A World Elsewhere (31 page)

Van patted the trunk that lay on the floor in front of him. “Every night I opened the trunk and checked the shirts for missing buttons. I took the trunk with me to Princeton and checked the shirts every night in my room, Landish, while you were sleeping.”

“Mr. Vanderluyden, if you know there’s no buttons missing, why do you count them?” Deacon asked.

“The trunk has been with me since she died. I never lock it because I know that every night I will search the same shirts for what I know I will never find. I can’t help it.

“Nurse should have found the button. She checked the crib whenever she put Vivvie down for the night. Or at least she was supposed to check it. Nurse should have heard her. She was sleeping in the same room. How could she not have heard her? I would have. Everything in that house was managed to perfection. The whole thing is so unbearably absurd. The child of the richest man in the world. The button from a shirt.

“And as for Father and my older brothers—all four of them said they hadn’t seen her, hadn’t been in the nursery, for weeks before she died. The official cause of death, and the one that those of our set pretended to accept, was given as ‘sudden fever.’ But I was the one struck down by her death as if by the worst sort of illness. I couldn’t eat or sleep, didn’t leave my bed for months. There was some sort of service for Vivvie that I doubt my father would have let me attend even had I been able to. I had been tutored, not rigorously,
in religion. I had never given God much thought. Now I gave him none. I could put no credence in a God who merely looked on while the most innocent and blameless of his children choked to death while lying alone in the darkness.

“The housekeeper came to my defence when Nurse said that it was my button that she choked on. She said that shirt buttons were constantly being lost and replaced. She said that if any of us lost a button, it might have been replaced before we noticed it was missing. But you know me, Landish. I was as fastidious about my clothes back then as I was at Princeton. If a button was missing, I’m sure I would have noticed. I’m sure of it. Don’t you think I would have?”

“I’m sure you would have.” Landish placed his hand on Van’s shoulder, where he crouched before the fire and the trunk. “You mustn’t blame yourself. I only wish you had told me this at Princeton.”

“But that’s who I was, you see. It’s who I was the day we met, the day I sat beside you on the bench. The Vanderluyden who, by an unmentionable accident, caused the death of his sister on whom he had doted to the point of becoming a family embarrassment. Everyone knew. Yet no one said a word to you? I was sure that someday you’d confront me with the truth. I dreaded it. But I couldn’t bear to tell you.”

“No one said a word. The measure of their fear of your family, I suspect. They might call us sodomites but even our worst enemies dared not cross that line.”

“I think of Vivvie many times every day. I still speculate about the true source of the button. Nurse might have been mending someone’s shirt. Father or one of my brothers might have paid Vivvie a rare visit. I wonder if they checked
their
shirts as I checked mine, still wonder if one of my brothers is harbouring a dreadful secret.

“I remember Vivvie as I saw her last, standing and holding the rails of her crib, laughing as I poked her belly with my finger.”

Van turned and looked at Deacon, who was staring at him wide eyed, his eyes welling up with tears.

“Padgy Porgie, pudding and pie/Killed the girl who made him cry/When the Iron baron had his say/Padgy Porgie went away.”

“Even if it
was
a button from your shirt—” Landish began, but stopped when Van stood.

“I have many times tried to convince myself to burn those shirts in this fire, burn them one by one as you burn the pages of your book, and burn the trunk as well. Four hundred and forty-four buttons. Some nights I have counted them a hundred times over. I have knelt here with a shirt in my hand, bunched it up and reared back to throw it, only to lose my nerve and replace it in the trunk.”

“Shall we help you burn them, Mr. Vanderluyden?” Deacon’s small face was whiter than ever.

“Come here, Deacon,” Landish said, but Deacon stayed put, his eyes shining with tears in the firelight and glued on the man in front of him.

“I’m going to do it tonight,” Van said. “But not now while the two of you are watching. Go back to The Blokes.”

