See Now Then (4 page)

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To see then Mr. Sweet, a very small boy in short pants and short-sleeved shirt bounding across the green grass of a lawn, selling, in a boyish way, water flavored with lemon juice and sugar to friends of his parents, sitting in a chair and listening to jazz, eating peaches that had been poached in pineapple juice, speaking authoritatively of being and not being, traversing the island that was Manhattan, and at that time not being able to see at all the house in which Shirley Jackson lived, the house in which he would live with the fugues trapped in his head, murdering the young Heracles over and over again and that boy coming alive again and again; to see Mr. Sweet, the short pants and short-sleeved shirt being replaced by the brown corduroy suit that Mrs. Sweet had purchased at the Brooks Brothers outlet in Manchester; not being able to see his then now; to see Mr. Sweet then before he was Mr. Sweet, innocent of the small short-haired mammal that thrived in the Mesozoic era; Mr. Sweet who was often found lying down on a couch in an old house that had once been occupied by a woman who wrote short stories and brought up her children and whose husband had betrayed her and had behaved as if he were nothing more than a louse to her, so recorded in a biography of her life.

Closing his eyes then, a long time ago now, there is Mr. Sweet, sitting at that ancient instrument, the harp, wrestling with that large triangle and holding it steady against his small, pretend manly breast; wrestling with a diminishing pitch here, a lengthening string there; gut in the middle, wire below; the flats and sharps, the major and minor keys, harmonic systems, double melodies, polyphony, monodists, melismata in the plainsong, the contrapuntal forms, allegro, concertos, not yet the nocturne—not now that but the ballad—oh yes, oh yes, all that flooded over Mr. Sweet as he sat before his ancient instrument, the harp, worshipping and worshipping, its holiness causing him to grow weak, he was so young, not yet Mr. Sweet and yet he was always Mr. Sweet as even he himself could see now then.

Oh, but this is the voice of the monodist, and with the ancient instrument Mr. Sweet is on a stage all alone, the podium has even been moved to the side, the auditorium is full of chairs but no audience, and this pleases the young Mr. Sweet, young and full-size he is then, not old and the size of a mole as he is now, and he plays the ancient instrument with joy and love and earthly vigor, so much vigor, and breaks all the strings on the ancient instrument from which now, right now, at this very moment, comes no music at all. But then, then, the auditorium is full of chairs but no people, no one at all, and tugging on the strings of the ancient instrument, with its strings made of gut and wire, Mr. Sweet plays a song, for he is not yet a theorist and he plays a song, a complete song full of harmonies and melodies so simple anyone could sing it, even Heracles just after Mr. Sweet has beheaded him could sing that song.
The Beheading of Heracles
was a title Mr. Sweet gave to all the music he played on the ancient instrument Then,
Sweet Night for Heracles
is the name Mr. Sweet gives the music he plays on the ancient instrument Now. And at the end of each suite or sonata, for the young Mr. Sweet plays everything in every way, each kind then was the same, there being no audience to make a distinction, chairs are indifferent, came a deafening silence, applause yes, silence all the same. An immortal to empty chairs was Mr. Sweet then, but he was a boy with all those things hammering against the inside of his head, notes and notes of music, arranging themselves into every known form but never into forms not yet known.

Oh, and this was the word Mrs. Sweet heard, that poor dear woman, mending socks upstairs. Oh, it was the voice of the monodist, her poor dear Mr. Sweet. Whack, came a sound from Heracles, as he made a putt, a basket, and a score and yet was under par or over par, Mrs. Sweet could never be sure. The boy’s head, free of his body with its entrails, filled up all the empty chairs in the auditorium of Mr. Sweet’s youthful recital. Not that, not that, cried the young Mr. Sweet and he made the chairs empty again. The strings of the harp, gut and wire, broke and he bent down and over to make the instrument well again, so ancient was this instrument. The Shirley Jackson house was not known to him then. Never did he imagine then—his youth was his now—that he would live in such a house, so big, so full of empty spaces that were never used, never filled up even in the imagination, the young Heracles with his endless tasks of hitting balls, large and small, into holes of all sizes; the young Heracles, growing in youth, not growing older, growing in his youth, becoming more perfectly youthful, his many tasks to perform, performing them more perfectly, at first performing them awkwardly, not right at all, but then becoming so good he could place any ball of any size in any hole, no matter its width or depth or height. Thwack, was a sound caused by the quick movement of Heracles’ hand sweeping a ball through the teeming air; whack, was the sound of his head sliced away from his body. Oh, was the sound that came out of the mouth of the monodist, Mr. Sweet, Mr. Sweet, as he saw Heracles pick his head off the floor and replace it on his neck, which was just above his shoulders, with such deftness, as if he were born to do only that, keep his head in that place just above shoulders.

