Timeless

by Lucinda Franks

  “It’s our New Yorker.”

  “It happens to be mine.”

  “You guys are funny,” Amy said, coming out the door. She was on her way down to the waterfall to look for turtles. “Are you sure you aren’t sister and brother?”

  Amy was an original. Wise and artistic beyond her years, she was a near genius at solving mechanical problems. In fact, she had saved the family last winter from suffocating in a voluminous nonstop of steam from the heating system. No one could plug it up until she accomplished some complicated maneuver in a minute, saying with a sigh, “Well, that was easy.” No one ever understood how she had done it.

  I took up my pencil and started doing a crossword puzzle. I also surreptitiously looked at my watch. I was betting on ten minutes. He didn’t like to be ignored by anyone, particularly his wife and his dog.

  It was only eight and a half.

  “Look,” he said, pointing to the rows of new Pink Lady and Honeycrisp shoots. “They’re already growing.” He refused to share the sunset with me, so I didn’t bother to take my eyes off my puzzle. I had my pride.

  “What’re you doing there, Mum?” he asked cheerily, as though fighting words had never passed between us. I rather envied Bob’s ability to start every moment anew, as though the present were the future and the past never happened.

  * * *

  We talked about our children then. One of our satisfactions was the success and well-being of our ever-growing brood. Amy and Josh, who could have languished under the pressure of having two high-achieving parents, had found their own paths to excellence, as had the older children from Bob’s previous marriage.

  Jenny, Bob’s first child, had gone from her job in the city’s human resources division to be the executive director of the Fresh Air Fund; she expanded programs, becoming well-known in New York’s not-for-profit circles. She married Gene Anderson, a former assistant U.S. attorney under Bob, whom he still called Boss. Similar to her father in age, personality, and ethical values, Gene had founded a firm dedicated to forcing reluctant insurance companies to honor the contracts of their policyholders. Tragically, Gene died in 2010 of double pneumonia. But after a period of mourning, Jenny raised herself up and began a second life, dating and participating in a panoply of social activities.

  The second child, Anne Morgenthau Grand, at age fifty determined and hardworking, got her doctorate with honors; she acquired a private practice as a psychotherapist and became associate director of the substance abuse program at New York–Presbyterian Hospital. Her husband, Paul Grand, was still a successful lawyer. The Grands’ daughter, Hilary, and son-in-law, Ben Harris, lived in the city with their two bright young children, Sam and Daisy. The Grands’ son, Noah, had gone to Russia with us one summer, bringing along a stack of Roald Dahl books and ending up teaching Josh to read. Noah had become a teacher for special-needs children and made his home in northern Idaho with his wife, Ali, a social worker.

  The fourth child and elder son, Bobby, had became a top money manager in a respected firm and a trustee of the Museum of Jewish Heritage. His wife, Susan, had taken an increasingly active role as a New York Public Library trustee, organizing special literary panels and sitting on pivotal committees. We continued to be very close to their children: their son, Harry, had graduated from Middlebury College summa cum laude and went on to New York University Law School; their daughter, Martha, was thriving at Amherst and had a flair for ballet dancing.

  My youngest stepdaughter, Barbara, married Hanmin Lee, a pediatric surgeon whom we came to love, and they settled in San Francisco. They produced two of the cutest, most gifted children, and I loved them as dearly as I did Barb. Mimoh, nine, and Taemoh, six, adored Amy and were always by her side whenever they stayed with us on the Vineyard.

  As for the youngest daughter, Amy, she had been a superb actress, landing all the leads in school plays, and was also a beautiful poet and painter, talents she had always seemed to dismiss, perhaps because her competitive New York schools valued only academics. She had finally decided on a career in the veterinary field, working in a refuge in Georgia dedicated to propagating endangered species from Africa. She volunteered at shelters and ended up getting a job at an animal care center in New York. Her passion for animals soon made her the most popular handler at the center. As her co-worker Jason remarked, “When she walks in, the dogs are all over her; she has a special way with them.”

