The Stories Of Mary Gordon Part 29

"Pa," said Tom, walking beside his father, opening the car door for him. "You see what we mean about her?"

"It was my fault. I forgot."

"Forgot what?" said Tom, emptying his car ashtray onto the church parking lot. Not my son, thought Mr. Ca.s.sidy, turning his head.

"How she is," said Mr. Ca.s.sidy. "I lost my temper."

"Pa, you're not G.o.d," said Tom. His hands were on the steering wheel, angry. His mother's.

"Okay," said Toni. "But look, Pa, you've been a saint to her. But she's not the woman she was. Not the woman we knew."

"She's the woman I married."

"Not anymore," said Toni, wife of her husband.

If not, then who? People were the same. They kept their bodies. They did not become someone else. Rose was the woman he had married, a green girl, high-colored, with beautifully cut nostrils, hair that fell down always, hair she pinned up swiftly, with anger. She had been a housemaid and he a chauffeur. He had taken her to the ocean. They wore straw hats. They were not different people now. She was the girl he had seen first, the woman he had married, the mother of his children, the woman he had promised: Don't let them take me. Let me die in my own bed.

"Supposing it was yourself and Tom, then, Toni," said Mr. Ca.s.sidy, remembering himself a gentleman. "What would you want him to do? Would you want him to break his promise?"

"I hope I'd never make him promise anything like that," said Toni.

"But if you did?"

"I don't believe in those kinds of promises."

"My father thinks he's G.o.d. You have to understand. There's no two ways about anything."

For what was his son now refusing to forgive him? He was silent now, sitting in the back of the car. He looked at the top of his daughter-in-law's head, blonde now, like some kind of circus candy. She had never been blonde. Why did they do it? Try to be what they were not born to. Rose did not.

"What I wish you'd get through your head, Pa, is that it's me and Toni carrying the load. I suppose you forget where all the suppers come from?"

"I don't forget."

"Why don't you think of Toni for once?"

"I think of her, Tom, and you too. I know what you do. I'm very grateful. Mom is grateful, too, or she would be."

But first I think of my wife to whom I made vows. And whom I promised.

"The doctor thinks you're nuts, you know that, don't you?" said Tom. "Rafferty thinks you're nuts to try and keep her. He thinks we're nuts to go along with you. He says he washes his hands of the whole bunch of us."

The doctor washes his hands, thought Mr. Ca.s.sidy, seeing Leo Rafferty, hale as a dog, at his office sink.

The important thing was not to forget she was the woman he had married.

So he could leave the house, so he could leave her alone, he strapped her into the bed. Her curses were worst when he released her. She had grown a beard this last year, like a goat.

Like a man?

No.

He remembered her as she was when she was first his wife. A white nightgown, then as now. So she was the same. He'd been told it smelled different a virgin's first time. And never that way again. Some blood. Not much. As if she hadn't minded.

He sat her in the chair in front of the television. They had Ma.s.s now on television for sick people, people like her. She pushed the b.u.t.ton on the little box that could change channels from across the room. One of their grandsons was a TV repairman. He had done it for them when she got sick. She pushed the b.u.t.ton to a station that showed cartoons. Mice in capes, cats outraged. Some stories now with colored children. He boiled an egg for her lunch.

She sat chewing, looking at the television. What was that look in her eyes now? Why did he want to call it wickedness? Because it was blank and hateful. Because there was no light. Eyes should have light. There should be something behind them. That was dangerous, nothing behind her eyes but hate. Sullen like a bull kept from a cow. s.e.x mad. Why did that look make him think of s.e.x? Sometimes he was afraid she wanted it.

He did not know what he would do.

She slept. He slept in the chair across from her.

The clock went off for her medicine. He got up from the chair, gauging the weather. Sometimes the sky was green this time of year. It was warm when it should not be. He didn't like that. The mix-up made him shaky. It made him say to himself, "Now I am old."

He brought her the medicine. Three pills, red and gray, red and yellow, dark pink. Two just to keep her quiet. Sometimes she sucked them and spat them out when they melted and she got the bad taste. She thought they were candy. It was their fault for making them those colors. But it was something else he had to think about. He had to make sure she swallowed them right away.

Today she was not going to swallow. He could see that by the way her eyes looked at the television. The way she set her mouth so he could see what she had done with the pills, kept them in a pocket in her cheek, as if for storage.

"Rose," he said, stepping between her and the television, breaking her gaze. "You've got to swallow the pills. They cost money."

She tried to look over his shoulder. On the screen an ostrich, dressed in colored stockings, danced down the road. He could see she was not listening to him. And he tried to remember what the young priest had said when he came to bring Communion, what his daughter lune had said. Be patient with her. Humor her. She can't help what she does. She's not the woman she once was.

She is the same.

