Little, Big

  “The Hills in the City,” she said to all of them, “were really very splendid. Of course back then it was nothing to have a servant or two, but they had flocks. Nice Irish girls. Marys and Bridgets and Kathleens. They had such stories. Well. The City Hills more or less died out. Some of them went out west, to the Rockies. Except one girl about Nora’s age then who married a Mr. Townes, and they stayed. That was a wonderful wedding. The first where I cried. She wasn’t beautiful, and she was no spring chicken; and she already had a daughter by a previous husband, what was his name, who hadn’t lasted, so this Townes man—what was his first name—was quite a catch, oh dear you can’t talk that way nowadays can you; and all those maids lined up in their starched outfits, congratulations, missus, congratulytions. Her family was so happy for her

  “All the Hills,” Smoky said, “danced for joy.”

  “… and it was their daughter or rather her daughter, Phyllis, you see, who later on, about the time I got married, met Stanley Mouse, which is how that family and my family get connected in a roundabout way. Phyllis. Who was a Hill on her mother’s side. George and Franz’s mother.”

  “Parturient montes,” Smoky quipped into the void, “et nascetur ridiculus mus.”

  Momdy nodded thoughtfully. “Ireland in those days was a dreadfully poor place, of course ….”

  “Ireland?” Doc said, looking up. “How did we get to Ireland?”

  “One of those girls, Bridget I think,” Momdy said, turning to her husband, “was it Bridget, or Mary? later married Jack Hill when his wife died. Now his wife …”

  Smoky quietly rolled away from her discourse. Neither Doc nor Great-aunt Cloud were truly listening either, but as long as they stayed in more or less attentive poses, Momdy wouldn’t notice his defection. Auberon sat cross-legged apart from them, preoccupied (Smoky wondered if he had ever seen him otherwise occupied) and tossing an apple up and down in his hand. He was looking sharply at Smoky, and Smoky wondered if he meant to shy the apple at him. Smoky smiled, thought of a joke to make, but since Auberon’s expression didn’t change he decided against it, and, standing up, changed his place again. (In fact Auberon hadn’t been looking at him at all; Lilac sat between him and his father, blocking his view of Smoky, and it was her face he looked at: she wore a peculiar expression, he would have called it sad since he had no better word, and he wondered what it meant.)

  He sat down next to Daily Alice. She lay with her head pillowed on a hummock and her fingers interlaced over a full tummy. Smoky drew a sedge from its squeaking new casing and bit down on the pale sweetness. “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  “What.” She didn’t quite open her sleepy eyes.

  “When we got married,” he said, “that day, you remember?”

  “Mm-hm.” She smiled.

  “When we were going around, and meeting people. They gave us some presents.” “Mm-hm.”

  “And a lot of them, when they gave us things, said ‘Thank you.’ “ The sedge’s green ear bounced in rhythm to his speech; he could see it. “What I wondered was, why they said ‘Thank you’ to us, instead of us saying ‘Thank you’ to them.”

  “We said ‘Thank you.’ “

  “But why did they? That’s what I mean.”

  “Well,” she said, and thought. He had asked so few things over the years that when he did ask something she thought hard how to answer him, so that he wouldn’t brood. Not that he tended to brood. She often wondered why he didn’t. “Because,” she said, “the marriage had been promised, sort of.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, they were glad that you’d come. And that the promise had come out like it had been promised.” “Oh.”

  “So that everything would go on like it was supposed to. You didn’t have to, after all.” She put a hand on his. “You didn’t have to.”

  “I didn’t see it that way,” Smoky said. He thought. “Why would they care so much what was promised? If it was promised to you.”

  “Well, you know. A lot of them are relatives, sort of. Part of the family, really. Though you’re not supposed to say it. I mean they’re Daddy’s half-brothers or sisters, or their kids. Or their kids’ kids.”

  “Oh yes.” “August.” “Oh yes.”

  “So. They had an interest.”

  “Mm.” It wasn’t precisely the answer he’d been looking for; but Daily Alice said it as though it were.

  “It gets very thick around here,” she said.

