Family Matters

by Kitty Burns Florey

  Betsy couldn’t ask him not to come, to wait out the storm at Emily’s house. Violet had been asking for him—but she didn’t tell him that, either.

  “You could have called us last night,” she said. “We’ve been worried sick.” She was stiff with him; they hadn’t parted on good terms. She had slept badly, the harsh words they had exchanged tumbling in her mind all night while the blizzard raged outside.

  “What was there to worry about? The storm wasn’t so bad yesterday.”

  “It’s bad now.”

  “We’ll take it easy.”

  There was more she would have liked to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to it. She could only resurrect the old upbeat voice she used to use with Violet and urge him to drive carefully.

  And where was he now? Where was Emily?

  “Maybe we should call the state police,” she said to her great-aunt.

  “What on earth for, honey?” Marion’s condescending patience made Betsy want to scream, though she knew it was put on and that Marion was as worried as she was. “It’s going to be a long, slow trip, and that’s all there is to it. Bothering the troopers in weather like this won’t accomplish anything.”

  She knew that—calling was simply something to do, and she spoke irritably. “Neither will listening to that damned radio!”

  Marion tightened her lips, but left the radio on. “I told him not to go out in this,” she muttered, as if to herself.

  Terry came and went, aimlessly moving from sickroom to kitchen to the front window, where she stood for minutes at a time watching for the car before she scurried back to her patient.

  Violet had eaten her bits of French toast and then fallen into a long, oblivious doze, but Betsy—though urged by Terry and Marion to nap, to rest—was unable to sleep or even to sit still for long. Aside from her anxieties about Frank and Emily, and about Violet, the baby’s activity kept her restless.

  “He’s tired of being cooped up!” Marion said when Betsy complained. “He’s kicking to get out!”—in the unnatural saccharine tone she had decided was proper for her to adopt.

  Betsy sat mesmerized by the raging snow outside, imagining the baby being born on a deserted road in a blizzard, being born on this very kitchen floor, in need of oxygen or blood or rare drugs that no one could get through to the hospital for, the baby born dead, choking, retarded—and her grandfather’s Cadillac skidding off an embankment somewhere in Connecticut—and Violet breathing her last in great pain. She sat immobile, chewing the cuticle around her thumbs, drawing blood, until she felt compelled to get up and move about the house.

  She would have liked to be alone. It seemed to her she had a great deal to think about—though, in fact, her mind was dulled and blank. She would have liked to sit by Violet’s bedside, without Terry or Marion, wrapped in her mother’s silent, painful peace. She didn’t want to share her dolors. But Terry hovered, full of lugubrious self-importance, and her great-aunt had settled into the spare room with a small suitcase. She knew Marion had come for her sake, to keep her company while her grandfather was away. Betsy tried to be grateful, but her thoughts were of peace, quiet, space—of these and of the morbid ideas that Frank and Emily had perished on the road somewhere and that her mother’s death was imminent.

  Violet had become somewhat worse since Frank went off into the blizzard, as if his presence in the house had been a prop that sustained her. For the first time, the injections against her pain seemed ineffective. Violet moaned weakly in her sleep and woke often, asking for the drug.

  Dr. Baird had struggled over early that morning. “It won’t be much longer,” he had said, and, though when she pressed him he wouldn’t be more specific, Betsy felt it was only a matter of days, perhaps less. “She’s as comfortable as she can be,” the doctor said, hinting at his disapproval that Violet was being allowed to die at home. He had given up recommending her removal to a hospital. “As comfortable as she can be, considering …” Betsy, looking at her mother’s placid sleeping face, watched it crease with pain and then smooth again, and thought ahead, with grief and trepidation, to the day when she would be left alone in the echoing house.

  Still she longed, perversely, for solitude. Marion’s chatter was driving her crazy, and the staticky drone of the radio was unnerving, but she kept returning to the kitchen where they both were, drinking cup after cup of coffee, not knowing what else to do or where to go. She wandered up to Violet’s room, but Terry urged her to stay downstairs. “I’ll call you if she wakes,” Terry promised. Her tone was passive.

