Endless Things

  But if there was no more path, what then? How did you hew one, what huge appetite did it take, what certainty of need or desire? What did he want from her? Why did she say she needed to know? She'd spurn him if he couldn't answer, that seemed clear. Would that be bad? How the hell did he know? He seemed to have no warrant for such a person as her in his story at all, and how could he tell her that? She'd only tell him to make a new story, as if that was easy. Easy as pie.

  He had never made his general happiness, the furtherance of his goals or the fulfilling of his needs, a condition of his love for anyone, certainly not any of the women he had been with. He had tried to find and supply what they needed; hadn't asked anything for himself but that they not go, not tire of him, not discard him. He'd never learned—who could have told him, if he didn't simply know?—that one thing you can do to keep her by you, given a general good disposition toward you, is to give her something to do for you: something that, maybe, would take a lifetime. That way she'd remain, maybe. And the thing you asked for would be done for you, too, to some degree, in some way, which would be heartening and lovely even if it wasn't always or entirely successful. I need your help. He felt like a robot or a brain in a jar, working his way by deduction toward these unfamiliar common human things.

  What, then, could he ask for? What did he want or need? How long was the acceptable wait till you finally declared, if you could? What would the negotiations be like, and how long would they go on, how often be repeated? He might want to just say Give me something to want and I'll want it for your sake, but of course that would precisely not do, so he had to think, in his bed in the Morpheus Arms, the bedclothes drawn up to his chin.

  After a time—it was long, or short—he heard a big car roar into the parking lot and brake with a pissed-off squeal before his unit, and he waited motionless in alarm and hope for his door to be flung open again.

  * * * *

  On Midsummer Day, Rosie and Spofford were married at Arcady. Pierce and Roo went down in the Rabbit. She claimed not to be a friend of theirs or even to know them at all, to know nothing of their circumstances and lives anyway, though it seemed to Pierce that she knew more than she ever said about everything that went on around her, at least in certain strata about which he (for instance) truly knew nothing; she had firmly decided not to go with him, then said she had nothing to wear, and finally came anyway, in a white lace dress and cowboy boots, more visible than she supposed herself ever to be.

  "Never been here before,” she said as the drive approached. “Big."

  Their car was one of many; there was even a boy to point you to a parking place. A Rasmussen wedding could not be small, or hidden; Rosie Rasmussen had tried in every way to make it small, and wherever she pressed it down or trimmed it off it sprang out elsewhere; finally she called her mother in and gave it over to her, and did as she was told. Which for some reason allowed her mother to regard her for the first time as an adult, and enjoy her company, and laugh with her and dispute and approve, as though they were any two people, any two friends with a history. Her mother, rosy cheeked and tireless, seemed drawn back from limbo, at whose gray doors Rosie had last parted from her. She could see now (from the windows of the study, where she and Spofford waited to appear, like actors in the wings) her mother making her way amid people she knew long ago, who greeted her with what appeared to be the same pleased surprise.

  Out on those lawns guests were disposed in artless groups, sitting on the grass or the stone seats; wandering musicians entertained (actually these were a few former members of the Orphics, a recently disbanded band; they now called themselves the Rude Mechanicals, and played a variety of instruments). Not far off, sheep munched grass and gave voice, happy that it was hot and green and blue again, as we all were. At length the musicians gathered us all into a great circle on the lawn where once Boney Rasmussen had played croquet, where Pierce had first met Rosie. In those days, he had believed that there were two of her, or that she and another were one. It's the simplest lesson a stranger can be asked to learn, the plainest puzzle to solve, and yet it can for a long while or a little while become inescapable, create all by itself a forest where no man is his own. Anyway now he knew. With Roo he walked in amid the circle—there were actually two circles, an inner and an outer, moving somewhat in contrary directions, as though for a dance, that old dance called labirinto—and he saw many he now knew, and many he never would. Rosie had seemingly invited the county, and then some. The last time Pierce had seen so many of them together this way, laughing, milling, celebratory, they were all masked and pretending to be who they were not. Val escorted her mother, tiny and bright eyed. Allan Butterman, the lawyer, was talking with—Roo pointed to him—Barney Corvino.

