Sherbrookes: Possession / Sherbrookes / Stillness (American Literature Series) (6 page)

Hattie comes to the door. They greet each other, constrained. Her voice is high-pitched, querulous. “What brings you to these parts?”

“I wanted to see you. Both. You know that.”

“Well, look your fill,” says Hattie. “
We’re
not leaving, him and I.”

Maggie takes her bearings. Judah used to say that any liar dreams he’ll be caught and pardoned; any faithless person reasons faithlessness is faith. There’s something in a clown, he said, that needs to get egg on his face and to take a pratfall walking in or out the door. But women have a harder time of it these years, she believes, than men. Not only do they have the housework and child-work and beauty-work to keep up with, but they also feel dishonored if they honor it as work. When a man has a profession the world calls him a professional; when a woman pursues a career, they call her a “careerist.”

“Yes, well,” says Judah, entering, carrying her suitcase. “We’ll let her alone a little bit, sister. Just long enough to wash.”

“I don’t mind,” Hattie says.

“I didn’t guess you would,” he says. “Well see you in a while.”

“How long?”

“Twenty minutes?” Maggie says. “I do want to freshen up.”

In her own way, her sister-in-law has kept to what she stood for, standing fast. Hattie tried. She loved the boys. But sometimes it had seemed more standing pat than fast, and then there was change all around them so that standing still was change.

“I’ll be in my room,” Hattie says.

Hair in the flanges of his nose, hair in his ears; a nose like an Indian’s, where rain could practice skiing. Eyes that were blue in daylight, gray at night, and green in the pine woods or when he looked at grass—the only changeable thing in him, Maggie thinks, an absence of color really, not a hue to name. Big ears to hear her where she walked, a mouth like Cupid’s crossbow, with the skin so often cracked and healed it seemed scarified. That was how his whole skin moved, independent of the bone struts beneath, so that when he squinted his checks would fall, not rise; that was how he used his hands, wrapping them like swaddling around the fork he held. There was stubble on his chin and cheeks; she has been robbed, she tells herself, of his resplendent youth. She has the photographs. He stands there pole-trim, erect. His white hair had been yellow then, as everything was yellow in the print. He is, she hears herself telling Mary, just the most beautiful man. He’s everything I dreamed of, he’s the strongest man in the whole wide world, just dreamy. He’s rich, her city friend says. Yes, he’s very rich. He’s old, she says, not all that old, just graying at the temples. But—and Mary drops her voice, sybilline, insistent—do you love him? Love him, Maggie answers, oh my, yes. I’m mad about the boy. He has this team of horses that he broke himself. He has a carriage—you know, the old-fashioned kind, with plush seats, all the trimmings and a place to put your parasol—and he takes me in it sometimes and we ride for hours and don’t ever leave his land. It’s a one-horse carriage actually, it’s for the Belgian workhorse that he got in Canada. But Mary says it’s boring; it isn’t boring now but will be twenty years from now, she’d rather shop at Bendel’s. And twenty years from now is eight years ago, and everything they’d argued on or prophesied had come to pass, is past. Judah stands there, her sizeable beast, her leonine husband twice the size of that dead emperor they called the Lion of Judah. And his eyes are yellow now, and the pouches of his flesh reek of the dying animal that he, the container, contains.

II

Across the hall, she hates them. She hates Judah’s offhand dismissal. She had said, “I’m not reproachful,” but he had reproached her nonetheless. He hasn’t, Hattie knows, the right. She’d done some things that merited reproach—as which of us hasn’t, she asks herself now—and other things to anger him that merited his righteous anger. She’d not deny that. She never denied it, in thought or in deed, and no matter what it cost her in his teasing disrespect. He doles her maraschino cherries out like alms. She can afford to buy all the maraschino cherries in the state of Vermont, and all of New England if pushed to it. She could have hoarded or have swallowed them in clumps. She could drink cherry pop or cherry brandy or Cherry Heering, come to that. But she prefers to be modest and ration her pleasures and not to be discourteous and to await his toast. “Your health,” he’d say, and she’d answer, “
Your
health,” noting how the sweetness bobbled and spread out and sank. There was little enough, otherwise, to sweeten up the bitter draught Judah made her drink.

She imagines, sometimes, a maraschino cherry tree. She has heard that somewhere they tie bottles over the fruit bud and let fruit grow in the bottle and then pour liquor in. That way you get a pear or peach too big for the bottleneck but in the bottle anyhow and saturated, growing. The maraschino cherry trees would line the streets of Washington and the banks of the Potomac, and springtime there would be, completely, bliss. George Washington chopped down a chokecherry tree. She is certain of that. She is certain that our nation’s father spared the proper cherry tree and cleared the nuisance—the chokecherry—out. He tossed a silver dollar straight across the wide Potomac and never lied and could have felled the chokecherry with three mighty strokes.

