See Now Then (6 page)

I have not lived my life as a scholar, said Mr. Sweet, still smarting from the insults Mrs. Sweet had hurled at him, especially that recent one with the concert hall and the one hundred musicians; she had asked him to close the garage door behind him, wash the dishes, wipe down the counter, clean the kitchen sink, take out the garbage, I have not lived my life as a scholar it is true, said Mr. Sweet, but neither was I meant to do such things, I cannot do such things.

And Mr. Sweet lay down on the chair in his studio above the garage, the chair with legs that ended in the shape of the paws of a large cat. A loud crack and a roar came through the closed windows. Heracles had released his pride of caged lions. A current of hatred traveled quickly through Mr. Sweet’s body but it did not threaten to consume him, and so he settled down and looked up. Above him was the domed ceiling painted a cerulean blue, receding into infinity if looked at unblinkingly for too long. Dim lights appeared here and there, and then brightly shone the constellations starting with Orion, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, arc to Arcturus, Canis Major and Minor, Castor and Pollux, and on and on expanding ever outward to the edge of night. Pyramids of thoughts and feelings hounded the dear man now as he lay sweetly on the chair: his beloved flannel-covered slippers that had been given to him by his mother when he turned twelve years old had developed holes in their soles and the slippers could not be repaired and they could not be replaced exactly, for no longer were slippers of that kind made. Mr. Sweet could still wear those slippers even now that he was a middle-aged man, he had not grown a half inch since he turned twelve. The world was cold and unmindful of his poor soul. The sky above, even as it was just the cerulean-blue ceiling in the studio above the garage, was vast, and it expanded out, smooth and also rippling, containing heavens and havens too, spaces that pulsed like an important artery in a body but without its importance or responsibility, spaces in which everyday experience could not settle. The thin edge of night, not so dark yet, framed the cerulean blue. The thin edge of night will give way to an unyielding darkness but Mr. Sweet just then held this, the thin edge of night, not too close to him. The thin edge of night is a metaphor, I shall write a symphony, a covert allusion to this, the thin edge of night is a metaphor, said Mr. Sweet to himself, and only to himself. In the meantime, the fixed point in the cerulean-blue ceiling expanded and expanded in Mr. Sweet’s mind, as if he had been influenced by a consciousness-altering drug or as if he had willed himself to see it so. The universe, or so it seemed to Mr. Sweet or anyone else and by anyone else he meant Mrs. Sweet, the young Heracles, and the sister with the lustrous curls, as he lay face upward; the thin edge of night expanded outward and outward and descended on him and then swallowed him up and in it he slept and slept and slept and slept!

The battalion of shy Myrmidons was scattered across the lawn and in Mrs. Sweet’s flower beds, some of them lying face down, some of them lying face up. Heracles stood above them, a fallen branch, dead at that, of the hemlock in his right hand. Whooo! Yeaah! Aaargh! Eeee-agh! A series of sounds escaped from him, sometimes angry, sometimes not. He bent down and arranged the battalion of shy Myrmidons. Some of them were missing; some of them had become entangled in the roots of Mrs. Sweet’s hibiscus causing the roots to girdle, growing around and around, viciously entangling themselves and this would end in their death. But the dear and sweet Heracles did not know that, how could he, Mrs. Sweet was his mother, his mother was Mr. Sweet’s wife, Mr. Sweet was his father, Heracles was Mr. Sweet’s son. The dear son of Mr. Sweet looked down on his battalion of shy Myrmidons, they all lay at his feet and some of them had become entangled in the roots of the hibiscus variety “Lord Baltimore,” variety “Anne Arundel,” variety “Lady Baltimore,” all of which were growing in Mrs. Sweet’s garden. Ants crawled all over the shy Myrmidons as they went about their ant business; bees flew in and then flew out of the pollen-laden blossoms of the hibiscus in Mrs. Sweet’s garden, and a hummingbird did this too. And Heracles gathered up the shy Myrmidons and placed them in a large black box, and set them aside for a while, a long while.