“Make sure you burn them,” Deacon said. “Don’t listen to the chimney witch.”

Van reached into the inside pocket of his housecoat and brought forth something wrapped in white paper that Deacon thought at first was a gift for him or Landish.

“I also plan to rid myself of this.”

“What is it?” Landish said.

“It’s the button. It popped out of Vivvie’s throat when Nurse clapped her on the back. It was too late by then. Nurse gave the button to my father. He gave it to me in a little box tied with ribbon on my sixteenth birthday. I had no idea what it was. I opened it at dinner in front of everyone. My mother left the table, but my father and my brothers just sat there and stared at me. Inside the cloth covering, the button is made of metal that might not burn in the fireplace. I would probably search for it among the ashes. So I plan to throw it into the deepest part of Lake Loom.”

“Can I see it?” Deacon said.

“No,” Landish said, standing up and, taking Deacon by the hand, all but dragging him from the chair. “It’s time to leave Mr. Vanderluyden alone.”

“Landish is right,” Van said, and turned back to the velvet-covered trunk.

At The Blokes, they sat on Landish’s bed, Landish pressing Deacon, who was still crying, to his chest.

“Why does he count the buttons when he already knows how many there are?”

“Because he can’t help it.”

“He should put a lock on the trunk. Then he’d know for sure that none were missing.”

“He knows. He’d unlock the trunk and count the buttons.”

“Why?”

“I told you. He can’t help it.”

“Vivvie’s mother must have been sad. And her father.”

“I’m sure they were.”

“And the nurse. Do you think she dropped the button?”

“It was an accident, whatever happened. It was no one’s fault.”

“He counts the buttons.”

“He can’t help it, he said.”

“He thinks the button might have been his. Because of what the nurse said.”

“Maybe. A small, cloth-covered button the same colour as a bed-sheet. I suppose she might have missed it. It might already have been in Vivvie’s mouth when the nurse put her down for the night.”

“Where is Vivvie buried?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I think New York. Near her parents probably.”

“Mr. Vanderluyden doesn’t like New York.”

“I don’t blame him. Not now.”

“Because of Vivvie?”

“She puts some things in a different light.”

“Mr. Vanderluyden.”

“Maybe.”

“He made Vivvie sound nice.
He
sounded nice when he talked about her. Most of the time. He sounded happy.”

“Almost happy.”

“He remembers her. She was in the Murk, but he wasn’t. Maybe, in the Tomb of Time, she remembers
him.”

“Maybe she does.”

Landish thought about Van alone in his room at night, pulling out from beneath his bed the trunk that was filled with shirts, counting their buttons over and over again. He thought of how he must have felt when his young wife told him she was pregnant. It would have been painful enough to hear even if he’d never had a sister. But he must have thought instantly of Vivvie, hearing of this child that wasn’t his.

He felt sick with guilt just thinking of how it would have been had he found Deacon one morning as the nurse had found Vivvie. He couldn’t imagine bearing such a burden for the balance of his life. And though he knew that such suffering was not justification for making others suffer, he wasn’t sure that he could have resisted revenging himself on the blameless just as Van had done when he betrayed him.

He doubted that Van had burned or would ever burn the shirts, or throw the button in Lake Loom. But he wondered why he had told him the truth about Vivvie, after all this time.

Deacon counted the buttons on his shirt, rolling them between his fingers. He couldn’t imagine ever having been so small that he could choke on a button. She had to hold the bars of her crib to keep from falling down. Deacon wasn’t even in the Murk when his father died. He was still in the Womb of Time. He wasn’t as old as Vivvie when his mother died.

