The Barrowfields, page 32
“And yes, I think about little Maddy, too. I think about her all the time. I think about her when I walk down her hall and go by the room she lived in for three years, and I think about how much she loved the horses, and I remember when she got those big glasses because she couldn’t see and how sad that made us. I think about standing with you at her funeral and trying to explain to you what was going to happen to her now that she was gone, and I think about how the flowers everyone had sent were so pretty, and how for the first time in a month it had stopped raining and the sky was so blue and it ran on forever and there was no horizon, and how every single bit of life’s promise had been destroyed for all of us—and I couldn’t imagine that time would even carry us to the next day. I think of all those things. That’s what’s in my brain every time I come up this driveway and walk through the front door. But it’s all a part of this house and a part of our lives. We can’t go back and change what happened.”
Threnody said nothing. Then she said, “Do you really think you can come get me?”
“Yes, sweetheart, I’ll come get you. I’ll pick you up as soon as I can get down there.”
She hung up. I continued to hold the phone to my ear until the pulsating blast of white noise shocked me back to reality. The sky had become gray with the shadow of a thousand birds moving unsteadily over the eroding ground. Fleeting.
Story came to me with sleep in her eyes and took my fallen head into her arms. When I could speak again, I told her I was going to Charlotte to get Threnody.
—
I vomited in the shower. I stood there holding the rail, feeling as if I’d been slammed in the stomach; feeling as if all my insides had been pulverized into a bloody and sickening dust. I knew that I couldn’t run from it anymore. I had tried for nine years. People always talked about the past and all the memories they had and I didn’t have any. I only looked one way. The arrow of time for me moved in only one direction and that was forward.
For his birthday the year he left, I bought my father a marginally rare edition of Camus’s The Stranger. I got a good deal on it because it had been price-clipped to hell and had a tear on the front of the dust jacket and might have gotten wet at some point, but it was a copy of the first American printing and I knew he didn’t already own a copy of his own because there wasn’t one in the library. As we sat there together he opened it and began to read but never made it beyond the first page. Many years would pass before I would discover why. He was stopped cold by the first line of the book.
That day, Father’s birthday, had brought no cake and ice cream; there had been no colored candles to blow out. Threnody had painted him a darling picture of a crow in a little green tree with a few sprigs of grass growing at its trunk, and this he had folded and put in his desk. There were to be no other gifts, and no celebration was had. When night came, Father and I sat in our places—he in his desk chair, me on the floor with my back against the bookshelf next to his desk. A searching wind rattled at the window and stirred the candles that lit Father’s writing room. The walls ran high into the darkness away from the light, as though the room were open to the cold black sky above. Were it not for this illusion, this enclosed space would have felt more like a tomb.
Father said, “Please pour me another glass of wine.” There was an open bottle in a box next to where I sat. Then he said, “Shall we put on some music? You and I always used to listen to music. I have so many fond memories of that.”
This warmed me, and I said, “I’d like that.”
“Softly, though. Don’t wake up your mother. What should we listen to? Schubert’s Winterreise? No, not Schubert. You know what I’ve been listening to are the late-period quartets.”
“Whose?”
“Beethoven’s. The A minor, third movement is my favorite. Do you see it? It’s right there.” I started the music and in the first quiet swell of the strings he held out his glass to me with a trembling hand but looked away so as not to acknowledge the weakness. In his face was sadness; in his eyes lay resignation and defeat. He savored the wine as if it were the last glass he’d ever have.
“I love Spanish wine, I’ll tell you. I’ve loved it my whole life. It’s the fool’s nostrum—take my word for it. It might’ve been the death of me.”
“You’re almost out,” I said. “Perhaps you’ll live.”
“No danger of that. I have another case in the pantry.”
“I worry about how much you drink.”
Ignoring my concern, he put his nose into his glass and drew back his lips to show his vampiric canines. Then he said, “If you ever think ‘I have enough time to do that—I’ll just pass the time today and make my art tomorrow,’ then you have already lost. Time has fooled you into thinking it exists.”
I told him, as I always did, that I did not understand.
“That’s to be expected,” he said. “There are some ideas that cannot be communicated; they can only be experienced. These are not things I have always known, or that I knew when I was your age, for I surely didn’t. These are things I have learned.”
On this night I was content just to sit there with him; to be in his presence and to have his momentary attention, even as it wandered. He rarely made sense to me anymore and I resented the distance that had grown between us, but in spite of all my anger and perplexed rage I still loved him dearly—although much of the child’s love I had once felt had been replaced, I think, by a souring and pathetic sympathy for the wasted existence my father had come to represent. Yet I knew he had a good heart, and a kind heart, and on this night it was comforting to simply be near him.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you for such a long time,” he said, “you’re a very bright, very compassionate young man. I see so much of your mother in you, and that is something for which you should be very proud. She is an extraordinary woman. She is much stronger than I have ever been. Somehow she has tolerated me and all my eccentricities—yes, I know—all these years, and her love for me has never waned, even though I’ve given her plenty of reasons. And I see some of myself in you—which emboldens and yet terrifies me at the same time.”
