Family Matters

by Kitty Burns Florey

  But Betsy wasn’t eating much. Emily knew she suffered from terrible indigestion as well as from grief. Her hair, none too clean, was screwed back in a knot, and her face looked puffy. The baby was due soon. I should stay to see her through, Emily thought fleetingly, knowing she wouldn’t. It could be a couple of weeks yet, and she’d be stuck in this ugly house or in some cold motel.…

  I’ve got to get back to my own life, she apologized in silence to Betsy, watching anxiously as Betsy picked at her chicken.

  “Try to eat, Betsy,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m eating,” Betsy said cheerfully enough. “I just can’t eat a lot at once.”

  “Your mother didn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive the last few weeks, did she, Betsy?” asked Frank morosely.

  He ate plenty, Emily noticed. All his talking had put new heart into him, she thought. He’d collapsed in tears when Violet died. Of the three of them plus nurse plus Marion looming in the background, he was the first to cry out, he was the one who threw his arms around Violet’s still body, cradling it and sobbing until Betsy led him away. He had gone blindly, shrunken and stooped, like an aged, aged man.

  But he had perked up during these two days. The sound of his own voice was a tonic—and her own flattering, deferent silence, Emily thought wryly. Well, let him have what he wanted this one last time, let him be, she thought, and congratulated herself on her charity. The idea came to her again that he had been broken somehow, or at least weakened, by Violet’s death, and he hadn’t long to live. She lingered briefly on the thought before she pushed it away with distaste.

  She and Betsy talked of Betsy’s plans. She would bring the baby to Connecticut in the summer for a nice long visit? Betsy promised. And everything was prepared? Diapers? Receiving blankets? Warm sleepers? One of those zip-up thermal things? What a time of year to have a baby!

  Frank took no part in the discussion. He sucked a chicken bone, above it all, and Emily wondered at the distance between him and his granddaughter; it had become more pronounced as Frank recovered his spirits. It was obvious that his disapproval of her pregnancy had worn away some of the fondness and trust between the two.

  Betsy was not openly hostile to her grandfather. She was courteous with him, and respectful of his grief, but she seemed to have things on her mind. Sometimes during his dinner-table ramblings, she glanced at him with vexation, as if his words were at war with her thoughts. But she said nothing.

  Frank had little to say to her; he did most of his talking to Emily. The sessions at the funeral home, with his pregnant granddaughter at his side, were clearly difficult for him. No doubt he considered himself to be bearing them stoically—even heroically. Emily imagined him with his friends, neighbors, former business associates, introducing Betsy, not batting an eye but managing at the same time to convey subtle disapprobation and his consciousness that unwed motherhood was not a proper state for the granddaughter of Frank Robinson.

  Emily observed all this almost with glee. His own past come back to haunt him, she thought. It’s in the blood, old man! She giggled aloud and turned it into a cough. Poor Frank … but she caught herself, thinking: Enough! Why should I let him be? Why should he be spared again? Damn the man! She came to a decision: She wouldn’t let him get away with this one. Before she left, she would reconcile Frank with Betsy. She’d make him face up to it, make him give his errant granddaughter what he never gave his mistress: generous, uncritical, free, and courageous love when she needed it. She would do it for Betsy—leave her mark on them both, for Betsy’s good. And for Frank’s, too.

  Emily poured herself another glass of wine and smiled at Frank and Betsy. “It’s good to have you here, Emily,” said Betsy warmly, and Frank looked up from his plate with an absentminded nod of agreement.

  After dinner she sat on the living room sofa. No more holing up alone with him, no more biography, no more pampering. She’d given him her presence—an ear—shared her strength with him. He looked fine, she thought, watching him poke at the fire—except that he looked so old. He’d get over his daughter’s dying. Oh, he’d weep some more at the funeral, he’d be blue for a while, but he’d bounce back. That was death, after all: the shock of the blow, then the comforting memories, then the dull ache, and somewhere toward the end of it all life resumed—business as usual. Frank was no different from anyone else—except that he was old. He’d become old suddenly or else she hadn’t seen it before—old, old and failing. All the more reason to reconcile him to the baby.

