, wondering if perhaps the local printer, who printed the weekly newspaper and pamphlets and auction posters, couldn't print a hundred copies of his collection; he'd pay the cost. Tim kept the poems in a big envelope, which was hidden away in the old suitcase he used each time he went back to Wisconsin. Their father took the envelope to the other side of the house and brought it back after midnight, and said, "I like a lot of them, practically all of them, but I think you should wait until you're twenty-one to publish." The way Tim took the poems and then left the room was the real reason Charles had asked to see them.
THE FLEDGING
I fled it.
Feathers around bone
and a body so tiny it must
have been just air when it hit.
Had it tried its first flight yet?
Had other feathers around bone
crowded or denied it?
Did its mother slap her wing — a cruel crone?
It lay on leaves where ants would lace around it
with ribbons and streamers of gold and red
and bright birthday bows that led
over a sand pyramid down to the
hole where they'd tie it for good.
No matter where I travel or roam,
to the Far East or farther West,
it stays: for I am it,
the fledgling fallen from its nest.
Charles looked up. Tim had stopped his gestures of nervousness and was staring at him in wide-eyed silence as he breathed through his mouth.
"Have you read much Hart, er—Stephen Crane?" Charles asked.
"Oh, sure," Tim said. "Some. What do you think of it?"
"Are these sort of representative?" Charles asked, and flinched at his College English question.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you always write about death?"
"Death?" Tim asked, breathless. He studied Charles with troubled eyes. "Do I?" he said.
"So far."
"Aren't they just symbolic?"
"Everything's symbolic," Charles said, and flinched again.
36
MARIE'S SINGING
Now all of the family was home for Christmas at last. Marie came in the kitchen door after a spate of last-minute shopping with Elaine, giddy with Elaine's giddiness and good cheer, and there were Jerome and Charles, the missing two, at the kitchen table, playing pinochle with Tim and her dad. They hadn't been here since Thanksgiving vacation and she was so happy to see them she almost sang out "Joy to the World!" as she'd been singing all the way home in the car, in "that clangoring alto," as Elaine called it, and then asked her to mellow it so she could see to drive.
"Mrs. Claus returneth," Tim said, and Marie wondered, since her hands were full of packages, how Tim pictured the word: Claws?
Charles looked up from his cards and said, "Hey-hey, Marie," and Jerome said, "How have you been?"
"Fine," she said, smiling and studying them with affection for their brotherly bonds. They were wearing the sweaters she'd sent for their birthdays—they were that thoughtful—and Jerome had on a handsome pair of horn-rimmed glasses, new to her, that made his hollow-cheeked face look fuller and more direct in its lines.
She was relieved that neither got up from the table to greet her or give her a kiss; those moments were so difficult for her to find her way through, and she felt awkward enough as it was. They looked much older than she'd remembered, older than their ages, it seemed, and both were so intelligent and had learned so much at school and otherwise, she was convinced she'd never catch up, and didn't care. She blushed, embarrassed, yet comforted by the feelings they stirred alive in her, and put the packages down on the counter.
"Oh!" she said. She'd tracked in snow and it was mating around her shoes, tattered water around a mouse. She took a sponge from the drainboard of the sink and blotted at the water. The house had to be perfect for Christmas, correctly arranged and immaculate, so the spirit of the season could move unhindered through all of the rooms; she'd spent two weeks cleaning and decorating the place, and now, as usual, was the first to track it up.
"Have you joined the Thespian Club yet?" Charles asked her.
He'd been the president when he was a senior and won the highest award, an Omar, and acted at the university now; his hair was long again, halfway down his neck, and she remembered hearing he was in another play, one by Shakespeare, something with "night" in the title. She'd always wanted to go to the university with her dad to watch him perform, but she assumed she wouldn't understand the play and then wouldn't know what to say to him afterward, and he was so sensitive she was afraid that no matter what she said it might affect their relationship from then on.
"Oh, no," she said. "I'm just a sophomore."
"So? I joined when I was a sophomore.”
"But you're so good. I can't act."
"Sure you can."
"I'd feel too dumb standing up in front of all those people."
"Get into makeup or props."
"Maybe next year."
Her dad, who'd been staring at Charles, said, "Will it be necessary for her to grow her hair as long as yours in order to act?"
"Oh, for God's sake," Charles said.
"I used to act in school, too, you know, but that doesn't mean I ran around looking like a bum. I'll give you five dollars right now if you'll run uptown the first thing in the morning and have that stuff cut off."
"It's supposed to be long."
"Wear a wig!"
"Oh, God!" Charles said, and turned the coloring fury of his face on his cards.
She put the sponge in the sink and saw that Tim and her dad, who were paired off against Charles and Jerome, were passing the signals Tim had devised over the fall. She hoped Jerome and Charles had their own set of signals, as they used to, and used them.
