Elena

  In New England Maid, Elena wrote that “the flags and bunting and uniforms held their own for a while in what appeared to be a rear-guard action on behalf of memory. But normalcy was a more powerful foe than anything confronted in the Great War, and in the end all the symbols of that struggle faded as if embarrassed by their own eccentricity, fashions that no longer suited the times.”

  Of all the people who fought that “rear-guard action on behalf of memory,” Bobby Taylor was the bravest. He had been gassed twice and shot once, but except for a hard, dry cough, he looked more or less as he always had. There was a drawn quality to his face, a certain wildness in his eyes, but these could be assigned to the extremity of his experience.

  It was his behavior, not his appearance, that aroused speculation about him. He would sometimes burst out crying in the middle of a conversation or laugh inappropriately, and in a high, thready manner which sounded almost girlish. Dr. Houston blamed these aberrations on the residual effects of mustard gas and prescribed withering purgatives which left Bobby weak and feverish. Pastor James went by to see Bobby and offered the comforts of Christian endurance. Nothing availed, however, and within three months after he came back to Standhope, Bobby Taylor placed a note on the mantel in his living room. It said: “Thank You.” Then he walked into the back room of his house, took off his clothes, crawled into bed, and shot himself between the eyes with his father’s pistol.

  Elena and I were together playing croquet on our front lawn when the bell began ringing down the street at the Taylor house. We ran toward the sound of the bell as fast as we could, both expecting to see dark smoke rising in the distance since the bells were almost always used as fire alarms. But when we saw no smoke, we slowed our run, then finally stopped a few yards from the house. We could see Bobby’s mother talking intently to her neighbor, Mr. Parks, in the front yard. Mr. Parks looked briefly toward the house, then drew her under his arm, lowering the side of his face into her hair.

  For a long time Elena and I stood on the walkway watching people hurry past. Then Mr. Parks came over to us. His face was flushed. “Go home,” he said, rather harshly. “There’s nothing for you to see here.”

  We went back to our own yard. I picked up my croquet mallet.

  “Want to finish the game?” I asked.

  Elena shook her head, glanced back down the street, then turned and walked inside. She was clearly subdued, though only briefly so, for in an hour or two she was romping about the yard again, though even then, from time to time, she cast secret, fearful looks toward Bobby Taylor’s house.

  She was only eight years old. What could she possibly have known of war? But knowledge is partly what we choose powerfully to remember, and Elena never forgot Bobby Taylor. He surfaced not only in her actual description of his death in New England Maid but also, more subtly, in her section on Stephen Crane in Quality:

  At the end of The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming has his badge, a piece of cloth stained by his blood which serves as a blindfold for his mind. For what has he lost in gaining it? Surely the greatest soldier is not the young combatant but the old warrior who has come to understand that the color of courage is not always red. Fleming has no such understanding, and it is the central intellectual loss of his experience. Perhaps it is also Crane’s, for he seems unable to under stand that the illusions which so puff up Fleming in the final passages are identical to those for which the Swede will die in “The Blue Hotel.” One is no less suicidal than the other, and both ensanguine the earth from Jericho to Flanders Fields.

  In January of 1918, my mother gave Elena a birthday party. She invited several of the neighborhood children, who arrived dressed rather formally, the girls in dark cotton skirts, the boys in starched shirts, knickers, and black knee socks. They seemed happy enough, as Elena described them in New England Maid: “Theirs was the unbounded pleasure that precedes experience, the openness that precedes caution.” In this somewhat mannered line, one can detect a faint hint of envy. Perhaps Elena was able to sense that the playfulness so natural to childhood had somehow escaped her, at least in part. This is not to say that Elena was a somber child, old before her years, pondering man’s tragic fate while watching other children skip rope. She was merely a sober child, curiously self-contained, though in no obvious way particularly gifted. Her gift was in her attraction to the shrouded and ambiguous, a keen moral perception, and a sense that that which is awry deserves more attention than that which is well ordered. She would later write that the greatness of Joseph Conrad resided in the directness with which he approached that which he already knew to be unapproachable. This was true of Elena, as well.

  In her biography, however, Martha saw it differently: “Elena’s childhood was darkened by the long absences of her father, the disintegration of her mother, and the final betrayal that involved them both.” In this line, of course, one observes Oedipus and Electra dancing while Freud pipes the tune. No doubt at all, we had family problems. My father’s absences contributed to them, as did my mother’s derangement. But if every disordered family created a great mind, then we would have a good deal more intelligence on hand than we currently do.

  Thus, rather than offering a portentous description of Elena’s formative years, I prefer to suggest what might have been noticed about her at this time.

