bee made us feel self-conscious at times, a punishment that visitors will unintentionally inflict on their complacenthosts. her presence seemed to radiate a surgical light. we began to see ourselves as a group that acted without design,avoided making decisions, took turns being stupid and emotionally unstable, left wet towels everywhere, mislaid ouryoungest member. whatever we did was suddenly a thing that seemed to need explaining. my wife was especiallydisconcerted. if denise was a pint-sized commissar, nagging us to higher conscience, then bee was a silent witness,calling the very meaning of our lives into question. i watched babette stare into her cupped hands, aghast.
that chirping sound was just the radiator.
bee was quietly disdainful of wisecracks, sarcasm and other family business. a year older than denise, she was taller,thinner, paler, both worldly and ethereal, as though in her heart she was not a travel writer at all, as her mother hadsaid she wished to be, but simply a traveler, the purer form, someone who collects impressions, dense anatomies offeeling, but does not care to record them.
she was self-possessed and thoughtful, had brought us hand-carved gifts from the jungles. she took taxis to schooland dance class, spoke a little chinese, had once wired money to a stranded friend. i admired her in a distant anduneasy way, sensing a nameless threat, as if she were not my child at all but the sophisticated and self-reliant friendof one of my children. was murray right? were we a fragile unit surrounded by hostile facts? would i promoteignorance, prejudice and superstition to protect my family from the world?
on christmas day, bee sat by the fireplace in our seldom used living room, watching the turquoise flames. she worea long loose khaki outfit that looked casually expensive. i sat in the armchair with three or four gift boxes in my lap,apparel and tissue paper hanging out. my dog-eared copy of mein kampf rested on the floor at the side of the chair.
some of the other people were in the kitchen preparing the meal, some had gone upstairs to investigate their gifts inprivate. the tv said: "this creature has developed a complicated stomach in keeping with its leafy diet.""i don't like this business with mother," bee said in a voice of cultivated distress. "she looks keyed-up all the time.
like she's worried about something but she's not sure what it is. it's malcolm, of course. he's got his jungle. whatdoes she have? a huge airy kitchen with a stove that belongs in a three-star restaurant in the provinces. she put allher energy into that kitchen, but for what? it's not a kitchen at all. it's her life, her middle age. baba could enjoy akitchen like that. it would be a kitchen to her. to mother it's like a weird symbol of getting through a crisis, exceptshe hasn't gotten through it.""your mother is not sure exactly who her husband is.""that's not the basic problem. the basic problem is that she doesn't know who she is. malcolm is in the highlandsliving on tree bark and snake. that's who malcolm is. he needs heat and humidity. he's got like how many degreesin foreign affairs and economics but all he wants to do is squat under a tree and watch tribal people pack mud all overtheir bodies. they're fun to watch. what does mother do for fun?"bee was small-featured except for her eyes, which seemed to contain two forms of life, the subject matter and itshidden implications. she talked about babette's effortless skills in making things work, the house, the kids, the flowof the routine universe, sounding a little like me, but there was a secondary sea-life moving deep in the iris of her eye.
what did it mean, what was she really saying, why did she seem to expect me to respond in kind? she wanted tocommunicate in this secondary way, with optic fluids. she would have her suspicions confirmed, find out about me.
but what suspicions did she harbor and what was there to find out? i began to worry. as the odor of burning toastfilled the house, i tried to get her to talk about life in the seventh grade.
"is the kitchen on fire?""that's steffie burning toast. a thing she does from time to time.""i could have prepared some kind of kimchi dish.""something from your korean period.""it's cabbage pickled with red pepper and a bunch of other things. fiery hot. but i don't know about ingredients.
they're hard enough to find in washington.""we're probably having something besides toast," i said.
the mild rebuke made her happy. she liked me best when i was dry, derisive and cutting, a natural talent shebelieved i'd forfeited through long association with children.
the tv said: "now we will put the little feelers on the butterfly."in bed two nights later i heard voices, put on my robe and went down the hall to see what was going on. denise stoodoutside the bathroom door.
"steffie's taking one of her baths.""it's late," i said.
"she's just sitting in all that dirty water.""it's my dirt," steffie said from the other side of the door.
"it's still dirt.""well it's my dirt and i don't care.""it's dirt," denise said.
"it's my dirt.""dirt is dirt.""not when it's mine."bee appeared at the end of the hall wearing a silver and red kimono. just stood there, distant and pale. there was amoment in which our locus of pettiness and shame seemed palpably to expand, a cartoon of self-awareness. denisemuttered something violent to steffie through the crack in the door, then went quietly to her room.
in the morning i drove bee to the airport. rides to airports make me quiet and glum. we listened to news updates onthe radio, curiously excited reports about firemen removing a burning sofa from a tenement in watertown, deliveredin a background clamor of ticker-tape machines. i realized bee was watching me carefully, importantly. she sat withher back against the door, her knees up, held tightly together, arms enfolding them. the look was one of solemncompassion. it was a look i did not necessarily trust, believing it had little to do with pity or love or sadness. irecognized it in fact as something else completely. the adolescent female's tenderest form of condescension.
on the way back from the airport, i got off the expressway at the river road and parked the car at the edge of thewoods. i walked up a steep path. there was an old picket fence with a sign.
the old burying groundblacksmith villagethe headstones were small, tilted, pockmarked, spotted with fungus or moss, the names and dates barely legible. theground was hard, with patches of ice. i walked among the stones, taking off my gloves to touch the rough marble.
embedded in the dirt before one of the markers was a narrow vase containing three small american flags, the onlysign that someone had preceded me to this place in this century. i was able to make out some of the names, greatstrong simple names, suggesting a moral rigor. i stood and listened.
i was beyond the traffic noise, the intermittent stir of factories across the river. so at least in this they'd been correct,placing the graveyard here, a silence that had stood its ground. the air had a bite. i breathed deeply, remained in onespot, waiting to feel the peace that is supposed to descend upon the dead, waiting to see the light that hangs above thefields of the landscapist's lament.
i stood there, listening. the wind blew snow from the branches. snow blew out of the woods in eddies and sweepinggusts. i raised my collar, put my gloves back on. when the air was still again, i walked among the stones, trying toread the names and dates, adjusting the flags to make them swing free. then i stood and listened.
the power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. the dead have a presence. is there a level of energycomposed solely of the dead? they are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. perhaps we are what theydream.
may the days be aimless. let the seasons drift. do not advance the action according to a plan.
