Great House (32 page)

You have to understand, she said at last. I was thirty by the time
I met John, and some weeks earlier I had caught sight of myself in the reflection of a shop window before I had a chance to compose my face, and afterwards, on the bus ride home, I came to accept certain things. It was not a revelation, she said, it was more a question of things having reached a certain point, and the image I saw reflected back at me was the last straw. Not long after that, I was at my sister's and her husband brought a friend back from the office. John and I found ourselves trying to pass one another in the narrow hall that led to the kitchen, pass without touching, and he asked, rather awkwardly, whether he could see me again. The first night he took me out I was taken aback by how, when he laughed, you could see his fillings, and also the darkness gathered at the back of the throat. He had a way of throwing his head back and opening his mouth to laugh that took me some time to get used to. I was what you might call the solemn type, Mrs. Fiske said, looking past me out of the window, solemn and shy, and despite the music of his laughter I was frightened by what I thought I saw there at the back of his throat. But we found our way with one another, and were married five months later in front of a small group of family and friends, many of whom were surprised to find themselves there, having come to believe that I would become an old maid, if I wasn't one in their eyes already. I made it clear to John that I didn't want to waste any time before trying to have a child. We tried, but it didn't come easily. When at last I became pregnant—this is strange to say—the sensation I had was of a tide washing in and out of me, and when the tide came in the child was safe within me, and when it washed out it was the child being pulled away from me, as if he had seen something bright and shining elsewhere, and no matter how I tried to hold him back I couldn't. The pull of that other thing, that other, shining life, was too hard to resist. And then one night asleep in bed I felt the tide wash out of me for good, and when I woke I was bleeding. We tried again after that, but deep down I no longer believed I was capable of bearing a child. Those were painful times for me, and if normally I laughed little now I laughed hardly at all,
but I remember thinking that John's laughter remained constant. It isn't that he wasn't saddened, but he had a merry disposition, he could turn a corner and see things from another angle, or hear a joke on the radio and that was enough for him. And when he laughed, throwing his head back, the darkness at the back of his throat seemed to me even more foreboding than before, and a little shiver ran through me. I don't mean to give the wrong impression. He was very supportive, and did his best to cheer me up. In a way I can't explain, said Mrs. Fiske, the darkness I saw there had nothing, or very little, to do with John himself and everything to do with me; the back of his throat just happened to be the place where it dwelled. I began to turn away when he laughed so as not to see it, and then one day I heard his laughter switch off like a light, and when I turned back his mouth was clamped shut and there was a look of shame on his face. I felt awful then, cruel, really, absurd and self-absorbed, and soon afterwards I made sure that things began to change between us. By and by a kind of tenderness was allowed in that had not been before. I learned something about controlling certain kinds of feelings, about not giving in to the first emotion that presents itself, and I remember thinking at the time that such discipline was the key to sanity. About six months later we decided to adopt a child.

Mrs. Fiske leaned forward and stirred what was left of her tea as if she might drink it, or as if the words for the rest of her story were resting among the bits of tea leaves at the bottom of the china cup. But then she seemed to think better of it, returned the cup to its saucer, and leaned back again in her chair.

It didn't happen right away, she said. We had to fill out endless forms, there was a process. One day a lady in a yellow suit came to our house. I remember staring at her suit and thinking that it was like a small piece of sunshine, and she an envoy from a different climate where children thrived and were happy, and that she had arrived at our house to shine herself and see how it looked, how so much light and happiness might reflect back off of our colorless walls. I spent
the days before her arrival on my knees scrubbing the floors. I even baked a cake on the morning of her arrival so that there would be the smell of something sweet in the air. I wore a blue silk dress and made John wear a houndstooth jacket that he'd never have chosen for himself, because I thought it had an optimistic flair. But as we sat waiting uneasily for her in the kitchen I saw how the sleeves were too short and how the jacket, the way John sat hunched in that ridiculous jacket, instead gave away our desperation. But it was too late to change, the doorbell rang, and there she was with her patent-leather bag containing our file tucked under her arm, this bright yellow guardian from the land of tiny fingernails and milk teeth. She sat down at the table and I put a slice of cake in front of her, which she didn't touch. She took out some papers for us to sign, and proceeded to conduct her interview. John, who was easily intimidated by authority, began to stutter. Embarrassed and insecure, cowed by the power she had over us, I lost my way in the answers I tried to give, became flustered, and made a fool of myself. As she looked around, an artificial little smile pulled tightly at her lips, I saw her shiver, and I realized that the house was cold. I knew then that she would not give us a child.

