Private Life (38 page)

Len left him some pages, on which he noted questions and corrections. As the weeks

went by, she began to wonder how many pages the two of them would accumulate.

Certainly more rather than fewer. Len did not seem, on the surface, to be of an analytical

or critical turn of mind. However, it was none of her business. Len declared that he would

certainly find a publisher--two or three were interested already.

Len also attended a few of Andrew's talks and took industrious notes in the back

of the room, then applauded loudly and once, in her hearing, shouted "Bravo!" No one

had ever shouted "Bravo!" before, and Andrew responded with a tiny bow, which caused

some of the audience to turn around and crane their necks, and Margaret to blush, but she

had all sorts of strange symptoms now, breathlessness, headaches, even a kind of

agoraphobia when she got up in the morning and the thought of leaving her room was

repellent to her. As well as she knew that she would be fine in the kitchen, and that her

own range and sink would look familiar to her, and that her own hands cooking and

cleaning would draw her out of this strange mood, even so it took all her strength to put

on her clothes and open the door. Andrew seemed to notice nothing.

And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she

had overheard from time to time about marriage. That's what knitting groups and sewing

groups were for, wasn't it? Commiserating about marriage. But through the years no one

had said what she now thought, which was that marriage was relentless, and terrifying,

and no wonder that when her father died her mother had risen from her bed and gone to

work. Her father had been much like Andrew, hadn't he? Opinionated and energetic, loud

and forbidding. What a dramatic and unnecessary thing to do, to kill yourself because you

were a doctor and your son died of complications from the measles. Margaret knew she

would always keep this thought to herself, but it was an oddly satisfying thought, and she

had a right to think it--she was three years older than her father had been when he shot

himself.

And so, one day when Andrew was due to give a talk in Saratoga, a long drive,

she said she had a headache. Andrew and Len came up with the idea that Len would drive

the Franklin. Franklins were easy to drive--Len was experienced with a Hudson and a

Packard. The Franklin would be a new pleasure for him, Andrew said, air-cooled, the best

engineering by far. They went out the door, and a few moments later, she heard the

Franklin start up and roll away.

After they left, she lay there for a while with a cool, damp cloth across her

forehead. Really, in spite of his deficiencies, Len Scanlan was a godsend, and it was

purely a sign of her advancing age and narrowing imagination that it had taken her so

many weeks to realize this. She decided to get up and go for a walk--not to Vallejo, but

north, along the coast of the island, which she hadn't done yet that spring. She put a shawl

over her shoulders and went out, not forgetting to unearth Andrew's old field glasses as

she did so.

The weather was beautiful. Her headache evaporated, but she had to lament her

newfound sluggishness. She had hardly gotten away from the base (past the causeway)

before she was looking for a place to sit down, unhooking her collar, carrying her shawl

over her arm, pushing up her sleeves, wishing she had brought a hat. She sat on a rock for

a few minutes, remembering when she could walk across the fields behind her

grandfather's farm and get to Beatrice's house in town in a little over an hour. She stood

up, a bit rested, and walked on. At the next resting spot, a rock set on a slight rise

overlooking a small pond just south of the marshes, she saw an amusing display. Two

large-bodied black birds with white beaks were making a racket in the water. A mating

pair, they looked familiar, though she couldn't have said what they were. The female was

using her large feet to run across the top of the water, flapping her wings and stretching

her head far forward, and the male was hot after her, some ten feet to the rear. He did not

seem able to catch her, or perhaps he was not interested in catching her. Rather, they

seemed to enjoy their noisy game, and to splash as much water into the air as they could.

Then she noticed another of these birds not too far away. When the first male saw it, he

went straight for it and began making aggressive feints and displays, to which the other

male responded in kind. At one point, the two males had a standoff, their necks extended,

their heads down, and their eyes on each other, looking for all the world like a pair of

dogs. The first male succeeded in chasing the other male away (that one pounded over the

surface of the pond, then took off and flew beyond the hill). The pair now proceeded to

dine, diving under the water (and staying there for some time), plucking bits of things off

the surface, and also stalking about on the edge of the pond, eating grasses and leaves.

Margaret liked them. Unlike most birds, they were neither cute nor graceful, and they had

no dignity, only energy. She watched them until the air began to grow quite chill and the

afternoon light to dim.

When she described them to Andrew the next day, he said that they were "coots."

"Oh, mud hens," said Len. "Very common birds. Of no value at all, really.

Though I'm told the meat isn't gamy, like duck."

"I was just watching them, not planning to hunt them." But by that time, they

weren't listening, just repeating back and forth how important and successful the talk had

been the evening before. Then Len brought up Teddy Roosevelt, whom he admired. Also.

He glanced at Andrew. "In his own field, of course."

Andrew nodded slowly, as if acknowledging that being president was fine in its

way. Then he said, "More recent specimens have not been comparable to him, that is

indeed true."

Margaret felt a headache coming on and went into the kitchen.

She began shirking her typing and walking to that pond whenever it was fair

weather. The coots were there the first two times, and then they were gone, apparently

replaced by a pair of Canada geese, who busily built a nest right on the bank of the pond,

out in the open. She went two more times to watch the geese, but they were rather dull in

the way that elderly rich people are dull--too great a sense of propriety to do anything

interesting. And then their nest was raided and the geese decamped. At the pond, she

found, she didn't mull over the injustices of marriage, and so it was a relief.

