Fortunate Lives (26 page)

And David. “You can’t possibly understand how vulnerable any teenager is unless you have one of your own,” she had finally
replied to Ellen, not unkindly, since it had been Ellen’s own decision not to have children. “We’ve all repressed memories
of our own misery at that age. Or we’ve
edited
the whole experience so that we can bear to remember any of it at all.” But Dinah gave up the effort of explaining when she
saw Ellen’s expression of suppressed disagreement.

David
was
so vulnerable because he had made an apparent success of his childhood. He was one of those children whom most adults come
to believe they once were themselves, the sort of person they unwisely urge their own children to be, as though anyone could
choose his or her nature. It was perfectly natural that the anxious parents of West Bradford, when they considered what appeared
to be David Howells’s easy progress through the years, didn’t understand that his talent for growing up would not necessarily
have any bearing on his success at being a grown-up. They had, of course, reinterpreted their own history in the
context of their current lives; otherwise the contradictions were unsettling, were too illogical.

David appeared golden in his small pond because he had such easily recognizable talents, scholastically and socially, but
he had a naïveté that only his parents understood. It seemed to his parents that David’s faith in the logical progression
of his own life was unaccompanied by any understanding that he would have to shape its direction. Eventually he would have
to make invidious comparisons, unpleasant judgments, difficult choices. He accepted his existence at face value, with very
little cynicism. Dinah didn’t know how to protect him from his own innocent expectations; for the time being, she did her
best to guard him from disillusionment by covering his tracks and anticipating his failure to plan ahead.

But it was true that morning in May, while she cleared the way for Martin and David to maneuver the trunk into the bedroom,
that she became increasingly angry at both of them. She didn’t think they had the right to pass judgment on her request, to
patronize her by their mutual air of condescension. She had sensed she was being ganged up on. Didn’t they remember all the
requests they had made of her over the years that were whimsical, foolish, or a consequence of their own forgetfulness or
lack of foresight?

She hadn’t said any of this; she merely nurtured her resentment icily in the old farmhouse, which had been filled with the
light of spring when the leaves were still only sparsely sketched on the trees and the interiors of the four-windowed rooms
were bleached with a shadeless profusion of unshifting sunshine. She had remained silent. She could not have said to them
that if David was leaving in three months, she needed to begin to believe it at once.

And now, in August, the trunk still sat empty, so while David helped Netta sort through the things she had
salvaged from her marriage, filling the cupboards and bureaus and bookshelves of her apartment on Marchand’s Drive, Dinah
rummaged through all the closets of her own house, collecting whatever items she had on hand that David would need. Sarah
would have made up her own lists competently, needing very few reminders, and Toby would have had his trunk packed by mid-July.
He had planned ahead with a sort of desperation and had never seemed to be able to relax entirely into whatever pleasure was
to be had in the immediate moment. Whereas Toby had always been wary of the immutable onslaught of his own future, David’s
talent was to navigate the present with brilliance.

Dinah had glanced out the window one afternoon years ago, when Toby was in third grade, and had seen David emerge from the
schoolbus and turn to continue a conversation with a friend through one of the bus windows. Finally Toby had climbed down
the steps and trudged past David and even Duchess, who abased herself before him, wriggling and shambling around him in a
humble plea for affection. He didn’t pay any attention to the dog or to his mother when he passed her in the kitchen, except
to acknowledge her with a monosyllabic greeting and go on his way up the stairs to his room. After a while Dinah had gone
to find him there, where he was stretched out on his bed.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Dinah asked. “You feel all right?”

He was quiet for a moment, thinking it over. “Matthew thinks that if me and Anne and Jason are all lawyers we could have a
good business, because he’s black and Jason’s Jewish and Anne’s a girl, and she’s a Catholic.” He looked away from her after
explaining this and didn’t say anything for a moment. Dinah was so taken aback at such sad precocity that she was struck dumb.
“And I guess I’m a Christian. That’s what Matthew says.”
He looked at her for confirmation, but she was searching for some way to discourage this whole line of thought. He went on.
“Jason’s going to go to Columbia, and Matthew’s going to Yale, and Anne’s going to Vassar, and I’ll go to Harvard.” None of
this was cute or amusing to Dinah, and it was clear it had filled him with anxiety. “But if I can’t get into Harvard I don’t
know what I’ll do. I don’t even know how I’ll get a job.”

