Family Secrets (32 page)

“What difference does it make if he does?” Jonah said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to change anything. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, I can’t help it if I’m a worrier.”

“But it doesn’t matter if he tells them,” Jonah said. “They’ll only have sympathy for you. Basil just has a strange sense of values, that’s all.”

“Maaaa!” Paris screamed from the bedroom. Too old to call Lavinia Mommy any more (under Lavinia’s guidance) and too stubborn to call her Mother (Lavinia’s suggested substitution), Paris had settled for Ma, the name she had copied from her friends in the street. She’d have to get the child out of Brooklyn, Lavinia thought, before her accent became impossible. A Brooklyn street accent. They would have to go to New York someday, before it was too late.

“Oh, I just don’t know where to run first,” Lavinia said. “I have to be everything to everybody.”

“Just relax,” Jonah said.

She went into Paris’ bedroom to kiss her goodnight and have their little nighttime chat, and be sure the alarm clock was set for seven-thirty, not that it would help. “I don’t know why, living in this house, you can’t have better diction,” Lavinia told Paris.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t want you to copy your friends. I want you to copy me. I was always very careful about my diction. It’s important to speak well and not to fall into sloppy habits. People judge you by the way you speak.”

“Okay,” Paris said. Lavinia wondered if she had impressed the child at all.

“And don’t call me Ma. Call me Mother.”

“Nobody I know calls their mother Mother,” Paris said.

“You are not the people you know. You are you. You are my child. You are better than they are.”

By the time Lavinia had gotten Paris settled for the night Jonah was sound asleep, snoring. She poked him to make him turn over, and he stopped snoring. She knew that was only a short respite, and jumped into their double bed beside him, trying to fall asleep as quickly as possible before he turned over and started snoring again and kept her awake the whole night. It was a funny thing about marriage, she thought. You never knew in advance if you would marry a snorer. How could you know? You didn’t even think to ask him, and even if you did ask him and he said yes, you couldn’t possibly imagine how dreadful it was until you were right there in the bed listening to that loud sound. Jonah had a magnificent snore, the champion of snores. A wet, guttural, long-drawn-out, vehement steam engine of a snore. Sometimes she just wanted to hit him. But he couldn’t help it, poor thing. He had a deviated septum from once being hit on the nose by a stray baseball, or a bully in his childhood neighborhood, or perhaps by both, and he couldn’t breathe. She knew he’d had a lot of fights as a child. Jonah was never a sissy. He had grown up in a tough neighborhood and he had defended himself with the best of them. He was gentle, but he was not afraid. The religious young man who carried his Torah tenderly and hit out with a hard fist if anyone called him sheeny. They had both had to fight for their lives, he with his fists and she with her sharp tongue, and they had both survived, but he was an innocent and she had learned to be wary. He still trusted people. Well, he would learn someday.

She tried to sleep but she couldn’t help reliving that dreadful scene with Basil in the bathroom. He would learn too, someday. Someday someone would hurt him the way he’d hurt her. It wouldn’t be she. But he’d get his. That was how it worked out. Lavinia liked to believe that. It saved her from feeling guilty, because it wasn’t she who had hurt the transgressor, it was fate.

Jonah began to snore again and Lavinia sighed. She poked him, and he mumbled and turned over. Oh, God, he was snoring again! How could that be? You weren’t supposed to be able to snore on your side, only on your back. Apparently Jonah could snore in any position. She couldn’t wake him up, he needed his sleep. But so did she, dammit!

She took her pillow and got the extra blanket out of the closet. Then she took them into Paris’ room and made a nice little nest for herself on the daybed, the one they used to use when Rosemary was still single and slept over to take care of Paris if they were going out. It was warm and quiet in the room, the child’s soft breathing almost inaudible. Lavinia looked over at the nice bed they’d bought her when she got too big for her crib. A pretty little Early American reproduction, with a dresser and desk to match. Someday Paris would appreciate it. There were toys and dolls lined up on top of the dresser, but none in Paris’ bed. Lavinia was proud to be able to say that Paris had never slept with toys, not since she moved from her baby crib to her big-girl bed. All she’d had to do was drop a casual remark that sleeping with toys was a silly thing to do, and Paris had exiled her toys to the dresser top. It was better that way. Who knew, she might swallow one of the teddy bear’s button eyes in her sleep and die.

