All That Is (16 page)

Caroline, though she was unable now to do much more than mumble, rolled her eyes whenever Vivian mentioned Cook. That was one of the clearer signs of what she was feeling. There was an inane smile on her face and a mouth full of struggling sounds, but her eyes had an expression of knowing, knowing and understanding. Tick, the black labrador that was Warren Wain’s, lay peacefully at her feet, knocking the floor with his thick tail when someone would approach. Like the rest of the household he had seen better days. He moved a little stiffly and his muzzle had flecks of white but he had a good nature. Cook, not bothering to shave and wearing a shapeless sweater, took him for walks.

“How are they getting along?” Bowman asked when Vivian came back to New York.

“Cook is spending all the money and the house is a wreck,” Vivian said.

“How’s your mother?”

“Not very good. I don’t think she’s going to be able to stay there for long. They can’t take care of her. You have to help her dress and other things, well, you know. I’ll have to go back down there.”

“Should she be in some kind of home?”

“I don’t like the idea, but she’ll probably have to be.”

“Can Beverly help? She’s a lot closer.”

“Beverly is having some trouble herself.”

“What is it? Her children? Bryan?”

Vivian shrugged.

“With the bottle,” she said. “It runs in the family.”

When she left for Maryland again, it was with the understanding that she might have to stay a few weeks longer, and when she arrived in Cornersville things seemed to be worse, for reasons that she soon understood. The bank account was overdrawn, and the old man had to do something. In his slippers and bathrobe at the breakfast table while Vivian was doing the dishes, he finally said,

“Cook, listen, I need to talk to you.”

“Yes?”

“I have to say this, but have you been signing my name to anything?”

“Signing your name? No. What for? I signed it a couple of times,” he said.

“Only a couple of times?”

“Twice. Two or three times is all.” He was becoming uneasy. “When you were too busy on account of Caroline to do it.”

“To do what?”

“Go to the bank,” Cook said.

Wain sat quietly.

“You know, when I was in France, during the war …”

He could hardly remember the war, sitting in the unfinished house across from his failed son. He could hardly construct how he had gotten from there to here. Cook’s face was bored and defensive.

“In the winter when it was cold,” the old man said, “we’d pour a big circle of gasoline on the ground and light it and then jump in to warm ourselves before we flew. They said, what are you doing that for, aren’t you afraid of getting burned? We’d probably be dead in an hour anyway, so what difference did it make?”

He’d been an observer in the flying corps and had some photographs of himself in uniform. He realized he’d gotten away from the point.

“I don’t understand,” Cook said.

“What don’t you understand?”

“The point of it.”

“The point is, I’ll be dead and the bank account will be empty. There’ll be nothing left. The house will fall down around you and you’ll have Caroline to take care of, and that’ll be the end.”

“It was only a few checks. Just saving you some trouble.”

“I wish you knew how to,” Wain said.

The week after arriving, Vivian, sitting at her grandfather’s dark desk against the wall in the unfinished study, wrote a letter.
Dear Philip
, it began.

She always wrote
Dearest Philip
. Was this an unintentional lapse or was it something more? Bowman felt a kind of foreboding, a chill going through him as he read the strangely unfamiliar words. No one could possibly know what had happened in London. That was in another world, another completely. Nervously he read on.
Caro is about the same. It’s very hard for her to talk and I feel like she gets tired of trying to make herself understood and she gives up, but you can tell things from her expression. It’s mainly me who takes her out, me and grand-dad. Apart from that we watch tv or she sits in the kitchen with me a lot. Nothing much gets done on the house. Cook is really useless. He’s in town doing what, I don’t know, or back in the shed. But that’s not why I’m writing
.

Bowman turned the page over. He was reading quickly, apprehensive.

I’m not sure how to put it or why it is, but for a while now I’ve had the feeling that we’ve each been going our own way without a lot in common. I’m not talking about a particular thing (?)

