Crawlspace (12 page)

“Mr. Winslow said he’d take them back if they didn’t fit.”

I stood up and shuffled around in them while Alice laughed. “They fit perfectly. Couldn’t be better.” I kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“See what’s in that package over there,” I said.

“Which one, dear?”

“The one with the bright yellow paper.”

She picked it up and felt the weight of it with her hands. “Oh, I know what’s in here.”

“Do you?” I winked at Richard and immediately felt foolish when he gazed blankly back at me. He wasn’t the sort of person you could easily wink at.

Alice was laughing and tugging at long purple ribbons. Then flinging aside the bright yellow tissue paper, she withdrew a huge Chinese cookbook I’d ordered for her at the local bookshop. She’d wanted it for a long time, but it was the sort of extravagance she would’ve never permitted herself. Now she hugged it to her breast, trying to look cross. “Oh, Albert.”

“Now I expect Peking duck with prime sauce. Just like Singapore.”

“If I could reproduce the skin on that duck, we’d open a restaurant. And even if I knew how to do Peking duck, where would we get the ingredients around here?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

She kissed me and laughed. “I love the book. But you’re mad. It’s such an extravagance.”

I suppose I looked dejected about my miscalculation, because she patted my cheek and said, “Don’t be unhappy, dear. If we go into the city for vacation next spring, we’ll stock up on Chinese vegetables and all sorts of exotic ingredients.”

After that there was an exchange of a number of smaller packages—toothbrushes, cologne, socks, what have you. We were both very happy like children playing there around the tree, all our packages strewn about.

Richard remained silent. He sat in a chair, his legs stretched stiff in front of him, watching us. Several times I stole glimpses at him. It was a curious absorption with which he viewed us, as if we were laboratory animals performing in a maze. I couldn’t tell if the spectacle of us playing there with our presents on the floor made him feel pity or contempt. I wondered if he liked us or simply thought of us as two silly, aging fools.

But even as he sat there I could tell he was weighing something in his head. For some reason my mind fastened on violence. I had a fleeting vision of Alice and me on the floor, pools of blood running out of our shattered skulls—blood running in a languid trickle onto the rug, under the Christmas tree, blood blotching the cushions and drapes and spattered over the presents and the brightly colored wrappings. I saw in my mind some lurid tabloid story about a middle-aged couple in a desolate cottage in the bog, cruelly put to death by a young itinerant handyman whom they’d befriended. In a flash I saw it all before me—bright, red, and wet, as if it had happened right there under my nose. That’s what I imagined he was weighing that moment—working toward some course of action, some decision that once made would be final, drastic and irrevocable. But I put it all out of my mind, and it was Christmas once again.

In addition to slippers, Alice gave me a fine old meerschaum pipe and a large tin of my favorite tobacco. I filled the pipe immediately and puffed thoughtfully, giving a silly imitation of Sherlock Holmes, saying idiotic things like “Elementary, my dear Watson.” It was all very strained and unnatural. Alice’s laughter was a bit too strident, and mine much too tense. Clearly we were putting on a show for Richard Atlee. We were demonstrating the warmth and happiness of our household, even though Alice and I knew all that was a lie. That our household—full of beautiful things, to be sure—was no more than a slightly elaborate mausoleum—a dismal, empty place that never knew the laughter or warmth of a real family. We had lived in beautiful cities of the world and collected many rare and exquisite things with which we’d surrounded ourselves. And yet in the final summation, here in the twilight of our days we both knew that our lives added up to zero. And yet, for some unaccountable reason we were acting out some incredible lie for this perfect stranger—this stray cat who had wandered in out of the cold. Why?

“Now I have one last present,” I said to Alice. “Wait here.” I went upstairs and rummaged through my drawers, finally pulling out a tiny box from beneath a stack of freshly laundered handkerchiefs. I brought it down and presented it to Alice.

“Take it,” I said.

She looked clearly puzzled, for this present, unlike the others, she’d clearly not expected. It had been a very well-guarded secret.

“What is it?” she asked.

I waved it under her eyes like a sorcerer. “Take it and find out.” She shrank from the tiny packages as if it were an insect. “Oh, Albert. What have you done?”