  She was somewhat lonely. She missed her father. She missed him intensely and would brood for quite some time after his departure. She was fascinated by anomalies, stared with inhuman concentration at a five-legged cow a farmer once displayed in the square. Each spring she was usually the first child in our neighborhood to find a four-leaf clover. She was interested in nocturnal creatures, such as owls and bats. Ordinary animals rather bored her, and at no time in her life did she have a dog or cat, goldfish or canary. She had few friends and tended to play either with me or alone. She read slightly more than other children her age, and was especially drawn to stories about calamities — children caught in fires, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes. She was particularly resistant to cold and often played outside in the dead of winter. She enjoyed long walks, and then, as well as later, such strolls encouraged a talkativeness in her which ended abruptly when the trek was over. She often pushed herself into situations of limited danger, while carefully holding back from anything truly threatening. Her eyes were particularly sensitive to light, so that she often chose to play in the shade or under the eaves. The shack in our back yard was a favorite spot because its roof shielded her from light. She preferred enclosures, and played in the house more than other children not out of insecurity — the most obvious interpretation, I suppose — but because open space offered too much distraction for one whose early aim was concentration.

  None of this in any way suggested my sister was extraordinary, and it was not until a particular incident during her eighth birthday party that I began, however vaguely, to suspect something exceptional about her.

  We were all sitting at the kitchen table, myself, Elena, and the children my mother had invited to the party. My mother was rearranging dishes in that white painted cupboard which forever occupied her. The front of her dress was still wet from having clumsily emptied the water pan beneath the ice chest, but she had refused to change. Her preoccupation with the cupboard was a disordered priority, the visible tip of what was to become an immense derangement.

  We were waiting for my father to come downstairs. He bounded in a few minutes later, shaven and refreshed. He had become some thing of a dandy, favoring flashy ties and gold stud pins. I was thirteen then, and I hated his good looks, energy, and particularly his physical grace, which was such a maddening counterpoint to my own teenage awkwardness.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Harry,” my mother said icily.

  My father flashed his big let’s-close-the-deal smile and slapped his hands together.

  “On with it, then,” he said jubilantly. “I can’t wait.”

  My mother lit the eight candles on Elena’s cake while the rest of us watc
hed.

  “Okay, blow them out, Princess,” my father said.

  Elena stared at the cake as if it were not really there but only a photograph in a magazine, something that had nothing to do with her.

  “Make a wish, then blow them out,” my father said.

  Elena lowered her eyes slightly, then glanced up at the candles again.

  “Come on, Elena, blow them out,” my father repeated happily.

  Elena did not move. There was a peculiar heaviness in her face, a sense of being distracted.

  My mother touched my sister’s shoulder. “Elena?”

  “What’s wrong, Princess?” my father asked.

  Elena said nothing.

  “Come on now, make a wish.”

  “I don’t have a wish,” Elena said.

  The other children laughed, thinking it a joke. My father laughed along with them, but I detected an uneasiness, as if all his long neglect had finally broken over him in a malignant wave.

  I looked at my mother and could see the panic rising in her.

  “Please, Elena,” she said softly, “blow out the candles.” In New England Maid, Elena described our mother’s voice as having “a tone of penitence and beggarly complaint,” and so it did that day.

  “Please,” my mother said again. “Please, Elena, we want it to be a nice party.”

  Elena closed her eyes, leaned toward the table, and blew out the candles.

  Relief swept into my mother’s face.

  “That’s a good little princess,” my father said. “Good girl. All your wishes will come true.”

  The rest of the children cheered loudly, then joined my mother and father in a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

  When they had finished, my father drew out his watch, glanced at it casually, then returned it to his vest.

  “I’d better be on my way,” he said. Then he headed for the door and the road.

  My mother did not look at him. She began methodically slicing the cake, tearing into it with dreadful energy.

  I looked at Elena. She was staring across the table at me very sternly, and for the first time I sensed the strange bond that only siblings may feel, the relentless embrace of a shared and unshirkable history, an intimacy so compact it seems to press in on the brain.

  I tried to smile.

  “Have a piece of your cake, Elena,” I said.

  She shook her head, got out of her seat, and walked into the living room. I waited until the other children had finished their cake, then joined Elena in the living room.

  She was sitting in a chair near the front room, staring out at the street.

  “Dad has to go to work,” I told her. “He couldn’t stay for the party.”

  Elena continued to face the window.

  I lowered myself to the floor and curled my legs underneath me, Indian-style.

  “Want to play a game?” I asked.

  Elena shook her head.

  “We could go outside, then,” I offered. “We could play croquet. All your friends could, too.”

  “I don’t want to,” Elena said.

  The other children drifted into the living room and then on out the front door. In a few minutes, all of them were gone.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy your party,” I said.

  Elena did not answer and after a time I also wandered out of the house, leaving her still sitting silently in her chair.

  I ended up in a park several blocks away, and as I shuffled about, kicking at the dust with the toe of my shoe, I stumbled upon a small turtle. It struck me that I had not given Elena a birthday gift, and the turtle looked like just the thing to lift her mood. I picked it up and ran home.

  “What’s that,” Elena said as I came back through the front door.

  “Something for your birthday,” I told her.

  Elena slid out of her seat and walked over to me. She delicately moved her finger over the shell.

  “It’s very pretty,” she said.

  The turtle, of course, had withdrawn its entire body into the shell.

  “Want to see its head?” I asked.

  “It won’t come out,” Elena said. She continued to glide her finger over the shell.

