by Louis Begley
XXI
THE DAY I ARRIVED in Lenox I called George at work and we agreed to go to Great Barrington that evening to see Shane, his favorite western. Since I was picking him up, I had to leave at six-thirty. At about quarter of six, I went downstairs, certain that my parents would already be having drinks. I found them on the back porch. The gin, vermouth, olives, and the shaker, as well as a bowl of peanuts and another one of Ritz crackers, were all on the wicker table at my father’s side. As usual after work, he was dressed in khaki trousers and a fresh white Brooks Brothers shirt, the kind that doesn’t button down, starched to his liking by the Seven Dwarfs laundry, and old tennis shoes that he wore without socks and never whitened, unlike those in which he appeared on the court, which had to be spotless. His picture is vivid in my mind, as is my mother’s, in her light blue cotton dress the straps of which slipped whenever she stooped or let her shoulders slouch. My father offered me a martini. More ice was needed. I offered to get it, but my mother said no, she would do it, I could stay with my father. I thought this meant that he was going to tell me something while she was in the kitchen, but he just pointed to the crackers. When my mother returned, I caught her looking at him questioningly. He made no response, shook the gin and the vermouth, poured a drink for me, and refreshed my mother’s and his own. Only after we had raised our glasses and had a sip, a large one in their case, he cleared his throat and spoke. This was not the sort of thing he had wanted to write to me about. The point was that he had a growth in his gut, and the doctors would be taking it out the following Wednesday. He didn’t mind missing the tennis tournament this once, and Mother wouldn’t have trouble finding another partner. Perhaps Chuck Riley. He was a real estate agent who belonged to the club whose wife had limped ever since a skiing accident.
I asked him whether it was bad. He made a face and said that, probably, he’d have to wear one of those funny bags under his trousers. At least he’d never again have to wait for some guy to decide to get out of the john. He laughed at his joke and drained his glass. I shouldn’t be doing this, he said, but it’s a little late to worry about my health.
He won’t listen to the doctors, said my mother.
No, I won’t, replied my father, it’s quite enough that I let them work on me.
I turned to my mother and asked whether the surgery would be in Pittsfield. She nodded and said that Dr. Pierson would do it. They’d been to Boston for a second opinion, and the Boston doctor’s advice had been the same: the operation shouldn’t be postponed.
It hurt me to hear that they had come down to Boston without letting me know. I asked how they would manage.
Your father will be home from the hospital in ten days, she said, if there are no complications, and we’ll have a nurse here for the first week. Anyway, Mrs. Heaney said she’d give me an extra day.
That was our cleaning lady, who lived in Housatonic and worked for my mother three days a week, besides helping in the kitchen and serving when people came to dinner.
I’ll be in the office within a month, added my father, fixing another shaker of martinis. Seeing that, my mother threw up her hands.
That’s all right, he said. Nobody wants to know what you think. Here, have another one yourself.
There was a telltale thickness in his voice, a signal for my mother to lay off. Expressionless, she passed the peanuts and the crackers.
I reminded her that I was supposed to be going to the movies with George and asked whether they would prefer that I call him and stay at home.
You run along, said my father, and take my car. By the by, I’ve told Jack and a couple of other people at the bank about this thing.
That meant I could speak to George about my father. Normally, my father didn’t let my mother or me use his car, so this permission was a sign of momentary benevolence. I thanked him.
Don’t be late for George, said my father, and pressing on the armrests of his chair pulled himself up to shake my hand. I thanked him again and kissed my mother. These gestures surprised me, perhaps all of us; they weren’t the norm.
Three days after my mother, the nurse, and I brought him back home, I returned to Cambridge. It had been necessary to take out a greater length of intestine than Dr. Pierson had anticipated, but he told us that the recovery should be normal. He recommended only that the nurse stay longer than had been planned, perhaps two weeks, until my father had learned to take care of himself. Being very squeamish, Mother agreed readily. The nurse was another Irishwoman from Housatonic, a friend of Mrs. Heaney’s. She assured my mother that between them they would handle everything. We let them settle my father down for the evening.
