Cartesian Sonata: And Other Novellas (17 page)

Maybe he could strike a bargain. Walter opened one eye. They were still here: his things, his home, his history. He had new friends, how could he leave Uncle Charlie and Aunt Sophia, or May, Edna … Nona … or … or Cousin Clella, Miss Leach? … He bet the lace buffet set was still around. And Bertha’s towel. A deal. He could offer to stay long-term, at a reduced rate, which Bettie would be happy for, since then there’d never be a vacancy, and always someone who could be counted on, quiet and regular, and helpful even here and there, bringing wood in or taking bags to the car or picking up a few things in town, someone who wouldn’t mind being prayed over in the morning, who would look forward to it, who would fold his hands if it pleased her to see them folded, who’d believe, who’d cherish what she cherished, her family history would be half his, he’d ask after her husband’s health, he’d listen to her stories, he’d relish her food—she’d like that—and the table … 
and the table would be set for the morning light every morning, the wood shining up through the lace like a winter river through ice … ah … the pain was dreadful; he could offer to help survey the household accounts; it was dreadful; he could offer advice on improving efficiency; it was dreadful; with his one eye he saw a slice of kiwi gleaming like a green coin dug from a trove of treasure …

It would have to be. It would simply have to be. Walter stood up. He pretended to be vigorous and hardy. He would be … what?… well, worthy. Like a summer coat, he would put on an optimistic outlook. He would make his soul work out as though it was some fatty in the gym. He would make himself measure up. Hadn’t he stood in a doorway as a kid to have a line marked on the jamb where his head reached? It was his last chance to be Walter Riffaterre. Steamy soaks in the tub would soften his hardest thoughts. And Bettie’s wholesome big breakfasts would warm and thicken the cold thin wire he was. Think of a life lived alongside … no … lived
at
this desk, so full of marvels he hadn’t yet catalogued them all. He had to make it happen. He’d be so sweet his teeth would melt. And the wedding guests—dear people—would line up to shake his hand: Maude and Virgil and Gladys, Mertis Sturtevant especially. Each would hand him a present: a silver butter knife, thank you kindly, an alarm clock, needed that, a picture whose frame was made of fruit, how original, a pickle fork, so thoughtful. It would be like being a groom. No more checkered shirts and dumb belts and tight pants. Money and spoons.

Walter put the booklet back where he had found it, open and tented. Next to it was a wedding crèche with tiny toy figures of a bride and groom—standing together of course—at the edge of a puddle of Everlastings in the middle of which was a small glass dome enclosing a captured cotton bird and two—wasn’t it?—two twigs interwoven with a pink-and-blue ribbon. Of
course. These were figures from the cake. How clever. Then pink and blue for babies. And there’s a piece of stiff paper the size of a playing card propped against the glass. I see it. I am sitting here at my desk and I see it, I pick it up. “Blessings on you for not smoking here.” Back of the ensemble is a yellow candle. There was—there is—there is certainly no concern for fire.

Yet who would blacken these wicks by lighting them? who would risk wax on the glass, the doilies, the polished wood below. Candle stumps are so spoiled, runny and irregular. They were here—pure, unlit and unharmed—so he could recollect light, its flicker, and remember romance.

Walter held his breath. Should he look now in the holes below? Or should he save that for another night? Would there be another night, any other night? Well, there wasn’t much: a spare candle, a small Bible (here it was), an even smaller book on the language of flowers, a greeting card, a clear glass bowl of poh … that stuff … against which was propped a reproduction of a religious painting in a really dinky wooden frame (he’d study that later), then a sort of silver basket holding a pincushion impaled with pins, and finally a green glass pill jar, empty of everything but its air. Walter let the jar revolve in his eye. Admired for its shape? its color? its screw glass lid? why?

There was more. Indeed, he had the desktop to inspect, as well as the drawers underneath, and the cabinet which served as a nightstand, next to the bed. But he was totally tired. How long would the little cash he had concealed in his car last? He pulled his shirt off, let his pants drop. In the hopeful hereafter, he’d never let his pants puddle. Soon Walter was lying languidly across the coverlet. He was considering the feasibility of returning to the Karmel Korn Kompany and stealing the stash of cash the Karmel Korn Kids left lying about as carelessly as a pulledoff sock. Of course he couldn’t. He was too tired. There wouldn’t be much in any case. Even stretching the dough like a
loaf, it wouldn’t last. What he wanted, what he needed, was a miracle, a kind of sign. What he didn’t need was to be one of the thieves. Bettie’s Lord wouldn’t in the least like it: a silly idea born of desperation and desire.

