Little, Big (20 page)

"She cried all night," Mrs. Flowers said, her own eyes filling. Mr. Flowers explained, or tried to. It wasn't that they believed in worldly shame or honor, their own marriage bond had been sealed before any words or formulas had been spoken; the flowering of vital energies is always to be welcomed. No: it was that August, well, didn't seem to understand it the way they did, or perhaps he understood it better, but anyway to speak frankly they thought he'd broken the girl's heart, though she said he said he loved her; they wondered if Violet knew what August felt, or—or if she knew (the phrase, so loaded with common and wrong meaning, fell out anyway, with a clang, like a horseshoe he had had in his pocket) what the boy intended to do about this.

Violet moved her mouth, as though in answer, but no answer came out. She composed herself. "If he loves her," she said, "then . . ."

"He may," Mr. Flowers said. "But he says—she says he says—that there's someone else, someone with, well, a prior claim, someone . . ."

"He's promised to another," Mrs. Flowers said. "Who's also, well."

"Amy Meadows?" Violet said.

"No, no. That wasn't the name. Was that the name?"

Mr. Flowers coughed. "Happiness wasn't sure, exactly. There might be . . . more than one."

Violet could only say "Oh dear, oh dear," feeling deeply their consternation, their brave effort not to censure, and having no idea how to answer them. They looked at her with hope, hope that she would say something that would fit all this too into the drama they perceived. But in the end she could only say, in a tiny voice, with a desperate smile, "Well, I suppose it's not the first time it ever happened in the world."

"Not the first time?"

"I mean not the
first
time."

Their hearts leapt up. She
did
know: she knew precedents for this. What could they be? Krishna fluting, seed-scattering, spiritincarnating—avatars——what? Something they had no inkling of? Yes, brighter and stranger than they could know. "Not the first time," said Mr. Flowers, his unlined brow raised. "Yes."

"Is it," said Mrs. Flowers, almost whispering, "part of the Tale?"

"Is what? Oh, yes," Violet said, lost in thought. What had become of Amy? What on earth was August up to? Where had he found the daring to break girls' hearts? A dread came over her. "Only I didn't know this, I never suspected. . . . Oh, August," she said, and bowed her head. Was this their doing? How could she know? Could she ask him? Would his answer tell her?

Seeing her so lost, Mr. Flowers leaned forward. "We never, never meant to burden you," he said. "It wasn't—it wasn't that we didn't think, that we weren't sure it wasn't, or wouldn't be, all right. Happiness doesn't
blame
him, I mean it's not that."

"No," said Mrs. Flowers, and put her hand gently on Violet's arm. "We didn't
want
anything. It wasn't that. A new spirit is always a joy. She'll be ours."

"Maybe," Violet said, "it'll be clearer later."

"I'm sure," Mrs. Flowers said. "It is, it
is
part of the Tale."

But Violet had seen that it would not be clearer later. The Tale: yes, this was part of the. Tale, but she had suddenly seen, as a person alone in a room reading or working at the end of day sees, as she raises her eyes from work that has for some reason grown obscure and difficult, that evening has come, and that's the reason; and that it would long grow darker before it lightened.

"Please," she said, "have tea. We'll light the lights. Stay awhile."

Outside she could hear—they could all hear—a car, chugging steadily toward the house. It slowed as it approached the drive—its voice was distinct and regular, like the crickets'—and changed gears like changing its mind, and chugged onward.

How long is the Tale? she had asked, and Mrs. Underhill had said: you and your children and your children's children will all be buried before that Tale's all told.

She took hold of the lamp cord, but for a moment didn't pull it. What had she done? Was this her fault, because she hadn't believed the Tale could be so long? It was. She would change. She would correct what she could, if there were time. There must be time. She pulled the cord, which made the windows night, and the room a room.

The enormous moon which August had taken Margaret Juniper out to see rise had risen, though they hadn't noticed its ascent. The harvest moon, August had insisted this was, and had sung a song about it to Marge as they sped along; but it wasn't the harvest moon, amber and huge and plenteous as it was, that would be next month's; this was only the last day of August.

