Come Sunday: A Novel (26 page)

“I haven’t seen this one before,” I say. “Where is that?”

“Eastern Transvaal. Just outside Nelspruit. Ever go to God’s Window?”

I shake my head.

He takes a sip of tea. “They say from the escarpment you can see all the way from the Lowveldt to the front door of the Almighty.”

“Was it open?” I ask, and Rhiaan laughs. “Just wondering if the Almighty has an open-door policy.” When Rhiaan smiles he looks nothing like my father, but when his face succumbs to gravity, the likeness is eerie.

“I don’t remember him ever smiling, do you?” I ask, noticing how in the photograph my father does not have his arm around his son, does not even stand close enough for their sides to touch; how the view of all creation yawns between them.

“There were times,” Rhiaan counters.

“Like when?”

“Like when you were born,” he says, and I am reminded that Rhiaan’s memories are not my own. “I remember him having a big barbecue when Mom came home from the hospital with you, and all his buddies from work came over to have a look.” I feel a twinge of delight—maybe there were times he wasn’t the bogeyman. “And then he got as pissed as a fart and left a helluva mess for Mom to clean up!” He laughs, and I roll my eyes.

I sip my tea and change the subject. “Cicely says you’re going back to receive some fancy award?”

“Oh, I haven’t decided yet. They’re opening an apartheid museum
in Cape Town and they have a wing dedicated to the artists of ‘protest works,’ whatever that is.”

“You’re not excited.”

“To tell you the truth, I am tired of talking about the past. It’s gone, it’s done; whether I like it or not, there’s no going back and changing it.” Is my brother giving me advice? “You’ve got to lean with all your might against the boulder of the present and wedge it loose, even if it means you have to watch it careen into your neatly built idea of the future.”

There falls between us a soupy silence. After a while he looks up from his mug. “So what are you up to these days, Ab? How are you doing?” He squints, rubbing the spot between his eyes.

“Well, let’s see. I get up before noon most days, write a few hundred words of nonsense they keep printing in the magazine, and count the hours before I can go back to bed.”

“Don’t ever underestimate what a courageous thing it is to get out of one’s bed each day.”

“Speak from experience, do you?”

“My wife been talking to you?”

I nod.

He gets out his pipe and tobacco pouch. “She makes too much of things.”

“Depression is a serious thing.”

“Cicely always worries about those things over which she has no control rather than letting things run their course. She calls it depression so she can speed up the process with a Prozac-inspired happy ending. But I think we have to hold out for the real thing.”

“She says you are working on some new poems. Got anything you could show me?”

From a binder of loose sheets and newspaper clippings, he extracts a page. In single-spaced Times New Roman is an untitled poem.

Waste not your woe, O Breath

upon the wooden grain you

mistake for flesh.

For kindness rather a spark proffer

Not to singe or maim and

with regret hastily smother;

Not for spite, nor shame,

nor pity for rhymes untold.

For perhaps one last blaze

a towering glory,

a phase, this pyre will trade

an ashy mound.

What scars, what charry husk

then, tempting sorrow Coeur;

What kindness then to puff

and words shall be no more;

Only wind and scatterlings,

across the rooftops I shall soar,

bid adieu to telluric shores,

and bonjour, upon winged hope,

to birth, to life once more.

“It’s lovely. It’s so tragic, and suicidal, and hopeful.”

He grins. “Glad you like it.”

I get up and give him a hug, and then return to my seat. “Give me a copy, will you?”

“Only if you pinkie-promise not to show it to Cis. She’ll surely have me committed.”

“Only if you pinkie-promise not to set yourself on fire!”

He holds out his little finger and I reach over to clasp it with my own.

Just then a cold gush rushes in as Cicely opens the door. “Come on, you loafers. Let’s go find some snow!”

Before I leave, I browse the shelves for a book. Rhiaan has always organized his library the way an aspiring Don Juan might organize his lovers: autobiographically. Books he fell in love with at school sit in the shelves next to those that seduced him in college. There are the early-exile
books, the pre-Cicely tomes, and a rather sparse section that he says are for the books he read when his children were very little. Every ten years or so he adds a new classification, and although this system works quite nicely for him, it is a bugger for guests who perhaps want to find a light historical novel or a saucy romance. You have better luck choosing a book by its cover, which is what I do now, running my hands along the spines till they come to rest on the faded yellow back:
The Works of Alexander Pope
.