"Hey, my Rose, won't you just swallow the pills for me. Like my girl."

She pushed him out of the way. So she could go on watching the television. He knelt down next to her.

"Come on, girleen. It's the pills make you better."

She gazed over the top of his head. He stood up, remembering what was done to animals.

He stroked her throat as he had stroked the throats of dogs and horses, a boy on a farm. He stroked the old woman's loose, papery throat, and said, "Swallow, then, just swallow."

She looked over his shoulder at the television. She kept the pills in a corner of her mouth.

It was making him angry. He put one finger above her lip under her nose and one below her chin, so that she would not be able to open her mouth. She breathed through her nose like a patient animal. She went on looking at the television. She did not swallow.

"You swallow them, Rose, this instant," he said, clamping her mouth shut. "They cost money. The doctor says you must. You're throwing good money down the drain."

Now she was watching a lion and a polar bear dancing. There were pianos in their cages.

He knew he must move away or his anger would make him do something. He had promised he would not be angry. He would remember who she was.

He went into the kitchen with a new idea. He would give her something sweet that would make her want to swallow. There was ice cream in the refrigerator. Strawberry that she liked. He removed each strawberry and placed it in the sink so she would not chew and then get the taste of the medicine. And then spit it out, leaving him, leaving them both no better than when they began.

He brought the dish of ice cream to her in the living room. She was sitting staring at the television with her mouth open. Perhaps she had opened her mouth to laugh? At what? At what was this grown woman laughing? A zebra was playing a xylophone while his zebra wife hung striped pajamas on a line.

In opening her mouth, she had let the pills fall together onto her lap. He saw the three of them, wet, stuck together, at the center of her lap. He thought he would take the pills and simply hide them in the ice cream. He bent to fish them from the valley of her lap.

And then she screamed at him. And then she stood up.

He was astonished at her power. She had not stood by herself for seven months. She put one arm in front of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and raised the other against him, knocking him heavily to the floor.

"No," she shouted, her voice younger, stronger, the voice of a well young man. "Don't think you can have it now. That's what you're after. That's what you're always after. You want to get into it. I'm not one of your wh.o.r.es. You always thought it was such a great prize. I wish you'd have it cut off. I'd like to cut it off."

And she walked out of the house. He could see her wandering up and down the street in the darkness.

He dragged himself over to the chair and propped himself against it so he could watch her through the window. But he knew he could not move any farther. His leg was light and foolish underneath him, and burning with pain. He could not move anymore, not even to the telephone that was half a yard away from him. He could see her body, visible through her nightgown, as she walked the street in front of the house.

He wondered if he should call out or be silent. He did not know how far she would walk. He could imagine her walking until the land stopped, and then into the water. He could not stop her. He would not raise his voice.

There was that pain in his leg that absorbed him strangely, as if it were the pain of someone else. He knew the leg was broken. "I have broken my leg," he kept saying to himself, trying to connect the words and the burning.

But then he remembered what it meant. He would not be able to walk. He would not be able to take care of her.

"Rose," he shouted, trying to move toward the window.

And then, knowing he could not move and she could not hear him, "Help."

He could see the green numbers on the clock, alive as cat's eyes. He could see his wife walking in the middle of the street. At least she was not walking far. But no one was coming to help her.

He would have to call for help. And he knew what it meant: they would take her away somewhere. No one would take care of her in the house if he did not. And he could not move.

No one could hear him shouting. No one but he could see his wife, wandering up and down the street in her nightgown.

They would take her away. He could see it; he could hear the noises. Policemen in blue, car radios reporting other disasters, young boys writing his words down in notebooks. And doctors, white coats, white shoes, wheeling her out. Her strapped. She would curse him. She would curse him rightly for having broken his promise. And the young men would wheel her out. Almost everyone was younger than he now. And he could hear how she would be as they wheeled her past him, rightly cursing.

Now he could see her weaving in the middle of the street. He heard a car slam on its brakes to avoid her. He thought someone would have to stop then. But he heard the car go on down to the corner.

No one could hear him shouting in the living room. The windows were shut; it was late October. There was a high bulk of gray cloud, showing islands of fierce, acidic blue. He would have to do something to get someone's attention before the sky became utterly dark and the drivers could not see her wandering before their cars. He could see her wandering; he could see the set of her angry back. She was wearing only her nightgown. He would have to get someone to bring her in before she died of cold.

The only objects he could reach were the figurines that covered the low table beside him. He picked one up: a bust of Robert Kennedy. He threw it through the window. The breaking gla.s.s made a violent, disgraceful noise. It was the sound of disaster he wanted. It must bring help.

