In the kitchen, with the windows open on the lawn side, I could hear them talking and laughing.
Ed was going in and out with dishes. He was already nearly a young man. He hadn’t grown his hair like some of his school-friends. He liked Bob Dylan, and sang his songs quite tunelessly around the house. He seemed to worry a lot about things. The atom bomb especially haunted his very dreams, like it did so many in those days. At school they had showed him how to get under his desk should the world happen to blow up. When he came home that evening, he had made me practise too, under the kitchen table. The two of us looking out, and all the good earth gone to ashes.
But in truth it was hard going out into the world, when the same world might be removed in a sudden great flash.
After the pudding course, he stayed out a long time. I thought I could hear Dr King’s pleasing voice talking to him, and Ed’s own smaller voice responding. It made me happy somehow. I washed the dishes and the platters with enjoyment, which a person wouldn’t ordinarily. Ed came back in.
‘Dr King wants to say thank you, Ma.’
‘I’m in my dirty apron, Ed, I can’t go out there just now.’
‘I don’t think he minds things like that.’
‘No?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
So I went out. Mrs Wolohan was telling a story. She only really spoke at length when she was at ease. Sometimes she was content just to listen. But she was telling a story, and the men were laughing as she went along the stations of it. I don’t remember what it was. I just remember the ease, and the happiness at the table.
‘Oh, Lilly,’ said Mrs Wolohan. ‘Dr King wants to compliment you on your pecan pie.’
‘I never made it before. I was frightened making it.’
‘It was the best pecan pie I ever ate,’ said Dr King.
‘That’s so kind of you,’ I said.
‘You have a fine boy there. What do you think he will do after high school? I questioned him to the best of my abilities, but he wouldn’t tell me.’
‘He wants to do something with farming, you know.’
‘A fine boy,’ he said again, as if somehow he were clearing up a mystery. Which in a way he was. A fine boy. Yes, Ed was. Ed was a fine boy. A magnificent boy.
‘I’m very proud of him,’ I said, and added, though why exactly I could not say, ‘I love him very much.’
‘He could do anything he wants,’ said Dr King, opening his arms wide in the dark air to illustrate this ‘anything’, and smiling.
‘Thank you, sir.’
That was more or less what we said. How is it that oftentimes the most important things that happen are at the end of the day composed of chit-chat?
When God is happy I am sure he chats with the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
I went back into the kitchen in a strange state of excitement. I was shaking as I rubbed down the surfaces with an old cloth.
I had hoped to save a bit of that pecan pie for Mr Nolan, since he was a Southern man too, but when the plate came back empty, I didn’t mind.
*
It’s an easy phrase to say, and harder to say what it means, like faith itself, but it was true, I saw it, I heard him say the words, Ed ‘loved his country’, just like Bill did later. I loved Ireland, in spite of all, and I was so grateful to America, for finally offering me sanctuary. But Ed, flesh of my flesh, was of America. America made him and America unstitched the gansey of him.
I am remembering the morning he came to me, with his draft letter in his hand. He is standing there in my narrow wooden bedroom, and he wants me to read the document. It is official-looking, urgent, full of intent. Of course it is not a death warrant, but it is a warrant of sorts, that’s how it reads to me. I look up and his face is deeply serious, like a philosopher’s. His father’s face shines through his features, the man he never knew, and that I knew but barely understood.
‘That’s the letter they send, you know, Ma,’ he said, unnecessarily.
I was gazing at him. I was seeing I thought something for the first time. His features were regular, square, like a portrait. He stood before me, and I gazed at his face. I think I saw how doubt wavered there, and courage, and of course the blessed ignorance of what was truly to come. I thought I knew what a war was and I certainly did not wish him to go. If I had been asked I would have said so. But no one had asked me and now I said nothing. His face, a portrait of someone lovely to me, looked suddenly unfinished. The thought made me dizzy, panicky. Those finishing touches, that it is the work of a good mother to supply, were missing. I was thinking that and felt the terrible treachery in the thought. I didn’t even know where the thought came from, and hardly what it meant. I had failed in something, I had failed. I had not managed to complete him. And now I would have no more time to try and do so.
