by Howard Fast
“That old bastard,” Joan Herman had said, referring to his father-in-law, and never one to mince words, “has piss in his blood and ice in his heart.”
THIRTEEN
Waiting at the local airport for the plane carrying their grandparents to land, Leonard asked Elizabeth whether she ever felt Jewish. It was the kind of question that under other circumstances might have provoked a clever, funny quip. Now it prompted her to stare at her brother for a long moment before she answered quietly, “It’s crossed my mind. Why?”
“We’re supposed to be Jewish.”
“So they tell us.”
“Has it ever bothered you?”
“No. Not really.”
“I’ve never been in a synagogue,” he said. “I mean—when this happens to you, you think about what you’ve never done.”
“We were in a synagogue once,” Elizabeth reminded him. “No, twice. Once when Daddy spoke at the Temple Emanuel in New York, and once in Newport.”
“That doesn’t make anything, Liz. You know that. I don’t even know what it is to feel Jewish.”
“I don’t know what there is to feel. I’m sure there must be something. I heard Gramps say that according to Hitler’s definition, if you were one eighth Jewish, you were Jewish and a candidate for the gas ovens. Gramps is I think one sixteenth Jewish, if that means anything. Granny’s father was a Congregationalist or something of the sort. I was never too clear about it. Then Mother would be—”
“That’s it,” Leonard interrupted. “They’re coming in.”
On this small county airfield, there was only one rather unimposing airport structure. The planes landed and the movable staircase was rolled up to them. Augustus Levi’s plane was a 727, blue and white with the word MACAMAW painted in large black letters on both sides of the cabin. Macamaw was the name of the engineering and construction company that Augustus Levi’s great-grandfather had put together during the Civil War, building roads and railroads on contract for the Union Army.
Noticing that his sister’s eyes were beginning to tear again, Leonard said sternly, “None of that, Liz. We have a long, hard day ahead of us.”
“You’re not going to tell them?”
“No, no, no. We have to get through this damn dinner party. It’s important to Mother.”
“How can you be so cool?”
“I’ve been living with it, Sis. You learn to live with anything.”
“All right. I’m over this one.”
The plane had rolled to a stop and was now swinging around to approach the installation. As Elizabeth and Leonard entered the airport building from the parking area, Augustus Levi and Jenny entered from the field side. Spotting Elizabeth and Leonard, Augustus strode forward and embraced his granddaughter in a bear hug. His wife moved more sedately to embrace and kiss, first Leonard and then Elizabeth. Leonard had always feared his grandfather’s handshake. It was bone crunching, and he still feared it, enduring it and trying not to wince with pain.
“Let’s look at both of you. Stand back,” Augustus declared. Leonard always felt that his grandfather had been named properly. Levi was six feet and three inches tall, a broad, barrel-chested man with a ruddy face that resembled the traditional cartoon of John Bull. His frame was large enough to support the roll of fat around his stomach, so he was never taken for a fat man, a large man but not a fat man, for all of his two hundred and forty pounds.
His wife, Jenny—Jean by birth certificate—had been one of those tall, rangy women, golf and skis and tennis and horses—wide shoulders that carry clothes with queenly grace. Now, at age sixty-nine, she was still a fine-looking woman, thirty pounds heavier than the girl he had married, with the unassuming arrogance that comes of having been born rich and having been rich all of her life. Augustus was seventy-three, but he fought age as he fought everything else, and if he displayed a vigor he did not wholly feel, it was nevertheless a vigor he could command when called upon. Leonard had often wondered how these two self-satisfied and very large people could have produced his mother, Dolly, who was, in contrast, small, delicate, and prey to endless uncertainties.
