Home Truths (4 page)

“Have you dropped Freddy now that Bradley is here?” It seems that she was asked that a number of times.

“Oh, I still like Freddy, but Bradley’s my cousin and everything.” This is a good answer. She has others, such as, “I’m English-Canadian only I can talk French and I’m German descent on one side.” (Bradley is not required to think of answers; he is American, and that does. But in Canada you have to keep saying what you are.) Irmgard’s answer – about Freddy – lies on the lawn like an old skipping rope, waiting to catch her up. “Watch me,” poor Mrs. Bloodworth said, but nobody cared, and the cry dissolved. “I like Freddy,” Irmgard said, and was heard, and the statement is there, underfoot. For if she still likes Freddy, why isn’t he here?

Freddy’s real name is Alfred Marcel Dufresne. He has nine sisters and brothers, but doesn’t know where they are. In winter he lives in an orphanage in Montreal. He used to live there all the year round, but now that he is over seven, old enough to work, he spends the summer with his uncle, who has a farm about two miles back from the lake. Freddy is nearly Irmgard’s age, but smaller, lighter on his feet. He looks a tiny six. When he comes to lunch with Irmgard, which they have out in the kitchen with Germaine, everything has to be cut on his plate. He has never eaten with anything but a spoon. His chin rests on the edge of the table. When he is eating, you see nothing except his blue eyes, his curly dirty hair, and his hand around the bowl of the spoon. Once, Germaine said calmly,
uncritically, “You eat just like a pig,” and Freddy repeated in the tone she had used,
“comme un cochon,”
as if it were astonishing that someone had, at last, discovered the right words.

Freddy cannot eat, or read, or write, or sing, or swim. He has never seen paints and books, except Irmgard’s; he has never been an imaginary person, never played. It was Irmgard who taught him how to swim. He crosses himself before he goes in the water, and looks down at his wet feet, frowning – a worried mosquito – but he does everything she says. The point of their friendship is that she doesn’t have to say much. They can read each other’s thoughts. When Freddy wants to speak, Irmgard tells him what he wants to say, and Freddy stands there, mute as an animal, grave, nodding, at ease. He does not know the names of flowers, and does not distinguish between the colors green and blue. The apparitions of the Virgin, which are commonplace, take place against a heaven he says is
“vert.”

Now, Bradley has never had a vision, and if he did he wouldn’t know what it was. He has no trouble explaining anything. He says, “Well, this is the way it is,” and then says. He counts eight beats when he swims, and once saved Irmgard’s life – at least he says he did. He says he held on to her braids until someone came by in a boat. No one remembers it but Bradley; it is a myth now, like the
matin du kidnap
. This year, Bradley arrived at the beginning of August. He had spent July in Vermont, where he took tennis lessons and got poison ivy. He was even taller than the year before, and he got down from the train with pink lotion all over his sores and, under his arm, a tennis racket in a press. “What a little stockbroker Bradley is,” Irmgard heard her mother say later on; but Mrs. Queen declared that his manners left nothing wanting.

Bradley put all his own things away and set out his toothbrush in a Mickey Mouse glass he travelled with. Then he came down, ready to swim, with his hair water-combed. Irmgard was there, on the gallery, and so was Freddy, hanging on the outside of the railings, his face poked into the morning-glory vines. He thrusts his face between the leaves, and grins, and shows the gaps in his teeth. “How small he is! Do you play with him?” says Bradley, neutrally. Bradley is after information. He needs to know the rules. But if he had been sure about Freddy, if he had seen right away that they could play with Freddy, he would never have asked. And Irmgard replies, “No, I don’t,” and turns her back. Just so, on her bicycle, coasting downhill, she has lost control and closed her eyes to avoid seeing her own disaster. Dizzily, she says, “No, I don’t,” and hopes Freddy will disappear. But Freddy continues to hang on, his face thrust among the leaves, until Bradley, quite puzzled now, says, “Well, is he a friend of yours, or what?” and Irmgard again says, “No.”

Eventually, that day or the next day, or one day of August, she notices Freddy has gone. Freddy has vanished; but Bradley gives her a poor return. He has the tennis racket, and does nothing except practice against the house. Irmgard has to chase the balls. He practices until his arm is sore, and then he is pleased and says he has tennis arm. Everybody bothers him. The dogs go after the balls and have to be shut up in the garage. “Call the dogs!” he implores. This is Bradley’s voice, over the lake, across the shrinking afternoons. “Please, somebody, call the dogs!”

