excused, as relations between her and Morri were still a bit tentative. We returned home much earlier than we’d expected, as Mr. Arthur was an early riser and was always in bed by ten o’clock.
Finding Violeta absent from the sitting room, I took the stairs two at a time to our bedroom, planning to dive upon her, but she was not there. On intuition, I went to the window of the room in which I’d previously slept. I discovered her sitting in her garden, swathed in a black Portuguese mantilla. In her hands was the tabletop Daniel had carved for her just before his death. She was sobbing.
I ran down to her, but nothing I could say or do would stop her tears.
“Please tell me what’s wrong — is it Daniel? I often think of him too, you know.”
Looking away from me, speaking in Portuguese, she said, “I do not love you, John. Not as you would wish. Not like I loved Daniel.” She reached a trembling hand to her mouth. “I never shall, you see, so we must never have a child.”
“Then why … why did you come to me?”
“It was the only way to rid us both of the angry resentment that had developed between us. It was the only way to help you.” Gazing up at me with eyes full of sorrow, she said, “I warned you that you ought not to fall in love with me. I did everything I could to show you that.”
I understood then that she had kept so much distance between us because she did indeed wish to save me from herself. In an odd way, she had been more generous through our weeks of disappointment than she had been in sharing her bed with me. There had been no true complications between us from her point of view; she had simply never loved me.
I stood up, sensing my life spinning slowly to a stop. But I was not angry or even sad. Though it was a paradox, I felt both hollow and very heavy. I felt that I was composed of all the thoughts I’d had of her over the last twenty years — all my prayers and wishes. I was very tired — of myself most of all.
“You did indeed warn me,” I told her in a voice of stone, unwilling to break down. “I genuinely thank you for that. And for trying to help. I see now what a dilemma I put you in.”
I pressed my dry lips to her cold cheek and glided up the stairs as a specter. From my room, I watched her sitting in her garden for more than an hour. Then she went inside, leaving the tabletop on her bench. Staring at it through that forest of dark weeds, imagining my face as Daniel had carved it, I saw how I’d never wanted to understand the plain truth of our relationship. Even as a lass she had told me that I could hope for nothing more than friendship.
When she returned to her garden, it was with a long knife. My heartbeat jumped and my eyesight dimmed; I was sure she was about to take her own life.
When I reached her, she was defacing the portrait Daniel had carved of her, slashing at it with a violence so deep that I stepped back without knowing it, nearly toppling. I would have liked to still her hand, but I knew by now that she did not want or need my protection.
The next day, I did without breakfast and took a lonely walk along the Hudson River, thinking of the child we’d never have. I met Morri after school and explained solemnly what had taken place between Violeta and myself. I told her I intended to spend a weekend outside of the city so that I might think out my future — and that of my daughters.
Morri and I took a long boat ride on Saturday morning to the colonial town of Roslyn, at the bottom of a slender inlet on the northern shore of Long Island. On our first afternoon there we took a walk through the woods, up a rather steep hill and far into a desolate distance of leafless trees. It was as cold as I’d ever known it, and I felt as though I were walking through an old landscape that had frozen inside me. I expected to see Violeta’s body on the ground, as she had been after her uncle’s attack.
Morri walked faster than I and would often wait for me to catch up. It pleased me the way she looked back for me.
On Monday, sometime before dawn, the snow began to fall. It was the first snow that Morri had ever seen. Dashing outside, she promptly fell on her bottom, bruised but laughing. I sat down beside her. Tilting my head back, I watched the flakes falling, feeling their tickling chill on my cheeks. She and I lay together for a long time, letting ourselves be covered.
We got back to Violeta’s home early Monday evening, as Morri had the day off from school. She met us at the door with kind words and kisses, offering to make us hot coffee and
When I informed Violeta of my intentions, she gave me an encouraging smile and said, “I ask you only that you keep your studio here. So that we might remain friends. Do me that one favor, John.”
For the first time in my life I said no to her. A single word had never come harder to me.
I wrote immediately to Mother to tell her of my new home, and I changed the address in my newspaper appeals. On my last night at Violeta’s house, she slipped out to her garden before dawn. Gazing up at the stars, contoured by moonlight, she seemed again that nymph of the night I’d previously imagined. When she spotted me, I stepped back into the shadows like a criminal. She began tossing a ball up in the air. It was Fanny’s. In my mind, I could see my beloved dog jumping for it and barking. I stumbled back to bed. A little while later, I heard the sound of pebbles being tossed at my window. I covered my head with my pillow. When finally I removed it some minutes later, she was still tossing her stones. She continued until sunrise, but I dared not go to her.
One morning in mid-January there came a thunderous pounding at the door of our new home on Waverly Place. Running to answer it, I found my mother raising her hands to her mouth, already in tears. Behind her were Esther and Graca. At least a score of stuffed bags were being unloaded from three large carriages.
Our reunion was somewhat hysterical, as they always are in my family. It was rather like a mad Italian opera played at too fast a tempo, with four characters of wildly different temperaments searching for an equilibrium lost somewhere between tears and laughter. I kissed my children all over and took turns holding them.
The girls were wearing the filigree earrings I’d purchased in Alexandria and told me with pride that they hadn’t taken them off in weeks and had no intention of doing so for many more. On touring our house, I told them that they would have to share a bedroom, but they claimed that it was better that way, since they always slept more soundly when together at night. Like Morri, Mama had her own room and pronounced it perfectly charming, though it contained not a single piece of furniture or even a rug. Conditions were obviously very cramped and modest, and despite their smiles I suspected that they found it depressing after so long a journey. When I showed them how I’d encamped in what had been the pantry, in preparation for their arrival, I could feel my courage tiptoeing away from me.
“Just keep breathing,” Mama told me. But I could not laugh. She tapped my forehead as though to knock some sense into me. “Stop worrying, John,” she said, plainly intending it as a command. “We’ve all faced much worse than a bit of crowding and dust in our lives, even Graca and Esther.”
I took my children and my mother on separate walks down Broadway over the next two days, as in the light and air I could talk more freely of the loss of my arm and my experiences at River Bend. I apologized immediately to Mama for losing my arm, since I had come out of her complete and it seemed an affront to both her pain of childbirth and years of care. She hushed me up and kept saying, “You ought to have told me much sooner, you know. You needn’t always suffer alone. You’ve been doing that since you were a tiny lad, and I think it’s about time you stopped.”
I kept reassuring her that my difficulties had long passed. But she could not reconcile the image of her son in her mind with the man before her. In the early morning, while still half-asleep, I sometimes caught her standing in my doorway, watching me with troubled eyes.
Mama has always been a creature of unexpected moods, and after this initial period of disbelief and sorrow, she turned playful with me once more. Though this in itself was a heartening relief, I knew it would take many more
