Americana

She watched me standing above her and I tried to think of nothing. She was absolutely still, watching me, not a grass-blade of motion, opening new rooms by the systematic locking of doors. Knowing this, she did not reach out nor move toward nor away from me when I lay down on the bed. I stretched out on top of the sheets. I have always been proud of my body.

"Don't be afraid," she said. "Tell me what you want me to do."

"I don't know yet. Let's just stay like this for a moment. Do you remember the night we spent in Maine in that old house? You told me a bedtime story."

"Don't be afraid, David."

"I'm not."

"You were in terror back there."

"Yes," I said.

"You mustn't be afraid. I'll help you. I'll do anything you want me to do."

"First, before anything else, I want you to tell me a story. Like in Maine. Like the story you told that night before I went to sleep."

(So ready, so lewd and willing was Sullivan, so skilled the artist immersed in her craft that she did not even pause at this request, much less break into waves of saving laughter.)

"And a deep sleep it was," she said.

"A story. A bedtime story."

"I have just the thing. It's about an evil old uncle of mine and the incredible experience we shared in a small boat on a fog-shrouded day in Somes Sound."

"Are you going to make it up?"

"It's real," she said. "You made me think of it when you mentioned Maine."

"Tell me then."

"I had a hated and feared and bloody Ulsterman of an uncle," Sullivan said. "At the age of eighteen he left Dublin for Belfast, renouncing church, state, family and the adulterous shade of Parnell. My father's brother he was, the blackest of ex-Catholics, a blasphemer of the militant and dour type, not at all merry and joshing and ribald like the likes of my dead dad. Years later he came to this country and settled eventually in Maine, in a small town not far from Bar Harbor. And I went to visit him once, seeking to redress an old family grievance. It was a quiet simple town, a fit and proper place for Uncle Malcolm. He came to the door and I had almost forgotten how wild and ominous a man he looked-bald, firm, compact, real as a keg of stout. His eyes were dark, two pilot lights burning, and he looked at me as though I were the Pope's most favored concubine. He hated Catholics. He hated my father like plague, like incense. Brothers they were, stem and stern, Shem and Shaun, tight Dublin and tighter Belfast. In my letter I had given no hint of the purpose of my visit. We sat on the porch. It was a moonlit night. Statues of patriots stood on the green. No barding lads or songsters rolled out of the pubs and not a dark hop of Gui

"This is getting boring," I said.

"You must permit me at least a fraction of the self-indulgence you reserve for your own tired ends. Not that I mean to sound harsh. But I've cooperated with you up to now and I'm willing to continue to whatever point you choose to take us. And you've asked for a bedtime story."

"I'm sorry. Please go on."

"Large issues will begin to manifest themselves out of the dull set of pieties I've been constructing here. This is not easy work for me."

"Have you rehearsed any of this?" I said.

"In bed at night I often converse with the great English-speaking figures of history. I think I can admit that to you. I develop philosophies, legends, autobiographical notes, small bits of feminine wisdom, anecdotes and lies. I present these to someone like Swift or Blake; then, as Swift or Blake, I comment and criticize. It may be only an illusion but my mind seems to be at its best just before sleep. I've had some brilliant dialogues with myself, I think; or, more to the point, with the great figures of the past. So your instinct is quite correct. In a sense I've rehearsed this story. In fact I've told it many times, refining, editing, polishing, getting nearer and nearer the awesome truth. But I have never yet revealed that truth. I have never told the whole story, not to Coleridge, not to Melville, not to Conrad. I've never revealed the mystery of the final hours of that fog-shrouded day in a thírty-five-foot sloop in Somes Sound-not to a soul living or dead."

"One second, please," I said. "I want to turn out the light."

"The rocking chairs went to and fro in perfect military formation. Uncle looked out on that dead historic vista, that Yorktown, Shiloh, that headless glimpse of Khartoum. Then he said he pla