As soon as he dozed off, my mother said, There’s nothing in the kitchen except baby food and what I got for the nurse. Let’s go to the club.
We sat on the screened veranda overlooking the golf course while she drank three Tom Collinses, one after another, and smoked. It doesn’t matter, she said, you’re driving. We talked about the doctor and the nurses first. After that she told me local gossip, much of which I couldn’t follow. It’s natural, she said, you haven’t been here in a long time. Then, I suppose because the various ostensible reasons for my not coming home during holidays and school vacation nagged at her, she asked whether I was all right.
Do you mean the injuries? I asked.
She said no, she really meant the other stuff. This was a subject to which neither she nor Father had alluded since the university had placed me on leave. She fished another Chesterfield out of a pack she had just opened. I lit it for her. She was a finicky and methodical smoker, every gesture being part of a ritual that had used to fascinate me.
I told her that I was fine; everything was under control.
That’s good, she said. But you’re still seeing this doctor.
I replied that in all likelihood seeing Dr. Reiner or someone like him would be my lifetime occupation.
I suppose it doesn’t matter so long as you can afford it, she said. Mr. Hibble must be printing money.
She saw the waiter lounging nearby and told me to call him over and order another drink for her, to be brought to the table. With that, we went in to dinner.
I HAD TOLD GEORGE that I would stop by late, and after taking my mother home I drove to the Standishes’. He met me at the door and said, Come into the library; the parents are still up.
They must have had dinner at home. May wore a long skirt, and Cousin Jack one of his velvet smoking jackets. I thanked them for the flowers they had sent to the hospital. Oh yes, May said, your mother has already written. We drank our Scotch and sodas, and George and I worked out the plan for his driving me to Cambridge. He was going early, before law school started, to move into a house that he and a couple of Yalies who had been at school with him had rented on Garden Street. As I was about to leave, Cousin Jack said he wanted to have a word with me. I followed him to the back porch. He motioned for me to sit down, sat down himself, and offered me a cigar, which I declined. I had stopped smoking after New Orleans; besides, his were much larger and smelled stronger than anything to which I was accustomed.
Your father is a very sick man, he said, I’ve talked to Pete Pierson.
I replied that I was astonished. When we spoke with him, Dr. Pierson had been optimistic.
Jack examined the lit end of his cigar and drew on it deeply. Doctors have different stories, he told me, depending on who they’re talking to. There was stuff that couldn’t be gotten out. What they were able to do was, of course, necessary. He would have been in great discomfort without it.
I nodded.
No need to tell your mother, Jack added, all in good time. I thought one of you should know, and that it had better be you.
Again, I nodded wordlessly.
By the way, he continued, you don’t need to worry about your mother. She’ll be well provided for. The bank will see to it.
I thanked him, saying that this was a great relief, especially as I knew almost nothing about how my parents were f
ixed.
Never mind all that, he replied. Your father is my first cousin. I wish I had looked after him better.
DR. REINER did not initially resist my attempts to explain the turmoil of contradictory emotions awakened in me by the visit to Lenox. Even I could see, though, that I was going around in circles, and, after a week of listening he said that the subject should be put aside until I was better able to externalize it. That left me to brood alone over the mysteries of the Standish family, on which my sporadic trips to Lenox threw little light. Two weeks before Thanksgiving, Dr. Pierson told my parents that the cancer had metastasized. He did not advise additional surgery. The nurse from Housatonic returned and was relayed at night by yet another Irishwoman from West Stockbridge. I continued my visits and spent Christmas and New Year’s and the week between the two holidays at home. It was plain that my mother was stir crazy. I took her to the movies several times; she didn’t care what film she saw. When May Standish invited me to their New Year’s lunch, she surprised me by saying that she hoped I would bring my mother. My mother thought about it and said she’d go.
