Moon Palace (37 page)

In the spring of 1939, Barber had one last opportunity to learn something more about his father, but it did not produce any results. He was a junior at Columbia then, and somewhere around the middle of May, just one week after his hypothetical brush with Uncle Victor at the World’s Fair, Aunt Clara called to tell him that his mother had died in her sleep. He took the early morning train out to Long Island, then weathered the sundry ordeals of burying her: the funeral arrangements, the reading of the will, the torturous conversations with lawyers and accountants. He paid off the bills to the home where she had lived for the past six months, signed papers and forms, sobbed intermittently in spite of himself. After the funeral, he returned to the big house to spend the night, realizing that it would probably be the last night he ever spent there. Aunt Clara was the only person left by then, and she was in no condition to sit up talking with him. For the last time that day he patiently went through the ritual of telling her that she
was welcome to go on living in the house as long as she liked. Once again, she blessed him for his kindness, standing on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, and once again she returned to the bottle of sherry that she kept hidden in her room. The staff, which had consisted of seven people at the time of Barber’s birth, was now down to one—a limping black woman by the name of Hattie Newcombe, who cooked for Aunt Clara and made an occasional stab at housecleaning—and for some years now the place had been collapsing around them. The garden had been left untended since his grandfather’s death in 1934, and what had once been a decorous effusion of flowers and lawn was now a tangle of grim, chest-high grass. Inside, cobwebs hung from nearly every ceiling; the chairs could not be touched without emitting stormclouds of dust; mice sprinted crazily through the rooms, and Clara, the tipsy, perpetually grinning Clara, did not notice a thing. It had been going on like this for so long now that Barber had ceased to care. He knew that he would never have the courage to live in this house, and once Clara died the same alcoholic death as her husband Binkey, it was all one to him whether the roof caved in or not.

The next morning, he found Aunt Clara sitting in the downstairs parlor. It was not yet time for the first glass of sherry (as a general rule, the bottle was not uncorked until after lunch), and Barber realized that if he was ever going to talk to her, it would have to be now. She was sitting at the deal table in the corner when he entered the room, her tiny sparrow’s head bent over a game of solitaire, humming some tuneless, meandering song under her breath. “The Man on the Flying Trapeze,” he thought to himself as he approached, and then he came around behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. The body was all bones beneath the woolen shawl.

“Red three on the black four,” he said, pointing to the cards on the table.

She clicked her tongue at her own stupidity, merged two piles, and then turned over the card that had been freed. It was a red
king. “Thank you, Sol,” she said. “I’m not concentrating today. I miss the moves I’m supposed to make and then wind up cheating when I don’t have to.” She let out a small, tittering laugh and then resumed her humming.

Barber worked himself into the chair opposite Aunt Clara, trying to think of how to begin. He doubted that she had much to tell him, but there was no one else to talk to. For several moments he just sat there and studied her face, examining the intricate network of wrinkles, the white powder caking on her cheeks, the ludicrous red lipstick. He found her pathetic, poignant. It could not have been easy marrying into this family, he thought, living with his mother’s brother for all those years, never having any children. Binkey was a moronic, good-natured philanderer who had married Clara back in the 1880s, less than a week after seeing her perform on the stage of the Galileo Theatre in Providence as the assistant in Maestro Rudolfo’s magic act. Barber had always liked listening to the scatterbrained stories she told about her days in vaudeville, and it struck him as odd that the two of them should now be the only people left in the family. The last Barber and the last Wheeler. A girl from the lower classes, as his grandmother had always called her, a dimwitted floozy who had lost her looks more than thirty years ago, and Sir Rotundity himself, the everburgeoning boy wonder, born to a madwoman and a ghost. He had never felt more tenderness for Aunt Clara than he did at this moment.

“I’m going back to New York tonight,” he said.

“No need to worry about me,” she answered, not looking up from the cards. “I’ll be just fine here by myself. I’m used to it, you know.”

“I’m going back tonight,” he repeated, “and then I’m never setting foot in this house again.”

