Textures of Life (24 page)

When a child is lost, all tenses become the present; everything is now. She was—is not there in that corner, under here, behind. She is all the corners where she is not. She is not. On the threshold lies the dog-leash, thin green leather from the dime-store, pick it up, follow. Befores are afters, dog is out and followed, pick it up and follow nowly. All imperatives are present, go. She is not on the stairs, never traveled alone, that now have been—are. The street is not filled with May, at its far end not dotted with her. The street is filled with not May. There is minute after minute, street after street, not present with May.

And May is now May forever, no longer or ever to be only “the child.” She is more now than the mind-pictures ever have been,
are
—the spoon, the stories of her and to her, the small sounds at elbow, even the half-creature rising—to see even that would be—she is more. She is more than the empty hole left where the hook was, is. She is May in the moment, panted after, not yet here but present above any, when she is to be found. She is May—found.

On the viaduct, two blocks from home, a boy with a slew of fish in his grasp pointed down, and shouted. The girl walked toward the hidden place he pointed to, lifting and setting her shoes like hods, hearing her own raucous breath, feeling the raw blisters, the breeze on her wet temples—this is the hairline edge, this is the now.

May stood in the lonely untrafficked arch beneath the viaduct, all as she had been, the mittens dangling from their sleeve-string, beside her the dog. As her mother advanced upon her, she remained as she was, only looking up, into the giant swell of her. She said nothing trivial—that she had followed the dog, and had buttoned her buttons, or had been bound for the zoo. She had, above all, the wide look of a child who was learning. It was the dog, sidling his culprit eyes, who whined.

“Don’t you ever! Don’t you
know
? Don’t you
ever
—” Choked, the girl was forced to spit to the ground what she was surprised was not blood. In her hand, the leash came up, doubled like a crop, and lashed twice, and again, on the gray-plaid shoulder. In her dream—incubus that sat on her at once and she knew would never leave—it was only twice. Then she knelt, putting her head on the child’s breast, and circled the gray, silent coat with her arms. Kneeling, she prayed with the intensity of the unbeliever, to that god who must be somewhere behind objects, or in persons might reside. It has come upon me, she said, and I’m not old enough, I’m not yet twenty-five. Oh God, she said, with the certainty of a daughter, this is the way it will be, between us. And still kneeling, felt, in soft, continuous answer, the wet menstrual blood on her thighs.

At home, though her mother could not eat, May ate heartily. Rosily cool, tonight she would neither cry nor suffer, in order to let her mother make amends. Afterwards, she was taken into her mother’s bed—for comfort—but though she submitted to being held hard against that yearning, nursing body, she did not relent. After a bit, she crawled out, toddled softly away and was heard puttering in the studio, on the forbidden table. At once, the mother sat up.

“You will break—” she said, when she saw what the child held in her hands, surely that was to be its revenge. Then she saw what the child was doing and thought to herself, shamed to the core, it is
my
idea—that she would break it. For the child, holding the wax baby before her with even hand, took a napkin from her own table, wrapped it round. Slowly she climbed the bed with it in her arms. Gravely she cradled it, with a sad, perfect tenderness, showing what might be done with a child. From the other side of the bed, her mother reached out—only to help—but was put off with the same grave look. “It’s sick,” said May. “It’s mine.”

Finally May lay down with it, but did not sleep. In her clear eyes, still so short of memory surely, it was not possible to see what she had learned. Opposite, her mother pondered in them. Once she saw them tremor, and thought: She is afraid of me, my own child. And finally, shrinking back in the bed, she separated herself. I am afraid of her, she thought. I am guilty of what I have made. But then, the other, falling back in sleep, stretched herself out against her, in open trust. Watching, the mother guarded it, in this room so full of love and poison. So they remained, gathered there, waiting for him to come home to them—and rescue them.

M
RS. PAGANI SENIOR WAS
setting off for Europe. To her, as well as to the other passengers on the great liner still in dock, its dark stacks slanted across the sunset, toward another continent—or would that be the
other
way?—all this New York of pennant skies and gesticulating wharfside was taking part in their adventure. Offshore, two tugs were darting about, skirts gathered, flanking their charge in snub profile.