“
That
Pope!” I exclaim. “Of course!”

THE AFTERNOON LIGHT passes across the pages of my book, then dims until I can read no more. “Roast lamb and new potatoes, with mint sauce,” announces Cicely. “To remind you of home.” My sorrowful sister-in-law of the night before has given way to the one who punctuates the day with meals and merriment.

“Sounds good,” I fib.

When we gather around the dining table, decorated with tea lights and a potted poinsettia, Rhiaan’s place is empty.

“Rhiaan is going to eat later,” she says. “He’s not feeling too well at the moment.” But no sooner has she made the announcement than he comes in and sits down. Frowning, he turns off the overhead light so that we are illuminated only by Cicely’s candles. “Anybody mind?” he asks.

“Ambience,” jokes Greg. “It’s what makes an entrée cost twenty dollars more in a fancy restaurant.”

We pass the platters, scooping generous portions on our plates, if not for appetite’s sake, then for Cicely’s, while she fills the wineglasses, careful to skip over Rhiaan’s.

“I think I will have some wine, my dear,” he insists, and without fuss she fills his glass. The conversation turns from the weather forecast to plans for skiing and then, without warning, to Lent.

“What are you two giving up for Lent this year?” asks Cicely. “You always give up the most unusual things.”

“Ah,” sighs Greg, pleased to gnaw on the idea.

“I remember when you gave up guns.” She laughs.

“Hey, have you ever tried sitting through the news without seeing a gun of some sort? It was the longest forty days of my life!” says Greg.

“I am going to give up dieting,” Cicely announces, and we all laugh. “What?”

“Dear God, woman, that’s about as necessary as giving up vacations to Baghdad!” exclaims my brother.

“Okay, Rhiaan, what’s your big sacrifice?” she retorts.

“Don’t ask me to give up pork rinds,” he jokes. “My comforts are few and far between.”

“I thought I might give up nostalgia,” Greg interjects, turning the air serious.

“Say more, young man,” says Rhiaan.

“It seems to me that the older I get, the more I yearn for my past. For the neighborhood I grew up in, the little community events, my old school pals. I suspect that if I went back there I would still feel nostalgic. So it’s a deceptive thing, isn’t it? Nostalgia traps you into believing the past was better than what’s up ahead.”

Could he have said anything worse? If it weren’t for Cicely’s earlier salute to hope, I would stand up right now and say, You jerk! The past
was
better than what’s ahead because the past had Cleo. It is these abstract theoretical constructs of Greg’s that drive me to despair. He might as well have said, “I’m giving up memories,” or “I’m giving up Cleo.”

Cicely does not bang him over the head with the pot lid but nods, listening intently while I assassinate the peas on my plate. It is when Rhiaan speaks that I look up. “It is nostalgia for the things that will not come to pass that is better to give up,” he says. “A homesickness for the home you do not yet have.”

“Careful, Rhiaan. Sounds like you’re dancing dangerously close to theology,” Greg jests.

Rhiaan shakes his head. “I’m not talking about the eternal home to which you and your flock feel assured of reaching. What I’m talking
about is the absence between having potential and having fulfilled none of it.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” says Greg with an embarrassed laugh.

“Speak for yourself!” Cicely scolds her husband.

“Oh, but I do, my dear. Hear me out. It’s when you look back and realize that the thing you did all those years ago is probably the best thing you ever did and are ever capable of doing, and that no matter how much you try, you are not ever going to be able to capture the glory again. The irony, of course, being that back then you were too young to enjoy it and now you are old enough to realize it had little to do with talent or effort on your behalf.” And to Greg: “No offense, old chap, but it seems to me that rather than give up nostalgia you should give up the notion of achieving happiness altogether—”

“See?
This
is what I am talking about,” Cicely interrupts, looking at me.

“No, wait a minute, let me finish—my wife thinks I am morose, but I propose a more noble quest. Not for happiness but for identity. Strip away all that fetters it, all the bells and whistles, till there is only self.”

