THE TOWN WHERE SHE HAD GROWN UP, where her mother had once taught first grade and her father’s hardware store doubled as an alternate town hall, was small enough that once her news was out, the sequence of humiliating encounters Daphne had to endure, however endless they seemed at the time, were finite: from her family doctor (a ghastly conversation about venereal disease) and her tactless brother (“Knocked up? Whoa”) to teachers and neighbors and parents’ friends and the salesclerks she couldn’t avoid forever in the shops where she still had to do her everyday errands. On and on it seemed to go, this awkward continuum of faked joy, hidden panic—not regret, never regret, she would remind herself; at least not about the baby—and, from nearly everyone around her, thinly disguised pity. People were kind but distant; she almost wished somebody would go ahead and call her a slut. Now and then, she caught a certain glance exchanged by her parents, a glance whose meaning she wished she did not understand.
Yet somehow, in nearly a full round of seasons, she had eluded the one chance meeting that she dreaded more than any other. Just when she began to think that maybe she’d be spared—maybe Mrs. Patton had moved away or even died (she was, after all, a gray-haired widow)—it happened.
Kit was a few months old by then. It was a mercifully comfortable summer day, not too humid or still, and Daphne was taking a walk through town—a walk just for the sake of a walk—pushing him in his carriage, the same baby carriage in which her own mother had pushed her along the very same streets. She hadn’t been paying much attention to people passing her by on the sidewalk—often, when she could get away from the house, she would slip into vague daydreams detailing Malachy’s change of heart, their fates rejoined through his mother’s intervention—so she had only a few seconds in which to absorb that the woman approaching her was Mrs. Patton.
Mrs. Patton had been her first cello teacher—the woman who had seen and believed in her early talent, who had persuaded Daphne’s mother to drive her three times a week to Hanover for expensive lessons with a more advanced teacher, who, in turn, had sponsored her audition for the camp. As soon as they received the acceptance letter, Daphne’s mother had invited Mrs. Patton for dinner. She arrived with a congratulatory bouquet of daffodils gathered from her garden. After handing the flowers to Daphne’s mother, she had embarrassed Daphne by grasping her hands and telling her, tearfully, “I always hoped that one of my pupils, someday, would have a chance like this. You, Daphne, are my true musical daughter.”
Daphne knew full well how disappointed her parents were in her “change of circumstances,” as they phrased it in their letter to her high-school principal, but at least they had a consolation prize: a first grandchild. If Mrs. Patton had meant what she said the day she came for dinner, she had every right to be disappointed, too—without a single consolation. Daphne had been a good student in all the subjects she possibly could; to cross a teacher was something that never gave her pleasure.
They both stopped, beneath the shade of a store awning.
“Hi, Mrs. Patton.”
“How are you doing, dear?” It was clear (and no surprise) that she knew about Daphne’s “change of circumstances.” Perhaps her parents had sent that letter to Mrs. Patton as well, to all sorts of people who’d had loftier expectations for Daphne. Maybe they had mimeographed it and asked the postmistress to slip it into everybody’s mailbox, like the flyers advertising sales at Mack’s Grocery. Or maybe she had posted it on the bulletin board alongside the FBI’s wanted posters. (What did Daphne care, at this point?)
“I’m doing all right,” Daphne said. “I’m living at home, and I’m going to take some college courses in the fall. I might major in music.” She became aware that she was shaking. “I’m thinking I could maybe become a teacher.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Your pupils would be fortunate,” said Mrs. Patton. Then she turned her attention to Kit. She asked how old he was and if he was a “good baby.” She reminisced about her own two sons as infants, and she disclosed that she had three grandchildren, one of them not much older than Kit. She said nothing about Daphne’s cello playing (she hadn’t played in months) or her squandered chances.
As Daphne listened to Mrs. Patton, she understood that her old teacher held nothing against her, that she was a loving woman who took things as they came. (Maybe, when her husband died, she hadn’t been all that old.) Before she continued on her way, she leaned down so that her face was inches from Kit’s, and she said, “You have many happy surprises in store, little boy, especially with this young lady as your mom. A lucky baby, that’s what you are.”
