Carole Maso - Mother and Child - A Novel

Before long, a piano became available in the town of Kinderhook, and the mother made her way to it. When the woman with the piano opened the door and saw the mother, it was as if she knew her, and she hurried her into the drawing room with scarcely a word. Drawing room is short for withdrawing room, and it was a place where ladies once went after dinner while the men retired elsewhere. In the drawing room, the woman played the nocturne now.

Later she explained that she had had a son once who loved the piano, but that he had lost his hands in the war. The keys had been refurbished with his finger bones, which the war had sent home in a box. His wedding ring was kept in a saucer on the piano top. The mother braced herself for the rest of the story, which had been foretold in the nocturne.

Eventually, the woman said, a world where her son could not play the piano became a world impossible for him to live in, and he left this life.

She began again to play.

A keyboard of bone makes a sound like no other.

IN THE AGE of Funnels, the Vortex Man ruled, and the mother felt a certain awe when she thought of him there at the center of the whirling world. Though she could not exactly see him, she liked to think of him as a large fellow, wearing a crown and seated on a throne at the core of the Vortex. Conversant with danger and the depths, but a ballast, nonetheless, a guide in dizzying times.

No matter what wind whipped around them, or what the spinning suggested, the Vortex Man remained calm, fixed, solid, jolly even. Such was the mystery of the Vortex, that while all whirled with unfathomable energy, at the center it was still and mild.

She loved him: part wizard, part professor, choreographer, director, smoke artist, misanthrope, a monster, some said. Now the mother was hearing things: Destroyed will be our remembrance from the earth, he bellowed. It was night. Hello, she called, but who could hear her?

Sometimes, she thought his face must seem patient, impassive, serene, in waiting. Sometimes she imagined it as condescending, bemused, intolerant, or worse. Other times, it was possible to see strength and wisdom. More and more, people attempted to make their way to him through high winds and treacherous terrain, braving tornadoes, hurricanes, sunspots, cyclones, black holes, and even ether, the fifth element, to be by his side.

NOW BEFORE HER in the seductive wind-ridden night, the wolf stood in dazzling moonlight. Its silver fur, its sleek, streamlined body. Its snout. The glowing head. If it was an apparition, it was a sly one — and masqueraded as real, and suggested only solidity and magnificence. There was an unearthly quiet. She stood in a thicket of emotion, blinded by its beauty. Something wild moved through her and she shuddered. She remembered when it had turned her long ago from a child into a woman overnight and carried her over the threshold. The wolf darted away now. If the child had been present, she might have named it Jet.

How remarkable is the world, and all its creatures, and the magnitude of the feeling. The force of arrival, and the force of departure. And the way the space, made radiant by the wolf, retained something of that charged, majestic quality, long after the wolf had passed.

THE NIGHT OIL Man came to check the propane tanks and hoses and lines that ran into the house because the mother was certain the house was about to explode. The Night Oil Man had claws that were black from oil and curved. He was muttering because it was the center of the night and bitter cold, and though he was on call, he clearly had other places to trundle toward at that hour. The child remained asleep in her little firebed, and the mother saw no use in waking her. In the flammable world, it was better for the child not to move a muscle, and if she was awake, she might toss Lamby into the air and they might go up in the conflagration. Earlier, the mother had moved the child’s bed with the child and the lamb outside onto the grass under the stars into the garden. If the child woke up she would be scared, but it was better than being blown to smithereens, the mother reasoned.

When the Night Oil Man returned from his inspection, he was angry, for he found nothing at all that might have signaled trouble, no cause whatsoever for alarm, and no reason to justify his being taken away from the thick of his Night Oil wife and the night.

At that moment, he might have strangled the mother or violated her in some unspeakable way, at the very least, were it not for the child whom he saw all of a sudden outside asleep in the little makeshift trundle bed under the stars. Seeing her from the corner of his half-closed, blackened eye, he hunched over her, and cinders dropped from his hair. Instead of squatting above the mother with his night oil grunts, the house exploding around them, he smiled at the child and the lamb neatly tucked in.

At this time, no mention was made of the smell — not the smell of the Night Oil Man, nor the smell of the child. The child was wearing an amulet containing the aromatic Oil of Wintergreen, an oil known in the Valley for warding off bats.

The Night Oil Man patted the child on the head, sneered at the mother, and made his way back into the night.

Before he left, the mother pressed a spare amulet into his hand. Despite the reassurances of the Night Oil Man, the mother put up her umbrella and held vigil all night at the mouth of the house, and waited for day to come.

A SMART BOMB was falling directly at her, but she was smarter, and she caught it and she held it in her arms and she rocked it and soothed it, until it was detonated and rendered harmless. The mother appeared meek and mild on the outside, but she was fierce and brave inside. She wrapped the bomb in swaddling clothes: her eyeless, soulless, inanimate child — so that another child might live.

IT WAS JULY, and the Headless Horseman Fife and Drum Corps was making its way across the sheepfold. The children were Grinning for Cheese and playing Hoops and the Game of Graces. It was a splendor to watch them on the lawn with their circles and ribbons and slender sticks, and the gaiety and laughter delighted the mother. On the Croquet Lawn, a Punch and Judy show was being staged. Chimneyside Tales were being told. There were games of Shuttlecock and Nine Pins. Bells rang. Some who came were walking on stilts. Others were spitting cherry pits, trying to go the distance. Little children were making dolls of cornhusks. The child sat next to the loom with her lamb. On the Bleaching Field, skirmishes between the Redcoats and the Patriots were being reenacted. At noon the Freedom Pole was raised, and at four the effigy of King George was strung up and hanged. The boys beat it soundly with sticks.

Effigies in fact abounded in the Valley. It was a valley of fewer and fewer men, and more and more, the women and children were asked to chase figments out on the memory field.

After the last tale was told, the mother noticed that there was some small calamity occurring in the bushes, and she rose to see what the commotion was. It was not enough apparently that King George had been strung up and hanged and beaten. Seven small boys had dragged the entrails of the King furtively into a wooded enclosure and were huddled around it. In the enclave, the boys were beating and battering the very daylights out of what remained with sticks.

In their fervor, they did not notice the mother. One boy who had been appointed Guard, so as to ensure no one came to take away their cache, had gotten caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment and had deserted his post.

The mother, as she got nearer, felt as if she were seeing through a veil something of the shrouded part of humanity, something at the very heart of life’s darkness. Mysterious are the days. Not far away, a small faceless cornhusk doll reached for day, or her mother, now a husk as well.