The salary he made at the station he put away in the bank each week, because his main employment was as a sales representative for Lustron Homes, whose headquarters were in Columbus. The Lustron Corporation mass-produced porcelain-coated stainless-steel homes that could be assembled with a wrench in less than two weeks by a modestly accomplished homeowner. The idea had seemed brilliant to Sam in the abstract.
In the spring of 1948, the day Sam’s own house was delivered on two huge Lustron trucks, he had already explained enough about it on the radio that a sizable crowd gathered in front of and in the yards next to the small lot Sam had bought on Birch Street. By the time his house was fully assembled, he had sold three other models. He wrote to Carl Strandlund that the houses sold themselves.
The fact was, though, that Sam didn’t like living in his efficient, pale yellow porcelain-enameled house with the turquoise-blue shutters, the whole of which only needed hosing down once a year or so, never requiring repainting. But whenever a driving rain hit that steel exterior, he felt as though he inhabited a tin can at which someone was shooting a BB gun. The house was quirky but not charming, with odd shelves and cabinets built into the design, ample storage everywhere in efficient but peculiar places, and clean-lined, lean furnishings provided by Lustron at Sam’s request and at a discount. It was remarkably neat and well organized, but, to Sam’s way of thinking, it was not especially appealing.
“You know what, Sam,” Betts said to him one evening, looking around the living room from her seat on the built-in couch beneath the big front window, “this is a house that you can’t imagine getting old in. It’s like a place you go to wait for something else. Like a train station or the bus station. Do you know what I mean? This is a house you only stay in until you leave.”
Sam stayed on there, though, and oversaw the construction of the other Lustron houses he had sold in Washburn, but within less than a year, he resigned from the company, which was running into all sorts of unexpected problems with production in any case. He concentrated on his job at WBRN, which was steadily adding advertisers. Sam had come up with an idea for a weekly on-air talent competition with a live audience, and it had become surprisingly popular, although some of the various acts didn’t translate very well over the radio and required Sam to think fast in order to describe what was going on to the listeners at home.
Will Dameron was intrigued by those Lustron homes. He didn’t like them, but he liked the idea of them. Eventually Will traded a hilly, forty-seven-acre tract of land adjacent to the Green Lake Golf Course for a partnership with Sam; the two of them were convinced that prefabricated homes had a promising future if they were carefully planned. Sam had found a company outside Boston, in Framingham, that thought along the same lines, and he persuaded Cardinal Homes to put up a few houses on spec, entirely under his supervision. The Cardinal Corporation would retain all but ten percent of any profit in exchange for their initial investment. If the speculation was successful, Sam and Will would have sole rights to operate the franchise in the twelve counties surrounding Washburn, as well as in the city of Columbus.
“For a while I thought about staying with Lustron, since the buyer can get government subsidies,” Sam explained to Will. “But, I don’t know. I don’t really like living in one. Those houses . . . There’s no way you can ever feel moved in. You can just wipe off or wash away any sign you’ve ever been in the place. Inside and out. I thought I’d like that. The easy upkeep, I mean. But, I don’t know. . . . Carl Strandlund’s saying they’ll be able to produce four hundred houses a day. But I was thinking what it would be like. Lustron’s thinking they’ll be able to sell them for somewhere around nine thousand dollars. But I think it’ll have to be more if they’re going to make any profit. You see, what happens,” Sam said, “is that they crate the entire house right at the plant. Load it on flatbeds in reverse order of assembly. That part’s fine. The idea’s good. But the cost . . . each house weighs close to twenty tons. Now, Cardinal ships on flatbeds, too, but the product isn’t so heavy. The strength comes from traditional framing at the site. And they’re bigger. Can be about as big as you want. A lot more variety.”
