Searching for Caleb (27 page)

   It was the sixth of June and they were on their way to Caro Mill, Maryland, to celebrate their father's ninety-third birthday.

   Unfortunately his birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, which meant that no one who worked could come along. And Bea was confined to her bed with lower back pain. It was up to them: Lucy and the maiden aunts, and Two, who was now retired. Between them they had loaded the car with presents and fruit, a Thermos of Sanka, Laura May's needlework, Sarah's knitting, insect repellent, sunscreen, Bufferin, Gelusil, a Triple-A tour guide, a can of Fix-a-Flat, a fire extinguisher, six emergency flares, and a white banner reading SEND HELP. They had had the Texaco man check the gas, oil, water, brake fluid, transmission fluid, tire pressure, and windshield cleaner. Then Two nosed the car out into traffic and they were on their way, with enough horns honking behind them to remind Lucy of an orchestra tuning up. Young people nowadays were so impatient. Luckily Two was not a man who could be fussed, and he went on driving at his same stately tempo. In his old age he had shrunk somewhat, and was made to seem even smaller by his habit of tipping his head back as he peered through the windshield. His eyes were narrow blue hyphens. His mouth was pulled downward by two ropes in his neck. When he decided to turn left from the right-hand lane he signaled imperiously out the window, still facing front, maintaining his cool Apache profile for Lucy to marvel at while behind them more horns honked. "Kindly check the odometer, Lucy," was all he said. "I would be interested in knowing our mileage on this trip."

   "Yes, dear."

   Once they hit the open road they were dazzled by too much

   612 sunshine and too wide an expanse of fields. It was some time since they had been in the country. (One year ago today, to be exact.) Lucy longed for her wing chair in which she could sit encircled, almost, with the wings working like a mule's blinders to confine her gaze to the latest historical romance. The upholstery was embroidered in satin-stitch, which she loved to stroke absently as she read. Then in the back yard her Sea Foam roses were just opening; there were going to be more this year than ever before and she was missing one entire day's worth. And it was so much cooler and greener at home, so shadowy, so thickly treed that when you spoke outdoors your voice came echoing back, clear and close, as if reflected from a vaulted green ceiling not far above your head. Here the sun turned everything pale. Pinkish barns sped past and bleached gray roadbanks, and beige creeks spanned by wooden bridges like dried-up, whitening bones. Lucy turned and sought out her sisters-in-law-a double pair of webbed eyes reluctantly drawn to hers. "Really, traveling makes me sad," Lucy told them. But they didn't answer (Lucy always said such personal things), so she faced front again.

   At Plankhurst there was a very confusing crossroads and she sent Two thirteen miles out of the way before the mistake was realized. "Oh, I'm just so-I just can't tell you how badly I feel about this," she said. Two grunted. In the back seat her sisters-in-law gave her disappointed looks that made her want to cry. "I just seem to do everything wrong," she said. Nobody denied it.

   Two hours out of Baltimore they began to encounter signs for Caro Mill, although still it seemed they were in the depths of the country. The only buildings were farmhouses, widely scattered, and occasionally a little grocery store patched with soft drink ads. Then they swooped over a hill and there was the town all spread out before them, a clutter of untidy buildings. They had traveled this Main Street annually for years, although each time in a different location. They had passed this very Woolworth's, diner, pizza parlor, fabric store displaying dingy bolts of cloth turning gray along the creases. Still, Lucy sat up straighter and began perking the lace at the neck of her dress. Two pressed his thin white hair flat against his head, and in back there were rustles and whispers. "Oh, I do hope Father likes the-" "Remind me to ask Father if he wouldn't care to-" But Duncan was the one Lucy thought of, not her father-in-law at all. It was for Duncan she had bought this hat (only wouldn't he think the wooden cherries were-old-ladyish, maybe?) and put on these coins of rouge and her eighteen-hour girdle and the Sunday pearls. (Only come to think of it, hadn't he always laughed at the family's fondness for pearls?) She twisted her rings. "Perhaps he won't be home," she said.

   "Who?" Two asked, although of course he knew.

