I was too angry at her for “getting bombed” before a dinner party to give my usual modest refusal: You don’t have to. I always ended up accepting the money anyway.
The first thing you saw as you entered Grandma’s main room was the bar. Set up on a narrow table against the back of the orange “dog sofa,” it was well stocked with Ocean Spray cranberry juice, Clamato, spicy V8, gin, bourbon, and pink sherry in a glass decanter.
Maggie and Diana played jacks on the floor in the recreation area—complete with a black-and-white TV—behind the sofas where sat Mom, Aunt Olivia, Uncle Harry, and an older couple who’d been family friends for decades.
Dad hadn’t yet appeared, but I knew he would because he never turned down a free meal.
With Grandma in such a state, I hurried back into the kitchen, now steamed up by the boiling pots.
Grandma Claire was wearing a white canvas apron that said COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF and sported black burn marks along some of its edges.
I grabbed her oven mitts and removed the leg of lamb from the oven, placing it on the stovetop next to a pot of boiling artichokes, a dish of baked scallops, and a pan of sautéed asparagus. The scent of rosemary rose from its sizzling juices. Grandma could prepare these dishes in her sleep, or in any other condition.
The table was set with custom-made place mats, which bore photos from Grandma’s youth and childhood—now distorted by years of spills. Some photos were of the grandchildren, and others were of Dad, Uncle Harry, and their sister, Aunt Liz, as kids. There were still others, black-and-white photos, of a young Grandma Claire, her four siblings, and their parents. The blank spots in the mats were like the ghosts of banished relatives.
GRANDMA WAS AN expert at seating arrangements. “Now, Ala”—her voice sounded hollow and slightly breathless—“you’re there—hiccup—next to me.” Grandma was very protective of Mom. She would refer to her as “poor Ala” and keep her close by, under her wing. “And Olivia—hiccup—I hope you can—hiccup—forgive me. I’ve squeezed you in between your husband and your brother-in-law.”
“Oh, that’s just fabulous, Claire! We can talk about the Porcellian Club and Haybines!” she muttered through a crooked smirk, but her sarcasm was lost on Grandma.
“And Teddy is at the head of the table. But oh, now, where is Teddy, damn it all?” Grandma always sat at one end of the table, while Dad, being the oldest, got the honor of sitting at the other.
Just then, Dad rushed in with bits of hay still in his hair. He apologized for his appearance. “. . . Just didn’t get a chance to change.”
“Oh, no need to explain yourself. It’s not as if anyone here doesn’t know you,” Aunt Olivia said, rolling her eyes.
Amid the general clatter of knives and forks against china, the conversation revolved around the least controversial subject—the past. Dad took the lead with stories of his outrageously naughty childhood.
Dad hardly ever asserted his opinions in front of his siblings or his mother. If he did, or if he received any positive attention from other people for his wit and charm, his immediate family would mock or contradict him. It was easier to avoid humiliation by keeping quiet or talking about noncontroversial matters, and on the subject of his childhood hijinks, everyone could agree.
Once, at the age of four, during a lunch party at his great-aunt’s, Dad had locked himself in the bathroom and flushed the key down the toilet.
“I was trying to figure out a way to climb out the window—which had no ledge—and get back in through another window. I was going to try to grab the next window and swing over. There were hasty consultations audible from behind the door as to what could possibly be done. It was a really solid door, about two inches thick, and there was no easy way to get through it. Finally the superintendent was called. It was a Sunday afternoon, so he came with ill grace to take the door down. He pulled the pins, and pried the door off the hinge side, and got it out.”
Aunt Olivia erupted into histrionic, though not unfriendly, laughter. “Oh honestly! I don’t believe you were that awful!”
“Oh, he was. . . .” Grandma sighed, her cloudy eyes still distant. Her body was curled up in her seat, her shoulders stooped, her abdomen caved in. Every part of her was gnarled.
“Oh do tell us another,” Aunt Olivia teased.
