The Angel on the Roof: The Stories of Russell Banks (15 page)

Indisposed

Lie in bed. Just lie there. Don’t move, stare at the ceiling, and don’t blink. Keep your fingers from twitching. Let your weight press into the mattress. Take shallow, slow breaths, so that the covers neither rise nor fall. Feel the heavy, inert length of your body. The whole of it, from your head to your feet, like the trunk of a fallen tree moldering and sinking slowly into the damp, soft ground of the forest.

For that is how he likes you best—your husband, William. You are Jane Hogarth, wife to the painter, keeper of his house and bed. He sees you as a great, tall tree that he is too short to climb, except when you are prone, cut down by the ax of his temper or drawn down by his words, his incessant words, and the needs that drive them.

It’s now midmorning. You are indisposed and have remained here in bed, as if it were a choice, a decision not to rise at dawn, empty the pots, wash and dress, brush out your hair, descend the stairs to the kitchen, build the fire and start preparing the day’s food, send Ellen to the market, organize the wash, beat the carpets, sweep and wash the floors, the two of you—the big, slow-moving, careful woman and her helper, that skinny, nervous, rabbitlike girl, Ellen.

You’re a poor combination, you and that girl. Together you seem to break more crockery, waste more time, do more work than either of you would do alone. You follow each other around as if setting right what the other must have done wrong. You never should have agreed to take her in, but she is your cousin, a Thornhill, and her family could not hold her at home in the country any longer. It was the only way to keep the girl from becoming a harlot. William insisted on it. Absolutely insisted.

Of course, he insisted, you reflect. They’re just alike, he and that tiny, quick girl. They probably have the same appetites. If he did not have this house and you to run it, to keep it clean and comfortable and filled with food and drink for him and his friends, he would have long ago died a rake’s miserable death. And he knows it. He saw that girl and recognized the temperament and he knew the way she would go, if you did not take her in. He sat there in his short-legged chair in the corner, the only chair in the house that lets his feet rest flatly on the floor, and his eyes and hands and mouth would not stop moving until you relented.

We can’t set her onto the streets, and your uncle won’t let her return home, and her mind seems set on the city life
, and on and on he chattered, while his hands moved jerkily across the paper on his lapboard, and his eyes jumped like blue fleas, and the girl wrung her hands and spun around, dropping her bonnet, stooping to retrieve it, knocking over the water pitcher and basin on the table next to her, all the while apologizing and blathering as much family gossip into your face as she could think of, probably making most of it up, just to keep on reminding you that you, too, are a Thornhill and that she is the daughter of your famous father’s country brother.

Maybe my father
—
,
you tried to say, but he wouldn’t let you finish.
No, no, no, no, no!
he said, his eyes still hopping over the girl, leaping from her clear face to her fresh young bosom to her slender hips and back again, as she spun and wrung and bumped into things.
No, your father’s house is already too crowded. All those apprentices, maids, children, patrons, hangers-on. And how many cousins already in from the country? Even he himself, your father, couldn’t say. No, our house is quite large enough, she should stay here with us. After all, there’s only the two of us. And you need a helper,
he said, suddenly turning his gaze on you, as if you had just entered the room.

His eyes filled wetly with sympathy for you. You nodded your head slowly up and down, and his eyes went swiftly back to the girl, his hands to the drawing on his lap. Then, the matter settled and the drawing finished, he stopped, folded the sheet of paper in half, stood up, and went out the door to the street, calling over his shoulder as he rounded the corner that he wouldn’t be back till later this evening.

Which you knew. No reason for him to say even that much anymore. He’ll come home sometime after midnight, smelling of wine and beef fat and whores, humming downstairs in the kitchen while he rummages for a piece of cake or slice of cold meat. Then he’ll bump his way up the stairs, and he’ll be on you, climbing up and over you with his nervous, little body, already stiff and pressing against you with it, prodding, poking, groping, his hands yanking at your breasts, his wet mouth jammed against your dry throat, until finally, to stop him from jabbing himself against you, you spread your large thighs and let him enter you, and for a few moments, as if searching for your womb, he leaps around inside you.

