Family Secrets (61 page)

Everybody thought that was such a funny story they told it and told it. Imagine Aunt Melissa holding on to the mean stallion while someone called that boy on the phone to come and get him! It was just impossible to imagine. That huge horse would kick her to death, he would bite her hand off, he would kill every one of them. If you happened to see him, the best thing to do would be to get out of his way as fast as possible and let that boy worry about it.

At Windflower Buffy didn’t have any friends but she liked Paris and Richie, even though they were much older than she was. Paris was always nice to her and listened to her talk and always seemed interested. Buffy wondered if Richie was going to marry Gilda Finkel. He’d never brought a girl home before. If he married her then maybe they’d have a baby and she could play with it. Buffy loved babies. When she was too old to run any more then she would take care of babies, but that was a thousand years from now and too far ahead to even think of. She didn’t want her own parents to have a baby. She liked being an only child. Her parents always made a big fuss over her and took her everywhere they went. They took her to eat in restaurants and let her help pick which one. When John was a baby Buffy had loved to play with him, but now that he was a little kid it wasn’t fun any more. He was too young to be her friend and too old to be a toy. Everybody at Windflower was the wrong age. There really wasn’t anybody who was the right age for anybody else to play with. She was lucky she had something she liked to do that she could do all by herself.

ELEVEN

Richie Winsor married Gilda Finkel in New York, and everyone in the family, like it or not, attended the wedding and the reception. They went to the Bahamas for their honeymoon, and then returned to live in Richie’s apartment while both of them continued their college educations. When Richie graduated from college he entered law school—Columbia, like his uncles—and he and Gilda spent summer weekends at Windflower in the house with his mother, Rosemary, Jack, and Buffy. Herman, who had never reconciled himself to Gilda as a daughter-in-law, came up for occasional visits as usual. Hazel was very happy to have her son with her, because she never saw him in the winter except for Christmas vacation and then he and Gilda went out every night to a restaurant or night club and spent every day at the beach so she hardly saw them at all even though they were staying in her own house.

Frankie found Gilda a kind of curiosity. There was Gilda, an outsider like herself, but Gilda couldn’t care less. She made no effort whatsoever to make anyone like her. She and Richie invited up hordes of their loud, unattractive friends from the city, and had cookouts and swimming parties. Frankie thought they were probably Gilda’s friends, since Richie had never invited anyone before. Now he was the grand host, inviting the world. There were two sides of the swimming pool now: one for Richie and Gilda and their company, and the other side for the rest of the family. Richie had never been known to introduce anyone or to observe any other social amenity, so no one talked to the strangers. They didn’t talk to the family either. They probably thought the family was as strange as the family thought they were—such a timidity and lack of joy, such dressed-up old ladies, so fastidious, as if they were going to tea in town instead of on a stroll around the grounds. Melissa and Lavinia wouldn’t go to the pool because they were shy; Jonah and Lazarus wouldn’t swim with the company because they thought the strangers made the water dirty. John, who was seven, swam like a fish, and Frankie didn’t have to watch him. Rosemary and Jack braved the presence of the strangers because the pool cost money and they felt they should get their good use out of it. They went to swim every day, especially when Buffy was at the pool. Hazel wandered down a few times, but nobody talked to her so she would sit in the shade by the pool house and knit or do her puzzles.

Paris had gone to Europe. Her second book was coming out in the fall, and now a magazine had assigned her a story to do in Rome, and then she was going to travel to Venice and Capri with some people she had met. The magazine was paying for her first-class plane fare and her hotel in Rome, and giving her enough spending money so that it would nearly cover the rest of her vacation as well. What a deal, Frankie thought enviously. She wished she could be a writer. She never got to go anywhere except here at Windflower, stuck here summer after summer, going crazy. She wouldn’t lower herself to talk to Richie and Gilda’s friends, who were all fat and frumpy and overdressed. The girls wore bathing caps with rubber flowers all over them, and false eyelashes at the pool. The guys were repulsive. None of them had ever done a day’s exercise in their lives. Their flabby stomachs made them look forty years old, not twenty-two or whatever Richie and his friends must be now. Spoiled, rich kids, Frankie thought with disgust. And Gilda was sitting there at the edge of the pool like Cleopatra, ordering her Marc Antony around. “Richie, start the fire,” “Richie, make the hamburgers,” “Richie, get some more wine from the house, and some ice, Richie,
ice!
” The last word would be shouted after Richie’s already retreating obedient form.