Freddy is forgotten, but Irmgard thinks she has left something in Montreal. She goes over the things in her personal suitcase. Once, she got up in the night to see if her paintbox
was there – if that hadn’t been left in Montreal. But the paintbox was there. Something else must be missing. She goes over the list again.

“The fact is,” Bradley said, a few days ago, dabbing pink lotion on his poison ivy, “I don’t really play with any girls now. So unless you get a brother or something, I probably won’t come again.” Even with lotion all over his legs he looks splendid. He and Irmgard stand side by side in front of the bathroom looking glass, and admire. She sucks in her cheeks. He peers at his sty. “My mother said you were a stockbroker,” Irmgard confides. But Bradley is raised in a different political climate down there in Boston and does not recognize “stockbroker” as a term of abuse. He smiles fatly, and moves his sore tennis arm in a new movement he has now.

D
uring August Freddy no longer existed; she had got in the habit of not seeing him there. But after Bradley’s train pulled out, as she sat alone on the dock, kicking the lake, she thought, What’ll I do now?, and remembered Freddy. She knows what took place the day she said “No” and, even more, what it meant when she said “Oh, I still like Freddy.” But she has forgotten. All she knows now is that when she finds Freddy – in his uncle’s muddy farmyard – she understands she hadn’t left a paintbox or anything else in Montreal; Freddy was missing, that was all. But Freddy looks old and serious. He hangs his head. He has been forbidden to play with her now, he says. His uncle never wanted him to go there in the first place; it was a waste of time. He only allowed it because they were summer people from Montreal. Wondering where to look, both look at their shoes. Their meeting is made up of Freddy’s feet in torn
shoes, her sandals, the trampled mud of the yard. Irmgard sees blackberries, not quite ripe. Dumb as Freddy, having lost the power to read his thoughts, she picks blackberries, hard and greenish, and puts them in her mouth.

Freddy’s uncle comes out of the foul stable and says something so obscene that the two stand frozen, ashamed – Irmgard, who does not know what the words mean, and Freddy, who does. Then Freddy says he will come with her for just one swim, and not to Irmgard’s dock but to a public beach below the village, where Irmgard is forbidden to go; the water is said to be polluted there.

Germaine has her own way of doing braids. She holds the middle strand of hair in her teeth until she has a good grip on the other two. Then she pulls until Irmgard can feel her scalp lifted from her head. Germaine crosses hands, lets go the middle strand, and is away, breathing heavily. The plaits she makes are glossy and fat, and stay woven in water. She works steadily, breathing on Irmgard’s neck.

Mrs. Queen says, “I’ll wager you went to see poor Freddy the instant that Bradley was out of sight.”

“Mmm.”

“Don’t ‘Mmm’ me. I hope he sent you packing.”

“We went for a swim.”

“I never saw a thing like it. That wretched boy was nothing but a slave to you all summer until Bradley came. It was Freddy do this, come here, go there. That charming English Mrs. Bustard who was here in July remarked the same thing. ‘Irmgard is her mother all over again,’ Mrs. Bustard said. ‘All over again, Mrs. Queen.’ ”

“Mrs. Bustard est une espèce de vache,”
says Germaine gently, who cannot understand a word of English.

“Irmgard requires someone with an iron hand. ‘A hand of iron,’ Mrs. Bustard said.”

Irmgard was afraid to tell Freddy, “But we haven’t got our bathing suits or any towels.” He was silent, and she could no longer read his mind. The sun had gone in. She was uneasy, because she was swimming in a forbidden place, and frightened by the water spiders. There had been other bathers; they had left their candy wrappers behind and a single canvas shoe. The lake was ruffled, brown. She suggested, “It’s awfully cold,” but Freddy began undressing, and Irmgard, not sure of her ground, began to unbuckle her sandals. They turned their backs, in the usual manner. Irmgard had never seen anybody undressed, and no one had ever seen her, except Germaine. Her back to Freddy, she pulled off her cotton dress, but kept on her bloomers. When she turned again, Freddy was naked. It was not a mistake; she had not turned around too soon. He stood composedly, with one hand on his skinny ribs. She said only, “The water’s dirty here,” and again, “It’s cold.” There were tin cans in the lake, half sunk in mud, and the water spiders. When they came out, Irmgard stood goosefleshed, blue-lipped. Freddy had not said a word. Trembling, wet, they put on their clothes. Irmgard felt water running into her shoes. She said miserably, “I think my mother wants me now,” and edged one foot behind the other, and turned, and went away. There was nothing they could say, and nothing they could play any longer. He had discovered that he could live without her. None of the old games would do.