Dad told about the time when, at the age of four or five, he had been dragged along to his uncle’s wedding reception at an incredibly narrow Manhattan brownstone. He had grabbed handfuls of brightly colored canapés that he’d assumed were pastries, and was disappointed to discover that they were actually salt fish.
“There was nowhere to put said canapés, so I just jammed them into my pants and jacket pockets. There were quite a lot of them, and with the pressure of people pushing up against me, this stuff started to ooze out, and naturally got onto other people’s clothes, which they began to notice. People were starting to get mad at me, and chase after me, at which point I had to escape. So I snuck upstairs. But since the place was so full of people—even upstairs—the only way I could go was out. So I climbed out onto a cornice. At some point, somebody noticed me up there, and a commotion erupted on the street, while from inside there was this consternation among the guests, who were trying to get me back inside. But since nobody wanted to climb out onto that gutter to get me, I sat pretty up there until eventually I had to come in because I wanted something to eat. At that point, I got into serious trouble and was taken home. And that was the end of the party!”
“Speaking of delinquency,” Uncle Harry interrupted. “When do you plan on replacing the roof on the pump house?”
Grandma Claire bared her large teeth, ready to join in the attack on Dad. You, Teddy, are a disappointment, a miserable excuse for a human being! But, like a faithful guard dog trying to prove its worth, Mom jumped in first.
“Yes,” she barked, “the pump will break and we’ll be left with no water. But of course Teddy isn’t concerned about that! What does he ever use water for?” Mom tended to have a very poor grasp of mechanical details but was preternaturally provoked by Dad’s imperfections.
“Gee, I mean, that piston pump’s been there since the thirties,” Dad now answered as meekly as he could to avert a quarrel. As much as Dad loved to stir the pot, he avoided direct confrontation at all costs. “I’d like to install a submersible. And to do that, I have to pull out over two hundred feet of steel pipe, which requires that the roof be removed. . . .”
Just as I planned one day to rescue Mom from Rokeby, I felt guilty that I didn’t stand up to the family when they ganged up on Dad. When I was alone, I would practice what I would say to them if I had the courage. I don’t see any of you fixing anything. If you don’t like his work, why don’t you pay professionals to do it? If you don’t like his friends, you don’t have to speak to them. But I said nothing. I continually failed as his one and only protector.
AFTER I’D CLEARED the plates and piled them into the warm, soapy water in one side of Grandma’s great cast-iron sink, everyone retired to the sofas for more conversation and coffee. Grandma Claire made her usual request of me. “Oh, Alexandra, do play us a little something! I’d love to hear my favorite, ‘Long, Long Ago’!”
Reluctantly, I took out my violin. I usually brought it down with me for parties, knowing I’d be asked to play. The folk melody “Long, Long Ago” was from the beginning of volume one of the Suzuki method books, one of the first songs I’d ever learned to play—after “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Lightly Row.”
A general hush had already filled the room when Aunt Olivia leaned over to Grandma Claire and whispered loudly enough for all to hear, “Will Alexandra be playing us a little ‘Twinkle’?” She giggled shrilly, then put her finger to her lips. “Shhh . . . ,” she said to herself, and pretended to suppress more giggles.
As I began to play, Grandma Claire sang along under her breath.
Tell me the tales
That to me were so dear . . .
Grandma Clai
re’s melodramatic reaction to the song distracted me. Her eyes teared up, as they always did when I played this, her most frequently requested tune. She sat with her hands clasped, wet eyes expectant, in silent awe.
Long, long ago,
Long, long ago . . .
It irked me that she would cry in the presence of others. What was it, anyway, that she was remembering with so much sadness? Perhaps it was her first love, whom her father prevented her from marrying by sending her off to Florence during her senior year of high school.
. . . But by long absence
Your truth has been tried . . .
Blessed as I was when I sat by your side,
Long, long ago,
Long, long ago . . .
After I played, Grandma Claire and Aunt Olivia settled in to a game of Scrabble. Grandma would play Scrabble any time she could find a willing opponent. She loved to trick her partner into branching out toward the triple word scores in the corners of the board. Once they’d built their words to the edge, she would try to use the high-score letters she’d been hoarding to form her favorite words, like “zit” and “quo.” But her performance tonight lacked this kind of strategy.
