Evergreen (68 page)

“It’s very tempting, very alluring and very sudden, Chris,” he said cautiously.

“Of course. You don’t think I expect a decision this minute, do you? I’m coming back around Christmas and we can talk some more then. But I do want to leave one thought with you, Eric. No, two. The first is obvious: that there’s a real future in a company like ours. The second ties in with your ambition to write.”

“In what way?”

“Well, in order to write you have to have something to write about, don’t you? You have to know people and cultures and conflict. Think of the memory bank you could establish on a job like this! Enough to draw against for the rest of your life! And I’d see that you had plenty of time for exploring.”

Again, that quick look of estimation. Eric answered it slowly.

“It would be such a—a
defeat
for my grandparents.”

“Yes, but they’ve had their lives and done what they wanted. Now it’s your turn, isn’t it? In time I’ll have to be moving over myself, to make room for my own boys. I’m almost forty-two, you know.” Chris summoned the waiter and took out his wallet. “I’ve got a train to make. Eric, it’s been great. Every time I see you I realize how much I’ve missed you. Think it over; there’s no rush, but I truly believe this could be the start of something great for you. I’ll get in touch. And oh, yes, remember me at home.”

For the last year he had been feeling that his life was sliding steadily toward the unknown. Except for the few who knew that they were fated for something definite like law or medicine or engineering, this feeling was common, Eric knew. It wasn’t strong enough to be called panic; it
was just
there
, a kind of scary drift into a world in which perhaps one would never be entirely at home. He tried to imagine himself sitting in the office every morning of his life, conferring with bankers and mortgage brokers, then driving out to an enormous tangle of construction out of which would emerge another grid of look-alike, boxy houses. Not that it wasn’t a decent product and therefore a productive life, but as far as he was beginning to understand, it wasn’t something to which he could look forward with any exhilaration. When a man has completed a thing he had wanted with all his heart to do, he sits down to rest and says, “There, that’s over. I wanted to do it and I’ve done it!” It wasn’t like that at all, at least as far as he could see.

So he kept thinking about what Chris had offered.

He certainly hadn’t intended to mention it to anyone, yet one day when he was home over Thanksgiving he found himself telling Aunt Iris.

“Maybe I’m rationalizing the whole thing because I want the adventure,” he concluded.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting adventure, is there?”

“I suppose not. And ever since Chris planted this seed the building business has looked duller and duller.”

Iris said slowly, “Without actually thinking it over, I’ve sort of assumed you would write. I don’t know how or in what form, but I’ve just thought of you that way. Perhaps because your father and I both had vague desires to do something with words … only, neither of us had any true gift and I believe you have.”

“One doesn’t just rent a room, buy a typewriter and begin to write,” Eric argued and, paraphrasing Chris, “you have to live first and have something to write about.”

“True. And writing isn’t what you’re asking about right now anyway, although it might well tie in, as your cousin says.”

“You’re avoiding an answer. What I want to know is, should I consider the offer?”

“Should you hurt my parents, you mean. That’s what you’re asking me, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry. It’s not fair of me to expect you to be neutral, is it?”

“No, it isn’t. Because I know what it will do to them. And still I know that you’ve a right to be somebody yourself, not just somebody’s beloved grandson.” Iris sighed. “So I guess I’ll just have to throw the decision back in your lap.”

Eric nodded soberly. “Only don’t mention it, please? Not even to Uncle Theo. I need time to sweat this out myself.”

“Not a word. I promise.”

Just before Christmas he and Chris met again at the same place.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” Eric told him.

Chris was surprised. “What’s the obstacle?”

“I keep thinking about Grandpa and Nana. He’s had me down at the office telling everybody I’ll be working there next year; he’s even got my room set aside.
She’s
bought Early American prints for the walls.” And when Chris began a gesture, he went on hurriedly, “I know, you’ll say it’s my life and that’s true, but it’s a big decision and I can’t make it in such a hurry.”

“Listen,” Chris said, “I want you to come in later this week. I’ll get an appointment with the people here in New York for an interview. Then whatever questions you have they can answer and you won’t be making the big decision just on my say-so. Only one thing—” he lowered his voice and glanced at the adjoining table, “when you give your name, spell it the way you used to, will you? Freeman? It’s more American that way. I’ve told them that’s your name.”

