Alice watched him carefully from under her lowered lashes, concealing her fascination. The spoonful of pudding halfway to his lips dropped out of his hand, tumbling streakily down his bib to the floor, and a look of surprise sprouted in his eyes. His face crumpled into a mask of woe and he began to whine. He did not say anything, but sat there meekly, tears oozing out of the corners of his shut eyes, and blubbered wetly into his chocolate pudding.
‘Good lord, doesn’t he do anything but cry?’ Alice’s father scowled, lifting his head, and making a scornful mouth. Alice glared at Warren in safe contempt.
‘He is tired,’ her mother said, with a hurt, reproving look at Alice. Bending over the table, she stroked Warren’s yellow hair. ‘He hasn’t been well, poor baby. You know that.’
Her mother’s face was tender and soft like the Madonna pictures in Sunday school, and she got up and gathered Warren into the circle of her arms where he lay curled, warm and secure, sniffling, his face turned away from Alice and the father. The light made a luminous halo of his soft hair. Mother murmured little crooning noises to quiet him and said: ‘There, there, angel, it is all right now. It is all right.’
Alice felt the lump of pudding stop in the back of her throat as she was about to swallow, and she almost gagged. Working hard with her mouth, she finally got it down. Then she felt the steady encouraging level of her father’s gaze upon her, and she brightened. Looking up into his keen blue eyes, she gave a clear triumphant laugh.
‘Who’s my girl?’ he asked her fondly, tweaking at a pigtail.
‘Alice is!’ she cried out, bouncing in her chair.
Mother was taking Warren upstairs to bed. Alice was aware of the retreating back, of the measured clicking of her mother’s heels going away up the stairs, sounding faintly on the floor above. There came the sound of water running. Warren was going to have a bath, and mother would tell him a made-to-order story. Mother told Warren a story every night before she tucked him in bed because he was good as gold all day.
‘Can I watch you correct tonight?’ Alice asked her father.
‘May,’ said her father. ‘Yes, you may, if you are very quiet.’ He wiped his lips on his napkin, folded it, and tossed it on the table, pushing back his chair.
Alice followed her father into the den and went to sit in one of the big, slippery leather chairs near his desk. She liked to watch him correcting the papers he brought home from town in his briefcase, fixing up all the mistakes that people had made during the day. He would go reading along, and then all at once stop, pick up his colored pencil and make little red gashes here and there where the words were wrong.
‘Do you know,’ her father had said once, looking up suddenly from his work, ‘what will happen tomorrow when I hand these papers back in class?’
‘No,’ said Alice, shivering a little. ‘What?’
‘There will be’, her father intoned in mock severity, with a black frown, ‘a weeping and wailing and a gnashing of teeth.’
Alice had thought, then, of the great hall at college where her father stood, high upon a platform. She had been there once with mother, and there had been hundreds of people who came to listen to her father talk and tell them wonderful strange things about how the world was made.
She had pictured him standing up there, handing down papers to the people, calling them by name, each one. He would look the way he did when he scolded mother sometimes, strong and proud, and his voice would be hard, with a sharp edge to it. From up there, like a king, high on a throne, he would call out the names in his thundering voice, and the people would come, trembling and frightened, to take their papers. And then, rising mournfully, there would be the sound of weeping, of wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Alice hoped that she would be there some day when the people were gnashing their teeth; she was sure that it would make a terrible and awe-inspiring noise.
Tonight, she sat and watched her father correct papers until it was time for her to go to bed. The light of the study lamp circled his head with a crown of brightness, and the vicious little red marks he made on the papers were the color of the blood that oozed out in a thin line the day she cut her finger with the bread knife.
Every day, that year, when her father came home just before supper, he would bring her surprises from town in his briefcase. He would come in the front door, take off his hat and his heavy rough coat with the cold silk lining, and set the briefcase down on a chair. First he would unbuckle the straps, and then he would take out the newspaper that came all folded and smelling of ink. Then there would be the sheaves of papers he had to correct for the next day. And at the very bottom there would be something especially for her, Alice.
It might be apples, yellow and red, or walnuts wrapped in colored cellophane. Sometimes there would be tangerines, and he would peel off the pock-marked orange skin for her and the spongy white threads that laced over the fruit. She would eat the sections one by one, the juice spurting sweet and sharp into her mouth.
In the summertime, when it was very nice out, her father did not go to town at all. He would take her to the beach when mother had to stay at home with Warren, who always coughed and fretted because he had asthma and couldn’t breathe without the steam kettle beside his bed.
First father would go for a swim himself, leaving her on the shore, with the small waves collapsing at her feet and the wet sand sliding up cool between her toes. Alice would stand ankle-deep, watching him admiringly from the edge of the breakers, shielding her eyes against the blinding glare of summer sun that struck silent and brilliant on the surface of the water.
After a while she would call to him, and he would turn and begin swimming shoreward, carving a line of foam behind him with his legs and cleaving the water ahead with the powerful propellors of his arms. He would come to her and lift her onto his back, where she clung, her arms locked about his neck, and go swimming out again. In an ecstasy of terror, she would hold to him, her soft cheek prickling where she laid her face against the back of his neck, her legs and slender body trailing out behind her, floating, moving effortlessly along in her father’s energetic wake.
