The Immigrant’s Daughter (3 page)

“About that silly little act we put on? We're not heartless, Mother, but if you bleed for everything — well, how much blood does one have?”

“I know.”

Carla was silent. Barbara stepped out of the car and into the driver's seat. Sam held open the back seat door for Carla, but Carla said, “No, I'd like to sit in front with Barbara.”

“Sure.”

Barbara just glanced at Carla. A few moments after the car began to move, Carla reached out tentatively and touched Barbara's arm. Then Carla burst into tears. Barbara slowed the car and took it off the road onto the shoulder.

“What in hell is this all about?” Sam wanted to know.

“Sam, please shut up,” Barbara said. She got out of the car, walked around and opened the door on Carla's side. Carla came out of the car into Barbara's arms, and embracing her, holding her soft, warm body against her own breast, Barbara understood that this was something women could do, a kind of human contact that men had lost long, long ago.

“I only wanted you to love me,” Carla whimpered.

“I know. I do, truly.”

Back in the car, Barbara drove on again, thinking that this short trip to the Napa Valley could turn into some kind of Voltairean adventure, going on and on, encounters with the hurt, the wise, and the foolish. And what was wrong with her, herself, Barbara Lavette, that here she was at sixty years and supposedly a woman of experience and insight, yet she had never really tried to comprehend this dark, tumultuous woman her son had married? The rich and the poor, always the rich and the poor, something she had wrestled with all her life, the difference being so basic and so deep, like all the apparently unalterable differences this world presented, black and white, Chicano and Anglo.

Sometime around nineteen twenty or nineteen twenty-one, Carla's father, Cándido Truaz, had come to work at Higate Winery, to become foreman, to have Jake Levy build him a house on the property. Carla had been born there on the grounds of Higate, had grown to womanhood there, had played as a child with the children of the Levys and Lavettes in a kind of tangled relationship that she as a child never really understood, except that she did come to realize that the brown-skinned were the disinherited and the white-skinned were the inheritors.

God, help me; Barbara pleaded the thought. Nothing was worse than to face one's own inadequacy and insensitivity. It was too much of being Barbara Lavette. If age did nothing else, it sometimes brought along with the wrinkles a kind of insight.

She sighed and said, “We're almost there, so I imagine we'll have no more adventures. But what shall we tell them about the clothes? We look like we've been through a battle.”

“So we shall tell them about the battle,” Sam said.

“I wore my best dress,” Carla said, mournfully.

“Clothes don't matter. The dress can be cleaned and they have plenty of clothes there.” Then she said to Carla, softly, “Forgive me, please.”

“For what?”

“Just forgive me.”

Sam listened in dubious silence. Emotional outflowing disturbed him. It gave him a feeling of being naked in a bad dream.

They had done this up brown, and peach and white, which were the colors of the enormous tent they had raised. This was to be only the family to celebrate Barbara's sixtieth birthday, but it was the family in the Western, not in the Eastern sense. A California family, settled there in the last hundred years, was limited; and with this knowledge of limitation and the sense of awayness and loneliness that prevailed before the coming of easy air transport and cheap long-distance telephoning, a family tended to cling to the most fragile relationships. A new family emerged because the Pacific Ocean, only a few miles away, made a barrier to Westward wandering, and in this case, the big old winery was a magnet of sorts. It was ruled over by Clair Harvey Levy, Jake's widow, and operationally it was guided by Adam Levy, Jake's son. Eloise was his wife. Freddie Lavette was Eloise's son from her first marriage, to Thomas Lavette, and Freddie and his half brother, Joshua, were totally dedicated to the growing of grapes and the making of wine. Adam's brother, also Joshua, had been killed in the Pacific during World War II, and the third child of Jake and Clair, Sally Levy, had married Barbara's half brother, Joseph Lavette. It went on from there, and Barbara could remember trying to explain the family quilt to Boyd. He never quite got it all straight and sorted out. When Sally's daughter, May Ling, one-quarter Chinese, married Freddie Lavette, no one could comprehend what their previous blood relationship had been. Along the way, other families had interacted and interconnected: the Cassalas, who were a kind of royal Italian clan such as existed only in San Francisco during the first half of the century, and the Devrons, who owned the better part of downtown Los Angeles.

