Without another word, the little gathering broke up, Grace and Phil ushering Celeste away, Jim to go off back to St. Francis Church, and Reuben to take Laura to lunch.
When they sat down in the dim interior of the Italian restaurant, they finally spoke, and Reuben told Laura briefly and in a spiritless voice about what had happened last night and how he’d hurt Celeste. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he said, suddenly crestfallen. “But I just, I had to say something. I tell you I think being hated is painful, but being deeply disliked is even more painful, and that’s what I feel coming from her. Intense dislike. And it’s like a flame. And I’ve always felt it when I was with her, and it’s made my soul wither. I know this now because I dislike her. And God help me, maybe I always did and I’m as guilty of dishonesty as she is.”
What he wanted to talk about was Marchent. He needed to talk about Marchent. He wanted to be back in the world of Nideck Point, but he was caught here, out of his element, in his old world, and was eager to escape all of it.
“Reuben, Celeste never loved you,” said Laura. “She went out with you for two reasons—your family and your money. She loved both and she couldn’t admit it.”
Reuben didn’t answer. The truth was he couldn’t believe Celeste capable of such a thing.
“I understood it as soon as I spent time with her,” said Laura. “She was intimidated by you, by your education, your travel, your way with words, your polish. She wanted all those things for herself, and she was burning with guilt, burning. It came out in her sarcasm, her constant digs—the way she kept on even when you were no longer engaged, the way she just couldn’t let it go. She never loved you. And now, don’t you see, she’s pregnant and she hates it but she’s living in your parents’ beautiful home, and she’s taking money for the child, lots of money, I suspect, and she’s ashamed and she can hardly stand it.”
That did make sense. In fact, that quite suddenly made perfect sense, and it seemed a light had flared in his mind by which he could read his strange past with Celeste clearly for the first time.
“It’s probably like a nightmare for her,” said Laura. “Reuben, money confuses people. It does. That’s a fact of life. It confuses people. Your family has plenty. They don’t act like they do. Your mom works all the time, like a driven self-made woman, your father is an idealist and a poet who wears clothes he bought twenty years ago, and Jim comes off the same way, otherworldly, spiritual, driving himself to minister to others so that he’s perpetually exhausted. Your dad’s always struggling with his old work, or taking notes in a book as if he had to give a lecture in the morning. Your mother rarely gets a good night’s sleep. And you come across a bit that way too, working night and day on your essays for Billie at the paper, pounding away on the computer till you practically fall asleep over it. But you do have money, and really no idea what it’s like to be without it.”
“You’re right,” he said.
“Look, she didn’t plan it. She just didn’t know what she was doing. But why did you ever listen to her, that’s what I’ve always wondered?”
That rang a bell with him. Marchent had said something so very similar to him but now the words escaped him—something about the mystery being that he listened to those who criticized him and cut him down. And his family certainly did a lot of that and had done a lot of that before Celeste ever joined the chorus. Maybe they’d unwittingly invited Celeste to join the chorus. Maybe that had been her ticket in, though he and Celeste had never realized it. Once she’d taken up the relentless scrutiny of Sunshine Boy, Baby Boy, Little Boy—well, it was established that she spoke the common language. Maybe he’d felt comfortable with her for speaking that common language.
“In the beginning, I liked her a lot,” he said in a small voice. “I had fun with her. I thought she was pretty. I liked that she was a smart. I like smart women. I liked being around her and then things started to go wrong. I should have spoken up. I should have told her how uncomfortable I was.”
“And you would have in time,” said Laura. “It would have ended in some completely natural and inevitable way, if you had never gone to Nideck Point. It had ended in a natural way. Except now there’s the baby.”
He didn’t answer.
The restaurant was becoming crowded, but they sat in a little zone of privacy at their corner table, the lights dim, and the heavy draperies and framed pictures around them absorbing the noise.
“Is it so difficult for someone to love me?” he asked.
“You know it’s not,” she said smiling. “You’re easy to love, so easy that just about everybody who meets you loves you. Felix adores you. Thibault loves you. They all love you. Even Stuart loves you! And Stuart’s a kid who’s supposed to be in love with himself at his age. You’re a nice guy, Reuben. You’re a nice and gentle guy. And I’ll tell you something else. You have a kind of humility, Reuben. And some people just don’t understand humility. You have a way of opening yourself to what interests you, opening yourself to other people, like Felix, for instance, in order to learn from them. You can sit at the table at Nideck Point and listen calmly to all the elders of the Morphenkinder tribe with amazing humility. Stuart can’t do it. Stuart has to flex his muscles, challenge, tease, provoke. But you just keep on learning. Unfortunately some people think that’s weakness.”
“That’s too generous an assessment, Laura,” he said. He smiled. “But I like the way you see things.”
Laura sighed. “Reuben, Celeste is not really part of you now. She can’t be.” Laura frowned, her mouth twisting a little as though she found this particularly painful to say, and then she went on in a low voice. “She’ll live and die like other human beings. Her road will always be hard. She’ll soon discover how little money will change it for her. You can afford to forgive her all this, can’t you?”