“Why did you do that? What difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference. Take my word for it. Particularly in the Middle East, everything heating up between the Arabs and Israel.”

“You mean that I shouldn’t appear to be Jewish.”

“Well, you aren’t, are you? You were brought up an Episcopalian
and you’re my cousin. Who would think of asking whether you were Jewish?”

“I’m also Joseph Friedman’s grandson.”

“Of course, of course. But listen, Eric, it’s a chilly, practical world and you’ve got to be practical to survive in it. I strongly advise you to play that side down for business purposes. Especially this business.”

Eric grimaced. “Lousy. Dishonest. And worse than that, cruel.”

“Why cruel? You aren’t doing or saying anything hurtful. It’s just a case of
not
saying something, a case of omission.” And when Eric didn’t answer, he added urgently, “Besides, aren’t you forgetting the other side of yourself? Gran and Gramp and all the life you had with them?”

“Chris! You think I could forget them?”

“I certainly don’t. And after all, it isn’t as if you were a religious Jew. You haven’t gone over to the religion, have you, Eric?” Chris asked abruptly.

“To tell the truth, I haven’t any religion at all,” Eric said. His voice sounded somber to his own ears.

“Well, that’s the fashion these days, isn’t it? So shall I make the appointment for this week or do you want to put it off till my next trip?”

“Put it off,” Eric said. “As long as there’s no hurry.”

After leaving Chris he walked down Fifth Avenue toward Grand Central. Christmas lights in shop windows and out of doors rippled and streamed like moving water. “Adeste Fideles” clanged from a loudspeaker above the entrance to a department store. The citadel of Christmas, emporium of glitter, cathedral of twentieth-century America. The department store. He felt unusually depressed.

A bank advertised its loan service under the smiling photograph of a young couple admiring an expensive sports car. Was that the measure of contentment, the measure of a man, his ability to provide a sports car? Or a motorboat, a diamond, or any of the things for which people put themselves in hock? Worth his weight in gadgets, a man was.

Climb, forge ahead, acquire, be smart, even if you have
to lie a little, even if you have to deny the truth about yourself to do it. Why not?

He began to walk faster, to breathe more deeply of the icy air. Morbid today, misanthropic. The world really isn’t all that awful. Just my own personal riddle, needing to be solved. That’s all it is.

If this offer had come, not from one of his mother’s people, but from one of Grandpa’s cronies, Mr. Duberman, let’s say, or some other of the pinochle group, would it be much less of a problem?

He tried to imagine the scene, a party perhaps, everyone around a table crowded with crystal, with flowers, with silver platters and bowls of meats, half a dozen kinds of meats, half a dozen kinds of smoked fish, salads, molds and puddings, spicy condiments and pungent sauces, glossy, twisted loaves, fruit, cakes—

“Eat, here, pass the salad to Jenny, she eats like a bird—”

“If you don’t taste that pudding you’ll insult my wife,” Grandpa would roar, and pile a ladleful of steaming noodle pudding on someone’s plate.

Nana’s bracelets would clash; she’d smile with pleasure and pride, diamond pinpoints flashing in her ears.

“Did you know that Eric will be going abroad next year?” Grandpa would inquire of the table at large. But everyone would be talking: on this side two of the men having a vigorous political argument; on the other side someone telling jokes, people crying with laughter. Grandpa would clink on a goblet with his knife and call above the noise.

“You’ve heard about our Eric? You haven’t heard?”

With amusement and tenderness he constructed the scene in his mind: the sudden silence, his grandfather’s announcement, the cries of congratulation; his grandmother getting up to hug him, squeezing his head against perfume and warm silk; an old man gripping his hand.

“What a smart boy! A treasure! Joseph, Anna, a treasure of a boy—”

Of course they would shed tears because he would be going away; of course his great opportunity would have to be anywhere else but in the Middle East, where now, at the end of a second millennium, people of this blood were again being threatened with slaughter. Granting all that, he knew it would still not be such unacceptable pain as this return to his mother’s people, reminding them again of their losses. He wondered suddenly how it must have been for his father, making the decision which was to take him from them for good.