“You don’t look good, either of you,” was Augustus’ immediate reaction. “You need sun and exercise! Kids today don’t eat right! God damn it, you’re not on coke, are you?” He spoke to them as he would have spoken to a job-boss, but whereas the job-boss would have cringed in fear, both Leonard and Elizabeth broke into their first real laughter of the day. He adored them, and possibly they were the only things in the world that he gave a damn about, these two slender, beautiful creatures who were out of his genes and his blood. On their part, he was their large, gruff, and totally malleable pet bear. Jenny was something else, a grandmother, loving, though not too demonstrative; always in the shadow of the man she had married, yet tall and queenly enough to be her own person.
The luggage came off the plane, five suitcases for their single night at the Cromwells, and Augustus went off to have a last word with his pilot. When he returned, Leonard was hauling a suitcase into the station wagon. Effortlessly, Augustus tossed the other pieces into the car.
“Should we wait for the pilot?” Leonard asked.
“No. We carry a navigator who doubles as a co-pilot now. They’ll find their way into town. I do wish I could spend some time with you kids and play some tennis. By golly, it’s three, four years since we played tennis. Think you could beat me, Liz?”
“I’d give it a good try.”
“Well, maybe this afternoon.”
“You haven’t touched a tennis racket in years,” Jenny said, “and you’re not going to this afternoon.”
“Listen to her!” He was in marvelous good humor.
“Why can’t you stay?” Leonard wondered.
“We’re on our way to Switzerland. It’s business, not pleasure.”
“Oh, I envy you.”
“Come along.”
“Have you opened the house at Klosters?”
“No,” Jenny said with annoyance. “No. Nor shall we. It’s cold and drafty and falling to pieces, and I don’t know why we don’t sell it.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Elizabeth said. “You remember, Lenny—that great big fireplace.”
“I remember how cold I was,” Leonard said.
“We’ll stay in a proper hotel in Geneva,” Jenny said. “I will not go near Klosters. He believes he’s thirty. I will be seventy years old come October, and I am aware of it.”
But Leonard’s thoughts were riveted now on that day in Klosters—he was eight years old, chilled to the bone, and taken into that strange old half-timbered lodge through the wild, whipping snow. A fire roared in the great fireplace, but he could not warm himself and he kept shivering with the cold of death. Death—the cold, cold breath of death.
Jenny babbled on. “Believe me, nothing I’d like better than to take both you darlings with me and show you off to some people we know in Switzerland and France. Nothing ups the status like two gorgeous grandchildren, and I’m at a point where I don’t hide my age—in fact I am not a little proud of it, and no face-lift. Ugh. Disgusting thought, taking your flesh and stretching it out until you look in the mirror and you truly don’t know who you are. You remember Maggie Blakely—the one from Virginia whom your mother used to invite when we visited in Georgetown—well, her face job turned her into an utter stranger, I mean her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, and while the new face was rather decent looking, the confusion of explaining who she was became a nightmare to her—”
Elizabeth began to cry.
“Will you shut up,” Augustus told her. “Will you please shut up.”
“It’s nothing,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just silly emotional, and it’s all of us being here together today—”
“I understand,” Jenny said. She was sitting in the back seat with Elizabeth, while her husband sat next to Leonard, who was driving. “I do understand, my dear,” putting an arm around Elizabeth and drawing her over against her breast. Jenny could
remember how fretful and maudlin she herself would be during her menstrual periods; long gone, but she could still remember. Certainly the same thing. When Augustus turned to stare at her questioningly and worriedly, Jenny nodded wisely to reassure him.
“She’ll be all right,” Leonard said thinly. “Don’t worry, Gramps. She’ll be all right.”
FOURTEEN
MacKenzie came into the dining room with a basket of flowers from the garden. He had selected white lilacs and peonies of white and pale rose, a great mass of sweet-smelling and beautiful blooms, and at the sight of them, Dolly clapped her hands in delight. “How wonderful! But, Mac, what am I to do with them? It would break my heart to cut them back, yet they’re much too big for the table. They’ll make a fine bouquet for the sideboard. But then, what shall I do for a centerpiece? I remember when I was a little girl, reading a story about some great Italian chef who worked for a grand duke or some such person, and simply ran out of ideas for centerpieces. Then his nephew talked him into giving him a tub of butter which he carved into a splendid lion. Do you know, the boy became a famous sculptor, and I can’t for the life of me remember his name and we don’t have a tub of butter or a sculptor. What then? Come, Mac, be creative.”
