Men and Angels (30 page)

But then she thought about the paintings Mrs. Eastman had said she could have: the two early ones, scenes of the Freeman family—the blue-green grass, the red daylilies, the reluctant sister in her out-of-season black hat, the mother coaxing the baby to eat while the cat, his fur bluish in the luxury of the grass, slept outside the family gravity, beneath a hammock. In the other painting the mother sewed, one girl read to the family while the younger one sat on the window seat, the thin white curtain blowing near her hair, the light casting a barred, square shadow on the floor.

After eighty years the paintings were the same—untroubled and suggesting life was good, mothers and their children, the light on a yellow bowl. And the late one that had excited her, that suggested that life was valuable, was solid. It was of a woman entering the bath. She was middle-aged, her belly sagged and in one hand she held, in pity or in weariness, one of her drooping breasts. The body had a vigor and a toughness Caroline could not have rendered as a young woman. It was a real addition to the show, and she wouldn’t have had it otherwise, for it was the kind of painting of Caroline’s that Jane didn’t like. It was not a landscape; it was not of her.

But it was all over, all that life that Caroline had set down, all those children and their mothers, all those women entering their baths. Yet the painting went on saying what it had always said. Was it true that some people found comfort in the permanence of art? She couldn’t begin to believe it. It was something some people said because it went on being said and they wanted to be the people who went on saying it. She thought of Michael and the children. Would it one day be possible that some blood would stop, some messages wouldn’t get to her brain, and she would look at them and not remember; would stand next to them and feel herself entirely alone?

When she got home, the children were bathing. She ate a salad and some lentil soup that she had made before she left. She poured herself a glass of wine and sat at the kitchen table. She was fond of her kitchen with the wooden cabinets painted in blue enamel, the butcher-block counters, the pots that hung from hooks, the plates she had collected resting on their shelf. She was looking forward to reading to the children in their beds. Nothing was nicer than being close to them as they lay giving over to the pull of sleep. She thought it could almost make her forget the terror she had felt all the way home. But the terror would be there as she held them, read to them. And they must never know.

Walking down the hall to Peter’s bedroom, she stopped at the door of her own. The light was on, and she meant to turn it off. Opening the door, she saw Laura unpacking the suitcase she had left on the bed. Quickly, deftly, Laura went through Anne’s clothes, sorting them into piles: white and colored, clean and dirty. She put her hands into all the inner pockets of the suitcase and, with a sharp, certain gesture, turned the case upside down and shook it. A gold earring fell onto the bed.

Anne stood in the doorway horrified, as if she were watching someone commit a private sexual act. She felt she had no right to be there, in her bedroom, watching someone unpack her bag. She wanted to go away, to say nothing, to pretend she hadn’t seen it. Then, slowly, outrage rose. Laura was going through her things. She shouldn’t have been doing that. It was one of those thresholds of civilization everyone agreed about.

“What are you doing, Laura?” she asked.

Laura raised her eyes from her task and smiled at Anne as if she’d said something foolish. “I’m unpacking your bag,” she said.

“I’d rather you didn’t do that.”

“I knew you were tired and I was going to do a wash while you were reading to the kids.”

“I’d rather you didn’t go through my things.”

“But I always do the laundry. It’s one of the things I always do.”

“I know that and I’m grateful. But I’d rather you didn’t go into my bags or my drawers.”

Laura walked out of the room. Anne closed the door for a moment, unbalanced by a sense of defeat. Shocked by the depths of her own anger, she had once again been too mild. But what should she have done? She couldn’t fire someone for doing what was helpful. What Laura did didn’t hurt anyone. It only gave offense. She had asked that it not be repeated. That ought to be it. But she felt she had made a mistake. Dealing directly with Laura had made Laura more daring. It had begun with her expressing her annoyance at Laura’s having forgotten to give her messages. As if it were the signal she had all the time been waiting for, Laura had, since then, assumed more and more. She had, as well, lost her shyness with Anne. Anne felt in her behavior the night that Ed had come, as well as tonight, a new note of defiance. She carried with her to the children’s room a sense of violation that made her unable to concentrate on the book she read.

