The Winter of Our Discontent (18 page)

“Why, they’re lovely,” Mary said. “Wait till I get a pin, I’ll wear them.”

“They’re the first—the very first, my creamy fowl. I am your slave. Christ is risen. All’s right with the world.”

“Please don’t be silly about sacred things, dear.”

“What in the world have you done with your hair?”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it. Always wear it that way.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d like it. Margie said you’d never notice. Wait till I tell her you did.” She set a bowl of flowers on her head, the yearly vernal offering to Eostre. “Like it?”

“I love it.”

Now the young got their inspection, ears, nostrils, shoe-shines, every detail, and they resisted every moment of it. Allen’s hair was so plastered that he could hardly blink. The heels of his shoes were unpolished but with infinite care he had trained a line of hair to roll on his crested brow like a summer wave.

Ellen was girl of a girlness. All in sight was in order. I tried my luck again. “Ellen,” I said, “you’re doing something different with your hair. It becomes you. Mary, darling, don’t you like it?”

“Oh! She’s beginning to take pride,” Mary said.

We formed a procession down our path to Elm Street, then left to Porlock, where our church is, our old white-steepled church, stolen intact from Christopher Wren. And we were part of a growing stream, and every woman in passing had delight of other women’s hats.

“I have designed an Easter hat,” I said. “A simple, off-the-face crown of thorns in gold with real ruby droplets on the forehead.”

“Ethan!” said Mary sternly. “Suppose someone should hear you.”

“No, I guess it couldn’t be popular.”

“I think you’re horrid,” Mary said, and so did I, worse than horrid. But I did wonder how Mr. Baker would respond to comment on his hair.

Our family rivulet joined other streams and passed stately greetings and the stream was a river pouring into St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church, a medium-high church, maybe a little higher than center.

When the time comes that I must impart the mysteries of life to my son, which I have no doubt he knows, I must remember to inform him about hair. Armed with a kindly word for hair, he will go as far as his concupiscent little heart desires. I must warn him, however. He may kick, beat, drop, tousle, or bump them, but he must never—never—mess their hair. With this knowledge he can be king.

The Bakers were just ahead of us going up the steps, and we passed decorous greetings. “I believe we’re seeing you at tea.”

“Yes, indeed. A very happy Easter to you.”

“Can that be Allen? How he’s grown. And Mary Ellen. Well, I can’t keep track—they shoot up so.”

There’s something very dear about a church you grew in. I know every secret corner, secret odor of St. Thomas’s. In that font I was christened, at that rail confirmed, in that pew Hawleys have sat for God knows how long, and that is no figure of speech. I must have been deeply printed with the sacredness because I remember every desecration, and there were plenty of them. I think I can go to every place where my initials are scratched with a nail. When Danny Taylor and I punched the letters of a singularly dirty word with a pin in the Book of Common Prayer, Mr. Wheeler caught us and we were punished, but they had to go through all the prayerbooks and the hymnals to make sure there weren’t more.

Once, in that chair stall under the lectern, a dreadful thing happened. I wore the lace and carried the cross and sang a beefy soprano. Once the bishop was officiating, a nice old man, hairless as a boiled onion, but to me glowing with rays of holiness. So it was that, stunned with inspiration, I set the cross in its socket at the end of processional and forgot to throw the brass latch that held it in. At the reading of the second lesson I saw with horror the heavy brass cross sway and crash on that holy hairless head. The bishop went down like a pole-axed cow and I lost the lace to a boy who couldn’t sing as well, a boy named Skunkfoot Hill. He’s an anthropologist now, somewhere in the West. The incident seemed to prove to me that intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There’s luck or fate or something else that takes over accidents.

We sat the service through and heard the news announced that Christ was risen indeed. It ran shivers up my spine as always. I took communion with a good heart. Allen and Mary Ellen weren’t yet confirmed and they got pretty restless and had to be given the iron eye to stop their jittering. When Mary’s eyes are hostile, they can pierce even the armor plate of adolescence.

Then in the drenching sunshine we shook hands and greeted and shook hands and wished the season’s best to the communityof our neighbors. All those we had spoken to coming in, we regreeted going out—a continuation of the litany, of a continuous litany in the form of decorous good manners, a quiet supplication to be noticed and to be respected.

“Good morning. And how are you this fine day?”

“Very well, thank you. How is your mother?”

“She’s getting old—getting old—the aches and daggers of getting old. I’ll tell her you asked for her.”

The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it? Ahead of our small parade in the sun went Mr. Baker, avoiding stepping on cracks; his mother, dead these twenty years, was safe from a broken back. And Mrs. Baker, Amelia, tripping along beside him, trying to match his uneven stride with her fluttering feet, a small, bright-eyed bird of a woman, but a seed-eating bird.

Allen, my son, walked beside his sister, but each of them tried to give the impression that they were total strangers. I think she despises him and he detests her. This may last all their lives while they learn to conceal it in a rose cloud of loving words. Give them their lunches, my sister, my wife—their hard-boiled eggs and pickles, their jelly-and-peanut-butter sandwiches, their red barrel-smelling apples, and turn them free in the world to spawn.

And that’s just what she did. They walked away, carrying their paper bags, each one to a separate private world.

“Did you enjoy the service, my darling?”

“Oh, yes! I always do. But you—sometimes I wonder if you believe—no, I mean it. Well, your jokes—sometimes—”

“Pull up your chair, my dimpsy darling.”

“I have to get lunch on.”

“Bugger lunch.”

“That’s what I mean. Your jokes.”

“Lunch is not sacred. If it were warmer, I could carry you to a rowboat and we would go out past the breakwater and fish for porgies.”

“We’re going to the Bakers’. Do you know whether you believe in the church or not, Ethan? Why do you call me silly names? You hardly ever use my name.”

