An Unfinished Season (31 page)

I said, You can't mean that.

But I do, he said.

Can you tell me, I began.

No, I cannot, my father said, smiling one of his thin smiles. I tried to see behind it. Something to do with his business, I thought, the strike or its aftermath; or his life with my mother, some indiscretion, or more than indiscretion, betrayal or an act of dishonesty. He was looking at me evenly and I was listening hard but I knew I had all I was going to get. At that moment my father was impenetrable. He was fifty years old and as I looked at him, his heavy shoulders and head, his wrestler's build, I knew I would make a different sort of life for myself. Mine would be a twentieth-century life, the modern world, where spillage was inevitable, even necessary. Some disorder was welcome, was it not—and then I remembered Jack Brule.

My father smiled suddenly and said, in conscious parody of his gruff voice, Be a god damned adult, Wils. Then he turned and limped back to his chair, easing himself onto the cushion.

You win, I said.

Winning doesn't come into it, he said.

Your way, I went on, sounds lonely.

Can be, he admitted. He extracted his Havana from its silver tube and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, testing density. But he did not light it. He said, Butch Greenslat had an interest in suicide. He'd had a client or two over the years, took that way out. We often talked about it over a drink at the end of the day. Butch had a philosophical turn of mind, when he wasn't chasing women or putting the fix in at the Hall. He had a theory that suicide, like any affair of pride, required equilibrium, the perfect harmony of emotion and will. A kind of sublime handshake was how Butch put it. Think of a musician at the height of his powers, the pure note of a horn, the note held to the limits of breath. My father hesitated, listening to Benny Goodman play the opening notes of
Rhapsody in Blue.

I listened to Goodman's run, the notes rising and dispersing, ending in silence.

You can't arrest it any more than you can arrest a puff of smoke, my father said. Its course is inevitable unless something interferes with the equilibrium, changing the field of force, and in Jack Brule's case, nothing did.

That would be Butch's explanation, I think.

I hope you can make it up with your girl, my father added.

I shook my head. I think she's dispersed, like your black smoke.

She'll be having a bad time of it, he said.

I think so, I said.

It'll work out, my father said.

For me or for her? I asked.

For her, he said.

I hope so, I said with a confidence I did not feel. I think, with Aurora, it's an affair of pride.

I'm very sure it's more than pride, my mother said from the doorway. I had no idea how long she had been standing there in the shadows listening to my father and me. Her face was set in a frown, her arms crossed, her manner distant. I'm sure she only needs to find her own way.
Only,
my mother repeated with a cold smile. Not that she'll have much help.

You didn't used to listen at keyholes, my father said.

Come to bed, Teddy, my mother said. You, too, Wils.

In a minute, my father said.

It's late, she said.

We haven't finished, my father said.

It's never finished, my mother said as she turned her back and walked out of the room.