After they parted ways, Daphne realized that she could stop dreading the judgment of others. Kit was real now; the youth of his mother and her lack of a husband were very old news. She stopped fantasizing about life in a distant city or anyplace where no one knew her. If she could just find a way to move out of her parents’ house—to wake up somewhere other than the same twin bed where she had dreamed so many grandiose dreams (which, in a way, she was relieved to set aside)—then she would be as free as she could hope to be.
5
What I’d Be Without You
THE TIMING OF THEIR CONVERGENCE, from three different places—three different states—is nearly perfect. Kit has just pulled his jacket from the backseat and slipped his sunglasses into a pocket when, looking over the roof of the car, he spots Christina, three rows away, unfolding her father’s wheelchair.
“Can you bring along the picnic stuff?” he says to Sandra.
He calls out Christina’s name and jogs across the lot, shrugging his jacket into place: uncomfortable in the afternoon heat, but his mother says he’ll be glad to have it once the sun goes down.
“Were you planning on managing this by yourself?” he says when he reaches her car. Seeing Zeke in the passenger seat, Kit waves.
“The chair I can deal with,” she murmurs. “Dad is the challenge.”
“Heard that!” Zeke is climbing out, stiff and slow but determined. “Leave that contraption,” he commands Christina. “Don’t need it.”
“Dad, believe me, it will make all our lives a lot easier. It’s not just about you and your senatorial dignity.”
“You,” Zeke says to Kit. “Glad to see you.” It seems to take a full minute for the older man to hoist himself to a standing position, but it’s true that he can maneuver on his own two feet.
“How about,” Kit says, “we use it to carry the food until you need it?”
“I won’t eat on ground. Done with that silliness when I retired.”
“My mother says there are picnic tables.” As Sandra arrives with the canvas bags containing their contribution to dinner, Kit’s phone rings. “We just got here, Mom. Where are you?”
She’s already there, waiting for them in the main building.
Cars locked, wheelchair piled with cooler bags and satchels, they set off toward … Kit reads the sign. “ ‘Manoir de Mélodie’? What is this, a theme park?” He intends, if nothing else, to keep the mood light. Nearly a year has passed since the catastrophe in Provincetown, but he hasn’t been together with his mother and anyone from Lucinda’s family since last Thanksgiving.
They move slowly, the pace set by Zeke, but they have plenty of time, and Kit is happy to stop every few paces, just to take in the variously impressive views, the fragrance of the burgeoning flower beds. The “camp,” as his mother so quaintly calls it, was established in the 1930s, cannibalizing a bankrupt estate built around a dairy farm (so the website explained). Over nearly a hundred years, it’s become an eclectic campus of ornate Victorian structures and clusters of low whitewashed buildings—the “studios”—with a Scandinavian reserve.
At Christmas, his mother began to describe her memories of this place, but none of her descriptions prepared Kit for the sense of studiously understated privilege—high culture merged with old money and horticultural know-how—that greets outsiders who visit the camp. The trees are tall, lustrous, and vaulted, their shadows on the far-r
eaching lawns magnificently wide.
The signs, by contrast, are low to the ground and meant to simulate rustic modesty, the names of the various buildings burned into cedar planks.
“You two go on ahead. Dad and I are going to visit the facilities.” Christina points down a hill toward a shed sequestered by yews.
Kit hesitates, but he knows his mother will be impatient for them to arrive. He and Sandra follow the arbitrarily serpentine course of the bricks until, emerging between the embrasure of two oaks, the vista brings them to a halt. Here is the building his mother referred to as “HQ,” a turreted white mansion competing for their awe with its backdrop: the satin surface of Lake Champlain.
“My God,” says Sandra. “I can’t begin to imagine the caretaker’s budget. Forget the rest. She spent a whole summer here and you never heard about it?”
“Well,” he says simply. Her question is as rhetorical as they come.
A group of people dressed up for the concert commune on the porch. Kit and Sandra sidle through their midst to enter a spacious hall, its principal furnishings a moose head over a stone fireplace, a gilt-framed mirror on the opposite wall, and a red Persian rug easily twice the size of their living room.
