Sherbrookes: Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness (American Literature Series) (22 page)

He wonders why she came. Was it for safety only, for some shibboleth of duty and the Golden Rule, or to collect what Judah put up for grabs? He wonders why he’s come. He tells himself reunion is not always reconciliation, and it’s as good a place as any to return to. He’s not estranged, he tells himself; they’re simply out of touch. They need to catch up on old times.

A hoot owl flies across the clearing, so close that he can feel the susurration of air beneath its wings. “Polly want a cracker?” she had said to him on Sutton Place. “No matter how you play it, that’s the song we sang. You can tie a bunch of ribbons on; it’s still a gilded cage.”

So Ian is nobody’s son. He’s learned the lessons of withdrawal better than his teacher, been rootless while Maggie returned to take root. He’s held no job that counted, been in no city or country he’d come to call home, lived with no one he’d nurse through their six final months. He is twenty-six years old, a sometime stage manager and bit-part actor with a private income. Sometimes he plays backup bass. Once he wore a moustache and three times sported a beard; once he shaved his skull entirely and walked the Cordilleras for a month.

He had attended Exeter, then Harvard. He wrote a freshman essay on
The Masses
and the men who founded it. He admired what he learned about Floyd Dell, Max Eastman, John Reed, and Lincoln Steffens; he wanted to be big and bluff, to travel and write poetry and articles that shake the world. It was 1969. So after two years at Harvard he spent two years being—as he called it then—political. He knew he was riding the ebb of a tide, on a bandwagon that had slowed down. Yet Ian joined a dojo and trained himself in unarmed combat and the use and maintenance of guns. He renounced his piano playing as a mark of caste. He spent those hours that he once would spend at music on the streets instead. In Texarkana, however, he saw bodies in the wreckage of a fire-bombed Mercury Monterey coupe and became a pacifist. He returned to Adams House, was graduated in 1973 cum laude in government, and hit the road in earnest for four years.

The hoot owl shifts and settles, opposite. It is deep dark now; Ian stands up. He will rehearse his history for the women in the house; he has been to several continents since he saw them last. He knows Fats Waller’s repertoire and a good deal of Shakespeare by heart. He has had trouble with his teeth and finds it harder now to kick the habit of cigarettes than, two years previously, he found it to kick cocaine. “You have an addictive personality,” one woman said to him once. Her name was—Ian lifts his arms and stretches, remembering—Alison Clark. She was a social worker who used jargon when he angered her or failed to stay the night or praise her crabmeat salad. “You’ve got a character disorder, did you know that? Your surround just doesn’t make it, baby; you’re not a person to trust.”

He starts down the hill to the house.

“You’re spoiling him.”

“No.”

“Yes, you are. You’ve got him tied so tight to you he’ll strangle on those apron strings.”

“You’re wrong, Judah.”

“Prove it.”

“It isn’t a thing you can prove. There’s no such thing as too much love; it isn’t how children get spoiled.”

So then they’d squabble over their son; he’d furnish their argument’s text. He’d be the leverage they used in the seesaw bickering that made their separation a relief. Yet if Maggie spoke harshly to her husband and bitterly about him, she tolerated no dispraise from others and no single nagging syllable when in that separation Ian had attempted to console her by attacking Judah. She had the right, she seemed to say, to quarrel with her life’s one mate; he’d earned no equivalent right. If he had nothing kind to say, she’d rather hear nothing at all.

Therefore silence was their rule, and Ian held his tongue. On the question of spoilage, for instance, he learned that there are many ways to spoil a broth. You can add too little seasoning, too much, or have too many cooks. You can have too thick or thin a stock and she—who was a first-rate cook—had shown him the trouble with watering down.

The spruce tree Judah planted in honor of his birth would have been taller than he as an infant; then Ian remembers looking down on it from the height of his young vantage; now it’s grown at least a foot for every year of his life. So the tree that had seemed small is tall, and not yet fully grown. The poplars he is walking past had seemed to scrape the sky. They were enormous, heaven-aspiring, the biggest four trees on the place. The house that huddles beneath him grows larger as he nears. His grandfather’s grandfather built it—Daniel “Peacock” Sherbrooke—arranging its grandiose proportions all the way from California in letters sent by sea mail and the railroad he helped to complete.