3

At dusk one day, the young Heracles was born, and Mr. Sweet, who then appeared to be as tall as a young prince in Tudor times, smiled at his son and kissed his cheeks, and then he cut his young son’s umbilical cord. He looked at the newborn boy and was afraid to hold him close because he had the strongest desire to drop him out of his arms, see him fall to the ground, his body intact except for his head, his brains scattered all over the floor of the delivery room that was in the hospital in the town that was not so far away from the Shirley Jackson house. Mrs. Sweet, lying on the bed, her legs wide open, still in the position she had been when the young Heracles came out of her womb, her womb it is from which the young Heracles emerged, her whole body shivering from the effort of bringing Mr. Sweet’s son into the world, she looked at them, her old husband, her new son, and fell asleep from weariness. “How to secure my kingdom, so that I can give to, leave an inheritance for the young Heracles, who is my only son, so far?” was not what Mr. Sweet thought to himself at all, at all, not at all. He so hated the young Heracles, just born and new and yellow was the color of his skin, for he had jaundice, and his eyes were open wide and they looked as if they saw everything even though everything could not yet be understood. Such eyes, such eyes, said Mr. Sweet to himself, such eyes, they would never see and so lead to an understanding of Beethoven’s concertos and Mozart and Bach, and in any case the young Heracles had hands that were big, suggesting a clumsiness to come, for such hands would never hold a lyre comfortably if at all or linger over a pianoforte or hold a flute to the lips or hold any instruments to the lips or caress any instruments at all; his fingers were big as if meant to hold a javelin and a shield and to tear to shreds things many times his size. So thought Mr. Sweet as he held his son in his arms, his hands, his own fingers were delicate and looked as if they were musical notes rising up and floating freely above empty sheets of notepaper and then landing in an order that resulted in the most beautiful tunes especially when whistled. But Mr. Sweet did not throw to the ground or let fall out of his hands the young Heracles, and so their story continued, with a bitterness for Mr. Sweet that had a taste familiar to the tongue and with a bitterness that had a taste familiar to the ages; the ages and ages of fathers who did not love their sons.

*   *   *

But he cut the umbilical cord of the young Heracles, that lifeline all human beings have to their mothers, and this is always an honorable and loving thing to do, and the newly born baby Heracles had jaundice and this made his mother nervous for she loved him so immediately she saw him. She loved his eyes, those very ones that were so wide and looked as if he could see everything that they did not understand, his past was his future and he could see it, even though he didn’t understand it; anyway, she loved her little son and was sorry to see him lying, stark naked, in a hospital bassinet, under some lights, his yellow skin getting more so until he looked almost like a marigold, so she thought, and she grew more worried as she held him to her breasts, two large sacks full of milk, and she held him so tight he almost melted into her, but he did not; instead he grew well, eventually getting rid of the jaundice condition, for it was caused by her blood type being at odds with Mr. Sweet’s blood type as it pumped its way around and inside the little body of the young Heracles. This condition lasted seven days and on the eighth day he was released from the hospital and sent home with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sweet, who lived in the Shirley Jackson house. It was not a day in September, it was a day in another month, the month of June, and peonies were in bloom, some special ones, white petals with a single streak of red randomly appearing on each petal; and irises too and columbine and a rose named Stanley Perpetual.

Outside the house, there was a large old silver maple tree, as there would be outside a house such as the Shirley Jackson house, and it had old wounds here and there from the many times it had been struck by lightning. Outside too was an old apple tree, so diseased it hardly could muster any blooms and so was never with fruit; and also there was a pear tree and it did bear fruit but it was bitter and could never be eaten. The grass was green and just starting to grow rampantly, waiting for the first mowing. Aaaaaaaah! That was a sound that came from inside the house, a sigh of exquisite satisfaction, and it was made by Mrs. Sweet. She was standing over the baby, her son, looking down at him as he lay propped up on his side, one little arm underneath one little cheek, the other little arm curled up and resting under his chin, his skin the color of a healthy baby. His eyes were closed.

