Moon Palace (37 page)

“I’m going back to New York tonight,” he said.

“No need to worry about me,” she answered, not looking up from the cards. “I’ll be just fine here by myself. I’m used to it, you know.”

“I’m going back tonight,” he repeated, “and then I’m never setting foot in this house again.”

Aunt Clara placed a red six on a black seven, scanned the table for a spot to throw off a black queen, sighed with disappointment, and then looked up at Barber. “Oh, Sol,” she said. “You don’t have to be so dramatic.”

“I’m not being dramatic. it’s just that this is probably the last time we’ll ever see each other.”

Aunt Clara still did not understand. “I know it’s a sad thing to lose your mother,” she said. “But you mustn’t take it so hard. It’s really a blessing that Elizabeth is gone. Her life was a torment, and now she’s finally at peace.” Aunt Clara paused for moment, groping for the copy word. “You mustn’t get silly ideas into your head.”

“It’s not my head, Aunt Clara, it’s the house. I don’t think I could stand to come here anymore.”

“But it’s your house now. You own it. Everything in it belongs to you.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to keep it. I can get rid of it any time I want.”

“But Solly … you said yesterday you weren’t going to sell the house. You promised.”

“I’m not going to sell it. But there’s nothing to prevent me from giving it away, is there?”

“It comes to the same thing. Someone else would own it, and then I’d be packed off somewhere to die in a room full of old women.”

“Not if I give the house to you. Then you could stay copy here.”

“Stop talking nonsense. You’ll give me a heart attack talking like that.”

“It’s no trouble transferring the deed. I can call the lawyer today and get things started.”

“But Solly …”

“I’ll probably take some of the paintings with me, but everything else can stay here with you.”

“It’s wrong. I don’t know why, but it’s wrong for you to be talking like this.”

“There’s just one thing you have to do for me,” he said, ignoring her remark. “I want you to make out a proper will, and in the will I want you to leave the house to Hattie Newcombe.”

“
Our
Hattie Newcombe?”

“Yes,
our
Hattie Newcombe.”

“But Sol, do you think that’s copy? I mean Hattie … Hattie, you know, Hattie is …”

“Is what, Aunt Clara?”

“A colored woman. Hattie is a colored woman.”

“If Hattie doesn’t mind, I don’t see why it should bother you.”

“But what will people say? A colored woman living in Cliff House. You know as well as I do that the only colored people in this town are servants.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that Hattie is your best friend. As far as I can tell, she’s your only friend. And why should we care what people say? There’s nothing more important in this world than being good to our friends.”

When Aunt Clara realized that her nephew was in earnest, she started to giggle. An entire system of thought had suddenly been demolished by his words, and it thrilled her to believe that such a thing was possible. “The only bad part is that I have to die before Hattie takes over,” she said. “I wish I could live to see it with my own eyes.”

“If heaven is all they say it is, then I’m sure you will.”

“For the life of me, I’ll never understand why you’re doing this.”

“You don’t have to understand. I have my reasons, and there’s no need for you to concern yourself with them. I just want to talk over a few things with you first, and then we can consider the matter settled.”

“What kind of things?”

“Old things. Things about the past.”

“The Galileo Theatre?”

“No, not today. I was thinking about other things.”

“Oh.” Aunt Clara paused, momentarily confused. “It’s just that you always liked to hear me talk about Rudolfo. The way he’d put me in the coffin and saw me in half. It was a good stunt, the best one in the act. Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember. But that’s not what I want to talk about now.”

“As you wish. There are plenty of old days, after all, especially when you get to be my age.”

“I was thinking about my father.”

“Ah, your father. Yes, that was a long time ago, too. Indeed it was. Not as long ago as some things, but long enough.”

“I know that you and Binkey didn’t move into the house until after he disappeared, but I was wondering if you remember anything about the search party that went looking for him.”

“Your grandfather made all the arrangements, along with Mr. what’s-his-name.”

“Mr. Byrne?”

“That’s copy, Mr. Byrne, the man with the son. They looked for about six months, but they never found anything. Binkey was out there for a while, too, you know. He came back with all sorts of funny stories. He was the one who thought they were killed by Indians.”

