William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (41 page)

After that, Carey felt that he was through trying to figure her out. He had thought that Maudie’s death would prostrate her, kill her. It almost had, he imagined, in the first few days, but he hadn’t reckoned on the therapeutic powers of Loftis’ conversion. His heart rejoiced at this, yet it was still faintly disappointing—that a death should accomplish overnight what all his talk about faith had failed to do in years.

Peyton’s wedding took place on a Saturday afternoon in October of the same year. It was a brilliant, mild day, filled with the bluster of wind and leaves, and bringing from the water that same acute, clean, salty air which seaside resorts advertise as “salubrious.” The wedding was to be at home (Carey had had, a week before, a genial chat about it over the phone with Loftis, who had said that everything was “fine, fine” now, Helen sends her regards, we’re both looking forward to seeing Peyton, and so on) and as he drove over that afternoon with Adrienne, it occurred to him, not very originally, that no ceremony in the Christian culture is more exciting, or grand, or awe-inspiring, than a wedding.

“It is the symbolic affirmation of a moral order in the world,” he said out loud.

“Don’t be so pompous,” said Adrienne mildly. That shut him up. They drove on a way in silence.

Finally he said, “It’s still awfully hard to figure out.”

“What?”

“This understanding they’ve come to.”

“Who?”

“The Loftises. Of course.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I mean—I mean. Oh, so many things. I have a great deal of regard for Helen Loftis, but I can’t understand why, considering Milton for what he is, he would stay with her. I wouldn’t, I know. As a husband.”

“Maybe,” Adrienne murmured coolly, “it’s because she’s got the dough.”

“That’s not funny,” he said.

“Why not?”

“As a poor man’s wife you should know that money isn’t the tie that binds.”

“Sometimes it is,” she said.

“Don’t be cynical,” he replied, “no man’s that dependent. I mean—well, even if you are dependent, say financially, you still don’t torture yourself crazy. Not for money.”

“Maybe it’s not torture,” she said, “maybe he loves her. Or it.”

“It. What do you mean, ‘it’?” he asked, rather sharply.

“Maybe he enjoys being emasculated. Finally.”

“Oh, Adrienne,” he snorted, “honestly. You sound like you’ve been rereading one of those psychiatrists who simplify everything for the layman.”

“No, dear. I’m just putting two and two together. After all, it doesn’t have to be it. It could be love, you know. That’s what we Christians are supposed to call——”

“Adrienne,” he put in, “I
deplore
your flippancy in matters like this. I won’t——”

She patted him on the hand. “All right, sweetheart,” she said, smiling, “I was only fooling.”

His sinuses hurt, and he felt that, for his own part, the wedding wasn’t getting off to much of a start, but to keep things jolly he returned her hand pat and said, “I just guess it’s what I get for marrying a Bryn Mawr girl, who
is
too much of this world.” It was an old joke they had, and each of them made a mechanical, appreciative chuckle, and Carey, because he had quelled what might have developed into a nasty, day-long tension between them, felt as physically relieved as if he had taken off a wet pair of shoes. They talked no more of Loftis or Helen, but before they reached the house they had put Dolly to rout, agreeing that it was tough about her, but that it was her own fault really. Who else was to blame if she had to live like a Carmelite nun, practically a recluse, looking like a wraith with at least twenty pounds shed in her mourning for Loftis? Didn’t that show you that the wages of sin is not death, but isolation? They wondered about Peyton, too, for neither of them had known her after she had grown up. And, in the light of the rumors which had floated about town concerning her reasons for leaving school, and her questionable conduct later in New York City, they agreed that it was a fine thing that she should finally be married here at home, where her roots were. Although Carey had to caution Adrienne about the faintly arch tone she used when she mentioned the husband-to-be—Harry Whatever-his-name-is—just because he was a Jew, “and a painter to boot.”

“Why do you suppose they came back here?” Adrienne said. “After all this business between her and Helen.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know, dear,” and was about to mention the touching, mysterious bonds that connect a father and daughter—for he had little girls himself—but he thought better of it and drove on. Life was strange.

The fact of the matter was that Loftis
had
been responsible for bringing Peyton home for the wedding, and when he awoke that day, with the early sunlight making a mellow, diagonal streak across the blankets and the frosty air, with its hint of distant blazing leaves, fanning his cheeks through the window crack, he felt happier than he had in years, and youthful and oddly hungry, with a deep, visceral, drowsy hunger such as he had not experienced since those days long ago at boarding school when, waking on Sunday mornings to the sound of a lazy bell, he had yawned and stretched, watched the myriad, swarming October light, stained with smoke and pollen, and yawned and stretched some more, inhaling the odor of fresh pancakes from the kitchen downstairs, and felt an inexpressible and drowsy and luxuriant hunger—for precisely what he couldn’t tell, perhaps the pancakes, perhaps a woman to crawl into bed beside him, most likely both.

