The five towns, p.10
The Five Towns, page 10
“Hooray!” Amy cheered once more. And she snuck a fistful of cookie dough while her grandmother bent over the open door of the oven.
Evelyn Freundlich, who was already planning one of her Sunday family barbecues for her cousins Selwyn and Harriet and their three boys from Bayside, was shocked when she heard of Edward’s impending visit. There was absolutely no way to change the plans, however, since Edward was right there in New York and her mother-in-law had gone ahead and invited him. Besides, it pained her to see how both her mother-in-law and daughter knew that she would be upset. She was sorry she’d been so cold toward Edward in the past and had behaved in such a transparent manner that even Amy understood her feelings. It had been a mistake. From now on she would have to change her attitude and welcome him as any proper sister-in-law might. It terrified her to think that someone might have any insight into what she really felt or what she was hiding. She had felt safe on Bush Road for so long, far from that chaos of feelings and memories that had troubled her for so many years, and now all of it was coming to roost right outside under the willow tree, right there in the backyard. She must remain calm. She had no other choice.
On an early spring Sunday in the suburbs, the air is heavy with the mucky smell of fertilizer. The Italian gardeners have been out in force, riding their dilapidated trucks from house to house on Saturdays, industriously doing very little. They’d show up each week to trim lawns that didn’t need trimming, to prune bushes they’d already cut sharply back, and to holler loudly back and forth while the family inside the house tried to catch an extra half-hour’s sleep because it was Saturday, and only 8:00 A.M. The gardeners, always a father and several burly sons whose identities were interchangeable, were essential to suburban life because the beauty of a house lay partly in its grounds, which thus were cultivated for loveliness, not utility. These were not the members of the generation that would plant its own beds of lettuce, carrots, and tomatoes. Space was precious, and was reserved for family pleasure: a patio, a barbecue grill, lawn furniture, rose bushes, lilacs, spreading shade trees under which the tired family might sit after a week of work, school, Girl Scouts, flute lessons, car pools, PTA meetings, and canasta. The backyard refuge was a symbol of the luxury provided in the new garden, the luxury to relax. No one ever worked harder at relaxing than the families in the suburbs.
Arthur Freundlich, however, was not at all relaxed on this particular morning. He hardly ever looked forward to family Sundays; he loathed most of his relatives and those of his wife’s who made the trek out to Woodmere to drink his liquor, consume his sirloin steaks, and generally make parasitic nuisances of themselves. He would have preferred a simple Sunday to himself, time to putter around the garage and fiddle around with his hand tools, time for a quiet drink or two in the shade of the willow tree, time to glance at the Sunday paper and to work over sales figures in peace and quiet. He had no quiet all week. His days were a blur of getting up early to beat the traffic, of the din at the factory where the TV tables were turned out one after another at a speed not quite fast enough to keep up with the demand. His wife had been hinting lately that they should consider moving, perhaps to a house in Lawrence, a larger, more gracious place with ample bedrooms and a real second story instead of the split-level. But what did he want with a bigger house? It only meant bigger bills, more responsibility. He had enough responsibility to last his entire lifetime, what with his father dying and his mother dependent on him and his lousy brother making shit out of the family business.
It was all gone, that dream of taking his father’s creation and building it into something the old man would never have recognized. He could have shown them, he’d have shown them good, but the chance was wrecked by Edward. Edward the beautiful, Edward who could do no wrong. How he had always fought the image of Edward, fought for space in his parents’ dreams, fought everyone who believed that behind that handsome face was a soul as pretty and fine to look at. He knew the truth, however—he knew that Edward was an untrustworthy bastard, but no one would ever listen. Christ, it was too early to have a drink. He’d have to get into that ridiculous apron and stand over the grill, stabbing at the steaks with the long-handled cooking fork and trying to look interested while his wife’s cousin tried to sell him insurance he didn’t need. Shit.
