The Keepers of the House (32 page)

“Yes,” I said. I watched him walk down the graveled road to swing shut the heavy wood gate, locking it. He came back and handed me the key. “Oliver,” I asked, “did you know?”

He shook his head.

“Keep the children close enough to the house.”

I put the key on the hall table. The phone rang—almost under my hand—and I picked it up without thinking. It was my cousin Clara in Atlanta. “What is going on, Abigail?” she demanded breathlessly. “What is going on? What’s all this we’ve been hearing?”

“Where’s Sam?” I asked her. “I thought you all always talked on the phone like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

“He hasn’t heard. He’s working on next week’s sermon and I haven’t dared tell him.”

I laughed in her face and hung up. I kept on chuckling, because it really was funny, when you thought about it. She was in for such a bad time. She was jibbering right now. … She hadn’t liked John’s white supremacy speech. But how would she like having a jet-black Negro for an aunt? …

I sat on the fragile little rosewood chair and reached under the table to the telephone box at the baseboard. I pushed down the handle and turned off the bell. I’d had enough.

More cars than usual seemed to be driving by on the state highway. They’d come to see. Of course. When the paper came out at noon, there would be even more.

I wasn’t angry or hurt. I wasn’t anything except numb. I didn’t seem to be in my own body any longer. I was very far off, watching, curious, but not involved.

I had lunch with the children. We talked about horses and about the new Shetland their father had promised them. I said I would order it by phone that very afternoon. Then they went back outside.

I drifted through the afternoon and the evening in the same way, detached and quiet. After dinner, the servants went away, leaving only the children, their nurse, and me. When the doorbell rang, I opened it, and stood blinking in the sputtering flash of bulbs.

I would have recognized him anywhere. He was a red-haired version of William Howland. “You must be Robert,” I said. He stood and let me look. “I’ve been expecting you.” When I said it, it seemed true. And I suppose I had, all day in the house, all the long day’s waiting. “Come inside.”

There were two photographers, standing to either side. Their bulbs had blinded me. “You too,” I said. “It will be chilly waiting on the porch.”

We went into the living room, the four of us. “It’s changed,” Robert said.

“We remodeled. Would you like some coffee?” I asked the photographers.

“No,” they said.

“There is plenty,” I said. “I really expected more people. … but then there
were
more out there, weren’t there? I think I saw someone dodge back.”

“I suppose they’ve gone back to the car,” Robert said.

“The gate was locked. Did you drive through it?”

“We walked,” Robert said.

“Would you like a tour of the house? It’s so different, I don’t think you’ll recognize much.”

“I didn’t come for that,” Robert said.

I looked at this child that my grandfather and Margaret had produced. You could see both of them there. The heavy-boned figure was my grandfather, all Howlands had those heavy stooped shoulders, and that same shaped head. And the blue eyes were my grandfather’s too. Robert looked like my grandfather, feature by feature, but there was a mist of Margaret spread over everything. There was nothing of hers you could put your finger on and say: that came from Margaret. She was everywhere, in his face, in his movements, intangible but all-present, as much as her blood running in his veins.

He told the photographers bluntly: “I’ll meet you at the car.” They went quickly. Robert nodded after them. “They’re glad to go. Seems they were scared.”

“Not scared, Robert,” I told him. “Just disgusted. You’re a Negro to them.”

His skin, which already had a waxy cast to it, went dead white. I think at that minute he wanted to kill me.

I didn’t care. All through the long empty day I had been preparing for this, and now that it was here, I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t afraid. I felt elated and strong—it was something in Robert’s face. It was something that told me. …

“Killing me wouldn’t help,” I said. “And your mother and your father are already dead.”

“Did she really kill herself?”

“That’s what the people say who found her.”

It bothered him, the way it bothered Crissy and the way it bothered Nina.

“Do you know why? Was she sick?”

“I expect she got tired of living alone.”

“She wasn’t alone. You said she was living with a cousin.”

“But alone. …” I got up and went to the bar. “A drink? Bourbon or Scotch?”

“No,” he said.

“For old times’ sake.” I fixed two bourbon-and-sodas. “In memory of the time your mother gave you pneumonia taking you out in the sleet with chicken pox.

