Things Invisible to See (11 page)

That evening when her father sat reading the newspaper in the living room after supper, she curled up at his feet on the hearth beside Cinnamon Monkeyshines, who kept watch over the fire, and Davy brought her the Sears catalogue.
Dibs on that doll. Dibs on that icebox.
Now he let her have the best things on each page, as she used to do for him.

It was to this preserve of childhood that Ben came.

T
HE EAST PART OF
Ann Arbor once belonged to trees, Indians, and Englishmen. The Englishmen and the Indians went the way of all flesh, leaving nothing but their names—Iroquois Drive, Devonshire Place. The trees were luckier. Here, an orchard. There, a stand of hickory. What the realtors call “stately old homes” have taken root under their branches.
Stately
: large rooms, window seats, French doors, a third-floor room for the maid.
Old
: a bathtub on legs, and behind the electric icebox, a door for the iceman, who no longer comes. Lilacs, spirea, forsythia in season; a rusty rose arbor, tottering; a goldfish pond in the backyard. Elm. Maple. Mountain ash.

Number 201 Orchard Drive was so different from Ben’s house on the north side of Main as to make him think he had crossed the frontier of a different nation. Pear trees lined both sides of the walk and roofed his passage with bent wands bearing light burdens of snow. The pears were long gone. Two months earlier a Negro man and his wife had come over from the west side and begged Helen for the windfall. Helen said yes, and the windfall was collected and canned. Row upon row of the Bishops’ pears shone in the kitchen of a frame house on Catherine Street.

Ben crunched up the front walk; the snow underfoot felt clean and unused, as if it had been stored in mothballs. He rang the bell twice.

When the door opened, he was facing a woman who looked very much like Clare, only older.

“Come right in,” she said. “I’m Clare’s mother. I’ll tell Clare you’re here.”

He stepped into the hallway, and Helen went to the foot of the stairs and hollered, “CLA-YER! He’s HERE!”

A little boy clumped down the stairs, almost hidden behind the pungent swag of evergreen that wreathed the banister.

“Aunt Helen—”

“This is Davy, my sister’s boy.”

“Aunt Helen, Clare says to give her ten minutes. She wants to come down for lunch.”

“You may as well come in and wait by the fire,” said Helen and motioned for Ben to follow her.

The living room was as crammed as a shop. There was a grand piano in one corner and a low black jade pedestal, intricately carved with leaves and blossoms; nothing heavier than a handkerchief could have sat on it. Massive gold frames held a pair of landscapes, all shade and twilight and cows drinking at a dark river and cottages under willows that trailed their boughs like feathers of lead.

There was a large cream brocade sofa against one wall, and two overstuffed chairs of wine plush on either side of the fireplace, and a glass-topped coffee table between them, under which a tiger cat slept like an exhibit, offering its belly to the fire.

There was a black sofa with wooden dividers in the back, and a whatnot shelf supported by columns of polished spools—how many years of making and mending had used so much thread?—whose surfaces held ashtrays from China enameled with egrets and a wooden box from Persia which showed an emperor hunting a gazelle and two china heads that belonged to dolls whose bodies had long gone.

There was a small round table whose four feet ended in claws and from whose open drawer spilled photographs and bridge tallies and old Christmas cards.

The Oriental rug underfoot gave Ben the feeling that all these wonders were precariously balanced on an island of flowers. He knew it would be polite to admire something.

“Nice sofa,” he said at last.

“Love seat,” Helen corrected him. “It’s an antique.”

“Aunt Helen gets all her furniture from dead people,” said Davy.

“I know it’s crowded in here,” said Helen, “but I hate to sell things that have been in the family. Do you want a ginger ale?”

“Me too,” said Davy.

“Bring two bottles of Vernor’s and two glasses from the kitchen, Davy,” said Helen.

As Davy darted away, Helen took Ben’s arm and led him to the mantel. A long swag of artificial holly hung down at either side of it like a rumpled snake.

“I want you to see what nice painting Clare does. She painted this pitcher when she was twelve.”

On its unglazed belly, an angel rode across a navy sky on a green bird. Every feather was meticulously drawn: a bird in armor, a jeweled nightingale.

“Beautiful,” he said.

“And that bowl next to the pitcher,” said Helen. “She gave me that bowl for Mother’s Day when she was eight.”

