William Gaddis - Carpenter's Gothic

Silenced, the vexation in her voice surfaced in her hands back streaking While the bonnet is trimming, the face grows old, on the glass of the sampler; culling the morning's mail for Doctor Yount, Doctor Kissinger, Dan-Ray Adjusters, Inc. crumpled and tossed; B & G Storage, The American Cancer Society and The National Rifle Association aside unopened; a flood of glossy pages from Christian Recovery for America's People, the community college flyer's offerings unfurled in mini-courses on Stress Management, Success Through Assertiveness, Reflexology, Shiatsu, Hypnocybernetics and The Creative You; Gold Coast Florists torn open: Floral arrangement $260? Mounting to her eyes, her vexation seized wherever she turned them to be seized in turn by the unwavering leer of the Masai warrior on the magazine cover displayed, along with Town & Country and a National Geographic, on the coffee table, and she picked up the bird book for refuge in godwits and curlews, sandpipers, snipe, the repose they conjured as quickly gone with another turn of the page and she was up and through the kitchen, tapping on the white door — Mister McCandless?

It rolled back sharply as though he'd been waiting there. — I just remembered… she stood clutching the book, a finger tucked in its pages witnessing her urgency, — the man I said came to the door for you? Lester. His name was Lester… She got a brief nod for that, a murmur of dismissal but she stood looking past him there square in the doorway to bookshelves filled floor to ceiling through the planes of tobacco smoke, papers in stacks, in rolls, shadeless lamps, leather cases, filing cabinets pulled open, — are you a writer? she blurted.

— I'm a geologist, Mrs Booth.

— Oh. Because there are so many books aren't there, and papers and, and look! You have a piano! Isn't it? under all these things, I saw the corner of it I thought it was a buffet or something, a marvelous old sideboard we had one all the drawers done in velvet where we kept the silver but it's a spinet isn't it, couldn't it go in the alcove? in the living room there in the alcove…? It needed work he told her, the sounding board was warped. — Oh. Because it would be so sweet there in the alcove, maybe we could get it fixed couldn't we…? Why, did she play? — Well yes but, I mean not for a long time, those little Haydn pieces and things like that but not, I mean nothing modern, I mean I never got to Debussy or even…

He'd try to look into it he said, turning away, — now I know you're busy please don't let me keep you.

— No that's all right. I mean I've just been cleaning the windows in there, they're so fogged with smoke. You smoke a lot don't you… Too much he agreed, tapping tobacco from a glazed envelope into a paper. — Like that window right over your table there, she nodded past him, — you can hardly see through it.

— I don't especially want to see through it Mrs Booth. Now please don't let me…

— Wait I'll get you an ashtray… and she was back that quick with a saucer, — if you need anything else… He stood over the still commotion of papers spread on the table there, motionless till he reached for the ashtray he'd been using. — I just meant if you want a cup of tea or anything… and she stumbled, turning for the door, tumbling the books stacked against the piano, — oh, I'm sorry, I'll…

— It's all right Mrs Booth please! just leave them!

— Well all right but… she straightened up, — if you need anything… and she got through the door to pause in the kitchen, again in the living room and she was up the stairs running a bath, turned off as abruptly as she'd turned it on, and down the hall past empty bedrooms loosening her blouse, bringing the television screen to life with animated mischief in the lower intestine. She turned it off. Digging under scarves, blouses, lingerie in the top drawer she brought out a manila folder riffling the score or so of hand written pages, crossings out, marginal exclamations, meticulous inserts, brave arrows shearing through whole paragraphs of soured inspiration on to the last of them abandoned at what it might all have been like if her father and mother had never met, if her father had married a schoolteacher, or a chorus girl, instead of the daughter of a stayed Grosse Pointe family, or if her mother, lying silent even now in the cold embrace of a distant nursing home, had met a young writer who…

She was up for the moment it took to find a pen and draw it firmly through young writer who, take up rapidly with man somewhat older, a man with another life already behind him, another woman, even a wife somewhere… his still, sinewed hands and his… hard, irregular features bearing the memory of distant suns, the cool, grey calm of his eyes belying… belying? She found the dictionary under the telephone book, sought for bely and could not find it.

— Mrs Booth?

— Oh! She was up, — yes? His voice came up the stairs to her, sorry for the bother but might he use the telephone? — Yes, yes do! and she caught her eyes in the mirror gone wide with listening, gathered in a frown as all that reached her were yelps from the road below where the boys, when she came to look down, straggled up the hill broadcast flinging something one to another, a shoe of the smallest of them coming on well behind where the mist stayed the day as she'd left it. Then as though listened for herself she reached the telephone and raised it silently, there was only the dial tone, and she placed it as carefully back, exchanging a glance with the mirror which she recovered in arch detail down the hall, bent so close over the bathroom basin that her eyes' dark circles deepened until hidden under daubs of a cream lightener, the fullness of a lip modified, eyelids lined with the faintest of green and the hair punished, drawn, tossed free again before she came down the stairs. He was standing over the kitchen table leafing through the bird book where she'd left it, his apologies revived without a look up, he had to wait for his call to go through he said, something wrong with the circuits.

— Oh. When that happens I just keep dialing, they…

— This is out of the country.

— OK. Oh well sit down then, in the living room? I mean I was just going to make tea… Was there a drink? and yes, scotch would be fine, leafing past plovers, willets, yellowlegs greater and lesser, had anyone been in that room? he asked her abruptly, besides the plumber? — Well no, no. I mean it's been locked, how could we… Not her no, he didn't mean her, but anyone else? the man who showed up at the door, did he come in? — No, he stayed at the door. He put his foot in the door.

— You said he just wanted to see me? didn't ask any questions?

She turned with an empty glass, brushed her hair aside, — He asked me if I was your first redhead… but her smile fell flat against his back already turned for the living room. When she came in, ice clinking the glass in one hand, her cup rattling the saucer in the other, she'd done a nice job on the windows he told her, standing there in the alcove, and something about the ivy, that it needed cutting back, almost knocking the glass from her hand as he reached for it. She steadied her cup and sat down, knees drawn tight on the frayed love seat, — and you did find your mail? It was stuck in the door there, one was from Thailand. It had such beautiful stamps that's why I noticed it.

Thailand? He didn't know anyone in Thailand, — never been there… and he settled back in the wing chair as from long habit.

— Oh. Oh and wait yes I meant to ask, is her name Irene? your wife I mean…? His nod came less in affirmation than the failure to deny it. — Because there've been some calls, someone asking for Irene? And all this furniture that's what I wanted to ask you, the agent said she was coming for it, that all of it's hers but they didn't know when. I mean we have things in storage we'd just want to know ahead of time, all these lovely things it looks like she'd just gone for the day, I just don't want anything to happen to it. That little china dog that was on the mantel it's already broken, Madame Socrate when she was cleaning she broke it right in half, I tried to glue it… He glanced up there from the empty fireplace where he'd been staring, it was something of his he told her, raising his glass, never mind it. — Oh. Well of course we'll pay for it but I meant, your wife I mean do you know when she might come for her things? or where we can reach her to ask? Because if we can't reach you, if you're someplace where we can't reach you you might be there for years, you might be gone for twenty years and, I mean…