It is part of Ian’s legacy. He knows the terms of Peacock’s injunctions by heart. The magnate, too, had aspirations to heaven, but he praised the Lord in a complicated manner, passing ammunition to the envious and letting them take potshots at the inordinate house. Four stories high, surmounted by a cupola, with a servant’s wing that once held thirty and outbuildings that housed thirty more, “Peacock’s Palace” used up one whole quarry’s seasonal production of black roofing slate and—so the legend had it—all of Woodford Mountain’s hardwood for its paneling and floors. There are fourteen fireplaces, marble walkways, and a mile-long circuit that surrounds the buildings of the compound—the carriage barn and hay and cow barns and sugaring house and stables and the Toy House where his father used to sit.

Peacock Sherbrooke, who ordained all this, died on the day he came home. Like some latter-day commercial Moses who speculated on the promised land and lived to see it reached, built, tenanted—but not by him—he expired at the entrance gate in 1869. He had had pneumonia on the journey east. But in some fashion Ian only partway comprehends, his own father completed Peacock’s venture by never venturing forth. Judah’s was a holding action, and it held. The thousand acres he’d inherited remained the farmland that it first had been, though ringed with superhighways and gas stations and motels. He threatened those who left the house—even his wife and son—with expulsion, extirpation, the biblical language of exile. He treated the mile circuit as a magic circle, and those who went beyond it had to do so without his protection.

So Ian put it all behind him when he left. His mother had been family enough. New York City had been world enough, and then there was the world to see and inward voyages to take with the help of his white powder. In college, he met classmates with names that were grander thanSherbrooke and houses that made his seem small. He contrived a kind of willed forgetfulness, and soon that contrivance was fact.

“Ian Sherbrooke, please.”

“Who’s calling?”

“Hello? Is this Mr. Sherbrooke?”

“He’s not here.”

“Would you know where we might reach him?”

“No.”

“Might we leave a message, then?”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“Would you tell him Samson Finney’s office—he’s got the number—is trying to contact him? And we’d be grateful if he’d call.”

“How do you spell it?”

“Finney?”

“Yes.”

“F as in Frank, i, double n as in nobody, e, y. Finney.”

“I’ll do that,” Ian said.

There is a fire in the library; he sees it as he nears. The room flickers at him, beckoning; there are open drapes. The Big House has a porch that runs the length of its southern and western exposures; he climbs the side steps lightly; still, they creak. He edges past the wicker rockers—set out already in April, he notes, so there must have been a thaw and the snowfall would have been recent, or perhaps they’re careless now and leave furniture out all year long. Ian steps past the green plush glider. He stands by the library window, in the shadow of the drapes.

Hattie is knitting. He has not seen her in years. She has a skein of blue wool at her side and a shape on her lap that enlarges—something, he thinks, like a shawl. She sits ten feet away, beneath a reading lamp, her glasses on a chain around her neck; she who once seemed large to him has shrunk. His aunt purses her lips in concentration, making motions with her mouth that correspond to her fingers’ knitting motion, and the way she works suggests a frail rigidity.

He moves; she shifts accordingly, and he wonders is this what they mean by a picture window? He scans the room; he thinks how many times how many in his family had no doubt done such staring from the reaches of the porch. He sees a second pair of legs and hands in the leather chair that Judah used—a block chair with a headrest: umber, huge.

The chair is canted sideways from him, and the woman within does not stir. He wonders how he knows the hands and feet are female—since she wears no nail polish, is wearing pants and boots. He asks himself why it is so certainly his mother in the chair. Then she bends forward, firelit, as if in instinctual response, and he asks himself why ever he needed to ask. She is fifty-two years old. He is half that age, has been around the world and with more women than he can count or name; she is beyond compare. Hattie says something, her lips moving now in counterpoint to the motion of her yellow needles and blue wool. And Maggie, bending forward to answer, offers her hair and profile and arms as if for Ian’s inspection. He starts for the Big House door.

