Though missis Savage is convinced that she and Byron are poles apart in temperament let alone intelligence, Graice perceives, as she comes to know them more intimately, that the couple is perfectly matched.
Each is in possession of a dazzling amplitude of spirit curiously constrained, finely and sharply focused, like a powerful beacon of light shining into the darkness that illuminates not the darkness but its own trajectory of vision. For all her amusing complaints of busyness Gwendolyn Savage is happily caught up in the cyclical tasks of domestic arid social life while showing little awareness of, let alone concern for, much that lies beyond this life; while Byron, though ebullient with talk of the issues of the day, focuses his prodigious analytical mind exclusively upon his field of specialization: yet, within that field Renaissance, eighteenth and nineteenth century European art , upon minor iconographic and historical problems beside which works of art seem sometimes mere illustrations, proof. Graice perceives too that her friends' very magnanimity is granted them by means of an infrastructure that surrounds and protects them yet re mains unexamined as the air they breathe: their inherited wealth, their social position, the color of their skin.
The Savages' great good fortune is an accident of history they seem to assume is not accidental but natural. their God given birth right.
Impossible, Graice Courtney thinks. These people.
So good, so generous, yet so smug.
Still, when the telephone rings downstairs and Graice is called to answer it, her heart leaps at the prospect of an invitation from missis Savage. never, never does she say no.
What am I but a sort of mirror or reflector for them, beaming back their happiness to them? Magnifying their happiness to them?
Anddolmind?
h: a luminosity as of liquid fire spilled into her veins and turned her radiant. Where there was the darkness of the mere body, the diseased uterus, there flowed fire.
It entered through a vein, a delicate blue vein on the inside of her left wrist.
She died, her skull opened onto blackness. a roaring assailed her there was God in His glory as a beacon of light searing but not blinding speaking not in words yet unmistakable His wisdom. Gwendolyn my daughter your childbearing years are over but others will bear children in your place and these children you will hold in your arms and love as If they were your own babies ofyour blood and desire and these children in turn will bear children and these children in their turn to the very end of human time thus when she woke from the anesthetic seemingly within seconds: the two hour operation performed on her body was swift as a flash of lightning in her brain she was buoyed upon God's certainty and the unflagging joy of this certainty beneath the terrible pain of which she could not in her weakened state speak, and as she regained her strength in the days following in the hospital, and then at home, she dared not speak except obliquely to her dear young friend Graice.
What do I fear Graice, that others might think me mad? a God struck lunatic of the kind, in my girlhood, my family abhorred? the Negro sidewalk preacher shouting and wailingJesus! Jesus! Jesus! and the hill people shrieking in tongues dancing in ecstasy holding poisonous snakes aloft or twining them around their necks, kissing their mouths these creatures of 5a tan rendered harmless by Jesus's love but in truth she dared not say such things even to her young friend Graice for fear of revealing weakness to her, confiding too impulsively in her who surely looks to Gwendolyn Savage for strength , spilling her heart's inchoate desire as one must never do, as Gwendolyn Makepeace was counseled never to do, For once a truth is known it cannot be unknown, it can only be denied, her mother's own wisdom and that of her mother's mother, For once a truth is known it cannot be unknown, it can only be denied, better silence, better muteness, even in delirium muteness, for there was Byron above her gripping her hands in both his hands his strong capable hands as she rose from the anesthetic thick as fog in her brain, her beloved husband Byron calling to her across the distance telling her the operation was successful she was going to be all right telling her he loved her loved her loved her how brave and good a woman she was though confessing to her days afterward, when she was home, no longer an invalid though weak on her feet and still on a regimen of painkilling pills, confessing it had been one of the shocks of his life seeing her in the postoperative room so aged, so worn, so pale, her face like a mask, waxen and white as a death mask; he'd come close to breaking down having