Robert Wilson - Gypsies

“No. I did not.”

Michael frowned.

She said, “Do you hate your father? I mean, hey, he walked out on you. Walked out on you and your mom. That’s a pretty big thing. You hate him for it?”

“No.” Cautiously now. “But that’s different.”

“Is it? Maybe it’s only a matter of degree.”

“He never beat me.”

“Should I have hated Daddy for that? Well, maybe you’re right… maybe I should have. Tim did, at least eventually. But, Michael, I was too young. When you’re five years old you don’t have that kind of hate in you. You forgive. Not because you want to but because you don’t have a choice. Can you understand that? Sometimes you forgive because there’s nothing else you can do.”

It was more than she had meant to say.

He looked at her steadily.

“But now,” he said, “you do have a choice.”

And there was nothing Laura could say to that— no answer she could think of.

They pulled up at the house just after dark.

It was an old row house on a hill that ran down toward the river, and behind it there was a steep wooded slope. The street was called Montpelier and it dead-ended against a chalky cliff.

This was not the greatest neighborhood. Some of these houses had been mended and repaired; many had not. Once upon a time, Laura thought, this would have been a street full of working people, Poles and Germans, but now, she guessed, most of these folks were laid off from the mills, and there were more than a few black faces peering out from shuttered windows as she parked beside the curb. Down where Montpelier met Riverside there was a big noisy bar; Riverside, a commercial street, was crowded with pawnshops, barred and locked at dusk.

Odd that her parents had stayed here so long. All my life, she thought, we moved every year, every two years. Sometimes because Daddy got laid off for drinking, sometimes for no discernible reason. Here, finally, they had settled. Maybe because they were alone together at last; maybe because Daddy had finally built up some seniority at the local mill.

Maybe because we left.

But now, she thought, we’re home.

There was a yellow bulb burning over the porch. Karen parallel-parked and Laura unloaded luggage from the trunk. Michael hefted a suitcase in each hand. He regarded the house warily. “So,” he said, “this is it?”

The screen door creaked open. Mama stepped out into the porch light. Laura’s hands were shaking; she clasped them together in front of her.

“Yes,” she told her nephew. “This is it.”

His mother and his aunt shared a second-floor bedroom, but Michael had the third floor of this old house all to himself.

He liked it up here. His grandparents were too old to climb the stairs, so everything was covered with a fine layer of undisturbed dust, and everything was antique: furniture, he guessed, they had been packing around all their lives. Michael was accustomed to the house in Toronto, a new house full of new things, as if nothing had existed before the year 1985; the Fauves’ third floor was a shocking contrast.

His grandmother had come up once that first night, gasping on the stairs. She apologized for the clutter. “All this mess,” she said sadly. “When Mama Lucille died we put all her stuff up here. So this is your family, Michael. See? This was your great-grandfather’s rolltop desk. That big old bed belonged to my parents …”

The bed had sat for so long in this room, and was so massive, that the floorboards had curved around it. His mother aired the sheets and pillowcases for him, but the bed retained a characteristic odor, not unpleasant, of ancient down and ticking, of whole lives lived between its sheets. Sleeping there these last few nights Michael had wished he could make windows into past time as well as across worlds: that he could gaze back down the years and maybe discover the secret of his strangeness. Wished this old bed could talk.

He spent a lot of time up here. Considering the situation in the house, it was better to be alone. And, anyway, he liked to be by himself. Alone, he could let his thoughts roam freely. Nothing to fear up here, no Gray Man, only these old high corniced rooms with their ripply windowpanes and the winter sky showing through; only the trickle of the water in the radiator grills. Lying here, suspended in down and history, he could allow himself to feel (but faintly, carefully) the rush of secret power in himself, the wheels of possibility spinning in him; to contemplate a step sideways out of Polger Valley and time itself; to wonder whether Aunt Laura’s instincts might not have been correct all those years ago, maybe there was a better world somewhere, a truly better world, and maybe he could reach it: maybe it was only a quarter step away down some hidden axis… maybe it was a door he could learn to open.

He thought about it often.

Downstairs, things were different. A week in this house had not inured Michael to all the silence and indignities.

His grandmother insisted on cooking. Every evening he helped her with the heavy china platters: chicken and gravy, roast beef and potatoes, meat loaf and boiled peas relayed steaming from the tiny kitchen to the dining room. Jeanne Fauve was overweight but not really fat; she was the kind of nervous woman whose metabolism runs fast. She was constantly in motion but the motion was inhibited, no large gestures but a lot of fluttering. Her hands moved like birds; her eyes darted like a bird’s eyes. She wore her hair in white spring curls bound tightly to her head. Michael kind of liked her and he thought she might like him—she would stare thoughtfully at him when she thought he didn’t notice. But if he looked directly at her, her eyes would dart away.

Tonight Michael helped her carry in a pot roast from the oven. Everything was in place: linen tablecloth, the china, the tarnished silverware. Everybody in their chair except Michael’s grandfather. Michael sat down at the foot of the table. He was hungry and the roast smelled wonderful, but he had learned to be patient. He put his hands in his lap; the mantel clock ticked. His mother whispered something to Aunt Laura.

Then, finally, Willis Fauve came ambling in from the downstairs bathroom, where he had washed his hands. Willis was not really a large man, Michael thought, but he was a big presence in the room. His forearms were big and he wore polyester pants cinched over his expansive belly and a starched white shirt open at the collar. He had a small face set in a large head, blunt features concentrated around heavy bifocals. He wore his hair in a bristly Marine cut and his thick eyebrows made him seem to be always frowning. Most of the time he was frowning. Certainly he did not ever seem happy.

Sometimes he would come to the table drunk. Not loudly or conspicuously drunk, but his walk would be unsteady and he would talk more than he normally did: mainly complaints about the neighbors. He would sit opposite Michael, and his acrid breath would waft across the table. Willis Fauve was a beer drinker. Beer, he said, was a food. It had food value.

Tonight Willis was just detectably drunk. Michael thought of him as “Willis” because he could not imagine calling this man “Grandfather.” Michael was acquainted with grandfathers mainly from TV: kindly, grizzled men in bib overalls. But Willis was not kindly; he was not even friendly. He had made it obvious that he regarded this visit as an intrusion and that he would not be happy until his privacy was restored. Sometimes—if he’d had enough to drink—he would come out and say so.

Willis sat down wheezing. Without looking at anyone he folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes. Michael was supposed to do the same, but he kept his eyes open. “Thank you, Lord,” Willis Fauve intoned, “for this food which you have seen fit to set before us. Amen.”