Little, Big

Sophie had also known that Auberon was on his way home, though the bus had thrown off her calculations by a day. She was full of advice, and had many questions to ask; but Auberon wanted no advice, and she saw that her questions would get no answers either, so she didn’t ask them: what information he chose to offer was all she would get for the moment, scantily though it clothed his City months.

At dinner she said: “Well. It’s nice to have everybody back. For one night.”

Auberon, devouring victuals like a man who’s lived for months on hot dogs and day-old Danish, looked up at her, but she had looked away, not conscious apparently of having said anything odd; and Tacey began a story about Cherry Lake’s divorce after only a year of marriage.

“This is delicious, Ma,” Auberon said, and helped himself again, wondering.

Later, in the library, he and Smoky compared cities: Smoky’s, from years ago, and Auberon’s.

“The best thing,” Smoky said, “or the exciting thing, was the feeling you always had of being at the head of the parade. I mean even if all you did was sit in your room, you felt it, you knew that outside in the streets and in the buildings it was going forward, boom boom boom, and you were part of it, and everybody everywhere else was just stumbling along behind. Do you know what I mean?”

“I guess,” Auberon said. “I guess things have changed.” Hamletish in a black sweater and pants he’d found among his old clothes, he sat somewhat folded up in a tall buttoned leather chair. One light lit shone on the brandy bottle Smoky had opened. Alice had suggested he and Auberon have a long talk; but they were having difficulty finding subjects. “It always felt to me like everybody everywhere else had forgotten all about us.” He held out his glass, and Smoky put an inch of brandy in it.

“Well, but the crowds,” Smoky said. “The bustle, and all the well-dressed people; everybody hurrying to appointments…”

“Hm,” Auberon said.

“I think it’s…”

“Well I mean I think I know what you say you thought, I mean that you think it was…”

“I think I thought…”

“I guess it’s changed,” Auberon said.

A silence fell. Each stared into his glass. “So,” Smoky said. “Anyway. How did you meet her?”

“Who?” Auberon stiffened. There were subjects he had no intention of discussing with Smoky. That with their cards and their second sight they could probe his heart and learn his business was bad enough.

“The lady who came,” Smoky said. “That Miss Hawksquill. Cousin Ariel, as Sophie says.”

“Oh. In a park. We fell into conversation… A little park that said it was built by, you know, old John and his company, back when.”

“A little park,” Smoky said, surprised, “with funny curving paths, that…”

“Yeah,” Auberon said.

“That lead in, only they don’t, and…”

“Yeah.”

“Fountains, statues, a little bridge…”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I used to go there,” Smoky said. “How do you like that.”

Auberon didn’t, really. He said nothing.

“It always reminded me,” Smoky said, “for some reason, of Alice.” Suddenly flung back into the past, Smoky with great vividness remembered the small summery park, and felt—tasted, almost, with the mind’s tongue—the season of his first love for his wife. When he was Auberon’s age. “How do you like that,” he said again, dreamily, tasting a cordial in which a whole summer’s fruits were long ago distilled. He looked at Auberon. He was staring into his glass gloomily. Smoky sensed that he was approaching a sore spot or subject. How odd, though, the same park… “Well,” he said, and cleared his throat. “She seems like quite a woman.”

Auberon ran his hand over his brow.

“I mean this Hawksquill person.”

“Oh. Oh, yes.” Auberon cleared his throat, and drank. “Crazy, I thought, maybe.”

“Oh? Oh, I don’t think so. No more than… She certainly had a lot of energy. Wanted to see the house from top to bottom. She had some interesting things to say. We even crawled up into the old orrery. She said she had one, in her house in the City, different, but built on the same principles, maybe by the same person.” He had grown animated, hopeful. “You know what? She thought we could get it working again. I showed her it was all rusted, because, you know, the main wheel for some reason sticks out into the air, but she said, well, she thought the basic works are still okay. I don’t see how she could tell that, but wouldn’t that be fun? After all these years. I thought I’d have a shot at it. Clean it up, and see…”

Auberon looked at his father. He began to laugh. That broad, sweet, simple face. How could he have ever thought… “You know something?” he said. “I used to think, when I was a kid, that it did move.”

“What?”

“Sure. I thought it did move. I thought I could prove that it moved.”

“You mean by itself? How?”

“I didn’t know how,” Auberon said. “But I thought it did, and that you all knew it did, and didn’t want me to know.”

Smoky laughed too. “Well, why?” he said. “I mean why would we keep it a secret? And anyhow, how could it? What would be the power?”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Auberon said, laughing more, though the laughter seemed likely to deliquesce into tears. “By itself. I don’t know.” He rose, unfolding himself from the buttoned chair. “I thought,” he said, “oh, hell, I can’t recreate it, why I thought it was important, I mean why that was important, but I thought I was going to get the goods on you…”

“What? What?” Smoky said. “Well why didn’t you ask? I mean a simple question…”

“Dad,” Auberon said, “do you think there’s ever been a simple question around here you could ask?”

“Well,” Smoky said.

“Okay,” Auberon said. “Okay, I’ll ask you a simple question, okay?”

Smoky sat upright in his chair. Auberon wasn’t laughing any more. “Okay,” he said.

“Do you believe in fairies?” Auberon asked.

Smoky looked up at his tall son. Through the whole of their lives together, it had been as though he and Auberon had been back to back, fixed that way and unable to turn. They had had to communicate by indirection, through others, or by craning their necks and talking out the sides of their mouths; they had had to guess at each other’s faces and actions. Now and then one or the other would try a quick spin around to catch the other unawares, but it never worked, quite, the other was still behind and facing away, as in the old vaudeville act. And the effort of communication in that posture, the effort of making oneself clear, had often grown too much for them, and they’d given it up, mostly. But now—maybe because of what had happened to him in the City, whatever that was, or maybe only increase of time wearing away the bond that had both held them and held them apart, Auberon had turned around. Slowly I turn. And all that was left then was for Smoky himself to turn and face him. “Well,” he said, “ ‘believe’, I don’t know; ‘believe’, that’s a word…”

“Uh uh,” said Auberon. “No quotes.”

Auberon stood over him now, looking down, waiting. “Okay,” Smoky said. “The answer is no.”

“Okay!” Auberon said, grimly triumphant.

“I never did.”

“Okay.”

“Of course,” Smoky said, “it wouldn’t have been right to say so, you know, or really ask right out what was what here; I never wanted to spoil anything by not—not joining in. So I never said anything. Never asked questions, never. Especially not simple ones. I just hope you noticed that, because it wasn’t always easy.”

“I know,” Auberon said.

Smoky looked down. “I’m sorry about that,” he said; “about deceiving you—if I did, I suppose I didn’t; and