The only person who wasn’t afraid of those loud outsiders was John, who was used to strangers from seeing all Frankie’s friends in the house in Florida. He was friendly and fearless, and Richie and Gilda’s company thought he was cute. They would give him hamburgers and admire his dives from the board when he demanded they look. They’d better admire him, Frankie thought. My kid is the only one in that bunch who knows how to dive! Still, she didn’t like him hanging around those people, taking their handouts like he never got fed at home. When she caught him at it she would grab the hamburger away and smack him. He had to learn. He would eat anything, go anywhere to get scraps, and he was so skinny nobody knew where he put it. He burned it up. She’d been skinny like that when she was young. Now that she had left her carefree twenties and was a mother it wasn’t so easy to keep skinny. Once you were thirty, good luck. Your waistline said goodbye and went its own way, whether you liked it or not. She wore loose-fitting shirts now over her slacks because she had a pot from drinking. Somebody once asked her if she was pregnant again and it shocked her so much that she cut out all her beer and went exclusively to scotch. And no desserts, ever, not any more.

The one person in that family whom Frankie admired was Papa. The old man was eighty-two years old, and he still went to the office. He wasn’t what he had been, but he was still sharp for an old man, and you could see he was still the boss around here. Every night after dinner the whole bunch of them trooped over to The Big House, where Papa would be lying on the sofa in the living room, and they would all sit there and pay court to him until he yawned and said it was time to go home. Most of the time he didn’t even bother to talk to anyone; he just lay on the sofa and watched and listened, half-dozed sometimes if he was bored, then woke up, and spoke to anyone who came over to sit on the edge of the sofa or kneel at his side. Frankie’s mother-in-law and Lavinia talked about him a lot, about the good old days, and Frankie was sorry that she hadn’t known him then and that John really wouldn’t know him at all. To John, his great-grandfather was a strong old man who hurt him with his moustache when he kissed him.

Frankie thought that maybe if she’d met Papa when he was younger he might have liked her more. He was always polite—Papa was never rude to anyone—but he didn’t pay attention to her. He wouldn’t sit and talk to her. He intimidated her so that after making a little small talk she would retreat. Well, what the hell did she have to say to him anyway? He knew so much more than she did, and what could she ask him about? When he was a kid in Russia? How to make a million dollars? He would think she was crazy.

The family was getting ready to go to some big dinner party at Andrew and Cassie’s country place. They never went there more than once a year, if that, because it was far away, and Cassie had decided that it was about time she invited them all over to see how she’d redecorated the house around Andrew’s paintings. So naturally, since they never went anywhere, the Windflower contingent all talked about this coming event for weeks, what should they wear, who would sit with who in the big car, who would drive the other car, what should they buy for a hostess gift, etc., etc. It was making Frankie nervous. She didn’t want to go at all. She was intensely uncomfortable in Cassie’s presence because she was so ritzy. When Cassie looked at her Frankie always wondered if her black roots were showing or if there was a stain on her blouse. She didn’t want to go to their fancy place and eat their fancy dinner, especially since she was sure they wouldn’t think to serve booze, or at least not enough, and she didn’t see how she could get through the ordeal without it.

“John isn’t going,” Frankie told Melissa.

“Why not?”

“He’s too young. He’ll get too excited and I don’t want him out late.”

“Oh, he should get to know his young cousins,” Lavinia said, interrupting as usual with her big loyalty-to-the-family number.

“John can sleep in the car on the way back,” Melissa said.

“He’s my son and he’s not going,” Frankie said. “I’ll stay here with him.”

“Oh?” Maybe, they were thinking, Frankie wasn’t such a bad mother after all, really concerned about her child. Little did they know.

“Well, Rosemary’s taking Buffy,” Melissa said, but it was really just a last token protest.

“Buffy’s
ten,
” Frankie said firmly.

“He’ll be awfully disappointed,” Lavinia said.

