had ever been, as though he had shot through a door without noticing that it opened on a flight of cellar stairs to pitch him headlong down. “Don’t,” he called out, lost. “Don’t go.” An imperious voice, such as he had never used to her before, such as he had never had to, such as she could not conceivably have refused. But nothing answered him. “Don’t go,” he said again, not imperiously, afraid in the dark of the wood and more bereft more suddenly than his young soul could have conceived possible. “Don’t go. Please, Lilac. Don’t go, you’re the only secret I ever had!”
Gigantic, aloof, not much disturbed but quite interested, old ones looked down like trees at the small one who had so suddenly and fiercely come in among them. Hands spread on their enormous knees, they considered him, insofar as they could consider someone or something so minute. One put his finger to his lips; silently they watched him stumble amid their toes; they cupped huge hands behind their ears, and with eavesdroppers’ slight smiles they heard his cry and his grief, though Lilac could not.
Two Beautiful Sisters
“Dear Parents,” Auberon in the Folding Bedroom wrote (typing featly with two fingers on an old, old machine he had discovered there), “Well! A winter here in the City is going to be quite an experience! I’m glad it won’t last forever. Though today temp. is 25, and it snowed again yesterday. No doubt it’s worse where you are, ha ha!” He paused, having made this gay exclamation carefully out of the single-quote mark and the period. “I’ve been twice now to see Mr. Petty at Petty, Smilodon & Ruth, Grandpa’s lawyers as you know, and they’ve been kind enough to advance me a little more against the settlement, but not much, and they can’t say when the darn thing will be straightened out at last. Well Im sure everything will turn out fine.” He was not sure, he raged, he had shouted at Mr. Petty’s automaton of a secretary and nearly balled up the paltry check and thrown it at her; but the persona whacking out this letter, tongue between teeth and searching fingers tense, didn’t make admissions like that. Everything was fine at Edgewood; everything was fine here too, Everything was fine. He made a new paragraph. “I’ve already about worn out the shoes I came in. Hard City streets! As you know, things have got very expensive here and the quality is no good. I wonder if you could send the pair of tall lace-up ones in my closet. Theyre not very dressy but anyway I’ll be spending most of my time working here at the Farm. Now that winters here theres a lot to do, cleaning up, stableing the animals and so on. George is pretty funny in his galoshes. But hes been very good to me and I appreciate it even if I do get blisters. And there are other nice people who live here.” He stopped, as before a precipice he was about to tumble over, his finger hovering above the S. The machine’s ribbon was old and brownish, the pale letters staggered drunkenly above and below the line they should be walking. But Auberon didn’t want to display his school hand to Smoky; it had degenerated, he had lately taken up ball-points and other vices; what now about Sylvie? “Among them are:” He ran down in his mind the current occupancy of Old Law Farm. He wished he hadn’t taken this route. “Two sisters, who are Puerto Rican and very beautiful.” Now what the hell had he done that for? An old secret-agent obfuscation inhabiting his fingers. Tell them nothing. He sat back, unwilling to go on; and at that moment, there was a knock at the door of the Folding Bedroom, and he drew the page out, finish it later (though he never did) and went—two steps across the floor was all it took his long legs—to admit the two beautiful Puerto Rican sisters, wrapped into one and all his, all his.
But it was George Mouse who stood on the threshold. (Auberon would soon learn not to mistake anyone else at the door for Sylvie, because Sylvie instead of knocking always scratched or drummed at the door with her nails; it was the sound of a small animal wanting admission.) George had an old fur coat over his arm, an antique lady’s peau-de-soi black hat on his head, and two shopping bags in his hands. “Sylvie not here?” he said.
“No, not just now.” With all the practiced skills of a secretive nature Auberon had managed to avoid George Mouse for a week in his own farm, coming and going with a mouse’s forethought and haste. But now here he was. Never had Auberon experienced such embarrassment, such a terrible caught-out feeling, such an awful sense that no common remark he could make would not carry a load of hurt and rejection for another, and that no pose, solemn, facetious, offhand, could mitigate that. And his host! His cousin! Old enough to be his father! Usually not at all intensely aware of the reality of others or of others’ feelings, Auberon just then felt what his cousin must feel as though he inhabited him. “She went out. I don’t know where.”
