Evergreen (75 page)

That Iris may not be mine! My darling, my dear! It—it chokes me.… I think of how unforeseen she was: five years between births, and I’d been so troubled then, I hadn’t been near Anna very much. Yes, and I think—crazy thought—I’ve even thought that Iris looked a little like that Werner fellow. Crazy, crazy thought that I’ve got to drive out! That I will drive out! I ought to be ashamed of myself.

Yet there was something between the two of them, if not that. Some thing. I don’t know how far it went, but I know. Before our marriage or after?

When? Perhaps that day when I sent her to borrow the money? If it was, I have only myself to blame. I should never have made her go, never put her in a position where she—Alone in that house. All those dark stairs, dark wood banisters going up and up; a tall mirror at the end of the first flight to the room where the piano stood. Anna showed me once, and I never forgot the first time I had been inside a rich man’s house.

Or perhaps a meeting on some dusky winter afternoon? In an ornate hotel, the traffic marching down Fifth Avenue ten floors below. Glasses and bottles twinkling on a table: champagne, for Anna drinks no whiskey. Yes, a table. And a bed.

He closed his eyes, pressing them shut.

As for me, there could have been women. It’s so easy, especially when a man can buy things. Girls in the office. A lady lawyer at a closing once: tall, black hair coiled over a white collar. So easy. But there was never much time, I climbed so fast. Not enough time for that sort of thing. And I never really wanted it enough or I would have found the time, wouldn’t I? Never really wanted it enough.

Anna.

I didn’t think, when I asked her to marry me, that she would consent. There’d been nothing between us, no look, no slightest touch of the flesh to make me think I had any chance at all. Yet I asked and she said yes. In a way I knew that wasn’t how it usually happens between a man and a woman. In a way I knew even then that there was
something
.

She was so young. Naïve, not of the world. And still is, to a certain extent, though she would be annoyed to be told so. Never let her guess, never let her suffer because of my darkest thoughts. Understanding. Forbearance. Whatever you want to call it. For I have had so much, that she has given me. And we have had such a life together, she and I.

Anna, my love. My love.

There was the car now. He looked at his watch. She’d come home early, not wanting to leave him so long. He heard the garage door go down, then her steps on the gravel drive. Another car came, and a door slammed. More steps. Whose?

Then Theo’s and Anna’s voices, coming upstairs, the voices of Jimmy and Steve below them.

“Good afternoon.” Theo’s mock-professor voice. “How is the patient today?” And in his normal voice, “We drew up to the stop light at the same time and the boys and I got the idea of coming along to see you.”

“You’re always a sight for sore eyes, you people. How’s everything, Theo?”

His long-established greeting. It meant: How are you doing at the office? Busy enough but not overworked, I hope. Paying your bills with something left over after taxes. It meant: Is everything smooth at home? No troubles with the kids?

Theo’s long-established answers reassured him. Yes, yes, everything was fine and there was nice news: Jimmy had made the tennis team.

“Well, congratulations!” Joseph said. “And you, Steve?
You upset about something?” For Steve was frowning, with what Anna called his “buttoned-up” expression.

“No.”

“Go ahead,” Theo said. “You can tell Grandpa.” And, since Steve stayed silent, he went on, “Steve was at my office just now to do some papers on the copying machine. And he happened to overhear a conversation with a patient, a girl who’s going to have surgery because she doesn’t like the shape of her nose. Steve’s disgusted, not just with her, but with me! He thinks I should have booted the girl down the stairs along with her nose.”

Steve spoke up. “I said, with all the wounded and suffering people in the world you should be ashamed to waste your work on a spoiled bourgeoise.”

“Suffering is a matter of degree,” Theo said. “If her nose makes her miserable, even though that may seem ridiculous to you, it really isn’t ridiculous at all.”

“I don’t go for that argument. The fact is, you treat people like her because you make money doing it and that’s the only reason. The profit system again.”

“What’s wrong with the profit system?” Joseph demanded.

“What’s wrong? The profit system is wrecking the environment and destroying the human spirit. That’s all.”

The stance of the boy, his slight figure leaning against the wall, the proud lift of his head, angered his grandfather.

“Destroying the environment! What the devil do they teach these kids in school, anyway?”

“School!” Steve was scornful. “I do my own thinking! School doesn’t teach anything, except cramming for high marks.”

