Evergreen (82 page)

“Yes. It was awful.” Inadequate word, so far from the unspeakable truth.

“Has Steve gone yet?”

“Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I just came back from the airport. What made you ask, Nana?”

“I just had a feeling. I felt he might go in a hurry because of all this.”

“That’s just how it happened.”

“You haven’t told your parents yet?”

“No. I’ll do it tomorrow. I sort of wanted to get myself together first.”

“I know. I won’t say anything. Besides, that’s not why I called. I wanted to talk about you.”

“About me?”

“About you and Janet. You know, Jimmy, she’s a marvelous girl.”

“You think so?” Jubilance in his voice, and a little cracking sob. Exhausted. Too much of everything, this whole long week.

“Yes, I do. When are you going to marry her?”

Jubilance faded. “We’ve another year of college and four years of medical school, Nana.”

“Five years are too long to wait. It’s waste and a sin to put off living while you’re young and when you have the capacity to live. So many people haven’t got it.”

He threw his free hand helplessly into the air. “What can we do?”

“You can let me give you the money to marry her.”

Years before she had come into his room during a thunderstorm, sensing his fear. Now again, across more than a thousand miles, she had sensed his need. Tears burned and he blinked them back, as though she were able to see them.

“It’s too much to take from you,” he said quietly.

“I’m the best judge of that, don’t you think?”

His parents wouldn’t like it. They liked—his father especially liked—to be self-sufficient. They wouldn’t even let him take it from Nana, he was sure. They were always saying she did too much as it was. And they were right.

Hope sank.

“Jimmy? Are you there? Well, what do you say?”

He thought of something. “Would you, do you suppose we could borrow it from you? We could start to pay you back as soon as we go into our internships.” Hope rose. “Interns get prettty good pay. Would you consider that?”

“Listen, I called you, didn’t I? I want you to get married. I want to give, I mean lend you, enough so you’ll be able to.”

“With interest, it would have to be,” he said proudly.

“Of course, with interest, what else? A business deal is a business deal. Right?”

She was playing a game, humoring his pride. He was quite aware of what she was doing, and yet this was the only way he would have it.

“How much interest?” he asked.

“Well, five and a half, six percent. The same as I get from tax exempts.”

“The ordinary rate’s much higher.”

“I know. But a grandmother and a grandson, after all! I don’t want to get rich on you. So, five and a half, all right? And you figure out what you’ll need for light housekeeping, two rooms and your monthly expenses, above your allowances. You do that and mail it to me this week. Hear?”

“I hear. Nana, Janet’s coming any minute and when I tell her, she won’t believe it! I’m so grateful, I can’t start to tell you, I—”

“Then don’t. Listen, this call’s getting expensive. My telephone bill is a disgrace this month. Write me a letter, Jimmy.” The receiver clicked.

He stood there wiping his wet eyes and shaking his head. A dollar more on the telephone bill, and thousands to support them for the next five years!

There was such a great churning, such a twisting in his knotted chest. Steve, Adam Harris, Nana and Janet, all of life past and to come, churning and twisting. He wished he could sit down and weep with it as a woman might, without shame.

Before the knock came he knew by the footsteps in the hall that it was Janet.

“I’m so sorry,” she cried. “Oh, I’m so sorry about Steve!”

Through all the thicknesses of cloth, through her quilted jacket, he felt heartbeats. At least, he felt his own. Wave after wave of comfort rolled over him, just standing there like that. The knot in his chest untwisted itself in a wash of
sedative and healing warmth. He held to her as though she were a tower, and he almost a foot taller than she!

It came to his mind that he could give her the news now, but he didn’t want to speak just yet. He unbuttoned her jacket and then her blouse, loosened her skirt and led her willingly to the bed.

He thought he heard her whisper into his shoulder, “Don’t worry, don’t be sad about anything, not about your brother, not about anything, I’m here, I’ll always be here.” And then he heard nothing, saw nothing, just sank into a bliss like summer night, as warm and throbbing, and lay there in that night until at last he raised his head into what might have been the dawn of morning, into a gold so luminous that it flickered into silver and a silence so vibrant that it trembled into music.

“Will you please make iced tea?” Anna asked, coming into the kitchen. “And bring out the walnut cake? I’m having a guest this afternoon.”

Celeste turned from the stove. “My, that’s a nice dress! I was saying to Miss Laura just last week, your grandmother looks like herself again.”

During these few years since Joseph’s death she hadn’t paid much attention to appearances. At the beginning she had worn mourning for a year, although her friends had insisted that people didn’t anymore, and that Joseph wouldn’t have wanted her to. But she had known better. He, who had cared so much about old conventions, would have wanted her to.

Now she adjusted the dress where her narrow gold bracelet had caught in the sleeve. It was fine, cream-colored linen, a dress for summer, that brief, beloved season, and she took pleasure in it.

“The gentleman and I will have our tea outside,” she added. “It’s much too nice to be indoors.”

“Gentleman!” Celeste repeated. “Gentleman!”

Anna smiled. “Yes, an old friend,” and went out, leaving Celeste to wonder.

She had not long to wait. The car paused at the entrance to the drive—he would be looking for the number to make certain of the house—then started up, crackling over the gravel, and came to a stop not far from where Anna stood.
It was a small foreign sports car, a young man’s car. The door slammed and Paul Werner came up the steps.

Anna didn’t move, forgetting to offer him her hand. He stood there, looking at her.

“You don’t change at all,” he said.

“You haven’t that much, either.”

He had gone gray, but his hair, still thick and smooth, shone silver against tanned skin. The eyes—the family eyes—were brilliant, like the young eyes of a child.

Suddenly Anna felt a dreadful awkwardness. What had she done? Why ever had she allowed him to come here? Leading him to the terrace, she murmured, “Sun or shade?” and when he had chosen shade, sat down and could think of nothing more to say.