  “Any change.”

  “I’ll call you.” Terry looked as glamorous and efficient as ever, but her eyes were red, and tears spilled over at odd moments as she sat by Violet—not reading or knitting, just watching.

  “How does she stand it?” Betsy said to Marion.

  “Who?”

  “Terry. To spend her life watching at deathbeds.”

  “Oh, I doubt it’s as bad as all that. Most of her cases recover, I’ll bet.” Marion cleared her throat. “No one said your mother’s on her deathbed yet, anyway.”

  The false words gleamed in the air, then went out. Betsy had nothing to say; she stared out at the snow.

  Irresistibly, she told herself her rosary of troubles, over and over. There was no comfort or happiness for her that she could see. Her mother was at the threshold of death, any day she would—alone and unfriended—give birth to a fatherless babe, and her grandparents were missing in the snow.

  The argument with her grandfather oppressed her. “I’ll go and get her if I have to drag her,” he had said. “I won’t have your mother grieving like this.”

  “Grandpa, Emily’s got troubles of her own—let her be.”

  He was taken aback at Betsy’s easy mention of the name. Then he brushed her words aside; he was hearing nothing but Violet’s request: I want my mama. “That damned woman!” he muttered, and Betsy knew he meant Emily.

  “How can you call her that?” she demanded. “After the way you treated her!” She had resented Emily’s aloofness; now she defended her to this thick-skinned, predatory male.

  He turned on her in a rage. “You two are mighty chummy, aren’t you? Got the whole story, didn’t you?” They were in Violet’s room. He took Betsy’s arm and steered her out the door, and they stood in the hall, shouting at each other.

  “It’s about time I knew—time someone knew who my mother’s parents were. You kept it from us all these years—it wasn’t fair!” There it was again, the childish lament.

  “It was my business. Damn the woman! Damn her for telling it to you, for dragging up all these dead issues. What does it matter now? The interfering old bitch!”

  “Don’t you talk about her that way!”

  “You’re her granddaughter, all right,” he said with a look at Betsy’s belly.

  She didn’t even try to excuse him—to blame his brutal words on grief and outrage, the shock of Betsy’s search and Emily’s revelations. Pure, cold, limitless anger made her incoherent.

  “How can you—how can you! Don’t you understand anything?”

  “I understand that I won’t let her do this to my daughter. I’lI drag her up here if I die in the attempt. I’m damned if I’ll let her get away with this.”

  Half an hour later he had slammed out the door. And where was he now?

  Hours went by. They had all risen early, and the morning was immensely long. They had lunch. Marion made large tuna-salad sandwiches for the three of them and then loudly did the dishes, humming to herself. Betsy retreated from her great-aunt’s studied optimism, upstairs—not to Violet’s room but to her grandfather’s study. They had shouted at each other: had they ever done so before? She couldn’t remember, ever, hearing his voice raised to her. Still, she wouldn’t take back her words—she wished only that there could be more of them, that he were there, now, at his desk, and that they could talk quietly. There was more to be said.

  The storm made the study dark. Snow clung to th
e two windows and kept out most of the daylight, but Betsy knew the room by heart, and she tried to take comfort from its familiarity. It was dominated by her grandfather’s desk—a large, bland office model (the replacement for the quirky old oak piece in the attic)—but it bore his mark upon it, unmistakable. It was very neat, the working space of a man who didn’t really have any work to do. In the center were a calculator, the university law review, a mugful of pens, a little pile of letters. But arranged in each corner were more personal things: an old iron bank he’d had since boyhood, a sand dollar, a small marble fish Violet had given him, a wooden egg that had been his mother’s. Betsy picked each item up and turned it over in her hand. Each was warm to the touch, as if her grandfather had handled the things just before she came in, but they only made her lonelier. He had stalked off into the snow, leaving her behind in the empty house with nothing to do but wait and brood.

  Betsy sat down heavily at the desk. The tuna fish had not agreed with her. Nothing agreed with her. The coming of the child oppressed her; in spite of all her cares, she could think of nothing else. What am I doing? she asked herself, and, resting her hands on her huge belly, she asked the child within, Who are you? What will happen?

