| My mother sat beside Da's bed,
smiling in the soft way she had that always made me wonder which
side of the pillow her dreams lay, for all the fact that she
seemed in command of things. She had her head tilted a trifle and
was looking into the old man's sleeping face. Two days and a night of strangeness and fear had gone by. I wasn't used to such solemn matters. Illness wasn't common with the Baudoums. I struggled through every minute with the feeling that a piece of my heart was caught in my throat. My grandfather's eyes were closed, his breathing labored, his face distant as though seen through a distorting veil. Great rushing sounds came from his mouth, the gums naked as a baby's, a good deal of his dignity taken away with his false dentures. He breathed as though the air had weight. That it was a substance to be bitten and chewed. Tears came to my eyes. I felt sorry for my grandfather. But I felt even sorrier for myself. With Da lying in the strange bed, in such unnatural sleep, I felt bitterly lonely. I was angry with him for frightening me so with this evidence of human mortality. It was too soon for my Da to go away. My grandfather had given me Dickens as my special bird and now he was leaving me alone before the race had even begun. When my own race had barely begun. I feared I'd get lost in the world without my grandfather. Or, if lost and then found again, deprived of Da's wise, silent understanding of the great courage I'd exercised on my journey back. I'd been lost before. We'd gone, my mother and father, myself and Da, to visit Aunt Tassy, Grandma Jenny's older sister, who was in her eighties when I was nine. She lived with a companion nearly her own age, a maiden lady like herself, who was hard of hearing and smoked endless cigarettes right to the very end, nursing the last few puffs at risk of burnt lips by holding the butt end with a hairpin. Her name was Charlotte. Between the two of them, they kept Aunt Tassy's house reasonably clean but far from neat. There was an unpleasant smell as often surrounds the very old; it was even a little frightening to me. I couldn't know the reasons for my unease but felt it strongly. I couldn't bear to be trapped in the parlor with its dusty furniture and drawn curtains. The long afternoon of reminiscences, display of old photographs kept in moldering albums, warm buttermilk forced upon me and drunk so as not to hurt the feelings of the old ladies was a delicate torture to me. I was aware that my father suffered the day impatiently as well; regarded it as a duty to be performed from time to time, in the name of family charity. My mother didn't seem to mind. In fact seemed to enjoy it as Da seemed to do. But, then, Mother was much given to family and my grandfather to tales of youth that might be shared more easily with Tassy and her housemate because they had the years to match his own. I bore the little pats and touchings, the buttermilk, and the heavy smell of old dust for a time, the measure of which was in my mother's keeping. When she thought it right, she'd excuse me to go out to play in the backyard, which was overgrown and tangled with wild blackberry and honeysuckle. The old house was nearly at the edge of the little town of Helms, about twenty miles outside of Rochester. Beyond the house and yard were very few dwellings or buildings of any sort. The road and sidewalks ran out no more than half a mile away, brought to an end in the face of an area known as the South Mountain Reservation, not quite a county park or game preserve, but something much more than a picnic ground. A small reservoir served part of the surrounding area's water needs. A full-grown wood, laced with shadowed paths, surrounded the lake on three sides. The county road marked the fourth. Da and I had often walked the woodland tracks and trails together in every season of the year, my grandfather pointing out the trees and flowering shrubs that he knew: canoe birch, a first messenger of autumn with its yellow leaves, the red maple and downy serviceberry flaming in the first week of the season. There was pepperidge, white oak, amur maple, and the common horse chestnut with its dark brown nuts from which Da fashioned rings for me to wear upon my fingers. Once we came upon a fringe tree, sometimes called old-man's-beard, in a summer glade. It was only after seeing it that Da discovered what it was from a book of such lore. The first time we saw it flowering in great clusters of white blossoms hanging from the branches we thought it quite magical and pretended to believe or did believe that it was a wonder available only to ourselves. Once, returning to it in midspring, it looked dead. That's the nature of the tree. I cried. In early summer it was richly flowered and foliaged again. I learned a small lesson about life, death, and resurrection. It was on a day in October that I went out beyond the backyard and walked the road into the wood, certain that I knew its paths and byways. I heard the birds speaking from the sheltering trees, turned red and gold; listened to the wind rustling the leaves, making music. Somewhere a wind harp sang out and tinged the day's failing light in melancholy. I walked on for a long while until I became aware that violet shadows, fast turning purple, were lying beneath the trees. A frog called out, heralding the coming of night, and a dusk cricket whispered back. I turned around to make my way back to the road and my Aunt Tassy's house. I stopped all at once, frozen to the spot, looking at the trunks of the trees, the shadows, and the choice of paths as though I'd never before been among them. I walked down one lane and then another, hurrying along for some distance, then turning back in uncertainty to try another way. Panic rose as thick as honey in my throat. My heart was racing. I ran along the paths, kicking up the dust with one shoe in a nervous hop. An owl screamed out in the growing dark. I started to run without caution, running through weeds and brush that slashed at my ankles. I began to sob, a frightened sound that added to my fright. I thought I heard my grandfather call my name. I ran faster and found