The Hours (16 page)

It could, she thinks, be deeply comforting; it might feel so free: to simply go away. To say to them all, I couldn’t manage, you had no idea; I didn’t want to try anymore. There might, she thinks, be a dreadful beauty in it, like an ice field or a desert in early morning. She could go, as it were, into that other landscape; she could leave them all behind—her child, her husband and Kitty, her parents, everybody—in this battered world (it will never be whole again, it will never be quite clean), saying to one another and to anyone who asks, We thought she was all right, we thought her sorrows were ordinary ones. We had no idea.

She strokes her belly. I would never. She says the words out loud in the clean, silent room: ‘‘I would never.’’ She loves life, loves it hopelessly, at least at certain moments; and she would be killing her son as well. She would be killing her son and her husband and the other child, still forming inside her. How could any of them recover from something like that? Nothing she might do as a living wife and mother, no lapse, no fit of rage or depression, could possibly compare. It would be, simply, evil. It would punch a hole in the atmosphere, through which everything she’s created—the orderly days, the lighted windows, the table laid for supper—would be sucked away.

Still, she is glad to know (for somehow, suddenly, she knows) that it is possible to stop living. There is comfort in facing the full range of options; in considering all your choices, fearlessly and without guile. She imagines Virginia Woolf, virginal, unbalanced, defeated by the impossible demands of life and art; she imagines her stepping into a river with a stone in her pocket. Laura keeps stroking her belly. It would be as simple, she thinks, as checking into a hotel. It would be as simple as that.

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2

Mr
s . Wo olf

S
h
e sits in the kitchen with Vanessa, drinking her tea.

‘‘There was a lovely coat for Angelica at Harrods,’’ Vanessa says. ‘‘But then nothing for the boys, and it seemed so unfair. I suppose I shall give her the coat for her birthday, but then of course she’ll be cross because she believes coats ought to come to her anyway, as a matter of course, and not be presented as gifts.’’

Virginia nods. At the moment, she can’t seem to speak. There is so much in the world. There are coats at Harrods; there are children who will be angry and disappointed no matter what one does. There is Vanessa’s plump hand on her cup and there is the thrush outside, so beautiful on its pyre; so like millinery.

There is this hour, now, in the kitchen.

Clarissa will not die, not by her own hand. How could she bear to leave all this?

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3

Virgini
a prepares to offer some wisdom about children. She has scant idea what she’ll say, but she will say something.

She would like to say, It is enough. The teacups and the thrush outside, the question of children’s coats. It is enough.

Someone else will die. It should be a greater mind than Clarissa’s; it should be someone with sorrow and genius enough to turn away from the seductions of the world, its cups and its coats.

‘‘Perhaps Angelica—’’ Virginia says.

But here’s Nelly to the rescue; furious, triumphant, back from London with a parcel containing the China tea and sugared ginger. She holds the package aloft, as if she would hurl it.

‘‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Bell,’’ she says with an executioner’s studied calm.

Here is Nelly with the tea and ginger and here, forever, is Virginia, unaccountably happy, better than happy, alive, sitting with Vanessa in the kitchen on an ordinary spring day as Nelly, the subjugated Amazon queen, Nelly the ever indignant, displays what she’s been compelled to bring.

Nelly turns away and, although it is not at all their custom, Virginia leans forward and kisses Vanessa on the mouth. It is an innocent kiss, innocent enough, but just now, in this kitchen, behind Nelly’s back, it feels like the most delicious and forbidden of pleasures. Vanessa returns the kiss.

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4

Mr
s . Dall ow ay

^‘‘
P
oo
r Louis.’’

Julia sighs with a surprisingly elderly mixture of rue and exhausted patience, and she seems, briefly, like a figure of ancient maternal remonstrance; part of a centuries-long line of women who have sighed with rue and exhausted patience over the strange passions of men. Briefly, Clarissa can imagine her daughter at fifty: she will be what people refer to as an ample woman, large of body and spirit, inscrutably capable, decisive, undramatic, an early riser. Clarissa wants, at that moment, to be Louis; not to be with him (that can be so thorny, so difficult) but to be him, an unhappy person, a strange person, faithless, unscrupulous, loose on the streets.

‘‘Yes,’’ she says. ‘‘Poor Louis.’’

Will Louis spoil the party for Richard? Why did she ask Walter Hardy?

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‘‘Suc
h a strange man,’’ Julia says.

‘‘Could you stand it if I gave you a hug?’’

