Belva Plain - Evergreen.txt

by Evergreen

  But he, Eric, had a house and a big room in it with a fireplace and a bed with a quilt that had animals printed on it, and a shelf of books, and a cupboard where he kept his Erector set and Lincoln Logs and his big dump truck and hook-and-ladder. And he had plenty to eat. They were always making him eat when he wasn't hungry. You must finish that good hot cereal before you go to school. So how could he be an Orphan?

  Because of the Accident, that was why. Something had happened in a car far away, in New York City. The car got smashed and after that he didn't have any father and mother. He had come here to live with Gran and Gramp. After the Accident. He saw it like that, in big letters. Like the letters on the monument: Luke Bellingham.

  "Well, here we are," Gramp said, switching off the radio.

  "Hand me my crutches from the back seat, will you please, Eric?"

  His grandmother came out of the house to help Gramp in. "Why,

  I was worried about you, it's almost five o'clock and Teddy's here

  waiting for you."

  "Oh, we had a fine time. Eric saw his new puppy that got born this morning, and we had a beautiful drive. I see you're all dressed up."

  300

  She had on a white silk blouse and her gold-and-pearl brooch. "Of course, it's Eric's birthday."

  "Look what you've got!" Teddy shouted as soon as they came into the hall. "Look what you've got!"

  An enormous carton lay on its side and half in, half out, was a bright red perfect car. It was big enough to sit in and pedal. It had headlights and a brass horn and bucket seats like a racing car.

  Eric's heart stopped. "For me. You bought this for me."

  "I didn't, silly!" Teddy said. "My present's still wrapped up in the dining room with your others."

  "It's from Macy's in New York," Gran said. She turned to Gramp. "I thought it was those folding chairs you ordered, so I opened it."

  "Couldn't you have-?"

  "Teddy was with me. We opened it together and then it was too late."

  "I see," Gramp said. "Well, you'll enjoy the car, I'm sure. Better go up and wash your hands and change. We'll be having dinner soon."

  "I'll go home and put on my suit," Teddy said. "My mother says I have to wear my good suit because it's Eric's birthday."

  "Yes, of course. Be back at six, Teddy," Gran said.

  Eric shook his head. "I can't believe it."

  "What can't you believe?" his grandmother asked.

  "The puppy George and this car, all in one day."

  "Ah, but you haven't seen everything yet!" Gran said gaily. "Go on up, dear, will you?"

  His suit and clean underwear had been laid out on the bed. His Sunday shoes stood under the bed. He was so happy, so excited! The dog, the red car with the headlights from Macy in New York! He didn't know Macy but it surely was nice of him to send a present like that. "Wheeeeeee," he said and turned a somersault on the rug near the bathroom, and then another and another, four of them before he reached the farther wall with a thump. He wondered where he would keep the car. In the garage, perhaps? He wanted to find out right now.

  His grandparents' adjoining rooms were at the end of the hall. He could barely hear them talking. It was a very quiet house. "Don't ever call from one room to another," his grandmother always said. "If it's important enough to tell me, it's important enough for you to walk where I am."

  301

  He went down the hall. They were talking quietly in Gramp's room. Suddenly his grandmother's voice grew louder and he heard her say, "But I couldn't secrete it! How could I when Teddy was there? He would have told Eric. I'm sorry, James. It couldn't be

  helped."

  "I thought they had agreed that it was for the child's own good that there be no contact. It's too confusing, too unsettling! They agreed, didn't they? So why don't they keep their agreement?"

  "Well, they have kept it, really. I suppose they feel that a gift isn't—oh, I don't know, they must feel some need to give something."

  "Awfully ostentatious! It must have cost a hundred dollars." "I'm sure it must. Well, I'll write an acknowledgment and let it go at that. But I do feel a little sorry for them, James."

  "I have one concern, and that's for Eric," his grandfather said firmly.

  "Well, of course."

  There was a rustling, as of someone rising from a chair. Eric scurried back to his room.

  Why were they annoyed with Macy for sending the car? That was funny. Such a beautiful car! Better than anything Teddy had. And that was good, because sometimes Teddy made him angry. "Don't you feel awful not having any father and mother?" he would say. Well, he didn't feel awful at all. He had everything he wanted, Gramp and Gran gave him everything he wanted and they loved him. And he didn't feel awful at all! He stuck out his tongue at an imaginary Teddy. You haven't got a car like this, Teddy! And you haven't got a dog like George, either!

  But it was a funny thing about Macy. He remembered last winter he'd got a pair of skates from him and it wasn't even Christmas. Gramp had said something to Gran. He'd thought then that they weren't pleased about the skates, but afterward he'd forgotten about it. Anyway, he had the skates and now he had the car and it didn't matter really. Only, it was funny.