Walter slid between the sheets, sheets cool as a caress, and chewed a corner of his childhood pillow on his way to sleep.

Walter heard unfamiliar voices in the dining room. Bettie was serving other guests. He retreated to his bed, moving soundlessly up the solid stairs and sitting where he had smoothed the covers back. Nervous, anxious, disappointed, Walter stared at the short ladderback which served the desk, and at its woven seat. He had no proper plan. Certainly he’d be wise to pay for his two nights. It wouldn’t do to run up a big bill, or make Bettie uneasy. Beyond that …

Walter wanted Bettie’s Bed & Breakfast to prosper but he didn’t want her to have any customers. He had no smile for the contradiction. Or for the creamy blotter covering the desk’s writing surface. He heard Emery laboring on the landing and rushed out to rescue him from the baggage. The offer, the protest, the capture, the capitulation rapidly followed one another, and then Walter was rushing down the remaining stairs toward the porch, the outdoors, the trunk of an out-of-state car. He couldn’t pass himself off as a handyman, could he? Who was it who was always happy to be of service? In some film. He put the bags between two strange cars and escaped into the garden, which he’d hardly looked at. The air felt as it should feel: early on an autumn morning. The light was lean. There were a few roses in wan bloom, the pansies of course, crysants, ah … cushion mums, yes—what was that? a weed? a hedge which
looked like the original burning bush—and lots of plants which seemed simply to be waiting around much as he was.

After a few minutes on the garden’s bench, he felt the cool damp concrete through his pants. He would have to wait out the concluding coffee, the obligatory brief exchange of small talk, the awkwardness of paying and checking out, a few flattering remarks would be flourished at that time, and then everyone would take their leave as if they were family or invited guests, and all this, he feared, would take a while; meanwhile his rump was growing cold, the patch was precise. He tried to take an interest in the plants, but they were so clearly in transit toward their last legs.

Walter ended up sidling around everybody in the entry, pretending not to be there like a draft, but disappointed he was ignored by the two men who were tossing hearty goodbys back and forth like a ball, and by Bettie as well, who had her hands clasped and every fold under control. Mister Ambrose was sitting on a step past the turn of the landing at the top of the stairs. Ah … not feeling well, Mister Ambrose, Walter asked, keeping his voice low. The screen banged at that moment, and he relished the little click of the hook going home. Phlegm in my nose and mechanism, Emery burbled, can’t breathe. Oh dear, said Walter, getting behind him. You’ll breathe better standing. He put his arms under Emery’s and lifted. Emery unkinked slowly like a hose. Mother, he managed.

Bettie appeared on the stairs in a dark dress and wide white collar like a Pilgrim. Just go on down to breakfast, Mister Riffytear, I’ll join you in a tick or two. Walter unhooked himself and came out from behind Emery, who suddenly seemed huge. Like the sun from behind a cloud, he unaccountably thought, feeling a sudden warmth. They passed on the stairway without further word. I’ll steam a kettle for you, dear, she said, drop in a little Mentholatum. Hoof, went Emery. Yes, the screen was
hooked, and a car was backing cautiously out the drive. A streak of soothing sun brightened the railing of the porch. The fall air was cool and clean. Walter filled his lungs, pleased it was easy as filling cups.

In the entry hall at the foot of the stairs, sitting on the radiator cover as if it had always been there, though its presence was a surprise to Walter’s eyes, was a little wooden schoolhouse some amateurish hand had glued together. What brought Walter near to inspect it further was its weather vane. Sorely over-scale, it topped the dormer where the school bell lurked, one rod ending in wooden N and S, another, naturally, in E and W, still a third tipped with arrow and feather. Perched above this was a jigsawed rooster as large as the school’s door. The whole thing had been put together, it looked like, from a kit of precut parts. Bettie’s arm, white as the sleeve of a nurse, reached past him to pick the little house up. Carefully, she wound the key sticking from its rear. The school’s bell began to ping. Bettie returned the music box, as Walter now realized it was, to a place so familiar the shadow of its occupancy showed, a faint stain from the wood remaining on the radiator cover. The pingadings performed a delicate, somehow familiar, tune. Rooster, compass, arrow turned hesitant and wobbly turns. “Idlewise,” Bettie finally said, after she’d let Walter listen for a puzzled and searching moment. What a strange combination of concepts, Walter thought. Austrian, she explained, as the pauses between pings and dings lengthened and the melody unwound like a twisted string. The last note arrived so long after all the others it seemed in despair at being left behind, bringing Walter close to heartbreak.

Some breakfast now, Mister Riffytear?… come along.

