Mavis Gallant - Home Truths

The party last night kept Mrs. Queen awake. She had to get up out of her uncomfortable bed and let the collies out of the garage. They knew there was a party somewhere, and were barking like fools. She let them out, she says, and then spent some time on the gallery, looking in the living-room window. It was a hot, airless night. (She happens to have the only stuffy room in the house.) The party was singing “Little Joe.” Apparently, she did not see Mrs. Bloodworth dancing and falling down; at least she doesn’t mention it.

Mrs. Queen is not going to clean up the mess in the living room. It is not her line of country. She is sick, sore, and weary. Germaine will, if asked, but just now she is braiding Irmgard’s hair. Eating toast, Irmgard leans comfortably against Germaine. They are perfectly comfortable with each other, but Mrs. Queen is crying over by the stove.

Irmgard’s cousin Bradley went back to Boston yesterday. She should be missing him, but he has vanished, fallen out of summer like a stone. He got on the train covered with bits of tape and lotion, and with a patch on one eye. Bradley had a terrible summer. He got poison ivy, in July, before coming here. In August, he grew a sty, which became infected, and then he strained his right arm. “I don’t know what your mother will say,” Irmgard’s mother said. At this, after a whole summer of being without them, Bradley suddenly remembered he had a father and mother, and started to cry. Bradley is ten, but tall as eleven. He and Irmgard have the same look — healthy and stubborn, like well-fed, intelligent mice. They often stare in the mirror, side by side, positively blown up with admiration. But Bradley is superior to Irmgard in every way. When you ask him what he wants to be, he says straight off, “A mechanical and electrical engineer,” whereas Irmgard is still hesitating between a veterinary and a nun.

“Have you dropped Freddy now that Bradley is here?” It seems that she was asked that a number of times.

“Oh, I still like Freddy, but Bradley’s my cousin and everything.” This is a good answer. She has others, such as, “I’m English-Canadian only I can talk French and I’m German descent on one side.” (Bradley is not required to think of answers; he is American, and that does. But in Canada you have to keep saying what you are.) Irmgard’s answer — about Freddy — lies on the lawn like an old skipping rope, waiting to catch her up. “Watch me,” poor Mrs. Bloodworth said, but nobody cared, and the cry dissolved. “I like Freddy,” Irmgard said, and was heard, and the statement is there, underfoot. For if she still likes Freddy, why isn’t he here?

Freddy’s real name is Alfred Marcel Dufresne. He has nine sisters and brothers, but doesn’t know where they are. In winter he lives in an orphanage in Montreal. He used to live there all the year round, but now that he is over seven, old enough to work, he spends the summer with his uncle, who has a farm about two miles back from the lake. Freddy is nearly Irmgard’s age, but smaller, lighter on his feet. He looks a tiny six. When he comes to lunch with Irmgard, which they have out in the kitchen with Germaine, everything has to be cut on his plate. He has never eaten with anything but a spoon. His chin rests on the edge of the table. When he is eating, you see nothing except his blue eyes, his curly dirty hair, and his hand around the bowl of the spoon. Once, Germaine said calmly, uncritically, “You eat just like a pig,” and Freddy repeated in the tone she had used, “comme un cochon,” as if it were astonishing that someone had, at last, discovered the right words.

Freddy cannot eat, or read, or write, or sing, or swim. He has never seen paints and books, except Irmgard’s; he has never been an imaginary person, never played. It was Irmgard who taught him how to swim. He crosses himself before he goes in the water, and looks down at his wet feet, frowning — a worried mosquito — but he does everything she says. The point of their friendship is that she doesn’t have to say much. They can read each other’s thoughts. When Freddy wants to speak, Irmgard tells him what he wants to say, and Freddy stands there, mute as an animal, grave, nodding, at ease. He does not know the names of flowers, and does not distinguish between the colors green and blue. The apparitions of the Virgin, which are commonplace, take place against a heaven he says is “vert.”

Now, Bradley has never had a vision, and if he did he wouldn’t know what it was. He has no trouble explaining anything. He says, “Well, this is the way it is,” and then says. He counts eight beats when he swims, and once saved Irmgard’s life — at least he says he did. He says he held on to her braids until someone came by in a boat. No one remembers it but Bradley; it is a myth now, like the matin du kidnap . This year, Bradley arrived at the beginning of August. He had spent July in Vermont, where he took tennis lessons and got poison ivy. He was even taller than the year before, and he got down from the train with pink lotion all over his sores and, under his arm, a tennis racket in a press. “What a little stockbroker Bradley is,” Irmgard heard her mother say later on; but Mrs. Queen declared that his manners left nothing wanting.

Bradley put all his own things away and set out his toothbrush in a Mickey Mouse glass he travelled with. Then he came down, ready to swim, with his hair water-combed. Irmgard was there, on the gallery, and so was Freddy, hanging on the outside of the railings, his face poked into the morning-glory vines. He thrusts his face between the leaves, and grins, and shows the gaps in his teeth. “How small he is! Do you play with him?” says Bradley, neutrally. Bradley is after information. He needs to know the rules. But if he had been sure about Freddy, if he had seen right away that they could play with Freddy, he would never have asked. And Irmgard replies, “No, I don’t,” and turns her back. Just so, on her bicycle, coasting downhill, she has lost control and closed her eyes to avoid seeing her own disaster. Dizzily, she says, “No, I don’t,” and hopes Freddy will disappear. But Freddy continues to hang on, his face thrust among the leaves, until Bradley, quite puzzled now, says, “Well, is he a friend of yours, or what?” and Irmgard again says, “No.”

Eventually, that day or the next day, or one day of August, she notices Freddy has gone. Freddy has vanished; but Bradley gives her a poor return. He has the tennis racket, and does nothing except practice against the house. Irmgard has to chase the balls. He practices until his arm is sore, and then he is pleased and says he has tennis arm. Everybody bothers him. The dogs go after the balls and have to be shut up in the garage. “Call the dogs!” he implores. This is Bradley’s voice, over the lake, across the shrinking afternoons. “Please, somebody, call the dogs!”

Freddy is forgotten, but Irmgard thinks she has left something in Montreal. She goes over the things in her personal suitcase. Once, she got up in the night to see if her paintbox was there — if that hadn’t been left in Montreal. But the paintbox was there. Something else must be missing. She goes over the list again.

“The fact is,” Bradley said, a few days ago, dabbing pink lotion on his poison ivy, “I don’t really play with any girls now. So unless you get a brother or something, I probably won’t come again.” Even with lotion all over his legs he looks splendid. He and Irmgard stand side by side in front of the bathroom looking glass, and admire. She sucks in her cheeks. He peers at his sty. “My mother said you were a stockbroker,” Irmgard confides. But Bradley is raised in a different political climate down there in Boston and does not recognize “stockbroker” as a term of abuse. He smiles fatly, and moves his sore tennis arm in a new movement he has now.