“I can’t believe you’re here; I can’t believe I’m here!” To Kit’s relief, his mother glows with excitement. She rushes to embrace them. “This place—it’s all so … it’s been so gussied up since I was here, but I guess that’s a sign of the times, isn’t it? The arts demand opulence now.”
“Opulence or grunge,” says Kit.
Bart, catching up with his wife, grins at Kit and reaches for a high five. “Dude!” he growls. Kit has often wondered whether Bart’s mimicry of teenage mannerisms (always a year or two behind the times) endears him to the students at his high school or makes him an object of ridicule. Reflexively, Kit plays along.
“Word,” he answers as they slap palms (uncertain what the word word, in this context, might actually mean).
“Word indeed. Like, can this be for real?” Bart gestures broadly.
“Where are the others?” says Daphne.
“Zeke’s taking his time,” says Kit. “Christina’s with him.”
Sandra stands before the fireplace and gazes up at the stuffed moose, its bearded chin four inches above her head, antlers reaching just shy of the coffered ceiling. “Can we—can you give us a tour?”
“Of course.” Daphne takes Bart’s hand. They look like people on a date rather than a long-married couple. How much does Bart know about her history here? Maybe, unlike Jasper, he’s known all the details from day one—maybe since before Kit’s mother left Jasper (which she did in order to be with Bart). Now that Jasper is back in Kit’s life, he can’t help comparing the men. He will never see them through his mother’s eyes, but he is baffled by her choice. Was Bart’s playfulness, even buffoonishness, something she needed? Did she think it would help restore her stolen youth? Bart has always been attractive in a sporty way: fit, hale, game for anything upbeat and social. But he has none of Jasper’s wry edge; didn’t she miss that? (Not that he can’t see the obvious justification: here was a man who gave her another shot at being a mother—a married mother, properly paired with a father.)
“Show Sandra around,” says Kit. “I’ll wait here for Christina and Zeke.”
“But you have to see everything, sweetheart. You more than anyone else.”
“There’s time. Don’t worry about me.”
From the porch, he sees no sign of the others. He wanders inside again, past the moose and into another large room, this one paneled in dark polished wood; no cedar-plank aesthetic here. Another massive hearth, a pool table, and a grand piano all vie for attention—losing out to a bay window facing the lake. Far more captivating to Kit, however, are the row upon row of photographs checkerboarding the walls. They are not hung chronologically, as photos of sports teams in a college gymnasium would be, and only some are posed group shots (posed on the porch of this very building). Most depict musicians in performance or rehearsal. Kit, who now defaults to a curatorial mind-set, is irritated at the haphazard quality to the display, especially at the lack of identifying captions on most—but, more irritating still, not all—of the pictures. Hastily, he scans the photos whose occupants are attired in a way that suggests “the sixties”: girls in grannyish dresses that look like they belong on women braving the Oregon Trail; boys flaunting sideburns like strips of Velcro, wearing bell-bottoms and Nehru jackets (there’s a garment overdue for its comeback). He finds a group shot dated August 1968, one year too late.
“Here you are.” Christina, alone. “I’ve parked Dad out front. About five people got up to offer him their chairs as we approached the porch. That always puts him in a gloomy mood. Two years ago he looked a decade younger than he is; now he looks a decade older.”
She pauses to assess the room. “Are we in a fairy tale or what? I can’t believe Greg and I have never been to one of these concerts—or brought the girls.” Then she says, “Listen. Don’t look so worried. Dad’s fine—as fine as he can be. What I hate is the way he refuses to take into account his effect on other people. Since the stroke, I mean. Ironic, if you consider that knowing his effect on other people was the key to his career.”
“It’s too bad Greg couldn’t come.”
“He claims he’s overworked right now, but that’s the status quo. Know what? Just about now”—she looks at her watch—“he’s micro-waving a bowl of popcorn and tuning in to a ball game. And bully for him. I think he’s gone from stunned to bored over the family soap opera.”
