A Garden of Earthly Delights (42 page)

“Hell you don't.” Clara laughed, yanking at his hair. In an instant she was playful, laughing. Making a game of it: “Do what I say, Swan. Why d'you think I'm here, this place I can hardly breathe, except for
you.
” It wasn't a question. Swan stared at his mother, fearful she would say something she wouldn't be able to take back. He felt panic for her, suddenly. How could she make her way among these people who knew so much more than she did? What if she lost everything, after coming so far? “Swan, what the hell are you looking at? Like some damn ol' retard, I swear. Sometimes.” Clara stood at the bureau mirror primping the back of her hair the way you'd pet a cat. The image in the mirror leaned toward her as if for a kiss. Ashy-blond hair, smooth healthy skin, a blur of pale blue eyes and parted lips about to whisper—what? Swan's heart began to beat in terror for his mother, and of her.

“Well. We got here, hon. After all these years.” She paused, her eyes suddenly sharp through the mirror. “What's wrong? You look like you're going to be sick.…”

“I … I don't like it here, I guess.”

“Oh, yes! You'll like it here. You'll love it.”

Clara threw the hairbrush down onto the floor. A nerve in Swan's eye twitched. Swan had seen his mother cry many times—she began to cry now. It wasn't a sad helpless crying like a child's crying but a hard angry baffled crying. It seemed to Swan that Clara must be crying because of what he'd said, for of course he'd said the wrong thing, but he knew it wasn't only just that; with Clara, it would be more. When she cried like this it wasn't for him. She cried only for herself.

Someone knocked at the door, quietly. Clara called in her bright happy voice, “Come in!”

He entered the room, almost shyly. His stooped shoulders, his uplifted hands, his stiff-legged walk and the expression on his face
as if he were in the presence of something sacred—these made Swan love him and hate him at the same time.

Clara cried, over Revere's shoulder, “Swan, go away. Outside!”

Quickly, not looking back, he left.

Walking fast and blind along the hall. Colliding with chairs, kicking at them. “Goddamn.” It was Clara's voice in him, frustrated yet laughing, too. “Goddamn goddamn damn
damn.
” He would not hear anything behind him in that room, they had shut him out of.

At a high window oddly shaped like an egg, the sun was blazing. Seen from Revere's windows even the sun looked different. This should have surprised Swan, yet did not.
From now on. Someday. You will have everything.
He felt the excitement, yet the weight of it. He was jamming fingers into his ears, not just to blot out sound but to hurt. Now he wouldn't be able to come to Clara in the night, she wouldn't be alone ever again. That man, his “father,” would be with her. They would shut the door behind them as they'd shut it at the other house but now it would never really open again. His “brothers” would be waiting for him.…

It was true, Swan thought. All that Clara predicted. For he had no choice, if Clara had so predicted.
The son he loves best.
It would happen because he, Swan, knew; and his “brothers” did not know. And Revere did not know. He would wait, and he would grow up. Already in his heart he was grown: he was not a child. He was older than Clark, even.

He smiled, thinking this. Removed his fingers from his throbbing ears: had Clara called
Swan
? But there was nothing.

And he knew the adult he would grow into: not Revere, that kindly man, but someone else. Someone else not kind, but sharp-eyed as Clara. That other man had a face Swan could almost see and in his dreams maybe he would see it. There was no haste, it would happen as it must. He would grow into what he would be, without choosing. Revere was his father, and he would love his father yet his real father was someone else. That was his and Clara's secret: he would die with that secret. Now he understood something of the blind dazzling sun. No words, no logic. Only the heat, the terrible blinding light.

The morning of the funeral.

Swan had awakened before dawn. His sleep was feathery-light, never strong enough to hold him for long. And then he lay in bed listening to the crows in the tall elms outside the windows. Their cries that were harsh, jubilant; cries of early morning, predators having gotten through the night, and hungry now for their prey. Swan thought
We are going to a funeral today. All the way to the city.

In the two years he and Clara had lived in this house there had been funerals in the Revere family, but Swan had not needed to attend. “You're spared, sweetie. This time.” Clara kissed him, as if they were conspirators. Taut-faced, cinching a shiny black belt around her waist to make her bust and hips more shapely in a black dress of some brocaded fabric purchased for just this occasion: death. Clark had had to go to these funerals: he was seventeen now, a big boy. Jonathan had gone to one funeral. Robert and Swan had stayed home with the housekeeper and had become allies and friends, almost; but when the family returned, Robert had immediately forgotten him. Tagging after his bigger brothers, whom he adored.