G
ermaine knows. This is what Germaine said yesterday afternoon; she was simple and calm, and said,
“Oui, c’est comme ça
.
C’est bien malheureux. Tu sais, ma p’tite fille, je crois qu’un homme, c’est une déformation.”

Irmgard leans against Germaine. They seem to be consoling each other, because of what they both know. Mrs. Queen says, “Freddy goes back to an orphan asylum. I knew from the beginning the way it would end. It was not a kindness, allowing him to come here. It was no kindness at all.” She would say more, but they have come down and want their breakfast. After keeping her up all night with noise, they want their breakfast now.

Mrs. Bloodworth looks distressed and unwashed. Her friend has asked for beer instead of coffee. Pleasure followed by gloom is a regular pattern here. But no matter how they feel, Irmgard’s parents get up and come down for breakfast, and they judge their guests by the way they behave not in pleasure but in remorse. The man who has asked for beer as medicine and not for enjoyment, and who described the condition of his stomach and the roots of his hair, will never be invited again. Irmgard stands by her mother’s chair; for the mother is the mirror, and everything is reflected or darkened, given life or dismissed, in the picture her mother returns. The lake, the house, the summer, the reason for doing one thing instead of another are reflected here, explained, clarified. If the mirror breaks, everything will break, too.

They are talking quietly at the breakfast table. The day began in fine shape, but now it is going to be cloudy again. They think they will all go to Montreal. It is nearly Labor Day. The pity of parties is that they end.

“Are you sad, too, now that your little boy friend has left you?” says Mrs. Bloodworth, fixing Irmgard with her still-sleeping eyes. She means Bradley; she thought he and Irmgard were perfectly sweet.

Now, this is just the way they don’t like Irmgard spoken to, and Irmgard knows they will not invite Mrs. Bloodworth again, either. They weigh and measure and sift everything people say, and Irmgard’s father looks cold and bored, and her mother gives a waking tiger’s look his way, smiles. They act together, and read each other’s thoughts – just as Freddy and Irmgard did. But, large, and old, and powerful, they have greater powers: they see through walls, and hear whispered conversations miles away. Irmgard’s father looks cold, and Irmgard, without knowing it, imitates his look.

“Bradley is Irmgard’s cousin,” her mother says.

N
ow Irmgard, who cannot remember anything, who looked for a paintbox when Freddy had gone, who doesn’t remember that she was kidnapped and that Bradley once saved her life – now Irmgard remembers something. It seems that Freddy was sent on an errand. He went off down the sidewalk, which was heaving, cracked, edged with ribbon grass; and when he came to a certain place he was no longer there. Something was waiting for him there, and when they came looking for him, only Irmgard knew that whatever had been waiting for Freddy was the disaster, the worst thing. Irmgard’s mother said, “Imagine sending a child near the woods at this time of day!” Sure enough, there were trees nearby. And only Irmgard knew that whatever had been waiting for Freddy had come out of the woods. It was the worst thing; and it could not be helped. But she does not know exactly what it was. And then, was it Freddy? It might have been Bradley, or even herself.

Naturally, no child should go near a strange forest. There
are chances of getting lost. There is the witch who changes children into birds.

Irmgard grows red in the face and says loudly, “I remember my dream. Freddy went on a message and got lost.”

“Oh, no dreams at breakfast, please,” her father says.

“Nothing is as dreary as a dream,” her mother says, agreeing. “I think we might make a rule on that: no dreams at breakfast. Otherwise it gets to be a habit.”

Her father cheers up. Nothing cheers them up so fast as a new rule, for when it comes to making rules, they are as bad as children. You should see them at croquet.