“Ah, the darlings!” she said, leaning over the railing. “Just like governesses. Exactly!” At her side and eye-level, her grandchild regarded her from its father’s shoulder, dear, solemn little missy who wasn’t likely to know what the word “governess” meant—and not likely to ask, either. She had a way of seeming to know the difference between what you might easily have explained and what you couldn’t, and of choosing the latter, as if this somehow pressed to her advantage. She was far more likely to ask you to define “exactly”—if she asked at all. But then, they had only known each other—this second time—a week. And aside from her quaintnesses, plus, for the initiate, those tiny stigmata at the eyes and the elderly little hands—she was like any other child. Any other fair-cheeked child—these still so round and reassuring—whose limbs were a bit stretched for her age, her strength (as the old women in Yorkville would have put it) perhaps a little “outgrown.”

So far, their relationship had been all one could anticipate. At first meeting, she had minutely examined her grandmother’s person in all its fresh, coastal tints, all the winking delicacies at neck and wrist and shoe-buckle—lifting the veil like a peruke, laying out the pearl-clean contents of handbag, to pronounce finally, to what heartfelt merriment!—“You are like a shop.” Across her head, the eyes of the two generations could meet in relief—in, yes, pride. And when, lying in her grandmother’s lap, she leaned into her grandmother’s ruffled collar to smell it, dawdling her Mary-Ann sandal, lying back just as Mrs. Pagani had pictured it—and Elizabeth said, “My! She never does that with me!”—her mother did not reply, “Nor you ever, then or now, with me.” For, ever since learning of May’s trouble, and that only at the last moment, when she herself was due East because of her own—what she had wished for Elizabeth, at Elizabeth’s wedding, had rarely been out of her mind. That her girl should be made to
see
in this way was not to be borne, not to be thought of—if borne. It underlay all their conversations, and in this life would never be said.

For Elizabeth and David, both so worn, she bled and said nothing. How much she herself had been taught was only now clear to her, and they would never notice. More than merely their bedouin life of the last two months—first at Barney’s, then at her place—was now visible in them. Still young in face they looked in some way exposed prematurely—as if, in whatever overnight experience had come upon them, only youth had kept their hair from white. It would have done her own heart good to see Elizabeth her old, savagely untidy self, slopping about in her old wolf-colors, instead of this thin, pinched non-slattern, so sallowly clean. And David, though so unlike his father in feature, now had a thin aura of him—of that nameless quality not resignation only, not just gentleness—drawn around him now with no more emphasis than the fuzzy lines-of-feeling around a figure in a cartoon, but enclosing him. Probably the likeness would have been lost in comparison, but now was strong, in remembrance.

And in time, perhaps her son-in-law could annul what she had unwittingly transmitted to her own daughter, by teaching Elizabeth (as just short of too late, his father had taught Margot) the alternative aspects of one’s own selfishness, martyrdom and worth. For to her mind—and how Nicholas would have laughed to hear her!—the male was still the
only
corrective for the female. In any case, as a grandmother, she was prepared to be selfish; she could not stand the strain of watching all this in solitary, and was therefore as glad of her pilgrimage for this reason as for its other one. All his gifts to her had turned out gracious ones, and always would. She looked brightly at her blessings, down there in the water. When she came back from her tour, it was as well that they were to have the five thousand miles from coast to coast between them, though with the direction reversed. A corrective came to her. Three.

“When I get to London,” said the grandmother, taking the child’s hands in hers, and emphasizing with them, “I shall write you
all
about the Round
Pond
.” And May, in her way, did not ask what that was, instead patting her father a silent request to be set on her feet, from which posture she peered up. Hands against her little held-in chest, did she, whom did she resemble? The grandmother held her breath.

“Oh, Mother,” said Elizabeth. “What a romantic you are.”

“I’m a grandmother. I have my rights.” She was able to say this lightly enough, expectedly enough, compelled as always, in Elizabeth’s presence, to act out her daughter’s image of her. Elizabeth, she was sure, was equally so compelled, in hers. There was a cure for it. She glanced at her grandchild, so gracefully compliant in the little Kate Greenaway summer smock which had been her own gift, and yet already, at just past three—so choosing. The cure was long.

