Answer as a Man

  “So you want to be a priest!” said Lionel on this occasion, for Joan had persuaded the boy to “tell Uncle Lionel.” “What the hell for, kid?”

  “I told you, Uncle Lionel. I think I have a vocation.”

  “Piffle,” said Lionel, who wanted to use a stronger word. He paused, then said, “Shit.”

  He was immediately concerned, but Sebastian smiled and said nothing. “Look here,” said Lionel, “it’s just a whim. You need some fun in your life. Your sister is a hundred years old; your mother is taken up with your brother. Your grandfather is old and now has heart trouble. And your father has all the burden of his family on him, and his work besides. He has to work much harder than I do. And there’s Nicholas again, a worry, to say the least. Not too much good for fun, all that. How would you like to go on a vacation with your aunt and me this summer?”

  Joy shone on the boy’s face. “I’d love it!” Then he sobered. “I can’t leave Nickie all alone with Nick.”

  “She’s not alone. She has her mother to help, and Mr. Doherty, and sometimes her … your father and Mr. Mulligan.”

  “Nick doesn’t always pay attention to them. He does to me and Nickie. Then there’s Mama. She’s sick so much.”

  The drunken, foolish bitch! thought Lionel vindictively. He had never even liked Patricia at the best of times. Now he saw her as the enemy of his son, probably the worst enemy he would ever have.

  “You’ve got to live for yourself sometime,” Lionel said.

  But Sebastian said nothing, and Lionel knew that he had made an adult decision. “Now, look,” said Lionel, “do you want to be like your Uncle John?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good, anyway.” Lionel laughed. “I’d hate to think he was your model! Well, it’ll be a long time. A long time.” He was not given to a display of any emotion in public, but he leaned sideways and kissed his son’s cheek. Sebastian put his head on his father’s shoulder, with a great content. The sparkling stars sailed through the treetops, and from a nearby house there came the faint poignancy of a Chopin nocturne.

  Sebastian felt peace as he had never known it in his own home. He did not know the word, but it was an ineffable peace, held in his father’s arm as he was, and they did not speak again.

  When Lionel came home, he said to his wife, “Do you think your brother Jack has, something to do with perverting Sebastian’s mind?”

  “No. Jack doesn’t like children. He doesn’t like anyone but me.” A peculiar expression passed over her face. “He never notices Sebastian when he’s here visiting, except to tell the child that all children are ‘evil from their birth and wicked from their youth,’ or something like that. As though he were the entire vessel of Original Sin.”

  “Who, then, dammit?”

  “You know that when we were children ourselves”—and Joan smiled—“Father Sweeney said God chooses his priests when they’re born.”

  Lionel was angered, a rare thing for him. “If he’s been talking to Sebastian, he’ll hear from me!”

  Joan glanced at him with surprise. His face was intensely serious. He said, as he had said so many times before, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my son. My son.”

  Joan felt no jealousy, no resentment. She took her husband’s hand and kissed it and held it against her cheek. She said, “And I, too.”

  For she believed that she was more the mother of Sebastian than Patricia, who hated him. She, Joan, would give her life for him. For he was Lionel’s son,

  “We are his parents,” she said. “Oh, yes, we are his mother and his father. He has no one else.”

  Patricia blew into Patrick’s bedroom on a gust of hot windy air. She was screeching at the top of her lungs.

  Patrick had been forced to return to his house, during the past six months, to rest for an hour or two during the afternoon because of his heart ailment. He fumed over it but conceded it was necessary. He would not limit the amount of food he absorbed at the table nor his lavish drinking of wine and whiskey, nor his vigorous visits to his amiable mistress. “Hell,” he would say, “if a man cannot live the life he loves, then he’d better not live at all. Life bought at the price of pleasure isn’t worth it.” But he did rest because of his growing exhaustion.

  He was napping when Patricia banged open the door, screeching imprecations, and she did not notice that her father was lying naked on his bed. He half sat up, blinking, and pulled the sheet over him hastily. He thought suddenly that she seemed shockingly like her son, Nicholas, and that she sounded much like him in her violent and explosive words.

