Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  ‘No,’ she said, turning her head away from the bundled infant in the crook of her arm. ‘No — Barbara. Give it to Barbara. She’ll feed it. She bought bottles. She’ll feed it. Give it to Barbara.’

  29

  ‘I don’t know why, Barbie. I just feel I’ve got to,’ Lexie said. ‘It’s the best offer they’ve ever made, and anyway —’

  ‘And anyway, you want to go there.’ Barbara leaned back in her chair and tried not to show how agitated she was. If she’d learned one thing in all these years with Lexie, it was the importance of not displaying naked emotion. If there was anything almost certain to send Lexie off on her own stubborn path it was any hint of pressure from someone else, and today, clearly, it was necessary to be particularly careful. It was rare indeed for Lexie to use Molly’s cosy name for her. She must be very strung up.

  ‘I suppose I do.’ Lexie got to her feet and went over to the big window to stare down at West Fifty-seventh Street nine floors below. There was the usual elegant bustle down there, cabs drawing up at the entrance to the Henry Hudson Hotel, dog walkers from the Parc Vendome apartment block on the corner of Ninth Avenue, flower shops and candy stores with their indolent, expensive customers. For a moment she felt a surge of certainty that she did not, after all, want to leave it all behind. It had taken her long enough and money enough to get here, heaven knew. She thought of the cramped little rooms they had shared in the old apartment near Intervale Avenue, of the hot nights sitting out in the breathless humidity of the fire escape, and told herself she was mad, quite, quite mad even to think of behaving so stupidly. Here she was in one of the nicest parts of Manhattan, living in real comfort and security and not a little style. She’d left the fire-escaped buildings and the rattle of the steam in the old pipes and the smells of the delis and street stalls far behind long ago. Why let go of it all now?

  ‘I don’t have to leave it all for good, of course,’ she said then, still staring down at the street. ‘After all, it mightn’t work out there, and then —’

  ‘Sure it’ll work out,’ Barbara said at once, almost automatically. ‘When did any show you were in not work out? But — I’m not sure what you mean?’ And she looked at Lexie’s back, keeping her own very straight and trying to keep her voice relaxed and unanxious, though she knew she wasn’t really succeeding. But Lexie seemed not to be aware of that; she still stood at the window with her hands clasped in front of her, and her head bent.

  ‘I mean, why do I have to upset you and Molly, just because I have to go? It could be a short run, after all. The way things are there, who can say? And anyway, I could have it in the contract. Got to come back soon — say six months — how would that be?’ Lexie whirled round and looked at Barbara with her chin set at a sharp angle and her eyes very bright.

  ‘I don’t reckon I quite see what you mean,’ Barbara said carefully. ‘Are you saying that —’

  ‘I’ll go on my own.’ Lexie sounded impatient. ‘I know I said I’d take you both, that we’d just start again there, but for God’s sake, why do I have to upset you two? Molly’s happy in school, isn’t she?’

  ‘Very happy.’ Do I sound relaxed? Barbara thought. Do I sound as though I don’t really care either way? Please let me sound relaxed. ‘She’s real good at arithmetic, Mrs Seligson said, and her writing’s getting better all the time.’

  ‘So why take her away? She’s doing well — going to a new school, and in England yet — it’d be sure to upset her, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Well, I guess it would,’ Barbara said. ‘I mean, any child changing schools gets kinda upset. She fussed a bit when she started, didn’t she? And when she had to leave Mrs Ross’s grade. But now she just adores that Mrs Seligson, never stops talking about her.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lexie said. ‘Yes, of course that’s the way to do it — if you can manage, that is —’

  ‘Oh, sure I can manage.’ Barbara went over to her armchair to get her knitting. She didn’t want to knit, but it would give her something to do with her hands. ‘But what about you, Lexie? Won’t you sort of miss her?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Lexie said. ‘Of course I will. Like the very devil. But she won’t miss me, will she? She won’t be upset, and —’

  ‘She will miss you, Lexie. Truly she will — she loves you so much that —’

