Family Secrets (21 page)

Isman seemed to stop breathing altogether. His eyes darted to Adam’s eyes, then away, afraid to read the answer, afraid not to know. Adam knew he was imagining all sorts of horrors. No job? No home? Adam deserting him, leaving him to struggle along all alone? What could it be?

“Please, Papa, tell …”

“Four children are enough children for a poor man. You have two fine sons and two lovely daughters. Genug! Now you stop.”

“We tried to stop …”

“I don’t mean the woman in the Bronx. I mean you and Becky at home. I mean you two stop. No more. No more children.”

Isman knew what that meant. No more nights of comfort and love in the bed, no more pleasure, no more forgetting the humiliations of his day as a failure in the warm, sweet nights. No more sending Becky to suffer in silence and pain under the instruments of the woman in the Bronx who removed unborn babies from poor women who could not afford to have them. No more putting Becky’s life and health in danger. No more lovemaking. No more comfort and joy. His eyes filled with tears. No more money was coming from Adam. He knew this. The words did not have to be spoken.

“I won’t pay for any more children, Isman.”

He had said it. Had he really said it at last? Isman felt his head singing, he was dizzy. But Adam had only said no more money for more children. He had not said no more money at all. He would not desert them.

“Yes, Papa,” Isman said.

“When Ned is ready for college, if he wants to go I’ll pay for it. You tell him that. Tell him to study hard.”

“Yes, Papa. Thank you.”

“He’s a good boy.”

“Thank you, Papa.”

“You should be proud of your fine children. You should concentrate on giving them everything you can. You must not be selfish. You brought them into the world and they look to you. When you’re old, they can pay you back with devotion and care.”

“Yes, Papa.”

Adam stood and pushed back his chair. Isman, watching him, did the same. The conversation was ended. They walked to the door of the restaurant and Adam received his coat and hat from the checkroom attendant. Isman retrieved his threadbare coat. He did not wear a hat. The two men walked out to the street, where Adam’s chauffeur-driven car was waiting. His office was five blocks away. Isman could take the subway back to the Bronx.

“My best to the family,” Adam said.

“Thank you, Papa. Thank you for that good lunch.”

Adam nodded and stepped into his car. He watched Isman walk to the corner and turn it, and then he forgot about him.

TWENTY-FIVE

Next to their Papa, their Mama, Lucy, was the most important person in the children’s lives. She was their moon, waxing and waning with her illness, but there.

Lucy thought that perhaps this time she might be dying. It did not frighten her, but it made her infinitely sad. What would all of them do without her? True they were adults now, and she had never been with them as much as she had wanted to when they were little, but still they always knew that she existed, that she was somewhere where they could reach her, that she was ready with her advice and words of love. She had spent her life with Adam, and their children had spent their lives with her, and now they would all be alone.

She had never believed in heaven as a place. Heaven was if the people who were still living remembered you with love. Thus you lived on as a part of them. What else could she have told them? What had she forgotten? Who was she anyway to be telling other people what to do? She knew she was old, fifty-one, an old woman, but inside she was still a girl. She had not changed. Old people only grew old on the outside. They couldn’t walk quickly, they had arthritis and couldn’t move their arms and hands the way they once did, their backs ached, the mirror showed them the face of an old, wrinkled, white-haired person, but inside there was still the young person who didn’t understand all these changes and resented them. Why do I look like this? Why do I feel so different? What has happened to me? That was the secret of old age, Lucy thought, you only grew old to the outside world, but not to yourself, and so it was sad.

There were two nurses in her bedroom now instead of one, and the doctor came to see her twice a day, in the morning and the evening. The shades were drawn and the room was dark so she could rest. How could she rest when each breath was a torment? She was literally dying from lack of air, and her chest hurt with the effort of trying to get it. Sometimes she slept, or thought she slept, but she knew she had been unconscious from the lack of air, half-asleep, half-dead. There were no drugs for this illness, no pills. She would not go to the hospital and they did not force her to. Hospitals were to die in, and now to be born in too. Everett and Paris had been born in hospitals, and it had made Lucy happy to see that a hospital could also be a place of life, not just of sickness and death. Her strength had left her and she could no longer fight. This was what being old meant. Unable to handle your own destiny. Unable to fight. Weak …