  “It’s the very worst, the very worst! Irreplaceable! The only decent artistic thing in this whole damned hideous house! And what was he doing in Mama’s bedroom anyway! Snooping! He hates anything beautiful because he’s so ugly himself! He’s got to be sent away, right away!” She was gasping, her face dangerously red, her usually sleek fine hair tousled, her brown linen dress only partly buttoned, her eyes insane with hatred and wrath.

  “What is it?” asked Patrick, putting his hand against the ominous pain in his chest.

  Through her hail of words her father gathered that Sebastian, on a curious visit to Patricia’s mother’s room, had “deliberately” destroyed a very large and valuable piece of Meissen china set in the middle of a black walnut table. It had been delicately painted with dolphins, exquisitely wrought cupids twined with gilt and pink ribbons in strategic spots, bouquets of incredibly tiny flowers, small woods animals and birds by the flock, miniature trees, and baskets with infinitesimal fruits in them. It was a veritable museum piece and was at least two hundred years old.

  No servant was permitted to dust the object, only Patricia herself, ever since she was a child, and it was a task she enjoyed. What little imagination she had, had been inspired by that object. She had been a lonely child, for no contemporary had been able to endure her arrogance, and the china ornament had been her companion. She had given names to the cupids, the dolphins, and the animals.

  Patrick sat up straighter, for he well knew what the ornament had meant to his daughter, and he was extremely angry and compassionate. Patricia, weeping convulsively, sank on her knees and cried over and over that “he must go, go, go, and at once, before he does worse mischief!” It seemed that Sebastian, who was found alone in the room—servants, hearing the crash of the heavy ornament, had come running—explained that he was looking for Nicholas and had accidentally bumped into the table.

  “That big piece!” exclaimed Patrick. “I can hardly lift it meself! And the table is heavy; needs a man to move it!” His face became crimson and swollen.

  “He confessed! He could do nothing else, being caught there, Dada!”

  Patrick thought of the slender boy. The enormous ornament was not only very heavy; it was almost as large as the boy himself. He shook his head and then smoothed his daughter’s hair and said, “There, there, mavourneen. ’Twas your puir mither’s pride and joy, and that it was.” When deeply disturbed, he lapsed into his childhood’s brogue. “Send the lad to me, I’ll get to the bottom of this, then.” He kissed his daughter and wiped her tears with the edge of the sheet.

  Patricia threw her arms about his neck and screamed, “Send him away, Dada, send him away, even if he is Jason’s pet. Jason doesn’t even try to help poor Nicholas! Tries to stop us from going to Lourdes so Nicholas can be cured!”

  “Send the lad to me,” said Patrick, and Patricia flew out of the room like a Fury. Patrick, groaning, pulled on his trousers, but it was much too hot to put on a shirt, and so he sat again on the bed, his pink and hairy chest heaving with his rapid heartbeat, his head hammering. The room was suffused with Patricia’s perfume, which nauseated him. He retched once or twice and rubbed his fat sweating face and groaned again. He reflected miserably that everything had gone wrong lately, and he thought of his debts and his heart and Patricia’s ill health and how hard it was to grow old when one felt young. He closed his eyes for a minute or two. Bright sparks ran about th
e inner lids and frightened him.

  Patricia ran shouting into the nursery, where a subdued duo awaited her, Nicole and Sebastian. Nicholas was suddenly asleep in his room. He did this often after a period of sustained violent activity, and it was almost impossible to wake him later.

  The two children looked in silence at Patricia as she stormed into the pleasant schoolroom. Patricia flung out her arm and pointed toward the door. “Get to your grandfather’s bedroom, you sneak,” she shouted at Sebastian. “He wants to talk to you, and I hope he beats you almost to death!”

  “Mama,” said Nicole. But Sebastian caught her arm and squeezed it, so she was silent. Patricia began to scream again. “He’ll send you away, as I always wanted, and then we’ll have peace in this house! You cause nothing but trouble here, and always did! Mischief-maker, liar, sneak. No wonder poor Nicholas is sick! You make him sick! I swear you do! He’ll be all right after you’re gone! You’re possessed of the Devil!”

  Unfortunately, Mr. Doherty, who was permitted a walk after lunch, was not present at the time of the breakage or for this hysterical scene.

