Rikki Ducornet - Brightfellow

“Biblical!” he exclaims.

“Why biblical?” Billy wonders.

“It’s ambrosial and. . gives off beams of light!”

“You’ve been reading too much Loon,” Billy jokes. “I’ve only served you a dish of spaghetti.” Yet he is pleased. “Curious you say that, though. .” He tells his young guest about the vanishing pie. Charter blushes, but briefly. Billy’s innocence in the matter is evident. “Are you religious?”

“No,” Charter tells him. “Although I like to consider just how horny Noah’s toenails were when he hit six hundred.”

“Moses had horns. .,” Billy muses and then confides: “I am a private sort. Reclusive you could say. In this way I am much like your friend Vanderloon, although he has taken it to extremes. Perhaps campus life breeds recluses. Well. What I mean to say is you will find it quiet in the house. You will be able to work undisturbed. The Circle could not be more conducive to study. Well. . there are the children and they have their games, but still. . they really don’t create much disturbance. Let me show you your room!”

What impresses Charter about the house first of all is that there are no photographs, no family pictures on the mantel or sideboard, no dead parents, ancestors, pets. Apparently Billy is not only wifeless, he’s childless. This is comforting. If there had been photos everywhere Charter would have felt like an intruder. But he thinks instead that he can do well here. He will enter into a serious study of Vanderloon’s ideas, not just collect them as one collects curiosities. Not just wander in the books aimlessly.

The house is spare; apparently Margaret had brought along a great deal of family furniture that left the house when she did. Billy has gone for a certain modernist minimalism, uncommon on the Circle. The few pieces he has acquired are angular, blond, the lamps as disquieting as space aliens. On the walls are a few framed museum posters, someone named Rothko who Charter thinks must have been a house painter, and a Dalí that causes him so much anxiety he will stay clear of it during his tenure in the house. An inscrutable Boz Heiffer.

Together they climb the stairs and reach a hallway lit by a clearstory: the light! Billy leads him to a large room furnished with a desk and chair, a reading chair, and a number of those peculiar lamps, each one pointing at them accusingly. “Ah!” Billy laughs. “The cleaning lady, I don’t know why. .” He redirects them into a more serviceable angle.

Above the desk is a large window. Stub’s heart leaps; his ears are ringing; he feels like singing: the room has an unobstructed view of Asthma’s own.

“What do you think?” Billy asks as they return to the living room and settle into the butterfly chairs. The chairs are a novelty and Charter thrills with a sudden surge of sophistication and expectation. As he sits, he acquires substance, he expands. The blond coffee table is wonderfully indefinable, almost. . numinous. He thinks the word numinous ridiculous, thinks it ridiculous, too, that ever since he renamed himself so hastily and with such affectation, he is unrecognizable, risks turning into a fop.

“Do you like it? The upstairs; is it—”

“What is there not to like? Your unerring taste, your bountiful generosity, I—”

Billy reaches into a pocket and tosses him a key. “Not that you need it; I keep the place unlocked, we all do. The only thefts around here — and they are sporadic — appear to affect our pantries alone. The passing hobo, a mischievous undergraduate. Look here. Let’s say you move in Friday night. We’ll have dinner and then, well! The upstairs is yours. I trust you will work well there, that you will honor me and the house with a brilliant dissertation. Nothing, Charter, would please me more.”

Outside, another game of kick the can begins. Asthma shouts: “No! Dickie! That’s not fair ! That’s not the way we do it !” For a brief moment a medley of children’s voices sweeps past. “That,” Billy grins,” is about as bad as it gets.”

Later he stands outside the library, still as a stone. The evening grows darker and he stands beneath the great mystery of the night, the Circle house lights above him shining through a tapestry of leaves, making everything look extremely strange and beautiful. He imagines he is deep beneath the sea, a merman maybe, and that the lights are not house lights at all but stars glimmering through sea grass and water.

Blackie keeps breaking her nose. Twice in less than a year. She sits alone nursing her rye as her Rod is intangible up in his study, working on his book (publish or perish!), or so she supposes. Instead, from a distant hill deep within his mind, he is gazing at his magnificent house in Jamaica, burning white in the blazing sun, the rooms freshly scrubbed, tiles cool to the touch. (How he loves tile!)

Blackie gingerly touches her bandaged nose. She has enough self-knowledge to know the drinking, these periodic accidents, have much to do with guilt. The nasty way she treats Asthma, and this despite herself. She wishes she were nicer, knew how to control her irritation, keep her filthy mouth shut, or, better yet, manage a pleasant, an amusing (!), conversation. The truth is, she’s always been nasty, she’s never liked children; her annoyance, her impatience, is visceral. She has always been rude. She likes to think it doesn’t mean anything but is up nights because she knows it does. She’s a bitch at best, a shrew and a crab; she’s shrill and she’s into control. She pontificates like a nun or a nanny. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she’s convinced much of the time that she has a handle on the stuff that eludes everybody else.

Once, she caught Asthma rolling her eyes. “Don’t you dare do that!” she had shrieked, “You nobody’s fat bottom!” The recollection of scenes such as this torments her. But I didn’t slap her, she thinks, tapping the bandaged tip of her nose. It’s not like I’m Goldie. I know what I’m doing. I struggle. It’s existential.

Looking across the Circle she sees that Billy is entertaining. His young guest is reading on the front porch. It’s pleasant to see that porch in use again. It makes the Circle feel. . companionable. It makes her feel less alone. As does the rye and the thought that her dilemma is somehow. . heroic. She will do better. She will think of diversions. She will take Asthma places. Across the river to Kahontsi. Its museums. The theater. Buy Asthma a pinafore. Barrettes. She’ll pack a picnic lunch. She’ll get it right. Nobody’s fat bottom! Where the hell did that come from? Poor little worm, she thinks, her heart sinking. Poor little plucked hen.

Billy has served his guest coffee and they sit together in conversation. The children are merry, running hither and yon; the evening is balmy, the stars turning on one by one, and the frogs! Their voices trilling from the nearby pond. The world is a civilized place, Blackie reminds herself. If only I could remember.

Early Friday evening. His duffel, so large he thinks he could have lived in it all along, is now emptied and stored on a shelf in the closet. He has hung his three shirts on sturdy wood hangers, folded his one good sweater with care and placed it in the middle dresser drawer, rolled up his three pairs of socks, his few pieces of underwear, and placed these in an upper drawer. His few toiletries are in the cabinet above the sink.