The Road Taken (2 page)

Poor Huey, Rose thought now, and took the cake into the dining room and put it on the table with the rest of the food. She saw Mrs. Kisler and her son among the people who had come to console the family, and recognized the more elaborate cakes on the tables as ones from her bakery, which other people had obviously brought. But even now, the mourners wouldn’t eat Hugh’s birthday cake. It seemed just too morbid. Eventually, when everyone had left, the family ate it, so it wouldn’t go to waste. Rose had been right; it was stale.

After that the family went on as best they could. There was a hired girl to take care of Hugh during the day while William was at the shop. Maude took Hugh into her bed at night to comfort him when he cried out from nightmares, and Rose spent extra time with him too. Ever since he had been a baby, whenever their mother was sick she and Maude had given him his bath, and still did, even though by now he knew how to do it himself. They loved the look of his silky little limbs covered with soap bubbles, his damp hair, his happy giggle when they tickled him. He had become their charge, their child toy, and now he was all theirs. He clung to his two older sisters perhaps more than he should, but he was comforting them too. Their father didn’t criticize this because he didn’t even notice. He seemed in a haze somehow, distracted. Rose attributed this to grief, but she didn’t know how to make him happy, any more than she had known how to make her mother well.

That summer her sister, Maude, had bloomed overnight into a beautiful young woman. The boys who had been her childhood playmates were now uncomfortable with her, liking her too much—although some of them had the courage to ask her out for a walk. How tense and confused and romantic these silly little afternoon dates were! A glimpse of ankle under a long skirt, the light brief touch of a gloved hand on an arm, and a boy’s neck could redden in a blush. Rose thought they were all idiots.

But the other new development was that she herself had a boyfriend of her own, or sort of. In her fantasies Rose thought of him that way, even though she knew they were make-believe. Now that he had broken the ice, Tom Sainsbury smiled at Rose whenever he saw her in the neighborhood, and gave a little nod of recognition, and the thrill of that, of feeling chosen and grown-up, lasted for hours. She felt he was the best-looking boy in town. Tom Sainsbury was different from the boys who chased her sister, Maude; he was adult, casual, comfortable, a boy who had known sorrow, who understood girls.

His father worked at the local boatyards, the Herreschoff Manufacturing Company, which made sailing yachts, steam launches, and U.S. Navy torpedo boats, and that summer Tom got a job there to learn the trade he intended to follow when he graduated from high school. He was helping to work on a yacht for the America’s Cup race. Sometimes Rose walked to the waterfront hoping to catch sight of him. He was fourteen now, and Rose supposed that in a few years he would have girlfriends his own age, and then he would eventually fall in love with one of them and get married. But for now, she kept on dreaming; it didn’t hurt anybody, no one knew. Sometimes she let herself dare to hope that he would wait for her.

And now her father, Rose was beginning to notice, was no longer grieving. In fact, he was looking cheerful, and sometimes hummed a little tune under his breath. He had seemed to adjust to getting on with his life more quickly than Rose thought was proper.

In the warm spring and summer evenings, after he had closed the butcher shop, and Mrs. Kisler had closed her bakery, their father would stroll down to her shop and walk her home. After a little while he began to take walks with her in the evenings after supper too, and then on Sundays after church. It was clear to everyone, even his children, that William Smith was courting Celia Kisler. And why not, people said. Celia was young enough to work hard, although of course she would prefer not to, and young enough to remarry and have more children, and certainly William’s children needed a mother; a man couldn’t do it all himself. Rose was horrified. She considered her father’s behavior a betrayal of their mother, and even of them.

Mrs. Kisler’s son, Alfred, was the same age as Huey. The two boys knew each other from the neighborhood, but they had never been friends. Hugh played with the “good” boys, the docile and timid ones, and even, sometimes, with girls. Alfred played with the leaders. Even at their age, children were mean to each other. Rose knew that when the boys teased Hugh, Alfred sometimes did too. But now, because of their parents’ courtship, it was inevitable that the two families began to do things together: sometimes a Sunday dinner at Mrs. Kisler’s house, or a day at the beach having a picnic.

“You mustn’t tease Hugh anymore,” Celia told Alfred. “Now you must defend him.” Alfred made a face and shrugged.

