The Fire-Dwellers (15 page)

Well, you better see the doctor, then. No – I think I’m exaggerating. It’s nothing. It’s just from looking at the TV all evening. I’ll take a couple of aspirins.

  — I haven’t got a headache at all. Yes, I have. As a matter of fact, now that I notice it, it’s excruciating.

Maybe you need glasses.

Yeh, maybe

EVER-OPEN EYE THE SON OF ROBIN HOOD STANDS BEHIND KING JOHN AT RUNNYMEDE, MAKING THE RELUCTANT MONARCH SIGN THE MAGNA CARTA
.

  — Sometimes a person feels that something else must have been meant to happen in your own life, or is this all there’s ever going to be, just like this? Until I die. What’ll it be like to die? Not able to breathe? Fighting for air? Or letting everything slide away, seeing shapes like shadows that used to be people, nothing real because in a minute you won’t be real any more? Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with me now and in the hour of my death. If only I could say that, but no. My father’s dead
face, looking no different except the eyes closed, and I thought his face had been dead for a long time before he died, so what did it matter, but I didn’t believe that. Something should happen before it’s too late. Idiot-child, what more could happen? What more do you want? You’ve got – yeh, I know, God. No need to write me a list. And I’m grateful. Don’t take me seriously. Don’t let anything terrible happen to the kids.

Click.

Well, c’mon, Stacey, it’s getting late.

Yeh, so it is

Doctor Spender’s waiting room is walled with plants – tall rubber plants with leaves slickly green as though varnished, ferns drooping like miniature willow trees, needled cacti. They are real, not plastic, and this, obscurely, gives Stacey faith in Doctor Spender’s medical abilities. Stacey is the only person waiting. She riffles through magazines, looking only at the pictures. She is wearing her black skirt and a yellow tailored blouse, so it will be easier to strip to the waist in case he wants to listen to her lungs.

  — Should I tell Mac I’ve been? I don’t think so. If there
is
something wrong, it would only worry him, and if there isn’t, he’d think I was neurotic. Boy, he’d sure be right about that. I shouldn’t have come. There isn’t a darned thing the matter with me. I wish I’d worn my blue suit instead of this skirt. Katie’s right – it looks like Victoriana. Does it, hell. Why should it? I only bought it last year. What does Mac think about Thor? What does Mac think about? What are you thinking about, Mac?
Oh, nothing much
. Well, what sort of a nothing?
For heaven’s sake, Stacey, what does it matter?

  — What really happened? How was it for him?

Mac, about Ian’s age, listening to his mother’s softly chiding voice. Must remember you are a minister’s son, dear, and set a good example. It isn’t asking very much dear and of course a BB gun is out of the question and it hurts me so when I hear you using swear words and. Mac, maybe only the once, when it was too much, his face like Ian’s face, inheld, bitterly uncommunicative, lashing out, not knowing he was going to smash the window until he had done it. Matthew, towering like Moses, bearing in his eyes the letter of the Law. Kneel down, Clifford, kneel down right here in the study with me, and we will both pray. Mac, longing for any whip rather than this one, knowing this occasion would never arise again, must not, looking at his father’s clamped-shut eyes, listening to the flat voice calling upon the lord of all the galaxies to bear witness to a fragmented square of a brittle substance called glass by some of the users of it who lived on a small planet and who must learn not to break, not by not wanting to, but by some other reinforced and steel means
.

  — Was it like that? If it was, how come we’ve got a window left? But how do I know? Mac, I’m a rotten guesser.

Okay, Mrs. MacAindra – you can go in now.

Oh – thanks.

Doctor Spender is youngish, overworked, soft-spoken,
perpetually tired-looking. He looks up from the file card on his desk and smiles.

Hello, Mrs. MacAindra. What seems to be the trouble?

Well, it’s these headaches I’ve been getting. And there’s this place right at the back of my head, and it sort of goes
kaboom-kaboom
when I’m trying to get to sleep. Not really an ache – just a dull throbbing, but it bothers me. Then I get neurotic and start thinking I’ve got a tumor of the brain.

