Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart Read online

  Oh, re ally! Is that so! Really. doctor Savage says, amused.

  Others join in. Graice falls silent. She's embarrassed, chagrined, afterward she'll realize to her horror that she'd spoken disparagingly of the very enterprise of art history and of iconography, doctor Savages religion, doctor Savage's life's blood, it's amazing he should let her off so easily.

  Mercedes has been unobtrusively gathering up dirtied plates and cutlery, and as she heads for the swinging door, a weighty stack of china in her strong arms, missis Savage's melodic voice rings out, not sharply, but on the edge of sharpness, Those bottles, Mercedesyou've forgotten the wine bottles. Mercedes mumbles, Yes, ma'am, comin' right back to get em.

  Hearing this exchange Graice Courtney says, I'll take them, jumping up impulsively from her chair before missis Savage can protest. She snatches up the empty wine bottles and bears them off in the black woman's wake. brazenly out into the kitchen where no guest is welcome.

  Thinking, Why am I doing this?

  She sets the wine bottles down on one of the counters where there's space. How disappointing the Savages' kitchen is: old fashioned fixtures. an immensely ugly stove. a single over head light emitting a pitiless glare. dishes, pots, pans heaped on all sides.

  twin sinks filled with sudsy water and stacked with china. The air is heavy with the smells of turkey grease, gravy, and percolating coffee.

  Mercedes is staring at Graice Courtney, this pushy white girl who is in her kitchen, uninvited. and Mercedes isn't smiling. The surprised, gruff growling sound she makes only vaguely sounds like Thank you.

  But almost at once missis Savage has pushed through the swinging door, diamond earrings glittering in alarm, and missis Savage is smiling.

  smiling rather hard at Graice Courtney. No need for you to help clear the table, dear, she says, re aching for Graice's arm.

  You're our guest, you know!

  Graice resists the instinct to draw away. She says, I get restless just sitting. I don't like being waited on.

  missis Savage laughs as if Graice has said something clever.

  But that's what being a guest is, dear.

  Her arm linked snug through Graice's, leading Graice back to the table.

  Penetrating the voices of the company are a series of liquidy re ver berating chimes.

  Chiming the hour, the half hour, the quarter hour, and the hour again.

  to eternity.

  Says doctor Reed, beside Graice Courtney, showing his gums in a wide smile, You almost don't mind the passing of time, do you, when it's heralded by such music!

  It's the tall ivory faced grandfather clock beside the Jacobean sideboard: a Joseph Mills clock, they are told, ca. 1740, London.

  One of the most prized possessions of the late Lawrence Savage.

  Misty eyed missis Wells fingers her rope of pearls, smiles at Graice Courtney across the width of the table. She says almost vehemently, There is such beauty in the world, isn't there! I always feel, coming here to the Savages', that it compensates for the other.

  The re mark is the sort of random social observation, uttered spontaneously and lyrically, that no one is obliged to answer.

  Graice Courtney quickly smiles.

  For dessert there are three delicacies, each from a recipe handed down through Gwendolyn Savage's family, the Makepeaces of Raleigh, North Carolina: a pumpkin pie with whipped cream, an airy prune whip, chocolate puddings in fluted little half pint cups.

  Up and down the table missis Savage is lavishly praised, praised most lavishly by doctor Savage himself, who smiles at her adoringly. He clears his throat and says, And my dear wife is as good as she is capable.

  missis Savage blushes prettily and says, Oh, with these recipes, anyone could succeed. Truly.

  Graice Courtney is no longer hungry but she spoons chocolate into her mouth and feels a powerful rush of sweetness, sweetness raw as pain flooding her mouth. Suddenly she wants to cry, Oh, Jesus, how she wants to cry. sitting at this table among strangers.

  Two hours have passed. Two hours fifteen minutes. And still

  the antique clock ticks on, its finely calibrated mechanism preparing for another outburst of chimes.

  But the dinner is concluding, and talk has fragmented into smaller, more casual groups. It seems clear that most of the Savages' guests are intimately acquainted with one another. Graice hears missis Wells inquire of missis Savage in a gentle voice, And how is Jenny, Gwendolyn? and sees a flicker of dismay or hurt in missis Savage's face as she says, Oh, she's generally happier, we think. Sometimes it's hard to gauge. She has a new job. she's still living in Manhattan. Of course, as you can see, she isn't here with us today.

  There is more to be said but missis Savage doesn't continue, and missis Wells discreetly changes the subject: Did I mention to you, Gwendolyn Alan was so sweet, he remembered my birthday? Imagine!

  He sent me a lovely card from Paris this summer. How is he? missis Savage's expression brightens. She says, Oh, Alan is fine, thank you; Alan is very fine, working enormously hard to get his book finished.

  Byron and he disagree about the merit of what he's doingnot the quality but the subjectbut Alan did get a Guggenheim fellowship to do the re search and Byron was delighted about that. you know, it isn't easy to be the son of Byron Savage and an art historian, people tend to be envious. But Alan has been doing very well, we think. He's still in Paris, we won't see him until Christmas; he's promised to come home for Christmas.

