George was sensitive about some things, insensitive about others, Edith had noticed.
Gert heard this and looked at her son.
Derek blushed. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s more like it.’ Gert’s pudgy face broke into a warm grin as she looked at Edith.
They were dining on rather good spare ribs with barbecue sauce. Norm’s fingers were greasy to the second joints. He had shaved, but the rest of him looked as sloppy as ever: plaid lumberjack shirt, unpressed trousers, no jacket. Only Derek and Gert had made an effort, and Gert looked quite splendid in an East Indian skirt and white blouse and filigree earrings two inches long.
‘Naa-aow, what were we saying?’ Norm asked, still chewing on a bone. He had a Pennsylvania accent that Edith had learned was typical.
‘About Eisenhower – how he did nothing about McCarthy,’ Gert said with the same drawl and flatness as Norm. ‘It was Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont who had the guts to make a move against that bastard. “If Eisenhower won’t, I will,” Flanders said. If you remember, Norm.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Norm, putting down a clean rib. ‘You’re right, dee-eerie, you’re always right.’
Edith felt comfortable in the conversation, though it was only what she and Gert had said weeks ago. Edith had had almost three martinis, and a warm buzz had risen to her ears. She thought Derek handsome this evening. Doing well in school! If only Cliffie would pull himself together like Derek. Hardly two years’ difference in their ages. Maybe puberty…
‘I was wondering, Edith, could you and Brett lend us a hundred dollars for a month?’ Now Gert was in the kitchen, helping to put things away and stack the dishes for washing.
They’d had coffee. The men were in the living room. Edith didn’t like to say yes without consulting Brett. Or was that a dodge? They hadn’t any extra money now, however.
‘It’s the dentist’s bill for Norm,’ Gert went on. ‘His father’s promised to pay it and he will, but the dentist in Trenton is dunning us. We owe more than a hundred,’ Gert said with a frank laugh, ‘but a hundred will shut him up, and we ought to get a couple of hundred from Norm’s father in less than a month.’
‘Mind if I ask Brett?’ Edith said in a pleasantly conspiratorial tone, which she was at once ashamed of.
‘’Course not!’ said Gert. ‘I know how it is. Specially now with – Brett’s uncle on your hands.’
‘Oh, he’s contributing to his upkeep.’
When Edith got Brett in the kitchen alone, she told him what Gert had asked.
‘Absolutely not. Don’t start that,’ Brett said.
‘All right.’ And it would be up to her to tell Gert, of course.
‘It’s the way to lose friends,’ Brett said. ‘An old saying, but true. – Sorry, darling. Tell her we’ve got extra expenses now too.’
Edith prepared herself to do it.
‘Frankly,’ Brett threw over his shoulder in a soft voice as he left the kitchen, ‘I bet they’ve got debts all over the countryside. They’re that type.’
Edith thought that was very likely true. But alone, she’d have lent the hundred, and maybe regretted it a little when she never got it back.
In the downstairs hall, where Edith encountered Gert getting something from her coat in the hall, Edith said with a wincing expression, ‘Brett says no. We can’t do it just now, Gert. I’m really very sorry.’
‘Oh, that’s all right.’ Gert’s relaxed smile made it seem as if nothing had happened. ‘Where’d the boys go? To Cliffie’s room?’
‘Probably. If they’re not around.’ Edith imagined Derek taken aback by Cliffie’s room, which looked like that of a six-year-old: comic books everywhere, a field of toy soldiers on the floor. Edith lifted her head and followed Gert into the living room. Along with Gert, Edith took an unaccustomed nightcap of Chartreuse (expensive, and the bottle must have been with them for a year now), and lit a cigarette.
‘How long you staying, George?’ asked Norm from an easy chair, hands behind his head.
Edith listened with some interest.
‘Oh – I dunno. Not as long as my welcome lasts, I trust. Ha-ha! It’s pleasant here – with my nephew and wife – long as I’m not too much in the way.’
