Fortunate Lives

by Robb Forman Dew

  “I’m never going to be like that,” Toby had said to her. “Even if I’m really poor. I’d live out in the country.”

  She had tried then and many times afterward to persuade him of all the desirable, likely, and secure possibilities between the extremes of being lost and adrift in society and being a Harvard Law School graduate, but without success. He noticed the people huddled in doorways, or wandering with their possessions through Grand Central Station, or the man outside the deli, and without fail he imagined himself in their situation. All the ordinary people in the streets in their suits and dresses or jeans and T-shirts might as well have been invisible.

  In all his life Dinah had not been able to figure out why Toby had so little faith in his own abilities. She didn’t think she had ever been able to reassure him adequately, and now, on a warm August day in the heavy air of late summer, it occurred to her that David might eventually complete a cycle that Toby had hoped to begin. Neither she nor Martin had ever wanted David to go to Harvard, hoping that he would choose a four-year undergraduate college. Her resentment of the whole institution—admission to which, in all its imagined unattainability, had loomed gloomily over much of Toby’s life—resolved itself into a thin fury as she sorted and folded and marked sheets and towels. She was tense with a shaky, febrile anger at Mr. Franklin M. Mount, who had suggested that Harvard students would need raincoats to carry on their rarefied lives.

  As Dinah was bending over David’s bed, where she was carefully lettering HOWELLS in the bottom right-hand corner of each one of eight towels with a laundry pen, she heard Ellen call up to her from the kitchen. People in West Bradford hadn’t locked their doors until recently, when several women’s purses had been stolen from kitchen counters right inside their back doors. Dinah still didn’t lock her door. For one thing, she was rarely parted from her purse. Even when she was in her robe or nightgown, she went from room to room with her old Coach bag slung by its strap over her shoulder, where it functioned as a kind of portable office. She often used it to brace her checkbook while she paid the plumber or wrote out a check at the grocery store while standing in line, and the tan leather was marked and dotted with black squiggles of ink from hurried moments when she had struggled to tear off the check before capping her pen. But besides that, she had no idea where her house keys were, and she never remembered to take Martin’s and have them copied. So people came and went all year at the Howellses’ house. Friends left a jar of soup or a plate of cookies on the kitchen counter if they found no one home. The man who read the gas meter made his way through the house to the basement, and workmen left their bills propped against the sugar bowl on the kitchen table.

  “I’m up here, Ellen,” she called down. “I’m in David’s room.”

  Ellen was one of the few people whose voice Duchess recognized, and she went to the top of the stairs, wagging her tail enthusiastically. Taffy stayed where he was, lolling on David’s pillow, but the gray cat, Bob, disappeared like a wraith beneath the dresser.

  “Vic and Martin are going to be at the office until about seven. I thought we could get pizza,” Ellen said, zigzagging around Duchess, who impeded her way excitedly. Ellen sat on the other side of the bed and idly scratched Duchess between the ears. “Would that be okay or would you rather go out?”

  “No. That’ll be fine,” Dinah said, although she wasn’t in the mood to be sociable this evening. “I don’t even know who’ll be home for dinner. I hadn’t planned to cook. But God, I really want to get this done. Why don’t you make a salad if you would.” Dinah had looked up when Ellen came in to smile a greeting, but she had seen right away that Ellen was in one of her purposeful moods, in which she would be likely to be bossy. Dinah had deflected her intention, and although Ellen cast a disapproving eye over the trunk, into which Dinah had folded sweaters and blankets and sheets, she didn’t comment.

  “I hate washing lettuce,” Dinah added conversationally. “In the summer I feel like I devote my life to washing lettuce. You make the salad and the pizza will be our treat. David and Sarah both have friends over, and no telling how many people will be here for dinner.”

  “Will David mind if I take what I need from the garden?” Ellen asked.

  “Oh, no. He hasn’t done much work in the garden the past few weeks. I imagine the lettuce needs thinning.” Ellen shot her a speculative look to see if Dinah intended irony, to see if she knew what David had been doing in the past few weeks. Clearly, though, no one had mentioned to her David’s probable involvement with Netta, because Dinah continued earnestly marking the last of the washcloths. Ellen went off, clattering down the stairs in her clogs, with Duchess fast on her heels.

