“You don’t need all those ingredients for a simple poulet chasseur,” Mountford said to the cook. “White wine, bouillon, brandy, butter, oil, flour, tomatoes, tarragon, chervil, shallots, salt and pepper…ridiculous. You can use a bouillon cube,” he said, putting the bottle down. “Vinegar instead of wine. Cooking fat. No one will ever know. Go easy, now,” he said, in his jovial way. “Go easy with the brandy and the flour. You know how things are… You can stay for lunch,” he said, turning to the child’s father, “but you understand I can’t keep her. I scarcely know her. She’s more of a stranger, if you know what I mean. We’ve had a few words together, nothing more. Tell her she has made a mistake, I don’t know her and that’s that.”
That much is settled, the man thought. She will not live in a house where she can hear “No one will ever know.” She will not he infected by meanness. As for himself, he had come out of it well. He had not bullied, or shown authority, or imposed a decision. He had not even suggested a course! She had been given free choice all the way.
“If I were you,” said Mountford as they went into the front part of the house, “I would just give her to old Bertha in the kitchen.”
“It isn’t a matter of giving her away,” he said. “I’m not giving her.”
“Well, old Bertha would be one solution. We ought to repopulate those empty peasant areas — fill them with new stock, good blood.”
“Not with my child,” he said. He knew exactly how he ought to murder Mountford. He saw the place between his eyes, and his own hand flat, like a plate skimming. Mountford’s eyes would start, fall out nearly, while the skin around them went black as ink. That was the way to show Mountford what he thought of him. He saw the kitchen again, the large stove, and the hag who must be old Bertha. Mountford, untouched, was still pink of face and smiling.
The child had disobeyed. She stood in the hall, fragile, composed, her hands bright in a shaft of light. This is her first shock, he remembered; I must tell her gently. She was so confident, so certain she would always be wanted. He thought, She must be mine — she is so independent. He spoke tenderly, but the small, resolute face did not alter. He felt the hopeless frustration of talking to someone whose mind is made up, and understood how difficult it must have been, sometimes, for someone to deal with him. He had a living memory of having once been secure in his ideas and utterly convinced. She has courage, too, he decided. But it was not courage — she was simply pretending not to mind. Perhaps she is stupid, he thought. All that acting, that pretending nothing matters. She must be her mother’s, after all. “There,” he wanted to say to the child’s mother, “do you see how patient I had to be?”
As they walked away from the house, he heard the reptile. He recognized the frantic note of the creature abandoned; there was no mistaking the hysteria and terror, the fear that no one would ever come for it again.
“Go back and get him,” he said.
“I don’t want him.”
“You can’t leave him,” said the man. “You’ve taken him out of his own life and made a pet of him. You can’t abandon him now. You’re responsible for him.”
“I don’t want him,” the child said without emphasis.
Why, he thought, she is cruel. How horrible this has become — she can’t belong to either of us, for surely we were never guilty of cruelty? The child sat in the car now, confident she would never be made to account for anything, that she had another choice, that her chances were eternal.
He stood with his hand on the door of the car and said once again, “Look here, how old are you exactly?”
“Six and a half.”
“Then that’s it,” he said. “That would be the age. There’s no getting away from it.” He had to give in; he had to accept her.
Well, she will have to help me then, he decided, and an access of fierce and joyous hostility toward the child’s mother made him think he was seeing clearly for the first time. I may have made some mistake, he said, but she got away with murder. Look at the pain and grief I thought were finished; she had nothing to remind her.
But then, he remembered, she does not know the child exists. I must have forgotten to tell her. How can I suddenly say, “Here is the result, the product, the thing we have left?” She could say, “Why didn’t you mention it sooner?”
“I would like to take you to your mother,” he said, “but it will take a little planning. She may not know anything about you. You are quite like her, I am afraid, though also like me. She may not want to admit who you are like. If she knew you had abandoned that creature, she might tell you there are two sorts of people, that the world is divided…” He thundered on, as if making himself heard, “People who give up…who destroy…though her own position is not all that good. Still, I’m certain she would say you are on the wrong side.”
“Who do you think you’re shouting at?” the calm child seemed to be saying. “And why are you bothering me?”
1969
THE WEDDING RING
ON MY WINDOWSILL is a pack of cards, a bell, a dog’s brush, a book about a girl named Jewel who is a Christian Scientist and won’t let anyone take her temperature, and a white jug holding field flowers. The water in the jug has evaporated; the sand-and-amber flowers seem made of paper. The weather bulletin for the day can be one of severaclass="underline" No sun. A high arched yellow sky. Or, creamy clouds, stillness. Long motionless grass. The earth soaks up the sun. Or, the sky is higher than it ever will seem again, and the sun far away and small.
From the window, a field full of goldenrod, then woods; to the left as you stand at the front door of the cottage, the mountains of Vermont.
The screen door slams and shakes my bed. That was my cousin. The couch with the India print spread in the next room has been made up for him. He is the only boy cousin I have, and the only American relation my age. We expected him to be homesick for Boston. When he disappeared the first day, we thought we would find him crying with his head in the wild cucumber vine; but all he was doing was making the outhouse tidy, dragging out of it last year’s magazines. He discovers a towel abandoned under his bed by another guest, and shows it to each of us. He has unpacked a trumpet, a hatchet, a pistol, and a water bottle. He is ready for anything except my mother, who scares him to death.
My mother is a vixen. Everyone who sees her that summer will remember, later, the gold of her eyes and the lovely movement of her head. Her hair is true russet. She has the bloom women have sometimes when they are pregnant or when they have fallen in love. She can be wild, bitter, complaining, and ugly as a witch, but that summer is her peak. She has fallen in love.
My father is — I suppose — in Montreal. The guest who seems to have replaced him except in authority over me (he is still careful, still courts my favor) drives us to a movie. It is a musical full of monstrously large people. My cousin sits intent, bites his nails, chews a slingshot during the love scenes. He suddenly dives down in the dark to look for lost, mysterious objects. He has seen so many movies that this one is nearly over before he can be certain he has seen it before. He always knows what is going to happen and what they are going to say next.