Sometimes I looked in on them while they slept. Their bedroom was completely dark, with thick, heavy curtains. In the summer, it was humid in there, and I could barely stand it for very long. However, at times they slept at night with the window open, and by moonlight I could see them, curled up together under the white bedsheet. They always slept facing each other, in arms, and it comforted me more than anything.

Being curious however, and often bored, I went into the study while they slept. I wasn't expressly forbidden from going in there. It was only that it wasn't a room for children to play in, so I knew that I wasn't supposed to snoop around. I would pull open the drawers of the big oak desk and look through the files for things to read. The most interesting were from elsewhere in the country, as those from abroad were all in French and I couldn't read them. Quinn kept all of the letters they ever received carefully filed away. Dasius's letters were in a cramped, elegant hand, and some very old and falling apart at the folds. From these I learned that Dasius thought of me, and sometimes sent me presents I didn't receive.

"For Jackie there is a jumper enclosed, but I imagine that it may be small by now. I have held onto it from Him in Paris, uncertain if you would allow it him or not. I think not, and yet it is a gift. Here it is for you and your decision." Clearly, Quinn had decided not to give it to me. There was news of cookies from Paris, a china doll, a set for lawn bowling, endless clothing, foreign books, a television. How I longed for television! I tucked all these letters back away, with their long itemized lists of numbers and general chitchat. I thought, "Being old is terribly boring", and went outside to play. 

"Him", I thought. By then, La Perle had taken on the character of dreams, of false memory. Paris, too, was a fantasy. I had seen pictures of other places in books, but I had only ever even seen one film. I spent most days running around the fields and woods playing make believe by myself. Occasionally there were men in the house, and they would show me how to hand fish, or to tie knots, or ask me to help them. Help them? I thought. They never lasted very long, disappearing as quickly as they had come. If I asked Father about them, he would say politely, "Who?" Things were quite neat that way. I never saw carnage as a child, though the threat of it sometimes seemed close when Father felt in a mood.

But he was rarely in a mood in those years. Sometimes he would retire to his room for some days, and it would just be Leis and me. I understood that he did not want to be my parent, not in any way, to influence my development. He had beautiful blond hair and he left me touch it sometimes, because he liked for me to rub his head and make soft animal sounds at him, to climb on him. He often seemed ill, and I would find him outside by the farm sink sometimes during the day, while Father slept, coughing up blood. "Sh," he would whisper to me, "don't tell him." I promised that I wouldn't, and so we were closer because of our secret from Father.

On occasion the coughing racked him so deeply that he needed me to help him back into the house, and at those times, he would let me hold his hand, because he said that he couldn't feel much in his fingertips and he wanted a human touch. Other times, I would find him wandering outside in the early morning, and he would seem rattled by my presence, like he didn't know quite who I was. I would go up to him and pull on his shirttail, because his aloofness disturbed me. He might say, "Who is that?" to which I would say, "It's Jackie" and he would give a soft, uncertain, "Of course." He touched my hair only once, which had grown long, and said "You look wild. Poor orphan." It confused me, but I had stopped longing for him to like me, even though I thought him very handsome, and funny, and I wanted to be like him. 

He said that he didn't like me, but he did. Sometimes he tied my shoes for me, and turned me around and around until it made me laugh, making sure my shirt was tucked in properly. If I fell and scraped my knees, it was invariably him who washed them and bandaged them, and cooed at me. Father's love was absolute, and occasionally smothering. Leis's was elusive and rare, and never more than when he began to disappear, and Father began to lock his door. For I was really alone then, with no idea of what was going on. 

At ten, I had some awareness of romantic love, though the notions of it I read in books puzzled me, because their fantasies were in no way reflected by what I saw at home. I pawed through King Arthur and the Princess of Mars. I quite liked the Jungle Book, and its depiction of a wild boy caught between two worlds, and which one did he belong in? I would lie down in the grass field and read it, growing tan. 

It was on a day like that, when Quinn had locked the door to his room and Leis had gone elsewhere that I heard a car coming up the long drive, and as I had been taught to do, I hid. There were occasional cars, mostly solicitors who ignored the "no trespassing" signpost down by the road, but I had been instructed to under no circumstances be seen. But I caught a glimpse of it, a silky black drop top Alfa Romeo. It was impossible. It was the sleekest car I had ever seen, and so I disobeyed. 

By the time I reached the house, the car was empty and a man who clearly was driver and not owner, was standing against the car reading a newspaper. I "hallo'd" him, and he "hallo'd" me.

"What sort of car is it?" I asked, dropping down to tie my shoe and be as casual as possible.

"Alfa Romeo," he said.

"I know that. What sort?" I asked. I knew cars from the pictures in Leis's magazines, sent from abroad.

"Cabriolet 1938. 8C."

I hemmed and hawed wisely. "May I touch it?" I asked.

"If you are the little boy the master is looking for, more than that," he said. "We're meant to drive you back north."