He was called up and of course he went. He might have squirrelled out of it somehow, with his college place, but he didn’t.
Some weeks later, there we were, in Bridgehampton, the army bus pulling in. Ed wasn’t the only one waiting to board. I recognised the boy who had worked all year in the Candy Kitchen. One of the Yastrzemski sons also, Joe, who was going to take over his father’s farm some day. All the mothers and fathers standing back, smiling and waving, I am sure under strict instructions.
I held my unfinished son for as long as he would let me, until he pulled away gently.
‘I was going to leave my old Buick with Joe Yastrzemski, but I guess that won’t work,’ he said.
‘You won’t be gone too long, honey,’ I said.
‘You ask Mr Nolan to turn the engine over now and then, okay, Ma?’ he said.
‘All right, I will, Ed,’ I said.
‘Okay, Ma, you look after yourself.’
‘I will, Ed. You be sure and do the same thing, you be sure.’
*
When Ed had been in Vietnam for two years or so, and my little black and white TV was telling me every evening things I did not want to hear and showing me things I did not want to see, but had to hear and see, because that was the fearsome hell where my Ed was, something happened. It happened out of the blue, pure coincidence. I was down in New York city on some errand for Mrs Wolohan, I do not even remember what it was, that part of the memory has fallen away. I may have just looked in on her city apartment or fetched something there, but I had crossed back over towards Central Park, and was heading down Third Avenue – going where as I say I do not know.
I wasn’t paying too much attention to anything I am sure, but somehow or other I became aware of a little group of people coming towards me on the sidewalk. I was soon staring at the man in this group, because, although twenty years had passed, I thought I knew him – I thought it was Joe Kinderman, to the life. He was bobbing about in that springy walk of his, and talking, and waving his hands, all very normal for him, and characteristic. So vivid to me that the years fell away. If it wasn’t Joe Kinderman, I thought, it’s his double. I don’t know if I wanted it to be him. I don’t know what I thought about it. I might have dived away into a cross street, I might have turned on my heel and hurried back towards Central Park. Instead I stopped and watched him coming towards me. He seemed to be caught in that little crowd of people, maybe theatre-goers returning from a matinée show, I thought, there was a woman, a black woman, and three younger people, maybe her daughters, and they were just strolling, strolling along.
All the many details of Joe and his story flooded into my head. I saw Mike Scopello in detective mode as of old, with his conscientious face, and the rats of fear from those days poked their noses back into view. I watched him coming. So far he was quite unaware of me, in fact he was laughing now, as if he knew the people around him.
Now we were only a few feet apart. He caught my watching eye.
‘Joe,’ I said. ‘Joe.’
As if it was the most natural thing in the world, and he was some old friend. I wondered bizarrely is this how it always is when people meet who have had strange history t
ogether, jailer and prisoner, or the like, hello Sam, hello there Sol? And the dream the prisoner had of killing his jailer when he got the chance melts away in the powerful pull of politeness?
Joe, for it was certainly him, though that bit older, with his curly hair greyer as you would expect, and his face somehow longer, narrower, and the skin itself greyer, stopped, and touched the shoulders of the two girls nearest him, as if he might protect them.
‘Is that you, Lilly?’ he said.
‘It is me,’ I said.
‘Who is this?’ said the woman with him, very politely, smiling, a fine, strong face.
But Joe didn’t seem to know how to answer her, so he just stayed there, dumb for the moment, the cabs on Third Avenue as raucous as rooks, the half-hearted blue of the sky looking down at us. I do not suppose God loved me much then, because my heart stirred with a murderous desire, the humiliation of what he had done sluiced through me, the memory of his abandonment flooded me as if I was some sort of storm drain. I dared not move a muscle, in case I sprang forward and tried to do him some harm, tore at his throat with my teeth, hit at him with my bare hands, which would not have been wise in that indifferent New York street, but was an almost irresistible impulse.
