The Rope Walk (20 page)

At that moment, they heard the sound of footsteps in the room, and Miss Fitzgerald's voice. “Kenneth, the taxi's here,” she said, but she stopped when she stepped outside and saw Alice and Theo.

Sidonnie leaned down and put her hand on the suitcase's handle, next to Theo's.

Miss Fitzgerald's own hand disappeared busily into her sleeve and extracted a tissue. “Well, Sidonnie,” she said, not looking at her. “Thank you for your trouble.”

Sidonnie smiled down at Theo. “You stay here and see if he needs anything,” she said quietly. “I'll be all right.” She picked up the suitcase and moved carefully into the house past Miss Fitzgerald, who stepped aside to let her go and then, after glancing uncertainly at Kenneth, who sat slumped in his chair, turned to follow her.

Kenneth tilted back his head, his eyes closed.

For a moment the three of them were quiet. Alice glanced curiously at the drawing propped up on the easel. It was only lines of black charcoal, the suggestion of the lawn and the trees behind in a scribbled dark mass like a thunderhead.

“Let me have your arms,” Kenneth said after a moment, not opening his eyes. They drew close to him and he held out his hands. Alice staggered as he grasped her forearm and pushed himself from the chair, but Theo put a hand on his back and Kenneth steadied himself on his feet.

“A wonderful woman, Sidonnie Roberts,” he said, his eyes still closed. “Let's go inside.”

“Who will cook for you now?” Alice asked as they walked slowly inside, Kenneth leaning on their arms. He had opened his eyes, but his expression was pained. She felt indignant on his behalf. The strained coolness of Miss Fitzgerald's goodbye to Sidonnie, whom Kenneth clearly loved, had appalled her. Was it everywhere, she wondered, this secret hatred inside people she thought she had known? She thought of Archie, holding Theo in his arms under the tree outside the hospital the night before. Archie didn't feel that way about black people, she thought.

They helped Kenneth to the settee where he settled back against the cushions. “Hope has been feeding herself all these years,” he said. “And she's dying to feed me now.”

Alice thought about the crowded rooms in the house. She imagined the kitchen, a welter of dishes and boxes and teetering pyramids of cans. In her own house, the kitchen with its friendly fireplace and long table, its polished wood floor and bowls of fruit, the candlesticks and vases of flowers and clock on the mantelpiece, the braided cushions on the chairs, the wallpaper of tiny blue windmills, was her favorite room. “Maybe Elizabeth could cook for you,” she said. “She's a good cook. We could bring you supper every night.”

Kenneth waved away her offer. “Don't worry,” he said. “Really, Alice. Don't worry. What I eat is the least of my concerns.” He took a deep breath, adjusted himself against the cushions again. “Now,” he said, looking up at them from under his drooping eyelids. “I used to play in those woods when I was your age. Tell me everything about your fort.”

Theo described it in detail, its provenance on the island, its stones, his plans for the construction of the roof. He sat down on the floor beside the settee. He wanted to build a landing pier out into the river, he said, and an outdoor fireplace. When they got a canoe, he told Kenneth, they could draw it up on the far side of the island onto the tiny half-moon beach. They would need a telescope, too. “Do you have a piece of paper?” he asked abruptly.

Kenneth pointed to a box on the floor. “In there,” he said. “Help yourself.” He lay back again, smiling faintly.

Theo bent over the paper, busily drawing. Inside the fort, he said, he imagined hammocks strung from the beams, a stone floor, shades made of woven branches for the windows that would roll down on a cord.

Kenneth asked questions, lying with his eyes closed and nodding from time to time.

“Let me see your drawing,” he said finally, and Theo passed it up to him.

Kenneth sat up and looked at the paper, but he handed it back to Theo after a moment, and Alice thought that perhaps he had not been able to see it clearly.

“Magnificent,” he said. “I'll find out what happened to the zebra. It will be a furbelow for your fort.” He smiled.
“Furbelow:
an ornament, like a flounce or a ruffle on a dress. Spelled exactly as it sounds. Fur-below.”

“Thank you for the mobiles,” Alice said suddenly, remembering
them and feeling ashamed that they had not said thank you before, that she could not think of the words to express their pleasure at the gift, their understanding of its great value.

He reached out and she came near, giving him her hand.

