Backwater (3 page)

I looked down at my wet jeans and wet hiking boots. My lumberjack shirt was dirty, but dry.

I ran upstairs, put on my Ann Boleyn memorial sweatshirt with the hood flipped back humorously (she was beheaded). She was my favorite of Henry the VIII’s dead wives. I ran back down.

“Well,” said Fiona, swishing past me, “is this how you want to appear to others?”

I smoothed back my hair and grinned for posterity.

*    *    *

I picked at my dessert (rum cake with candied walnuts); I’d worked hard to bake it. It was a historic family recipe dating back to the early nineteen hundreds when my great-great-grandmother was said to have gotten several serious suitors on the strength of her rum cake alone. I made the cake for my ex-boyfriend, Claude, but it was too late in our faltering relationship for dessert to wield any magic.

Claude was always smiling, even when we fought. He reminded me of a dolphin—intelligent, fun-loving, content to ride the present wave. Claude lived for the moment, and I, who embrace the lessons of the past, found this severely limiting. We broke up last Fourth of July weekend when I refused to go to the fireworks display on July 1
^st
because to do so would have been historically inaccurate. Claude said I was “overdoing the history thing.”

It just goes to show you how historians are never appreciated.

Athletes are.

Actors.

Big-time lawyers.

In Sunday school my teacher used to say that the meek will inherit the earth. That was eight years ago.

I’m still waiting.

This is why I appreciate my best friend Octavia Harrison. She is the only teenager I know who thinks doing a family tree is interesting. Octavia is going to become a sociologist and study how different societies act and develop. She’s used to being misunderstood, too. Her favorite uncle died when she was ten, so we’ve also got loss in common. Last year we had a memorial service for my mom and Octavia’s Uncle Reuben. We lit candles and talked about them until four
A.M.
while eating white-cheddar popcorn (Mom’s favorite binge food) and garlic pickles (Uncle Reuben’s favorite). Octavia apologized about the pickles, but I told her you can’t change history, you’ve got to stay with the facts.

Fiona was getting her video gear together again for the after-dinner interviews, talking about some research study that said forty-seven minutes is as long as a person can watch a video and retain information. Just about everyone thought that was fascinating.

Tib was sitting next to me. She patted my hand. “You keep doing what you know is right,” she said firmly. “That’s more important than having a crowd of people appreciate your efforts.”

“I know.” I hated that part about life.

“It’s only a competition if you let it be,” Tib added.

“I’m
not
competing.”

Egan choked down a laugh when he heard me say it.

*    *    *

I need at least two hours to interview a person.

Fiona interviewed six Breedloves in fifty-seven minutes.

Everyone had six and a half minutes to speak.

At the end of that time a buzzer went off.

Fiona said that time needn’t be our enemy in this stress-packed world. Time could be our friend.

Egan’s interview was the most time efficient.

“Tell me, Egan,” Fiona asked, “what is your finest accomplishment up to now, do you think?”

Egan thought about that and said he didn’t know.

“What are some of the things you enjoy doing, things you’ve been successful at?”

Egan thought and said he’d wasn’t sure.

Fiona’s smile was getting thin. “What are some of your cherished childhood memories?”

Egan thought and thought and couldn’t remember any.

“Are you aware, Egan, that the videocam is running?”

That much he knew.

But she wasn’t getting to the heart of the family with her cable TV tactics any more than a surgeon could perform a heart by-pass with a plastic knife.

Soundbites are to history what condensed books are to literature.

Over the years I’ve learned how to be a penetrating interviewer because I’ve got the two things a good interviewer needs: curiosity and patience.

