Nostalgia (40 page)

Sarah now steps into the garden, dressed gaily in a white frock with pink ribbons and carrying a straw bonnet in her hand. “Summerfield, darling,” she says. “Won’t you please change your mind … there’s still time.”

The “Summerfield, darling” is new, and he doesn’t care for it, though he can’t think exactly why—only that he has noticed before the irony that terms of endearment, spoken in a particular way, can put distance between people.

She comes to where he stands in the flagstone path and kisses him on the cheek. “Won’t you change your mind?” she says again.

The public schools are to close today for the summer vacation, and she has entreated him to join her for the celebratory exercises at midday. In truth, he wouldn’t mind going, save for having to greet Gilfinian—his greeting Gilfinian, he suspects, her primary purpose. “No,” he says, “I won’t change my mind.”

“But why not?” she says. “What have you to do here? I understand your need for rest—I do—but it’s been a full week. Don’t you think you might benefit from a little outing?”

“I might actually,” he says, “only I don’t feel like going. I don’t feel like people.”

“You mean you don’t feel like Thomas.”

“Oh, Sarah, I’m barely out of bed,” he says. “Must we talk about him this early in the day?”

“I suppose not,” she says, “but we’ll have to talk about him sometime.”

Now she throws her arms around him and withdraws, laughing. She flattens her hands against his chest, patting him there three times for emphasis as she says, “I still can’t believe you’re here … alive … real!”

He feels an impulse to shrink from her touch but manages to contain it. He says nothing, though he thinks the three conditions she has named are exactly those he himself finds most mystifying.

Reaching up to touch his hair, she says, “You’ll want to get this cut before you go to base ball practice. There’s a new barber’s saloon in Montague Street.”

He only looks at her.

“Of
course
you’ll go to practice,” she says, abruptly serious. “Why do you look at me that way?”

“How am I looking at you?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know … as if you would run away again. It frightens me.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Jane just now came inside and told me you were interrogating her in the garden.”

“For heaven’s sake,” he says. “I only asked her what kind of tomatoes she was growing.”

Sarah looks as if she doesn’t believe him. “Summerfield,” she says, “will you tell me … when you discover it yourself … how I might help you? I’m not so dull as to let my own relief at your return blind me to—”

“How
old
is he anyway?” he says suddenly.

Affronted, she pauses for a moment. “He’s thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one! That’s nearly a decade—”

“Summerfield,” she says, “first of all, Papa was six years older than—”

“I’m sure you know he could do very happily with much less than you,” he says. “There’ll be an awful lot of you squandered there.”

She appears both astonished and hurt. “You exchanged a dozen words with him at a Christmas party last year,” she says. “You can hardly claim to know him.”

“Then look me in the eye and tell me you think I’m wrong.”

“It’s not like you to be arrogant, Summerfield,” she says, lowering her head. “It’s not your nature … I’ve always admired that about you.”

“Then look me in the eye,” he says. “Tell me you think I’m wrong.”

She turns her face to one side. “I do think you’re wrong,” she says, “but even if I thought you right, it’s not your place to say such things. It’s horrid. What possible effect can it have but to make me unhappy?”

“I say it precisely in the interest of your happiness,” he says. “
And
you haven’t looked me in the eye.”

“I won’t be put to tests,” she says. “I must say you’ve a very strange
way of showing your interest in my happiness. For weeks, I thought you dead. I thought you’d accomplished what you set out to do … to leave me thoroughly alone. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, Summerfield, but you weren’t here, were you … night after night, as I—”

Just then Thomas Gilfinian comes out the kitchen door, waving his hat and crying, “Hallo, hallo!”

Sarah moves hurriedly to the shed, putting her back to the house and situating Summerfield between herself and Gilfinian, who approaches the flagstone path, beaming. “Welcome home,” he says, offering his hand, “welcome home, lad.”

Summerfield thinks it odd to be welcomed to his own home by a visitor, but he supposes Gilfinian means it generally,
Welcome back to Brooklyn
. He doesn’t much like being called lad either, and he finds the man’s green plaid vest oddly familiar and a bit garish.

“What a day!” cries Gilfinian, and then calls out to Sarah, “Sarah, dear, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she answers, turning and coming forward now. “I’d only got some dust in my eye.”