T
HE DAY WAS
overcast when I left Quarterday but brightened when I reached the city. I had trouble finding the Lutheran church, a few streets west of Lincoln Park, stuck between low-slung apartment buildings in a residential neighborhood. The church was constructed of red brick, and if it weren't for the steeple and the clerestory windows you could mistake it for a school or a warehouse. I was a few minutes late and most of the mourners were already inside. The hearse and three black Cadillacs were waiting at the curb but the chauffeurs were across the street fanning themselves with their billed hats; the day was warm. A few older men were finishing cigarettes on the church steps. I recognized them from the parties earlier in the summer, only now they were in business suits, looking impatient at eleven o'clock in the morning. They were staring at their shoes and shaking their heads when I passed by. I heard one of them say, Jesus, what must Jack have been thinking to do such a thing, and one of the others replying that he didn't know but it certainly wasn't anything good, but Jack was always a queer duck, even for a head doctor. I nodded and they nodded back, trying and failing to place me as they flipped their cigarettes on the gritty patch of lawn and consulted their wristwatches once again. Inside, I recognized the doctors who had been arguing about German tattoos, and a few of the women
who had been in the apartment on Friday. All the women wore white gloves and hats. I looked for Marlon Brando but he was not in sight. I did identify what looked like Adlai Stevenson's bald head but I could not be sure, the church was ill lit and crowded. Charlie Smithers and his wife were seated near the front, son Al wedged uncomfortably between them. I was surprised to see only a few friends of Aurora's, Dana and Antoinette and one other girl whose name I could not recall, sitting together in the middle of the church. I wondered what had happened to her schoolmates and the boys she had dated over the years, but perhaps she had discouraged them from coming; and then Oscar Palshaw wálked by. Probably Aurora wanted only to get the service over with, do what was necessary without the chore of greeting friends and listening to their so-sorrys and what-can-I-dos, everyone nervous and on the edge of tears. I had tried to call Aurora half a dozen times but the phone was busy; twice it went unanswered, even when I let it ring a minute or more, imagining Aurora sitting alone in her room and listening to the monotonous interruption, unwilling or unable to move. I had no idea what had become of Consuela. I had written a note also but had heard nothing in reply. Now I noticed the aunts in the front pew, facing the closed casket and its spray of white roses. Aunt That's son Oliver was next to her and on the other side a pretty girl in a wide-brimmed hat, and I knew without asking that she was the cheerleader, Aurora's Texas cousin. The older man on her right was as weather-beaten as a fence rail but turned out in banker's gray for the occasion, and two rows behind them, inconspicuous in the shadows of the far end, was a grieving woman with her head on the heavy arm of her blank-faced husband, surely Aurora's mother and the piano-playing stepfather, the Elliotts. He was staring intently at the casket, covered by an American flag. On the flag was a decoration, no doubt the dead man's Silver Star, and I wondered if he would approve of such a dramatic memento—and then I remembered Aurora and me discussing when the future began, with graduation or a job or marriage or children and never imagining that it would begin with a funeral. The church was appointed in a plain style. Behind the casket
was a lectern where the minister would stand and beyond that risers for the choir, except the risers were empty. The light inside was wan and seemed to evaporate as I looked at it, drawn upward to the vault of the nave. A somber attendant in a black suit handed me a program as I slipped into an empty pew at the rear of the chamber and bent my head to say a brief prayer, wishing Jack Brule Godspeed and some measure of grace and consolation for his daughter and for Consuela. Whatever ill will I had toward the dead man was gone, and it was not my place to judge. The program proposed a hymn, a reading from Scripture, another hymn, another reading, remarks by the Reverend William Chasewell, and a final hymn. We all sat uneasily in the half-light listening to the organist play scales. Under the music was a hushed sibilant rustle, people whispering mouth to ear. The woman in front of me remarked to her neighbor that she had refused her daughter permission to attend the funeral, too depressing for a young girl, not at all appropriate given the unwholesome circumstances. She'll discover that side of things soon enough. Poor Aurora. I closed my eyes and thought about affairs of pride and the marriage of emotion and will; and you would have to add imagination to reach the perfect equilibrium when, I supposed, anything was possible. Perhaps when they said emotion, they meant imagination. This plain church discouraged the expression of either. Submission was recommended. We all sat dumbly listening to the organist practice his scales. The Reverend Chasewell was standing behind the lectern now, a Bible in his hands. He was as tall as Jack Brule but older and seemed to regard his congregation with mild distrust, his eyes narrowed and his mouth a thin suspicious line. He had the superior bearing of a Victorian gentleman. At his perfunctory signal everyone rose and the organ sounded the notes of the first hymn. At a movement behind me in the center aisle, I turned to discover Aurora and Consuela, dressed identically in black, unveiled, advancing a step at a time. They walked side by side, both bent slightly at the waist and moving so slowly they might have been struggling through water. They looked like sisters, only a few years separating them, their heads almost touching, walking in soldierly unison;
