Evergreen

by Belva Plain

  “No more sugar,” he said aloud, giving the last, and then walked on down the road, not knowing where he was going, with George plodding slowly behind. Now and then their feet cracked last year’s fallen twigs.

  At the top of a small rise the road branched off. Half a mile beyond you could see where one branch ran into the state highway. This was as far as he had been allowed to walk when he was a little boy. He remembered how, when he was so young that he had hardly been out of Brewerstown, he had stood there looking at the blacktop road with the white dividing line, wondering where it went after it rounded the curve and fell out of sight, who lived there, what happened there, where he couldn’t see. He smiled to himself. Such a child! He hadn’t known anything at all, still didn’t, for that matter. He hadn’t been anywhere except to Maine, to Niagara Falls with Teddy’s family and last year to New York City with Gran. He wondered whether any of that curiosity, that surging excitement, would come back again, that feeling that there must be “something down the road.” It didn’t come back. There was only a great, looming dark. School and Teddy and all his friends, the scout troop, his boat and his room and Lafayette, all to be wiped out, to disappear, as when you wipe the eraser over the blackboard.

  He turned around and started back. He was ashamed; he oughtn’t to be thinking about himself, when Gran was going to lose everything. He oughtn’t to be thinking about what would be coming next for him when for Gran there would be nothing coming next. Or probably there wouldn’t. He hoped he was wrong about that, hoped she would really meet Gramp again, as she was certain she would. (Was she really, truly certain? Or did she only say so for his sake, and perhaps for her own as well?) Anyway, one thing he could hope for her, that she wouldn’t have too much pain.

  Ahead of him he recognized Father Duncan’s car turning into the Busbys’ driveway. He would be making his weekly visit to the old lady, who had broken her hip. He started to cross over, not wanting to be caught up in greeting or conversation, but Father Duncan hailed him and he was caught after all.

  “So everything has been straightened out, has it, Eric? I talked to your grandmother on the telephone a while ago.”

  It seemed that everyone except himself had known about what was to happen to him. His future had been disposed of the way you sell a horse or a dog, except that he would never sell a horse or a dog, never send it away from its home.

  “Yes, Father. All settled,” he said.

  Father Duncan had a keen gaze, a way of putting his head on one side as if he were estimating your size and weight. “If there are things that puzzle you, that trouble you, Eric, come and talk to me. Tomorrow or anytime. Will you?”

  “There isn’t anything,” Eric said. Or rather so much that he didn’t want to talk about it. It was like looking for the needle in the haystack; you’d never find it, so why even try?

  “Let me just say one thing quickly, Eric. Your other grandparents—they’re of a different faith. You must respect it. I know I don’t have to tell you that. Respect it, but hold on to your own. You can. It’s perfectly possible for you to live there happily and love them as I know they love you, and still keep your faith. You understand?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You remember Christ said to his disciples, ‘And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’ If you remember that He is with you, times when you may feel lonely, missing people, it will help enormously.”

  “I know,” Eric answered, feeling nothing.

  “Well, I’ll be going in to Mrs. Busby,” Father Duncan said.

  Dr. Shane’s car was still out. Lafayette was still grazing near the fence. Nearing home, Eric saw the car in the driveway. It was a long dark car. Even from here he could tell it was a Cadillac.

  He slowed his walk. Jeepers, he thought, and hoped they wouldn’t get all sloppy, maybe cry and hug him and kiss him and all that crap. He went sweaty with embarrassment and fear.

  Gran was standing with some other people on the front steps. She was looking up and down the road, looking for him. Then she saw him.

  “Eric!” she called.

  His heart began to knock, actually knock inside him. He was so scared he hoped he wouldn’t do something awful like crying again or throwing up. He had a crazy flash of memory, something about Gramp and Indians and battles and brave ancestors. He knew it was ludicrous, that it had nothing to do with the present situation. Still, Gramp would have expected him to put his head up.

  They were all turned now, looking toward him. There was a man in a dark city suit. There was a tall lady in a bright dress, looking too young to be a grandmother. His grandmother. He had a crazy sense of unreality: maybe I am dreaming all this? The lady had red hair, and that surprised him. He hadn’t expected red hair, although he didn’t know just what he had expected.

  They were coming down the steps. He straightened, and with one hand resting on George’s collar, walked toward them slowly across the grass.

  31

  Anna lifted the warm dough from the bowl as carefully as if it were alive and placed it on the porcelain table, then floured it and took up the rolling pin. A fine, soothing calm washed over her, as always when she had the kitchen to herself. She moved without haste, handling the familiar pans and spoons.

  Eric came in from the yard. “What are you making?” he asked.

  “Strudel. Do you know what that is?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s a kind of pie, only much better, I think. I’ve already made one batch this morning for your Aunt Iris’ house. It’s in the pantry. Go take a piece and tell me how you like it.”

  When the dough had been rolled flat she brushed it with salted butter and began to pull it carefully, so as not to tear it, stretching it as thin as tissue paper until it hung over the edge of the table. Eric watched silently. He had cut a small piece and stood there, eating.