In June, the coots reappeared; they must have been nesting out of sight. That day,

it took her a while to understand what she was seeing. One of the coots was swimming

about, ducking its head and plucking things off the surface of the water. It was putting

these things somewhere, and then Margaret saw something like a dragonfly or a large

insect fluttering. When she put the field glasses to her eyes, she saw that the fluttering

thing was a very tiny bird, about as big as a walnut, bobbing and swimming in front of

the large-bodied black coot, which she now decided was a female. Because the female's

beak was white, she could see fairly distinctly how she held something out to the chick,

and either stuck it in the chick's mouth, or allowed the chick to snatch it from her. Small

and young as it was, the chick was an animated swimmer, as at home in the water as its

mother. It paddled around in little circles and fluttered its tiny wings and bobbed.

Margaret laughed just to look at it.

The weather was foggy and drizzling the next day, so she stayed home, catching

up on her typing, but the day after that, she went to the pond again, and this time the coot

had three chicks, all about the same size. Quite often, they would array themselves in

front of the female in a half-circle, and she would plop insects into their mouths in turn. If

she swam a foot or two in search of more food, they might swim after her. But the

funniest thing was that the chicks were very independent, and it was quite usual for one

or another of them to swim away entirely, the tiniest wayward infant in the world,

industriously leaving all protection behind. At these moments, Margaret couldn't resist

scanning the skies for hawks or an eagle. The female seemed not to notice--she continued

to feed whomever she had with her until either that one swam away or the prodigal

returned. Sometimes the whole troop walked up onto the shore, and the female yanked

bits for them there. They followed her or they didn't. They were only birds, and just a few

days old, but their size and behavior made them seem uniquely endowed with personality

to Margaret. A stiff wind and the onset of evening drove her away.

When she got home that evening, she saw that Andrew and Len had been moving

stacks of papers, some of which had been in one place for years. It was not even possible

to sit down to supper, because stacks were arrayed around the edge of the table according

to some system that she didn't care to inquire about. She knew that, were she to show the

slightest interest, she would be enlisted to do something with the papers, and it would not

be to throw them away. It was a nice evening, so they ate out on the porch, from plates on

their laps. Andrew said little, and after ten minutes he was back in the house, fishing for

something. Then, when she got up in the morning, she saw that he had been at work all

night--the wardrobe in the front room was empty, and boxes that had been sitting on the

hat shelf were emptied onto the floor. When he heard her in the kitchen, Andrew came

out of his room and said, "We have found concrete evidence of the progress of my

thinking. It has been most gratifying." She didn't say anything. She hardly did say

anything these days, and it didn't seem to matter, which was a relief.

Eventually, the chicks numbered seven. She walked to the pond three and

sometimes four times a week. Andrew and Len never asked her where she was going, but

she offered--she said, "Just running up to look at the birds!" They nodded and waved her

away. It was so exhilarating that she leapt out of bed in the morning, all her former

symptoms gone. Andrew's work on his own book tapered off--he didn't even notice what

she was not typing, because he and Len were either in his study or up at the observatory

most days. And then Andrew accepted a speaking engagement at a Chautauqua at Lake

Berryessa. It was understood that Len would drive him and she would stay home. After

they left, she fixed herself a lunch to take to the pond. She was humming.

The chicks had evolved from yellowish dots with a sometimes discernible bit of

pink on the tops of their heads to fluffy, awkward, big-footed gray balls with ugly red

heads and necks. They were bolder and more irresponsible. Quite often, the male and the

female would be feeding three or four chicks on one side of the pond (which was

probably fifty yards across), and the others would be on the other side of the pond,

swimming energetically, or walking around on the bank. Their constant business made up

for all of their awkwardnesses. Not for a coot the sort of graceful languor you saw in

many birds, who rode a current of air and saved their energy for something important. To

a coot, it seemed, everything was important.

Every time she mentioned the coots to someone, she was told again that they were

common birds; she kept her observations to herself, but that night, alone in the quiet

house, she found a sheet of paper and a pencil and attempted to draw what she

remembered so clearly from the day. She closed her eyes, summoned the dark, plump

figure of the harried parent into her mind, concentrated upon it, and then made a few

strokes with the pencil. It was no use; she hadn't the gift. Just the beak? Just the curve

over the back? It seemed as though her pencil was destroying the recollection rather than

reproducing it. She looked across the room at the picture of the rabbit and the dragonfly.

How quickly Mr. Kimura had given them life and personality! She got up early, knowing

exactly what she would do, but then she was rushing about so, in order to make the ferry,

that she knocked two stacks of papers off the table, and they slid across the floor. She

looked at the clock. Andrew and Len had expected to be back by two. She stacked the

papers willy-nilly and set them on the table in a way that more or less resembled the way

they had been, then hurried to the ferry dock. At the Kimuras' shop, Naoko was wiping

down the shelves, and she made her proposal. Within a few minutes, they had decided

that Mrs. Kimura would drive Mr. Kimura across the causeway and up to the pond, if

Margaret would meet them.

It was only ten-thirty by the time Margaret had done her business, and she was so

pleased with herself that she went to Mrs. Wareham's for a late breakfast.

The mess she had left behind looked more forbidding when she opened the door

on her return. Andrew and Len had clearly been rooting through years of papers, and she

had no idea if they had left them organized in any way. After removing her wrap, she

began going through the careless stacks she had made, trying to ascertain some principle