Her children came to see her, one by one, and that made Lucy sure that she was dying because they came with long faces, pretending to be cheerful but obviously worried and holding back tears. She wanted to tell each of them something nice that they could remember but it seemed pretentious. They would remember all of her and all of their lives, and what could she say anyway except that she loved each of them? What would become of them? What would happen to poor Hazel? Would her sisters and brothers care for her when they were all old? Would any man ever marry her? Lucy doubted it. And what of poor Basil, her grown-up crybaby, pretending to himself and the world that he was so much the man of the world? She knew better. Basil was soft. She hoped he could take care of himself. At least Lavinia and Melissa and Andrew had chosen partners to help them through life. But what of little Rosemary? A girl her age should be married by now, but nobody seemed to suit her. She would wait and wait until there was no one left for her to marry. At least she had the family. Adam would have her for company when she was gone. Rosemary could keep house. Lavinia and Melissa would visit, but they had such small children of their own to care for … It was strange how young children made Lucy tired now. Their noise and liveliness got on her nerves. She was too old to enjoy little children any more, and too sick. It was probably for the best. Children belonged to their mothers.

There had been so many changes in the world since she was young. She was not exactly an educated woman but she spoke three languages and had been in two countries. In her lifetime she had seen the miracles of indoor plumbing, hot water, trolley cars, subways, telephones, automobiles, the radio, motion pictures, movies that talked, the airplane. She could hardly count the miracles they had happened so fast. This should be enough for any one person, to have lived to see all these miracles, but she didn’t want to leave the world.

There had been bad things too, the Great War, and weapons, and killing, and crime here in the city, and all those dreadful things you could read in the newspaper, but even these ugly things could not make her want to leave the world. The moment of death was supposed to be peaceful. They said that people died with a smile of bliss on their faces. She was not ready to feel peaceful. She wanted air, she wanted to be able to breathe, and she wanted to live.

When Lucy died, strong Lavinia took it the hardest. She was hysterical. Her Mama’s death brought back to her, as a grown woman, all the baby terrors she had forgotten from the time she was two years old and her other Mama had died. She didn’t remember them as her baby feelings, but she knew that she was enveloped in terror and grief and bewilderment which made no sense even as much as she loved her Mama. She felt completely unhinged. She was in a panic. She clung to her Papa as if he were the one thing of safety in this terrifying world, and Jonah and her own baby were unable to comfort her.

A few days after the funeral she began to find herself again. She played with her baby, Paris, she tried to be nice to Jonah, and slowly the blurred world around her began to take shape again. But at night she had nightmares and woke up crying. Then early in the morning she would phone Papa, just to say hello, to make sure he was still there, alive and well. Then she would call Melissa, or Melissa would call her, and the two sisters would chat for half an hour, an hour, until they had run out of trivia and were literally speechless. They would say goodbye and Lavinia would phone Cassie, to see how she was, how her pregnancy was progressing, if she needed anything. Lavinia had become very close to Cassie during the past few years. She was glad that Andrew had married such a sweet, loving girl, and she thought it would be nice if Cassie would have a girl so that Paris would have a little cousin who was also a friend.

Then Lavinia would call Rosemary, to ask how Papa was, what was happening. Papa would be at the office with Andrew and Basil, and after she spoke with Rosemary sometimes Lavinia would think of an excuse to call him there. She always had to keep in touch. By lunchtime Jonah would have phoned from school, to see how she was getting along, and then she would have to make lunch for Paris and herself. While Paris napped, Lavinia phoned Melissa again, knowing that Everett was also sleeping, and she would report the results of her other phone calls. Then Paris would wake up and Lavinia would put her into the stroller and take her on the rounds of the grocery store, the butcher or the fish store, the bakery. She would always pick up some nice little cake or cookies for Papa. Jonah would go straight to Papa’s office after school, but he would be home around five or five thirty, and they would eat promptly at six, after Paris had been fed and given her bath. Lavinia was not as anxious during the afternoons as she always was in the mornings, because she was further from her nightmares of the night and because she knew in a few hours she would be seeing Papa again. Jonah would carry the sleeping baby (Lavinia did not trust any stranger to come to stay with her child) and they would walk to Papa’s house. Papa’s house now, although Lavinia knew it would always be Papa and Mama’s house. It was Mama’s bedroom, and Mama’s presence was throughout the other rooms. Lavinia would put the cake or cookies on a plate, and see that the maids had brought out fruit and candy. Rosemary and Hazel were there, often Melissa and Lazarus (there was a girl hired to take care of Everett whenever they went out lately), and sometimes Andrew would bring Cassie, but only for a short time because she was nearly ready to have the baby and she got tired early. Sometimes Basil would be there, sometimes he would be out. A few relatives would drop in, a few old friends. Lavinia felt she hardly knew her father’s brothers and sisters; the old aunts from the old country spoke no English and seemed at a loss for anything much to say. She felt closest to Aunt Becky, whom she had known so well for so many years. The others were nearly strangers, because they were from another world. It was hard to think they were her Papa’s own older sisters because they were so different from him.