denied the seriousness of the impending operation and not having so much as a single time uttered the dread word tumor as if it were an obscenity somehow seeded in his beloved wife's body of which no gentleman could speak, confessing, I knew then I could not live without you my beloved Gwendolyn I realize I am a selfish man a self absorbed man a creature of infinite vanity but I am no one without you my dear, my darling wife, and though dazed with pain and painkilling pills she knew she must comfort him, she must soothe him, perhaps in his childlike way he had blamed her for the obscenity in her womb and now she was obliged to comfort him, poor Byron Savage to whom the most trivial interruption of his daily schedule is a matter of profound grief, the orderliness of the Savage household from the time the children were babies is a phenomenon wholly unexamined, as natural and as unquestioned to him as the laws of Euclidean geometry, and as impersonal in its workings, never to Byron Savage could she speak of her experience under the anesthetic the touch of God's fire in her brain, For once a truth is known it cannot be unknown, it can only be denied, and though she was deeply hurt that her own daughter failed to visit her, telephoned only three times, she rejoiced in the company of her young woman friend Graice in whose face that first day in the hospital she saw such raw fright she understood Ys there's love, there's love that cannot be simulated though she would certainly never embarrass the girl or herself by speaking in such a way except obliquely perhaps or, as now, by an exchange of glances, a quicksilver exchange of smiles, though it's true that more than once during the course of her convalescence when Graice came to visit, remaining with her for hours, so sweetly solicitous, so cheering, sometimes reading aloud to her Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma these novels Gwendolyn has re ad andare re ad since the age of eighteen, never tiring of so much as a single line and sometimes simply sitting quietly listening to the birds in the garden yes she'd yearned to tell her friend of God's luminosity pouring through her veins and God's promise that children of her blood and desire would be borne not by her who has been too old in any case to bear children for years but by way of her and these children in their turn will bear children to the very end of human time yet certainly Gwendolyn Savage didn't say such a thing though thinking Graice, how is it we lack speech,' who has deprived us of speech ? for all that Gwendolyn Savage is so articulate and practiced in speech of another kind, inquiring of her guests who will have coffee? who will have tea? a little honey in your tea?
though once boldly and humorously in July, on an afternoon she was feeling exceptionally fine she'd re marked to Graice that she didn't at all mind the removal of her uterus any more than she'd minded the cessation of menstruation; indeed, she assured Graice, there are losses in growing older one scarcely misses or even realizes that one should miss, and Graice smiled at her with a look of re lief but did not ask of Gwendolyn Savage what those losses are.
Filthy habit, smoking. and Carter's strong smelling parchment colored Algerian cigarettes make it all the worse.
He's saying reproachfully exhaling smoke in thin curling tusks, raising his voice to be heard over the din of the cafe', Alan, tu sais que tu es irresponsable. perfide. Moi, je Alan Savage says sharply, Speak English, for Christ's sake: you aren't French and neither am I.
Carter stares at Alan Savage for a long astonished moment, the outburst is so uncharacteristic. Then, hurt, fumbling with his cigarette: I thought we'd come here to talk. To understand each other. French, English, what difference does it His voice trails off. The men sit silently, not looking at each other. Alan Savage feels his face heat, a vein begin to throb alarmingly in his head. Where is the waiter? A party of Americans enters the cafe, two couples in expensive sports clothes. Don't sit by us, Alan Savage thinks. The American voices, broad midwestern accents, are jarring to the ear.
It's summer. Paris will shortly be emptying out. But the cafe in which the two men are sitting, on the place Saint Sulpice, one of numerous undistinguished neighborhood cafes Alan Savage has frequented in the past year, is companionably crowded, buzzing with voices.
In the near distance the bells of Saint Sulpice begin. Alan wonders if it's possible to have heard these bells and to have felt one's heart curiously torn by them too many times.
It's as if a lighted candle were thrust up close to her face, Graice Courtney smiles so beautifully.