  “Blood’s thicker than water,” Smoky said, though that had always seemed to him among the dumber proverbs. Of course blood was thicker; so what? Who was ever connected by this water that blood was supposed to be thicker than?

  “Tangled,” Alice said, her eyes drifting closed. “Lilac, for instance.” A lot of wine and sun, Smoky thought, or she wouldn’t have let that name fall so casually. “A double dose; a double cousin, sort of. Cousin to herself.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, cousins of cousins.”

  “I don’t,” Smoky said, puzzled. “You mean by marriage?”

  “What?” She opened her eyes. “Oh! No. No, of course not. You’re right. No.” Her eyes closed again. “Forget it.”

  He looked down at her. He thought: follow one hare, and for sure you’ll start another; and while you watch that one scamper out of sight, the first one gets away, too. Forget it. He could do that. He stretched himself beside her, propping his head on one arm; they were posed like lovers then, head to head nearly, he above looking down, she basking in his regard. They had married young; they were still young. Only old in love. There was a tune: he raised his eyes. On a rock not quite out of earshot, Tacey sat playing her recorder; now and then she stopped to remember notes, and to brush from her face a long curl of blond hair. At her feet Tony Buck sat, with the transfigured look of a convert to some just-revealed religion, unaware that Lily and Lucy a ways off whispered about him, unaware of anything but Tacey. Should girls as skinny as Tacey, Smoky wondered, and with legs as long, wear shorts that short and tight? Her bare toes, already sun-browned, kept the rhythm. Green grow the rushes-o. And all the hills around them danced.

  A Getaway Look

  Doc meanwhile had also drifted away from his wife’s discourse, leaving her only Sophie (who was asleep) and Great-aunt Cloud (who was also asleep, though Momdy didn’t know it). Doc went with Auberon following the toiling caravan of ants bearing goodies to their hill: a good big new one, when they found it.

  “Stocks, supplies, inventory,” Doc translated, a look of quiet absorption in his face and his ear cocked to the little city. “Watch your step, watch your back. Routes, work-loads, chain of command, upper echelons, front-office gossip; drop it, forget it, circular file, pass the buck, wander off, let George do it; back in line, the old salt mines, in harness, in and out, lost and found. Directives, guidelines, grapevine, schedules, check in, knock off, out sick. Much the same.” He chuckled. “Much the same.”

  Auberon, hands on his knees, watched the miniature armored vehicles (driver and vehicle in one, and radio antenna too) tumble in and out. He imagined the congress within: endless busyness in the dark. Then he half-saw something, as though there were a darkness or a brightness in the corner of his vision, gathering until it was large enough for him to notice. He looked up and around.

  What he had seen or noticed was not something, but something missing. Lilac was gone.

  “Now up, or down, at the Queen’s, that’s very different,”

  Doc said.

  “Yeah, I see,” Auberon said, looking around. Where? Where was she? Though there were often long periods when he didn’t exactly notice her presence, he had always been aware of her, had always sensed she was there by him somewhere. Now she was gone.

  “This is very interesting,” Doc said.

  Auberon caught sight of her, down the hill, just going around a group of trees antechamber to the woods. She looked back for a moment, and (seeing that he saw her) hurried out of sight.
“Yes,” Auberon said, sidling away.

  “Up at the Queen’s,” Doc said. “What is it?”

  “Yes,” Auberon said, and ran, racing toward the place where Lilac had disappeared, apprehension in his heart.

  He didn’t see her when he entered that stand of trees. He had no idea which way to follow further, and a panic seized him: that look she had given him as she turned away into the woods had been a getaway look. He heard his grandfather’s voice calling him. He stepped carefully. The beechwood he stood in, smooth-floored and regular as a pillared hall, showed him a dozen vistas down which she could have fled….

  He saw her. She stepped out from behind a tree, quite calmly, she even had what appeared to be a bunch of dog-tooth violets in her hand, and seemed to be looking around herself for more. She didn’t look back at him, and he stood confused, knowing deeply that she had run away from him, though she didn’t look now like she had, and then she was gone again, she’d tricked him with the bouquet into standing still one moment too long. He raced to the place she’d disappeared, knowing even as he ran that she was gone for good now, but calling: “Don’t go, Lilac!”

