Little, Big (64 page)

"The same, the same." She looked up at him from where she sat, studying him shrewdly. He'd always had the sense his grandmother knew some discreditable secret about him, and if she could just squeeze it between the thick layers of her usual discourse, it would be revealed. "I go on," she said. "You've grown."

"Gee, I don't
think
so."

"Either that or I'd forgotten how big you'd got."

"Yeah, that's it. . . . Well." The two women looked him over from the heights of two generations, seeing different views. He felt examined. He knew he ought to take off his overcoat, but he had forgotten exactly what was underneath it; he sat instead at the far end of the table and said again, "Well."

"Tea," Alice said. "How about some tea? And you can tell us all your adventures."

"Tea would be great," he said.

"And how's George?" Momdy asked. "And his people?"

"Oh, fine." He hadn't been to Old Law Farm in months. "Fine, same as ever." He shook his head in amusement at funny George. "That crazy farm."

"I remember," she said, "when that was really such a nice place. Years ago. The corner house, that was the one the Mouse family first lived in . . ."

"Still do, still do," Auberon said. He glanced at his mother, who was busy with teapot and water at the big stove; surreptitiously she brushed her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, and then saw that he' caught her at it, and turned to face him, teapot in her hands.

". . . and after Phyllis Townes died," Momdy was going on, "well that was a protracted illness, her doctor thought he'd chased it down to her kidneys, but
she
thought . . ."

"So how was it, really?" Alice said to her son. "Really."

"Really it wasn't so hot," Auberon said. He looked down. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, oh well," she said.

"For not writing and all. There wasn't much to say."

"That's okay. We were afraid for you, that's all."

He lifted his eyes. He really hadn't thought of that. Here he'd been swallowed down by the teeming terrible City, swallowed as by a dragon's mouth and hardly been heard of again; of course they'd been afraid for him. As it had once before in this kitchen, a window rose within him and he saw, through it, his own reality. People loved him, and worried about him; his personal worth didn't even enter into it. He lowered his eyes again, ashamed. Alice turned back to the stove. His grandmother filled the silence with reminiscence, the details of dead relatives' sickness, remission, relapse, decline and death. "Mm, mm-hm," he said, nodding, studying the scarred surface of the table. He had sat, without choosing to, at his old place, at his father's right hand, Tacey's left.

"Tea," Alice said. She put the teapot on a trivet, and patted its fat belly. She put a cup before him. And waited, then, hands folded, for him to pour it, or for something; he glanced up at her and was about to try to speak, to answer the question he saw posed in her, if he could, if he could think of words, when the double doors of the pantry flew open and Lily and the twins came in, and Tony Buck.

"Hi Uncle Auberon," the twins (Bud the boy and Blossom the girl) shouted in unison, as though Auberon hadn't quite arrived yet and they had to call far to be heard. Auberon stared at them: they seemed to be twice the size they had been, and they could talk: they hadn't been able to when he left, had they? Hadn't he last seen them still carried fore and aft by their mother in a canvas carrier? Lily, at their insistence, began to go through cupboards, looking for good things to eat, the twins were unimpressed by the solitary teapot but certainly it was time for
some
thing. Tony Buck shook Auberon's hand and said, "Hey, how was the City?"

"Oh, he;, swell," Auberon said in a tone like Tony's, hearty and no-nonsense; Tony turned to Alice and said, "So Tacey said maybe we should have a couple rabbits tonight."

"Oh, Tony, that would be terrific," Alice said.

Tacey herself came through the door then, calling Tony's name. "Is that okay, Ma?" she said.

"It's great," Alice said. "Better than tuna wiggle."

"Kill the fatted calf," Momdy said, the only one there to whom the phrase would have occurred. "And fricassee it."

"Smoky'll be so happy," said Alice to .Auberon. "He loves rabbit, but he can't ever feel it's his place to suggest it."

"Listen," Auberon said, "don't make any fuss just for . . ." He couldn't, in his self-effacement, bring himself to say personal pronouns. "I mean just because . . ."

"Uncle Auberon," said Bud, "did you see any muggerds?"

"Hm?"

"Muggerds." He curved his fingers predatorily at Auberon. "Who get you. In the City."

"Well, as a matter of fact . . ." But Bud had noticed (he hadn't ever quite taken his eyes from her) that his sister Blossom had acquired a cookie of a sort that hadn't been offered to him, and he had to hurry to put in a claim.