*   *   *

Oh, the lovely, lovely baby, so thought Mrs. Sweet and she gazed down at her sweet son, lying in his cradle, on top of sheets she had made herself just for him, and he was wearing one of the many little tunics she had knitted for him, taking instructions from a book entitled
The Right Way to Knit
; she had bought that book at the Northshire bookstore, in a town not far away from the village in which she lived with her family, a happy existence with her family, especially now with the addition of the young Heracles. The boy, just lying there, his chest moving up and down ever so imperceptibly, his young heart, his young life, just beginning: what will his destiny be, thought his mother, what cruel surprises will life hold for him, what unfair labors await him, what harsh tasks he will overcome, yes, he will triumph over them, thought his wonderful mother, who had taught herself knitting from a book and had taught herself to cook meals eaten in the many different regions of France from a book, who had taught herself how to make a garden from a book, who had taught herself how to be, but that was from instinct. And she loved her little son, the baby, as if he were a firstborn but he was not, she loved her firstborn in just the same way she loved Heracles, her firstborn, a girl, that was Persephone, but Mr. Sweet kept Persephone away from her mother, because in his mind Mrs. Sweet was so much of another world, a world of goods—people included—that came on ships; he kept her to himself in the studio, for it was very important that she stay near his lyre, she was such an inspiration to him, he wrote hymns for her to sing and other music suitable for voice, just for her, and Persephone sang them extremely well, worthy of a theater but Mr. Sweet would not allow anyone else to hear her, and if by some accident they did hear her he discouraged them from thinking her voice beautiful, for they might take her away, far from the space above the garage in the Shirley Jackson house and Mr. Sweet would be all alone and he would die and he was afraid to die, even though he already was.

But … Mrs. Sweet so loved the young Heracles and to gaze down on him forever was one of her “one desires.” He was so beautiful but not in comparison to anything else, he was so beautiful and most beautiful all by himself. He had thick hairs growing just above his eyes and this made him look like a lion; but then he had enormous round eyes (they were closed now in sleep, as Mrs. Sweet looked down on him) and this made him look like an owl; but then he had a very broad nose, which made him look like an imagined bear, a teddy bear, a toy meant to calm children; his mouth, oh his mouth was as wide as the sun’s, that very sun that rises up above the known-by-all horizon and then covers the sky for a while, a while being a day, and to witness this event, the sun rising up from the horizon and covering the expanse of sky for the time it does, is a very definition of being alive; his ears were huge, the lobes themselves looking like a peculiar kind of flower that is found in a unique ecosystem and also like a satellite dish, an instrument made to receive information in a way not common to other human beings. As Mrs. Sweet was standing over him, admiring his baby form, his young tenderness, and seeing in his glorious features outstanding attributes, she wept, the tears flowing uncontrollably and in such volume, that she had to immediately gather them up and place them outside, making a pond, in which frogs, trout, and the like would live and lay their eggs. Oh, she said to herself, oh, his beauty will drown me, it is so much like the force of something immortal: the river in Mahaut, Dominica, that her mother had to cross each day on her way to school; the tree-clad mountains, that sometimes were a glittering green with new leaves and sometimes a blinding gold with old leaves, to be seen from any vantage, inside or outside, of the Shirley Jackson house; the moon, as it is portrayed and seen in a book called
Goodnight Moon
that she used to read to her first great love, the everlasting, deeply harmonious, beautiful Persephone.

*   *   *

The telephone rang; Mrs. Sweet’s entire being shook; her body of course but her presence of mind, too. Who could it be: the bill collectors; the telephone company named Verizon; the cable TV provider called something else; Blue Flame, a natural-gas company that supplied energy for cooking food and making the water hot for a bath, if the Sweets wished for such a thing; oil for heating the house; an angry voice demanding payment for the car loans; Paul, who cleans the chimneys; Mr. Pembroke, who cleans the yard; the Haydens, father and son, who have stopped the two bathroom pipes from leaking into the kitchen; a friend of the Sweets wanting to wish them good luck with the arrival of the young Heracles; a friend of the Sweets who has a special feeling of friendship for Mr. Sweet, not a love affair of steamy sex, just a friend who does not like Mrs. Sweet, who prefers Mr. Sweet; a friend who thought it would be a fine thing if Mrs. Sweet could be thrown from a great height and not die, from this fall, only becoming a cripple afterwards.