  Nicole turned silently and imploringly to Sebastian, but he shook his head and gave her a warning look. Her beautiful gray eyes flooded in tears. He walked to the doorway near where Patricia stood trembling with rage. When he passed near her, she swung out her arm and struck him fiercely on the face, so that he staggered and almost fell.

  “Mama!” cried Nicole.

  “Nickie,” said her brother, holding his bruised face and turning toward her. “Nickie!” His young voice was loud and commanding. The child burst into tears and went into her bedroom. Sebastian watched her go, then left the room. When he had gone, Patricia followed her daughter. She found Nicole sobbing on her white-dotted-swiss bed, and Patricia sat beside her, still panting. But Nicole moved away from her in silence.

  “Darling,” said Patricia. But Nicole shut her wet eyes and did not speak. She had never done this before, and Patricia felt abandoned.

  “He’s made you treat your mother like this, the wicked boy.”

  But Nicole opened her eyes and stared somberly at the wall. She let Patricia stroke her hair, but it was as if her mother were not present and she was caught up in a sorrow more than she could bear.

  Patrick, in his bedroom with Sebastian, rubbed his smarting eyes. He felt unutterably weary and sick. He had always loved Sebastian, his first grandchild, but for a considerable time, due to Patricia’s tales, he had come to be suspicious of the boy and extremely troubled and doubtful, for the first time, of his own judgments. No mother could so loathe her own child and accuse him so monstrously without cause, not even Patricia, who was sometimes guilty of hysterical exaggerations. There was also the matter of the destroyed ornament. No one, Patrick reflected, could get around that. He looked sharply at the boy and said, “What’ve you got to say for yourself, then, Bastie? That lovely work of art, your Mum’s treasure.”

  The boy looked at Patrick seriously. “It was an accident,” he said. He had never told a lie in all his life before. But he and Nicole had hastily invented a story, and he hoped it would be believed.

  “Come, now,” said Patrick, and was deeply vexed. “A heavy object like that! Sure, I could hardly lift it meself.”

  The boy shut his eyes for an instant, then looked directly at his grandfather. He was very pale and very resolute. “Nickie and I—we missed Nick for a minute. We didn’t hear him. Then we went looking for him. Everywhere; And he”—the young voice weakened—“he was in Grandma’s room, looking at the ornament. He thought it was pretty. Nickie and I took his hand to take him back to the nursery, and I … I slipped and fell against the table. Hard. And it rocked … it rocked, and the ornament fell off and broke. That’s all. I’m sorry. Mama liked it so much. And Nick cried. He honestly did. He was sick over it. And we took him back and put him to bed.”

  Patrick listened to this in absolute silence, and his little bright blue eyes were keen. He had heard thousands of prevarications before, and something sounded flase in the account of the child. He said, “Sure, and you wouldn’t be diddling me would you, Bastie?”

  He was not prepared for the stark terror that suffused Sebastian’s face. He sat up in alarm, all his instincts alert. “Are you lying to me, child?”

  “Why should I lie?” cried Sebastian. “You can ask Nickie, Grandpa! Why should I lie? It was my fault, all my fault.”

  “Maybe Nickie will tell the same story you’ve told her to tell.”

  The blue eyes became piercing and formidable. Sebastian began to tremble violently. Patrick said, “Only a maniac with the strength given him by the Divil himself, or a very strong man, could tip that table over, then. Were you spalpeens, the three of you, racing around the table and knocking it, in your divilment?”

  Wildly Sebastian thought that this would have been a better story. He gasped audibly, and shook his head. “Only me! Only me!” His voice was desperate. “You can ask Nickie. Mama, she said you would punish me, Grandpa. I wish you would and then let me go!” He clenched his small hands together. “Let me go!” he cried beseechingly.

  “Let me go!” a little boy had cried in Patrick’s hearing when he was a child himself. But the boy had been savagely beaten by an English soldier and eventually died. He had stolen a loaf of bread from a shopkeeper in the soldier’s presence, for he had been starving. The echo rang dolorously down the decades, and Patrick felt sick, seeing the bright red blood of his playmate as vividly as if it had just been shed.

