Belva Plain - Evergreen.txt

by Evergreen

  His father gave a lot to charity. The mail was always full of requests from the blind and from hospitals and the Jewish poor. He used to see him writing out checks at his desk. Once Mr. Malone even sent some priests. Maury had opened the door and been surprised to see these two men in their turned-around collars. Pa took them into his den and after a while they came out smiling and saying thank you. "We shall remember you in our masses," they said when they left.

  Maury remembered feeling a certain pride in that. People respected his father. Wherever they went people listened to him as if they wanted to please him. Sometimes Maury went with him to the construction sites and followed him through the din and bustle of unloading trucks and cranes, cement mixers and men running wheelbarrows full of bricks. They climbed through all the confusion of boards and pipes and tubing and rolls of wire, through the damp, dank smell that is the smell of new building. His father asked questions and pointed out something that had been done wrong or not done at all. He knew what all these things were for. Then they went outside to the little wooden house at the curb marked Rental Office, and there Pa went over books and talked on the telephone. He unrolled plans, white ink on blue paper, and talked courteously to people who came in to inquire. They went back out on the sidewalk. Men in hard hats came over and his father introduced him: "My son Maury," he said, and the men shook hands and looked at him respectfully as if he weren't just

  121

  thirteen years old. And he knew that the respect was because of his father.

  A nurse came up behind him. "What do you think of the room?" she asked Maury.

  "It's very nice."

  "Your father's been good to us. He's a very generous, kind man," she said.

  Pa beckoned from the end of the hall. Maury was relieved and pretended to be surprised. "Are we leaving already?"

  "Yes, your grandmother isn't feeling well. I don't want to tire her."

  "Do you want me to go and say good-by to her?" He hoped not, but knew that he ought at least to ask.

  "No, thanks, it won't matter," Pa said. "She's gone to her room."

  They stopped at a desk near the elevator where a nurse sat in front of telephones and charts.

  "That matter we talked about," Pa said. "I don't want it to happen again. There's no excuse for allowing her to fall out of bed."

  "We'll do our best, Mr. Friedman, of course. But you know, she is failing fast and—"

  "That makes no difference," his father said firmly. "I don't want it to happen again."

  "Yes, Mr. Friedman, of course." She smiled brightly, artificially. "This is your son, isn't he? What a handsome boy! He looks like an Englishman."

  "Yes. He's a good boy," Pa said, still not smiling.

  She arched her lips at Maury. "I have the most gorgeous little niece. I'll have to introduce you in a couple of years—"

  The elevator door opened and closed on her words. "Idiotic woman!" Pa said.

  But Maury was annoyed at something else. Here he had given up his holiday because his grandmother wanted to see him and she hadn't even known him! That ruined, old, old—thing! Impossible to think of her as part of himself or of his father or anybody at all.

  Back in the car Pa took a sheaf of papers out of a briefcase. "Excuse me, Maury, I want to go over these for a minute. I just thought of something."

  Maury knew it was the new apartment-hotel, the largest job his father had undertaken yet. Last week the brick was up to the third

  122

  floor; above that the red steel framework made a design of squares, forty-two stories of squares against the sky.

  "The newest thing in apartment-hotel living," Pa said now, pausing over the papers. "The newest thing in the city. Did you know we're half rented already, with completion date not till next fall?"

  He reached into his pocket for a cigar and matches and took a few puffs of enjoyment. "You know, sometimes I don't even believe all this has happened. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I see the light coming through the curtains and for a second I don't know where I am. Isn't that queer? I'm not sure it's all real. Can you understand that? No, how could you? You've never known anything different, thank God, and I'll see to it that you never do."

  He would, too, no doubt of that. He could do anything he wanted to do.

  "Only in America," he said now. "Think of it! The sons of immigrants. Malone from the bogs of Ireland. And in ten years we've put our mark on the city. Whenever I see our green and white 'M and F' I think of that. But we give good value, we've rightfully earned whatever we get. I can truthfully say we have never cheated the public, our work is solid as the pyramids and that's more than a great many men in our line can say."

  He went back to his papers and Maury started the second section of the New York Times for lack of anything else to do. It wasn't very interesting. But then, neither was looking out the window. They passed a clock in front of a bank. It said half past twelve and he thought, There's still plenty of time.

  "Pa," he said, "is it all right to drop me off at the rink? I could borrow somebody's skates."

  His father looked at him and right away Maury knew the answer would be no. "You've missed religious school for two weeks running because of your cold," he said. "You must be way behind."

  A memory like an elephant. You would think that a man who had buildings going up all over the city would have no time for stuff like that. "I can make it up tomorrow. I'll get up early before school."