  “Is that all you took? Don’t you like it?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, then, take more! Go take a big piece. A tall boy like you, you’ve two hollow legs to fill up.” She smiled and he smiled back, returning measure for measure. She wondered whether her own smile had been as urgent. Probably it had been.

  “Don’t you want milk? Something to wash it down with?”

  He went to the refrigerator and poured a glass. She saw that he had been thirsty. Cutting the Strudel dough, mixing the filling, she watched him without letting it seem that she was doing so.

  After four months of living together she was not yet accustomed to the sight of this stranger who was of her flesh. She kept noticing new features: a mole on the cheek, a scar on the elbow. He would have distinction when he was grown, she thought. His hair, now sun-streaked, was exceptionally thick and rich. The aquiline nose, found usually on darker, Mediterranean faces, gave his a kind of elegance. His eyes were guarded by the arc of heavy lids; when he lifted them abruptly you were surprised by a gaze of charming candor.

  She wondered whether, in that other life, he had ever been talkative. When boys came over after school now, pushing noisily into the house on these bright fall afternoons, she saw that Eric always stood a little apart, a little quietly. It was not that he was rejected or ignored; it was just that he seemed to be not quite of them. She suspected that it was his height and good looks which were passing him successfully through the cruel gamut of adolescence. Thoughtfulness at that time of life, she reflected, remembering Iris, was not a social asset, especially when it was accompanied by private school manners. Eric’s homeroom teacher here in the public school had told him not to address teachers as “sir,” an instruction which had confounded Eric; he still forgot sometimes and used the form when speaking to adults.

  But he had brought assets with him, too. He was a top basketball player and the years of living at the lake had made him a sturdy swimmer. Iris, concerned as always with “psychology,” had gone to the school before it opened and spoken to his advisor about Eric. She had followed up again only last week and be
en told how well he had adjusted. Extraordinarily well, Iris reported, considering the bewilderment anyone would feel after such an upheaval.

  The courage it must have taken! On the ride back, that first ride from Brewerstown, if that man Chris, the cousin, hadn’t come along—and stayed for two days to help “settle in”—it would have been unthinkable for them all. As it was, the boy had spoken hardly a word on the entire ride. What was there to say? Joseph had been so tense that he hadn’t talked, either. So Anna and Chris had spent a couple of hours making conversation about Mexico, where he had just spent six months. He had described Mexico City from one end to the other. He knew the area where her brother Dan lived; the houses there were very fine, he said. Then he had talked about Maury. She had forgotten that Chris was the young man whom Maury had so admired and visited in Maine. He’d talked of how bright Maury had been and of how they had met when Chris had had an accident. And Anna had thought: A stranger falls on the ice on a winter’s night, and half a dozen lives are changed. A new life exists because of it. How does one begin to understand it all?

  But Eric was doing well. Thank God, he was doing remarkably well. Everyone said he was.

  She opened her mouth to say something, wanting to make a connection, such as: Eric, I love you; I’m still not over the marvel of your being here; Eric, it’s like having your father back again—

  But she had done that once. It had been during his first month, when suddenly she had been moved to tears, tears so jubilant and so painful that she had not been able to hold them back. She had seized his hands and kissed him. And he had pulled away with such an expression (of alarm? distaste? embarrassment?) that she hadn’t done anything like it again.

  She said calmly, talking half to herself and half to him, “Now we put in the apples, some raisins, some almonds, and I always like to add currants. Most people don’t, but it gives a nice tart flavor, don’t you think?” she went on, turning the long, fat roll over and over on the table before cutting it into three sections and putting it in the oven.

  Eric nodded again.

  This time she had to say what was on her mind. “You never call me anything, or your grandfather, either. Of course you can’t call us ‘Gran’ or ‘Gramp.’ But I do think we need to have names. Won’t you decide on something?”

  “I don’t know what to choose,” Eric said.

  “When you were a tiny boy, just starting to talk, you called me ‘Nana.’”

  “I did? I don’t remember.”

  “Naturally you don’t. But would you like to call me that? And your grandfather could just be ‘Grandpa,’ couldn’t he?”

  “All right. I’ll start now, Nana.”

  “Eric? Is it very hard for you here? What I mean is—oh, I’ve put it clumsily, of course it’s all been hard for you—but what I meant was, because it’s here. Is it too different? That’s what I meant.”

  “No, no. It’s very nice here. I like the school and my room and everything. Honestly.”

  “I realize that were probably very different in ways that we mightn’t even be aware of. It’s not simple. But if you’ll just remember that we love you it will be simpler. Can you understand me?”

  “I do understand.”

  “Well, then, enough of that! What are you planning to do with this nice Saturday?”

  “I’ve got a pile of math to get out of the way. I thought I’d go sit outside to do it.”

  Every chance he got he went outdoors. Perhaps he felt confined in the house? This town, this house and yard, must seem so small after all that free space.

