Family Secrets (70 page)

“Hey, Ray, when ya goin’ ta getcha self a decent machine there, huh?”

“When you skinflints start spendin’ some money,” Ray would shoot back.

There wasn’t even a bowl of free peanuts on the bar. You could buy a package of potato chips for a quarter; there was a cigarette machine, and a jukebox that sometimes played quietly under the roar of the boxing match or football game on the TV. No one really listened to either the jukebox or the TV, except for the few avid sports fans. Who, after all, would come to a bar to watch a dinky nine-inch screen in black and white when he could be home watching the game on a big screen in color, his wife handing him cold beers? No, they came to the bar for companionship, for peace, to get away from the wife and kids or, as in Everett’s case, to get away from the nothingness that awaited them at home.

They weren’t all bums or barflies, no, not by a long shot. Everett had met his best friends in that bar. One was a chemistry professor, another owned a used-car lot, and a third was a would-be writer. One was even a cop. They had long discussions, but never arguments. Even though a couple of the guys were intellectuals, they weren’t pinkos. Parlor liberals reminded Everett of his own ineffectual family. He himself was a solid conservative. He felt proudly that he was a part of the mainstream of American life, of the come-up-the-hard-way-and-do-it-yourself school. He didn’t believe in helping the poor, who were all shiftless and lazy. The help his family had given him he preferred to put out of mind, considering that it was the least they could have done since they were family. It was different from giving to strangers. His mother was paying for John’s school, but Everett made John work during the summers. He wouldn’t give the kid any money. And actually, John liked to work. It had disappointed Everett that John had decided not to work for him, but the kid said he made more working for that big company, so what the hell? He was right, it was good to make as much money as you could if you were doing what you liked to do.

He tried to be friends with John, the few times he saw the kid. He watched carefully to be sure John wasn’t developing any of those weird, smart-ass ideas the other kids his age had, wasn’t smoking pot or hanging around with rabble-rousers and communists. Fourteen wasn’t too young to start watching. John seemed polite, well groomed, and private. He wasn’t a hippie or a weirdo, which was one of the reasons Everett had been worried about the fancy Eastern school at first, because they put funny ideas into kids’ heads back up north. Superintellectual liberals, how he hated them! But John seemed okay. He wore a tie; his hair was too long for Everett’s taste but at least it didn’t hang down to his shoulders like a girl. Hell, he wore a tie more often than Everett did!

Everett’s mother had stopped nagging him to find another wife. He and his mother were good friends now that he didn’t have to see her or live with her. They talked on the phone together every day. He called her, sometimes collect. They talked about business mostly, and Everett supposed she was his best friend. When he phoned he usually asked after his father’s health, but never asked to speak to him. They had nothing to say to each other. But Everett liked his mother. She enjoyed things. He was sorry he hadn’t taken after her more, that he’d turned out dour and serious like his father, but still, he enjoyed things more now. This was probably the most contented time of Everett’s life.

The bar was his life. It was like a social club. The men there didn’t bother to socialize outside the bar, to invite each other home to meet the wife and kids, to go to a movie or bowl or go out to eat. What for? Inside the bar they were safe; it was theirs. The other things, the dragging the yammering kids to the hamburger joint, the movie on Saturday night with the wife, the parties, the PTA, those were the things you
had
to do. But sitting around The Stoney End just relaxing with the guys, that was something you
wanted
to do. Everett had never been much of a drinker and he still wasn’t. A Miller or two, he liked that. It was the companionship that brought him to The Stoney End night after night, not the booze.

There were four booths in the back where you could get a pretty fair meal if you wanted. Everett ate there sometimes, alone, and had a steak, nearly raw the way he liked it and had trained the Cuban cook to make it for him. It wasn’t great meat but it was a helluva lot easier than going to the supermarket and shopping and cooking and then having to wash dishes. Sometimes, if he was tired, he would just have a beer and then go home, lie down, watch a little TV, read the evening paper or look through a magazine, and then if he got bored he would get up and go back to The Stoney End to see what was happening there. He knew there would always be someone he knew, or someone who would talk to him even if they didn’t know each other, because Ray the owner-bartender was always wisecracking and making people feel friendly and good.

