Little, Big Part 30

"Do you know where my white outfit is?"

"In the closet?"

She opened the door of the toilet. They had screwed into the door of this little chamber a collapsing clothes-rack, which held most of their clothes. "Look inside my overcoat," he said.

There it was, a two-piece white cotton outfit, jacket and skirt, an old nurse's uniform in fact with an identifying patch on the shoulder. Sylvie had ingeniously altered it into something at once stylish and improvised: her taste was sure, her skills didn't match it quite, he wished not for the first time that he could give her thousands to lavish on herself, it would be a joy to watch.

She looked over the outfit critically.

"Your coffee's going to boil away," he said.

"Huh?" With a pair of tiny scissors in the shape of a long-beaked bird she was removing the identifying shoulder patch. "Oh, yike!" She hurried to turn it down. Then she returned to her outfit. Auberon returned to his study.

His strengths as a writer were a "I wish I could write," Sylvie said.

"Maybe you can," Auberon said. "I bet you'd be good at it. No, really"a"she had snorted in contempt at this notiona""I bet you would." He knew with love's certainty that there was little she couldn't do, and that little wasn't worth doing. "What would you write?"

"I bet I could think up better stuff than they think up on *A World Elsewhere.'" She carried the steaming kettle of coffee to the tub (as in all old-law tenements this sat squat and unembarra.s.sed in the middle of the kitchen) and began straining the liquid through a cloth into an even bigger cauldron set in the tub. "It's not touching, y'know? It doesn't touch your heart." She started to undress.

"Do you mind," Auberon said, abandoning as hopeless the imaginary walls and door that separated him from Sylvie, "if I ask you what the h.e.l.l you're doing?"

"I'm dying," she said calmly. s.h.i.+rtless now, the globes of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s swinging gently with their pendular momentum as she moved, she picked up the two parts of the white outfit, looked them over a final time, and thrust them into the cauldron of coffee. Auberon got it, and laughed delightedly.

"Sort of a beige," Sylvie said, p.r.o.nouncing the "g" as though it were in "badge". She plucked from the dish-drainer by the sink the little sock-like cotton strainera"el colador, a boya"which she used to make strong Spanish coffee, and showed it to him. It had turned a rich tan color he had himself often admired. She began stirring the cauldron slowly with a long-handled spoon. "Two shades lighter than me," she said, "is what I want. Cafe-con-leche."

"Pretty," he said. Coffee spattered her brown skin. She wiped it off and licked her fingers. With the spoon in both hands she lifted the garment up, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s tautening, and looked at it; it was already deep brown, browner than she, but rinsings (he could see her think it) would lighten it. She dropped it back in, with a quick finger tucked a lock of hair that had got away back under her snood, and stirred again. Auberon wouldn't ever decide whether he loved her more when her attention was on him, or when as now it was fixed on some task or thing in the real world. He couldn't write a story about her: it would consist only of catalogues of her actions, down to the most minute. But he had no real desire to write of anything else. He was standing now in the door of the little kitchen.

"Here's an idea," he said. "Those soap-operas always need writers." He said this as though it were a fact he was sure of. "We could collaborate."

"Huh?"

"You think up some stuff that might happen on the showa"coming out of what's happening nowa"only better than what they'll doa"and I can write it."

"Really?" she said, doubtful but intrigued.

"I mean I'll write the words, and you write the story." What was odd (he came closer) was that he meant by this offer to seduce her. He wondered how long lovers are lovers before they stop having to plot each other's seduction. Never? Perhaps never. Perhaps the lures get smaller, more perfunctory. Or maybe just the reverse. What did he know?

"Okay," she said with quick decision. "But," she said with a secret smile, "I might not have a lot of time, because I'm going to get a job."

"Hey, terrific."

"Yeah. That's what this outfit's for, if it comes out."

"Gee, that's great. What kind of job?"

"Well, I didn't want to tell you since it's not for sure. I have to get interviewed. It's in the movies." She laughed at the absurdity of it.

"A star?"

"Not right away. Not the first day. Later for that." She moved the sodden brown mess to a corner of the tub. She poured out the cold coffee. "A producer, sort of, I met. Sort of a producer or director. He needs an a.s.sistant. But not like a secretary exactly."

"Oh yeah?" Where was she meeting producers and directors and not telling him about it?

"Like sort of a script girl and a.s.sistant."

"Hm." Surely Sylvie, even more alert than he was to such things, would have sensed whether this sort-of producer's offer was real or mere predation; it sounded doubtful to him, but he made encouraging noises.

"So," she saida"turning cold water full force over the now-tan outfit, "I got to look good or at least as good as I can look, to go see hima ."

"You always look good."

"No, really."

"You look good to me now."

She flashed him the briefest and brightest of her smiles. "So we'll get famous together."

"Sure," he said, coming closer. "And rich. And you'll know all about movies, and we'll make a team." He circled her. "Let's make a team."

"Oh. I got to finish this."

Okay.

