At paradise gate, p.11
At Paradise Gate, page 11
“Please call Anna Robison. Ike is a patient of Dr. Jauss. Ike seems worse, though maybe not much worse, I don’t know. I would like the doctor to see him. I wish Dr. Jauss hadn’t—” The bell rang, the phone disconnected, and Anna thought that she hadn’t been emphatic enough. She should call again, but again she hadn’t written down the number, and it seemed to have vanished in her panic. She put down the receiver and sat on the step. She was breathing very hard and her shoulder was throbbing.
Of course, she should not have left the house, not gotten out of earshot of Ike’s bed, perhaps most critically, not raked over still another set of reminiscences, the most saddening of all. The quality of friendship, she thought, or the quality of domestic life, did not change. With each new generation arose new loves and new worlds of memory; what each person had was sufficient, and filled exactly the vessel of expectation, or at least failed to fill it to the same degree in everyone. What was easier than to know people, to think of them lovingly, to distinguish and exalt them in the memory, not, in the end, for a kind manner or a characteristic turn of the head (though that seemed to be the reason) but for their recognition of oneself? It was only human, this endless sociability. The quality of wildflowers untrammeled, of sky unhazed did change, however.
What did she know? She read seed catalogues and planted her garden, pleased as anyone that the tomatoes this year would be resistant to verticillium wilt. She went to the store and bought lettuce out of season, oranges trucked thousands of miles, chickens raised in cages so small that their feet grew around the mesh and ripped away when they were sent off to market. Who knew better than Anna the real cost of chickens that had to be chased and killed and plucked and singed before dinner preparations could even begin? Christine could be rabid on the subject of endangered species; she and Todd had had their most vicious fight, at Anna’s dinner table, about tigers, and Christine had gotten redder faced and shriller than wives Anna had known of philanderers and alcoholics and child beaters. Helen had hushed her furiously, and Anna, too, had frowned at the disruption of their pleasant supper, but sometimes as she knelt in the garden, peacefully poking peas into the soil, she remembered the vaster peace of Papa’s hired wagon in the mountains, of unhitching the horse at the end of the rutted “road” and hobbling him to graze while Mama and Papa carried sheets and blankets and hampers of food the last mile to the cabin. Helen had attributed Christine’s fury to something darkly psychological, but Anna agreed with Christine’s fury at never having seen what she had seen, at knowing such scenes had vanished forever. And later on, the hampers and linens would come back down, the horse would be put into his traces, and they would disappear like dust blowing off the mountain. The next spring, the road would be narrower, its ruts more stuffed with moss, lichen, creeping groundcover. “People can’t touch these mountains,” Papa had said. “Never have, never will.” Anna, aged six, had shivered at their power. Papa had, of course, been wrong.
Then Alfred came into her mind again, and she realized that his image had been pressing on her. Her shoulders tightened painfully. Of all the dead people, his death had been the worst, a grand and terrible alcoholic battle against liver disease and heart disease, the course of which was impressed upon Anna and Ike by the intermittence of their visits with him in the last three years of his life, when he looked in his late seventies and was actually in his late fifties. The oddest and most horrifying development was the growth of hair on his face—his eyebrows curved around his eyes, his hairline descended, his beard thickened and encroached upon his upper cheeks. Anna remembered him hearty at the dinner table, casual, very casual with the bottle of wine he had brought, suggesting Helen have a little more, Anna have a drop, it was very “nice tasting, not at all bitter. Practically grape juice, really.”
