Читать книгу Cost - Roxana Robinson - Страница 10

After dinner they all went out to the back porch. Julia put the chairs in a row, and they sat watching the sky for shooting stars.

At first they could see nothing. The night around them was opaque, a dense and uninflected black. It held them muffled and sightless. Slowly their stares softened into gazes, and the nocturnal world emerged. The watchers became aware of the dark openness above the meadow, with the quiet shushing of the invisible water beyond, and gradually they could see the revelation of the starlit sky overhead, black, transparent, scattered with glitter, endlessly deep.

It wasn't possible, thought Julia, to imagine the sky as endless, whatever science said. You couldn't conceive of infinity. The mind balked and slid sideways—toward beauty, for example. She thought of painting the night sky, the problems of rendering the velvet quality, the depth. The transparency, and the endlessness: there it was again.

The air coming off the water was cool and damp, and Julia, shivering, went inside to get blankets. She brought out the heavy Hudson's Bays, which were coarse white wool with broad bold stripes of color. She liked these, liked them for both their actual substance and their romantic heritage.

The blankets had first been made in the eighteenth century by the English trading company. They'd been bartered for furs, in the northern reaches of Canada. Julia liked the picture: she imagined the Indians arriving at the trading post with their burden of supple, lustrous skins, and loading up with the heavy, handsome blankets, carrying them back into the silent forests. The green, glassy waters, the tall-masted ships dropping anchor in the wide bay. The stillness of that pristine landscape.

Now, of course, you were taught that any exchange between colonials and indigenous tribes was inequitable, but Julia chose to see the scene as benign. Blankets for furs was not a bad trade, and the blankets were heavy, warm, handsome. She chose to see the exchange through its beauty, and wasn't this the way you defined your vision of the world? In just such a private, fumbling, illogical way, freighted with emotion, dimmed by ignorance, fueled by conviction?

So Julia handed out the blankets, which came, not from a silent galleon on a silver lake, but from a mail-order company in Maine, and was reminded of an earlier sublime moment, which was possibly imaginary, but which gave her comfort.

She tucked striped blankets around her father and Steven. The best and the heaviest, with the rose-colored star in the center, she put around her mother. It was too heavy for Katharine's fragile shoulders, and Julia propped it around her like a tepee.

“Thank you, darling, that feels lovely.” Katharine's smile glimmered up at Julia in the dimness. She smelled of lavender.

Her mother's gratitude was like a tiny blow, an offer of intimacy against which Julia hardened her heart, though she did not know why. She patted the frail shoulder beneath the blanket. “You're welcome,” she said lightly.

Julia sat down between her mother and Steven. His body radiated warmth and maleness; she was surprised again by his size.

“You're nice and warm,” she said, leaning toward him. She had a right to the heat he gave off: he was hers, in a way, as she was his. She thought of Simon, who was not hers, nor she his. Possession was not a part of their relationship, at least not yet, but he liked to wrap his arms around her, and she liked this very much. Body heat: why was it so powerful? She sat in the glow of Steven's, grateful that he hadn't stormed off to his room, that he was not judgmental and moody but patient and forgiving.

“I think I see one.” Edward's head was tilted back, the blanket standing like a ruff around his face.

“Where?” Julia asked.

“Over there,” Edward said. “Gone now.”

“You can never show your shooting star to anyone else,” Julia said. “It's always too late.”

“But you can see one together,” Katharine said.

They sat in silence, wrapped in their rough blankets, heads tipped back, gazing expectantly up into the darkness. The salt breeze moved past them.

“I don't dare blink. I don't want to miss one,” Julia said. “My eyes are drying out.”

“Age,” Edward announced. “The older you get, the less fluid you produce.”

“Wizening,” Julia said. “We're all wizening. Even you, Stevo.”

“I can feel it already,” Steven said. “Yaugh!”

“There's one,” said Katharine. “Don't I see one? Over there.”

“You've always had sharp eyes,” Edward said proudly. “She finds four-leaf clovers, too.”

Katharine was famous for this. She could sit down on any lawn, at any picnic, and casually pluck up the magic things. “Here's another,” she'd say brightly, while her children, on their hands and knees, scrambled fruitlessly through the grass.

“‘Thank you, she said modestly,’” said Katharine.

Actually, Julia thought, they're charming.

Affection flooded through her for her elderly, struggling parents, who were trying to make their way through each difficult day, who were beset and confused by the changing world, handicapped by their failing bodies, finding solace in humor and each other.

Julia, cocooned in the Hudson's Bay, felt the anxieties and irritations of the day falling away. The dinner and the argument were over, the kitchen was clean, the dishwasher rumbling and steaming. Above them rose the dark limitless sky, before them lay the deep benevolent mystery of sleep. The world seemed calm.

She couldn't protect Steven from his grandfather, who was complicated and demanding—as was she, as was everyone—and who loved him. In fact, Julia was suddenly proud of Edward and his absurd, infuriating antagonism. It was some essential thing. It was part of what he was, what charged and animated him.