My father had another six weeks left, the last two of which he spent in the hospital. I was in Cambridge when he died and came back to see him buried in the family plot in Stockbridge. Neither Henry nor Archie came to my father’s funeral. Archie had already been posted to an army unit based in Pusan; Henry was in advanced infantry training.
Meanwhile, in early February, the New York publishing house to which, on Professor MacLeish’s advice, I had sent my manuscript wrote to me. For some minutes after I had read and understood the editor’s letter I was hardly able to breathe. He was agreeing to publish my book and would even pay me an advance for it. It wasn’t much, but I had never had more than a couple hundred dollars in my account that wasn’t in transit to Dr. Reiner. I called Professor MacLeish—the first time I had dared—and, after him, Tom Peabody. I didn’t call my parents. I knew that what I had written would hurt my mother’s feelings, and, if he lived long enough to read it, my father’s too, probably even more. It would be better to give them the news very casually when I went home. As it turned out, when I made my next weekend visit, my father was too far gone to absorb what I was talking about. I did call Mr. Hibble. When I saw him during the summer, he had asked how much longer I would be seeing a psychiatrist five times a week. It adds up to a tidy sum, he told me. I said I knew that, but couldn’t tell him how much treatment I would need after Dr. Reiner, when I moved to New York. By then, I reminded him, there would be no more tuition and room-and-board bills, though, of course, there would be other expenses.
New York, he mused, so that’s where you intend to be.
That’s right, I told him, unless the army takes me, in which case there won’t be any psychiatrist’s bills until I’m discharged.
We’ll see, he said, and asked what kind of work I planned to be doing in the city. When he heard that I was planning to write, he shook his head and told me that I was very fortunate indeed to have old Mr. Standish’s trust to back me up; there was no money in scribbling. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that my advance proved him wrong. All the same, I wanted him to know about it.
Even with the changes I had to make in the novel, as I wasn’t writing an honors thesis my workload wasn’t heavy. I went to see my mother twice after the funeral. Before my father died, she had chafed under the constraints imposed by his illness. Now she didn’t seem to know which way to turn. Couples who used to have them to dinner hadn’t begun to invite her as an extra woman; she didn’t have girlfriends; the men who had been the subject of so much whispered gossip were lying low or had disappeared. Her telephone didn’t ring. Material cares might have provided a distraction, but Cousin Jack had been true to his word: one of Mr. Hibble’s associates put my father’s affairs in order; the pension the bank agreed to pay her for life would let her go on living just as before, without trying to cut back. There was an insurance policy she hadn’t known about or had forgotten that paid off the mortgage on the house. Another policy she was aware of paid her an amount that she had always thought might just suffice to provide for her basic needs. Now it was icing on the cake; Mr. Hibble advised her to go ahead and buy herself a treat that would help lift her spirits. The rest he would help her invest in sound securities.
She told me on my last day in Lenox that she wanted to get a job, perhaps at the office at Riggs, perhaps something connected with Tanglewood. What did I think? I said both were good ideas. Did I believe that my doctor could put in a word for her at Riggs? I told her I didn’t think that was the sort of thing analysts did for the families of patients and offered to speak instead to Cousin May, unless she preferred to do so herself. It would have to be over the telephone from Cambridge if I was to catch the five o’clock bus to Boston. In the car she told me that she would speak to May; she really wanted the Riggs job. Then in a more urgent tone she said that what she wanted right then above all else was to get away from Lenox. These are the hateful months, she said. I want to be in the sun, away from the mud and the cold.
Will you go with me to Puerto Rico for a few days? she asked. We could leave from New York next Thursday and get you back to Cambridge on Monday or Tuesday. My treat.
Hold on, I told her, let me think.
