Eagle Eye (14 page)

“Well?”

“I wanted to look at the city again.”

“Again?”

“Like from the Amenia porch.”

She had never said anything like that to me. In my whole life. Like that sounded. “And can you?” I wanted to know too. It would be something I could hold onto.

She looked down, hunted. It was the simplicity that scared me. “Oh, Bunt. I see so much.”

Husky-voiced. A woman I’d never seen before. A woman. Making me see how in all the girl-wrestling I’d maybe never seen any of them—right. How they chain themselves to each other—after we chain them. Be careful, Jasmin was saying to me. Your mother’s voice has death in it. But it’s not too late.

“Strange, how I can
talk
to you,” Maeve said. “Why is that?”

I couldn’t tell her yet; it would choke me. Kangaroo.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” my mother said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Maybe I do.” I took her by the wrists. Doing any of this wasn’t going to make me feel any bigger. But this was the audience I had. “Tell me, Maeve—has Buddy always given the parties around here?”

She went limp. Only a little. I’d only slapped her gently, with her life. I let her go.

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

“You’re telling me I’m not worth anything. That’s not nice.” I could smile at that whimsy from a world where the rainbows weren’t barbed wire yet. She looked ravaged enough to be my mother. I was old enough. “I’m away from you, from you both. Without having to be away.”

“How do you mean, Bunty?”

“I learned a lot over there, sure. But not what Buddy thought. Not in the galleries only. Walking the streets, watching Europe. And in the bars, with my friends.”

When we talked, no matter about millions of things, no matter what, underneath it was always about them back here—and us. Versus us. They were in possession of our childhoods. From a hundred thousand miles away—three times round the globe and over, they held us fast.

“It was in Paris I learned it most. In the restaurants. Watching the kids and the parents—once I ate a whole dinner watching a couple with a two-year-old. Her grandparents owned the place, but she sat up and ate like a little granny anyway—she knew she was watched. Oh there was love going around; when the grandpa served me the melted butter I thought he’d drown me in it, looking at her sideways. And the grandma came out of the kitchen like under a spell. But they were all so cool about it, the baby most of all.” I couldn’t believe it, whatever it was. “And when dinner was over, a little white dog jumped out from beneath the cloth. From the baby’s lap. And in their own family restaurant.” It knew, too, whatever was being taught there in front of my eyes. It was the coolest of all.

“In Asia, too,” I said. “Though there it was too much. When they were poor. The parents were teaching them how to be. How to
be
the underdog. I won’t buy that.”

I’d interested her. Fishing for her, skeining. Somebody had to. And could do it only with the truth. She’d spread her arms against the curve of her lair—but she was listening. “What do you mean—I was telling you you’re not worth anything?”

“They’ve got other things wrong over there. But I could feel it in the streets. In the parks especially. Maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it only leads to armies in another way. But I wanted it.”

“What?” Maeve said. “What
did
you want?”

They’d never really asked that, she and Buddy. Only thought they had.

“A girl said it to me. She was going back to Boston to teach in a nursery, because of it, she said. She was going to try to teach them it. Monica, her name was.” She was still coming down, when she said it to me. I’d held onto her while she screamed and huddled. Sex helped. I was sick on my own, though I hadn’t had a thing. Tired of my world-dwarfing, I huddled too.

“She said it was too late for you to teach us obligation,” I said. “She said you only taught us love.”

“Smart,” my mother said. “You’re smart.”

“Let’s make it a rule,” I said. “Not to say that to each other. Ever again. A family rule.”

Maeve looked up at me. “Too late for that. Your girl was right … Bunty dear. Go away and leave me for a bit, then.”

“Leave you?”

She stretched out her hands. “Be.”

How seductive her voice was—and not for me. I knew how hard I had to fish for her. What I couldn’t figure was how. There was some secret to the terrarium. A bloody secret garden—somewhere.

Holding onto her hands, not wanting to let them go—or was she holding me?—treading water for a time, I cast my eyes here, there. “School starts you becoming a person, Maeve, that’s all.” Her apologetic, blue-eyed boy, swinging arms with her. “I became one to myself. You two didn’t, to me. You stayed where you were. In my mind.” I leaned closer, close. “Tell me, then. About Buddy. It can’t be so terrible.”

