Before My Life Began (55 page)

He sucks on his finger, presses down, takes his thumb away and sees that the cut is not deep—a slight crescent, like the hinge of a cuticle, along the right edge of the forefinger. Damn! He puts a Band-Aid over the cut, pours himself more coffee, sits. The cut stings and he knows he should put antiseptic on it, but he does not want to leave his studio; if he stays at his desk and works, he thinks he may, in the silence, be able to retrieve the peace that has been temporarily shattered.

He closes his eyes, sees Lucius smiling at him. Lucius will be waking now, getting ready to go to church. Aaron imagines Lucius throwing off a blanket, stretching his long brown body. Lucius's skin seems somewhat pale to Aaron, as if the gray of morning light has dusted it. There is a small community of blacks in Amherst, descendants, for the most part, of slaves who made their way North in mid-nineteenth century, settled in the area as servants, blacksmiths, carpenters. Some of them were free blacks. Lucius enjoys being in their presence. Lucius believes in God. He believes, quite literally, in the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour and Redeemer, and his belief has allowed him to take up Aaron's suggestion: to move out into the world beyond Aaron's family. He has even written to Rose and Carrie about his spiritual rebirth, has asked them to forgive him, to think of coming North when he can afford to send for them. But how strange, Aaron thinks, given Lucius's life, given the brutality inflicted upon him by God's world, by whites who profess, too, to believe in Jesus. God's existence or nonexistence does not much interest Aaron—it never has—though he does wonder at the ability of someone with a mind as clear and piercing as Lucius's—a mind at least equal to his own—to believe and care.

Aaron opens the sliding door, closes it, walks down to the woods. He turns, sees that the doors to his studio look like silver mirrors. Nothing moves, yet he is frightened. Why? Given what he has already lost, the threats he has had to endure, what could happen now that can have the power to terrify? Still, the question is there: if the dangers from the world are truly gone, will dangers from within now emerge? Will such dangers be worse? Are there dangers there—fears—that he has been able throughout his life to deny, to hide from? He smiles, thinks of how Susan would enjoy knowing that he thinks this way sometimes. When she talks with him about the novels she reads and the psychology books she studies, she argues that of the two sets of dangers human beings are subject to—those from without and those from within—those from within are infinitely more terrifying. Precisely because, she says, they are as infinite and unpredictable as they are mysterious and intangible. Is it so? The danger now, he supposes, is not to his life or to the lives of those he loves but to what he has
made
of his life. If one of their children should die? If their house should burn down? If he or Susan should become seriously ill?

Such possibilities, when he imagines them, do not scare him. But in that vague distance he often senses between himself and Susan—that air with no color, that air that also lies, he knows, in an empty room near his heart—there is, still, something that disturbs. But what?

“Don't move, mister.”

He freezes, his hands moving upward instinctively in a gesture of surrender. The voice is husky, assured. Why didn't he hear any sounds? He walked down to the woods because he saw something move. Why, then, wasn't he more alert?

Warm hands cover his eyes, thumbs against his temples.

“Scared?”

“Yes.”

“I' m sorry.”

Susan's hands grasp him about the chest, so that he can feel the length of her body against his own. He turns.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were sleeping.”

“Benjamin called. He wanted to come home early.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“You were working and I didn't want to interrupt. And—”

“And what?”

“And I was afraid that if you went, there might be trouble.”

“Tell me.”

“That's all.” She rests her head against his chest, pushes at his chin with her forehead. “God, your heart is beating so wildly, Aaron!”

“Tell
me.”

“I think I'm scared now too, just listening to your heartbeat. I
am
sorry. I only meant to surprise you. Really.”

He kisses her forehead, her eyes, tells her that it's all right. He holds her tightly, realizes that what he sees in the empty chamber near his heart is a vial of poison. He imagines a cutaway drawing of the heart, the vial perched now in the upper left-hand chamber. He imagines Nicky reaching inside, taking the vial down, as if from a shelf. He imagines Nicky giving the vial to Gail. He imagines himself watching Gail as she tilts her head backwards, drinks.