“Do you recollect that glass eagle made by the Corning people that the Red Cross gave to the senator for heading up their drive?”
“Wonderful! Order of Cromwell or something.”
“Ma’am?”
“I’ve just decorated you. Come on, Mac, to work. Get the eagle and then the big Wedgewood vase for the flowers. Then wine and water—three glasses for each setting.”
MacKenzie went into the kitchen to dress the flowers and fill the vase, a lovely piece of pale blue and white china.
“How is it going?” Ellen asked him.
“I haven’t seen her like this in ages. She’s high as a kite.”
“Thank goodness, the way it’s been.”
“Any reason for it?”
“None that I intend to gossip with you concerning it. Here, be useful.”
“Useful. I live my life like a goddamn screwdriver, which is useful and screws now and then.”
Nellie Clough came into the kitchen on the last note, and she broke into giggles.
“And what is so funny?” Ellen demanded coldly.
“Nothing, Miss Ellen, absolutely nothing.”
“I got to take this vase in to Miss Dolly, and then I’ll return and be useful.”
He returned with Dolly, who said, “Would you believe that I forgot about lunch?”
Ellen pointed to a tray piled high with settings. “Let’s get this out, Miss Dolly, and then we’ll brood over it.”
Dolly was counting the settings. “Seven, Ellen. You have only six.”
“Oh? That’s right.” She added a setting, wondering what devil’s urging made it so difficult to remember that Clarence Jones was a guest, and telling herself that this was not the first black man to dine here, not by any means. “For heaven’s sake,” she said to MacKenzie, “don’t stand there. Take the tray out to the terrace,” and then disliked herself for using Mac to cover her own insensitivity. “You go with him,” she told Nellie, “and set up on the large round table.” When they had gone, she faced Dolly and apologized.
“Oh? That’s right.” She added a setting, wondering what devil’s urging made it so difficult to remember that Clarence Jones was a guest, and telling herself that this was not the first black man to dine here, not by any means. “For heaven’s sake,” she said to MacKenzie, “don’t stand there. Take the tray out to the terrace,” and then disliked herself for using Mac to cover her own insensitivity. “You go with him,” she told Nellie, “and set up on the large round table.” When they had gone, she faced Dolly and apologized.
“I don’t know what gets into me.”
“You’re a little hard on Mac, aren’t you?”
“It’s his fault, he’s so kind and patient. He is, you know.”
“I do know, of course, Ellen.”
“Like the senator. Same type. And that just leads me to dump on him.”
They were old friends, these two, going back years, with no proper servant-mistress relationship but something else shared in that curious sanctum called a kitchen. Dolly stared at Ellen for a long moment, and then said, “You cut up the cold chicken?”
“Oh, yes,”
“We won’t serve. Make a buffet on the baker’s stand and let them pick. My father likes the chicken just cut in chunks with celery bits and the mayonnaise on the side. We have potato salad, and you put together a salad niçoise and a platter of sliced tomato. You mentioned hard-boiled eggs and they’ll do fine with the tomato, and do a plain tuna salad just in case the kids want to be kids. We have a big piece of cheddar and a cut of stilton. Daddy likes stilton. Thin-sliced black bread and some rolls. And get Nellie to help you.”
“You’re nettled with me,” Ellen said. “You certainly are nettled with me.”
“I am not,” Dolly said firmly. “So the senator’s kind and patient?”
“I think so.”
“I’m sure you do.” Then Dolly went back to the dining room and began to arrange the flowers. The senator found her there. He had changed into a white shirt, pale gray flannels, and sneakers. He came into the room and stood quietly, watching Dolly whose back was to him. She was wearing a pink peasant skirt, a white cotton blouse, and sandals. A shaft of sunlight, filled with a dizzying dance of dust motes, caught her and made the senator think of the French impressionist painters and their obsession with sunlight. The flowers danced in the sunlight, and glowed as if they were lit from within.