Later, Helen wrote home that he drank in spite of the Antabuse he was taking, and that he threw up in the doorway of his office, under the very eyes of his secretary and the Chairman of the Board. These shocking bits of news were dropped into otherwise light, impersonal narratives about things Christine was doing, plans Helen was making. Anna never quite understood these letters. Perhaps Helen was defying her to sympathize, daring her to advise, or even come. In every letter, she said she thought that the worst was well behind them, Alfred was much calmer now. She seemed horrified that her mother and father might show concern, as if to be unhappy was to prove her aspirations foolish, her judgments wrongheaded. As for Anna, it astounded her as much in the sixties to watch Helen’s self-esteem shatter in the face of Alfred’s particular destiny as it had in the thirties to watch Ike’s crumble in the general devastation. At any rate, Alfred insisted on going to the office the day after he got out of the hospital, even though his weight had dropped to 110. His investments were about to burgeon, he was going to be made a partner, who was more brilliant, in spite of everything, than Alfred Peale Darlington? Soon they would live like they had never lived before, calmly, carefully, recreationally. They would drive Christine to college and, while some trustworthy young man looked after things in the office, they would take a pleasure trip through New England. They would eat many raw vegetables and swim laps, but Alfred had a heart attack at his desk, someone else was made a partner, and many of the stocks had to be sold to pay for this and that. Christine went to college on the bus, and it seemed wisest to Helen to move her antiques and oriental rugs back to Des Moines, where she could live more cheaply, where she could make friends who didn’t belong to the firm and never had. Now, of course, she couldn’t understand how she had exerted herself for thirty years and ended up in the same place.
“Mother!”
When Ike’s voice broke into her reverie, it startled her upright, startled her into thinking of the phone calls, of how loud her voice had been, or what she had said about dying.
“Are you awake again, Daddy?” she called convivially, as she heaved to her feet.
“I haven’t been asleep! Where were you? Turn on the light! Why are you dressed?”
“I went out in the backyard. In the garden.”
“What for? I called you!”
“I don’t know, Ike, I really don’t. I just wanted to get some air.”
“It’s a pitch black out there.”
“I know. I’m sorry I left you in the dark. I really am.” She really was. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I’d like to be asleep, but how can I with you traipsing all over? What if something happened to you?”
“Nothing did. Nothing will.” She thought of George, of his unknowable knowledge of her, and bit her lip. “Can I get you anything, Ike?”
“No!”
“Are you going to sleep?”
“No!”
“Do you want to get up? You could take a bath. I’ll help you.
“No!”
“I won’t stay in there with you, I’d just run the wa—”
“NO!”
“Ike, I don’t think I nurse you very well. I think I should apologize. Mama was the same way. The whole time somebody was sick, Mama ran around in a temper. Anyway, I’ve been trying, but I haven’t been doing very well. Your room isn’t very cheery, and maybe I don’t hear you every time you call, for one reason or another. The girls have some ideas. I don’t know, Ike, I hate to give up our priv—”
“Unlock that door.”
“What?”
“Unlock that door.”
“It’s tied with a stocking.”
“Untie it.” His gaze held hers, and she wondered if he could simultaneously take in all of her, as she could of him. It was peculiar how the spectacle of his illness aroused no pity in her, though no horror, either. Mostly it made her want to do the proper thing. She thought of the door open, a breach between the chambers of a heart. “You could move into the guest room, that’s right across the hall.”
He made no reply, holding her gaze.
“No,” she said. “No, I won’t untie it.”
PART
Three
Claire’s was the voice of an early riser that could attach itself to the coming day even before dawn. Over the phone it sounded washed, dressed, fed; Anna took as much comfort in its tone as in its words—that Claire would be there soon, she was walking right out the door, she already had her coat on. Putting down the receiver, Anna noticed that the hallway had perceptibly lightened, and suddenly hungry, she thought of food.
When her daughter’s arrival coincided with the popping of her toast and the first appearance of the sun, a cueball in the fog, Anna took it as a good omen. The few complaints she had been going to make about her night drained away, and she merely smiled and gestured toward the coffee pot.
“Mother, I’m not going to start,” said Claire, “but just tell me if you thought about the nurse since last night.”
“Yes, I did. I—”
“No, I promise, I’m not going to pester you. How’s Daddy?”