Here, his eye skipped ahead. The question mark frightened him, he
didn’t know what it meant, but there was nothing.
I guess I can’t blame you. And I don’t blame myself. Probably it’s always been this way, but in the beginning I didn’t realize it. I really don’t belong in your world and I don’t think you belong in mine. I feel like probably I should be back where I fit in
.

The words unaccountably went through him like something fatal. It was a letter of parting. Two nights before she’d left they’d made love with a pillow doubled beneath her like an innocent naked child with a stomachache, and he felt her become engaged in a way that had never happened before, perhaps because of how they were going about it or perhaps they were entering another level of intimacy, but now he saw with a sudden and poignant regret that he’d been wrong, she had been responding to something else, something known to her alone.

Daddy would probably have a fit if he heard me saying this, but I don’t want anything, any alimony. I don’t want you supporting me for the rest of my life. We haven’t been married for that long. If you could give me three thousand dollars to help me temporarily, that would be fine. Be honest, I’m not wrong, am I? We really weren’t meant for each other. Maybe I’ll find the right man, maybe you’ll find the right woman, at least someone more suited to you
.

Her daddy. Bowman had never had a strong masculine figure in his own life to teach him how to be a man, and he had been drawn to his father-in-law despite himself and the real distance between them. There was no connection—he had no idea what his father-in-law thought or would do. He remembered him sitting with almost criminal ease, buttering a piece of toast and drinking coffee at breakfast the morning after the big snowstorm in Virginia when they all slept over. He remembered it clearly afterwards.

The day after having written the letter, Vivian happened to see her uncle Cook coming along the side of the house pushing a wheelbarrow with something heaped in it, and then with a shock she saw a foreleg hanging over the rim. She hurried out as Cook set the wheelbarrow down by the front door.

“What happened? Is he hurt?” she asked anxiously.

“I found him out by the shed,” Cook said.

The dog’s eyes were closed. She took its paw.

“Is he dead?”

“I think so.”

“You’d better call the vet. You’d better tell grand-dad,” Vivian said.

Cook nodded.

“He was just lying there,” he said.

Her grandfather came out to see. He was wearing an old straw hat, like a country lawyer. They could hear Caroline calling out something slurred. Wain stroked the dog’s foot and then slowly, as if thinking of something else, began to gently smooth its fine black coat.

“Should we call Dr. Carter?” Vivian asked.

“No. No,” Wain said. “No use calling him.”

Tears were running down his face. He seemed ashamed of them. Dr. Carter was the bow-legged vet who couldn’t see out of his left eye—he’d been hit on the head one time. He’d hold up a hand, “For instance, I can’t see my hand,” he would say.

Cook was standing silent and, to his father it seemed, emotionless. Wain was remembering what Cook had been like as a boy, mischievous but companionable, and what had gradually happened to him. He had a vision of what was to come, Cook, sullen and still handsome coming down the stairs to face foreclosure, naked legs first, wearing his gray paisley dressing gown, his silver hair uncombed. Tired and looking as if he had a headache, having spent it all.

“Well, what is it you want?” he would say.

Without any idea of what he would do, and Caroline slumped in her wheelchair, past trying to make herself understood.

It was bitter at first, being alone, being left. The pillow slip became dirty, he swept up himself. He felt angry but at the same time realized she had been right. They had been living a life of appearances and essentially she had had nothing to do, which included maintaining the apartment. The towels were usually damp, the bedding hastily pulled up, the windowsills had dirt on them. They had quarreled about it. Why didn’t she clean up a little? he asked conversationally.

She disdained to answer.

“Vivian, why don’t you spend a little time cleaning up the place?”

“It’s not my ambition.”

Her use of the word, whatever that meant, annoyed him.

“Your ambition. What do you mean, ambition?”

“It’s not my aim in life,” she said.

“I see. Just what is your aim in life?”

“I’m not saying,” she said.

“And what is mine?”

“I don’t know,” she said dismissively.

He was enraged. He could have broken the table with one blow.

“Damn it! What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know,” she said.

It was useless trying to talk. He could barely bring himself to lie in
bed beside her, the sense of alienation was so strong. It seemed she was radiating it. He was nearly shaking, he couldn’t sleep. Finally he’d taken his pillow and gone to sleep on the couch.

