* * *
The nicest thing about Connie was that she was, so to speak, sort of in and out of the family at the same time. What I mean is, she wasn’t really a Canning at all, although she used the name for the lack of another.
As a matter of fact, she was someone Uncle Wish (a happy compromise for Aloysius) had picked up in Italy after the late great war and managed, by hook or crook, to appropriate and spirit home. She was, Uncle Wish had explained with tears in his voice, a homeless waif foraging among the rubble of an ancient world, her poor little body emaciated and filthy, her cute little nose chronically running.
Anyhow, Uncle Wish brought her home and left her with Grandfather, after which, having euphemistically borrowed a substantial sum of money, he was off again to some other place to see what else he could find.
Grandfather saw to it that Connie’s body was washed and her nose wiped. He believed, I think, that Uncle Wish’s bootleg adoption of Connie was a good sign. He took it as an indication that Uncle Wish was developing a sense of commitment to the serious problems of life.
Nothing, of course, could have been more absurd. Uncle Wish was simply a compassionate scoundrel who was always prepared to indulge his humanity if there was someone else at hand to pay the price over the long haul. Most of the girls he picked up in the places he went were well washed and well fed and, after Uncle Wish was finished with them, well paid. It should be said, moreover, that they were invariably older than Connie. And much less permanent. Uncle Wish may have been willing to be an absentee father, but he had absolutely no intention of becoming a husband, absent or present.
So, over the long haul, Grandfather paid for Uncle Wish’s grand gesture. But don’t shed any tears in your beer because of that. Having accumulated most of the money in an area approximately a hundred miles wide running roughly from Chicago to Denver, Grandfather was adequately equipped for it. And Connie blossomed in his tender care.
I saw her for the first time in the summer of 1949, when I made my annual visit to Grandfather’s country estate. He was a great family man, Grandfather was, and I was invited every summer for a visit of three months’ duration. The invitation was, in fact, by implication a command, and in view of the high price of disfavor I appeared faithfully near the first of every June, bearing the fulsome greetings of my father, Grandfather’s son and Uncle Wish’s brother; and I was mindful of my father’s fierce admonitions, delivered in private just before my departure, to for God’s sake be very careful not to say or do anything that would jeopardize our position in Grandfather’s will.
My father, you realize, was extremely sensitive about our position in Grandfather’s will, but I never blamed him for that. Inasmuch as he never earned a dime in his life, living quite richly on an allowance that Grandfather made him, it was perfectly understandable.
It was, as I said, nice to have Connie in and out of the family at the same time. Being in, she was, so to speak, handy; being out, she was, as it were, available. What I mean is, there were none of the messy complications and taboos ordinarily imposed on blood relationships.
That very first summer, in 1949, I was introduced to the advantages of our anomalous connection. While foraging among the rubble of an ancient civilization, it became quickly apparent, Connie had acquired a seamy sort of intelligence far beyond her years in matters that would have, if he had known it, set Grandfather’s few remaining hairs on end.
She was only ten at the time, and I was twelve, but in effect she was ages older. She was as old as Nero, and she spoke a language older than Latin. Her English was hardly more than a few key words and phrases, but the eyes and the hands have a vocabulary and a grammar of their own. She had much to teach me, and I must say that I was an apt pupil. I anticipated eagerly my annual pilgrimage to Grandfather’s house.
Cleaned up, Connie was a pretty little girl. Grown up, she was a beauty. She grew along lovely lines to intriguing dimensions, and when she reached the intriguing dimensions, she simply quit growing. As she mastered English she forgot Italian, but she never forgot her other ancient language.
She lived with Grandfather until she was ready for college, and after college she established herself in an apartment in Chicago, where she was, she claimed, working seriously at painting. I never visited her apartment and never saw any of her work, and I suspect that the reason I never saw any was that there never was any. As with me and Father and Mother and Uncle Wish—as with us all—Grandfather paid the freight over the long haul. But I was happy to learn, the first summer after her establishment in the Chicago apartment, that her command appearance at Grandfather’s was to run, for the most part, concurrently with my own.
In the summer of 1964 I was 27 and Connie was 25. Grandfather was 86. Father and Mother and Uncle Wish were dead. All dead. Father had died suddenly under Grandfather’s roof of what was diagnosed by Grandfather’s doctor, also an octogenarian, as a coronary. Mother, remaining in Grandfather’s house after Father’s death, had soon followed him to heaven as a result of an overdose of sleeping pills, which sad event was popularly supposed to have been incited by grief. I was present on both occasions, as was Connie, and I remember expressing to her a proper astonishment at discovering, on the first occasion, that Father had any heart at all, let alone a weak one, and, on the second, that Mother was capable of grief for anyone, let alone for Father.
But small matter. Every loss has its compensatory gain. Uncle Wish having previously come a fatal cropper in a distant land, from which his mortal remains were shipped home for burial, Connie and I were now the only heirs in Grandfather’s last will and testament. His estate, I believe, amounted to something like $70,000,000, which is, you must agree, a tidy sum.
