Time Squared, page 25
Her father was the first to reach the little girl who had been herself, and afterwards her aunt and the slaves, and in the beginning there was incomprehension and then there was wailing. But something else was going on, too. Eleanor could feel it behind her, and turned to see a legate in full regalia stride out of the wood. Despite his rank, he was neither a tall man nor a handsome one, although he had what Eleanor’s father called a good face, lively and expressive, with quick dark eyes and a thatch of hair he pushed back from his forehead as he reached her family.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?” he asked briskly, looking down at Eleanor’s still form.
Her father stood up, tremendously pale, but trying to be courteous to a man of high rank. “A messenger’s horse. It reared . . .”
“My messenger, yes. She got in the way. That shouldn’t have happened.” The legate looked back at her father. “And she was frightened, so she fainted.”
“No, sir, she doesn’t faint. Didn’t faint. This isn’t fainting.”
Looking unimpressed, the legate knelt beside the girl and held a flask to her slack mouth. As he did, Eleanor felt the forest go to pieces around her, disintegrating strangely into waves and lines and circles. Then all was dark and she was sucked back in her body. Eleanor felt herself inhale and exhale and her heart began to beat, beat, beat, flooding her with a great love for her life. In a flutter, she opened her eyes on the legate, who smiled down at her kindly.
“There you are,” he said.
“I didn’t faint,” Eleanor said. She levered herself up on an elbow and looked around the hilltop, feeling dizzy and increasingly perplexed. “Where’s the Blitz? It was just here. And the airplanes.”
The strange words—her astonishing revival—frightened her father and aunt, and the legate looked displeased with her answer.
“You’re not yourself,” he said. “We’re going to have to fix you up.”
“Can you fix my dreams?” Eleanor asked. “I don’t like them.”
The legate looked into the forest. Between the trees, Eleanor caught a brief glimmer of another form. The legate looked at it steadily before nodding, as if he’d been conferring silently with somebody hidden. Then he turned back to her.
“That’s precisely what we’re going to do.”
He got to his feet, and as he looked down at her, the legate almost absentmindedly grew taller. Crying out in awe, her father threw himself on the ground, his obeisance hastily copied by her aunt and afterwards in a tumble by the frightened slaves.
“Oh great god Mars,” her father said, raising his arms. “Forgive me. I didn’t recognize you before. Your condescension and wonderful kindness . . .”
“Nonsense,” the god said, glancing impatiently toward the forest.
“Please allow me to sacrifice a heifer . . .”
“I’m afraid I’ve got business to take care of,” the god said.
“A goat, perhaps.”
“Never liked their eyes.”
“We have chickens,” her aunt called, gesturing at the baskets.
“Not hungry,” the god replied, and disappeared into the trees.
1951
Middleford, Connecticut
23
Eleanor was conscious of muffled noises as she woke up. Footsteps. Different types of footsteps, one person dragging a pair of soft-soled shoes as if they couldn’t lift their feet, another pattering along in a hurry. She heard laughter. A man’s voice. Women’s voices, near and far. She knew she was in hospital but didn’t know why.
“Auntie?” Her mouth was dry, her aunt beside her. “What’s the matter with . . . ?”
“You’ve had a bad virus,” the man said. Dr. Blythe.
“What virus?”
“It doesn’t matter,” her aunt cooed, leaning over her.
“What?”
“Viral meningitis at first. Then . . .” A horrified whisper. “Encephalitis.”
“Sounds like a sicky Heffalump,” Eleanor said. “Sickly.”
“Here you are,” her aunt replied, teary and amused all at once.
“Robin!” she remembered.
“It’s all right. He’s all right.”
“Sure?”
“We couldn’t reach him for a while. A letter arrived when you first got sick that you can read when you’re better. But he’s on leave in Tokyo now and he sent you a telegram. I wired back that you’ve been sick but you’re recovering.”
“Read it right now.”
The words didn’t line up on the page. Chickens, she read.
* * *
Meningitis explained the headaches she’d been having, encephalitis her dreams. Hallucinations, Dr. Blythe called them. She’d nearly died. (“Now, Clara, she knows that.”) There was very little they’d been able to do but fight the symptoms. Keep her hydrated, keep her fever down as much as possible. It had gone very high.
“One night you said Lizzy Mortlake was a goddess.”
Eleanor didn’t remember. Then she did. Once at the Mowbray’s garden party, up in the great chestnut tree, someone below them had called Liz as beautiful as a goddess. Little Cassie Mowbray echoed it the way she echoed things. Lizzy’s a goddess.
There was something else. She couldn’t quite bring it to mind.
“I don’t know when that happened, exactly. It’s not all there in my memory. Blanks.”
“You’ve been very sick.”
“Am I . . . ?”
Couldn’t remember.
Sickly. “Am I sickly?”
Eleanor sat up in bed. But her head was a pumpkin and she had to lie back down.
“That word again.” Her aunt sounded worried or amused or both.
“I had that bad flu a few years ago, after Robin came back from West Point.”
“You had the flu, but that’s the only other time you’ve really been ill.”
