Bien Élevé - Jean Whitehead

In 1924 when I was not yet ten years old, I was aware of my mother’s sense of what was proper. As her only son, I was to do things correctly. This was important. If all went to plan, people would say that I had been well brought up, or in my mother’s words, bien élevé.
 
We spoke only French in our house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But at church or school, I’d certainly heard phrases like comfort the afflicted or visit the sick. These were among the common virtues lined up against the seven deadly sins, at Saint Paul’s School of Catechism. And it was toward these virtues that my mother gently steered me, one bright and breezy day, when it may have appeared that I had nothing to do. In our fifth summer at the shore in Duxbury, my mother suggested an excellent way for me to implement my duty to be kind, and even to make a special effort. I went to see Mr. Briel.
 
He was a gentleman who sat on his porch overlooking the sea, a cane tucked beside his right knee and a tweed cap set crookedly on his head. He spoke rather loudly to his cheerful wife, Mrs. Briel, when he wanted her to hear something he had just learned from me. For example, I told him I’d been given a bank, a device which rang a bell whenever you deposited a coin. And that the machine itself was made by the American Can Company. He seemed to stress the American Can Company aspect, so I wondered if he’d once worked there. This made me nervous, because he obviously didn’t work there, or anywhere, anymore, which related to the reason I had come, to comfort the afflicted.
 
Sadly, Mr. Briel was completely blind, his eyes hidden behind dark lenses. His voice, which was rather flat, sounded resigned to the fact that, for the rest of his life, he would never see anything at all. There was nothing for it, of course, but to talk of other things, and that’s what we did when I visited him on his porch.
 
Mr. Briel was interested in the bridge project over at Powder Point, whether I thought the Red Sox would boost their standing by year’s end, and how much damage had been done to the Myles Standish statue, when lightning knocked it clear off its tower last summer. This last topic quickened my breath, as it came awfully close to wondering what the statue looked like now. But most of the time we talked easily, with no big silences, in a way that I felt my mother and Mrs. Briel—who must have cooked this up together—would appreciate.
 
One of the things Mr. Briel liked was talking about his days as a boy back in Scotland, which was not easy for me to imagine, considering his present age and condition. He went on happily, with no comment needed from me, about riding his Shetland pony over the hills to his uncle’s Uplands estate, fishing for salmon with his father, and winning a prize for reciting poems by the great Robert Burns. After talking about these things for a while, he grew quiet, and I knew I shouldn’t speak. In a few moments he would ask me to start up the Victor Talking Machine in the corner, just wind it up and play the record that was already on the turntable. I did that, taking special care to place the needle just right on the black revolving disc. A scratched record would be especially sad for Mr. Briel.
 
Sounding a bit hollow and far away, but plenty clear enough to enjoy, the singing voice of Sir Harry Lauder echoed brightly from the Talking Machine.
 
“Roamin’ in the gloamin’
 
By the bonnie banks o’ Clyde
 
Roamin’ in the gloamin’
 
With my Bonnie by my side...”
 
I usually played the other side of the record too, and sometimes a second and third of the Harry Lauder favorites, and Mr. Briel seemed happiest while this was going on.

I never grew accustomed to his blindness. It lay heavy on me as an inescapable evil, like death itself. I didn’t really believe in death at that time, but during my visits to Mr. Briel, I faced blindness personified. There, before me, sat the permanent inability to see this world.
 
These visits became part of my summer days. Sometimes I went in the morning, while Mrs. Briel hung clothes on her taut laundry line. Sometimes at day’s end, after a sailing expedition or a swim with my sisters. One day, I brought a pail of fresh clams to Mrs. Briel. She and my mother both relished a meal of steamers, and although I was not a fan, I loved the ritual of bucket and shovel on the sand flats at low tide.
 
Summer had a progression in which I was able to lose myself. I slept very well, drifting off to the sound of leaves stirring over our small farmhouse. On Sundays, we ate my favorite roast chicken, a specialty my mother had perfected in France. My father spent most of his time in his study writing another book, but sometimes he would join us to go fishing off Eagle’s Nest Bridge. The days were full.                                                                 
 
Then August came. Things began to feel melancholy. The end-of-summer thing was happening. Each year I saw it, the way August fifth felt perfectly fine, and August tenth was normal. There were still cookouts and rowboat trips out to Clark’s Island and certainly plenty of opportunities to eat ice cream.
 