In his dream he is, as ever, able to stand inside dark rooms without fear. But what if, instead of being inside the dark room, the room is somewhere within
him?
He shivers.

“Yes?”

“Sometimes I do get scared,” he says. Can he ask her about the room? If there is a dark room inside him somewhere, what could possibly be hiding in it, he wonders, that could cause him more pain than memory can? “I know it's irrational, but sometimes I just get scared that everything is going to be taken away from me. You. The children. Lucius. The house. My work.”

“Oh sweetheart!” She reaches up and kisses his chin, touches his eyes with her fingers. “I
am
sorry about—”

“It's as if there's this room down here—” he touches his chest “—and as if some little boy who looks like me enters it with a smile on his face and—”

“Yes?”

“I don't know. Awful things happen, I suppose. But I can't
see
them. All I see is blackness, the boy sliding down a dark tunnel. All I feel is the boy's terror, his heart pounding, bursting—”

Susan smiles. “Men do fear death as children fear to go into the dark, don't they? Even if they're as brave as you are. Your fear's not uncommon.” She presses her ear against his chest. He thinks of Ellen, when Gail was pregnant, listening to Emilie's rapid heartbeat. He thinks of Ellen's fingers, moving gently along the planes of his face. He imagines himself leading her through a house—he and Lucius have framed it, put on the roof—and explaining to her why he does the things he does. He sees her feeling the nails and hammers and saws, touching the beams, searching the air where the walls will eventually go. He sees her beside him, in his studio, and he is describing a drawing to her so that she can, inside the dark room of her mind, draw the house that he has imagined. He sees his father, in his bedroom, sitting patiently while he copies a picture of Pee Wee Reese from
Sport
magazine. When he shows the picture to his father, his father smiles in an easy and natural way that is surprising. His father's face seems almost handsome in the halflight that slips in across the fire escape. Half-light, half-life, Aaron thinks. Ellen's desire, without eyes, to see a world she would never see—to know exactly what it was like—was this anything like his desire to imagine a life other than the one he had? He must, as a child, despite Abe, have wanted a different life. It was simply that he didn't believe he would ever know how to get one.

“Do you remember the first time we spent the night together and you grabbed me—the sun was just coming up—and started trembling because, you said, you were frightened of losing me?” Susan asks.

“Yes.”

“I think I knew I loved you then—might love you forever—even though I hardly knew you, hardly knew anything about you. You were so amazing as a lover—it just went on and on and on—and then you were suddenly such a vulnerable little boy.”

“I suppose.”

Susan's body, against his own, is warm. He strokes her hair. He remembers sitting with Tony on the cold hard step in front of his building on Martense Street. He wonders: would Tony believe that Aaron is now living within the life the two of them dreamt of that night so many years ago?

“Can we go inside?” Susan asks. “I'm starting to get cold.”

“Would you tell me about Paul and Benjamin?”

They walk toward the house, holding hands.

“There's not much to tell. I went and took care of things and then I came back here. I was upset, I guess, but I didn't want to worry you. I wanted to think things through by myself first. So instead of going to you I came down here to walk it off, to be alone for a while.”

“Is Benjamin upstairs?”

“No. By the time I got there, in fact, I think Ben was sorry he'd called. He didn't want to admit he'd needed to do so. You know Ben—he hates to admit he ever needs anything or anybody. But it did scare me some.”

“What scared you?” Aaron stops. “Paul?”

“No. Paul is Paul. Harmless. Childish. I was scared of
Benjamin
. Of what to do about his anger.” She shakes her head, as if to clear it. “Okay.” She exhales. “Paul claims that Benjamin tried to kill him—to strangle him.”

“Maybe he had cause,” Aaron says, and as he does—the words surprise him—something eases in his chest. He puts his arm around Susan.

“What?”

“I don't buy the business about Paul being harmless and childish. The man is disturbed. The man likes to prey on—”

“Maybe he had cause,” Susan repeats. She begins to pull away, then relaxes. “Good Lord,” she says, her hand to her mouth as if to keep herself from giggling. “You may be right, Levin. Do you know that?”