“Only to me. And it’s no secret.”

“Only to me, Maeve.”

“What good is it, if I tell you how Buddy lies to himself? I can’t tell you mine.” She gave me her strange, transparent smile, as if I must be seeing through her lips to them.

“He digs being rich, you mean.”

“For me,” she said, with the smile. “Only for me.” And she looked away from me, at the terrarium.

What’s there, what’s there? The jewels had been. That she doesn’t wear. The Kwan Yin that he began looking at art with. And when he knew better, discarded, leaving it with Maeve. The suit of armor, if we still had it. Disposed of after some jokey guest stuck a pair of sunglasses on it. It’s all here, what she came to the city for. Why weigh it on him?

“Generosity can be a disease.” Maeve turned up my palms, staring at them. “That doctor tells Buddy it’s a way of possessing people. Buddy told me.”

Jannie should know. I saw him in the launderette. With Jasmin’s check in hand. Holding his face out to her, like a check.

“And what did Buddy say?”

“He laughed, and said ‘Jannie’s not a Jew.’ Your father’s just as sick as they say I am. Only he’s a success at it.”

She raised her chin high. I saw her mother in it. I saw her natural outcome. Or thought I did. And could love her for it. In a way she never taught me to. “Oh, Maeve.” I held my arms out, to her shabbiness. I hugged her to me, a bag of bones that had no more demands in them. What did it matter whether those demands were hers or Buddy’s—she had no more of them. I felt it in her—the emptiness of those who demand nothing from others anymore. Or not from themselves.

Or who tell you the stories that help them dwarf the world.

I let her go. Watching carefully. Standing near. Somewhere—there was a brink.

“I’ve a confession to make. I gave one of your coats to a girl.”

If she asked which coat, it meant that she could still be dragged back.

“Did you. I hope she needed it.”

“She reminded me of you a little.” I suppose Jannie would say that’s why I get the girls I get.

But it wasn’t merely the way the two of them felt to my arms—smallboned, downbeat. It was when Dina spoke of Felipe. Oh, I believed in her tale of the sphincter muscle. But I could tell the reason she and he hung together must be different. Why wouldn’t he come here? What if she ripped off houses like this because she wanted to? Why would he rather mug? What did they hang onto each other for? What was their joint sadness?

“Did she. She live near?”

She said it absently, the way she had asked about schoolmates when I interrupted her, peering down meanwhile at a task. A glass globe, decorated and almost finished now? Why did I think that? What did it lack?

“In the park.” I said. Absently.

“The park.” Maeve stared through her glass lair and out the other side. “I’d like to live there.”

“Maeve. Maeve.” I’d been with as many way-out people as anybody. I couldn’t take it in her. “Maeve—let’s go get some gormay.”

“
Gour-
may, it is,” my mother said. Half-laugh, half-sob. “I found out.” And all her charm came back to me. Her wild, whirl-on-a-heel intentness when she wanted something. She would get it too, like always. Unless I got there ahead of her.

I followed her stare. “Your plants—your new plants. They don’t seem to be doing very well. Even though Claes watered them.”

“Oh, they’ll do,” she said. Staring at them as if they were shelves. With her death on them.

They’ll say now that she was telling me. Asking me for help. Directing me toward it. But I don’t believe it. She had it all worked out. She hadn’t asked me to come back. And had taken all precautions. The key was at her waist.

She was only gambling on when.

You guess things because of what you are. In Maine once, I knew a local boy who couldn’t tell his left from his right—and walked more unerring in the woods because of it. My habit is maybe a city one. I’m always miming space with my elbows—or a cock of the head, a stretching of ears—anything handy. I follow architecture with my body. Skyscrapers don’t do anything for me; I just stand tall. The Taj Mahal made me spread my fingers—Siva Siva. And certain parts of Italy put me in knots. Or tempted me to fly. Jasmin was onto it. “Think of me as Borromini Tower,” she said once. And leaned back.

“Buddy bought the farm,” my mother said. “Our farm. Watch out. He thinks he did it for you.”

Funny how just as I began to catch onto what the lair was—to mime its space to myself, plotting it mentally with my feet, getting the feel of it in my arms, receiving its message like a cable I couldn’t read yet—my mother began to tell me what she thought was the story of her life. Just as I was only half-listening; maybe she felt that. We talk best, Bats, to those who’re no longer listening.