"It'll be a while."

"I can wait. I'll just watch."

"Oh, papo. I get embarra.s.sed."

"Mm. That's nice." He kissed her throat, smelling the biscuity odor of her exertion, and she allowed him to, her wet hands held out over the tub. "I'm going to let down the bed," he said in a low voice, something between a threat and the promise of a treat.

"Mm." She watched him do so, her hands in the water but her mind not now on her task. The bed, lowered, intruded suddenly into the room, very bedlike but also like the prow of a laden s.h.i.+p that had just come in: had just sailed through the far wall and hove to there, waiting to be boarded.

Nevertheless Spring In the end, thougha"whether because she came to doubt that her producer really was one, or because the false spring of that week vanished and March went out like a lion freezing her tender marrow, or because the dyed outfit didn't ever please her quite (there lingered about it after no matter how many was.h.i.+ngs a faint smell of stale coffee)a"Sylvie never did go to be interviewed for the movies. Auberon encouraged her, bought her a book to read on the subject, but this only seemed to plunge her into further gloom. The klieglit visions faded. She sank into a torpor that alarmed Auberon. She lay till late in a huge tangle of bedclothes, his winter coat atop them all, and when she did rise, mooned around the little apartment with a sweats.h.i.+rt over her nightgown and thick socks on her feet. She'd open the refrigerator and stare irritatedly within at a container of moldy yogurt, nameless leftovers in tinfoil, a flat soda.

"Cono," she said. "There's never anything in here."

"Yeah? Is that so," he said with heavy irony from within the imaginary study. "I guess it must be broken." He rose, and reached for his coat. "What do you want?" he said. "I'll go get something."

"No, papo a"

"I have to eat too, you know. And if the refrigerator won't supply it."

"Okay. Something good."

"Well what? I could get some cereal a"

She made a face. "Something good," she said, with a twohanded, chin-uplifted gesture that certainly expressed her desire, but left him no wiser. He went out into a new-fallen still-falling snow.

As soon as she closed the door on him, Sylvie was swept by a tide of gloomy feeling.

It amazed her that he, brought up the baby boy in a household of sisters and aunts, could be so endlessly solicitous, take so much of their daily domestic life on himself, and b.i.t.c.h so little. White people were strange. Among her relatives and their neighbors a husband's chief domestic duties were eating, beating, and playing dominoes. Auberon was so good. So understanding. And smart: official forms and the endless paper of an aged and paralytic welfare state held no terror for him. And not jealous. When early on she'd developed a pressing crush on sweet brown Leon who waited at the Seventh Saint, and indulged it a while, and lain then next to Auberon every night rigid with guilt and fear till he'd wormed the secret out of her, he'd only said he didn't care what she did with others as long as she was happy with him when she was with him: now how many guys could you find, she asked herself in the clouded mirror over the sink, who would act like that?

So good. So kind. And how did she repay him? Look at you, she insisted. Bags under your eyes. Losing pounds every day, pretty soona"she held up a warning pinkie in the mirrora"like this. Flacca. And not bringing home s.h.i.+t, useless to herself as to him, un' boba.

She'd work. She'd work hard and pay him back everything he'd done for her, the whole oppressive relentless treasure of his goodness. Toss it back in his face. There. "I'll wash f.u.c.kin' dishes," she said aloud, turning away from the small pile of them by the squalid sink, "I'll turn tricks a ."

And was it to that that her Destiny led her? Bitter-faced and rubbing her horripilated arms, she paced from bed to stove like a caged thing. What should free her bound her, bound her to await it amid a poverty, an impoverished day-to-day existence different from the long, hopeless poverty of her growing up, but poverty nonetheless. Sick of it, sick sick sick! Self-pitying tears sprang to her eyes. d.a.m.n her Destiny anyway, why couldn't she trade it for a little decency, a little freedom, a little fun? If she couldn't throw it away, why could she get nothing in exchange for it either?

She climbed back into bed, black resolution in her mind. She drew up the covers, staring accusatorily at the middle distance. Dark, asleep, far-off but built into her very stuff, her Destiny couldn't be resigned, she'd learned that. But she was tired of waiting. It had not one single feature she could determine, except that Auberon was in it (but not this squalor; Somehow, not even this Auberon), but she'd discover it now. Now. "Bueno," she said, "All right," and took a stem att.i.tude under the covers with arms crossed. She'd wait no more. She'd learn her Destiny and begin it or die; she'd drag it out of the future where it lay by main strength.

Auberon meanwhile plodded to the Nite Owl market (surprised to find this was Sunday and nothing else open, what do weekends mean to the leisured poor?) through snow that lay just for this hour virginal and new, his the first feet to begin its long defilement into rotten slush more black than white. He was angry. In fact he was furious, though he had kissed Sylvie gently farewell, and would kiss her again in ten minutes when he got back, just as gently. Why didn't she ever even acknowledge the equability of his temper, the sunniness of his disposition? Did she think it was easy to maintain, easy to press down honest indignation into a soft answer, every time, every single time? And what credit did he get for his efforts? He could sock her sometimes. He'd like to give her one good punch, quiet her down a little, show her just how far his patience had been tried. Oh G.o.d how awful even to think it.