He had been like her when he was still at Cluding Deacon. Not knowing one word. Trying to crawl. He couldn’t remember it. She would be older than him now. Older than Goddie. Grown up. Maybe she would have looked a bit like Mr. Vanderluyden. She might have lived at Vanderland with him. Vanderland would be different. Mr. Vanderluyden might not be so unhappy. Deacon and Landish might still be in Newfoundland, in some place nicer than the attic. Goddie’s aunt, sort of. Aunt Vivvie. He wondered if Goddie knew about her. He didn’t think so. Choking on a button was something she would talk about. But it was all Just Mist. It wasn’t real. Vivvie went to the place from which no one knows the way back home. Even babies had to go there by themselves. He knew that if he fell asleep he would dream about the button and the chimney witch, so he stayed awake all night.

Landish brought the sketch of Gen of Eve to the Academy, ostensibly to show as an example of a self-portrait for Goddie’s drawing class, but really so that Esse could see it.

Gertrude was leading Goddie from the Academy just as Landish entered.

“What do you have there?” she said.

“A self-portrait by my mother. A pencil sketch she drew many years ago.”

“I want to see it,” Goddie said.

“There’s no time,” Gertrude said, leading Goddie away, who looked
back longingly over her shoulder at Landish and the sketch beneath his arm.

“Gen of Eve and Landish. So she was expecting when she drew this,” Esse said. “Expecting you. How lovely. And clever. A wonderful keepsake, Landish. I can’t imagine a sweeter one.”

“I remember her drawing other sketches, staring at the part she was working on through a magnifying glass. A magnifying glass in one hand, a pencil in the other. She would squint, frown, sigh. She said her work was hideous.”

“Then I’ll bet it’s best admired through a magnifying glass.” Esse took one from the drawer of her table and began to pore over the sketch. “Oh, it’s marvellous, Landish,” she said. “Every detail is just right. She must have spent weeks, months at it.”

The sight of Esse smiling as she looked at Gen of Eve brought to his eyes a sudden rush of tears.

The Rume was almost dark.

Mr. Henley had come to fetch him, saying that Mr. Vanderluyden wanted to see him to show him something special. They had walked together through the chandelier-lit house with its deep shadows, but now he was alone. There was a note pinned to Mr. Vanderluyden’s red chair: “Deacon, I’ve gone upstairs in the elevator. I’ll just be a minute.”

The lamps were not lit in here, not even the two blue ones with the white globes on top that Landish said had cost a fortune. There was a golden tree of candles beside the iron staircase, but none of the candles were lit. Neither were the candles on the catwalk overhead, so Deacon couldn’t even see the books. There was an old globe as high as Deacon on one side of the fireplace. He spun it and stopped it when it came to Newfoundland. A relief globe, it was called. The land was raised. You could feel the mountains with your fingers. The fire was so low you couldn’t smell the smoke.

The trunk that looked like a long narrow coffin lay in front of the fire. He saw now that the red velvet–covered top was divided into squares. He wrote his name in the velvet with his finger, then moved his finger back the other way and wiped it out. The trunk was uneven, a bit higher at one end than the other so it wobbled when Deacon sat on it. He got up, knelt on it and pressed down with both hands. It was still uneven, and he wondered if Mr. Vanderluyden would think that he had broken it.

He heard a sound on the catwalk and looked up to see him standing at the top of the circular stairs, leaning his arms on the little balcony from which you could oversee the Rume without being seen—or give a speech if you wanted to.

“Do you want to see inside the trunk? All you have to do is raise the lid. I’ll show you.” He walked down the narrow, winding stairs, one hand on the rail, the other in the pocket of what looked like a bathrobe, though it wasn’t white but red. “Satin” was the word for cloth that shone like that.

“Come kneel by the trunk,” Mr. Vanderluyden said. They knelt side by side, before the trunk, before the fire. Mr. Vanderluyden raised the red velvet lid. “There are hinges on the other side. It doesn’t have a lock. It’s meant for storing clothes. I could stretch out full length inside it with my arms above my head. If I stood it on one end, I could step inside and close the door behind me.”

“What’s in it?” Deacon said. The lid was blocking what little light came from the fireplace.

“Shirts,” said Mr. Vanderluyden. “The ones I told you and Landish about.”