He looked over at Evelyn’s sleeping form hunched up under the blanket. She always slept as if she were protecting herself from someone who might suddenly start to rain blows down upon her head. He knew she didn’t like having sex with him. He knew she didn’t respect him, never had, ever since the early days in the army when he didn’t know how to touch her or speak to her or make her happy. None of the lot of them respected him at all. It was always “Do as your mother says, don’t ask your father,” “Pretend you’re listening to him, but don’t trust a thing he says.” Even his mother, who’d have been out on the street if it weren’t for him, even Momma didn’t respect him. He was just Arthur the second son, Arthur the weak, Arthur the reliable but dull. Wasn’t there a safe haven somewhere in the world for dull people, where their dullness was thrown under a bright light and appeared suddenly shiny and new?
“Time to get up,” he said to Evelyn suddenly, wanting to put an end to these tiresome, predrink litanies that repeated themselves over and over in his head like a stuck record.
“I have something to tell you, Arthur,” she said in that infuriating way she had of prefacing an upsetting remark with a warning that, yes, indeed, it would upset him. Sometimes it made what she had to say seem far worse.
“Now what?” he replied. The tiredness he’d felt upon awakening grew in intensity and his body felt as weighted down as if his pajamas were filled with stones.
“Your brother is coming today,” she said flatly. Her head was still buried protectively beneath the blankets. All he could see were her eyes, which were blank, devoid of all expression. She hated Edward too, but beneath her dislike he could feel something stronger, some sickly fascination that frightened and repelled him. What was it about Edward—my God, Edward was coming out here! Edward would be bending over the charcoal grill to inspect those steaks, wrinkling his nose in disgust, no doubt, as he always did at anything that wasn’t pâté de foie gras.
“Why in the hell didn’t anyone tell me?” he roared, and his wife cringed. He’d never struck her in his life, but she quivered as if she expected a fist to come flying any moment.
“I knew you’d be upset,” she said, her words muffled by the covers pulled up over her chin, her eyes still empty. “It’s for your mother. She wants to see him. The issue is closed.”
“What isn’t? What do I ever have to do with anything that goes on in this place? You make the decisions, you buy the furniture, arrange the parties, raise the kids, pay the bills—what is there left for me? Where am I in all this?”
She said nothing, just continued looking at him with those vacant eyes. He grabbed his bathrobe and went out the door, slamming it behind him. But as usually happened when he tried to act in anger, he muffed it; the door shut on the tie to his bathrobe and he had to click it open again to extricate himself. Fuming, he headed downstairs to squeeze himself some orange juice, and maybe see about putting a little something into it, just to help get a start on what promised to be an impossible day.
Oddly enough, the day did not turn out to be the melodrama envisioned by Evelyn or the shooting match her husband feared. Edward simply showed up. He failed to appear in the small group of people getting off the railroad train he’d said he would make, but a little more than an hour later a taxi deposited him at their front door. Amy was crushed she hadn’t been at the station to welcome him, but she made up for it by running into his arms for a vast, enfolding embrace. His mother was next in line.
“Oh, Eddie, Eddie,” she groaned as she hugged his waist. He gave her a kiss on each cheek and reached into his pocket. He handed her a small box, a blue leather case, the kind that contains jewelry. She opened it, gave a small shriek, and embraced her son again.
“Let me see, Grandma,” Amy begged as Marci came forward, trailing her security blanket and chewing on its tattered end.
Dora showed the cameo brooch to her grandchild. Amy oohed at the lovely lady carved into the stone and wished her uncle had bought something for her.
“It’s Italian, Mother,” he said quietly.
One of the things Amy loved best about her uncle was that he spoke in such a soft, comforting voice. Her parents were always yelling, hollering from room to room, trying to make themselves heard over the blare of radios, the TV, the clatter of the dishwasher. Her uncle was, as she remembered, a person of tremendous calm, dignity and style. While everyone else—from her father to her cousin Selwyn to the neighbors on the block—wore printed open-necked shirts and baggy pants on Sundays in the Five Towns, he was dressed in a dark suit with vest and muted tie, with a matching handkerchief peeking from a pocket. And his shoes were very shiny, long and narrow and nothing like her father’s sensible, cloddy, lace-up shoes that he wore to work every day. Uncle Edward was a prince waiting to be served by his retainers; he was elegant, and he was Amy’s first vision of glamour.