After that I entered into what I suppose is called a depression, though I didn't know it then. When I emerged many months later, I'd accustomed myself to the idea of a life without children. Then one day, visiting my sister who had moved to London, I was reading the paper and my eye happened to catch a small ad near the bottom of the page. I could have easily missed it, it was just a few words in small print. But I saw it:
Baby boy of three weeks available for immediate adoption
. Below it was an address. Without hesitating, I took out a piece of paper and wrote a letter. Something took hold of me. My pen hurried across the page, trying to keep up with the words pouring out of me. I wrote all I'd been unable to express to the lady in yellow who had come from the adoption agency, and as the letters flew off the point of my pen I knew that ad had been meant for me alone. The boy for me alone. I posted the letter, and said nothing about it to John. I
didn't want to put him through more than I had already; having seen me through the worst of my depression only to watch me fall prey to blind hope, again, would be more than he could bear. But I knew it wasn't blind hope. Sure enough, as soon as I returned home to Liverpool a few days later, a letter was waiting for me. It was signed with only her initials: L.B. Until you called last night, I never knew her name. She asked me to meet her five days later, at four o'clock on the 18th of July, in the ticket hall at West Finchley Station. I waited until John left for work at eight and then I hurried out on my way. I was going to meet my child, Mr. Bender. The one I had waited so long for. Can you imagine what I felt, stepping aboard that train? I could barely sit still. I knew I was going to call him Edward, after the grandfather I'd loved. Of course he must have had a name already, but I didn't think to ask, and she didn't tell me. We said so little. I could barely speak and neither could she. Or perhaps she could have spoken, but chose not to. Yes, I think it was that. There was a strange calmness about her—it was my hands that shook. Only later, during those first days, with the house filled with the smells of a new baby, did I think about that other name hiding behind the name we had given him, like a shadow. But in time I forgot about it, or if I didn't entirely forget it I rarely thought of it, except at odd moments when I would hear a name being called on the street, in a shop, or on the bus, and I would stop and wonder if that was it.

When I got to London I took the Tube to West Finchley. It was a warm, sunny day and she was the only one indoors in the ticket hall. She fixed me in her gaze, but didn't step forward. I felt she was looking inside me, under my skin. A strange calmness, that's what struck me. For a moment I thought it was possible that she wasn't the mother, but rather a surrogate sent in her place to carry out the bitter task. But when she moved the blanket away and I stepped forward and saw the baby's face, I knew he could only be hers. When she spoke at last her accent was heavy. I didn't know where she was from, Germany or Austria, maybe, but I understood that she was
a refugee. The baby was asleep, his little knotted fists balled on either side of his face. We stood there in the empty ticket hall. He doesn't like it when the hat falls too low on his forehead, she said. Those were her first words to me. A few moments later, very long moments, she said, If you put him on your shoulder after he eats, he cries less. And then, His hands get cold easily. As if she were giving me instructions on how to run a finicky car instead of giving away her own baby. And yet later, once I had him a few weeks, I began to see it differently. I understood that those few things were the precious discoveries of someone who had studied and tried to understand the mystery of her child.