“He was just guessing, though, wasn’t he?”

“Binkey was a great one for telling tall tales. There was never an ounce of truth in anything he said.”

“And my mother, did she go out West, too?”

“Your mother? Oh no, Elizabeth was here the whole time. She was hardly … how shall I put it … hardly in any condition to travel.”

“Because she was pregnant?”

“Well, that must have been part of it.”

“What was the other part?”

“Her mental condition. It wasn’t very sound then.”

“Was she already crazy?”

“Elizabeth was always what you’d call moody. All sulks one minute, then laughing and singing the next. Even years ago, way back when I first met her.
High-strung
was the word we used for it in those days.”

“When did it get worse?”

“After your father didn’t come back.”

“Did it build up slowly, or did she snap all at once?’

“All at once, Sol. It was a terrible thing to see.”

“You saw it?”

“With my own eyes. The whole thing. I’ll never forget it.”

“When did it happen?”

“The night you … I mean, one night … I don’t remember when. One night during the winter.”

“What night was that, Aunt Clara?”

“A snowy night. It was cold outside, and there was a big storm. I remember that because the doctor had trouble getting here.”

“It was a night in January, wasn’t it?”

“It might have been. It often snows in January. But I don’t remember which month it was.”

“It was January eleventh, wasn’t it? The night I was born.”

“Oh, Sol, you shouldn’t keep asking me about it. It happened so long ago, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It matters to me, Aunt Clara. And you’re the only one who can tell me about it. Do you understand? You’re the only one left, Aunt Clara.”

“You don’t have to shout. I can hear you perfectly well, Solomon. There’s no need for bullying and rough words.”

“I’m not bullying you. I’m just trying to ask the question.”

“You know the answer already. It slipped out of my mouth a moment ago, and now I’m sorry it did.”

“You shouldn’t be sorry. The important thing is to tell the truth. There’s nothing more important than that.”

“It’s just that it was so … so … I don’t want you to think I’m making it up. I was in the room with her that night, you see. Molly Sharp and I were both there, waiting for the doctor to come, and Elizabeth was screaming and thrashing so much, I thought the house would fall down.”

“What was she screaming?”

“Awful things. Things that make me sick to think about.”

“Tell me, Aunt Clara.”

“ ‘He’s trying to kill me,’ she kept shouting. ‘He’s trying to kill me. We can’t let him out.’ ”

“Meaning me?”

“Yes, the baby. Don’t ask me how she knew it was a boy, but that’s the way it was. The time was getting close, and the doctor still wasn’t there. Molly and I tried to get her to lie down on the bed, to coax her into the proper position, but she wouldn’t cooperate. ‘Open your legs,’ we told her, ‘it will ease the pain.’ But Elizabeth wouldn’t do it. God knows where she found the strength. She kept breaking loose from us and going for the door, shrieking those terrible words over and over again. ‘He’s trying to kill me. We can’t let him out.’ We finally wrestled her onto the bed—or I should say that Molly did, with a little help from me—that Molly Sharp was an ox—but once we got her there, she wouldn’t open her legs. ‘I’m not going to let him out,’ she screamed. ‘I’ll smother him in there first. Monster-boy, monster-boy. I won’t let him out until I kill him.’ We tried to pry open her legs, but Elizabeth kept squirming away, thrashing and flailing until Molly started slapping her across the face—whack, whack, whack, as hard as she could—which angered Elizabeth so much that all she could do after that was scream, just like a baby herself, all red in the face, shrieking and screaming as though to wake the dead.”

“Good Lord.”

“It was the worst thing I ever saw in my life. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“Still, I managed to get out, didn’t I?”

“You were the biggest, strongest baby anyone had ever seen. More then eleven pounds, the doctor said. A gigantus. I do believe that if you hadn’t been so large, Sol, you never would have made it. You should always remember that. It was your size that brought you into the world.”

“And my mother?”