“I’ve wanted to ask you about Laura,” she said to the children. She was conscious of wishing to punish. But she had to know what they felt. If they were unhappy, she would have to fire Laura. “Has she been acting different lately?”

“No,” said the children.

“Has she been acting nervous or unhappy.”

“What do you mean ‘unhappy’?” Sarah asked.

“You know, as if she’s not glad to be here.”

“No,” said both children.

“She cleans my room up a lot more,” Sarah said. “All the time. Sometimes she doesn’t put things back the right way.”

“I’ll say something about it to her,” Anne said.

“No, don’t, Mom,” Peter said. “It’ll make her feel bad.”

“All right,” said Anne. “But if she does anything that you don’t like, that makes you feel uncomfortable, you must tell me.”

She felt the children’s attention leave her. They were looking toward the door. She joined their glances. Laura was standing just outside the children’s room. She looked in at all of them, smiled, and walked down the corridor.

Anne and the children gave one another panicked, shamed looks.

“Do you think she heard us?” whispered Sarah.

“No,” Anne whispered back, unconvincingly. “And besides we weren’t saying anything bad.”

“Yes, we were,” said Peter. “Talking about people behind their backs is always bad.”

“Well,” said Anne, “she shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.”

“She wasn’t, Mother. The door was open,” Peter said.

She didn’t want to discuss with Peter the fine points that distinguished
vrai
from
faux
eavesdropping. He could too easily use it against her. And she wanted to leave the children. She felt desperate to apologize to Laura. But for what? She wanted, then, to assure Laura that she thought she was doing a good job, that she didn’t mistrust her. She knocked on Laura’s door.

“I was just going to run down to Friendly’s for some ice cream. What kind would you like?”

“I don’t care for any, thank you.”

“Okay,” said Anne. “But if you want some, please feel free to take some later. It’ll be in the freezer.”

“Thank you.”

Anne got into the car. Now she would have to buy ice cream that she didn’t want. How did she always manage to make herself appear in the wrong with Laura, even when she knew it was she who’d been offended? The girl had a kind of genius for offense, she thought. Or was it just that she herself was hypersensitive. She had read about women resenting other women who successfully took care of their children. Perhaps what had happened tonight was a result of meeting Mrs. Eastman; perhaps that had unsettled her. But that wasn’t it. Her response had not been odd. People weren’t allowed to go into your suitcase without asking; they weren’t allowed to lurk in doorways listening. Her car skidded on the icy road. If she got into an accident on this fool’s errand, it would be no more than what she deserved.

She was walking in her backyard, searching for green shoots. It was the first of March, any day the crocuses would be appearing. Last spring, seeing her crocuses, she had conceived a plan: she would plant a bank of them in a circle around the oak that stood on the small rise at the far end of the garden. But in the fall at the nursery, she’d stood before the trays of bulbs for over an hour, unable to decide on which she wanted. She loved the vivid yellows and dark purples, but then she loved the cream-colored blossoms, and the white with violet stripes, the pale yellow folding out of the gold stamen at the center like a flame. In the end, she bought four dozen bulbs all mixed. She hadn’t the courage for a unified field; she couldn’t live with leaving so much out.

There had been an early-morning rain. It made the lawn a patched affair of snow and mud and grass. The sun shed gray light weak as water. It was a healing weather; the sense of failure she had awakened with was beginning to fall away. She had awakened believing what she was trying to do for Caroline was impossible. She wasn’t good enough; Caroline deserved better. She botched everything in her life. She’d been wrong in her handling of the business of Michael, clumsy in her dealings with Laura. And her mind was not first-rate.

Ed was waiting for her in the kitchen.

“I was wondering if I could bring my wife by for lunch today. She was in a real good mood this morning. And she asked me to ask you. She hardly ever wants to do anything, so I thought I’d ask you, even though it’s awful short notice. If you can’t do it, believe me I’ll understand.”

“No, of course, it’s fine,” she said, feeling panicky. “I’ll just go down to the deli and get cold cuts and things.”

