“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” Suddenly she stopped, almost shouted, “Hey, Dr. Rowan, I just remembered something!”
“What?”
“About Dad.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t have the faintest idea why I remembered it now. It was long ago, when I was a little kid, and Grandmother was still in New York.”
“Go on,” Luisa urged.
“Dad used to drink. He wasn’t an alcoholic. It never interfered with his work, but he used to come back home from the studio and have a couple of drinks. Martinis, I think. And then he’d go into a gripe session, where nothing pleased him. One night he began shouting about how much he hated his father, and how his father had ruined his life.”
“Which father?” Luisa asked.
“That’s just it,” Raffi said. “I’d never heard of this Red Grange character, so of course I thought he was talking about Grandfather. It was really weird, because usually he talked about how much he loved Grandfather and how sorry he was I never had a chance to know him. But that night he kept on talking about how selfish his father was, how he wanted only his own pleasure, and how he’d deprived Dad of his identity. Mom just took me up to bed and said Dad didn’t know what he was talking about, gin breeds aggression, and I should forget it. Forget it, she said. How could I?”
“Go on.” Luisa’s voice was gentle.
“But I did forget it, after all, didn’t I? I mean, I haven’t thought about it all these years till this very minute. I remember Mom gave Dad an ultimatum. No more booze, no more drugs.”
“Drugs?”
“Pot, I suppose. Maybe cocaine, that’s what a lot of people were doing. Anyhow, Dad quit. Cold turkey.”
“With the help of AA?”
“Dad? My dad didn’t need AA. He could do it himself.” Her voice was heavy with scorn.
Luisa asked mildly, “But he did do it himself, didn’t he?”
“I guess he did. I never saw him drink any liquor after that. But, Dr. Rowan, don’t you see? When Dad was going on about how he hated his father, he wasn’t talking about Grandfather, was he? He was talking about this Red Grange who was his biological father. No wonder he hated somebody who took him away from where he was happy, from Aunt Frankie and Grandmother and Grandfather.”
“Does it help you understand?”
“A little. Thank God Dad doesn’t have any of Harriet’s genes. If he has the same genes as Grandmother, and I guess he has to, half of them, if they have the same mother, well, he must have started out with a good chance. In the world’s eyes, in my friends’ eyes, Dad is terrific.”
“Isn’t he, at least some of the time?”
“Maybe.”
“And you, Raffi? Are you terrific?”
“I’ve come to see that I’m not a total blot on anybody’s escutcheon, and that I don’t have to let all this screw up my life completely. I’d have to do that myself.”
“This is a real breakthrough, Raffi.”
“Is it?”
“You know it is. You’ve made remarkable progress. How’s college?”
“I like it. I like having Grandmother nearby. I’ve made some good friends.”
“How are your grades?”
“Good. I’ll be on the dean’s list, so that means I can try out for the next play, and I’m going to.”
“Good,” Luisa applauded.
“I’m beginning to realize I don’t have to have Dad’s approval. I’ve got the grades, so I can go ahead and do what I want. I may be stunted in some ways, but not academically.”
Taxi did moderately well academically at his boarding school. His mandatory weekly letters home were brief and uninformative, and referred to the school as the prison to which he had been unfairly committed.
From the school’s point of view, he had adapted reasonably well, got his work in mostly on time, and was the star both of the chorus and of the drama club.
He came home for spring vacation looking pale, then flushed. Camilla took his temperature and called Dr. Wickoff’s office.
‘You’d better bring him right in,’ the nurse said. ‘Dr. Liz isn’t in, but Dr. Andy will see him.’
There seemed no reason to refuse. Taxi had met Dr. Andy, as everybody called him and, as far as Camilla could see, associated him with nothing unpleasant.