Today, Swan would be taken with the others. He'd nudged his head against Clara hoping to be absolved, but no.

“It won't kill you, sweetie. It has to be done.”

Almost Swan didn't mind so much, being allowed to sit up front in the car between Clara and Revere. He could stare out the wind-shield at the landscape, that never ceased to fascinate. His three brothers would ride in the roomy backseat, close-faced, sullen.

Aunt Esther asked to be “forgiven,” another time. Couldn't ride in the car because the motion made her heart flutter.

The crows had wakened him, and he carried their shrillness in his head, downstairs to breakfast. There was no escape: every morning they ate breakfast together in the big kitchen. (Revere rose very early, before dawn. But he drank only coffee at that time. He did not “sit down to eat” until seven A.M. with his family and this was a principle of his.) At one end of the table Revere sat leaning forward onto his elbows and at the other end Clara sat and when
Aunt Esther was feeling strong enough to join them she sat between them. Clark, Jonathan, and Robert had their places at the table, that could not be varied. This morning the brothers were edgy, silent. Yet their silence had the look of dogs that had been snarling and yipping at one another a minute before.

When Swan sat quietly at his place, he glanced nervously at Revere, who was mournful-eyed and distracted, and did not return Swan's glance. Often the two smiled at each other, when Swan took his place; but this morning Revere's eyes were glazed over like a scrim of ice on water.

Clark was rubbing his shaved jaws ruefully. He'd cut himself more than once: he was the only one of the brothers who had to shave. Robert was mumbling something to Jonathan about a missing muskrat trap of his, and Jonathan laughed behind his hand, disguising the sound as a cough. Jonathan was fourteen now, narrow-faced, with dark pinched-together features and a blemished skin and not enough flesh on his arms and legs. Seated across from Swan, he never looked at Swan; his eyes were hooded, secretive. Clark, closest to the stove, was watching Clara with a small smile. She was looking sleepily pretty this morning with her hair loose on her shoulders, in a pink quilted robe Revere had bought for his sons to give her on Christmas morning. In all that household, Swan thought, there was nowhere to look so shining as Clara.

“I'll take something up to Esther,” Clara told Revere. She was waiting for the eggs to fry; a cautious cook, since her instinct was to be hurried and slapdash. “I feel sorry for her.…”

Clark said quickly, “Aunt Esther wasn't ever well. Even … a long time ago.” Conscious of having said something wrong, as Clark often did, he continued, clumsily flirting with Clara, “How come you aren't like that, Clara? Sick-like, I mean.”

Clara laughed, as if she'd been complimented.

“That's not my nature, I guess. I'm healthy as a horse.”

Revere said to Clark, “That's enough, now. This isn't a happy occasion.”

Clark's face reddened. He was a big thick-shouldered boy, almost his father's size. There was something heavy and swerving in him yet good-natured, the same idle lumbering gait you see in bulls
that have been castrated, safe inside their pens. “I didn't mean anything disrespectful, Pa.” The word
disrespectful
hung conspicuously in the kitchen air amid a sound of sizzling bacon and sausage.

Revere seemed not to hear, however. He was sitting with his elbows on the table in a way he forbade his sons. Already he was dressed for the drive, in a starched white shirt and dark necktie and darker coat that fitted him tight across the chest. Swan had heard Clara complain to him half-seriously that his expensive clothes never fit him exactly, so they didn't look like what they cost: that, to Clara, was a shame.

Clara spoke in her light glimmering way about the upcoming drive: she was looking forward to meeting her kinfolk, as she called them. “And Swan. I mean, Steven. It will be good for him, too.”

Revere murmured a vague assent. Clark, Jonathan, Robert stared moodily at Clara. Was she saying something wrong? Swan guessed that she was, without knowing it. In this household, so much was unsaid; it was like running in a marshy place, where you could sink your foot in quicksand and fall flat on your stomach. Swan understood that the boys were thinking of their mother who was dead.
Whoever the woman was, we didn't know her. We don't have to miss her. Only just respect her memory.
Clara had advised Swan, as if instucting herself.

Swan knew that Revere and the boys went to visit the cemetery every other week or so. They made their plans quietly, maybe secretly. The boys' mother had been dead now for two years, Swan knew. In his and Clara's presence they never spoke of her.