Tim crossed his eyes and said through clenched teeth, "Rack 'em up! Rip 'em off! Whip 'em out!"—he plucked a card from the fan in his hand and lifted it high— "Ah, ha! Ah, ya-ta-ta! Winny-beat Whoo, whoooooooo!" His eyes uncrossed. "Feast on this, fond bluver Jerbloom," he said, and flipped the card, an ace, down on the table. "Shazam! The amazing Kutabux does another card-flappling trick!"
Jerome, whose play was next, kept staring at his cards and said in his dispassionate, gravelly drawl, "You're a hebephrenic schizophrenic, Tim."
"Oooo!" Tim said. "Large dictionarized words stream
from such a werrietegetable languageopod so highly educated, I see, a pump -whisilQ-wheet!"
"Come on, come on," her dad said. "Either play cards or act the fool, one of the two, or let's quit right now."
"I choose the former of those, kind sire,” Tim said, and tossed down another ace.
"Ha," her dad said. "That helps."
"You betchum, Big M."
"Play!"
At her dad's elbow was a beanbag ashtray, filled with cigarette butts, orange peels, peanut shells, and the butts and chewed bits of his cigars. She'd have to remember to empty it before it gave off that awful odor of old cigars she'd grown up with most of her Life; and she'd have to remember, too, to set out more ashtrays for Jerome and Charles, who smoked in the house now, instead of going out for a walk.
Jerome closed one eye, drew back from his cards like a farmer, and said in a farmer's voice, "Looks like you two are gonna git trounced again" And then threw down a trump!
Marie laughed. He never acted in such a slapstick manner unless he was embarrassed. He must be happy to see her. She smiled and the edges of her vision turned rivery-hued and tunnel-like from levitating tears. She picked up the packages, wavering shapes far away from her, and went into the living room, dimly lit and smelling of pine pitch and the countryside from the ceiling-high tree. The television was going, coloring the walls and half the ceiling gray-violet, and above the back of the easy chair she could see a half-moon of big hair curiers, and then, without moving the curiers or taking her eyes from the television, Susan said, in her matter-of-fact voice, "What'd you get me, Mare?"
Sue was as intelligent as the boys—a straight-A student who never had to study—and she'd helped their father grade school papers from the time she was eight. She hadn't ever taken a course in algebra but could solve Marie's nightly problems with hardly a thought (how could anybody add x's and abc's? they were letters, deviltry!) and she sometimes felt she'd been born into the family to remind the others to be grateful.
"You'll have to wait till Christmas to find out," she said.
"You never wait.”
"I know."
"You see everything everybody's got a week before they get it."
"I know," Marie said.
She couldn't bear the uncertainty. She always rewrapped the packages as carefully as she could, adding touches of her own—a larger bow, an arrangement of tape, or a design cut from colored foil or an old Christmas card. Unless they were gifts for her dad. His she had to re-wrap exactly as she'd found them, or he'd realize they'd been opened, and he couldn't stand it if anybody knew what he was getting before he did. She arranged the gifts she'd brought in (she'd re-do them later), along with the others under the tree, to balance the colors and best display those most artistically wrapped, and then reached to the stand at the center of the tree and put her finger into it; she'd filled it with water in the morning and added a spoonful of molasses for food, and the level was still high.
She realized she was singing "O Little Town of Bethlehem" under her breath and stopped. It irritated Tim and Charles that she was always singing and humming songs— Tim, especially, and when they were younger he'd named her Hum-Hound. Lately, whenever a song unconsciously rose from her, she'd feel jolted by a punch to her shoulder.
“Hum-Hound! Hum-Hound!" Tim would be saying with eyes so angry his pupils appeared blank. "Goddamn-ass Hum-Hound!"
She rearranged a few of the foil icicles hanging on branches in front of her eyes. She'd used eleven packages to cover the tree. Instead of draping handfuls of icicles here and there, or tossing them at the tree, as the boys always did, and letting them hang where they would, she'd suspended each one separately, as she'd seen somebody else (a friend's mother?) do, and now the tree looked like a fall of silver water from a tip pointing toward infinity. The colored lights were reflected off the icicles, as well as the ornaments—she moved a blue globe with a gold sunburst in its center tb another spot—when they were hung right.
A detail was missing. She stepped back and saw that the star at the tip of the tree was lit, casting a red streak across the newly white-painted ceiling. She'd arranged cotton snow around the stand before putting down the packages, the manger scene was set up, and this year she'd repaired a shepherd that hadn't been used as long as she could remember, and had included him among the visitors at the stable, as it must once have been. All the rooms but hers and Susan's were clean, woodwork washed, windows shined, dusting done; and the floors were waxed until the Christmas-tree lights reflected at her feet in the sheen of this one were like a magnified swath of the winter sky's tapestry.