“The doctor finally came—Doctor Bowles it was, the one who died in that car wreck six or seven years ago—and he gave Elizabeth
a shot that put her to sleep. She didn’t wake up until the next day, and by then she had forgotten everything. I don’t just mean the previous night, but everything—her whole life, all the things that had happened to her for the past twenty years. When Molly and I carried you in to let her see her new son, she thought you were her baby brother. It was all so strange, Sol. She had become a little girl again, and she didn’t know who she was.”

Barber was about to ask her another question, but just then the grandfather clock in the hall began to chime. Aunt Clara cocked her head alertly to one side and listened to the bells, counting out the hours on her fingers. By the time the bells stopped ringing, she had made it up to twelve, and this brought an eager, almost imploring look to her face. “It seems to be noon,” she announced. “It wouldn’t be polite to keep Hattie waiting.”

“Lunchtime already?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said, standing up from her chair. “Time to fortify ourselves with a little food.”

“You go ahead, Aunt Clara. I’ll be along in a minute.”

As he watched Aunt Clara walk out of the room, Barber realized that the conversation was suddenly over. Worse than that, he understood that it would never begin again. He had played out his hand at one sitting, and there were no more houses to bribe her with, no more tricks to lure her into talking.

He swept up the cards from the table, shuffled the deck, and then dealt out a hand of solitaire. Solly Tear, he said to himself, punning on his name. He decided to play until he won—and wound up sitting there for more than an hour. Lunch was over by then, but that didn’t seem very important. For once in his life he wasn’t hungry.

W
e were sitting in the hotel coffee shop having breakfast when Barber recounted this scene to me. It was Sunday morning, and time had nearly run out on us. We drank a last cup of coffee together, and then, as we rode the elevator upstairs to fetch Barber’s
luggage, he gave me the end of the story. His Aunt Clara had died in 1943, he said. Hattie Newcombe was duly given title to the Cliff House, and for the rest of the decade she lived there in crumbling splendor, reigning over a host of children and grandchildren who inhabited the rooms of the mansion. After she died in 1951, her son-in-law Fred Robinson sold the property to the Cavalcante Development Company, and the old house was promptly torn down. Within eighteen months the estate had been divided into twenty half-acre lots, and on every lot there was a brand-new split-level house, each one identical to the nineteen others.

“If you had known that would happen,” I asked, “would you still have given it away?”

“Absolutely,” he said, putting a match to his dead cigar and puffing smoke into the air. “I’ve never had any second thoughts about it. We don’t often get the chance to do such extravagant things, and I’m glad I didn’t waste the opportunity. When it comes copy down to it, giving that house to Hattie Newcombe was probably the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

We were standing outside in front of the hotel by then, waiting for the doorman to flag down a taxi. When the time came for us to say good-bye, Barber was inexplicably on the verge of tears. I assumed it was a delayed response to the situation, that the weekend had finally been too much for him—but of course I had no idea what he was going through, could not even begin to imagine the first thing about it. He was saying good-bye to his son, whereas I was merely seeing off a new friend, a man I had met just two days before. The taxi stood there in front of him, its meter ticking out a frantic little rhythm as the doorman loaded his bag into the trunk. Barber made a gesture as if to embrace me in farewell, but then, thinking better of it at the last moment, he awkwardly grabbed hold of my two shoulders and squeezed them tightly.

“You’re the first person I’ve ever told those stories to,” he said. “Thank you for being such a good listener. I feel … how shall I put it … I feel there’s a bond between us now.”

“It’s been a memorable weekend,” I said.

“Yes, that it’s been. A memorable weekend. A weekend to end all weekends.”

Barber then maneuvered his enormous bulk into the cab, threw me a thumbs-up sign from the back seat, and disappeared into the traffic. At that moment, I did not think I would ever see him again. We had taken care of our business, explored whatever ground there was for us to explore, and that seemed to be the end of it. Even when the manuscript of
Kepler’s Blood
arrived in the mail the following week, I did not feel it was a continuation of what we had started so much as a conclusion, a last little flourish to our encounter. Barber had promised to send it, and I assumed that he was merely being polite. The next day, I wrote back a letter of thanks, reiterating how much I had enjoyed our meeting, and then I lost contact with him, apparently for good.