  At this moment missis Savage glances toward Graice Courtney, locks eyes with her, smiles. That lovely radiant smile. Throughout the meal she has drawn Graice into conversations, has asked her questions; now she asks, Graice, where did you say you're from? and Graice says, Hammond, New York, and missis Savage says, Oh, yes, that's near Lake Ontario, isn't it, and near Rochester? and Graice says, Yes, and missis Savage says, And your family is from Hammond?

  and Graice says hesitantly, as if uncertain of the question, Yes, and missis Savage says with a searching look, And are your parents. ?

  and Graice, who has been turning her dessert spoon slowly in her fingers, lays it down on her plate and says, with a slow shake of her head, My mother died two years ago. of a long illness. She pauses.

  She hears missis Savage and missis Wells make murmurous sympathetic sounds but she doesn't look up. She says, with a slight slammer, It was a peaceful death. I mean, at the end. I mean, she was at peace.

  at the end. She pauses again. She's breathing quickly and shallowly and her eyes are hot with tears. She says, It was. no one s fault.

  They operated, but. Her voice trails off; the grandfather clock begins its slow mellifluous chime. Again the older women murmur words of sympathy but Graice doesn't look up and Graice doesn't hear.

  Then she's hurrying from the table. finds herself in the front hall.

  it's the guest bathroom she's seeking: this black and gold papered little room, interior, windowless, a mirror with wavy glass in which her pale guilty face floats in the instant before the slow gathering wave of nausea inside her breaks and she vomits out her guts in the toilet.

  So it happens that Graice Courtney stays the night at Savage House.

  Seeing the condition she's in, both the Savages insist.

  Graice is too weak, too sick, too frightened to protest. As the Savages help her up the stairs, to one of the guest rooms, she has to lean heavily on them. her legs are barely strong enough to support her.

  They are murmuring words of consolation, encouragement.

  But Graice is too confused to hear. And sleepy: can't re member when she has been so sleepy in the presence of others.

  Since the death.

  Since the funeral when she slept twelve hours.

  She's led to the room by missis Savage, and how cavernous a room it is, how chilly, dark silk wallpaper in panels, twelve foot ceiling, a braided carpet on the polished floorboards, the high canopied bed piled with bedclothes awaiting Graice Courtney's body.

  missis Savage is speakin
g in her kindly concerned voice: Here are towels, Graice, here is one of Jenny's nightgowns, Graice, one of Jenny's bathrobes, the bathroom is through that door, there is soap, there are toiletries in the. in the morning you'll feel much much better.

  Graice is trying to explain something but the words won't come.

  missis Savage sits beside her on the bed stroking her hand, squeezing the weak icy unresisting fingers, saying gently, Never do we know why, Graice, never never do we know why, why such things happen and we must bear such grief, such heartbreak for which we're un prepared, why God expects so much of us, what His plan for us is.

  Graice begins to cry. Graice begins to cry and stops. Forces herself to stop.

  Otherwise she'll begin to laugh. Talk of God, Duke Courtney used to say, is fancy jargon for What's the odds?

  Graice manages too to forestall a violent attack of shivering until missis Savage is gone and the door is safely closed. Then she undresses with slow clumsy fingers, she slips into the bed trembling with the need to sleep, the high hard mattressed bed is like a boat adrift on a dark sea, heavy chilled sheets drawing her body's warmth from her, but Graice lies very still and unmoving God help me God help me please help me and eventually her body's warmth re turns.

  But by then she's asleep.

  If I re member, it's in vague watery patches like any of my dreams.

  11Aere, kitty! Here, kitty kitty kitty! Here, Houdini! Where the hell are you?

  Leslie Courtney spends a half hour tramping in the stinging cold, coatless, bareheaded, nostrils pinched against the garbagey smell of the alley. and today has been one of his busiest days: a long morning session at Precious Blood Church photographing the choir, two portrait sittings after lunch, a week's work backlogged in the darkroom, and financial accounts to balance, and the telephone is probably ringing at this very moment, no one in the shop to answer it. Damn, Leslie is thinking, goddamn, he should have hired someone to help him out; the photography business invariably picks up in the weeks before Christmas and now it's less than a week and there's a barely controlled frenzy in the air you can almost smell, people driving their cars recklessly customers vague and impatient not knowing what they want or how much they want to spend, Christmas carols blaring on all sides, the bright lurid silly sentimental strings of lights up and down Main Street and the winking re d and green lights Leslie Courtney feels obliged to tape around the border of the front window of Courtney's Photography Studio. there's a simpleminded cheerfulness to holiday lights you can't deny, whether you approve or not.

  This intoxicated end of the year atmosphere to which in theory Leslie Courtney should be immune he's familyless, has no crucial presents to buy but to which he seems to be vulnerable not only as a Hammond merchant but as a citizen of the United States.