Edith offered people more coffee, served tonight from her silver pot, a present from her great-aunt Melanie.
The boys came back from Cliffie’s room. Edith hoped they had made a date. They both had bicycles. The boys Cliffie went around with were younger than he, and it was absurd. It wasn’t that Cliffie wanted to be a leader, a big shot, just that his contemporaries found him boringly young himself. Just as Edith was about to ask Derek if he could come for lunch next Saturday, Gert said:
‘Oh Edie, Derek’s taking clarinet lessons now. Isn’t that something?’ She spoke as if Derek had started the lessons on his own, and he probably had.
‘How nice!’ Edith said. ‘Where?’
‘Oh-h.’ Derek waggled his head in embarrassment. ‘Washington Crossing. It’s a group lesson, three of us. But it’s – interesting.’
‘Got your own clarinet?’ Edith asked.
‘I’m buying it on the instalment plan.’
‘With his allowance,’ Norm said.
‘And that’s not very regular,’ Derek put in.
‘No comments,’ Norm said, ‘or we’ll make you take a summer job. Like the rich kids.’
George got up creakily. ‘Edith – must be retiring. Tired. Excellent dinner.’ George relied upon his cane to begin walking.
Derek, the nearest, got up from the floor where he had been sitting. ‘Help you, sir?’
Cliffie, also on the floor, didn’t move, but watched George as if he were an animal in the zoo, remote, of mild interest.
‘No, no. Night, everybody,’ said George.
Brett at least perfunctorily helped George out of the room, started him on the stairs.
George did rather all right on his own, if he did things slowly. His cheeks weren’t as pink as when he had arrived, but then he hadn’t acted on Edith’s and Brett’s suggestion to sit out on the lawn in a deckchair, and he certainly didn’t take any walks.
The atmosphere was decidedly more relaxed after George was upstairs.
‘Really – he’s living with you folks now, huh?’ Norm asked.
‘You could call it that,’ said Brett.
‘What does he do all day?’ Gert asked.
‘Reads a lot,’ Edith said. ‘I get books out of the library for him all the time. Then there’re our books. He even reads some of Cliffie’s encyclopaedias. Then he sleeps a lot.’
‘Well, is he – going to a doctor at all?’ This from Gert.
‘No, his main doctor’s in New York, and it seems – well, I have to take him once a week to Trenton, Saturdays, because the New York doctor sent his reports there. Records, I mean.’ Brett took a breath. ‘They take a look —’
‘It’s his back, isn’t it?’ asked Gert.
‘Yes, they do pal – palpation,’ Brett said in his earnest way, and for some reason they all laughed. Cliffie the loudest.
3
It was a morning blighted by the return of a self-addressed, stamped manila envelope, formerly folded in half, containing Edith’s article ‘Why Not Recognize Red China?’ which she had sent to the New Republic. They wrote:
We remember your earlier two articles and we liked them, but this isn’t for us right now, mainly because your main argument is covered in an article already scheduled. However we thank you for your submission.
Edith had once had an agent, Irene Dougal on West 23rd Street. But she felt she didn’t write enough to warrant an agent, and had Irene really done her much good? Edith had sold just as much on her own, four things, so the score was 4–4, and the agent took ten percent. She had had no correspondence with Irene Dougal in a long time.
It was mid-December, and it seemed ages since the weekend in November when they had taken the car and rambled over Pennsylvania. Edith had asked the Quick
mans, who lived next door, if they could look in on George and see that he was managing to get his own meals – which Edith had prepared as best she could in advance and put into the fridge. Frances Quickman had also fed Mildew. Edith and Brett and Cliffie had stayed a night in a motel near New Holland, another night in Lancaster, Amish country. Edith had bought half a dozen Pennsylvania Dutch pie plates of pale green glass, oven-proof, for fifty cents each at a dusty old roadside antique shop. She had also found a hand-painted chest of drawers for a mere eight dollars, and the man had been kind enough to deliver it the following week. Edith had installed it in the guestroom. It was beige with dainty blue and white painted flowers – delightful!