Pain. How do you measure it? Doctors measure it in dois: much pain, middling pain, less pain.…

He went back to Dartmouth the following week, with graduation only five months distant, with no decision made and sure of nothing.

Great-uncle Wendell died in early April and was buried from the home which had been in his family since the first Guthrie had come to Massachusetts three centuries before.

Eric drove down from New Hampshire, meeting as he went the first uncertain gusts of spring that blew warm whenever the sun struck through the clouds. In spite of his errand he felt exhilaration as the car rolled between stonewalled fields, down aisles of elms on old main streets, past the white, square, ample houses of his childhood. He knew exactly how these houses would look inside, the corner cupboards flanking the fireplace in the dining room, the tall clock on the landing midway between floors. The shapes and patterns of Brewerstown.

When they came back to the house from the churchyard where the Guthries lay, the faces that gathered, faces of relatives and strangers, were familiar, too. How odd that you got used to other types and faces without real awareness of the difference and the change! Now suddenly he realized that he hadn’t seen faces like these in a long, long time.

Generalizations were totally unscientific. There were almost
as many exceptions as the rule, and yet he could know, here in this room, that he was not among his father’s people. Less tension here perhaps, less animation, color, noise? No matter; it was different.

They were an unmistakable breed, these people, shaped narrowly and of a healthy toughness that went with hardy skills like rough-weather sailing or cross-country skiing. The women, even those who weren’t pretty, who had long, craggy faces, wore the marks of their kind: skirts and blouses, gold circle pins, a strong, no-nonsense manner. He would have recognized one of them if he had encountered her in Patagonia. He stood there watching the group around the coffee urn, listening to the crisp accents and gentle voices, feeling as if—as if he had just walked into his own home after a morning’s absence. And quite suddenly he understood what it was that moved him so, in a way that was probably not entirely reasonable, that was just simply because—

Because they looked like Gran.

Chris was there with his wife and older boys. Chris’s brothers were there also with young, pregnant wives.

Hugh came over to introduce Betsey. “I’ve heard you’re going on an exciting venture with Chris,” Betsey said. “We’re all so delighted that you’ll be together.”

Eric flushed. “I haven’t quite made up my mind,” he answered.

Chris had come up behind them. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” he said. For the first time he sounded impatient. “It’s already April and if you want to come along you’ll have to see the people in New York by the end of the month. I can’t stall any longer for you, you know.”

“I know.”

“For the life of me I can’t imagine why you don’t jump at the chance!”

“I guess because it’s for five years. One wants to be absolutely sure of a commitment like that.”

“Well, don’t think too long, that’s all.” Chris walked away.

Now Hugh introduced an old man who had been standing near the fireplace.

“Cousin Ted, this is Eric. You’ve never met, I think.”

Eric took hold of a hard leathery hand, looked into a pair of concentrating eyes.

“I knew your mother when she was a baby. Never saw you, though. Never see much of my wife’s family since she died. But I wanted to pay my respects today. I live over in Prides Crossing since I retired.” He rambled, moving toward senility.

“I met your father once. Came to me for a job at the bank, I recall. Couldn’t give him one, though. Depression, you know. No jobs. You look like your mother,” he said abruptly. “A fine, pretty girl, your mother was. Died too young. Look at me, I’m eighty-seven.”

Someone came and led him away to the coffee urn. Eric thought, All these people know more about who I am than I do. The thought caused a bleakness and at the same time a soft wish to reach out to them.

“Remember us,”
Gran said.

If I turn my back now and cut myself off that’ll be the end, the final end. The old people are dying or dead. Chris will go away and when he comes back well be strangers. At least, there’s a little something between us now, a little flame that can be fanned.

Arabia. Riding with Chris of that old, first life, into a new life.… Someone had put pine cones in the fireplace; the sweet, sharp scent of them sifted through the warm air. Fragrance and flavor, like those of Proust’s madeleine, were potent instruments always; he could smell Maine’s salty coves again and Brewerstown’s gilt Septembers, its fires of fall. Oh, remembered places, remembered faces! Flesh of his flesh and quiet ways; Gramp’s birds and a white horse grazing, and so much more. So much.