  Josh, our younger son, who was also a talented artist, had just become an entrepreneur, managing the New York branch of Good Eggs, an online grocery start-up that connected farmers to shoppers by delivering local fare right to people’s homes. Bob had made Josh, at age twenty-four, manager of Fishkill Farms, and Josh had expanded it to include free-range chickens and organically grown vegetables. He even began using organic clay sprays on some trees and had planted thousands of new fruit trees. He had a burgeoning reputation as one of the leaders of the new young growers who were changing the Hudson Valley. When he was twenty-six, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Mount Saint Mary College across the river. It gave me a thrill to witness the extraordinary closeness between Josh and his father. Bob taught his son about farming at an early age—they had an acre garden near the house—and now they work together and chat about farm matters constantly.

  We were proud of the success he was making of the teetering farm, which we had barely been able to hold on to. He worked fourteen-hour days and was exhausted but happy at the growing fans of the orchard. But it wasn’t easy. A farmer’s life is frustratingly dependent on the whims of nature. This summer’s bounty can be next summer’s disaster. A spring freeze that wipes out half the lovingly tended apple crop, a tomato blight, a weevil infestation—some seasons could be nerve-rattling.

  “When you are as old as I am,” I remember telling him, “you’ll look back at what you did for your father. You preserved his heritage. The love of the land that your great-grandfather gave your grandfather, which was in turn passed to your father, finally came to you. Look around you, the Morgenthau tradition has lived on. And you made it happen.”

  * * *

  One weekend, Bob suggested we visit the Garden of Stones at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. A visionary installation created by the famous sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, the sunken garden commemorated the victims of the Holocaust. It was exquisite in its simplicity—huge boulders excavated in Vermont spaced out on a bed of sand—and spiritual in its symbolism. Saplings planted by survivors several years earlier rose from holes in the huge stones, and to me they represented the struggle between life and death: some of the trees were tall and strong on this December day, and others had perished.

  Bob was walking around alone, thin in his puffy green jacket, as though he himself were a tree trying to rise from a boulder. I saw a vision of the young sailor that Bob had once been; I saw him as he had appeared in the early home movie his father once took at the old estate in Fishkill Farms. In it, he had been breezy, mysterious, clearly fond of skylarking, and unbearably handsome.

  The movie recorded a secret visit made by Winston Churchill in 1942 to huddle with President Roosevelt and Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. It was a historic and unique portrait of the three powerful men, but the camera kept wandering back to Bob. I was captivated by how this new ensign flirted with the girls. Not by going after them, but by leaning back, legs crossed, arms folded, waiting for them to be presented to him. Wearing crisp dress whites, he behaved not the least crisply: he gobbled a piece of finger food from the picnic table and then smirked for the camera, swiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Churchill clearly didn’t like the mint julep Bob had made, and he slid down in his Adirondack chair, legs spread, stomach protruding, like a plump oyster on the half shell.

  By 1945, Bob had returned as the person I now knew, dead cold sober, his lively roguish spirits gone. I felt a longing for this youth I had missed by thirty years, the man he would never be again.

  I leaned against the fence near the roiling wa
ters of the harbor and gazed at the Statue of Liberty looming over the garden. The brackish smell reminded me of the boat trip the family had taken in July 2003. It was heavenly. Navigating the Souvenir from New York to Montreal. The kids were supposed to sleep on the deck, but it rained constantly, so the four of us stuffed ourselves into two bunks; toes tickled nostrils, smelly boys’ feet had to be endured, bodies flopping over on bodies. Bob, then eighty-three, went up and down the bridge lithely, steering through thick fogs, finding narrow channels. Everyone was truly happy: unspoiled, unentitled pioneers who never complained.

  Bob came up behind me then. “Remember the boat trip to Montreal,” I said, “how we all thought it was the best family trip we’ve ever taken … That’s something we’ll never do again.” I flinched, hearing the bitterness in my voice.

  He shook his head. “Can’t you stop being negative? Try to enjoy a memory for what it is, something you can look at anytime you want; no, it will never come again, and I don’t think it should.” He pointed to the boulders. “Look at these trees. Healthy, thriving, and fed only by rock. That’s optimism.