But Paul spoke easily. “What a lovely place! It suits you. Old house, old trees, and so quiet.”

“Yes, we’ve been very happy here.”

“I’m glad you answered my note. I was afraid you might not.”

“Why shouldn’t I have? There’s no reason anymore why I shouldn’t.”

“I was sorry to learn of Joseph’s death. He was a fine man.”

“Yes.”
Fine man
. A banal expression, gone meaningless through thoughtless overuse. All dead men became fine men. Yet in Paul’s mouth, at this moment, the words had impact, the flavor of truth. Yes, he had been, Joseph had.

“You knew that I also lost my wife?” Paul asked.

“No! I’m sorry. When?”

“Almost three years ago.”

“As long as that! I’m sorry,” Anna repeated.

“Yes. Well.” He crossed his legs, his foot swaying into a path of sunlight. His shoe was new and polished. She remembered—such an absurd thing to remember—that he had always worn fine shoes and had narrow feet.

She stood up. “I’ll just remind Celeste. You’d like iced tea? Or something else?”

“Tea will be fine, thank you.”

She was grateful, returning with the tray, for the small fuss of the tea ritual, serving the lemon and sugar, slicing the cake. It gave one something to talk about.

“A long time, Anna.”

She looked up. Paul was smiling at her, and she smiled back. “For people who—knew each other rather well, we’re both pretty tongue-tied,” he said.

She shook her head wonderingly. “Where does one begin?”

“Suppose we begin with Iris. How is she?”

“She’s a middle-aged woman, Paul. That’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“Our two lives are hard to believe. But go on.”

“She’s grown so strong and competent! And a great help to me! Joseph left a good deal of property, and Iris is the only one of us who seems to know how to talk to lawyers and accountants. She’s got a marvelous head for business. I think she surprises herself. Goodness knows, she doesn’t get it from me!”

Paul smiled again, without comment.

“And the children are grown. Jimmy is going to be a doctor and—”

He interrupted. “The husband? It’s still a good marriage?”

Anna nodded. She could have told him volumes, couldn’t she? But the thought of putting into words the myriad complexities of all those lives was exhausting. There wasn’t enough time and anyway, the effort would be futile. It wasn’t possible to make them real to him: Iris, Theo, Steve and all the rest. People he didn’t know at all.

“Nothing to tell me?”

She threw up her hands.

“I understand I’m asking you to give flesh and life to phantoms. To sum up years in a few minutes.”

“I know you would like to see them, Paul. I know that.”

“And I know I never can. Unless—” he stopped.

Would you like to see some pictures, at least? I’ve just
fixed up an album of new ones. I’ll bring it out,” Anna offered.

He bent over the album. He had a graceful back, his body unthickened and unslowed by age. He would live to be very old, quite likely, remaining supple to the end. She had a flash of memory: the day she had first seen him, still almost a boy, dashing up the steps of his house, with arms full of gifts from abroad.

“The girl looks like you, Anna. She’s lovely.”

“She’s a lovely person, Laura. Kind and sensitive and gay.”

“Fine-looking boys, too. Who’s the young one?”

“That’s our Philip.” (Joseph’s little genius, she thought wistfully. Oh, he’s good, but he’s not that good!) “I’d forgotten, he wasn’t even born when I saw you last.” The words rang mournfully. She wanted to defy the mournfulness. “Iris has a happy household,” she said. “All growing up well.” Why mention Steve’s crisis or the worries over Jimmy’s acceptance at medical school or the worries about Laura’s boy friends? These were all normal nowadays, anyhow, more’s the pity.

“It seems like madness when I realize that these are all partly my people,” Paul said.

“I know.” She felt a darting pain in her chest. Or had she only imagined it? They said one could. Psychosomatic.

He put the album aside. It occurred to Anna that it was rude to keep him sitting outdoors. “Would you like to see the house?” she asked.

He nodded and they went into the coolness, through the dining room where Joseph in his dark suit looked soberly from the wall, and finally into Anna’s favorite sitting room at the back of the house. Here the light was caught and held in every season. It was the room where she lived now; magazines lay on the tables, and a ski sweater that she was knitting for Laura lay on the white and yellow sofa.

“This room looks familiar,” Paul said.

She didn’t understand. “Familiar?”

“You don’t remember? My mother’s sitting room was always yellow and white. They were her favorite colors,” he said quietly.

That room! Oh, yes! She felt a prickling flush from her neck to her forehead. She had forgotten.

Paul was examining the watercolors that covered one wall “These are very fine. Did you select them yourself?”

“Yes, years ago. Joseph always left things like that to me. He wasn’t interested in art.”

“Very good taste, Anna. You could get triple what you paid for them. Not, I suppose, that you care about that.”

“No, I bought them because they make me feel contented. That’s the only reason.”

They were simple works, spare of line: pond lilies and water weeds; a long vertical painting of a dead tree raising its arms into a thunderous sky; a small square picture of lichen on a wet, black rock.

“Charming,” Paul said. He walked to the window again and stood looking out at the shimmering afternoon, just stood silently looking.

When she followed his gaze she saw only the tea things on the garden table and the tops of the phlox, their towered flowerets showing mauve and cerise above the wall. A breath of their pungent fragrance came through the open window.

Anna sat down and waited. How strange it was that he should be standing here in her house! How briefly he had entered her life, only a few weeks’ worth of hours at most, if you were to add them all together! And he had done as much to change her life as anyone could. She recalled now what had not crossed her mind in years, for she had buried the memory, locked it away in a top drawer and hidden the key; those nights in his parents’ house, so long ago, and her own dry sobbing, the swallowed tears, the fist in the mouth. Youth, its pains more piercing than any of the deeper griefs that come later!