Now he yawned, sat up in bed in order to belch more easily and, regarding himself in the window pane, found to his delight that he was still good-looking. Helen, he reflected, had said the same thing just last night during the recess of a Community Concert they had gone to, and it gave him pride to be able to confirm her judgment, by clenching his jaws and making his eyes narrow, so that the resemblance in the window pane was not too unlike Lord Mountbatten. A flaw in the glass, however, transformed him suddenly into a wasted, aging satyr, and he climbed out of bed, a trifle ashamed of his vanity. There was an air of readiness, of preparation in the house, and the sound of movement downstairs. Although it was only nine, there already stood on the drive below, underneath the sycamores, a caterer’s truck, coy in pink painted doves and bridesmaids. This waking joy of Loftis’ was internal and delightful and sensuous, the more intense because during the past few months it had derived from a sense of postponed disaster, like a mountain climber who has had fearful dreams of an avalanche, only to get up in the morning and emerge safely from his tent and breathe the vivacious alpine air. His joy was unrestricted and a bit overwhelming, and in a turmoil of good will he threw up the window and shouted down at Edward, who stole out from behind the caterer’s truck in his colonel’s uniform, drinking what looked like beer. “Hallo!”

Edward squinted upward, raised his glass. “Hallo, old man! Time to get out of the sack!”

“I am out. Isn’t it cold out there for drinking beer? I thought you were going to Williamsburg.”

“I’m supervising. Helen went up by herself. She said I’d do better here, helping out. Ha!” He drank, leaving a lacework of foam on his lip. “Ha! How much can a battle-scarred veteran help at a wedding? Woman’s stuff.” Edward had survived Guadalcanal, with wounds in the neck and what he insisted on calling his “tum-tum,” and he took few pains to conceal the fact. He had arrived from Camp Lee late last night. Loftis refused to be diverted.

“When did she leave?”

“About an hour ago. She’s going to pick up Peyton and her boy at that girl’s house where they’re staying and have breakfast before they come back. Helen called them on the phone. Come on down, old man, and have a short one. We’ll start off this party and——”

Loftis smiled indulgently. “No, thanks, old man, I’m taking it easy.” And pulled the window down, for the chill of the morning had begun to seep into his pajamas. The mention of something to drink sent a tentative cloud of gloom through his mind, for among his resolutions the one concerning moderation was number one. But the feeling went away; Peyton was coming, that was enough, and to the cadences of his own artless tenor he scrubbed himself in the bathtub, singing a Cole Porter song and thinking of life’s rich promise, of discipline and fulfillment. He splashed childishly, making air bubbles beneath the washcloth, and a wreath of soapsuds among the hairs on his belly. And the remarkable thing, he thought—the remarkable thing was that Helen was not only wife, mother,
hausfrau
again, had not only joined with him to entice Peyton back into the fold again, but had actually volunteered to make the first welcoming gesture. Last night, back from the concert, Helen had been nervous and distracted; Loftis had had to soothe her.

“Do you think she’ll be angry or bitter, Milton? What do you think she’ll say? Should I … make the first motion? You know—kiss her? Tell me, Milton. Oh, I’m so worried. … Tell me, dear, if she’s not still mad why did she stay up in Williamsburg instead of coming right home? Why did——”

He took her gently by the shoulders and went through it all over again: certainly she won’t be angry. Hadn’t her letters to both of them proved that? Hadn’t she, Helen, herself been convinced of that months ago—after all the correspondence between them, at first so standoffish and halting, had finally become tender, tacitly forgiving, just as their letters had been in the old days? Yes, certainly, letters were no final proof, but weren’t they sign enough, weren’t they worth the chance? Don’t be silly, Helen.

So eventually she had become calm and had agreed. In fact, he had succeeded so well in convincing her of Peyton’s good intentions that she made a perfectly amazing suggestion. Loftis wouldn’t go. She would drive with Edward to Williamsburg to fetch Peyton and Harry, thus proving to the girl that she wished only to greet her as a mother—solitary, loving, without Loftis, who might only dissipate by his presence the effect she wanted to give: of a woman, alone in the October sunshine, who is both contrite and forgiving and who, by her solitariness, is a symbol of humility and penitence and warm maternal love. It seemed to Loftis vaguely theatrical, but he knew that Helen was not beyond theatrics at times, and he said, “O.K., Helen, anything you think best.” As for the reason why Peyton and Harry had spent the night in Williamsburg (at the house of an old Sweet Briar friend), Loftis had his own ideas—maybe Peyton really was a little afraid of home still, and was trying to make her home-coming an easy, gradual thing—but he didn’t let on to Helen.