Young Heracles, his tasks, so many, so many: wash the dishes, put them away, clean the stables, walk the horses, fix the roof, milk the cows, emerge from his mother’s womb in the usual way, slay the monster, cross the river, return again, climb up the mountain, descend on the other side, build a castle on the top of a hill, imprison the innocent in a dungeon, lay waste to whole villages to the surprise of the villagers, trap and then skin the she-fox, eat his green vegetables and his meat too, kill his father, not kill his father, want to kill his father but not kill his father, keep his head on his shoulders, survive the threshold of night, await the dawn, take a pickax to the iris (his eyes, not the flowers growing in his mother’s garden), seize the sun, banish the moon, at every moment his skin so cold, the fire at his back, cross the road by himself, tie his shoelaces, kiss a girl, sleep in his own bed. Ah, gee Dad, said Heracles, as he raced to get a glass of water from the kitchen sink to quench the unquenchable thirst he had acquired after one of his many journeys, Sorry, Sorry. Heracles had then collided with Mr. Sweet, hitting him squarely in the head, causing starry lights to shoot out of his ears and nostrils and eyes, sending Mr. Sweet into a coma from which he emerged many years later and immediately he cut off Heracles’ head again. But that Heracles, blessed with a natural instinct to live that would never, ever abandon him, picked up his head and put it back on—again, where it rests to this day, in the rising just above his shoulders.

Oh, was the sound of the harsh sigh violently escaping the prison that was Mr. Sweet’s lips, as he lay in the studio above the garage in the Shirley Jackson house. And he lay there on a brown couch, still, as if dead, but he was not dead, he only hated to be alive, with that wife, who now, now, knitted furiously, even with great vigor. Her heart raced with the effort, faster and faster and then even faster than that. Oh, so dangerously fast did her heart beat that it almost beat itself to death, but Mrs. Sweet said, gggggrrrrgghhhh, the sound of blood and oxygen combined as it simultaneously reached her throat. What the hell and oh shit, said Mrs. Sweet, and how surprised she was to hear these words catapulting out and around inside her head, for these were not her own words, these were the words of Heracles, Heracles spoke in this way when he thought no one could overhear him. But this (what the hell, oh shit) was in response to: the children—this would be Heracles and Persephone—won’t get out of bed in time to meet the school bus, the man who can repair the household appliances won’t come on a mutually agreed time, it will rain when the sun should shine, the fruit will rot on the bushes, Mr. Sweet will not emerge from the studio above the garage as Mr. Sweet, he will emerge from the studio above the garage inside a mauve velvet-covered coffin, an imitation of a jewelry box, Mr. Sweet will be dead. This last—Mr. Sweet being dead—if Mr. Sweet was dead what would happen to Mrs. Sweet, who would she be? Mrs. Sweet was a knitter and mender of socks, and she did that because while doing so she could delineate and dissect and then examine the world as she knew it, as she understood it, as she imagined it, as it came to her through her everyday existence.

All that day, all that night, as the very thing called time collapsed within itself, Mrs. Sweet made socks and in that way marked off time, and in that way sought out the things that had not yet entered her mind. She mended and knitted away at the socks, repairing the holes, sometimes making just ordinary stitches, sometimes making a Christmas tree and a Santa Claus in the colors red and green to fill the holes, eventually undoing those to finally fill the holes with six-pointed stars and biblical scrolls in blue and white. Mr. Sweet hated this, how he hated this, the six-pointed stars and the biblical scroll in blue and white, the sight of it making him swear that he would be a deathbed Catholic, whatever could that mean, thought Mrs. Sweet, for she so loved Mr. Sweet and thought always that his contradictions were a source of laughter, whatever could that be or mean, a deathbed Catholic. But Mrs. Sweet loved Mr. Sweet without blinds.