Julia laughs, and is nineteen again. She is impossibly beautiful. She goes to movies Clarissa’s never heard of, suffers fits of sullenness and elation. She wears six rings on her left hand, none of them the one Clarissa gave her for her eighteenth birthday. She wears a silver ring in her nose.

‘‘Of course,’’ she says.

Clarissa holds Julia, and quickly releases her. ‘‘How are you?’’ she asks again, then instantly regrets it. She worries that it’s one of her tics; one of those innocent little habits that inspire thoughts of homicide in an offspring. Her own mother compulsively cleared her throat. Her mother prefaced all contrary opinions by saying, ‘‘I hate to be a wet blanket, but—’’ Those things survive in Clarissa’s memory, still capable of inspiring rage, after her mother’s kindness and modesty, her philanthropies, have faded. Clarissa says too often to Julia, ‘‘How are you?’’ She does it partly out of nervousness (how can she help being formal with Julia, feeling a little anxious, after all that’s happened?), and she does it partly because she wants, simply, to know.

Her party, she thinks, will fail. Richard will be bored and offended, and rightly so. She is superficial; she cares too much about such things. Her daughter must make jokes about it to her friends.

But to have friends like Mary Krull!

‘‘I’m all right,’’ Julia says.

‘‘You look wonderful,’’ Clarissa says in cheerful desperation. At least she’s been generous. She’s been a mother who com

pliments her child, gives her confidence, doesn’t carp about her own worries. ‘‘Thank you,’’ Julia says. ‘‘Did I leave my backpack here yesterday?’’

‘‘You did. It’s right there on the peg by the door.’’

‘‘Good. Mary and I are going shopping.’’

‘‘Where are you meeting her?’’

‘‘Actually, she’s here. She’s outside.’’

‘‘Oh.’’

‘‘She’s smoking a cigarette.’’

‘‘Well, maybe when she’s finished with her cigarette, she’d like to come in and say hello.’’

Julia’s face darkens with contrition and something else—is her old fury returning? Or is it just ordinary guilt? A silence passes. It seems that some force of conventionality exerts itself, potent as the gravitational pull. Even if you’ve been defiant all your life; if you’ve raised a daughter as honorably as you knew how, in a house of women (the father no more than a numbered vial, sorry, Julia, no way of finding him)—even with all that, it seems you find yourself standing one day on a Persian rug, full of motherly disapproval and sour, wounded feelings, facing a girl who despises you (she still must, mustn’t she?) for depriving her of a father. Maybe when she’s finished with her cigarette, she’d like to come in and say hello.

But why shouldn’t Mary be held to a few of the fundamental human decencies? You don’t wait outside somebody’s apartment, no matter how brilliant and furious you are. You enter, and say hello. You get through it.

‘‘I’ll get her,’’ Julia says.

‘‘It’s all right.’’

‘‘No, really. She’s just out there smoking. You know how she is. There’s cigarettes, and then there’s everything else.’’

‘‘Don’t haul her in here. Honestly. Go, I set you free.’’

‘‘No. I want you two to know each other better.’’

‘‘We know each other perfectly well.’’

‘‘Don’t be afraid, Mother. Mary is a sweetheart. Mary is utterly, utterly harmless.’’

‘‘I’m not afraid of her. For god’s sake.’’

Julia produces an infuriatingly knowing smile, shakes her head, and leaves. Clarissa bends over the coffee table, moves the vase an inch to the left. She has an urge to hide the roses. If only it were someone other than Mary Krull. If it were anyone else.

Julia returns, with Mary in her wake. Here, then, once again, is Mary—Mary the stern and rigorous, Mary the righteous, shaved head beginning to show dark stubble, wearing rat-colored slacks, breasts dangling (she must be past forty) under a ragged white tank top. Here is her heavy tread; here are her knowing, suspicious eyes. Seeing Julia and Mary together, Clarissa thinks of a little girl dragging home a stray dog, all ribs and discolored teeth; a pathetic and ultimately dangerous creature who ostensibly needs a good home but whose hunger in fact runs so deep it cannot be touched by any display of love or bounty. The dog will just keep eating and eating. It will never be satisfied; it will never be tame.

‘‘Hello, Mary,’’ Clarissa says.

‘‘Hey, Clarissa.’’ She strides across the room and pumps Clarissa’s hand. Mary’s hand is small, strong, surprisingly soft.

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‘‘Ho
w are you?’’ Mary asks.