  "You know you won't. No, you'll stay home this afternoon and prepare your work."

  If he'd only leave him alone with this religious stuff! Most of the

  123

  boys at his school didn't have all this religion to fuss about. Their families had given it up as narrow and unmodern. Pa's attitude was so stern, so solemn and boring. Now, with his mother, he didn't mind it as much. She made a pretty ritual out of it, the way she blessed the candles on Friday nights, and her silver candlesticks that she had brought from Europe. It was almost like poetry. On Saturday mornings he hated to get up and go to the synagogue.

  "Let him sleep," Ma would urge. "He studied late last night. I saw the light under the door."

  "No," Pa said. "There is a right way and a wrong way, Anna." "There won't be time for his breakfast. Let him miss it this once, Joseph."

  "Then let him go without breakfast."

  Pa always talked like that. He was angry when people were late and wouldn't wait more than ten minutes for anyone. He was angry when people broke rules. One of Ma's friends was going to Reno for a divorce and they were talking about it at the dinner table. Pa said, "There's no excuse for her, Anna. People know very well what's right, so let them do it and that's that."

  "You sound so hard, Joseph," Ma said. "Isn't there any forgiveness in you?"

  "There's a right way and a wrong way, Anna," Pa replied, just as he did on Saturday mornings: "Maury is to get up and go with us. No excuses."

  He always went; he knew he had to go and no doubt it would have been easier to get up on time and go without protest. But he never did. Somehow, the battle had to be gone through first. He didn't know why it was like that between his father and himself. And riding home now in the car, Maury thought: He runs everything and everybody. It seemed to him, in some vague way, that his father would loom over him for the rest of his life. Would there ever be a time when he would be able to say what he wanted to say to his father? And get his own way and be rid of this—this battle with someone who was always more powerful than he?

  He was sullen the rest of the way home and up into his room. The last thing he heard before closing the door and sitting down to his work was his father's voice, not angry, but very firm and positive: "And, Anna, I don't want the lamb to be underdone the way it was last time. Tell Margaret."

  124

  Just before dinner his father called him into his den. On the table before him lay a cardboard box filled with pictures, snapshots and photographs.

  "Here, son, I want to sho
w you this. I got these out to put them in order."

  Mounted on thick cardboard was an old, old photo of a girl, standing against a wall. Her skirt covered her shoes and her dress had big sleeves that went out from the shoulders like balloons. She had two thick long braids, and even in those queer clothes you could see she was very pretty. In the lower right-hand corner was some foreign name, the photographer's name, and the word 'Lublin.' That was a city in Poland, he knew that much.

  "Who is it?" he asked.

  "My mother," Pa said. "Your grandmother, before she was married."

  Maury looked again. She had one hand on her hip in a pose almost impudent, and she was laughing; perhaps the photographer had just said something funny.

  "I was always told she was a beautiful young woman," his father said. "And you can see she was."

  That—that they had seen today—that had been this?

  He had a flash of amazed vision, a frozen moment, in which for the first time he seemed to see everything there was to see and know everything there was to know. There was a phrase, a line from a poem or something read in English class, something about "long corridors of time." And he thought: This is what happens.

  Suddenly, without intending to, he bent over and kissed his father, something he had been embarrassed to do since he was a little boy.

  15

  The Berengaria sailed for Southampton at noon with pennants snapping and music spangling the river wind. Engines rumbled and shook; the ship backed out into the Hudson, turned and moved out past the Statue of Liberty and past the place where Castle Garden used to be, the place where Anna had touched land in America. She hadn't been as excited then as she was now, and wasn't that strange?

  Below in the stateroom the empty champagne bottles from their bon voyage party had not yet been removed. The dressers were crowded with gifts: three pyramids of fruit, enough for ten people; boxes of chocolates and cookies; a pile of novels; flowers; a ribbon-tied package from Solly and Ruth.

  Anna opened it and took out a leather-bound, gilt-edged diary. "My Trip to Europe" was embossed on the cover.

  Joseph smiled. "Ruth knows you're a scribbler, doesn't she?"

  "I shall write in it every day," Anna said firmly. "I don't want to forget a minute of this."

  June 4th * To go so far away, to the other side of the world! I still

  can't believe this is happening.

  All of a sudden one evening last March Joseph said, "I want to do something grand for our anniversary this year. I want to go to Europe. We can afford it."

  126

  It struck me funny that when we are poor in Europe we think only about getting to America so we can get rich enough to go back to Europe.

  "Not Paris," Joseph said. "You didn't come from Paris, you know."

  So I shall actually be seeing Paris, the Louvre, the Tui-leries, the Cours La Reine where Marie Antoinette came riding in from Versailles! I think of the city as an enormous crystal chandelier, all fountains, lights and sparkle.