And so it was that one day, out of the blue, now, to be exact, Mr. Sweet said to her, you have said horrible things to me and to Heracles and to Persephone and to the other people that have not been yet born of you and me. On hearing that, Mrs. Sweet cried and cried, not wanting to believe that she was the kind of Mrs. Sweet who could say things that were not kind and sweet and she grew silent. On seeing her deep, black felt coat, her natural skin it was, for Mrs. Sweet by this time could from time to time be herself, Mr. Sweet wished her dead but she was so alive, mending the holes in the socks properly, filling them up sometimes, with patterns he did not like, patterns he so hated; she was so alive, when she walked down the stairs, after mending the socks, her shoulders held up and back, straight, as if they had never known burden and weight of any kind at all, no, not at all.

You have said such horrible things to me, said Mr. Sweet to Mrs. Sweet as she walked in the door of their house, the very one in which Shirley Jackson had lived, and these words were new to Mrs. Sweet’s ears for she was just then returning from the synagogue with a Sweet’s kind of wisdom to share with him. The rabbi had told Mrs. Sweet of a biblical interpretation. The rabbi had said that in a vision it was revealed that all the bricks made by the slaves who had built ancient Egyptian civilization held a baby within them. Inside each brick was a full baby, and the baby cried out. Inside each brick, a perfect baby was curled up, lying there and not dead, not alive, Mrs. Sweet pondered, as she mended the socks, upstairs, on another floor from the studio, and as she mended the socks, she did not think of what was imprisoned in each stitch, each stitch being a small thing in itself that would make up a whole. I shall be a deathbed Catholic, Mr. Sweet said to her, and with such hatred, thought Mrs. Sweet then, but whether directed toward the baby who lay inside that ancient brick or a priest, she could not tell. I shall be a deathbed Catholic, and as the world turned, continuing in its mysterious way, mysterious to any human being trying to understand her place in it (that would be Mrs. Sweet), his place in it (that would be Mr. Sweet), not yet Heracles (he was still a boy), not yet Persephone (she was still a girl), and Mrs. Sweet turned those words over and over again in her mind.

Mr. Sweet did not hate the rabbi and did not hate Catholics, so thought Mrs. Sweet to herself. Mr. Sweet does not hate the rabbi and does not hate Catholics but he does hate me, is not what Mrs. Sweet thought to herself. Her chin sagged down to the place just beneath her breasts and then came back up to its natural setting, which at her age was at the same level as her collar bones. How wearying was Mr. Sweet and his outbursts and making things of them, thought Mrs. Sweet, but then again, no one did that anymore, no one, Meg and Rob—just for instance—considered the outbursts, the ever-changing moods, the volatile emotions, of their companions wearying. Heracles asked his mother, this would be Mrs. Sweet, to make him a meal, breakfast, dinner, or something in between, and she took offense and they quarreled over this, the result was a great calm, silence even, and the calm and silence were filled up with many words.

Hear then the young Heracles, still innocent of the notions of honor and glory: Dad, he said, do you want to go bowling? But Mr. Sweet could see the bowling alley, it had in it people who had eaten more than they should and this very thing was a badge of honor, and they spoke loudly and would die of diseases that were curable, they would never die of natural causes, but what would that be, for to die is natural. But in time will come a collection of events saturated with feelings and smells and the way someone remembered them and the way something, anything, felt like, and the sounds and someone experiencing the relation between sound and time and even space—oh, oh! Oh, oh, said Mr. Sweet, do we have to, do we have to, and he could see all the people in the bowling alley, throwing bowling balls with accuracy and finding satisfaction in that, and throwing bowling balls in a carefree manner and finding equal satisfaction in that, and he hated those people, for none of them knew of adagios and B flats and symphonies and boogie-woogie and all that, they only knew of the joy of the wooden ball knocking down wooden pins in the lanes. Dad, do you want to go bowling, said Heracles to Mr. Sweet and Mr. Sweet said, yes, bowl you out of existence, but Heracles skipped away to the car, an old Volkswagen Rabbit in which they would drive to the bowling alley, and did not hear his father say those words. Just before they entered the bowling alley, Mr. Sweet fell and broke the bone in the smallest finger of his right hand and so for a short time was unable to play on the pianoforte a melody written by a German man in the middle of the nineteenth century, and Mrs. Sweet stood still. She loved them both so much, the young Heracles, her husband Mr. Sweet dressed up in the brown corduroy suit which hugged his body so closely, he looked like one of the earliest mammals.