And gradually, there on her father’s back, Alice’s fear would leave her, and the water, black and deep beneath her, would seem calm and friendly, obeying the skilful mastery of her father’s rhythmic stroke and supporting both of them upon the level waves. The sunshine, too, fell warm and cordial upon her thin arms, where the skin was stippled with goose-flesh. The summer sun did not burn her skin raw and red, the way it did Warren’s, but turned her a lovely brown shade, the color of cinnamon toast.
After swimming, her father would take her for a brisk run up and down the beach to make her dry again, and as she raced him along the flat hard packed sand at the water’s edge, laughing into the teeth of the wind, she would try to match her steps to the easy piston-powered pace of his swift stride. Then it seemed to Alice, as she felt the growing strength and sureness of her young limbs, that some day she, too, would be able to ride the waves in safe dominion, and that the sunlight would always bend deferentially to her, docile and generous with its creative warmth.
Alice’s father feared nothing. Power was good because it was power, and when the summer storms came,’ with the crackling blue sheet lightning and the ear-splitting thunder claps, like the sound of a city toppling block by block, Alice’s father would roar with laughter as Warren scurried to hide in the broom closet, his fingers in his ears and his pale face grave with terror. Alice learned to sing the thunder song with her father: ‘Thor is angry. Thor is angry. Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! We don’t care. We don’t care. Boom, boom, boom!’ And above the resonant resounding baritone of her father’s voice, the thunder rumbled harmless as a tame lion.
Sitting on her father’s lap in the den, watching the waves at the end of the street whipped to a ragged froth of foam and blown spray against the sea wall, Alice learned to laugh at the destructive grandeur of the elements. The swollen purple and black clouds broke open with blinding fl
ashes of light, and the thunderclaps made the house shudder to the root of its foundations. But with her father’s strong arms around her and the steady reassuring beat of his heart in her ears, Alice believed that he was somehow connected with the miracle of fury beyond the windows, and that through him, she could face the doomsday of the world in perfect safety.
When it was the right time of year, her father took her into the garden and showed her how he could catch bumblebees. That was something no one else’s father could do. Her father caught a special kind of bumblebee that he recognized by its shape and held it in his closed fist, putting his hand to her ear. Alice liked to hear the angry, stifled buzzing of the bee, captured in the dark trap of her father’s hand, but not stinging, not daring to sting. Then, with a laugh, her father would spread his fingers wide, and the bee would fly out, free, up into the air and away.
One summer, then, Alice’s father did not take her out to catch bees. He lay inside the house on the couch and mother brought him trays with orange juice in tall glasses, and grapes, and plums to eat. He drank a lot of water, for he was very thirsty all the time. Alice would go often into the kitchen for him and get a pitcher of water with ice cubes to make it cold, and she would bring him a glass, frosted with water drops.
It went on like that for a long while, and father would not talk much to anyone who came into the house. At night, after Alice was in bed, she could hear mother speaking to father in the next room, and her voice would go along very soft and low for a while, until father would get cross and raise his voice like thunder, and sometimes he would even wake up Warren, who began to cry.
One day, after a night like this, the doctor came to see father. He brought a black briefcase and silver tools, and after he had left, father began to stay in bed. It was the doctor’s orders. There was whispering, always now, upstairs instead of talking, and the doctor wanted the blinds in father’s room kept down because the sunlight was too bright and hurt father’s eyes.
Alice could only go to see father once in a while now because they kept the door shut most of the time. Once when she was sitting on a chair by the bed, talking to him softly about how the violet seeds were ready to collect in their dry brown pods in the garden, the doctor came. Alice could hear the front door open downstairs and mother asking him in. Mother and the doctor stood together for a while in the downstairs hall, the low murmur of their voices sounding solemn and indistinct.
Then the doctor came upstairs with mother, bringing his black bag and smiling a foolish bright smile. He pulled playfully at Alice’s pigtail, but she switched it away from him with a pout and a toss of her head. Father winked at her, but mother shook her head.
‘Be nice, Alice,’ she begged. ‘The doctor’s here to help father.’
This was not true. Father did not need any help. The doctor was making him stay in bed; he shut out the sun and that was making father unhappy. Father could tell the plump silly doctor to go out of the house, if he wanted to. Father could slam the door after him and order him never to come back again. But instead, father let the doctor take a big silver needle out of the black bag and swab a sterile place on father’s arm and stab the needle in.
‘You should not look,’ mother told Alice gently.
But Alice determined to look. Father did not wince at all. He let the needle go in and looked at her with his strong blue eyes, silently telling her that really he did not care, really he was only humoring mother and the absurd fat little doctor, two harmless conspirators. Alice felt her eyes fill up with tears of pride. But she blinked back the tears and did not cry. Father did not like anyone to cry.
The next day Alice went to visit her father again. From the hall she glimpsed him lying in bed in the shaded room, his head on the pillow, and the light, pale and dusty orange, filtering through the drawn blinds.
