Remember Ben Clayton (18 page)

“This is nonsense,” he said. “You’re making this up out of nothing.”

“Not exactly nothing,” she said, as she walked back to the armature and began to pack clay onto it again. “I’m making it up out of the way you look at it, that smile of approval you work so hard at. And I hear it in your voice too. You know, it would really help me if you would say what you truly think. How else am I supposed to improve?”

“Maureen, I’m not going to allow you to maneuver me into saying that I don’t think it’s good enough. And why does my opinion have to be the only word on the subject anyway? You could ask—”

“Because yours is the opinion that counts!”

She said this with such ferocious finality that he thought for a moment she was going to storm out of the room, but instead she went placidly back to work. He watched her, her face set, her eyes red but no tears falling, her hands kneading the clay.

“I’ll admit that it’s not a work of genius, if that will restore your trust in my honesty. But I’m not going to say it’s not worthy. It’s ready to go to the foundry and it’s ten times better than most of what passes for public art in this country.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was an unfair outburst.”

“It certainly was,” he said, though with a needling fondness. He had been as honest with her as he could, but like so many truths he found himself proclaiming to his daughter, it was darkened by the shadow of a lie.

SEVENTEEN

D
ear Miss Gilheaney,” Maureen read aloud to Vance, who sat across the table from her in Schilo’s, his spoon poised over his split-pea soup.

“Thank you for your letter, which took a while to catch up to me as we are on the move most of the time cleaning up the battlefields here and we don’t know when we will get our mail or even if. I don’t get a lot of mail anyway so I guess it’s all right. I understand if Mr. Clayton doesn’t want to hear more about Ben’s death at this time. I guess I wouldn’t want to either but I thought I better write to him about it so I did. It was strange to hear from you that there’s going to be a statue of him. I would like to see it someday when it gets put up but I don’t have any plans to come back to the States. I like it here in France and think I will stay, as I now understand the language and can speak with pretty much anybody, though some of the men’s accents are harder to understand than others. I’ll be through with my work with the Service des Travaux in a few weeks but they say I can have a job in the little town of Somme-Py helping to rebuild the city hall. I think I will take the job because I can do some good for the people of France and it reminds me some of home though the country is rolling not mostly flat like Eastland County where I’m from.

“You said in your letter that people would be happy to see me and I ought not to worry about coming home. But you would have to take a look at me to see what I mean. My face is mostly gone and would be a shock for most folks to look at and I don’t care to spend the rest of my life having people run away at the sight of me, little children especially. You may think I’m exaggerating Miss Gilheaney but it really is pretty bad and it’s easier to be in France because the people here are used to wounds such as I have and they don’t think too much about it. I hope you do not think I am a complainer, that’s just the way it is and I am getting used to looking like this and I want to live a quiet life where I can do some good and not think about myself all the time.

“I can tell from your letter you are a very kind person and if you want to write to me again I would be glad to hear from you. It feels good to me to read words written in english. That way I don’t feel so far from home and even though I have friends here I still feel alone sometimes and the people don’t understand me like people from my own country do. Please tell Mr. Clayton I’m sorry he feels so bad about his son but I guess saying sorry won’t help him much. They say time heals all wounds but I don’t know if that’s true if you’re old like he is and don’t have much time for them to heal in the first place. I don’t think time will heal my wound either but that’s another story and I don’t expect it to anyway.

“When you get that statue done or close to it maybe you could take a Kodak of it and send it to me. I would surely appreciate that and would like to see what Ben looks like after your father has done his work.

“I will close by saying thank you again for your kind words to me and by wishing you and your family much happiness in the years ahead. Sincerely, Arthur Fry.”

She folded the letter back into the envelope and put it in her purse.

“Are you crying?” Vance asked.

“Shouldn’t I?”

“I saw men like that over there,” Vance said. “Those kind of wounds. Poor devil.”

“It happened in the same battle where Ben was killed. Saint-Étienne. Do you know of it?”

“Of course. It wasn’t the Marne, but the boys in the 36th say it was pretty bad.”

“I think I’ll write him again. He seems to want me to.”

“It would help to keep his spirits up. He’s bound to be pretty homesick.”