In a bit Bettie set a bowl of bananas and cream before him. Walter moaned gratefully. Haven’t had this since— A little visit to childhood, Bettie said. But first— Walter nodded, folded his
hands, lowered his head, his features solemn as her dark dress. Lord, I know you’re listening because you always are, keeping kindly track of us down here where sometimes things are hard—and the kettle whistled in the kitchen. Get under the cloth now, Mister Ambrose, Bettie shouted, get your head the whole way under. I’ll see how you’re fixed after Mister Riffytear and I have talked to the Lord. Poor Mister Ambrose needs the help of the Holy Ghost to breathe on days like these, Bettie said to Walter rather grimly, before raising her voice to God again. As I said, some times are hard, here in the world where we must all work and sweat our brows to prosper at all. And I hope you’ll take special care with our good guest here, who leaves us today, and goes out to work in harmony with your will, as I know he does.

Ah … about today, Walter began, but Bettie was not through asking for things. Lord, Mister Ambrose is very poor off today, which is not fair, because he already has so many former evils eating at him. He doesn’t need his nose not to work, or his machine to fill up with snot. Walter flinched. This woman was someone to be feared. At least let the steam ease him. Amen. Thank you for letting Mister Ambrose into your blessing, Bettie said, motioning Walter to eat, although Walter couldn’t determine where his permission might have figured. I made pancakes for those other gentlemen. Walter felt his head whirling as if it were a seed in the wind. About today— But Bettie was gone to see about Emery and whether his head was altogether under.

The pancakes came slathered in butter and syrup. The coffee was dark as a well and reflected his face as he leaned his nose into it. Walter remembered to cut one bite at a time out of his stack of cakes, instead of slicing everything up at once; and he ate almost without chewing, the sweet becoming mush, then melt, and sliding away down his throat as a liquid. He’d have to sit as still as a cushion until she returned. I’ve had a very
pleasant stay, he’d say. And I mean to settle up today. But I’d like to delay my departure … ah, there’s more work for me in the Quad Cities than I counted on, he’d say, but he mustn’t claim that business was brisk, because Bettie might think he was flush then, and besides it wasn’t true, he’d have to call his service and hope for the best, not something downstate, though, something mid which he might easily reach, if, that is, an arrangement could be made.

Mister Ambrose is eased, thanks to God, Bettie announced, his nose is breathing, so a cup more coffee while I rest my feet, Mister Riffytear? She sent a long sluice of it streaming from the spout, and sat herself and the pot down. Walter almost called her Bettie (don’t do that!), she seemed suddenly so forlorn, sitting where one of the young gents had sat, the place empty of gent’s plate and nap but surrounded still by butter, jam, and bread. Walter’s arm reached across the table and fetched her a fresh cup and saucer from another setting. May I? Gently, he filled her cup. And nudged the sugar. Poor Emery, she said, stirring two sugars in. He led a loose life once, drank and smoked and talked a lot, but he’s paid his debt in misery and disappointment, I should think, by now. He was always somewhat a good sort in spite of being sinful as they come. Helped out without my having to be cross. Didn’t author any public disgraces. Bears up best he can. But it is hard to have to depend on so armless a man to lend a hand. She lifted the cup like a chalice. Delicately inhaled its odor. Gazed into the parlor in a meditative mood.

I’d like to stay a while longer, Walter blurted. Quite a while. You see, my work it seems is not yet finished here and I rather like … I like more than much, Missus Ambrose, my room here, and your breakfast, and I admire, I do, your many things, the history they have, the care that’s gone into them, and the care you’ve given them, too—

The front room is the best, Bettie said, giving him a look he
couldn’t translate. I’m sure, Walter replied, worried. It’s certainly splendid. The street is quiet most times. Oh, I’ve noticed. Can’t see the river, some complain. Only barges anyway, Walter said sincerely. The wind doesn’t winter up front, Bettie promised, but it can be beastly in the back bedroom, that northwest corner calls up quite a howl. In front, however, Walter attempted to agree, it behaves, I’m sure; however, I can’t afford the full fee, not right now at any rate; however I’m convinced that in time business will pick up—not the wind, I don’t mean—however now what I hoped was that maybe the longer stay—you see—would make possible a lesser price. Bettie sipped, keeping her lip inside her cup, warming her fingers and her face. And I could always lend a hand around the house, happy to. I’d be here when most needed in the morning and again in the late afternoon. Bettie lowered her cup but Walter saw her hand was shaking slightly, a tremble like a plant’s leaf in a hidden draft. Her gaze had grown watery. Was she well?