Now there was no longer the presence, even unseen, of another or the awareness of someone else’s moods or habits. The rooms were silent. There was only the framed photograph of her in the bedroom with its faintly Asiatic eyes, the slightly upturned nose and bowed upper lip. At night he sat reading, near his elbow a glass with ice and the amber of whiskey and its subtle aroma. Things she had said remained embedded in his memory, he knew they would not be soon covered over.

“I gave you your chance,” she had told him.

She would say nothing more. His chance, was that what it had been?

“Vivian and I have split up.”

“Ah,” Eddins said. “Sorry to hear it. When did that happen?”

“A week ago.”

“I’m really sorry. Is it permanent?”

“I think so.”

“Ah, God. We looked at you as the gilded couple, polo, private income …”

“There was no private income. Her father is, among other things, very tight-fisted. I can’t even recall if he gave us a wedding present.”

“It’s terrible. What are you going to do? Why don’t you come up to Piermont and stay with us for a while? It’s a working-class place but very nice. There’re a couple of restaurants and some bars. There’s a movie house in Nyack. From the kitchen table, well, in this case the dining table, you can look out at the river.”

“You make it sound very appealing.”

For a moment he was almost tempted, the casual and idyllic life, the old house uphill from town. He could imagine the rhythms, driving in in the brightness of morning and back out at night, sometimes late, the traffic having thinned, the clear night above the trees.

“I’ll be all right,” he said.

“You say that offhandedly but, remember, the door’s really open to you. We’ll even make a place in bed.”

They sat silent for a few moments.

“I remember your wedding,” Eddins said. “The drive through the beautiful country. The fine house. Whatever happened to the judge who liked full-chested women?”

“I haven’t seen the judge for a while,” Bowman said.

Vivian, however, happened to see the judge soon after her return, although “happened” is inexact. Judge Stump had heard the news and extended his sympathies. He invited her, not without some nervousness although he could always explain himself as being a family friend, almost an uncle, to lunch at the Red Fox. He was in a fine gray suit with his hair perfectly cut and groomed. After some polite but, as always with him, jagged conversation, he shared some news he thought she might be interested in. He was buying the Hollis house, the big one, not the nearby farmhouse, on Zulla Road. He said this looking at the tablecloth, then glancing at Vivian.

“I hate that house,” she said. “I’d hate to live in it.”

“Ah,” the wounded judge said.

“Has nothing to do with you,” said Vivian. “It’s just that I’ve never liked that house.”

“Ah. I didn’t know that.”

She spoke her mind, he knew. To some extent, that suited him. She was the most desirable woman he had ever seen. They did not often have the chance to talk, really talk. Gathering his courage, the judge said,

“Well, there are other houses …”

For a moment she was uncertain of what he was saying.

“Judge …”

“John,” he said.

“Are you …?” she began with a smile.

He was not the sort of man to smile disarmingly. He did not smile when pronouncing a sentence or stating a fee, and he wanted, in this case, to clearly show how serious he was, but nevertheless he softened his expression slightly.

“I’ve already gone through one bad marriage,” Vivian said.

The judge had gone through three, though he considered himself blameless.

“Why don’t you think about Jean Clevinger?” Vivian suggested lightly not knowing that Mrs. Clevinger, rich and very lively, had almost from their first meeting rejected the judge out of hand.

“No, no,” he protested, “Jean … we don’t have anything in common. We don’t share the really important, the deep things.”

Vivian didn’t want to hear or even guess what they were.

“I think you and I should just remain friendly,” she said rather boldly.

The judge was far from discouraged by this. He felt satisfied, he had made progress. He could be patient for a bit, now that he had at least made it known. As they rose to leave, he more or less indicated the table and their lunch and suggested,

“Between us, hm? Between us.”

Bowman told his mother the news. He hadn’t wanted to face her disappointment or questions, but it was inevitable. He’d gone home for the weekend, he couldn’t tell her on the phone.