Elizabeth McCracken - The Giant's House - A Romance

“Someone,” said James. We waited for the rest of the sentence, but that was it. Finally, he elaborated. “I’m saving myself for Someone.”

“But who?” said Caroline.

James didn’t answer.

Caroline was right, and she was wrong. People are not tables in a nightclub up by the entertainment. Tables empty, they start fresh several times a night, seven nights a week, a clean cloth snapped across and fresh candles stuck in holders. If only one party could be seated at a table for years and years, well, the maître d’ might have different thoughts. He might keep that best table, reset it every day, waiting for Greta Garbo, the president, his future unmet undreamed-of inlaws.

And me? Now I understood. I was saving myself for James. Myself meant only my secrets. Any other commodities (my youth, my virginity, any brand of innocence or hope) I’d years ago lost, a gambler who didn’t understand the game. My secrets were all I’d saved, all these years, the only thing I hadn’t and wouldn’t cash in on just anyone. If you poured out yourself to anyone who might for a moment listen, on just a usual day — it struck me as cheap, the way some girls’ mothers used the word. I was saving what was left of myself for James.

That summer, Mrs. Sweatt died all over again, to nobody’s surprise. She’d died in January and stayed in limbo through Easter, into June, but still, death and resurrection didn’t seem so farfetched. Not that Mrs. Sweatt rose from the dead. She didn’t. Her death was just brand-new in a way it never had been. I thought of James and his theories of Heaven. Mrs. Sweatt, who died twice, was born again, converted again into the religion of the dead.

Dying seemed a shame. Still, if we’d picked a time for her to die, we’d done a good job. The town was never so alive as in late June, early July, when summer and tourists still seemed like a pretty good idea, what with more money, fair weather, new faces — it wasn’t till August that you wondered what sort of blockhead had dreamed summer up. Years hence, when James thought of his mother — those annual remembrances when mourning and regret become what you do for the day, out of loving habit — the weather would be sweet, the shop windows in bloom, the breeze off the bay full of kind meaning.

Suddenly, after having gone underground, to Iowa, to New Hampshire, wherever it was we thought she’d gone, Mrs. Sweatt was back. She was everywhere. Not just in stories, though there were plenty of those. Waltzing at her wedding with all the guests, because her new husband, after six cocktails, insisted on doing the Alley Cat using only his a priori knowledge of the dance, angling on the dance floor peppy or slow depending on the music, while Mrs. Sweatt wanted to be hospitable; besides, she’d taken lessons. Reading her True Love magazines and crying at those unfortunate women, more unfortunate than her because now the whole country knew their heartaches. Cooking her midwestern cuisine, which meant opening a can of something and pouring it over something else: meat cooked in Coca-Cola, cake mix sweetened with half a can of frozen lemonade, apples poached in red soda pop. “Use cherry, not strawberry,” she’d advised Caroline. “Strawberry is too bright.”

She showed up in photographs, too, mined from albums and boxes and envelopes, now set on the mantelpiece and tucked into mirror frames. It didn’t seem like she’d ever shied away from the camera. Her high school graduation portrait as Caroline’s bridesmaid, six years old on the boulevard at some Western amusement park. And in James’s pictures, too, where she was prettiest. You could tell which ones he’d taken; in them she was smiling at her son, not the camera, and the fond reproach on her face was unmistakable.

Maybe the kids who started showing up at the cottage were there to offer comfort to someone who had suffered a loss — though their visits were awfully loud for sympathy calls. By August, the place was full of high school kids, some who knew James well and some who’d never spoken to him. The few boys who’d toughed out the Scouts to make eagle — boys you’d expect to be polite — were the ones most likely to laugh too loud and smell of smoke mixed with chlorine from the swimming pool. It was a mean, petty smell.

They always came in groups. I watched them tour the cottage sometimes, each teenager clearly thinking that if only it were him — if only his parents agreed to build him a house in the backyard — his life would be perfect.

I stopped by the cottage every day after work. I brought books, small gifts — cookies from the bakery, or a marbled composition book, or a new pack of cards. James sometimes spent hours shuffling; when you talked to him, you got used to the steady noise of the deck meeting itself. His hands seemed to double over themselves to manage it. He shuffled several packs at a time.

“That’s quite a nervous habit you have there,” I said.

“Not nervous.” He cut the cards several times. “Trying to keep my fingers limber.”

Work piled up at the library. I was as thorough as I could be during the day, but I’d stopped staying late evenings to read reviews and do the statistics and balance the budget.

“Are you having an affair?” Astoria asked me.

I looked at her. “Would I tell you if I were?” I said. But then I saw the delight in her face and had to own up. No, no affair, no intrigue. Just helping some friends. I wondered who she thought the affair would be with.

Soon others came to the cottage. I’d forgotten what an odd place it was, the high ceilings, the oversize furniture. On one side of the room the builders had set windows into the wall in two rows, because specially made proportional windows were too expensive, but the ordinary number of ordinary windows would have looked as strange and dismal as submarine portholes. People loved to sit in the big armchair, let their legs dangle off the edge. Teachers came, and neighbors. Astoria asked me if I’d take her with me one day.

“Why do you need to come with me?” I asked.

“You know me, Peggy. I’m not so good with idle chitchat.”

“Astoria. You do nothing all day but chitchat idly.”

She twisted her wedding ring around. “I’m not so good with sick people. With sick young people, I mean. I get sad easily.”

“He’s not sick,” I said. “He’s tall, and you can’t catch that.”

“I’m just curious. I just want to see.”

“See what?” When she wouldn’t answer, I said, “I can’t stop you from visiting, but do it yourself. We’re not here to satisfy your curiosity.”

For a while there were almost always a few kids loitering when I arrived. They brought records for the player; sometimes they even danced in the middle of the room, in the pleased, measured way you dance for someone else’s benefit. James sat in his chair; a visitor balanced on the arm, which was big enough to be a chair itself. I tried to like the music. Mostly I lurked by the door, feeling like the oldest person in the world. Some nights I could not bear all that youth and possibility: I’d hear laughter through the door, and I’d turn around and leave.

One night as I came up the walk, I saw through the window a boy and girl dancing — or should I say, embracing while revolving in tandem. The music was slow treacle. Boys sat on the floor or the bed, looking up at the couple every now and then, not talking. Other people’s happiness is always a fascinating bore. It sucks the oxygen out of the room; you’re left gasping, greedy, amazed by a deficit in yourself you hadn’t ever noticed.

The song was just ending as I walked in; the couple parted, and the girl clapped her hands three times, as though she believed she would hurt the singer’s feelings if she did not acknowledge him.