This Magnificent Desolation (19 page)

He shakes his head, and his mother frowns, kneels to pick a book from the floor. Never? she asks. She seems perplexed, and more than that, she appears stricken.

No, he says. I never heard it until you sang it to me. The Capuchins only prayed; they rarely sang.

Mother bares her teeth and chews on her lower lip as she reaches for her cigarettes.

Slowly, she unwinds the cellophane; a breeze rustles the drapes, and white light shimmers on the tabletop. Suddenly she laughs. Those damned Franciscans. I knew I should have taken you to the Jesuits.

March 1983

Near midnight beneath the blue lights of the Windsor Tap, Maggie, dressed as a torch singer from the 1930s, is singing the last slow ballads of her set. As she sways slightly to the subtle backbeat from the band, the stage lights sparkle and shine and coalesce upon her form-fitting, blue sequined dress, creating the illusion of sinewy, slick movement. She's been singing since nine under the hot stage lights, with fifteen-minute breaks every half hour, and her face is covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Sweat beads her upper lip and her red hair clings damply to the sides of her pale face and to her neck and shoulders, like a wick soaked dark with oil. Duncan can hear Joshua on the bar stool beside him breathing deeply. Maggie's eyes are stretched dark and seductive with kohl, but rarely does she look up at her audience as she sings and only once does she look in Duncan's direction, smiling briefly.

As Duncan watches her, it seems as if she is experiencing exquisite pain, sadness, and pleasure, and the vacillation between these states has left her exhausted. With the last note, she strikes a pose that he's seen in old posters and movie stills for singers of that era—she bends her knees, arches her back and raises her gloved arm high, following, chasing, trying to catch up to that elusive note perhaps, as it rises from her throat and drifts up into the steamy air above the lights where tobacco smoke spirals in narrow winding tapers, and she remains in that pose until the note recedes and then dies and the lights go down and the stage is in darkness. It's as if the room wakes from a dream and only slowly a smattering of applause begins, and then lengthens as Maggie makes her way to the bar.

Sweat shines in the space between her breasts, pressed and bunched by the tight dress, and Duncan is suddenly aware of the physicality of her, of her breath burning so hot he thinks she must have a fever, of the large pores of her face, the kohl streaked about her large eyes, the dampness of her skin, of her breasts and hips, across which the dress stretches, wrinkles, and clings as she moves.

Can I get a hug from my biggest fan?

Duncan leans toward her and she wraps her arms about him and he feels the strength of her, the muscles of her shoulders and back, the damp of her sweat, and a sense of her tension as it is released through the act of hugging him.

Oh my. Sometimes I forget how tiring this can be, she says, plopping herself down on the stool and reaching for a glass of water, and then the bottle of Old Mainline and the shot glass that Clay has left on the bar for her.

What did you think of the show?

I loved it.

Maggie harrumphs, then nods. Well, it's not the Palais Garnier, but I suppose it'll do. She raises her glass, the umber liquid sloshing, and Duncan raises his Coke bottle. Smiling, Mother ruffles his hair
and then they drink and Duncan watches from over the rim of his bottle as she empties her glass.

She eyes Joshua. Cat got your tongue?

Maggie, Joshua says and smiles serenely. I'm still six thousand miles away. I'm in the war, only it's 1943, and I'm sitting on the left bank. I'm the only black boy in a mishmash unit that has set up in the burned-out Continental with a platoon full of New Hampshire farm boys who spend half the night crying for their mama and the other half whispering in the dark: Nigger, nigger, nigger, tomorrow Jerry gets you. But y'know, it don't matter. It don't mean a thing, because I'm sitting on the left bank in Paris, drinking Pernod and listening to you sing, and when you sing like that, it just don't matter.

That's what you're thinking while I'm singing?

Sure. I imagined it just like you sang it.

Damn. Remind me to sing some sad numbers next time.

No. It was good. It was real fine.

What was your favorite?

You know what my favorite was.

Take my hand, Maggie says. Dance with me.

You know I can't dance, Maggie.

Come dance with me.

There's no music, Joshua says, and Maggie tugs playfully at his arms. His body leans from the stool.

