Family Secrets (71 page)

It was very quiet at Windflower that summer of 1967. Lazarus sat under his favorite tree, his unabridged dictionary on the metal table in front of his chair, and read a little with a magnifying glass, but it made him sleepy and often he just looked out over the vista until he nodded off into a nap. Jonah took solitary walks around the property for hours. Lavinia puttered in her garden and arranged flowers for the houses. Bringing an armful of fresh-cut garden flowers to Paris and arranging them for her was Lavinia’s excuse to see her child, who was always locked away upstairs in her bedroom typing. Lavinia knew better than to interrupt her, but she always hoped she would arrive when Paris was in the kitchen having a meal. Rima was usually at the pool, baking herself in the sun and giving herself wrinkles. Lavinia was glad Paris didn’t spend much time in the sun. Sun gave you cancer. She left long notes in the kitchen for Paris, pages and pages. She brought fresh vegetables from the farm down the road and washed them and left them with more notes.

“Oh, your poor mother,” Rima said, “washing all those vegetables.”

It bothered Paris that her mother sneaked in and out like a fan, an admirer, hoping for a glimpse of her. But what could she do? She still couldn’t bring herself to go over there often to see them, and she kept coming here to her own house, her borrowed house, and then hiding in it like a hermit. It was ridiculous. She should go away altogether. But her mother said she would miss her, and after all, she had a book to write, as usual, and what better place to write it than this place where nothing happened to distract you?

Paris had stopped having weekend guests, except for Rima, who was still involved with her married man. Now Paris invited people for dinner, six and eight at a time, and she and Rima cooked. Their friends were respectable: married couples, mostly business associates, a few old friends who sometimes brought houseguests or a relative from out of town with them. Paris had become a good cook and she enjoyed it.

Buffy was away in Europe, running with her team. Rosemary and Jack needed only one maid now, who also had to cook because Rosemary hated cooking. They ate meals at odd hours: lunch at three o’clock. Everyone wondered how they had found such a docile cook.

Melissa was the only one who was constantly busy, because she was afraid to leave Lazarus out of her sight for long. She had been nursing him for so long that she had almost become him. Now it was she who told his old stories, who imparted tidbits of medical advice, “Lazarus says …” He no longer ate his huge breakfasts, feeling that older people should eat more sparingly, and besides, he really had no appetite. She was always at her wit’s end trying to find something that would tempt him. Caviar? Too salty, he said. Custard? Too sweet, he said. A cookie? Too rich, he said. This cookie then? Too dry, he said. She hovered over him, cutting his meat, trying to find the choicest bits, removing the fat, offering him his vegetables, coaxing him to eat as she had done to Everett so long ago. He was her baby. If he spent too long in the shower she worried that he had fallen or had a heart attack, forgetting that Lazarus always took long showers. She rapped on the bathroom door: “Are you all right, Toots?” She took him for his walks around the grounds, adjusting her quick step to his slow one, until finally she walked slowly all the time, even when he was not with her, leaning slightly to one side as if the heavy burden of his body were still pressed against her.

“What’s the matter with you?” Lavinia would say. “Stand up!”

Melissa wanted to be old, she wished herself old. He was so much older than she, how much? Eighteen years? Seventeen, perhaps, she had forgotten. That year she was sixty-four, and Lazarus was … eighty-seven! Why, he was twenty-three years older than she was. She remembered how sophisticated he had been once, so suave, so gallant, so wise and all-knowing about the world, and she such a frivolous girl. She didn’t want to be a frivolous middle-aged woman, she wanted to be old and serene and wise, and because she couldn’t bear the thought of being too different from him, she wanted to be tired too, and content to rest. She would have liked to go to the theater, but Lazarus hated it, and it was too much of an effort for him. He refused to hire a car and driver; too expensive he said. They never went to opera any more, or to concerts, and she tried not to miss them. When he took naps, she took naps. She slept all afternoon, beside him on the bed, waking occasionally to see if he was still all right. When he woke up she brought him cookies and milk, an eggnog, trying to tempt him, and when he turned the snack away, as he usually did, she consumed it herself. She had put on weight and almost become plump. It became her, everyone said, but she wasn’t pleased with herself. She had always been proud of her trim figure. Now there were favorite clothes she couldn’t squeeze herself into any more. But the added weight made her look older, more matronly, and she felt she should accept it. She was not a young woman. She was Dr. Lazarus Bergman’s wife, and a grownup.

