Barbara Greer

by Stephen Birmingham

  ‘That’s a lie,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It’s not a lie! Why should I lie? It’s the truth. It’s the truth! “The way he is sometimes!” Don’t you think I knew what he meant, Patrolman Olin? The way you are most of the time, he should have said! Oh, I’m so sick and ashamed of it, so sick and ashamed of it! Ashamed of pretending there’s nothing the matter with you when all along—all along—everybody—oh!’ From where she kept it tucked, beneath the belt of her dress, she tugged at her handkerchief, withdrew it, dabbed at her eyes and nose. ‘I’ll leave you alone now,’ she said. She turned and went quickly out of the room.

  He sat in his chair for a while, then stood up. He went to the cellarette and fixed his drink, carefully measuring it, just right, the way he wanted it. He swirled the liquid in the glass, admiring the pale glow. He carried his drink to the window and looked out. The rain had stopped and he looked out across the lawn, the trees, the acres of his domain. He lifted his glass and drank a toast to the acres so serene. Then, as if he had bidden it to, the sun came out instantly and brilliantly. In the immediate aftermath of the storm it etched every outline and detail of leaf and blade with such precision and sharpness that, for a moment, he felt almost overwhelmed, dizzied from the sudden clear beauty of it, and his chest filled with violent sunbursts of happiness. It was the way the grass lay, flattened by the rain, and the way the maple leaves hung limp and dripping, and the way all this green glittered as though God had sprinkled diamonds over everything.

  Then, behind him, he heard Edith’s voice again, at the door. ‘Preston, Nancy Rafferty has just arrived. Let’s try, for Barbara’s sake, to make it a happy evening, shall we?’

  15

  They had tried to recapture it, that sort of thing, in their new house in Locustville. Perhaps, Carson thought, he himself had fallen in love with whatever it was, the spirit of grace and comfort that belonged to those summer family picnics at the Woodcocks’ farm. Together, after they were married, he and Barbara decided that the kind of life that Barbara’s family led was the kind of life they would create for themselves. It was a little game, during that first year, before there were any children to think of, pretending that their house on Bayberry Lane was, or could be, a smaller version of Orchard Farm in Burketown. They had several carefully selected props, wedding presents, his silver cocktail shaker that his ushers had given him, the tall-stemmed glasses, the heavy table linen, Barbara’s pretty dresses. Every evening they set the stage for themselves, changing for dinner, sipping their cocktails, eating by candlelight. Each night, ceremoniously, he sampled and approved the wine.

  His own family had been different. He was an only child. Such cousins as he had were scattered about in other cities, in Virginia and the Carolinas. He had grown up as part of a threesome: his mother, his father and himself. His father had been a busy and successful banker, whose greatest wish, when he came home at night, had been for orderliness and quiet. His mother was a small, nervous, pretty woman with an obsession about cleanliness. Her greatest cares were the appearance of her house and garden. Though she had always had two coloured girls who worked for her, she had never found a servant who would clean and polish and weed and prune with the devotion and meticulousness that she felt was proper. ‘There is only one way to have things as you want them,’ she often said. ‘And that is to do things yourself.’ During the day, she followed the maids through the house with a dampened scrubbing cloth, finishing their work, attacking whatever dirt and disorder the girls had overlooked. With her cloth she would lunge at a smudge on the woodwork or a speck of dust on the hearth. Grimly, with a polishing cloth, she would go over the just-polished silver. On her hands and knees she would search the crevices between the carpet’s edge and the baseboards for signs of dirt, and, in the same attitude, she would grope through the soft humus of her spectacular perennial borders in search of weeds. In spring she grew perfect tulips, followed by iris, phlox, delphinium and roses, followed by chrysanthemums; in her garden, against all odds, eight perfect camellia trees flourished. Three or four times a year, she and her husband entertained at small dinner parties for six or eight guests—‘The most I can handle.’ The guests were usually the same six or eight people, and three or four times a year these six or eight people had dinner parties for the Greers. Carson’s mother’s one activity outside her home occurred when, once a year, she served as co-directress of the Junior League show; for two or three months preceding this show, she devoted all her energies to it. His mother had a pretty singing voice and, each year in the show, the second act curtain rose on Lydia Greer, sitting alone in a latticed bower, while the two pianos played the introduction to ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song.’

