It was not, however, an atmosphere she would have chosen for herself—the airless inescapable pressures of intimacy with others would have withered her soon enough—her system required the cold, exclusive climate of the individual. She was not afraid to say: I am rich, money is the island I stand on; for she assessed properly the value of this island, was aware its soil contained her roots; and because of money she could afford always to substitute: houses, furniture, people. If the Manzers understood life differently, it was because they were not educated to these benefits: their compensation was in a greater attachment to what they did have, and doubtlessly for them the rhythm of life and death beat on a smaller but more concentrated drum.
It was two ways of being, at least that is how she saw it. Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master’s wrist.
Mrs. Manzer smiled at her; quietly, with the persuasive, firelight voice of a storyteller, she said: “When I was a girl I lived in a little city on the side of a mountain. There was snow on top and a green river at the bottom: can you see it? Now listen, and tell me if you can hear the bells. A dozen towers, and always ringing.”
Grady said, “Yes, I do,” and she did; and Ida, impatient, said, “Is this about the birds, Mama?”
“Strangers who came there called it a city of birds. How true. Of an evening, when it was almost dark, they flew in clouds, and sometimes it was not possible to see the moon rise: never have there been so many birds. But in winter it was bad, mornings so cold we could not break the ice to wash our faces. And on those mornings you would see a sad thing: sheets of feathers where the birds had fallen frozen: believe me.
It was my father’s job to sweep them up, like old leaves; then they were put into a fire. But a few he would bring home. Mama, all of us, we nursed them until they were strong and could fly away. They would fly away just when we loved them most. Oh, like children! Do you see? Then when winter came again, and we saw the frozen birds, we always knew in our hearts that here and there was one we’d saved from some winter before.” The last bright ash in her voice guttered and darkened; musing, withdrawn, she took a low, shuddering breath: “Just when we loved them most. How true.”
And then she touched Grady’s hand, saying: “Can I ask, what’s your age?”
It was as if the fingers of a hypnotist had popped close to her eyes: alerted, turned out of a slumber where the cherished, slain by other winters, burned in wing-fluttering fires, she blinked and said, “Eighteen”; no, not yet, it was weeks ahead, her birthday, almost two months of days uncut, not tarnished, like a cherry pie or flowers, which suddenly she wanted to claim: “Seventeen, really. I won’t be eighteen until October.”
“Seventeen, I am already married; eighteen, I am the mother of Ida. That is the way it should be: young people married young. A man will work then.” She spoke vehemently; and with more color than seemed necessary: this, fading rapidly, left her pensive. “Clyde will be married. I have no worry.”
Ida giggled. “If you don’t, Clyde does—have worries, I mean. I saw Becky in the A&P this morning, and she was just furious; so I said, what’s eating you, honey? And she said, Ida, you can tell that brother of yours to go sit on a tack.”
It was as though Grady were abruptly transferred to a harsh and damaging altitude; with a ringing in her ears, she waited, not knowing by what path to descend.
“Rebecca is angry?” said Mrs. Manzer, the merest seed of concern planted in her tone. “Why is that now, Ida?”
She lifted her shoulders: “I should know? What do I know that goes on between those two? Anyway, I said she should come around today.”
“Ida.”
“So why do you say Ida, Mama? There’s plenty enough for everybody to eat.”
“Jesus, you’re just going to have to get a new icebox: nobody could fix that one anymore.” It was Clyde, who, having approached unnoticed, stood at the edge of the room, smeared top to bottom with grease and holding a frayed Frigidaire belt. “And look, Ma—can’t you make Crystal step on it: you know I’ve got to be back to work at four.” Right behind him, Crystal appeared with a rushing defense of herself: “I’m asking you, Mama, what do you think I am? a horse? an octopus? All day I’ve been in that kitchen while you people loll in the cool parts of the house—and Bernie sent in there to drive me wild, and Clyde with the icebox all over the floor.” Mrs. Manzer held up her hand, which brought everyone’s grievances to a halt; she did know how to handle them. “Hush now, Crystal darling. I’ll come in there and do it myself. Clyde, clean yourself; and Ida, you go set the table.”