   "It's a working day. Though Justine said he comes home for lunch. But perhaps he won't. I mean, one time-"

   One time when they visited he had gone fishing with a friend. A plumber or something. Another time he had wandered around the house all afternoon wearing earphones on a very long cord, following a baseball game. You could only grasp the depth of the insult when you remembered that Duncan did not like sports and would prefer to do almost anything but listen to a game. "One time-" she said, but Two's voice cracked across hers like a whip.

   "Leave it," he said. "What'd you do with Justine's letter?"

   "Letter?"

   "Her letter, Lucy. Telling us how to get to their house."

   "Oh. Oh, why I-"

   She remembered suddenly that she had left the letter at home on the dining room buffet, but she didn't want to say so. "Why, someplace here," she said, riffling through her pocketbook. Two let out a long puff of air. He slowed and beckoned from the window, startling a fat lady standing on the median line. "Pardon me," he said. "We are looking for Watchmaker Street. For twenty-one Watchmaker Street."

   "Oh, Justine," the lady said.

   Everyone flinched. Justine's name was always bandied about so. Like common property.

   "Why, you just turn left at the next light," she said, "go two blocks and turn left again. That's Watchmaker Street."

   "Thank you."

   He rolled the window all the way up.

   Now they were silent, concentrating on the view, wondering what sort of house they were headed for. Hoping, just this once, for something really fine. But no. Of course: there it was, a flimsy, no-account little place.

   Tacked to the screen was what appeared to be a magazine ad for traveler's checks. YOU ARE FAR, FAR FROM HOME, it said, IN UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY . .

   . But then out flew Justine, barefoot, glowing, in a dress with a lopsided him. "Uncle Two!" she cried. "Aunt Lucy! You got here!" She hugged them-some of them twice over. She called for her grandfather, who naturally couldn't hear. She showed Laura May and Sarah up the rickety steps and into the house to find him, and then she ran out again to help Two and Lucy unload the trunk. "Duncan will be here in a minute," she said. "He's coming for lunch. Oh look! This is Aunt Bea's gift, I know the wrapping. Will you look at that bow?" But then she dropped it.

   Fortunately it was not breakable. Lucy had often wondered: was accident-proneness catching? Justine had been such a careful little girl. "I wrote and asked Meg to come too but they're having final exams," Justine said.

   "It seems to me these birthday parties get smaller every year. She sent her love to all of you."

   "Oh, bless her heart," Lucy said. "Well, some of these things are her wedding presents. Did we tell you we're giving her your great-grandma's silver?"

   Not a one of them was tactless enough to comment on Meg's manner of marrying.

   "Now," said Two. "Tell me straight. How's Duncan's business going?"

   "Oh, fine, Uncle Two. Just fine."

   "What is it again? Jewelry?"

   But then Grandfather Peck came down the steps, bending in an odd flimsy way at the knees, and he had to be greeted and fussed over. Lucy kissed his bristly white cheek, Two shook his hand. "Happy birthday!" Lucy shouted.

   "How's the what?"

   "Happy birthday!"

   He looked at her for a moment, considering. "Oh, very well, thank you," he said finally.

   "You don't have to shout, Aunt Lucy," Justine told her. "Only narrow in.

   You know what I mean?"

   "Oh yes," said Lucy, although she didn't. They went through this on every visit.

   Once they were inside the house, there was the usual difficulty in knowing what to say about it. Certainly some comment seemed called for.

   But the rooms were small and dark. The windows were curtained only by great tangles of plants all merging and mingling and sending long runners clear across the floor. There were not nearly enough places to sit. In one of the little back bedrooms, Lucy was horrified to glimpse an absolutely bare, rust-stained mattress, striped blue and white. It reminded her of the time her church group had toured a flophouse for their social service project. "Justine, dear heart," she said, "have we interrupted your bedmaking?"

   "My what? Oh no, I'm going to run the sheets down to the laundromat this evening."

   "Perhaps I could help you put the fresh ones on."

   "But I don't have any others," Justine said.

   Lucy sat down very suddenly on a chrome-legged chair that had been dragged out of the kitchen.