He stared into Laura’s soft blue eyes.
“Please?” she said. “She’ll never know for one moment the kind of life that’s opening now for both of us.”
He knew what these words meant grammatically, intelligently, but he didn’t know what they meant emotionally. But he did know what he had to do.
He picked up his phone, and he texted Celeste. He wrote in full and complete words, “I’m sorry. Truly I am. I want you to be happy. When this is all over, I want you to be happy.”
What a cowardly thing to do, to tap it into his iPhone when he couldn’t say it to her in person.
But in a moment, she’d answered. The words appeared: “You’ll always be my Sunshine Boy.”
He stared at the iPhone stonily and then he deleted the message.
They left San Francisco by three thirty, easily beating the evening traffic.
But it was slow go in the rain, and Reuben didn’t reach Nideck point till after ten.
Once again, the cheerful Christmas lights of the house immediately comforted him. Every window on the three-story façade was now neatly etched with the lights, and the terrace was in good order. The tents were folded and to one side at the ocean end. And a large, well-built stable had taken shape around the Holy Family. The statues themselves had been hastily arranged under it, and though there was no hay or greenery yet, the beauty of the statues was impressive. They appeared stoical and gracious as they stood there under the shadowy wooden roof, faces glinting with the lights from the house, the cold darkness hovering around them. Reuben had some hint of how wonderful the Christmas party was going to be.
His biggest shock came, however, when he looked to the right of the house, as he faced it, and saw the myriad twinkling lights that had transformed the oak forest.
“Winterfest!” he whispered.
If it hadn’t been so wet and cold, he would have gone walking there. He couldn’t wait to do that, walk there. He wandered around the right side of the house, his feet crunching in the gravel of the drive, and saw that wood-chip mulch had been spread out thickly under the trees, and the festooned lights and the softly illuminated mulch paths went on seemingly forever.
Actually he had no idea how far the oak forest continued to the east. He and Laura had many times walked in it but never to the farthest eastern boundary. And the scope of this undertaking, this lighting of the forest in honor of the darkest days of the year, left him kind of breathless.
He felt a sharp pain when he thought of the gulf that now separated him from those he loved, but then he thought, They’ll come to the Christmas gala, and they’ll be here with us for the banquet and the singing. Even Jim will come. He promised. And Mort and Celeste would come, he’d make sure of it. So why feel this pain, why allow it? Why not think of what they would share while they could? He thought of the baby again, and he doubled back to the front and hurried along till he reached the stable. It was dark there and the marble Christ Child was barely visible. But he made out the plump cheeks and the smile on its face, and the tiny fingers of its extended hands.
The wind from the ocean chilled him. A thick mist suddenly stung him, rushing so fiercely against his eyes that they teared up. He thought of all the things he had to do for his son, all the things he’d have to assure, and one thing seemed absolutely certain, that he would never let the secret of the Chrism enter the life of his son, that he would shield his son from it even if it meant taking him away from Nideck Point when the time came. But the future was a little too vast and crowded for him to envision it suddenly.
He was cold and sleepy, and he didn’t know whether Marchent was waiting for him.
Could Marchent feel cold? Was it conceivable that cold was all she felt, a bleak and terrible emotional cold that was far worse than the cold he was now feeling?
A fierce exhilaration came over him.
He went back to the Porsche, and took his Burberry out of the trunk. It was a fully lined Burberry and he’d never bothered to have it hemmed. He hated the cold and liked that it was long. He buttoned it up and down, pulled up the collar, and went walking.
He walked into the vast airy shadows of the oak woods gazing up at the miracle of the lights overhead and around him. On and on he walked, aware but unconcerned that the mist was thickening and that his face and hands were now damp. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
On and on the lighted boughs seemed to go, and everywhere the mulch was thick and safe for walking. When he glanced back the house was distant. The lighted windows were scarcely visible, an unshapen flickering beyond the trees.
He turned back and continued east. He had not come to the end of it, this exquisitely illuminated forest. But the thick mist was now shrouding the branches ahead of him and behind him.
Best to go back.
Very suddenly the lights went out.
He stood stock-still. He was in complete darkness. Of course he realized what had happened. The Christmas lights had been connected with all the outside lights of the property, the floods in front and at the back. And at eleven thirty the outside lights always went off, and so had the Christmas lights of this wonderland.
He turned abruptly and started back, immediately running smack into the trunk of a tree as his foot caught on a root. He could see nothing around him.
Far away the burnished light of the library and dining room windows did still reveal his destination, but this was faint, and at any moment someone might snap off those lights, never dreaming that he was out here.
He tried to pick up the pace, but he suddenly pitched forward and fell hard on the palms of his hands on the mulch.
This was a ridiculous predicament. Even with his improved sight he could see nothing.
He climbed to his feet and made his way carefully, feet inching along the ground. There was plenty of space for walking, he only had to keep to it. But once again he fell, and when he tried to get his bearings, he realized that he could no longer see any light in any direction.
What was he to do?
Of course he could bring on the change, he was certain of it, strip off these clothes and change, and then he’d see his way clearly to the house, of course he would. As a Morphenkind he’d have no problem even in this awful darkness.