“She didn’t.”

“Of course she did.” I waved the two glasses around, and for some reason I slipped into my best ladies’ tea party accent. “She was going to educate you or kill you.”

“I know that,” he said quietly, and he took the drink I offered.

His tone stopped me. “Robert,” I said seriously, “why did you come back?”

My grandfather’s face looked up at me, misery-streaked and lined with pain. “I suppose it was a clipping from an Atlanta paper.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh God, that one.”

“I suppose I couldn’t stomach that.”

“John said that, sure,” I told him, as patiently as if it would make a difference, “but did you see what his opponent said? Did you?”

“No.”

“You’ve been out of the South too long. … The papers don’t usually pick up what is said at those small rallies.”

He just sat staring at his drink.

“You look incredibly like your father,” I said.

“I never doubted my mother’s word.”

“You’ve even got the marriage certificate to prove it.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Couldn’t you guess? That was the first thing they sent out to me.”

“I suppose.”

“You married, Robert?”

He nodded.

“Black or white?”

Again the flash of anger under his skin. “Don’t provoke me.”

“How would I know? Nina married a Negro.”

He appeared not to have heard. I went on, innocently, beginning to see already what it was I should do.

“I’m curious,” I told him. “I can’t help that. After all, we did grow up together, in a way.”

A short nod of agreement. He was staring at a small heavy table. “That was in the upstairs hall.”

“I remember. It’s really quite a fine Seignouret piece, so I had it refinished.”

“There were two up there.”

“The other one was too far gone. … What’s your wife like?”

“She’s fine.”

“What does she look like?”

“Something like you. The same color hair, and light blue eyes. Her name was Mallory and her father is a radiologist in Oakland. She’s about your age too.”

“I’m a million years old,” I said. “Drink your bourbon. It will help.”

“Yes.”

“John will lose,” I said abruptly, “because of you. For the first time in fifty years the results of the Democratic primary will be upset in the election. There’s no doubt in the world that the Republican will win by a landslide.”

“I suppose.”

“You said that before. … Do you know the Republican candidate?”

“I don’t even know his name.”

“That’s a pity,” I said. “You should.”

Again he didn’t seem to hear.

“Do you know about the schools in Tickfaw County closing last year.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“But you should. … They closed the schools rather than integrate under court order.”

“Oh.”

“They opened private schools for the whites. I don’t think there are any schools for the Negroes.”

He shrugged. “I heard of something like that in Virginia.”

“This is right here. And the moving spirit of that particular bit was Mr. Stuart Albertson.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“The man you just made governor.”

I allowed myself a chuckle. Things really were funny if you looked at them right. “Child of my heart,” I told him, “you have really done it this time. You got rid of John and got something ten times worse. …”

He was staring at me, not quite believing.

“But you didn’t come back to help the Negroes around here. Or hurt them either.” I had another irresistible fit of giggling. “You’re doing it for more personal reasons, you’re paying off an old grudge. Your mother or your father?”

“They’re dead.”

“Makes it harder that way.” I fixed myself another drink, very slowly, waiting to see what he would do. He seemed frozen or fixed. He was staring at the refinished Seignouret table.

“Does your wife know you’re here? But she doesn’t, of course. She doesn’t know anything about this or you wouldn’t have called me from a pay phone.”

He shook his head. “Why should I bother her with this mess?”

“She home?”

“Yes. … No, she’s gone to the hospital to wait for the child. She’s Rh negative, and they’re all born that way, with transfusions and so forth.”

“So she wouldn’t be likely to read the papers too closely, if the papers there carried it.”

“No.”

“Anyhow the papers always call you Robert Carmichael. She wouldn’t think anything of that, would she, even if she saw it?”

“Why should she?”

“She married a white man,” I said quietly, “what would she do if she found out he was a Negro?”

He just stared at me.

“You won’t have told her. … No, not you. But when she knows, what sort of a difference will it make?”

He stood up and walked over to me, his face flushed waxy white again. I sat perfectly still and leaned my head back and looked at him. I was not afraid, my heart was pumping steadily, my lungs were pulsing gently.