  By the time Dinah had arranged the towels and sheets in David’s trunk and showered, the house had filled up. Sarah and two of her friends were out on the porch, talking with David and Sam Albergotti, whom Dinah had scarcely seen this summer. Netta stood in the porch doorway, with Anna Tyson leaning back against her knees. Ellen was slicing cucumbers, and Martin and Vic were sitting at the kitchen table over a stack of papers.

  “Have you ordered the pizza yet?” Dinah asked when she came into the kitchen.

  “We’re trying to sort it all out,” Ellen said. “We think two large ‘Vegetarians’ and two ‘Combinations.’ One ‘Deep Dish’ and one ‘New York Crust’ of each. What do you want?”

  “I don’t care. I’ll have a piece of either kind. Will Anna Tyson want something plain, though? Should we get one ‘Small Cheese’?”

  Ellen didn’t want Netta and her daughter to stay for dinner, and she grimaced at Dinah with urgent intent, but looked away as Martin glanced up to speak to his wife. He was distracted and frowning slightly. “Sweetheart, Netta and I are going over to the office and see if we can finish the editing on her article. Is that okay with you? We’ll pick up something and take it over there. It goes to the printer tomorrow morning. Vic, are you coming?”

  Vic held his hands up, palms outward in surrender, shaking his head. “Not unless you need me. I’m done in.”

  “No, that’s fine,” Martin said. “I don’t think it’ll take us more than about an hour.”

  David had come into the room, and Anna Tyson had sidled over and was slouching against his legs while he rested his hand on her shoulder. “Netta’s not going to eat with us?” David asked lightly, looking down at Anna Tyson for her nod of confirmation. “Well, Anna Tyson and Netta can come with me and Sam to pick up the pizzas and you can follow us, Dad.”

  People began to mill about, getting Diet Cokes or beer or wine, finding places to sit. Sarah and her friends appropriated the table on the porch, and Vic got up and put napkins and plates on the kitchen table; but Dinah suggested that he and Ellen and she have their dinner in the living room.

  When the three of them were finally settled there, sitting on the floor around the coffee table, drinking wine and waiting for David to return with their pizza, they didn’t worry much about keeping up a conversation. This gathering was familiar and undemanding.

  Ellen put her glass of wine down after taking a sip and sat back against the edge of the sofa, contemplating something. When she spoke, her voice was careful, the way people speak to patients in hospitals.

  “Dinah,” she said cautiously, pausing, “I know that it’s impossible for you to be openly rude to someone.” She stopped, considering, and her voice was soft, not instructive. “But doesn’t it ever occur to you that you don’t have to be nice to every waif who crosses your doorstep? I mean, Anna Tyson might as well just move in here.”

  “I don’t mind Anna Tyson,” Dinah answered, mildly enough, but with the sudden hope that Ellen wouldn’t say anything more.

  Ellen picked up her wine and swirled it gently, studying her glass with concentration. “Anna Tyson is hardly the problem though, is she?”

  A shadow of doubt about Martin and Netta crossed Dinah’s mind, but she held it off. She listened for the sound of the car, wondering why David was taking so long to return with t
heir pizza. She rose and went to the window, looking out to see if he was in sight. She noticed the rather nasty aluminum aftertaste of the cheap red wine she bought in jugs and usually mixed with orange juice and drank over ice.

  “This wine’s awful,” she said to Vic and Ellen. “I’m going to dump mine and get a beer. Can I bring either of you one?” She left the room when they both demurred, and she heard Vic ask Ellen something about their storm windows as she carried her wineglass down the hall to the kitchen.

  Franklin M. Mount

  Dean of Freshmen

  Harvard College

  12 Truscott Street

  Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

  Dear Mr. Mount,

  I’ve pretty much done all that I can do. I’m sending expensive sheets for David’s bed because I couldn’t find any reasonably priced sheets that were extra long. How many parents do you think have these things lying around? It seems to me you would think about the expense and inconvenience. I bet there’s not a single freshman coming to Harvard next year who has an extra-long bed in his own house. And how many of us have an extra trash can, for instance? Or lamps? Two lamps?