Clara served them breakfast—“My men. All of you so handsome.” She made a playful ceremony of it, placing strips of bacon and tiny sausages on napkins to soak up the excess grease. The fried eggs were slightly scorched at the edges, and some of the yolks were cooked hard, but otherwise delicious. Swan liked it that Clara served Revere first, acknowledging how special he was; then she served the others, beginning with Clark. But, serving Swan, she touched the back of his head lightly to signal
Hey! I love you best.

In this Revere household, they had such small secret signals between them. Sometimes only just a glance was enough.

Now Clara smiled at them all. Urging them to eat while they could. “We're going on a long trip, remember!”

It was a happy time, Swan thought. Or would have been except for the
funeral.
The
wake.
He had no idea what these words meant except he wished he could stay home.

Sunlight flooded the kitchen and lit up the shining copper pans Clara had bought from a mail-order catalogue. Also Clara had ordered fluffy yellow curtains with tiny red flowers on them for the kitchen windows. For the parlor that was so dark and somber even by day she'd ordered similar curtains, of a gauzy white material with tiny red dots in it, curtains that came to only the windowsills, and seeing these in the parlor Aunt Esther had protested, “Clara, no. I'm afraid, dear—
no.
”

Clara had torn the curtains down, her face flushed and angry.

Goddamn old bitch. Why doesn't she die, the old bag.

Swan couldn't understand what was wrong with the curtains, he'd thought they were pretty. Like Clara he felt pushed and herded around by the old woman, you could feel Aunt Esther's power in the house, that Clara had to back down. Still, Clara had the boys carry most of the old furniture upstairs to the attic. By mail order from a Port Oriskany furniture store she'd purchased a handsome living room “suite”—oversized leather sofa and chairs, brass floor lamps, sunburst-framed mirrors and a shaggy wine-colored carpet.

Clara was asking Robert would he like another piece of raisin toast? The piece he'd taken had a burnt crust. Robert seemed about to say yes then changed his mind and said no, what he had was all right.

Swan dreaded Clara addressing Jonathan that way, but Clara knew better. After Swan, Robert was Clara's favorite son.

Robert had clear skin and eyes that were flecked with hazel; he was the nicest-looking of the Revere boys, with a sweet, flushed face and a habit of smiling nervously; something about him made Swan think of a rabbit fattened in a cage. Jonathan was lean, snaky-quick and unpredictable; if it hadn't been for Jonathan, Robert would have been Swan's friend. The week before, Jonathan had
pelted a squirrel to death with heavy stones just to make Swan cry, and Robert had begged for him to stop. “I hate you! You always want to kill things.”

“Lucky you, you're not a goddamned squirrel,” Jonathan had sneered.

If Revere had known, Jonathan would have been punished. But Robert would never have told. Swan would never have told.

Clara, finally sitting down, lifted her fork to her mouth and tried to eat; she sipped at coffee eagerly, and burnt her mouth; seeing Revere's eyes on her, she said edgily, “Oh, honey. I wish we didn't have to go. A funeral makes me …” Her voice trailed off weakly.

“If you don't want to accompany us, Clara, you really don't have to. My family would understand.”

“No! They wouldn't. They would judge me, and not like me.”

“Clara, no.”

Swan stared at his plate. The mess of broken eggs and congealing grease. He and the Revere boys squirmed in embarrassment when Revere and Clara spoke like this, in a quick intimate exchange as if they were alone. Clara, calling that old man
honey
! You could hear the tremor in Revere's voice; you could see the sick helpless love in the man's face. And Clara, exasperated, laughing in her edgy brittle way, fluffing out her hair with her hands like a willful child.

Revere said quietly, “Clara, nobody likes funerals.”

Mandy had arrived, to clean up in the kitchen. A short heavy woman older than Revere; prim and prune-faced, Swan thought. Always her suety gray eyes were trailing onto Clara, disliking her. And when Clara spoke to Mandy, the older woman stiffened and never met her eye. Mandy behaved as if Revere was God, with exaggerated solicitude and deference; of the boys, she favored Robert because he was the youngest. Swan was invisible to her, she seemed scarcely aware of him. Now she busied herself at the sink, while casting a sidelong look at Clara who was wiping her eyes with a napkin. Swan would have liked to shout at the old woman
You're ugly! You're old! You were never like my mother!