He lay still for ten minutes, waiting, looking at the clock. He could see her walking, cursing. She could not hear him. He was afraid no one could hear him. He picked up another figurine, a bicentennial eagle, and threw it through the window next to the one he had just broken. Then he picked up another and threw it through the window next to that. He went on: six windows. He went on until he had broken every window in the front of the house.

He had ruined his house. The one surprising thing of his long lifetime. The broken gla.s.s winked like green jewels, hard sea creatures, on the purple carpet. He looked at what he had destroyed. He would never have done it; it was something he would never have done. But he would not have believed he was a man who could not keep his promise.

In the dark he lay and prayed that someone would come and get her. That was the only thing now to pray for; the one thing he had asked G.o.d to keep back. A car stopped in front of the house. He heard his son's voice speaking to his mother. He could see the two of them; Tom had his arm around her. She was walking into the house now as if she had always meant to.

Mr. Ca.s.sidy lay back for the last moment of darkness. Soon the room would be full.

His son turned on the light.

A Writing Lesson.

Fairy tales, we have been told, have within them the content of all fiction. As an exercise, write the same story as a fairy tale, and then as the kind of fiction we are more used to.

If you are writing a fairy tale, you can begin by saying that they had built a house in the center of the woods. And they sat in the center of it, as if they were children, huddled, cringing against bears. He had to go outside, for food or fire; she never went out. He was clever, and hidden, and got by the bears when he was outside. The walls of the house were thick, and they were safe, sitting in the center.

If your story is not a fairy tale, begin by saying that the husband and the wife lived a life that was somewhat isolated. In the first paragraph, be sure that you introduce the other major character: the girl. Say, before you go any further, that the girl is strong and young and the man is a good man. Say at this point that the wife is frail and beautiful. The reader will know from the beginning that you mean the wife to win in the end, if you are writing the fiction we are familiar with. In a fairy tale, the prize usually goes to the young, the strong, the courageous, and the good. But perhaps even in fairy tales there is no possibility that the frail and the beautiful will not, in the end, win. And so you can apply your description of the characters to either of your stories.

You will, by this time, have prepared the reader for the end of the story and indicated the direction you would have his sympathies take. This both is and is not the technique of the teller of tales. The main feature of the technique is that the teller gets to the point.

Quickly, then, whichever mode you are writing in, let the reader know that the girl is someone else's wife, and should not be called a girl if the fiction you are writing is realistic. She is called a girl simply to distinguish her (and it is important that she be distinguished) from the man's wife, with whom, as things would happen, she has more in common than she can know or would admit. But you must let the reader see these similarities only gradually; it is part of the craft of concealment.

When you are writing the fairy tale, go on to say that the wife sat all day combing her beautiful hair. The man and the girl worked together, cutting up wood, tying it in bundles. Sometimes their fingers would touch and she would tell him with her eyes, "How I love you. It is unbearable to me." The man will understand, although the girl will not speak because she has seen the wife, pale and fragile, combing her beautiful hair.

This is the way to describe the situation if you intend to write a fairy tale. If you are writing realistic fiction, your approach will be different. It is possible to say that the wife did have beautiful hair and that the man and the girl worked together, but it must be a perfectly ordinary job; it will have nothing to do with bundling wood (wood should not even be mentioned); they can share an office, a secretary. And sometimes she will try to tell him something with her eyes. But if you are not writing a fairy tale, you must remember that the language of the eyes is silent, and often unheard or misunderstood. As a humorous touch, you can say that the girl once tried to tell him with her eyes, and he asked if she were ill. And so the girl will remain silent, for she has seen the wife with her husband, frail and tentative, sitting beside him at dinner, touching him often. And the sight will have moved her; such fragility, in any mode of fiction, must move any but the coldest hearts. But because outside of fairy tales, if you are not writing a fairy tale, the feelings of the characters are not always clear, you must make the point that the girl hated the woman, for the girl was a hewer of wood. That is to say, she believed that love was earned and could be lost, and the wife was loved for her beautiful hair. How the girl would have loved that: to be loved for her frailty, her hair, not to have to work at love like a cabinetmaker (you can see that we are using the image of wood without actually mentioning wood), but to be loved for what she was born with, what she had nothing to do with, what she could neither improve very much nor change very much. How she would have loved to be loved for what she could not do.

A problem now arises: How do you describe endurance, silence, in the language of the fairy tale? And how do you say that in the midst of her silence there was talk, a paradise of talk, a wilderness of talk, about everything else? And how do you describe his fine bright eye: a bird's? a horse's? For you, the craftsman, this will be a difficult problem. Perhaps you will have to leave all these things out of the fairy tale and put in their place definite, visible action.

In the fairy tale, something definite must happen: It is in the nature of the narrative. In the fairy tale, she will weep. The girl will weep in the woods and someone, someone old or magical, will hear. Something will happen, something outside her, so that her intention of silence will remain pure, and yet he will know. Something dramatic will happen, so that she can remain silent, but he will come to her, to her deathbed, to her bed of leaves, knowing.