Helen had gone to bed then. It was still early in the evening. He had been alone, and although he had been happy because Peyton was finally coming home, he hadn’t, for some obscure reason, been able to define this happiness quite properly. He went through the rooms straightening pictures, flipped a bug out of one of the water-filled vases which stood around the house ready to receive the nuptial flowers. He wandered into the kitchen where Ella and La Ruth, together with La Ruth’s son, Stonewall, were sitting around the table. Ella and La Ruth were making hors d’oeuvres, and Stonewall, who was four, was busy eating them. He was a skinny little boy with the pale, blanched undercolor of the white man who had fathered him, and his eyes were like chestnuts floating on twin pools of milk. When Loftis entered he turned these eyes toward him, in curiosity and in awe, and La Ruth gave him a rap across the fingers.

“Git yo’ messy hand outa dere!” she cried. “Nasty thing.”

“Well look at us,” Loftis said cheerily. “How are we doing?” Stonewall slid beneath the table.

“Us is just dandy, thank you,” said La Ruth prissily, looming large over a bowl of mashed olives, “just havin’ de time of our life out here in de kitchen fixin’ things up fo’ de weddin’. My my, here is cheese an’ green olives an’ black olives an’ florets of collyflower and Heinz’s pickle party asso’tment and roe herrin’——”

“I presume you mean caviar,” Loftis interrupted.

“No, indeed,” La Ruth went on, “dat ain’t what I presumes at all. Mama she tol’ me——”

“Hush up,” said Ella. She looked up at Loftis with a timid, snaggled grin. “Bet you a happy man, ain’t you? Bet you feel de risin’ in yo’ soul, don’t you?”

He agreed, nibbling on a piece of celery, that he was affected spiritually, and he went to the refrigerator for a beer when Ella, her face wrinkled with reproach, said, “Now, ain’t you ashamed?”

“Just one, Ella? The last one before I lose my baby. One won’t hurt, Ella.”

She gave grudging permission with a little nod of her head, bent scowling down toward a pan full of bread crumbs, and La Ruth giggled softly. “Come on out from dere, Stonewall,” she said. “He don’t bite.”

“Don’t tell Miss Helen,” he said, and walked to the back porch, with the beer bottle coldly perspiring beneath his hand. It would be his last, he thought, for a long while. It was very quiet on the water, and chilly, and the moon, hung like a pale lamp above the rim of the bay, seemed to shed only the coolest light over a crowd of fading, dusty stars. Drunken pilgrim, the earth reeled through a host of asteroids, and falling stars drained down the night like streaks of melted glass. In his veiled and perplexing happiness, Loftis could have wept a little, and for the state of tranquility which, years ago, he never would have believed he could attain.

Helen had been right. The simple touch of a hand redeems us, and who knows, when fingers clasp each other and press to the white, invisible bones, what chemistry then? There is a decency in us that prevails and this touch, perhaps, only reaffirms it. The promises he had made to Helen he had kept and she, though she had no promises to make, had burst forth under the light of his transformation like the flower from which the shadowing stone has been rolled away, which unfolds toward the sun tender leaves of gratitude. It hadn’t been easy for him, or for Helen. He had had to cure something in her, and because she was a reluctant patient, who had taken pains to nourish her suffering, his cure had been forcible, abrupt and highly emotional. Remembering the day in Charlottesville, he had become crazed with guilt, with the sight of the wreckage of their lives, and nothing was too violent for him, as long as he found some sort of equilibrium. Even his love for her, which was honest and deep, became subverted to this goal. He threw himself at her knees, in throes of Byronic remorse, wild-eyed, weeping, hair in his eyes, asking her to forgive him for everything, for Dolly, for not being a better lawyer, for his drinking—realizing, as the whisky fumes seeped up his nostrils and as she arose and moved silently away, the pity of it all: that, in order to convince her, he must cease indulging in the very thing which allowed him to be so grandly humble and contrite. The house was empty. Maudie was gone, and Peyton, too. Helen stayed in her room and slept, lulled by nembutal; she had Ella bring her meals on a tray, saw no one, read all the old
Geographics
and
Lifes.
She went to church no more.