  ‘Yes,’ Lexie said. ‘Yes, I know. We’ve been through all that before. But she won’t miss me the way she’d miss you —’

  There was nothing Barbara could say, and a silence grew between them, thickening until it was almost palpable. Barbara could only sit and gaze miserably at Lexie’s back, for she had turned to stare out of the window again. She looked as good as she ever had, even in a plain crêpe de chine frock, with hips as slender and legs as fine as they had been when she was a girl, for all her thirty-seven years, and her thick dark hair was still cut in its elegant bob. Other women wore their hair fashionably marcelled with crisp waves marching over their heads in regimented lines, but Lexie maintained her own style and managed to look as modern as tomorrow. Other women fretted and fussed at beauty parlours and at Lexie’s age had skins that were already showing signs of sagging, but Lexie still had her English complexion. Barbara lifted her hand and touched her own lined face and then, embarrassed at her own foolishness, concentrated on her knitting again.

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll have to think about it a bit more,’ Lexie said abruptly. ‘It’s a marvellous offer, but all the same —’

  ‘It’s the way things are there that worries me.’ Barbara couldn’t help it. She’d meant to say nothing, had tried so hard to say nothing, but the words pushed themselves out past her teeth. ‘Joe downstairs was saying he reckons there’ll be a war in Europe before Christmas. He’s got all day to read the papers and he listens to all the news bulletins on the radio all the time and —’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Barbara, the janitor? A lot he knows! Do you suppose they’d be rehearsing new shows if there was going to be a war? It’s the new game everyone’s playing, that’s all. Every party you go to, everyone you hear, all they can talk about is war, war, war. You’d think they want it to happen, the way they go on! I don’t believe it! I saw enough last time not to believe it. Those soldiers we used to do the show for, the way they were — no one wants that again, no one wants another war.’

  But she didn’t believe what she was saying, and she knew Barbara didn’t either. For weeks she’d been reading the papers herself without letting Barbara know how worried she was, sitting in her dressing room at the theatre eagerly scanning the pages for any scrap of news out of London. She knew it was true. War wasn’t an impossibility any more. The question was not will it happen, but when will it start?

  And how much is my wanting to take this offer to do with all this war fuss? she asked herself drearily, still looking down at the sunlit Manhattan street below, but trying to visualize grey London streets and London buildings and London people. Ten years it’s been, more than ten years, and I’ve refused every offer they’ve made. God knows there’ve been enough of them — Cochran never stopped asking me. The better I did here, the more he wanted me home, and I wouldn’t go — but now that it looks like trouble’s in the wind, I can’t make up my mind to say no. I must be stark, staring mad.

  Bessie, she thought then, with a sudden spurt of anger, Bessie, why doesn’t she write? All those years of letter after letter, full of gossip and questions and chatter, and now, when I need to hear from her, when I’m aching for that damned chatter, silence. Why doesn’t she write? Anxiety tightened in her again and she moved sharply away from the window.

  ‘What time is she due out of school?’ she said, not looking at Barbara.

  ‘Half after three.’ Barbara had her head bent over her knitting now. ‘I usually leave around fifteen after. Unless you want to fetch her today?’

  ‘Do you mind if I do?’

  ‘Lexie, for heaven’s sake, don’t be that way!’ Barbara burst out. ‘You make me feel like I’m trying to —�
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  ‘Oh hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Lexie tried to smile. ‘I mean to keep my promise, but every so often it just creeps up on me. I’m sorry —’

  ‘Me too. Sorry I bawled,’ Barbara mumbled. ‘Listen, we need some ice cream — I didn’t make any dessert for tonight yet. Would you get some on the way back? The drugstore on the corner of Fifty-eighth and Eighth has that bilberry one she likes best. If you get a quart I can keep some for tomorrow and then —’

  Lexie laughed. ‘You’re a set of French windows, you know that? You know perfectly well if I stop at the drugstore she’ll want a soda —’

  ‘Well, it won’t do her no harm. Once in a while it’s not so bad —’ Barbara said, still mumbling. ‘And anyway —’

  And anyway it’ll give you two time to be together, and you aren’t together that much. The words hung unspoken in the air between them and after a moment Lexie nodded and went to the door. ‘I’ll go now,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk round the block the long way. I need the exercise.’ And time to think. ‘Don’t worry if we’re a bit late, then. I guess she’ll take her time over the soda. At least ten minutes deciding which flavour.’

