The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories Page 28

  When the rituals were over and her tears were finished at last Marylee put her head against him, saying, “She told me she would be at Dorothy’s. If only I had checked.”

  “She was there, right up to the last minute,” he said, and then he went on with the formula which would make it possible for her to keep on living; he went on even though he was not convinced of it. “There was nothing anybody could have done.”

  It will be enough for her, he thought. She has the baby. He was ready to let go but Marylee saw him drifting and reached out.

  “Alvah.” She had him by the hand and she was looking sharply into his face. “Alvah, I’m going to need you.”

  He answered automatically. “I’m right here.” He could feel the increasing pressure; he had a choice; he would not look at her.

  She let go. “I’ll always love you anyway.”

  He said, without answering, “I’ll be right here.”

  The baby was to be born in March, and Marylee would pin her life to it. Larkin would give her three more children to replace the dead one, leaving her almost satisfied, but the new ones were nothing of his; they would swirl around him without realizing how remote their father had become because they had never known anything else. Only the dead child was really his, and he would spend most of his life with her and the others; he had been there once and he belonged with them; he would go down in dive after dive to look for them. When he was no longer in submarines he would swim, going fierce, dogged, unremitting lengths in the base pool.

  He kept a picture of Janny on his desk wherever he went but never looked at it; instead he would withdraw into himself and rehearse the afternoons they’d spent together on the rocks. He would feel her in his arms, angular and smelling a little, because all living children smell; he’d imagine her on the dock, flinging herself on him again and again. He belonged with Janny and the others; he belonged with all his classmates who had died at Pearl or in the Coral Sea and he imagined that eventually he would join the child and all the others would surround them: tableau. He could not think beyond that moment, but imagined peace. All this seemed more real to him than his wife or his living children, whom he would kiss abstractedly, so that he remained a solitary in the busy house Marylee kept in an attempt to lure him back to life.

  By the end of the war Larkin was drinking too much and his men knew it; eventually his superiors became aware of it. They put him on shore duty so they could keep an eye on him; they sent him to sea where he wouldn’t have so many opportunities; they put him in a Navy hospital in an attempt to dry him out; eventually they had to survey him, so that in his forties he was retired for medical reasons, living in New London because he couldn’t leave the water or the rocks or any of the rest of it; he used to take his tackle and go fishing off a point where he could watch the base. Once in that first winter of his retirement he took his tackle and walked to the middle of the bridge that spanned the Thames, looking for a long time at the black surface of the water. If he jumped it would be over in a minute, but first he would have to go through the awkward business of getting rid of his tackle box and making it over the guardrail, or if he hung on to the box because it would make it quicker, then he would have a hard time getting over the rail at all. The problem could have been solved, but he was held back not so much by the weight of his clothes, his boots, his accoutrements as by the fact of Marylee; he owed her something, if only freedom from another vigil by the water, another funeral. Instead he went to his usual place and fished, finishing the fifth of rye from his tackle box, so blurring the days that it was months before he thought about what he had almost done. Looking over at Marylee at dinner one night, he could not be sure whether he was grateful or resented her because he was still here. He went out to a bar and was gone overnight. Marylee greeted him late the next day; she was pale and taut but she didn’t say anything. He was still working at part-time jobs in this period, trying to stave off his desperate boredom, but none of them lasted for long. After a while there weren’t any more jobs; he and Marylee both marked it, but neither of them would say anything.

  As he moved into his fifties, Larkin would go off for days at a time, disappearing on desperate binges. He would always mark the first time, not because of any place he went or any thing he did but because of Marylee, who came for him and found him. There were two policemen with her, they made him understand they had been looking for him for a week, they’d been about to drag the river, but the words had no particular meaning; the only meaning he saw was in Marylee’s face. For the first time he was aware of all the accumulated pain and fatigue of several years; he saw with regret how much he had aged her. He reached out, longing to make everything all right for her and his living children, but he was appalled by the changes life had made in them all. Only Janny remained unchanged, with her face forever bright.

  After that he was able to trace the progress of his life by the lines in his wife’s face, by the looks of reproach in the faces of his growing children; he marked it by the aches in his own bones and his compounded boredom and loneliness, the pain which would not be drowned in rye, and in his periodic attempts to stop drinking he would thank God that he was getting older, knowing that eventually time would put an end to this—it was the best he could hope for. For the first time he thought with resentment of the dead, who would remain unchanged.

  After the first few absences Marylee stopped calling the police; she knew it wouldn’t do any good to ask his friends to look for him. It wasn’t really necessary. Eventually somebody would telephone—he was passed out sick in the back of a waterfront bar, would she please come and take him home; he had gotten involved in a six-day poker game and gentle as he was when he was sober, he was raging now; if she didn’t come get him, he was going to hurt himself or somebody else; he was in the hospital, he’d stepped in front of a slow-moving car. The last time he was gone for three weeks. He came to himself in the hospital, God knew what had happened in the time which had dropped out of his memory; there had been a fight, something worse had happened, he’d been hurt and he seemed to recall being stuck to the pavement, sleeping in a freezing rain. Marylee was by the bed, looking older than he could have imagined, and he could read his own death in her face. They didn’t know yet that he had come back, so the doctor continued to talk to Marylee: Heart failure, among other things. His lungs are filled with fluid, it’s so far along I don’t know how much we can do for him. Larkin knew that he couldn’t get his breath; it was almost like drowning and he thought, God, how appropriate.