‘Ella,’ he said to the woman, ‘would you go back to the hotel with the girls? Would you? I just have to talk to this lady. I won’t be long. I will be down to you directly.’
‘Of course, Joe,’ she said, trustingly, I thought, I noticed. Trustingly. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘It is,’ said Joe. ‘Surely is.’
The three girls and the woman – yes, a fine, curvy woman, I thought, I noticed, in one of those sheath dresses, and all smooth and nice, and her skin so dark it shone with a private, secret light – turned back along the sidewalk and left us there.
‘Well,’ said Joe. ‘Lilly. I knew we would meet again some day.’
‘Did you, Joe?’ I said. Oh, I felt wretched there. There had been some dark trick of time. He looked like a man in his very prime, but I felt shrunken and old. I had had Ed so late. Maybe I had had no business bearing a child so late. Maybe that was it.
‘Do you want to step in?’ he said, indicating the door of the Italian deli that was just there. ‘We can talk in there, Lilly.’
‘All right,’ I said. I followed him in. Unwanted thoughts kept hitting at my brain, unwanted. The allure of Joe, his oddness, the fact that you couldn’t ever get a handle on him, decide definitely who he was. The pleasure it used to be, to be with him. This was not the way to be thinking. I should have held on to the fury, I knew. Then there was the choosing of the table, the waiter shepherding us, Joe asking for coffee for himself and tea for me, it was hopeless, it was like years ago … For all I knew this man was a murderer, maybe that mad Swede had been falsely accused, he certainly had a cruel heart, cruel enough to abandon his pregnant wife.
He seemed content with the silence that sat between us then, for a long time. The little scabby-faced waiter came with cups and pots and we were given what Joe had ordered.
‘This is stupid,’ I said, ‘sitting here. I should go.’
I wasn’t talking to him really, but to myself. What could I say to him? He had left his pregnant wife without a word why and never a word since.
‘I’m so sorry, Lilly,’ he said. ‘You can’t be thinking too well of me. Sure was unforgivable, what happened. I should have maybe written it all out in that letter for you, at the time, but I didn’t, I know. I didn’t. Just a short stupid letter I sent. Lots of things I didn’t do. I look back from this vantage, and I wonder at myself. Why did I do that? How did I do that? I suppose I can look back and tell you why I think I did it, why I think now, I mean.’
‘I was pregnant, Joe. You just left me. You just disappeared. One day, Joe was there, and then the next, no Joe. Who was that woman, Joe, who were those people?’
‘That’s my family, Lilly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My wife, my daughters.’
‘You got married again, Joe?’
‘Lilly, yes I did. I went back to where I come from, where I am known, where people know me for who I am, and I married a girl that was local.’
He shook his head, like he was hearing someone else’s despicable story, and then at least had the good grace to repeat: ‘I’m so sorry.’
It was my turn to say nothing, and I knew well enough that he would wait till I did speak, and not break the silence. But I had to wait for the strange sludge of grief to die away in my throat. A whole minute probably passed. Then I managed something, but it didn’t sound like talk, more like a little engine starting to chew up its own spinning parts.
‘You have a son, Joe. He’s in Vietnam. He never knew his father.’
‘I always did want a son. Tell me, Lilly, forgive me asking, but is he white, my son?’
I was completely surprised.
‘Is he white?’ I said.
‘Yeah.’
‘Why, Joe?’
‘Well …’
‘Your other family there, they’re black.’
‘Yep.’
‘But you’re not black, Joe. You’re as white as me.’