“I miss being outdoors, in the woods,” he said. After a moment, with more conviction in his voice, he resumed. “But I'll be on my feet again, wouldn't you say? Only, this fall has been a bit of setback.” He let go of Alice's hand and reached up gingerly to touch the bandage on his head.

Alice thought of what Archie had told her about Kenneth climbing mountains and looking down on the clouds, the shifting blue and white scaffolding of vapor beneath him, the valleys below. He could not climb a mountain now, she thought, and for a moment she felt inside herself the grief of that loss for him, a prisoner in this house. She was suddenly aware of the open doors behind her, the woods at the edge of the lawn, and beyond that the river twisting away invisibly toward the sea. It came to her with a shock that she hadn't been anywhere yet, that every road was open to her. Her life, she thought, had barely even begun.

“Where were we?” Kenneth said abruptly. “In the Lewis and Clark. They were presenting the Missouri Indians with medals for their chiefs, and whiskey and gunpowder.”

“And the lost horses had come back,” Theo said, stretching out on the floor as he had done the day before, his arms behind his head.

Alice sat down at the table and opened the book. The party had halted, waiting for the return of two men who had been sent off as scouts to look for Indians. Many Indian villages had been decimated by smallpox, Clark wrote.
“I am told when this fatal malady was among them they Carried their frenzy to verry extraordinary length
,” Alice began reading,
“not only of burning their Village, but they put their wives & children to Death with a view of their all going
together to some better Countrey. They Burry their Dead on the top of high hills and rais Mounds on the top of them.”

She was interrupted—snow had fallen on the explorers early in October, and the banks of the river were often lined with Indians come to view the curious party—when the door opened and Miss Fitzgerald came in with a tray. She did not seem to notice that Alice was reading aloud and set the tray down on the table with a clatter. She bore a tall glass of something foamy and yellow over to Kenneth on the settee. “Eggnog,” she said. “Mother used to give us this. Remember?”

He took it from her clumsily—Alice wondered whether he had been asleep. “Rum,” he said indistinctly, and took a careful sip. He cleared his throat. “Isn't that what's added to eggnog?”

“Oh,
Kenneth”
she said, as if he'd been teasing her.

She wants to do it all for him, everything by herself, Alice thought, with a flash of understanding. She wants to be in charge. That's why she wasn't sorry to see Sidonnie leave.

“And here's a plate of cookies for the children,” Miss Fitzgerald said. She didn't look at Alice or Theo. She took the plate off the tray and put it on the table, like setting a saucer of milk on the floor for cats. She stood at the table for a moment, gazing around the room, her eyes following the slowly revolving shapes of the mobile that Alice and Theo had hung.

They heard the sound of the lawn mower starting up outside. Alice turned to look out the French doors. Eli, wearing an old white tennis hat, came into sight, leaning over the mower and forcing it through the tall grass. The sun was lower in the sky now, and the light outside had softened. She noticed how the trees at the edge of the lawn stood together in a dense mass of dark green, just as Kenneth had rendered them in his charcoal drawing, a single solid shape against the sky.

“The industrious MacCauleys,” Kenneth said. “The heroic
twins were here this morning, Alice, hacking away at the rock of Gibralter.” He took a sip of the eggnog. “Do you think your father would simply adopt us? How could we earn our keep at the MacCauleys’ house, Hope? Do you think we seem pitiful enough to be adopted?”

Alice was embarrassed that he should refer to the shameful state of the house in his sister's presence, but Miss Fitzgerald only stood quietly, her hands hanging limply at her sides, watching Eli outside as if she'd never seen a lawn mower before. Alice thought of all the times Miss Fitzgerald had come to the MacCauleys’ house, her face bunched up under its headscarf, some matter of civic interest on her mind, a clipboard and a pen in her hand. How strange it was to discover that someone so apparently purposeful and in command should be simultaneously, privately, so helpless.

On their way home, Alice told Theo what Archie had said about Kenneth climbing mountains, about his having adventures and exploring the world.

“Now he's cooped up in that house with
her
,” Theo said. He shuddered. “She is so weird. Why doesn't she ever say anything to us? She acts like we're not even there, like we're not even a person.”

Alice noted that he had referred to them collectively as a single person. She was oddly pleased, even if it was just a syntactical error. “And he's
sick
, too,” Alice said, rising to Theo's indignation. She heard the outrage in her voice. It seemed so unfair. Why did people have to get sick? A bell-shaped cloud of gnats hovered in the road before them. Alice waved her hands wildly in front of her face to disperse them. The late afternoon sun hung ahead of them, burning with a gold light under the trees’ lowest branches,
as if the road were a stage in a dusky theater, its upper reaches in darkness.

