A World Elsewhere (32 page)

“You said you were going to burn them.”

“I decided not to.”

“Did you throw the button into Lake Loom?”

Mr. Vanderluyden got up and lit the red candles on the candle tree.

Almost everything in the library that wasn’t made of wood was red. The wood was dark, and it was carved into shapes like the statues
in the park. It shone like it was polished every day. There was a painting on the ceiling of clouds and angels with red dresses and white wings, and babies who were chubbier than Goddie and held their hands up in the air like they were falling.

The shirts, though yellowed with age, were buttoned and neatly folded, arranged in two even piles in the far left corner of the trunk, which otherwise was empty. There was enough room in the trunk for ten times as many shirts.

“Thirty-seven shirts. Twelve buttons to each shirt. Four hundred and forty-four buttons,” said Mr. Vanderluyden. He reached into the trunk and removed a shirt from the top of one of the piles. Its collar and cuffs were almost brown and frayed to the point that soon they might separate from the shirt altogether. He handed it to Deacon.

“Count the buttons,” Mr. Vanderluyden said.

Deacon carefully unfolded the shirt. It felt much lighter than the ones he wore. He could almost see through it. There were holes in the tails as if Mr. Vanderluyden had poked his fingers through them. Deacon counted out loud. There were two buttons on each cuff. “One, two, three, four.” One on either side where the collar closed. “Five, six.” He counted the buttons down the middle. “Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.” He looked up at Mr. Vanderluyden. “Eleven?” he said.

He counted them again and got eleven. “Why is one missing?”

Mr. Vanderluyden took the shirt from Deacon, folded it carefully, replaced it in the trunk and slowly closed the red lid. He stood.

“Let’s take the elevator up to the roof,” he said.

“I’ve never been in an elevator,” Deacon said.

“Not many people have,” said Mr. Vanderluyden. “Don’t worry. It just goes up and down.” He took Deacon’s hand and led him around the column of the chimney. He slid open a wooden door, a panel in the wall, then did likewise with the elevator’s iron door, which Deacon was relieved to see was made of crisscrossed bars that he could see through. They stepped inside and Mr. Vanderluyden pulled the iron
door back into place. He pushed a button and the floor began to rise beneath their feet like the floors had done on the boat.

“Pulleys, cables, wheels, weights and counterweights,” said Mr. Vanderluyden. “That’s all. Powered by the generators in the basement.” The elevator slowed, stopped. Mr. Vanderluyden opened the iron door and a wooden one. He took Deacon by the hand again and led him out onto the walkway of the parapet, which ran round the upper walls of Vanderland like an elevated road. The air was cool. Deacon felt relieved to be outdoors, no longer in the little room that rose up as if by magic.

There wasn’t a cloud. “The moon is almost full tonight,” Mr. Vanderluyden said. “If it wasn’t for the moon, we could see more stars.”

“What happened to the twelfth button?” Deacon said.

“I should have noticed when I lost it.”

“Everybody loses buttons.”

“I suppose. When Nurse gave my father the button that Vivvie choked on, he told me to take my shirt off and hand it to him. I was left standing there in front of everyone, wearing nothing but an undershirt. He counted the buttons. When he found that one was missing, he threw the shirt back in my face.”

“You were sad when Vivvie died.”

“Very sad. But I thought like the others. They blamed me. I blamed myself.”

“But you said none of the buttons were missing.”

“I told you what I wished was true. It’s hard not to—when you meet someone who doesn’t know the truth, who doesn’t know anything about you, it’s hard not to tell them what you wish was true. It’s as though what people don’t know about you never happened. You can start again. New. Go back to before everything was spoiled. But other people’s ignorance does not undo or change the past. And so you never feel absolved. You never feel better.”

“It’s not your fault. Landish knows that too.”

“I’ve changed my story twice now. He might not believe a word I say.”

“I’ll tell him you sounded sadder than before.”

“I should burn the shirts, shouldn’t I?”

“Like Landish burns the pages?”