Even in the course of the fiction we are familiar with, there is one central event around which the story centers, around which it fans, like a peac.o.c.k's tail. You should be searching your narrative for a central event, a significant event. In the fiction we are familiar with, it is possible that the central event will be an event in the mind: a decision. For example, it would be perfectly consistent with the rules of fiction and with the character of the girl as you have created her, if you have her decide not to act but to keep her love a secret. You can refer back to the scene of the husband and the wife at dinner. You can depict the girl watching the wife afraid to eat anything until her husband has eaten something first, then giving him half her dinner. You may describe the fear that that engendered in the girl: you may discuss the fear that may exist in the heart of a strong person in the presence of vulnerability. You may mention, here, the girl's sense of superiority: she would, she knew, never wait to see what anyone was eating before she began to eat. And you may include here her sense that, being stronger than the wife, she was more able to bear loss.

The central event of a fairy tale often involves loss. The theme of the quest is also prevalent. In the fairy tale, for example, the girl can go to the man for help because she has lost something magical: a comb made of pearls, a ring in the shape of a lion's head. And they will search in the woods until it is dark, and then they will lie down with the animals.

In a story that is not a fairy tale, the difficulties in getting them into the woods alone may be distracting. He is married; she is married, so you can see the implications for your narrative. In addition, the image of a couple in the woods may be comic or prurient. And besides, the girl has decided that nothing of that nature will happen. You must convey that her decision involved some sorrow, but you must not say that the girl is weeping: it is not consistent with her character. You may make the wife weep; you could create a moving scene in which you describe the wife, combing her beautiful hair, weeping. Only you have decided that the girl will remain silent. So there is no reason for the wife to weep. But you may depict the wife weeping anyway: it will be beautiful and consistent with her character.

And the man? The man loved them both, each according to what he believed she needed, each according to his needs. The girl he loved in a paradise of talk, a wilderness of talk, and his wife he took to him, flesh to flesh. If we were to end the fairy tale, this would be a happy ending: each having what she needed, which was what he thought she needed: each happy. But, in realistic fiction, this apportionment will not satisfy the character of the girl as you have created her.

Perhaps even in the fairy tale, apportionment will not be enough for the girl, and she will turn into a kind of witch, stirring her love in a dark pot, over and over, with things from old nightmares: heads of animals, curious mangled limbs, herbs that are acrid, dangerous. Even this could lead to an event or an ending: the girl could bewitch the wife and take the husband. But you want the girl to be the hero of the story, and now the girl has become a witch, so you can see the problem for your narrative.

But the problem is not insuperable because the form of the fairy tale, unlike the realistic form, allows for the possibilities of transformation. So you can depict the girl transformed from a girl to a witch, and then you could transform her back to a girl, sadder, more silent, perfectly beautiful in the woods, having learned in her witchhood the language of animals. You can have her send the man and the wife off, having cured them of their enchantment, and leave her in the woods, full of secrets, full of lore. This will compel the reader with the attractions of the supernatural.

It is possible in realistic fiction as well to create the witch as hero, but you must place her in another moral context, and you cannot call her a witch. The use of multiple contexts is an option of the writer of the fiction we are now used to, but you must be sure that your values are clear to the reader. You must create a context in which you extol the values of silence and endurance. You must make the reader interested in the girl's interesting and understandable hatred; you must make him sympathize with her fear and her sense of superiority. You will praise the girl for swallowing her power like a spell she wants to forget, for loving, in spite of herself, the beautiful wife, frailly combing her beautiful hair by the window. And this is the image that will stay in the reader's mind. Of course you can see the problem for your narrative.

You must be sure that the reader can only interpret the story as you would have it interpreted. If you have written a fairy tale, it may be possible for the reader to find everyone a hero: the girl, the man, the wife. All may live on, each inhabiting his particular beauty. But if you are not writing a fairy tale, the center of your fiction is the avoidance of action, the will, steadfastly clung to out of love and hatred, not to change, but to be silent. This may be interpreted as cowardice or bravery, depending upon the context you have created. If it is cowardice, the wife will be the hero of the story, because the reader will have seen her do nothing cowardly. And if it is bravery, the reader will still remember the wife, sitting at her window, frailly combing her beautiful hair.

Once you have decided upon the path of your narrative and have understood its implications, go back to the beginning of the story. Describe the house.

The Thorn.

If I lose this, she thought, I will be so far away I will never come back.

When the kind doctor came to tell her that her father was dead, he took her crayons and drew a picture of a heart. It was not like a valentine, he said. It was solid and made of flesh, and it was not entirely red. It had veins and arteries and valves and one of them had broken, and so her daddy was now in heaven, he had said.