Belva Plain - Evergreen.txt

by Evergreen

  They gathered up the blanket and their baskets. "The girls will come with me," Ruth directed. "Harry and Irving, you go to the bathhouse with your father and change. We'll all meet at the entrance in front."

  Across the boardwalk lay Surf Avenue and the roving crowds, the life of the evening. The sky was darkly streaked, gray against coal gray, smudged with a remnant of rose. The lights of the Scenic Railway arched and soared; the Ferris wheel hung like a spider web; in all the booths, lights winked and twinkled. Far ahead, band music blared and faded with the veering wind; near at hand the merry-go-round jangled. Anna was enthralled.

  "I don't know where to go first!" she cried. "Where shall we start? Will there be time to see it all?"

  "We'll do our best!" Joseph said. "Want to start with the Streets of Cairo? I went last year and you can walk right through a real Egyptian street, the real thing. They've got donkeys, you can

  79

  ride on a camel—no, I forgot, you can't do that, but you can watch and next year when we come again you'll ride a camel."

  She felt, and knew she was feeling, a child's delight, perhaps even more than the children did, who began to be tired. So much to see and hear all at once! Such bright colors, and all the music was like colors! Spinning and wheeling, like one of those little machines—what did you call it?—a kaleidoscope, where you put in some simple thing, a piece of cloth or a couple of pins, and when you turned it endless, unfurling patterns came, a dazzle in the eyes.

  Then it was dark and time for the fireworks to begin. Too bad there wouldn't be time for the side shows! But Anna had seen pictures of a calf with two heads and a dreadful bearded woman; she was glad not to go. Luckily they found seats for the fireworks, which were absolutely splendid: rockets of red, white and blue; stars that rushed into the night sky, each one higher than the one before, showered back upon the earth in a spray of gold. Last, the sound of cannon fire, shuddering and crashing until the final boom that almost shook you out of your seat. And silence. And the band striking up "The Star-Spangled Banner" while everyone rose in his place. Anna was proud that she was one of those who knew all the words: "—and the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air—"

  It was over. Ended and over, the wonderful, wonderful day. The crowd shoved slowly toward the trolley, the Coney Island Avenue line. Solly knew the quickest way to get there ahead of the rush. Otherwise they would never have got seats. As it was, the boys had to stand leaning on Joseph and Solly, each of whom held one of the sleeping girls. Ruth held the littlest one, and Anna took the baskets. People were standing all along the aisle, even hanging on the outside of the car. The conductors could hardly pass through the crowds; they were hot and sweaty and you couldn't blame them if they were cross. They'd spent the whole day riding back and forth on the cars while all these others had been on the beach. It grew hotter and hotter as they rode through Brooklyn toward the bridge. The breeze died, and what little there was of it was moist. The babble of talk and laughter died, too. People are tired after the long day, Anna thought. Also, they are thinking about tomorrow. It almost takes the pleasure out of the day, this ride and the surging heat again and thinking about tomorrow. Almost, but not quite.

  After they parted with the Levinsons and changed to the Broadway car it was not so crowded, not so bad.

  80

  "We're lucky we caught the last car," Joseph said. "It will be midnight before we get home. Did you have a good time?"

  "Oh, I loved it!" she said.

  "Put your head on my shoulder. I'll wake you when we come to our stop."

  She didn't sleep. The bell jangled and the motorman sped up Broadway in the dark, the trolley swaying with the speed. She could feel the heat of Joseph's skin through his shirt. "He'll be burned," she thought. They had forgotten the cocoa butter, left it home on the dresser. Perhaps it would not be too late if she put it on him when they got home. He had such fair skin.

  My friend, she thought. My one friend in all the world. Now I really know what it is to be married. Not fairy tales, she thought scornfully. No girl should know so little about life as I did: when I have a daughter I will not allow her to be so stupid, so unworldly. Tristram and Isolde. Fairy tales.

  And yet, yet... all that soft sparkle, the soaring and the singing, the longing, the touch, the ache and the sweetness, all of those, not true? I'm nineteen now, I ought to know. Why do I still wonder about it?

  Joseph bent down and kissed her hair. "We're home," he whispered.

  He helped her down the trolley's high step. The wind came blowing from the Hudson when they turned the corner. Their shoes went slap and click on the sidewalk, the man's heel flat, the woman's needle-high, slap and click through the sleeping street.

  11

  The boy Maurice was born in his parents' brass bed on July 29, 1914. He weighed seven pounds and had a head of thick, light hair.

  "Three hours' labor for a first baby!" Dr. Arndt exclaimed. "Do you know how lucky you are? At this rate, you ought to have six more!"

  Outside a newsboy cried alarm. "Extra! Extra!"

  "What is it?" Anna asked, and Joseph went outside to see. He came back with the New York Tribune.

  " 'Austria declares war,'" he read. " 'Rushes vast army into Serbia; Russia masses eighty thousand men on border.' Solly was right. The war has come."