She tiptoed into the room, which smelled sweet and strange with alcohol. Father was asleep, lying motionless on the bed except for the rhythmic rising and falling of the blankets over his chest and the sound of his breathing. In the muted light, his face was the sallow color of candle wax, and the flesh was lean and taut about his mouth.
Alice stood looking down at her father’s gaunt face, clenching and unclenching her thin hands by her side and listening to the slow thread of his breathing. Then she leaned over the bed and put her head down on the bedclothes above his chest. From somewhere, very faint and far off, she could hear the weak pulsing of his heart, like the fading throb of a distant drum.
‘Father,’ she said in a small pleading voice. ‘Father.’ But he did not hear, withdrawn as he was into the core of himself, insulated against the sound of her supplicant voice. Lost and betrayed, she slowly turned away and left the room.
That was the last time that Alice Denway saw her father. She did not know then that in all the rest of her life there would be no one to walk with her, like him, proud and arrogant among the bumblebees.
Tongues of Stone
The simple morning sun shone through the green leaves of the plants in the little sunroom making a clean look and the patterned flowers on the chintz-covered couch were naive and pink in the early light. The girl sat on the sofa with the ragged red square of knitting in her hands and began to cry because the knitting was all wrong. There were holes, and the small blond woman in the silky white uniform who had said that anyone could learn to knit was in the sewing room helping Debby make a black blouse with lavender fish printed on it.
Mrs Sneider was the only other one in the sunroom where the girl sat on the sofa with the tears crawling like slow insects down her cheeks, falling wet and scalding on her hands. Mrs Sneider was at the wooden table by the window making a fat woman out of clay. She sat hunched over her clay, glaring angrily at the girl every now and then. Finally the girl got up and went over to Mrs Sneider to look at the swollen clay woman.
‘You make very nice clay things,’ the girl said.
Mrs Sneider sneered and began to take the woman apart, tearing off the arms and head and hiding the pieces under the newspaper she was working on.
‘You really didn’t need to do that, you know,’ the girl said. ‘It was a very good woman.’
‘I know you,’ Mrs Sneider hissed, squashing the body of the fat woman back into a shapeless lump of clay. ‘I know you, always snooping and spying!’
‘But I only wanted to look,’ the girl was trying to explain when the silky white woman came back and sat down on the creaking couch asking, ‘Let me see your knitting.’
‘It’s all holes,’ the girl said dully. ‘I can’t remember how you told me. My fingers won’t do it.’
‘Why, it’s perfectly fine,’ the woman countered brightly, getting up to go. ‘I’d like to see you work on it some more.’
The girl took up the red square of knitting and slowly wound the thread over her finger, stabbing at a loop with the slippery blue needle. She had caught the loop but her finger was stiff and far away and would not make the yarn go over the needle. Her hands felt like clay, and she let the knitting fall in her lap and began to cry again. Once she began to cry there was no stopping.
For two months she had neither cried nor slept, and now she still did not sleep, but the crying came more and more, all day long. Through her tears she stared out of the window at the blur the sunlight made on the leaves which were turning bright red. It was sometime in October, she had long ago lost track of all the days and it really didn’t matter because one was like another and there were no nights to separate them because she never slept anymore.
There was nothing to her now but the body, a dull puppet of skin and bone that had to be washed and fed day after day after day. And her body would live on for sixty-odd years or more. After a while they would get tired of waiting and hoping and telling her that there was a God or that some day she would look back on this as if it were a bad dream.
Then she would drag out her nights and days chained to a wall in a dark solitary cell with dirt and spiders. They were safe outside the dream
so they could jargon away. But she was caught in the nightmare of the body, without a mind, without anything, only the soulless flesh that got fatter with the insulin and yellower with the fading tan.
That afternoon as always she went out alone into the walled yard behind the ward, carrying a book of short stories which she did not read because the words were nothing but dead black hieroglyphics that she could not translate to colored pictures anymore.
She brought the warm white woolen blanket which she somehow liked to wrap around her and went to lie on a ledge of rock under the pine trees. Hardly anyone came out here. Only the little black-clad ancient women from the third-floor ward used to walk out in the sun now and then and sit stiff against the flat board fence, facing shut-eyed into the light like dried-up black beetles until the student nurses came to call them in for supper.
While she lay in the grass, black flies hovered around her, buzzing monotonously in the sun, and she stared at them as if by concentrating she could shrink herself into the compass of a fly’s body and become an organic part of the natural world. She envied even the green grasshoppers that sprang about in the long grass at her feet and once caught a shiny black cricket, holding it in her hand and hating the small insect because it seemed to have a creative place in the sun while she had none, but lay there like a parasitic gall on the face of the earth.
She hated the sun too because it was treacherous. Yet it was only the sun that talked to her still, for all the people had tongues of stone. Only the sun consoled her a little, and the apples which she picked in the orchard. She hid the apples under her pillow so that when the nurses came to lock up her closet and drawers during the insulin treatment she could still go into the bathroom with an apple in her pocket and shut the door to eat in large, ravenous bites.