“Toby, you’re only eight…. It’s tokenism…. Why are you… ? Well…” She had paused to marshal her thoughts, to think of a way
to discourage him wisely. “Look at Ellen! Or your Aunt Isobel! Neither of them even
finished
college! God, Isobel didn’t even start…” She was sputtering with frustration. Where had he even heard of these schools? What
could have put this into his mind? She made an effort to collect herself, and sat down on the foot of Toby’s bed. “Listen,
most of the people in the world don’t go to Harvard or Yale or Columbia or Vassar, and they have jobs.
Most
of the people in the world don’t go to college at all! And there are lots of fools out there who did go to those schools
and
don’t
and
shouldn’t
have jobs!” She had been surprisingly angry—not at Toby, but at this suffocating set of expectations he had set up for himself
when he was only eight years old. For a few minutes she thought she had assuaged his fears about his life as an adult, because
he settled farther into his pillow and gazed out the window.

“You mean, even if I go to Harvard I might not get a job?”

And over the years whenever Martin and Dinah took the children into New York, Toby had trod after them moodily through any
museum and lagged behind them along the frantic sidewalks. Once when Martin had persuaded David to go again with him and Sarah
to the Museum of Natural History, Dinah had begged off, and Toby had simply refused, so he and she were having a
sandwich at a deli they frequented whenever they were in the city.

For as long as Dinah could remember, there had been a bearded, disheveled man who stood or sometimes sat in front of the deli
and never spoke, but became upset and insistent when customers approached, leaning forward aggressively and thrusting toward
them a jar that already contained a few coins. Dinah always had some change ready to give him, and she took his presence in
stride after so many years. But that lunchtime, when they had not gone to the Museum of Natural History, Toby had pulled his
mother back as they approached the deli.

“What, Toby?” she had said, but he hadn’t answered her. He had only been in the fourth grade, but his pull on her arm and
his braced feet and locked knees had brought her to a standstill. He wouldn’t answer her, though. “Come on! I’m hungry, and
it’ll be too crowded for us to sit down if we don’t go in now.” She had disengaged her arm from his grasp and moved ahead,
and he had, indeed, followed her to a booth, although he refused to have anything to eat. She didn’t attempt to chat with
him; she concentrated on her own lunch.

“I’m never going to be like that,” Toby had said to her. “Even if I’m really poor. I’d live out in the country.”

She had tried then and many times afterward to persuade him of all the desirable, likely, and secure possibilities between
the extremes of being lost and adrift in society and being a Harvard Law School graduate, but without success. He noticed
the people huddled in doorways, or wandering with their possessions through Grand Central Station, or the man outside the
deli, and without fail he imagined himself in their situation. All the ordinary people in the streets in their suits and dresses
or jeans and T-shirts might as well have been invisible.

In all his life Dinah had not been able to figure out why Toby had so little faith in his own abilities. She
didn’t think she had ever been able to reassure him adequately, and now, on a warm August day in the heavy air of late summer,
it occurred to her that David might eventually complete a cycle that Toby had hoped to begin. Neither she nor Martin had ever
wanted David to go to Harvard, hoping that he would choose a four-year undergraduate college. Her resentment of the whole
institution—admission to which, in all its imagined unattainability, had loomed gloomily over much of Toby’s life—resolved
itself into a thin fury as she sorted and folded and marked sheets and towels. She was tense with a shaky, febrile anger at
Mr. Franklin M. Mount, who had suggested that Harvard students would need raincoats to carry on their rarefied lives.