  The doctor grumbled, "More crazy slaughter, and for what?"

  Anna said, "Eli and Dan will be in it." There came a flash of old, old memory: Mama in her bed, the twin boys lying with her, some woman standing there, a neighbor or midwife. She seized the baby.

  "Nothing will happen to this little boy. I'll never let anything happen to this little boy!"

  "No, of course not," the doctor said gently.

  The years of the war were marked off in Anna's mind by the growth of her son. She would remember that the Lusitania had been sunk on the day he took his first step holding on to her two fingers, and he only ten months old! When the Russian army drove

  82

  the Austrians back to the freezing mountains of Carpathia—she trembled, shedding tears for Dan and Eli—that also was the time Maury said his first words. By the time the United States entered the war—the poster with the bloody hand: The Hun, his mark. Blot it out with Liberty Bonds—by that time he was almost three, genial, alert, delightful.

  She studied the face she had so longed to see, the features emerging from the formless round. The nose was straight. The eyes were almond-shaped and darkly blue. There was a cleft in the chin. Whom are you like, my son? Yourself alone, like no one in the world before you or to come.

  She felt profoundly that he had made a great change in her. She no longer thought of herself as a girl. A long age had passed since the time before his coming. He had enlarged her, so that she had new feeling for the blind man passing in the street and the young men dying in Europe. And yet, in an entirely opposite way, he had made everything but himself so unimportant that she didn't care what happened anywhere, as long as he was safe.

  During the night she often heard Joseph get out of bed to go in to the crib, and she knew that he was listening for the baby's breathing. No child had ever been more loved than this one! No child was ever more carefully fed and bathed, dressed and played with, than this one.

  "Maybe he'll be a doctor," Joseph said.

  "A lawyer would be fine, too."

  They were able to laugh at their own foolish pride. Yet they meant what they said.

  She read to Maury, long before he could possibly have understood the words. But somewhere she had heard that infants can absorb the sound and feel of words even though they do not understand them. So she read peaceful things, poems of Stevenson and Eugene Field.

  "Sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings—little blue pigeon with velvet eyes."

  In front of the apartment house the mothers sat with their carriages and strollers, observing, criticizing, counseling each other.

  "You need another baby," they told Anna. "You're
spoiling this one. It's not good for him or you."

  Of course she wanted more children. And certainly Joseph wanted a large family. But none came. Yet really there was no great need to hurry. These years with Maury, only a few hundred

  83

  days out of a long life, were too perfect to be wished away. All day long, after Joseph had gone to work before light, until he came home after dark, they had each other, Anna and Maury. Oh, little Maury, little boy!

  Darkness still covered the earth and the street lamps still burned near their bedroom window. It was not quite five o'clock. In another minute Anna would rise and make Joseph's breakfast. It was hard to get out of bed these winter mornings. The water stopped running in the bathroom; he had finished his shower. Now he would hang the towels back on the rack and wipe the tub, leaving it without spot.

  His clothes for the morning were ready on the chair. He did everything with such care and method. His books of appointments and bills owed and money due him were all in order, so that he was always prepared, always on time, and no moment was wasted.

  He came from the bathroom now and stood at Anna's mirror to brush his hair, making an exact center part. The clean overalls that she had washed were in their paper bag by the door with his painter's cap. He always wore a suit on the way to work. It was not, she knew, that he was ashamed of his work; he took pride in his labor and skill. It was just that he saw this work as a way station on the road to another life. He saw himself, she understood, as a man who went to work wearing a collar and tie.

  It seemed to Anna, and had from the beginning, that he was a clear and simple person to understand. Yet lately she had been concerned. He was so quiet. He had always been quiet, true. But now he had almost nothing to say. Often he fell asleep in his chair after supper, and she would have to wake him to get him to bed. Of course, he was on his feet all day. . . .

  The silence, of itself, did not bother her, for evening was her only time to read in peace. It was the reason, if any, behind the silence that troubled her.

  At breakfast he said, "I read your brothers' letters last night. I woke up around one o'clock; I couldn't sleep, for some reason."

  "It's so good to be hearing from them again." Their letters since the end of the war had been cheerful enough. Dan had emerged unhurt from four years of fighting. Eli had shrapnel in his arm and would never bend the elbow again, but he had been given a medal for valor and his firm had promoted him, the three men ahead of him having been killed.

  84

  "If you aren't killed you can make a good thing out of a war," Anna said now, "outrageous as it is."

  "It would seem so," Joseph answered bitterly. "You have only to look at what the war did for Solly."

  Who would have thought that Solly, of all people, would have prospered so? His boss had made a fortune turning out fatigue pants for the army and Solly had gone into the new factory, first as an assistant and then as supervisor. They had moved uptown to five nice rooms on Broadway at Ninety-eighth Street, much nicer rooms than Joseph's and Anna's.