  “I told you Cousin Ruth is coming to spend a few days, didn’t I? Grandpa’s gone into the city to call for her. Maybe if you’re finished with your work by the time they get here he’ll take you out to buy the football helmet and things you need.”

  “That’d be neat.”

  She watched him spread out his books and then started upstairs to change out of her work clothes, thinking with a pleasant thankfulness of him and Joseph going out in the afternoon. Joseph had taken charge of fitting Eric out for school and that was good; the boy needed a man; he’d been too long with an old woman, and a sick one, at that. Joseph and he had had lunch and gone to a couple of baseball games during the summer; it seemed as if they were really coming together. A pity that Joseph couldn’t spend more time with him! But he was always so busy.

  They had joined a small beach club for Eric’s benefit. People here sent their children to camp and, except for the two Wilmot boys down the street whose parents couldn’t afford to send them, there had been no one around all summer. But Iris, because Anna had never learned to drive, had dropped off the Wilmots and Eric at the beach every day, which was generous of her, busy as she was with her two babies.

  Such darling little boys! Just eleven months apart and Stevie was walking now. Their coming had made such a difference in Iris. But not only their coming: first Theo’s coming, and the house, and the perquisites that go with the title “Mrs.”! If she were a Sicilian peasant, Anna reflected, Iris would have a dozen children gladly. She was at her best when she was pregnant. All the tension went out of her face. Even her voice was pitched more softly, more confidently. She had grown enormous each time, but she hadn’t made the usual attempts to minimize her size. In fact, she had flaunted it, especially in front of childless women or women with only one child who weren’t able to have any more.

  She’ll not stop at two. It isn’t kind of me, but I envy her fruitfulness.

  Not kind of me, either, that I feel such pride in showing Iris off to Ruth. Not that Joseph won’t have been doing it before they reach here, if only to save himself from her babble. “That woman talks my ear off,” he’d grumbled again before leaving this morning.

  But I do feel pride! All those years of having people feel sorry for Iris! Especially Ruth, with her three daughters married young. Now Iris has what she wanted; she’s had so little. (The innocents, born into trouble, Iris—and Eric, too.)

  Ruth will be amazed at Iris’ new house. Joseph had built it for them; it was nothing that either he or Anna would have wanted, but it was what Iris wanted and Theo apparently had no objections to it. A kind of glass box it was, glass and dark, stained wood, standing in a grove. A startling house, airy and light, but quite plain, almost severe. Still, it had been written about in an architects’ magazine, and people did slow their cars down to stare at it when they went by.

  One thing, surely: Iris would never, nor would her children, have to stand in shame in front of an Uncle Meyer waiting for somebody to offer kind charity and a roof. Nor would Eric.

  She glanced outside. He had moved to the top of the wall. His books were open beside him and he was sitting quietly, looking toward the orchard, with his arm around the dog George. Curious, she watched. What was he thinking? Certainly he was not demonstrative or revealing, as Maury had been. Maury had worn his heart on his sleeve. He must be like his mother.

  He had been remarkable at his grandmother’s funeral, hadn’t cried at all. Of course, her death had been expected, but it had been shocking, all the same. Death always is. It had been in Eric’s second month with them that the call had come and a dry, old voice (Uncle Wendell, he’d said) had told them that Mrs. Martin had passed away. So Joseph and Anna had driven back to Brewerstown with Eric, purposely avoiding the street where he had lived, but he had been asleep on the back seat anyway.

  “Such calm!” Joseph remarked later. “That part of him certainly isn’t like our family.” Anna had acknowledged that he was referring especially to her, who cried so quickly and easily.

  But Eric had sat quietly through the funeral service, shaken hands with the minister and dozens of townspeople, then got back in the car with them and fallen asleep again all the way back, a good six hours’ drive.

  “He’s got courage, that kid has!” Joseph said. “He can take what comes. That’s what you call grit.”

  But it was a hard time, all the same.

  Hard for me too, Anna
thought with abrupt irritation. I didn’t realize I could get so tired. I thought I was younger than I am. People assume I can do everything: help Iris with the babies, rear a teen-age boy and start to worry about college and all the other complications—With equal abruptness came the prickle of hot shame. Self-pity! Of all the disgusting qualities a human being can have!

  She heard the car come up the drive and, a moment later, Ruth’s and Joseph’s voices in the hall.

  “Where’s Eric?” Joseph inquired of Celeste.

  “He and the dog walked down the road a few minutes ago, Mr. Friedman. Went down toward the Wilmot house.”

  “Oh, well, you’ll see him later,” Joseph told Ruth. He carried her suitcase upstairs to the guest room and set it down. “Well, I’ll leave you girls to yourselves and look at the paper till Eric gets back.” Beneath the courtesy Anna could read his impatience and knew that he had been drowned on the ride by torrents and floods of words.

  “So how are you?” Ruth asked, and went on without waiting for an answer, “Country life agrees with you!” (She called this coming to the country!) “You look better every time I see you, Anna, in spite of your troubles.”