“It’s about happiness,” Mrs. Flowers said, and Violet had to stare puzzled at her for a moment until she reheard this as “It’s about Happiness,” the name of their eldest daughter. The younger ones were named Joy and Spirit. The same confusion happened when their names came up: our Joy is gone for the day; our Spirit came home covered with mud. Folding her hands and raising eyes that Violet now saw were red from weeping, Mrs. Flowers said, “Happiness is pregnant.”
“Oh my.”
Mr. Flowers, who with his thin boyish beard and great sensitive brow reminded Violet of Shakespeare, began speaking so softly and indirectly that Violet had to lean forward to hear. She got the gist: Happiness was pregnant, so Happiness had said, by her son August.
“She cried all night,” Mrs. Flowers said, her own eyes filling. Mr. Flowers explained, or tried to. It wasn’t that they believed in worldly shame or honor, their own marriage bond had been sealed before any words or formulas had been spoken; the flowering of vital energies is always to be welcomed. No: it was that August, well, didn’t seem to understand it the way they did, or perhaps he understood it better, but anyway to speak frankly they thought he’d broken the girl’s heart, though she said he said he loved her; they wondered if Violet knew what August felt, or—or if she knew (the phrase, so loaded with common and wrong meaning, fell out anyway, with a clang, like a horseshoe he had had in his pocket) what the boy intended to do about this.
Violet moved her mouth, as though in answer, but no answer came out. She composed herself. “If he loves her,” she said, “then…”
“He may,” Mr. Flowers said. “But he says—she says he says—that there’s someone else, someone with, well, a prior claim, someone…”
“He’s promised to another,” Mrs. Flowers said. “Who’s also, well.”
“Amy Meadows?” Violet said.
“No, no. That wasn’t the name. Was that the name?”
Mr. Flowers coughed. “Happiness wasn’t sure, exactly. There might be… more than one.”
Violet could only say “Oh dear, oh dear,” feeling deeply their consternation, their brave effort not to censure, and having no idea how to answer them. They looked at her with hope, hope that she would say something that would fit all this too into the drama they perceived. But in the end she could only say, in a tiny voice, with a desperate smile, “Well, I suppose it’s not the first time it ever happened in the world.”
“Not the first time?”
“I mean not the
Their hearts leapt up. She
“Is it,” said Mrs. Flowers, almost whispering, “part of the Tale?”
“Is what? Oh, yes,” Violet said, lost in thought. What had become of Amy? What on earth was August up to? Where had he found the daring to break girls’ hearts? A dread came over her. “Only I didn’t know this, I never suspected… Oh, August,” she said, and bowed her head. Was this their doing? How could she know? Could she ask him? Would his answer tell her?
Seeing her so lost, Mr. Flowers leaned forward. “We never, never meant to burden you,” he said. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t that we didn’t think, that we weren’t sure it wasn’t, or wouldn’t be, all right. Happiness doesn’t
“No,” said Mrs. Flowers, and put her hand gently on Violet’s arm. “We didn’t
“Maybe,” Violet said, “it’ll be clearer later.”
“I’m sure,” Mrs. Flowers said. “It is, it
But Violet had seen that it would not be clearer later. The Tale: yes, this was part of the. Tale, but she had suddenly seen, as a person alone in a room reading or working at the end of day sees, as she raises her eyes from work that has for some reason grown obscure and difficult, that evening has come, and that’s the reason; and that it would long grow darker before it lightened.
“Please,” she said, “have tea. We’ll light the lights. Stay awhile.”
Outside she could hear—they could all hear—a car, chugging steadily toward the house. It slowed as it approached the drive—its voice was distinct and regular, like the crickets’—and changed gears like changing its mind, and chugged onward.
How long is the Tale? she had asked, and Mrs. Underhill had said: you and your children and your children’s children will all be buried before that Tale’s all told.
She took hold of the lamp cord, but for a moment didn’t pull it. What had she done? Was this her fault, because she hadn’t believed the Tale could be so long? It was. She would change. She would correct what she could, if there were time. There must be time. She pulled the cord, which made the windows night, and the room a room.
The Last Day of August
The enormous moon which August had taken Margaret Juniper out to see rise had risen, though they hadn’t noticed its ascent. The harvest moon, August had insisted this was, and had sung a song about it to Marge as they sped along; but it wasn’t the harvest moon, amber and huge and plenteous as it was, that would be next month’s; this was only the last day of August.
Its light was on them. They could look at it now, August was too dazed and replete to do anything else, even to comfort Marge who wept quietly—perhaps, who could tell, even happily—beside him. He couldn’t speak. He wondered if he would ever speak again, except to invite, except to propose. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut… But he knew he wouldn’t.
Marge raised a moonlit hand, and stroked the moustache he had begun to grow, laughing through her tears. “It’s so handsome,” she said. He twitched his nose like a rabbit under her fingers. Why do they always rub it wrong, turn it uncomfortably underside-over, should he shave it so they can’t? Her mouth was red and the flesh around it flushed from kissing and from weeping. Her skin against his was as soft as he had imagined it would be, but flecked with pinkish freckles he hadn’t expected, not her slim white thighs though, bare on the sweat-slick leather of the seat. Within her opened blouse her breasts were small and new-looking, capped with large changeable nipples, seeming to have just been extruded from a boyish chest. The little hair was blond and stiff and small, like a dot. Oh God the privacies he had seen. He felt the strangeness of unbound flesh strongly. They ought to be kept hidden, these vulnerabilities, these oddities and organs soft as a snail’s body or its tender horns, the exposure of them was monstrous, he wanted to recase hers in the pretty white underthings that hung around the car like festoons, and yet even as he thought this be began to rise again.
“Oh,” she said. She hadn’t, probably, got much of a gander at his engorgement in the rush of her deflowering, too much else to think about. “Do you do it right away again?”
He made no answer, it had nothing to do with him. As well ask the trout struggling on the hook if he liked to go on with that activity or cease it. A bargain is a bargain. He did wonder why, though one knows a woman better and she has picked up anyway the rudiments, the second time often seems more difficult, more illfitting, more a matter of inconvenient knees and elbows, than the first. None of this prevented his falling, as they coupled, more deeply in love with her, but he hadn’t expected it to. So various they are, bodies, breasts, odors, he hadn’t known about that, that they would be as individual, as charged with character, as faces and voices. He was surfeited with so much character. He knew too much. He groaned aloud with love and knowledge, and clung to her.
It was late, the moon had shrunk and grown chill and white as it climbed the sky. With how sad steps. Her tears fell again, though she didn’t seem to be exactly weeping, they seemed a natural secretion, drawn forth by the moon perhaps; she was busy putting away her nakedness, though she couldn’t take it back from him any more. She said to him calmly: “I’m glad, August. That we had this one time.”
“What do you mean?” A hoarse beast’s voice, not his own. “This one time?”
She brushed the tears from her face with the flat of her hand, she couldn’t see to fasten her garters.