Joseph threw up his hands. “Bah! Socialist poppycock! It all comes down to one thing, this sort of talk. Envy. All this leveling business, pass-fail grades and that stuff; it’s the people who get Cs and Ds who want it. They may give you all sorts of high-flown moral reasons, but the plain fact is they envy the people who get As.”

“That doesn’t apply to me,” Steve said stiffly and accurately,
for he had always been an A student. “I’m not envious of anybody or anything. What I am much more is guilty, and you all should be too.”

Jimmy swung his tennis racket. “Aw, come on, Steve, lay off, will ya?”

But Joseph had been goaded and wanted to pursue the subject. “Guilty about what?”

“About living the way we do. You ought to be guilty about living in a house like this while millions of human beings live in shanties!”

“It took brains and hard labor to earn this house! Don’t you think a man deserves some rewards for his brains and labor?”

“There’s a lot of luck involved in making money.” Steve spoke quietly now, while Joseph could hear his own angry panting breath. “Luck and a little chicanery here and there, besides.”

“Steve! That’s going too far!” Theo said furiously.

Joseph raised his hand. “Leave him! Chicanery, is it? I want you to know that your grandfather has never been party to a crooked deal! Do you hear that? Not a thing to be ashamed of. I’ve built honestly. People need shelter and I build it for them. Most of them never lived so well before. And I’m supposed to be a louse because I make some money doing it?”

“Joseph! You’re getting too excited!” Anna cried. “You’re not supposed—Boys, why don’t you go outside for a while and practice serves against the garage wall?”

“Or start walking home,” Theo said. “I’ll catch up with you on the way.” And when they had gone downstairs, “I’m sorry. Steve is tough to cope with. We have this all the time.”

“He’s angry inside,” Anna said. “Maybe because Jimmy is taller?” she questioned thoughtfully. “That can be very hard, having your younger brother grow taller than you. And now he’s breaking out with acne besides.”

“My wife, with the excuses,” Joseph grumbled. “With the psychology.”

“Never mind,” Anna said. “There are things going on inside of a child that we can’t guess at. Iris said the guide told her Steve’s IQ is a good bit higher than Jimmy’s, and still Jimmy does just as well, and he seems so much more interested in things, his stamps and animals and tennis and—”

“Jimmy!” Joseph interrupted. “Jimmy’s always been easy on the nerves. His own and everybody else’s.”

“Jimmy has always had an accepting attitude,” Theo said. “He enjoys life. No credit to him, he’s very, very lucky to have been made that way. He just seems to look at things clearly and calmly. A couple of nights ago he asked: ‘If you and Mother should die what would happen to this house?’ I was taken aback for a second and then I realized it was a perfectly reasonable question. But Steve flew into a rage with Jimmy. He had furious tears in his eyes. I’m sure it wasn’t because of thinking that Jimmy might have hurt our feelings. Goodness knows, Steve never takes much heed of other people’s feelings! It must have been because he’s terrified of death, poor guy, of our deaths and being left alone.” Theo sighed and no one spoke for a moment. Then he stood up. “Ah, well, they don’t know when they’re well off, do they? I suppose we didn’t either, at that age. But it will all pass. I just hope Steve doesn’t get involved in anything too deeply before it does. He’s been talking about going south this summer on one of those marches.”

Joseph intercepted Anna’s distress signal. “Anna, stop protecting me. I’m not dead or dying yet.”

“Of course you aren’t! It’s just that you get too upset. You always do!”

“Mama’s right,” Theo apologized. “I shouldn’t have brought the subject up. Don’t worry, I’ll handle things.”

“I know you will, Theo. But it isn’t easy. What we do for our children! We spend our life’s blood—”

“There was a very fine speaker at the luncheon,” Anna said. “The subject was hospital costs. You would have been interested, Theo.”

Joseph smiled. Transparent! Keep the conversation impersonal.
Don’t upset the old man. We’ll just take up the time until the visit’s over.

Anna and Theo forgot how clearly words carried up the stairs, even though, a few minutes later, they spoke so quietly at the front door.

Joseph could hear Theo say, “He’s rather low in spirits today, isn’t he? To be so upset about Steve—I don’t think it can really just be Steve’s nonsense.”