Amy took her uncle’s hand and led him out into the backyard where her mother was serving drinks to the group assembled on the patio—her cousins and their three children and her father. Selwyn and Harriet were drinking manhattans; her father was having scotch; the three boys had asked for Cokes. Evelyn was explaining to them that she had no Coca-Cola, but would orange soda do? And the boys, who ranged in age from eleven to four, were putting on an exhibition of bad manners that embarrassed the Freundlichs but did not trouble the Ringelbaums at all. Amy loathed the Ringelbaum boys and felt that the presence of her uncle was an answer to two of her secret prayers: that she might be with Uncle Eddie again and that she might not ever have to spend a day playing with that insufferable threesome.
When Evelyn finished her attempt to palm off the orange soda on the recalcitrant children, she turned and saw Edward. Her face paled and she gave a start, but she was instantly in control and moved toward him gracefully, one hand extended, with a charming “So good to see you again, it’s really been such a long time.” She stared down at Amy, hanging on Edward’s arm, and said, “Why don’t you take Marci and see if the boys want to play badminton with you? Go on, go have some fun.”
“No,” insisted Amy, “I want to stay here.”
“This is time for the grown-ups,” Evelyn said. “I want you to do as I say.”
“I won’t, I won’t, I don’t want to play with them, they’re horrible!” And with that, Amy burst into tears and fled in shame into the house, the back door slamming behind her.
Evelyn turned apologetically toward her cousins, who waved away her gesture. “Don’t be silly,” Selwyn said, taking a gulp of his drink. “I’m sure they’ve done horrible things to her. They hate other children, especially little girls.” His wife, who was overweight and frantically charming, rolled her eyes in agreement. She lit up another Kool and said, “So this is the famous Edward Freundlich who never comes to any of the family-circle meetings?”
“It’s not our family,” Evelyn corrected. “It’s Arthur’s.” She glanced around the yard. “Where is Arthur?” Her husand, drink in hand, had disappeared.
Dora Freundlich made her way down the steps to the patio holding a platter of cheese and crackers and a fistful of cocktail napkins that had funny bar jokes printed on them. She beamed at her eldest son and shrugged expressively at Evelyn, a gesture that Evelyn immediately understood to mean, What’s going on with Amy, she’s in the house crying? And Evelyn gave her mother-in-law a shrug to indicate, I don’t know what’s going on, but you know how temperamental she can be.
Arthur suddenly appeared, rounding the corner by the rose bushes, tottering slightly as he crossed the lawn and catching his sleeve on an outstretched branch the gardeners had missed. The thorns caught him across his hand and snarled in the weave of his shirt, and he battled the branch out of the way in a manner that told Evelyn he was still upset at his brother’s presence. Arthur’s point of view would always be competitive. Edward was his adversary, and Arthur did not want old enemies visiting his home.
“Well, well, well. Well, well. Big brother home at last. Congratulations. Glad you made it. Mother has really missed you.”
Evelyn moved close to her husband and gave him a poke in the ribs with her elbow as she leaned over to inspect the damage the rose bush had done to his shirt. “Behave,” she whispered furiously, the same way she warned her children when they were getting out of hand.
“You gonna watch me cook the steaks?” Arthur asked Edward.
Edward gave his brother a long stare, then relaxed and smiled broadly. “It’s been a long time, old man. Nice place you’ve got out here. You can really get a taste of the good life. I hear things are going well with the business.”
Arthur shot his mother an aggrieved look. “No thanks to you,” he muttered.
“What’s that you’re saying?” Dora put in, shoving the cheese platter into Evelyn’s hands. She grabbed Arthur by the arm and yanked at him, hard, to pull him over to where Edward was standing. “You’re brothers,” she announced as Evelyn turned away in embarrassment. “Now kiss and make up—you haven’t seen each other in two years. Shame on you both!”
Edward was still smiling—a faint, superior smile that gave his face an air of cocktail-lounge sophistication. Arthur, who was hunched over as if someone had hit him in the stomach, turned his face away as he presented a hand to his brother to shake. “Why stand on ceremony, old chum?” Edward said, and he grabbed Arthur by his down-curved shoulders and ceremoniously planted a kiss on each cheek, first the left, then the right.