“Why does it terrify you?”
“Look at me. Is this what you want to become?”
I would have lied to him, but he didn’t give me a chance.
“You’ve been so good to your sister. It’s wonderful to see how close you two have become. You’ve been more like a father to her. The way you read to her every night. The way you sing to her sweet songs until she falls asleep. You’ve been the parent to her that I should have been. I trust that you’ll continue to do that.”
“Of course I will,” I said. “Always.”
“I need you to help me look after her.”
“I promise I will. Of course.” Outside, the wind gathered itself noisily in the valley and came to overtake the house. Yellowed papers moved from Father’s desk to the floor and remained there. He thought for a moment, then said, “Please start the music over. Did you hear it? Just listen for a minute.” And we listened for a time as the strings in their immortal sorrow made the dark more dark, and the wine more red, and the candles more lonely.
“There is no music that has ever been created that is more beautiful than that,” he said. “I wanted the words in my book to be that beautiful. To be that exquisite. To be that perfectly sorrowful. It was something I could never hope to achieve. This I realized….
“Do you want some wine? I suppose you’re nearly old enough. Or you will be soon. Have some. This will be a moment you’ll remember. The time we shared wine together.” Fumbling, he reached for an empty glass at the corner of his desk, filled it, and handed it to me. “Come sit here.”
He had just that day taken all the pages of his book and put them into a box with the title page facing up. In simple type, it read:
THE BURNING OF SERVETUS
A NOVEL
BY
H. L. ASTER
I sat upon the box, feeling then as if I were guilty of some sacrilege; as if I were sitting on a gravestone of a dear friend. Thinking of his empty life’s project, I stole a look at Poe and the perched black bird and sensed for the first time the absurdity of it all and instantly felt a well of pain for my sweet dear father. Until that moment there was a hidden part of me that had wanted to believe in him without reservation. Now the careful facade dissolved before my eyes and it hurt me deeply, for I saw in his dimming face a knowing sadness that comes when those who believe in you can no longer believe—
His toast: “May time pass more slowly for you.”
We drank together and the wine burned my throat and tongue like wine from the church’s communion.
“I know,” he said, “you’ll have better things to do with your life. But in the event you have idle time on your hands, if such a thing exists, perhaps you’ll write a book of your own. Maybe you can pick up where I left off. You can add your time to my time and maybe that will be enough.”
“You still have time.”
“Time is only enough when you have the will to do something with it. And I do not. Damn this life and this house,” he said. “I once wished to visit Valldemossa, but it came to me instead.”
I said nothing. I could think of nothing to say. His fatalism was only words to me. All I knew was that he was my father and the only thing I wanted to do then was to protect him. I wanted to keep him forever. I would keep him and care for him as he carried the remnants of his broken dreams. In that way we would survive, or so I thought.
“All this,” he said, “will be over in the blink of an eye. Hasn’t it passed just that quickly so far? It won’t change for you. It will run its course and carry you away. Time,” he said, “is nothing, after all, but man’s explication of hell. In truth, neither time nor hell exist, but time will steal your soul in a way that hell never could.”
Nine days had passed since we had buried little Maddy. The next day Father would kiss Threnody goodbye.
She was sitting outside when I arrived at Hurricane’s house in Charlotte. She climbed into the car before I could get out to give her a hug. After orienting the vents to her liking and adjusting her seat backward, she allowed herself a look at me. Her look said, “And here we are again.”
She had grown taller but still seemed uncomfortable with her new height and the span of her limbs. I noticed a manufactured delicacy to her movements—an unnatural attempt at gracefulness—that I hadn’t seen before and which troubled me. Her big brown eyes were sad and her face was sallow, and a bitter pain contracted her around an invisible point. She was curled in upon herself like a frozen leaf.
All she had with her was a pair of sunglasses and a hardcover book. As a rule, no one in our family ever went anywhere without a book. I put my arm around her and said, “Hey, Bird.” She diminished within my embrace.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to get here.”
“That’s fine. I’ve just been outside for like two hours. I think I got sunburned pretty bad on my arms, but I finished my book. I should have brought another one. Maybe we can stop at a bookstore.”
“Are you coming back to the mountains with me? Where’s your bag?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I just have to get out of here for a while.”
“Is Mother here?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her I was coming down?”
“No.”
“Did you leave her a note?”
“No, but I’ll call her later.”