  “I can make it,” I told her. “Come with me.”

  Elena followed me into the kitchen. I set the turtle down on the small table near the sink and withdrew a box of matches from the drawer.

  “What are you going to do with those?” she asked, staring at the matches.

  “Get the turtle’s head to come out,” I told her. “Watch.” I struck one of the matches and laid it on top of the turtle’s shell.

  Elena’s eyes widened. “Don’t do that!” she cried.

  “Have to,” I said. “When it gets hot, it’ll stick its head out.”

  I struck another match.

  “Stop it, William,” Elena insisted.

  “Well, you want to see its head, don’t you?” I asked. Elena’s squeamishness was beginning to irritate me.

  “No, I don’t,” Elena said frantically. “I don’t want to see it.”

  I lowered the match over the shell. “Yes you do.”

  “No!” Elena shrieked. She grabbed the turtle from the table and rushed from the room.

  “Come on, Elena,” I shouted, “you’re crazy.” I darted after her.

  She was already through the living room and I could see her running about in the front yard as if unsure what she should do next. I ran out onto the small porch.

  “Bring me that turtle,” I said. By then I had quite forgotten it was a gift for Elena.

  Elena hugged the turtle to her. “No. I won’t.”

  “Bring me that turtle, Elena,” I repeated.

  Elena shrank back. “Please, William.”

  “Hand it over,” I demanded. I took another step.

  She stepped back again, squeezing the turtle tightly to her chest. “No.”

  I bolted forward and Elena rushed away from me. She was running frantically but I was gaining on her quickly. Then she suddenly veered to the right as she reached the edge of the sidewalk and I flew past her. As I whirled around, I saw her step into the middle of the walkway. She raised the turtle high above her head, and in one fierce movement she slammed it down against the pavement, cracking the shell with the blow.

  I stared down at the broken turtle, horrified.

  “Are you crazy, Elena?” I said. “Why did you do that?”

  Elena stood trembling on the sidewalk. For a moment she watched the insides of the turtle ooze out from the shattered shell. Then she walked silently back to the house, her long hair swaying left and right as she made her way through the thick covering of leaves that blanketed the yard.

  Years later I related this incident to Jason. We were sitting in his apartment in the Village and he was looking very stately, pipe in hand, the smoke curled about his head.

  “It’s an odd story, don’t you think?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never been able to figure it out, exactly. But I’ve never been able to shake it, either.”

  “Perhaps that’s only because Elena is so famous. Every little thing matters.”

  “But I kept remembering it long before that. It’s one of my childhood memories, not just one about her.”

  Jason nodded. “What is it that pesters you, William?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. The contradiction, I suppose. The idea of destroying a thing in order to save it.”

  “You mean the turtle?”

  “Of course.”

  Jason smiled. “You’ve got it all wrong, William. Elena didn’t throw that turtle down to save it from its pain. She threw it down to save you from your cruelty.”

  I leaned forward slightly. “So she was just behaving like a sister?”

  Jason nodded. “A dutiful sister, yes.”

  Jason had the gift of giving everything he said the sound of indisputable authority, and yet I think that his interpretation may not have been correct. F
or her part, Martha related this same incident in her biography and used it to suggest Elena’s early rebelliousness against male authority, first my father’s, then my own. But I have come to believe that Elena would have rejected any gift from me. For she was acting in defense of something far more important: the mood of thoughtfulness that had overtaken her, and which she would not permit to be stolen from her by small devices. All her life, my sister believed that she had an absolute right to her unease, that it was the central resource of her intelligence. “There is a kind of anxiety that debilitates,” she wrote in Quality, “and a kind that ennobles, that offers resistance both to the inward and to the outward misery, that cries out for reformation, as the voice of Captain Vere does from the decks of the Indomitable, both within the life of one and within the lives of all.”

  There are times now when I gaze at all those many photographs I have of Elena, and in each of her changing faces this basic seriousness remains, as if it were the single line she threw out to the world, her determined gravity.

  Martha ends her chapter on Elena’s birthday party with a dramatic interpretation of it, describing Elena’s refusal to blow out the candles as “a gesture of resistance and refusal in its initial childhood phase.” She says that in the end my sister was made whole, at least as an artist, “by various episodes of psychological disjunction, which, added together, argue for the general diagnosis of periodic childhood depression.”

  But something of my sister’s life is already missing in Martha Farrell’s report: her ordinary needs, the ones that bind her to the rest of us. She needed to leap into McCarthy Pond, dress up like a witch on Halloween, take a hay ride to MacDougall’s farm, sing all those boring childhood songs. And then, of course, there was that one further need, which rose in her at this time, one that did not so much darken her childhood as give it greater ardency. It was unmistakable. It lived in everything she did: in the way she hesitated before entering the shed or kept the door to her room slightly ajar. It stared outward through her eyes, and was, I suppose, most simply embodied in that lock of Lewis Carroll’s creation, that creature of tightened bolt and unbending steel who beats about tirelessly, searching, searching, as it says, for someone with the key to me.