  "Do you want to introduce me?"

  "No. Maybe. Later."

  At length there came out from the house a child, in white, white flowers in her hair, her feet bare; she carried a bowl or vessel with care. With steady, grave confidence she came into our dance, and from her bowl she took and scattered white petals on the path, or rather she made a path of petals for the two who came after her to walk.

  "It's her daughter,” Pierce said to Roo. Surprising tears stood suddenly in his eyes.

  "Not his, though."

  "No. But I think she was a big reason for this."

  "Sure,” Roo said, and pondered how it was that now children brought about marriages, when it had always been the other way around. Sam's eyes fell on them, but her smile was general, for herself as object of our attention, and for the couple too—he and she, not in white but wearing bright coats and chaplets and holding hands, as though they were taking a stroll in a long-past or just-past age. The former Orphics played Mendelssohn on zither and ocarina.

  When they were among us, Rhea Rasmussen separated from the circle, as though just then remembering her duties, and came to Rosie and Spofford and took their hands; she spoke to them words we couldn't hear, meant for them alone, so that we went on talking among ourselves for a moment, murmurs of appreciation touched with light laughter here and there. Then Rhea stepped back, holding the two of them in place before her; we were stilled; Sam with her now empty bowl beside them lifted her face in rapt attention to them and what they might do next, lifting a leg absently to scratch where a bug bit.

  The vows that Rosie and Spofford took at Rhea's promptings were the standard ones engraved on every heart there, a relief (Roo whispered to Pierce) that they hadn't made up their own. To have and to hold, to honor and cherish, in sickness and in health, till Death (even he, old friend, among the wedding guests, Pierce for the first time truly took notice of him there) did them part. When they kissed, and all was accomplished, some applauded, as for a performance, and others murmured in awe or delight, as at an accomplishment. Our circles dissolved, and shyly or boldly one by one friends and family came up to embrace them. Roo, gripping Pierce's hand too tightly, turned away with him, a fixed smile on her face.

  "I get so embarrassed,” she said when they were apart. “All those things they say that they've said before. I mean she's said them, anyway. I don't think you get to say them a second time."

  "It's always the first time,” Pierce said. “Every time. By definition.” Roo looked at him in disgust or contempt, and he perceived that perhaps his brand of irony or doublespeak was no good anymore, and he ought now to put it aside, if he could. But still he returned her look in mock surprise. “What,” he said. “You don't believe in marriage?"

  "I didn't say marriage. Marriage is long, anyway should be. Weddings are short."

  "So you're no romantic,” he said, as though he'd just learned this.

  "Romance is I guess a nice way to start off. But everybody says it doesn't last."

  "Everybody says?"

  "As you ought to know by now,” she said, rifling a steady look at him, “I've never had one work out. In fact you could pretty much say I've never had one at all. Not with all the parts."

  He wouldn't look away from her,
though her own face seemed to be daring him to do so. “Well, I can tell you,” he said, “'cause you wouldn't know, that it's the romance that does last. It's all that's left after everything else is gone. Including her. Or him I guess. That's the problem."

  "Then I'm a lucky gal,” she said, and walked away.

  Pierce, after a moment of chagrin or discontent (Why was she like that? Was the obvious answer as unlikely as it seemed to him? Was he supposed to know, or know better?), turned toward the long tables whereon the food and drink were laid. He encountered Val going that way too, unsteady on the grass in tall shoes, seeming a little out of place altogether in the sun and air, like an upholstered chair, swathed as she was in figured fabrics and hung with chains and (Pierce noted in wonder) a pair of tiny mother-of-pearl opera glasses.

  "Hi, Val.” He took her arm, and felt leaned upon for real.

  "So they went and did it,” said Val.