There are other misconceptions. There is the misconception that he had silver teeth. In fact his teeth were wooden, and he spent the night of Valley Forge inspiriting the troops. He proved his gay insouciance and his scorn of prideful Redcoats by whittling at his lower teeth with his honed bayonet blade. She, Harriet, has no problem with her teeth. She is blessed with every single one of them, and they do not corrode. Her brother said that cherry acid was as good a paint remover as any, and better than most, and that he’d filled a bathtub with it once and worn out the enamel.

He was always teasing her. He’s teased her since she can remember and is at it still. She supposed his teasing was a surrogate for courtesy, his way of saying: “Harriet. I’m glad you’re with me, sister. It makes it easy you’re here.”

“Thanksgiving’s not a harvest feast,” he’d say instead.

“Of course it is.”

“You’re wrong. I’ll prove it.”

“Prove it then,” she challenged him.

“It happens in November, right? The final Thursday of the month.”

“That’s Roosevelt’s doing,” Hattie said. “That’s when he regulated holidays, remember?”

“But it was somewhere around then anyhow. Well, give or take a week.”

“All right.”

“And it started in New England.”

“Yes.”

“And they’re bringing in pumpkins and corn from the fields.”

“Of course.”

“It’s not ‘of course’ ”—he triumphed. “There’s nothing growing then. There’s not a pumpkin left to harvest, or even Indian corn.”

It was a misconception, and she’d set him straight. Samoset had brought in corn from the storehouse, not lifted off the stalk. But Judah pointed to her picture books that showed the pilgrim-settlers coming laden from the fields. Samoset walked down to meet them, grinning, arms filled full.

“Well, then, the artist got it wrong. That’s not how it happened at all.”

“You don’t know, Hattie. You weren’t there either. It must have been slim pickings is my point.”

“All right,” she said. “All right.”

“Admit I proved it,” Judah said.

“You didn’t.”

“Admit it. I did.”

So they would fall to bickering and squabbling as they’d squabbled seventy years before. He’d bested her at checkers, though she had taught him the game. He’d bested her at riding and in their mother’s heart of hearts. He’d bested her by the involuntary arrogance of size. But there was voluntary arrogance also, and she had curbed that in him. She’d made alliance with her sister-in-law, and they bridled him for years.

Then the alliance was broken, and everything in the Big House broken, shattered by Maggie’s departure and the way Judah went wild. He teased her about the family tree, calling it scrub oak only, or like the poison sumac that mostly was display. He told her how the doctor said a bottle of maraschino cherries can cause what’s called insulin shock. He teased her that she never married and wasn’t the marrying kind. “Love ‘em and leave ‘em,” he’d say. “That’s my sister Hattie—got a string of broken hearts there knotted around her finger. Only none of us knows just exactly what she needs to be reminded of. Or who. She keeps her own counsel on that.”

She kept her own counsel continually. She could have told him things. She could have told him, for instance, how the women of the house first fashioned their alliance. Maggie had been making quiche lorraine. She called it “quiche lorraine,” but it was really only pastry crust and eggs and onions and bacon. She, Harriet, was in the kitchen (watching the wreckage, thinking this young person cooks as if she’d all her life had someone who would clean up after, scrubbing up the pots and mixing bowls as if it were a privilege to rinse what Maggie dirtied . . .)

“I hope you like the way it tastes. And that this recipe pleases you.”

“Of course.”

“I mean it,” Maggie said. There was a pastry smear beneath her eye.

“Why do they call it quiche?”

“It’s a peasant dish,” she’d said—and Harriet wondered, was that the answer? “It comes from Lorraine.”

“Lorraine who?”

“It’s a place, not person.” Her sister-in-law straightened, smiling. “It’s an area in France.” Maggie wiped the pastry smear but managed only to enlarge it. There was flour on her hand.

“You’re making it for Judah”—she let resentment surface. “You’re making it for him and for his guests.”

“For you too, Harriet. For all of us.”

“You don’t care a, a—what’s the word?—a twopenny damn. You’re being polite.”

Then Maggie made their alliance. She laid the mixing spoon and the eggbeater on the table (not on the bowl, Harriet saw, not in the tray set aside so the drippings wouldn’t puddle or trail to the floor) and put out her hand. “Don’t despise me.”

“Despise you? Why should I despise you?”

“You’ve got your reasons, I don’t doubt. But don’t despise me. Please.”

Nobody on God’s bounden earth could have resisted the woman; she, Harriet, couldn’t resist.

“I don’t hold you responsible”—she staked one final claim. “I don’t think you intended harm.”

There was evening sunlight on Maggie’s white cheek. The cheek was smudged. “I married your brother for love.”

And money,
she might have responded.
And position. And the house. And for his salt lusts
. She would have said that earlier—five minutes previous she’d been watchful and suspicious, been the sentry of the Sherbrooke clan.
And for the name, to lord it over people with. To eat up his substance with whorishness. Who knows your reasons, lady?

“I did,”—Maggie joggled her hand, palm out. “I do love Judah Porteous. And his sister therefore is someone I shall come to love—if she’ll permit it. Will you?”