The black sky stretched up into deep space. Julia wondered again how to paint it, how to capture its warm blue-blackness—not true black, but a velvety purply black. Maybe layers of transparent glazes, built up slowly like Jan van Eyck's soft, gauzy skies—though his were daytime ones. Few artists did the night sky: Whistler. Douanier Rousseau, The Sleeping Gypsy. O'Keeffe, the one of the sky and stars from underneath the tree. How to manage that soft breathing mysterious quality of the nighttime air, the sense of expanding space?

Julia thought of her handsome Jack, and felt the familiar flick of anxiety. She wondered where he was right now: not, presumably, sitting on a quiet porch overlooking the sea, waiting for the heavens to reveal themselves. Or maybe he was doing just that. Waiting for chemical stars to burst inside his brain. Handsome, bad-boy Jack, with his glinting, merry, sidelong glance. Jack, leaning back in his chair, throwing his head back to laugh. Jack's laugh.

She wanted to hear Steven's news of him; she was sure they'd seen each other in New York. She trusted Steven. He looked after his brother, and he knew Jack in ways she never would. Kids nowadays lived in another world, you'd never know what it was like. (What was it like?) They would never let you in. But Steven was reassuring about Jack. He's still a kid, Steven always said.

Jack played in a rock band; she'd watched him perform. Onstage, bathed in the exotic glow of the overhead lights, he was a star. She'd seen him up there, shifting his hips, giving that slow, knowing smile. Tossing his hair back from his eyes. He was so thin, that sexy, narrow torso, the flat stomach, the long elegant limbs. He was a hunk! It made her laugh. How did your own child become a hunk? It made her proud. What were you to think, his mother?

Whatever Steven had to say about Jack, she didn't want it said in front of her parents. She didn't want them to discuss Jack. Edward would turn authoritative and judgmental. It would be like her lack of money; he'd act as though Julia had deliberately chosen to have a son like Jack. Her father would have a list of reasons for Jack's situation: too much television, not enough discipline, the divorce. As though she'd had a choice about divorce, or as though she could go back now and do things differently.

Maybe they had been easier on Jack than on Steven, somehow things seemed to slacken with the second child. They'd done everything properly with Steven, the first time, but it seemed as though once they'd done it, it was done. It had seemed unnecessary to do it all again, and they were too tired. Had that been it? What were they thinking of? Now it made no sense. It was a blur to her now, a patchwork mosaic, all those years of the children's growing up. There were scattered moments that stood out: coming in to find the entire bathroom soaked, including the towels hanging on the racks, the boys in the tub together, shrieking, bright-eyed, their bodies rosy. The time Jackie fell out of the tree in Central Park and came home holding his poor dangling arm, his face pinched with pain. It seemed as though their childhoods were the same, but they had turned out two such different people, Steven so earnest and responsible, and Jack—well, Jack was not so much. Not so earnest and responsible. What had happened?

Probably Jack had stayed up too late, watched too much television. Too many video games, with their flickering psychotic lights, their vertiginous vistas and violent tasks. His brain had certainly been fried, if that's what video games did. She and Wendell hadn't given him any— one or two, maybe—but in New York you couldn't keep your children from doing whatever it was they wanted to do. As soon as they were safe on the streets they were gone, and so was your authority. Jack had spent hours on video games at his friends' houses.

But Jack was a sweetheart, her heart's darling. His life was unsettled, but whose in their twenties was not? Steven was in flux, too. And if they were looking for blame, what about Wendell leaving his family for that awful nitwit, why mightn't that be the problem? Why wouldn't it be Wendell's fault? In any case, wherever the blame should be assigned, it was not for her father to assign it. Julia would not hear a single word from Edward about Jack.

Her father looked intently at the dark sky, scanning it for movement. He could still see perfectly well, though his feet were clumsy, and his hands—that had once tied off microscopic blood vessels and stitched filament-sized nerves—were now like paws. The thing was to keep going, never admit weakness or defeat. His eyes were still good, and his hearing. He didn't have a hearing aid. Carter Johnson, who was exactly his age, had a flesh-colored plastic snail curled behind each ear. You could hear them, that high insect whine, and he was always fiddling with them, looking troubled, turning them up and down. They didn't seem to help him at all.

All this was partly genetic, but it was also taking care of yourself. He'd never let himself run to flab. He got out every day and walked. He was fit and hale for eighty-eight.

He kept thinking he saw the flicker of a falling star, but as soon as he focused, it was gone. Staring made his sight unreliable, things glimmered mysteriously on the perimeter of his vision. He was vexed at missing Katharine's star, he didn't like missing things. Katharine's vision was good, too—they were both doing well, apart from her hip.

Her hip—but Edward couldn't bring himself to consider Katharine's hip. When he'd first met her it had seemed insignificant. She'd been lithe then, and active. Over the years, though, it had steadily worsened, and he'd been helpless, unable to stop its encroachment, despite the operations and therapy. Katharine never complained. Sometimes, at night, he'd rub her back, and sometimes she wept silently. They both pretended it wasn't happening. If she broke out into sobs she apologized. He knew it was from the pain, and from relief so sharp it felt like pain. He rubbed her shoulders and told her it was all right. He'd been helpless to help her.

