Family Secrets (49 page)

“Who’s ‘they’?” Frankie asked.

“Schvartzes,” Lazarus said loudly.

“Shh!” Melissa said.

“What are you shushing me for, Toots? They don’t know they’re shvartzes.”

“What are shvartzes?” Frankie asked. “Maids?”

“Yeah, maids,” Everett said, and laughed.

Frankie went off and came back with the bottle of gin, some ice, some bottles of tonic, and some glasses on a tray. She set the tray efficiently on the side table and mixed herself a drink. “Drink, anyone? Jonah?”

“No thank you,” Jonah said. “Lavinia won’t let me drink.”

Frankie looked surprised. She sat down and drank her gin and tonic and lit a cigarette.

“Can you drink that after the whiskey?” Melissa asked. “Won’t you get sick?”

“I never get sick,” Frankie said.

“My goodness.”

Lavinia looked at her watch. “We made a reservation for six o’clock. After that it gets crowded and the service isn’t so good. Anybody who has to get ready better start doing so. Paris?”

“I’m ready,” Paris said.

“Well you might have to …” Lavinia lowered her voice to an intimate whisper, “go to the bathroom.”

Everyone got up, except Frankie and Everett. Both of them had looked at their watches too. “There’s plenty of time,” Everett said.

“I’m all ready,” Frankie said. “There’s just time for one last drink.” She went to the side table and mixed it.

“Oh, Frankie,” Melissa said, “you need to sew that hem.”

Frankie looked down. “What hem?”

“The place with the pin in it. You can’t go like that. We’re going to a nice restaurant. You should sew it or change your dress.”

“Oh.”

“I have a sewing box upstairs,” Lavinia said.

“Who’s going to see the pin?” Frankie said. “I’m going to be sitting down.”

“Oh, you just can’t,” Melissa said. “I’ll sew it for you.”

“Sewing is a wonderful convenience,” Lavinia said.

“Not if you hate it,” said Frankie.

Melissa and Lavinia took Frankie upstairs to be repaired, feeling like kind-hearted martyrs. Imagine, such a slob, coming to visit looking like that, and expecting to go out in that torn dress! Poor Everett, what had he gotten himself into? If she kept house the way she dressed … Not that Everett would notice. They were two slobs. What a pair.

Lazarus put the gin back into the downstairs closet so philistine hands would not defile it. That girl was the worst thing he had ever seen. She looked like a maid. But Everett had never had good taste in anything, so why should he have expected better? It was a good thing they were going to be far away in Florida.

Jonah was hungry. He was trying to decide whether he should have the lobster or the sirloin steak tonight. He liked to plan ahead and decide what he was going to eat before he got to the restaurant. Everything in its place, planned and orderly.

“What are you going to eat tonight, Paris?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I think I’ll have the lobster.”

They went to the restaurant in Everett’s rented car. At the table Frankie and Everett decided they were going to have a highball.

“Ooh, so much drinking,” Lavinia said.

They were all scrutinizing the large menus. “Why don’t you have the lobster, Frankie,” Melissa said kindly. “I’m sure you’ve never had lobster before.”

“Actually,” Frankie said in an uppity tone, “I’m very fond of lobster.”

She’s probably overwhelmed by all this, Melissa was thinking. She’s not very gracious, but she’s probably uncomfortable and shy. She just sticks out like a sore thumb.

Melissa is an angel, Lavinia was thinking. Any girl would be the luckiest girl in the world to get her for a mother-in-law. That girl probably doesn’t even know how lucky she is.

Oh good, Frankie’s going to make trouble, Paris was thinking.

Everett was hoping everyone would get along all right after a while. He had daydreamed of a confrontation in which Frankie really gave the family a hard time, but now that he had actually brought her here he realized he was anxious that she make a good impression. He knew that if his mother and the rest of them pushed her she would fight back, and he was a little afraid of that. Why couldn’t she just keep her mouth shut? But then she wouldn’t be his Frankie.

“I’m going into the television business,” Everett said to his mother. “That’s going to be the new thing. More and more people are buying sets. I’m going to be the first one in the neighborhood in TV repair.”

“I think that’s a very good idea,” Melissa said. “You were always right on top of things, Everett.”

