So it went for the first five days of his visit, that is, the three days that weren’t spent traveling around in Mildred’s car, the quiet, uneventful days when Ferguson and Sydney would lie around in the backyard and talk about anything that came into their heads, not just about the question of who fucked whom and why but also about Sydney’s girlhood in Ohio and Ferguson’s double boyhood in New Jersey and New York, about the different ways in which stories were told in books and movies and the pleasures and frustrations of teaching young children, about how Mildred felt both excited and nervous to have her nephew staying in the house, excited for all the obvious reasons but nervous because she was hesitant to expose her sister’s son to the way she was living now, which explained why she had asked Sydney to sleep in the garage apartment while Ferguson was with them, to spare the boy any embarrassment, as she had put it, meaning her own embarrassment, and when Ferguson asked Sydney why she had gone ahead and told him the real story just minutes after picking him up at the airport, the pretty cowgirl said: I hate dissembling, that’s why. It means you don’t believe in your own life, or that you’re scared of your own life, and I believe in my life, Archie, and I don’t want to be scared of it.
Around four o’clock, they would pull themselves together and shuffle into the kitchen to start making dinner, continuing to talk as they chopped onions and peeled potatoes, the two of them twelve years apart in age, which paradoxically was much larger than the fifteen years that stood between Sydney and Mildred, but for all that he and Sydney were closer in spirit than Sydney was to Mildred, Ferguson felt, two mutts as opposed to the thoroughbred from Stanford University, a question of temperament more than of age, he supposed, but when Mildred finally returned to the house at six or six-thirty, Ferguson would pay close attention to how the two women acted around him, aware that Mildred was pretending not to be involved with Sydney in the way he knew she was while Sydney stubbornly ignored the injunction to pretend, showering endearments on his aunt that seemed to make Mildred more and more uncomfortable as the days went on, the darlings and angels and sugar-pies that no doubt would have pleased her if he hadn’t been sitting at the table with them, and after five days Ferguson sensed they were locked in a silent quarrel that had been provoked by his presence, and on the evening of the sixth day, which was the next to last day of his visit, the increasingly anxious and out-of-sorts Mildred drank too much wine at dinner and eventually lost her composure — lost it because she wanted to lose it and needed the wine to push her over the edge — and the surprising thing about her outburst was that she didn’t lash out at Sydney but at her nephew, as if he were the cause of her troubles, and the moment the assault began, Ferguson understood that Sydney had been talking behind his back, that the cowgirl had betrayed him.
Since when have you been a Bulgarian, Archie? Mildred said.
A Bulgarian? Ferguson replied. What are you talking about?
You’ve read Candide, haven’t you? Don’t you remember the Bulgarians?
I’m not following you.
The buggering Bulgarians. That’s where the word comes from, you know. Bul-gar, bug-gar. Bugger.
And what’s that supposed to mean?
Men fucking other men up the ass.
I still don’t know what you’re talking about.
A little birdie told me you’ve been buggering other boys. Or maybe other boys have been buggering you.
A little birdie?
At that point Sydney jumped into the conversation and said: Leave him alone, Mildred. You’re drunk.
No, I’m not, Mildred said. I’m mildly intoxicated, and that gives me the right to tell the truth, and the truth of the matter is, my beloved Archie, the truth is that you’re too young to be going down that road now, and if you don’t get a grip on yourself, you’ll turn into a queer before you know it, and then there’ll be no turning back. There are enough queers in this family already, I’m afraid, and the last thing we need is another one.
Without uttering a word, Ferguson stood up from the table and started walking out of the room.
Where are you going? Mildred asked.
Away from you, Ferguson said. You have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t have to sit here listening to your crap.
Oh, Archie, Mildred said, come on back. We need to talk.
No we don’t. I’m done talking with you.
Ferguson stomped off, struggling to push back the tears that were gathering in his eyes, and when he came to the corridor at the front of the house, he turned left and walked down the tiled hallway until he reached the guest bedroom at the far end. In the distance, he could hear Mildred and Sydney arguing behind him, but he didn’t listen to what they were saying, and by the time he entered the room and shut the door, their voices were too muffled for him to make out the words.
He sat down on the bed, put his hands over his face, and started to sob.
No more sharing of secrets, he said to himself, no more unguarded confessions, no more trusting in people who didn’t deserve to be trusted. If he couldn’t say what he wanted to say in front of everyone in the world, he would keep his mouth shut and say it to no one.
He understood now why his mother had always looked up to her older sister — and why she had always been disappointed by her. So much intelligence there, he said to himself, so much humor when she had a mind to be humorous, so much generosity when she had a mind to be generous, but Mildred could be mean, meaner than any other person on earth, and now that Ferguson had been scalded by that meanness, he wanted nothing more to do with her and would henceforth cross her off his list. No more Aunt Mildred, and no more Sydney Millbanks, who had shown such promise as a friend — but how could you be friends with someone who seemed to be your friend but wasn’t?
A moment later, Sydney was knocking on the door. He knew it was Sydney because she was calling out his name, asking if he was all right, asking if she could come in and talk to him, but Ferguson said no, he didn’t want to see her or talk to her, he wanted her to leave him alone, but unfortunately the door had no lock, and Sydney came in anyway, cracking open the door until he could see her face and the tears that were rushing down her cheeks, and then she was all the way in, apologizing for what she had done, saying I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.