Frankie didn’t even bother to answer her. John would do what she said and that was that. He could stay up late and watch television. They wouldn’t all be there hovering over him and telling him to go to bed. He wouldn’t be very disappointed not to go. She would let him have at the candy box that Lazarus always locked up. Boy oh boy, the way they locked up things in this house! The booze locked up so the maids wouldn’t get at it, the candy locked up so the kids couldn’t get at it, and the key hung on a nail which any child could reach as soon as he was old enough to drag a chair to it. Every night after dinner Lazarus would go into the closet where the candy was locked up and stand there hunched over the whole box, picking out piece after piece with his long bony fingers, chewing thoroughly, totally absorbed, and if you tried to come in he got all embarrassed and annoyed as if you had caught him zipping up his fly. According to Lazarus, the only time it was medically recommended to eat sweets was after a meal, and since he was against sweets in principle anyway, he got furious with guilt if you discovered that in his old age he had become a candy freak.

It was finally the famous night of Cassie and Andrew’s family dinner party. Richie was taking Gilda. When Frankie realized that, she almost had a change of heart. She wasn’t as bad as Gilda. If that fat slob could show up, why couldn’t she? Gilda had a tight white dress and a feather boa and rhinestone drop earrings. It was really outrageous. But that was Gilda: jeans or feathers.

When Frankie saw the rest of them trooping out of their houses to the cars she realized Gilda hadn’t been too outrageous after all. They were all wearing cocktail dresses! For dinner in the country, after a two-hour drive cramped in a crowded car! Frankie was glad she had decided not to go.

“Don’t let John stay up too late,” her mother-in-law said, the pest.

“Have a good time,” Frankie said.

“There are Good Humors in the freezer. Don’t let him eat more than one; I saw him eating one this afternoon.”

“They’re all gone. Lazarus ate them,” Frankie said.

“I did not! That’s a damned lie!” Lazarus’ face was purple with rage because it was a lie; she had just made it up to bug him.

“Come on, Melissa,” Lavinia said, “don’t keep Papa waiting.” Lavinia had managed to get herself, Jonah, Melissa, and Lazarus seats in the big car with Papa and Etta. The chauffeur was driving, so everyone could relax. Jack was driving Hazel’s big car with Rosemary, Hazel, Buffy, Richie, and Gilda. If I’d gone, Frankie thought, I would have had to drive my Volkswagen anyway, and who needs that?

When they all drove away Frankie made herself a nice big scotch on the rocks and sat on the screened porch in solitary splendor. John was in the living room watching TV. It was late afternoon, and nice, and very quiet. The maids had gone down to the lake to fish since they didn’t have to prepare dinner. Later they would bring the fish back up to the house and fry it. Frankie hoped they would catch enough for her and John too. She was sick and tired of all those la-de-la dinners they had around here. Sometimes she just wanted to drive to Howard Johnson’s and get some fried clams.

She made another drink and sat there sipping it and thinking of all the kinds of food she would like if she didn’t have to watch her waistline. Fried clams. A cheeseburger with French fried potatoes with lots of catsup and a pitcher of draft beer. Key lime pie. Irish coffee. Bratwurst with sauerkraut and German beer and a big plate of hash brown potatoes on the side, and a couple of scotches and then coffee with a couple of brandies. A lemon-filled sugar donut. Two fried eggs on top of hash brown potatoes the way they used to make it in the diner when she was helping her mother. How she used to hate that diner, but how she missed their fried eggs on top of hash browns! They were made just right, not too greasy. Codfish cakes with cream sauce. Chicken croquettes with gravy. It was all that cheap restaurant food she had been brought up on and thought she would never miss, and now she hadn’t had it for so long she did miss it. The only thing she liked from her new life was caviar. Frankie really liked caviar. The other stuff, the gefilte fish and the matzo balls and the borscht made her sick just to taste them. All Everett ever wanted was steak. Steak every night, blood rare, and he would never eat vegetables or salad or even take a vitamin pill. Someday he would just fall apart. You couldn’t just live on half-raw meat and black coffee. Frankie liked her steak very well done, with a lot of A-1 sauce on it to kill the taste.