As Edith went about her chores that morning, hanging T-shirts and Levis and pajamas on the back lawn line to dry, she reminded herself that she had vowed to change her attitude toward George. If he was going to become a fixture, it was destructive to fret – inwardly. It had occurred to her that George might be an asset, if she ‘held a thought,’ as Mary Baker Eddy would put it. George could be a good influence on Cliffie, if they got to know each other better. George had made a success of his career as a lawyer, and certainly passed exams in his time, and had been capable of organizing his life. Even now there was a method in his reading: nineteenth-century history for the past three weeks. Cliffie needed organization. Brett didn’t spend nearly enough time with him. Edith decided to have a talk with George about Cliffie.
Her other equally important thought was that she ought to take it easier in regard to Cliffie. Nothing was going to be accomplished by reminding him that if he didn’t pull himself together he’d never get to college. Cliffie wanted to go to college, Princeton indeed. Edith had had this same thought before, she had to admit, and she’d never stuck with it long. Anger and impatience would rise again, she’d feel like shaking him (only two or three times had she), and the old round of nagging would begin again. But this time with George in the house, things just might be different. Hope springs eternal, she thought, and smiled wryly at herself.
‘George?’ she called gaily from halfway up the stairs. ‘Like a tray for lunch?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, Edith – yes.’
‘Right you are! Ten minutes.’
She made chicken sandwiches with lettuce, a touch of mayonnaise and sliced stuffed olives, put a couple of slices of tomato on each plate, and carried the tray up. She had also brought glasses and a quart container of milk.
‘Thought I might join you,’ she said, ‘if you’ve no objection.’
‘Of course not, why should I? A pleasure.’ George heaved himself up a little against his pillows, and laid his book aside.
Edith put the tray on his lap, and managed for herself by dragging up a second chair to put in front of her as a table. They were silent for a few moments as they ate, then Edith came out with it directly. ‘It occurred to me, George, that you might be a good influence on Cliffie.’
‘How so?’
‘Well – because you’re outside the family. I mean – of course you’re Brett’s uncle, but you’re new to Cliffie. You’re a man who’s had a successful career, you know how to organize yourself – how to work, I mean, when you do work.’
George laughed dryly, ‘Ha-ha!’ with his mouth wide for an instant, then asked pleasantly, ‘What do you mean by being a good influence? I never was a saint, you know.’
‘But you can see, I think, that Cliffie doesn’t buckle down to anything. He’s got no drive, he doesn’t see any reason for doing anything, not even for getting dressed sometimes in the morning, even finishing a model airplane once he’s started.’ Edith stopped, because she could go on and on about Cliffie.
But George seemed to be waiting for her to say more.
‘I don’t know if Brett’s said anything to you, but Cliffie’s been a worry since he was two or three years old. He’s not stupid, really there’s nothing wrong with his I.Q., I’ve been told. But all during his childhood, he seemed to take a pleasure in not doing what we wanted him to do like – make progress in reading before he even started school. He’s like a person only half alive – except that’s not really summing it up either.’
‘Hum-m,’ George said, pushing his head comfortably back into the pillows and gazing at the ceiling. ‘I consider him simply a modern boy. He’s a product of the television age. He’s become passive, and like all of us now, he’s bombarded by information, baffled and amused by events over which he knows he has no control – and he never expects to have any. A fit candidate for the Welfare State or whatever they call it in England.’
Edith remembered that a few years ago, she’d written much the same thing, using different phrases, about Cliffie in her diary. ‘We even tried to budget the TV once,’ Edith said. ‘It didn’t work. Cliffie can sulk.’
George coughed and reached for a wadded handkerchief. He had Kleenexes, but preferred handkerchiefs. He was making no reply.
‘I wonder where we went wrong?’ Edith laughed a little. She realized she was goading George to make a remark in Cliffie’s favor, to mention any smallest positive, praiseworthy thing.
