William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (20 page)

She wished she could tell Carey how much her garden meant to her. Whenever the dreadful depression came back, she would fly toward her garden as one dying of thirst runs toward water. She’d pluck and weed and pick, and as she knelt on the cool ground she felt, she said, absolutely rooted to something firm and substantial, no longer a part of the family. Now her back was to Peyton. Presently she heard Milton’s footsteps on the terrace, then heard him as he sat down heavily next to Peyton. She heard the clink of ice, too, which meant, of course, that he was drinking.

He started to say something to her—“Helen dear,” he began—but he said nothing else and she didn’t answer. He talked to Peyton, they talked together—trivial, harmless things, father and daughter—it didn’t matter what they said. For five or ten minutes she knelt there. The sunlight was dying fast, and to make the most of this contentment she had to hurry, plunging her fingers into the soil, pulling up weeds which she laid on a paper beside her, leaning forward from time to time to smell the blooms.

Ella Swan came out on the kitchen porch with her hat on. “Well, good night all,” she said in her shy way; Peyton and Milton told her good night and Helen turned and called good-by to her. “Good night, Ella,” she said. “Remember I’d like you early tomorrow morning.” She watched her standing on the porch, partly obscured by the willows, old and bent and stooped-over, dressed fantastically in one of the cast-off gowns Helen had worn in the twenties, looking like a wrinkled ape someone had costumed for a side show in silk and tassels and clinging beads. She raised her hand to her eyes, squinting at Helen, although the sun was behind them.

“Mr. Loftis has to leave early to take Peyton up to school,” Helen said then. She spoke in a bland yet not unfriendly tone—with what she hoped was just the right inflection—so that although her accent was impersonal it was also
excluding
in effect, making plain to Milton that somehow she had been insulted. The “Mr. Loftis” had done that, she hoped. And already, she told Carey, she knew that by those unfortunate words she had committed herself—knew that she wouldn’t be going with Peyton to Sweet Briar.

“Because of her insult?” Carey said.

“I guess,” Helen said.

“It didn’t sound like much of an insult,” he replied. “What Peyton said.”

“Let me go on.”

So Ella said, “Yes, ma’am,” and hobbled down the gravel walk,
crunch crunch crunch
beneath the trees, and was gone. Helen continued her weeding; Peyton and Milton said nothing to her: she could feel their silence at her back, feel them even eying each other significantly, and because of this the same old bitterness came back.

I will not yield to this,
she said to herself.
I will not yield to this
…

And struck through the earth with her trowel. She looked up, thinking
I will not yield to this despair;
saw waves, sky, clouds high above Port Warwick, where twilight hung like umber, or the most faultless rusty shade of gold. Her mind spanned forth, encompassing some small vision of the future. It was silly, and so easy: to think of a moment when time has run down like an old woman’s heart, and the house on a sunny Sunday afternoon is full of grandchildren and, venerated, you rise to face the love of those who call you by name, being able to say then
accomplished, accomplished.
So that’s what she thought. They made no noise now, but it didn’t matter. She looked up past the beach, the bay, thinking: I will not yield. God willing, this sun will shine on me in the peace of my last days when Milton and I love each other once more, and I’ll be old but happy then because Peyton loves me too; I’ll have seen this through. …

But there it was. She looked down then, even smiling some, she recollected, prepared to get up at the sacrifice of pride and go sit and talk with Milton and Peyton; she looked down where her trowel had sliced through the earth and saw that it had cut a pomegranate root right in two. You could see it, she said, the buried ends exposed and green and moist, brutally severed.

“Carey,” she said, “I wonder what these moments are that come to fetch us off into desperation. The pomegranate root. You see, I’d been on my knees trying not to yield, seeking God’s help.
Teach me to love,
I’d been saying. I remember it all. I thought I could get up from my garden and decently, patiently, face those people who’ve harmed me the most. I’d show love and kindness. But it wasn’t just that root, bleeding and ugly as it was; it was something else behind me. Peyton’s voice.
So
undisciplined,
so
crude. Saying something like, ‘Bunny, quit pinching me!’ And the way he went on, ‘Why, baby, I’m shocked!’ and hers again: ‘You’re
mean,’
things like that, and the sniggering and giggling back and forth.”