  There were steak, fried onions and biscuits and all his favorite things. Teddy had given him a kite. Gran and Gramp had bought a sailboat that came up to his waist; he could sail it on the lake. Mrs. Mather had made a chocolate cake with white icing and seven candles. No, eight, because there had to be one to grow on. First she turned off the lights in the dining room. Then she

  302

  brought it in with the candles flaring and everyone singing "Happy Birthday." Eric blew out the candles and cut the first slice.

  "What did you wish?" Teddy wanted to know, but Gran said, "If you tell it won't come true," so he wouldn't tell. He really didn't know what he wished; there was nothing he wanted except that he knew he wanted it always to be now. Just the way everything was now.

  "You must thank Mrs. Mather for the beautiful cake," Gran said. "Go into the kitchen after dinner and thank her."

  So he went in to thank her and she bent down and kissed him. "Bless your heart," she said.

  Then he and Teddy rode the red car. They took turns up and down the hall, while Gran and Gramp went to listen to Gabriel Heatter with the war news on the radio, the way they did every night. Every time Eric passed the door they looked up and smiled at him, his grandmother from the chair by the window where she sat with her shawl around her, for the house was chilly and they were saving heat. "A good citizen should," his grandfather said. He himself sat upright, intent on the news, in his own wing chair that smelled of leather-dressing, a clean sharp smell that was like Gramp's shaving lotion; his own smell that he always used, in the chair where he always sat.

  Presently it was time for bed. Teddy's father came for him from across the road. And Eric went up to bed. Gran kissed him and folded the sheet around his shoulders.

  "It was a lovely birthday, wasn't it?" she said, and turned out the light.

  He lay there all warm and sort of floating away. It wasn't entirely dark yet. He could partly see the late spring evening past the window, and partly imagine the familiar landscape: the yard and the lawn, the hemlock grove, the thickets where you could be an Indian and the lake beyond. Peepers set up a sharp, sweet call, one note over and over. A bird, thinking perhaps that it was morning, whistled once and was still. Tomorrow he would find the phoebe and ride in the car, and sail the boat. He would have to get string, a terribly long, long string for the boat. Then he would eat up what was left of the birthday cake. Seven. Today I was seven. Sev—

  The peepers throbbed.

  28

  Joseph and his reflection traveled down Madison Avenue together, going back to the office. Whenever he looked away from the afternoon press of taxis and buses, whenever a glass door swung open or a flame of opalescent sunlight struck a window, he saw a vigorous man in a gray suit walking fast, swinging his arms. He
hadn't realized how high his arms swung.

  He was in good shape. Didn't look his age. In the morning, after waking automatically at six, he did his calisthenics. He watched his diet, although not stringently: he didn't run to fat. Anna was envious; she would go for days on cottage cheese and salads to keep thin. A little weight wouldn't hurt her, he always said, and was told that his tastes were old-fashioned. Well, at fifty-five, why shouldn't they be?

  Still, that wasn't old these days. It was hard to think that his father had been only two years older when he died, worn away, shuffling and bereft of will. That was the main thing, will. You got old when you lost it.

  He ought to be, and he was, thankful down to the marrow that he hadn't lost his. He'd been able to build again from the ruins, or at least to make a promising start. It wasn't given to everyone to have a second chance. Poor Solly. Ruth was living now in three rooms that Joseph had let her have in that very first apartment house on the Heights, the one for which Anna had borrowed the money. That house, he admitted with amusement, was a foolish kind of talisman to him. He didn't suppose he'd ever sell it. Any-

  304

  way, Ruth was living there. She paid a small rent. He would have given it to her for nothing, but she wouldn't accept that and he admired her refusal. He would have done the same if the circumstances had been reversed. God forbid.

  Waiting at Fifty-sixth Street for the light to change, he was shocked into a reminder of sadness by a window that still displayed the black-bordered photograph of Roosevelt, dead two weeks. It was a personal grief, the death of this president. A solemn grief: the funeral train from Georgia, the slow march down Pennsylvania Avenue, the horse with stirrups reversed. Symbolism of the fallen warrior. A brave man. He felt he would miss that man, his fine confident voice on the radio.

  Yet there were people who had hated him . . . and not the very rich alone, those who thought of him as a traitor to his class! Joseph knew a workman who had lost twin sons in the war; he blamed Roosevelt, said we should never have gotten into the war. But that was nonsense; frantic, bitter, ranting. Understandable, but ranting all the same. Malone had lost a son-in-law, Irene's husband, killed at Iwo Jima, and now Irene had come back home with her two babies ... not an easy thing for the Malones, what with teen-agers of their own still at home, but they never complained.

  Irene's boy looked like Eric, or what they could remember of Eric when he was two. Joseph felt his mouth twist. Always that small involuntary twisting when certain things came to mind. Don't think of them, then. Don't think of what can't be helped. The light changed and the crowd poured across the street. Crowds looked different today from the ones you used to see in midtown New York. For one thing, they were larger. The city was so crowded that you couldn't get into a restaurant, couldn't get a hotel room. He'd had an architect come in from Pittsburgh last week and they'd had to put him up at home. People were jamming the shops; people who'd never had anything before the war were coming in to the fancy stores with cash to buy furs and pianos and diamond watches, never even asking the price of anything!