  "Yep."

  "Tied the knot."

  Pierce nodded in solemn agreement, though it seemed to him not so much a knot tied as one untied, a great Celtic knot, one of those mazy ones that though apparently undisentanglable are seen at last to be made out of simple symmetries, a tug at one end would return it to its primal state as an undifferentiated thread or string or braided belt with both a beginning and an end, though both had been hidden in the design.

  They were the first at the long table whereon open bottles were displayed, and stacks of plastic wineglasses, which Pierce from a distance had taken as real, as they had been at Boney's memorial, held here too.

  "Who will be next,” she said, as though pondering an awful force that was mowing down the innocent or the fated. She hadn't ever; neither had he; she never would, he (she knew, from his ambiguous natal chart, still in her files) either would at last, or never would. Barren, anyway, that much was for sure. “Was that Barney Corvino's daughter I saw you come with?"

  "Yes, it was."

  "Sad story,” she said.

  They looked together back to the lawn, where Rosie and Spofford were making slow progress through their well-wishers, taking the hands of elders, laughing and embracing friends they perhaps had not earlier noticed among the guests, too busy with their ritual and one another.

  "You know,” Pierce said, lifting a glass. “This is a beautiful place we live in."

  "Yes, it is.” They both looked to the shade of the tall oaks and maples, and to the pale hills beyond. “The Land of Heart's Desire."

  "Of course no place is that,” Pierce said. “Not really. But still."

  "Actually,” Val said, “it really was. Once. But of course that was before you got here.” She shouldered him gently, to show she was kidding. Pierce left her to refill and meet her neighbors (and clients, as some of them were) and made his way to where the well-wishers clustered around the wedded pair, waiting their turn. He stood by an elderly man, in a straw fedora and seersucker suit, whom he felt he had seen somewhere, and in this connection, too—maybe only because he reminded him strongly of Boney Rasmussen. He was talking to the Blackbury Jambs librarian, today without her glasses.

  "Yes,” the gent was saying. “The fierce vexations of a dream."

  "Yes,” said the woman. “And in the end—what does Robin say? ‘Jack shall have Jill, and naught shall go ill.’”

  "So he says,” replied the elder. “So all the confusions of the night are straightened out. But—as I always pointed out to my students—there's an interesting exception."

  A teacher, Pierce thought: and an unexpected envy arose within him. How much fun that had been: to tell people what they didn't know, things that weren't even maybe so important, but that caused that sudden light to arise in their eyes, effulgence of an inward connection just then made. A small sound made too, sometimes, a sort of call or coo that was made on no other occasion. Meaning.

  "What exception?” the librarian asked.

  "Well, you'll remember that Robin anoints the eyes of Lysander and Demetrius, who both love Hermia, and Cupid's flower causes the both of them to love Helena instead."

  "Yes."

  "And when Oberon is setting things to rights, he anoints Lysander's eyes with the new herb, and wipes away the effect of the love drug. So that when he wakes, he loves his Hermia again."

  "Yes."

  "But Robin doesn't anoint Demetrius. When he wakes, he still loves Helena, not Hermia as he did before. For him the spell's not broken. And since this makes up two couples, the fairies leave it that way. So Demetrius went to sleep, was put under a love spell, and never wakes up."

  "Well, good. It should happen to us all."

  They both laughed loudly, heads nodding together, as though they'd pulled the trick themselves. It was their turn then, and Pierce was surprised to see tears in Rosie's eyes as she took the old man's gnarled claw and listened to the words he spoke for her alone.

  Pierce approached them next. He too was embraced with sudden gratitude, and tears appeared in her wide eyes for him too; Rosie seemed like a shipwreck survivor come to shore, glad for every human touch. Spofford more manly, each of them pounding the other's back as though to eject a bone from the throat. Pierce thought he smelled in Spofford's beard or collar a sweet herbal smoke.

