Part 60 (2/2)
”What went on up there.”
”He asked me not to tell you. On the principle that telling you would be the same as telling William.” But I did not say what it was I must not tell. A commonplace. First crack at the bride's crack would never any more belong to William's son.
”Birds of a feather, that's William all over. Indirect, everything through Connelly. I think it's sound. Premarital trial run. If I'd done it with William we wouldn't have gotten married in the first place.”
I said, ”You don't just call off a wedding-”
”Oh don't you?” she sneered. ”Where'd you get that?”
”William's son wouldn't.”
”You mean it wasn't satisfactory? A failure? It didn't work out? He didn't”-she seized it-”tell you the details?”
”No,” I said.
My mother was thoughtful but avid. ”Of course he's younger, not that that's an obstacle-”
”He's not younger, he's lots older than she is.”
”Who's talking about that Pettigrew girl? You I mean. I had you before Sarah Jean ever came into the picture, well didn't I? I used to think it would be such a funny ironic thing if he fell in love with you. William's boy. It would make everything respectable again, not that I gave a d.a.m.n about that sort of thing. But he never did.”
”He never did,” I agreed.
”And you, you never fall in love with anybody,” she accused. ”Well go to bed if you're that tired, you look like an old maid dumped there. I'm staying up, Enoch's flying in. I wish you could wear clothes. You can't wear clothes, that's only part of the trouble. What about that family?”
”They're gone.”
”Thank G.o.d for small favors. It's a nice empty island again, maybe I'll go and live there.” The little quiet lay under her face. ”The house?” she asked. ”How did it look?”
”Big.”
”Big, that's right. Big as an Emba.s.sy. I really ought to go and live there. That'll be a solution. Oh, sit up, sit on a chair like a person.”
”He burned all the chairs,” I said.
”Who?”
”Except the ones with the kings' heads. Nick. And the piano stool.”
”Don't talk to me about Nick will you? I have to figure out my whole life. I have to re-figure it out. What do I care about kings' heads? They go rolling in the end, that's, exactly the point. That's where you just don't seem to follow. You don't know a thing, not one thing. You think just because we're rid of a threat there's nothing more in the world to worry about, all the rest comes easy.”
I said, ”He wasn't really a threat.”
”Look, are you going to go on and on about Nick? Is that what you're here for? To go on and on? He wasn't really a threat, oh that's very nice, I expected that. You've always been on his side. I realize that. The reason you were born was for him to have somebody on his side. Celestial design. Look, he's dead, what's the use of going on and on about a dead blackmailer? He sweettalked you, I realize that. That's his way. You can't see that. He convinced you, right? Well he was out to convince you. That's why he wanted you over there.”
”He didn't want me.”
”That's right, he's got you now. You swallowed it and he's got you. The Man of No Desires. I know the whole thing, I've got it all by heart, please don't bother me with it. There's not a thing he wants, he doesn't want a thing. Just like the Buddha after nirvana. A holy man. What I want to know is how come these holy men always want to sit in a temple full of virgins? He told you he wasn't a blackmailer? 'Me? I'm no blackmailer, right? Is that what he told you?”
”No.”
”No. So?”
”I could see it. He wasn't that way.”
”He wasn't that way! She could see it! He sweettalked you and you believed every d.a.m.n stale word. Don't tell me how he looked while he was doing it, I don't want to know, I'm not interested. Eyes like blueberries, nose like on a statue et cetera et cetera. Don't start on me with that. Then you'll say it wasn't just his looks, it was his soul. Well there is no immortal soul. Some people don't know a horsethief when they're in the middle of smelling the manure.” Her look was maimed by anger. She was insulted. Then it came to me that her tone was formal, traditional, a fiction: she spoke not of a man but of a legend, a theory, an ancient familiar crotchet. ”I don't say it isn't pitiful. I mean even if it was a complete stranger and I read the report in tiny type somewhere that a complete stranger got drowned somewhere I would think it was pitiful just the same. Even for a crook to die. I'm against capital punishment, you know that. I think all death is pitiful. I'm against Death.”
With this proclamation she told her grievance. She still believed in her own duration, her ascendancy, even her perpetuity; she still meant to s.n.a.t.c.h a coruscating feather from the breast of the world. She was against Death; her grievance was against Nick; but her grief skirted both. Her grief was not for Nick. Nick was as little to her as Death. Nick and Death were the same. To my stepfather she had whimpered the very truth: she felt nothing. It was not grief then when she had mourned my impossibilities and what I was issue of and how I would not be freed: not grief but fabrication, grievance, pique. Fake, fake, every tear a fake, a theatricality, a fraud, hoax, and profane replica of loss. Her hysteria was only an expert indifference: she had never cared whether I was free or how I was made or where I must go. What she cared for was the Emba.s.sy. She was not in pursuit of my freedom but of a palace. I knew this, and from the beginning; therefore wondered why now behind the clamor of her grievance she hoisted the terrible small silence of disaster.
She said: ”The Senate has confirmed.”
Her voice had a certain lapidary uncompromisingness, like an epitaph.
”When did it happen?”
”The minute Enoch got there. Before he got there. They called him up and told him to fly out right away, and when the plane came down it was practically all over Was.h.i.+ngton. They met him and they told him.”
”Fast,” I said.
”Oh, fast, you bet. They rushed it through. The fastest confirmation in Senate history. It's made him a laughingstock. A figure of fun, it took no time at all. They didn't ask him a single question. He did all that reading up on rainfall and cows and all their juntas”-she said the j of jugular for this word-”and it all went for nothing. A clown, a Punch-and-Judy show, they practically banged him on the nose with it-”
”It means they like him, doesn't it, if it went like that?”
”It means they were in a hurry. It's made him a fool.”
”What's the difference what it's made him if it's made him Amba.s.sador? That's the main thing, isn't it?” I watched the cautious point of her tongue. I said: ”Now you have it.”
”No I don't have it.”
”All right”-I thought her pedantic-”Enoch has it.”
”I'm in the middle of re-figuring out my whole life, I told you, can't you follow that? My life is changed. The whole basis of my life from now on, can't you follow?”
”You'll have to do something about your geography,” I agreed. ”And go to Berlitz for irregular verbs.”
”Is that what you think's involved in changing a life? Is that what you think a turning-point is? Look, I'm at a turning-point, can't you understand that?”
”So am I,” I said.
”You?” She was blank.
”Someone died.”
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