A miniature sleigh of red enamel, filled with candy and nuts, sat in a circle of pine branches on the coffee table, and she could see the wreath on the front door through the Venetian blinds. An angel knelt among holly on the television set. There was a candelabra behind her, and candles of red and green and white were standing in pairs on the coffee table, the end tables, the gate-leg table, and the smoking stand.
Candles were so much more appropriate for a celebration than electric lights. With candles burning, there was , room for darkness, for the emotions that arose only in subdued light, and the flames swayed as though to music that was perpetually joyful and serene. On Christmas Eve, with all of these lit, they'd be surrounded by a host of separate harmonies united in a dance, and the moving shadows would make it seem even the past had joined them.
She went into the kitchen and four pairs of eyes fixed on her.
"Oh," she said. "Do you want coffee?"
They turned back to their cards and "Sure, sure, sure, sure" went around the table in different tones as though they were bidding. She filled the percolator at the tap and took down the coffee can. In this house, the smell of coffee was a common perfume; any of the four could empty a pot in a couple of hours, and there were times when Jerome and Charles took their mugs upstairs and had coffee and cigarettes just before bed. What did they talk about?
She realized that her dad's voice was pitched as it was only when he spoke to her—higher, imperative, and for some reason always impatient.
"I said, 'Don't you think it's about time you took off your coat?' Can't you hear?”
"Oh, I forgot."
She folded it and placed it over the back of a chair and went to the refrigerator door. She'd also forgotten the platter of cold cuts she'd prepared. They ate hearty meals of several helpings and ate whenever they had the inclination in between, but were always hungry. None of them ever put on weight, though. Why? She picked at her food, hardly more, but was always heavier than she felt she should be; not overweight, really, but never as slim as she'd like, either.
She lifted the waxed paper from the platter, where wedges of cheese and slices of ham, corned beef, and liverwurst were rayed around a central arrangement of olives. Charles and Tim loved green olives. She popped one into her mouth. She put the platter on the table and her dad glanced up at her in an imperious, annoyed way. Was he losing at cards? He couldn't stand to lose. He'd say, "Oh, well, it's just another game," and go into the living room and slump in his chair, brooding, pulling and punishing the hair at the back of his head, and then he'd be at the kitchen table again, riffling the edge of the card deck and saying, "Well, is there anybody in this house brave enough to take a chance?"
He wasn't as restless and displeased with himself since he'd gone back to teaching, and in six years had worked his way up from coach and P.E. instructor in the junior high to the principal of the high school. This seemed to give him deep satisfaction. And since the beginning of the summer he'd been seeing Laura, a youthful-looking, high-spirited widow who lived in Chicago, and had become much happier, more open and demonstrative, than Marie had ever seen him. Though he couldn't carry a tune, he'd come into the kitchen where she was busy with dishes, throw his arms out wide, and sing in the voice of that old movie star, Eddie Nelson, or whoever, "Oh, Marie I Ah, Marie . . ."
He'd been driving to Chicago every weekend since the fall, and planned t
o spend part of the hohdays there. Now he slammed down a trump to take a trick, spread his hand out on the table, and said, "I've got the rest," and then tossed the cards to Jerome.
Then turned his annoyed look full on her. "I suppose you spent too much money again today."
"I think the checking account might be overdrawn."
''Overdrawn?"
"Maybe."
"Maybe? Can't you subtract yet?"
"Well, you know . . ." Her wiggly figures never came out right.
"That money was supposed to last you till the middle of January!"
"I know."
"What do you expect to buy groceries with?"
She blushed and lowered her eyes. "I saw some things I had to get."
"Some 'things.' What things?"
"You'll see."
"Ach!"
He turned back to the table, gathering up the cards dealt gingerly by Jerome, and heaved a sigh. Laura was an executive's secretary and a private bookkeeper, and a devout Catholic, too; she planned every move she made months in advance and carried out her plans to the letter, and since their dad had seen how well she managed, he'd become more intolerant than ever with Marie, and her way with money. She knew it wasn't sensible to spend so much at Christmas, when they didn't have that much to begin with, but couldn't help herself, and, anyway, she knew his anger would go when he saw his gift from her.
She'd bought him a maple bedroom valet, with a seat where he could sit as he dressed, a drawer beneath that tilled with shoe-care equipment (she'd also got a shoehorn with a handle of deer antler or bone), and a shelf beneath that for shoes; maple shoe trees came with it. and its back was a hanger for suits. He'd become more careful about his dress and appearance, and was always going into the bathroom to brush his teeth or gargle with something; he combed his hair in a new way, to conceal his bald spot; his shoes weren't dull and scuffed, as they used to be; his suits were neatly pressed; and she no longer had to tell him when a tie and sport jacket clashed.
"The coffee will be done in a while," she said. “Is there anything else I can get?"
Beyond the Bedroom Wall Page 42