  He was the last in their receiving line, and they took him by each arm and drew him to sit with them at a long table beneath the oaks. They talked there of many things. Pierce felt the sun on his back, and thought he should not have worn black, all he had, though, in suitings. At a silence he asked, his heart contracting in his breast, if Rosie had heard from Mike, and what, and how he.

  "Gone,” she said. “Still gone.” For a month or more as winter went on he hadn't called or come for his turn with Sam; neither he nor anyone speaking for him had appeared at the new custody hearings that Allan Butterman had arranged at last, his claims therefore evaporating as her own had done that day when she had sat for an hour in the wrong room in the Cascadia courthouse, and Sam had been taken from her. He was gone from the county, it appeared, gone from this area, gone entirely.

  "I got a call then from Indiana or Iowa or I forget where,” she said. “He wanted to tell me he was there, and that he was still here, I mean that he was still, you know. But then nothing more since then. I don't think anything's changed."

  Pierce nodded. It seemed not to trouble her to be asked, in fact she put a hand on his black sleeve, as though she knew that it was harder for him to ask than for her to answer, and why. He thought—he had not thought of it since the midwinter, it had come at a time when so much else had thereupon tumbled over on him—how he had on a dark morning given to Rose Ryder two hundred of Fellowes Kraft's dollars, his share of money found in Kraft's house, in a book, where else; two hundred dollars of getaway money, to replace the money she'd paid to the Powerhouse to train her in their theurgies. What if she still had it, what if a time came when. Those bills were oddly large, he remembered, dating from some earlier currency era, and maybe could no longer be spent. Pierce felt the inescapability of all that he and she and all of us everywhere had done, still going on somehow. Inescapable and unreleasable things, altered though at every iteration, past and present like a boy and his mother holding hands and swinging in wide circles, first one standing his ground and impelling the other around and then the other impelling the first, and at the same time both moving forward, across the lawn, across into the future, neither able to go without bringing the other. If that's what he'd meant or known about the way the world goes, then maybe Roo wouldn't have said it was obvious, that everybody knew. Or it was the most obvious thing of all.

  He saw Roo now turn back toward him. She lifted her hand from far off. All three of them returned her slight salute.

  "How's that Rabbit working out for you?” Spofford said to him. He seemed fully, almost insolently at ease in his atemporal finery, as though he had been married countless times, as though he'd done nothing else ever.

  "Good. It's good."

  "Nice little vehicle.” He had that
smile Pierce knew, as though he was playing a not really unkind but unsettling joke, as though he knew something to Pierce's credit that Pierce didn't know.

  "Yes."

  "Good winter car. Sturdy. Front wheel drive."

  "So you're going on with the sheep?” Pierce said, defensive swerve. “How many have they become?"

  "Varies,” said Spofford.

  "You'll sit up there on your hillside, telling your tale."

  Roo had come up, and stood silent before the two, listening to the end of their exchange.

  "I've got no tale to tell.” He stood, and shaded his eyes with a great hand to look into the distance; then to Roo.

  "Oh yes,” Pierce said. “Oh yes. ‘Telling your tale’ means counting your sheep. In an older English. ‘And every shepherd tells his tale, Under the hawthorn in the dale.’”

  "Where does he get this stuff?” Spofford asked Roo.

  "Congratulations,” she said, and gave startled Spofford a long and ardent hug.

  It was time then for cake, and toasts, some of which were long and maudlin, some tongue-tied and earnest. Rosie's angular mother (with her new old husband at her side—he looked splendidly at ease here where he had never been before) told us of Rosie's childhood in this place and in this county, and tears glittered in her eyes. “That was long ago,” she said. Last toast was that elderly gent in the seersucker, who turned out to be a cousin, a Rasmussen, the eldest of the clan, and Pierce remembered him then, here among the mourners a year ago—could it be only one, one year? He lifted his glass higher than the others, so high it seemed not a glass of wine but a torch or an aegis, held up for all of us to see: and he spoke in a ringing voice, audible all around, yet not loud.