We drove around for a while looking for a place to eat, and after hitting every manhole on Park Road going and coming, we went through Uptown and wound up on Central Avenue near Chantilly and just beyond Plaza-Midwood, where we found a Mexican restaurant with outdoor seating that looked festive enough for our purposes. A dozen wooden tables sat on a stone patio shaded by an awning which bore the resilient but now-faded colors of the Spanish flag. It undulated lazily in the rising heat of the day. Alternating red and yellow circus umbrellas provided redundant cover from the sun, and sun-bleached spiraled streamers ran along the corner trellises and fell down here and there and then ascended again in improbable Lissajous curves that compressed and decompressed with the atmospheric perturbations of passing cars. We arrived before noon, so the restaurant was nearly empty and two waitresses in white blouses and close-fitting black pants sat in the shade waiting for customers to arrive.
Threnody ordered a cream soda, which they didn’t have, so she settled for a Coke, and I declined a margarita and instead ordered a Bloody Mary, which was made to order. The patio stones, laid by a drunk man or a blind man unskilled in masonry or possibly both, made it damn difficult to get one’s chair not to rock back and forth, but the table, we discovered, had been bolted to the ground, and although ours appeared to be at somewhat of a slant, it had the dubious advantage of relative stability.
“It’s a nice day,” I said.
“Is it?” said Threnody. “I’m cold for some reason.” She rubbed her hands together and shivered visibly even though it was growing hot outside. Our drinks arrived and I asked Threnody if she was hungry. She said no and pushed the menu to the other side of the table.
“Do you want an appetizer?” As a kid she loved appetizers.
“No, I’m really not hungry.”
“Can we have a minute to look at the menu?” I asked the waitress.
“Sí, of course.”
“Gracias.”
“De nada. Tómese su tiempo.” We were taking our time.
Two men in undershirts and paint-spattered cargo pants sat to our left in the corner of the patio near the street. They were unshowered and unshaven, and I counted six empty Pacificos on their table. The ashtray they shared was full of ruthlessly extinguished cigarettes. One of the men had started dropping his spent cigarettes into a nearly empty beer bottle where they smoldered and smoked up the glass with nauseating effect. Both men leaned into the middle of the table as though they were hatching a conspiracy, but the discourse that reached my ears comprised only job complaints and petty politics.
My Bloody Mary came to the table with a phallic javelin of compressed meat protruding from the top of the glass. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was or whether it was intended to be edible. I extracted it carefully and laid it on my napkin.
Threnody said, “What is that?”
“I wish I knew. Beef jerky, maybe?”
“What’s usually in a Bloody Mary?” she asked.
“Blood, of course. That’s the first ingredient. Then intestines taken from cadavers. A few bile ducts. Patellar tendons. Celery. A bit of vodka.”
“Lovely. Can I try it?”
“Why the hell not,” I said. “Father gave me wine once before I was old enough to drink. You won’t like it, though.”
Threnody put her straw in my drink and made an awful face. “And look how you turned out,” she said.
“I guess that could go either way.”
“I’m just kidding.”
We sat for a while making small talk about the book she’d just finished and what I’d been reading, and how she didn’t fit in at school or in life—a pleasure we shared—and she told me that Mother was having a hard time with Hurricane. We talked all around the gaping hole right in the middle of both of us. I ordered another Bloody Mary, this time without the meat pole, and gave Threnody the celery and the olives. Now I was shivering with an imagined cold of my own, and with an unimagined emptiness that one day would have to be filled, if we could ever figure out how to fill it.
A drab little wren, a beggar, pranced around under our table scavenging for crumbs. Threnody slowly slid her foot over to him, hoping he would hop onto her shoe, but each time she got close he would jump and flap his dusty wings and then come back again a little farther away. She wanted to order some bread to feed him, but before our waitress returned he shot away and took up residence above a doorway across the street. The sun was overhead now and burned through the awning and the red and yellow of our table’s umbrella, and everything was the filtered color of red Spanish clay.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” said Threnody. “It’s really important.”
“Ask me,” I said.
“Why did we all get these stupid fucking names?”
We laughed together and she smiled.
“You have a beautiful name. There’s no one in the world with your name.”
“I wish I knew what it meant,” she said. “I mean, I know what it means, which is depressing enough in its own right. I just don’t know why it’s my name.”
“It’s from a poem Father wrote before you were born.”
She was surprised. “A poem? No one ever told me that. Do you have it?”
“I don’t, but I’m sure it’s somewhere.”
She was sad again. “Our father, the writer,” said Threnody.
“Yes,” I said, “our father, the writer.”
“Do you know what he said to me?” she asked.
“Father?”
“Yes.”
I could feel the wound inside me involuntarily starting to open. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to talk about Father or any of it. We’d all done such a good job of pretending. At least I had. Of not facing what had happened. Of not ever facing it.
“Before he left,” said Threnody.
“Before he left?” I said. “The day he left?”
“Yes,” she said, growing impatient.
