The Whore's Child (10 page)

It’s not the purpose of this narrative to suggest what kind of man I’ve become. I will say this much, though. I was sent to Vietnam during the last hopeless year of that war, and there I learned that I wasn’t the abject coward I felt destined to become starting that night in a New Mexico parking lot. Vietnam provided opportunities for every imaginable cruelty, and these I discovered were not in my true nature. Although it must be said that my mother does consider me cruel, harsh in my recollections. And when we argue about the past, there are times when she can almost convince me.

But the worst truths are contained in our many silences. Too often the past will cause our eyes to meet furtively, guiltily, as they did one afternoon during the last days of my father’s illness, after he’d returned home from a chemotherapy treatment. “The worst thing about chemo,” he said thoughtfully, in that painstaking manner he had when reporting on some discovery in a dictionary or encyclopedia, “is the metallic taste it leaves in your mouth.” He said this without irony, and then the shiny silver washer appeared on the tip of his tongue.

Buoyancy

For some time they’d been sliding from lush green into sepia, summer into autumn. Everywhere there were downed trees, slender birches and lindens caught up on power lines, trunks chainsawed into cross sections and stacked on the roadside, broken limbs, piled up next to gray-shingled houses. Even trees that had survived the hurricane were damaged, their trunks stripped naked and pink under the early September sky. In the wake of their car, brittle leaves danced and twirled along the shoulder of the road like distant memories.

“Oh dear,” said the professor’s wife, her voice a rich mixture of sadness and disappointment. She’d been worrying the white, scarlike crease of skin on the third finger of her left hand.

At the wheel, her husband, Paul Snow, eyed her gravely but didn’t say anything, waiting instead for her to elaborate, though he was not surprised when she didn’t. June had always been given to small exclamations that she left dangling, incomplete, and her “Oh dear’s” were usually the tip of some emotional iceberg. To keep from colliding with them head-on, Professor Snow acknowledged their existence, as he sensed he was supposed to, then navigated around them with care lest his wife reveal the full nine-tenths below the waterline. She’d done so only once, years before, when her litany of lifelong grievances and womanly disappointments had come out in an amazing torrent, beginning with rage against him, but ending in almost unbearable regret and sadness, from which, it now seemed, she had never fully recovered her old self. Their family physician had assured him that his wife’s moods had stabilized, that she was right to wean herself off her medication and he needn’t watch her so carefully anymore. Professor Snow had been relieved to hear this, though it seemed to him that June’s equilibrium was fragile still and could collapse without apparent, immediate cause. It was, of course, the immediate cause he was always trying to locate, having no wish to revisit the remote or universal.

“What is it?” he said.

By way of response, his wife failed to entirely suppress a shiver.

“Perhaps if we opened the windows,” he suggested, rolling his own down and turning off the air conditioner. When the warmer air outside began to swirl through the car, he realized that he himself had been cold for some time. “Is that better, June?”

“Yes,” she said unconvincingly. “Much.”

But with the warmer outside air came the rich odor of decaying leaves, and once more Snow felt the disorienting approach of winter and shivered himself. At first he thought his wife hadn’t noticed, because she was looking straight ahead and took such a long time to say, abstractedly, “We’ve come too late, haven’t we.”

On the ferry, though, under a bright late summer sky, the breeze on the upper deck billowing their clothes, they both cheered up. Out on the open water there was, of course, no evidence of the recent hurricane, nor hint of autumn, much less of winter. Here, as the early September sun warmed their skin, the Snows compared notes on what they remembered, what they’d forgotten and what had changed in the nearly thirty years since their last visit to the island. “The main biggest difference,” the professor remarked, “is that we now have enough money to stay at an inn.” On that previous trip— poor as a young assistant professor and his new, even younger graduate-student wife could be—they’d rented the cheapest cottage they could find in Oak Bluffs and still had to leave three days early because they’d run out of money.

In truth, Snow thought he’d forgotten all the details of that visit until many came rushing back to him: the way the cars were loaded, bumper-to-bumper, into the dark belly of the ferry; the gulls that sailed effortlessly along the upper deck, patiently awaiting a handout; the coin-operated viewfinders still mounted on both the port and starboard railings, promising to bring into focus the place you were going to, as well as the one you’d left behind.