  The thing is, Mr. Mount, I’m losing too much. I’m having to let go of things that I need. I’m giving too much away. I’ve always thought that in the long run—if you could look at the whole picture—I am a generous person, even a fatalistic person. I’ve let a good many things go out of my life without bitterness, with no thought of revenge. But I’m being pressed to the absolute limit, and it seems to me that Harvard College ought to take this into consideration in the future.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A CRY OF ABSENCE

  WHEN DAVID PULLED IN behind his father’s car along the curb in front of the pizza parlor, Netta was talkative and amused. “I can’t believe this place,” she said, gesturing out the window in the mild evening. “It’s great, isn’t it? It could even have been Minuteman Pizza and Sub Shoppe. With an extra p e. You know, like all those terrible cute places they’ve built out on Route Two.” She was delighted. “I hadn’t realized how provincial I’d become in Cambridge. I’d forgotten that this kind of irony existed outside of Harvard.” She smiled in fleeting self-disparagement and grew pensive. “In spite of everything—I mean, even living in a place like West Bradford—I think it’s been good for me to get away from the whole Harvard thing.”

  David and Sam exchanged a glance. The two of them and Socs Trangas’s youngest daughter, Irini, had waited tables for Socs one summer, and he was a morose man who lacked any trace of a sense of irony. Neither Sam nor David had ever considered the absurdity of the logo in the window, which depicted a stalwart Minuteman in his tricornered hat, clasping his musket across his chest with one hand and with the other holding aloft a steaming pizza. That same logo decorated the countless cardboard flats that Sam and David and Irini had spent many hours folding into carry-out boxes.

  In 1977, Socrates Trangas had moved his wife and three daughters from Greece to Albany, New York, where his older brother Connie lived, then finally on to West Bradford in 1979, when he and Connie had a final falling-out. Socs hadn’t spoken to his brother since. He had chosen to locate in West Bradford because it was a college town with no cheap restaurants, but when his fledgling attempt to make a success of a modest place serving Greek food had failed, he had turned it into a pizza and sub shop in 1982. It still rankled, though, the failure of his restaurant, and he avenged himself somewhat on his clientele, all of whom were regulars since there was no other place to get a pizza in West Bradford. He begrudged and rationed each piece of pepperoni, each chunk of green pepper, every slice of mushroom that he dealt out as fast as cards onto the waiting rounds of fresh dough.

  He rarely socialized with his customers while they waited at the counter for their orders, but he was fond of the Howellses, who had expressed real regret when he had given up serving avgolemono soup, spanakopita, pastitsio, moussaka, and assorted Greek pastries, and had built a long counter across the back of the room to facilitate carry-out orders of Italian subs and pizzas.

  The Howellses had been almost nightly customers in the fall and winter of 1983, when the renovations to their own kitchen had taken two months longer than they had expected, and Socs always came out of the kitchen to chat with Dinah when she came in to pick up an order. One evening she had listened with sympathetic attention when he told her about the disagreement with his brother in Albany. When he had looked down and realized that the box with her pizza in it had grown cool to the touch, he dropped the conversation and handed it over to her at once. At the door she turned back, with a short wave.

  “So long,” she had said, but he misheard her and hesitated uncertainly for a moment while she stood with her hand still raised as she pushed sideways against the door.

  “Right. Okay.” And he paused once again. “Shalom,” he replied, raising his own hand in a peaceful dismissal. When Martin Howells came in to pick up an order in mid-December of that year, Socs had presented him with a bottle of Wild Turkey in its holiday box and a card with Chanukah greetings. Neither of the Howellses could think of a tactful way to set the misunderstanding straight, and it didn’t matter as long as they were careful not to order pizza on any of the Jewish holidays, when Socs would invariably make a point of greeting them appropriately. They were uncomfortably trapped into false pretenses because they had left it too long ever to explain.

  Now Sam and David only exchanged a look; they didn’t want to appear foolish themselves by revealing to Netta their own innocence—that the anachronism of a Revolutionary War pizza had never occurred to them. They followed her into the restaurant, where it took a little while to get the order straightened out.