and then I saw they were holding hands. The congregation, singing, turned to watch them, and time itself stopped in a sudden gulp of held breath. Some of the women turned away in distress, though Olivia Elliott never moved, her eyes resolutely forward. Aurora paused, her hand resting lightly on the pew rail not two feet from where I sat. She was wearing her father's wristwatch, her left hand made into a fist so that it would not slip off. I smiled at her but she stared straight ahead, pausing as if to gather strength for the march down the center aisle to the casket with its draped flag, white roses either side, the Reverend Chasewell standing motionless, waiting. My hand clasped hers until she looked sharply at me, her eyes alienated and unfocused; and then she smiled crookedly, a look of studied resolve. I am not certain she knew who I was. Her hand was under mine and then it was gone. Aurora and Consuela went on up the aisle, laboring against the current that threatened to overwhelm them. They were holding hands so tightly, wrists touching, that they resembled—not lovers, not sisters, but prisoners shackled by fate and circumstance, the vultures in the trees; and they would not give in. Their heels clicked on the stone floor, a tempo at odds with the hymn but consistent somehow with the frank curiosity on the faces of the congregation. The Reverend Chasewell's frown was commentary on the disgraceful irregularity, daughter and mistress marching down the center aisle as if they were members of a wedding. Robert Elliott raised his head and gave a cross look, but it went unseen. Aurora and Consuela were unaware, their eyes set on a point in the middle distance. At last they reached the front of the church and took their places beside the aunts, still holding hands. They began to sing. I sang, too, and listened to the Reverend Chasewell read from John, and sang again and listened to the Reverend Chasewell read from Ecclesiastes, and then listened to the Reverend Chasewell read his appalling lesson until I could listen no longer and quietly slipped out of the pew and stepped into the indifferent light of midday Chicago. The hearse and the three black Cadillacs were waiting at the curb, their chauffeurs looking listlessly at me, alone on the porch. Two motorcycle patrolmen, ominous in white helmets and black leather leggings, waited to conduct the cortege to the cemetery. I did not know in which of Chicago's many graveyards Jack Brule would be interred. I wondered what words, if any, would be etched on his tombstone; and finally I wondered why his remains were not bound for Arlington, where the war dead were. But I thought I knew the answer to that. I stood on the front steps listening to the final hymn, the one about God's mighty fortress. The congregation was not in good voice and the music was pale. I strained to hear the words but what I heard instead was a kind of groan, voices under the organ, an indistinct murmur. I listened for Aurora's alto but it was lost somewhere in the interior and I suspected she was not singing but listening, as I was, for one clear note, evidence of the heartbeat beneath the skin. Then the hymn concluded. The patrolmen fired up their engines, the chauffeurs returned to their cars, and Aurora and Consuela were walking down the porch steps, followed by the aunts, the Texas cousin and her father, the Elliotts, and other family members I did not recognize. There was a moment of confusion after Aurora and Consuela disappeared into the lead limousine, the one behind the hearse. Mourners gathered on the church steps watching the departure, the funeral party debating which car to enter as the chauffeurs stood at attention beside open doors. I saw Aurora's arm fall from her open window, that gesture again. She caressed the skin of the limousine as if it were a cat's fur, her father's wristwatch limp around her wrist. At last the cars pulled away from the curb and moved slowly up the street, the hearse so long and black it seemed to go on forever. Aurora's arm disappeared from the window of the limousine behind it. I walked away among strangers, searching for my car. Nothing in this neighborhood was familiar. The hearse turned the corner and disappeared. I was nineteen years old.

 

 

 

 

T
HAT'S WHAT
I know of that long-ago summer under the high-topped tents, an unfinished season sure enough. By the end of the decade my parents had given up the Midwest and moved to Florida, where my mother gave lessons in feng shui and my father practiced coming out of a fairway sand trap with a five iron; and a, decade later they were both gone. When they moved south, I had no reason to visit Chicago and never did again. Still, wherever I went in the world I was careful to check the papers for a Chicago dateline, and over the years understood that the city was having something like a renaissance. It was in the
Herald Tribune
that I found a two-line obit of Ozias Tilleman and, a little later, two paragraphs on Georg Brunis. One of the Cordes girls married a tennis professional and I always checked the tournament summaries to see how he had done; but by the early 1960s he had slipped in the rankings, and disappeared from the sports pages. In the last year of the Eisenhower administration, Charlie Smithers got an ambassadorship, one of the Caribbean nations. Much later, my old day school hired a new headmaster, a Melville scholar from Hotchkiss or St. Paul's, one of those two.