Along with these, there was the Truaz family, Carla's family, who lived on the place, big, barrel-chested Cándido, his wife, two kids besides Carla; and there were also various and sundry grandchildren and half a dozen other kids whom Barbara could not properly place, and, in the brash, bright pavilion, a five-piece mariachi band. The cooking was Mexican, under the supervision of Cándido's wife, Martha: huge pots of chile beans, stacks of tortillas, wide bowls of mole, succulent chicken immersed in a wonderful bitter chocolate sauce, saffron rice mixed with shrimp, red snapper Vera Cruz, and wine, red wine, which was in tribute to old Jake Levy, who had never considered white wine to be a drink fit for a grown man.

And Barbara, seeing all this, said to herself, ruefully, And I would have missed this and sulked. How awful that would have been.

They loved her, and such expressions of love filled her with guilt, something she had puzzled over all her life.

In Eloise's bedroom, dressed in a clean skirt and blouse that Eloise had provided, Barbara confessed the small agony of being kissed and embraced by so many people.

“Yes, I always feel that way — filled with guilt,” Eloise said.

“Do you know why?”

“No, not really. Do you, Barbara?”

“Sort of. You possess deep down the notion of being undeserving of love — or undeserving of anything good, one might say, and then you receive it and it's a mistake, like a package being delivered to the wrong person. I told you about that dreadful accident. The children weren't hurt badly, but the driver of the school bus was killed, and less than a half hour later, Sam was passing around a champagne bottle, and all I could think of was the poor broken body of the man as the firemen dragged him out of the bus, and I was sick with guilt. But why? One moment I say it's the sense of being undeserving of love, and then that doesn't explain it—”

“My parents loved me too much,” Eloise said. “I was a pretty little doll — a precious thing, I suppose they felt, but not a person. But today, you and Carla and Sam saved those children's lives. I've never seen Carla like that. It did something to her.”

“Yes — to all of us.”

“The skirt is perfect on you,” Eloise said, and then she sat down and began to cry. Her husband, Adam, knocked, opened the door and waited, his hand on the knob. He was a tall, slender man, with a pleasant freckled face, sunburned arms and orange hair turning white. He stood in the doorway watching his wife for a long moment, and then said, more harshly than Barbara had ever heard him speak to Eloise before, “It's got to stop! The boy is alive and well, and I will not live out my life with a self-pitying bundle of tears.”

Surprisingly, at least to Barbara, Eloise snapped, “I am not self-pitying, Adam! I won't have you talk to me like that!”

Adam started to speak — and swallowed his words. He was nervous, distraught.

“In front of Barbara,” Eloise said, unhappily.

“I'm sorry.” He went to Eloise, but she retreated into herself, her head bent. He looked at Barbara helplessly.

“She'll be all right,” Barbara said. “Just leave us together, Adam. Please.”

“I don't know,” Adam said. “I shouldn't have said that. I'm not myself either. God Almighty,” he said to Eloise, “you know how much I love you! We have more damn blessings than ninety-nine percent of the people on this earth!” And with this, he walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Barbara handed Eloise a box of tissues. “We have this in common,” Barbara said. “We're both of us the easiest cry on the Coast. Tears frighten men. It's our old, old weapon, and some men go into an absolute panic with it. Boyd did — just went to pieces — and it appears that your Adam disintegrates just as easily.”

“And I don't cry that much. I was so strong all through this agony of Joshua's. Even when I learned that they'd amputated his leg, I managed. I did manage. But two weeks ago, he got his permanent prosthesis, and somehow that — I don't know. It did something to me —”

“I can understand that,” Barbara said.

“He became so angry, Joshua did. He was never really against that filthy war. You know, he wouldn't even discuss Vietnam. Oh, he had one awful fight with Freddie, but then when Freddie went to jail for nine months as a conscientious objector, Joshua didn't have a word to say against him. He was in boot camp with the marines then. He just said, His way and my way — they don't mix. But since he came back, his hatred of the war and the government and Johnson — he becomes livid if anyone mentions Johnson. To him, it was Johnson's war. I've never seen anyone change like that —”

“But people do.”