* * *
And so, when I arrived at Grandfather’s house last June, there was Connie to meet me. As I tooled up the long drive from the road between tall and lithesome poplars, she came out of the house and across the veranda and down into the drive, and by the time I had brought my black Jag to a halt, she was in position to lean across the passenger bucket and give me a kiss. Contact, minimum. Effort, below standard.
“Hello, Buster,” she said. “Crawl out of that thing and get kissed properly.”
I crawled out and was kissed properly. Or improperly, depending on your point of view.
“Very stimulating,” I said. “I believe your technique has improved, if possible.”
“Do you think so? It’s sweet of you to say it.”
“No doubt you’ve been practicing. I must remember to call on you in that apartment of yours sometime.”
“No chance. The summer is sufficient, darling. I don’t believe I’d care for you in off seasons. You might become tiresome.”
“That’s true. There’s nothing to be gained from too much of a good thing. Where’s Grandfather?”
“He’s on his daily pilgrimage to the Happy Hunting Ground. He’s communing with Canning ghosts.”
“A dreary ritual, surely. It was, all in all, a dreary ritual even when the ghosts were alive and kicking. I refer especially to Father.”
“Well, you know Grandfather. He’s very devoted to his little family, dead, or alive. Fortunately, I might add, for you and me.”
“True again. Darling, you have the most devastating knack of getting directly to the crux. I suppose I had better go up there and check in immediately.”
“I was about to suggest it. I’ll just go along for company, if you don’t mind.”
“I’d be delighted. Perhaps, along the way, we can trifle for a while in some leafy glade.”
“It’s entirely possible. I have no special preference for leafy glades, but I am, as you know, addicted to occasional trifling.”
Leaving the Jag in the drive, and my bag in the Jag, we went around the big Colonial house, past the garages in the rear, and so onto a path that ran up a gentle slope among maples and oaks and sycamores to the crest of the rise; then down again among more of the same into a hollow where, under the flowering crab apple
tree Grandfather had gathered in a private plot the deceased members of the Canning clan.
There, side by side, or end to end, lay Grandmother and Uncle Wish and Father and Mother. There, in good time, Grandfather would also lie, a patriarch among them. There also was room reserved for me, and for Connie by my side. An unpleasant prospect, surely, but hopefully remote. What was pleasant and immediate was the fact that Connie and I were side by side and hand in hand, very much alive and with a prospect of trifling.
Unfortunately for the prospect, however, we met Grandfather on his way back. As we reached the crest of the rise, we could see him on the slope below us, ascending briskly among the trees. I must say candidly that Grandfather, for an octogenarian, was depressingly spry. He lifted his knees high when walking, and in fact his gait was a kind of prance that seemed about to break any second into a trot. Now, seeing us above him, he gave out with a shrill cackle of greeting and lifted an arm in salute. A soft warm breeze stirred the white fuzz on his head.
“Good to see you again, Buster,” he said, approaching. “Welcome home.”
“Thank you, Grandfather. You’re certainly looking fit.”
“Feel fit. Am fit. You were coming at once to say hello to your old Grandfather, hey? Good boy.”
“As you see, Connie and I came looking for you first thing.”
“Good girl, Connie. Considerate. I’ve been to visit my children. Pay them a visit every decent day. Just on my way back. Got a project in hand that I must get to work on. Work on it two hours every day, decent or not.”
“Is that so? What are you doing?”
“Writing a history of this county. Many fascinating things have happened here. Know many of them first-hand. Consulting sources for the rest.”
“It sounds like quite a project. How long do you think it will take to finish it?”
“Five years. Got it worked out on a schedule. Two hours a day for five years.”
“Five years!”
If my dismay was apparent in my voice, Grandfather didn’t seem to notice it. My exclamation was literally wrenched out of me, of course, and small wonder. After all, I mean, 5 and 86 are 91!
“That’s right,” he said. “Five years will see it done. Must keep at it, though. Must get at it now. You’ll excuse me, I hope.”
“We’ll walk back to the house with you.”
“Wouldn’t hear of it. Since you’ve come this far, you’ll want to go on and pay your respects to your father and mother. Connie will go with you.”
“Thanks, Grandfather. It’s very thoughtful of you.”
“Not at all, not at all. Make yourself at home, my boy, as usual. The place is yours. I’ll expect to have you here until September at least. You and Connie both.”
He pranced over the crest and out of sight down the far slope. I sighed and groped for Connie’s hand, which I had released to shake Grandfather’s.
“To tell the truth,” I said, “I am singularly uninterested in paying my respects to Father and Mother.”
“Grandfather expects it, and you mustn’t disappoint him.”
“Nevertheless, I find the idea uninviting.”
“Perhaps I can make things a little more interesting for you. When you stop to consider it, the Happy Hunting Ground is as nearly a leafy glade as any other spot we are likely to find.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I am more interested already.”
