Marina

Five

Arrival

Her father had a story of the songbirds in old Prussia. How in wintertime, before human understanding forced birds to take southerly routes, sparrows and swallows and redwings would flush from the trees of the Palatinate and dive in pairs down to the bottoms of lakes, and stay there, beak-to-beak, sharing air while their split-pea hearts beat a dirge for summer. Unless disturbed by the errant nets of fishermen, the birds of cold Europe would thus pass winter, even as frost spread over the surface of their lakes and their old perches bowed with snow. After the thaw, the birds would take one last gasp of each other’s air and thrust up from the depths, feathery missiles shooting skyward. Then the birds would find a familiar branch and sit, sunning and fluffing their waterlogged pinions.

The widow Woolsack, flocked now with friends in the sitting room of Mme Frick, reminds her of the winter birds. Someone who has been driven to depths, held their breath, and waited while the season did its worst. Her face is dark, rusty, her eyes startlingly white as the sand of the place she left, some of which is retained on her dress. Marina knows it will take weeks to shake out; and even then grains will return like memories to nag you. Joseph’s mother holds a saucer and cup, looking everywhere, carefully, encompassing them all. Knots of muscles jump at her elbow, in her jaw. The lines of care and age she remembers in the woman’s face are gone, replaced by a smoothness not youthful or vigorous but burnished and honed, like a cast statue. And statuesque she sits, while all around her the ladies mill and primp, making passes to the buffet laden with an abundance of cakes and tarts and fruit, a trough of gleaming oysters. When a sample of each dandy is brought for her to taste, Joseph’s mother gives her eyebrows an almost imperceptible lift, shakes her head so minutely you could blink and miss it. She can stomach none of the food. Coffee will be fine. Yes, a little cognac.

Of course, dear, they say, fluttering and almost dropping into curtsies. Joseph’s mother surveys the room with her impossibly white eyes. Mlle Pichon is kittenish by her side, also in black, as though not in mourning but that black were the colors of her court; Pichon fiddles with her sleeves, strokes her friend’s hair where it curls down in two black wisps before her reddened ears. Joseph’s mother accepts the preening without comment or expression; she is one to whom dread honor is due. Even the normally haughty Mme Frick is subdued and attentive—after a showy burst of tears when they arrived from the landing.

Something nudges her elbow. Marina turns and almost knocks the punch cups from Joseph’s hands. He gives her one, cuts his eyes mother­ward as he drinks. She still doesn’t know how to stand near him; Joseph’s new height, his odd mannerisms, his deepened voice have displaced her, forced her to be obvious, as though obviousness will afford her entrance into his now-guarded perceptions.

“Are you happy to have your mother back?”

He says, “It would be bad if I wasn’t.”

“Well, will you be happy to move to your new house.”

He flicks his cup, screws up his lips. “It’s just a new place. Another room.”

“But you’ll be closer—” She stops herself. The ladies are peeling away from Joseph’s mother, gathering around the pianola. There is to be a song.

“Closer,” he says, grinning meanly and affecting elegance. “To whom?” This is his new way, by turns enigmatic and snide. He’s grown sharp points and doesn’t hesitate to jab her. By turns she’s cultivated her own.

“To me, of course,” she says. “Or maybe you don’t care about me either. . . .”

Joseph’s grin grows sharper. Is this something the doctor has taught him? The mocking and parrying? These little tests to see how much she’ll take? He is not the boy whose hand she took on the couch that night, whose fingers she pressed between her legs, the boy who shuddered and was terrified when the wet spot appeared on his thigh. The last time they were alone, a month ago, before Uncle Willie was brought back, Joseph had said words she’d never before heard, tried to hook his finger inside her. She, in turn, choked his part to purpleness.

The only other male fracture in this veneer of femininity is the doctor. A black ribbon on his arm in memory of his dead wife, he leans in the doorway, sips his drink, and stares at the back of Joseph’s mother’s head. For an instant the seeming vacancy of the doctor’s stare is gone; he catches Marina’s glance and she quickly turns away.

Someone clangs the keys of the pianola and the ladies test their trebles, call for Mlle Pichon to come up and join them in their serenade. So she does, leaving Joseph’s mother alone.

“I should go over there,” Joseph says.

She follows him, takes a place at the left wing of her chair. The ladies’ voices join in concerted discord and the song begins. Marina keeps her eyes down, watches the fingers of the woman’s right hand tap an entirely different rhythm. A song of her own. Before the second bar is done, Joseph’s mother waves him close, whispers something in his ear. He nods and disappears in the direction of the buffet.

Now the tapping right hand turns upward. Forefinger curls for Marina to bend down. She does, the ladies’ voices droning through a chorus about love. She has never been so close to Joseph’s mother; she can feel her stray hairs and smell her breath—raw and metallic. For a moment she waits, then the impossibly white eyes roll from the singers to her, catch her up and fix her in place. The lips curl back and she sees the barest tip of the woman’s tongue, red and darting as she speaks.

“Watch yourself, little girl; the world means you nothing but hurt.”