“Television,” Lazarus said scornfully. “If God had meant man to watch television …”

“Oh, you said that about radio too,” Melissa said.

“He would have what?” Frankie asked.

“What?”

“If God had meant man to watch television, He would have what?”

“Invented it,” Lazarus grumbled, caught.

“Well, He did!” Lavinia said, and laughed. “God gave someone the intelligence to invent it.”

Paris had seen television once, at Selma’s house. It had a tiny screen in a huge box and Selma’s father had put a blurry magnifying glass over the tiny screen so she couldn’t figure out what was happening on it, especially since they were watching a baseball game and she hated baseball. But a lot of Selma’s neighbors had come over to watch the game, so she figured a lot of people probably thought television was wonderful.

“I made a set for myself already,” Everett said. “I just bought the parts and put them together.”

“He’s very talented,” Frankie said.

“My goodness, I should say so!” Melissa said admiringly.

“In the long run it cost me about three times as much as buying a set because of all the mistakes I made,” Everett said: “But now I can fix anything.”

“Then it was a good investment,” Melissa said.

“I’ve been watching the television industry,” Jonah said. “There are some good growth stocks.”

“Oh, do you know about the stock market?” Frankie asked. “I’d like to learn about it.”

“Fat chance,” Lazarus said.

“What does that mean?”

“It takes years,” Lazarus said.

“Does it take years, Jonah?” Frankie asked.

“I have to study it all the time,” Jonah said.

“Well then you can just give me tips for when I’m rich,” she said, and smiled.

That girl should have had orthodontia, Lavinia thought. Poor people never do.

She thinks she’s going to be rich when she marries Everett, Melissa thought. I wonder what stories he told her. Well, maybe he seems rich to her. I hope she doesn’t think all this she sees around here belongs to him.

ELEVEN

Hervé Saffron was born feet first, as Lazarus had predicted, but the obstetrician reached into his mother’s body and turned him around, as one would a baby colt, so he came out properly. Hervé was an enormous baby, eleven pounds, squalling, with his mother’s size and face and his father’s dark hair. His hands were not a baby’s hands, he was not cute, and he was hyperactive. His parents worshiped him.

Everett Bergman and Frances “Frankie” Riley were married in Miami in November. Nobody in the family approved, but when Melissa went to Papa for his word of judgment he took the young couple’s side.

“Let them get married,” Papa said. “If it doesn’t work out they can always get divorced.”

The old man certainly was abreast of the times, everyone said, not actually calling him “the old man,” as that would have been disrespectful. To them, Papa was ageless. He was still vital, still went to the office every day, and still made all the major decisions in the family. But now he was the modern one, not flinching at the idea of bringing a goy into the family, not flinching at the thought of divorce. He was more liberal with his grandchildren than he had been with his children, but he knew the world had changed and these young people would have to be a part of it. He would not be there, but his plan would survive and so his family would be together, in as close a facsimile of his image as he could manage, and so he could watch the seasons pass without fear.

That winter Rosemary became pregnant at last. She was radiant. The baby was a girl, named Barbara Lucy Nature, nicknamed Buffy. Barbara was for Jack’s dead mother, Bathsheba, and Lucy was for Rosemary’s dead mother, Lucy. Buffy was an alert and happy infant, and Jack took many photographs of her, one of which Paris carried in her wallet.

Everett was so busy with his new TV repair business, which was taking more time than he had expected to get off the ground, that he and Frankie could only spend a two-week vacation at Windflower, but there were four grandchildren at Windflower now: Paris, Richie, Hervé, and Buffy.

Adam’s sons and daughters had presented him with a television set. It sat in state in the living room at Windflower, and now when the family came over after dinner they watched programs. Everyone enjoyed this, except for Nicole.

“Television!” Nicole would say scornfully. “For morons. Why can’t you talk to each other, have a good conversation? I myself wouldn’t have a television set in the house. I prefer to read a good book.”

Nicole and Basil and baby Hervé and his nurse (French, of course) were all staying downstairs in Basil’s suite in Papa’s house. As soon as the family started watching a favorite television program Nicole, who would not deign to join them, would pop out of the suite and put her finger to her lips.

“Shh. Turn that lower, the baby can’t sleep.”