Halfway across, June pulled a pale yellow sweater over her head so she could feel the sun on her arms, and her husband felt his heart go into his throat—imagining for an instant that she’d forgotten herself, that she intended to sun herself in her brassiere there on the upper deck, and instinctively he reached out to prevent her.

How foolish, he thought, remembering too late that she’d pulled the sweater on over a blouse as they left the house that morning. This of course meant that he’d also momentarily forgotten exactly who she was, this woman, his wife.

But fate was kind and offered him an opportunity to save face. “I seem to be snagged,” June said, her voice muffled inside the sweater, its fabric having caught on a button, and there, even as she spoke, was his helpful hand, already extended, as if to suggest that he was capable of anticipating her every need.

When they arrived at the Captain Clement House, the front entrance was locked, with an elegantly printed note affixed to the inside of the glass:
Please Enter Through
Garden.
They went around back, passing through a trellised archway into a manicured green world miraculously untouched by the storm. The giant oak on the terrace outside had been stripped bare, but the garden, surrounded and protected on three sides, was unscathed. And perhaps because several dozen varieties of perennials were in defiant bloom, there were yellow bees everywhere. The Snows did not linger.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” said the small, trim woman who greeted them inside, introducing herself as Mrs. Childress, the owner. She was of difficult-to-read middle age, with a not-quite-British accent and dark circles under her eyes. “For the moment you have the inn to yourselves. I’m rather concerned about the Robbins party. They’re sailing up from Newport and I was given to expect them several hours ago, but I’m sure they’ll be docking presently.” She gave an elegant, sweeping gesture in the direction of the garden, as if to suggest that the schooner in question might this very second be tying up just beyond the French doors. “We islanders are all prey to a certain foreboding these days,” she confided to June as the professor signed the guest register. “A remnant of the storm, no doubt. I’m sure they’ll arrive safely.”

Snow agreed, remarking that nothing untoward ever happened to people from Newport who owned sailboats.

“Well, I don’t know these particular people,” Mrs. Childress said, as if to suggest that therefore she had no idea whether they might be susceptible to sudden squalls at sea, “but they were quite delighted to learn we’d have a distinguished professor of American history in our midst. I warn you in advance that we’re all bracing for a weekend of scintillating conversation.”

“Ah,” said Snow, whose discipline in fact was literature, “I’m retired, I’m afraid.”

Mrs. Childress blinked, seemingly confused.

“I no longer scintillate,” he explained, “though of course I used to.”

The woman clapped her hands appreciatively and turned to June. “Isn’t he the droll one?”

She then showed the Snows to a room on the third floor, from which they had an excellent view of the town and, in the distance, the harbor. Once she left, Snow followed his wife out onto the balcony, where he was relieved to find her smiling.

Back home in Ithaca, they had made gentle fun of the language of the inn’s brochure, in which “resplendent” appeared three times. But Snow had insisted it was perfect for them, suspecting that despite their easy mockery, June secretly had her heart set on just such a place as the Captain Clement precisely for its “meticulously preserved, graceful formalities,” its “artful blending of American and English, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiques,” its “finishing touches of crystal and porcelain appointments,” its “romantic ambience and elegant grandeur.”

And after all, it was thanks to him that their return to the island, so often discussed, had kept getting postponed for well over a decade. Twice they’d canceled their reservations to accommodate some academic conference— most recently just last Christmas when Snow let himself be talked into his least favorite conference so he could sit on the committee interviewing shortlist candidates for his own position. He should have known better, of course, though he never would’ve imagined his colleagues might hire, over his strenuous objections, a young fool whose academic specialty wasn’t even literature at all, but rather, as he proudly proclaimed, “culture.” In the interview he used all the latest critical jargon, and assured the puzzled committee that his research was strictly “cutting edge.” A month later, when the boy visited the campus— he seemed no more than twenty, though his vita stated thirty—he’d shown no deference to the department’s senior scholars and exhibited a smirking contempt for Snow’s own books. That so many of the professor’s colleagues remained so enthralled suggested to Snow that perhaps they secretly shared his dubious opinion of his life’s work. This realization was so bitter that he’d behaved badly, wondering at the question-and-answer session following the young man’s presentation (on “Gender Otherness and Othering”) whether students could apply his courses toward their foreign-language requirement.

