Belva Plain - Evergreen.txt

by Evergreen

  But he had brought assets with him, too. He was a top basketball player and the years of living at the lake had made him a sturdy swimmer. Iris, concerned as always with 'psychology,' had gone to the school before it opened and spoken to his adviser about Eric. She had followed up again only last week and been told how well he had adjusted. Extraordinarily well, Iris reported, considering the bewilderment anyone would feel after such an upheaval.

  The courage it must have taken! On the ride back, that first ride from Brewerstown, if that man Chris, the cousin, hadn't come along—and stayed for two days to help 'settle in'—it would have been unthinkable for them all. As it was, the boy had spoken hardly a word on the entire ride. What was there to say? Joseph had been so tense that he hadn't talked, either. So Anna and Chris had spent a couple of hours making conversation about Mexico, where he had just spent six months. He had described Mexico City from one end to the other. He knew the area where her brother

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  Dan lived; the houses there were very fine, he said. Then he had talked about Maury. She had forgotten that Chris was the young man whom Maury had so admired and visited in Maine. He'd talked of how bright Maury had been and of how they had met when Chris had had an accident. And Anna had thought: A stranger falls on the ice on a winter's night, and half a dozen lives are changed. A new life exists because of it. How does one begin to understand it all?

  But Eric was doing well. Thank God, he was doing remarkably well. Everyone said he was.

  She opened her mouth to say something, wanting to make a connection, such as: Eric, I love you; I'm still not over the marvel of your being here; Eric, it's like having your father back again— But she had done that once. It had been during his first month, when suddenly she had been moved to tears, tears so jubilant and so painful that she had not been able to hold them back. She had seized his hands and kissed him. And he had pulled away with such an expression (of alarm? distaste? embarrassment?) that she hadn't done anything like it again.

  She said calmly, talking half to herself and half to him, "Now we put in the apples, some raisins, some almonds, and I always like to add currants. Most people don't, but it gives a nice tart flavor, don't you think?" she went on, turning the long, fat roll over and over on the table before cutting it into three sections and putting it in the oven. Eric nodded again.

  This time she had to say what was on her mind. "You never call me anything, or your grandfather, either. Of course you can't call us 'Gran' or 'Gramp.' But I do think we need to have names. Won't you decide on something?"

  "I don't know what to choose," Eric said. "When you were a tiny boy, just starting to talk, you called me 'Nana.'"

  "I did? I don't remember."

  "Naturally you don't. But would you like to call me that? And your grandfather could just be 'Grandpa,' couldn't he?"

  "All right. I'll start now, Nana."

  "Eric? Is it very hard for you here? What I mean is—oh, I've put it clumsily, of course it's all been hard for you—but what I meant was, because it's here. Is it too different? That's what I meant."

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  "No, no. It's very nice here. I like the school and my room and everything. Honestly."

  "I realize that we're probably very different in ways that we mightn't even be aware of. It's not simple. But if you'll just remember that we love you it will be simpler. Can you understand me?"

  "I do understand."

  "Well, then, enough of that! What are you planning to do with this nice Saturday?"

  "I've got a pile of math to get out of the way. I thought I'd go sit outside to do it."

  Every chance he got he went outdoors. Perhaps he felt confined in the house? This town, this house and yard, must seem so small after all that free space.

  "I told you Cousin Ruth is coming to spend a few days, didn't I? Grandpa's gone into the city to call for her. Maybe if you're finished with your work by the time they get here he'll take you out to buy the football helmet and things you need." "That'd be neat."

  She watched him spread out his books and then started upstairs to change out of her work clothes, thinking with a pleasant thankfulness of him and Joseph going out in the afternoon. Joseph had taken charge of fitting Eric out for school and that was good; the boy needed a man; he'd been too long with an old woman, and a sick one, at that. Joseph and he had had lunch and gone to a couple of baseball games during the summer; it seemed as if they were really coming together. A pity that Joseph couldn't spend more time with him! But he was always so busy.

  They had joined a small beach club for Eric's benefit. People here sent their children to camp and, except for the two Wilmot boys down the street whose parents couldn't afford to send them, there had been no one around all summer. But Iris, because Anna had never learned to drive, had dropped off the Wilmots and Eric at the beach every day, which was generous of her, busy as she was with her two babies.

  Such darling little boys! Just eleven months apart and Stevie was walking now. Their coming had made such a difference in Iris. But not only their coming: first Theo's coming, and the house, and the perquisites that go with the title 'Mrs.'! If she were a Sicilian peasant, Anna reflected, Iris would have a dozen children gladly. She was at her best when she was pregnant. All the tension went

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  out of her face. Even her voice was pitched more softly, more confidently. She had grown enormous each time, but she hadn't made the usual attempts to minimize her size. In fact, she had flaunted it, especially in front of childless women or women with only one child who weren't able to have any more.

  She'll not stop at two. It isn't kind of me, but I envy her fruit-fulness.