It was all these, she went on, but not alone: this other voice which she loved more than any on earth, floating through the dusk to touch her like hands: a voice, Maudie’s.

At the window. She had wakened Maudie when she’d called to Ella.

Helen turned. Peyton said, “I’ll get her, Mother,” and was up and across off the grass before she could rise or even move. Then she struggled to her feet, her mouth open: “Wait, no!” she began. “As God is my witness——” but only watched those smooth young wanton legs, limp-kneed, moving across the lawn and into the house, Milton sitting spraddle-legged in his chair, glass in hand, turning lazily to see Peyton disappear beyond the door, his red neck swelling, enlarging as Helen approached on the run, digging in with her heels past the lawn chair.

“For Christ’s sake, Helen! What’s the matter?” His hands on her shoulders, holding her.

“Let me go! She wants me. I won’t have Peyton——”

“What’s the matter with you? Get hold of yourself!” Shaking her now, his face red and frightened, one hand clamped on her shoulder, the other behind her neck, wet and cold where he had held the glass.

And she was shouting, “Let go of me! I’m going up there. It’s my baby. I’ll not have Peyton——”

But suddenly she was better, calmer—realized this craziness. The anger fell away: he was pressing her down in a chair, saying, “Helen, Helen, for Christ’s sake.” And then, more gently, saying: “Poor baby, you’re all tired out, that’s all. Take it easy. Take it
easy,
for Christ’s sake. Maudie’s all right. Peyton’ll take care of her.”

She sat there, not looking at him while he bent over her.

“You’ve got dirt on your forehead,” he said, “right there.” Touching her brow with his finger. She said nothing; however, she recollected, she supposed that at this moment she was thinking in an odd repetitive way: Yes, she’ll take care of her; Maudie’s all right. Not with relief or comfort, as she should have, because although she knew Peyton would take care of her, she still wanted to be up there and she couldn’t get this wild false notion out of her mind: usurping my place, that’s what; it’s not enough that she play with Milton but now she goes to Maudie too. False, she knew, but she wanted to get up then and push Milton out of the way. She wasn’t frantic about this; she wanted just to get up calmly and walk upstairs to Maudie. But she was afraid of revealing herself; the guilt was returning. She feared a new, ugly crisis with Milton: they had had too many arguments, too many.

Now he was gentle with her: “Let me brush it off, honey,” pulling out his handkerchief and wiping her brow. She let him, sat there fidgeting, breathing in uneasy gasps. “There, it’s all off,” he said finally. “Now relax, baby.” How could he be that way, so tender, pretending that nothing had happened between them? She wanted to get up then, started to, but thought better of it: I won’t let him see; he’s seen too much already. She sat back, avoiding his eyes. Night was coming, and wind: the willows were tossing up and down. She heard Maudie’s voice and Peyton’s above her, then his, very gentle: “Well now, Helen, why don’t you take it easy tonight? Just until she goes. Then she’ll be gone.”

That awareness. He knew. And to think that all along she should not have considered it: he knew. Part of a dream flitted across her mind: the gesticulating silhouette of a crazy female, no more than a shadow, which always came just before she went to sleep. Then she thought: how could he believe that Peyton hates me when—
I’ve been a good mother, I’ve done what’s right.

“There wasn’t any reason for him to believe that, Carey, was there?” she said. Carey noticed she had almost ripped her handkerchief to shreds.

“There wasn’t any reason for him to believe that Peyton hated me. Even I—and I’ve been close to her—even I couldn’t think something like that. Wasn’t what he said cruel, Carey? Wasn’t it?”

“You mean,” Carey answered, “that what he implied was that
you
hated Peyton. Isn’t that what you mean?”

“I—I. No. I——”

“Take it easy, Helen. Go on.” Carey’s sinuses began to hurt. He blew his nose.

“Well, ‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

“And Milton said then—and he wasn’t bitter—he said, ‘Well, you’re just tired, I guess.’ ”

But it occurred to her again what Milton had said.
Then she’ll be gone.
What a rotten, rotten thing to say.

“Poor baby,” Milton said then, squatting down beside her, “we have a rough time sometimes, don’t we?”