But what if Lisa or Heddy were up? What if one of them were going around turning off the lights? Why, Jean Pierre would be in the kitchen as he always was.
It would be ridiculous for him to risk being seen, and the thought of enduring the change for reasons so mundane, and then quickly hiding again in his human skin and dressing hastily in the freezing cold outside the back door, seemed absurd.
No, he would walk carefully.
He started off again, his hands out before him, and immediately his toe caught again on a root and he went forward. But this time, something stopped him from falling. Something had touched him, touched his right arm and even caught hold of his right arm and he was able to steady himself and step over the roots and clear of them.
Had it been a bramble bush or some wild sapling sprung from the roots? He didn’t know. He stood very still. Something was moving near him. Perhaps a deer had come into these woods, but he could catch no scent of a deer. And gradually he realized there was movement all around him. Without the slightest crackling sound of leaf or branch, there was movement virtually surrounding him.
Once again, he felt a touch on his arm, and then what felt like a hand, a firm hand, against his back. This thing, whatever it was, was urging him forward.
“Marchent!” he whispered. He stood still, refusing to move. “Marchent, is it you?” There came no answer from the stillness. The rural dark was so impenetrable that he couldn’t see his own hands when he lifted them, but whatever this was, this thing, this person, whatever, it held fast to him and again urged him forward.
The change came over him with such swiftness he didn’t have time to make a decision. He was bursting out of his clothes before he could even unbutton them or open them. He pushed off his raincoat and let it drop. He heard the leather of his shoes ripping and popping, and as he rose to his full Morphenkind height, he saw through the darkness, saw the distinct shapes of the trees, their clustered leaves, even the tiny glass lights threaded all through them.
The thing that had been holding him had backed away from him, but turning, he saw the figure now, the pale figure of a man, barely discernible in the moving mist, and as he slowly looked about he saw other figures. Men, women, even smaller figures that must have been children; but whatever they were, they were receding, moving without a sound, and finally he couldn’t see them anymore.
He made for the house, easily sprinting through the trees, with the torn remnants of his clothes over his shoulder.
Beneath the dark and empty kitchen windows, he tried to will the change away, struggling violently with it, but it wasn’t listening to him. He closed his eyes, willing himself with all his soul to change, but the wolf coat wouldn’t leave him. He leaned back against the stones and he stared into the oak woods. He could see those figures again. Very slowly he made out the nearest figure, a man, it seemed, who was looking at him. The man was slender, with large eyes and very long dark hair, and a faint smile on his lips. His clothes looked simple, light, some sort of very old-fashioned shirt with balloon sleeves; but the figure was already paling.
“All right, you don’t mean me any harm, do you?” he said.
A soft rustling sound came from the forest but not from the undergrowth or the overhead boughs. It was these creatures laughing. He caught the very pale outline of a profile, of long hair. And once again they were moving away from him.
He heaved a deep breath.
There was a loud snapping noise. Someone somewhere had struck a match. Pray it wasn’t Lisa or the other servants!
Light leapt out from behind the north end of the house, and seemed to penetrate the mist as though it were made of tiny golden particles. And there they were again, the men, the women, and those small figures, and then they vanished altogether.
He struggled with the change, gritting his teeth. The light grew brighter and then flared to his left. It was Lisa. Dear God, no. She held the kerosene lante
rn high.
“Come inside, Master Reuben,” she said, not in the least fazed that she was staring at him in his wolf shape, but merely reaching out for him. “Come!” she said.
He felt the most curious emotion as he looked at her. It was like shame, or the nearest thing to shame he’d ever known, that she was seeing him naked and monstrous and that she knew him by name, knew who he was, knew all about him and could see him this way, without his consent, without his desire for her to see him. He was painfully aware of his size, and the way his face must have appeared, covered in hair, his mouth a lipless snout.
“Go away, please,” he said. “I’ll come when I’m ready.”
“Very well,” she said. “But you needn’t fear them. They are gone now anyway.” She set the lantern on the ground, and left him. Infuriating.
It must have been some fifteen minutes before he made the change, cold and shivering as the thick wolf coat left him. Hastily, he put on his torn shirt and what was left of his pants. His shoes and raincoat were somewhere back in the forest.
He hurried inside, and was intent on running up the stairs to his room, when he saw Margon sitting in the dark kitchen, at the table, alone, with his head resting on his hands. His hair was tied back to the nape of his neck, and his shoulders were hunched.
Reuben stood there wanting to speak to Margon, desperate to speak to him, to tell him about what he’d seen in the oaks, but Margon quite deliberately turned away. It wasn’t a hostile gesture, merely a subtle turning, his head bowed, as if he were saying, Please do not see me, please do not talk to me now.
Reuben sighed and shook his head.
Upstairs, he found the fire lighted in his room, and his bed turned down. His pajamas had been laid out for him. There was a small china pitcher of hot chocolate on the table with a china cup.
Lisa emerged from the bathroom with the air of one who was busy with a multitude of errands. She laid his white terrycloth robe out on the bed.
“Would you like for me to run you a bath, young master?”