Lavinia slept then, in the peaceful room with her child, and that night she did not dream, or if she did, they were soft dreams she never remembered in the morning. She woke up when Paris’ alarm clock went off. Paris was still sleeping. That child loved to sleep; she hated to get up for school and always slept right through the alarm. She also hated to go to bed. Poor dear child, it was going to be hard for her in the daytime world when her favorite time was the night. She would just have to adjust if she meant to make anything of herself. Still, it was too bad. She could have taken after Jonah, up at dawn and ready to go, full of energy, and drooping at nine o’clock at night.

Lavinia went over to Paris’ bed and looked down at her. How beautiful she was! She covered the sleeping child’s face with kisses, to wake her up gently for the day. Paris’ little fist came out and flailed at her, striking her.
She
had hit her!

“Jonah! Paris hit me!”

He came running. “What?”

“She hit me. That rotten kid
hit
me!”

Paris, still half-asleep, was looking at both of them with a look that was part anger, part bewilderment, part fear. Striking out at her mother had been an instinctive act, not premeditated.

“Oh, Lavinia,” said Jonah, the peacemaker, “you know she’s a grouch in the morning.”

“I was
kissing
her,” Lavinia said, hurt.

“Don’t you ever hit your mother,” Jonah said sternly.

“I hate it when you kiss me on the mouth,” Paris said.

“Why?” Lavinia snapped. “Do I have bad breath?”

“No, I just don’t like it.”

“Little porcupine, you hate to be kissed. Porcupine.”

Paris looked pleased. She liked to be called porcupine. How could anyone understand such a strange child?

“You’d better get ready for school,” Jonah said.

“Come on, porcupine. I’m not leaving until your feet are on the floor.”

Paris obediently got out of bed and shuffled into her bathroom. She left the door open, the way she had been taught to. At least they wouldn’t have a fight about that this morning. Lavinia went back into her bedroom and Jonah followed her.

“I guess I snored again last night,” he said.

“Oh boy, did you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You can’t help it.”

“I can’t hear it when I snore,” he said.

“I know, but I can.”

“Well, that’s my aristocratic Mendes nose. My fine, big, Sephardic nose.”

“Broken nose. Nobody in your family has a big nose. That’s one of the only good things I can say about them. I wouldn’t have married you if you had a big nose.”

Jonah smiled. “It is not such a bad-looking nose, is it?”

“Fishing for compliments. You know you’re handsome.”

“Paris is going to look like me,” he said proudly.

“She looks exactly like me.”

“Well, she looks like both of us. Anyway, she’s pretty.”

“I wonder why she hit me. I didn’t like that at all.”

“You shouldn’t try to kiss her in the morning.”

“She hit her mother. I would never have dreamed of hitting my mother. I would have cut my hand off first.”

“Children are different today,” Jonah said. “I had great respect for my parents. Today they’re different; I see it at school.”

“Well, she’s going to respect me. I’m going to demand it.”

“You’re right,” he said mildly.

“You bet I’m right.” Why were things always falling out of control? Everything was a battle. All she wanted was to keep control of her life, her family, her safe little kingdom, and everything kept falling out of place. A family should have order, with the parents at the head of it. Was it too much to ask that there be some kind of order in a life? It was such a little thing to ask. It was her right; she had earned it. She would get it. She always got what she set her mind to, eventually. Lavinia sighed. It was only eight o’clock in the morning and Paris had already ruined her day.

NINE

Basil and Andrew were deferred from the draft because they were involved in important government business, managing cargo ships for the war effort. Lazarus, Jonah, and Herman were too old to go. Jack was safely in Virginia with Rosemary, at a desk job during the day and living in a hotel room at night, writing funny letters home complaining about the unintelligible accents of Southerners and the stupidness of small-town life—but he was safe, and that was what mattered. They were all safe.

On a cold clear day in January, Adam and Andrew and Jonah went up to Windflower in Adam’s limousine to look over their property. Basil said he was too busy to go with them. The girls didn’t want to go, it was too cold. They had all seen the place already, when the trees were in full leaf, and they had all agreed that it was an earthly paradise but The Crazy Russian lived like a pig. It turned out to be just as well that only the three of them went there this day, because what they saw was a dreadful shock.