Andrew’s office was, like Liz’s, cluttered with things which might appeal to children. One wall was hung with photographs, some of young patients, some of family. Andrew and Elizabeth now had two little boys, who were prominently displayed. There were several snapshots of Noelle’s twins and her younger little girl. Camilla’s eyes were drawn to a large color photograph of Andrew and Noelle, Andrew an early adolescent, Noelle a charming child. Andrew’s hair blazed, and Noelle’s was a rather lank brown; no wonder she played with it.
Andrew examined Taxi methodically. ‘I’ll s-send this culture to the lab, but I’m betting it’s strep, so I’m going to start you right away on medication—’ He was looking carefully at the chart. ‘Something you’re not allergic to. You’re to take all of it, Taxi, even if you s-start to feel better. Lie low for a couple of days. Read. Watch TV. Rest. You’ve grown a lot since I last saw you, and you’re underweight.’
‘I’ve no intention of becoming an obese slob.’
‘No anorexia allowed in this office. Go home and let your family pet and pamper you.’
‘Oh, yes, and then they’ll send me back to that prison.’
‘It’s not a prison, it’s an excellent school. The head’s a friend of mine, and the report is that you are d-doing very well indeed, and that the other boys like and admire you.’
Taxi shrugged. ‘Peasants.’
‘Okay, T-Taxi. Strep does tend to bring out the negative. When your fever is gone and you’re feeling better, the rest of the world will be brighter.’
Camilla and Mac went up to the school to see Taxi in Amahl and the Night Visitors. He was still small enough to play a younger boy, his voice on the verge of deepening but still pure and sweet. Camilla and Mac held hands and watched him transcend himself. He brought a quality to the opera seldom seen in an amateur production.
‘I wish Frankie had come,’ Camilla said.
Frankie was keeping her distance from Taxi, and the day of the production conflicted with one of her art classes. ‘Give Taxi my love,’ she said. ‘He’ll understand I can’t skip class.’
Of course he didn’t.
A few weeks later they had a troubled call from the headmaster. Taxi had been found in the stacks of the library on the floor with one of the girl students. Both of them were being suspended for a week. Then they would be allowed to return to school, on probation, under strict supervision.
Taxi came home, delighted to see everybody, not regarding the suspension in any way as a punishment. At dinner he said, ‘There are quite a few shows I want to see in these few days, so I’m going to Times Square and stand in line.’
‘Sorry, Taxi,’ Mac said. ‘This is not a vacation. No theatre for you.’
‘I have my own money.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Mac said, ‘you are to stay home at the seminary. I gather you have quite a bit of schoolwork to catch up on.’
Taxi shrugged. ‘Okay.’
When Camilla finished the dishes—Mac had an evening seminar—and went to check on Taxi, he was not in the apartment. She left the building, crossed the close, and went to the main entrance. The student at the reception desk said he’d seen Taxi go out with the teenage daughter of one of the professors.
Camilla would not have called Luisa, but Luisa happened to call her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Luisa said. ‘But this is not atypical behavior for Taxi. Don’t make too big a deal of it.’
‘I agree. I won’t call him on it. Do I overreact?’
‘Understandably, occasionally. Do you still love Taxi?’
‘You don’t turn love on and off like water in a faucet,’ Camilla said.
‘But do you?’
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‘I don’t know. Sometimes I feel nothing but scar tissue, and scar tissue doesn’t feel.’
‘And you blame yourself for not feeling?’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t. You’re not responsible for how you feel. You’re responsible for what you do, and considering everything, you and Mac have done pretty well.’
‘But—here I am talking about my scar tissue, and Taxi’s the one who’s been so terribly wounded.’
Luisa gave an impatient grunt. ‘A lot of people get terribly wounded. The media saturates us with false images of happiness and security, but it’s a lie. That’s why I and the rest of my ilk stay in business.’
Taxi made it halfway through his senior year and was expelled. When Camilla and Mac drove up to the school to bring him home, he was not there. Finally, cutting through the subdued panic, one of the girl students went to the headmaster’s office and said that Taxi had gone to join a small theatrical company in Boston.