‘The time is out of joint,’ George said. ‘This is not an age for heroes.’
‘Gumption I’m talking about. Maybe with puberty – You know —’ She was launched now, for better or worse baring her mind to selfish, pain-in-the-neck George because at least he was a new ear and was listening quite as attentively as Brett ever did. ‘You know with puberty, there’s often an impetus, life takes on a meaning, and there’s a drive toward something, even if it’s only – butterfly collecting or making model ships.’
George looked at her condescendingly. ‘Puberty means what puberty means. There’s an increased awareness of the opposite sex, perhaps.’
‘I mean,’ Edith said, pushing the second straight chair farther from her and wishing she had a cigarette, ‘you know what they say about artists, that every child is an artist till puberty, then with puberty he drops it, while the real artist derives strength and a sense of purpose and goes on.’
‘Is Cliffie showing any interest in art?’
‘No.’ Edith smiled.
There was a silence then. Was George about to doze off? But his dark brown eyes, which were not looking at her, had not quite closed. Their lower lids sagged a bit, showing pink, reminding Edith of an ageing hound. She looked away.
‘I just sometimes wonder if he’ll ever pull out – wake up,’ Edith said. ‘So does Brett.’
George still said nothing. Edith felt his silence, felt his eyes which were on her now. It was as if George might not want to hurt her by commenting further. Then he said:
‘Is Brett really liking his job in Trenton, liking the life here?’
Edith felt a swift shock of insult. ‘Oh, the life, yes. He says the atmosphere isn’t as lively as in New York with the Trib. Most of the material the Standard prints is syndicated. But the pay’s not too bad. – Brett and I are starting a newspaper here, maybe he told you. The Brunswick Corner Bugle. We’re aiming for Christmas for our first issue – aided financially by some ads the local shops have given us.’ Edith smiled. ‘That’s why the phone rings more often lately. Advertisers. Or Gert informing me —’ But Edith wasn’t sure George was able to hear the telephone. Edith knew George didn’t care for her or Brett’s politics, thought they were babes-in-the-wood, doomed to failure. But after all Tom Paine’s Crisis had been a small paper, and with what results!
‘Is it cheaper living here than in New York? I suppose so.’
‘Oh, it would be now, if we hadn’t so many expenses on the house. You know how it is at first, the extras —’ Edith was not thinking about what she was saying. She felt embarrassed, somehow almost humiliated, and stood up, saying, ‘I’ll take off. Things to do below stairs.’ She collected plates.
‘Dear Edith, I wonder if you’d mind terribly bringing me a cup of hot Ovaltine?’
‘Now?’
‘Yes, please. I think it’s just the thing to get me off
to sleep. Had a bad night last night. My back – right side this time, usually it’s in the middle.’
Edith went down with the tray, vowing to herself that she’d get an electric kettle for George’s room so he could make his own odd cups. She could perhaps get one with the Green Stamps she already had. She had been saving stamps for a new steam iron, but an electric kettle was clearly more urgent. She put the tray down a little hard on the kitchen table, and poured what was left of the milk into a pan to heat.
Her thoughts flew off at angry tangents as she snatched down the Ovaltine jar and reached for a spoon. Since when was George God, even if he had made some rather astute comments on Cliffie? Edith didn’t believe Cliffie was hopeless, but George had implied as much. Why hadn’t George ever married, for instance? What was the matter with his make-up? Edith couldn’t imagine a man thirty-five or so not getting married, if he could afford to, because it was so convenient to have a wife, they performed so many services. If George had a wife, he wouldn’t be here now, for instance. George was better looking than the average man, he must have been earning pretty well all his life, so Edith concluded that he was selfish, or had made mistakes in handling women, or was perhaps incapable of love or affection for another person. As she carried the Ovaltine up on yet another tray, a smaller one, she felt miserable, felt she had revealed too much to George. She felt vulnerable to him now, more cut down in his eyes. And yet here he was in her house, and it was she who was his servant.