Evergreen (55 page)

Eric sat on the steps of the sales bungalow, waiting for his grandfather. To the left stretched long rows of completed houses, all alike under the gray March sky. To the right, frames were going up; hammers racketed; dust rose in spurts of reddish cloud when a truck dumped a load of bricks; cement mixers rumbled. Enormous pipes, wide enough for two men to crawl through, lay among coils of glittery copper wire. A truck ground up a small incline. Another dropped a load of sheetrock. Confusion out of which, to be fair about it, would come order.

Soon he would be starting the fourth year in his “new family,” so he had been on these visits to the building sites many times by now. He didn’t really mind, as long as he wasn’t asked to go too often. Today they had combined the trip with shopping for shoes and a raincoat. Grandpa said that was a man’s business, not a grandmother’s.

He didn’t really need a new raincoat. Gran would have looked at his old one and said, “It’ll do for another year,” just as Gran used to say, “You already have enough sweaters, you don’t need another one.” Or, “You’ve really had enough to eat, Eric,” a statement that would be unthinkable in the Friedman house.

Here, food was urged upon you, more than you could swallow sometimes. Here, something was always being bought for you. “You like the sweater? It’s nice, I’ll get it for you.” Giving was a way of loving, not as a substitute
for time or caring but only because, Eric realized, they never seemed to find enough ways. If Chris and the family had had any worries about how he would be loved—and he had no reason to think so—they needn’t have had them. He was bathed, surrounded and enveloped with it.

Chris wrote to him regularly. The other Guthries wrote from wherever they happened to be. Cards were mailed on ‘round-the-world cruises. Greetings and small presents came from the house that the elder Guthries had rented in the south of Portugal. Chris wrote really long letters with descriptions of Venezuela and snapshots of the children sent, Eric knew, to stave off any loneliness Chris thought he might be feeling. Eric tried to respond in kind. I’ve made the basketball team, playing forward. I got a new bike for my birthday. Everybody is good to me. I’ve got lots of friends. I’m in a new scout troop.

The truth was more complex than these flat facts. It was so very different, this household. For one thing, it was so busy. The sense of a busyness almost hectic came from his grandfather. Take today: it was supposed to be his free day. But as always there was some emergency which he absolutely had to attend to, even today, with Passover starting at sundown. He was always rushing somewhere. Eric had been surprised to learn that his grandparents had only lived seven years in town; they were as involved as if they had been there all their lives. His grandmother was on the hospital board and so many other charitable boards that he couldn’t remember them all. Grandpa had built a chapel for the new temple and turned over his half of the profits as a gift. (Grandpa wouldn’t have told him, but Aunt Iris had; she was so proud of him.) Last week a policeman had been run over chasing a suspect and the town had taken up a collection for his widow and children; Grandpa was the head of the committee. There was talk of his being appointed to a state commission to study public housing. No, he was not the kind of man with whom a boy could spend long afternoons in the woods with book and
binoculars, hunting for birds. He wouldn’t have been interested, even if he had had the time.

Perhaps, though, that wasn’t fair? When you thought of his life and where he had come from? Once in New York they had driven past the house on Ludlow Street where he had grown up and past the house on Hester Street where Nana had come as an immigrant. He’d been shocked at the narrow, crowded streets and the mean houses. He’d never seen such places except vaguely in pictures.… What could you learn of forests and birds living in places like those?

Last fall before school opened Grandpa had had to go to Boston on business, and Nana had suggested they travel north through New England for a few days. It was surprising, but Grandpa had agreed. They had gone all the way up to Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire, staying in old wooden hotels with sunflowers in the yard and stacks of pancakes to start the chilly mornings. They’d walked around the white little towns and Nana had gone into antique shops and, bought knickknacks of old glass.

“Keeps a woman happy, buying toys,” Grandpa had said, and winked at Eric.

They had walked down a road, Grandpa and Eric, and stopped on a bridge over a stream where a couple of boys were fishing.

