by Ann Beattie
Banyan had perfect pitch and played the piano beautifully. He also excelled at field sports and t’ai chi. He slept at night absorbing language tapes playing softly. He helped his father prepare his taxes, and he helped Elizabeth, whom he called “Mom,” cook dinner. He was a brilliant mimic, whose repertoire included Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca and question-and-answer sessions with Ronald Reagan that would leave even Republicans laughing helplessly. To put it mildly, Banyan was an unusual child, who got a lot of positive feedback. People always wondered aloud at his natural talents, and they commended him for being so interested in his schoolwork, in which he excelled. For years, Banyan was inclined to be a historian, though his facility with languages made him think, also, of becoming a translator.
He appeared on College Bowl (Duke). He went to the first two years of medical school (Yale). Then he spent a year in Paris, because that was a city his father particularly loved when he and Nate and Kate had gone there. There, he studied art. He soon began to be less interested in painting than in performance art, though. One of his most popular routines had to do with re-creating an entire hockey game while standing in the same spot. Girls adored him, because he was handsome as well as talented. When he returned to the U.S., he had a wife, Marie Catherine.
I thought Banyan was the most self-assured, interesting person I’d ever met. I had gone to the University of Maine at Orono and become a librarian, and I lived just a few miles down the road from my mother and Dennis. I saw them often, and sometimes Elizabeth drove from Cambridge, where she managed a store that stocked soaps and perfumes that were so harmless you could feed them to fish. She still had the same car Nate had bought her, which had well over 150,000 miles on it, but which she wouldn’t get rid of for sentimental reasons. Sometimes Kate joined us for dinner. She had a dog that did no tricks at all, and that would not even respond to “Lie down.” It was quite a comedown after Prince Valiant. All it did when you told it to lie down was cringe a little, then get all misty-eyed.
On the Saturday I’m going to tell you about, Elizabeth reported that she had gone to have Miss Willa Walker’s landscape appraised. The Museum of Fine Arts had suggested someone in downtown Boston—a very nice man, she thought. The landscape should probably be worth about a hundred thousand dollars, she said, disguising her smile.
“No!” my mother shrieked.
Years before, Banyan had selected that particular landscape because he thought it was the most wonderful. Even as a child, Banyan’s excellent eye had been respected. Going through the slides Andrew Kingsley had sent, Banyan had picked out his favorite, and Uncle Nate—who felt that in making the trade, he was atoning for the discounted Valentine hearts—simply deferred to Banyan’s opinion. When Nate died, though— working on a final tire, before a planned trip to Santa Fe—the Willa Walker painting he had given her as a gift had made her sad. She willed it to Banyan, but gave it to Elizabeth for safe keeping. Elizabeth kept it in a box in her closet for a long time, but eventually, when our aunt died—also unexpectedly, while opening a can of Campbell’s soup—she took it out to get it appraised.
“You can’t sell that. It was promised to Banyan,” Dennis said. “A hundred thousand . . . can that be right?”
“Well, we wouldn’t sell it out from under him. We’d tell Banyan about the appraisal,” Elizabeth said to Dennis.
“Banyan’s not money hungry,” my father said.
“Dennis, people don’t have to be money hungry in order to part with something,” my mother said.
“He grew up in a family where his aunt sold everything her husband ever made as fast as she could after his untimely death, including the man’s Day-at-a-Glance book. Think of it: she sold his personal calendar to a Japanese businessman! She’d have sold his socks if anyone wanted them,” Dennis said.
“You mean you wouldn’t be interested if something you owned was worth a hundred thousand dollars?” Elizabeth said.
“There’s too much thought given to money in this family. If you ask my opinion, it contributed to Nate’s death. All the money did for Nate was enable him to buy rich food that gave him a heart attack. As if running around the world the way he did wouldn’t have killed him soon enough.”
“What do you mean? St. Bart’s isn’t exactly a Third World country, Dennis.”
“He died because he was out of his element.”