  He did get better for a while as it turned out, and on a morning illumined by pallid winter sunlight he and Marylee began to talk. “I’m sorry for everything.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I have to make it up.”

  “You don’t need to make anything up,” she said. “This is my life, I’m satisfied.”

  “I should have stayed down there. It would have been better for everybody.”

  “Alvah, you didn’t have to do anything. All you had to do was talk to me.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “I couldn’t …” He was groping, trying to explain. “I just couldn’t go on.”

  He understood then that what he had foreseen in the belly of the Squalus was not his own death or the guilt he expected to bear for the death of the others, but rather the prospect of having to continue, of having to face the unending, relentless possibilities for change. What he had resisted was not the death of the other men or even the death of Janny, whose young, perfect face he could see to this day, but the fact that he would have to continue and so descend, or decline, so that he may never have felt any guilt for the others but only resentment because they were fixed as they were, bright and young. They would never have to suffer, or age. He could feel his lungs filling again; he knew he was drowning at last. They would bring oxygen but it wouldn’t help; he waited with satisfaction.

  Larkin was weary, ready to go, but he had to complete the
formula. “I made us all suffer.”

  She said with unexpected bitterness, “Somebody has to.”

  And so, waiting for oxygen, he understood that it must be the function of all the living to redeem the dead. He could see Janny’s face but he said, with some urgency, “I have to get better.”

  Marylee said, “If only you’d talked to me.”

  —The Transatlantic Review, 1972

  Perpetua

  We are happy to be traveling together in the alligator. To survive the crisis in the city outside, we have had ourselves made very small.

  To make our trip more pleasant the alligator herself has been equipped with many windows, cleverly fitted between the armor plates so we can look out at the disaster as we ride along. The lounge where we are riding is paneled in mahogany and fitted with soft leather sofas and beautifully sculpted leather chairs where we recline until seven, when the chef Father engaged calls us to a sit-down dinner in the galley lodged at the base of our alligator’s skull. Our vehicle is such a technical masterpiece that our saurian hostess zooms along unhampered, apparently at home in the increasingly treacherous terrain. If she knows we’re in here, and if she guesses that tonight we will be dining on Boeuf Wellington and asparagus terrine with Scotch salmon and capers while she has to forage, she rushes along as though she doesn’t care. We hear occasional growls and sounds of rending and gnashing over the Vivaldi track Father has chosen as background for this first phase of our journey; she seems to be finding plenty to eat outside.

  Inside, everything is arranged for our comfort and happiness, perhaps because Father knows we have reservations about being here. My sisters and I can count on individualized snack trays, drugs of choice and our favorite drinks, which vary from day to day. Over our uniform jumpsuits we wear monogrammed warm-up jackets in our favorite colors—a genteel lavender for Lily, which Ella apes because she’s too young to have her own ideas; jade for Cynthia and, it figures, my aggressively girlish sister Anna is in Passive Pink; Father doesn’t like it, but I have chosen black.

  “Molly, that color doesn’t become you.”

  “Nobody’s going to see me, what difference does it make?”

  “I like my girls to look nice.”

  I resent this because we all struggled to escape the family and made it too. We’d still be out there if it wasn’t for this. “Your girls, your girls, we haven’t been your girls in years.” Father: “You will always be my girls.” That smile.

  OK, I am the family gadfly. “This crisis. Is there something funny going on that we don’t know about?”

  “Molly,” he thunders. “Look out the windows. Then tell me if you think there’s anything funny about this.”

  “I mean, is this a trick to get us back?”

  “If you think I made this up, send a goddamn email. Search the Web or turn on the goddamn TV!”

  The chairs are fitted with wireless connections so we can download music and email our loved ones although we never hear back, and at our fingertips are multimedia remotes. We want for nothing here in the alligator. Nothing material, that is. I check my sources and Father is right. It is a charnel house out there while in here with Father, we are pampered and well fed and snug. It is a velvet prison, but look at the alternative! Exposure to thunderstorms and fires in collision, vulnerability to mudslides and flooding of undetermined origin; our alligator slithers through rivers of bloody swash and our vision is obscured by the occasional collision with a severed limb. We can’t comprehend the nature or the scope of the catastrophe, only that it’s all around us, while here inside the alligator, we are safe.

  Her name is Perpetua. Weird, right? Me knowing? But I do.

  So we are safe inside Perpetua, and I guess we have Father to thank. Where others ignored the cosmic warnings, he took them to heart. Got ready. Spared no expense. I suppose we should be glad.

  If it weren’t for the absence of certain key loved ones from our table and from our sumptuous beds in the staterooms aft of the spiny ridge, we probably would.