  The woods into which she had escaped were various, dense and briary, dark as a church, and showed him no prospects. He plunged in blindly, stumbling, torn at. Very quickly he found himself deeper in The Wood than he had ever been, as though he had shot through a door without noticing that it opened on a flight of cellar stairs to pitch him headlong down. “Don’t,” he called out, lost. “Don’t go.” An imperious voice, such as he had never used to her before, such as he had never had to, such as she could not conceivably have refused. But nothing answered him. “Don’t go,” he said again, not imperiously, afraid in the dark of the wood and more bereft more suddenly than his young soul could have conceived possible. “Don’t go. Please, Lilac. Don’t go, you’re the only secret I ever had!”

  Gigantic, aloof, not much disturbed but quite interested, old ones looked down like trees at the small one who had so suddenly and fiercely come in among them. Hands spread on their enormous knees, they considered him, insofar as they could consider someone or something so minute. One put his finger to his lips; silently they watched him stumble amid their toes; they cupped huge hands behind their ears, and with eavesdroppers’ slight smiles they heard his cry and his grief, though Lilac could not.

  Two Beautiful Sisters

  “Dear Parents,” Auberon in the Folding Bedroom wrote (typing featly with two fingers on an old, old machine he had discovered there), “Well! A winter here in the City is going to be quite an experience! I’m glad it won’t last forever. Though today temp. is 25, and it snowed again yesterday. No doubt it’s worse where you are, ha ha!” He paused, having made this gay exclamation carefully out of the single-quote mark and the period. “I’ve been twice now to see Mr. Petty at Petty, Smilodon & Ruth, Grandpa’s lawyers as you know, and they’ve been kind enough to advance me a little more against the settlement, but not much, and they can’t say when the darn thing will be straightened out at last. Well Im sure everything will turn out fine.” He was not sure, he raged, he had shouted at Mr. Petty’s automaton of a secretary and nearly balled up the paltry check and thrown it at her; but the persona whacking out this letter, tongue between teeth and searching fingers tense, didn’t make admissions like that. Everything was fine at Edgewood; everything was fine here too. Everything was fine. He made a new paragraph. “I’ve already about worn out the shoes I came in. Hard City streets! As you know, things have got very expensive here and the quality is no good. I wonder if you could send the pair of tall lace-up ones in my closet. Theyre not very dressy but anyway Il’l be spending most of my time working here at the Farm. Now that winters here theres a lot to do, cleaning up, stableing the animals and so on. George is pretty funny in his galoshes. But hes been very good to me and I appreciate it even if I do get blisters. And there are other nice people who live here.” He stopped, as before a precipice he was about to tumble over, his finger hovering above the S. The machine’s ribbon was old and brownish, the pale letters staggered drunkenly above and below the line they should be walking. But Auberon didn’t want to display his school hand to Smoky; it had degenerated, he had lately taken up ball-points and other vices; what now about Sylvie? “Among them are:” He ran down in his mind the current occupancy of Old Law Farm. He wished he hadn’t taken this route. “Two sisters, who are Puerto Rican and very beautiful.” Now what the hell had he done that for? An old secret-agent obfuscation inhabiting his fingers. Tell them nothing. He sat back, unwilling to go on; and at that moment, there was a knock at the door of the Folding Bedroom, and he drew the page out, finish it later (though he never did) and went—two steps across the floor was all it took his long legs—to admit the two beautiful Puerto Rican sisters, wrapped into one and all his, all his.

  But it was George Mouse who stood on the threshold. (Auberon would soon learn not to mistake anyone else at the door for Sylvie, because Sylvie instead of knocking always scratched or drummed at the door with her nails; it was the sound of a small animal wanting admission.) George had an old fur coat over his arm, an antique lady’s peau-de-soi black hat on his head, and two shopping bags in his hands. “Sylvie not here?” he said.

  “No, not just now.” With all the practiced skills of a secretive nature Auberon had managed to avoid George Mouse for a week in his own farm, coming and going with a mouse’s forethought and haste. But now here he was. Never had Auberon experienced such embarrassment, such a terrible caught-out feeling, such an awful sense that no common remark he could make would not carry a load of hurt and rejection for another, and that no pose, solemn, facetious, offhand, could mitigate that. And his host! His cousin! Old enough to be his father! Usually not at all intensely aware of the reality of others or of others’ feelings, Auberon just then felt what his cousin must feel as though he inhabited him. “She went out. I don’t know where.”