“No, not like that. He will never run out of pages to burn.”

Deacon imagined Mr. Vanderluyden feeding the shirts into the fire one by one, saving the one with the missing button until last, watching it burn the way Landish watched the last page burn. Landish did it every night. Gough said it was a ritual, but Sedgewick said that made it sound too grand.

Mr. Vanderluyden leaned on the edge of the parapet.

“Isn’t it something, Deacon? No matter which way you face, it looks the same. Vanderland is in the very middle of the mountains.”

There wasn’t a sound. It was as if the clamour of Vanderland had been carried off by the wind, the place scoured of sound by the wind, which had since died down. How strange the silence seemed in the wake of such an uproar. The actors had withdrawn from the stage just before the curtains rose, but something of their recent presence still hung in the air, like the first moment that followed the passing on to elsewhere of the soul of Vivvie.

The moon was low and bigger than the sun. It lit up the mountains. But the Smokies weren’t smoky and the Blue Ridge was more black than blue. They didn’t blend together like they did on sunny days. He saw the upper treeline of each ridge and the spaces in between the trees. The mountains would be dark when the moon went down.

“I can’t see over the wall,” Deacon said.

“Here, I’ll lift you up.” Van took Deacon beneath the arms and lifted him until his feet were even with the ledge. “Stand on the ledge, Deacon. I won’t let you go.” Deacon put his feet on the ledge. This was the highest up he had ever been. A motor car came up one side of the Esplanade. Its lights reflected in the fountain and spread out across the grass.

“Isn’t it something?” Mr. Vanderluyden said. “You can walk all the way around Vanderland on this pathway. I own everything you can see from it except the mountains and the sky. Sometimes it feels like even they are mine.”

There were people far down below on the steps, guests who had come out to meet the car.

“We can see them, but they can’t see us. They can’t even hear us, but the sound of their voices carries up. It would be nice if I could run the entire place myself, have it all to myself, day and night.”

“You’d be lonely.”

“I suppose. If there was another Vanderland just like this one next door, a replica that no one lived in, I could go over there from time to time.”

Deacon imagined another, empty Vanderland and wondered if its Rume would have a chimney witch.

Mr. Vanderluyden lifted him down.

“Were you afraid up there?”

Deacon shook his head.

“Don’t tell Landish that I stood you on the ledge.”

As he walked into the library, Landish glanced up automatically, as he always did, at the beautiful domed ceiling with its fresco of white-winged angels. Van was waiting for him, his tall, thin figure leaning against the black granite mantle of the fireplace, the wooden frieze rising behind him. Landish stopped in the middle of the room.

“I cried on your shoulder when you told me of your failure to save your sister from drowning. So misunderstood but so heroic. Now I’m trying hard for your sake to try to understand why you had to not only invent that tale but then another consisting of only part of the truth about the missing button. Yet you then told Deacon the whole truth. You shouldn’t have told Deacon.”

“Confessing to Deacon has lightened my spirits somewhat.”

“You don’t look or sound like it. By the way, it hasn’t lightened
his
spirits. He’s been waking from God knows what sort of dreams.”

“He’s most often woken in the arms of Gough, you being absent from The Blokes or too drunk to notice a boy crying in the bed beside your own.”

“Said Sedgewick.”

“What would you say to the idea of Deacon being raised at Vanderland?” Van said.

“He
is
being raised here. For as long as you care for me to tutor Godwin.”

“I have a proposal to make concerning Deacon. Come, sit down.”

“Is there someone else who needs company while having dinner?” Landish heard his voice quaver. He felt as though he had fallen into a trap that he should have known had long ago been set for him.

Van smiled. “I know it was never your intention to remain at Vanderland. What if, when you left, Deacon stayed behind? To become a part of the family, I mean. A Vanderluyden. He would be the other man of the house.”

“As you once wanted me to be. Deacon and I are a family. Van, nothing can make up for Vivvie’s death.”

“You can’t bring yourself to say you are his father.”

