Men and Angels Page 4

  But something new had happened. She wasn’t sailing now; she was rowing away. She felt the strain against her heart as she pushed harder to be farther and more certainly away. And one night, as she lay awake while Michael slept, she knew that whether she took the job or not, the way she felt about her family had changed. If she didn’t take it, she would continue rowing away from them. If she did, she would become different in her relation to them. She would have done something daring, something perhaps shocking. It would be the first time in her life that she had shocked.

  How had she become the woman she was? At thirty-eight, never to have performed a daring action. She was tired of it, tired of the weakness that had marked her life. She thought of Caroline at twenty, defying her father to study abroad, leaving her child ten months of the year. Unwomanly, they would have called her, but was that what people meant, had always meant, by womanliness—mere submission?

  So the talks began, first tentative, then daily changing tone: tearful, unfriendly, lacerating, hurt, apologetic, pleading, blandishing, rational, cold. Pictures were created: think of the sunsets, the olive trees, the children in the square. Think of them among French children, speaking French. Think of us walking among the cypresses. But in the end, it was Michael who said to her that they must do it, that it was mostly fear that kept them back. And Caroline, this work, was too important to lose because they lacked courage. Of course they would do it, they both said, as if their indecision had been merely good form, a gesture proffered to a hostile universe so as not to appear, before its punitive gaze, too confident. People did it all the time, they said; now they would try it. It will only be a few months, they said, and we’ll have years.

  But even as they said it she was worried. Suppose they didn’t have years together. Suppose he left her—he would be without her for months. No one could relax about a marriage now; one in two failed, the corpses lay out everywhere. No one of her generation could imagine with any confidence a separation that would leave chastity—to say nothing of the marriage itself—intact. She knew her husband was attractive. He was one of those men who grow into their bodies only in their thirties. She’d married a gangly boy but the man she lived with was lean and princely, a young nobleman Piero della Francesca would have liked to paint in profile.

  “Would you like me to take the children, so you can really do it right?” he’d asked. “That way, they wouldn’t lose the advantages of being in France for a year.”

  She’d felt ill with fear when he suggested it. She could barely explain to him what the prospect of living without her children made her feel: derelict, unfranchised, as if she were sleeping on the street. No, no, she said; they’re better off here. Leave them with me.

  And so the summer passed, amorous, familial. Her work was pleasant and absorbing. Everyone behaved unnaturally well because they knew Michael would be leaving soon; they could see it rolling at them like a stone down a mountain. She didn’t allow it, till the last few days, to take over: the grief, the small fears, the apprehension that she couldn’t, even for a few months, run a house alone and rear two children. Michael had left detailed instructions about the things he usually took care of: the oil burner, the electrical system, the storm windows. But it wasn’t those she was most afraid of; she was afraid that she wouldn’t be anyone she recognized without Michael; she was afraid of discovering a fathomless weakness that the darkness of marriage, its dense, tough material, had covered up.

  The week before Michael’s departure she woke regularly at five in the morning. I can’t do it; I’ve made a terrible mistake, she would tell herself. But she would think of Caroline; the daunting girl, the challenging matron, her foot on the running board of the car she drove herself. She thought of Caroline’s paintings. So there was a woman, forty-five years dead, whom she would know as she knew her own family. But to do it she had to let her husband go away from her. For a while, she kept telling herself. Not long. We’ll be together in four months, she kept saying. It isn’t much.

  But when the day came and she saw Michael zip his suitcase shut, it was unbearable. All morning the children cried, on and off; they argued about ridiculous things; Michael mislaid his passport.

  They arrived at JFK two hours before the flight. Anne kept squeezing Michael’s hand; he kept giving her the name of the plumber. When the flight was announced, all of them cried except Sarah, who sat in her chair not looking up and reading Goodnight Moon, an atavistic gesture she performed when she was frightened. Peter made Michael sign an agreement that they would see each other on December 15. And then, Michael was simply gone. There was nothing more to wave to: the door of the plane closed up, and they couldn’t see where he was sitting.

  The children slept in the car on the way up to Selby. When they got home, the children were cross and sleepy, and she felt she had used up all her strength on the drive. She didn’t even make the children bathe or brush their teeth. She said they could sleep in their underwear. When Peter asked if they couldn’t all sleep in the parents’ bed, just for one night, she agreed. She could have fallen down on her knees in gratitude before her son. Never, she thought, had anyone had such a good idea.

  Now she was doing it all, all they had talked about and thought about and planned for. She was researching Caroline; she was living alone. The only problem was to find someone wonderful to take care of the children. But Laura Post wasn’t that person. It was too bad, really, but she simply wasn’t right.

  By the third week of September Anne hadn’t found a live-in baby-sitter. But she had to go down to New York again. One day she talked Mrs. Davenport into staying until eleven so she could have supper with Ben. He had something to give her, he said, and handed her a packet of Caroline’s letters to Derain. She touched them, trembling with excitement. By the time they were ready to leave the restaurant, she’d looked at them all. But she’d missed the last bus. She called Mrs. Davenport, who sniffed when she answered the phone and said, “It’s the first time for you, but it won’t be the last. It’s always the way. Luckily, I don’t have to be no place tonight.”

