On Keeping Women (27 page)

Hector’s cigar, a stub by then, revolved in his mouth.

He himself said suddenly “Tell me what you think about this.” Tapping the letter in her lap. “About all of them.”

Sister nods formally. She’d expected this. Palms pressed against her spread knees, she stared into the folds of her habit, into some pocket where her secular wisdom was stored. “There are
types,
Doctor—
pardon
, women—who are like nuns without Jesus.” Adding, with a shoulder-squaring intake (of pride? he thought afterwards) “And sometimes, they are not nuns.” But when she was about to issue her third comment, and he’d said, urgently “Yes, yes,” Hector’d made a sign to her, and she didn’t reply.

So here he is, the occasional streetlight glancing on him as he walks, showing him just as the brighter lamp at the townline had revealed him to the local busdriver: a tall daddylonglegs of a man, with the shouldering pathos of the recently ill. Nodding his bags and his “See you” down and off the high step with the reserve of a man deep between journeypoints and harboring himself. Dealing himself to himself close to the vest. Horrie, the night busman on the New York run for eight years now, knows him well. Saying a sharp
“Hi”
when he got on. But only “Right, Doc” when he asks to be let off more than a mile from his place. Yet a warmth had passed between them, as of men dealing to each other. On the plane just left, his silent seatmate, a man of middle-age with a resolute visor of hair, had smoothed his shaven chin continuously; now and then a forefinger painted an invisible moustache. In chat it developed he had never had facial hair. “Nor missed it.”

What’s he missed about himself? Not wanting to live as she does, in a swirl of rhetoric. Is he a smaller man than he thinks, and merely yearning over the barrier-reef of his limitations? Or is he still the man of his younger hopes?—a vast, shady customer.

He has to have more of himself to go on with. Before he decamps. So he’s come home.

Nobody need write any more letters now. The unmailed ones in his bag will go into his study, and into the locked medical files; to wait there like the record of a dangerous journey not yet over. On which a man’s fidelity to his profession, to his very children is being questioned, and drawn by some magnetic needle to an as yet unidentified pole. So that the customary passions of his life—or what passed for these—are seen to be automata—not parts of a soul, but of a neighborhood. “Same thing might happen to a Spaniard from one cup of American water, I’m aware of that,” he’d told James in that one letter. “The colon prefers its own bacteria. Would he suffer from our freedoms, you think? I’m like that just now, in this oasis of nuns, and unfrocked monks. When you’re away from yourself you see your lacks.”

The trip home has been the hardest; no wonder he’s walked the last part of it. A closet-cruelty to himself? Christ. Will he be able to undergo again all the illuminations she’s always scattering in front of him? Can he continue to fend off, to say to her—always silently—“I do not choose your lighted path”? He’ll keep the letters, but maybe never consult them. They exist, they have to be kept. They are his disease. A souvenir, from Jerusalem:

And here’s the house. It shocks him. It has his name on it, even if well off to the office-side. Low-roofed there, and open to any bell. Tall on the house-side, and full of complicitous corners. Through this four o’clock world of brainy shadow, he can see that the tower has indeed been shored. The lawn is passable. He can be sure that the bamboo’s been cut, and that it’s growing again. Beyond his own trees, Kellihys’ shows a lone attic-light on high, and a moving feverglow in the basement—nothing between. Not a bad score, for the Kellihys. But making his own dark house ride more steadfast. For one flash he sees each as a house among other houses, on a road. What makes people think that a man and a woman—whose lives are in perpetuity so
other—
can ever navigate a mutual destiny by means of such a house, of any house? That lamp over his door is a vampire lamp, bleeding out life and blanking all souls; it will burn, and lure, and come to nothing. A house is a game of pick-up-sticks, whose hoarded straws will outlast him, his family—and still fall. He must warn Charles.

Then his eyes shift up. His mouth closes. The hour changes. He’s home.

Upstairs, out there in the prow of the house, is its figurehead. Does it see him? The angle at which it sits—due north—suggests not. Perhaps it does, but refuses that side of its knowledge. Does he, down below there, see her as a blot-head drawing back into her own wallpaper—or as a real girl? Or even as elder daughter, as in the family casebook? They’ll never know which. On his part he would help if he could—and has tried.