Although many evenings Mama had not been feeling well enough to leave her bedroom, they had always known she was there, and so there was warmth in the house. Now they knew she was not there, and pretend as she tried Lavinia felt a chill go through her. The bed was flat.

Poor Papa, alone in this house. Those old relatives were boring him, she knew it. They were boring her, too. She wished they would go away so she could be alone with Papa, like in the old days, and they could talk of interesting things instead of trying to entertain all those old foreigners who did not want to be entertained.

“So,” Papa said. “Friday I go to Laurel Pastures.”

“What’s Laurel Pastures?” Rosemary asked.

“A fancy resort hotel in the mountains,” Melissa said, “Lazarus went there once.”

“What’s there, Papa?” Rosemary asked.

“I need a change,” Papa said. “Finklestein from the Center, he went there last year with his wife, he liked it. I’ll go by car.”

“We’ll go with you, of course,” Lavinia said quickly. “Jonah can stay for the weekend, and then Paris and I will stay with you as long as you need us.”

“Who needs you?” Papa said. “I’m a grown man, I go alone.”

“Well, I just meant for company …” She had never felt so rejected.

“It’s full of old people like me and Finklestein,” Papa said cheerfully. “I’ll get a good rest.”

“Papa needs a rest,” Melissa said sympathetically.

“But do you have reservations?” Lavinia asked. She could call them, she could request the best suite … wasn’t there anything she could do for him?

“What do you think, I learned everything from you?” Papa said, amused at her. “You learned from me.”

So Papa went to this fancy Laurel Pastures to rest and recover from his grief, and Lavinia worried herself sick. She called him every evening at ten minutes to six, after he had finished his afternoon of pinochle and just before he went in to dinner. He sounded cheerful. Andrew and Basil called him too, during the day, to report on things at the office, and he called them. Lavinia always called each of the boys in the evening to find out if there was anything new with Papa; was he taking care of his health, was he well? He shouldn’t eat too much salt, she reminded them, tell him, tell him, he thinks I nag him.

Cassie went into the hospital and had an eight-pound baby boy. She and Andrew named him Christopher. Christopher Saffron. Chris. Lavinia was not too pleased with the name. It seemed so … goyish. It had no roots. Not that she had any right to complain, naming her daughter Paris, but still, wasn’t Christopher a saint? He was an absolutely exquisite baby, with straight light brown hair and slightly uptilted eyes, the image of Cassie. They should have named him after Lucy. Well, they would have if it had been a girl. It seemed heartless.

They were already, slowly, moving out of the family circle, these two. Andrew had found a piece of land in upstate New York, two hours from the city, and he and Cassie’s brother Ferdinand had bought it for a song. Andrew hadn’t told Papa; he was saving it for a surprise, that he was a man, that he had done this all on his own. It had a huge lake on it and many old, beautiful trees. They were going to build two houses on it. Andrew liked traditional architecture and Ferdinand favored modern, so the two houses would be far from each other so that neither would clash with the appearance of the other. Ferdinand’s would be built into the side of a cliff overlooking the lake, and it would be small because he was still a bachelor. Later he could enlarge it if he married and had children. Andrew’s would be deep in the woods. Andrew was wild about nature, and he already had men hacking down this and moving that so his view would be artistic and the mood peaceful. Two hours from New York City; what a trip! Lavinia wondered when anyone would ever get to see them now. But they planned to spend every weekend there, winter and summer. Cassie had a nurse for baby Chris, a great strong German girl, a refugee, and the nurse would stay with them full time.