Shortest Day (6 page)

Cautiously Arlo pushed open the door of the Science Center, hoping to avoid the old man who usually occupied the corner of the entry on cold nights. But Guthrie was there. Arlo flinched, and tried to hurry past him, but the old man stretched out his hand. “Hey, guy, I wanta tell you something, I wanta tell you something.”

Arlo stopped and turned back. “What is it, Guthrie?” he said warily, remembering all the times he had been bored to death by Guthrie.

“Didn't you know? They run me off. I tell you, for what? For what? What did I do? Nothin'! They run me off! I didn't do nothin', and they run me off. For WHAT? Listen, I wanta tell you something.” The old man beckoned to Arlo, then reached out with unexpected strength and pulled Arlo's face down to his own. “See, I just wanta tell you something.”

“Well, what is it?” said Arlo. “What do you want to tell me?”

The old man smiled. His smile was saintly. “Listen, I mean, I like you, I
respect
you. I just wanta tell you they run me off! For WHAT? I ask you, for WHAT?”

Arlo gave him a dollar, and made a rush for the elevator, while behind him the old man tried to catch a couple of students bursting in from outside. As the elevator door closed, Arlo could see them ignoring him, hurrying past, staring straight ahead.

Arlo forgot Guthrie as the elevator rose to the eighth floor. He was eager to check on his camera. Time was growing short. The last exposures would have to be just right.

He found his graduate assistant in the astronomy lab, Chickie Pickett. “Hey, man,” Arlo's colleague had said, after getting his first eyeful of Chickie, “how about sharing the goodies?” Because Chickie didn't look like the other women graduate assistants, who went around in athletic pants and heavy sneakers. Chickie wore bows in her hair and went in for four-inch heels and plunging necklines. She was upholstered in pearly gobbets of flesh. Chickie was writing a dissertation on the convection layer under the solar photosphere, but she looked like Betty Boop.

“Is everything okay?” said Arlo, tenderly inspecting his camera. It looked all right. It was still taped to the floor next to the big glass window, its lens pointing east to the sky above the roof of Memorial Hall.

“I was here this morning at eight-thirty,” said Chickie, “and it opened and went click, right on the button. Only two more exposures, one a week from today and the last one on the shortest day.” Chickie fluttered her eyelashes at Arlo. “Then you can take a look at your whole year's work. I can hardly wait. The analemma on film! Forty-four suns in one picture!”

“I hope to God nothing goes wrong. If the power goes down, the timing will be off. It could ruin everything.”

“Or what if somebody joggles the camera? That Professor Finch, he's so clumsy.” Chickie was a squealer, and her high-pitched giggle pierced Arlo's right ear. “He blunders around in here, keeps bumping into me.”

Arlo could think of a good reason for bumping into Chickie, but he said nothing. Chickie could take care of herself.

They left together to have a beer in the Square. Old man Guthrie was no longer crouched beside the door waiting to snatch at Arlo as he went by. But as they crossed the overpass they ran into him. He was one of a group of people moving around in the dark, legs and arms appearing in the light of a gasoline lantern, disappearing again. They were working on something, putting up a tent beside a ramshackle structure made of boards.

“Hey, guy, listen, I told you. Hey, guy, come here.”

Arlo did not come. “Good night, Guthrie,” he said, setting off with Chickie in the direction of the Wursthaus on the other side of the Yard. Let Guthrie find another Saint George to fight his battles.

CHAPTER 7

Mary had a baby, oh, Lord
,

Mary had a baby, oh, Lord!

Mary had a baby
,

Mary had a baby
,

Mary had a baby, oh, Lord!

Black American tradition

T
he production of the Christmas Revels was an enormous undertaking requiring a permanent office in Kendall Square, the year-round attention of a salaried staff, and continuous efforts to raise money. Hundreds of talented people were involved, year after year, paid and unpaid—writers and artists, a music director and a couple of stage directors, a sound engineer, a properties manager, a technical director, a stage manager, a lighting designer, a set designer, a volunteer coordinator, and an organizer of the annual flock of children.

Principal among the talented people was Walter Shattuck, the Old Master, who had begun the Revels years ago, whose singing voice still lent them its haunting mystery. Walt's celebrity was one of the reasons why throngs of people crowded into Memorial Hall to fill Sanders Theatre sixteen times over during every Christmas season. It explained why hordes of volunteers came forward every year to help backstage, to work on costumes and sets, and arrange for tryouts and rehearsal halls, and raise money, and send out mailings.

The volunteers would have explained their loyalty by saying, “Well, I don't know. It's magic. It just, you know, like it casts a spell.” Perhaps they were underscoring the researches of Dr. Box, who saw the Revels as a continuation of ancient midwinter rituals and incantations to drive away the fearful darkness. Perhaps, like the mummers and dancers of old, they were whistling to keep up their spirits.

