by Mary Cable
The old adobe house is a treasure in itself, but Lydia and Deck, still New Englanders at heart, respect but do not love its Hispanic look. The front door leads into a sala, with built-in buncos around the walls, made less unpleasantly hard by Navajo and Rio Grande blankets. Carved wooden saints crowd the mantelpiece, and whenever Lydia and Deck have a party, they light votive candles in front of them.
But Lydia and Deck do not live in the sala. They prefer the cluttered hominess of their library, with its worn chintz-covered chairs and matching chintz curtains, and hundreds of old copies of the National Geographic piled on the bookshelves, along with an encyclopedia and shabby sets of Dickens and Hugh Walpole.
“Ooo-hoo! Here we are!” I sang out, in the false and simpleminded manner that I knew Lydia liked.
“Ooo-hoo!” came Lydia’s voice.
An aged West Highland terrier, Belinda, impeded the way into the library by lying across the threshold. She had been doing this for about fifteen years, and from time to time visitors had tripped over her and entered the room sprawling. But Lydia believed that Belinda was guarding the castle keep, in obedience to some archaic and aristocratic instinct. Oz and I automatically found a way around her.
Lydia and Deck sat in wing chairs on each side of the fireplace - where, in spite of the mild May weather outside, a fire was blazing. Looking down from the mantel was Decatur’s great-great-grandmother, painted by Gilbert Stuart. She was a pretty young woman, dressed in yellow satin, with a yellow satin turban in the style of the 1790s, and she looked confident of her good looks and her elegance. Not for her the indignities of the candid camera.
Deck had made a shaker of martinis and he and his wife had it between them, on a low, rickety table that was strewn with mail-order catalogues. There was also the morning New Mexican.
Lydia pointed to it angrily as she said, “I just would like to know what you think of a son who would do a thing like this.”
“I think it’s terrible, Ma,” Oz said.
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Lydia said, scrutinizing him sharply. “I was wondering whether you were in on it.”
“Certainly not. I told David not to do it.”
“Daddy’s heart is broken,” Lydia said. We all looked at Decatur, who nodded. His arthritic old hand shook, but held on to the eighteenth-century goblet in which he liked to drink his martinis.
“Needless to say, my heart is broken as well,” his wife went on. “But I’m a fighter. David won’t get away with this. I’ve already talked to Bishy. Tracked her down, visiting her mother in the East. She thinks David must have waited until she was safely out of the state before he sicked his lawyer on us.”
Oz went to the bar and assembled the makings of a Bloody Mary. And, although I am not much of a drinker, I said I’d have one, too.
Deck said to Lydia, “Darling, you didn’t tell me you’d talked to Bishy.”
Lydia cast her eyes heavenward. “I did tell you,” she said. “You just forgot. You see”-she turned to Oz-”You see, it is true, your father does forget. But that doesn’t mean he’s loony. And neither am I.”
“Of course not, Ma.”
“We’re old and we’re down, but we’re not out.”
“Certainly not.”
“Bishy says not to worry. She says she’s working on a plan, and she’ll be flying back to New Mexico in a few days. And we’re not to say anything to David, because she intends to come to Santa Fe first and talk to me.”
“What’s the plan, Ma?”
“She wouldn’t tell me over the phone. But she said not to worry, and she usually knows what she’s talking about.” Lydia took a swig of her martini, found a bottle of olives on the floor beside her chair, and popped two olives into her glass. Then she added, addressing no one in particular, “Bishy has been wonderful. Ever since she married David, it’s been as if she were my very own daughter.”
My adrenalin surged, but I said nothing. I was used to this kind of remark from Lydia, and had been since the day I met her.
After Lydia had had her second martini, she began to weep. I couldn’t remember ever having seen her do such a thing before, except the time that Belinda’s predecessor, a Skye terrier, had been carried off by an eagle. Tears rolled down her furrowed cheeks and she rocked back and forth. “David-” she said gaspingly. “Little Davey-”
I felt sure that in her mind’s eye she was seeing a beautiful, energetic two-year-old, not a tired- eyed forty-six-year-old man. But I could not help but think of “Absalom, my son, my son-” and in spite of my dislike for her, I was moved to say, “Not to worry” (since this phrase of Bishy’s had seemed to be a comfort). “We’ll get him to change his mind.”