“Starring me.”
Christina puts a hand on his arm. “Ouch. Sorry.”
“I’m flattered you can be so blunt.”
“I have a huge mouth. Speaking of knowing one’s effect on other people.” She turns toward the view of the lake. “Unreal. Where’s your mother?”
“Giving a tour to Sandra. And Bart.”
“Ah, Mr. Chips!”
“I think his fantasies tend more toward Breakfast Club or School of Rock.”
Christina sits in a morris chair beside the piano. “Where’s the butler with my Pimms?”
“You hang out till he gets here,” says Kit. “I’ll spell you with Zeke.”
Zeke sits rigidly, arms and legs symmetrically placed, in the same grave posture, with the same glum expression, as Abe Lincoln in his stone memorial. “Yo,” he says drily when he sees Kit. “Daughter’s left me here as ant bait.”
“Don’t feel so sorry for yourself.” Immediately, a woman in the chair adjacent to Zeke’s offers it to Kit. He accepts. Zeke’s hearing has begun to dwindle, so Kit sits close when they talk.
Zeke laughs his sandpaper laugh. “Probably miffed no one’s recognized me. Right?”
Kit smiles. “From your lips, not mine.”
“Lucinda called me on it. The vanity.”
“A sin we all suffer in spades. Don’t think you’re special there.”
“See? Vain about my vanity.” Zeke turns to Kit and smiles, victorious.
It took Kit surprisingly little time to feel comfortable (and to stop feeling guilty) around this thorny man, to recognize that his thorniness is the shadow of his former easy charm, his public radiance—a side of Zeke that Kit is sorry he will never know. But he did see Zeke at the apex of his grieving, during the arduous, awkward Thanksgiving when all the Burnses—or those remaining—came together at the farm with Kit, Sandra, Daphne, Bart, and the twins. Predictably, Lucinda’s absence was magnified by the occasion. More than once, Christina would murmur, “This is when Mom would always say …” or “If Mom could have seen …” Jonathan made a show of reciting grace before the meal. When they lifted their heads, Kit looked instantly at Zeke, who was wiping his eyes.
Kit wonders what it would feel like to be the sort of man regarded as a figurehead, someone voted for—your name ticked off on a ballot—by thousands of strangers who trust you to make decisions affecting their lives. Does their trust bec
ome the unspoken foundation of your life, so that when they forget you—when your decisions no longer affect them—you lose your sense of balance? No wonder public figures—athletes, movie stars, rock musicians—seem to die younger than painters, inventors, scientists, those whose success relies on a talent for solitude.
It was Christina’s idea to hire Kit for what Zeke called the family chaos project, or FCP (the F, as Christina likes to say, vacillating in what it really stands for). This is the work of weeding through and cataloguing the letters, speeches, ledgers, pedigrees, auction programs, studbooks, photographs, and frighteningly plentiful paraphernalia related to the history of the farm and Zeke the Elder’s influence on American agribusiness. Some of it will go to a dairy museum in the Midwest, some of it to a Vermont historical society mounting a major exhibition. “And please may a heck of a lot of it,” said Zeke, “go directly to the landfill.”
Since December, Kit has been spending two to three days a week at the farm. He survived the stage of inhaling gallons of dust and aerated rodent dung in Zeke’s enormous, neglected attic, bashing his head repeatedly on the roof’s raw interior as he removed box after box, trunk after trunk, and carted them out to the barn for sorting. There is a soothing monotony to the work—broken every so often by the discovery of startling treasures: most notably, a 1948 letter from Thomas E. Dewey to Zeke the Elder, floating the notion that Zeke might be secretary of agriculture if Dewey is elected president. The surviving Zeke—despite his age, still the Younger—held the letter in his trembling fingers and, when he finished reading it, gasped. “Kept that from us? Ego he had? Wonders never cease!” But Kit saw how moved he was.
For Kit, the most momentous find, irrelevant to the project itself, was a carton of his father’s belongings that Lucinda had clearly saved from Mal’s apartment yet hidden away. (Had she worried that others might find their preservation pointless and maudlin?)