“You forgot, Robert,” I told him, “or you wouldn’t have come. We’re all together, you and me and Crissy and Nina. You came to ruin me”—I could feel my lips giving a slow smile (and that was another thing, when my lips moved, I felt how cold they were)—“but I can do that too, I think.”

Now that he was so close I could see that his face was covered with sweat. The drops had gathered into streams on his neck; they were soaking his coat collar.

“I can find you, wherever you live. I can appear there, just the way you’ve appeared here. And I can tell my story. … How much does your wife love you?”

Upstairs the baby wailed and then fell silent. Robert jumped and glanced toward the sound.

“I’m not saying I will do that,” I told him, “I am only saying that I could, if I wanted to. I haven’t made up my mind yet.” It will depend on how angry I am and how much I want to hurt you in return, I thought. And when you go home you will have to wonder whether I am coming or when I am coming. …

That sweaty white face hung there in the air over me. “Sit down, Robert,” I said petulantly, “you’re making me nervous.” He stepped back a bit—I was surprised. I hadn’t expected him to listen to me. But then it had been such a long time since anyone had listened to me. If ever before.

And I said something that I didn’t mean to say, something that sounded horrible to me even while I was saying it. “Robert, I know what you are, and I know why you came back. And I know something else. Your skin may be the same color as your wife’s, but your blood’s not—and you believe that. You really believe that.”

There was a tiny tremble to his lips. To stop it he swallowed, and I heard the tiny sound of that.

I looked at him, my grandfather’s son, his only son. I looked at his face, haggard and old. And I could hear my grandfather saying: Lady, lady, what are you doing?

I answered him back, wherever he was, wherever ghosts go: Why did you have children, for them to tear each other apart?

But it was over for me, this baiting, this swaggering in the face of collapse. I wanted Robert out of my house. I wanted him away from me.

“I’m sick of it,” I said. “Go away.”

He got to his feet. Again I was surprised that he had obeyed me.

“Look,” I said, “I hope you’re leaving tonight. My husband’s family is wild enough to kill you.”

“I’m going directly to New Orleans and then home.”

“It was risky coming,” I said. “If John had been here there might have been real trouble.”

There was a faint sad smile. “I figured you’d be alone.”

“And so I am.” He had known that. “Go on ahead now.”

I went to the porch with him, and watched him walk off down the dark slope of hill toward the waiting car. “Robert,” I called after him, “I may be coming to find you. You’ll expect me, you won’t forget?”

He didn’t turn and I wasn’t sure whether he’d shaken his head or not. But it didn’t matter. He would remember me and he would look for me all the days of his life.

As for my part I would remember too. I would see my grandfather’s face, creased, and hurt, and torn with emotion. I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t even bother going to bed. At breakfast time the house was still quiet, without its familiar morning sounds. There were no voices downstairs, no sounds outside. Today they had planned to mow the big front field, but the sunny morning was silent and empty: no rattling tractors and clanking mowers. I heard the children’s alarm clock ring sharply; I wondered why they bothered to set it, when they knew they would not be going to school. Perhaps they had not believed me. I went downstairs, passing the charred section of banister that Howlands kept to remember by. I walked through the large center hall: the night light was still burning. That was the first thing the butler turned off when he came in the morning—so he was not here. I went into the kitchen; it was empty. The light by the back door was burning too; I snapped it off. No one at all had come this morning. The whole staff was staying away. They expected trouble. …

I put on the kettle for coffee, and used the house phone to call the children’s nurse, Julia. She would be frightened when she saw the empty house; I had to explain. “I’ll see that you get home before there’s any trouble,” I promised her. And as I dripped the coffee I wondered about that. What if I couldn’t. …

I went outside briefly and looked around. The winter-stripped land looked the same. The state road below us was empty, except for a passing car that went directly by without slowing or stopping. The sky was bright and clear and windy, filled with crows riding thermals endlessly. The yard and the big front field were completely deserted, not even a cat crouching in the shadows. Like the house staff, the farm hands had not come. Their equipment was still parked behind the bathhouse: their tractors and mowers and graders, and all their attachments. And the gasoline drums were still there.