I was observing the plants. Dark-snouted, the nearer ones, healthy velvet, clambering toward us, opening their broad throats. Screaming. If I could only tune in.

“Don’t take a house from him,” Maeve said. “You’ll never get it right for him. Or if you do, you’ll only be its secretary: Secretary to the house. And he’ll move on.
He’ll
be doing it down at the office. While everybody’s watching the house. He’s too smart for us. That’s one time he tells the truth.

The plants in the rear—high, graceful aureoles new from the greenhouse—were already only a faded lace, scarcely breathing, their broad skirts drooping, as if a squeezing hand was at their roots. At the Folies Bergère, I’d seen a mock ballet of Circe—twining green sirens, oldish women most of them, kicking and cavorting in and out of painted cloth waves, from behind each of which an iridescent serpent-arm rose and pulled them down. All done in black light. The plants back there looked as if they too were in stage-light, on another plane. The cemetery bench was pushed near them. And close to it—the Kwan Yin was back. Inside.

“Buddy’s afraid to be rich. He has to have somebody to lay it on. But the peacock has to stand very still. Take his money, if you have to. I earned it. But get away somewhere. To that Paris, if it pleases you.”

“You can’t earn it for me,” I said. “Not going to war taught us that.”

I tucked my elbows tight against my ribs. Architecturally, the terrarium was speaking to me. But a real terrarium is for plants, I thought. All moisture, no air. Or not much. It’s not for the animal kingdom. Even a peacock wouldn’t want in. Not for long.

“He wanted to give me the farm. He planned on it. I thought, yes, maybe I could stand on the porch there. And look at my life. But he wouldn’t be there standing with me. Equal. He won’t do it with you either. Even poor old Blum agrees with that.”

… But I’m young. And I’m the son … True, Bud hadn’t mentioned taking her up there. When he talks of her, he never gets her quite right—I saw that. But he couldn’t be the ogre she made of him either—I knew that. “What’s Blum got to do with it?”

“When I went down there, that once, to the opening, I made friends with her again. She was his girl for a long time once; did you know?”

“Now that I think of it.” I hadn’t, much.

The Kwan Yin I’d mistaken for Maeve was in position again; I could see its coif, bent. Anyone who sat on the bench would be looking at its face. On the other side of the bench—another head, too high for an occupant of the bench to pat easily. The Chinese lion glared at me resignedly; porcelain never believes its own expression. But always knows its value. This one was a beauty. Like mismated companions, those two. She must have dragged them both back.

“She still is,” Maeve said. “Now and then. Buddy’s a generous man. He doesn’t like to see the money go out of the family, but he’s generous. Every one of the girls he’s had since, has had a house built for her. When he moved on.”

“Maeve.” It stood to reason. That a man wouldn’t have just one. But within a family, it’s always a revelation. “Did you always know?”

“No, but should I mind, really? I’m the one he never left. Blum says he hasn’t anybody now. And my house, he’s grown to love it. Look at it.”

Did she like it, didn’t she. From her expression I couldn’t tell.

“What about you?—did you ever?”

“Once. But he lived in the suburbs. We couldn’t keep it up.”

It was chilling, of course. To find out they hadn’t lived their lives for me. Still, I had been kept. For tonight.

“Can I stand like you? Like this?” I sidled—and suddenly I was backed up against the globe, spread-eagled against it with my hand halfway from my sides, like hers. I made myself laugh at her. “Gives you a feeling you’re off the floor.” The sliding door was between us now. With a chink of light on the open side. My side.

“If we’d moved to the suburbs, it might have worked out. I might have got out. But he wasn’t a city man. Living in a Bronxville hotel. Temporarily. The Gramatan, the one that closed a while back. When I saw the notice of that, I—but of course we
didn’t
move.”

… In the bathroom, way back. Could I have sensed it, somewhere between the elbows? …

“You were going to leave Buddy?”

“I needed time to. He was negotiating for a seed farm; he wanted us to live on it. You see its name now in all the garden stores.” She said it dreamily. “Maybe I would have. But this way—we broke up. I felt guilty for a long time.”

I didn’t ask her which way. Maybe she saw my face. I wouldn’t bank on it.