Greensleeves

  The porter had added my suitcases to the shorter of the two Pan Am queues. I paid him off and from long habit sat down to wait on the camel-bag, which is very good for sitting on in queues. It’s my favorite, though most eccentric-looking, piece of luggage—a pouch-type affair made of camel hide, all buckles and pockets outside and apparently limitless space within, which I got years ago in Cairo and have been hard to separate from since. I’m the impulsive type—I tend to buy large, awkward objects on the way to the plane, or abruptly decide to take my ski boots—and I’ve never exhausted the camel-bag’s capacity. In Zagreb once it managed to swallow four extra books, a large Turkish coffeepot I’d suddenly acquired, and Jeanne’s mohair lap-robe, on top of its usual load.

  There were only two ahead of me in the queue. I wished it were twenty. For a moment it seemed inconceivable—just pure nonsense—that I should be in Portland airport, sitting on my camel-bag in another Europe-bound queue. It was pure nonsense. But there I was, and all I could do was try not to think about it. I’d already endured an eighty-mile ride by bus and limousine in the nerve-racking company of my own thoughts, after a leavetaking in Mary’s Creek that still ached like a tooth. Uncle Syd had been sad, upset about not driving me to Portland—though he hasn’t tackled city traffic for twenty years—Aunt Doris barely restraining tears . . . I too numb to say good-by to her. When the time came, she looked so bewildered and—I don’t know, bleak—standing there at the bus door in her little squarish knit suit with the Garden Club pin on the lapel, that all in a rush I felt I couldn’t bear to leave her, wished desperately I weren’t going, and couldn’t speak at all. It remained to be seen whether I could control my present untidy mess of mixed emotions until I could make it onto the plane.

  “Excuse me,” said a porter, politely doubling himself to the level of my drooping head. “Are you Miss Annie Mae Johnson?”

  “No. Sorry.” Oh, I was sorry—sorry I was not Miss Annie Mae Johnson, or the porter, or anybody else on earth except me, with anybody else’s set of problems. Quit thinking, I told myself in disgust. You’ll live. Recite German declensions or something. Count every pair of white shoes to walk in through those doors . . . The queue moved up a notch. I shoved my bags forward, sat back down, and fixed my eyes on the doors.

  Three seconds later a tall man walked swiftly through them and stopped, silhouetted against the brilliant sunshine outside. It was a silhouette I knew well, topped by an unmistakable white crew cut, and it had never looked so good to me.

  “Uncle Frosty!” I cried, springing off the camel-bag and waving my arms. Several people turned to stare at me, but I didn’t care—he’d spotted me. His long legs covered the distance between us, and a moment later his arms went around me in a tight, hard hug. “Oh, Uncle Frosty, I’m so glad to see you,” I gabbled against his shoulder. “With your train late and all—how did you ever do it?”

  “Drove eighty,” he said calmly. Uncle Frosty is not an emotional type. Incidentally, he’s not my uncle, either; he’s Charles Frost, a lifelong friend of Dad’s and a sort of ex-officio parent of mine since I was five years old. He disentangled himself from my arms and hair and handbag, and pushed me far enough away to peer into my face. “Well, Shan? How are things?”

  “Oh—all right,” I quavered. I pulled myself more or less together. “Quite all right. Don’t look so worried.”

  “Your telephone message wasn’t exactly soothing. Isn’t this departure more than usually sudden, even for you?”

  “Yes. But I guess it’s more than usually sensible, so that’s that.” I attempted a bright smile. “I am glad you got home in time to say good-by.”

  “I wish I’d been in time to chauffeur you up here this morning.”

  I suddenly realized I wasn’t sorry. Eighty miles with Uncle Frosty, who really knows me, and I’d have been all to pieces. It wasn’t even quite safe to have him turn up now—the only thing gluing me together was the determination not to think, just to make it somehow onto that plane. The loudspeaker crackled out some announcement. I shouted over it, “How was San Francisco? Enjoy your trip?”

  “Not much. It was just business.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know you had clients in California.”

  “I don’t, but an old law-school buddy has kindly saddled me with one of his. I did enjoy seeing old Newton again. He’s completely bald,” Uncle Frosty added with deplorable satisfaction.

  I smiled and began to feel infinitesimally better—just because he was there, sounding sane and normal and as if the world were right side up instead of upside down. He went on, in the same even tone, “Shan, I called your Aunt Doris before I came out here. She seemed a mite upset.”

  “Yes—well, her usual farewell dither. She—”

  “I got the impression it was a good deal more than that. She said you were upset.”