He remembered that roadhouse Frankie used to go to up at Windflower and how mad he’d get because he didn’t see why she had to go to some cheap bar when they had everything she could want at home. Maybe she had found that kind of friendship and companionship at the roadhouse, like he found here. But what the hell, Frankie was a damned drunk! Still, maybe he could have tried to understand her better. He sure had tried, but she never seemed interested in understanding him either. She’d been in his life so long ago that the sharp edges were beginning to wear off in his memory, and now he could say to the guys that he’d once had a wife who got killed in an accident and he had a great kid, and what the hell, everybody had some kind of tragedy in their lives, right? You just had to make the best of it.

He hadn’t been to Windflower for years. Everybody understood. They were used to his ways. He had to work, and he couldn’t take time off, and besides, there were memories. His parents used to come to visit him and John every Christmas, but now his father was older and not feeling too well and couldn’t make the trip, so his parents stayed home. He and his mother had their phone calls. She saw John a couple of times a year, for a day, when he came through New York on his way to Florida or to visit a friend in the East. John had a million friends. Everett couldn’t figure out who the kid took after. Maybe his grandmother, Everett’s mother. She said she’d had a million friends too when she was young. It was too bad, Everett thought, that she was tied down nursing his father, but she seemed to like it. Yep, she was a good ol’ girl.

Everett knew that when his father died he’d have money. It didn’t mean much to him. He couldn’t really think of anything he’d like to spend a lot of money on. He didn’t want to expand his business, he didn’t want to travel, he didn’t care about a better house or clothes or even putting in a swimming pool. The only thing he spent money on was his car, and he always had enough for that. Even though he lived in Florida he was always pale white. Suntans were for tourists. He had thought once it might be fun to buy a small yacht, but then he’d decided against it. It would be enjoyable to work on it, fix it, maintain it, but he really didn’t like the water. No, he had everything he wanted right here, right now. Maybe he was creeping toward middle age and settling down. There was nothing wrong with that.

John, at fourteen, was mature for his age, tall and strong, with a quiet, sure charm and a fairness of outlook that made him the acknowledged leader in his class. He liked Exeter, and hoped to go to a good Eastern college where he could major in psychology and then came back and teach it. He wanted to be a teacher, he had decided, in a boys’ prep school just like this one, up north, and never go back to Florida. He had no ties back in Miami. He was fond of his father, but in a rather removed way, as if his father were an eccentric older brother, a bit odd, with some weird ideas, set in his ways, conservative, hicky even. His father wore funny sloppy clothes and liked to sit around in a bar and never read a book. His father was so full of prejudices it was funny. He had a bad word to say about everybody, from minorities to the very rich. John was more amused than annoyed. It didn’t concern him, really; he was too far away to be affected by it and could smile politely and say, “Yes, Sir,” the way he’d been taught by his mother when he was a child, and then his father would be pacified.

His interest in psychology had started because of his own personal problems. Before that he’d thought of being a writer, or of teaching English, or maybe some sport. But as he grew older he became aware of certain conflicts he had in his mind about his mother and the way he felt about her. On the one hand he missed her very much, and on the other he remembered how badly she’d treated him and how mad he’d been at her sometimes, and then he sometimes felt guilty about her death as if it had relieved him of some burden. That terrified him. So he had gone to his adviser, who had sent him to talk to a doctor in town who was associated with the school in some way, and through their talks John had realized that what he felt was normal and natural because his mother had, after all, been a human being with faults, not a goddess, and being dead didn’t wipe out all her faults as if they’d never existed. John also realized that when he had been with the family at Windflower he had felt a little guilty about loving his mother because everybody there seemed to dislike her. Like he’d say, “My mother says …,” and their faces would turn stony, turn away from him, and he wanted them to like him. It was so interesting that a person could have so many different conflicting feelings about the same person: love, hate, anger, respect, embarrassment, fondness, annoyance, and even confusion and incomprehension. He knew that a lot of boys had those feelings about their parents, and it would be good for them to understand what they were feeling and make some sense out of it. Psychology would help. He didn’t want to be a doctor or a psychologist, he just wanted to teach the stuff, and be there as an adviser if some of the kids wanted to talk to him. He felt he could help because he understood. And he liked the sheltered academic life in a prep school community. It was like a big family. He’d even thought for a while of teaching something in a boarding school for younger kids, but then he’d thought no, he wanted to teach on a more advanced level, and besides there were still unhappy memories lurking even though he’d liked his old school. He realized now that he’d been unhappy when he was young, but now he felt good about himself and about his life. He would never have had this independence, this security, if he hadn’t been sent away from home so young.