Happiness, he had come to see, his happiness anyway, was a season; and in that season, Sylvie was the weather. Everyone within him talked about it, among themselves, but no one could do anything about it, they could only wait till it changed. The season of his happiness was spring, a long, skittish, changeful spring, as often withdrawn as proffereda"like any spring: but nevertheless spring. He was sure of it. He kicked the wet snow. Sure.

He mooched indecisively among the few and expensive goods the Nite Owl offereda"one of those places that keep up a marginal existence by being open on Sundays and deep into the nighta"and when he had made his choices (two kinds of exotic juices for Sylvie's tropical palate, to make up for punching her) he drew out his wallet and found it empty. As in the antique joke, a moth should lazily fly out. He scrabbled in his pockets, inside, outside, under the eyes (reserving terrible judgment) of the counterman, and at last, though having to resign one of the juices, made up the amount in found silver and linty pennies.

"Now what?" he said when, snow on his hat and shoulders, he opened the door of the Folding Bedroom and found Sylvie in bed. "Having a little nap?"

"Leamee alone," she said. "I'm thinking."

"Thinking, huh." He took his sodden paper bag into the kitchen and messed around for a time with soup and crackers, but when he offered her these she refused them; in fact for the rest of that day he could hardly get a word out of her, and grew afraid, thinking of her familial streak of madness. Dulcet, kind, he spoke to her, and her retreating soul fled from his words as from a cutting edge.

So he only sat (his imaginary study moved into the kitchen since the bed remained opened and occupied) and thought of how further to indulge her, and of ingrat.i.tude; and she struggled on the bed, and sometimes slept. Winter deepened. Black clouds formed over their heads; lightnings answered lightnings; north winds blew; cold rain poured down.

Let Him Follow Love "Hold hard," Mrs. Underhill said, "hold hard. Somewhere here a slip's been made, a turning missed. Don't you feel that?"

"We do," said the others gathered there.

"Winter came," Mrs. Underhill said, "and that was right; and then a"

"Spring!" they all shouted.

"Too fast, too fast." She beat her temple with her knuckles. A dropped st.i.tch could be fixed, if it could be found; a certain unraveling was in her power; but where along the long, long way had it been? Ora"she cast her eye along the vast length of Tale unfolding from the to-come with the steady grace of a jewelled and purposeful serpenta"was it yet to be? "Help me, children," she said.

"We will," they said, in all their various voices.

This was the problem: if what had to be discovered lay in what-was-to-be, then they could discover that easily enough. It was what-had-been that was hard to keep in mind. That's the way it is for beings who are immortal or nearly so; they know the future, but the past is dark to them; beyond the present year is the door into aeons-ago, a darkling span lit with solemn lights. As Sophie with her cards probed an unfamiliar future, pressing on the thin membrane that separated her from it, pressing here and there to feel the advancing shapes of things to come, so Mrs. Underhill felt blindly among the things that had been, searching for the shape of what was wrong. "There was an only son," she said.

"An only son," they echoed, thinking hard.

"And he came to the City."

"And he came to the City," they said.

"And there he sits," Mr. Woods put in.

"That's it, isn't it," Mrs. Underhill said. "There he sits."

"Won't be moved, won't do his duty, wants to die of love instead." Mr. Woods clutched his skinny knee in his long hands. "It could be this winter will go on, and never stop."

"Never stop," Mrs. Underhill said. A tear was in her eye. "Yes, yes, that's just how it appears."

"No, no," they all said, seeing it so. The freezing rain beat on the deep small windows, crying in mourning, the trees lashed their branches at the implacable wind, the Meadow Mouse was seized in the Red Fox's desperate jaws. "Think, think," they said.

She knocked again at her temple, but no one answered. She rose, and they retreated. "I'll need advice," she said, "that's all."

The black water of the mountain pooi was just unfrozen, though jags of ice like broken stone projected around its margins; on one of these projections Mrs. Underhill stood and sent down her summons.

Sleepy, stupid, too cold even to be angry, Grandfather Trout rose from the dark depths.

"Leamee alone," he said.

"Answer up," Mrs. Underhill said sharply, "or it'll go hard with you."

"What," he said.

"This child in the City," Mrs. Underhill said. "Greatgrandson of yours. Won't be moved, won't do his duty, wants to die of love instead."

"Love," Grandfather Trout said. "There is no force on earth left stronger than love."

"He won't follow the others."

"Then let him follow love."

"Hm," said Mrs. Underhill, and then "hmmm." She put her thumb to her chin and her finger along her cheek, resting her elbow in the cup of her other hand. "Well, perhaps he ought to have a Consort," she said.

"Yes," Grandfather Trout said.

"Just to trouble him, and keep his interest up."

"Yes."