  — That’s right, clown. Make yourself sound like a nut case. Yes, but what if it
is
a tumor? These things happen. Oh God, dead at thirty-nine. What kind of a death would that be? You’d be incoherent long before it happened; the kids would see you mindless, dribbling, maybe shouting all the four-letter words you’ve decorously never said in front of them. No, I wouldn’t let them see me. If I was incompetent, Mac wouldn’t let them see, I hope. What would happen to the kids? Who’d bring them up? My sister? But she doesn’t know them, what they’re like. I don’t want anybody else to bring them up.

We’ll see, now. Show me exactly where the throbbing comes, Mrs. MacAindra. That’s fine.

The examination goes on. Heart and lungs. Blood pressure. Any other symptoms? Finally the doctor looks at her, mildly inquiring.

Can’t find anything wrong, superficially. Not worried about anything, are you?

Oh no. Everything’s all right. I mean, at home.

  — How can I say anything else, without making it sound foolish? I can’t put my finger on it, anyway. Too many threads. I can’t say it, and who would believe me if I did? It’s like being inside a balloon made out of some kind of glue, and when you try to get out, you only get tangled and stuck.

Well, I think I’ll send you for an X-ray, just to make sure there’s nothing wrong.

I’m sure there isn’t. It’s probably just my imagination. I probably need to have my head examined.

Doctor Spender smiles.

That’s exactly what you’re going to have.

The X-ray results are negative. Stacey does not have tumor of the brain. She thanks Doctor Spender and puts down the phone. It is early afternoon, and Jen is asleep. Stacey moves around the house without knowing in advance what she is going to do. She goes upstairs to the bedroom and looks at herself in the full-length mirror. She is wearing a blue-and-pink-print dress, bought on sale last autumn. The pink is in the form of small clocks, all of whose hands indicate five minutes before either noon or midnight. She removes the dress and her slip, and puts on a pair of tight-fitting green velvet slacks and a purple overblouse which has been hanging in the cupboard for some months, as yet unworn. She then rummages at the back of the cupboard, on the floor, and comes up with a pair of high-heeled gold-strapped sandals.

  — Okay, so of course I know you shouldn’t wear high heels with sandals. But I love high heels. I just do. All right, Mac, I know these are vulgar, especially with slacks. But I like them, see? And I can do with the extra height.

She listens at Jen’s door. No sound. Let sleeping kids lie. Stacey in golden high-heel sandals tiptoes downstairs to the kitchen, collects the gin bottle and two bottles of tonic, and goes down to the basement room, leaving the door between the kitchen and basement open in case Jen calls.

  — This calls for some slight celebration. Reprieve. I’m not a goner yet. Did I really think I was? Well, it’s in the middle
of the night I start thinking about it, and then it seems pretty certain. Really, it’s only what would happen to the kids. Yeh? It doesn’t matter about you, Stacey? Well, it shouldn’t matter. Why not? Because I’m thirty-nine and I can’t complain. But they haven’t begun yet. That’s not how you feel about yourself, though. It matters. Okay, but so what? I think of Katie – maybe Ian, now, too – thinking of me like I’m prehistoric, and it bugs me. I’m sorry, but it does. I’m not a good mother. I’m not a good wife. I don’t want to be. I’m Stacey Cameron and I still love to dance.

The floor is dark-red linoleum tiles. Stacey kicks aside the numdah scatter rugs with their rough embroidery of magic trees, trees of life flowering unexpectedly into azure birds, green unlikely leaves. She pours a gin and tonic, drinks half of it and tops it up. The records are kept in a mock wrought-iron stand. Stacey shuffles impatiently through them and finally finds what she is looking for. She changes the record player to seventy-eight and puts the old disc on. The needle skids a little, complaining at the scratches on the surface.

Tommy Dorsey Boogie. The clear beat announces itself. Stacey finishes her drink, fixes another one, drinks half of it quickly and sets the glass down on top of the TV. She looks at her gold sandals, her green-velvet thighs. She puts her arms out, stretching them in front of her, her fingers moving slightly, feeling the music as though it were tangibly there to be touched in the air. Slowly, she begins to dance. Then faster and faster.