She looked at me as if she would like to believe me, but couldn’t. “Well, I thank you for the thought, but how do you know? Maybe you think you know him, but believe me he’s changed a lot since - when was it? - that New Year’s Eve you came out here from New York because he’d asked you. You probably thought he was easy to push around, and he was, I suppose. Especially by girls. But he’s changed.” And she closed her eyes and dabbed them with a wadded-up Kleenex.
Her husband was peering at her in some distress. She was obviously embarrassing him.
“What about lunch, darling?” he asked.
“Lunch?” The word seemed unfamiliar to her. Then she said, “Oh! Lunch!” And collecting herself, smoothed her hair. “Mrs. Martinez said she’d put sandwiches on the table, and some salad. It’s all probably ready. Let’s bring our drinks.”
Lydia ran her household in a picnicky kind of way, but the picnic had a certain shabby elegance. Mrs. Martinez, now assisted by her daughter Filomena, had been with the Smithsons since their first days in New Mexico, when the boys were small. Entertaining had been Lydia’s forte. Mrs. Martinez still set the table with the Porthault linen place mats, now mended and slightly brown here and there with hot-iron marks put there by the inept Filomena. But instead of five- or six-course dinners, with finger bowls at the end, Lydia and Deck lived on sandwiches and salad for lunch and one course - say, lamb chops and frozen spinach - for dinner. When we walked into the dining room that particular day, four places were set with Spode plates and Baccarat crystal, with a Venetian glass bowl of tulips as a centerpiece, but the menu was ham and cheese sandwiches and a salad of iceberg lettuce.
By the time we sat down, Lydia had recovered her poise and was once again talking inanities. It seemed as if she wished to forget the matter at hand.
“Have your Emperor tulips bloomed yet, Alex?” she asked me. “You never seem to have much luck with tulips.”
A tanager, on a branch just outside the dining room window, was intent on hawthorn berries.
“Hey, a western tanager,” said Decatur, interrupting his wife. “The red head - yellow body - black and white wings - by golly, rare to see at this altitude.”
“Not rare,” said Oz. “He’s probably headed north from wherever he spends the winter.”
“Where is that?” Lydia asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know? I thought you were the big Audubon Society supporter.” She picked up her fork and angrily stabbed a hunk of lettuce.
I came to Oz’s rescue. “They all go to Central America, don’t they, dear?”
“But where in Central America?” Lydia demanded.
The tanager hopped to another branch, peered through the window at us, and then, as if horrified, took wing.
“Get the bird book, Oz,” his mother said.
I thought, she’s forgotten that years have gone by since meals here had to be instructive. From Oz I had heard that when he and David were growing up, Lydia had insisted on teaching them something while they were captive at the table. Where is Turkistan? Get the atlas. What is the meaning of “symbiosis”? Get the dictionary. She liked to say now that she had helped both of them get into Harvard. Maybe, I thought, but she had also made both of them eat too fast and bolt from the table.
D
ecatur offered wine to Oz and me - we declined - and then filled his own glass. Lydia had brought her third pre-lunch martini to the table with her.
“Put a little more gin in this for me, Oz dear.”
“Mother,” Oz said, “let’s not forget why you asked us to lunch.”
“Of course not. That’s why I need more gin.”
Oz glumly fetched it for her. Of his family, he was the only one who didn’t drink much. I was grateful not to have that problem with him, but I also saw that sobriety separated him from the kind of fun the others had - or used to have, anyway. High jinks. Larks. Revelry. At times like this stressful times - these two tried to revive it. A deep red flush had come across Lydia’s wrinkled face and her handsome dark eyes glittered. One could see traces of the beauty she had once had. A photograph of her in the library showed her as a bride, circa 1930, her arms full of freesia and white roses, her turned-back veil making a gentle snowstorm all about her head. Miss Lydia Aspinwall must have been the Bachrach photographer’s idea of a perfect bride. He had posed her meekly gazing at the flowers, her face totally without expression. Blank. A blank bride had been the ideal.