“Ridiculous!” Mother said. “Who could believe that people who travel abroad return home and die because they’ve been out of their element?”
“Jim Morrison,” Dennis said.
“What about Jim Morrison?” I said.
“He died in France, didn’t he?”
“This is utterly ridiculous,” Mother said. “You embarrass yourself, Dennis.”
“Amelia Earhart,” he said.
“I think we should call Banyan and let him decide what he wants to do,” Elizabeth said.
“Where is it?” Dennis said.
“I don’t think we should tell you. Who knows what you might do with it,” Mother said.
“Wrapped in Bubble Wrap in my trunk,” Elizabeth said.
“You locked the car?” my mother said.
“Yes, Mother. And I also pick up the kettle when it whistles.”
“I wasn’t questioning your common sense, Elizabeth. There have been radios stolen out of cars around here lately. That’s something new. When Dennis and I moved in, as you know, we never locked the door.”
“The world has changed,” Dennis said.
“It sounds like you mean to dig in for the rest of your life,” Mother said.
“The so-called good life killed Nate,” he said belligerently. “That, and letting people convince him he was a genius when he was just a tinkerer.”
“Never say such a thing,” my mother said. “Never, never, never.”
“Dennis, people who tinker fix broken locks, or whatever. Nate was an artist,” Elizabeth said.
“You grew up in this family, and you’re true to their beliefs.”
“But Dennis—you’re part of the family, too.”
“I know it. I don’t know why people didn’t pick up any of my beliefs. Everybody just wants to chase after fame and fortune. Banyan is genuinely gifted, and he’s still maturing. Why corrupt him with money?”
“Banyan has always been a real favorite of your father’s,” Mother said. “He leaps to his defense, when I’ve never heard him defend—”
“Defend what? Elizabeth’s ill-advised idea to marry when she was eighteen? Jane, with her talent for writing, deciding to become a librarian and recommend other people’s books all day? She never even gets in the sunshine. You look unhealthy, Jane,” he said, turning to me. “It’s important that you take care of yourself as the family scribe.”
“You can be a mean person sometimes, Dennis. I hope you realize that,” Mother said.
“I give credit where it’s due. Jane has perfect recall. I could ask her what I said at Sunday dinner three weeks ago, and she’d tell me. I don’t know—maybe having a memory like that will serve you well one day, Jane. At least you think about other people.”
“I think it’s in Banyan’s best interest to tell him what the painting is worth,” Elizabeth said.
“Let’s face it, Elizabeth. It’s sad but true: Dennis has never forgiven me for not legally marrying him, because it makes him feel like an outsider. And the only other outsider, in a way, is Banyan—because he joined up late, and might not have joined up at all. Poor child: imagine that his own mother took him by the hand . . .”
“What’s done is done,” Elizabeth said, making a motion as if to disperse cigarette smoke. Or perhaps the past seemed to dangle in front of her, annoying, like a cobweb.
“Maybe Banyan will take us on a trip,” Elizabeth said. “He was so lucky to be left that landscape in Uncle Nate’s will— won’t he want to share the wealth? Those trips were so much fun.”
“Donovan provides you with stability,” Dennis said. “He’s been a good provid
er. A good father, too. He should have a say in whether you tempt his son with that amount of money.”
My sister glowered at him. It was the same expression she had on her face the day he said, “You most certainly will not become a model.” Soon after that, she’d taken the glass off the frame that held the formal photograph of Mother and Dennis and misted Dennis’s face with the plant sprayer. She already had the short-short skirt. Even the viper stockings, if I recall correctly.
Years passed, though, before I drove with Elizabeth to tell Banyan about the value of his inheritance. The day we set out, Miss Willa Walker’s painting was still wrapped in Bubble Wrap, in the trunk. Elizabeth had swaddled it in towels and placed it in a box. Banyan and Marie Catherine lived in a small town in Vermont no one has ever heard of, called Cray. Banyan drove over two hours to play piano at the big new Sheraton in Burlington on the weekends. He was again enrolled in medical school—though a less prestigious one—and Marie Catherine, during certain periods of the year, helped collect sap to be made into maple syrup. She worked mornings making flower arrangements for the local florist.