“No, no, I know him. I should, shouldn’t I? He’s thinking about Maury and Eric. He gets this way sometimes, even before the attack, he did.” Anna’s voice lowered. “He can’t bear to hear the mention of their names. I always try, when the day comes around that either of their names is called on the roll of the dead at temple, I always try to make some excuse not to go. I say I don’t feel well or something.”

“And does it work?”

Anna laughed. “Of course not! But I try.”

You never know with Anna, what she’s hiding, what planning, always to spare me. She thinks I don’t know that for a time years back things weren’t going well between Iris and Theo. They all covered up, but I knew. I didn’t ask because I guess I was afraid to know. Anyway, they wouldn’t have told me.

Thank God it’s all right now; I can tell that too. He’s a good man, Theo is. I like to see him come walking up from the tennis courts with the kids, talking French or German with them. And good to Iris: his voice is gentle when he speaks to her. I hear that. He’d better be.

My dear, my heart. From the day she was born, the homely, tender, appealing little thing.… Yet she’s done well. She’s turned out to be a good-looking woman in her way, not in the popular fashion, but different looking, distinguished. That’s the word: distinguished. Iris.

That kid Steve had better not cause her any heartache. I’ll tell him so one of these days, too. Chicanery, he said. What a word! Luck! He makes it sound so cheap, like crapshooting or slot machines. Luck! All that labor, getting
up before five to reach the building sites in those early years! Scrambling for contacts and financing, sweating out the mortgage payments, that was luck?

He says we don’t give value for the money. Granted, we don’t give the value they gave in this house that I’m living in. How can we, with the building trades unions getting more and more every year? Squeezing the bosses dry. Still, I know a man wants his family to live decently, wants to give them things. I ought to know! So what’s the answer? That I don’t know. I’m sorry I don’t.

I understand in a way what Steve means, even though he thinks I don’t. He’s a smart boy, the smartest of the lot. But I can’t take to him the way I do to the others, my baby guy Philip or Jimmy. Jimmy has merry eyes. I just thought of that. Maybe because of Steve’s stringy long hair? And I like immaculate fingernails, especially when I’m eating. I can’t help it, I hate dirt. Damned arrogant kid! And still, you can feel something. So unhappy. Poor Steve. Wish I could get to him. Poor kid.

Anna came back with a tray, two cups of tea and a small plate of biscuits. “You’re to have this and then a nap. Doctor’s orders, so don’t grumble.”

“Who the hell needs a nap?”

“You do,” she said calmly. “You want to get back to the office, so do what you’re told.”

She sat down, stirring the tea. Her face was placid, dignified. Firmness in the softness. Remarkable woman! Why do I always think of what my father would have said? Quality, he’d have said. He used to pick up a fine piece of cloth and smooth it between his thumb and finger. “Quality. You can always tell,” he’d say.

“What are you thinking?” Anna asked.

“Of you. I didn’t make a mistake when I saw you sitting on the stoop at Levinsons’.”

“I’m glad.”

“Are you, Anna? Sometimes I wonder. I’ve had too much time to think, this past month. You remember, just before I had the attack, we were at that benefit for the blind? You
were talking to that fellow who publishes the art books, and I thought, “There’s the kind of man she ought to have married, the kind of man who speaks her language.’”

“You want to get rid of me?”

“Don’t make a joke of it! I’m serious.” He reflected: ought he to tell her the rest? Yes, yes, have it all out, all of it. “I know I promised you once never to talk about the subject again, but lately I haven’t been able to put it out of my mind. About you and Werner—he was a man who spoke your language, wasn’t he?”

Anna sighed deeply. “Oh, Joseph! Not again?”

“I’m sorry. I know you assured me there never was anything, but so many things don’t fit: words, gestures, incidents. I needn’t go over them again, because you know them and I know them. But they don’t quite fit, and my sense, my instinct—”

“Senses and instincts don’t prove anything,” Anna interrupted. “I gave you rational answers. I can’t do more than that. I feel as though I were using a sword against cobwebs when you talk about ‘instincts.’”

Even in her quiet denial he heard defiance. If he were not still an invalid she would have been more vehement, he knew, more angry. He mustn’t press too hard, mustn’t look for trouble. He was lucky, after all, to have had her all these years, he told himself for the thousandth time. A woman like Anna could have had anyone.