They would turn the sound lower, which Adam did not like because in his later years his hearing was not as acute as it had been when he was younger. But Nicole would pop out again anyway.

“Shh! Lower! You’re waking the baby.”

Finally, in desperation, they would turn off the set and settle for conversation. No sooner had they found a subject of mutual interest, which was getting harder all the time, then out would pop the ever-present Nicole, finger to lips.

“Shh! You just woke up the baby.”

“What’s the matter with him, anyway?” Adam said in annoyance. His children had slept through anything when they were infants: a house full of relatives and greenhorns all babbling at once, family games, singing, arguments, laughter. What was wrong with that baby, anyway? His mother probably made him nervous. She certainly made Adam nervous.

Etta would make a prune face and then smile. “Hoo ha! I thought I was too old to have a baby in the house, but it seems I’m stuck with one all over again.”

Everett and Frankie came to Windflower for their vacation, bringing photographs of their new dog, Daisy, a Doberman. It had long been Everett’s dream to have a killer dog that only he could control, the Toughie of his childhood fantasy, and when Frankie said she liked dogs too, he bought Daisy.

“Next year I’ll bring her,” he told his mother.

“No, you won’t. I’m scared of dogs.”

“Scared of Daisy? Everett smiled his fox smile. “Why? She won’t hurt anyone unless I tell her to.”

“You should be afraid to keep a dog like that in your house,” Melissa said.

“She’s guarding the house until we get home.”

“Well, you just leave her there,” Lavinia said. “Dogs are dirty. I don’t want a dog here. Paris is allergic to dogs.”

“How much does a dog that size cost to feed?” Lazarus asked.

“Oh, she just eats dog food,” Everett said. “Although she loves to lick our toes when we’re lying in bed. I call it toe jam.”

“Ugh,” Paris said. “You certainly are getting worse since you’ve been living in Florida.”

“Everett, really,” Melissa said. “Can’t you control yourself?”

“I tell him,” Frankie said. “He doesn’t listen to me either.”

Frankie was bored at Windflower. She hated the sun, so in the long afternoons she would sit on the carpeted stairs that led to the second floor, in the cool half-darkness, and drink. Lavinia always pulled down the blinds and closed them against the afternoon sun, so it would not fade the furniture and rugs. In this silent, subterranean darkness, Frankie was almost invisible. She and Everett both had keys to the car, his own car this time, which they had driven up north to save money, taking turns driving and making the trip in only a day and a half. She would take the car into the nearby village and buy scotch, and then she would drink it herself because no one wanted to join her.

“Talk to me, Jonah,” she would say, whenever she could find him alone. “You and I are the only two intelligent people around here.”

“I have to move some stones on the road,” Jonah would say. Or, fix the wall, or mend the dam, or roll the tennis court. Anything to get away from her.

“Paris,” Frankie would say, “come on, let’s you and me go to the roadhouse.”

“We can’t go to a roadhouse in the daytime,” Paris would say. “How does it look?”

“It looks nothing. We’ll have a couple of beers, watch TV …”

“No, I have to do something.”

Everett wouldn’t go to the roadhouse either. He wanted to talk business with his mother, or Jonah, or tinker with his junk. His junk followed him everywhere, and grew like something from a science fiction movie: Everett’s Junk. He was now building a television set for the family, in the bedroom that had once been his and now he shared with Frankie. There were still the twin beds with the night table separating them. Frankie wore boy’s pajamas, striped, with a drawstring at the waist, and he slept in his undershorts. Frankie put a bathrobe over her pajamas for breakfast with the family, but Everett still appeared in only his underpants from time to time, just to test them. His mother always sent him back to his room to dress.

“You’ll have to be careful with this TV set,” Everett told the family, cheerfully sadistic. “I didn’t put a case on it, so if you touch the wrong thing you’ll get electrocuted.”

Paris was so bored that she was always glad to see Everett, even though he drove everyone crazy. Actually, his driving them crazy was part of the entertainment. But he didn’t stay the whole two weeks, after all. He said the family was driving him crazy. So he went back home with Frankie to the little house his mother had bought them in Florida.

“Come visit us,” Frankie said to Paris. “I don’t know how you stand it here.”