“When he sells it, I’m going to consider that closure, of a kind, and stop writing about the family,” I said. “Mysteries are what sell, anyway.”
“You’re just depressed,” Elizabeth said. “You need a boyfriend.”
“Well, you met Donovan accidentally, didn’t you? I’m waiting to meet someone accidentally.”
“I was done up like a whore. And I was young.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“I’m not saying you’re old. I’m just saying that I was young. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m amazed they didn’t put up more of a fight when I said I wanted to marry him.”
“I think she was traumatized, being left with the two of us, you know? I think she wanted to believe there was stability in marriage.”
“Hm,” my sister said.
“I mean, I think she was also hoping against hope our father would show up again, though maybe that was just so she could have it out with him. I think she cared about Dennis, don’t you? I mean, that she still does.”
No answer from Elizabeth.
“I don’t think he was just a convenience,” I said.
“I guess I think he was,” she said. “They fight all the time.”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I admit that people’s marriages don’t look so desirable to me. My friend Karen Quinn actually got kicked in the butt by her husband and broke her rib crashing into the kid’s snowman. I mean—”
“There are always bad marriages. Donovan and I have had a pretty good marriage, don’t you think?” Elizabeth said.
“It’s none of my business.”
“You don’t think so?”
“You and Donovan don’t even speak half the time.”
“Honey, after that many years, you’ve heard every opinion,” she said. “Ask me his opinion on anything, and I’ll tell you.”
“Whether you should tell Banyan about the painting,” I said.
She shifted in the seat. “I didn’t mention what we were doing on our trip to Vermont,” she said.
We drove in silence for a while.
“But if Dennis is right and Banyan’s not materialistic, he’ll be glad to give you a cut, won’t he?”
“Well, he has a wife. I find it hard to read Marie Catherine.” She looked at herself in the rearview mirror. “And he and I had that big fight when he dropped out of Yale, and I don’t think he’s ever quite forgiven me. After all, I’m not his mother. I’m just some woman his father—”
“Didn’t screw behind a tree,” I finished.
“You can be so horrible. Why can’t you just forget unpleasant things?”
I smiled my best Mona Lisa smile.
Ahead of us was the steep hill that led to Cray. It crested and then the road swung to the right and we drove the narrow route that had once been a logging road, recently paved because the head of the volunteer fire department lived on it. In another mile or so we turned down Banyan’s street, Crabapple, and drove slowly through the ruts to the last house on the dead end.
Marie Catherine, always happy to have visitors, ran on tiptoes to the car. Ballet flats in Vermont? But there she was, in a swirling skirt and a little tube top with a sweater thrown over it, and her pearls and her little black shoes. Behind her, I could see dried flowers lying in piles, like brush, on the front porch. The morning glories were in bloom. Most things in this part of the world had about a ten-day growing period, and everyone went around gaping, as if they were stoned.
Elizabeth embraced her daughter-in-law. I bowed from the waist; it was something that just occurred to me, for no special reason, except that Marie Catherine had never assimilated herself into American culture and she never knew what to expect from anyone, so why shouldn’t I do something a little different? On her tiptoes, she hugged me hello.
“Banyan goes to get ice cream and cookies!” she said. “You did not see him coming down the road?”
“No, and thank heaven,” Elizabeth said. “That road is impassable. I’m always afraid the car will slip down the incline.”
“Because of that terrible accident when you are only children,” Marie Catherine said, solemnly.
“Well, yes,” my sister said. “Has that passed into family lore?”
“He tells me it was very romantic, that you met the man who was to be your father when he was protecting you two young girls because the car had fallen into some tree.”
“That was the night everybody got so shook up, it changed us for all time. It’s when she”—Elizabeth indicated me— “decided to write the story of that, and everything else, though she’s never shown anything to us to this day. It was also when I realized my mother was just as fragile as I was, so I’d better have a plan to look out for myself.”