  — Once it seemed almost violent, this music. Now it seems incredibly gentle. Sentimental, self-indulgent? Yeh, probably. But I love it. It’s
my
beat. I can still do it. I can still move without knowing where, beforehand. Yes. Yes. Yes. Like this. Like this. I can. My hips may not be so hot but my ankles are pretty good, and my legs. Damn good in fact. My feet still know what to do without being told. I love to dance. I love it. I love it. It can’t be over. I can still do it. I don’t do it badly. See? Like this. Like this.

  — I love it. The hell with what the kids say. In fifteen years their music will be just as corny. Naturally they don’t know that. I love this music. It’s mine. Buzz off, you little buggers, you don’t understand. No – I didn’t mean that. I meant it. I was myself before any of you were born. (Don’t listen in, God – this is none of your business.)

The music crests, subsides, crests again, blue-green sound, saltwater with the incoming tide, the blues of the night freight trains across snow deserts, the green beckoning voices, the men still unheld and the children yet unborn, the voices cautioning no caution no caution only dance what happens to come along until

The record player switches off.

  — Was I hearing what was there, or what? How many times have I played it? God it’s three thirty in the afternoon and I’m stoned. The kids will be home in one hour. Okay, pick up the pieces. Why did I do it? Yours not to reason why, Stacey baby, yours but to go and make nineteen cups of Nescafé before the kids get home. Quickly. Jen? Lord, she must’ve been awake for hours. Oh Stacey.

The black coffee washes around in her stomach like a tidal wave. She gets Jen up, murmuring carefully, and then goes
to her own bedroom and Mac’s and changes into her blue silk suit. She puts on a pair of medium-heel navy-blue shoes. She holds the gold sandals for a moment in her hands, then delves into the clothes cupboard and buries them under a pile of tennis shoes and snow boots. She brushes her hair, backcombing it slightly, then slicking it down into neatness and spraying it so it will hold. She applies lipstick and powder. She examines herself in the full-length mirror.

  — Am I okay? No lurching hemlines, protruding slip straps, off-base lipstick or any other sign of disrepair? I think I’m okay, but how’s my appraisal power? Shaken, no doubt. Remorse – overdose of same. I’m not fit to be in charge of kids, that’s the plain truth. God, accept my apologies herewith. He won’t. Would you, in His place? No. Come on, be practical. Dinner. Mac won’t be here. Dinner downtown for him, the lucky bastard. When did I last have dinner downtown? Precious lot he cares. Goddam him, some night when he comes bowling in at ten o’clock expecting me to have kept dinner hot in the oven since six, I’m gonna say
Now listen here, sweetheart, want me to tell you something? There isn’t any bloody dinner and if you want any, why don’t you just go along and scramble yourself an ostrich egg? Why don’t you just do that little thing?
Oh Stacey, this is madness. Get a grip on yourself. Yeh, well let’s see now – pork chops, cauliflower with cheese sauce, mashed potatoes, and what for dessert? It’ll have to be ice cream. Got half a carton in the freezer. Maybe I should make apple Betty. What a slut I am, not a cooked dessert for those kids. No, I can’t. I’m incapable of peeling an apple. Sometimes I want to say –
listen, if all of you never had another dessert for the rest of your lives, would that kill you?
Answering chorus of
It sure would
, spoken with conviction. Come on, bitch. Another cup of coffee.

Stacey prepares dinner primly and with caution. When the children arrive home, she talks as little as possible. The meal is finally over and the noise begins to subside. The mist is beginning to clear. Stacey washes the dishes and then bathes Jen, reads two Little Golden Books to her, and puts her to bed. After some considerable time, Duncan and Ian are also in bed. Only Katie remains. Katie has finished her homework and is down in the TV room. Stacey goes down but does not go in. She stands near the doorway, looking, unnoticed.

Katie has put on one of her own records. Something with a strong and simple beat, slow, almost languid, and yet with an excitement underneath, the lyrics deliberately ambiguous.