“During the flu, I had blanks. A day, a couple of days—they were gone. I thought about how you can wake up in the morning into a new world. You don’t know how you got there but suddenly, there you are. The daffodils are blooming. You just have to accept what’s in front of you and cherish whatever memories you have. But there are so many blanks. What was I doing a year ago today?” She shook her head. “I don’t think I should have so many blanks.”
“I’d find it awful to remember every moment of my life,” her aunt replied. “There are things I remember very distinctly that I’d rather not. My first marriage, for example. And months when I could tell you, ‘Well, of course I was living in London and trying to make a go of it as an actress.’ But day to day? Then suddenly there’s the extraordinary moment of meeting your uncle. My one and only Stage Door Johnny.”
* * *
Inchon. That’s where Robert had landed in Korea. Where was he now? Tokyo?
Wasn’t Japan full of radiation from the bomb?
Eleanor felt a twinge of resentment on top of her worry. She’d been very ill and her fiancé ought to have been with her. She was going to have to speak to Robin. More to the point, he was going to have to start listening to her, especially about the bomb. Radiation did strange things to you. She wished she could remember what.
* * *
Stage Door Johnny was in April, her aunt was saying. She refused to talk about the bomb, but insisted that she’d met her husband in April. It seemed to be important that he’d introduced her to Eleanor’s father a few months later, taking her to an art opening when his brother had been there, still a divinity student at Cambridge. Eleanor’s father had rather grandly bought a painting by Vanessa Bell, Virginia’s Woolf’s sister, even though the Crosby money was in the past and not his pocket. It was the start of his collection, which he mainly picked up at flea markets. Her father had an eye, and for a couple of shillings he’d bought a red chalk drawing of praying hands that an expert later authenticated as a sketch by Leonardo da Vinci.
Amazing that his collection had survived, with the manse taking that direct hit during the Blitz when thank God they were with her in Kent. (Her aunt was rambling.) A miracle they’d dug up the basement and found his collection intact.
Eleanor had heard the story often enough that she could almost see the manse, only the arched windows and a doorway left standing. She wondered if Aunt Clara was bringing it up now to speak about mutability, change, loss, and recovery.
Oh. The fact they’d have to sell the Leonardo to pay the hospital bill.
“Don’t be absurd,” Liz Mortlake said as she came in. “We’ll take care of it.”
“Liz.” Her aunt spoke in a warning tone.
“Oh, the question of pride. I’ve never known whether it’s good or bad. No doubt both. Our good qualities being our bad ones, and so forth.”
Liz sat down in the other chair. It was a rare sight, Lizzy Mortlake and Eleanor’s aunt bristling at each other. They were good friends, both displaced Brits, both fashion items. Icons.
“If you have to sell the sketch, Clara, then let me buy it. Get a valuation and I’ll pay. You know I’ve always coveted William’s collection.”
“Please, Auntie! Then Kate can keep looking at it, too.”
A moment of panic. Where was Kate? How could she have forgotten about Kate?
“Is she all right? Where is she? Where’s David?”
“Everybody’s fine. Kate’s busy moving into a flat in New York. Otherwise she’d be here with you.”
Eleanor didn’t remember who David was. Then she did: Kate’s boyfriend. Her married boyfriend, the war photographer. One didn’t speak of him in front of the rest of the Mowbrays, but Liz wasn’t fazed by the relationship. Liz was a goddess.
Eleanor giggled. “Did Auntie tell you what I said when I was sick?”
“What was that?”
She remembered it now. She was on a hilltop in England after being kicked on the head by a horse. “Oh great god Mars!” her father had cried, and Charles Mortlake had given her an elixir. Charles had looked into the forest, where Lizzy had been standing. Not precisely Lizzy. Venus in all her beauty, the sun shining out of her red-gold hair. Lizzy Mortlake was a goddess, it was true.
No she wasn’t. Couldn’t be. If Eleanor said it aloud, she’d sound insane.
“I don’t know!” she cried, her hand going to her forehead. “My mind’s broken!”
“You’ve been sick,” Liz said soothingly. “Don’t worry. We’re fixing you right up.”
* * *
Murdo Crawley was on the television downstairs in the rehabilitation hospital, a very hushed and private place. The Leonardo must have been worth a fortune.
“I can’t stand that man,” her aunt was saying. “Such an opportunist. I doubt he believes a word he’s saying. Joseph McCarthy is an evil creature and Crawley oughtn’t to row that boat.”
She spoke in a hiss in case anybody else heard her. No one could risk being called a communist these days, especially with the Chinese fighting in Korea. Her aunt was a nonconformist, not a communist, but she said that no one in Middleford knew the difference.
“War can be anywhere now,” Eleanor said. “It can happen tomorrow, here, with the bomb. They’re turning the whole world into a battlefield, not just Korea. The world is sickly.”
“And Crawley’s a virus. Poor Alicia.” Seeing Eleanor’s face. “You’re tired. Let’s go back to your room.”
She was in a wheelchair. People weren’t supposed to survive viral encephalitis but Eleanor had. She was strong, even though the world was sickly. At least, there was something wrong with the world. She couldn’t remember what.