  Where Christmas isn't just an annual religious celebration, it is the religion Crammed into a hectic week or two, then finished for another year.

  He cups his hands to his mouth, bawling, Houdini! Damn you! Kitty kitty kitty.

  Houdini the midnight black cat with the stumpy tail and the frayed ear and the green tawny eyes has been missing for nearly two days. Leslie Courtney can t bear to think that something might have happened to him, the damn cat is in his trust.

  Houdini? You know who this is! Kitty kitty kitty!

  Tramping through the snowy trashy alley where, if you stumble out of the rutted tire trails, you're in snow anywhere from six to eighteen inches deep. Past Ricardo's Shoes, past Aiken's Hardware, past the Hosiery Box, past Rexall's, the rear entrances of stores almost as familiar to Leslie Courtney as his own. Tonight, a Thurs day, most of the downtown stores are open until nine.

  It's pitiful, Leslie thinks, how merchants vie with one another to draw the customer in, hope to lure him into buying. A society where everything is for sale, all things have their prices. Making of its citizens prostitutes of varying degrees of success and failure.

  His voice is becoming raw, despairing: Houdini? Kitty?

  At the cross street, Sixth Street, Leslie pauses. His breath is steaming. He wonders if he should continue the search, following the alley another block, or should give up temporarily and go back home.

  The telephone might be ringing. Houdini might have come back in his absence. He's hungry and cold. It's six thirty and pitch dark: December 20. Tomorrow is the darkest day, longest night, of the calendar year.

  There's a steady stream of traffic on Sixth Street, the hissing of tires in slush. Across the street PIZZA STAR flashes in re d neon.

  It's no place for an animal, even hardy street wise Houdini. Leslie checks the gutters looking for the cat's corpse. steeling himself for what he can't believe he might actually find.

  A man Leslie knows, by face rather than name, happens by, asks what the hell Leslie is doing, and Leslie says in a bemused voice that doesn't suggest his concern, Oh, I'm looking for this damned cat that belongs to my niece; it's staying with me while she's at school. He's grateful the other doesn't linger to chat.

  Leslie's teeth are chattering, the cold is penetrating his bones.

  His hair has become so thin in the past year he pointedly feels the cold, if he's hatless, like an eerie breath blowing slyly on his scalp.

  He decides to give up.

  Hurrying back along the alley he calls, Houdini! a few more times, purses his lips, and whistles. That sharp piercing whistle sometimes has the power to rouse Houdini from his hiding place inside the house.

  When he's inside the house.

  Leslie doesn't want to acknowledge how fearful he is, how sick he's beginning to feel. For what if, this time, Houdini is gone.

  his niece's beloved cat.

  Leslie Courtney's living link, as he thinks of Houdini, with Persia Courtney.

  Leslie enters his ground floor apartment through the rear vestibule, a space about the size of a telephone booth, enters the kitchen, takes off his glasses at once to wipe the steam from the lenses. The telephone isn't ringing. The apartment is deathly silent, only the vibrating hum of the aged refrigerator that's as internalized as Leslie Courtney's own heartbeat.

  He fits his glasses back on, adjusts the earpieces. The familiar room, the kitchen, leaps back into focus: but to what purpose?

  That sick helpless feeling deep in the gut.

  That sense of loss, irreparable loss: loss of which, if you want to re main sane, you must never think.

  Mechanically, as he's in the habit of doing at least once a day, he opens one of the cupboard doors, checks the bottle of Seagram's high on the shelf. It's the only bottle of liquor. He no longer drinks hard liquor, not even wine, not even beer or ale, but he keeps the unopened bottle of Seagram's on the shelf. In case, some day or some night, he simply can't bear what his life has become. can bear it.

  When Persia was first hospitalized Leslie vowed he wouldn't take a single drink until she was well and discharged from the hospital, at which time he would celebrate the occasion with a drink and he hasn't had a drink since.

  There's a sense in which he's still waiting.

  Houdini? Are you in here?

  He checks the corner of the kitchen floor where the cat's bowls are kept, neatly on a sheet of newspaper: a bowl of water, a bowl of dry cat food. At first it seems to Leslie that some of the cat food has been eaten; then he decides it hasn't.

  Misery mounting in him, he wanders through the rooms touching walls, pieces of furniture, like a blind man. He's seen these surroundings so many times he isn't required to see them again.

  In the two years in which Graice's cat has been living with Leslie he has wandered away from home twice, but never as long as this.

  Both times before he'd re turned excited and hungry, showing no signs of having been injured. This time, something must have happened to him: a fight with another tomcat, or with a dog, or an accident in the street.

  It's one of the ironies of the situation that Leslie has a mild allergy to cat hair. That he often wakes with his sinuses packed and throbbing to discov
er Houdini snuggled up close beside him in his bed, atop the covers. the damned creature can force open Leslie's bedroom door in the night without disturbing him. And, once Leslie discovers him sleeping on the bed, he hasn't the heart to make him leave.