  Carson’s relationship with his father had never been exactly an affectionate one; still, it had been respectful always and, at moments, warm. His father had been a reserved man, who was embarrassed by any display of emotion, particularly by displays of love or admiration.

  Once, Carson remembered when he was perhaps thirteen or fourteen, his father had asked him, ‘Young man, have you decided what you want to be in life?’

  And Carson had answered quickly and—at the time—truthfully, ‘I want to be a banker, sir. Like you.’

  His father had smiled a shy and rather tender smile. ‘That’s the one thing,’ he said, ‘that I shall not permit you to be.’

  Puzzled, Carson had asked, ‘Why not, sir?’

  ‘Because,’ his father answered slowly, ‘you might someday have a son who would want to be just like you.’

  He had not understood that remark for a long time; it had stayed with him, recurring to him often, for many years. It was a strange remark, but now, long after his father’s death, he thought he understood it. His father had understood the debt that any man owes to another who admires him—who admires him enough to model his life on his. It was like many of the things his father said.

  The summer before he had gone off to Princeton, his father had called him into his office and said, ‘Growing up is an easier matter than the psychologists would have you think. It is a question of deciding when you want to do it. You are going off to college in September. In my opinion, that would be an excellent time for you to decide to become a man. If you decide to put off becoming a man until later, then you must prepare yourself for a few more years of childhood.’

  ‘I think I would like to be a man now, sir,’ Carson had said.

  His father had smiled the same brief smile. ‘Don’t tell me your decision!’ he said.

  But Carson had decided to be a man then. There had seemed to be very little choice.

  But perhaps it was because his own childhood and youth had been quieter and less spectacular, that the sort of life the Woodcocks appeared to have seemed significant and appealing. It appealed to him, or had in the beginning, not necessarily because of its richness, but more because of its completeness and, he had thought, its happiness. It had seemed to him that perhaps, indeed, the Woodcocks had achieved a kind of plateau or point of view from which every deed, every event, was not only orderly, but pleasant; not only cultivated, but meaningful. In any case, the illusion had been a naïve one, and short-lived. He saw it now, looking back, as merely a projection of his own point of view, the point of view of a young man who had fallen in love with the idea of being a happy young husband. The end of the feeling had come, as he remembered it, the day that the Woodcocks had first visited them in Locustville.

  They had been in the house nearly a year. Edith Woodcock had wanted, for some time, to visit them and see the house, but Carson and Barbara had managed to put her off. Carson’s family had visited them several times, but that was different. They wanted everything perfect, everything finished, before the Woodcocks came; they wanted the lawn to be flourishing, a few flowers to be sprouting in the garden, the painting and papering to be finished in the house, the furniture to be bought and arranged, and the flagstone terrace to be dressed with graceful iron furniture and planted with bright geraniums. When, at las
t, all these things were done it was late in May, and the Woodcocks were invited.

  They arrived on a Saturday morning—Preston, Edith and Peggy, with John driving the car—and, Carson remembered, as they turned into the driveway the curve of the rear bumper on the Chrysler station wagon seized the branches of a small azalea he had planted, uprooted it, and dragged it up the drive. There had been profuse apologies and John had been put to work with a spade replanting the shrub. But the incident, in a curious way, symbolised the whole visit. The driveway, for some reason, had been too narrow for the Woodcocks’ Chrysler, and in everything that happened afterward, there seemed to be difficulty with sizes; Barbara’s family did not seem to fit into the house. The living room, with all of them in it, seemed too small; although there were plenty of chairs there seemed to be, for a panicky moment, doubts that everyone could be seated. The terrible physical disparity between the Woodcocks and other things kept creating fresh problems. Edith Woodcock, going into the bathroom to wash her hands, struck and bruised her arm on the doorknob, trying to close it, and Preston Woodcock, in the living room, was shaking out dottle from the bowl of his pipe by striking it on a glass ash tray and struck the ash tray too sharply, breaking it in two even pieces. John, conscientiously, after putting the azalea back in the earth, sat in the kitchen, where he felt he belonged, and Carson, pushing open the kitchen door to fix drinks for his guests, tripped over John’s feet. The day began to have a nightmare quality, a dream of giants in a dwarfs’ house and he and Barbara moved resolutely through the overcrowded house trying to fix lunch.