She watched him eat his soup, his tie tucked between the buttons of his shirt. He had a lusty appetite and did not make a fuss about manners. She could imagine him eating alone in his boardinghouse or in the university cafeteria, reading Milton or Donne as he spooned up his food with one hand. Schilo’s, where he had brought her for dinner, was a noisy saloon on the river that now, after prohibition, would have to survive solely on its hearty peasant food and its home-brewed root beer.

The conversation shifted to his frustrations with the university administration and the hidebound deans for whom real literature was still centered in the old dead world of Europe.

“Look at what’s happening in America, not just in New England—and just how long, by the way, do we have to celebrate Hawthorne to the exclusion of every other American writer?—but in Harlem, in Chicago! Music, poetry, women standing up for themselves, Negroes deciding they’ve finally had enough, Reds poking the country in the eye, everything getting a second look. Well, see, I’m going on again.”

“Yes, you are.”

He grinned at her as he slurped up the last of his soup.

“Want some schnitzel?”

“No.”

“Want to get out of here and go for a walk?”

She waited for him by the door as he paid the bill. She watched him exchanging small talk with the waiter and the men behind the bar, captivating everyone he met, guilelessly selling himself to them. He took her elbow as they walked out onto Commerce Street and down to the bridge crossing the river.

“We must pause and pay homage to the future site of your sculpture,” he told her.

There was a bench on the bridge and they sat down and looked at the water below, flowing so modestly it was almost still, reflecting the stars from the clear winter night overhead. They sat casually close together, as if chance had deposited them there.

“Is there a date set for the unveiling?” he asked.

“Early September, depending on the foundry schedule, and on the granite company that will make the base.”

“You’ll be the toast of San Antonio, Maureen.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose it will be just one event among many.”

But she was excited. Even though her misgivings about her Spirit of the Waters were still vivid, her concerns had not been shared by Mrs. Toepperwein and the members of the Arts and Beautification Committee, who had visited the studio and enthusiastically approved the piece for casting. Just last week, her father had taken two days from his own work to help her cast the original clay tablets in plaster, so they could be shipped to the foundry to be cast again in bronze. She had been careful not to press him again for an opinion on their quality, and she had seen the relief in his face at not having to offer one.

“You haven’t even let me see it yet, you know?” Vance said.

“When it comes back from the foundry.”

“Don’t you trust me? Are you afraid I’ll crush you with my merciless opinions?”

“I don’t know. Will you?”

“I could never crush you. You’re too strong-willed. You’d brush my petty objections aside.”

“I don’t brush things aside, Vance. I take them to heart.”

The comment caught him up for a moment, as she supposed she had meant it to. He smiled slightly, and looked off down the river in a reflective silence.

“Come up to Austin one of these days,” he said.

“What for?”

“What for? To see me, I should think. After all, I’ve made plenty of visits to San Antonio to see you.”

“I thought you’d been coming here on business.”

“Well, sure. Research, interviews, that sort of thing. All of it legitimate. But you’ve been an added enticement, as I hope you might have noticed by now.

“We could have a picnic at Mount Bonnell,” he went on, as she pondered this proposition. “Maybe go to a lecture or two, hear some fiery rhetoric about something or other. There’s always something happening in Austin. How about giving it some thought?”

“All right, Vance, I’ll give it some thought.”

THE HOUSE WAS DARK
and empty when she came home at eleven thirty, but the light was still on in her father’s studio. Maureen walked into the yard and opened the studio door and found her father standing on a stepladder working on the upper body of the human figure. He wore his usual old ratty blue shirt with the sleeves rolled back, flecks of clay on his arms, doing fine work on the figure’s collar with a wire-ended modeling tool. He had not heard her come in and she did not interrupt him right away, just watched the swift and practiced movements of his hands as he carved the clay and smoothed it with his thumb, movements that had bewitched her since her early childhood. The sight of her father creating something bigger than himself was bound up in her memory and in her present life as an emblem of her own well-being. The night after her mother’s death, when Maureen was howling inside with shock and bewilderment, feeling the punishing weight of the empty universe, she had stood here in her father’s studio and watched him as he went back to work on his latest commission. The stillness of her mother’s body, the piercing finality of her absence, all the intolerable visions and sensations of that week had been smoothed down to a manageable degree by the sight of her father defiantly turning to his life’s task.