  Netta came back to the car with them to be sure Anna Tyson was fastened into her seat belt in the back seat, and to give her a quick kiss. Then she moved to the driver’s window and leaned in and kissed David lightly on the cheek. “Thanks for baby-sitting. I’m sure I won’t be long,” she said, before going along to get into Martin’s car where he had pulled in ahead of them at the curb.

  Once Netta and Martin arrived at his office, Netta cleared a place on the desk and put the pizza box down between them. When she discovered that the wedges hadn’t been sufficiently severed one from the other, she took up a pair of scissors laid out on Martin’s blotter and snipped the gooey pie into neat triangles. He was unusually impressed; Netta had always seemed so removed from practical concerns.

  “That’s great,” he said. “You just cut along the dotted lines. We always use one of those roller things. It never works, though. All the cheese runs together.” He was surprised, as he always was, when one of his family’s habits turned out not to be universal. But as she stretched her arm across the desk, Martin noticed dark, smudged bruises where her short sleeve pulled away from her upper arm, and another fading bruise along her collarbone. “Netta. What happened?”

  She looked up from the pizza to see what he was talking about, and when she saw her arm exposed, she let it drop to her side, the scissors in her hand falling against her skirt, where they left a smear of oil against the pale blue print. She sat as she was without answering, and then she gestured with her free hand in a brushing-away sweep of her arm, as though she could push the question back to Martin. When her eyes became glassy with tears, he realized that she was going to confide to him so much more than he wanted to know.

  She settled into the chair across from his and looked down at the scissors she was still holding, idly clicking them open and shut. She let out a gentle exhalation of breath, not quite a sigh, and shook her head backward with her customary flick. It was a preparatory gesture, Martin decided unhappily.

  “It’s true,” she said, “that I’m not sure how to handle the whole thing anymore. I mean, I know I’ve done a lot of good, and I’ve never met anyone who’s so… I don’t know…” And she paused to consider, and to gather her forces. “Owen’s so needy. So sad. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person as lost. I mean, there’s a
lot of denial going on in that whole family, I think. The Crofts are very controlling, especially Judith. And they’ve refused to let him move home.” She snapped the scissors shut, putting them on the desk, where the blades, resting on the absorbent blotter, left another feathery spear of oil.

  Martin didn’t have anything to say; he was unmoved. What Vic had told him about David and Netta crossed his mind. The thought of Netta’s victimization, even possible brutalization, by Owen Croft offended a kind of fastidiousness in Martin.

  She looked directly at him in appeal, holding her hands out slightly, almost in supplication. “I didn’t want Owen to hurt himself. I can see now that he just couldn’t stand it. He just couldn’t be hurt anymore by… by any sort of censure. Oh, God! He grabbed one of my knives down from that magnetic rack. We were standing right there in the kitchen.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again, and she glanced away in an attempt to compose herself. “He’s just so emotionally injured, and I’m the only one he can come to. At least, I can offer him a moral base. Do you see what I mean? He has to count on someone. I don’t think anyone can live in the world with… well… a total absence of trust. And I do think there’s a person there with so much value. But then I seemed not to trust him!” Tears were running down her face, and she wiped them away with the back of her hands the way a small child would; she was clearly filled with regret at the memory of her own behavior. “And… well, we were both pretty drunk. I should have just left him alone. He had his wrist over the sink. I don’t know if he really would have cut himself. I don’t know. I just don’t know. But of course he didn’t mean…” and she gestured to the bruises on her arm. “He didn’t have any idea what he was doing. He only wanted me to leave him alone.”

  She had been bending forward toward Martin in an effort to make herself clear, and suddenly she seemed to deflate. She settled back in her chair, and she was such a small woman that she appeared to shrink within her clothes in an attitude of despair. Her downslanted eyes were swollen, the fragile flesh beneath them was shadowed, and across her cheekbones and along the graceful stretch of bone from ear to jaw, her skin was taut and luminous. She was so slight, so small and vulnerable, sunk deeply into her chair just across the desk from Martin. She was utterly and obviously defenseless.