He went to visit his grandparents as infrequently as possible. He liked the physical aspects of Windflower, but whenever he went there his grandmother drove him crazy. She treated him as if he were four years old. It was “Eat this,” and “Eat that,” and “Do this,” and “Don’t do that,” and “Be careful” until it was coming out his ears. She was afraid of everything. The whole world seemed menacing to her. She worried where he was, and if he left the house to go next door to visit Paris she was frantic that something bad had happened to him. He made one-day visits to his grandmother now, out of courtesy, because he couldn’t stand more. After being on his own all his life since he could remember it was very irritating to be hovered over and smothered like that. He wondered if she’d treated his father like that when he was young.

It was impressive, John thought, that two of his cousins had become so famous. Paris was a writer and Buffy was a runner, and he followed both their careers with loyalty and interest. He thought it was funny that the “old folks,” as he thought of his grandparents and aunts and uncles, were sort of shocked about Paris’ books and Buffy’s choice of career. He thought they were both terrific. The old folks had such old-fashioned ideas. Even his father was shocked, but then his father was one of the worst of the old folks sometimes, even though he tried to pretend to be modern.

The only thing John had in common with his father was that they were both crazy about cars. When they were together that was the main thing they talked about. Now John was working after school and during the summer to save money to buy his own car. When he told his father that he was working for Canco because he made a lot of money there his father had seemed to assume that John intended to spend his life there. That was really a laugh, working in the shipping department of a canning company! But what else could you get when you were fourteen? People thought the only thing you were good enough to do was lift boxes. He just wanted the car, that was all. And a little spending money, to go out with his friends, see movies, and go skiing. John had learned to ski up north and he loved it. He figured that by the time he was old enough to get a driver’s license (even though he had a Florida learner’s permit now) he would have enough money to buy his car, and then he could buy a good pair of skis. He had a cheap pair now, that he’d bought with Christmas and birthday money he’d saved from the family. Then he’d get a good hi-fi. There were a lot of nice things he wanted like that, and he knew he’d never be rich on a teacher’s salary, but it didn’t matter if getting them took longer. He’d get them all eventually.

Some of his teachers had been the most important people in his life. He still remembered Stan, his adviser when he’d been just a little kid, and how much it had helped to have a friend like him. Maybe people who weren’t in the academic community didn’t think teachers were so important, and maybe some teachers were jerks, but there was a lot of good to be done in education. John wondered why his father had never thought of teaching people all the things he knew about making things and fixing things. His father didn’t like people. That was too bad. Meeting new people, getting to know them, having friends, was one of the best things in life. No one should ever have to be alone.

SIX

Now that he was very old Lazarus had become quiet. No longer did he regale the family with the same old stories, with new words he had discovered, with new medical theories. He dozed, woke with a start as if surprised, and dozed again. He did not like the world as it was; he preferred the past. Sometimes he had a wild look in his eyes, almost of anger, of being offended by this new unseemly world that pushed its way into his old safe one through the medium of his television set, his radio, and even on the street. No, it wasn’t safe to walk on the street any more. There were no movies to go to; they were all shocking. The people on the street were dirty-looking, unkempt, unhealthy. He took his daily walk with Melissa now, leaning on her arm for support, peering out at his street with contempt and annoyance. All that garbage piled up! Dog filth! Hippies! Cars honking, buses hooting, exhausts breathing out poison. The air itself was poisoned, dropping little crisp black dots of poison on his window sill, his clothes, his very person. He wore a hat, he put his collar up, he leaned on Melissa, and he wondered why he drove himself to take his healthful constitutional when the world he took it in was so filthy it would only do him harm. He appreciated Windflower, it was so clean and silent, except for the restful sounds of nature, the waterfall, the leaves rustling in the trees, the occasional chirping of birds. Not disease-carrying pigeons but polite country birds that kept their distance.