So they became domestic partners, banding together and bonded. They clucked and bustled in the kitchen like a pair of broody hens. Even then the woman was, Harriet suspicioned, no broody hen but an eagle at rest—and her arms were mighty wingspans and her hands sheathed claws. Yet she had followed Maggie, chattering—from kitchen sink to countertop to stove to chopping block to sink—picking up her droppings, setting things straight. Judah said they’d got a pecking order, and that made him (teasing, kneading Maggie underneath her apron) the roost’s cock. His wife had slapped at his hands. She told him to behave himself, and laughed.

But this was her wan, private knowledge, and she forgot it for years. She had taken Maggie for an ally—but had been taken in, mistaken. They had bridled Judah with conspiratorial efficiency—making him take off his shoes when on the ballroom carpets, making sure he came on time to meals. He had been docile, gentled, as her sister-in-law had been docile—so Harriet believed for years she was witnessing family love. She had partaken of it also, partaking of their bed and board and knowing there was room enough to spare. It had been a mistake.

Except Maggie, in those first few years, never made mistakes. She wronged them all repeatedly but seemed to do no wrong. Nothing she ate or drank made any difference to her figure, ever; she could guzzle all night long and gorge herself on cakes and bread but not accumulate a single pound. Her skirts would billow about her like sails in a stiff breeze. Harriet baked cakes, despairing, and then baked rhubarb and pecan pies and fudge brownies and presented them topped off with homemade ice cream and shared it all and felt herself bloat and go greasy while Maggie ate, delighted, licking her fingers in the kitchen and licking the spatula clean. She had the complexion of a Camay model, and it would not mar.

“How do you do it?” Harriet asked.

“Do what?”

They were allies now—but Harriet still baked cakes and cobblers and brownies, letting Judah have a tuck-in on plain New England food.

“I’ve burned the crust,” she said.

“Don’t be silly, Hattie. It’s perfection.”

“You think so?” she’d ask, shy.

“Yes.
Perfect
.”—and Maggie’d pare the drippings off the pie pan and swallow and make a perfection sign, curling her index finger to her thumb. She’d raise her other fingers and squint past her hand’s circle, appreciative, nodding.

“Sugar and spice and everything nice”—Judah smacked his lips. “This ain’t half bad, Hattie. I’ll have another slice.”

“Tell her ‘if you please,’ ” said Maggie.

“I do please,” Judah said.

“You don’t—you unmannerly man.” They were allies in this also in making him say “Please” and keep his elbows off the table and wipe off his mouth when he drank.

“OK, ladies. Hattie. I’ll have more, please.”

“Why, certainly,” she said.

“Why, thank you,” Judah said.

“You’re welcome, I’m sure.”

“Pretty please,” he pronounced, “with sugar on top”—and she knew he had bested her and heard Jamie Powers crackling through the underbrush, whistling, laughing, and felt her face flame and threw the cake knife down.

“Now look”—Maggie scolded him—“look what you’ve done.”

“I’ll take a second piece.”

“Not while I’m sitting here,” her ally declared—who would not, would never be bested.

“Thank you,” Judah said. “It’s been a lovely meal.”

“
You’ve
spoiled it. You’re the one who spoiled it, Jude.”

“I said pretty please,” he said.

“You didn’t mean it. You meant something else.”

“I’ve been studying good manners.”

“But you’re not learning them,” his wife pronounced.

“And you,”—he said, his face suffusing with dark blood. “You two are such excellent teachers.”

“It’s your fault,” Harriet echoed. “It isn’t us who spoils it”—and he overturned his plate and coffee cup and stalked out of the room.

They had had a second son, Seth, born two years after Ian. Unlike his elder brother, he was a sickly baby, but patient and pleased with the world. He died at six months old, of what Wiggins called crib death.

“What’s that?” Judah demanded. “What sort of sickness is that?”

The doctor said it was a name for no name, for something they hadn’t figured out but maybe was a sudden fever in the night. “He had no fever when he went to sleep,” said Judah. Seth lay there, extinguished, in blankets that doubled his weight. “I’m truly sorry,” the doctor repeated. “We don’t know enough about it.” Hattie feared it might have been God’s judgment, that He who giveth taketh, and for reasons that we know not of.

“What reasons?” Maggie said. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Only that He passeth understanding.” They talked about Seth often, then rarely, then avoided talking till avoidance was a habit and he became mere memory, a bit of breath and trustfulness and bone.

“Hattie, I need you.”

“Yes.”

“To be my friend,” said her sister-in-law.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean by that ‘Yes’?”

“Just yes. You need me for your friend.”

But it was a “yes” of concurrence and not agreement; it was a “yes” that recognized the rightness of the statement, but not the statement’s case. She made no acquiescence with that “yes,” nor any sort of pledge.

“You offered me your help once, Hattie. He’s insane.”

“Excitable,” she said. “Judah was always excitable.”

“He’s
insane
. Your brother is stark raving mad.”