As Dinah was bending over David’s bed, where she was carefully lettering HOWELLS in the bottom right-hand corner of each one
of eight towels with a laundry pen, she heard Ellen call up to her from the kitchen. People in West Bradford hadn’t locked
their doors until recently, when several women’s purses had been stolen from kitchen counters right inside their back doors.
Dinah still didn’t lock her door. For one thing, she was rarely parted from her purse. Even when she was in her robe or nightgown,
she went from room to room with her old Coach bag slung by its strap over her shoulder, where it functioned as a kind of portable
office. She often used it to brace her checkbook while she paid the plumber or wrote out a check at the grocery store while
standing in line, and the tan leather was marked and dotted with black squiggles of ink from hurried moments when she had
struggled to tear off the check before capping her pen. But besides that, she had no idea where her house keys were, and she
never remembered to take Martin’s and have them copied. So people came and went all year at the Howellses’ house. Friends
left a jar of soup or a plate of cookies on the kitchen counter if they found no one home. The man who read the gas meter
made his way through the house to the basement, and workmen left their bills propped against the sugar bowl on the kitchen
table.

“I’m up here, Ellen,” she called down. “I’m in David’s room.”

Ellen was one of the few people whose voice Duchess recognized, and she went to the top of the stairs, wagging her tail enthusiastically.
Taffy stayed where he was, lolling on David’s pillow, but the gray cat, Bob, disappeared like a wraith beneath the dresser.

“Vic and Martin are going to be at the office until about seven. I thought we could get pizza,” Ellen said, zigzagging around
Duchess, who impeded her way excitedly. Ellen sat on the other side of the bed and idly scratched Duchess between the ears.
“Would that be okay or would you rather go out?”

“No. That’ll be fine,” Dinah said, although she wasn’t in the mood to be sociable this evening. “I don’t even know who’ll
be home for dinner. I hadn’t planned to cook. But God, I really want to get this done. Why don’t you make a salad if you would.”
Dinah had looked up when Ellen came in to smile a greeting, but she had seen right away that Ellen was in one of her purposeful
moods, in which she would be likely to be bossy. Dinah had deflected her intention, and although Ellen cast a disapproving
eye over the trunk, into which Dinah had folded sweaters and blankets and sheets, she didn’t comment.

“I hate washing lettuce,” Dinah added conversationally. “In the summer I feel like I devote my life to washing lettuce. You
make the salad and the pizza will be our treat. David and Sarah both have friends over, and no telling how many people will
be here for dinner.”

“Will David mind if I take what I need from the garden?” Ellen asked.

“Oh, no. He hasn’t done much work in the garden the past few weeks. I imagine the lettuce needs thinning.” Ellen
shot her a speculative look to see if Dinah intended irony, to see if she knew what David
had
been doing in the past few weeks. Clearly, though, no one had mentioned to her David’s probable involvement with Netta, because
Dinah continued earnestly marking the last of the washcloths. Ellen went off, clattering down the stairs in her clogs, with
Duchess fast on her heels.

By the time Dinah had arranged the towels and sheets in David’s trunk and showered, the house had filled up. Sarah and two
of her friends were out on the porch, talking with David and Sam Albergotti, whom Dinah had scarcely seen this summer. Netta
stood in the porch doorway, with Anna Tyson leaning back against her knees. Ellen was slicing cucumbers, and Martin and Vic
were sitting at the kitchen table over a stack of papers.

“Have you ordered the pizza yet?” Dinah asked when she came into the kitchen.

“We’re trying to sort it all out,” Ellen said. “We think two large ‘Vegetarians’ and two ‘Combinations.’ One ‘Deep Dish’ and
one ‘New York Crust’ of each. What do you want?”

“I don’t care. I’ll have a piece of either kind. Will Anna Tyson want something plain, though? Should we get one ‘Small Cheese’?”

Ellen didn’t want Netta and her daughter to stay for dinner, and she grimaced at Dinah with urgent intent, but looked away
as Martin glanced up to speak to his wife. He was distracted and frowning slightly. “Sweetheart, Netta and I are going over
to the office and see if we can finish the editing on her article. Is that okay with you? We’ll pick up something and take
it over there. It goes to the printer tomorrow morning. Vic, are you coming?”

Vic held his hands up, palms outward in surrender, shaking his head. “Not unless you need me. I’m done in.”

“No, that’s fine,” Martin said. “I don’t think it’ll take us more than about an hour.”