  They moved out on to the terrace. Peggy Woodcock, down from Wellesley for the weekend, found the arms of the slim iron chairs too high for her elbows and settled for sitting on the flagstone. Preston, who insisted that the chairs were very comfortable, tipped back in his to show how comfortable it was and overturned a geranium pot. Edith Woodcock, to be helpful, looked for a broom which, for some reason, was nowhere to be found. The day grew very warm. The hot sun fell directly upon the terrace, blinding everyone. The chairs were then crowded into a tiny corner where there was shade. Edith tapped her brow with her handkerchief. Peggy said, ‘Oh, God, it’s hot! Where do you go if you want to cool off? Isn’t there any place to swim?’

  They had planned a picnic, a copy in miniature they had thought, of the picnics at the farm. But there was a delay with something in the kitchen and Peggy stopped talking about the heat and switched the subject to her hunger. ‘Let’s eat!’ she said. ‘Ye gods, I’m hungry, Barb. Where’s lunch?’

  And the conversation disintegrated wholly into complaints, followed by apologies, followed by cheerful encouragements.

  ‘Of course it’s terribly small and we haven’t done all the things we want to do with it,’ Barbara apologised.

  ‘Oh, but I think it’s really very sweet, I think it’s lovely!’ her mother encouraged.

  ‘Will you put my Martini back into the shaker and chill it a little more, Carson?’ Peggy said. ‘It’s warm.’

  ‘Oh, we just wish you and Carson were closer!’ Edith complained. ‘It’s so lonely at the farm.’

  Lunch, of course, eventually came, but Carson by that time had already begun to discover the curious fact that the Woodcocks were not properly scaled for the house in Locustville. Indeed, their proportions seemed wrong for every place except the farm and Burketown. Perhaps, he thought, that was why they so seldom travelled anywhere else. Barbara’s parents had been to Europe a couple of times, but in the last ten years they had not ventured much beyond their quarter of Connecticut. Perhaps they, too, had discovered that they fitted the farm and the farm fitted them, and that they were uniquely unsuited for any other habitations of the world. Like a chambered nautilus, they had constructed a dwelling place that fitted their contours; its dimensions were perfect for them; only within its convolutions were they comfortable and safe. Outside of it, on the sea floor, they might perish.

  Carson lay on his back gazing at the ceiling. It was very dark now and only the small square of the window glowed palely. He looked at the radium dial of his watch; it was eleven-thirty. With the time change, it would be six-thirty in Locustville. He thought of Barbara there, and wondered what she was doing now.

  The Woodcocks had gone back to Burketown that night as they had planned. (How could they have stayed? There were not enough rooms or beds in the house to sleep them). In the big station wagon, they inched out the driveway. He and Barbara had watched them go, waved goodbye to them as they returned to the infolding of their shell. And after they had left, he could tell that Barbara, too, was unhappy, dissatisfied with the way the day had turned out. They hadn’t discussed it. But that night, before going to bed he had heard her say for the first time the thing she had said so often since: ‘Of course, Carson, Locustville is only temporary.’ He had been struck with the thought of temporariness, and what it meant; with the realisation that she regarded Locustville as only one stop on a long journey. The destination had been uncertain then; it was uncertain now. It was one of those seven cities where the company had sales offices: New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco or Los Angeles. (He was reminded of those mystically numbered seven cities every time he signed a letter, for they were emblazoned on the company’s letterhead; how impressive they looked, embossed in blue on the white paper).