Then, at last, he sighs and releases his grip on your breasts and slides out of you and off. You hear him standing in the darkness buttoning himself up. He wobbles unsteadily from the room and down the hallway to his own room. A few minutes pass in silence, and he begins to snore. And you lie in your bed and stare blankly into the sea of darkness that surrounds you.

Now, this morning, when Ellen comes to your door and asks what should she do today, you say that you are indisposed, meaning that you cannot come down today—as if it were a choice, a decision. You almost remind the rabbitlike girl that after three months in the house she should know what to do. You remember that you yourself knew after three months what was expected. And you had no patient, calm, competent, older woman to teach you the intricacies of housekeeping. Ellen walks off with her chamber pot in hand, and you lie there in your bed, preferring to have the girl think you have decided to stay in bed today, like a lady of leisure, than that she know the truth.

The truth is that you have made no decision at all. Not to rise, and not to stay abed. When you woke at dawn, it was as if you had not wakened at all. You had merely slipped from sleep into a world where neither sleep nor wakefulness existed, where you could neither act nor not act. And so you lie here, hoping that by imitating a corpse you will at least seem to be in the same world as the people around you. They will think you are present, even if only as a corpse.

But you are not present. You are absent, gone from this house, its clutter of beds, pots, chairs, tables, bottles, linens, carpets, dogs, and clothes, and gone from the people who live here, that taut, young woman downstairs in the kitchen and the man who went out to his studio early this morning, as always, that man, that chattering, growling, barking, little man, his bristling red hair and bright little eyes, his jerky hands and his sudden switches of mood, words, movement, direction. You are absent from them both. Gone. Your large, strong, smooth-moving body. Your barren body.

And so, helpless, you lie in bed. You can’t move. You stare at the ceiling, and you cannot blink your eyes, even as the shadows fade and the afternoon light scours the plaster to a white glare. You feel your weight press steadily into the mattress. You take shallow, slow breaths, and the covers neither rise nor fall. You feel the heavy, inert length of your long body, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet, as if it were the trunk of a fallen tree moldering and sinking slowly into the damp, soft ground of the forest.

Suddenly, he is in the room, standing next to the bed. Your husband, William Hogarth, the famous painter and engraver. You stare at the ceiling, but you know he is standing there beside you. You can hear his quick, gulping breaths, can smell his sweat and his mouth, the kidney pie and ale he had for lunch. He is asking questions, making demands for answers. His voice barks at you. Leaning over you, blocking your view of the ceiling, he peers into your eyes, and his expression changes from that of an annoyed man to that of a wondering man. But he is not happy when he is a wondering man, and his expression swiftly changes back to one of annoyance.

It occurs to you that he will beat you again, will double those hard, small fists of his and throw them at you, as if you were in a pit and he were stoning you from above. You are not afraid. Not now. Not anymore. You are absent now, and though he may bury you in this pit with his stony fists, he will bury only your barren body, as if he were pummeling a pile of some poor woman’s old clothes.

As suddenly as he came, he is gone. You are alone again. The shadows on the ceiling, long gray wedges, have returned. Falling—, you are falling and flying away at the same time, from this thick body, from the bed, its four carved posts, from the room itself, the clutter, the babble of furniture, crockery, clothes, and carpets, away from the house and the crowd standing wide-eyed on the narrow street in front, gaping skyward as you fly and fall away from them. It’s what he would want. You are pleasing him at last. You have left behind what he wants—your large, slow body, your silence, and your acceptance of his blows, his words, his pushing, stiff little body, his seed. You are pleasing him at last.

You watch him return to the house with the doctor in tow. They are both out of breath and red-faced as they come through the door and enter the bedroom. It is dusk. The doctor asks for light, and, in a few seconds, Ellen appears next to them with a lit candle. The doctor, a short man, almost as short as your husband, but older, rounder, dirtier, takes the candle from the girl and holds it near your face. You watch them all—the somber, wheezing doctor with the stained fingers, the fair-haired, pink-faced girl, her new breasts popping above her bodice like fresh pears, and your husband, bobbing nervously behind, talking, talking, making suggestions, asking quick questions, recalling similar cases. From time to time, he looks at the girl’s breasts and goes silent.