Arthur glared up at Edward as if he might hit him, then his face relaxed and he began to laugh, senselessly and sloppily, his eyes trickling tears of amusement and humiliation. “Yeah,” he repeated, “old chum, old chum.”
“Good,” said Dora. “Now we can get on with our day.”
It was an awkward afternoon, made so by Edward’s dark presence which seemed as foreign to the suburban backyard as the presence of a vulture perched in the willow tree. Selwyn and Harriet were constantly glancing at Edward, taking in his immaculate dress, his European shoes, the play of his long fingers in the air as he described the places he had seen—the canals of Venice, the duomo in Florence, the glories of the Rhine, the Seine, the Thames. The three Ringelbaum boys played monkey-in-the-middle with little Marci, who could not catch a ball at all and shrieked and whined each time she missed it.
Arthur stood over the charcoal grill, preparing the coals in his clumsy Boy Scout fashion for the huge steak that would follow. He piled up twigs and sticks, laying each one across the other, then stuffed newspaper in the cracks, ready to be lit with a match. Beneath the sticks lay the charcoal, ready to be heated until it turned grayish-white and the grilling of the steak might begin. Dora had disappeared inside the house to prepare Edward’s favorite potatoes and vegetables; he liked hashbrowns, fried until crisp, and onions in a cream sauce. She and Amy had made a Sacher torte, which now sat, its dark chocolate glistening, beneath a plastic cover.
Evelyn was perched on the edge of her lawn chair, constantly getting up and sitting down again, chasing paper napkins that blew high in the air on a gusty spring breeze, refilling drinks, and handing out more cheese and crackers. She had gone inside once to see where Amy was, but the door to the little girl’s room was closed and Evelyn decided not to disturb her. She knew Amy would appear when she was ready, and she was not troubled by the fact that Amy was being rude to her uncle; in fact, she was quite satisfied with the arrangement.
By the time the fire was ready to receive the steak, the guests were properly sloshed and the chef was donning his apron inside out. “No, you fool,” Evelyn whispered, taking the apron off and turning it rightside out so the cartoon father burning dinner on its front was visible to one and all. Arthur reddened a bit more as his wife pushed and pulled at him, then announced, “Bring on the meat,” and was handed a platter with a huge sirloin steak on it, a steak at least two inches thick with an impressive layer of fat around the edges and a large bone at its top. Arthur forked it clumsily and dropped it onto the grill. The metal barbecue teetered and looked as if it might fall, but the steak settled down with a sizzle of fat and Arthur assumed his steak-cooking pose, arms folded, long-handled fork at the ready, a milk bottle of water at his feet to douse any uncontrolled flames that might shoot up and burn this remarkable piece of beef.
Evelyn gave her husband an occasional troubled glance, for she knew that in his condition the fate of the meat might not be too promising. And sure enough, the rack on the barbecue grill was indeed set too low. The layer of fat around the edge of the steak began to drip into the flames, and soon a raging fire developed that threatened to incinerate the entire steak. Arthur reached for his water bottle and sloshed some on the flames. The fire changed to smoke, a thick grayish cloud that lifted up and dropped down over the guests.
“Clumsy fool,” Evelyn cried out as her cousins and brother-in-law choked and coughed, hastily moving their chairs away. But the patterns of wind on this early spring day could not be predicted and everywhere they moved their chairs the smoke followed, blowing in their faces, while Arthur apologized thickly and tried to raise the steak higher over the coals.
They decided to move into the house to get away from the smoke. Picking up their drinks, they gathered by the back door and filed inside. When the party had resumed in the living room, Evelyn noticed that Edward was missing. She glanced out into the yard but did not see him there. Walking into the kitchen, she found her mother-in-law slicing beefsteak tomatoes, but no sign of Edward. How like him to disappear at a family gathering, to make himself unavailable when needed.
When the steak was finally ready to be eaten and Evelyn appeared at the back door with her best china platter to receive the meat, she glanced over at the willow tree in the corner of the yard and saw the two of them sitting on the bench beneath the tree, talking. His arm was wrapped around her and his face turned toward her, listening intently to what she had to say. Edward and her daughter, Amy.