Rose moped along the water’s edge, feeling gravelly sand in her stockings and pain in her heart, and wishing she could go home. Alfred and Huey couldn’t have been more unlike, and she didn’t know why the grown-ups forced them on each other. Alfred was self-righteous, his widowed mother’s “little man,” a cocky miniature adult; while Huey was still a cuddly, vulnerable child. Alfred was athletic and coordinated, his older cousins had taught him how to swim, and he was already diving off the “high wall” into the water with the other kids; Hugh just wanted to spend hours dreamily looking for shells. When the families were together Alfred was the leader and Hugh the follower. But at least they got along.

“How nicely they play together,” Celia Kisler said. “They will be good brothers.”

Papa looked smug, as if he had made an excellent choice. That’s what you think, Rose thought, and glanced at Maude in despair. Hugh, however, gazing at Alfred with big eyes, looked ecstatic.

And suddenly it was fall and their father married Celia Kisler. Everyone they knew came to the wedding, and seemed to think it was a happy ending for both the bride and the groom. Celia Kisler, now Celia Smith, sold her bakery to the baker, and her house to a Portuguese family, and moved in with her new family.

“Now you’ll call
me
Mother,” she said to the children.

How could Celia dare to say that, Rose wondered. How could she call this woman Mother? But at least she didn’t have to call her stepmother “Mama.” There would be only one Mama.

People got married and then they had children; that was a fact of life whether you liked it or not. Quite quickly, Celia had a baby girl, whom they named Daisy. Alfred and Hugh now had to share a room. Hugh didn’t mind, but Alfred wasn’t happy about it, although he got used to it. Alfred had also gotten used to Hugh following him around, and finally even seemed to like it. Whenever Hugh got on his nerves Alfred could send him away with a simple command, and only Rose saw the hurt in Hugh’s eyes.

Rose still didn’t like Alfred very much—there was a tough wildness in him—but she loved the little baby, Daisy, right away. How could you not love a baby? It wasn’t the baby’s fault that she had been born to this family. Daisy was soon followed by another girl, Harriette, and Rose loved her, too. Both her little half sisters were pretty and healthy. It was a boisterous household now with six children so close in age. If Papa regretted not having another boy he didn’t say so. Celia, of course, was always pointing out to him how wonderful Alfred was, as if to make up for the lack of another son of his own.

Celia was smart, Rose began to realize at fourteen; Celia knew how to handle a man. She could probably learn from Celia, who might show her how to grow up since her own mother wasn’t here to do it. But Rose still couldn’t feel close to Celia, and she didn’t think she wanted to learn anything from her. Maude would be mother enough.

When Rose had her first menstrual period she was terrified at the sight of the blood, but it was Maude she went to, not Celia. Maude explained to her what it was, said she was not to exercise or bathe while she was unwell, and then with a little embarrassment Maude told her that now that she would be menstruating every month she was grown up enough to have a baby of her own, and therefore to stay away from men.

But of course she would stay away from men! She was a nice girl. Men made you pregnant, Rose knew, but she was not sure how the babies got in there in the first place. Maude was so evasive Rose was sure she didn’t know either. Rose knew it had to do with the marriage bed, although from whispers and gossip she’d overheard she knew that sometimes it happened out of it. People always gave you warnings, they never gave you details. People did not discuss these things, and they had no mother. It was inconceivable to talk about it with their father. Rose would rather have cut out her tongue than ask her stepmother such a personal question, particularly since it had something to do with Celia and her father.

Rose still missed her own mother, although her father seemed to have forgotten all about her. It was as if her mother’s existence was drifting farther and farther away, just as her brownish photograph, which Rose hid in her dresser drawer under her ribbons, was slowly fading. Ever since his remarriage her father had unaccountably stopped mentioning her mother, not a word. Didn’t he care anymore? It was as if Adelaide Smith, the departed, belonged in her own compartment, her own era, and that era was gone. Celia liked to say life went on.

Rose never learned what her mother died of. Many years later, when she had children of her own and the world had changed a great deal, and everyone knew about things like tuberculosis, cancer, emphysema, coronary artery disease, she realized her daughters thought it very strange that she had lived docilely with such a mystery, but that was the way things were when it happened. Everyone had only wanted to protect her.