This made me squint. "I've got to go in now," I said.

The driver shrugged and went back to his paper. I tried to get a look at it but it was in French, which annoyed me. While I went around the side of the house he didn't even watch me go. I checked. It was necessary to go around the side so that Father wouldn't know I was prying. 

Summer in the South didn't last, which was a mercy in the evenings, but I was already missing the gasping adrenaline of overheated sport during the day. For a long time it had been raining too much to play outside at length, and no sooner had the rain left than it had begun to cool off. Going in I stood shivering in the anteroom, just off of the kitchen. In our house it was always as dark as it could be, and it took some time for my eyes to adjust. At my feet there was a book I'd dropped on the way out, Leaves of Grass, I think, and I picked it up for security. I'd taken no more than a few steps out of the anteroom when I heard, "Jackie, is that you?" from Father in the sitting room, and I froze, completely in trouble. "Do come in. Very good." Out of doors was the only place where life was without directions. Quite often I liked that, for it gave my life dimension, but I had intended to spy a little.

When I went in, still it was a bit dark, but Quinn's figure was clear, and I went to sit by him on the white settee as he liked. I had grown a little too large to sit in arms, and he had shown me how I might sit in company, with my ankles crossed and hands folded, though there had never been an opportunity to follow those directions. I followed them. 

"If you are leaving him in the dark all of the time, he will end up blinded," came a low, cool voice with the faintest accent around the corners of words, and my heart leapt, beating in my throat, because it was Dasius, whose letters I had scrutinized and who I remembered from Boston so well. He rose and flipped open the curtain, and it was he, slim, organized figure in a black three piece suit, minus the jacket that he had thrown over a chair. Thrown over a chair! In my house!

"I think I know quite well how to care for my own child," Father grumbled, taking my folded hand and scrutinizing my fingernails. He gave the hand back to me and patted my head.

Dasius sat again across from us, in my favorite black leather wingback chair. It was the perfect reading place. He crossed his legs and dragged his fingers through his short hair, curled just right in the front. "You must know that there are other interests at work. There is a measure of importance about this that I did not anticipate."

"Well you are mad if you think I will let you take him."

"Darling, it is you who are mad, I'm afraid."

"Oh you are hearing it from him. You wouldn't listen to slander, I hope. You do realize that he will slander me to anyone who will listen. He wants everything that I have and I will destroy it before he can have it. Mark me."

"Well I've heard that like before," Dasius said, after a pause. He was in smart black wingtip shoes, which I admired endlessly. 

"Tell me quite clearly what you mean to do. Tell it in front of the child."

"We will take him to Boston again to be educated. There has been a space secured at Boston Latin contingent on that he pass the exams. If what you tell me is true, he ought to have a decent go of it, and there is already a tutor who will make sure of that. There is a suite arranged and an allowance for upkeep."

"He will not stay with you?" Quinn asked, taking my hand again and keeping it. 

"No, darling. Even you can see how that would be impossible."

"If you will take him it must be a private school with room and board. I won't hear of a suite where anyone might come and go."

"Boston Latin is the best school in the region, I assure you."

"You are having the blood from my body in this matter," Quinn hissed. "If you will not see reason I will take him away and to hell with all of you." 

When I looked to Quinn's face it was tight with pain and other ill. I said, "Daddy I won't go. I'll stay here with you."

"Jackie, if you come, you will be made into a gentleman of character and substance, of access. Would you not like that? You will have your own car and your own rooms. Would you not like that?" Dasius asked me.

"No, sir," I paused, thinking it over, "because I am not a whore." 

"Don't laugh at that," Dasius said to my father, who had lain back to laugh, and I felt quite pleased to have said the right thing. "It does not suit that he speaks this way."

"What I don't care if he suits your sphere at all," my father said.

"Be wise and think it over," Dasius said. "This is larger than you are."

"So you say and I am quite resolute in my decision."

Dasius stood up to go, and I rose with him to get his coat. I could be a gentleman, really I could, and as I handed it to him he pushed my hair back with his hand and knelt at my height.

"Don't whisper to him, devil," my father said, cheerfully. "And do not try to give him anything. He's had Pluto here before offering the pomegranate and he knows better."

I would not know for many years what Dasius meant by trying to take me away, and I did not go. I did not know that others wanted me for their own, to influence me. I did not know how lost the 20th century had found some of them, and that my own influence was meant to give them entrance into a world they did not understand. I did not know of course that Laurent had become addicted to opiates, and languished in a Paris he had become unaccustomed to, and that his only pleasure had become sending gifts to me that I never received. But from that time, we were never without the crows seeking to pick at our flesh, for when Leis came back he would rarely come alone.

Oh how I wanted to ride in that Alfa Romeo, but I could not countenance the pain in Father's face. That evening he clipped my fingernails with little scissors, which I loved because it was intimate.

When I went through the kitchen again late on I noticed something new I hadn't spied before. A telephone.