I didn’t know I was good at it until I got thrown into interviewing two years ago as a freshman during flu season, which wiped out the entire staff of the Long Wharf Academy
Advocate
, including Lizzie Pucciari, an assistant editor who was coughing so bad she couldn’t take notes. But the paper had to come out and Mr. Leopold, the school newspaper’s advisor, asked me if I would interview the new Dean of Students, McAlaster Proust. Everyone knew Mr. Proust had cancer the year before, but no one ever mentioned it, like saying the word could be catching. Lizzie, from her sick bed, told me to ask him the usual stuff—where he went to school, what were his hobbies, how long had he been working in education—but I wanted to know what the cancer had taught him. I figured if it hadn’t taught him anything, the school was in trouble. So I asked him. And you know, he leaned back in his chair and talked for an hour about how scared he’d been and how having something like cancer puts everything in perspective. He felt he’d been given a second chance and he had an urgency to reach out to students and show them how to celebrate life. I mentioned that less homework might be one of the ways that all the students could celebrate life more fully, and he laughed and said he’d take it under advisement.

I called the interview “From Disease to Enlightenment,” and the school secretary, Mrs. Fusser, hugged me in the hall and told me about her mother’s fight against cancer and how she had beaten it just like Mr. Proust had. Mrs. Fusser was going on and on about what an excellent interviewer I was. It’s a gift, I told her. You’ve got to get behind a person’s public mask to find the real humanity.

I’m told my mother knew how to do that, even during her long bout with cancer. Tib said no one in this world fought harder to live than my mom. People would come to visit her at the hospital to cheer her up and she ended up helping them with their problems. That’s a social worker for you. I wish I had more personal memories of her. I have all her jewelry in a safe. I have the letter she wrote to me before she died that was dictated to a nurse about how she loved me and the riches she hoped life would bring. She wanted me to know that the absolute hardest part about dying was leaving me so young. She said history has proved that women can do anything. She said she had much more to tell me, but was getting tired and would finish the letter later. She never finished it; she died the next day. We called it “the unfinished letter” and like an unfinished symphony, it bore the sadness of death that had come in the middle of something instead of at the end.

I listened to the roaring rhetoric coming from the living room. Uncle Whit was loudly debating a point on the economy and used FDR’s New Deal as an example. I walked over. I wanted to mention that the strength of the New Deal was that President Roosevelt realized that no one big plan could help the country—it had to be a string of little plans hitting America’s problems on all fronts to boost the economy. I tried making my point, but no one heard me. I waited until there was a lull in the conversation, but Breedloves forsake breathing when they talk. I even tried raising my hand, but I didn’t get called on.

Then I did what I always do at family gatherings—curled up in the reading nook with a fat history book.

“Just like Josephine,” Fiona whispered to Archie. “Ivy cloistered over there like she was better than all of us.”

At the mention of Josephine, several Breedloves within earshot sucked in air. Thankfully, my father hadn’t heard. In this family, being like Josephine isn’t a compliment. This wasn’t the first time we’d been compared.

Josephine is my aunt, and Dad and Archie’s sister who disappeared years ago. The last anyone heard, she’d been a struggling sculptor in Vermont. Tib said Josephine was a true loner; she needed to be by herself more than anyone Tib had ever met. Plenty of people thought she was a nutcase because of it. I’d have given just about anything to get her thoughts for the family history if I knew where she was. If she was even alive.

I heard the sound of Scrabble letters pouring into a hat. Dad’s voice boomed, “What letter shall it be tonight?”

The game was Legal Alphabet and I hated it. The point was to pick a letter, then people shouted out legal terms that began with that letter and the definitions. Speed and pushiness were vital skills.

Thirteen Breedlove lawyers leaned forward as Dad drew his great hand into the hat.

“P!” he shouted in full-courtroom voice. “Perjury—an intentional lie told while under oath or in a sworn affidavit.”

“Plaintiff!” shouted cousin Sarah. “The person who brings a case to court.”

“
Pro bono!
” screamed cousin Brad, pushing past Sarah. “A service provided for free!”

The game grew louder and stronger, the legal voices reaching
a thundering crescendo. Two lawyers stood on chairs. One beat his breast.

Makes you wonder about the species.

Petition.

Plea bargaining.

Precedent.

Patent.

Uncle Archie’s hand slammed the table, rattling the chandelier above. “Pillory! A medieval punishment and restraining device.”

“Peace,” I said gently, hoping the game would end. “A state of tranquility or quiet.”