  Barbara gave a stilted little laugh and bobbed her head, and as she heard the front door of the apartment close behind Lexie and then the distant whine and clang of the elevator she went to the window to watch her go down the street. She won’t be around a lot longer for me to watch, she told herself bleakly, because she’ll go. She’ll take that offer, I know she will. And she couldn’t decide what made her feel so bad about it: the thought of Lexie far away in an England threatened by war (she had a hazy image of a tiny island being shot out of the sea by huge German gunners in aeroplanes) or the deep-down knowledge that she wanted Lexie to go and leave her alone with Molly.

  Molly, she thought, and felt the spring of delight that even thinking about the child could lift in her. Molly with her slanting dark eyes and her thick dark hair and pointed little face; Molly with her chatter and her giggles and her ready hugs, her tears, her tempers, her cooing; her Molly.

  But she isn’t mine, she told herself, and went out to the kitchen to start getting supper ready. She isn’t mine. She’s Lexie’s. I’m just her aunt, and Lexie’s her mother.

  But she doesn’t know that. She thinks I’m her mother, and we’ve let her think it. It had seemed so natural and easy, because the baby had called Barbara by her first name right from the beginning. She’d not been like other babies with strings of mamamamas and dadadadas; she’d said babababa — and then learned to make them into Barbie. It had been simpler for her infant tongue to handle, that was the point. That was why she had called for Barbie when she’d been fretful or feverish, or had a pain or a bad dream or just wanted company. It wasn’t that I wanted to take her away from Lexie. It just happened that way.

  And after all, it was you she knew best, wasn’t it? It was you who looked after her and fed her and changed her diapers and burped her. It was your face she saw first thing in the morning and last thing at night. How could it be otherwise when Lexie had to go to the theatre every night and was gone when it came to bedtime, and was still sleeping in the morning when the child awoke? How could it be otherwise when it was you who took her to play in the park, to walk along the paths beside the playground and feed the birds with breadcrumbs? How could she not feel best with you who took her shopping for clothes when she needed them, took her to the dentist and the doctor and all the rest of the ordinary everyday things that Lexie couldn’t do? It wasn’t Lexie’s fault that she couldn’t do such motherly things. She had to go out each day to work, to dance and sing and make the money that kept them all so comfortably and indeed elegantly in the smart section of the West Side that had been their home for most of Molly’s life.

  And where, Barbara remembered now, slicing carrots into a saucepan, where she had become Molly. Lexie had chosen to name her baby Milly after the mother she had never known, who had died giving birth to her. Barbara had liked that, for she could just remember her grandmother, and had loved her, so Milly the baby had been. Until they had moved to 333 West Fifty-seventh Street and the fancy neighbours had misheard when they’d been told the pretty baby’s name, and had assumed it was Molly; and Molly had somehow suited the elfin infant in her handsome beribboned bassinet, so Molly she had become — Molly Rowan because we were as foolish about her surname, as we were foolish about so many things, but at the time it had seemed best. Lexie had put her own name of Asher on the birth certificate, of course, but had added another one: Rowan, the name of the character she had played in one of the sketches in the show she had been in at the time of her pregnancy, and somehow they had both drifted into the habit of using that additional forename as a surname. It was easier and less embarrassing for the unmarried Lexie, and for Barbara too. So the child had just stopped being Molly Asher and had become Molly Rowan.