The wooden bowl, covered with crudely painted hearts and flowers, Ben found less attractive than the pitcher.

“Pretty good for eight,” he said.

“She painted angels on all my kitchen cupboards. And when we had the kitchen repainted last year, Mr. Schneider painted right over them. It broke my heart. Clare said, ‘Don’t worry, Mother, I’ll paint you some new ones.’ Nell says, ‘Watch out, she’ll paint on your coffin.’ Come here—let me show you something.”

She urged him toward the grand piano, over which hung half a dozen diplomas and certificates and one blue ribbon.

“Clare won first prize in the Scholastic Regional Art Contest, Southeastern Michigan Division, when she was fourteen.”

“That’s wonderful, just wonderful,” said Ben. He was growing sleepy; the room was too hot.

“And she won this blue ribbon for a shadow box she entered in the Ann Arbor Garden Club Flower Show.”

“Well, what do you know?”

“And here’s a picture of Clare in the freshman class play. She wrote the play.”

Helen pointed to the photograph of a makeshift horse wearing ballet slippers.

“Did you say Clare is in the picture?” asked Ben, puzzled.

“She’s the horse. The front half.”

Davy ran into the room carrying two ginger ales with Grandma right behind him, dragging her suitcase, her straw hat shoved cockeyed on her head.

“I’m going now,” she said. “It’s been lovely.”

“Oh, Grandma, you don’t want to go now,” said Nell, gliding up behind her. “We’ve just put lunch on the table.”

“And Clare’s friend Ben has come especially to meet you,” said Helen. “Oh, you can’t go now.”

Grandma peered at Ben through her thick glasses, as if she had been asked to believe in something she could not see. Or was she listening to the muffled thumping in the hall? Did nobody else hear it except this old woman and himself, Ben wondered, and at that moment he caught sight of Clare in the mirror over the mantel. She was paddling headfirst down the stairs, pulling herself forward with her arms, dragging her legs after her as if she wanted to leave them behind; a shell she had outgrown and could not shake off.

Ben wished he had not seen her. She would not want him to see her. Not that way. He followed Helen into the dining room.

“This is Hal, Clare’s father,” said Helen. “He always sits down to lunch at noon, whether anyone else is here or not.”

Hal, in shirt-sleeves at the head of the table, had not only sat down, he had already started to eat, spearing beets out of a bowl as steadily as a conveyer belt, forking them, eating them—
snip, snap!
He speared, spooned, snapped, chewed without mercy; he did not miss a beat.

“Glad to meet you,” said Ben, though he did not feel they had met, only appraised each other, as one insect might wonder if the other is edible. He looked away and saw Clare again, this time in the mirror over the telephone table in the front hall. Nell was lifting her into the wheelchair. Was this Clare, he asked himself, this rag doll whose dress hung dark and plain, like a nun’s habit? The two of them emerged from the mirror into the dining room: two time travelers entering the fourth dimension.

“Hello,” said Clare.

Davy took Ben’s hand.

“Here’s your place,” he said, “next to me.”

Ben sat down at the table between Davy, who stared at him, and Grandma, who was humming under her breath. And Clare? She hardly seemed to notice he was in the room.

“Clare tells me you’re a student at the University,” said Helen.

“She did?” Ben’s stomach sank. He had never told Clare that.

“What are you majoring in?” asked Nell.

“Geology,” said Ben. The first subject that popped into his head.

“And what do you plan to do with it?” asked Hal.

Everybody was staring at Ben now, forks in midair.

“It’s kind of private,” he said. “I just can’t talk about it.”

He must be on academic probation, thought Helen, trying to imagine what could be so private about a career in geology.

“If you want an easy course, take Precious Gems!” exclaimed Nell, and Clare’s stony face broke into a smile.

“Mother, tell Ben about Precious Gems.”

“I can’t,” said Helen. “I don’t even like to think about it.”

“Tell it, tell it!” pleaded Davy.

“Well—” Helen wiped her mouth with her napkin and laid the napkin on the table. “Hal and I were at a faculty dinner party—we had only been married a month, and everyone was so curious about me because Hal is twenty years older than I am—we met on a blind date—and somebody started talking about pipe courses on campus, and I said, ‘The biggest pipe course on campus is Precious Gems.’ There was a long silence. And then the hostess said, ‘The gentleman on your left is our good friend Professor Shrew, who teaches that course.’ I nearly died.”