"Now out, out!" said Lily.

"You wanna go see the rabbits die?" her daughter asked her, taking her hand.

"No, I don't," said Lily, but Blossom, wanting her mother with her for the dread and fascinating event, pulled her by the hand.

"It only takes a
second
," she said reassuringly, drawing her mother after her. "Don't be afraid." They went out through the summer kitchen and the door that led to the kitchen-garden, Lily, Bud and Blossom, and Tony. Tacey had filled a cup for herself and one for Momdy, and with them backed out the pantry doors; Momdy followed her.

Grump grump grump said the doors behind them.

Alice and Auberon sat alone in the kitchen, the storm of them having passed as quickly as it came on.

"So," Auberon said. "It seems like everybody's fine here."

"Yes. Fine."

"Do you mind," he said, rising slowly like an old man, much tried, "if I get myself a drink?"

"No, sure," Alice said. "There's some sherry there, and other things, I think."

He got down a dusty whiskey bottle.

"No ice," said Alice. "Rudy didn't come."

"He still cuts ice?"

"Oh yes. But he's been sick lately. And Robin, you know, his grandson—well, you know Robin; he isn't much help. Poor old man."

Absurdly, this was the last straw. Poor old Rudy . . . "Too bad, too bad," he said, his voice shaky. "Too bad." He sat, his glassful of whiskey the saddest thing he had ever seen. His vision was clouded and sparkling. Alice rose slowly, alarmed. "I made a real mess of it, Ma," he said. "A real awful mess." He put his face in his hands, the awful mess a harsh, gathering thing in his throat and breast. Alice, unsure, came and put her arm tentatively around his shoulder, and Auberon, though he hadn't done so in years, never even for Sylvie, not once, knew he was about to sob like a child. The awful mess gathered weight and force and, pressing its way out, opened his mouth and shook his frame violently, causing sounds he had not known he could make. There there, he said to himself, there there: but it wouldn't stop, release made it grow, there were vast volumes of it to be expelled, he put his head down on the kitchen table and bawled.

"Sorry, sorry," he said when he could speak again. "Sorry, sorry."

"No," Alice said, her arm around his resistant overcoat; "no, sorry for what?" He raised his head suddenly, throwing off her arm, and, after another gasping sob, ceased, his chest heaving. "Was it," Alice said softly, warily, "the dark girl?"

"Oh," Auberon said, "partly, partly."

"And that stupid bequest."

"Partly."

She saw peeking from his pocket a hanky, and pulled it out for him. "Here," she said, shocked to see in his streaming face not her baby boy in tears, but a grownup she hardly knew transformed by grief. She looked at the hanky she offered him. "What a pretty thing," she said. "It looks like . . ."

"Yes," Auberon said, taking it from her and mopping his face. "Lucy made it." He blew his nose. "It was a present. When I left. Open it when you come home, she said." He laughed, or cried again, or both, and swallowed. "Pretty, huh." He stuffed it back in his pocket and sat, back bent, staring. "Oh God," he said. "Well, that's embarrassing."

"No," she said, "no." She put her hand over his. She was in a quandary; he needed advice, and she couldn't give it to him; she knew where advice could be got, but not whether it could be given to him there, or whether it was right for her to send him. "It's all right, you know," she said, "it really is, because," and then bethought herself. "Because it's all right; it'll be all right."

"Oh sure," he said, sighing a great, shuddering sigh. "All over now."

"No," Alice said, and took his hand more firmly. "No, it's not all over, but . . . Well, whatever happens, it'll all be part of, well part of what's to be, won't it? I mean there's nothing that couldn't be, isn't that right?"

"I don't know," Auberon said. "What do I know."

She held his hand, but oh, he was too big now for her to gather him to her, hug him, cover him up with herself and tell him all, tell him the long, long tale of it, so long and strange that he would fall asleep long before it was over, soothed by her voice and her warmth and the beat of her heart and the calm certainty of her telling: and then, and then, and then: and more wonderful than that: and strange to say: and the way it all turns out: the story she hadn't known how to tell when he was young enough to tell it to, the story she knew now only when he was too big to gather up and whisper it to, too big to believe it, though it would all happen, and to him. But she couldn't bear to see him in this darkness, and say nothing. "Well," she said, not releasing his hand; she cleared her throat of the huskiness that had gathered there (was she glad, or the reverse, that all her own storms of tears had been wept, years ago?) and said, "Well, will you do something for me, anyway?"