And meanwhile, her own cure lay only partly behind her. There must be no more attempted revisiting, at least not with others—as just now. “Why that?” he had said with interest. “Why the Round Pond?”—Oh because, you know, she had said, that’s where all the “tecs” go, the lovely educated English ones, to interview the nursemaid, or brood on clues. Or else, she had added, the guilty pair tryst there, and are put off sinning, in the sight of all that innocence—“Aren’t they ever encouraged by it?” he said—and when he had got over laughing, “Yes, what could be more Britishly innocent than a round one, yes, I guess you must see it. Put it on the list.”—There had never been any real list of course, just as there had been no discussion when, gradually, he had stopped saying “
We
must see.”

“You must see.” That had been her only directive, beyond the designated fund already in the bank under her name from the first, not to be willed. At her own request, nothing else was to be willed her, she having come to him already provided. All property was to be David’s. It had come as a surprise, to find that she and he, plus Jacques’s illness, had made such inroads on their capital. Aside from the “good will” of the business, still very good if made use of in time, there wasn’t too much capital left for David—just about enough for that use. Plus the house, and the weekend cabin. It had been odd of him to let things slip through his fingers that way, just at the end—and the mentioned young man had never been hired. Could it be that he had
managed
to let things slip just so far? Or merely, that all his life he had been a man who knew just how much, how far, to give way? It was not hers to say which. As he had taught her: Surprises…still come.

And she had her clues—all her particulars, gathered now and ahead to be gathered, on her own. A French boat, but disembark at Plymouth. Downstairs, her cabin, a single if he was not to go with her, smelled of glaceed pineapple, just as predicted. Her trunk, empty, was in the hold. Who travels with a trunk, these days? You. She had Jacques’s list of shops, but from him only one name, from the time when “we” was still the phrase—“Jacques’s family will expect it of us. Bordeaux.” He was no greedy old man trying to catch at her through all eternity—instead, he had given her most particular directions on how to leave him behind. When the boat left, she was to go straight down and arrange for her sitting—the second—choice of which would establish her, as the experienced traveler she already was. In her handbag was her international driver’s license. Beyond that, she was on her own, the decisions all hers. She hadn’t quite yet decided on Yugoslavia. But she was almost sure of enough courage for the Grand Corniche.

“Yes—they are just like,” said Elizabeth. All three of them were looking down at the water, as people do at these ceremonials.
“Exactly.”

“What are?” said the grandmother. She had forgotten. A small hand, playing at her waist, reached up to touch the Russian-enamel watch, the size of a robin’s egg, that hung above. Smiling, she bent her lapel within reach. This child was not afraid of the attraction of objects; on the other hand, she liked them, she—good Lord. She bent further, to stare—was that the resemblance which for a moment back there had haunted?—dear Lord, was it only that?

“The tugboats. Like governesses. Mother why is it—you certainly have an eye for it—why is it
you
never drew?”

“I?” said Margot. She was utterly surprised. It was such an intimate question—from Elizabeth, who never. And such a confusing one. “Why—it wasn’t—the right time for it, I guess. I…wasn’t…the right generation. I mean—” She arched her neck high, meaning them to see that this was not a plaint. At the same time, she had to mask her mouth with her hand, covering the deep, rose-shock of pleasure at being so newly observed. “I mean…it was for
you
.”

But Elizabeth had already turned away, monitoring the little girl, who was now a few yards down the deck, squatted over the pattern for shuffleboard. At her mother’s approach, the child did not move away, but turned her back.

“She’s forever tagging after her,” said David. “It’s no wonder May hides.”

“Ah, but David, in such crowds,” said the grandmother. “Afterall—
here
.”

“At the table, anywhere. She can’t take her eyes off her, in the same room with her. You saw. She knows it herself. ‘I know,’ she says, ‘but it’s as if I don’t dare lose her, I can’t stop.’”

“Ah, well. Maybe she’ll get rid of it, out there.” This was ambiguous.