  It’s Father’s fault. Like a king summoning his subjects, he brought us back from the corners of the earth where we strayed after we grew up and escaped the house. He brought us in from West Hollywood (Cynthia) and Machu Picchu (Lily) and (fluffy Anna) Biarritz and Farmington, for our baby sister Ella attends the exclusive Miss Porter’s School. And Father reached me … where? When Father wants you, it doesn’t matter how far you run, you will come back.

  Emergency, the message said, Don’t ask. Just come, and being loyal daughters, we did. With enormous gravity he sat us down in the penthouse.

  “My wandering daughters.” He beamed. Then he explained. He even had charts. The catastrophe would start here, he said, pointing to the heart of the city. Then it would blossom, expanding until it blanketed the nation and finally, the world. Faced with destruction, would you dare take your chances outside? Would we?

  He was not asking. “You will come.”

  “Of course, Father,” we said, although even then I was not sure.

  Anna the brownnose gilded the lily with that bright giggle. “Anything you say, Father. Anything to survive.”

  Mother frowned. “What makes you think you’ll survive?”

  “Erna!”

  “What if this is the Last Judgment?” She had Father’s Gutenberg Bible in her lap.

  He shouted: “Put that thing down!”

  She looked down at the book and then up at him. “What makes you think anybody will survive?”

  “That’s enough!”

  “More than enough, Richard.” She raked him with a smile. “I think I’ll take my chances here.”

  He and Mother have never been close. He shrugged. “As you wish. But, you girls …”

  Anna said, “Daddy, can we bring our jewelry?”

  Cynthia laid her fingertip in the hollow of Father’s throat. “I’m fresh out of outfits, can I go to Prada and pick up a few things?”

  I said, “It’s not like we’ll be going out to clubs.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Molly, watch your tone.” Cynthia is Father’s favorite. He told her, “Anything you want, sweet, but be back by four.”

  Little Ella asked if she could bring all her pets—a litter of kittens and a basset hound. The cat is the natural enemy of the alligator, Father explained; even in miniature—and we were about to be miniaturized—the cats would be an incipient danger but the dog’s all right. Ella burst into tears.

  “Can I bring my boyfriend?” Lily said.

  Our baby sister punched her in the breast so hard she yelled. “Not if I can’t take Mittens.”

  “Boyfriends?” We girls chorused, “Of course.”

  Father shook his head.

  You see, because we are traveling in elegant but close quarters, there’s no room for anybody else. This meant no boyfriends, which strikes me as thoughtless if not a little small. When we protested Father reminded us of our choices: death in the disaster or life in luxury with concomitant re-knotting of family ties. He slammed his fist on the hunt table his decorator brought from Colonial Williamsburg at great expense. “Cheap at the price.”

  I was thinking of my boyfriend, whom I had left sleeping in Rangoon. Never guessing I was leaving forever, I stroked his cheek and slipped out. “But … Derek!”

  “Don’t give it another thought.”

  “Daddy, what’s going to happen to Derek?”

  “He’ll keep.”

  Cynthia, Anna and Lily said, “What’s going to happen to Jimmy/David/Phil!”

  “Oh, they’ll keep,” he said. Perceiving that he had given the wrong answer, he added. “Trust me. It’s being taken care of.”

  “But, Daddy!”

  Perceiving that he still hadn’t said enough, he explained that although we were being miniaturized, his technicians would see to it that all our parts would match when we and our boyfriends were reunited, although he did not make clear whether we would be restored to normal size or the men we loved would
be made extremely small. He said whatever it took to make us do what he wanted, patting us each with that fond, abstracted smile.

  “I’ve got my best people on it. Don’t worry. They’ll be fine.”

  Anna did her loving princess act. “Promise?”

  Now Father became impatient. “Girls, I am sparing no expense on this. Don’t you think I have covered every little thing?”

  None of us dares ask him what this all cost. Unlike most people in the city outside we are, after all, still alive, but the money! How much will be left for us when Father dies?

  Of course in normal times the brass fixtures, the ceiling treatment, and luxurious carpeting that line our temporary home would be expensive, but the cost of miniaturizing all these priceless objects and embedding them in our alligator? Who can guess!

  One of us began to cry.

  “Stop that,” Father roared. “Enough is enough.”

  It probably is enough for him, riding along in luxury with his five daughters, but what about Cynthia and Anna and Lily and Ella and me?

  The first few days, I will admit, passed pleasantly as we settled into our quarters and slipped into our routines. Sleep as late as we like and if we miss breakfast Chef leaves it outside our doors in special trays that keep the croissants moist, the juice cold and the coffee hot. There’s even a flower on the tray. Late mornings in the dayroom, working puzzles or reading or doing needlework, a skill Father insisted we learn when we were small. Looking at what he’s made of us, I have to wonder: five daughters at his beck and call, making a fuss over him and doing calligraphy that would have pleased blind old Milton; we all nap after lunch. We spend our afternoons in the music room followed by cocktails in the lounge and in the evening we say grace over a delicious meal at the long table, with Father like the Almighty at the head: is this what he had in mind for us from the first?