  “Oh, no. I mean, naturally I hated to leave her and Uncle Syd—”

  “She told me, very forcefully, that she was sure you didn’t want to leave at all.”

  “Uncle Frosty, she can’t comprehend anybody wanting to leave Mary’s Creek, once they’ve achieved a state of grace and got there. You know Aunt Doris.” . . . Poor, dear, warmhearted, exasperating, indomitably provincial Aunt Doris, pattering about her comfortable old kitchen in a fragrance of cookies and fried chicken, trying desperately to understand what was the matter with me, arriving at all the wrong conclusions, doing all the wrong well-meant things.

  “Then,” Uncle Frosty persisted, “you are not harboring some secret longing to stay on in Mary’s Creek?”

  “My word, no.”

  “You are, in fact, overjoyed to be going back to Europe?”

  I struggled to say “yes” so we could drop the subject, but it came out “no.”

  Uncle Frosty’s left eyebrow, which is an individualist and slants upward, lifted a trifle higher. After a minute he said, “That seems a remarkably unsatisfactory situation.”

  I didn’t contradict him. I didn’t have to answer, because suddenly the one man between me and the counter departed, and there I was, scrabbling in my bag for ticket and passport.

  “Good morning!” said the beaming young man behind the counter.

  I pushed my documents across. I do find aggressively cheerful people hard going, especially when I’m in a totally uncheerful mood.

  “Let’s see . . . Lightley, Miss Shannon Kathleen. Off to London, are we?” he added, scribbling things on my ticket and flipping papers about. “How’d you like to slip me in your suitcase, hm?”

  There was more of this fingernail-on-the-blackboard sort of badinage, mercifully cut off by another reverberating announcement over the loudspeaker. Then the young man got busy talking on his little phone to whoever it is they always talk to, and I turned back to Uncle Frosty, who was regarding me speculatively.

  He said, “If you don’t want to stay in Mary’s Creek but don’t want to go back to Europe either, what do you want to do?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Don’t give me that. I’ve never seen you yet without an idea—usually half a dozen. You must have tried to break this deadlock.”

  Feeling unutterably tired all of a sudden, I said, “Oh, I had some notion of going to business school somewhere this summer. But Aunt Doris—and Dad—scotched that.”

  “Business school?” echoed Uncle Frosty, squinting at me.

  “Well, you can’t get a job just by knowing how to talk French and German and act in plays. So I thought a business course, maybe here in Portland . . . but you should have heard Aunt Doris.”

  “What did she say?”

  I sighed, remembering all we’d both said, and enacted Aunt Doris for a minute. “‘Shannon Lightley! A girl your age? Why, Sugah, how could I let you start off by yourself to live in a big place like Portland, with goodness knows what kind of . . .’—and so on. I keep forgetting how dangerous the wor
ld looks to Aunt Doris. But really, Uncle Frosty, considering that since I was eleven years old I’ve been ‘starting off by myself’ and frequently ending up by myself in Paris, Berlin, Belgrade, Rome . . .”

  “She keeps forgetting that,” Uncle Frosty said gently. “Didn’t you write your dad?”

  “Yes, three weeks ago. For permission, for tuition money—and explained everything clearly. I thought. He just sent a plane ticket to London and said quit being quixotic and come on home.”

  Uncle Frosty drew a deep breath. “Ever since our kindergarten days there’ve been times when I longed to punch Greg Lightley in the nose for a sheer, pigheaded fool. In our kindergarten days I used to do it.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Did he punch you back?”

  “No. He always sat down very earnestly and thought things over again. It’s why I’ve never been able to stay mad at him.”

  “He won’t think this over. He considered my whole idea of coming back here quixotic in the first place.”

  “And was it?” Uncle Frosty attempted to meet my eye.

  “Yes,” I said, avoiding his. “So I just—phoned and got my reservation.”

  “Not even a cable of protest?”

  “Oh—cables from me scare Dad. He always thinks I’m dead or something. And being scared makes him angry. And . . .” I let it trail off, thinking bitterly, I should have cabled in the first place. Instead of writing. No explanations. Neck broken, send hundred dollars.

  “Shan,” Uncle Frosty said, in a voice that suddenly put me on my guard. “There’s one thing you haven’t even touched on. What happened to—”

  “OK, all set I guess, Miss Lightley,” cried the young man, tossing his phone on its hook and diving down to tag my luggage. “Departure 11:55, Gate 17, Concourse B . . . These three bags everything?”