  She patted the sofa next to her. “Sit by me,” she said to Betsy—before Frank could park there and start up his reminiscences again. She smiled at her granddaughter. “Now. Why didn’t you tell me how much Frank disapproved of your pregnancy?”

  Frank’s fire poking stopped for a second, then went on. Betsy frowned, but whether it was at Emily’s words or at Frank’s disapproval, Emily didn’t know.

  “What about it, Frank?” she said loudly. “Do you have something against fallen women?”

  He turned around at that, with the old familiar hurt face. “That’s enough, Emily.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. And then to Betsy: “It hasn’t helped any, has it? To have your grandfather turn away from you at a time like this?”

  “It has hurt me very much,” Betsy said softly after a moment.

  “Betsy!”

  They both looked up at him, there was so much anguish in the cry—but the anguish was all for himself, Emily saw. And so did Betsy, apparently. She went on in her clear voice: “It has, Grandpa. And your not telling me about my mother. I’m sorry. I know quarreling is painful for us both. But you know how I feel.”

  He turned back to the fire, grasping the mantel with both hands and bowing his head, like a man in a movie. There was a painting over the mantel, of washed-out-looking flowers in a pink transparent vase. Helen’s taste, thought Emily.

  “It’s been hard for me, Betsy,” Frank said.

  “Hard for you!” Emily flared up. “What about Betsy? Hard for you? You’re not pregnant and alone. You don’t get stared at and asked insulting questions and called names. You don’t cry yourself to sleep from loneliness.”

  “Shh, Emily,” Betsy said. “It’s not like that.”

  “Don’t shush me! I know what it’s like. And I haven’t yelled at him properly in twenty years.”

  “I’m not listening,” Frank said with his back turned.

  “Oh, yes you are, Frank. I’ve listened to you for two days straight and you can just listen to me now for a minute. This granddaughter of yours is the only one of your women left who’s worth anything and who still loves you. Now you just do your duty by her before you die. You accept her baby and accept it cheerfully and gratefully, and forget about yourself for once.”

  He pushed himself away from the mantel and faced her. “Dramatizing as usual, Emily. Leave me alone.” His voice was shaky, and it rose—Emily thought—unbecomingly. “I accept the baby, as you put it. Of course I disapprove—so would you, if you weren’t always posing and acting, playing the liberated female. I disapprove for her sake—it’s got nothing to do with what happened years ago. It’s her career that concerns me, and the baby’s future.”

  “Come off it,” Emily said, sitting back on the sofa. She was prepared to go on, but Frank left the room without another look at her. “Hypocrite!” she called after him, and heard him stump up the stairs.

  “The old humbug,” she said to Betsy.

  “Emily, please,” Betsy said in a voice full of fatigue. “He means well.”

  Her mildness infuriated Emily. “You can’t believe that! He means well to Frank Robinson, my girl, but not to anyone else if it’s going to inconvenience his precious self. I know all about him! He doesn’t fool me with that saintly preacher face.”

  Betsy was silent for a moment, and Emily watched her with some anxiety. She was angry with Frank and impatient with Betsy—she could have swatted her for her meekness—but she didn’t want to quarrel wi
th her granddaughter. The sweet dream was dead. She’d awakened from it at last. She would gladly leave Frank Robinson behind—as he’d left her twenty years ago, without a backward glance—but she wanted this dear, awkward girl and her baby. She wanted some stab at the kind of family life Frank had been yakking about for the last two days. My little family, she thought: I haven’t had any family in—how long? how long? And he’d had so much.

  She squeezed Betsy’s fingers gently. “Am I right? Am I?”

  Betsy sighed. “Of course you’re right, Emily. But you have no idea how hard this is for me. I’ve been thinking and thinking, these past few days. I’ve been thinking about my mother—not about her death, but about her life. What a nothing it was. And she was happy! That’s the ugliness of it.” She stopped and pressed one hand to her forehead. “No—not ugliness. Nothing about my mother was ugly. She was entitled to her life—to that kind of life, if she wanted it. She told me she’d had a wonderful life, and I believe her. But I see it ahead for me, Emily, and I don’t want it. Living for the past, or for dreams, or for other people’s comforts. Only for that!”

