I thought about the story. Then I began to write.
Arms Emory’s father had worked in the mill back when it was fully operative; he had worked in the pulping room. They had lived in one of the beautiful houses in Bradford Place that William and I had seen. Back then, the houses were still beautiful. When the boys were young, their father died, and their mother—whom Arms thought of as practically a saint—moved them to a new house, and she got a job at the hospital, and she told her sons that what they did reflected on their father, so even now Arms did not drink. His happiest days had been on the football field in high school when he and his brother were the football stars. Arms loved his brother deeply.
* * *
—
I sat in the overstuffed chair in my studio and thought about these two men. Once in a while I would write a scene, but mostly I just sat, staring at nothing. Just thinking about them.
* * *
—
I realized that the youngest kid I had seen in the gas station store parking lot, his name would be Sperm Peasley. He would be called Sperm as a joke—because he was so pale and small that it looked like his parents had conceived him with two sheets between them. But he never thought of his name anymore. The older of the two fellows with him would be called Jimmie Wagg. He would be the drug dealer of the town. And the middle kid was Sperm’s cousin. They had just stolen the potato chips from the store, I decided. And Sperm was still young enough to get a real kick out of that.
* * *
—
I wrote these sentences: “But there was an exhaustion Arms felt these days; it left him too tired to fight with his wife—he had not liked her for a number of years—and it left him too tired to think of the election. And yet there was an anxiety he felt as well. He did not see the connection between his anxiety and his fatigue; he was not a reflective man.”
* * *
—
I wrote about how, right before the pandemic, Arms had attended a meeting with other cops about police reform. And how glad he had been to see these others; he was respected, he was a sergeant. He had led them through the routine: no chokeholds, no excessive force.
* * *
—
I would put the story aside and sit in the overstuffed chair and think about it. But writing it— I had not been that happy for quite a while. I was able to work.
vi
One night at dinner I spoke to William of my brother and how sad I felt his life was, and William said, “Lucy, I don’t want to hear this. You’ve told me this before, and I don’t want to hear it again.”
“Fine,” I said.
* * *
—
But here is the other memory I had of my brother when I mentioned much earlier that I remembered him being beaten up on the playground:
The memory is this:
I was young, my brother was older, he may have been seven at the time. When I walked into the house one day, my brother was lying on the living room floor and he was whimpering, and I saw—my mother took in sewing and alterations to make money—I saw that my brother had a series of straight pins stuck into his forearm. I could not believe it. My mother was on the floor leaning over him. I screamed, and what I always remember is that my mother looked up at me and said with an odd smile, “Do you want some too?”
And I ran out of the house.
One of the reasons I believe this memory to be true is, first of all, it was so strange.
* * *
—
And also because I remember going with my mother and my brother to the local doctor’s office some time later than this; my brother required a shot, and when he saw the doctor bring out the syringe, my brother ran like an animal, he could not get away from the man fast enough; I remember he ended up crawling underneath the doctor’s desk, and he was crying. And I remember the doctor looking at my mother. And my mother laughed and said something like: What can you do?
* * *
—
I had told William about this when we were first married and he had not said anything. But when I started to see a psychiatrist, my lovely woman psychiatrist, she had nodded slightly and said quietly, “Oh Lucy.” What I mean is I think she believed me.
* * *
—
William said that night, waving a hand, “There’s nothing new about it. I don’t want to hear about your brother. Besides,” he said, “he has that old couple that he went to the food bank with, or whatever.”
“They’re dead,” I said. “The Guptills died a few years ago, and there is no place my brother can go with this pandemic.” And William still did not want to hear about my brother’s life.
But my brother’s life had been, and still was, one of great solitariness. And he would arrive in my mind sometimes, as he did this night. I remembered that years ago my mother had told me—Pete would have been a grown man at that point—that my brother would spend the night in the Pedersons’ barn—this was a barn that was closest to us—to be with the pigs that were going to be taken to slaughter the next day.
* * *
—
And then William began to talk about his “nephews and nieces”—the children of Lois Bubar’s children, and the children of Dave and his brothers, and how well they had all done, and he went on and on—I had heard this before, so often—about how they were so smart, and they read books! He said this to me that night, after not wanting to hear about my brother, and I remembered: William does not like to hear anything negative.
* * *
—
Many people do not. William is not alone in that.
* * *
By the middle of October the foliage was beautiful. It seemed that the colors had arrived somewhat late, and because there had been so little rain for so long people thought maybe this was why the trees were shy and would not change their color so vibrantly. But then they did! Then they did.
* * *
—
Here is a secret about the beauty of the physical world:
* * *
—
My mother told me this when I was very small—my real mother, not the nice mother I made up later to be with me—my real mother told me one day that the great landscape painters understood one thing: that everything in nature started from the same color. And I thought of this as I watched the leaves changing. You may think: Don’t be ridiculous! There are vibrant reds and yellows and greens! And there are. Yet, walking along the river, as I did more frequently now, but also walking down our narrow road, I saw this. That in the yellows and the reds and the greens, they were somehow springing from the same color, and it is hard to describe this, but as more leaves fell I saw this more clearly. Everything seems to start with a kind of brown and it grows from there: The huge slabs of rocks that were on the side of the road were gray and brown, and the oak trees that had turned russet were similar in color to the seaweed that I have described as being a coppery color, and the water, whether it is dark green or gray or brown, was of a similar hue.
* * *
—
I also noticed how, in the afternoons, clouds might start to come in and they were gently autumnal; they made the world look quietly soft as though it was already getting ready to tuck itself in for the night.
* * *
—
I am only saying: What a thing the physical world is!
vii
William took another trip to Sturbridge to see Bridget and Estelle. When he returned this time, he did not weep. He said that Bridget had made two friends in Larchmont—one a girl next door, and also that girl’s friend, and Bridget seemed much happier. “Of course, she’s such a great kid,” he said. But! Estelle’s boyfriend had dumped her. Or Estelle had dumped him. “Are you ready for this?” He looked at me ruefully. “The guy was gay.”
“He was gay?” I said. “And she didn’t know that?”