Aunt Clara placed a red six on a black seven, scanned the table for a spot to throw off a black queen, sighed with disappointment, and then looked up at Barber. “Oh, Sol,” she said. “You don’t have to be so dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic. it’s just that this is probably the last time we’ll ever see each other.”

Aunt Clara still did not understand. “I know it’s a sad thing to lose your mother,” she said. “But you mustn’t take it so hard. It’s really a blessing that Elizabeth is gone. Her life was a torment, and now she’s finally at peace.” Aunt Clara paused for moment, groping for the copy word. “You mustn’t get silly ideas into your head.”

“It’s not my head, Aunt Clara, it’s the house. I don’t think I could stand to come here anymore.”

“But it’s your house now. You own it. Everything in it belongs to you.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to keep it. I can get rid of it any time I want.”

“But Solly … you said yesterday you weren’t going to sell the house. You promised.”

“I’m not going to sell it. But there’s nothing to prevent me from giving it away, is there?”

“It comes to the same thing. Someone else would own it, and then I’d be packed off somewhere to die in a room full of old women.”

“Not if I give the house to you. Then you could stay copy here.”

“Stop talking nonsense. You’ll give me a heart attack talking like that.”

“It’s no trouble transferring the deed. I can call the lawyer today and get things started.”

“But Solly …”

“I’ll probably take some of the paintings with me, but everything else can stay here with you.”

“It’s wrong. I don’t know why, but it’s wrong for you to be talking like this.”

“There’s just one thing you have to do for me,” he said, ignoring her remark. “I want you to make out a proper will, and in the will I want you to leave the house to Hattie Newcombe.”

“
Our
Hattie Newcombe?”

“Yes,
our
Hattie Newcombe.”

“But Sol, do you think that’s copy? I mean Hattie … Hattie, you know, Hattie is …”

“Is what, Aunt Clara?”

“A colored woman. Hattie is a colored woman.”

“If Hattie doesn’t mind, I don’t see why it should bother you.”

“But what will people say? A colored woman living in Cliff House. You know as well as I do that the only colored people in this town are servants.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that Hattie is your best friend. As far as I can tell, she’s your only friend. And why should we care what people say? There’s nothing more important in this world than being good to our friends.”

When Aunt Clara realized that her nephew was in earnest, she started to giggle. An entire system of thought had suddenly been demolished by his words, and it thrilled her to believe that such a thing was possible. “The only bad part is that I have to die before Hattie takes over,” she said. “I wish I could live to see it with my own eyes.”

“If heaven is all they say it is, then I’m sure you will.”

“For the life of me, I’ll never understand why you’re doing this.”

“You don’t have to understand. I have my reasons, and there’s no need for you to concern yourself with them. I just want to talk over a few things with you first, and then we can consider the matter settled.”

“What kind of things?”

“Old things. Things about the past.”

“The Galileo Theatre?”

“No, not today. I was thinking about other things.”

“Oh.” Aunt Clara paused, momentarily confused. “It’s just that you always liked to hear me talk about Rudolfo. The way he’d put me in the coffin and saw me in half. It was a good stunt, the best one in the act. Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember. But that’s not what I want to talk about now.”

“As you wish. There are plenty of old days, after all, especially when you get to be my age.”

“I was thinking about my father.”

“Ah, your father. Yes, that was a long time ago, too. Indeed it was. Not as long ago as some things, but long enough.”

“I know that you and Binkey didn’t move into the house until after he disappeared, but I was wondering if you remember anything about the search party that went looking for him.”

“Your grandfather made all the arrangements, along with Mr. what’s-his-name.”

“Mr. Byrne?”

“That’s copy, Mr. Byrne, the man with the son. They looked for about six months, but they never found anything. Binkey was out there for a while, too, you know. He came back with all sorts of funny stories. He was the one who thought they were killed by Indians.”

“He was just guessing, though, wasn’t he?”

“Binkey was a great one for telling tall tales. There was never an ounce of truth in anything he said.”

“And my mother, did she go out West, too?”

“Your mother? Oh no, Elizabeth was here the whole time. She was hardly … how shall I put it … hardly in any condition to travel.”