  He held out his hand to Sebastian, and the boy took it and cried helplessly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mumbled between his sobs. Patrick wanted to weep himself, over the long-dead child and over Sebastian.

  “Don’t cry, then,” he said. “It’s all right, lad.” He wiped the child’s eyes with a corner of the sheet. Then he took Sebastian in his arms and held him tightly. “It’s a man you are, Bastie, not a little colleen, and there’ll be time enough for sorrow. There, there, now.” He rocked the boy in his arms, crooning. Sebastian was now on Patrick’s knees, and his tears wet Patrick’s chest. Patrick felt an enormous grief, the grief that all fathers feel for their children, a grief darkened with guilt that they had brought their sons into the world at all. “Weep not for myself,” the good Lord had said on his way to Calvary, “but for your children.” Patrick had not understood that before, but now he did in all its poignancy.

  With intense clarity he thought of Patricia. He knew now that all her tales of the child had been lies, but why she lied was a profound mystery. A terrible thought came to him: had Nicholas inherited some dementia from her? Was she mad herself? There was a certain extreme excitability common to both mother and child. But Patricia’s was for effect. A different and agonizing pang assailed Patrick’s head, and the room swayed about him and he felt frightened as it became unreal to him. He shut his eyes.

  When he opened them, Sebastian was no longer crying but was sitting up on Patrick’s knee, his young face concerned. “What is it, Grandpa? What is it?”

  “Nothing, then. A headache.” Patrick tried to smile. He was still dizzy. He pushed Sebastian off his knee, then smacked him affectionately several times on his buttocks. “Tell Mama I thrashed you. It’s no lie.”

  When Sebastian was gone, Patrick lay back on his hot pillows. He did not think of his oldest grandchild. He thought of Nicholas, and he knew the truth. God help us, he thought. He cried again, an old man’s tears.

  Sebastian found his mother with the still-silent Nicole. The little girl sat up abruptly in her bed, and when she saw the traces of tears on her brother’s face, she burst forlornly into tears herself. She ran to him and embraced him, clutching him convulsively. Patricia laughed, an ugly laugh. Sebastian looked over his sister’s shoulder at her.

  “Did he thrash you, as you deserved?”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  She stood up, satisfied, and gave him an evil glance of triumph. Suddenly she felt an uncontrollable desire for whiskey,
and almost ran out of the room, shouting, “And that’s just the beginning! You’re going to be sent away, where you’ll be thrashed all the time!”

  Nicole had quieted into silent sobbing. Sebastian whispered, “Grandpa didn’t hurt. Nickie, he took me on his knee.”

  She looked up into his face. “Then he won’t send Nick to some hospital? He doesn’t know? You didn’t tell him?”

  “No. Of course not, Nickie. I thought of Mama all the time. What she’d do if Nick was sent to a hospital. Poor Nick.”

  Nicole thought of the scene in her grandmother’s room and shuddered at the memory. She and Sebastian had found Nicholas there jumping maniacally up and down on the heavy table and slobbering with glee. When the other two children had gasped with dismay, seeing the huge ornament rocking beside the child’s leaping feet, Nicholas had glanced at it with mad eyes, and then, with incredible strength, had pushed it off. It fell with a splintering crash, and Nicholas howled again as he jumped to the floor, overbalancing the table, which rolled on its rim.

  The two other children trembled and clung to each other as Nicholas danced about them, shouting, “No more pretty! Boom, boom! Boom, boom!” And he howled once more.

  Sebastian said with horror, “Quick! Take him back to the nursery! Put him to bed!” He heard the servants pounding up the back stairs, and he pushed Nicole fiercely. “Hurry! I’ll say it was an accident—I was looking for Nick, I’ll think of something—get out of here!”

  “No! You’re not going to take the blame this time!”

  “Mama. She’ll die if Nick’s sent away! And so will Nick, alone with strangers. Please, Nickie, please!”

  Nicole had obeyed, dragging the dancing, giggling Nicholas with her, just as the servants burst into the upper hall. Once in the nursery, the girl had put her brother to bed, and he had fallen into one of his abysmal sleeps.

  Then Nicole, shivering, had sat down and awaited calamity.