‘Let him be,’ they were advised. ‘If he can make it on his own, perhaps that’s what he needs.’
‘Who knows what Taxi needs?’ Luisa asked rhetorically. ‘Even Taxi doesn’t know. Perhaps Taxi most of all.’
But Taxi did well in the theatre. Frankie was happy in art school, bringing friends home for the weekend, building a good portfolio of her work. She seldom talked about Taxi. After she completed her degree she moved out of the seminary apartment and into a loft with three other aspiring artists. She got a job with a prestigious gallery. She called her parents regularly. Everything she was doing was right and proper, but Camilla and Mac missed her.
‘I think I’m having empty-nest syndrome,’ Camilla said, as she and Mac sat in her study before dinner.
‘That’s natural,’ Mac said. ‘I am, too, even though I’m enjoying the peace and quiet.’
‘Frankie wasn’t exactly noisy.’
‘No.’
And Taxi hadn’t been around to make noise.
Mac added, ‘But you know what I mean.’
Yes.
When Frankie married it was just a continuation of normal patterns. The wedding was in the seminary chapel, with Mac officiating, and Camilla was torn between a joyful sense of completion for her daughter and loss for herself and Mac. Frankie and Ben moved to Seattle, where Ben became a partner in his father’s small publishing house, dealing mostly with technical books for a small but steady market. Frankie called at least weekly. Camilla and Mac made occasional trips to Seattle. They would probably have gone more often if there had been grandchildren to visit.
“Aunt Frankie sent me her new book,” Raffi said. “It’s terrific. Stuff you taught her about astronomy, and wonderful stuff of her own about Orion and hunting stars.”
She had come across campus to have dinner with Camilla.
Camilla, looking at Raffi, whose cheeks were flushed with cold, her nose pink, drew her into the warm living room.
Raffi laughed. “It’s winter, Grandmother. More snow tonight.” She pulled off her woolen cap, shrugged out of her pea coat, and tossed it and her backpack onto one of the chairs.
“Dinner’s nearly ready,” Camilla said. “Let’s go into the kitchen. I’ve made that pasta you like, with artichokes and cherry tomatoes and black and green olives and other goodies.”
“Whoopee, I’m starved.” Raffi followed Camilla into the kitchen. A large pot on the stove was steaming, and Camilla put in a small package of fettuccini. “This is the kind that cooks quickly. Three minutes.” She set the timer. Started to ask, “What’s on your mind?” but stopped. Raffi would tell her whatever it was when she was ready.
Raffi took a long wooden spoon and stirred the pasta. “Good news, Grandmother.”
“Wonderful. I’m ready for good news. What?”
“Mom called. Dad’s contract’s been renewed for three more years. He was given some kind of a scolding, which made him livid, but if he was as stinky at the studio as he was at home, he deserved it.”
“But he has the contract.”
“Yes. Mom says she’ll call you tonight. So now maybe we can relax.”
Camilla nodded slightly and stirred her sauce, redolent of onion and garlic, cilantro and other herbs. She glanced briefly at Raffi, who said nothing more until the timer pinged. Then the girl took mitts and drained the pasta into the waiting colander, raising a cloud of steam.
“We’re doing a section on poetry in Freshman English.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
“Sure.” They heaped their plates, then moved into the dining alcove. Raffi spooned Parmesan cheese onto her pasta. “I keep digging at you, Grandmother, trying to get at the truth, why Dad wanted to pull the rug out from under me.”
“He—” Camilla started.
Raffi rode over her. “I know he was frantic about his contract, but what I’m coming to see is that truth is complicated, and the same thing can have a different truth for different people.” She got up from the table, went into the living room, and dug a bulky textbook out of her backpack. She brought it to the table and opened it to a marked page. “Listen to this. We had it today. It’s by Emily Dickinson.
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
That’s my dad, isn’t it? Maybe he can’t help telling it slant. Maybe he got slanted and can’t straighten up?” Without waiting for an answer, she returned to the text.