Its light was on them. They could look at it now, August was too dazed and replete to do anything else, even to comfort Marge who wept quietly—perhaps, who could tell, even happily—beside him. He couldn't speak. He wondered if he would ever speak again, except to invite, except to propose. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut . . . But he knew he wouldn't.

Marge raised a moonlit hand, and stroked the moustache he had begun to grow, laughing through her tears. "It's so handsome," she said. He twitched his nose like a rabbit under her fingers. Why do they always rub it wrong, turn it uncomfortably underside-over, should he shave it so they can't? Her mouth was red and the flesh around it flushed from kissing and from weeping. Her skin against his was as soft as he had imagined it would be, but flecked with pinkish freckles he hadn't expected, not her slim white thighs though, bare on the sweat-slick leather of the seat. Within her opened blouse her breasts were small and new-looking, capped with large changeable nipples, seeming to have just been extruded from a boyish chest. The little hair was blond and stiff and small, like a dot. Oh God the privacies he had seen. He felt the strangeness of unbound flesh strongly. They ought to be kept hidden, these vulnerabilities, these oddities and organs soft as a snail's body or its tender horns, the exposure of them was monstrous, he wanted to recase hers in the pretty white underthings that hung around the car like festoons, and yet even as he thought this be began to rise again.

"Oh," she said. She hadn't, probably, got much of a gander at his engorgement in the rush of her deflowering, too much else to think about. "Do you do it right away again?"

He made no answer, it had nothing to do with him. As well ask the trout struggling on the hook if he liked to go on with that activity or cease it. A bargain is a bargain. He did wonder why, though one knows a woman better and she has picked up anyway the rudiments, the second time often seems more difficult, more illfitting, more a matter of inconvenient knees and elbows, than the first. None of this prevented his falling, as they coupled, more deeply in love with her, but he hadn't expected it to. So various they are, bodies, breasts, odors, he hadn't known about that, that they would be as individual, as charged with character, as faces and voices. He was surfeited with so much character. He knew too much. He groaned aloud with love and knowledge, and clung to her.

It was late, the moon had shrunk and grown chill and white as it climbed the sky. With how sad steps. Her tears fell again, though she didn't seem to be exactly weeping, they seemed a natural secretion, drawn forth by the moon perhaps; she was busy putting away her nakedness, though she couldn't take it back from him any more. She said to him calmly: "I'm glad, August. That we had this one time."

"What do you mean?" A hoarse beast's voice, not his own. "This one time?"

She brushed the tears from her face with the flat of her hand, she couldn't see to fasten her garters. "Because I can always remember this now."

"No."

"At least remember this." She threw her dress into the air, very agilely causing it to settle over her head; she wiggled, and it descended over her like a curtain, the last act. "August, no." She shrank against the door, clasping her hands togeher, drawing up her shoulders. "Because you don't love me, and that's all right. No. I know about Sara Stone. Everybody knows. It's all right."

"Who?"

"Don't you dare." She looked at him warningly. He wasn't to spoil this with lies, with coarse denials. "You love her. That's true and you know it." He said nothing. It was true. A collision was taking place inside him of such magnitude he could only witness it. The noise of it made it hard to hear her. "I'll never ever do it with anyone else, ever." Her bravery exhausted, her lip began to tremble. "I'm going to go off and live with Jeff, and I'll never love anyone else, and just remember this always." Jeff was her kindly brother, a rose gardener. She turned her face away. "You can take me home now."

He took her home, without another word.

Being filled with clamor is like being void. Void, he watched her climb down from the car, watched her shatter the moonshadows of leaves and be shattered by them as she went away, not looking back, he would not have seen her if she had looked. Void, he drove away from the shaded, shuddering crossroads. Void, he drove toward home. It didn't feel like a decision, it felt like void, when he turned off the gray pebble-glittering road, bounced through the ditch, climbed a bank, and steered the Ford (dauntless, unfazed) out into the silvered pond of an uncut pasture, and then further on, the void slowly filling with resolution that felt also like void.