Dr. Reiner would have to be paid for at least three missed sessions—Thursday, Friday, and Monday—if I was in Cambridge in time to see him on Tuesday, and four otherwise. That was a waste of a lot of money. But it was money that would be spent anyway, and it wasn’t as though I got my money’s worth for every fifty minutes on his couch. He would, of course, want to talk about it: What was the relation between not seeing him and going off to a warm place with my mother, the role of money in this, the trust money versus the money my mother had offered to spend, what kind of fantasies did my mother’s proposal inspire, was this a case of a little wish fulfillment?
Up his! I said to myself, and told my mother she had a date.
WE STAYED AT A MONASTERY in old San Juan newly converted into a hotel. A little bus ferried guests to the beach where brown boys set up parasols and deck chairs. The same bus took you back to the hotel. Lunch was served in the restaurant that opened onto the monastery’s cloister. You could also eat at the beach, at an installation, half glorified hot dog stand and half tropical bar, that offered sandwiches, daiquiris, and beer. Perhaps there were other drinks as well, but my mother liked daiquiris and after she had put one away it was difficult to get her to stop or even pause. She had made all the arrangements for this expedition and equipped herself at the cruise wear department of Kaufmann Brothers in Pittsfield. On the beach she wore a bright two-piece, hardly more than a bikini, over which was knotted a light Tahitian pareo, and white sandals with only a strap of leather over the big toe holding them in place. I noted that she had painted her toenails violet. This was a far cry from her pool costume at the club: a one-piece bathing suit that flared out in a tiny pleated skirt, white or pink oxford cloth Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, a hand-me-down from my father who favored them for the office, and white tennis shoes. The afternoon sun was ruthless. Being even fairer than I, after every swim my mother asked me to put suntan lotion on her back, shoulders, and the backs of her legs, and she insisted on rubbing it on me, although I tan easily and have never suffered from sunburn, even after a whole day on the water. We’d already had lunch at the beach, and I was drying myself after a long swim, when I realized that she was turning bright pink. I asked whether she wanted another parasol, so as to be completely out of the sun. She said no, she was dizzy, and was beginning to feel the burn. Would I mind going back to the hotel—if I wanted to stay she would take the bus alone. I said I’d go back with her; we’d been at the beach for hours.
The rooms all had screen doors that opened on the balcony circling the courtyard. They were cool, even in the heat. I took a shower and sat down at the desk in my pajamas to work on my manuscript. It was tough going, and I decided to close my eyes for a few minutes.
Instead I fell into a sleep from which my mother, rapping on the screen door, awakened me. She was wearing a pink silk bathrobe that I had never seen before. I got up and let her in. She said she was feeling better and asked me to order a couple of daiquiris from room service. Then she stretched out on the other twin bed. She said her skin was burning; she’d tried to take a nap but it was no use. Anyway, she wanted to talk. I looked at her from my desk chair. She too must have taken a shower or a bath. Her hair was wet. When the waiter brought the drinks she asked me to tip him and asked him to bring another round in half an hour. I said, Please bring only one, but she laughed and said again she’d drink my daiquiri if I didn’t. We sipped our drinks for a moment in silence. Then she said that taking this vacation was the best idea that she’d ever had; she could never have taken it while my father was alive. He refused to get away even during the dreariest winter months, when everyone with two nickels went somewhere—as far from the Berkshires as possible. All he ever wanted to do was play tennis and golf and sit around the locker room and drink. It was a struggle to get him to go skiing even when the golf course was under a foot of snow.
That was true. They had sent me to a sailing camp in Marion several summers in a row, but we had never gone on a holiday as a family. We had skied at Catamount when I was little, and later at Stowe or at Mount Snow, but hardly ever stayed overnight and never any longer. My father, like George Standish, thought nothing of driving six hours to get in six hours on the mountain, and if he drove in the dark he knew he wasn’t wasting time that could have been spent on the slopes. When he went to bank trust officers’ conventions in Florida, he could be counted on to complain about the clientele at the hotels and the boredom he had suffered. My mother must have been pursuing this same train of thought because, turning on her side, she told me that if he had only enjoyed his business trips like other men who took the opportunity to have a little fling on the side while they were out of town he might have been less mean.