‘Not as white as that,’ he said, and gave a little laugh. ‘Lilly by name, and Lilly by nature. You see, Lilly, years ago, I had this great fear, this great fear that … I’m not saying I know if it’s right or wrong, but being with Ella and the girls is right for me, because … My great-grandfather, the one who swam the tunnel to get to his wedding, you remember? He was white all right, but his bride was black, and all his children. And Jürgen Neetebom, he was the only white man ever in my family. And when I was born, his great-grandchild, by God if I wasn’t so black at all, which I know now can happen, it’s, you know, skipping generations, and I was very confused in those days, Lilly, and I was afraid when I got out into the world, and was able to live as a white person, that people would find out about me, or that my skin would turn back, so I used to use all those lotions, you remember, and the bread soda and God knows, and when you got pregnant, I feared, I feared so bad the child would be black, and I knew you would leave me, I knew I would lose everything, so … I couldn’t face the thought of standing there, peering down into the cot, and I would see my true face, my true face in the face of my child.’
‘But Joe, your true face, that’s a good face. I wouldn’t have minded one bit.’
‘I wouldn’t feel that now. All that fear. Times are different now. Changing, anyhow. I feel such pride in my race, Lilly, I do. I love my girls.’
‘Of course you do, Joe.’
‘But back then … I can’t tell you properly what that was like. It was being burned in a fire. The thought of losing everything.’
‘Losing everything, Joe? You did lose everything.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. I left before it was an established fact. So, I chose to stay there in my home place. And that’s what I did.’
‘And all the trouble with the police, Joe?’
‘Well, that all was all right, Lilly, that man was caught.’
It seemed to me suddenly that Joe was a very unusual man, he was a very unusual man sitting across from me. I remembered him as being a tower of a person, a beacon. And he still was. It seemed to me sitting there, angry and resentful as I may have felt also, that he still was. He was Joe, Joe in America, with his own particular and unusual story.
‘Joe, it wouldn’t have mattered to me one tiny bit what colour you were, or Ed was, for that matter. Not one tiny bit.’
‘Oh, but, it mattered to me. That was the fear. You live in a big box of fear. You start that sort of subterfuge, Lilly, and then it’s fear all the way. And I am mightily sorry for you being mixed up with me like that. You’re a good person, Lilly, of course you wouldn’t have minded. But I didn’t know that. I was thinking, thinking, thinking. All fear, crazy thoughts, strange thoughts, things that madmen are thinking. You were better off without me.’
‘That’s what you
say. But I loved you, Joe. That would always have been enough for me. I know what fear is too, Joe. I didn’t feel afraid with you.’
‘You were so lovely, Lilly, and it was a privilege to be with you, yes sir.’
‘I don’t know whether to thank you for that, or throw this scalding tea over you.’
‘I wouldn’t blame you, one bit. Are you all right for money, Lilly? I have a cab business down home, it’s my own car, I could send you something?’
‘I’m fine, Joe, God knows. I’ve been lucky. People helped me. Mike Scopello helped me. Lots of people.’
‘I’m glad Mike helped you. He was always a king of a man, a king.’
Then Joe pushed back his chair.
‘I better go, Lilly. I am mighty proud to think my son is in Vietnam. I think he is so brave. I will think about that. And if you want to tell him I am thinking about it, do tell him.’
Then Joe got up. He breathed out a long heavy breath, and nodded his head. It was so like him of old. But this wasn’t of old. This was the dry fields of the future.
‘Do you have a picture of him?’ he said. ‘Of my son?’
‘No,’ I said, lying. There was always a picture of Ed in my purse.
‘I thought about that baby a million times. I didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.’
‘It would have been the easiest thing in the world to find out,’ I said.
‘Maybe,’ he said, and nodded again. ‘You often talked about America, Lilly, I remember, you said a lot of things about America that was wise, how strange she is, and deep, and wide. I often think of that. I often think of you. I am not a heartless man. But I am not a good man.’
Then he turned towards the light of the street. Somehow in the contrasting glare I could see him better now. His face was not just ashen as it used to be, but deeply lined. There was something in those lines more eloquent than anything he had said. I felt it was almost reprehensible even as I felt it, but I felt sorry for him suddenly. There had always been a weight on Joe that no one could see, not with human eyes.