The car sputtered out of gas: He choked it, prodded it, urged it a little further, but it died. If there was a God damn garage within ten miles of here it would be convenient as hell. He sat for a while in the cooling car, imagining his destination without exactly thinking about it. He did wonder (last lamplit window of common thought, flickering out) if Marge would think he'd done it for her. Well he would have, in a way, in a way, he would have to put stones in his pockets, heavy ones, and just relax. Wash it all away. The thunder of void resolution was like the cold thunder of the falls, he seemed already to hear it, and wondered if he would hear nothing else through eternity; he hoped not.

He got out of the car, detached the squirrel tail, it ought to be returned, maybe they would Somehow return the payment he had made for it; and, slipping and stumbling in his patent-leather seducer's shoes, he made for the woods.

"Mother?" Nora said, astonished, stopping in the hall with an empty cup and saucer in her hands. "What are you doing up?"

Violet stood on the stairs, having made no sound coming down that Nora heard; she was dressed, in clothes which Nora hadn't seen for years, but she had the air of someone asleep, somnambulating.

"No word," she said, as though sure there would not be, "about August?"

"No. No, no word."

Two weeks had passed since a neighbor had told them of seeing August's Ford abandoned in a field, open to the elements. Auberon, after long hesitation, had suggested to Violet that they call the police; but this notion was so far from anything Violet could imagine about what had happened that he doubted she even heard: no fate August was resefved to could possibly be altered, or even discovered, by police.

"It's my fault, you know," she said in a small voice. "Whatever it is that's happened. Oh, Nora."

Nora rushed up the stairs to where Violet had sat down suddenly as though fallen. She took Violet's arm to help her rise, but Violet only grasped the hand she offered and squeezed it, as though it were Nora who needed comforting. Nora sat beside her on the stair. "I've been so wrong," Violet said, "so stupid and wrong. And now see what's come of it."

"No," Nora said. "What do you mean?"

"I didn't see," Violet said. "I thought . . . Listen now, Nora. I want to go to the City. I want to see Timmie and Alex, and have a long visit, and see the baby. Will you come?"

"Of course," Nora said. "But . . ."

"All right. And Nora. Your young man."

"What young man?" She looked away.

"Henry. Harvey. You mightn't think I know, but I do. I think—I think you and he should—should do what you like. If ever anything I said made you think I didn't want you to, well, it's not so. You must do exactly as you like. Marry him, and move away . . ."

"But I don't want to move away."

"Poor Auberon, I suppose it's too late—he's missed his war now, and . . ."

"Mother," Nora said, "what are you talking about?"

She was silent a time. Then: "It's my own fault," she said. "I didn't think. It's very hard though, you know, to know a little, or to guess a little, and not want to—to help, or to see that things come out right; it's hard not to be afraid, not to think some small thing— oh, the smallest—that you might do would spoil it. But that's not so, is it?"

"I don't know."

"It isn't. You see"—she clasped her pale, thin hands together, and closed her eyes—"it
is
a Tale. Only it's longer and stranger than we imagine. Longer and stranger than we
can
imagine. So what you must do—" she opened her eyes "—what you must do, and what I must do, is forget."

"Forget what?"

"Forget a Tale is being told. Otherwise—oh, don't you see, if we didn't know the little that we do, we'd never interfere, never get things wrong; but we
do
know, only not enough; and so we guess wrong, and get entangled, and have to be put right in ways—in ways so odd, so—oh, dear, poor August, the smelliest, noisiest garage would have been better, I know it would have been . . . ."

"But what about a special fate, and all that," Nora said, alarmed at her mother's distress, "and being Protected, and all?"

"Yes," Violet said. "Perhaps. But it doesn't matter, because we can't understand that, or what it means. So we have to forget."

"How can we?"

"We can't." She stared straight in front of her. "But we can be silent. And we can be clever against our knowledge. And we can—oh, it's so strange, such a strange way to live—we can keep secrets. Can't we? Can you?"

"I think. I don't know."

"Well, you must learn. So must I. So must we all. Never to tell what you know, or think, because it's never enough, and it won't be true anyway for anyone but you, not in the same way; and never hope, or be afraid; and never, never take their side against us, and still, Somehow, I don't know how, trust them. We must do that from now on."