  "I'm glad for them," Anna said and meant it. "With all those children, they needed some luck. Ruth told me confidentially that Solly and one of the other men may go in business for themselves. Solly's saved a few thousand dollars, you know."

  "All you need is luck."

  "You're not envious of Solly?"

  "Of course I am! He's a decent fellow—you know what I've always thought of him-but, my God, he's no brain, is he? He's a humdrum plodder and now he's way ahead of me. Haven't I got a right to be envious?"

  "We're doing fine, Joseph." Anna tried to coax him.

  "Fine!" He slapped the table. "I'm twenty-eight years old, thirty before you know it, and I'm exactly nowhere. Living in a dump!"

  "It's not a dump! Nice people live here, good solid people!"

  "Sure! Department store clerks, bus drivers, postmen. Poor wage slaves living from hand to mouth. Like me." He stood up and began to pace the kitchen. "And when I get older and can't work ten or twelve hours a day anymore, what then? With prices rising while you're looking at them? We'll have even less than we have now, that's what then."

  That part was true. Since the war everything was becoming more and more expensive. True too that they were not advancing.

  "Anna, I'm scared. I look into the future and for the first time I'm scared," he said.

  There were small veins at his temples. One of them jumped when he talked. She hadn't noticed that before. His hands were spotted with paint. They looked like the spotted hands of an old man. She thought, He looks older than twenty-eight. And she, too, was suddenly afraid.

  One day Joseph came home and began to talk in a bright, ex-

  85

  cited voice. "You know what Malone the plumber told me today? He knows an apartment house near here that you can buy for almost nothing. The owner lost a pile in some business and on top of that both his kids have asthma. One of them almost died with it in the winter. So he's got to move west and he wants to sell the house fast." He walked up and down the room, as was his habit when he was tense. "Malone and another guy want me to go in with them. I need two thousand cash. Where can I get two thousand cash?"

  He left the food on his plate. He picked up the newspaper and let it fall.

  "Your magazine is on the table," Anna said.

  He always read the Saturday Evening Post; it was all he ever read, except for the evening paper. He had no time for the morning paper.

  Now he leafed through the magazine and put it aside. She saw that he was entirely intent on his idea. But nothing will come of it, she thought pityingly, and began to mend Maury's overalls. The silence needed to be broken but she didn't know how to do it.

  Presently Joseph said, "Anna, I've thought of something."

  "Yes?"

  "You know, when you were at the Werners', they were very good to you. Maybe, if you asked, maybe they'd lend us some money."

  "Oh, no, I'm sure not!"

  "Why? I would pay interest. They might just be willing to do it, rich people like them. I've heard of such things before."

  She felt weak with dread. What was he asking of her?

  "It can't hurt to try, can it?"

  "Joseph, please, I'll do anything for you, only don't ask me to do that."

  "But I'm not asking you to do anything wrong! Are you too proud to ask for a loan, is that it?"

  "Joseph, you're shouting, you'll scare Maury."

  They went to bed. She felt his anger and it frightened her. He was so seldom angry. "Joseph, don't make me," she whispered, and moved to touch him, but he drew away and pretended to be asleep.

  In the morning he began again. "Damn it to hell, I could do so much with that money! I know I could! Malone and I could fix that place up, raise the rents, then sell it. Don't you see, this is the start I've been waiting for and it may never happen again!"

  86

  He will wear me down, Anna thought.

  "I'd go myself, but I don't know the people. They'd listen to you."

  And on the third day she gave in. "Enough, for God's sake! I'll call Mrs. Werner on the telephone tomorrow."

  She climbed the steps of the Seventy-first Street house on Saturday morning. It was a warm day for March, but not warm enough to cause the sweat on the back of her neck. That woman, Anna thought. "How well you look, Anna," she will say. "And so you have a son, how lovely!" She will write out the check (will she, possibly?). And hand it to me with her little smile and all her dignity.

  The bell tinkled through the house. A moment later Paul Werner opened the door. He was wearing his topcoat and he had a package in his hand.

  "Why, Anna," he said. "Why, Anna."

  "I have an appointment with your mother."

  "But Mother's in Long Branch for the week. The whole family's there."

  "She told me to come at ten o'clock."

  "She did? Let's" go look on her desk. She might have left a message there." And as Anna waited at the foot of the sta
irs, "Come up, Anna."

  The morning room was the same. The flowered chaise and the embroidery basket were still there. There was a new photograph on the desk, a large professional portrait of a baby. His baby?

  He rummaged through papers. "I don't see anything. Wait, here's her calendar. It's next Saturday, Anna; you're a week ahead of time."

  My God, she thought, I look like a fool. And Joseph needs the money by Wednesday.

  "It's too bad. They're down at Cousin Blanche's farm for the week. There's a big house party and Mrs. Monaghan and Daisy went, too. Daisy has your old place, Anna."

  She had forgotten his dark, rich voice. Like the deepest notes of a cello, it was.