“That’d be great. It’d be easy for her to eat. You know, soup or things like that, they can be a problem for her. It upsets people, you know, the way she eats. Most of our friends can’t handle her. She upsets people, her looks, and sometimes she says things that are a little off the wall. Even her family doesn’t want to see her now. Bunch of drunks,” he said, in the first unkind tone Anne had ever heard him use. “They should be proud she did so well for herself. She even started college before she got sick.”

From her bedroom she watched Ed and Brian getting out of the car. Ed had never come in a car before. Always he arrived in his white van and pulled into the driveway. But the day must have seemed special to him. He parked in front of the house. When he got out she saw he was wearing a shirt and tie and a corduroy jacket. How handsome he looks, she thought proudly. He waved when he saw her at the window. She could see that he was glad to see her, that her face at the window gave him particular pleasure. Little Brian ran up the steps to her, dressed in flannel slacks and a blue blazer, and jumped into her arms when she opened the door.

Ed walked around the car to open the door for his wife. The sight of her was shocking. If Anne hadn’t known, she would have thought that Rose was a retarded girl of, perhaps, twenty. She had the bloated look brain-damaged people seem to have, the skin that always seems susceptible to rashes or to boils or small diseases that ought to be able to be kept back. Her legs were swollen and she was wearing flat suede oxfords. Her coat was too small for her; it wouldn’t button, so she kept holding it closed, furtively, shamedly, looking around her to avoid uneven ground. Ed held her elbow. With every step he told her how well she was doing.

“You must be Anne,” she said when she was three steps from the top of the stairs. “I’m Rose, but you know that. But who else could I be looking like this?”

“You look fine,” Anne said. “I’m glad you’ve come.”

“Well, you can say I look fine, what else can you say? Of course you didn’t know me before. I was considered very attractive. When we first got married, people said they didn’t know how Ed Corcoran snagged such an attractive girl.”

“I still don’t know. It must have been my brains,” Ed said, laughing.

“No, Ed, I used to be smarter than you. It was sex appeal. My husband and I had a very passionate sexual relationship. I suppose you wonder if we still have intercourse in my condition. Everybody wonders that. I’m here to tell you that we do. That part of my brain still functions. I can still perform my wifely duties, don’t you worry.”

“Sit down, Rose. Let Anne take your coat,” said Ed. He didn’t seem embarrassed.

Anne was happy to go into the other room, where Brian followed her.

“Can I have a pop?” he said.

“We’re about to have lunch, sweetie. But you can have one for dessert.”

“Okay. Can I play in Peter’s room?”

“Peter’s in school. But you know how to be careful.”

“I know there’s stuff I’m not allowed to touch. So I never touch it,” he said self-righteously.

“That’s good,” Anne said. She kissed him on the forehead. He was such a nice child, such a good child. What a wonderful father Ed was to have kept him happy in the tragedy he had to live out.

“Don’t you be any trouble or you’ll get it from me,” Rose said to her son.

“He’s never any trouble,” Anne said. “He’s a lovely little boy.”

“That’s because we don’t let him get away with anything,” said Rose. “You can’t let them get away with anything nowadays. With the drugs and all. I think my husband lets him get away with too much. He can be very fresh.”

“I keep being amazed at how well behaved he is for his age. My children would never have been that good about not touching Ed’s tools and things,” said Anne.

“Well, there are a lot of spoiled kids around,” Rose said.

“Rose is very interested in art,” Ed said pleasantly.

“Perhaps you’d like to look at some of my books. Or borrow them,” Anne said.

“I have this Andrew Wyeth book I love. And
Christina’s World
, that’s my favorite painting. Ed told me he told you about my idea. To go down there on that hill where he did that painting. It’s still there, you know. I thought I could get into that pose, like Christina. Then Ed could take my picture. It would be appropriate, because I’m crippled, too. Ed doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Do you, Anne?”

“I think it would be lovely,” Anne said, trying to look steadily at Rose. She continued to wear her sunglasses in the house, so it was impossible to see her eyes.

“You see, Ed, she thinks it would be lovely. You’re the only one who thinks it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Maybe, then, if Anne thinks it’s a good idea, we’ll go in the summer. When the weather gets nice.”