Little, Big

“Because I can always remember this now.”

“No.”

“At least remember this.” She threw her dress into the air, very agilely causing it to settle over her head; she wiggled, and it descended over her like a curtain, the last act. “August, no.” She shrank against the door, clasping her hands togeher, drawing up her shoulders. “Because you don’t love me, and that’s all right. No. I know about Sara Stone. Everybody knows. It’s all right.”

“Who?”

“Don’t you dare.” She looked at him warningly. He wasn’t to spoil this with lies, with coarse denials. “You love her. That’s true and you know it.” He said nothing. It was true. A collision was taking place inside him of such magnitude he could only witness it. The noise of it made it hard to hear her. “I’ll never ever do it with anyone else, ever.” Her bravery exhausted, her lip began to tremble. “I’m going to go off and live with Jeff, and I’ll never love anyone else, and just remember this always.” Jeff was her kindly brother, a rose gardener. She turned her face away. “You can take me home now.”

He took her home, without another word.

Being filled with clamor is like being void. Void, he watched her climb down from the car, watched her shatter the moonshadows of leaves and be shattered by them as she went away, not looking back, he would not have seen her if she had looked. Void, he drove away from the shaded, shuddering crossroads. Void, he drove toward home. It didn’t feel like a decision, it felt like void, when he turned off the gray pebble-glittering road, bounced through the ditch, climbed a bank, and steered the Ford (dauntless, unfazed) out into the silvered pond of an uncut pasture, and then further on, the void slowly filling with resolution that felt also like void.

The car sputtered out of gas: He choked it, prodded it, urged it a little further, but it died. If there was a God damn garage within ten miles of here it would be convenient as hell. He sat for a while in the cooling car, imagining his destination without exactly thinking about it. He did wonder (last lamplit window of common thought, flickering out) if Marge would think he’d done it for her. Well he would have, in a way, in a way, he would have to put stones in his pockets, heavy ones, and just relax. Wash it all away. The thunder of void resolution was like the cold thunder of the falls, he seemed already to hear it, and wondered if he would hear nothing else through eternity; he hoped not.

He got out of the car, detached the squirrel tail, it ought to be returned, maybe they would Somehow return the payment he had made for it; and, slipping and stumbling in his patent-leather seducer’s shoes, he made for the woods.

Strange Way to Live

“Mother?” Nora said, astonished, stopping in the hall with an empty cup and saucer in her hands. “What are you doing up?”

Violet stood on the stairs, having made no sound coming down that Nora heard; she was dressed, in clothes which Nora hadn’t seen for years, but she had the air of someone asleep, somnambulating.

“No word,” she said, as though sure there would not be, “about August?”

“No. No, no word.”

Two weeks had passed since a neighbor had told them of seeing August’s Ford abandoned in a field, open to the elements. Auberon, after long hesitation, had suggested to Violet that they call the police; but this notion was so far from anything Violet could imagine about what had happened that he doubted she even heard: no fate August was resefved to could possibly be altered, or even discovered, by police.

“It’s my fault, you know,” she said in a small voice. “Whatever it is that’s happened. Oh, Nora.”

Nora rushed up the stairs to where Violet had sat down suddenly as though fallen. She took Violet’s arm to help her rise, but Violet only grasped the hand she offered and squeezed it, as though it were Nora who needed comforting. Nora sat beside her on the stair. “I’ve been so wrong,” Violet said, “so stupid and wrong. And now see what’s come of it.”

“No,” Nora said. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t see,” Violet said. “I thought… Listen now, Nora. I want to go to the City. I want to see Timmie and Alex, and have a long visit, and see the baby. Will you come?”

“Of course,” Nora said. “But…”

“All right. And Nora. Your young man.”

“What young man?” She looked away.

“Henry. Harvey. You mightn’t think I know, but I do. I think—I think you and he should—should do what you like. If ever anything I said made you think I didn’t want you to, well, it’s not so. You must do exactly as you like. Marry him, and move away…”

“But I don’t want to move away.”

“Poor Auberon, I suppose it’s too late—he’s missed his war now, and…”

“Mother,” Nora said, “what are you talking about?”

She was silent a time. Then: “It’s my own fault,” she said. “I didn’t think. It’s very hard though, you know, to know a little, or to guess a little, and not want to—to help, or to see that things come out right; it’s hard not to be afraid, not to think some small thing— oh, the smallest—that you might do would spoil it. But that’s not so, is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It isn’t. You see”—she clasped her pale, thin hands together, and closed her eyes—“it is a Tale. Only it’s longer and stranger than we imagine. Longer and stranger than we can imagine. So what you must do—” she opened her eyes “—what you must do, and what I must do, is forget.”

“Forget what?”

“Forget a Tale is being told. Otherwise—oh, don’t you see, if we didn’t know the little that we do, we’d never interfere, never get things wrong; but we do know, only not enough; and so we guess wrong, and get entangled, and have to be put right in ways—in ways so odd, so—oh, dear, poor August, the smelliest, noisiest garage would have been better, I know it would have been…”

“But what about a special fate, and all that,” Nora said, alarmed at her mother’s distress, “and being Protected, and all?”

“Yes,” Violet said. “Perhaps. But it doesn’t matter, because we can’t understand that, or what it means. So we have to forget.”

“How can we?”

“We can’t.” She stared straight in front of her. “But we can be silent. And we can be clever against our knowledge. And we can—oh, it’s so strange, such a strange way to live—we can keep secrets. Can’t we? Can you?”

“I think. I don’t know.”

“Well, you must learn. So must I. So must we all. Never to tell what you know, or think, because it’s never enough, and it won’t be true anyway for anyone but you, not in the same way; and never hope, or be afraid; and never, never take their side against us, and still, Somehow, I don’t know how, trust them. We must do that from now on.”

“How long?”

Before Violet could answer this, if she could, or would, the door of the library, which they could see through the fat banisters, opened a crack, and a wan face looked out, and withdrew.

“Who’s that?” Violet asked.

“Amy Meadows,” Nora said, and blushed.

“What’s she doing in the library?”

“She came looking for August. She says—” Nora now clasped her hands and shut her eyes “—she says she’s going to have August’s baby. And she wondered where he was.”

The Seed. She thought of Mrs. Flowers: Is it the Tale? Hopeful, astonished, glad. She nearly laughed, giddily. “Well, so do I, she said. So do I. She leaned out between the banisters and said, “Come