But it must be clear by now that, in so far as a man can be, he is a man built up of other people’s notations, even in his own mind. In the main, family references. Which may have been what he—instinctive as any of us—embarked on a family for. And on a profession too, though there he was pushed. He’s pushable. But as those who live with him have learned to accept—with an unusual twist to it. He’s pushable on the big things; there he’s like water. Or seems so. Maybe sliding back on himself on the end? There’s not been time enough for them to judge. But they all know that on the small, cranky issues he is a rod, adamant. Or his routine is. He will not be budged. On reflection, one can see what might make him as he is, in both instances. Since his character must wait on its expression by other persons—he waits too. And in turn, this of itself builds up to a kind of character—canny if not mean, residual. In addition, all fathers of our time, our place, are of course a kind of collaborative—even more than the mothers, if you look close. And in this—he collaborates.

We must follow him now, up the steps. What happened—happens. So far, our notations, drawn from persons related to him, are almost inexcusably exact. And would be apologized for, except for that question always moot: Can those who aren’t aware of themselves really expect privacy? Isn’t privacy for those who know they have secrets, who know themselves at least in part?

For those who do, the worst emotional mystery is a man or a woman, lived with—who doesn’t. Or who draws a blank. We must govern that—the family of such a person keeps saying to itself—or else tremble forever on the crater of the unperceived. Even to perceive him or her as that—is a gain.

So Ray, has always been researched—chill word. And since his recent leaving—along every route possible. Charles is a route. The son as written to, and all that haunted library of a summer writing as a son, a brother, a man—to himself. Maureen when approached, is at first a burst of tears, no help—and then a surprising store, spontaneous. “Father wants to be very conventional. He’s like me.” Tears still dropping. “We can’t be freaky.” Though being compared to the Spanish maid-of-all-work—as a father’s sole greeting—does hurt. Royal says, walking alongside James on one of their city days together, “Daddy’s got no tact; he can’t lie.” Says Royal, a former expert. His foot-operations are refining him; he’s practicing truth and is turning out as good as it as he is at anything. Presently, he wants to be a psychoanalyst. “But Daddy’s witty too—you all never see it. He’s so sly. Remember what he said to you about his accountant? ‘Mr. Rooney has very touchy prerogatives.’ And what Mummy always quotes he said to her when he first met her? That he liked to play with his mental blocks, he had so many of them?”

While Lexie, reported this last, looks guilty, remembering those stray aphorisms so cherished by her, polished up even, so that after years neither Ray nor she is sure whom they stemmed from, she even wondering if perhaps they aren’t fabricated out of her own need to be with a sentient man. Or later, out of wifely shame. “Ah, Lexie—” James will write, in response to her questioning later “—our recording angel-ess. Who believes that not to be aware is against the human covenant. You know I doubt that angels ever were female. Certainly not archangels. Research that for me, won’t you; I may be marrying a Japanese girl… And am far too busy, at my age, to write any sort of memoir.” From Honshu, still single, he’ll write “Our little dickey-bird, my nephew, tells me that my friend, your husband, has done just that, journal-style. (As you must know, your son Royal has skeleton-keys to all of us.) Extraordinary of Ray—if true. And yet oddly like him. He got the idea from you, of course—to examine himself. And us. For your sake. A triumph of a sort. On both sides, as should be. No doubt they’re simple enough observations, Ray being Ray. But you being you, will interpret them. And call it poetry. I’ve no doubt you’ll be grindingly fair. Naturally however, I remain on Ray’s side.”

Up the steps now, up the steps. In Hector’s yellow shoes. There are two sets of front steps to most of these houses on the river’s terrace-side, this first set lifting you to the lawn level. Here, for this house, two huge horse-chestnuts border the flagstone path to its porch. Overhead, their tops combine. In the very center of the second story is a small sewing-room, now a bath, used mostly by Lexie and the girls. Though everybody uses it at one time or another, because of the tub’s great size. In spring, the bower of tree-tops presses its white cones inward to the bather. Through a pointed window, with a small ledge.

Delay no longer. Now, up the porch-steps, firmed three years ago. He has his keyring, as well as his nocturnal habit, sharpened like a crackman’s over the years, of reentering his house noiselessly. For a while, when the two elder were babies, and Lexie by nine
P.M.
was exhausted—by that peculiar post-partum weariness which engulfs so many young wives in his district—he even wore sneakers for her sake.