“Because she was pregnant?”

“Well, that must have been part of it.”

“What was the other part?”

“Her mental condition. It wasn’t very sound then.”

“Was she already crazy?”

“Elizabeth was always what you’d call moody. All sulks one minute, then laughing and singing the next. Even years ago, way back when I first met her.
High-strung
was the word we used for it in those days.”

“When did it get worse?”

“After your father didn’t come back.”

“Did it build up slowly, or did she snap all at once?’

“All at once, Sol. It was a terrible thing to see.”

“You saw it?”

“With my own eyes. The whole thing. I’ll never forget it.”

“When did it happen?”

“The night you … I mean, one night … I don’t remember when. One night during the winter.”

“What night was that, Aunt Clara?”

“A snowy night. It was cold outside, and there was a big storm. I remember that because the doctor had trouble getting here.”

“It was a night in January, wasn’t it?”

“It might have been. It often snows in January. But I don’t remember which month it was.”

“It was January eleventh, wasn’t it? The night I was born.”

“Oh, Sol, you shouldn’t keep asking me about it. It happened so long ago, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It matters to me, Aunt Clara. And you’re the only one who can tell me about it. Do you understand? You’re the only one left, Aunt Clara.”

“You don’t have to shout. I can hear you perfectly well, Solomon. There’s no need for bullying and rough words.”

“I’m not bullying you. I’m just trying to ask the question.”

“You know the answer already. It slipped out of my mouth a moment ago, and now I’m sorry it did.”

“You shouldn’t be sorry. The important thing is to tell the truth. There’s nothing more important than that.”

“It’s just that it was so … so … I don’t want you to think I’m making it up. I was in the room with her that night, you see. Molly Sharp and I were both there, waiting for the doctor to come, and Elizabeth was screaming and thrashing so much, I thought the house would fall down.”

“What was she screaming?”

“Awful things. Things that make me sick to think about.”

“Tell me, Aunt Clara.”

“ ‘He’s trying to kill me,’ she kept shouting. ‘He’s trying to kill me. We can’t let him out.’ ”

“Meaning me?”

“Yes, the baby. Don’t ask me how she knew it was a boy, but that’s the way it was. The time was getting close, and the doctor still wasn’t there. Molly and I tried to get her to lie down on the bed, to coax her into the proper position, but she wouldn’t cooperate. ‘Open your legs,’ we told her, ‘it will ease the pain.’ But Elizabeth wouldn’t do it. God knows where she found the strength. She kept breaking loose from us and going for the door, shrieking those terrible words over and over again. ‘He’s trying to kill me. We can’t let him out.’ We finally wrestled her onto the bed—or I should say that Molly did, with a little help from me—that Molly Sharp was an ox—but once we got her there, she wouldn’t open her legs. ‘I’m not going to let him out,’ she screamed. ‘I’ll smother him in there first. Monster-boy, monster-boy. I won’t let him out until I kill him.’ We tried to pry open her legs, but Elizabeth kept squirming away, thrashing and flailing until Molly started slapping her across the face—whack, whack, whack, as hard as she could—which angered Elizabeth so much that all she could do after that was scream, just like a baby herself, all red in the face, shrieking and screaming as though to wake the dead.”

“Good Lord.”

“It was the worst thing I ever saw in my life. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Still, I managed to get out, didn’t I?”

“You were the biggest, strongest baby anyone had ever seen. More then eleven pounds, the doctor said. A gigantus. I do believe that if you hadn’t been so large, Sol, you never would have made it. You should always remember that. It was your size that brought you into the world.”

“And my mother?”

“The doctor finally came—Doctor Bowles it was, the one who died in that car wreck six or seven years ago—and he gave Elizabeth
a shot that put her to sleep. She didn’t wake up until the next day, and by then she had forgotten everything. I don’t just mean the previous night, but everything—her whole life, all the things that had happened to her for the past twenty years. When Molly and I carried you in to let her see her new son, she thought you were her baby brother. It was all so strange, Sol. She had become a little girl again, and she didn’t know who she was.”