  “Nothing is set in stone,” he went on, leaning against a rock, looking to see if I got his pun.

  He looked out at the harbor, the gateway abroad. “I read an article on Portugal in the Times,” he added nonchalantly. “I’d like to go there sometime.”

  I gave him a blank look.

  “Don’t we have a thirty-fifth wedding anniversary coming up?”

  “Are you suggesting we celebrate it in Portugal?” Not at ninety-three years of age. We hadn’t been to Europe in at least seven years. And even then, not to a country where we didn’t know the language or the customs or the quality of medical care.

  He regarded me slyly. “It depends on whether we have the right suitcases.”

  31

  Frankie shoots out of the airport like Mario Andretti at the Grand Prix, skims the streets of Lisbon, and comes squealing to a halt before our sedate Belle Epoque hotel. As we shakily disgorge from the black Peugeot we have rented, he looks at his watch and gives us a triumphant smile: “Four minutes exact. A record.”

  I nod politely at the small-boned driver of medium height and dark hair. Bob rolls his eyes.

  Frank Sánchez, a talented photographer who was born in Cuba and immigrated to Spain, turns out to be an ideal guide. He is a translator for us as well as a driver, saving me from doing 150 miles, which is the length of Portugal up to San Sebastián on the Spanish coast.

  Bob and I love to visit vineyards, and because I love port, I want to go to a particular port house that makes an excellent glass. When we discover it is located up a long, winding road on the pinnacle of a mountain, I suggest we skip it, but Bob, in spite of his acrophobia, insists we go. How many adventures have there been that I wanted to take and he didn’t? This is something I will never know because I’m realizing now that he has kept them a closely guarded secret. He has wanted to make me feel simply happy, not guilty.

  During the climb to the port house, the dialogue between him and our breakneck driver is highly entertaining.

  “Slow down, Frankie!” he booms as he’s jolted along, avoiding even a glance at the canyon below. “Watch that turn!” Frankie, however, cannot hear him because his primitive GPS is delivering adenoidal commands: “¡A la derecha en la ro-tun-da!” So Frankie continues to whip around the hairpin curves, sending his right wheels—and Bob in the passenger’s seat—almost over the cliff. The tyrannical woman in the GPS, whom we name Loco Loca, and Bob’s reverberating voice make a desperate dodecaphonic symphony.

  Hired to simply chauffeur us around, Frankie turns out to be as quirky as we are, and we soon become a little family, spending most of our time together touring, jesting, and eating.

  We listen to a woman singing Portuguese fado music—rich, complex, and mournful—go through wine country in the Douro Valley, and end up in San Sebastián, which, with the greatest number of Michelin stars, has become the food capital of the world. We dine at a little restaurant where the grim Basque owner has somehow, thousands of miles across the ocean, heard of Bob and drops his veil of grumpiness to embrace him in a bear hug.

  During our week in San Sebastián, Frankie divides his time between Bob and me. He and I wander around eating pintxos, the Basque version of tapas, made from fresh crusty bread topped with delicacies ranging from marinated anchovies and caviar to baby squid to foie gras and figs. Frankie and I spar and joke. Unlike my family, he actually thinks I am “the funniest person” he’s ever met. Every minute he seems to be snapping pictures of me with his sophisticated cameras—Lucinda caught off guard looking confused, Lucinda against the mountains with the sun at her back, Lucinda at the exact moment she is cursing an elevator that shuts on her knuckle.

  I come alive, soaking in such unusual attention, while Bob sits back and watches with interest, his razor blue eyes missing not a thing. My husband’s reaction pleases me as much as Frankie’s compliments. I wonder what he is thinking? Is he jealous? I hope so.

  But Frankie’s admiration does not stop with me. He loves Bob—who reminds him of his Cuban grandfather—and always defers to him. Frankie makes him look young and vigorous. The two of them walk along the river each morning, and my husband takes the pavement with long, fast strides. Moreover, instead of the one mile he walks at home, he walks two miles with Frankie. He isn’t going to let this young fellow outdo him. I am astonished. Even more so when, later, we have a Pernod at the Deux Magots and then I, of course, get us lost in the backstreets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Bob finally says he’ll guide us. He passes me and proceeds with his sticks swinging so quickly I can’t keep up with him.