“Shrew,” repeated Hal, as if invoking him. “We took freshman English together.”

“At Michigan,” added Helen. “All our family went to Michigan. Hal, Nell, me—”

“Our other sister, her husband, my ex-husband,” chimed in Nell.

“Hal,” said Grandma, “did anyone ever tell you that you have beautiful ears?”

“You did,” said Hal. He smiled at her.

“You tell him every day,” said Davy.

“Davy, she forgets,” whispered Nell.

Grandma peered at Davy. Her glasses made her eyes huge and all-knowing.

“How old are you now?” she asked.

“Five.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

Ben finished his salad—a Bartlett pear filled with cream cheese—and reached for the plate of hamburgers. Nell snatched it away from him.

“Give Ben a real hamburger. That’s Hal’s Protose.”

“They look just like—” began Ben, but she cut him off.

“They’re made from soybeans. Hal is a vegetarian.”

“I never heard of soybean hamburgers.”

“I order them from Battle Creek,” said Hal, as if that explained everything. Helen had just come from the kitchen, and from the dish in her hand she forked a real hamburger onto Ben’s plate.

“We’ve got cases and cases of Protose,” said Davy.

“You’ve heard of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, of course,” remarked Hal.

Ben shook his head no.

“I want to take Clare to the San,” Hal said, as if Ben had nodded yes instead. “I want to see if Dr. Kellogg can help her.”

Clare, head bowed, was eating slowly and steadily.

“Listen,” exclaimed Helen. “The marching band is practicing.”

Silence.

“I can’t hear anything,” said Ben.

“Me neither,” said Nell.

“Can’t you feel the vibrations?” asked Helen, turning to Ben.

Again they stopped talking and listened.

“It wouldn’t be the marching band now,” said Nell.

“Perhaps it’s snow,” said Helen.

“Pardon me?” asked Ben.

“Helen can hear the snow coming when it’s still miles away,” said Nell. When he did not respond, she changed the subject. “Wasn’t that Ohio State game a thriller?”

“I didn’t see it,” said Ben.

“Goodness, I don’t know how you could bear to miss it,” said Helen. “We go to all the games.” She almost said, “We used to go to all the games till Clare came home,” but stopped herself in time. “Our seats are right on the fifty-yard line. Where are your seats?”

“My seats?”

“Where you sit,” said Nell.

“I don’t have any tickets.”

“You never got your tickets?” exclaimed Helen. “Every student is entitled to a season ticket. You should have gotten yours in the mail the first week of classes.”

“I’ll call the dean of men about it on Monday,” said Hal.

“That’s all right,” said Ben quickly. “The season’s over.”

“The season’s over,” said Hal, “and who knows if there’ll be a football team next year? Did you see the headlines this morning? The Germans sank another submarine.”

“If we go to war, there won’t be enough men around to make up a team,” said Nell.

“Do you think we
will
go to war?” asked Clare.

She had hardly spoken during the entire meal, and now her voice was as startling as a stranger’s.

“We’re arming ships,” said Hal. “We’re sending men. We can hardly be called neutral.”

“I expect you’ll be drafted one of these days,” said Nell, beaming at Ben.

“Wait till you’re drafted,” said Hal. “No point in going any sooner. You can serve your country better with a good education.”

In the front hall, the telephone was ringing urgently.

“Now who would call during lunch?” asked Helen and rose to answer it. Again silence fell over the meal. Helen knew they were all listening to her, trying to piece the conversation together from her brief responses. “Here? … Tonight? … But not for supper, I hope.”

She banged the receiver down without saying good-bye.

“What nerve!”

“Who was it?” asked Nell.

“Marie Clackett. Mr. Knochen will be arriving here at eight.”

“I thought he wasn’t coming till the seventh. That’s Sunday.”

“He says he has important business on Sunday.”

Helen began to clear the plates.

“I think that any man who goes around saying he can call back the dead will go straight to hell. And to charge a dollar for it, too!”

“Every dollar goes to the Red Cross,” Nell reminded her.

“Did Jesus charge people a dollar when he raised Lazarus?” demanded Helen.