“Now come, Alice. Don’t be foolish. Take it.” I took her hand and pressed the package into her palm. “Open it and see what you’ve got.”

She undid the ribbons very slowly, then peeled off the paper. Inside was a small black satin box.

“Albert. I’m afraid—”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, here. I’ll do it for you.” I flicked open the case and held it out to her. She moved back a step and caught her breath. Looking at her, I laughed. It was one of the only honest moments of that night.

“Do you recall when we were in Bombay—” I said.

“Yes.”

“And you saw one of these?”

“Yes.”

“Remember how much you wanted it?”

“Yes.”

“And I didn’t have the money then?”

Her cheeks flamed. “Yes—yes.”

“I told you then that one day I’d buy you a star sapphire—” I took her hand, which she offered almost dumbly, and slipped off the simple gold wedding band she had worn for nearly a quarter of a century. I replaced that with the star sapphire.

For a while she held her hand out and gazed at it vacantly, as if she weren’t quite sure of what it was or what it was doing on her finger. Several times she made gestures—all futile—as if she were about to take it off, give it back. Then her eyes filled. She became watery and giddy and started to laugh. She held up her hand again and admired the ring, and kept repeating over and over again. “Oh, you dear. You dear dear—”

Then she crossed the room and kissed me warmly. Next she turned and walked quickly to where Richard sat. “This is the happiest Christmas of my life,” she said, and she knelt down and kissed him.

We were silent then—all of us. And in some curious way, we were very happy. Richard, as well.

“I bet you think we’ve forgotten you,” Alice blubbered to Richard. After a moment, she rose from her knees, and ran to the tree and got the box in which she’d wrapped the wool reindeer sweater. She brought it back and offered it to him.

That moment might have been amusing if it hadn’t been so strange. He gazed from the box to Alice and then back to the box, a look of stony impassivity on his face. “Take it,” she said, very gently. “It’s for you.”

It took him what seemed ages to open the box and withdraw the sweater. It was a beautiful blue with cable stitching. And there were the two glorious white reindeer knitted across the chest. I’ll never forget those reindeer—white, majestic, wild, with a touch of almost the supernatural about them. It was a work of art.

Richard held it in his hands, staring at it blankly. For one awful moment I was sure he was going to reject it, turn it back to her and stalk out. But he didn’t. He just sat there and gazed down at the sweater.

“Try it on,” Alice coaxed him softly.

“Go ahead, Richard. Let’s see what it looks like.”

Still he sat there, until she took the sweater and unfolded it. “Stand up,” she said, putting some authority into her voice.

He got to his feet and submitted quietly as she pinned the sweater against his chest and studied it critically. “You were right, dear,” she said to me over her shoulder. “He is a big boy. I’ll have to let the sleeves and the waist out.” She seemed ejected.

“But it’s beautiful, Alice,” I said.

“Do you think so, dear?”

“It’s a honey. Don’t you think so, Richard?”

At first I thought he hadn’t heard me, and I was about to repeat my question. But in the next moment he straightened himself and let the sweater fall from his chest to the floor. It was a perfectly harmless movement but for me it was strangely threatening.

“Do you like the sweater?” I asked again.

“I’m gonna stay here now,” he said. Those were his first words to us that night.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m gonna stay up here now,” he said.

“If you’d like, Richard,” said Alice.

“We wouldn’t think of letting you go back down to the cellar,” I added.

“There’s lots to do round here,” he went on, not even hearing us. “The two of you are gettin’ on. You need help. I’m gonna help you.”

“That would make us very happy,” Alice said, her eyes glistening.

“I’m gonna stay here now,” he said again. “I’m gonna take care of you.”

We were happy in the days that followed. Like new parents. We had a vested interest in the future of our child. We worried about his health and his moods. We still wanted to see him find some form of employment outside of our home. From time to time at supper we’d inquire what progress he’d made toward finding a job.