“But it works out well, because you gain a father,” Marie Catherine said. “Come on the porch and see what I am making. Wreaths, for autumn.”
“We didn’t want to move to Maine,” I said. “Her, particularly.”
“I had my eye on Paris, but I couldn’t even make it in New York,” Elizabeth said.
“You wished to go to Paris?” Marie Catherine said, a little surprised.
“Look at me. Once I thought I’d be a model.”
“Yes, but you are très jolie, you know. And you do not go to Paris?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “It was all a young girl’s dream.”
“A dream because many pretty girls model in Paris?”
“Yes.”
“Mm. Oui,” Marie Catherine said, eyes downcast.
“Look at those purple flowers. They don’t even look dried. What are those, Marie Catherine?” I said.
“Statice,” she said. “And over here, these dry very purple, too. Heather. But those buds are very delicate. You have to handle carefully, because they are very fragile.”
“What would you most like, in the world?” Elizabeth said.
“Moi?” Marie Catherine said.
“Yes. If you could have anything. You know—the way I wanted to be a glamorous model with a glamorous life, when I was young.”
“But still, you know, you are très jolie,” Marie Catherine said. “What would it be?” Elizabeth probed.
“I don’t think about this! I am happy, oui,” Marie Catherine said seriously.
“You wouldn’t even like a new car, or a dog, or a boat to go out on Lake Champlain in the summer?”
“Dog?” Marie Catherine said to me, tilting her head.
“We don’t really understand people from your generation very well, Marie Catherine. A lot of our friends moved to remote places, or they joined the Peace Corps or something like that. It’s just that you and Banyan seem to be very unmaterialistic.”
“If I make a pretty wreath, I don’t need to hang it for myself,” Marie Catherine smiled.
“Would you like a boat?” Elizabeth said.
“Maybe Banyan,”
Marie Catherine said, helpfully.
“A boat, a car, maybe your own studio, where you could make your wreaths? If you had a hundred thousand dollars, wouldn’t you think of something to do with it?” Elizabeth said.
“Why one hundred? Why not ten?”
“Only one. One hundred thousand.”
“Well, that is very nice, but probably I will not think of what I want until I have so much money.”
“What did you want when you were a child?” Elizabeth said, sinking into a blue butterfly chair. I jumped up on the porch railing. Marie Catherine stood there on the wide wraparound porch, as if alone, on stage. She seemed slightly perplexed, but eager to please.
“A castle!” she said. “And a dragon to breathe fire against enemies, if the drawbridge”—she gestured with her hands— “might be stuck. And of course many flowers, and rabbits, and no foxes, and beautiful birds.”
In the distance, we could see Banyan’s car bumping toward us. There was something wrong with the suspension; even the Vermont roads were not so bad they would account for the car bouncing like a seesaw.
“Listen, darling, your mother has come today with the idea of our having very, very much money,” Marie Catherine said as Banyan got out of the car. “I am telling her we will move to a castle like the one in the book. The castle, n’est-ce-pas?”
“Cherry Garcia?” Banyan said. He slammed the car door behind him, clutching a brown bag to his chest.
“Hello, Banyan,” I called.
“Hello, Jane,” he said.
“Hello, sonny,” Elizabeth said. She was needling him; he hated to be called anything except Banyan.
“Hello, nonwicked stepmother,” he said, coming up the porch steps. He kissed her on the cheek. He leaned over to kiss the top of my head. He put his arm around Marie Catherine. “You two look very well,” he said. “Tan and fit.”
“Practicing your bedside manner?” Elizabeth said. Her remark seemed to deflate her. “Maybe I am sort of wicked,” she said. “I was wicked to Jane in the car. She needs a boyfriend. But maybe I’m not being realistic about how difficult it is to find one.”
“The family curse. A belief in the advisability of getting together with just anybody,” he said.