“So, tell me what you think,” says Gilfinian to Summerfield, smiling in a comradely fashion. “Will General Grant move against Petersburg again? I understand it hinges on the condition of the railroads.”

Gilfinian refers to the question of how successfully the army has isolated General Lee from the support of his western reinforcements—but Summerfield refuses to be drawn into a jovial dialogue about troop movements, as if the war were a fascinating outdoor sport. He says, “I don’t know,” and then looks pointedly at Sarah.

His attention thus deflected, Gilfinian turns to her, takes the bonnet from her hand, and places it on her head, undertaking to tie the ribbons. “You best put this on,” he says.

Summerfield sees with satisfaction that she blushes, embarrassed at being treated like a child. He smiles at her from over Gilfinian’s shoulder, and she casts him a defiant look.

“There,” says Gilfinian, ducking cheerfully beneath the brim of the straw bonnet to kiss her cheek.

Summerfield has never before seen his sister permit a kiss from
anyone who was not a blood relative, and it appeared to him—though he can’t entirely trust his own judgment—that she tolerated more than enjoyed it.

“Thomas,” she says, “I’ve been trying to persuade Summerfield to come with us today.”

“Oh, yes, you must,” says Gilfinian. “You wouldn’t want to miss our eloquent Mr. Hastings, our trustee, reading the Declaration of Independence.”

Summerfield—who hadn’t recalled Gilfinian’s being quite so short, nor having such rosy, pudgy cheeks—smiles again, widening his eyes, and says, “ ‘Let Facts be submitted to a candid world.’ ”

“What?” says Gilfinian. “What’s that?”

“He’s quoting from the Declaration,” says Sarah quickly.

“Oh, yes, yes, of course,” says Gilfinian. “And you don’t want to miss the pupils’ calisthenics … and ‘On the Hill the Sunlight Playeth.’ Do come with us, won’t you?”

“Thank you,” says Summerfield, “but I believe I’ll stay indoors. I think it’s going to be hot.”

Gilfinian turns to Sarah and says, “I’m afraid he’s immovable, my dear. And I can’t very well argue that it won’t be hot.”

“But you’ve never minded hot weather,” says Sarah. “You like hot weather.”

Summerfield shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe I’ve changed,” he says.

At that moment, as if to settle the matter, the sun clears the treetops and floods the garden with a blinding light. They each begin to move toward the house. Summerfield notices the pungent smell of the tomato vines, instantly awakened by the sun.

Just before going through the door, Sarah turns to him. “If you don’t relish visiting the barbers,” she says, “I’ll do it for you this evening, after supper.”

He holds back to retrieve his coffee cup. Then, once inside, he hears Gilfinian, already on the stairs, whispering, “He’s awfully thin, isn’t he?”

I
N THE AFTERNOON
, he sits at the writing desk in the library, lost in thought—or lost in something akin to thought, a somber composition with far fewer notes than rests and virtually no melody at all. He removes his father’s smoking cap and touches a bald spot, about the size of a quarter, on the right side of the crown of his head, where, the previous night, he twined the hairs singly around a finger and absentmindedly pulled them from his scalp. For a moment, he hoped he’d only dreamed he’d done this stupid thing, and it’s with a sense of shame that he accepts it now as fact. The last several minutes, he has been pondering an apparent paradox within himself—that having looked into the face of death, he sometimes feels fearless and at other times feels afraid of just about everything. He imagines himself swinging between two walls (another image of suspension, of not touching ground) and dimly recalls a passage from one of Emerson’s famous essays—something about man, in pursuit of truth, being swung between walls, unmoored, submitting to “the inconvenience of suspense.” Well, he thinks, it was nothing of his own doing—he can take no credit for it—but if Mr. Emerson would have him unmoored and afloat …

The face of death
, he thinks suddenly, realizing he has no idea what it means or what it might look like, and just then Mrs. Bannister raps sharply against the library door and flings it open, marches into the room with a tray, and startles him so badly he nearly cries out. He quickly puts the smoking cap back on. She takes from the tray a tumbler of pale-green liquid and a single letter and sets them down on the desk.

He sighs, collecting himself, and says, “Mrs. B, do you think you might knock on the door gently and then wait for my reply before you enter?”