The telephone rang: Mrs. Sweet thought, oh what is that and who is it? And Mr. Sweet said, I’ll get it, for he had heard that sound, it mingled in with the sharp and flat notes. On his way to the phone he could see the young Heracles lying inside his little crib and his mother had been standing over him in a fit of imagining his future, remembering his future too, for the fate of a child is in the memory of the mother! The boy hero was asleep in his crib, on sheets made by Mrs. Sweet with her own hands, he could remember the nights in dark winter, when she should have been listening to his compositions of fugues and other somber tunes, she was knitting away, knitting away, weaving blankets, weaving sheets and diapers too, knitting tunics and such, and it was very disrespectful, for the creation of a thing is superior to the creation of a person, so thought Mr. Sweet to himself! That boy and his mother would become a title for a song to be sung by children, thought Mr. Sweet, and he made a mental note of that: Mrs. Sweet adoring her son and imagining her son’s greatness in the world that was to come, his triumphs, for here he is shooting the basketball in the hoop, when the hoop itself was miles away, and the golf ball into the hole when the hole itself was miles away, and hitting the baseball way out of the boundaries of the baseball park; and the baseball park itself was as big as the seventeenth largest island on the surface of the earth. Mrs. Sweet imagined her son’s future and they were very bitter images to Mr. Sweet. Seeing this scene of the adoring mother worshipping her young son, a hero to her already, as he lay sleeping in his little crib, how Mr. Sweet hated Mrs. Sweet and his hatred for the young Heracles, new to him, its reality new to him, increased; but this hatred was a new form of discomfort, so Mr. Sweet thought to himself. All the same, Mr. Sweet hated the young boy and wished that a family of snakes would appear from nowhere and devour him! But that did not become so, just then or ever. And so Mr. Sweet, sulking away, though that is too tame a word to describe his disturbance, his hatred, his confusion, thought of a number of dishes he could serve to Mrs. Sweet, if only he could cook: a soufflé of a young baby with no name; poached new baby with no name; a saddle of Heracles with lemon and thyme; she would devour them, for she loved to eat, anyone could see it in her expanding waist, the thickening of her upper arms, her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, her ankles like the feet of chairs in the drawing rooms of well-off people, meant to represent well-loved and domesticated animals; oh how Mr. Sweet hated Mrs. Sweet: she looked like something to eat, but afterwards you would hate even the thought of eating; and he could see her stout, overly well-fed body dead, in the hills of Montana or Vermont or somewhere like that, you know, where the leaves are turning gold, yellow, red because they are about to drop to the ground and become a metaphor, and metaphors are the true realm of a creator. But just then, as if she were seeing now, as clearly as she was in the present, Mrs. Sweet had a memory of her old friend Matt, who was the manageress of a grocery store that sold special cheeses and special hams and special yogurts and special everything necessary to cook a good meal from a cookbook written by Marcella Hazan or Paula Peck or Elizabeth David. And Matt, who lived with someone named Dan or Jim, Mrs. Sweet could not remember his name exactly right then, only that he spoke brilliantly about the weather, about the atmosphere, naturally, physically in which we would all live Then, and Now too. Matt gave Mrs. Sweet a number of recipes for cornbread: Edna Lewis, a cook whose family had its origins in slave society in Virginia; Nika Hazelton, whose recipe for cornbread Matt had adapted so that Mrs. Sweet had no interest in the original, for she loved Matt not in just that way she loved Mr. Sweet or the young Heracles; but her love for Matt was an exception, Mrs. Sweet loved her friend. But can love, all by itself, in isolation, be understood, or trusted even?