Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Ariah said, “When Chandler was born, his hair was dark. Dark swaths like seaweed. Now it’s becoming lighter, like Dirk’s. He’ll grow into his father, I think. He likes numbers, and Dirk says he used to play with numbers at Chandler’s age, too. Dirk’s mother says
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Chandler is very like Dirk at his age.” This was so stunning a lie, Ariah couldn’t quite believe it was hers. “Of course, Chandler was born a few weeks premature, he has catching up to do. But he will.”
Thank God, Ariah’s worries about her baby’s paternity were behind her now. She recalled them only dimly, as you might recall a blurred movie sequence from long ago. Seeing Dirk with Chandler you knew they were father and son. Chandler adored his daddy, and Daddy adored him. Ariah saw her anxiety, in retrospect, as a symptom of her pregnancy like morning sickness, or her cravings for peculiar foods (cold oatmeal, pickle sandwiches, “fish fingers” with mustard, hot cross buns from DiCamillo’s Bakery). A first-time mother fantasizes the worst, Dr. Piper assured her. Imagining they might give birth to deformed infants, monsters. At least, Ariah hadn’t been that crazy.
Fretful Chandler had put aside his numbers game and dropped off to sleep. Mrs. Littrell was squinting through the spray-lashed cabin window at the men on the deck. Mrs. Littrell marveled, “I never thought I’d live to see the sight, your father in a life preserver. Like a sea captain.” She tried to laugh though the
Valkyrie,
in the wake of an enormous Great Lakes coal barge that had passed dangerously near, was beginning to rock. With a ghastly smile Mrs. Littrell said, “Ariah, you married such a wonderful man. You were right not to despair.”
Not to despair? Was that what her love for Dirk was?
“Yes, Mother. We don’t need to discuss it.”
Ariah shut her eyes. This damned boat! Rocking, lurching. It was seasickness she feared, more than drowning.
But Mrs. Littrell persisted, raising her voice to be heard over the noise of the boat’s motor. “Oh, Ariah. God’s ways are inscrutable as the Bible says.”
Ariah said, “Maybe God just has a wicked sense of humor.”
The Littrells never spoke to Ariah of the Erskines, whom they knew well in Troy; they never spoke to her of Gilbert Erskine. It was as if, when the Littrells were visiting at Luna Park, under the spell of the Burnaby household, a part of the past had ceased to exist.
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The night of the yachting trip to Lake Erie and back, undressing for bed and discussing the excursion, which Dirk believed had gone very well, Ariah had a sudden wish never to see her parents again, or anyone. Her soul was worn thin and soiled as an old, used towel. She heard herself say in a droll voice, “Well. It seems I’ve been totally forgiven now. The
Valkyrie
did it, with the Reverend.” Peering into a mirror she discovered several new, very visible silver hairs sprouting from her head. Like stark melancholy thoughts they were, the kind you want to tear out by the roots. “But guess what? I’m the same sinner as always.”
Dirk chuckled, reaching for her. “Darling, I hope so.”
3
N o wa r n i n g !
A weekday afternoon in October 1953, too early for Ariah’s after-school piano student, the doorbell rang and Ariah went to answer it.
She felt only a mild uneasiness. It wouldn’t be the postman ringing the door at this hour, and not a delivery man. Ariah wasn’t so friendly with her Luna Park neighbors that one of them might drop by unexpected and uninvited. (She had a reputation, she supposed, for being unfriendly, aloof. And maybe that wasn’t misleading.) Apart from a few hours of piano instruction a week, Ariah spent her days with Chandler. She was a devoted, consecrated mother. She’d dismissed the Irish nanny Dirk had hired for her, and cut back the hours Dirk’s housekeeper worked for them. “This is my house. I hate to share it with strangers.” She loved to observe Chandler from a little distance, watching as the child played for long periods of time oblivious of her.
He muttered, argued, laughed to himself, patiently creating remarkably intricate towers, bridges, airplanes, then, with a terse little cry of judgment (“Now you go!”) in mimicry of Daddy’s voice, he caused them to crash, disintegrate, topple into a heap.
The game had a secret name, he’d whispered in Mommy’s ear if she promised not to tell: “Earthquake.”
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At two years, seven months, Chandler was thin, inclined to nervous excitement, shy and mistrustful in the presence of other children. His face was small and triangular as a ferret’s. His eyes seemed to Ariah ferrety—shifting, restless. “Chandler, look at
me
. Look at
Mommy.
” And so he might, but you could see that his rapidly working little brain was fixed on something more urgent.