Sam spent all his spare time poring over the various possible floor plans. “The thing is,” he told Will, “not to have every house look like the one next to it. Different layouts, different uses of materials. It’s awful to see what they’re doing out on Long Island. And they’re building on slab to save costs, but I don’t want to do that. Cardinal includes the cost of a cellar, since their houses are designed with cold weather in mind. In the Northeast. But we get plenty of cold weather in Ohio. I’ve always thought there’s a way to do this right. People want to own their own houses. But why would they want a house that looked like every other house on the block?”
The two men had agreed, though, that before any construction began, it only made sense to get the utilities in place, the water, gas, and electric services set up in one fell swoop, because they were planning for growth. Here was the real risk they were taking, and both of them knew it. The time-consuming chore and expense of obtaining permits and variances, of installing the gas, water, sewer, power, and phone lines, was unsatisfying and frustrating and done at their expense. There were endless problems, just as Sam and Will had known there would be, and they often reminded themselves or each other that this was the part of their investment that allowed them to foresee long-term benefits.
As the big yellow shovels and earthmoving equipment began crawling over the acreage—turning the soil and throwing up high walls of dirt on either side of the furrows they dug—both Sam and Will were discouraged at the sight. This part of the project wasn’t a bit exhilarating. The tidy streets they envisioned looked like trammeled cattle runs. The foundations were dug, but the forms hadn’t been set in place yet to pour cement, and the basements and winding channels filled with rain and then became muddy trenches, as though an army had just departed. Will and Sam were glad, though, that the water drained away so quickly; they had done perc tests, but, said Will, “the proof of the pudding is in the pie.”
Later that evening Sam telephoned Will. “That can’t be right,” Sam said as soon as Will picked up the phone. “Why would the proof of the pudding be in the pie? Do people around here make pies out of pudding? Is, say, a custard pie considered a pudding? At least the custard part? I’ve never heard of that.” But Will said he had no idea; it was just a saying his mother and grandmother had used all his life, and that he only meant that they didn’t have to worry about drainage. But Sam knew all that; he was simply nervous as building progressed, and he wanted to nail down every detail. It was quite clear to him that, although Dr. and Mrs. DeHaven from WBRN and Dwight and Claytor and Robert Butler drove out now and then to look around at the site and made encouragingly hopeful predictions, not one of them—or anyone else in Washburn, for that matter—believed people would want to live so far out of town and up on a windy, muddy hill.
Since Will and Betts had announced their engagement at Christmas, Will had taken to coming by Scofields late on a Sunday afternoon and, if Betts was available, inviting her—and anyone else who happened to be around—to join him at the Monument Restaurant. “Just for a bite to eat,” he always said cautiously, as if there were other things going on at the restaurant of which they would not be expected to partake. It was touching to Betts in its courtliness, the invitation’s careful courtesy—not asking for any other sort of obligation, only supper, and including everyone in the family. Generally Lavinia begged off, and Howard and Agnes as well, knowing, of course, that Will and Betts must want time to themselves.
One Sunday, though, Betts and Agnes had spent the day looking over patterns and fabrics for Betts’s wedding and honeymoon wardrobe. The wedding itself would be the middle of May, at St. James, and with only the immediate family present. All the Scofields’ friends and family would be invited to the reception, though, which would be at Lily and Robert’s house, where Agnes and Lily planned to have tables set up
in the garden. When Agnes began to decline Will’s invitation, Betts urged her to join them. “Oh, no, Mother. Please come with us! I want you to explain to Will what I’m wearing.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Betts. Don’t you think it should be a surprise?” Agnes asked, still reluctant to join them.
“But it won’t be a surprise he’ll like. Will, you’re old-fashioned about these things,” she said fondly, pretending to rebuke him. She turned back to her mother. “Mama, if you bring along the patterns . . .”
The three of them crossed the square together, chatting. As they reached the curb, Agnes wasn’t aware that she leaned toward Will slightly, and that he automatically cupped her elbow in his large hand as she stepped down, just as a matter of habit. But for Betts it was a moment exactly like the revelation in Mrs. Frazier’s fourth-grade class when, one by one, students took turns looking through a powerful microscope Mrs. Frazier had borrowed from her husband’s lab in the Harcourt Lees biology building.