But part of the attraction was surely the magnetism of Sarah Bailey. In the solar system of the Christmas Revels, Sarah was the central sun, sending out her benevolent warmth in all directions. The others circled around her like planets around a star. Her husband, Morgan, was a satellite too, but in a different way. While the others rotated on their own axes, turning away from Sarah and then toward her again and away once more, following their own routines, Morgan was like Mercury—a small and arid planet with one face perpetually facing the sun, his dark side turned to the rest of them, to whatever was not-Sarah.

Morgan's story was complicated, but Sarah's was simple. She had spent a happy childhood climbing into laps, she had grown up easygoing and in love with stories. She had moved comfortably from high school to college to marriage with Morgan, to writing scripts for the Christmas Revels, to becoming one of its stage directors.

Sarah was an optimist. If something wasn't right, she would make it better. If her marriage was troubled, she would fix it. She would cherish Morgan until he trusted her, until he was no longer threatened by the world in which she moved so easily like a fish poising in clear water.

The Revels were wonderful to Sarah. She had no cynicism about them, no doubts. She loved the old songs and tales, she loved the stamping feet of the Morris dancers and the dark spaces of Memorial Hall. In Sanders Theatre the troubles of the world seemed remote and far away. If Sarah had been put in charge of the earth she might have improved it, but that was not her task. This was her job, and she carried it out with grace and confidence in those who worked with her. She mastered the rehearsals without pride or tyranny. With Sarah Bailey in charge, everything seemed simple and straightforward.

But even with Sarah, all was not transparent and truthful. Sarah had an overwhelming secret. She was nearly five months pregnant, but she had told no one. She hadn't even told her husband, Morgan. So far it hadn't been necessary, because she had a lucky shape. Without being fat, she was a thick column of a woman, like those monumental stone goddesses holding up a temple on the Acropolis. Her superb breasts shelved out above her waist. She was large, but she did not look pregnant.

Why hadn't she told Morgan? She would have to tell him soon, because surely she would begin to bulge before long. After all, her husband knew her not only with her clothes on, he knew her naked. How long could she keep her secret? A few weeks? A month?

The trouble was, they had agreed not to have children right away. Morgan needed time, he said, time without distraction. He had work to do. He was making a name for himself as an ornithologist, a comparative anatomist who had written a popular book on bird migration. For a few more years he wanted to be on his own, without depending on teaching, without working for some environmental outfit. He needed to pursue his own researches, wherever they led him. He wanted to write a serious scholarly work.

They would be poor, he said, but they could manage. With children it would be different. He just couldn't handle the confusion and expense of fatherhood right now.

So it wasn't fair to him that this had happened, that she hadn't told him while there was still time to put an end to things. Now it was too late. She wouldn't blame him for being angry.

And something else troubled Sarah. The baby had yet to assert itself by moving inside her. Why didn't it begin to kick and tumble and lash out with its hands and feet? Perhaps it was dead!

“No, no,” said the doctor. “Listen, you hear that? It's got a strong heartbeat.” Sarah was not reassured. She tried to cheer herself with an image of the baby calmly reading a newspaper under a lighted lamp, just biding its time, but it didn't work. A chill of fear went through her whenever she thought about her child. She kept her fears to herself because she had no one to talk to, but she was constantly aware of the infant in her belly, she was forever asking it to make itself known.

What
would
Morgan say? How would they bear the expense? How could she jeopardize her husband's career so selfishly when he was off to such a good start, when he was already so famous in his own fields How could she?

Her failure to tell her husband was typical of the lack of candor between them. The biggest things never got said.

Sarah had met Morgan Bailey at one of his public lectures. She had come up afterward to ask a question, and he had taken her out to dinner. He was attractive, witty, amusing, and he had the aura that goes with fame. Somehow famous people were more interesting than other people. Sarah had been drawn to him without being able to help herself.

They were married, and for the first year they had been happy together. It didn't matter that Sarah began to be so busy working for the Revels, because Morgan was away most of the time, tracking Canada geese to their breeding grounds in Hudson Bay, then following them south. But this year things were different. Morgan had become so watchful. Whenever Sarah went out, he wanted to know where. Who would be with her? When would she be back?

Was this the day she should tell him about the baby? No, no, not this morning. Once again Sarah couldn't face it.

She dodged around the kitchen–living room of their apartment on the second floor of the three-decker on Maple Avenue, pulling on her coat and hat, gathering up papers and music and scripts and handbag, pulling on her gloves.

Morgan was already at his desk, but he looked at her sidelong. Oh, God, she was so beautiful. If only she weren't so lovely he wouldn't have to worry. Oh, Christ, he should have married a homely girl, somebody nobody else would look at twice. It was a stab in his side, the way they all stared at her, the way they couldn't take their eyes off her.