  Anne said that she hadn’t dreamed of asking Mrs. Davenport to stay; she could simply bring the children next door to the Greenspans. But Mrs. Davenport said she happened to care too much about the children to risk their health getting them up out of a warm bed to go out on a cold night. Anne said she would phone the children in the morning before they left for school.

  “I won’t tell them nothing,” Mrs. Davenport said. “In case you don’t get around to it.”

  She went back to the table where Ben was sitting and began to cry.

  “The children are perfectly fine,” he said. “Ghastly woman. You must get rid of her, darling.”

  “There’s no one else around.”

  “Something will turn up. It’s bound to. Meanwhile, have another brandy. It’ll help you sleep.”

  The waiter brought them a brandy, and Anne asked Ben if he had minded, as a child, being left so much to servants and then being sent off to school so early.

  “I minded awfully at the time. But in retrospect, I think it was good. It taught one early not to expect too much from human attachments.”

  She looked at Ben, his long spatulate fingers around the brandy glass, and thought, I am abandoning my children. I am teaching them not to believe in human attachments. Mrs. Davenport is making my younger child a superstitious nervous wreck. She wanted to tell Ben it was no good; she couldn’t do the job, she was boarding, with the children, the next plane to France.

  She thought of Caroline Watson’s son, who died at twenty-eight, an alcoholic. Peter would probably not become an alcoholic. Sarah would probably not jump out a window trying to flee the Devil. If only she could find the right person to stay with them.

  When she got home the next morning at eleven, she surprised Mrs. Davenport asleep in front of a TV game show. The woman was befuddled and distraught, and Anne felt sorry for her, waking up in front of so many strange televisions, in so many strange hou
ses. For the first time, she saw Mrs. Davenport as old and vulnerable and unfortunate rather than aggressive and unpleasant and ill-bred. She lied and said she didn’t have the right change and gave Mrs. Davenport an extra five dollars.

  “We’ll straighten it out next time,” said Mrs. Davenport, quickly folding the money and pushing it into her purse, as if she expected Anne to change her mind.

  Anne went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. She saw a pad of lined notepaper that Mrs. Davenport had left and thought that she should put it in a drawer so the children wouldn’t use it. A slip of paper fell out of the pad onto the floor. She picked it up. It was written on, and she didn’t want to read it, but she saw her own name. Her name riveted her; she couldn’t keep her eyes away.

  “This one’s such a slob,” the letter said. “Just to test her last week, I left a cookie behind the door of the playroom. Well, it’s still there. I’m leaving it there to see how long it takes her to get around to it.”

  Anne ran up the stairs as if she had been shot out of a cannon. She opened the door of the playroom. The room was a mess: pieces of puzzles, crayons, blocks, naked dolls were sprawled around the floor. She looked behind the door. There it was, a chocolate chip cookie, covered with dust and hair. She remembered that she had just given Mrs. Davenport an extra five dollars. How had she allowed that woman in her house, with her children, even for a moment? She picked up the cookie, and crushing it in the palm of her hand she walked to the telephone.

  Trembling, she dialed the number of the people in Syracuse that Laura had worked for.

  “Oh, she’s a model of patience,” said Joan Chamberlain. “And, you know, she’s always ready to do extra housework. She’s quiet, though, she keeps to herself. And I think she’s very religious. Not that that makes any difference, I mean, if you know it ahead of time.”

  “But you feel you can recommend her?” Anne said.

  “Oh yes, sure, there’s nothing wrong with Laura. Really, I’m sure you’ll be happy with her. I’m sure she’ll be just fine in your house.”

  The cookie was beginning to melt in her hand. She flushed it down the toilet, walked back to the telephone and dialed Hélène’s number. Laura answered the phone.

  “I was wondering if you could start working for me,” Anne said.

  “What about tomorrow?” Laura said.

  “Splendid,” said Anne. “I’ll be here all day. Just come whenever you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready,” said Laura.

  Three

  SHE KNEW SHE HAD been sent to Anne to save her. Once she might have worried. She might have been afraid Anne wouldn’t like her. Anne was the sort of person who used to be able to make her feel bad about herself. Now she never felt bad about herself. Anne was very pretty. People liked Anne. She had one of those houses people wanted to be in. Once she would have wanted Anne to be her friend, to invite her to her house. She would have wanted Anne to tell Laura’s mother that Laura was a wonderful person. Anne was the sort of person her mother would listen to. If Anne told Laura’s mother that Laura was the best thing that had happened in the children’s lives, her mother would have to change her mind. Not like what happened with the other people. The Rutherfords at home. They told her mother she wasn’t good for the children. But that was the parents, not the children. The children liked her, she knew they did. They wanted her to stay. They said so when she asked them.