“I sometimes think this is your favorite room,” the senator said.
“It is, I suppose,” she answered without turning, continuing to move the flowers, as if there were some perfect arrangement that she must find. “And it’s the most valid. Every piece in the room has been in the family since at least—well eighteen ten at least.”
“And that’s important to you?”
She turned slowly to face him, and said, “This morning, Richard, all that fuss about the ham—well, it was my invention, you know. I get so angry with you, and then I have to hang it on something; but still it was real. Damn it, Richard, I am Jewish. That may be a recent decision on my part, and it goes in the face of all the Jews I do not like. I was born a year before Pearl Harbor, and until World War Two was over I never had an inkling that I was Jewish. Well, maybe an inkling, no more. I didn’t even think of Levi as a Jewish name. I was fourteen years old when I first read about the Holocaust. Slow process.”
“I try to understand.”
“I don’t think there’s any way to understand family relationships. I don’t understand my father and mother. I gave it up. I don’t even know whether I love them or hate them.”
“I think you love them,” the senator said uneasily, wondering where this was leading. He had always felt a certain awe regarding Augustus Levi, a man so absolutely certain of himself that he sometimes sent a cold shiver down the senator’s spine. In the Congress of the United States, Cromwell had known a good many men who were possessed of absolute certainty, and this he feared so much that he felt the only real and enduring evil on the face of the earth was unbending certainty, unshakable orthodoxy.
Dolly was putting the lace doilies in place, and the senator mentioned that she never used a tablecloth. “Mom used tablecloths,” he said. “I have good memories of them. It meant an occasion, I mean a special occasion.”
“Yes, of course. But I couldn’t bear to cover this beautiful old wood. It adds so much.”
“Well, nothing’s exactly the way it used to be. I mean in the lower depths.”
“Lower depths? Richard, your people were utterly respectable middle-class people.”
“They were what our president likes to call the moral majority. My father was so moral he’d die before he’d ask for a raise. Do you know, he never worked up to fifty dollars a week. Bank tellers ar
e the foundation of utter respectability. Mom was given to prayer; she worked prayer like no one I ever knew, and when I won my first election, she said to me, don’t ever say that prayer won’t bring what is prayed for.”
“You mean she was praying for you to become a politician?”
“Of course. She was Irish.”
“Touché. Could you take the silver chests out of the closet and set them here on the buffet? Or should I call Mac?”
“Bug off with Mac. I was up at five o’clock this morning. I ran at least a mile. I swam. I showered, and I’m still ambulatory.”
“Apologies, right down the line,” Dolly said. Somehow, these few minutes of the two of them alone in the dining room had turned into the best bit of relationship that she could recall in many months, if not years. What small magic was working on them she did not know. An hour ago she had been ready to bite his head off, and now she was regarding him fondly as he swung the heavy silver chests up onto the buffet. She had to admit that he was a fine figure of a man, gone a trifle to fat, but still a large, strong well-muscled man. She liked men to be physical.
“I will never forget,” he said, “the first time I had dinner in your mother’s house. I was just out of college and in uniform—thank goodness. I didn’t have a decent suit.”
“I guessed as much,” Dolly agreed.
“Your father glanced at me as if I were an insect.”
“Typical of him. You were not an officer. He relaxed when he heard you were Judge-Advocate. Afterwards, he told me he felt that was a sign of intelligence.”
“You’re being creative.” The senator grinned. “You never mentioned that before.”
“Scout’s honor.” She had opened the three chests of silver that Richard had lifted to the sideboard and was studying them thoughtfully. “Take a look. Do they need polishing?”
“No,” he decided. “You know, that damned, idiot senseless war in Korea—”
“You didn’t even look.”
“Sure I looked.” He lifted a fork. “Pristine. By golly, that night at your home, twelve spoons, eighteen forks, seven knives, all huddled around my plate—”