She's wearing a crocheted summer sweater, turquoise threaded with white. And white linen Bermuda shorts. given to her by Gwendolyn Savage, who'd bought them for herself earlier in the summer, wore them less than an hour, decided such fashions were no longer for her.
Alan Savage, shaking Graice's hand, staring at her, says, Graice Courtney! I almost feel we know each other already, my mother has written me so much about you.
The young man's words are either lightly ironic or a simple statement of fact, Graice can't determine. She senses that Alan Savage is one of those persons who speak ambiguously because their reading of the world and of others is ambiguous and ambivalent. But his handshake is forthright and friendly, and here on the lakeside terrace of the Savages' splendid white shingled summer house in Skaneate les, New York, in late August of 1963, Graice Courtney's happiness is suddenly effervescent as a bottle of sparkling water violently shaken.
All three of the Savages looking on, she says, Well. Your mother hasn't told me a word about you, and naturally they laugh in delight; doctor Savage's laughter is always explosive and hearty, wonderfully infectious, and Graice's vision mists over in the warmth and wonder and hope of the moment even as she's calmly calculating: Families like to laugh together: re member that.
And all that long lovely summer Sunday Byron Savage continues to laugh, heartily and infectiously, and Gwendolyn Savage is the most radiantly happy she has been since her surgery the previous spring, and Alan Savage, temperamental Alan who has been since early boyhood edgy and sardonic and as nervously restless in company as a whippet, one of those highly bred dogs that love to run indeed, live primarily to run, their hearts beating naturally only when they run is gradually eased into relaxing. for Graice Courtney's shining presence amid the Savages is a subtle altering of the old family equation that no one, not even missis Savage, who has been eager for a very long time for her son and her new young woman friend to meet, quite anticipated.
That long lovely summer Sunday: missis Savage whispers in her husband's ear, in quiet triumph, Aren't they a perfect couple!
Aren't they getting along well! Didn't I tell you! and doctor Savage, who perceives his wife's maternal solicitude in this as in other instances as a finely calibrated species of female hysteria, simply smiles his enigmatic smile and places a forefinger over his lips and says, Gwendolyn, love: caution.
Says missis Savage, mildly offended by her husband's obtuseness, Oh, of course, Byron. I know.
It might be the case that Byron Savage hopes for the union, if there is to be a union, if it isn't entirely female fantasizing, as much as Gwendolyn Savage. for he knows a good deal more than she why marriage, and marriage fairly quickly, might be well advised for their son. And this little Graice Courtney, despite her shadowy back ground, might be ideal: she's an outstanding student, she's a very beautiful young woman, she's clearly yet not cravenly adoring of Byron Savage.
Before dinner, there's a rowdy game of croquet played on the grassy slope above the lake, with missis Savage looking on. This long lovely summer Sunday shading into dusk.
Below, Skaneateles Lake mirrors the flawless sky, bluest of blues.
And there's blue in the Savages' immaculately tended lawn: hydrangeas, missis Savage's favorite flower.
The croquet game, played by the Savages, father and son, and Graice Courtney and three local guests, is alternately serious and slapdash.
Sitting in a canvas chair close by, missis Savage is caught up in the action; she's the kind of sympathetic spectator who is always caught up in others' games and never very good at games herself.
forthright competition wasn't part of Gwendolyn Savage's upbringing.
But now she's gaily absorbed in the players' antics: roguish doctor Savage, who swings his mallet with such gusto the others cringe, and beetle browed Alan, who plans his moves shrewdly, then swings wildly and misses or scores by default, muttering in comic deadpan, It's only a game! Only a game! and Graice Courtney, who has never gripped a croquet mallet in her hands before today yet whose playing is so inspired. and so funny. If one of the chipped balls ricochets off a wicket, or flies into the hedge, or rolls drunkenly down the hill, it is invariably Graice Courtney's, and much good natured hilarity attends the retrieving of these balls. old and battered as they are, dating back, in the Savage family's history, to when the children were very young.