  There were no answers; she had expected none. In fact, the questions had become rituals that set up a rhythm in her head whenever she lapsed into the blank, bovine trances that had come back during these last weeks of her pregnancy.

  She longed for the birth, even as she dreaded it. She longed for her passivity to come to an end so her life could go forward. Sitting at her grandfather’s desk, she felt a dull stupefaction stealing over her, and she blinked and sat up, wincing at the pain in her back. She leafed through the pile of letters on the desk: bills, a renewal letter from Consumer Reports, a notice of a board meeting. Pathetic, Betsy thought. The dregs of an active life. What would he do once Violet died? Go back to his board and his consultations and his club lunches with old cronies? His friends were dying off, she knew; this had begun to depress him before Violet’s illness absorbed him utterly. What now? And what would he do with his resentment against Emily? Did it even exist anymore? And—the question kept coming back—was he dead with her somewhere in the snow?

  The shelf over his desk was crowded with photographs. There was a faded one of Frank himself, in a stiff collar, smiling confidently at her—taken back in the days when he was deceiving Emily, Betsy thought. There was one of herself, with the dog, Poochie, in a stranglehold. A snapshot of Helen, dressed for church, in a hat with a veil. One of her parents, laughing, outside her father’s shop.

  Emily, it occurred to her, was missing from the shelf. Would her grandfather put up a picture of his old love, now that she’d been brought to light? One of her glamorous portraits? She belonged there, just as she belonged in the family plot. I’ll bury the three of them all together, Betsy thought fatalistically, and imagined the three gaping holes in the frozen earth, like the stanza of a tragic ballad.

  And Emily’s house in East Haddam—that gem shining now, empty, in the snow. What if Emily, lost in the storm, had left it to her? What on earth would she do with it? She fancied Emily would scream from the grave like a soul in torment if she sold it. She wondered about offering it to the state as a landmark: the Emily Loftus House—a museum of theatrical memorabilia? Under that memorial, Emily would surely rest in peace. Betsy smiled to herself. She would go up there in the spring with the baby. The sun would shine on Emily’s treasured fanlight, there would be blossoms on the apple tree, the baby would snuggle against her. “This was your great-grandmother Emily’s house,” she would say, putting the old key in the old lock. Inside, Emily’s sturdy spirit would hover around her and the baby, showering blessings.…

  No. Panic overwhelmed her. She knew she couldn’t bear it if they all died, and in her panic she knew they wouldn’t. Comfort and confidence came to her from all corners of the room. She was sure of it: Frank and Emily were safe. Her grandfather’s room breathed life—it was in the smiling faces of the photographs on the shelf, in the little man on Frank’s old mechanical bank who would doff his hat if you put a penny in.…

  They would be safe. That particular oppression would not fall upon her. The certainty calmed her, until down the hall she thought she heard Violet stir and cry out, and the panic returned. What did anyone else’s life matter? Violet would die. Before much longer, she would be motherless and alone. Betsy wanted to whimper—she was always wanting to whimper lately, to go someplace and cry, but where did one go in such pain if not to one’s mother? The subtle terror of it possessed her. The terror not of one’s own death but of one’s last parent’s death—the death that confers adulthood, ready or not. I don’t want my mother to die, she cried silently. I don’t want to be the mother!

  As if in protest, the baby began to thrash around inside her, and Betsy calmed again. All right. All right. I didn’t mean it. But the calm came with difficulty, the peace was hopelessly shattered, and she got up and walked down the hall to Violet’s room.

  Terry was crying. She looked up guiltily from her tissue, caught in the act, as if it were a dereliction of duty. Betsy stood in the doorway, and they exchanged sad, silent smiles. Violet slept, her wasted face calm. As they watched, she twitched and mumbled, but didn’t wake.

  Betsy went back downstairs. Marion was in the kitchen, with the radio, still drinking coffee. Her pendulous red face was freshly made up, her tiny mouth gleamed with rosy, improbable lipstick, and she looked up eagerly when Betsy came in.