  Just as I had become her mother in everyone’s eyes, and Lexie her aunt. It had seemed too complicated to explain when people made the assumption. Easier to let them think she was a widow, a sad widow with a baby to rear, and wasn’t it lucky she had her dear young aunt to live with her and provide for her? After all, she told herself, as she set the carrots on to cook, after all, it had suited Lexie too, hadn’t it? Broadway stars don’t look good as illegitimate mothers. It was important that she gave the gossip columnists nothing they could hold against her. Their living had depended on it, all of their livings, but specially Molly’s. So without discussing it, without planning in any way it had happened. Molly thought Barbie was her mother — when people spoke to her of her Mommy it was always Barbara she looked at, not Lexie, just as it was always Barbara she ran to when she was in need of comfort — and it would be dreadfully complicated now to explain the reality of the situation. Bad enough the way it had been when she had asked why she didn’t have a father like the other children at school. Barbara remembered that day with painful clarity — how she had felt her chest lurch at the question as they walked home from school during Molly’s first week there, and how she had opened her mouth to say something, anything, to say he was a traveller, he was Mr Rowan who had had to go away, and Molly herself had created the answer before she could say a word.

  ‘Jenny says her daddy died of the flu and she said it happened to a lot of people, dying of the flu, and she guessed it happened to my daddy too, and if it had we could be best friends because then we’d both be the same and I want to be Jenny’s best friend, so is that what happened to my daddy? Did he die of the flu like Jenny’s did? Say he did, Barbie, say he did. Jenny’s got a kitten at her house and a garden with a sandpit, and I want to be Jenny’s best friend for ever and ever —’

  So Molly was given a daddy who died of the flu, and she and Jenny had been friends for almost the whole of the semester. By the time they stopped being best friends it was there, part of their lives; a dead daddy and Molly as happy and cheerful as anyone could want.

  And now, Barbara thought as she scrubbed potatoes to bake in their jackets the way Molly liked best, now what? Lexie in England and us here — is that how it will be? And what about money? She hadn’t said anything to Lexie about that, though from the moment she’d heard about Cochran’s new offer and how Lexie was actually considering taking it, it had been nagging at her. Will she take me with her? Or will I have to go back to the factory? How would I pay the rent here if I didn’t? Will Lexie still pay for everything even though she’s away? Will she be able to earn enough in England to pay for us all, for two homes? It was a lot to worry about, a lot to fret over, but underneath was the gaping, stretching, wicked, selfish hope that Lexie would go, even though it was so risky, and leave Molly for Barbara. All to herself.

  Lexie, walking with her swinging stride along Eighth Avenue, knew exactly what Barbara was thinking. How could she not know every aspect of her thinking, every shade of her feeling? It was ten years they’d been together now, closer than any marriage could ever be, two women sharing the burd
en of caring for each other and for a child. Oh, Molly, Molly, Lexie thought as she moved swiftly through the strolling passers by. If only I didn’t care about you so much, how easy it would all be! I could see you run to Barbara and not care. I could hear you calling her in the night and not be hurt. I could sit back when you won’t come to me because you’re tired and miserable and it’s only Barbara you want, and not mind. But I do care and it does hurt and I do mind and now I’m thinking of leaving you and letting Barbara love you even more and invade you even more and take you over altogether. How crazy can a person be? What is there in England that makes me want even to think of going back?

  Work, her little secret voice whispered, it’s work, isn’t it? Some of it’s worry about Bessie, some of it’s worry about a war and wanting to be at home if it happens, suddenly being English again after ten years as an American, but mostly it’s work. Because what else is there now? You’ve done it here; you’ve taken Broadway. It’s yours any time you want it. There isn’t a producer anywhere in town who wouldn’t whoop and grab if he knew you were available for a show; there isn’t a producer in Hollywood either who wouldn’t be cock-a-hoop to get you for one of his films. They’ve asked you often enough, haven’t they?

  So why not go west? she asked herself as she reached the school, seeing the mothers waiting for the bell to go and the children to emerge and slackening her steps so that she could loiter well away from them. Why not go to California, make that the new mountain to climb and slice into little molehills? If you’re bored here because you’ve made it, need a new excitement, a new set of problems to solve, a new ambition, go to Hollywood. Everyone else does.