Instead, he laughed again to himself. “I’ll tell you, Lovett,” he said, “I’m tired. Do you mind leaving here? I want to think for a while.”
I went away with McLeod sitting in the chair in the middle of the room, the light bulb above his head, his eyes looking without expression at the peeling plaster upon his wall. I had the impression he would remain in this position for hours.
TEN
T HAT evening I lay awake for a long time and watched the random play of city lights across my ceiling. And in such an abstract game with nocturnal sounds as my only diversion—a woman’s heels clacking slowly upon the sidewalk, a window somewhere being opened and shut again—I found myself constructing an imaginary childhood.
Could it not be possible that I was born in an old house in the center of a Midwestern city, the house going quietly to seed, while the distinction of being one of the oldest families became less important to everyone but ourselves? This would be a city whose suburbs were constantly expanding and whose industry, nurtured by congenial tax rates and an amiable political machine, could grow and double within a decade. Institutions altered, and with them, men, and there would be a new country club and insurance brokers who peopled it. My parents would talk about such things with distaste for they lived in the memory of an earlier world, illumined in the transitory splendor of a calendar sunset, and they would assure me that forty years ago the city was lovely, adorned by small quiet streets and brownstone houses in the first rich maturation of their colors, small gardens between the buttressed stone stairways, and the inevitable corner grocery which lasted beyond its time like an oldrelative on pension until it emitted at last only the rich odor of unground coffee out of a once-magical assortment of smells. Spring mornings the men would walk to work, and on Sundays the entire family was in black, the quiet afternoons in the back yard annotated only by church bells.
It is a sweet picture, but it is a false shore. The only brownstone houses I ever knew were in disrepair and skived by landlords. I was born into a world which would move forever faster, and if I had to create for myself a tropical isle, I could not render it perfect, for I would always find the darkening clouds of typhoon, and hear the surf lashing the shore. It was possible to engage in such a voyage, but only to return to the hard cot beneath the dirty window of my narrow room.
So I lay there that evening while McLeod across the hall must also have stared at the ceiling, and I dreamed that I was in another room in a vast dormitory for children, and while we slept a fire had begun in the cellar and was sweeping along the dry wood of the walls and through the deep vent of the staircase. Soon it would reach the great room in which we slept and sear a passage through the door, and we would awake to the sound of children’s screams and hear our own voice.
Thus, restlessly, I slept.
In the morning Guinevere came to visit me, and as I might have expected she was not alone. Behind her, more vivid than a shadow, yet linked as inseparably, followed Monina. They came in together after a cursory knock, Guinevere’s arms laden with a pile of sheets which she deposited quickly upon my bed. “How’re you doing, Lovett?” she bawled.
I nodded a greeting. There was nothing to suggest that the last time we parted she had been screaming at me. Monina, no more abashed than Guinevere, ducked her head, babbled something, and then proceeded to examine the room. She did this with great care and some insolence as though she were unobserved, lifted a corner of the rug and looked under it, peeredbehind my armchair, and finally, paused at the desk and went through my papers, clucking to herself in some child’s game of words.
While this went on, Guinevere prattled at me. She had also had a dream the night before, and she proceeded to tell it in detail. “And you
I went away with McLeod sitting in the chair in the middle of the room, the light bulb above his head, his eyes looking without expression at the peeling plaster upon his wall. I had the impression he would remain in this position for hours.
TEN
T HAT evening I lay awake for a long time and watched the random play of city lights across my ceiling. And in such an abstract game with nocturnal sounds as my only diversion—a woman’s heels clacking slowly upon the sidewalk, a window somewhere being opened and shut again—I found myself constructing an imaginary childhood.
Could it not be possible that I was born in an old house in the center of a Midwestern city, the house going quietly to seed, while the distinction of being one of the oldest families became less important to everyone but ourselves? This would be a city whose suburbs were constantly expanding and whose industry, nurtured by congenial tax rates and an amiable political machine, could grow and double within a decade. Institutions altered, and with them, men, and there would be a new country club and insurance brokers who peopled it. My parents would talk about such things with distaste for they lived in the memory of an earlier world, illumined in the transitory splendor of a calendar sunset, and they would assure me that forty years ago the city was lovely, adorned by small quiet streets and brownstone houses in the first rich maturation of their colors, small gardens between the buttressed stone stairways, and the inevitable corner grocery which lasted beyond its time like an oldrelative on pension until it emitted at last only the rich odor of unground coffee out of a once-magical assortment of smells. Spring mornings the men would walk to work, and on Sundays the entire family was in black, the quiet afternoons in the back yard annotated only by church bells.
It is a sweet picture, but it is a false shore. The only brownstone houses I ever knew were in disrepair and skived by landlords. I was born into a world which would move forever faster, and if I had to create for myself a tropical isle, I could not render it perfect, for I would always find the darkening clouds of typhoon, and hear the surf lashing the shore. It was possible to engage in such a voyage, but only to return to the hard cot beneath the dirty window of my narrow room.
So I lay there that evening while McLeod across the hall must also have stared at the ceiling, and I dreamed that I was in another room in a vast dormitory for children, and while we slept a fire had begun in the cellar and was sweeping along the dry wood of the walls and through the deep vent of the staircase. Soon it would reach the great room in which we slept and sear a passage through the door, and we would awake to the sound of children’s screams and hear our own voice.
Thus, restlessly, I slept.
In the morning Guinevere came to visit me, and as I might have expected she was not alone. Behind her, more vivid than a shadow, yet linked as inseparably, followed Monina. They came in together after a cursory knock, Guinevere’s arms laden with a pile of sheets which she deposited quickly upon my bed. “How’re you doing, Lovett?” she bawled.
I nodded a greeting. There was nothing to suggest that the last time we parted she had been screaming at me. Monina, no more abashed than Guinevere, ducked her head, babbled something, and then proceeded to examine the room. She did this with great care and some insolence as though she were unobserved, lifted a corner of the rug and looked under it, peeredbehind my armchair, and finally, paused at the desk and went through my papers, clucking to herself in some child’s game of words.
While this went on, Guinevere prattled at me. She had also had a dream the night before, and she proceeded to tell it in detail. “And you
Similar Books