But the boy was hired and Snow retired, willingly enough when all was said and done. The young fool would get his. In no time he’d be a tenured, fully vested
old
fool, by which time Snow himself would be contentedly cold and dead. Until then, however, he had to face June, who certainly understood that with retirement Snow had no excuses left. The Captain Clement beckoned, and he assured her that they’d enjoy traversing “floorboards worn to a glowing patina by two centuries of perpetual footsteps.”

The morning after their arrival, the Snows slept in and went down for a late breakfast in the small dining room. Already seated were the two couples they’d met the afternoon before at tea, the people whose arrival from Newport had been awaited so anxiously by Mrs. Childress. They had mingled rather uncomfortably for an hour or so, the gathering supervised by their host, who seemed intent on holding it together by sheer force of will and a tray of sticky pastries. Later, at a restaurant close by, when the Snows casually mentioned where they were staying, they’d learned something about the Childress woman’s anxiety from a loose-talking bartender. The Childresses had bought the Captain Clement only three years before, evidently paying well over two million dollars. “You got any idea how many rooms you gotta rent to pay
that
back?” the bartender had asked, arching an eyebrow significantly. No sooner had they closed on the deal than the bottom fell out of the island’s real estate market—not to mention their marriage—and now the woman was good and stuck. The hurricane ruining the last month of the summer season would be the final nail in her coffin. The bartender had explained all this confidently and without visible empathy.

Indeed, the Captain Clement had an air of abandonment, the Newport foursome being the only other guests. Major Robbins, who owned the yacht, was retired military, and Snow couldn’t decide whether he was naturally loud or compensating for deafness. Having been misinformed about the professor’s area of study, Robbins had quickly cornered him and announced that he himself was something of a Civil War buff, proceeding to regale Snow with the tactical details of some obscure battle. Snow, loath to offend, first feigned interest, then distraction and finally—when the major said, “Now here’s where it gets complicated”—intellectual exhaustion. Robbins was not alone in appearing disappointed when the Snows made their excuses and escaped through the garden, the major’s party watching their retreat with the weary expression of people who’d been promised, then cheated of, a lengthy reprieve.

This morning, at breakfast, Robbins’s companions looked haggard, as though a single night’s sleep had not been sufficient for them to face this new day, though the major himself looked fresh and ready for anything. All four were dressed in beach attire and Snow noted with relief that they had finished eating and were unlikely to invite the Snows to join them. June, who professed to have enjoyed their company, was veering sociably toward their table until Snow touched her elbow and guided her to a table on the other side of the dining room. “Try the Mexican eggs,” Major Robbins bellowed.

“I will,” Snow promised, holding June’s chair for her, a gesture that seemed appropriate here at the Captain Clement.

Mrs. Childress, who had been in the kitchen, came out to greet them and to inquire how they’d slept. Snow had slept badly, but insisted otherwise.

“What a shame we can’t offer you breakfast in the garden,” the Childress woman said, sounding almost stricken. “But the bees have claimed it, I fear.”

From where they sat, the Snows could see that the garden was indeed set up for dining, pristine white tables scattered among the potted plants and hedges. They could also see bees swarming beyond the French doors.

“Are they the price of such lovely flowers?” June wondered.

“Alas, no,” Mrs. Childress said, her faintly British accent kicking in again. “It’s the storm. The bees are disoriented, or so we’re told. They think it’s spring.”

Major Robbins noisily pushed back his chair. “The beach!” he cried, as if commencing a dangerous amphibious assault, though his troops looked potentially mutinous. The major’s wife, the first to venture outside, let out a whoop as the bees closed in and then she bolted for the white trellised arch, arms flying about her head, her companions close behind, also beating the air wildly.

The Snows’ waitress was a pretty girl named Jennifer whose tan was dark and remarkably even, Snow noticed when she bent to pick up a fork she’d managed to knock to the floor. He wondered whether it was the girl’s clumsiness or her immodesty, given the scoop-necked uniform that caused Mrs. Childress to roll her eyes at June before disappearing into the kitchen.

“South Shore has the best beaches,” the girl explained in response to Snow’s question about where they might spend the afternoon. “Really awesome bodysurfing.”

As the girl said this, he thought he saw a trace of doubt flicker across her heretofore untroubled features, perhaps registering her realization that bodysurfing might not be what these particular guests had in mind.