Mrs. Frazier instructed the children to consider a small, shallow, seemingly unremarkable dish of water, and Betts had waited her turn to peer through the microscope, simply glad of the break in the routine of the school day. But, as it turned out, she was astounded when she finally got a glimpse of the water through the microscope. She had taken a place once more at the end of the line in order to have another chance to see if it might be some trick or illusion. She was a natural-born skeptic, and Mrs. Frazier was gratified at her interest and showed her how to adjust and focus the lens for herself. Betts watched the busy, turbulent life within that shallow bowl for a long time. And the recognition that shot through Betts like an electric shock—when she caught site of Will’s hand gently guiding her mother’s elbow—was exactly like the discovery that in what appeared to be nothing more than crystal clear liquid many things were undisclosed.
Just in witnessing Will’s small, unconscious gesture and her mother’s equally oblivious expectation of it, Betts understood on a visceral level that between her mother and Will there was a deeper connection than merely that of old acquaintances or good friends. She didn’t realize she had drawn in her breath in a small but audible gasp, and her mother and Will turned to look at her quizzically. “Oh! No, no,” she said. “I just remembered something. . . . It’s not important. . . .”
Betts had learned to shut down her imagination during her near obsession with being in love with Hank Abernathy—if his wallet fell open when he was paying a bill at a restaurant, for instance, and she almost saw the picture of his wife and two daughters. Or in his apartment lobby, when she glanced away while he collected his mail, which generally contained at least one pale blue envelope addressed in black ink and with a California postmark. So on that bleak February afternoon—with the remaining snow pitted and gritty with sand and dirt where it had been cleared from the paths that criss-crossed the square—as she and Will and her mother approached the Monument Restaurant, Betts managed not to consider anything very carefully, although it was a hard-pitched battle against her rising consternation.
What on earth had her mother been thinking? Had she been in love with Will? Had he been in love with her? But that was ridiculous; her mother didn’t seem to think much of Will one way or another, which, in fact, had often made Betts defensive on his behalf. And besides, her mother was fifty years old! Betts couldn’t throw off the idea of the implicit betrayal of her father. The emotional betrayal; any other sort of infidelity on her mother’s part was truly beyond Betts’s imagination.
Once they were seated, Betts managed to close her mind’s eye; she refused to know anything more than whatever appeared to be true at that moment. She even reprimanded herself for thinking such things about her mother. In fact, when their dinners were served, Betts became unusually proprietary about her mother’s welfare, making sure Agnes had the salt or pepper and checking that the waitress kept her mother’s coffee hot. At the deepest level of Betts’s orientation of herself to the world, she defined Agnes first and foremost as her own and Dwight and Claytor and Howard’s mother, and then as Warren Scofield’s wife. Betts wasn’t able yet to concede her mother’s widowhood.
These days Betts had often sought out her mother, surprised by her sophistication about fashion, her knowingness about the way people lived now. Agnes seemed simply to assume that Betts knew all about sex from experience. Nor did Agnes appear to be in the least surprised that Nancy Turner had gotten married because she was pregnant. Agnes didn’t even seem distressed by it, since Nancy and Joe Fosberg were happy enough and clearly adored their new baby. Most of all Betts had been surprised by her mother’s humor and their agreement about all sorts of things they had never agreed upon before the war. And, too, Betts was basking in her mother’s affectionate and wholehearted attention. It would have been simply foolish of Betts to do anything other than put out of her head the tiny, fleeting vignette of her mother’s elbow cupped in Will’s large hand.