“Till there is only a selfish, miserable old goat!” flashes Cicely. She pours another glass of wine for herself.

“That, my dear, will be a matter of opinion, of which the pure identity will have no need.”

It might as well be a tableful of tomcats for all the bristling. In an effort to inject levity, Greg says, “Sounds to me as though you are talking about a midlife crisis.”

Rhiaan snorts his pleasure. “Ah, if it were only that simple. Then we could purchase our sports cars, have our fandangos with minors, and be done with it.”

At which point Cicely leaves the table and heads for the kitchen.

“What about you?” Greg asks, turning to me. “You are very quiet.”

What I want to do is recite Rhiaan’s poem. “What’s there to give up when all I ever wanted has been taken from me?”

The banter ceases and for the moment we all become occupied with the task of heaping tidy piles of food onto our forks, till Cicely returns. “Homemade apple pie,” she announces. “Who’s for à la mode?”

When dinner is over and the dishes are soaking, Cicely asks me to join her for a dip in the hot tub. The air is frosty, the sky punctured with stars, and the water a scalding welcome. It is one of the things I love about this place—the absence of human-generated sound. Although there are homes tucked among the pine trees all along the lake and up into the foothills, you don’t hear much. In summertime, they even insist the boats creep out of the keys. In winter, when the boats and vacationers are hibernating, nothing but nature has a say.

Cicely talks about the quilting guild of which she is not only a member but the president, mentions that their prayer quilts are being sold online to raise money for the AIDS orphans in South Africa. She talks of accompanying Rhiaan on his trip—if he goes—and volunteering at one of the orphanages for a month or so. “The babies need someone to rock them,” she said. “Goodness knows I can rock a child.”

“You could do just about anything you put your mind to,” says Greg, walking out to kiss us each good-night. After he has left, and while I am still choosing something to say, Cicely turns to me and says, “He’s a wonderful man, Abbe; if I were you, I wouldn’t let him go.” She gets out, wraps herself in her gown, and darts back into the house.

I switch off the jets and close my eyes to the quiet. After a while there are discernible sounds: the lap-lap of the tub’s water, the occasional rustling of trees, and then suddenly a
hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo
. On the roof of the shed alights a screech owl, its gray plumage a perfect camouflage. It is still there when Rhiaan opens the sliding glass door and steps out onto the veranda.

“See the owl?” I point out to him.

“Ah yes, she’s a regular visitor.”

“Granny told me a story once about an owl. This beautiful woman called Blodeuwedd who had been made out of flowers to marry a man who didn’t have a wife.”

“
Ja
. And then she fell in love with another man and killed her husband, and for her punishment the gods turned her into an owl . . . She told me that one too.”

“I always felt sorry for Blodeuwedd. I always pictured her husband being someone like Dad, impossible to live with, which is why no
earthly woman would marry him. No wonder she fell for someone else.”

Rhiaan nods.

“What I haven’t been able to work out,” I continue, “is whether things would have turned out differently had she not gone down that path.” Had
I
not gone down that path.

“You mean, whether she was to blame?”

“Yes.”

My brother prefaces his axioms, as he always does, by lighting his pipe. Only when there is a steady glow in the tobacco nest does he say, gently, “Blame is another excellent thing to give up for Lent.”

GREG AND CICELY leave only after I convince them I would much rather look at the snow than go out and play in it. The advanced slopes, then, will be their choice today, and Greg can’t hide how pleased he is at the idea. Rhiaan is working in his studio, so I settle on the chaise lounge with Mr. Pope.

It is the sound of chopping that diverts my attention. I head outside and around the side of the house, following the noise to where Rhiaan is splitting firewood.

“I thought you were working,” I say.

He smiles. “I am. I do my best work with an ax; ask my editor.” He stands a log on its end, lifts the ax, and swings it till the blade finds its soft center.
Thwack
. Again he reaches for the pile for another log.
Thwack
. I hate the sound, the sound of nursery rhymes: Jill tumbling down the hill, Humpty-Dumpty breaking to pieces; the sound as the bough breaks just before the cradle falls. It is also the sound of a kitchen table felled by a madman, the seams of the world as they are ripped asunder.