"Yes, sure."

"Tonight, no, tomorrow morning—do you know where the old gazebo is? That little island? Well, if you follow that stream up, you come to a pool—with a waterfall?"

"Sure, yes."

"Okay," she said. She took a deep breath, said "Well" again, and gave him instructions, and pledged him to follow them exactly, and told him something of the reasons why he must, but not all; and he agreed, in a cloud, but having wept out before her any reservations he might have had to such a scheme, and such reasons.

The door to the kitchen-garden opened, and Smoky came in through it; before he came around the corner of the summer kitchen, though, Alice had patted Auberon's hand, smiled, and pressed her forefinger to her lips, and then to his.

"Rabbit tonight?" Smoky was saying as he came into the kitchen. "What's all the excitement?" He did an extravagant double-take when he saw Auberon, and books slipped from beneath his arm to the floor.

"Hi, hi," said Auberon, glad at least to have taken one of them by surprise.

Sophie had also known that Auberon was on his way home, though the bus had thrown off her calculations by a day. She was full of advice, and had many questions to ask; but Auberon wanted no advice, and she saw that her questions would get no answers either, so she didn't ask them: what information he chose to offer was all she would get for the moment, scantily though it clothed his City months.

At dinner she said: "Well. It's nice to have everybody back. For one night."

Auberon, devouring victuals like a man who's lived for months on hot dogs and day-old Danish, looked up at her, but she had looked away, not conscious apparently of having said anything odd; and Tacey began a story about Cherry Lake's divorce after only a year of marriage.

"This is delicious, Ma," Auberon said, and helped himself again, wondering.

Later, in the library, he and Smoky compared cities: Smoky's, from years ago, and Auberon's.

"The best thing," Smoky said, "or the exciting thing, was the feeling you always had of being at the head of the parade. I mean even if all you did was sit in your room, you felt it, you knew that outside in the streets and in the buildings it was going forward, boom boom boom, and you were part of it, and everybody everywhere else was just stumbling along behind. Do you know what I mean?"

"I guess," Auberon said. "I guess things have changed." Hamletish in a black sweater and pants he'd found among his old clothes, he sat somewhat folded up in a tall buttoned leather chair. One light lit shone on the brandy bottle Smoky had opened. Alice had suggested he and Auberon have a long talk; but they were having difficulty finding subjects. "It always felt to me like everybody everywhere else had forgotten all about us." He held out his glass, and Smoky put an inch of brandy in it.

"Well, but the crowds," Smoky said. "The bustle, and all the well-dressed people; everybody hurrying to appointments . . ."

"Hm," Auberon said.

"I think it's . . ."

"Well I mean I think I know what you say you thought, I mean that you think it was . . ."

"I think I thought . . ."

"I guess it's changed," Auberon said.

A silence fell. Each stared into his glass. "So," Smoky said. "Anyway. How did you meet her?"

"Who?" Auberon stiffened. There were subjects he had no intention of discussing with Smoky. That with their cards and their second sight they could probe his heart and learn his business was bad enough.

"The lady who came," Smoky said. "That Miss Hawksquill. Cousin Ariel, as Sophie says."

"Oh. In a park. We fell into conversation. . . . A little park that said it was built by, you know, old John and his company, back when."

"A little park," Smoky said, surprised, "with funny curving paths, that . . ."

"Yeah," Auberon said.

"That lead in, only they don't, and . . ."

"Yeah."

"Fountains, statues, a little bridge . . ."

"Yeah, yeah."

"I used to go there," Smoky said. "How do you like that."

Auberon didn't, really. He said nothing.

"It always reminded me," Smoky said, "for some reason, of Alice." Suddenly flung back into the past, Smoky with great vividness remembered the small summery park, and felt—tasted, almost, with the mind's tongue—the season of his first love for his wife. When he was Auberon's age. "How do you like that," he said again, dreamily, tasting a cordial in which a whole summer's fruits were long ago distilled. He looked at Auberon. He was staring into his glass gloomily. Smoky sensed that he was approaching a sore spot or subject. How odd, though, the same park . . . "Well," he said, and cleared his throat. "She seems like quite a woman."