  “How is she?”

  “The same.”

  “The snow seems to be letting up.”

  It was hard to tell. Out the window, all was white, fading to blue-gray. As Betsy looked, a streetlight went on, and against its light she couldn’t see any snow falling.

  “Look at that,” said Marion. “Streetlights on at two-thirty in the afternoon. That’s the worst of winter, in my opinion—the dark.”

  “I think you were right—it is stopping.”

  Her aunt snapped off the radio. “Let’s take a break from this, then.” Betsy went to the stove for a cup of coffee, thankful for the silence. Without warning, it was broken by a sudden harsh sob from her aunt.

  Betsy turned. “Aunt Marion!”

  Her great-aunt’s face was crumpled, weeping. She sat hunched at the table, one hand over her eyes, the other stretched out blindly.

  “Betsy …”

  Betsy went to her, knelt down, and took her hand. “Aunt Marion, what is it? What is it all of a sudden?”

  “I can’t stand the waiting anymore, Betsy. Go ahead—call the troopers. I can’t take this.”

  It was Betsy’s turn to speak patiently, rationally—out of her own irrational certainty. “He’ll be here, don’t worry.” As she spoke, she wondered at Marion’s emotion and then realized how much Frank must mean to his sister-in-law. They were, after all, old friends.

  Marion raised her naked red face to Betsy. Her makeup was all rubbed off or collected into furrows. The red lips stood out garishly, and her face was shiny with tears in the light from the window. Betsy remembered Judd’s photographs.

  “Don’t cry, Aunt Marion.” She took a table napkin and wiped her face, but the tears started again, and Marion buried her head in her hands and moaned.

  “I can’t bear it if he goes before me. I can’t.”

  Betsy did her best to provide comfort, wondering. She remembered what Marion had said of Will, her own father: “It’s a blessing Will went before Violet. He worshiped her.” She put her arm around her and waited for the crying to stop; she didn’t know what else to do.

  Finally, Marion raised her head and sat up. She took a tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I’m upset.”

  “Well, of course you are—” Betsy started to say, reasonably enough, but Marion forged ahead.

  “I always loved your grandfather, you know. I mean, I’ve been in love with him, for years. You never knew, no one
did.”

  Oh God, the poor woman, here we go. “I knew you two were fond of each other, of course—”

  She was cut off again. “Fond! Fond of each other!” She gave her brittle laugh. “He was the great love of my life. There was a time when I was eloser to him than anyone. I mean, we’d gone through it all together. I was always there for him. When Helen went off the deep end. And when she kicked him out of bed for good, and then Emily—you see what I’m saying, Betsy?”

  “I suppose I do,” she replied reluctantly and felt a vague anger rise in her.

  Marion went on before she could say more. “I’m sure your mother told you I was a trollop. Did she? A scarlet woman?” She raised her head and patted her upswept hair with something of her old dignity. “Glamorizing as usual, that’s Violet. I was no trollop. I had lovers, of course—not casual affairs, either, like young people today, but real love affairs. And I’m not referring to you and that photographer, either, so don’t get huffy.”

  Betsy wasn’t feeling huffy, she was feeling oppressed. Would life ever go forward instead of back? She was caught in a web of other people’s memories. She wanted all this to be over. She longed to be home, in her own bright apartment with Dr. Spock and Dr. Johnson, changing her baby’s diapers and working on her book.

  “I had a special friendship for many years with a man in New York,” her great-aunt continued imperturbably. “A married man. He didn’t keep me, I always made enough to support myself. Oh, he helped out, but I could have gotten along without him. The bohemian life, you know. The Village in the twenties and thirties. We were going to go to Paris, he and I—”

  Betsy listened, amazed in spite of herself, not at the story—which was, generally, what her mother had told her—but at Marion’s willful vulnerability. She was letting down her pride, drawing her own sting. Betsy wished she wouldn’t do it. She liked their old, distant, abrasive relationship, and she knew the reminiscences would end in more tears.