1986
The
bees hovered lazily amid the swollen purple blue flowers that dangled like
voluptuous grapes from the wisteria vine.
Wisteria. That was the name
Pamela had given it. Stephen had never
really noticed flowers before. Often, in
the mornings, Pamela would walk with him in the sumptuous garden, telling him
the histories of the various flowerbeds, borders and hedges, and the names of
the flowers and shrubs and trees that flourished there. To his bemusement he actually found this
interesting. He found nearly everything
about her, his mother, to be interesting.
He had already given her permission to form him, to shape and order his
life, though Pamela had shown virtually no interest in doing this. She simply seemed to enjoy his company. When he moved here with Pierre more than
two months ago Pamela told him that he must tell her everything about his
life without her. She wanted to know,
she needed to know, to make expiation, for the results of her folly with that
priest, of concealing her pregnancy, of abandoning her child. She was afflicted with guilt over
Stephen. She confessed this to him, and
had asked that he please tell her everything that he had suffered. To his surprise, Stephen was able to do
this. He was angry. Of course Stephen was angry, but his
birth-mother’s penance softened the edge of his wrath. He at times still wanted to punish her, but
she had already accepted Pierre as part of the package. They didn’t really
communicate, Pamela and Pierre. Each
acknowledged the other, and had silently agreed to coexist peacefully. There appeared to be no tension of rivalry or
mutual jealousy. Each appeared to have
conceded the importance of the other in Stephen’s life. Each accordingly backed off to allow the
other space. They remained too
resolutely distant from each other for Stephen to be able to play one off against
the other. Each rather had become for
him a refuge from the other. Stephen
could easily become happy, very satisfied with this sort of arrangement. The daughter, his half-sister, Martha,
remained a problem. He couldn’t simply
write her off as that stuck-up and uppity blonde bitch as he’d first referred
to her with Pierre. He had grown to
respect her, at times he was almost on the verge of liking her. But she did not like Stephen, or Pierre. She remained icy and aloof to Pierre’s
overtures of friendship. Stephen had
simply maintained a safe and respectful distance. It was after all a big house they were living
in. But last night began the appearances
of a breakthrough. They both happened to
be in the kitchen at the same time foraging for snacks. With tea and cake they both sat
simultaneously if rather silently at the table.
Stephen, upon learning that Martha had made the cake—it was
chocolate—his favourite, tersely complimented her. She thanked him primly, and offered him a
second piece, which he accepted. For
some minutes they sat thus at the table, chatting between mouthfuls about the
weather-- recently greatly improved--, and about Expo, which they both agreed
to be overcrowded and overrated. Martha
asked if he’d seen her son lately. Stephen replied that he hadn’t, that Matthew
seemed to be spending most of his time with Pierre, and that this concerned
him, since like Martha, he felt a little wary of his partner’s influence over a
vulnerable adolescent male. Just ten
minutes ago, before she left the house, he said good morning to Martha, and
she responded to him in a rather warmer than civil tone.
The ice was breaking.
He
saw little of Pierre, except at night, in bed, and in the mornings. To his surprise he felt not a bit put out
about his friendship with Matthew, since he was still working at bonding with
his mother. But he did feel
concerned. He didn’t expect they’d be
sleeping together, since he had no doubts about Matthew’s degree of
heterosexuality, neither did he care personally whether they went to bed or
not. But sex or no sex, this constant
togetherness between them was simply rocking the boat. For a while he’d tried to alleviate matters
by joining in as much as possible, but this thoroughly convinced Martha that
together they had plotted to undermine her son and corrupt his morals. Only now was he finally disabusing her of
this nonsense. And spending time with
Pamela did require both time and energy.
In a way he was grateful that Matthew had appeared on the scene as just
the foil to free him up from Pierre’s habitual neediness, thus clearing the way
for him to be with his birth-mother.
Melanie, the daughter, was almost never at home, or she was always going
somewhere with Martha.
The
air was warm, summery. From the warm
stone steps of the terrace he stared up at the purple wisteria blossoms and the
yellow-orange bees that lazily feasted in them.
Stephen’s first coffee of the day steamed from a mug next to him. He had a sip, then began to really look at
the garden, the rose beds, the satyr fountain.
The fountain intrigued him. He
got up and carrying his coffee with him, ventured out for a closer look at the
statue. The grass was still cool and
damp to his bare feet, though the skin of his face, arms and shoulders—he wore
a white singlet--rejoiced and thrilled at the sun’s warm caress. The statue was hideous, if otherwise
well-made. It was, Pamela had told him,
at least two hundred years old and had adorned the estate of her late husband’s
ancestral home in England. Moss grew up
its cloven hoofs and legs. In the sun it
shone with a gold luminosity, though it was carved out of cracked and crumbling
grey granite. The nose had been broken
off. Otherwise, the pensive, sage’s face
remained intact. He felt at one with the
satyr and reached across the dry basin to touch its left hoof.
This
would be his first visit in the holly maze.
Pamela had told him about it, that she herself, just three weeks ago, had gone in there for the
first time in the forty years she had lived there. He had
never been in anything like it. The
holly hedges were perfectly perpendicular, freshly manicured, and they towered
to at least twice his height over him.
Turning right angle after right angle after right angle he was surely by
now lost. He thought he must bring
Pierre in here. What fantastic games
they would have. He thought that if he
kept turning left and only left that he would be more likely to find his way
out. He turned again, and again, and
again. To his surprise he was not
frustrated. He didn’t even think much of
getting out, since he knew that eventually he would. More, he was determined to find his way
deeper, deeper into the maze, deeper into its secret. He came out into a clearing. A giant sundial stood in the centre, flanked
on four sides by benches made from carved stone. With his coffee he sat on a bench and looked
down at the numeral III. The grass here
was dry to his bare feet. He was getting
sleepy. He removed his clothes and lay down
naked on the grass in the May sun.
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