Louise Erdrich - Four Souls

THE BOY ’S CONDITION was diagnosed by Dr. Fulmer, at last, as the result of the father’s spermatozoal frustration too hastily released. The doctor himself had cautioned Mauser that he should forbear from procreative attempts for at least a year, and that he should cleanse his system by a regimen of sexual emissions and releases that would come to no fruition, or human result. Fulmer pronounced the boy a tragical mistake, the effect of an aberrant spermatozoa deformed by the long practice of Karezza. There it was again! The vile practice! How I wept to find that by a twisted path my own reading and advice was the source of such pain in the outcome. Were we to know, to anticipate, how grave an implication might arrive from the slightest of our actions, I suppose we would not act at all. Still, what occurred seems unholy, ungodly, and the fact that I saw it develop as a retribution upon the meekness of a child, a small boy quickly growing, hopelessly, oh, monstrous, took away my faith. I simply don’t have it anymore. Mauser ran to the church to beg forgiveness. Fleur prayed to what god or spirit she knew. But I rejected any deity who would so construct nature to fail. In fact, I cried shame. Shame on God! And I was not afraid to say it.

When the boy spun in circles for hours at a time. When his speech came out sideways. When his rage for sweet things overwhelmed us and especially at those times he went utterly tranced, void, blank, I made a calm promise to the deity that I should slap Him should we ever meet.

“So You’d best send me to the devil,” I said at night, instead of uttering my usual prayer, “for I’ll take You to task if You admit me to heaven. I’ll try my very best to exact an explanation. I’d like one. I won’t stop asking. Why did You do this? Why did You do this to a child?”

REINSTATED WITH the household, I had moved in my little Diablo, the Pomeranian who treated me with such contempt. Now I decided that I should train it to revise its attitude toward me and tried to withhold food, but that was impossible. The beast would starve before it would show affection. And I always thought dogs were incapable of turning face against one. So much for “merely” canine affection! I might have believed that I was too arduous a person to love, except that the boy had shown me different. He had changed my expectation and unlike Mauser I not only craved but understood that some return on my feelings should be mine.

That I was not so blighted a creature as I’d begun to accept was seconded, though not in so many words, by Fleur. Oh, many times it was obvious she had been drinking. She now tried to hide her consumption, but, to one who does not imbibe, the undertone of spirits is unmistakable. No matter how much Fleur gargled with orange flower water, I could tell. She put her arms around me, sometimes just to guide her faltering step. But other times she embraced me with true emotion, often when she witnessed how much I loved her child. She had a heart, no matter how she tried to hide it from her husband, a heart that stood both fast and passionate when it came to defending those she loved. I found out. There was an incident.

We took the boy by streetcar to the lake one afternoon. It was an adventure. We’d thrown off Fantan’s guardianship and struck off on our own with an umbrella and a basket of food and drink. I knew, of course, there would be a flask of whiskey underneath the folded napkins. But I ignored my uneasy regret. My cure was a curse. I understood that. I tried to reason with her often, but today I decided to turn a blind eye. Anyway, what happened occurred before she’d even sipped a drop.

We’d walked out on the long dock to catch the fresh breeze, found a bench at the very end, and sat down there together to watch clouds. Fleur nicked her chin up into the sky. She pointed at things that way, with her face, her lips, the expression in her eyes. She never used her hands or fingers.

“My mother’s name,” she said.

I didn’t understand.

“Anaquot. My mother’s name. One of her names.”

“Anaquot. It has a lovely sound. What does it mean?”

“Cloud.”

To the west, in blazing white billows, the clouds were massing. Over us the most perfect, rounded, pillow puff shapes were arranged in a warm blue sky. Our boy was standing at the rail at the dock’s end with his fishing pole, the hook baited with a bit of salt pork. At any moment, I was sure he’d catch a sunfish and I would shout for him, praise him high, and take the chance to gather him close. But the fish weren’t biting or they didn’t like salt pork. The sun struck our faces and arms. We grew lazy. We watched the clouds pass back and forth.

A man and woman came to the end of the dock and stood next to the boy looking out over the water. I saw them from the corner of my eye. Didn’t register. Then something drew me to stare at the man’s back and my heart crumpled like a mistaken drawing. I felt quite sick. It was the man who’d “done” the house of which Fleur was now mistress. It was the architect. I looked around wildly in a terror to escape, and met Fleur’s eyes. She frowned and gripped my arm, seeing that there was something very wrong, and just as I tried to gesture, to mouth the words, to indicate that I must hurry off or be discovered, he turned around. He and the woman — that is, the small, pretty, dark-haired, immaculately complexioned woman. Her figure was a graceful little arc. Her hair was cut in the latest fashion and she wore tiny webs of lace on her hands. She was the figure on top of a jewelry box.

“Why if it isn’t Miss Gheen,” he said, and then, just by the way my name was received by his companion, his sweetheart, his mistress I suppose, perhaps his fiancée, I knew the two of them had spoken of me together, before this moment.

“Ah, Miss Gheen!” The tiny woman glided up to me with the effortless movement of a dancer. Her face was all mocking curiosity. I understood at once that their conversation together had been at my expense, that I had been the butt of their fun together. Her hand was in his and I saw her squeeze it as if to say, Watch me bait her. Watch this!

“Miss Gheen, I’ve heard so very much about you,” she simpered.

I stammered, my face flushing wildly. I wished to jump right off the dock!

“I believe you have some… history… with my husband-tobe…”

Suddenly her coo turned to a gurgle. She leaned backward and went off balance, tiptoed for purchase, and swung her little parasol in an ungainly fashion as Fleur stepped neatly into place between us. Fleur had apprehended the situation, perhaps not the entire history of my shame — that I’d tried an awkward seduction would have been impossible for her to know — but somehow she caught the gist of what was happening. She knew to stand where she did, and then step forward. And forward. Without speaking.

“Who are you?” The small woman gave a little shriek, and spun away from Fleur with a flustered wave. I was emboldened.

“I would like to introduce you to Mrs. John James Mauser,” I said, from behind Fleur.

“Ah!” Weakly, the architect succumbed, cringed a little, and put out his hand with a smile he hoped would charm. He of course counted upon the good recommendations of those who held a mass of money, an unusual circumstance and soon to change, in fact, for John James Mauser. He wouldn’t risk offending the friend of the wife of a powerful client, and pulled his little trick away from the scene with a scrape of apologies.

Watching, I felt a heady triumph sneak through the center of me, rise like bubbles from the bottom of a champagne bottle, until I blurted out a laugh. Fleur turned to me, her face a comical copy of the woman’s sly and smug attempt to embarrass me. I was undone. We laughed together and then the boy, unknowing but only hearing us, joined in, raucous and funny all on his own. We couldn’t stop laughing as we opened our basket, as we spread our little repast on the bench. We kept laughing — not that we spoke of what had happened — it was all mime between us. My pretend twirl of the arrogant lace parasol made us hoot. Fleur reeled herself along the railings in a hilarious caricature. For me it was, somehow, a blessed afternoon. My self-pity about my failure in love was erased. The absurd triumphed. I had a true connection, something quite beyond the pale of words. If one accepts , I thought later, as we drowsily swayed home on the streetcar. If one only accepts what is given! There could be afternoons of laughter. There could even be happiness. If one only accepts!