“Now, Claire, do you want to put down ‘medal’ or ‘meddle’? Are you sure you’re all right to play this game?” Aunt Olivia asked.
“Yes, yes—hiccup—I’m jus’ fine. Now, let me see here. . . .”
Maggie and Diana were in the kitchen washing the dishes, since I had cleared the table. The dirty dishes soaked in one side of the double sink. Diana stood on a stool and sponged off each plate as she removed it from the warm water, then passed it to Maggie, who rinsed it in the other basin and set it on the drying rack.
Dad had fallen asleep in the recliner and was snoring loudly with his head back and his mouth open while Uncle Harry read the New York Times.
I too was beginning to feel drowsy from the smell of wine and the soft light from the candles around the room.
I did not wish to wait for Mom and Dad, who were always the last to leave. Maggie and Diana would get driven back up to the big house by Uncle Harry later. So, I decided now was the time to slip out the kitchen door.
So many times, I’d walked home from Grandma’s after dark. Tonight there was no moon and it was pitch-black outside. My feet knew the way by heart, knew all the uneven spots along the steep hill.
Peepers from the pond just north of Grandma’s house were singing their lungs out in a spring chorus. They sounded like little birds, confusedly chirping at night instead of at dawn. We could never swim in the peepers’ pond because it housed water snakes and snapping turtles as well. But it was fun to stand by its edge, listen to the low bass notes of the bullfrogs, and watch the water bugs run on top of the pond’s surface.
The spring air was unpredictable. I imagined the blasts of warmth that intermingled with chilly streams to be stray ghosts. My imagination was filled with ghosts.
Nonetheless, I’d learned not to be afraid of the dark. I felt brave, pushing forward into the blackness, listening to the sound of my own footsteps clipping along the hard dirt road.
PART III
ARTISTS AND DRIFTERS
Courtesy of Ralph Gabriner
CHAPTER TEN
THE IRREGULARS
Courtesy of Georgiana Warner
Rokeby was a haven for those who dwelled in the margins.
Some of the marginalized refugees included Dad’s various charity cases and protégés. Others were legitimate Rokeby tenants.
Almost all our tenants were somewhat bohemian, as the rental houses were not fancy. To Uncle Harry, who had inherited an attitude of scorn for any form of business, the tenants were a necessary evil. Grandma Claire, on the other hand, felt it was her responsibility to foster unity among members of the legitimate Rokeby community—i.e., paying customers—and so she would regularly invite the tenants to dinner.
The old creamery was the center of bohemian life at Rokeby, inhabited by two creative and unconventional women, Debbie and Mimi. Debbie organized seasonal pageants at Rokeby. These would usually be held out in one of Rokeby’s fields with fifty or more volunteers—whom Grandma Claire termed “riffraff” and Uncle Harry referred to as “drifters”—awaiting directions as to where and how to move with their papier-mâché masks, banners, and various other props. Larger than life with her wild, frizzy hair; broad, toothy smile; and grand plans and ideas, Debbie reminded me of Glinda, the good witch of the north from The Wizard of Oz.
Mimi was a Cuban-American artist with shiny black hair and bushy eyebrows. She had first come to Rokeby as part of a sort of gypsy/vaudeville show with her then husband—a bald, gap-toothed man about twenty years her senior who had started out as her college film professor. They would drive around in a Mercedes, hauling a trailer behind them, and perform sideshows with their German shepherd named Billy Jean, who had been trained to walk on her hind legs in a dress.
While Dad did not identify with Rokeby’s bohemians and artists, they all adored him. To them, he was a miraculous mix of classically educated WASP and generous free spirit whose very lifestyle was a masterpiece. As their landlord, Dad was Rokeby’s high priest, who enjoyed the privilege of stopping in at any one of the tenant houses at any time of day or night to eat his rightful share, which was inevitably followed by ice cream with caramel sauce. The tenants would keep this on hand for just such occasions.