“I know. He had to spend those months in the hospital, and that was torment time, but I thought it was easing up. He said to Freddie that he'd never sleep with a girl again,” woefully. “Can you imagine, Barbara, that no woman should ever look at his wound? But I thought that would change. I still do, but when this prosthesis was fitted, he just withdrew into himself, and it's been awful. And then Freddie gets the notion of making this huge dance card — you know Freddie adores you — and everyone who wants to dance with you signs it. Josh wouldn't. I know I cry too much.”

Barbara found Joshua sitting on a bench outside the old stone aging building, one leg bent, the leg with the prosthesis stretched out in front of him. She had seen him in the hospital, but this was the first time she had seen him since his release and return to Higate. He had changed a great deal from the chubby, cheerful boy she remembered in years past. He was bone-lean, and his face was full of sharp edges and angry knots. He had the same pale blue eyes as her son, Sam; cold eyes. As Barbara approached him, he began to work his way to his feet. She accepted this, feeling that if she told him not to rise, it would have been taken as a direct insult.

“Aunt Barbara.”

She was actually Freddie's aunt, but since Freddie was his half brother, he had always called her that. He kissed her cheek, almost absently. Barbara remained silent, and finally Joshua said, “I'm glad to see you.”

“Yes, we have something in common,” Barbara said flatly. “We lost part of ourselves. You lost a leg. I lost the man I loved better than I ever loved another. He was a part of me, and I lost him. I lost the right to live without endless loneliness. I lost the hope of a warm and decent old age in whatever time I have left. I lost the joy of sleeping with him, yes, of having intercourse with him, which I still need and want; of feeling his good protective warmth. All that — not with fake glory, but with the failure of his poor sick heart.” With that, she turned and began to walk away.

She had taken no more than three or four steps before he called after her, “Aunt Barbara!”

She turned and faced him.

“What in hell do you want of me?”

“I want to dance with you.”

“What!”

“Exactly. It's my birthday. That's what that big striped tent and all the rest is about over there, and you can hear the music and you can smell the chile beans even down here where you're hiding, and Freddie, I hear, made a dance card, and I want you on it.”

“I can't dance!”

“Why not?”

“Because I can't. Look at me.”

“That's bullshit, and you know it.”

He stared at her in astonishment, and then a long silence, the two of them staring at each other, and then Barbara smiled and then he smiled.

“Do you know what I'll look like, trying to dance?”

“Who cares?”

“I'll probably fall flat on my face.”

“I'll pick you up. Now take my arm and escort me back to the party.”

Clair Levy, Jake's widow, talked Barbara into staying overnight, and now with the party over and the wine drunk and the food eaten, Clair and Barbara sat in the kitchen of the old stone house that had been Clair's home ever since she and Jake had bought the winery. They were drinking tea and eating ham sandwiches that Clair had put together, neither of them having tasted much food during the course of the party.

“Good party?” Clair asked. Clair was seventy-four years old; her hair, once a marvelous burnished copper color, had turned white, and a lifetime on the farm — this winery being essentially a farm — had turned the skin of her face leathery and wrinkled. Withal, she was a handsome woman, tall, erect when she stood, a woman who worked all day with satisfaction and vigor. Barbara noticed her hands, splotched not with what they called liver spots, but with freckles. Clair ignored the modern warning against women with fair skin exposing themselves to the sun. “I love the warm sun,” she would say. “And I'm old. Nothing will change that.” But the hands were beautiful, strong, long-fingered.

“Oh, splendid,” Barbara assured her. “But such a great, important affair. I am so overwhelmed. It must have cost a fortune.”

“We needed a party. Money — oh, for heaven's sake, Barbara, I'm past giving two damns for money. With the new bottling plant in Vallejo, the winery's making more than enough money. But we needed a party. Oh, in any case, I wouldn't have missed your birthday. It's seven months since Boyd passed away. You needed something to shake you up.”