Mark Dunn - We Five

The rustic cabin belonging to Clara’s former brother-in-law Whit was miles and miles away on the Klamath River. It was an old gold miner’s shack Whit had fixed up for the wife who left him. Clara hoped that it would be here that Michael could hide himself until those who were looking for him gave up their search, and here that Jane’s brother Lyle would also find refuge. But leaving this city which Clara and Maggie both loved would be painful.

Clara returned to the wardrobe to select the few clothes she would be taking with her. But she’d hardly had time to remove a gingham house frock from its hanger when she was startled by the sound of someone pulling the bell chain downstairs — pulling the chain that signaled the arrival of a visitor to the flat. She went down to see who it was.

Jerry Castle looked pale, almost gaunt. He looked to Clara as if he hadn’t slept for several nights, though, in truth, he’d only lain awake one night. She detected, as well, the smell of liquor on him — a smell with which she was well acquainted. Standing at the front door, she said, “She isn’t here. If you are looking for—” She very nearly said, “your sister,” but checked herself. “She isn’t—”

“It isn’t Maggie I want to see. It’s you. Can I come in?”

“Well, I don’t — I’m really qu — quite busy,” Clara stammered, suddenly frightened by her son’s presence, which now felt importunate and threatening.

“So you won’t see me?”

“Of course I’ll see you,” said Clara, and then putting deed to word, she stepped back from the door to allow Jerry to enter. “Come into the parlor. We’re allowed to entertain visitors in here if they don’t smut the carpet.”

Clara led Jerry into the front parlor, which was used by all the residents of the large house. “I have nothing to give you to drink,” she apologized as she sat down on the sofa.

Jerry did not sit.

Clara indicated with an open palm an armchair upholstered in gaudy patterned chintz. “Please.”

In an act of inconsequential insolence Jerry claimed a leather-seated high-back instead.

“I’m going away, you see,” she elaborated. “That’s why I can’t be a very good hostess at the moment. I’m preparing to take a trip.”

“I can very well guess why you’re leaving. I don’t care about that. There’s only one thing that interests me. I want to know why you did it.”

“ Did it ?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

Clara, whose eyes had been half-avoiding Jerry’s intense gaze, now looked at him dead on. “Maggie hasn’t told you?”

Jerry shook his head. “I haven’t seen Maggie since I left here yesterday. And I have no need ever to see her again. I’m taking a trip too. I’m going back to Sacramento — the place where I thought I was born, but now I know differently. I know a lot of things I didn’t know before — things people shouldn’t have waited so long to tell me. Why did you do it? Was it a matter of money? Did you think you couldn’t afford to raise me?”

“That wasn’t the reason. I wish Maggie had talked to you. She might have said it in a way you’d understand.”

“Maggie did tell me about our father’s ill treatment of her. Was this it? Did you send me away because you were worried he might hurt me too?”

“I wish that were the reason. That would certainly exonerate me, wouldn’t it? No, in truth I — well, I just didn’t want another John Barton in this house. From the moment you came into this world, I could see him in you. Your face was his, your little hands — the way they bunched themselves into tight, angry little fists. So I got rid of you. I didn’t know at the time that it would have been easier to divest myself of him instead. Because eventually he did go, and he didn’t put up a fuss about it. But by then it was too late. You were gone and there wasn’t any way for me to get you back.”

Jerry thought about this. He picked up the wooden stereoscope resting on the table next to his chair. He put it up to his face and looked at the composite image presented by the card in the slot. The view was of some place in the Orient. There was a pagoda in the foreground. Behind it were trees that would have looked unreal had Jerry not seen a good many such strangely trimmed trees in the Japanese Tea Gardens at Golden Gate Park. He tried to push from his mind the day he spent at the park with Maggie and her four shop-girl friends, the way he’d forced himself on her, kissing her, touching her rudely upon the hips with his hot hands. The thought came with shame and with anger. It did not have to be this way. If he had known she was his sister he surely would have suspended his pursuit and gone after one of the others instead.

“But I turned into him anyway, didn’t I?” he said bitterly. “For all the good your sending me away did.” Jerry paused. He studied the Oriental rug on the floor. He didn’t raise his eyes as he said, “I had thought about killing myself. I had thought about killing the both of us.”

At first Clara couldn’t find words to respond. She rose from the sofa. Then she said raggedly, “I think you should go. As I — as I have said: I have packing to do.”

Jerry got up as well. But not before flinging the stereoscope to the wooden floor. It made a loud clatter, the handle breaking away on impact, the picture card flying off. Clara started. She took a step back.

“It doesn’t look real!” Jerry raged. “They say it’s supposed to look real and lifelike when the pictures come together. All well and good, but they’re still in damnable black and white. We don’t live in a black and white world.”

“No, we do not,” said Clara, her voice aching with pain. “I–I’ve seen cards where the pictures are color-tinted.”

“Like putting rouge on a corpse.” Jerry was breathing heavily. He took a moment to catch his breath. “I can’t hold you accountable for what was done to me. You are a stupid, frightened woman. You would have made a stupid and frightened mother, who would have been of no use to me.”

Clara nodded quickly in a frenzied travesty of agreement.

“It was better that I was raised by the cheddar-heads.”

“I don’t — I don’t know what that means.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going. I’m sorry for what I did to your daughter. I’m sorry for casting this brief shadow over your life. I needed to see you — not for you to apologize — just to face for one last time the woman who would do this. Now I’ve faced you. But I am not changed. My heart hasn’t softened. I thought it might, but it hasn’t. I don’t wish you well. I wish that the rest of your life were one long trial. And that you’ll regret to your dying day the stupid thing you did.”

Clara spoke softly: “I have always regretted it.”

Jerry left without saying another word.

Clara sank back onto the sofa and wept. She remembered Lucile Mobry’s words from the morning — what she said about men, and how, frankly, undeserving they were of redemption, and then she remembered opposing words from her daughter, who felt that a man could be changed through the tendance of a loving, caring woman. Now Clara came to see the truth as it was unveiled to her by the example of Jerry’s belligerent visit — the truth that lay somewhere between the two extremes.

She walked over to the stereoscope and picked it up. She wondered if she could repair the handle before her landlady came home from her errands and discovered it broken. She picked up the stereographic card containing the two images of the same Japanese pagoda and scrutinized it. She saw no difference between the two pictures printed side-by-side on the rectangle of thumb-smudged grey-green cardboard. Yet together the images were supposed to create a single picture of fuller dimensionality. Clara shook her head and returned the card to the box of stereographs.