“Know anything about fishing?” Grandpa had asked and when Eric said yes, he’d often used to fish for trout outside of Brewerstown, he’d looked out over the sloping fields where the corn stubble was dry, and then to the hills, to the far blue ranges overlapping one another; he had looked and looked and finally said, “There’s so much I’ve never seen, Eric.”

So perhaps it wasn’t right to say he wouldn’t be interested.

On the way south it was Nana who had made a suggestion, as if she had been reading Eric’s mind. “Maybe we could go back through New York State and Eric could see Brewerstown again.”

It wasn’t that he’d been afraid to ask. By this time he knew he could ask them for anything and they would give it or do it. The reason was that he hadn’t wanted them to think he was homesick or not happy with them. They were so dreadfully sensitive about him! Once he had overheard his grandmother talking to that old lady Ruth who came to visit.

“Eric has grown even closer to our hearts than Maury was at that age,” she had said. “Joseph used to be strict with Maury, remember? But Eric can do anything he wants.” And she had sighed. “I don’t suppose he can have any idea of what he means to us.”

They would have been surprised to learn that he did have, that he observed far more than they knew. He saw, for instance, that when Grandpa was working especially hard and long he could be quite cross with Nana. Small things irritated him, a purse or a pair of gloves left lying on a chair, or being kept waiting for five minutes. And Nana didn’t answer him back. But he was never cross with Eric, never once, although Nana sometimes was, but not very often, either.

They were soft with him because they were afraid he wouldn’t love them, he knew that clearly. There had been times when he’d been so sorry for himself, especially during the first year; no kid he’d ever known had been in his position. In a way he still sometimes felt a little sorry for himself. But most times he was more sorry for the two old people, he didn’t know just why.

So they had stopped in Brewerstown. Driving down the main street toward the house he’d had a sick feeling and slumped in the car, hoping nobody he knew would see him. He’d remembered the day he left the house almost three years before. Gran had gone back to the hospital where she was to die. They had carried her out, all shrunken and dark yellow, with a strange unpleasant odor not like Gran, who had always smelled of lemon soap. When he had gone down the front walk for the last time he had been thinking that the house would be lonesome for them. On the way
out he had stopped to stake an enormous peony head that otherwise would have drooped in the dust along the front walk; Gran was so particular about her peonies. He’d tried in those last minutes to memorize everything: the hawthorne tree, a real hawthorne from England, with wicked needles; the mulberry bush where he used to make a shady cave for himself and George when they were both very young. It had seemed to him that all of these were aware that he was going away. He’d gone down the path between Grandpa and Nana, strangers then, had got into their car and all the way down the road, until the house was out of sight, had not allowed himself to look back, had just stared straight ahead.

So now they had come up before the house again and, astonishingly, it looked the same. There was a doll carriage on the front walk. A baby carriage with a mosquito netting stood on the porch. They had sat in the car observing a croquet set on the side lawn and wash blowing on the line near the garage. The house was alive, as if Eric had never lived in it and left it.…

“Would you like to go in?” Nana had asked. “I’m sure the people wouldn’t mind—”

“No,” he’d said firmly. “No.” They had understood and started the car and driven away.

Wanting to say something, Eric had pointed out the horses in the Whitelys’ field. “That’s Lafayette, the brown and white one. I used to ride him almost every day.”

“You never said you could ride! Why didn’t you tell us? I’ll buy you a horse,” Grandpa had exclaimed. “There’s a good stable not fifteen minutes away from our house!”

“No,” he’d refused. “No, thanks. I don’t have the time now, with school and basketball practice and everything.”

But that wasn’t the truth. The joy of riding, the free wind, the horse-companion—all that belonged to the other life. He mustn’t mix them up. It had been confusing enough. He must keep the lives separate. That other was finished and closed. Forget it.

The door swung open now and Mr. Malone came out. He sat down with Eric on the step.

“Your grandfather will be through in a couple of minutes.” He wiped his forehead. “This is some big job, let me tell you. Think you’d like to run this business?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Eric answered politely.

“Silly question, wasn’t it? How could you know? But you will! My boys have taken over magnificently. And your grandfather will be in seventh heaven the day you hang your hat in our office.” He lowered his voice. “You know, Eric, he’s a different man since you came. Not that there was anything wrong before, but now it’s as if he’d shed years. I can tell. I’ve known him long enough. You know how long I’ve known him?”