“I didn’t think it would be fair to his first father, Carson of the
Gilbert
, a man I will never come close to equalling.”

“Have you thought about his future, Landish? Really thought about it?”

“You sound as though you’re offering to take him off my hands. Adoption is a strange form of philanthropy.”

“If you left here with the boy, what would you live on? If you found even the lowest form of a ‘situation,’ I could make it vanish in a instant.”

“But why
would
you?”

“I’m quite fond of Deacon. As is Goddie. You can’t imagine what a blow it will be to her if Deacon leaves. There are many parents in this
country who would give up their only son if I offered to make him my heir. You will by no means leave Vanderland penniless if you decide as I hope you will.”

“I’ll never give up Deacon.”

“You would if you had no choice. You would if your life and his depended on it.”

“Why would you make such a threat?”

“Give it some thought.” Van stood. Landish felt himself dismissed. “Good night, Landish.”

Landish all but crawled down the stone staircase, looking down through the rings of the iron chandeliers to the vestibule, where a man he took to be the butler stood, staring up at him.

“Henley, did I wake you?” he said. “Or do butlers never sleep?”

“Please don’t go any farther, Mr. Druken. By the way, I am not a butler. You and I met some years ago. My name is Mr. Trull.”

“Trull? Good old pistol-packing Trull from Princeton? Are you still packing those pistols? Is he still paying you to keep an eye on me?”

Mr. Trull drew a pistol from his coat pocket and pointed it at Landish. “A hole between your eyes is what you need,” he said.

Landish turned and crawled back up the stairs. He pounded on all the doors.

“Awake, awake,” he roared. “Treason is afoot.”

Doors opened. Gough, Stavely, Palmer and Sedgewick came out in their dressing gowns. Deacon came out, but Gough guided him back to his bed, then motioned the others into the Smoker and closed the door behind Landish as he stumbled through.

“Three sheets to the wind and decks awash,” he shouted.

“Obviously,” Gough said. He stood with his back to the door barring escape.

“No more roaming for me tonight, is that it?”

“Nor brandy,” Gough said. “And lower your voice.”

Landish sat heavily on the sofa, facing Gough.

“He offered me a bribe for Deacon,” he muttered. “I will by no means leave Vanderland penniless if I leave without Deacon. Well, I bought him from Cluding Deacon for fifty dollars and he’s not much bigger now, so he might fetch eighty at the most.”

“I curse the day you two set foot in The Blokes,” Sedgewick said.

“What’s happened, Landish?” Gough asked.

“He wants to buy the boy from me. He wants to be his father. Godwin and Deacon Vanderluyden. Deacon the new heir of Vanderland. Gertrude, who adores him so, would be his mother. It will truly endear him to Gertrude if her husband tells her of his plans to leave to Deacon everything that would otherwise have gone to Goddie.”

“Give him the boy,” Sedgewick snapped. “And good riddance to both of you.”

Landish rose, threw an errant punch at him, and fell down. Sedgewick turned his back on him and left the Smoker, slamming the door, while Gough and Stavely helped Landish to his feet.

“I can’t get my bloody bearings.”

“You could have hurt Sedgewick,” Gough said.

“He threatened me. And Deacon. He said I’d give him Deacon if my life and the boy’s depended on it.”

“He
said
that?”

Landish nodded.

“But nothing
more?
You must have misunderstood his meaning, Landish.”

“Perhaps,” Landish said. “Perhaps I did.” But he was thinking that he could not remember when Deacon had last hugged his leg or reached between their beds to hold his hand.

Deacon wondered what Goddie’s room was like. She said it was bigger than The Blokes’ rooms put together. He thought about waking up in the dark in a room that was so much bigger than his and Landish’s. Every morning, Goddie saw her nurse, maid and governess before she saw her mother. They got her ready to see her mother. All day she felt like he did when they were having dinner. She didn’t have to lift a finger. She went everywhere in a wheelchair now whether he went with her or not. She said it was her chariot.