   Grandfather Peck never would open his presents until after lunch. He had them taken to the table, and meanwhile he and Two settled themselves in the living room and discussed business affairs. Since both of them were retired, it was a vague, wistful, second-hand sort of discussion. "Dan I believe is very much involved with that Kingham matter," Two said. "You remember Kingham."

   "Oh yes. What was that again?"

   "Well, let's see, I'm not quite . . . but he says it's moving just fine."

   "Fine, is it."

   Perhaps Two should not have retired just yet. But he would feel better when his brothers joined him-Dan in two years, Marcus the year after that. (Sixty-eight was the age they had agreed upon.) Then Claude and Richard could run things on their own. There was no point in working yourself straight into the grave. Still, Two seemed bored and listless as he sat sunk in a corner of the threadbare couch. His father nodded opposite him. His father was so aged that he had reached a saturation point; no new wrinkles had been added in years. He looked not much different from the way he had at seventy. Not much different from Two, as a matter of fact. They might have been brothers. This was how they all ended up, then: arriving at some sort of barrier and sitting down to wait for death, joined eventually by others who had started out later. In the end, the quarter-century that divided their generations amounted to nothing and was swept away. Lucy passed a hand over her own wispy, corrugated forehead. She looked at Two, a handsome man whom she had determined to call Justin back when they were courting, but finally she had given in and called him what his family did. They won, as they always had. Everything was leveled, there were no extremes of joy or sorrow any more but only habit, routine, ancient family names and rites and customs, slow careful old people moving cautiously around furniture that had sat in the same positions for fifty years.

   But just as she felt herself sinking into a marsh of despair, she heard Duncan's light quick step across the porch. She saw him fling the screen door open-such a tall boy, or man rather, with his eyes lit from within and that awning of fair hair flopping over his high, pure, untouched forehead. She rose and smoothed her skirt down and held her purse more rightly to her stomach. "Duncan, darling," she said. His kiss was as hurried as ever, brief and light as a raindrop, but she felt her heart floating softly upward and she was certain that this time everything was going to go wonderfully.

   For lunch Justine served baked ham, potatoes, and snap beans. Everyone was pleasantly surprised. "Why, Justine," said Two, "this is excellent.

   This ham is very tasty."

   "Oh, Grandfather did that."

   "Hmm?"

   They stared at her. She seemed perfectly serious. Her grandfather was absorbed in salting his beans and could not be contacted.

   For dessert they had a layer cake with nine large candles on it and three small ones. Lucy watched closely while it was sliced. "Is it a mix, dear?" she asked.

   "Oh, no."

   "You made it from scratch?"

   "Grandfather made it."

   This time, he looked up. He gave them a shy, crooked smile and then lowered his white eyelashes. "Why, Father Peck!" Lucy said.

   "I did the ham too," he said. "She tell you that?"

   "Yes, she did."

   "Also the potatoes. I baked them first, you see, then scooped them out .

   . . found it in Fannie Farmer. Some people call them potato boats."

   Two looked at his watch.

   "The cake is what is known as a war cake," said the grandfather. "It makes do with considerably less butter and eggs than we would normally use, you see. After all, we're living in reduced circumstances."

   He seemed to savor the last two words: reduced circumstances. Lucy thought they sounded smugly technical, like devaluated currency or municipal bonds. For a very brief moment she wondered if he didn't almost enjoy this life-these dismal houses, weird friends, separations from the family, this moving about and fortune telling. If he weren't almost proud of the queer situations he found himself in. But then Sarah said, "Remember Grandma's orange peel cake?" and his face became suddenly thin and lost.

   "Oh. Oh yes," he said.

   "She used to mix it secretly in the pantry. Remember? She said she would give the recipe to Sulie but Sulie says she never did. Although of course we can't be too sure of that."

   "I wonder what was in it," Justine said dreamily, and she paused so long with her knife in mid-air that Two grew impatient.

   "Come on," he said. He looked at his watch again. "It's one thirty-two.

   Do you always have dinner so late?"

   "Mostly we don't have dinner at all," Justine said.

   "I ask because last year we ate around noon. Dessert was served shortly before one."

   "Was it?"

   "The year before that, we ate even earlier."

   "Did we?"

   "Is this a new hobby of yours?" Duncan asked Two. "Are you planning to graph us?"