What good did it do for a young child to know the name of something so terrible that there was no cure for it?

Chapter Two

Growing up in a household where the women outnumbered the men, in a society where men were considered better than women, and where everyone loved him, Hugh had always felt special, chosen. After his beloved but distant mother died, his older sisters took care of him, trying to make him feel safe. And his father, Hugh knew, would protect him too. For a time after Hugh lost Mama, he had nightmares in which he was chasing her through an ominous wood full of lowering trees, choking with anxiety and never able to catch up to her, but after a while the dreams went away, and by then his father had married Celia and Celia had brought into the family his stepbrother and new best friend, Alfred.

Hugh could hardly believe his luck that this popular boy, who had ignored him and sometimes even made fun of him when they were only neighbors, now shared his actual bedroom, and his table, and his house. While Alfred never actually defended him, in the neighborhood and later in the school yard, Alfred didn’t take sides against him anymore either, and because they were now brothers Hugh was treated with a little more respect from the bullies, just in case Alfred did decide to hit them. . . . To Hugh, Alfred was perfect. Alfred was confident about everything, he treated his mother as politely as if he were an adult, and he usually treated Hugh (quite rightly, Hugh thought), as if he were backward. And as if this were not enough to impress Hugh, he also liked Alfred’s clothes.

Hugh could sense right away that they were more fashionable than his own, because Alfred’s mother, Celia, cared about clothes a great deal. The fact was, Hugh liked her clothes even more than he did her son’s. She was often at the dressmaker, and even her two pregnancies didn’t stop her from looking
à la mode,
a French phrase Celia often used. As a small child Hugh had not paid much attention to Celia, the baker’s wife, except to think of her as a kind woman who gave him cookies; but when she became his stepmother and moved into his house, he began to see that not only was her son different from him but that she was very different from the women he had always known.

Because his mother so often was sick, Hugh had not been allowed to spend much time in her bedroom, but Celia was frequently away from hers on all kinds of household errands, so he was able to sneak around and ferret out the secrets of this strange newcomer, and also through her the mysteries of adult women in general.

Celia Kisler Smith was extremely neat: Her silk stockings, in small rolls, were laid in rows in her dresser drawer, and her bloomers, petticoats, and camisoles were folded into large, flowered, silky envelopes that she had sewn herself. Her corsets, long and sleek, in the shape of a woman, lay folded flat and tied with ribbon. Hugh let his hands slide over them, feeling their texture and wondering how it felt to be laced into these things. The color that gave her those blooming cheeks was contained in a pot beside her brush and comb. He dipped a tentative finger into it and put pink spots on his own cheeks and then his lips, looked at himself in the mirror for a long moment, and then wiped the rouge away because he knew boys were not allowed to do these things. He investigated further. Her long fair hair, which he had thought was so naturally abundant, he discovered was not; she apparently wrapped it over and around a hair-colored thing that looked to him like a small dead animal. She kept lavender sachets in her bureau drawers too, and scented mouthwash in the bathroom. His own mother, as he remembered her, had often smelled medicinal. Celia kept her jewelry in a porcelain box, and when Hugh looked in it he found her wedding ring from her first husband. Their father had given their own dead mother’s wedding ring to Maude, who wore it on her right hand, even though Celia had suggested several times that she stop.

His stepmother was determined to replace his mother in every way. Because his mother had died on Hugh’s birthday, at first the family had not had the heart to celebrate his actual birthday; instead they had a party on whichever day nearest to it fell on a weekend. This was not unusual; weekends were better for parties. And that way you wouldn’t be both happy and sad. But then, finally, Celia had insisted they celebrate Hugh’s birthday on the day it came around.

“You can’t change the boy’s age,” she had said briskly. “He’s entitled to his real birthday. The past is over. He must get on with his life. We all must.”

Rose had given Celia a strange look, but had said nothing.

Although Hugh called Celia “Mother,” by her request, he thought of her privately as simply Celia, or sometimes as “Alfred’s mother.” Although she was kind to him, even generous, he sensed somehow that on her list of favorites he was somewhere near the bottom. And he knew he really didn’t need her. He had Maude and Rose, for unconditional comforting; and his father, for pride and acceptance; he also had Alfred, who was good at everything, for his idol; and his two little half sisters, Daisy and Harriette, who were only babies yet and knew nothing, as smiling or wailing bundles of background noise, as pure Baby, something every home he knew had.