Clyde lingered after the others: dim, at a distance, a statue; his shirt was silk-wet with sweat and pasted to him like a thin plating of marble. Long ago, in April it was, Grady had taken of him a mental photograph, an intense, physical picture, emphatic as a cut-out on white paper: alone, often isolated by midnight, she let it emerge, an intoxicating symbol that set her blood to whispering; now, as he came closer, she closed her eyes, and retreated toward the beloved image, for her husband, looming above her, seemed a distortion, another person.
“You all right?” he said.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Yeah?” He slapped his thigh with the Frigidaire belt. “Well, remember, it was you that wanted to come.”
“Clyde. I’ve thought it over. And I think we’d better tell them.”
“I can’t do that. Aw, honey, you know damn well I can’t, not yet.”
“But Clyde, but something, I—”
“Take it easy, kid.”
For minutes, like a circulating presence, the sour sweet sweat smell of him stayed in the air, but a trifling breeze passed through the room, taking him with it: so she opened her eyes, lonely. She stopped by a window and rested on a cold radiator. Screeching roller-skates rubbed the street like chalk squealing on blackboard; a brown sedan cruised by, its radio loudly playing the national anthem; two girls carrying bathing suits tripped along the sidewalk. Inside, the Manzers’ house was much the same as it was outside, where, divided from the sidewalk by a runt-sized hedge, it was one in a block of fifteen houses, which, while not exactly alike, were still more or less indistinguishable assemblages of prickly stucco and very red brick.
Similarly, Mrs. Manzer’s furniture had this look of anonymous adequacy: chairs enough, plenty of lamps, a few too many objects. It was, however, only the objects that reflected a theme: two Buddhas, splitting their sides, supported a library of three volumes; on the mantel, tipsy jug-toting Irishmen laughingly jigged; an Indian maiden, made of pink wax, carried on a dreamy smiling ceaseless flirtation with Mickey Mouse, whose doll-sized self grinned atop the radio; and, like comic angels, a bevy of cloth clowns gazed down from the tall heights of a shelf. Such was the house, the street, the room: and Mrs. Manzer had lived between a green river and a mountain’s white summit in a city of birds.
Trilling his tongue, and with a model aeroplane suspended above him, Bernie scooted into the room. He was a whiny, worm-white, unwilling child, with banged-up bandaged knees, a baldy haircut and daredevil eyes. “Ida said I should come talk to you,” he said, whizzing around like a bat out of hell; and Grady thought, yes, Ida would. “She dropped Ma’s best plate and it didn’t break but Ma’s mad anyway on account of Crystal’s burnt the meat and Clyde’s let the icebox flood.” He collapsed and squirmed on the floor as though someone was tickling him. “Only why is she mad about Becky?”
Grady, feeling slightly unethical, smoothed her shirt and, surrendering to impulse, said: “I wouldn’t know; is she?”
“I hope to tell you; and it just seems funny to me, that’s all.” He flipped the propeller of his aeroplane, then said: “Ida said Crystal dared her, and that just seems funny ’cause Becky comes here all the time without nobody daring her. If it was all my house, I’d tell her to stay home. She don’t like me.”
“What a beautiful little plane! Did you build it yourself?” Grady said suddenly, for there were footsteps in the hall which made her anxious. Actually she did admire the plane, it was unusual; its fragile skeleton and stretchings of delicate paper were joined with Oriental care.
He pointed proudly to an imitation leather frame in which several Kodak pictures were placed together. “You see her? She made it. That’s Anne. She made thousands and millions, all kinds.”
The gnomish, spook-like little girl, whom Grady assumed to be a playmate of his, held her attention not an instant, for, to the left of this child, there was a picture of Clyde, smartly turned out in an army uniform and with his arm slung cozily around the waist of an indistinct but vaguely pretty girl. The girl, wearing a skirt much too short and a corsage far