You watch them all, including the one they are examining, the body on the bed. It is the largest body in the room, the strongest, the only healthy body in the room. The doctor’s lungs are bad, his face is red and blotched with purple islands and broken veins, and his hands are stunted and bent from arthritis. The girl, though young, is nervous and cannot eat without suffering great stomach pain. Her blond hair has started to fall out in thatches when she brushes it in the morning. And your husband, when he rises, coughs bits of blood, suffers from excruciating headaches, and has had three attacks of gout in this one year. Your body, though, lying there below you, is an athlete’s, unblemished, bulky, powerful, and smooth. That’s what they’re trying to save, that’s what they believe they can save—your big, healthy body. They need it, but it lies on its back, like a wagon without wheels. They are all annoyed. Why won’t it work? they ask each other. What’s wrong with this big, strong, in all observable ways healthy body?

The doctor asks the girl what were the exact words your body uttered this morning when she came to the room to check on it, to see why it was not performing its usual tasks.

Indisposed. It said it was indisposed,
the girl tells the man.
Nothing more, sir. No complaints or anything.
The girl’s hands are in fists jammed against her hips.

The doctor takes a small vial from his case and with one hook-like hand prods open the mouth of your body. With the other he empties the vial into it. Then he closes the mouth, massages the muscular throat, forcing the body to swallow. It swallows the thick, salty fluid, and the doctor releases the throat, content.

He wipes the mouth of the gray vial with his fingers and places it neatly into his case.
I’ve given it a purgative,
he says to your husband.
By morning, it should be back to normal again. You can do without it till then, can’t you?
the physician asks him, winking.

Your husband grins and looks at Ellen’s breasts.
Of course!
he says, and invites the doctor downstairs for a drink and something to eat. The girl Ellen runs ahead to prepare the table for the men.

Now your body lies alone in the darkening chamber. You watch it from above, from a place touching the ceiling. The body hears the doctor laugh, a rumble of voices, chairs against the floor. Then the sound of the doctor’s hearty departure. Laughter of your husband and Ellen. A door between rooms somewhere downstairs opens and clicks closed. Carriages pass in the streets, a pair of harlots argues with a vendor. Someone calls to a departing friend.

The body shudders slowly. A bubble grows inside the belly and then bursts. The body shudders again, this time more violently. It is the gray purgative working. Then the body erupts with rumbling noises from its several orifices, and its surface ripples with muscular contractions. It is wet with sweat, yet goes on shivering as if chilled. The body continues barking and erupting with noise, sounds of air under pressure being suddenly released. The sheet is wet, at first with sweat, soaked, but with urine now as well. Then a watery stool trickles from between the buttocks and spreads, foul-smelling, beneath the thighs.

The body hears the call of your husband downstairs as he opens the door to the street and informs the girl Ellen that he won’t be home till later. Then the sounds of evening drift up the stairs and seep under the closed door of the bedroom—the creak of the pump, dishes being washed, the sound of cupboard doors being opened and closed, and, after a while, the clicking steps of Ellen past your closed door and up the stairs beyond to her tiny room in the attic. Then—except for an occasional passing carriage, a cry from the street, a barking dog—silence.

The body lies motionless in its waters and extrusions, quiet now, the heart beating slowly, regularly, peacefully, the bladder, the kidneys, and intestines emptied and at rest, the lungs expanding and contracting with perfect symmetry and ease. For the first time that you can remember, you look down at your large, slow body, and you pity it. For the first time, you pity your body. Until this moment, you have felt either indifference or dislike, annoyance. For it has made you the plain daughter of a famous and demanding father, the one passed over in favor of your smaller, prettier sisters when the young artists and budding courtiers came to call at the home and studio of the grand and official court painter, the newly knighted Sir James Thornhill. It was the body presented at last to that persistent, abrasive one, the tiny man with the grandiose ambitions, given over to him almost as a joke, as a way of getting him to go away and cease his incessant talking. Hogarth wants a Thornhill, eh? Well, let him have Jane, let him have the body we call Jane, the cumbersome one, the one that’s larger than most men. Let him wake every morning and be reminded of his smallness. Ho, ho, she may turn out to be barren. A good joke on a desperate man, and a solution to the problem posed by a daughter too large and too plain to marry off easily.