This New and Poisonous Air (18 page)

As for when exactly he’d decided on what to say, he wasn’t sure, but knew it had occurred to him around the same time as Minarette’s speech about life being theater. Bill understood that one way to ensure a man did not continue to devote his life to the ministry was to draw back the curtain and show him that there was, in fact, no such thing as a God. Or even if there was, He was a small and distant body, and there were more fulfilling idols here on Earth. Bill had decided to play out a scene. He wanted to take Cal into the orchard and lift an apple from a branch. He imagined the sheep mingling around them, ringing their bells as Catholic altar boys did when a host was raised. Transubstantiation—Bill had learned the word from Minarette who’d been raised Catholic because her father appreciated the grandeur of High Mass. If bread could become a body, then the apple might become a whole world. He and Cal could play out a final story together—a new creation in which there was no Fall. Instead, they would be enfolded in the garden. They could remain there, isolated. If there was no city that offered true escape, then they would invent a place as they had when they were boys. Bill understood, of course, that they were no longer children and games of the imagination could only go so far, yet he thought such a diversion might be enough to catch Cal’s attention, to remind him what they had once been.

When working out exactly what to say, he’d even gone as far as asking Minarette for help, approaching her while she was busy with one of her cross-stitches which, unlike his mother’s country patterns, revealed the image of some ancient temple covered in statuary. “Min,” he said, dragging the tip of his boot along the seam of the floorboard, “if you were—well—if you were lacking in the adoration that you currently garner, how might you attempt to draw such attention?”

She glanced at him. “Are you trying to seduce the horses again, Bill, because that isn’t going to work.”

“I’m just interested. I mean, you seem to have some sort of power. Even those who are obstinate eventually fall into step.”

“I practice witchcraft,” she said, poking her needle through the fabric.

“Be serious, Min.”

She sighed, looking at him with dark eyes. “If you want someone to care for you, Bill, you must be straightforward. Simply tell that person what you require. Be bold to the point of belligerence. You’d be surprised what people are willing to give if you simply ask for it.”

“A straightforward dialogue,” he said, beginning to walk away. Minarette called him back, voice softer than usual. “The question is, whose affections do you want to acquire, Bill?” When he turned, he saw she’d put her cross-stitch aside, and he found he could not answer. “Not mine,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was barely audible even in the silent parlor.

“No need for apologies,” she replied. “We’re beyond that. But asking for affection can be dangerous business. One of my father’s early plays was called
All the Birds of Africa
. A mess of a drama, though it did have something
to say. He didn’t know the first thing about the continent, of course, and made up most of the details, using poorly digested bits of anthropology. But the general plot concerned a group of missionaries making their way down the Congo, attempting conversions at every port. They told everyone they met that God was love and that He wanted nothing more than to receive their love in return. The missionaries traveled in a houseboat painted boldly with crosses, and they sang hymns to the crocodiles. Most of their failures at conversion were caused not by their own actions but by a series of absurd accidents and intrusions. My father contrived these events to make the missionaries look like fools because he enjoyed that sort of embarrassment. These men and women, who’d begun their adventure with pride in their hearts, fell deeper and deeper into the sort of despair and lust that my father often wrote about. In the end, the missionaries agreed to set fire to their boat and surrender themselves to the whims of the Congo, knowing they might die or be swept to a place where no one knew who they were. They decided to unmake themselves because life was not worth as much as they thought. More than that,
they
were not worth as much.”

“That’s a grim story,” Bill said. “I’d be surprised if anyone would want to see that.”

“People flocked to it,” Minarette replied. “They applauded loudly at the end when the actors took their bow in front of the ridiculous burning boat. There are people, Bill, who enjoy seeing things burn because that is the way they think the world should be.”

“I can’t say I understand that point of view.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you can’t.”

THE SUN HAD DIPPED toward the western field, and Bill paused for a moment at his work, allowing the McCormick to tear and cut the wheat already in its gut. He passed one hand across his brow and squinted at the road. Still there was no sign of Cal’s wagon, but the moon had risen, and it seemed for a moment to act as a kind of proxy, glowing and pale like his friend, suspended by some unseen force. He did not realize Minarette had come outside until she was standing directly in front of him, holding a tin cup of water. Bill took it from her and drank, and she spoke to him, but he could barely hear her words over the cacophony—something about dinner—his parents coming home—maybe something about how she was sorry how things had worked out. She touched his arm lightly then turned away before he could question her, ascending the porch steps with the hem of her dress gathered in one hand so it did not drag. When Bill turned back to the thresher, he saw the flywheel was turning more slowly than it should have been and the engine was whining, begging for its steam to be released. In a matter of moments, the boiler began to shake and hiss, and Bill knew he needed to adjust the throttle but found that he could barely move. His legs were heavy, as were his arms. The platform atop the engine seemed miles away.

The clatter and whine of the thresher and its engine were developing a kind of rhythm—a strange music. Bill thought of the invisible Book of the Holy Ghost, the way it sang a song that only Cal could hear, and he wondered if his old friend would be able to hear the thresher singing too. He realized that if he turned toward the road at that moment, he might be able to catch a glimpse of Cal himself standing there, arms crossed and grinning as if he were still a boy. Cal wasn’t coming from town. He’d been standing there all along, watching the work, watching
Bill’s definite and continued existence. Cal knew that the right kind of music made the invisible become visible. And now that Bill was finally ready to see—it was too late. The thresher’s song was nearly through.