  Not kind of me, either, that I feel such pride in showing Iris off to Ruth. Not that Joseph won't have been doing it before they reach here, if only to save himself from her babble. "That woman talks my ear off," he'd grumbled again before leaving this morning.

  But I do feel pride! All those years of having people feel sorry for Iris! Especially Ruth, with her three daughters married young. Now Iris has what she wanted; she's had so little. (The innocents, born into trouble, Iris—and Eric, too.)

  Ruth will be amazed at Iris' new house. Joseph had built it for them; it was nothing that either he or Anna would have wanted, but it was what Iris wanted and Theo apparently had no objections to it. A kind of glass box it was, glass and dark, stained wood, standing in a grove. A startling house, airy and light, but quite plain, almost severe. Still, it had been written about in an architects' magazine, and people did slow their cars down to stare at it when they went by.

  One thing, surely: Iris would never, nor would her children, have to stand in shame in front of an Uncle Meyer waiting for somebody to offer kind charity and a roof. Nor would Eric.

  She glanced outside. He had moved to the top of the wall. His books were open beside him and he was sitting quietly, looking toward the orchard, with his arm around the dog George. Curious, she watched. What was he thinking? Certainly he was not demonstrative or revealing, as Maury had been. Maury had worn his heart on his sleeve. He must be like his mother.

  He had been remarkable at his grandmother's funeral, hadn't cried at all. Of course, her death had been expected, but it had been shocking, all the same. Death always is. It had been in Eric's second month with them that the call had come and a dry, old voice (Uncle Wendell, he'd said) had told them that Mrs. Martin had passed away. So Joseph and Anna had driven back to Brewers-town with Eric, purposely avoiding the street where he had lived, but he had been asleep on the back seat anyway.

  "Such calm!" Joseph remarked later. "That part of him cer-

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  tainly isn't like our family." Anna had acknowledged that he was referring especially to her, who cried so quickly and easily.

  But Eric had sat quietly through the funeral service, shaken hands with the minister and dozens of townspeople, then got back in the car with them and fallen asleep again all the way back, a good six hours' drive.

 
"He's got courage, that kid has!" Joseph said. "He can take what comes. That's what you call grit."

  But it was a hard time, all the same.

  Hard for me too, Anna thought with abrupt irritation. I didn't realize I could get so tired. I thought I was younger than I am. People assume I can do everything: help Iris with the babies, rear a teen-age boy and start to worry about college and all the other complications— With equal abruptness came the prickle of hot shame. Self-pity! Of all the disgusting qualities a human being can have!

  She heard the car come up the drive and, a moment later, Ruth's and Joseph's voices in the hall.

  "Where's Eric?" Joseph inquired of Celeste.

  "He and the dog walked down the road a few minutes ago, Mr. Friedman. Went down toward the Wilmot house."

  "Oh, well, you'll see him later," Joseph told Ruth. He carried her suitcase upstairs to the guest room and set it down. "Well, I'll leave you girls to yourselves and look at the paper till Eric gets back." Beneath the courtesy Anna could read his impatience and knew that he had been drowned on the ride by torrents and floods of words.

  "So how are you?" Ruth asked, and went on without waiting for an answer, "Country life agrees with you!" (She called this coming to the country!) "You look better every time I see you, Anna, in spite of your troubles."

  "I have no troubles!" Anna objected. As if, she thought wryly, by denying them they will cease to be.

  "Good, then, good, that's more than I can say. I don't know what I'd do if Joseph didn't let me have the apartment so cheap. He's a prince, Anna. You know the old saying, a mother can provide for five children and five children can't provide for one mother. Not that I'm complaining. After all, they have their own children, things aren't so hot for any of them, and you can't take blood from a stone, right? So what's this room? This isn't Eric's room?"

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  "Yes, it's Eric's room. We bought all new furniture, light and cheerful, as soon as we knew he was coming."

  They had had to return the desk because he had brought his own. It was a completely incongruous drawing room piece, ponderous in its dark Chippendale dignity. But they hadn't dared tell him so. Apparently it meant a great deal to him. On it he had placed photographs of his mother and grandparents. Hanging above it was a portrait in oil, very old, of a man with mutton-chop whiskers and a string tie.

  "That's my great-grandfather Bellingham," Eric had told them when they inquired. "No, my great-great-grandfather. He was a sort of hero in the Civil War. Have you any portraits on your side?" he'd asked Joseph, who seemed to have thought for an instant that the boy might be joking. But of course he had not been.

  "They didn't have portrait painters where I came from," Joseph had answered gently.

  Beside the desk Eric had hung a shelf of books, all about birds, Anna saw, the identification and classification of birds. But when she had made comment he had said no, he wasn't especially interested in birds. She had wondered, but asked no more. Celeste reported that Eric wanted the desk because his grandmother had always worked at it. Probably there was some similar memory attached to the bird books.

  "I felt so sorry for him when you brought him here last June," Ruth remarked now.

  "I know."