I thought of my own parents, who had also been married in the early 1930s, but without the help of Bachrach or a wedding dress or even roses. I have a snapshot of them standing on the steps of New York City Hall: Fielding Burrows, my father, wearing a double-breasted pinstripe suit with a white chrysanthemum in the buttonhole; and Alice, his bride, in a practical navy-blue suit and a matching hat that had a small white bow on it. What they lacked in style they made up for with eager smiles. They were full of plans and ambitions. Already Fielding was on the lowest rung in the State Department, a junior Foreign Service Officer, and they were about to go off to their first post, Dutch Guiana. Whereas Lydia and her bridegroom had had no plans at all beyond moving into the twenty-eight room Smithson house on Angell Street in Providence, and spending summers at Narragansett. When, several years later, they moved to Santa Fe to safeguard Deck’s delicate lungs, it was their first and last adventure.
“Here’s your gin, Mother,” Oz said. “But please eat your lunch. We’re going to have to talk sensibly.”
“What I want to know is,” Lydia said, straightening her back and looking stately, “where do you stand in this outrage?”
He sighed. “It’s simple. After you changed your will in favor of the Glorious Lighters, David came to me and said he’d been talking to his lawyer and-”
“-What lawyer?” put in Decatur. “Is it Ollie Fain? I’ve known him since he was five years old. He was retarded then and he’s retarded now.”
“Maybe so, Dad, but he’s a pretty shrewd lawyer. He reminded David about that accident you had in Santa Fe last year, when you finally lost your license. Now he and David are using that to show you’re non compos mentis.”
“I’ve been driving sixty-five years and this whippersnapper judge takes my license. A damned outrage and David knows it. I taught David to drive.”
“Oh, don’t, don’t talk about David’s driving,” Lydia cried. And we all thought of David’s terrible accident, twelve years earlier. Driving too fast on a two-lane country road, he had run full-speed into a rickety pickup emerging from an unmarked wagon track. The pickup driver was critically injured but survived; David’s injuries were minor, except for a fractured leg, and Bishy wasn’t along. But their four-year-old son, their only child, who had been standing on the seat beside his father, was killed instantly. Yes, no matter how angry we might be with David, it was cruel to mention his driving.
Decatur continued hastily, “I made a mistake, but I shouldn’t have lost my license.”
“Dad, you turned left when you should have turned right, and somebody’s adobe wall had to be replaced. But never mind that. Your doctor will vouch for you that you’re not senile.”
“He’d better! Fortman has been our doctor since the days when doctors made house calls. Delivered Oz, I think, didn’t he, Lydia?”
“Fortman? I don’t think so. Anyway, he’s dead.”
“What? Ed Fortman dead?” Decatur looked stricken. “Nobody told me.”
“Died four years ago, Deck. Your doctor now is Humphreys, but you don’t like him.”
“No. He’s a whippersnapper.”
Oz said, “Humphreys is fine, Dad. I’ll talk to him. We’ll get affidavits.”
“You’re a comfort, Oz,” Lydia said. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”
“Wait a minute,” Oz said. “I have news for you, Ma. I’m not on your side.” We all stared at him, because he very seldom took such a solemn and assertive stand. “I don’t like what David is doing, but I don’t like what you are doing, either. Why are you taking me out of your will?”
His voice went higher, which, despite his rigid self-control, tells me that he is fighting against rage.
“Because you have no children,” Lydia said bitterly. “You and David don’t care about family, and there are no heirs to carry on the name here. You and David would sell to-”
“Yes, I know - developers. David might. I wouldn’t.”
“David is very strong,” said Lydia. “He always could get anything out of you, even when you were children. You’d let him ride your horse, borrow your camera - and as for Alex, she thinks he’s the cat’s pajamas.”
“I don’t!” I burst out. Maybe too vehemently.
“Cat’s pajamas! Ma, what 1920s’ funny paper did you get that one out of?” Oz said crossly. “We all know what David is like - he’s selfish, self-serving, self-absorbed. We’ll get you the best lawyer in town and we’ll collect affidavits, and David can jump in the lake.”