Maude and Rose loved to give plays, dressing themselves and him in costume, even dressing the toddlers, sometimes even the family cat, and acting out their own abridged version of historical events at home. They did a tableau at Christmas (Hugh was the stand-in for all three Wise Men), and on Thanksgiving, after dinner (he was an Indian), and on July Fourth, after the annual town parade (he was a Founding Father). Alfred looked down on the whole idea of family plays and refused to join them, which disappointed them very much, but Hugh was not only accommodating but eager. Sometimes they made up their own scripts, and a few times, if it was a comedy, they put Hugh in a dress. He would never admit it, but he liked that best of all. Somehow it made him feel closer to his sisters, as if he could understand them when he put on their clothes. He had heard people say: “If I could get into your skin . . .” He felt their clothing would do just as well, as if it were magical.

“What a good sport!” everyone said gaily, amused, when Hugh stood there coyly posing, dressed as a milkmaid. “What a little character, what a little clown!”

Everyone said it but Alfred. “What a sissy!” Alfred said, turning away in scorn. Hugh didn’t know what to do. He wanted Alfred to approve of him, but he also wanted to pretend to be someone else. Perhaps that’s what it is, he thought.

“I’m not a sissy, I’m an actor,” Hugh said. He looked at Alfred pleadingly, wanting him to understand.

“If you say so,” Alfred said. “But
I
would never do it.”

Of course you wouldn’t, and that’s why I like you, Hugh thought. He knew he was forgiven and once again felt suffused with love.

He was eight now, tall and slim, a reed next to the muscular Alfred. They had been a family for three years. His father and stepmother shared one bathroom, and all the children shared the other one. Three years ago when Celia had come to live with them, she had told Maude and Rose that Hugh was too old to be helped with his bath anymore. He had not been disappointed; actually he had begun to feel shy and uncomfortable having to take his clothes off in front of them, even though they were his sisters. And now that he was older he felt even more differently about them. Suddenly he was curious; they were familiar yet unfamiliar. He had begun to spy on Maude, as he had on Celia, because now she was a woman too, another member of the mysterious species. She had graduated from high school and went on walks all the time with boys who liked her, and soon, everyone knew, she would pick one and get engaged.

One day he really lucked out in his spying. It was a hot afternoon, and Maude was taking a bath. Because she thought she was alone in the house, she had left the door ajar. Hugh crept down the hall, and looked in.

Her arms and shoulders and breasts and knees, visible above the soapy water, were plump and rounded, almost edible-looking; her bare skin was cream and peach. Her blond hair, piled high, had escaped in tendrils that stuck to her damp neck. He gaped, fascinated, at her nipples. They were large, and as pink as her lips. He caught his breath, and could feel his heart pounding, and a kind of stirring down there in the part he sometimes secretly played with. As Maude moved, he could catch just a glimpse, through the bath water, of her blond patch of hair. How soft it looked. He felt both excited and repelled.

This is not a girl,
he reminded himself, struck with guilt,
this is my sister.
Whatever feeling had passed through him a moment before now seemed wicked, shameful, and—he knew—forbidden. And, as suddenly as the excitement had come, it went away, and the naked girl in the bathtub no longer seemed fascinating and erotic, but pink and rubbery, a swimming cow. He couldn’t even bear to look, and went to his room and lay on his bed, exhausted and confused.

Later he forgot everything but the disgust. He knew what was under Maude’s layers of clothing, and he knew those boys who chased her wanted it, but he could no longer imagine wanting to undress a girl.

Years later, when Hugh looked back at those early childhood years, spoiled and taken care of in a houseful of women, he thought of them nostalgically as the happiest years of his life. The mind works that way, sifting out. He remembered the happy times and the comradeship, but he forgot the guilt and fear. He knew that growing up he had never been attracted to girls, and that also he had been, in some way, in love with Alfred, in love in a way beyond what you could express or admit. He forgot that his sister Maude had been his first love; he remembered only that Alfred had been. When he reviewed Alfred’s wonderful qualities through romantic hindsight, Hugh thought anyone would have felt as he did. Or perhaps not.