myself in the glade with the tree called old-man's-beard standing starkly, stripped of its summer glory. It was no landmark to me, afforded no direction. I was lost. I stood very still, trying not to cry, waiting for the breath to still in me. When it did, I heard the soft spill of water to my right. I made my way through the underbrush, not caring about the lack of paths or the scratches I received on my hands and arms. I came to the reservoir and a spillway fashioned of logs. An inch of water poured over the edge, purling softly. Beyond were more trees. And beyond them was the sound of motorcars and their headlamps flickering through the tree trunks and limbs. The road to town. I had to get across, but I couldn't swim and was afraid. Afraid of wetting and spoiling my shoes even if I made it across without mishap. Afraid of drowning all alone. I thought awhile and could see no other way. I put my courage to the test. Bending over and placing my hands on the logs below the thin surface of the water, I walked fourfooted across the span, all fifty yards of it, and made the opposite shore. When I was back at Aunt Tassy's at last, I found the grown-ups still sitting in the parlor, telling stories, lost in a spell of old time. I'd scarcely been missed. My mother looked at me and smiled. My father said, "There you are. We're going now. Say goodbye to Aunt Tassy and Miss Charlotte. "Where'd you get those scratches, in the berry patch?" Aunt Tassy said. " Should clear it out. Doesn't bear much fruit anymore. Getting old." In the car driving back to Rochester I sat in the back with my grandfather, wanting to tell someone about my adventure but afraid of the scolding that might follow. Still, I'd acted bravely and I wanted someone to know of it even if my foolishness had to be revealed. I felt my grandfather's hand on my knee. I turned my head to see Da looking at my shoes. Da smiled into my eyes. "Were you lost, then?" he asked, putting his mouth close to my ear and whispering. "Yes, Da. By the spillway," I said, doing the same. "You walked across?" "Yes. I was afraid," I confided. "Afraid of being lost or walking the logs?" "Both. Of everything in the dark." My grandfather put pressure on my leg, a man's compliment. "Bravely done," he said. I must have sobbed at the memory because my mother looked at me swiftly, measuring my control. I wiped at my eyes with the heel of my hand. It was a little boy's gesture and I was immediately sorry for it. I hoped she wouldn't come over to comfort me. That would surely make me break down and cry like a baby. I lifted my chin, looked at her and tried a small smile which, happily, didn't slide off my face. My mother nodded and turned back to her quiet, mysterious contemplation of Da's old face. Da's eyes opened. They were filled with the most terrible fear and confusion for a moment. They cast about the room seeking something. They fell on me with such urgency in their expression that I stood up as though called. Da managed to raise his right hand and arm a trifle and no more, but it seemed to beckon me. My mother bent over Da. She tried to lift him and settle him more comfortably upon the pillows. My father turned from the window and moved to help. Da's eyes snapped. As sunken and collapsed as he seemed in the bed, his spirit was strong and insistent. Mother and Father seemed to understand that they were to stop their fussing over him. At least my mother said, "All right, Pa, " and moved away. Da turned his eyes to me again and I went to the bed and took his hand. It felt weak and loose, the way his face looked, all sagging and drawn to one side like the mask of a melting wax figure. The eye on the left teared badly, overrunning the dark pink well of the lower lid like water from a tilted saucer. I took a tissue from the box on the bedside table and gently wiped my grandfather's tears from his cheek. Da tried to smile at me. It was a terrible effort that made me want to cry out that he shouldn't try such expressions of thanks. Da opened his mouth to speak. Slobber ran from his mouth to his chin and I wiped that away as well. He tried to speak again. It was scarcely human, an animal's attempt to communicate, rough and painful to hear. "The race starts in the morning, Hugh. Dickens will win." At least that's what I think Da wanted to say, though it sounded nothing like it. But I seemed to understand, so closely had our minds and hearts become tuned to one another. The words all turned round by the stroke, syllables askew, were more a communication heart to heart than tongue to ear. I nodded and gripped my grandfather's hand, trying to tell him that I'd be watchful for Dickens's triumph over time and distance. That I'd be watching his own struggle to win back to health and home. "I'll be up with the sun, Da," I said. "I'll come tell you the time the birds went off, the weather and all, as soon as I know."  A small boy may see a saint in his grandfather, as I did, but a man seeks other means to know the man who, in his great age, reached down to childhood and helped me grow. I don't know exactly how this particular story I'm about to relate came to my attention. I'm sure my father didn't tell me of it; I doubt he would have approved of anyone knowing. Perhaps my mother told me, for, though it showed my grandfather to be somewhat sinful, it also showed him most human, and my mother would understand the dearness of that. It seems that my grandfather, grown restless at his job, had accepted the offer of another which would have required a move to New York City. It was to be a position as typesetter and linotype operator with a city newspaper. A step up, he said, and an end to his gypsy ways. A similar offer had been made to him right in Rochester, and Grandmother knew it, but he'd refused it as being too small an arena for his temperament. He might have been discontented with the nest he found her folding around him, but she'd settled into the little house by the stream like a bird. It made a quarrel between them. Both were stubborn and, in the end, Da went off to Manhattan alone. They were separated, then, by nearly the width of the state, almost