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind—
Is the explanation kind, Grandmother, or is it cruel? I’m not sure I get this. Well, there are two more lines:
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
Is Emily Dickinson saying that if we know too much too soon we can’t take it?”
“Perhaps.” Camilla offered Raffi salad. “That’s one of her poems I don’t think I’ve heard before.”
“Packs a wallop, doesn’t it?” Raffi helped herself to salad. It was as though the ordinary acts of cooking, of eating, eased the truth, made it kinder than it would be if not slanted. She put down her fork. Then she said, “My dad’s a very successful actor.”
“Very.”
“So on one level that’s a truth, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“He’s got what he wanted. His contract’s been renewed. But he’s still not happy a lot of the time. He’s not manic depressive or anything, but he does swing up and down.”
—Like the Cepheids, Camilla thought. “The down times don’t last forever.”
“The last time I was home, he got out an album of pictures of himself and Aunt Frankie when they were little kids. He showed them to Mom and me, and then he stuffed the album in the garbage. After he went to bed Mom got it out and cleaned it off and put it away. Now I guess I know why there aren’t more pictures of Dad and Aunt Frankie after they were about four.”
“Harriet and Grange must have taken pictures,” Camilla said, “but we never saw any.”
“What about after? After they were killed and my dad came back to you?”
“We took pictures. There are several albums.”
“Where?”
“I gave a couple to your mother. And there are a few over there”—she indicated the living room and the wall of books—“on the shelf with all the scrapbooks of Taxi’s clippings, playbills, reviews, articles from TV magazines, and so forth.”
“May I see them?”
“Of course. The scrapbooks are pretty much duplicates of what your mother has.”
“The photo albums?”
“They’re there, on the bottom shelf. There aren’t that many after your dad and Aunt Frankie got into high school.”
“Did Aunt Frankie go to college?”
“She went to art school. She has a B.F.A. She dated an editor for a while—is that the right word? Do people still date? Or are they an item?�
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Raffi laughed. “It doesn’t matter. What about the editor?”
“He was the one who got her illustrating books for children, and doing book jackets. The year she broke up with her editor friend, she wrote her own first book—you know it.”
“Yeah, the one about the twins who were separated …”
“And then she won the Caldecott Medal with her third book.”
“Oh, yes, the beautiful one about the white wolf.”
“Then she and Ben married and moved to Seattle, where Ben came from.”
“So she and Dad were sort of like the twins in the first book … Except the twins got back together.”
“Except,” Camilla said.
“Oh, Grandmother, it’s sad. I hardly know my Aunt Frankie at all. She sends me really nice presents for my birthday and Christmas, and sometimes she writes me wonderful letters, but I don’t know her. I hate that.”
“I hate it, too,” Camilla said.
“Was Aunt Frankie at—at any of Dad’s weddings?”
“Yes. She came East when he married your mother. They liked each other. If it weren’t for geography, I think they would have been good friends.”
“What about the others? The first two? I know about them because sometimes when Dad’s being ugly he slaps my mom by making comparisons.”
“Sharilee didn’t last long. Frankie did meet her, but we never got to know her.”
When Taxi married Sharilee Swann (‘Who thought up that name?’ Frankie demanded), Camilla and Mac had not yet met her. The wedding was at city hall in Chicago, where Taxi and Sharilee were playing in a musical together. Taxi’s pure boy-soprano voice was long gone, but he was now a passable tenor, and he knew how to put over a song. The charm with which he sang made up for any lack in his voice.
The night of the marriage he had called, sounding very young and excited. ‘Mom! Dad!’
They were, of course, asleep.
‘Sorry to wake you but I had to tell you! Sharilee and I are married! Her parents are the pits, so we had to do it this way. I’m really sorry, Dad, you know what I really wanted was for you to marry us.’
A Live Coal in the Sea Page 29