  She stood up and walked to the fire with her odd pregnant walk, hands on belly.

  “And you, Emily,” she went on.

  Emily put her hand to her heart, but she wanted to hear it, whatever it was. “What about me?” It was like a play, exactly.

  “Waiting for him all those years. As if that was all there was to life. You! With your gifts! I don’t—oh, God, Emily!” She twisted her hands together. “I don’t want to inherit that.”

  “I was a fool, Betsy,” Emily said readily. “When I think what a fool I was! It’s taken me a long time to see it clearly. And he almost made a fool of me again—would you believe it?” The memories came, unbidden and irrational, of Frank in her bed in East Haddam, of Frank sitting with her at the breakfast table, of Frank kneeling before her and confessing his long love.… She washed the pictures, like dirt, from her mind.

  “You two aren’t going to go off into the sunset together, then?” Betsy asked, with the hint of a smile that Emily perceived as partly wishful.

  “No, thanks. I’ll stay the way I am.” Emily patted the seat beside her, and Betsy sat down again. Emily took her granddaughter’s hand. “I’ll tell you something, Betsy. I’m never unhappy, and I’m never what you’d call happy, either—not that kind of happiness that comes when you’re always expecting something good to happen. No, I don’t want commiseration,” she said quickly, seeing Betsy’s melancholy look. “There are better things than happiness, Betsy. I’m contented. My life goes along, day to day, just as I want it to. I like it. I wouldn’t change a thing. Oh, I’d take my voice back,” she said with a shallow laugh. “But I wouldn’t have the rest of it for anything. No thanks,” she repeated firmly. “And that includes him.” She jerked a thumb upward to the ceiling. “I’ll leave him to his lies and his memories.”

  They were silent again, sitting with clasped hands. “I’m not good at this, Emily,” Betsy said at last. “I find the whole thing very depressing.”

  “What? That your whole life has been an evasion?”

  At this, Betsy laughed outright. “It doesn’t help when you put it like that.”

  “Be glad you hooked on to it while you’re still young,” Emily said bitterly, but then she smiled at the girl and gave her swollen fingers a little squeeze.

  Betsy didn’t answer. She had drifted into her bovine state, her eyes vacant and her mouth gone slack, so that she looked (Emily thought) almost dim-witted.

  “Emily,” she said at last, with the abrupt, shy determination Emily found so appealing, “I want to tell you about this dream I had. I’d like your opinion. It seemed to me like a good dream—almost a good omen, and I feel I need good omens just now. I had it the night Mom died, and it’s been on my mind ever since. I keep wondering if it’s just sick and morbid, or—”

  “Tell me, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Well. In the dream I was in a park with my baby, and there was a wall, and on the other side of the wall was a sheer precipice—bottomless. I was taking pictures of the scenery, it was a very pretty park, and I thought it would be nice to have a picture of the baby sitting up on the wall. So I spotted a man coming down the path, and I asked him to sit up on the wall with the baby while I took their picture, and he did, and as I was taking the picture it occurred to me, what if this man was a homicidal maniac who would throw my baby over the side of the precipice? And just as I thought it, he did—the baby disappeared over the side. I began to run around and around this park, thinking, My baby is dead, my baby is dead. And then it occurred to me that I should commit suicide, to be reunited with my child—and the next minute I thought, But what if death is the end, what if there will be no reunion?”

  She was silent, and Emily prodded, with a gasping little laugh, “Was that all?”

  Betsy looked at her, smiling. “No. I put my faith in death. I leaped over the precipice. And I was reunited with my baby.”

  She waited for Emily’s reaction, but for a moment Emily couldn’t speak. The flames in the fireplace, the insipid painting over the mantel, a drooping begonia plant in the window, Betsy’s large, soft bulk—they all came together and whirled in Emily’s head with a sensation that was part déjà vu, part miserable memory, with an undercurrent of exhilaration that puzzled her. Back home, thinking it over in solitude, she would identify it as releasé. But now she sat with her hands pressed to her heart, shaking her head from side to side as if politely refusing something. “Oh, my dear Betsy,” she said. “I’ve had that dream—dreams like it—so many, many times.”