 I had always accepted the waning season, because there was no choice. The stiffer air, the women packing in the yards, the sails coming down, were all steps toward summer’s end, which everyone tried not to notice. But we were on that last lap, with cooler mornings and earlier sunsets, closing the door on summer. I knew that once I was back in Cambridge, going to school and smelling books and paste, I would be swept up in the fall excitement. But right now, there was only a feeling of loss, as the wind picked up and the grass cooled underfoot.
 
Just before Labor Day, I walked to Mr. Briel’s for a final visit. On the way I noticed the sand, sloping off the road and disappearing into scrubby thickets. It was the color of the eggs I’d collected from the chickens that morning. I thought again about Mr. Briel’s blindness and how unfair it was. His father, long dead, had had no way of knowing that his young son would someday go blind. No way of knowing that he’d turn into an old blind man, sitting on a wood porch and being visited by a boy. Me.
 
Then I started thinking how Mr. Briel didn’t know what would happen to me when I grew up. I could be a man with a son someday. Mr. Briel would be gone and never know. Mr. Briel didn’t even know if I was coming over today. He might suspect I was, he might hope I was. But really, he just sat there and did not know what would happen.
 
These thoughts lead suddenly to a new thought, most unworthy of a boy bien élevé. Mr. Briel wouldn’t know, for instance, if I made a face when I played the Scottish record. He wouldn’t see it if I stuck out my tongue. He would never, ever know if I decided to pull the sides of my mouth far apart with my fingers during the Harry Lauder songs. He’d imagine me sipping lemonade but never suspect me of thumbing my nose right at him, as he sat smiling and listening to music from a distant time. I wondered if I could bring myself to do so awful a thing.
 
I arrived at the cottage, and Mrs. Briel was as warm and welcoming as ever. She smiled down as if she had never seen such a pleasant boy. She walked me to the porch, where Mr. Briel sat with a crocheted blanket across his lap. I thought it made him look more helpless than ever.
 
“Won’t you sit down, Louis?” I suddenly felt condemned. When we were alone, Mr. Briel lifted his cane and tapped the planks of the deck. “You notice that, don’t you, son?” His smile was eerie, and I felt fear, misplaced and wrong.
 
“Mr. Briel?”
 
“You smell the breeze? She’s different.”
 
The breeze did move more vigorously over the low shrubs near the cottage. We acknowledged the coming autumn. I told him that my teacher this year would be Father Wade and that I’d heard he was very strict. I mentioned that my mother was knitting me a sweater, just in time for school. But my heart wasn’t in it. The bushes seemed to be rattling. I worried that the blanket might slip off his lap, or that he might remember going to school himself and grow sad.
 
Finally, he smiled weakly and spoke. “I certainly have enjoyed our visits this summer, Louis.”
 
“So have I, Mr. Briel.”
 
“And I thank you for coming to see me.”
 
There. He had said it. See.
 
Mrs. Briel brought out some lemonade, which I swallowed wrong, and it made my throat feel scraped off. Just as the Scottish record began, I coughed, although I tried not to. The music, from a country I’d never seen, sounded mournful and grim. And there weren’t even any cookies. I put my lemonade back on the tray and stood up. Mr. Briel didn’t seem to notice.
 
“Louis?” He tapped his cane again, but gently. “Do you know what you are?” Here it was. Somehow, he knew my thoughts about making faces, about sticking out my tongue. He knew I was unworthy.
 
“No, Mr. Briel.” I felt sick.
 
“You are a very fine boy.” He made this pronouncement in a measured and firm voice, as if the words had actual weight.
 
I looked out toward the bay, thinking I might cry. On the horizon, the sea was constant, beyond an acre of sloping yellow meadow. Far down, by the shore, there were low fragrant spruce, strong enough to stand the onslaught of winter tides and wind. I realized that whether you could see it or not, this was a pretty nice place to be able to sit. Hearing Mrs. Briel in the kitchen and gulls crying in the breeze, with pine scent wafting up from below, I concluded that I might actually be bien élevé, someday.
 
Then it was time. Even though I suddenly wanted to hug him, I shook Mr. Briel’s hand. I wished him well and thanked Mrs. Briel for the lemonade. I said goodbye to Mr. Briel for the summer, and, as it turned out, forever. When I left, he was facing the sea in his crooked cap, the blanket tucked snug around him.
 
I decided to walk home the long way, down by the beach. And I looked at everything—the brown seaweed on the pale sand, the tan and grey pebbles and shiny black mussel shells, the green eel grass and blue seawater, and the distant white sails, brilliant in the orange September sun.