Elizabeth McCracken - The Giant's House - A Romance

He reached over to the lamp on the closest table and snapped it on. The tables were the faultiest pieces of furniture: the carpenter had made them regular-size with extralong spindly legs.

James sat down on the bed and let the cane fall to the floor.

“It’s incredible,” he said.

“Look,” I said. “Here’s a closet. And you should try out the desk — if it isn’t high enough we can raise it.” I turned the faucets of the little sink on the back wall, as if I had not tried them every night for a month. “Works,” I said.

“Well, sport,” said Oscar. “What do you think?”

“It’s good,” said James. He stood up with a great deal of effort; I saw that we’d have to raise the bed on blocks. It hadn’t occurred to me that the bed would have to be high, as well as big. He walked along the perimeter of the room, leaning on the walls.

“Don’t you need your cane?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“We couldn’t afford a bathroom,” said Oscar apologetically. “But we figure that way we get to see you every now and then.”

“Wouldn’t want you to forget us,” said Caroline. “You’ll come over for meals, too.” She walked with James to the window. “See the rose?” she said. I didn’t know whether she was talking to James or the baby.

“It’s pretty,” said James.

Everything was suddenly pretty: the June light coming through the window, the filmy curtains that, I noticed, matched Caroline’s skirt.

Caroline cupped the baby’s head in her hand.

“Oscar?” she said. He walked to them, and they stood there for a moment, looking out the window.

“Jim,” said Oscar. “Your mother—”

“My mother is dead,” said James.

I wonder now whether they really meant to tell him then. Perhaps Oscar was about to say, Your mother is proud of you , or, Your mother called this afternoon . I didn’t even know whether James had known all along, or whether he’d just figured it out. I’d spent so long wishing they would tell him that I’d never imagined how it would happen.

James looked at Caroline, leaned on the wall for support, and put his hands out for the baby. Caroline lifted Alice to his arms.

Alice — higher in the air than she’d ever been — opened her eyes, looked at James. Caroline put her hand on his hip. “She misses you,” she said.

“She doesn’t know me yet.” He put his nose to the baby’s stomach.

“Your mother misses you, I mean.”

“My mother’s dead,” James repeated.

Caroline moved her hand in a slow circle on his hip. The baby made a noise as if she were about to cry, but she didn’t. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss you,” said Caroline. “Because she does.”

Did she think that would do? Did she think, now it’s over, now he knows and we don’t have to pretend . I did, I admit it. That was easy , I thought.

James said to the baby, “When were you going to tell me?” We were silent. Maybe we thought the baby would answer. She opened her mouth, but it was only to yawn.

“We meant to—” Oscar said.

“When?” said James. “When you figured I’d forgotten about her?” He was still looking at the baby, and Caroline put her hands out.

“Don’t drop—” she said. James lifted Alice higher, as if it hadn’t crossed his mind before, but maybe he would. Maybe he would drop the baby. Instead, he swung her around and set her in her mother’s arms.

“How long have you known?” asked Oscar.

James folded his arms across his chest. “How long has she been dead?”

“You’ve known all along?”

“How long has she been dead? Because I don’t know.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “No such patient,” he read. “I wrote this to her two months ago, got it back two weeks later. So then I called, and they said nobody named Alice Sweatt was ever there. So. She’s been dead for—”

“Four months and thirteen days,” said Caroline.

“And you don’t even miss her.”

“Oh, Jim,” said Caroline. “You don’t know how much.”

“I don’t know if I even believe that.” He walked to the bed as fast as he could, which was not fast at all. I thought, he wants to throw himself down on the bed angrily, and he can’t even do that. Instead he sat on the edge and put his face in his hands.

Caroline shook her head. “Peggy?” she said. She handed the baby to me. Alice was an awkward bundle. She still wasn’t crying, and I waited for her to. I thought that’s what babies did. They cried. I looked into her face, a five-month-old face, and waited for it to pleat and redden. I guess I wanted someone to cry.

I got my wish. Caroline inhaled deeply, as if she knew what she was going to do would be an effort. She knew it would be the last clear, easy breath she’d take in a while. “It’s like this,” she said in an improbably careful voice, and then, suddenly, she was weeping.

Oscar said, “Caro—”

“I’m sorry ,” she said angrily. She shook her useless hands as if they were full of something she wanted to get rid of. She brought them to her face, let them grab her shoulders, hit her thighs.

James looked terrified. Boys never see grown women cry. Or perhaps he had — what did I know of his life when I wasn’t around? Perhaps his mother cried every day she lived. Perhaps the secret of her perfect skin was gentle tears, applied first thing in the morning and just before bed.

But what Caroline was doing was not an everyday occurrence. It was something hoarded, a fortune stuffed under a mattress that has inexplicably managed to gather interest as fast as any bank account. She flung herself into the big armchair, then slid to the floor. Her pretty face was bright red.

Oscar tried to help her up, but she wouldn’t let him — she elbowed him away and continued to weep. I didn’t know why she was crying, and I wanted to know, I wanted it explained. I wanted her to say: this is guilt, this is delayed grief, this is postpartum depression mixed with a lot of other things. I hadn’t ever seen anyone cry like this in all my life. It was like she was poisoned and crying was the only way to get the poison out.

“I’m sorry,” said James.

“No!” Caroline stood up and stumbled to the bed. She sat next to James. She leaned into him. He put his arms around her.

I rocked the baby a little in my arms. “Hush,” I said to her, though she wasn’t crying. I didn’t say it loud enough for anyone else to hear. I whispered, “Everything will be fine.”

“We should have …” Caroline said to James. She couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out.

“Yes,” he said. “You should have.”

There was nothing else to say. No. There were dozens of things to say, but I didn’t know what they were, or how to say them. Oscar sat on the ground at his wife and nephew’s feet. James was crying a little too, tears without effort, as if his aunt, who still wept beneath his arm — silently now — had done the hard part.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was something we all felt obligated to say.

“You didn’t know,” said James.

I looked at him, then at Caroline. All along I’d thought he’d known that I was every bit as guilty as Caroline and Oscar — more, perhaps. I was James’s friend.

When I didn’t say anything, Caroline said, “No, it’s true. She didn’t know.”

Sometimes we need people to lie for us. That lie was a gift I shouldn’t have accepted: inappropriate and unethical and much too generous. But I did; I took it silently; I nodded.

That night was James’s welcome-home assembly at the high school. Caroline and Oscar had been consistent in their lie — everyone in Brewsterville believed that Mrs. Sweatt was alive though ailing in a New Hampshire hospital.