The land had been stripped bare. Before leaving, The Crazy Russian had sold the trees for lumber, all of them but a few giant trees near the house which were over a hundred years old, had them cut off at the root and sold them. So that was his sentiment for his old trees! And then he had sold the turf, neatly stripped away, and then he had sold the topsoil. The land was stripped down to its bare bones, stony, infertile, dead. The great expanse of view was revealed down to the lake, the waterfall frozen in ice, its water suspended as if in glass, and everywhere you looked were the stumps of trees, like pegs on a board. The cold and the gray icy sky above them only made it all look more desolate. Andrew gasped.

“That’s something,” Adam said. He shook his head. “A businessman like that I never saw. If you bought his pet dog from him he’d skin it first and sell it for a fur coat. You’d have to specify dead or alive. This is a kind of mind I never saw before.”

“Terrible,” Jonah said.

Adam brightened. “Still,” he said, “it’s not so bad. I would like to dynamite that hill and make it lower, so you can walk to the lake and back up without too much trouble, but still keep it a hill for the view. You can have your house there, Jonah. And the other one can be right next to it. Both equal. It’s nice the Russian saved us the trouble of clearing the land. We can start from scratch, bring in a landscape architect, put the trees where we want them.”

“He left the woods behind the lake, Papa,” Andrew said.

“I wonder what’s wrong with them,” Jonah said.

“He probably only had a contract to sell so many,” Adam said. “We can use some of the trees from the deep part of the woods. They’ll be free of charge. We’ll have to dynamite all those stumps, so we should dynamite the rocks too and make a nice lawn. The tennis court could go right there.” He pointed.

“I’d make it higher, Papa,” Andrew said. “We have trouble with ours when it rains. It takes too long to dry out. We had to change from clay to en-tout-cas. If you make it higher and cover it in en-tout-cas you can play a half-hour after it rains.”

“Me, I wouldn’t play at all,” Adam said pleasantly. “But that’s a good idea. I’ll build up the valley there a little while I’m at it and then put in the tennis court.”

“Then maybe it’s a blessing in disguise?” Jonah said hopefully.

“A blessing I wouldn’t call it exactly. But it’s a lesson, and it’s done, and it can’t be helped. Someday we’ll laugh and say it’s funny. Thank God we can afford to fix it. A man who can kill trees like that is a sick man. To be so hungry for a dollar … he’s a poor shnook so forget him. Andrew, what’s the best kind of grass it shouldn’t get crab grass in it?”

By the time the three men left Windflower and went back to Adam’s house for a family dinner and report they were hopeful about the future and amused about the past. Although it was not to be his home, Andrew was delighted to have a new place to play with and was full of suggestions. He had even made some sketches. Adam was in good spirits. At last he was building for himself and his family, not for strangers, and he would make every dream come true. The electricity in the pavilion by the lake would be made to work, and the pavilion itself would all be cleaned and fixed up, the bushes and poison ivy cleared away, the place painted, and nice dressing rooms put in with slatted wooden floors, and benches to sit on while you changed your shoes. There would be a nice big glider and some comfortable chairs, and awnings to roll down if it rained. They would put in a refrigerator and then they could have lunch there. For the lake there would be a new diving board and they would have the best kind of steel ladder and a big float to swim to. There would be a rowboat and a clean dry place to store it in. There would be a wading pool roped off at the edge of the lake where the water was shallow, for the children. He would have a little sand beach built there too.

His house, the one The Crazy Russian had formerly lived in, would be completely refurbished. Not a trace of dog odor would be allowed to remain. Etta would have a decorator, and she would fix it up, expense no object. In back there would be a garden filled with flowers, and under the big old trees the Russian had had the decency to allow to remain there would be another big comfortable glider and chairs and tables so that the whole family could sit with him on the hot summer afternoons after they had come back from swimming in the lake. Basil could live in the downstairs suite and Adam and Etta would have the largest upstairs suite, with the other rooms used for relatives who came to visit. Henny and the maids would live in the room in back of the kitchen. One maid’s room was enough; they could double up the way he was sure they did at home already. All the maids were related to Henny anyway, so it didn’t matter which daughter or cousin or niece she decided to bring.