There were so many of her friends she hadn’t seen for ages. It was a full-time job, taking care of Lazarus. He didn’t go to the office any more; at least she had finally made him give that up. It was about time. He really wouldn’t have retired except that most of his patients had died of old age. Besides, his office was in an impossible neighborhood, too dangerous even for a young man. Melissa watched with awe as husband after husband of her girlfriends died untimely deaths. Why they were her age, young men! Too young to die. Melissa and Lazarus were inseparable. It was how an old couple should be in their twilight years, growing old companionably together.

“Sixty-four isn’t old,” Lavinia would snap at her. “I’m older than you are and I live a normal life. Invite some company, or get a nurse for a couple of hours if you’re so scared, and go out to a matinee with a friend.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t enjoy it,” Melissa murmured, shocked at the very idea.

It was nice, Melissa thought, that Everett had turned out to be such a devoted son, telephoning her every day from Florida. She missed seeing him, but his phone calls were like little visits and she enjoyed them. She missed John more than she missed Everett, because Everett was always the same but John was constantly changing, growing up, getting smarter and more interesting and charming and devilish and she was missing so much of it. John was so sociable, with all those friends! The schools had been good for John, and she had to believe Everett had been a good father, because then that made her good; she was, after all, Everett’s mother. She was glad John wanted to work and that Everett encouraged it. She had always encouraged Everett in his chosen career even though the rest of the family didn’t seem to think much of it.

She had been lucky to have a long happy marriage when so many other people had their troubles. But sometimes now, when she lay in their bedroom while Lazarus napped, or when she leafed through a magazine while Lazarus dozed in the living room, she felt depressed. She was glad to have him there and it made her feel secure, but she was restless and a strange sadness filled her. She had indigestion, she had aches and pains, and sometimes she noticed a little twitch over one eyelid. Some days she and Lazarus hardly exchanged two sentences with each other. Mostly she cajoled him to eat or take his walk or stop walking because he seemed tired, and he said no. They didn’t have discussions any more, or conversations. Sometimes Melissa felt lonely. But her love for him wrapped her warmly as she shivered in her heart, and she let her thoughts drift back to the old days, the happy days when they all had so much fun, so many friends, so many parties, on the go, always laughing and chattering and planning things to do. What had narrowed their lives so much? Not just age; it had started happening before Lazarus grew so old. It was partly Windflower. Having the family around her had made Melissa so content, so self-sufficient, that she really hadn’t had time to be such a social butterfly. Those long summers when you didn’t get around to inviting your friends, and then in the winter you were embarrassed about it and then they had their lives too, their children and grandchildren to worry about. And there had been the winter trips to Florida, so that cut out all the holiday parties in Brooklyn and New York. It had always been the family first, and eventually it had been only the family. And now, of course, she couldn’t leave Lazarus for a moment, except once in the city when she ran to the doctor to get some tranquilizers. She had been so nervous leaving him alone for that short time, even though the maid was there and he was asleep, that when she finally got home she had to take two of the tranquilizers immediately. The doctor said they would keep her from being depressed and make her eyelid stop twitching.

Sometimes when she was lying down she pictured herself dancing, twirling and swaying in a sea-green dress, with a long chiffon scarf trailing gracefully behind her, and it was as restful as counting sheep. The little image danced across her sight under her closed eyelids like a little movie, a miniature, a tiny young Melissa. How golden her hair had been! She heard the music in her head, the old wind-up Gramophone, and she smiled. Such foolish dreams she’d had, and yet, they still made her smile.

At Windflower, that summer, a phrase kept running through Melissa’s head and she couldn’t figure out why. It was “The last of the Mohicans.” It would pop into her head for no reason at all—“The last of the Mohicans”—and she thought it must have been something Lazarus had said once.