“No, sir.”

“It was in 1912. Let’s see, that’s thirty-nine years. We’ve seen a lot of life together. Did he ever tell you how I was wiped out in the stock market in ‘29 and how he took care of me?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, of course, he wouldn’t. But I’ll never forget! He fed me and my whole family until I was able to pull myself together again. Yes,” Mr. Malone said, “old times. Old times. Seeing you here reminds me of when your father used to come to visit the job in the city. He was younger than you are. You don’t mind my mentioning your father?”

“No, sir.”

“‘Sir.’ I like the way you say ‘sir,’ although I wouldn’t object if you didn’t. But it shows you’ve been well brought up. Kids these days don’t say it. Except the parochial school kids.
They
have manners. They have to, or Sister would rap their knuckles for them.”

Strange how many different kinds of people there were around here, Eric reflected. Mr. Malone was so Catholic! And one of the engineers was Chinese; after you got used to his odd face you could see it was really handsome.

“Your grandfather had better put a move on.” Mr. Malone
looked at his watch. “If he wants to be home in time for the Seder.”

Imagine Mr. Malone reminding his grandfather of the Seder!

Grandpa came out and they got into the car. “Some project, hah?” he said, as they bumped their way around bulldozers and cranes. “Three million dollars’ worth! Don’t get me wrong, we don’t make that out of it.” He laughed. “Not by a couple of long shots, we don’t. What I meant was, we have to get that much together from the banks and syndicates to get the thing started. A thousand hours of headache, I can tell you that. But it’s a great challenge, Eric, a thrill to drive past when it’s all finished, and see the cars in the driveways, curtains in the windows, kids playing on the sidewalks. To think that you—we—conceived it in our heads and saw it through. Think you’d like it?” he asked, as Mr. Malone had done.

“There’s an awful lot you have to know,” Eric said.

“Ah, but you’d take to it like a duck to water, you would. We sold nineteen houses last weekend alone. What do you think of that?”

“Gosh,” Eric said.

“Say, it’s your birthday next week, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you want. You never do.”

Actually it seemed to him that he already had everything. But then, as the car turned a curve and they passed a pair of gates set in stone pillars, he suddenly did think of something he would like.

“You know what I would like, Grandpa? If it isn’t too expensive, I think it would be great if you’d join the Lochmuir Club. Then I’d have a place for tennis anytime I wanted. Even in the winter.”

“The Lochmuir Club? What do you know about that?”

“It’s really nice. I was there, remember, last year when those friends of Chris’s were visiting relatives in town? And Chris asked them to look me up? They took me out to dinner there.”

“I didn’t know that’s where you had gone.”

“Some of the kids at school belong. They’ve got squash courts and an indoor pool. The swimming pro there trained for the Olympics, too.”

“Sounds very fine,” Grandpa said slowly.

“So you think we could join, do you?”

“No,” Grandpa said, “we couldn’t.”

“Is it too expensive? Is that why?” Although, if that was the reason, it would be the first time his grandfather had ever denied anything because of it.

His grandfather took his eyes off the road for a moment. “That isn’t the reason. Don’t you know what the reason is?”

“No.”

“Think, Eric.”

It dawned upon him, and a warm flush prickled his neck. “Is it because you’re—”

“Don’t be afraid to say it. Because we’re Jewish and we are not admitted to that club. Not as members. Not as guests in the dining room. You never knew about that?”

“Well, I’ve read things here and there, but I guess I’ve never thought about it very much.”

“No, you haven’t had to, have you?” His grandfather’s mouth looked grim.

They rode for a few minutes in silence. Then Eric said, “Those people said they were coming back east this summer and they’d call me again. I’ll tell them I can’t go.”

“You don’t have to do that. You can go.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“Well, it’s up to you.” Another silence. Then his grandfather turned with a smile, a manufactured smile? Eric wondered. “Well, here we are, in plenty of time to change for your grandmother’s big dinner. You remember, of course, that we dress for Seder, Eric.”