“Yeah? Well, this stuff is hers.” He put down the shopping bags and plucked the hat from his head. It left his gray hair standing upright. “There’s some more. She can come get it. Well, a load off my mind.” He tossed the fur coat over the velvet chair. “Hey. Take it easy. Don’t hit me, man. Nothing to do with me.”
Auberon realized he had taken a rigid stance in a corner of the room, face set, unable to find an expression to suit the circumstance. What he wanted to do was to tell George he was sorry; but he had just enough wit to see that nothing could be more insulting. And besides, he wasn’t sorry, not really.
“Well, she’s quite a girl,” George said, looking around (Sylvie’s panties were draped over the kitchen chair, her unguents and toothbrush were at the sink). “Quite a girl. I hope yiz are very happy.” He punched Auberon’s shoulder, and pinched his cheek, unpleasantly hard. “You son of a bitch.” He was smiling, but there was a mad light in his eye.
“She thinks you’re terrific,” Auberon said.
“Izzat a fact.”
“She said she doesn’t know what she would have done without you. Without your letting her stay here.”
“Yeah. She said that to me too.”
“She thinks of you like a father. Only better.”
“Like a father, huh?” George burned him with his coaly eyes, and without looking away began to laugh. “Like a father.” He laughed louder, a wild staccato laugh.
“Why are you laughing?” Auberon asked, not certain he was meant to join, or whether it was he who was being laughed at.
“Why?” George laughed all the harder. “Why? What the hell do you want me to do? Cry?” He threw back his head, showing white teeth, and roared. Auberon couldn’t help joining in then, though tentatively, and when George saw that, his own laugh diminished. It went on in chuckles, like small waves following a breaker. “Like a father, huh. That’s rich.” He went to the window and stared out at the iron day. A last chuckle escaped him; he clasped his hands behind his back and sighed. “Well, she’s a hell of a girl. Too much for an old fart like me to keep up with.” He glanced over his shoulder at Auberon. “You know she’s got a Destiny?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Yeah.” His hands opened and closed behind him. “Well, it looks like I ain’t in it. Okay by me. Cause there’s a brother in it, too, with a knife, and a grandmother and a crazy mother… And some babies.” He was silent awhile. Auberon almost wept for him. “Old George,” George said. “Always left with the babies. Here, George, do something with this. Blow it up, give it away.” He laughed again. “And do I get credit? Damn right I do. You son of a bitch, George, you blew up my baby.”
What was he talking about? Had he slipped into madness under the pressure of grief? Would losing Sylvie be like that, would it be so awful? A week ago he wouldn’t have thought so. With a sudden chill he remembered that the last time Great-aunt Cloud had read the cards for him, she had predicted a dark girl for him; a dark girl, who would love him for no virtue he had, and leave him through no fault of his own. He had dismissed it then, as he was in the process of dismissing all of Edgewood and its prophecies and secrets. He dismissed it now again, with horror.
“Well, you know how it is,” George said. He pulled a tiny spiral notebook from his pocket and peered in it. “You’re on for the milking this week. Right?”
“Right.”
“Right.” He put away the book. “Hey listen. You want some advice?”
He didn’t, any more than he wanted prophecy. He stood to receive it. George looked at him closely, and then around the room. “Fix the place up,” he said. He winked at Auberon. “She likes it nice. You know? Nice.” He began to be caught by a fit of laughing again, which burbled at the back of his throat as he took a handful of jewelry from one pocket and gave it to Auberon, and a handful of change from another and gave him that too. “And keep clean,” he said. “She thinks us white people are a little on the foul side most of the time.” He headed for the door. “A word to the wise,” he said, and chuckling, left. Auberon stood with jewels in one hand and money in the other,