Lazarus died peacefully in his sleep, of natural causes, at age eighty-seven, that summer at Windflower.

Melissa was totally bereft. She had no one to take care of now, no one to look up to, and she was in a daze. Day after day she sat staring out over the hills, not really seeing them, not moving, not speaking, almost dead herself. Everett had come up for the funeral and stayed for two days. While he was there he went through some of his father’s papers and found Lazarus’ birth certificate. He hadn’t been eighty-seven after all, he had been eighty-nine; he had lied about his age all these years for vanity’s sake.

“He was almost ninety,” Lavinia told Melissa consolingly. “He had a long happy life. Pull yourself together.”

“He was a tough old guy,” Jonah said admiringly. “Taking care of himself all these years paid off. Now you should start to take care of yourself, take a walk, don’t just sit there.”

Lavinia and Rosemary had to pull her up out of her chair, one on each side, holding her up, making her take a slow stroll around the grounds. It was as if Lazarus’ soul had entered Melissa’s body. She seemed frail, bent, her steps were slow, she faltered, and she still leaned as if she were supporting his body against hers. All these years, thinking only of him, how could she begin again?

In the fall the family moved back to the city. Melissa was afraid to sleep in her apartment alone. She had never been in any house alone in all her life. First she had lived with her sisters and brothers, then with her husband and child, and finally with her husband alone, but never by herself. She determined to manage. She had been tough once, strong, a spitfire, hadn’t she? She would sleep alone.

Her friends phoned and came to call. There were dozens of them it seemed, all the girls she’d grown up with who were now old widows like herself, with married children, and they sat in her living room and chatted of old times. Melissa thought with surprise that most of them really didn’t look too bad. They had kept in shape, their hair was either subtly streaked with gray or dyed a natural color, they wore stylish clothes, rouge, powder, perfume, their nails were done. They weren’t bad at all, and she shouldn’t have let herself go because it was too soon.

With no one to look after and feed, Melissa wasn’t interested in food, and so she noticed with some pleasure that she had lost the extra weight she had put on the last few years and now her clothes fit again. Lavinia dragged her to the theater with her and Jonah. They went to a matinee once a month and insisted Melissa come too, and then Lavinia made Melissa send away for matinee tickets and go with her friends. Then there were the concerts, and the ballet. There was Blanche, who had been quite a musician in her day, and whose banker husband had died three years ago, and she insisted Melissa share her season tickets to a concert series. They would go Dutch, of course. And Ivy, who had been such a brain, married to a successful businessman who had died just last year, and she wanted Melissa to take piano lessons of all things! If not piano lessons, then how about a poetry course at the Y? Or what about flower arranging? Ivy was taking all of these. Her children were all married and she said once every week or two was plenty to see your grandchildren; after all, you didn’t want to get in the way, and to tell the truth, what could you say to kids anyway?

And there was Jessica, whose son managed a travel agency, and who went on trips all the time. Her husband had died a long time ago, and while he was alive of course she had gone with him, so she knew her way around. Melissa had always admired Jessica’s spirit. That winter Jessica signed up for a three-month European tour she would take in the late spring, to be crowned by a trip to Moscow to see the Bolshoi Ballet. She wanted Blanche and Ivy and Melissa to go with her.

“Moscow!” Melissa said. “It’s so far.”

“You can’t mourn forever,” Jessica said. “It’ll be almost a year. Travel is the best remedy for grief, I’ve found. There’ll be the four of us and we’ll have fun, like four schoolgirls.”

“Some schoolgirls,” Melissa said. “Old hags.”

“You can be an old hag,” Ivy said, “but I’m not. I’m starting my exercise class again next week at the Y, now that my back is better.”

“That’s how you pulled it out in the first place,” Melissa said, but she was tempted to join them on the trip. She had never been to Europe. She had never really been anywhere. All those places she had dreamed of and had never seen, all the plans and hopes deferred. There were always so many other people to think of first.

“Come with us,” Jessica said. “Ivy is going. Blanche is going. You’ll be sorry if you miss it. There’s nothing to do in New York in the summer anyway.”