II

“May I come in?” he asks.

“Who is it?”

He has opened the door; now he knocks.

“Just a minute,” Maggie calls.

“Who is it?” Hattie asks again.

“It’s me.”

“Who’s me?”

“Ian.”

Hattie’s voice is querulous. “Speak up! We can’t see you in the dark.”

“Ian Sherbrooke,” Ian says.

His mother is beside him. “Darling! Welcome home!”

She is nearly his height. He kisses her on both cheeks, in the European fashion.

“Are you all right?” she asks.

“Fine, I’m fine. How are you doing?”

“It’s so good to see you. Such a surprise.”

“I just got east . . .” He trails off, irresolute. They are like conspirators, he thinks, whispering in the hallway.

Hattie approaches. “I never . . .”

“How are you?”

“I never in all my born days.”

As she limps toward him, he removes himself from Maggie and steps forward to embrace his aunt. She still holds the knitting needles, and wool unravels behind her.

“Ian Sherbrooke! You rascal!”

He bends to kiss her also; she smells of caraway. The powder on her cheek adheres to his lips thickly.

“What a surprise!” Hattie says. “Margaret, turn that light on. Let’s get a proper look at him.”

The chandelier ignites. He remembers when it held candles, not bulbs. The hall clock strikes resoundingly: eight.

“You’ve eaten?” Maggie asks.

“Yes.”

“It’s not true,” says Hattie. “He could down a piece of pie, I’ll bet. Look how skinny you’ve gotten . . .”

“I’d have room for that.”

“Pumpkin,” Hattie crows. “You know it’s just about a miracle you’re here. We do have pumpkin pie. I never take a bite but I remember how you used to take three helpings and then look around and see who hadn’t finished theirs. Just yesterday, I guess it was, I said to Helen Bingham they don’t sell pumpkin worth buying anymore. You remember when we used to keep them on the porch? When you got so scared of jack-o’-lanterns we used to have to blow the candles out? Maggie, go get him a piece.”

“Not just now. Let me look at him.”

Yet Hattie is insistent, garrulous. “He’s
starving
, you can see his ribs. He ought to have a piece of pie. I’ll get it; you’d cut it too small. Coffee?”

“No, thank you. I’ve had some,” he lies.

“Doesn’t do to drink too much of that. Not after lunchtime, anyways. I never take a cup but Sanka now. They tell you it doesn’t make a difference, but it does. You’re right. A piece of pumpkin pie, a nice cold glass of milk.

So Hattie bustles out, and they have a minute alone.

“Hello.”

“Don’t mind her, darling, she’s just so excited to see you. I haven’t seen her skip like that in months. You’ll have to eat the pie.”

“I’ll manage,” Ian says.

Now there is silence between them. He studies his mother’s face. The chandelier is less generous to her than was the firelight, or his previous distance; she does show the traces of age. There is a network of lines at her eyes. The centers of them—that he’d always thought of as blue lakes, so clear she’d see him in Kabul, or when he’d had hepatitis those months in Tunis—have leached away. The bones of her nose are pronounced; the cheekbones he’s inherited are bound less tightly in their skin. It is as if the whole flesh-wrapping has gone slack, gotten weary; Maggie stands less straight. She bulks a little at the waist. She appears to be supporting something almost alien by the set of her bent knees.

“Silver threads among the gray.”

“The gold,” he offers, gallant.

“Gray.” She takes his inspection with grace. “It doesn’t bother me, you know. It’s not important.”

“Beauty?”

“That too,” she says. “It loses its importance. A winter in this climate and you forget about beauty.”

“So what do you remember?”

“The hospital telephone number. The oil burner emergency number. The way to turn your wheel when skidding; the school bus route along the roads, so you know which ones get plowed.”

He is compelled; he spreads his hands. “How did Judah die?”