His tendernesses are strange, awkward. This is important. Do they come from love, or duty? Or other obediences? That sheepish gawk before a kiss. That side-long calculation, to sneak … Is this why poetry can’t be made of him?—or Lexie, shivering, won’t try? Photo-enlarge him wall-high—Charles did it for his birthday once—and here’s a man at a desk, prescribing in everybody’s best interest. The original, passing it daily, averted his eyes.

“Ray doesn’t like to be made much of his mother said, smugly premarital. “But don’t ever let him
delay,
mind you; that would be the worst thing for a medical man” she says, mealy. “A word to the wise—” she whispered, almost human, “—my son does like to scuttle along.”
Ray?
young James said, betraying him, a quickly reassuring arm around his sister, “Why—at the hospital, he’s fine.”

While that younger Ray hung his head between them all, sidelong. Did he already know what each of his family will learn early—that he can never quite make his emotional appointments? He’ll never refuse obligation, only delay it until it disappears or turns into another—chain on chain. Stubbornly scuttling along the bottom of things, he avoids all crimes—murder, sodomy, even adultery maybe—what do we really know of him and Betsy?—and gauchely, almost gently—love. Saying to others mutely, with a halting smile: You’ll not make anything classical out of me. Even Lexie will never be able to.

Yet in ten minutes—he’s inside the door now, has eased it silently behind him and must be looking up the central stair—life is going to monster him. So that he’ll loom forever over his kin as a certain kind of ogre. Even when he’s in their presence they’re going to have to imagine him. Life’s caught up with him. This ogre of the inarticulate.

The best way to imagine him is Hoppe’s. As provincial newspaperman used to these items, a homestyle Jean-Jacques. Born in the town—imagine that he’s come for his daily inheritance. He usually knows the house.

The doc’s house is interesting, he reports, because it’s a layering, as all the older river-houses are. New England had its coach-roads which predicted the houses; York State has its rivers. In spite of the tower, this house isn’t American Gothic at all, but a bastard form of Hudson River-bracketed, and like any interim architectural style, marks a whole civilization gone by the boards. Note the pointed church-window, gone to bathroom, but still very important to the house. The downstairs rooms—the usual ones—are not our concern. Except to remark that the entire structure has horsehair-and-plaster-filled walls, now a regrettably lost art. Central staircase, revolutionary-straight.

The doc is going to walk up it. At the top of the stairs, standing at the center stairwell, he’ll see down the wide hall to the back of the house, whose second story is built out onto the hill. Direct center to his gaze—and ours—are two bathrooms that look out back, added later and built side-by-side for late-nineteenth-century thrift: sturdy old pipes, copper of course, wooden dadoes that Lexie and the girls papered above, marble sinks. On the south rear corner, next to one bath, is the second girl’s room—Maureen’s. They tend to treat her as if she’s deaf; she partly acts it. She’s the one resembles Doc most, temperamentally. T’other side of the other bath is the little lame one’s room—a smart cricket he is—I’d trust what he tells me, nothing soppy about that little master; how did Lexie ever breed him?

As Doc stands up there—let him get this far—the front wings of the house, left and right, just to either side in back of him, jutting forward. There’s no stair-rail, never been one—he’ll have to balance himself. As usual. To his left and in back of him, facing the river, is his and Lexie’s room, amply made of two knocked together, the front half low and bayed, being older, the rear half high and square, to admit that old bed they picked up somewhere. Behind Doc’s right elbow is the girl Chessie’s room, front and north, also a bay, and a fireplace, the only upstairs one. Best is none too good for that poor girl; the mother treats her like a second wife. Between the girl and little Royal at the back on that side is the oldest boy’s room—Charles. He’s as much like his mother as a reasonably normal boy can be. Doesn’t know that; nor does she. Duty-bound personalities, both of them. A natural sympathy exists—transferred. His to his father. Hers?—not that simple. Not easy, to have a husband who looks to his son for moral guidance. And who maybe should. Note particularly that when Charles, at twelve or so, was allotted his own room, Doc said “Should he be so near Chess?”—and she couldn’t get him to explain.