As for Agnes, she was infatuated with her daughter once more, just as she had unexpectedly been smitten the first year or so of Betts’s life. Once again the two of them were involved in a conspiracy aimed at insuring Betts’s pleasure, just as they had been when Betts, and Howard, too, were infants. The whole scheme induced in Agnes a no-holds-barred indulgence of that child’s desires. It was very nearly erotic to allow herself to luxuriate in a guilt-free generosity of spirit. By the time Betts was born, Agnes knew that a child couldn’t be spoiled by affection, could be fed at any time of the day or night, if she was hungry, without becoming a tyrant, should be comforted when she was in distress, and that whatever a doctor, or mother-in-law, or a well-meaning friend might suggest, there simply wasn’t any wrong way to love her children.
By then, Agnes also knew that it was simply a coincidence if you happened to love whatever children you ended up with. Even better if you liked them, as well. She had been too young and too self-conscious, too caught up in Dwight’s and Claytor’s well-being—and how their well-being reflected on her—to savor their infancy. Certainly she had loved them, too, with a kind of devotion that she kept under wraps, that had seemed unreasonable even to her, and that was discouraged by the mood of the day.
These days, when she caught herself imagining Betts’s delight at one thing or another, Agnes understood that she had fallen into a state too intense to sustain. She was convinced, for instance, that if she made for Betts the most beautiful coral-colored silk robe—managing to gather the sleeves sweepingly into the tight cuffs—then nothing else would be needed to insure her daughter’s happiness in the world. It was what she believed for the time being as opposed to what she knew. Every time she fingered the glorious fabric, she believed once again that it could be the answer to any problem whatsoever; she didn’t yet have to abandon her magic thinking.
Agnes and Betts were caught up in what amounted to a sort of last waltz—a honeymoon, even—before either one turned her attention elsewhere. At first Agnes was reminded of the unexpected attachment she and her own mother had fallen into not long before Agnes herself got married. The beautiful clothes her mother had arranged to have Aunt Cettie make. But poor Catherine; she had been incapable of contentment, and it had taken Agnes a long time to forgive her. Catherine Claytor either flew through the hours of each day in a state of elation or dragged herself through the tedious minutes with listless indifference. In fact, frequently Agnes found herself caught up in a memory of her mother and frozen in place with her jaw clenched and her hands closed into fists. After a while Agnes didn’t let her mind wander with much particularity over memories of herself and her mother.
It was reassuring, though, to imagine Betts’s life unfolding in small contentments as well as in the fever pitch of her frequent, spontaneous but short-lived, spells of joy. For her whole life Betts had seemed to Agnes to be a person who thrived best in extreme situations and floundered when stuck in the ordinary passage of time. Betts was mystified, for instance, by the realization that there were people who de
lighted in living under the tension of happy anticipation. By the time she was no more than three or four years old, she had declared her dread of such a state of being; she put her hands over her ears and hummed aloud when her brothers—as early as September—began to name the gifts they hoped to get for Christmas.
“Stop it! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand to wait for Christmas so long!” It had amused Agnes at the time, when Betts was a little girl who clearly knew herself so well, and it amused her still. But she had also felt sorry for Betts a little bit even then and wished her daughter would allow herself the same greedy, gleeful hopefulness the boys enjoyed. In Agnes’s experience, that was always the best part of any major occasion; no celebration ever lives up to the act of anticipating its pleasure.
In the case of her wedding, though, Betts relished the anticipation; she was deeply intrigued and entertained by the official, solemn nature of the preparations for her marriage. She was filled with goodwill toward everyone, and also with gratitude. She repeatedly thanked her mother for offering to make her trousseau; it was an undertaking that Betts couldn’t fathom taking on. The monotony of repetition; the frustration of getting a seam wrong and taking it out again with care. And Agnes never tried to explain to anyone who didn’t like to sew the marvelous transformation of a piece of fabric—often beautiful in itself—into what seemed to her an architectural construction that approached fine art. When she was by herself in the sewing room, she would hold up a blouse she had finished and regard the subtlety of the bound buttonholes, or the drape of the yoke, and she would experience a brief, euphoric surge of pure creative satisfaction.
The Truth of the Matter Page 21