Mom, Dad, and I would frequently go over to Debbie and Mimi’s creamery for “dinner”—which would involve musical or dramatic performances and storytelling. There, we could always expect to hear exotic music—Gypsy, Balkan, Indian, Jewish—see decorative costumes, and try new recipes. There, one could say or do anything, and it would seem brilliant and entertaining. The creamery was a world of fantasy and pageantry, a world where everyone wore a mask and costume and nothing was ordinary or mundane. And in contrast to the big house, it was a place without judgment, a place of free expression.
Mom would become a whole other person at the old Rokeby creamery, a person I never saw when I was alone with her. She would laugh, recite extemporaneous poetry, and forget to complain about Dad.
Among the other tenants was Alex, long haired, bearded, and lanky, with a large protruding Adam’s apple, who rented the milk house. He kept milk crates full of books and records, mostly the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones.
There was Matt, who lived in the apartment on the second floor of the coach house, a graduate of MIT’s School of Architecture. On summer weekends, Matt would blast hits from musicals like Oklahoma and West Side Story from his balcony. Dad promised one day to build the house Matt had designed for his thesis—what Dad called the “house of the future”—at Rokeby.
It was the denizens of this world whom Mom had invited over to the big house for her summer solstice party.
A motley crew of guests wearing painted foam fish on their heads was gathered in the sparsely furnished formal dining room, now hazy with cigarette smoke.
Debbie and Mimi entered the room dressed in their dancing-bear costumes—brown fake-fur suits with stuffed bellies, giant papier-mâché heads, and cute toothy smiles.
Dressed in a suit and not acknowledging anyone, Uncle Harry stood in a corner of the dining room with his back to the guests. These were not the type of people Uncle Harry wanted overrunning and defining the place. His friends were respectable: old roommates from boarding school, fellow club members from Harvard, and various local people interested in historic preservation.
Uncle Harry’s obvious disapproval made me feel that by participating in this wild party, I was somehow guilty of doing something corrupt and inappropriate. As he glanced proprietarily at the portraits, I doubted that the ancestors would have been any more approving than he was of the rabble gathered here, in this, their house, marring its elegance and embarrassing their staid dignity.
At one end of the dining room were portraits of Great-Grandma Margaret and Great-Grandpa Richard Aldrich—proud and pompous. At the
other end was their daughter, Aunt Maddie, divorced and exiled, as well as Emily Astor, who had been charmed into marriage by the infinitely charismatic Sam Ward. Also present: General Armstrong, William B. Astor, and Grandma Claire. Grandma was a different person in the portrait, with her curls still black; her back still straight; beads of jade around her long, modestly exposed neck; her mouth closed with teeth already clenched, stiffly self-conscious—so beautiful, yet never carefree, not even then.
Grandma Claire never came to our parties. She was only comfortable as a hostess of her own gatherings—necessarily structured around meals.
Some guests lounged in the home parlor—a term we used because “family parlor” sounded too bourgeois—splayed over the room’s silk-upholstered chairs and corduroy sofa. Others stood around the gramophone, which had been a personal gift from Thomas Edison to Great-Grandpa Richard Aldrich. As Dad cranked it up, the quarter-inch-thick record began to speed up until it sounded like “Ragtime.”
Then interest shifted to the collection of iceboat photographs hanging on the home parlor’s wall.
“My father was an iceboater,” Dad explained. “FDR gave him an iceboat called the Jack Frost. FDR would frequently come visit the Delanos next door, who were his very close relatives, and then stop by at Rokeby. I don’t know if he ever knew that my grandmother didn’t vote for him in the ’32 election. . . .”
Uncle Harry now approached me. “If you see anyone who doesn’t belong in other parts of the house, be sure to drive them out.”
Uncle Harry wanted to make the younger generation his accomplices in checking up on the guests. In training to drive these undesirables out of Rokeby, we were instructed to interrogate any strangers we saw on the property. Inevitably, however, they would say they were “friends of Ted’s,” and we would simply have to move on.
The Astor Orphan Page 6