  Betsy looked stricken. “Emily, I’m sorry—”

  “No need,” Emily said. She took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. She looked tenderly at her granddaughter. “Maybe I won’t have them anymore. For you, it’s a good dream, Betsy. For me—” She made a comical face and lifted her forefinger in the air. “Listen,” she said. “Let me sing you something. It’s been running through my head all day—my philosophy of life! Now don’t mind my screechy old voice, I want you to hear this.”

  Softly, in her flat cracked alto she began to sing:

  The old times are gone now,

  The future’s far away—

  She had gotten that far when Frank came in. Emily blushed for her voice, but Frank didn’t appear to notice it. He was frowning.

  “Betsy, I’d like to talk to Emily for a minute alone.”

  Betsy began to get up, but Emily stopped her. “You stay, Betsy. In your condition you don’t need to be jumping up and down at every whim of your grandfather’s.”

  “No—I’ll go,” Betsy said.

  Frank waved his hand wearily. “Forget it. You might as well hear this. I just want to say one thing, Emily. I don’t want you in my house. I don’t want you at my daughter’s funeral tomorrow. You’re a troublemaker and a bitch, just like you always were. In fifty-five years you haven’t changed. I must have been crazy to bring you here.” He looked not at Emily but at Betsy—defiantly. “There,” he said.

  Emily stood up and went over to him. She was trembling all over, but she reached up and slapped him, hard, in the face. It steadied her.

  With her head high, she left the room—as she might have walked regally offstage after a show-stopping solo. This, after all, was what she had come for.

  Chapter Twelve

  Betsy

  Violet’s funeral was very short and somewhat strange, an attempt at a compromise between her dying wishes and Frank’s sense of what was fitting.

  It was held in the university chapel—late in the afternoon (Violet had wanted an evening funeral, but that was impractical) and without music. It was presided over—what there was of it—by Dr. Wilder, the retired chaplain and Frank’s old friend. There was a contingent present from the university—the crowd at the baby shower distilled into, perhaps, five or six faculty members and a graduate student or two. And there were Frank’s friends—aging men in hat
s and tweed overcoats with their fur-coated wives—and a few neighbors Violet had been close to, but not many. It was odd, Betsy thought, as she often had, how few friends her mother had. Or rather, it wasn’t odd (she reflected, with her new insight), it was perfectly natural. Violet had given up friendship along with all the rest of the components of a real life.

  The service was almost entirely silent. Dr. Wilder asked everyone to bow their heads in a long meditation, and then he read from the Bible (“Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth …”—Violet’s choice) and from John Donne (“Death, be not proud,” chosen by Frank—it was one of the two poems he was acquainted with, the other being Shakespeare’s eighteenth sonnet). The procession of cars up Comstock Avenue to Oakwood Cemetery was short; the day was bitterly cold and smelled of snow, and Dr. Wilder’s exhortations to the mourners to remember that they were dust were carried away by a sharp wind.

  Frank stood between Betsy and Marion, the ends of his muffler whipping out behind him. His nose was red, his face was bone white, and he leaned unashamedly on the two women. Betsy, seeing the tears on his cheeks, wondered why they didn’t turn to ice. She had wept in the chapel—the Donne poem had moved her greatly—but out in the open all she could think of was the cold, the wind, the way the weight of her belly pulled at her—and Judd.

  Judd was at the funeral, and he was one of the few who ventured out to the cemetery as well. He stood alone and apart, wrapped in his black cloak—the twin to hers—like a Heathcliff, or a Manfred (she thought, with peculiar, restful detachment that she didn’t expect), or like a raven against the snow—some solitary, brooding figure. He didn’t look at Betsy. His face, as he watched the coffin lowered into the ground, was expressionless, and before anyone else he turned and walked away without a word to her.

  Her great-aunt nudged her behind her grandfather’s back and gave her a look. Betsy nodded serenely. There he was—he had come—and she knew they would meet again. Why else had he come to the funeral unless he wished to see her again? She experienced the same kind of certainty about that as she had about the safe return of Frank and Emily, but she didn’t know what to think of it. She thought instead of how striking he was, how vivid, striding off over the snow with his cape flapping. Seeing him, after all these months and at a distance, it seemed weird and miraculous that the two of them had once been together.