There was one, a bright liquid streak in the darkness. He announced it, but by the time he spoke, it was gone. Staring at where it had been, he wondered if he'd really seen it. Was he beginning to imagine things? The thought made him fearful. Dementia: it lay ahead for most of them, humans. He was afraid of failing, his whole physical plant turning decrepit. This was why he walked daily, why he busied himself with Julia's plumbing. He was determined to stay vigorous. He was fighting off decay, resisting the pathetic downward slide into decrepitude. It happened against your will. Tom Lounsdale's children had banded together, like a mutinous crew, and taken away his car keys. Tom could do nothing, and his voice had cracked when he told Edward the story.

Edward would disinherit his children if they tried this. The idea of it set him into a boil. He would not let other people determine his life. (Though his body was turning to dust.)

Katharine looked up into the night sky.

The blanket was too heavy, really, but she did not want to hurt Julia's feelings and sat quietly beneath it. All this was beautiful, the quiet sounds of the water, the hissing of the grasses, the deep velvet of the sky. On Mount Washington, with her brothers, the skies had been open and wild, the constellations close. There were hundreds of falling stars. She'd fallen asleep watching them, then she'd waked in the night and seen them spread out above her. That had been before the accident.

She'd been fortunate, really. She'd had all that in her life, she'd done everything. Hiking, tennis, foot races—in eighth grade she'd won the fifty-yard dash. The coming-out parties, where they'd danced until the midnight breakfast, silver salvers full of steaming scrambled eggs; then they'd danced on again until dawn. Mary Rue's party in Virginia, the big white tent on the lawn, fireflies in the field beyond. The girls in long dresses, the boys in black tie. She'd had a dress with a rose-colored sash, the skirt like petals. She'd had all that. She was sorry for the people who'd been crippled since birth, who'd never known those things. You lost things to age, there were things no one her age could do. But she'd done those things—hopscotch on the sunny flagstone walk at recess, skating on the frozen pond. It was odd that she could call up all these distant things, when so many recent ones were gone.

Even after the accident, things had been all right for a while. Years. Sometimes Edward rubbed her back at night, though this was never mentioned to the children. She knew it would make him feel demeaned, like a servant. She'd tried never to let her pain be known; she knew it made him unhappy. He was used to pain, but during surgery the patient was anesthetized. (He'd used saws, she knew, electric drills, staples. Surgeons were used to it. The pain he inflicted was necessary, a part of the cure.) There was nothing to be done about her pain, and no point in discussing it. She tried never to talk about it.

Now she could see that Edward was beginning to fail. It saddened her. He was stiff now, and ungainly. His feet were heavy. He tired easily, and couldn't carry the groceries in from the car in one trip. He asked the store to use several small bags, so he could carry them one at a time. He didn't tell her, but she'd seen it. Since he'd retired, he'd been doing the marketing, because her limp was worsening.

Katharine's body had been giving out for decades, it was in endless decline. She was used to it, but Edward was not used to being in decline, and it was hard for him. He'd relied on his body all his life, it had always done his bidding. She didn't know what would happen to him, to them, if his body really did give out. She didn't think about the future. Edward had always been the one to do that. Anything might happen, they might both die in their sleep.

They had friends who had gone into those places, “facilities.” Assisted living. The Medways had put their names down five years ago, so when they needed it they'd have a place to go. Eleanor had sounded so smug about it, as though it were laudable to plan for her own destruction. But shouldn't you struggle against it, resist? Wasn't the thing not to give in? Katharine had resisted all her life. She'd never called herself “disabled” or “handicapped,” those words seemed like defeat. She didn't want now to put herself in another category. She didn't want to go into one of those places, nor did Edward. She'd rather die. In fact, she was secretly rather looking forward to dying: it would be another adventure. And a relief. She felt she'd earned it.

She wondered what Julia's thoughts were for the future. If she'd remarry. She'd had other men in her life, after the divorce, Katharine knew, but Julia never talked about them. Katharine hoped she'd remarry, it would be such a waste of beauty and possibility if she didn't. Julia's wide face, the lovely wings of hair, all that emotional vitality. Those long strong legs. Katharine loved her daughters' lean tanned legs, so straight and fine, their steps miraculously solid and even. They were her redemption.

How could Wendell have left Julia? Katharine had loved Wendell, his sense of humor, his warmth. How could he have done this? Broken something so lovely and intact.

“There's one,” said Steven. “I saw it with my wizening eyes.”

“I saw it, too,” Julia said: a bright streak of falling light, a flare of hope. She thought of Simon.

“I did, too,” Katharine said.

“So did I,” said Edward, pleased.

There, thought Julia, as though something had been exquisitely proven. She felt a wave of pleasure. Her parents were fine. They were frail, but they were wholly present. Risks lay in the future, but they always did. Just now, Julia, wrapped in the striped blanket, sat between her mother and her son. They were all sitting on the vast, sloping, darkened side of the earth, looking into the limitless reaches of the sky and watching miracles of light and motion. Right now they were safe.