PARTISAN REVIEW
363
remember only one of the last verses, but he could still hear, even
to
this
hour, the tone of
his
father's voice as he sang
All will be well if
-
if
-
if -
Say the green bells of Cardiff.
When
his
father finished singing, he rose without a word and
switched off the light, and all Owen could see was a silhouette against
the lighted doorway. The silhouette grew larger and larger, became
a shadow that engulfed Owen, and then Owen felt a kiss on his lips.
The shadow's breath was sweet and cidery. (This smell, as Owen
later learned from his own experience, was of beer.) Then the shadow
moved away from Owen and a silhouette, enlarged by a guitar, went
toward the doorway and for a second, as it was struck by the hall
light, was changed into Owen's father, who disappeared, his foot–
steps going down the carpeted stairs and then resounding in the
hardwood foyer. Then the lighted doorway Owen was staring at
went black.
One night Owen woke to darkness (trees shielding the window
kept
his
room as dark as a closet) and heard voices downstairs. There
was a merciless, urgent quality about them, and they sounded like
the voices of strangers. Owen could only imagine a few reasons for
strangers being in the house at that hour, none of them good reasons,
and as he continued to listen, his eyes in motion as though sight were
requisite to hearing, his apprehension turned to alarm. The voices
did not belong to strangers. They were the voices of
his
father and
mother, pitched in a way he'd never heard them pitched. He went
to the stairwell. The voices were coming from the other end of the
house, not from the master bedroom, as he'd thought, and he
couldn't make out what they were saying. He went slowly down the
stairs, went in silence across the hardwood foyer and stepped into
the parlor. The dining room ahead was dark, but the tops and edges
of furniture gleamed and a pair of glass candlesticks cast rainbow–
tinted streaks across the table. The light came from the kitchen. His
parents were arguing there. Owen had heard them argue before, and
it shamed
him,
and he would have hurried back upstairs if it hadn't
been for the quality of their voices; they sounded as
if
they were
defending themselves against a third person.