Before Ariah could get to the front door, the bell rang again, sharply. Ariah was annoyed, opening the door—“Yes? What do you want?” On the step stood an elegantly dressed, perfumed older woman who looked familiar in a blurred bad-dream way. She was someone Ariah had never seen before and yet (she knew!) knew.
Moving her mouth strangely, the woman said, in a self-consciously cultured voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in some time,
“Ariah. Hello. I’m Dirk’s mother Claudine Burnaby.” Affecting not to notice Ariah’s look of astonishment and dismay, she extended a gloved, languid hand. The pressure of her fingers was nearly non-existent. She regarded Ariah through sunglasses so darkly tinted, Ariah couldn’t see even the glisten of her eyes. Her mouth was a rich lustrous fire-engine red but it was a mouth reluctant to smile.
Her! The mother-in-law.
For a long terrible moment Ariah stood paralyzed. This was an unlikely, improbable meeting of the sort a morbid-minded daughter-in-law might already have fantasized, for more than three years, yet now that it was happening, clearly it was happening for the first time; and the mother-in-law was in charge.
Parked at the curb, solemn as a hearse, was a chauffeur-driven car.
Ariah heard her voice faltering like an amateur singer’s. She reached for notes that weren’t there. “Mrs. Burnaby! H-Hello.
Please—come inside?”
The woman laughed pleasantly. “Oh, now, my dear—we can’t both be ‘Mrs. Burnaby.’ Not at the same time.”
Ariah would consider this remark afterward, in the way of an individual examining bruises and cuts he hadn’t quite understood he’d suffered.
Ariah stammered something about Dirk not being home, Dirk would be sorry to miss her, even as, with a part of her mind, she knew 154 W
Joyce Carol Oates
that Mrs. Burnaby had come deliberately at a time when Dirk wouldn’t be home, why was she presenting herself as naïve, obtuse?
She offered to take Mrs. Burnaby’s coat, fumbling with the garment, in fact it was a cape of buttery-soft wool, an exquisitely beautiful heather color that matched the suit Mrs. Burnaby wore beneath; the suit suggested high fashion of the mid-1940’s, boxy shoulders and a tight waist and flared skirt to mid-calf. On her stiff metallic-blond hair Mrs. Burnaby wore a black velvet hat with a small cobwebby veil.
An odor of aged gardenias and mothballs hovered about her. Ariah was deeply mortified to be exposed to this woman’s eyes as one who’d so let herself go since her wedding. She was wearing an old cardigan sweater and shapeless slacks and “mocassins” so rundown at the heel they were, in effect, bedroom slippers. The cuffs of Ariah’s slacks were stained from an Easter egg-dyeing session with Chandler months before. And of course Ariah’s (graying) hair was brushed back flat from her pale, plain face, and needed shampooing. She’d intended to freshen herself up a bit for the five o’clock piano student . . .
Mrs. Burnaby seemed scarcely aware of Ariah, however, looking pointedly around. “It has been years. Dirk never invites me. He’s always been a strange vindictive child, spoiled in the cradle. No one expected him to marry. Of course, there are reasons to marry, and some of them are good ones. You’ve changed the wallpaper in here, I see.
And the tile floor is new. Not one of them prior to you actually lived here in Luna Park, so far as I know. Remarkable. ‘Dirk is getting married, Mother,’ my daughters informed me, ‘you’d never guess who because you don’t read the newspapers.’ Their idea of humor. And who’s this?” In her high-heeled pumps, just perceptibly swaying, Mrs. Burnaby swept into the living room, where Chandler glanced up startled from his Tinkertoys. The chattery woman with the metallic-blond hair, vividly made-up mouth, and shiny black sunglasses loomed above him like an apparition. Her voice lifted gaily:
“Is this—Chandler? I think it is.”
Ariah hurried to crouch beside Chandler, who stared at Mrs.
Burnaby in wide-eyed silence. Under cover of caressing him, she tidied up his clothing and smoothed down his fine flyaway hair. “Chandler, this is Grandma Burnaby. Daddy’s mommy? Say hello to—”
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Mrs. Burnaby said, pleasantly but firmly, “
‘Grandmother
Burnaby,’ if you don’t mind. I don’t feel like anyone’s grandma, thank you.”
Ariah stumbled, “ ‘G-Grandmother Burnaby.’ Chandler, say hello.”
Chandler jammed fingers into his mouth, leaned his meager little body toward his mother as if to hide in the crook of her arm, blinked up at his grandmother, and murmured, barely audibly, what sounded like “H’lo.”
In her Mommy voice Ariah said, as if this were happy, astonishing news Chandler must be delighted to hear, “This lady is your Grandmother Burnaby, Chandler. You’ve never met Grandmother Burnaby, have you? So this is a nice surprise, she’s come to see us! Darling, what do you say when people come to see you? A little louder, honey—
‘Hello.’ ”
Chandler tried again, shrinking. “H’
lo
.”