Dance with me. C'mon, we'll make our own music. Listen to that. I can hear it—can't you?

Maggie woos Joshua until, with a roll of his eyes, he half-slides off the stool and, taking her hand, follows her to the dance floor, the eyes of the other men in the room upon them, blinking vacantly, longingly, desperately. At first they move slowly, with Joshua stumbling slightly, and then, with Mother leading, they move with more assurance. When Joshua looks down at his feet, Maggie whispers something to him and Joshua throws back his head laughing, and
Duncan smiles but then sees the scars there, crisscrossing Joshua's Adam's apple in a ragged X.

In the kitchen before the sink, Maggie and Joshua stand in darkness holding each other. Maggie strokes his hair, a soft
Shhhh, Joshua, Shhhh
hissing from between her lips. After a moment, in which it seems as if both of them have fallen asleep, chests rising and falling deeply, their eyes flutter and they press against each other, stumble to the wall, and begin kissing desperately, their mouths grasping and searching for the other's just as their hands reach for the other's face, the other's body, as if with a great and frightening hunger and each with such pained sounds they might have been wounded animals.

From the shadows of the hallway Duncan watches as the gray shimmering light cast from the streetlights turns their skin ashen and blue. Joshua holds his mother by her hips as they kiss and she takes his bruised face in her hands so tenderly you would think he were capable of breaking. They move against each other in the gloom, as if trying to find a way into the other's skin, and hold each other so tightly it's as if they fear losing each other. Duncan understands this fear, holds it close at night in his thoughts and in his heart as he listens to his mother breathing down the hall, the clatter of her whiskey bottle upon the floor, as his senses seek out the minor permutations, imperceptible psychic shifts in the air, those signals that might tell him of her intensions to leave and abandon him again as she had so long ago.

Joshua's open belt buckle bangs the countertop as their feet scuffle on the tile, and they stumble, breathless, legs and arms entwined, toward the doorway. Duncan's hand trails against the peeling wainscoting of the hallway in which the haunted light flickers as he slowly retreats to the stairs and to his bedroom. In the morning Joshua will be here and Duncan will wait in the kitchen for him to awaken and see him and reach across the kitchen table, place his large broken hand over Duncan's and say,
My man, Duncan. My man.

In his bedroom Duncan turns away from the sounds from the radiator pipes and hears the wind whistling across the snowy plains of Thule, bending its notes in the drifts and rills of snow and the Home rising darkly from between the divide of two mining valleys and the stars above blazing in their cold, divine glory. In the dark kitchen Brother Canice is placing more wood in the stove, and the light from the open grate, glowing orange-red embers crackling, bends warmly upon his plump face and upon the peeling wainscoting. Snow taps softly upon the windows. The Vulcanite radio glows amber upon the shelf of tinned goods, humming its vacant, searching sound, which Brother Canice listens to with his head cocked like an old dog, his mouth spitting sunflower seeds into the fire. In a moment he will begin a story and tell Duncan what comes next.

A person is disposed to an act of choice by an angel … in two ways. Sometimes, a man's understanding is enlightened by an angel to know what is good, but it is not instructed as to the reason why … But sometimes he is instructed by angelic illumination, both that this act is good and as to the reason why it is good.

—ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

Every morning Joshua rises at four A.M., and Duncan, listening to the dark, is waiting for him: the creak of the bedsprings, the shifting of the mattress as he begins to stir, rising toward waking, his body and mind so attuned to this schedule that he will wake each morning five to ten minutes before the alarm he has set whether he wants to or not—it's as if the dark, labyrinthine reaches of the tunnel and the sea are calling to him. Just as the memories of Vietnam
are—the two entwined and now inseparable from each other—one reflecting, paralleling, and so powerfully echoing the other that Joshua cannot forget those memories that he has tried all these years and with incredible difficulty to press into darkness, memories that now, as they emerge from darkness, emerge stronger, more powerful and crystalline than ever.