  “Yeah? Well, this stuff is hers.” He put down the shopping bags and plucked the hat from his head. It left his gray hair standing upright. “There’s some more. She can come get it. Well, a load off my mind.” He tossed the fur coat over the velvet chair. “Hey. Take it easy. Don’t hit me, man. Nothing to do with me.”

  Auberon realized he had taken a rigid stance in a corner of the room, face set, unable to find an expression to suit the circumstance. What he wanted to do was to tell George he was sorry; but he had just enough wit to see that nothing could be more insulting. And besides, he wasn’t sorry, not really.

  “Well, she’s quite a girl,” George said, looking around (Sylvie’s panties were draped over the kitchen chair, her unguents and toothbrush were at the sink). “Quite a girl. I hope yiz are very happy.” He punched Auberon’s shoulder, and pinched his cheek, unpleasantly hard. “You son of a bitch.” He was smiling, but there was a mad light in his eye.

  “She thinks you’re terrific,” Auberon said.

  “Izzat a fact.”

  “She said she doesn’t know what she would have done without you. Without your letting her stay here.”

  “Yeah. She said that to me too.”

  “She thinks of you like a father. Only better.”

  “Like a father, huh?” George burned him with his coaly eyes, and without looking away began to laugh. “Like a father.” He laughed louder, a wild staccato laugh.

  “Why are you laughing?” Auberon asked, not certain he was meant to join, or whether it was he who was being laughed at.

  “Why?” George laughed all the harder. “Why? What the hell do you want me to do? Cry?” He threw back his head, showing white teeth, and roared. Auberon couldn’t help joining in then, though tentatively, and when George saw that, his own laugh diminished. It went on in chuckles, like small waves following a breaker. “Like a father, huh. That’s rich.” He went to the window and stared out at the iron day. A last chuckle escaped him; he clasped his hands behind his back and sighed. “Well, she’s a hell of a girl. Too much for an old fart like me to
keep up with.” He glanced over his shoulder at Auberon. “You know she’s got a Destiny?” “That’s what she said.”

  “Yeah.” His hands opened and closed behind him. “Well, it looks like I ain’t in it. Okay by me. Cause there’s a brother in it, too, with a knife, and a grandmother and a crazy mother … And some babies.” He was silent awhile. Auberon almost wept for him. “Old George,” George said. “Always left with the babies. Here, George, do something with this. Blow it up, give it away.” He laughed again. “And do I get credit? Damn right I do. You son of a bitch, George, you blew up my baby.”

  What was he talking about? Had he slipped into madness under the pressure of grief? Would losing Sylvie be like that, would it be so awful? A week ago he wouldn’t have thought so. With a sudden chill he remembered that the last time Great-aunt Cloud had read the cards for him, she had predicted a dark girl for him; a dark girl, who would love him for no virtue he had, and leave him through no fault of his own. He had dismissed it then, as he was in the process of dismissing all of Edgewood and its prophecies and secrets. He dismissed it now again, with horror.

  “Well, you know how it is,” George said. He pulled a tiny spiral notebook from his pocket and peered in it. “You’re on for the milking this week. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Right.” He put away the book. “Hey listen. You want some advice?”

  He didn’t, any more than he wanted prophecy. He stood to receive it. George looked at him closely, and then around the room. “Fix the place up,” he said. He winked at Auberon. “She likes it nice. You know? Nice.” He began to be caught by a fit of laughing again, which burbled at the back of his throat as he took a handful of jewelry from one pocket and gave it to Auberon, and a handful of change from another and gave him that too. “And keep clean,” he said. “She thinks us white people are a little on the foul side most of the time.” He headed for the door. “A word to the wise,” he said, and chuckling, left. Auberon stood with jewels in one hand and money in the other, hearing, down the hall, Sylvie pass George on her way up; he heard them greet each other in a volley of wisecracks and kisses.