  Her mother said she wasn’t any good with children. Her mother said she didn’t know why Laura got it in her head to work with children, because she wasn’t any good. She said Laura had never been good with children, she hadn’t been any good with her own sister, why did she think she’d be good with anybody else’s children. If she couldn’t be good with her own sister. If she couldn’t get along in her own family. If she never had been able to. What did she think the world was all about?

  When she was twelve, her mother told her she would never be beautiful. She enrolled her in a typing course that summer, because she would have to work to support herself. Her mother said men married beauty: it gave them pleasure. It gave pleasure to the world, her mother said. If you were not beautiful, you did not give pleasure. If you were not good-natured. If you were not lively, were not smart. “She’s a pleasure.” “It’s a pleasure to be near her.” “The pleasure of her company.” What was this pleasure that she could not give? Pleasure, the word sounded to her heavy and fat, like sheep. They ate grass and then were shorn and then were eaten.

  Her mother was beautiful. That was why her father loved her. “Try and please your mother,” her father would tell her when her mother sent her away, sent her to her room. “I can’t stand the sight of you,” her mother said. “Try and please your mother.” Tears. “Don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry for.” Tears. “Out of my sight.” “Try and please your mother.” “Your mother doesn’t mean it. What she says.” Do you, my father, mean it, what you say? No, never. Because her mother was beautiful. “I can still fit my hands around your waist,” her father said to her mother. Her mother was small. At eleven, Laura weighed more than her mother. At twelve, she was taller.

  Anne was tall. Laura saw that she was more like Anne than she was like her mother. Her mother would think Anne was pretty. Was good-natured. Was lively and smart. Her mother would like Anne. When Anne told her mother that Laura was the best thing that had happened to the children, her mother would change her mind. She would say, “Why don’t you come home and live for a while. Come and live with me. Here is your room.”

  But Laura would say no. Because none of it was important. There was nothing that she needed now. She would say no to her mother. After she had saved Anne, saved the children. After they loved her. But it didn’t matter if they loved her. It only mattered that she saved them.

  She was so happy now. Before she found the Lord, she would have worried about all these things. Anne. Her mother. Now that she no longer needed anyone, now that her strength was in the Lord, she could feel sorry for Anne. Before, she would have been afraid Anne wouldn’t like her. Now she just felt sorry for her.

  Hélène said Anne had never known trouble. Hélène had been kind to Laura. But people like Hélène were always kind to her. Hélène liked her. But people like Hélène always liked her. Her mother wouldn’t like Hélène. She wouldn’t like her clothes. Hélène wouldn’t make her mother change her mind, think that she had been wrong about her daughter. Hélène’s house wouldn’t make her change her mind. It was a college house, but she did nothing to it. It had no pictures on the walls. The dishes were from the dime store. Laura knew that Hélène’s house was like that because Hélène knew that beauty didn’t mean anything. Often it was a lure. Hélène said that Anne had gotten through the world too easily because of beauty. Anne’s husband had been deceived by it. Hélène said she knew Michael was not happy in his marriage. “He has sold his birthright for a mess of pottage,” Hélène said. He chose a companion with a pretty face, an alluring body, instead of a partner for his mind and his spirit. Michael was a very spiritual person, Hélène said, although it wasn’t evident until one knew him well. But Anne had nothing in her of the spirit. She was a complete materialist. Even what she called her intellectual life was sensual. Pictures of fat mothers with fat babies, that was what she studied. Anne had no ideas, Hélène said. She had no life above the flesh. Putting her hand on Laura’s hand (the palms of her hands were damp) Hélène told her that she would be very good for Anne and for the children.

  When she saw Anne sitting by the window in her living room, looking at the asters in her garden, when she ate the food Anne offered her, when she wore the clothes Anne lent her, she knew she would save Anne and the children. Anne was not a bad person. But she was sinking in the flesh. The flesh of her hands was cool and dry; her forehead was cool. There were pink spots on her cheeks that gave her white skin color. For a while, that first day in the living room, Laura was afraid Anne didn’t like her, didn’t want her to take care of the childr
en. But Anne did like her; she had called her back. She probably had to check on something. Money, maybe. Laura would have worked without money, for her food, her bed. One day Anne, if Laura helped her, would be saved. But now she was drowning. Laura could see her; drowning as the damned souls drowned in flames of eternal fire. She could see Anne as no one else could see her. She was drowning in flesh. Her own cool flesh. The soft flesh of her children.

  From the bedroom Anne had fixed for her, Laura could look out the window to the garden. Now there were chrysanthemums, and later, Anne had said, the crocuses would come, and then there would be daffodils. Anne asked Laura if she was interested in gardening. She lied and said she was. She would learn to be. Her mother had not been. She would know more than her mother. Of course she already knew more of the Spirit. But Anne would teach her something (the flowers in the garden, the herbs in their clay pots) that her mother wanted to know but did not. Wanted to do but could not.