“The boy has good instincts. I've always said so.”

“I don't disagree.”

“Do you agree with what Lucius claims, though—that Paul is
evil?
That the children shouldn't be there at all?”

“No.” She clicks her tongue. “Lucius. Lucius is very much into evil these days. It's become his favorite word. If I believed Lucius, then I—”

“Okay. Tell me the rest.”

“Paul took me aside and said that Benjamin had set his alarm clock—it was what woke Paul—and had tiptoed into his bedroom. When Paul opened his eyes Benjamin had his hands on Paul's throat.”

“You believe him?”

“Partly. I mean, Ben does have an amazing temper.”

“When provoked.” Aaron shakes his head. “If he wanted to kill Paul he could have gone into the kitchen and borrowed a knife. Listen. Ben's a smart boy. He knows Paul is too strong for him.”

Aaron opens the sliding door. They enter his studio. Susan shakes off her jacket, sets it on top of a filing cabinet.

“Did Ben tell you what he was so angry about?”

“On the phone he said something about Paul wanting him to dance with him and Jen and Debbie, Paul threatening to send Benjamin home if he wouldn't.” Susan sits on Aaron's stool, studies his drawing for a few seconds, then looks up. Aaron sees that her eyes are moist. “Do you know what he said, Aaron? He said that Paul threatened to give him up if Ben wouldn't do the things Paul wanted him to. Same old Paul—he threatened to send Ben back to our house, to force him to live with me full-time. ‘But he can't
make
me,' Ben said.”

“Can't make him
dance
with them?”

“Can't make him leave.” Susan bites on her lower lip, gestures to Aaron to come to her. She takes his hands in hers, kisses the knuckles on Aaron's right hand, bites lightly on the stubs of his missing fingers. “Why does that move me so, his saying that?”

“Because Benjamin is Paul's son, but he's stronger than Paul. Because Ben would never reject Paul the way Paul rejects him.”

“He'll only try to kill him, is that it?”

“Maybe.”

“Oh Aaron, you
are
a smart man.” She wipes tears from her eyes.

“Only it's just so hard to know what to do sometimes, with Ben. I try to leave him alone, to let him find his own way, but there's something about him—do you mind my saying it—that reminds me of Paul, and—” She stops, rests her head against Aaron's chest again. “I get confused, sweetheart. Sometimes I get confused. About Jen too. Will you tell me why I was so lucky, after Paul, to have found a man like you—a good man, with a good heart—who's so patient with me, with
all
my children? Who understands them so well? What can I do, though? If I forbid them to go there, that may only make the idea more attractive and—”

“And what?”

“And Paul will always find ways to get to them. When he's determined to have his way, he's just like—”

“Me?”

“No. Like Benjamin is what I was going to say.”

She walks to the window. Aaron imagines tender shoots of grass being pressed down beneath their shoes, beneath the thin layer of snow. He imagines the snow melting, the grass bending upwards.

“Like you too, I suppose.” She talks without looking at him. “I know what the right answer is. The right answer is that I have to trust the children to figure these things out for themselves. Still, I don't think it would hurt to talk with them later, to let them know I'm worried, to let them know it's all right with me if they choose not to see their father.” She turns, faces him. Her voice is warm. “You're very happy when you're here by yourself, aren't you?”

“Yes.” He smiles. “Happier than I ever expected to be, in this life.”

“In this life.” She walks around his drafting table, touches the back of his neck, ruffles his hair. He wonders how it was that, in the cold morning air, her fingers were warm. He imagines her sitting at the base of a tree, thinking about Benjamin and Jennifer. He sees her with her hands tucked between her legs. He thinks of Nicky, in Ohio, sitting on the lawn in front of the tents, singing. You
like being a father, don't you?

“I like talking with you about the children,” Susan says. “In addition to being smart, you have good sense, Levin. Did anyone ever tell you that?”