  The next morning Bob bangs on Frankie’s door, bellowing, “Let’s go, time for breakfast. Hurry up,” and I think I hear Frankie jump out of bed and frantically rustle around to find his clothes. Bob is taking charge. That afternoon, as we set off for high tea, Frankie puts his elbow out as if to escort me, and before I know it, Bob pushes ahead, places his arm around my shoulder, and leads me down to the dining hall.

  Waiting for the elevator, Bob says, “That color you’re wearing is nice on you. You look beautiful.”

  One morning, Bob is trying to get his pants buttoned, lying down on the bed like a model trying to wiggle into an extra-small pair of jeans. “I’m too big for my britches,” he gasps.

  “You’ve got to get bigger pants,” I say, giggling. “You’re not the same size you were when you were married. Well, actually, weight loss or not, neither am I!”

  We eat at a three-star restaurant, just the two of us, and consume a lunch consisting of twelve courses, every one presented to us by a different waiter, each with his uniquely comic snootiness. Of much notice is Bob’s khaki farm pants and my messy hair held back with honeybees that are actually barrettes. After dessert, we fairly roll out the door and then start laughing about the turned-up noses, the tight mouths, the drawn-out accents, and the meaningful glances of the staff. I don’t remember when we’ve had such fun—as if we were teens in a house of mirrors.

  It feels as if something were about to happen; I get a tingling in my fingertips. Are things changing? Has Frankie come into our lives for a reason? Miracles often happen when you’re not looking.

  Our time together draws to a close. We say goodbye to Frankie and watch him get in the car and roar away.

  We go through the rest of our day, expectantly. But we are as we have been. Nothing changes. Nothing happens.

  Yet.

  * * *

  A few days later, we arrive home from JFK airport and barely get through the door when Bob suddenly shouts, “Hug!” I turn to see an unusual smile—tender, unprotected—and arms stretched out like a boy going after a butterfly. “Hug!” he repeats, and then holds me tight, as though he hasn’t seen me in years. We fall back on the couch, laughing.

  And that’s when I know something is happening.

  The following night, with one eye glued to a recipe since I’m su
ch an unpredictable cook, I make his favorite, soft-shell crabs, and, miraculously, they are delicious. The next day he rushes off to tackle the overwhelming amount of work he needs to do. An hour later, the doorbell rings. Sitting outside is a pink orchid. From Bob? But Bob isn’t programmed to send me flowers! In return, like a Pavlovian dog, I begin doing things like buying farm-fresh milk for his coffee in the morning and constructing his complex bowl of bran buds, berries, yogurt, and honey. He acts as if I’ve opened a piñata.

  That is how I know that something is changing in me.

  * * *

  The next night, Bob, who falls asleep when he hits the pillow, flicks out his lamp while I, as is my habit, lose myself in my hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, the dashing, shell-shocked detective who is also a talented lover. But tonight my attention wanders, and I drop Dorothy Sayers to the floor. I want my husband.

  I am nervous, but I slide over and press my belly in the hollow of his back. The man likes his sleep. I nuzzle his neck and take in that sweet musky scent, faintly familiar but not forgotten. His hair feels thick and wiry but silky beneath.

  I make spirals round his chest, his navel, and trail my fingers downward, to a nostalgic warmth. He stirs and dreamily turns over and touches me. Dreamy, nocturnal love. Then we fall into a deep sleep; through the night, we keep reaching for each other, finding a lost arm, a leg, a hand to be held. The way it should be.

  In the morning, I find him sleeping on top of me, his new apnea machine tickling me, swooshing in my ear.

  “Did you feel me rubbing your back last night?” he asks, waking.

  I put my cheek against his and gently take off his mask. My beloved.

  When we finally get dressed, I take out my underwear and find my stockings oddly stretched out. I glance at him. How ridiculously zany was our banter once! Should I take the risk?

  In a stern voice, I ask, “Bob, have you been wearing my panty hose?”