  Nevertheless, he had been cared for most lovingly. That was plain to see, Anna thought with some jealousy. And then: how sad it all was! How hard for that woman, after so many aloof, proud years, to have to appeal at the end to Joseph and Anna, after all!

  "What courage it must take to face one's own death like that," she had told Joseph.

  "We all face our own death, don't we?"

  "Not like that. Not to have to say, 'By August I shan't be here; now what shall I do about this, that and the other?' As if you were preparing to move to a new house."

  Ruth interrupted her thoughts. "As usual, Joseph hasn't spared anything, has he?"

  Anna smiled. No, he hadn't. He had filled the shelves and closets with books and clothes, cameras, ice skates and tennis rackets. There were a radio and a record player. He had even wanted to

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  buy a television for Eric, although they already had one downstairs and most people didn't own any yet. But Anna had said a firm no to that. Too much was too much and besides, a boy ought to do his homework in his room and read, not watch television. Iris agreed and the subject was dropped. Often it annoyed Anna that Joseph would take advice so readily from Iris, but when she said the same thing he might choose not to hear it. Eric's photograph album was open on the bed. "This is where he lived?" Ruth never bothered to hide her curiosity.

  "Yes. Look through it. Eric won't mind." It was a record of his years in Brewerstown, the pictures carefully dated.

  "You had a good time with that car we sent, didn't you?" Anna had remarked of a picture that showed Eric, aged seven or eight, sitting in a huge toy car. "You sent it?"

  "You didn't know? We sent you many, many things. Your rocking horse and roller skates and your two-wheeler." Then she bad stopped, hearing herself boastful and bragging. But she hadn't meant to sound that way.

  Joseph joined the two women briefly at lunch. "My son Irving tells me he sees your signs all over Long Island," Ruth told him. "They tell me you're one of the biggest builders in the East. Well, I knew you when! That's right, isn't it, Joseph?"

  "You knew me when," he agreed quietly, and Anna knew he was amused.

  Ah, the sin of pride again! I'm full of it, she thought. But she was proud, proud of Joseph in the dignity of his achievement. She was aware that a rivalry existed between herself and Ruth, different from the ordinary rivalries that existed among all women, whether they are willing to admit it or not. Theirs came because they had known each other so long; they had started out at the same place and edged on parallel tracks through life.

  Ruth was discussing the refugees in her neighborhood. "So hoity toity, talking German! They only came here ten or fifteen years ago. I've been in this country almost fifty years."

  The Daughters of the American Revolution versus the Society of Mayflower Descendants, Anna thought, amused again.

  Lunch over, they went out on the terrace. It was mild for October,

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  the sun just hot enough to be a comfort on the flesh. A flock of crows flew clattering above the trees, and pointed south.

  "This brick needs doing again," Joseph observed. "He did a lousy job. Where the dickens did Eric go, anyway? We were going to buy his football stuff."

  Anna saw that he was bored and restless. "He'll be back soon. In the meantime, I've made strudel for Iris and Theo. Why don't you run it over and see the babies?"

  "Good idea," Joseph said, sounding relieved, and disappeared into the house.

  "So Iris is doing well? Joseph drove me past her house on the way up. I can't say I like the style but it must have cost a fortune."

  Ruth's tart remarks had no more power to wound, poor thing. Anna responded calmly, "Yes, everything has turned out very well for Iris."

  "She certainly wasted no time in starting a family! Of course, at her age, one can't afford to wait too long. Still, I must say, I was right, Anna. I'm the one who always told you she was going to improve in middle age and you must admit I was right."

  She wanted to say, "Iris is thirty-one, which is hardly middle-aged," but caught herself and said instead, "I made pot roast for tonight with the recipe you gave me when I was first married. It's still the best way."

  "Why do you work so hard over cooking when you have Celeste?"

  "I just enjoy it. I send a lot of things over to Iris. Theo likes my cooking."

  "You cook when you're worried," Ruth said sagely. "I know you a long time, don't forget. You cook, and I sew. I make dresses for my granddaughters, which they probably never wear."

  Anna was silent, and Ruth went on, "Why don't you take a trip? You never do any traveling. If I had your money, believe me, you wouldn't see me for dust. Why don't you visit your brother in Mexico City? You haven't seen him in years."
/>   "Twenty years. But we couldn't go now and leave Eric."

  "I suppose not. Tell me, how are you going to bring him up? His religion, I mean. What's he to be?"

  Anna sighed. "To tell you the truth, I don't know. Joseph and I hadn't thought of it, I'll admit, but it was Iris who said he might want to go to church. So Joseph said, all right, he would take him. And Iris said, 'You'll go in with him, of course.' Well, we had

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  thought of bringing him there and calling for him. But going inside? No. Iris said, 'How can you let a child that age walk in alone?' So we took him to that big Episcopal church in town. It was so strange, wondering what any of our friends would think if they should see us, and wondering what the people in the church must be thinking, those who might know us." Anna paused to recollect. A splendid organ, singing, and Eric's clear voice. Great decorum, a high atmosphere. "And so?" Ruth prodded.