  And so, that day, they had begun a goal-less existence, or possibly an existence that had seven goals, which was too many. They never again tried to recapture the life at the farm, to recreate it in Locustville. Deprived of that old illusion, they tried to find a new one with plans, schemes, talk of what they would do some day.

  So much time had been spent that way—six years. He had read once, somewhere, that every cell in the human body renewed itself over a six-year span; in other words, none of the cells that were in his body or Barbara’s now had been there six years ago. They were different people, completely, the new cells living only with the memory of the old. He thought: I must be going to sleep; my thoughts are coming backward and upside down. He turned on his side, concentrating on keeping awake for a few moments longer. He was still wearing his shirt and trousers, which was foolish; he ought to hang up his pants. Pressing was always a problem on these trips and he planned to wear this suit in the morning.

  It had been a quiet, lonely day, this Sunday. And yet, he thought, perhaps. Sundays are not entirely lost days in selling. At least, on Sundays, a man had time to think, to go over his past and future, try to put his house in order. He thought, yes, there is some value in Sundays after all.

  Suddenly he thought he would write Barbara a letter, right now, tonight, telling her—if he could—all the things he had been thinking. He rolled out of bed and stood up. But, standing up, he knew at once that he was too sleepy now to write a letter. So he pulled off his shirt and trousers, hung the trousers, as he had done at college, with the cuffs clamped in the top of the dresser drawer. In the darkness, too sleepy even to brush his teeth, he got back into bed, thinking that he would write her the letter tomorrow.

  16

  Nancy spread the yellow dress out across the top of the bed. ‘Isn’t it divine, Barb?’ she said. ‘Doesn’t it look exactly like lemon chiffon pie?’

  ‘It’s very pretty,’ Barbara said quietly.

  Nancy looked at her. ‘Barbara?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you mad at me?’

  ‘Certainly not. Why should I be?’

  ‘For bursting in like that right in the middle of your—ah—little scene? Honestly, Barb, I thought the room was empty!’

  ‘I don’t mind your bursting in,’ Barbara said coldly. ‘I’m just annoyed at the meaning you’ve attached to it.’

  Nancy opened her pale eyes wide. ‘Meaning? Oh, Barb! Now you and I have known each other a long, long time. Sweetie, I don’t care what you do!’

  Barbara sighed. ‘I know you don’t,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t what you thought it was, anyway.’

&nb
sp; Nancy laughed. ‘Of course it wasn’t!’ she said. ‘He was frightened of the thunder and crawled up into your lap! What else would it be?’

  ‘Oh, please be quiet,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Barbara, I wish you wouldn’t keep worrying about shocking me. Really. Goodness, nothing shocks me! I think it’s perfectly fine—wonderful! I think you’re terribly lucky, actually, because he is attractive. I don’t blame you a bit. You know my philosophy, Barb—eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow ye may die! I’m the real, original, couldn’t-care-less girl, and I’m not a little girl from the country any more, either. I’m a graduate cum laude of the school of hard knocks Barb. I’m a hardened old Jezebel, so please don’t feel you’ve got to kid me.’

  ‘He said something very sweet, that was all.’

  ‘Of course. Why shouldn’t he? Oh, Barb, you’re so lucky! You’ve always had all the luck and I’ve had none of it. Last night, old Sidney Klein called me and wanted—oh, never mind. Anyway, I told him to go to hell. Now look at me—jobless, career-less, manless. Why does everything happen to me? Oh, well,’ she said, ‘in the meantime, try Woody again will you? It’s nearly six o’clock. He must be back by now.’

  Barbara lifted the telephone again and dialled. She waited with the receiver to her ear. ‘Still no answer,’ she said.

  ‘Let it ring.’

  Barbara continued to hold the ringing phone to her ear.

  ‘Still?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Try dialling again.’

  Barbara replaced the receiver, waited, lifted it, and dialled again. Nancy waited, watching her. ‘He must still be out …’ Barbara said finally.

  ‘Oh, Barb!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  Nancy’s face was petulant. ‘Now what will I do?’ She turned to Barbara. ‘You might have called him earlier! You might have just checked to see—and told me. Before I got all the way up here.’