* * *
At home now, awake from her nap. Liz was bringing the Leonardo into her bedroom so Eleanor could say goodbye. How lovely of her.
“Old friend,” Eleanor said. She felt much better, but still weak enough to be teary.
“It’s yours. It’s a present.”
Her aunt bristled.
“It’s mine, Clara,” Lizzy said. “I can do what I want with it.”
“Thank you,” Eleanor said, staring down her aunt. The Mortlakes were very wealthy and Liz liked being bountiful. (The present is more about Liz than it is about me, she thought. She enjoys being bountiful. But Eleanor didn’t want to be like that, sour and mistrustful and far too observant. She built a box around the thought and closed the lid.)
“Thank you,” she repeated, no longer able to hold back tears.
Liz kissed her and took down one of her college photos to hang the sketch.
“Now everything’s back the way it should be,” she said. “Huzzah.”
1969
New York City
24
Eleanor wished everyone would stop treating her as if she were made of glass. She’d been sick but she was better, perfectly capable of moving in with Katy. Their apartment was in the East Village, but it was safe. Safe enough.
The windows were the reason Katy had taken the apartment, which was hacked out from one floor of an old garment factory. She’d been here for a couple of months and the unused room at the back was perfect for Eleanor. Only a week to clean it out and paint it, and she’d salvaged as much furniture as she needed from the jumble before taking the rest to the curb, in the process finding a threadbare Oriental rug in someone else’s trash.
Now she was using her weekend off to arrange her furniture, flopping her new mattress into place and trying to find the right spot for a heavy old work table that had probably always been here. She’d sanded and oiled the scarred oak top and yesterday Katy had painted the legs in spiralling rainbows.
Today, Katy was out at a demonstration. But anti-war marches were complicated for Eleanor, with Robin serving in Vietnam. She agreed with the marchers but didn’t feel it was right to join them. If she and Robin were going to split up, she was going to tell him before taking part in a demo. Not that Eleanor had any intention of splitting up with Robin. Maybe the possibility was in her mind, but she kept it locked in a box.
“Give us a hand here, Ellie.”
Dafydd Arden called from the main room, which was also Katy’s studio. Eleanor decided the table ought to go under the window, and gave it a couple of shoves.
“Ellie?”
She found him crouched on the floor ready to bolt a big old porcelain sink to the wall. Dafydd was Katy’s surprise, or would be when she got back. He’d just flown in from Saigon.
“I think I’ve got it level.”
With his good arm and his hook, Dafydd had built a cradle for the salvaged sink out of scrap lumber from a building site. On top he’d put a glass half filled with water, and he was right, the water was level. Eleanor wondered what her role was. Maybe to admire his work like a good little woman. That was something she’d been thinking about lately: the role of women. But for Katy’s sake, she gushed.
“It’s going to be so great to have a proper sink!”
Not that their proper sink would drain anywhere. Into a bucket beneath the drain hole, which they would empty into the toilet. Eleanor and Katy shared a toilet and a chipped sink in a bathroom across the hall. Both had running water, although you had to let it run for a while so the rust would come out.
“Ask you to hold it for me while I put in some brackets,” Dafydd said.
“Wow,” she said. “You got a drill!”
Eleanor thought that was over the top, but Dafydd enjoyed praise. He believed he deserved it, which women never did. Lying back down under the sink, he manoeuvred into position to attach a bracket. Dafydd hadn’t stopped moving since he’d arrived, in and out of the apartment to the hardware store, the building site, too wired up to just sit and talk. An adrenaline junky: the definition of a war photographer. He loved his job, unlike Robin, who had asked Dafydd to hump back an uncensored letter. Reading between the lines, Eleanor could see that Robin was having a terrible time, especially with Ted’s whereabouts still unknown. Not that he supported the protesters. But his hesitations had touched her deeply.
Still under the sink, Dafydd asked, “You don’t go to the demos?”
Eleanor had no idea how to explain her agonized ambivalence.
“I wouldn’t beat myself up about it,” Dafydd said, scooching out from under the sink and sitting up cross-legged. “I haven’t met anyone over there with any use for the war, at least below the colonels. And I wouldn’t vouch for all of them.”
“Robin said earlier this year that one of his men had bought a lighter. It said something like, ‘We the unwilling, led by the unqualified, kill the unfortunate and die for the ungrateful.’”
“Like this,” Dafydd said, hauling a silver Zippo lighter out of his jeans pocket.
Eleanor ran her fingers over the inscription. “Not that Robin is unqualified,” she said.
“I think he might bail before too long.” Eleanor’s heart leapt as Dafydd continued, “Not right now, but soon. Taking casualties to secure a hill with no strategic value. Abandoning the hill. Watching the Cong filter back. It’s idiocy and Robin knows it.”
“So you’re bailing, too?”
Dafydd shrugged. “It’s a job,” he said. “What else have you got for me?”
“Questions,” Eleanor said. “About how long this idiocy is going to last. And how well Robin is going to survive it.”