“Splendid!” Decatur cried, raising his glass. “You’ve saved us, Oz. That’s the end of it.”
But Lydia shook her head. “David never jumps in the lake. Not when he is really set on something.”
“Nonsense,” said her husband. “He used to flit from one thing to another. You used to tell him he was a grasshopper and Oz was the ant.”
“That was when he was young and foolish. Now he’s middle-aged-”
“-And foolish,” Oz said.
“Yes, but very stubborn. You’ll see.”
“There’s that bird again,” said Decatur. The tanager was back for a few more of last winter’s hawthorn berries.
“Get the bird book, Deck,” Lydia said. “I’ll prove to you that’s no western tanager. It’s a grosbeak.”
“I have to get back to the bank now,” Oz said, throwing down his napkin. “I’m going to help you, but I’m terribly disappointed that you don’t want to leave this place to your descendants. Please think it over. Goodbye.”
We left them still at the table, toying with their sandwiches. Deck was looking up the tanager.
As we walked back across the lawn, Oz said, “I don’t know - maybe they are senile.”
I felt a wave of sympathy for Oz, as near as I could come to true closeness with him. Most of the time I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling, and long ago I had given up trying. But at rare times like these, I could tell how emotional he felt, and I found it very sad that he had to keep it to himself. I took his hand, but it was limp and unresponsive.
“I’m going back to the office,” he said and walked away toward his car.
I thought, Lydia and Deck have not changed a bit since I’ve known them, but now that something so unthinkable has happened, more happenings will follow. It’s as if a stone in an old wall had suddenly shifted. When it moves, so do others. Things will begin to slide about now, and there’s no knowing where they’ll go.
“Alexandra is from away,” Lydia was apt to say when she introduced me to anyone. “From away” was a phrase she learned as a child in Rhode Island, where indigenous Rhode Islanders often use it to describe persons not from there. It bears a faint suggestion that something is wrong with such persons.
In my case, though, “away” is truly where I come from. Being a Foreign Service child, I am not “from” anywhe
re - certainly not from my birthplace, which happens to have been Uruguay. I also seem to be from away in connection with Time. By that I don’t mean crazy. I mean that although I am perfectly aware of what century this is and I know that I was born close to the middle of it, I was brought up in the manners and sensitivities and expectations of the 1930s and 1920s and even earlier. This was because my parents were “older parents”; my father was forty-two and my mother thirty-nine when I was born. They already had an eight-year-old daughter, my sister Ginevra, and they had not planned another child. Because they lived away from the United States, American culture shocks largely passed them by, and they raised me like a child of times now thoroughly outmoded. I always had a nanny (or kindermädchen or ayah, depending on what part of the globe we were in), I ate separately from my parents, and I was carefully trained in matters no longer of importance except in the diplomatic service: for example, the proper lengths of white gloves, the use of calling cards, and where to sit in a room if you are the lowest-ranking person there (never on the sofa).
I also learned that Ginevra and I were here on earth for the advancement of our father, Fielding Burrows. Our mother told us stories of children who had disgraced their fathers by failing to be nice to everybody, particularly to foreigners, whose right to their own weird habits must be respected; or by throwing a tantrum in public or otherwise behaving like an Ugly American. Don’t criticize! Be a good listener! And if this meant listening patiently while some unreconstructed Nazi gave excuses for Hitler, then that’s what you had to do - just like Dad and Mother.
I learned these lessons and became very cautious about expressing opinions or even having them. My father used to say, “I’m of two minds” or “I need to sleep on it,” and, as a rule, so do I. But when he felt cornered, he could point to some State Department directive or regulation. “I regret that we cannot help you,” he might tell a terrified American beatnik, arrested in Turkey with traces of marijuana in his pockets. “Unfortunately, according to Regulation 1-415 ...” Or, to a Rumanian national in Istanbul, desperate to immigrate to the United States on the next plane, “There is a ten-year wait, but the guidelines permit me to take your name.”