Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity by Mary Gordon

Author:Mary Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2000-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve never seen a man as clean-looking as Jack Henderson. He had an immaculate, knifelike profile, a raised mole above his upper lip that seemed polished, or buffed. His hair was clipped short; his shoes were shined like mirrors. He wore a leather fedora which he kept on as he walked up the stairs to his room. The floor of his room was covered with gray linoleum. He didn’t even put a mat beside his bed. He didn’t have a bedspread, just a navy blue blanket with a darker navy blue stripe halfway across its expanse. No satin bindings, nothing ornamental, softened the blanket. He left nothing in the bathroom, no toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, razor, or comb. He left his towel folded on the radiator beside his bed. I knew all this because he’d ask me to leave any mail that came for him on his dresser. Occasionally, there were letters from his lawyers. I assumed they were re: the Henderson divorce.

After another while, perhaps it was six months, Jack no longer came back to his room, the room in our house, to sleep. Once, with the coarse knowingness of a young virgin, I said to my mother, “Well, I guess we know what he’s doing at night,” and my mother slapped me. “She makes a big meal for him, he works hard all day, he gets drowsy, he falls asleep on the couch. If he wakes up in the middle of the night he doesn’t want to come all the way over here; he’s considerate, he doesn’t want to wake us, so he just goes up to Lina’s boys’ old room.”

Both the boys were gone. Robbie was in the navy in Vietnam. Tommy, the older one, had tried to go into the marines, but was rejected because of his poor eyesight. He was living in the garage with his father. They were reported to be living in incredible filth; their hair grew down to their shoulders, they let their beards grow. They looked wild, like mountain men. Someone said they brought prostitutes in to stay with them; someone else said the old father, paralyzed, was down there with them. But no one knew. Rich men with their rare expensive cars still brought their engines to him; it was said he was a genius.

Cindi was still a child and so she was at home, but as her mother said, she never thought of anything but horses. She competed on light, quick mounts, but she herself was a workhorse. She always seemed to be pulling something heavy behind her—a wagon full of hay, and her eyes had the sweet dull sorrowful look of animals who work too hard.

“I simply refuse to believe that she’d be doing anything with a man in the same house with her daughter,” my mother said, putting an end to the discussion. She continued to take Jack’s rent money, although he never used the room. Occasionally, he went up there and stayed a little while.

But only I knew why.

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