Duncan knows that Joshua is staring at the ceiling in this moment, just as he is. The anxiety of this time in the morning, when—despite the quiet, the stillness—the weight of the day seems to press heavily, burgeoning upon the nerves, a day when so many things can go wrong and this hour when all he has is the time and space to think of them. Joshua sighs in the darkness and Duncan knows he wishes he could sleep until it is time to rise, less time to think and contemplate, but every morning it is like this. The darkness pressed against the windows, the coldness of the room, and the gray of half-forgotten dreams and memories swirling as fragments in their heads.

Joshua always prepares his breakfast and his lunch pail the night before and showers before bed. All there is left to do is to rise and dress. All there is left to do is wait for the alarm. But these minutes are the longest. Often he will simply rise and turn off the alarm long before it sounds. A few times he has left the house so early in advance that he has forgotten to turn it off and Duncan will hear it ringing, growing louder and more incessant as it continues, and he will rush into his mother's bedroom, where she is snoring loudly, the air stale with her breath and the sickly sweet smell of alcohol, and turn it off before she awakens. Only then, will Duncan return to his bedroom and sometimes drift back to sleep.

Duncan leaves his door partially open in the hope that Joshua might glance in, see him awake, and that he might wave farewell. Duncan has thought about rising and fixing himself breakfast in the kitchen these mornings so that he can be with Joshua, but he senses
that this time is a time when Joshua most wishes to be alone, that he is still finding his way through the fog, and if Duncan were to surprise him at the breakfast table, he might not even recognize who he is. Instead, Duncan wakes with Joshua and waits with him from his bedroom and slowly in this way comes to know him better.

Upon Duncan's bedroom ceiling his mother has painted a sky: varying shades of blue, white clouds, and a 1,021 silver stars—with each paint stroke, mother had counted them—all arranged in distinct constellations. And in the center of this is the skylight through which the true sky is visible. It reminds him of the ceiling in the Home's charnel house through which he and Billy and Julie often watched the day fade to night.

Duncan and Maggie lie side by side upon his narrow bed, watching the ceiling and the manner in which it changes as the light outside falls toward dusk. Maggie is drinking; every so often she raises her tumbler from the floor and ice rattles loudly in the glass.

How is your friend, Magdalene? She asks, her voice loud in the stillness between them. On the ceiling, Mother's Cassiopeia and Virgo, at the darkest corners of the room, begin to glow.

Poor child. She's such a tragic little thing. You must invite her over more often. Think about how alone she must be.

She pats his arm. You have me, Duncan, and you always will. She has no one but that crazy aunt who only knows she's there because her damn soup bowls get returned to her.

Maggie raises her legs and scratches absently; her nails rasp against nylon. She kicks off her heels and with a clatter they bang against the baseboard. She stretches her feet, curls her long toes until they crack.

How do they treat her at school?

At school? How would I know? I rarely go to school.

Oh, Duncan. You know that's not true. You go to school all the time. You were in school just over a week ago. Maggie waves her tumbler glass in the air, remonstrating.

I thought we were having a nice time. If you're going to be so sour and difficult, I see no need for us to talk. Let's just be quiet then, shall we? We don't need to say anything at all. We can just be quiet. Look at the stars. My!

Maggie lifts the tumbler of amber liquor to her lips but it takes a moment for them to grasp the rim. She sucks hungrily and then there is only air, and the pop and rattle of the fully formed ice cubes that remain. She sighs, realizing the glass is empty.

Feebly, she reaches for his hand. Do you remember the Soap Woman, honey? she mutters. That woman we saw in the museum? Her body left like that for strangers to gawk at and with no family or friends to claim her for their own. That's what happens when you're alone in the world. You would never let that happen to me, would you?

In the Home, the children played a game where they pretended that they were dying from some exotic, rare, incurable disease and that at the End their parents rushed to their deathbeds, to tell them how much they loved them. The children wanted to believe that their parents, no matter their flaws, would come for them when they had no time left and that they would always be there waiting for them—their sons and daughters—when it mattered most.

Maggie's glass tumbler slips to the floor, and moments later she begins to snore softly: a warm and pleasant sound like an old, spring-wound, wood clock ticking slowly and imprecisely.