‘‘Fine, thanks. You?’’

She shrugs. How should I be, how should anyone be, in a world like this? Clarissa has fallen so easily for the trick question. She thinks of her roses. Are children forced to pick them? Do families arrive in fields before dawn and spend their days bent over the bushes, backs aching, fingers bleeding from the thorns?

‘‘Going shopping?’’ she says, and does not try to hide the contempt in her voice.

Julia says, ‘‘New boots. Mary’s are about to fall off her feet.’’

‘‘I hate to shop,’’ Mary says. She offers a hint of an apologetic smile. ‘‘It’s such a waste of time.’’

‘‘We’re buying boots today,’’ Julia says. ‘‘Period.’’

Clarissa’s daughter, this marvelous, intelligent girl, could be some cheerful wife, shepherding her husband through a day of errands. She could be a figure from the fifties, if you made a few relatively minor alterations.

Mary says to Clarissa, ‘‘I couldn’t do it without help. I can face a cop with tear gas, but don’t come near me if you’re a sales clerk.’’

Clarissa realizes, with a shock, that Mary is making an effort. She is trying, in her way, to charm.

‘‘Oh, they can’t be that frightening,’’ she says.

‘‘It’s stores, it’s the whole thing, all that shit everywhere, ’scuse me, that merchandise, all those goods, and ads screaming at you from all over the place, buy buy buy buy buy, and when somebody comes up to me with big hair and gobs of makeup on and says, ‘Can I help you,’ it’s all I can do not to scream, ‘Bitch, you can’t even help yourself.’ ’’

‘‘Mm,’’ Clarissa says. ‘‘That sounds serious.’’

Julia says, ‘‘Mary, let’s go.’’

Clarissa says to Julia, ‘‘Take good care of her.’’

Fool, Mary Krull thinks. Smug, self-satisfied witch.

She corrects herself. Clarissa Vaughan is not the enemy. Clarissa Vaughan is only deluded, neither more nor less than that. She believes that by obeying the rules she can have what men have. She’s bought the ticket. It isn’t her fault. Still, Mary would like to grab Clarissa’s shirtfront and cry out, You honestly believe that if they come to round up the deviants, they won’t stop at your door, don’t you? You really are that foolish.

‘‘Bye, Mother,’’ Julia says.

‘‘Don’t forget the backpack,’’ Clarissa says.

‘‘Oh, yes.’’ Julia laughs, and takes her backpack from the peg. It is bright orange canvas, not at all the kind of thing you’d expect her to own.

What, exactly, was wrong with the ring?

Briefly, while Julia’s back is turned, Clarissa and Mary face each other. Fool, Mary thinks, though she struggles to remain charitable or, at least, serene. No, screw charity. Anything’s better than queers of the old school, dressed to pass, bourgeois to the bone, living like husband and wife. Better to be a frank and open asshole, better to be John fucking Wayne, than a well-dressed dyke with a respectable job.

Fraud, Clarissa thinks. You’ve fooled my daughter, but you don’t fool me. I know a conquistador when I see one. I know all about making a splash. It isn’t hard. If you shout loud enough, for long enough, a crowd will gather to see what all

16
0

th
e noise is about. It’s the nature of crowds. They don’t stay long, unless you give them reason. You’re just as bad as most men, just that aggressive, just that self-aggrandizing, and your hour will come and go.

‘‘All right,’’ Julia says. ‘‘Let’s go.’’

Clarissa says, ‘‘Remember the party. At five.’’

‘‘Sure,’’ Julia answers. She hoists her bright orange backpack over her shoulder, causing Clarissa and Mary to suffer through a moment of identical feeling. Each adores with particular force Julia’s brisk and kindly self-assurance, the limitless days that lie ahead.

‘‘See you,’’ Clarissa says.

She is trivial. She is someone who thinks too much about parties. If only Julia can someday forgive her . . .

‘‘Bye,’’ says Mary, and she strides, in Julia’s wake, out the door.

But why Mary Krull, of all people? Why should a straight girl like Julia make herself an acolyte? Is she still this anxious for a father?

Mary lingers a moment behind Julia, allowing herself a view of Julia’s broad, graceful back, the twin moons of her ass. Mary is almost overwhelmed by desire and by something else, a subtler and more exquisitely painful nerve that branches through her desire. Julia inspires in her an erotic patriotism, as if Julia were the distant country in which Mary was born and from which she has been expelled.