“Not in this house, Ivy!” boomed my father.

“No kidding.”

“We’ll make her a lawyer yet,” laughed Uncle Whit.

Thirteen pairs of legal eyes stared at me.

I looked away.

If I’d had guts, I would have said it.

Can’t you just let me be who I am?

It was seven
A.M.
I put my tape recorder on the dining room table and smiled at my father who was sitting across from me eating rum cake and coffee. I was about to interview him for the family history and I wasn’t expecting the search for truth to be pretty. Uncle Archie kept walking down the hall, pretending not to listen. He and Dad have been competing with each other since childhood.

“I’m so interested in your memories of childhood, Dad.”

Dad put down his fork tensely. “I had an excellent childhood.”

Uncle Archie coughed from the hall.

“I’m sure you did, Dad.”

“We were a strong family, a good family.”

Uncle Archie coughed again.

“You must have some wonderful memories of that, Dad.”

He sniffed and said nothing. Pulling molars was easier than this.

“In what ways were you a strong family, Dad? Can you remember some specific moments?”

Dad sniffed. “We loved the law. My father taught us legal precedent every night at the dinner table.”

This had to affect the digestion. “What kinds of things did you talk about?”

Dad squirmed. “Cases, politics, law journal articles.”

“So you and Uncle Archie had law school every night at dinner?”

Dad leaned forward. “
I
had law school,” he said quietly. “Archie had dinner.”

“Now just a minute!” Archie stormed into the room.
“You
needed the help.”

“I was always interested in learning more no matter how long it took,” Dad addressed me, “whereas
Archie
didn’t seem to think he needed it.”

“I was first in my class at Yale Law,” Archie spat. “You were
seventeenth.
From the first day, I felt in complete resonance with the law and its powers. I never wavered in my quest. I’ll let my record speak for itself.”

He was very rich and basically undefeated.

“Veni, vedi, vici.” Archie said smugly. That’s Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Julius Caesar said it first. Uncle Archie did not relate to regular guys.

I smiled at Uncle Archie, even though it hurt to. “Your father must have been so proud of you.”

Archie’s bushy eyebrows tightened. “He was.”

“How did he let you know?”

“By expecting me to excel at everything.”

“Excuse me, but didn’t that put a lot of pressure on you? It’s pretty hard to be excellent at everything.”

“Some of us manage.”

“What other things did Grandpa expect?” I asked cautiously.

Dad interjected, “Our father said given the chance to be a rich lawyer or a poor one, any son of his better choose the former.”

“I guess there was a reason Grandpa was called ‘Iron Will.’”

“He lived up to the name.” Dad and Archie said this in unison.

“Uncle Archie,” I pleaded. “Could I get my dad’s comments now? I’m going to interview you next. I promise.”

Archie’s chin stuck out in immovable Breedlove fashion.

“Please?” I added.

He retreated to the hall, but like all powerful lawyers, his presence remained.

I broached the next part gently. “Uh, Dad … how did Josephine feel about having law school at dinner?”

“Josephine,” Dad began coarsely, “had her own ways of not being present.”

“She certainly did,” Archie added from the doorway.

“I’ve seen pictures of her hiding under the dinner table …”

“That,” Archie asserted, “was one of many places.”

Dad got up angrily. “She deliberately walked away from this family, never turning back. She has lost her family privileges and I, for one, won’t waste any breath talking about her.”

He stormed out.

“Dad …”

I followed him, holding out the tape recorder. “We don’t have to talk about Josephine, Dad. We can talk about anything else. What you want from life … what your father wanted.”

He looked at me with irritation.

I went for a global perspective, held the tape recorder out, smiled caringly. “What do you want to say to future generations, Dad?”

“Ivy,” Dad intoned, “I want to be very clear about this. For future generations, including you. Breedloves have been born and bred to love the law. I have nothing more to say.” He marched up the stairs.

Uncle Archie checked my tape recorder to make sure it was on. “Personally, Ivy, I feel that my life didn’t begin until I went to law school.”