Mrs. Burnaby said, “Hello, Chandler. You’re getting to be a big boy, aren’t you? Almost four? Or—not quite? And what have you built there, Chandler? An ingenious little city of
sticks
?” Mrs.
Burnaby was breathing audibly as if she’d just run into the room. She carried a leather handbag and a shopping bag with a number of gift-wrapped packages; she handed the shopping bag to Ariah as one might hand over a burdensome object to a servant, without looking at her. “But why are you playing down here, Chandler? You must have your own play room upstairs? Surely there’s a nursery upstairs? It can’t be very convenient for your parents or comfortable for you, can it, playing down here? Getting in the way? And the furniture gets in your way, Chandler, doesn’t it?”
This seemed to be so urgent a question, Mrs. Burnaby spoke with such sudden concern and irritation, Ariah felt obliged to reply, as Chandler squirmed against Mommy. “Oh, Chandler plays anywhere he wants. He plays upstairs, and he plays down here. Sometimes I play with him, don’t I, Chandler? And he uses the furniture, too, in very clever ways. See, Mrs. Burnaby—”
The older woman said flatly, “Please do call me ‘Claudine.’ As I said, everyone can’t be Mrs. Burnaby at one time.”
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“ ‘C-Claudine.’ ”
Ariah’s impulse was to say what a beautiful name, for it did truly seem to her a beautiful name, but her throat shut up, refusing.
“And you are ‘Ariah.’ Dirk’s wife, from Troy. I’ve misplaced the last name, I apologize. Your father is a preacher?”
“A minister. Presbyterian.”
“But he does preach, also? Or don’t they preach in that sect?”
“Well, yes. But—”
“Well. At last we are meeting. I’ve seen snapshots of you of course, my daughters have shown me.” Mrs. Burnaby paused. It was a pause that called for a smile, or a thoughtful frown. But Mrs. Burnaby’s face remained inexpressive. “My dear, you look different in each snapshot; and now that I’ve met you, why—you’re someone else.”
It wasn’t often that Dirk and Ariah visited with Dirk’s married sisters and their families. Ariah dreaded these occasions which were usually centered around a holiday: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter.
From the start she’d sensed the disapproval, even the dislike, of her sisters-in-law Clarice and Sylvia, and had resolved not to care. Now she dreaded to think what they might say of her, to their mother.
And how eerie it was, Claudine Burnaby looked scarcely older than her daughters who were in their early forties.
Ariah had invited her mother-in-law to please take a seat several times but each time the woman affected not to hear; she’d suggested making tea, but Mrs. Burnaby seemed to prefer to prowl about the downstairs, asking if items of furniture or wall hangings were new, and if Ariah had selected them; she professed to admire the spinet, which was heaped with lesson books; she struck several loud chords that made Ariah grit her teeth as if she were hearing fingernails scratched on a blackboard. “I used to play once. Long ago. Before the babies came.” Next she drifted into the dining room, and peered through French doors at the back yard; she spent some minutes in the kitchen, as Ariah looked on anxiously from the doorway, wincing at the condition of the sink, the gas stove, the refrigerator. Ariah wanted badly to say
The cleaning woman is coming tomorrow
but though this was true, it had the air of a falsehood. She wanted to protest
Don’t judge me by what you see!
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Back in the living room, Mrs. Burnaby sat in a chair close by her grandson, stiffly, like a waxworks figure with limited flexibility in its lower limbs. She tried again to engage Chandler in conversation. She lifted one of the brightly wrapped presents out of the bag as if to tease, but Chandler merely cringed against Ariah, as before. The presents Mrs. Burnaby had brought for him, both Chandler and Ariah seemed to know beforehand, by their size and relative light-ness, were unpromising. Clothes, stuffed animals. Ariah worried that Chandler might squirm out of her arms and escape. Interrupted at his play he sometimes became peevish, and sometimes strangely wounded, fearful. Especially he disliked being interrogated as Mrs.
Burnaby was doing. And how strange this grandmother was, so unlike his other grandmother; regarding him through shiny, opaque black glasses and expecting him to smile at her though she wasn’t smiling at him. Her sandpaper face was unlined yet sallow-skinned, and her mouth was too bright, drawn to exaggerate the fullness of her lips, or to disguise their thinness. When she spoke, it seemed as if she had marbles in her mouth she was trying not to spill out. When she leaned forward to touch his hair, Chandler shrank back. He would have skidded across the carpet on his bottom, escaping into the next room, except Mommy caught hold of him with a gay little laugh.