* * *
The blossoms were gone—gone a month or more—and the crab apple tree was hung along the boughs with little red apples. The small headstones sought and achieved a neat and charming simplicity, enclosed and isolated from unkempt indigenous growth by iron pickets painted green. The grass within the enclosure had been clipped, and the mower was at rest with spade and hoe and rake and shears in the tool shed, also painted green, that stood aside from the assembled dead outside the iron pickets.
Sunshine filtered through apple leaves to fashion a random pattern of light and shade. Light lay lightly on Connie’s eyes, which were closed. Shade made a mystery of her lips, which were smiling.
“Do you know the trouble with Grandfather?” she said.
“I wasn’t aware that he had any,” I said.
“The trouble with Grandfather,” she said, “is that he won’t die.”
The warm air was filled, if one bothered to listen, with a thousand sleepy sounds. Among the leaves of the crab apple tree there was a flash of yellow wings.
“It’s true,” I said, “that he’s taking his time about it.”
“He’s absolutely interminable, that’s what. You heard what he said about the dreary book he’s writing about things that are surely of no consequence to anyone. Five years, he said.”
“I heard.”
“Do you think he can possibly live five years longer?”
“It’s my opinion that he can.”
“It’s positively obscene. Here are Uncle Wish and your mother and father, all dead and decently buried, and all years and years younger than Grandfather. Damn it, Buster, there ought to be some kind of decent order in dying.”
“Death is often disorderly. It’s peculiar that way.”
“It doesn’t seem fair for things to be so badly managed.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You must admit, my lovely waif, that you and I have profited from the disorder. A split two ways has obvious advantages over a split five ways.”
“It does, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Thinking is bad for you. As someone said about metaphysics, it befuddles you methodically.”
“Just the same, it was odd how your mother and father died.”
“Odd?”
“Well, how your father just up and died all at once of something that was diagnosed by a senile doctor as a heart condition. I never dreamed that there was anything wrong with his heart. Did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And then how your mother presumably committed suicide in her presumed grief. I never saw any evidence that your mother was inordinately fond of your father. Did you?”
“Not a shred.”
“I’ve also been thinking about something else that was odd.”
“What else?”
“You were here at the time of both deaths, darling. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
I raised myself on an elbow and looked at her. She lay on her back and did not move. Her eyes were still closed in the light. Her lips still smiled in the shade. The shade moved as the leaves that cast it moved.
“As odd,” I said, “as your own presence at those unhappy events.”
She laughed instantly in some strange, contained delight. Opening her eyes she sat up. Her laughter was more motion than sound, hardly louder than a whisper. In her voice, when she spoke, was a kind of mock wonder.
“Darling,” she said, “I do believe we suspect each other.”
“Impossible. One of us suspects; the other knows.”
“That’s so, isn’t it? You’re very logical, darling.”
“Logical enough to know that the quotient increases as the divisor decreases.”
“Of course. That’s elementary.”
“As you say, elementary. Even a child could see it. Even you.”
“Thank you. I’m really quite clever at arithmetic when you come right down to it. I understand clearly, for instance, that this all remains purely academic, a kind of textbook exercise, until the dividend is available for division.”
“In good time. Five years will pass in five years. Meanwhile, let us enjoy our summers.”
“I’m sick of our summers. At this instant, if I weren’t on orders and rations, I might be in Rio or Mexico City or some other exciting place.”
“If you were, I’d be desolate.”
“No, you wouldn’t, darling. You’re a summer habit. We’d make arrangements.”
“I’m reassured. However, you must admit that Grandfather, for all his irritating devotion and familial despotism, is
exceedingly generous with his money. He has always cheerfully supported us all, and in the style to which we’ve become accustomed. Some fair day, after the detestable county history is finished, you and I shall have what he leaves behind.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“There’s nothing deceptive about Grandfather. He’s fanatically devoted to his family, even though they neither sow nor reap. You know that.”
“For all his generosity, however, he’s a strait-laced and sensitive old moralist in his way. Suppose we did something to offend him and got cut out of the will?”
“Don’t even think of such a horrible contingency. We must take care to avoid such a thing.”
“That’s easily said, but I know you, and you know me, and we both know that either of us could be found out anytime. All I can say is, it’s a good thing Grandfather doesn’t have access to our detailed case histories this minute.”
She lay down again on the neat green grass, and I lay down beside her. The grass, lately cut, smelled sweet and good. Closing my eyes, I listened to the thousand summer sounds. Beside me, Connie’s voice was drugged with drowsy dreams.
“It isn’t remarkable when a very old man dies,” she said.
“If he has seventy million dollars and dies in the company of his two remaining heirs,” I said, “it may attract remarkable notice.”
“Nonsense. One only needs to be clever and careful.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
* * *
While I was thinking, June passed. In July, the first two weeks of it, it was too hot to think. Then, the third week, we began to get thunderstorms every day, and the temperature became tolerable, and it actually began to seem as if it might be almost possible to reach a decision and to accomplish something exceptional.
Short stories collection Page 11