  But mostly I shall be thankful to see my brothers in Vienna. I wonder whether we will even recognize each other?

  A whole crowd came to see us off, friends and business people and of course the Malones. Malone and Mary are going to Ireland for about six weeks after we get home in September. They want to see where their ancestors came from. Joseph said he surely wasn't going to go back to Russia to see where his came from!

  Malone is so hearty, I think that would be the best description of him. He gives the impression of never being worried. I asked Mary whether that was true and she said she thought it was. It must be very easy and relaxed to live with a man like that. He brings humor into every situation. We were watching people arrive up the gangplank and Malone kept joking: "There's Lord Throttlebottom!" (A long man like a string bean with mustaches that went out of style thirty years ago.) "And there's Lady Luella Pursemouth!" He's not unkind, though, just funny.

  After they called "All ashore that's going ashore!" we went up on deck. Maury and Iris looked so small standing with Ruth and Solly far below. I would have taken the children to Europe with us, but Joseph wants a vacation without children. We've never had one, not even one day! I can't get over Joseph's being willing to take a vacation at all, he who has worked six days a week and sometimes even seven for as long as I've known him. But I shall miss the children.

  Ruth put her arm around Iris and I knew she was giving me a message not to worry. I do worry some: Iris is only ten, and so shy, so wan. My heart sinks, thinking of her, although I know Ruth will take care of her.

  Dear Ruth! You were the first person to greet me when I

  127

  came to America. I remember how you got up from the sewing machine in that dreadful little room. How far we have come since then, you and I and all of us!

  Our stateroom is at the top of the ship, the Veranda Deck. I walked out just now; there is still daylight in the sky, although the ocean is black. There is no land in sight. We are really at sea. There's nothing, nothing at all, but sky and sea.

  June 5th

  Joseph was really angry at me this morning. I'm not used to anger from him, except rarely and then over trivial things. We were reading on deck when suddenly he almost shouted at me: "Where's your ring?" (meaning the diamond that he gave me last month for our anniversary). And when I told him it was downstairs in my drawer with my clothes he was furious. He says I am to wear that ring all the time, every minute. I said I didn't think it was appropriate to wear such a large diamond with a sweater and skirt but he said he didn't give a damn, that the ring was very valuable and I should understand that it had to be guarded at all times. He sent me downstairs to get it and on the way I was terrified that perhaps someone had stolen it. It must have cost a fortune! but, thank God, there it was, safe among my stockings.

  The thing is, I never really wanted it. Things like that truly don't mean that much to me, although Joseph cannot understand that. He thinks all women are absolutely mad about diamonds. I suppose most of them are. I know all my friends were so impressed when they saw it. I do believe that is the real reason Joseph wants me to wear it all the time, why he wanted me to take it on this trip in the first place.

  June 7th

  At our table I learn that there is a world of ships, and that this voyage, which is such an adventure for us, is a way of living for others. These people all cross the Atlantic as casually as we take the Fifth Avenue bus. One couple from outside Philadelphia, people about our age, are traveling with three children and a nursemaid who take their meals in their suite. They come to Europe every year, renting a house in England,

  128

  Switzerland or France. Joseph was surprised, he didn't think they looked all that wealthy, but he doesn't realize that their simplicity is very expensive. They don't talk very much and when they do they have more to say to the old lady than to us. The old lady is the widow of a New York banker; she travels all over the world, it seems, with her daughter. The daughter is in her late twenties. She looks lonely and bored. I feel sorry for her.

  I listen to the conversations of this traveling fraternity. They know the names of all the captains and pursers on the great ships. They talk about whom they met on this or that voyage and what cocktail parties they were invited to. One night all these people were asked to the captain's table and Joseph and I had the table to ourselves. The hierarchy of the ship! I suppose we were put here because there were two seats left over; certainly we don't belong here. Joseph is more quiet than ever and I know that he feels out of place. Naturally, I am just as out of place but it doesn't bother me; I find it interesting. I watch the spectacle, the procession descending the stairs to dinner: sagging women in brocade and diamonds, tired-looking men, honeymoon couples. Turning heads, energetic smiles, the chirp of greeting: "How are you? I haven't seen you in ages!"

  I watch the food, the great fish carved in ice, the vegetables like a Dutch still life, the spun-sugar baskets, the little iced cakes arranged like a bouqu
et. What labor and art to cook like that! I look at the nice, fresh faces of the boys who wait on us. They seem so cheerful and respectful as they pull your chair out: "Good evening, madame, have you had a nice afternoon?" I wonder what they really think about all of us.