THE ATTIC SHUTTER cast a ribwork of sunlight across the surface of the rug, illuminating the figures. The longer Aubrey studied the humped and trudging things, the more he thought they might be an attempt to represent some prehistoric ancestor of the modern pig, though the amateur work of the weaver made it difficult to tell. The animals were woolly-faced with no proper snout, and instead of hooves, they had what looked like singleknuckled fingers. Their eyes were milk-white and hard like the horny tusks that protruded from their jaws, and the rug maker had glued hair to the fraying wool of their underbellies—long, decadent strands of gray that seemed to drag along the ground as the pigs followed the corded road past cottages thatched with yellow wool. In the distance stood the ruin of a once fine farmhouse. Rot had effaced the second story, and only one of a broken gable remained. A shadow protruded from its window, likely the result of an awkward knot, though Aubrey thought it
also looked as if someone beneath was pressing a finger to the wool.

The world in the rug was not meant to reflect Aubrey’s own. Being the grandson of Bird Heidler, he was accustomed to this sort of exclusion. “Sisal and wool, horsehair and dye,” Bird had once told a darkened auditorium of graduate students, “these substances are brought together by the woman’s hand to become the architecture of her invisible self. Like the spider, she is enlarged by her creation. She is rug and hearth, house and landscape.” On the large screen behind Bird, an image of one of her more famous endeavors appeared—the piece Aubrey thought of as “Rug with Womb.” Students shifted in their seats for a better view. The rug, woven from fisherman’s rope that Bird had unbraided by hand, didn’t rest on a flat plain. Instead, a shapeless cone rose from the weft, creating a sort of mouth. As a child, Aubrey thought of this rug as a place to hide, a comfortable enclosure for dreaming, but from an adult perspective, the piece seemed like maybe it wanted to be fed.

The rug Aubrey found in the attic was nothing like one of Bird’s abstractions. Less refined, less intellectual—it was a
narrative
rug, but what was the story? Prehistoric pigs lay siege on an old house? He knelt in the dust, wondering if this might be one of Bird’s early attempts. A failure stowed away? The whole thing stank of mordant: an acrid smelling fixative that Aubrey recognized from Bird’s studio. She’d told him once that
mordant
meant “to bite”—aptly named, she’d said, because of the way the chemical fastened to woolen fibers. She’d snapped her teeth at him in good humor. Aubrey had dislodged the rug from a pile of broken boxes filled with vintage issues of
Life
magazine, all from the fifties and sixties when Bird’s star was on the rise. The covers showed pastel images of the Kennedys and photographs
of the unknown depths of outer space. Aubrey, in a T-shirt and jeans, had set out to make a catalogue of the attic’s artifacts that afternoon but never expected to discover something as important as a lost rug.

He was soon to become executor of Bird’s estate, his own mother lacking competence, and Bird herself growing sicker by the day. Unlike Bird’s artistic force, the estate would be under Aubrey’s control. He imagined interviews about his nearly symbiotic existence with his grandmother—questions concerning his understanding of her work, his notions of where she might have taken it had she not fallen ill. Some interviewer might even ask if Aubrey, too, was an artist. The answer would be a selfdeprecating no. Only an assistant. He’d studied art history at Northwestern for two years before Bird had pulled him back, saying she needed his help. “It’s just that things get so disorganized when you’re away, Aubrey,” she’d said. “I don’t feel like myself without you in the house.” And he’d sympathized. Bird needed him, so he returned without complaint and then took pains to convince himself that coming home had been the right choice, that the slippery seven years that followed had been productive for him. The estate was certainly worth the work, though what bothered him was never being quite sure
what
he’d given up. Camaraderie? He’d made only a handful of acquaintances at school. Education? Bird had been right. Her lessons were superior to any class. Autonomy? That was the issue with teeth. In coming home, had he somehow become a part of her? Had he been consumed?

Aubrey forced his thoughts back to the newly discovered rug. Every textile in the house had supposedly been inventoried by the representative from the Museum of Folk Art, Stanley First, who’d been chosen to curate Bird Heidler’s work. Mr. First had been enthusiastic, clucking
and gasping at each find. He’d disregarded Aubrey during his tour of the house, directing all pleasantry and analysis to Bird herself—once an angel of the Arts and Crafts movement, now more an angel of confusion, vacant in her parlor bed, unable to even tie the laces of her peasant boots.

Aubrey didn’t feel slighted. He could, after all, understand First’s fascination. Even as a remnant, Bird still engaged. Her long fingers appeared dexterous and strong, though they were no longer able to trip across the warp threads on her loom. Even her eyes, settled deep in their sockets, remained oddly sharp, as if still envisioning patterns. Stanley First wore a ring of braided silver which Bird followed with interest. “My dear Mrs. Heidler—the way you break the surface here is remarkable. What did you use? Are these
broom
bristles?”

Bird rarely answered questions, was usually
unable
to answer, though the look on her face made Aubrey wonder if her silence, in this case, was less a symptom of her illness and more a sign of succinct disrespect. She didn’t like people who made a living from talking. “If you know anything about art,” Bird had told him once, “you know it isn’t about talk—it’s about the silences.”

 

During the initial appointments after her diagnosis, Bird’s doctor had talked at length about plaques and tangles, abnormalities in her brain that would build and eventually lead to loss of memory and self. Aubrey sat with his grandmother, not holding her hand because she wouldn’t allow it. Once her conscious memory was gone, the subconscious would rise and spread. Bird would experience a return of long-forgotten instances and desires, but eventually even those memories would be taken by the plaques and tangles. Aubrey couldn’t help but think those words, “plaques and tangles” sounded like rugmaking
terms and imagined Bird’s insides looking more like one of her rugs, snarled to abstraction, hung with strange ornaments and ready to burst.