Tonight her mood was vastly different. Tonight she tremblingly believed she might at last be on the path to love and happiness and independence. Vance had asked her to come to Austin, to visit his world. And why would he want her to visit his world if at least some part of him did not want her to share his life?

“I hope you weren’t waiting up for me, Daddy,” she said.

He turned in surprise at the sound of her voice, then went back to work. “No. Just wanted to get this part of the shirt right before I quit.”

He made a few more careful swipes with the wire tool and then climbed down off the ladder, standing beside her to study his work.

“What do you think?”

“It’s strong.”

She meant it. Though it was still very rough, it registered in a striking way, with more force and momentum than had been possible to conjure in the scale model. Even if he were to leave off tonight and never finish the modeling, her father had still captured something essential about Ben Clayton: the ease and physicality of a boy who had grown up working with horses and for whom manual labor was not an imposed condition but a way of conforming to the world. The impression had something to do with a kind of looseness in the arms, an unconscious strength waiting to be called on as the boy stood next to his horse, one arm at his side, an open hand holding yet-invisible reins.

“I need to go back to the site,” he said.

“You mean to the ranch? Before you’ve finished?”

“I’ll get the lion’s share done, but I think I need to stand on top of that hill one more time, just to make sure there’s something I haven’t missed. There’s something about this one, Maureen. I must get it right.”

He turned to her, wiping his tools with a rag.

“Write to Clayton, will you? Tell him we’d like to come up in a few weeks.”

“He may not want us to, after what happened.”

“I don’t care. We’re going.”

He rolled down his shirtsleeves and turned off the lights as they walked out of the studio and into the house. As she was about to tell him good night and go to her bedroom he asked her how her evening with Vance had been.

“We had a good time. He took me to some place on the river. We had split-pea soup.”

“Not too romantic.”

“I had the impression he thought it was.”

She kissed her father good night, but some hesitation she had caught in his bearing caused her to linger in the hallway for a moment, and then to come back to him in the kitchen, where he sat with his back against the sink, opening a box of Hydrox cookies.

“Do you like him any better by now?” she asked.

“Is it time for me to offer a final opinion?”

“Maybe.”

He set the box of cookies aside. The weight of his reflections showed on his face.

“I think he’s an interesting fellow. Intelligent, witty, hardworking as far as I can tell.”

“But you still don’t care for him.”

“I didn’t say that. I like him just fine. If I have any hesitation about him, it’s that maybe he tries a little too hard to make an impression. To put himself across, I suppose you’d say.”

“Since when is that a crime? Where would
you
be if you didn’t have that sort of ambition?
I
don’t, and look where I am!”

“What do you mean, ‘where I am’?”

But all of a sudden she was too agitated to compose any sort of coherent answer. She could feel confused tears beginning to form in her eyes. Her father tried to maneuver his way out of the emotional trap he had caught himself in.

“Tell me what
you
think of him,” he said. “Yours is the opinion that counts.”

“Well, it should be obvious to you that I like him quite a lot.”

“In love with him, you mean.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. And I don’t know what he thinks about me. At first it seemed there was some sort of hesitation on his part, but that’s—oh, this is ridiculous! I shouldn’t be talking about this with you. It’s my own affair.”

She picked up the box of cookies and put it in the cupboard, struck by an angry impulse to tidy up as a rebuke to her father, who was generally too distracted to put things back where they belonged.

“He’s invited me up to Austin.”

“For what purpose?”

She laughed outright at his prosecutorial tone.

“Well, for a change of scenery, of course. To see him in his native environment. To get to know him a little better.”

“Just by yourself? No—”

“Chaperone? Daddy, I’m thirty-two years old! It’s nineteen twenty! Do you honestly think I have no judgment?”

He gave her a direct look, thought about what he was going to say, and then said it. “I’m not sure about your judgment when it comes to this man.”

The words shocked her. When had he assumed the privilege to deliver such a decree, to degrade her considered affection for a man and turn it into a witless childish fancy? He was a tyrant in his own subtle way, throwing her happiness back in her face.

“I’m sorry,” he hurried to say, because he could tell by a glance at her expression how wrong his words had been. “I only meant that when—”

“You only meant precisely what you said.”

“I don’t like the way he seems uncomfortable in my presence.”