“I don't think he can see very much,” Theo said. “But he can still walk around if he has his cane. He could get out if he had a guide dog.” He spoke as if he were considering something. He took aim and kicked at a rock by the side of the road, sending it sailing into the weeds, and squinted after it.

They walked along in silence. When they came to the corner, Alice saw the mother of one of her friends from school, Mrs. Kiplinger, out in her side yard taking in laundry from the line. When she saw the children she stopped and waved. “Hello, Alice!”

“Hi,” Alice said. She didn't want to stop. Mrs. Kiplinger was one of the mothers Alice thought felt sorry for her. She made a fuss over her, asking if she was hungry, as if no one ever thought of food in the motherless MacCauley house. She was always wearing some kind of tracksuit or athletic gear, her blond hair twisted into a knot at the back of her head. Sometimes Alice was invited to play with Sarah Kiplinger, who was in her class at school, but in general Alice preferred the games of boys to the dolls and tea parties most girls her age enjoyed. Still, girls weren't invited to play at boys’ houses very often.

“We just took Sarah to summer camp this weekend,” Mrs. Kiplinger said, bouncing over to the picket fence in her fancy sneakers, the basket of laundry under her arm. “I'm sure she'll send you a pretty postcard.”

“That'll be nice.” Alice nodded encouragingly, as if she'd been longing for a postcard from Sarah Kiplinger, away at summer camp.

“Who's your little friend?” Mrs. Kiplinger said brightly, looking Theo up and down.

“This is Theo,” Alice said. “He's the O'Briens’ grandson.”

Mrs. Kiplinger's expression changed, and Alice saw an unguarded, almost greedy curiosity come over her face. Did everyone in Grange know that Theo's mother had married a black man? Alice wondered. And why did it seem to matter so much?

“Ohhh,” Mrs. Kiplinger said, drawing out the vowel, her tone full of comprehension. She stared at Theo. “Oh, he
is
. Well, I know your grandmother, Theo. She's a lovely person.”

Alice nodded again, more enthusiastic confirmation of Mrs. Kiplinger's many opinions: Picture postcards were nice. Helen O'Brien was nice. “Well, we better be going,” she said. She could feel Theo beside her, a silent, glowering presence.

They trudged down the road toward home. Alice wanted to apologize for Mrs. Kiplinger, for her proprietary knowingness about Theo, for every adult's way of seeming to know more about you than you knew about yourself, but she wasn't sure what to say. Theo marched along next to her, looking at the ground. After a little while, he lifted his chin and sighed.

“I'm hungry,” he said.

“Me, too,” Alice said, realizing that he had identified exactly what she had been feeling. It was as if wind were gusting through emptiness inside her. She sighed, remembering that Wally and James would not be there when they got home. Maybe the twins wouldn't even be there for dinner, or Eli, or her father. This past school year, when she was alone for dinner, Archie being occupied with something at Frost, Elizabeth would make Alice scrambled eggs or baked beans on toast for supper. Elizabeth herself, if she was staying late because Archie wouldn't be home until after Alice's bedtime, ate different food she cooked for herself, strange-smelling concoctions mixed with rice, which she ate
with her fingers. Once, Alice had asked if she could taste what Elizabeth was eating, and Elizabeth had put a little spoonful on a saucer for her.

“This is what Vietnamese babies eat,” she had said to Alice. “Very good.”

Alice had tried a little, but she hadn't liked the taste or the smell, and she had been unable to conceal her dislike, looking up apologetically at Elizabeth with watering eyes.

Elizabeth had laughed. “You're not a little Vietnamese baby, Alice,” she had said. “Have to grow up with it.”

Alice had smiled politely, not wanting to hurt Elizabeth's feelings, but she had felt strangely unfit, as if it were she who was the stranger in this country, not Elizabeth, who had continued to eat with a sure, knowing pleasure. After dinner that night, Elizabeth fixed them both bowls of orange sherbert and took Alice on her lap at the table, even though Alice was too big for lap sitting. “Never mind, never mind,” she had said, holding her cheek to Alice's. “It doesn't matter that you are not Vietnamese baby.”