“Not now,” she says. “I’ll tell you later. Hattie will be back in just a minute.”

“Of a long illness; of a brief illness; suddenly,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what they do in the newspaper files. You fill in the appropriate blank; you only have to check the box.”

She turns from him and enters the library.

“I’m sorry.” Ian follows her. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I know I’m sounding stupid, but it’s—well, it’s funny to be back.”

“Funny strange or funny ha-ha?” This had been his childhood dis-tinction.

“Both. A friend of mine works for a newspaper. Writing obituaries. They have boxes for at home, in such-and-such a hospital, or where the accident took place.”

“Let’s change the subject,” Maggie says.

“All right.”

“It isn’t much more pleasant than the topic of my beauty.”

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

“Don’t be. You have the right to ask. It’s only that I thought you’d forfeited your membership.”

“In what?”

“We have a club.” She turns to him. Her eyes have lost nothing, are dry. “It’s called the family. You have to pay up on your membership dues. Then they send you proxy votes, newsletters every two or three weeks, requests for your opinion every month. Subscription blanks, circulars, everything . . . Oh, I know it’s not a membership that anyone can forfeit, not the sort of club we let you quit.” She drains the glass of water on the table by her chair. “But you did a better job of it than I ever managed, darling, you’ve been what we call ‘inactive.’ An ‘Associate Member,’ maybe, and it’s just a little much to hear you at the annual meeting—so full of questions all of a sudden, so anxious to know what you might have been asking me all winter long. It’s not funny ha-ha. It’s strange.”

Hattie returns. She carries a thick slice of pie, a bowl of cream, and a glass of milk. She has a napkin rolled in what he knows will be his napkin ring. The silver platter has handles in the shape of fruit that curve to form an S.

“You eat this. You look half starved,” she says. “Pecan, I guess it was. Your favorite.”

“Maybe he’d prefer a drink.”

“Not till he’s taken nourishment. Not till you’ve eaten every little bit of this here pie. And then we’ll see,” Hattie offers. “We might just celebrate.”

She loves him; he knows that. She took up his education when Maggie was away and Judah in the fields, or sullen; she read him bedtime stories while they argued down the hall. Her voice would go strident with emphasis, Ian remembers—but never quite cover the din in their room or the following fierce silence. She had tried to fill the breach his parents made in love. Judah said, “You watch it, boy, you’re buying her notions whole hog now. But you’re buying a pig in a poke.”

First the houses down the hill were outsize castles that he couldn’t run around. There were neighbor moats and enemy ambushes, and woods and deserts and fortified walls all through the town. But then Hattie taught him comparative size: they were none of them big as the Big House, and his was the top of the heap.

His mother never noticed, even, that those other houses existed; he’d tell her he was going to the Frasers or the Andersons or Sloans, and she’d say, that’s nice, dear, where do they live; that’s good, do you need a ride? Later he knew it her leveler’s instinct, that no one made her smile or notice if she didn’t find them worth it, and Maggie’s sense of worth was not the world’s. But back then Ian had believed it meant what Hattie meant instead, that we’re too fine to notice; our family was sitting here when theirs came up in wagons, and they took their shoes off when they came into our parlors, and it was a shoe that still fit.

So then the hill’s houses looked small. Then he only noticed they had fewer rooms than his, and his property consisted of a thousand acres, which was hundreds of times more acres than any other house. He was, his aunt assured him—not quite saying it aloud—a prince. He let himself out of the gate like a drawbridge, and the ditch was protected by sharks; no one would dare approach his castle without an invitation, and he drifted down the hill to school like a general making the rounds.

Hattie understood all this and seemed content—seemed to want him, Judah joked, for the youngest member of the D.A.R. But Maggie was a careless mother; occupied with other things, she scarcely would notice if Ian wore socks, and let him wear his Levi’s till the seams and knees were ripped. So Hattie made certain his clothes had been pressed, his buttons on, and that he was awake in time for Sunday school. She made sure the cooks and housemaids wore proper uniforms and did not smoke or swear. When he started in to smoke and be raucous and fight and whistle and swear, she said, “Boys will be boys.”