  For me too, Joseph thought, and in a very limited way, it's been like the twenties all over. The land they had scrimped for during the late thirties—when Anna said they were crazy to go into real estate again—had doubled and tripled. They'd built three hundred houses for the workers at the Great Gulf Aviation plant on Long Island, just rolled them out in rows on the old potato fields and sold every one in eight weeks' time.

  305

  Then they had moved on and done it again.

  Yes, like the twenties, except for a steadier caution. He'd never again feel as confident—and ignorant—as he had back then. He knew now what can happen.

  Knew also what a terrible thing it is that there is so much wealth to be made out of human blood.

  Still, that was the way of things. Now his desk and his head were full'of plans again for undertakings they would start as soon as the war was over. They said it was only a matter of months. . . . Suburban shopping centers, he reflected; he ought to get to some of the big stores before anybody else did.

  They had a good office now. Maroon carpet. Nice prints. Dignified, but not lavish. Anna would see to that. He smiled. She was always restraining him, Anna was, and she was probably right. Not that they could have afforded anything too rich anyway, the rent was so high. They were in a very good building, a prestigious address near Grand Central. Convenient for commuting, too, now that they'd got the house.

  Let's see. Three months to the closing and a couple more to fix it up. They ought to be in by the end of September.

  Anna hadn't wanted a house, but then, Anna never wanted very much of anything. She had her friends and her Friday afternoon concerts again, now that they had a few dollars to spare for things like that. She had her women's committees for half a dozen charities. And when she wasn't doing any of these, she read.

  But he had been wanting a house for a long time. When the Malones bought a place in Larchmont a year ago he'd made up his mind. They had spent every fall and winter Sunday driving around Westchester. He reflected how perverse it is that when you haven't got a cent all you see are things you wish you could have; now that he had a good down payment and could afford something decent, they couldn't seem to find it. Maybe because they didn't really know what they were looking for? And then two weeks ago on one of those warm, windy days of April, they'd come upon this house and Anna had gone crazy over it.

  He couldn't understand her. It was a big old place, probably in its eightieth year, with twelve—he'd counted in dismay and disbelief—twelve gables and three chimneys. It had a spiral staircase, a turret, six carved marble fireplaces, even in the bedrooms, and a porch fringed with wooden lace. Name of heaven! Even the young man from the real estate agency had looked doubtful. Not a very

  306

  good salesman. Brand-new and inexperienced, to wear his doubts on his face!

  "What style do you call this?" Joseph had demanded of him.

  "Well, sir, they tell me it's an authentic type, Gothic Victorian. I'd have called it gingerbread, myself. This was the Lovejoy family home," he had explained. "One of the oldest families in the area." And, irrelevantly, "I'm not from here, I'm from Buffalo. But I'm told they once owned a couple of hundred acres. The last one of the Lovejoys has a house over there, over the rise; you can't see it unless you go upstairs and look out over the trees. He wants to sell this old place off with two acres."

  Anna spoke for the first time as they climbed the stairs. "It's like something in a book. Feel the banister," she said.

  The dark old wood was worn as sleek as silk; they'd had the best materials in those days. But all these angles, nooks and crannies!

  "Look here!" Anna cried. "This round room in the turret! This could be the most wonderful office for you, Joseph. You could spread your maps and—come, look at the view!"

  On the lawn below, the hyacinths—or so Anna said they were— had come into bloom, rising out of a bed of last year's wet leaves. "A south terrace! It would catch the sun way into the winter, Joseph. You could wrap up in a steamer rug, the way we did on the ship, remember, and read—"

  He noted that the cement was crumbling and the bricks were rotted away.

  ". . . up there on the hillside, those are apple trees. When they bloom it will be all white. Imagine opening your eyes and seeing that, the very first thing in the morning!"

  He followed her downstairs. The agent and Iris, who had come along this day, followed him. The kitchen was in sorry shape. There was an old black monster of a stove. The icebox was in the entry, an enormous brown, scarred relic. The cabinets were so high that a woman would need a ladder to reach them. But the cabinets would all have to be ripped out, anyway. Hell, the whole kitchen would have to be ripped out.

  "See," Anna cried. "They've a separate room with its own sink: I do believe it's meant for a place to arrange flowers! Yes, it is! Here are some old vases left on the shelf. Imagine having a separate room for flowers
!"

  307

  She was talking like a not-too-bright child instead of a woman fifty years old. He'd never seen her like this before.

  "Any house can have a separate sink for flowers, Anna," he said irritably.

  "Any house can, but none of them do," she answered.

  "It's got a thousand things wrong with it," he burst out. Ordinarily he would have had more tact in front of the agent; he'd been harassed often enough himself in this business to know how it felt. And, wanting some support, some confirmation, he turned to Iris. "What do you think?" Certainly Iris would be more practical, more cool in judgment than her mother was.