“To avoid being repetitious and tiresome, but in my heart your name rings like a bell. Do I believe? What a question! Do I lift out each shining phrase from the Nicene creed, loaded like a shotgun shell, and inspect it? No. It isn’t necessary. It’s a singular thing, Mary. If my mind and soul and body were as dry of faith as a navy bean, the words, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,’ would still make my stomach turn over and put a flutter in my chest and light a fire in my brain.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Good girl. Neither do I. Let’s say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?”

“You say such dreadful things, even to the children.”

“And they to me. Ellen, only last night, asked, ‘Daddy, when will we be rich?’ But I did not say to her what I know: ‘We will be rich soon, and you who handle poverty badly will handle riches equally badly.’ And that is true. In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”

“You talk this way about your own children. What must you say of me?”

“I say you are a blessing, a dearling, the brightness in a foggy life.”

“You sound drunk—anyway intoxicated.”

“I am.”

“You aren’t. I could smell it.”

“You are smelling it, sweetheart.”

“What’s come over you?”

“Ah! you do know, don’t you? A change—a bloody big storm of a change. You are only feeling the outmost waves.”

“You worry me, Ethan. You really do. You’re wild.”

“Do you remember my decorations?”

“Your medals—from the war?”

“They were awarded for wildness—for wilderness. No man on earth ever had less murder in his heart than I. But they made another box and crammed me in it. The times, the moment, demanded that I slaughter human beings and I did.”

“That was wartime and for your country.”

“It’s always some kind of time. So far I have avoided my own time. I was a goddam good soldier, potkin—clever and quick and merciless, an effective unit for wartime. Maybe I could be an equally efficient unit in this time.”

“You’re trying to tell me something.”

“Sadly enough, I am. And it sounds in my ears like an apology. I hope it is not.”

“I’m going to set out lunch.”

“Not hungry after that nor’easter of a breakfast.”

“Well, you can nibble something. Did you see Mrs. Baker’s hat? She must have got it in New York.”

“What has she done with her hair?”

“You noticed that? It’s almost strawberry.”

“ ‘To be a light to lighten the gentiles, and to be the glory of thy peo-ple Israel.’ ”

“Why would Margie want to go to Montauk this time of year?”

“She loves the early morning.”

“She’s not an early riser. I joke with her about that. And don’t you think it was queer, Marullo bringing candy eggs?”

“Do you connect the two events? Margie gets up early and Marullo brings eggs.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not. For once I’m not. If I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell?”

“It’s a joke!”

“No.”

“Well, I promise.”

“I think Marullo is going to make a trip to Italy.”

“How do you know? Did he tell you?”

“Not exactly. I put things together. I
put
things together.”

“But that’ll leave you alone in the store. You’ll have to get someone to help you.”

“I can handle it.”

“You do practically everything now. You’ll have to get someone in to help.”

“Remember—it isn’t sure and it’s a secret.”

“Oh, I never forget a promise.”

“But you’ll hint.”

“Ethan, I will not.”

“Do you know what you are? A dear little baby rabbit with flowers on your head.”

“You help yourself in the kitchen. I’m going to freshen up.”

When she was gone, I sprawled out in my chair and I heard in my secret ears, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant de-part in pee-ace, according to Thy word.” And darned if I didn’t go to sleep. Dropped off a cliff into the dark, right there in the living room. I don’t do that often. And because I had been thinking of Danny Taylor, I dreamed of Danny Taylor. We were not small or great but grown, and we were at the flat dry lake-bottom with the old house foundations and cellar hole. And it was early summer, for I remarked the fatness of the leaves and the grass so heavy that it bent of its weight, the kind of day that makes you feel fat and crazy too. Danny went behind a young juniper straight and slender as a column. I heard his voice, distorted and thick like words spoken under water. Then I was with him and he was melting and running down over his frame. With my palms I tried to smooth him upward, back in place, the way you try to smooth wet cement when it runs out of the form, but I couldn’t. His essence ran between my fingers. They say a dream is a moment. This one went on and on and the more I tried, the more he melted.

When Mary awakened me I was panting with effort.

“Spring fever,” she said. “That’s the first sign. When I was a growing girl, I slept so much my mother sent for Doctor Grady. She thought I had sleeping sickness, but I was only growing in the spring.”

“I had a daymare. I wouldn’t wish a dream like that on anyone.”

“It’s all the confusion. Go up and comb your hair and wash your face. You look tired, dear. Are you all right? It’s nearly time to go. You slept two hours. You must have needed it. I wish I knew what’s on Mr. Baker’s mind.”

“You will, darling. And promise me you will listen to every word.”

“But he might want a word alone with you. Businessmen don’t like ladies listening.”

“Well, he can’t have it that way. I want you there.”

“You know I have no experience in business.”

“I know—but it’s your money he’ll be talking about.”

You can’t know people like the Bakers unless you are born knowing them. Acquaintance, even friendship, is a different matter. I know them because Hawleys and Bakers were alike in blood, place of origin, experience, and past fortune. This makes for a kind of nucleus walled and moated against outsiders. When my father lost our money, I was not edged completely out. I am still acceptable as a Hawley to Bakers for perhaps my lifetime because they feel related to me. But I am a poor relation. Gentry without money gradually cease to be gentry. Without money, Allen, my son, will not know Bakers and his son will be an outsider, no matter what his name and antecedents. We have become ranchers without land, commanders without troops, horsemen on foot. We can’t survive. Perhaps that is one reason why the change was taking place in me. I do not want, never have wanted, money for itself. But money is necessary to keep my place in a category I am used to and comfortable in. All this must have worked itself out in the dark place below my thinking level. It emerged not as a thought but as a conviction.