She told Carey how she got up and turned away from him. “How can you say such a horrible thing? ‘Then she’ll be gone.’ Just because all this packing and shopping’s tired me out do you think I
enjoy
seeing my child leave from home? Do you think I like it? Do you?” She couldn’t help saying that.

He put his hands on her shoulders again. “No——”

“Let me alone!” she cried. And she remembered that it was then, more than at any other time during the evening, that she wanted to say something about Mrs. X, the mistress, the snake, the despised woman of the shadows and dreams. “Let me alone, Milton!”

Neither of them said any more then, but both of them, she thought, felt that something was about to happen. It hung in the air, vast and extraordinary—a thin twilight humming like mosquitoes suspended above a pond, a noise indistinct, querulous yet violent. It approached, revealed itself: an airplane with silver wings, immensely fast, dipping overhead with a wild swoop toward the bay. The noise grew, night fell with a crash, and a gathering wind sent the willows tossing like a jungle of buggy whips. “Helen——” Milton called, but drowning out his words another plane appeared and slanted through the dark behind the trees, full of noise and flame and danger, and was gone behind the first.

She thought, Something’s happened to Maudie.

“Helen!” Milton cried. “The fools!” And raised his fist to the sky. “You goddam crazy bastards!” His glass fell soundlessly to the lawn and the ice cubes which she stepped on, as she ran, glowed like diamonds in the grass. A light went on in the house. Maudie lay sprawled at the foot of the stairs, giggling.

“It doesn’t hurt, Mama,” she said. “Listen to the planes!”

Helen knelt beside her, stiff with fright.

“I let her slip and fall,” Peyton said. “I’m sorry. It was dark. I didn’t mean to.”

“Mama, Peyton didn’t mean to. Listen to the planes!”

She lifted Maudie up. Milton dashed in, and she heard his voice behind her: “Oh, good, thank the Lord! I thought something had happened.”

She told Carey how another plane had joined that procession across the sky, the house rocking beneath this furious noise as if shearing buzzsaws had been brought earthward on the wings of some perilous bird. Then swiftly the noise diminished, the planes were gone, leaving only far out across the bay a receding and innocent billow of sound, almost musical, a tremulous twilight humming which faded, vanished, returned once, quavering, and became silent altogether. She looked up from where she knelt by Maudie. There was a bruise on Maudie’s leg—a little place, but it appeared to her huge and awful. As in a dream, everything she had imagined had come true. A result, it seemed, of nothing more than some crazy mischief. She looked past Peyton—the shorts, the slim, tanned legs, her hips again. All these lost. Hers. She was going away. But something prevented her from saying the right words.

So, she told Carey, she yielded—to her pride, her hurt, her own abominable selfishness. She got up and put her arm around Maudie and said to Milton, quite without emotion: “Something
has
happened, Milton. Didn’t I tell you? Peyton let her fall. I’ll have to stay here.” And she turned and went upstairs without a word more, to Peyton or anyone.

After Helen had finished that part of her story, Carey remembered, he had been inclined at first to say: so what? He hadn’t wanted to make all these snap judgments, but his initial pity for her had been tempered by a strong irritation: here was a woman who had not been the dupe of life, but had been too selfish, too unwilling to make the usual compromises, to be happy. And although he didn’t know her well, he would like to venture that she was also a complete prig. No wonder life had seemed a trap. All she had needed to do at certain times was to have a little charity, and at least measure the results. And he had told her so, trying to be objective, if, as he was later afraid, rather sententious. When she had paused, obviously miserable and overwrought, he had looked away from her and made doodles on his blotter, saying: “Was Maudie hurt bad?”

“No. At least, I really don’t think so.”

Then he had thought
ah, well
and had gone on to say weakly, “Well, like the adage, Helen: ‘As the smallest leavening maketh bread firm, small kindness maketh love grow.’ ” Actually it was an epigram he had made up just that moment and a poor one; because he was never sure of the worth of his judgments he often quoted imaginary sources to lend an air of authority—a low habit but relatively harmless. And Helen had said then, after a long dead silence full of torment and indecision: “Well, I guess that’s right. But I guess you’re like all the rest.”

“How do you mean that, Helen?” he had said gently.

“No. No, then. Not like all the rest. You’re the first I’ve talked to.”

“Well——”

“I sound terrible, don’t I?”