She considered this. “That’s different from putting sins and errors off the map entire. How can it be un-American to paint a picture of sadness?”
“I don’t know. But they did not want to see any waves on the domestic waters.”
For several minutes she knitted at her sock, evidently struggling not to say any more. At length she lost the battle. “If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink. Those congressmen are saying we have to call it a meadow of buttercups instead of a cesspool. Even the artists have to.”
“Well, but suppose the artist’s job is just to keep everyone amused? Maybe get their minds off the stink, by calling it a meadow. Where’s the harm?”
“Nobody will climb out of the pile. There’s the harm. They’ll keep where they are, deep to the knees in dung, trying to outdo each other remarking on the buttercups.”
“Well, I write historical romance. I’m sorry to let you down, but any time you’re looking for the meadow and buttercups, I’m your man.”
“Fiddlesticks, Mr. Shepherd. Do ye think I ken ye not?”
“Do you know me? I suppose you do. Well enough.”
“Well enough. You are good to children whose parents are not. You take in the straggliest cats. You are dismayed by the treatment of the Negro. You read more newspapers than Mr. Hearst himself, though it aggravates you to no end. Shiffling through all that claptrap hunting a day’s one glory. The rise of the little man somewhere, or the fall of a tyrant.”
“Is that everything?”
“About. I believe you stand on the side of the union of labor.”
“Well done, Mrs. Brown. You can read me like a book.”
Even in the full darkness I could feel her glare, the dangerous force of her. She had those needles.
“Set your photograph on the dustcover, or not, it makes no difference. You are still there, Mr. Shepherd, plain to see. Your first one was about the hatefulness of war, everyone said so. How it fills up the rich men’s pockets and grieves the poor ones.”
“I see.”
“You needn’t squirm, Mr. Shepherd. Your words are your own wee bairns. You need not leave them orphaned. You should stand up proud and say, ‘Those are mine!’”
Soon we passed through the long tunnel at Little Switzerland, a deeper darkness within the night’s blue darkness, like a cave in the sea. Mrs. Brown’s knitting stayed in her lap, the strange blue bundle with its armature of needles, like a peculiar pet she could no longer bear to touch. When we reached Mrs. Bittle’s she said good-bye, but until then we hardly spoke any more. Both driver and passenger seemed to need all our energies to find the way ahead, staring at the bleakness and the rain.
November 15
A letter from Frida after all this time, opened with trembling hands. Thrill and fear are really the same, inside a body. Her operation a partial success, good news, though she still suffers. The handsome Spaniard she met in New York seems to be good medicine, a sturdy platform from which to forgive. Her grammar was so odd though, barely coherent. The date on the letter was Lev’s birthday and the day of the October Revolution, but no mention of either. No more red carnations on the table for old loves, the viejo and democratic socialism. Diego has gone over completely to the side of the Stalinists now. And she, perhaps to the side of morphine.
December 24
A gift: knitted gloves of soft gray wool. What a remarkable sensation, to slide them on and feel each finger fit perfectly in its allotted space. “I noticed you have none,” she said. “Or wear none. I thought maybe they didn’t use them in Mexico.”
“I’ve bought three pair since I moved here and they’re all too short in the fingers. I wind up with webbed hands like a duck.”
“Well, see, I wondered. Your fingers are about twice what God gave the rest of us.”
I held out both gloved hands, stunned by the sight of perfection. “How did you do this? Did you measure me in my sleep?”
She grinned. “A grease stain on one of your letters. You must have leaned on the table to stand up, after eating a bacon sandwich.”
“Very impressive.”
“I brought in a rule and measured all the fingers.”
I turned my hands over, admiring the row of slant stitches across each thumb gusset. “Not blue, though. I thought you specialized in indigo.”
“Oh, those socks you mean, out of that cheap handspun. Those were for the children. This is pure merino from Belk’s. I can use quality on you, because you’re not planning to outgrow these in a year or run holes in them on purpose.”
“I’ll try not to let you down.”
A memory of snow. A hill striped sideways with blue shadows of trees. Screaming, the thrill of pursuit, some adult lobbing white balls, making the sound of a cannon blast with every volley. Cupping up hard snow that leaves pills of ice clinging to the fuzzy palms. Mittens, red with a snowflake pattern across the knuckles, made by someone. Father’s mother? No contact was allowed later on, it was Mother’s choice to leave everything: grandmothers, snow. All water-ice returns to the breath of the world. But those cast-off mittens might still be somewhere. Evidence of a boy’s existence.
I told Mrs. Brown she’d given me my first Christmas gift in over ten years. In our many days together, she has not betrayed such emotion as that confession invoked. “Ten year! And not one soul to give you a measly giftie?”
“My family is all gone.”
“But people. In Mexico you worked in homes, did ye not?”
“The last ones were Russian, they didn’t pay Christmas any notice. Mr. Trotsky had us work through like any other day.”
“He didn’t hold with our Lord Jesus?”
“He was a good man. But no, he didn’t. He was Jewish, his background.”
“He’s the one that got killed.”
“Yes.”
“And the ones before that, all Jews?”
“No. Mrs. Rivera was crazy for Christmas, she always organized feasts. I was the cook.”
“So you had to work straight through.”
“I did.”
“Mr. Shepherd, it pains me to be gone away next week.”
“Honestly, I’m glad you asked. You need to go see your family, and I need to be reminded what regular people do at holiday times.”