Treason by Sallie Bingham

Author:Sallie Bingham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2020-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

7

Flora began to call in the children for Saul’s birthday party. “Saul! Keith! Frank! Chrissy—all of you! Come and open the presents!” She had assembled them in a pile beside the unlit fire.

She’d also baked a cake with green icing—Saul’s request—topping it with ten candles.

From the swings, from their clubhouse behind the woodshed, from the porch, the children came, the younger ones running, the older boys strolling as though they hardly cared at all. The three girls came, looking as though they were clutching secrets. They had been plotting something by the vegetable garden. Looking at the children, I tried to imagine their conception, on a night after a party, in the middle of a hot afternoon. It seemed unlikely that any of us could remember exactly when, or why, our children had been conceived. Chance, good temper, a sudden rush of optimism had together or separately produced this little band, tumbling or running or pacing steadily down the hill toward the fire.

As they came closer, I noticed how pleasantly ragged they looked in their bleached hand-me-down clothes—a pied piper’s rabble. There were no real friendships between them, other than that between Saul and Jeff. They hung together only as a group, reflecting the grownups’ precarious unity. When we were not getting along, the children fell apart and sulked in corners. When we were excited, feeding off a new experience or argument, the children fought and laughed indiscriminately. “The grownups are the children,” I told Edwin once. That was after Chrissy had telephoned the doctor in town because Sheila choked on a chicken bone. All the adults were off walking in the woods. The doctor advised bread, and the crisis had passed by the time we returned. “Thank God, this time we get to play the young ones,” Edwin had said, not to be shamed.

Saul, a knobby nine-year-old, Edwin’s youngest, squatted down by the pile of presents and ripped into the first one. “Read the card,” Flora reminded him crisply; she hated any display of greed. Saul stopped ripping and began to poke around for the card. Jeff had drawn it, painstakingly, complaining of the bumps in the road, while we were driving up from the city. Saul found the card and showed it around to polite exclamations: a huge mouth, without teeth, shouting, “Happy Birthday.” I was glad there were no teeth. As Saul handed me the card, I caught his eye, and he looked hastily away. The children were as unused to direct looks as cats. Saul had his father’s eyes, pale gray, wary and bright, the eyes of an animal drawn into company against its instincts.

Monday—five days before—Edwin had rushed in my front door, late as always, with only half an hour to spare for me between appointments. He stripped off his watch, then stood with his arms stretched out so that I could unbutton his blue-and-white striped shirt. He submitted to my touch with hesitation, fearful that I would leave a trace or smell, which would be detected by Flora.

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