She pulls herself up straight and draws back her head, incredulous. “But I’ve brought you lemonade,” she says. “And a new letter that’s just arrived.”

“Thank you,” he says. “But still … do you think you might do as I ask … knock gently and wait for a reply?”

“I’ve never been asked to wait for any reply before entering the
library or the parlor in this house,” she says. “Not in my over twenty years here.”

“But I’m asking you now,” he says. “Do you think you might start?”

“I’m not sure I can,” she answers.

“Well, I would be grateful if you would try,” he says.

She looks at him sadly, turning down the corners of her mouth and wrinkling her forehead. “I don’t suppose you’ve forgiven me for blabbing to Sarah last winter,” she says. “About your plan to enlist.”

“There was never anything to forgive,” he says. “This has nothing to do with that. I only think it would be a lot more civilized than—”

“ ‘More civilized’?” she says.

“More civilized than just barging in like that,” he says.

She frowns at him again and turns to go. She stops at the door. “I wouldn’t have guessed the Union army a place to pick up airs,” she says. “Why, you make me out to be a herd of cattle.”

He watches her as she closes the door with exaggerated, almost parodistic caution, so as not to make a sound. After another moment, he opens and reads the letter she brought, which is from Al Reach of the Eckford Club. Reach has heard that Hayes is back in town, recovering from an illness, and—assuming he’s been mustered out—wants to encourage him, nay,
beseech
him, to rejoin the club as soon as possible. With only six of their principal players left, the ranks have never been in greater need. They’ve managed to acquire three new recruits, including an excellent catcher from Philadelphia and a young pitcher from the juniors, who shows promise but still wants a good bit of training. Hayes’s return would be a godsend to the Eckfords—who, this late into the summer, have yet to play their first regular match. He eagerly awaits Hayes’s prompt reply.

Summerfield refolds the letter and slips it inside the desk drawer, then goes to the low table between the wing chairs and collects three of the newspapers there. Back at the desk he begins tearing the paper into strips, about six inches wide and ten or twelve inches long. After he has accumulated a dozen of these, he rolls each into a narrow cylinder, moistening the seam with his tongue to make it stick, and flattening and gathering the ends to create a tapered effect. Meticulously he works, going mentally blank, and at last he brings out his mother’s
brass inkwell and dips the cigar-shaped things into it, an end at a time, to blacken them. One by one, he lays them on the remaining newspaper, side by side, to dry.

B
ROOKLYN WAS ONCE
a noisy place—a cacophony of hammers and whistles, hooves and hooligans and stray pigs in the street. Now it seems curiously, objectionably quiet.

Also … overall … purposeless.

Where is the war now? Where does it still exist? Reading about it in the newspapers somehow makes it even less likely, less real—a burnt ship somewhere at the bottom of the globe, bereft of cargo and crew, adrift in a sea of ash.

E
XPLOSIVE BURSTS OF STEAM
, a ringing of wheels, an erratic, startling whistle. He recalls the ride home with Walt, back to Brooklyn, dreamlike, in and out of sleep. Through his own special channels, Walt had managed to obtain tickets for them on an army transport, and though their car had walls and doors, windows and seats, the journey was not unlike the earlier one that deposited him at the hospital, the mammoth world, beyond understanding. Darkness and light. A smell of wet wool. Warm night air. Even a pasture, dotted with white flowers.

Walt, ill, chronically flushed, coughed sporadically, but was otherwise unusually quiet; when he did speak, he was terse and appeared pained by the rough rocking of the car. In the hospital, Summerfield had envisioned himself in a railcar with Walt—he’d imagined Walt’s patting him on the knee, saying, with his curious compound of maternal maleness,
Almost home, now
, and Walt did in fact say something to that effect. With his characteristic timing, he nodded and smiled and said, “You’ll soon be among more familiar sights and sounds, my dear.” The moment before, Summerfield had pondered the phantom shapes flying by outside the windows, indecipherable, unnameable; the quivering reflections on the inside of the glass; the curious silence of the men in the car, their apparent reluctance to converse; the play
of eyes meeting, and quickly averted. Two worlds, signaled by attire: in Burroughs’s civilian clothes, Summerfield had felt he properly belonged to neither of them.