“Gotta couple things in mind,” he’d say. Overjoyed by that we’d decline to pursue the question any further and rush right on to some less delicate topic. We simply couldn’t bring ourselves to press him on the subject. But because he appeared to be having difficulty finding a job, we even toyed with the idea of sending him back to school for some further training, although we had no idea of how much schooling he had had. On this subject he was inexplicably wary, and the several times I tried to pump him for information I met with steely eyes and icy rebuffs. Frankly I couldn’t see how questioning him about his schooling could offend. Even assuming that he had no schooling at all, such reticence growing out of shame and false pride, if permitted to continue, would get him absolutely nowhere.

“I’m only trying to help you,” I said one day in a fit of near despair.

“I can read and I can write,” he said and folded his arms with almost imperial finality.

“Yes,” I said, still determined to get an answer, “but how much schooling have you had?”

“Enough.”

“How much is enough?”

“I got out before they could ruin me,” he said and turned abruptly on his heel and left.

And also about his past he remained stolidly private-. One day while he was shoveling snow out of the driveway I asked him:

“Richard—where do you come from?”

“Out west.”

“Where out west?”

“All over,” he said and from the way he said it I knew that our conversation on that score was at an end. There was nothing belligerent about his desire for secrecy. If there had been, we would’ve become suspicious sooner. It was merely a kind of privacy he wished to maintain, and accept and at last to respect that wish very highly.

From the day he moved out of the crawlspace and up into the house, his living habits as regards personal hygiene, table manners, and simple rules of courtesy underwent an amazing course of transformation. We could see a conscious effort on his part to reform himself in these areas. At supper when he was uncertain of what piece of silver was required for a certain course, he would wait to see what either Alice or I would do, then move accordingly. At such times, you could see his eyes working under his lids, darting right and left to snatch some cue. There was no shame in it. He went about gathering information in a rather cold, ruthless way—like a miser storing up pennies. Once he’d learned something in that fashion he held tight to it. When the same problem of etiquette came up again in a day, or a week, or a month, he’d have it down pat, so that gradually his table manners and general deportment were irreproachable.

He bathed each morning quite early, long before Alice and I got up. When he left the bathroom, it was spotless. He kept his habit of being up very early in the morning and out of the house most of the day. Long before Alice and I were even stirring on our pillows, he’d done enormous amounts of work.

One morning, no more than a week after he’d moved in upstairs, we came down to the kitchen and found coffee, hot and freshly made, and the table in the breakfast nook neatly set. He’d squeezed fresh juice and left a pitcher of it in the refrigerator. He was nowhere in sight, but the woodbox had been stacked with freshly hewn logs and the newly fallen snow in our drive had been shoveled out.

After that time, breakfast and the woodbox were chores he rendered with unfailing regularity. There were other chores, of course, the furnace, the driveway, and later on in the spring and summer, the lawns and gardens and trees.

We brought him several additional outfits of clothing so that he might have a fresh change every day. These he kept in exemplary fashion, laundering and darning them himself as the need occurred.

We made one of the side rooms on the first floor over into a bedroom for him. We bought a new trundle bed and a box spring and mattress. We haunted antique shops and auctions for several weeks and in that way found a chest of drawers, a night table, and an old needlepoint rug, of exceptional quality. Alice insisted upon making him curtains and a bedspread herself.

His room quickly became a source of great pride to him, but when he went out for the day, he always left the door to it closed. One day, however, he walked out and left the door wide open. Alice and I succumbed to the temptation of looking in. We found the bed made, his floor swept bright and clean, and all clothing hung neatly in his closets. After that the door was closed unfailingly each day, but we never again felt the need of invading the sanctity of that place.

Of course, he wanted us to inspect the room—wanted us to check his progress. We’d become not only his sponsors, but his mentors, and he was eager to be judged by us and proved worthy.

Just as before when he lived in the crawl, he made his presence about the house scarcely visible. As I say, he did all of his work, and heavy work it was, in the early morning, before Alice and I were up. Then he’d disappear for the day. Where he went I don’t know. Ostensibly to hunt for a job, but more probably to wander in the forest, where he was undoubtedly happiest. The only certainty was that he would return at night to have his supper with us. How we looked forward to those suppers, and what efforts Alice expended to make her menus enticing.