We sat side by side on the hard bench, Mrs. Fiske said. She patted the bundle in her arms one more time then handed it to me. I felt the warmth of his body through the blanket. He squirmed a little, but continued to sleep. I thought she would say something else, but she didn't. There was a bag on the floor and she nudged it toward me with her foot. Then she looked out of the window and something she noticed on the platform seemed to jar her because she stood abruptly. I continued to sit because my legs were weak and I worried that I might drop the baby. Just like that, she began to walk away. Only when she reached the door did she stop and look back. I pulled the baby to my chest and held him tightly. I felt him snuffling there, and then I began to rock him a little and he relaxed and even cooed a little. You see! I wanted to shout to her. But when I looked up she was gone.

I sat without moving. I rocked the baby and sang to him quietly. I bent my head over his to block the light from his eyes, and when I pressed my lips to his head a cloud of warmth seemed to come off him, and I smelled the sweetness of his skin and also a fetid odor from behind his ears. He jerked his face toward me and opened his mouth. His eyes were wide with shock and his arms sprang up, as if he were trying to catch himself from falling. He began to cry. A sudden heat rose to my face and I began to sweat. I jiggled him, but he
began to cry louder. I looked up, and there, peering through the window, was a young man in a strange, almost pitiful coat with a matted fur collar. He had very black shining eyes. A shiver went up my spine as he looked at us, the baby and me. He looked at us with the hunger of a wolf, and I knew he could only be the baby's father. The moment seemed elongated, pulled thin, while some starved longing or awful regret churned inside him. Then a train pulled into the station and he boarded it alone and that was the last I saw of him. When you called last night, Mr. Bender, I was sure that you were he. Only when you rang the bell did I realize that you couldn't be.

 

A
T THAT POINT
I stood and asked Mrs. Fiske the way to the lavatory. The black spaniel dropped to the floor and bounced in a sickening way. A dizzy spell had come over me and I felt faint. I closed the door and sank down on the toilet seat. There was a wooden rack set up in the bath where two or three pairs of tights were drying, the shriveled brown feet still dripping, and above the tub was a window fogged from the humidity. I imagined escaping through it and running down the street. I put my head between my knees to stop the dizziness. For forty-eight years I had shared my life with a woman who was capable of coolly giving her child away to a stranger. A woman who had put an advertisement in the paper for her own baby—
her own baby
—as one advertises an item of furniture for sale. I waited for this new knowledge to throw its stark light, waited to understand, for the door to swing open, waited to come into a lifetime of hoarded truth. But no revelation came.

Are you all right? Mrs. Fiske asked, her voice coming from far away. I don't know how I responded, only that some minutes later she led me up the stairs to a small room with a twin bed where I proceeded to lie down without protest. She brought me a glass of water, and when she leaned over to put it down on the night table the view of her throat reminded me of my own mother. May I ask a question?
I said. She said nothing. How did he die? She sighed and squeezed her hands together. It was a terrible accident, she said. Then she left me alone, closing the door softly behind her, and only as I listened to her footsteps recede down the stairs, fainter and fainter, and the room began slowly, almost leisurely, to spin, did it occur to me that I was lying in the room that had belonged to him, to Lotte's child.

I closed my eyes. As soon as this passes, I thought, I'll thank Mrs. Fiske, say goodbye, and return home on the next train to London. But even as I thought it I didn't really believe it. Once more I had the feeling that it would be a long time before I would see the house in Highgate, if I saw it again at all. It was getting cold, the tomcat would have to find his dinner elsewhere. The swimming holes would freeze over. What was it that slept there on the soft, slimy bottom that drew Lotte back down day after day? Every morning she would go, as Persephone went down, to touch again that dark thing, vanishing into the black depths. In front of my eyes! And I could never follow. Can you understand what it was like? As if a small rip had been made in the day and she alone slipped through it. A splash, and then a stillness that seemed to last forever. A kind of panic crept over me. And just when I was convinced that she had hit her head on a rock or broken her neck, the surface would break and she would appear again, blinking water out of her eyes, her lips blue. Something had been renewed. On the walk home we spoke little. There was only the sound of the leaves and twigs crunching under our feet like broken glass. I haven't gone back since she died.