Anna told her briefly about his wakings but did not mention her fear. She could too readily imagine Claire bounding up the stairs and raising Ike’s eyelids with thumb and forefinger. Claire did everything with such force and certainty that when she exerted herself to open a reluctant jar, Anna always expected it to shatter in her hands. She had learned to meet the mark rather than exceed it, so that when she jerked off her gloves, they got folded neatly and were put in her pocket, and when she ripped off her coat, it found its way to hanger and closet, but such peaceful results were often surprising. Claire considered herself remarkably calm.
Anna liked to look at her. She had been handsome her entire life. Even in infancy, she’d struck you as handsome, and each year of handsomeness seemed better than the last. Her looks didn’t ask you to remember any historic moments of especial beauty, but announced themselves in the present. You always thought, Claire looks very good these days. Oddly, no one had ever compared her to Helen, at least not in front of Anna. She was saying, “I’d love to just tear out the wall, you know. The study is far too small for anything as it is, and if I knocked down the wall, I could throw up some shelves and cupboards, and have a nice storage area right there by the kitchen. I’d like new vinyl, anyway, and I could nail it right over the step and up to the wall. I thought about it all night.” But of course she had slept perfectly, Anna thought with envy, wholehearted and even enthusiastic, uninterrupted squarely up to the five-thirty wakening. “This is the last thing I can possibly do to that house, though. If I don’t gut the place and start from scratch, I’m going to have to sell it and find something untouched by twentieth-century hands.” She laughed. Even during the agonies with Geo, her complexion bloomed, her hair shone, and her teeth sparkled.
Anna must have glanced at the phone, because Claire interrupted herself and said, “It’s not even seven.”
“You don’t think they’re up yet?”
“At the enchanted castle? They’re lucky to get up at all!”
“Helen is a heavy sleeper.”
“Christine does her share.” Though Claire’s voice lifted as if she intended to continue, she picked up a piece of toast instead and nibbled off the crust. At last she said simply, “Well, Mother,” and got up to rummage in the refrigerator. They all knew Claire did not approve of divorce, or any other kind of weakness, either. She bristled with all the views she had to express. Anna, on the other hand, was hard put to find in herself any views at all. Men came and went very suddenly. One was introduced to a fiancé—Sam, Geo, Hanson—and expected immediately to love him, while all the familiar boyfriends disappeared. In the forties she had attributed this to the war, but it was still true. Men came into a family more suddenly and intrusively than babies, with their opinions already formed. Those opinions, as trivial as your own, were exalted and analyzed day after day by the daughter in question, and then you were asked not to serve sweet potatoes for Sunday dinner and not to talk about the Marshall Plan, or the war in Vietnam, which you hadn’t intended to talk about, anyway. At Christmas, Christine had been cataloging to Helen Todd’s every preference in shirts, ties, sweaters, socks, undershorts, and T-shirts, and now there would be no more Todd. What could be said, after all?
“Frankly, Mother—” Claire found and peeled a grapefruit. Juice spurted out the side of her mouth, and she caught it on her chin with the back of her hand. “Frankly, Mother, I blame Helen.”
Anna rolled her eyes skeptically.
“No, really!” Claire swooped down and landed at the table, hunched forward, eager to continue. Anna, too, leaned forward, almost against her will, but the husk of inattention was irretrievably sloughed off. Claire tipped her teacup so that the flower on the bottom appeared, and Anna watched her. This was usual, a ritual to heighten intimacy, lend surprise and insight to the imminent exchange. Mama had been adept at such rituals. As much as Anna didn’t want to get into it all, she waited attentively.