two hundred miles as the crow flies. Far too far back in 1903 or 1904 to be trotting home every weekend. He did come home, of course, from time to time. I'm a gadling, I suppose, much like Da had been, but, unlike him, I've never lost the habit. Where once he'd chafed at being surrounded by too much comfort, he clearly came to savor it. Jenny bought him a great, soft Morris chair as a birthday surprise and that might well have been the final nail in his domestication. He'd tell me how he'd sit in it, paper in hand to be read between dozings. I know the feeling and fly from it. Da told me, too, that they played word games way back then. There'd been no television or even radio. They did have an early phonograph and listened to Enrico Caruso on it. In the night, I wonder, did he lie awake feeling his wife's body along the length of his back and thighs, and did her familiar body seem strange because of their separations? Was he reminded of strange bodies that had become familiar even in their variety? How did she feel? Had she ever come close to telling him that he needn't come home at all? Something happened, and this is the scene I can only piece together from what was told me or what I simply surmise. There was a lady a "sob-sister" she was called who worked on the newspaper Da worked for. The Herald I believe. She started out to be a friend, then a drinking companion. She was dead-ended because of her sex, relegated to the fashion page, women's page, little stories of human heart-throb designed to bring tears and sell papers. He'd lost out on some of his own dreams. He was no poet, but perhaps she thought he was or could be. I imagine they got on well together, feeding each other's hopes, bolstering each other's egos. Pretending in one another's company that they would find their way, someday, to that special fate or fame awaiting them. She'd come to think that fate was meant for both of them together. I suppose she pressed marriage on him. Had he resisted? Had she lowered her expectations and agreed to simply live with him? Did he consider the possibility of having, without a second marriage but in practical fact, two wives, two households, and, probably soon enough, two sets of children? It's happened. Did he love the woman? Did she love him? I'm not sure that really matters. What matters is that he went home to put the virtues of those two lives side by side. It was a time of decision and, according to whoever told the tale to me, Jenny knew it. She'd challenged him right off. "So one of the cats you've teased has scratched you," Jenny'd said clearly in the dark. "What?" he'd probably shouted in sheer startlement. "Don't you understand me, Henri?" "Well, you'll have to speak clearer than that," he'd stammered. "I thought you writers enjoyed a good metaphor," Jenny said. She reached out, turned on the bedside lamp, and arranged herself against the pillows, covers to her collarbones, prepared to adjudicate his case. He remained lying as he was, back turned to her. "I think you'd best sit up and look this matter squarely in the eye, Henri. I have for some long time." He did as he was told. "I meant to say," Jenny went on, "that you've had your women " "I would like " he interrupted. "Don't," Jenny interrupted in her turn. "I don't want you to protest your innocence. Neither am I going to say that I understand a man's need for a woman 'just for the sake of his health.' I don't think you'd buy my taking lovers for the sake of mine. You've had your pleasure." "I never deprived you or the children of anything in order to satisfy any appetite of mine." "Do be quiet, Henri," Jenny said, almost sharply. "I'm trying to sort this out for both of us. I expect you would support your children. They're as much yours as mine. Of that you can be sure," she added significantly. "So I won't be pinning any roses on you for acting in good faith in circumstances which you created. "Up to now your affairs have been casual. That's been clear to me." "Didn't you mind?" Henri asked, somehow offended. "Very much. But I'd handed you an ultimatum. I'd refused to go with you because I wanted this home. I intended to be as fair as I knew how to be." "More than fair," he murmured unhappily. "I think so, yes," she agreed. "That's so much water over the bridge." "Over the dam, " he said absently. "Whichever," Jenny agreed with no sign of her annoyance. "But it's clear to me that one of your ladies is asking for more than your night-time company." "How do you know that?" "Is it true?" "Yes, but how do you know?" Jenny smiled softly. "My skin tells me things, Henri. You know you ought to listen to your skin." "What do you mean?" "Well," she said and thought awhile, choosing her comparisons. "Does your skin feel good when you walk down by the river through the mist?" "It does. " "Better than the alleys and streets of New York?" "Much." "Does your skin feel good on Sunday afternoon when you've had your dinner and you're sitting in your chair by the fire on a winter's afternoon?" He nodded, eyes misting up like a man being told about things in which he'd lost the right to partake. "How does it feel when you put on freshly washed pajamas and slip between freshly laundered and ironed sheets?" "Goddam wonderful," Henri blurted out, about to cry. "Better than the sheets changed when the thought comes into a chambermaid's head?" "Much." "You'll sleep in your underwear back there, won't you?" Henri nodded his head, much ashamed of such slovenly habits. "That's what I mean about listening to your skin." He was thoughtful for a long while. He looked at her dear face, hair long and loose and heavy along her shoulders. She looked back at him calm and composed, having had her say, prepared to forgive him, he knew, but not prepared to accept any prolongation of his tomcat ways or wayward existence. "Can I try an experiment?" he said. "Tell me what it is." He unbuttoned his pajama top and took it off. Jenny lowered the bodice of her nightgown. They came together, skin to skin. "I'm coming home," he'd said. At least that's the way I imagine it may have been, sitting here with the sun slipping down the sky. |