Judah held him by the hand. His father’s hand was huge, enfolding, and it manacled his wrist. Ian did not dare pull back, nor haul so hard in opposition that his bones would give—but neither did he help. The roof was steep. Slate has to have a certain pitch, Judah explained. Otherwise the snow gets in and then it melts and freezes and you’ll lose a roof in just one winter, since when water freezes it expands. Take a look at ice cubes; fill the tray to almost full and by the time it’s frozen the ice will be over the top.

So Ian clambered heavily after his surefooted father; Judah leaned sideways against the roof’s pitch; Ian crouched. His sneakers slipped. They were on the Toy House roof but not so high you couldn’t jump, since the Toy House was a replica of the Big House, its cupola and windows cut to scale. That winter there had been leaks. There were fragments and sections of slate on the ground. This was something you attended to before it got away.

“Daddy.”

“What?”

“Did you ever fall?”

“From where?”

“From here?”

“Not that I remember. But it’s like horses; you got to fall so often you learn not to care, you can’t remember even when you took the tumble.”

“Would it hurt?”

“Depends. You bend your knees; you tuck and roll; let your body be a spring. No point in fighting it; you’d telescope your legs.”

“From how high?”

“Any distance if you do it wrong. From falling down a step.”

“Thirty-two feet per second,” Ian offered. He shut his eyes. He looked up; he had learned the speed of free fall and the force of gravity that week.

“You should have seen,” said Judah, “Billy Eakins drunk and falling. Believe you me, he did so from a sight higher than this, though he slowed up once or twice bumping his way down. Well, we left him lying there until he slept it off.”

Ian pondered the story. Did it mean a drunk should climb on roofs, or you’d best be a drunkard to fall? Judah took replacement slates from the pile on the scaffold; he demonstrated how to nail them neither too tight nor too loose.

“Lean back. Get yourself some purchase.”

“How?”

“If you’re going to hold on with both hands, boy, what’ll you do with the hammer? You’ll fall for certain like that.”

“No.”

“You’ll want some space to breathe,” said Judah, and he took Ian’s hand again and forced him out over the roof. Now Ian knows it wasn’t force, it was a calculated angle and small risk, but then—in the dizzying rush of it all, in the instant that he dropped his hammer and watched it bounce on the paving below—he felt himself a lamb in eagle’s claws. The eagle has a wingspan larger than the lamb; it can pick its victim up and, great talons curved in the already-broken neck, flap to some unattainable eyrie and settle there to feed. Eagles drowned, he’d read, rather than give up the salmon they’d caught; they struck terror in the hearts of herds with just their shadow overhead. So Ian bit and fought for air till Judah said, “Okay. All right. I just wanted to show you it’s nothing to be scared of.”

Then he stood upright again, feet planted square on the scaffolding board, one rung higher than his father and therefore the same height. And with absolute assurance, having ascertained the angle—thirty-two feet per second meaning it would take him maybe three quarters of a second if he chose to land feet first, then tuck and roll, providing he had legs to tuck and arms to roll and shoulders that would take the weight—he jumped.

“So tell us where you’ve been?” Hattie asks.

“How did you get here?” asks Maggie.

“I could use a maraschino cherry now,” his aunt says, as if offhand.

“Let’s celebrate.” Maggie winks at Ian, doles out two.

The pink stain spreads across the china plate. Hattie picks up the cherry between her thumb and middle finger, letting it drip. “Artificial coloring.”

Then, while Ian picks and pours from decanters on the sideboard, his aunt describes her ills. It is a catalog of ailments—fear of cataracts, blood pressure way, way up. She can’t see in the dark these days, and the house is dark. She limps; she doesn’t sleep; she’s frightened of sleepwalking and the stairwell; if she ever has to get on too much medication, she appoints him, Ian, a committee of one to take it away. She wouldn’t want to go the way some members of their family have gone.