“Mother, don’t you remember Hugh Pellegrini?” Anna shook her head. “Yes, you do! Helen had a big thing for him right before we went away to college. He had a real bad limp because one leg had been crushed in an accident, and he couldn’t be drafted. Don’t you remember? We called him Miracle Man, because it was a miracle that the only man left in Iowa lived near us.” Anna did remember him—a handsome dark boy who, perhaps because of the accident, seemed older than he was. She remembered that he had been enormously polite, though not fawningly so. “Helen was after him for months! If she thought she might see him the next day, she used to pick whatever bobbie pins she could reach out of my hair after I was asleep and put up her own hair. Remember how there weren’t any bobbie pins because of the war? Oh, it made me so mad! I’d wake up half curly and half straight! And she just rifled my clothes and Susanna’s, too, because Aunt Dolores had given Susanna that pink sweater with the openwork that was too loose on her. Well, it wasn’t too loose on Helen! Anyway, she’d put on that sweater and go down to the drugstore near Leach’s Men’s Store, where he worked, and she’d thumb through the New Yorker and the Saturday Review. Never once a Saturday Evening Post! He’d come in on his lunch hour, and finally he asked her out. I was there, because after a while she’d been going there so long she looked like a fool, so she’d make me spend a lot of time buying bath salts or picking out a lipstick. ‘Now it doesn’t matter what you like, Claire,’ she’d say. ‘Make them show you everything, and try everything, and pretend you just can’t make up your mind, and I’ll act like I’m waiting for you. If I look impatient, don’t pay any attention!’ And she did! She’d tap her foot and roll her eyes, and breathe hard the way Daddy does, and then he’d come in and she’d complain about how picky I was! I swear the salesgirl hid behind the counter whenever I walked by the place for years after that!”
Anna laughed and shook her head, as much at the idea of Claire being bullied as at the elaboration of Helen’s act. “And to top it off, she always made me hand over whatever it was I bought, and if she liked it, she kept it! So he asked her out. Remember? They went out most of that summer.” Anna did remember that. It had been a pleasure to go to the door and find Hugh, whose smile was so warmly welcoming that it seemed to make him the host and herself, an old mother in her housedress, the greatly anticipated guest. His looks, his dignity, and his limp gave him depth and poignancy, seemed to display something of his soul.
“And you know, Mother, he was terrific! He had good manners and he knew how to talk, and he read a lot, I think. He was pretty ambitious, too. I know he was going to college at night. He was just about perfect for Helen, you know? She thought so, too, and the more she got to know him, the more she thought so. She said it all the time, and I think he fell in love with her. Well, Mother, no matter what she said, it was just as plain as day that everything was downhill after that first date—after he asked her out the first time, even. She talked all about it and about him and about them, but the only time she really felt it was that first moment. I don’t think she’s changed, and I think Christine can’t help but be the same way.”
“Maybe she didn’t like him as she got to know him, Claire. Maybe he was boring. Anyway, we don’t know what’s going on with Todd.”
“That’s just it! I bet there’s nothing going on with Todd. Christine is a good girl, and you know how I’ve always loved her, but she has about as much persistence as an oatmeal cookie!”
“Well—”
“Mother, listen! Kids need the example of a lifelong marriage, where the parents really stand together and present an undivided front. If they don’t see you living together and making it for more than ten years, then they don’t know how it’s done. Now, obviously it isn’t Helen’s fault about Sam and Alfred, but still, the example isn’t there. At key times in her life, Christine saw her mother living outside of marriage, and so living outside of marriage seems possible to her.”
“Well, Claire, it is possible you know.”
“I mean as being married, even desirable. Maybe all of this isn’t exactly Helen’s fault, but that’s where the roots of it are.” She finished with ringing certainty, licking her lips a little and smiling, and she always did when she had made a point. If there was anything Claire loved to do, it was to make a point.
“Hugh was a very nice man.”
“I think he got to be a lawyer or something like that. Can I make more coffee?”
“If you want it. None for me.” The fog was beginning, perhaps, to burn away; the sun was completely up. Having seen it rise made Anna feel slightly disarranged and almost nauseated. Her night, by contrast, seemed to have been so black, so constricted. “I’d better check on Daddy.”
“I’ll do it, Mother.” Claire put down the coffeepot.
“No!”
Claire looked sharply at her, seeming for a moment to divine Anna’s fear that she might see him disoriented and deathly, as he had appeared (only appeared, a trick of the light) before she went out to the garden, but Claire was in a good mood, pleased with the story she had told, unsuspicious. Anna pushed herself to her feet. In half an hour she would call Helen. Susanna, too. And the doctor again, if he’d not called her back.