  “I’ll carry the little one,” I said, snatching the camel-bag just in time as he slid the others onto the conveyor belt. I stood frozen, watching my two cases toddle irrevocably away from me, as if on their own little legs, and vanish one after the other through a pair of leather curtains and beyond recall. I was as good as on the plane.

  The young man banged his stapler and handed over my papers, asking cheerily, “Don’t suppose you’re any kin to that Gregory Lightley comes on the TV news sometimes at six o’clock?”

  “I don’t suppose so,” I mumbled. I can do better when I have my wits about me, but at the moment I was witless. I turned away so hastily that I almost ran Uncle Frosty down. He sidestepped, took the camel-bag and my elbow, and propelled me around a passing wedge of people and luggage.

  “I was about to ask,” he said firmly, “what happened to your plans for college?”

  I knew he’d been about to ask that. “Oh—they—sort of evaporated,” I muttered.

  He glanced at me, then stopped and faced me. “Shan, one of your primary reasons for coming back to the States was to have four years of American college. The University of Oregon, because it was typical, and you said—”

  “I know what I said!” I could hear myself saying it, in eager, impassioned tones, to him, to Dad, to Aunt Doris, to anyone who would listen—ten months ago. “But I’ve changed my mind. You couldn’t pay me to go to the University of Oregon. I don’t want to go to any college. I’m sick and tired of school, I—”

  “Not even a European university?”

  “No! I am absolutely dead set against a European university. The very idea makes me simply—” I took a breath and shut up until I had my voice in hand. “That’s not to say I won’t end up in one, of course. Dad’ll talk me into it. He can always sound more reasonable than I can.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Well, it won’t in forty years. So I turn out mongrel expatriate after all. So what’s the difference?” The loudspeaker drowned me out—fortunately, since I might have talked nonsense for quite a while—and I suddenly realized what it was saying. “That’s my flight,” I said in a strangled-sounding voice.

  “Still fifteen minutes.” Uncle Frosty studied me gravely. “Time for a cup of coffee.”

  “No thanks. I— Look here, Uncle Frosty,” I said, making a desperate attempt to smile carelessly. “Why don’t you just run on? I hate long-drawn-out farewells, don’t you? And I’m all right now, I’m perfectly fine—”

  “You’re perfectly miserable. You’re in a state.”

  “No, really. I’ve just been telling you—”

  “Old dear, I know what you’ve been telling me. But the performance wasn’t quite up to your usual standard.” For a minute we stood looking at each other. He added, “Would it help if I wrote your dad?”

  “No. Nothing would help.” Abruptly, I felt large, revolting tears of self-pity welling into my eyes. In a panic I said, “Uncle Frosty, once I’m on that plane I’ll be all right. But I’ll never make it unless you go away. I mean it. Please. Just leave. Leave the airport. Get in your car and drive to town.”

  He drew a long breath. “All right, Shan. Good-by. Write.” He jerked around, walked rapidly to the nearest doors, and went out.

  Just in time, too. I snatched up the bag and headed blindly for the ladies’ lounge, where I sat on a stiff leather sofa getting myself under decent control until he’d had ample time to get a mile or two away and the reiterated announcements for my flight were beginning to sound final and urgent. Then I fished my ticket out and hurried down the long vista of Concourse B.

  In Gate 17’s boarding area, my fellow passengers were already forming into an untidy queue beside the ramp; the plane was visible out the wide rear window. Two latecomers were still at the ticket barrier—a thin man and the inevitable fat one. There is always a fat man just ahead of me as I board a plane, I don’t know why. I could remember standing behind one in Zurich, in Milan, in Athens, in Vienna—my future stretched out clearly before me, translated into a long line of fat men, all exactly alike except that one smelled of garlic, one of beer, one of schnapps, one of eau de cologne . . . Just three more minutes, I told myself. Hang on three more minutes and it’ll all be over.

  I closed my eyes, feeling very peculiar. The loudspeaker blared something—it sounded louder than usual. Then somebody said, “Your ticket, please.” I blinked, saw the fat man struggling through the turnstile and the official extending a hand to me.

  “I don’t want to go,” I heard myself saying in an odd, high voice. The official stared, said, “Miss, you’ll have to hurry”—and all at once I felt quite normal, in fact, preternaturally composed, like a duchess at the vicar’s tea. I stepped up to the desk and looked the official in the eye. “I’m not leaving,” I informed him. “So sorry to be a nuisance, but I find I can’t get away. Could you tell me about turning back my ticket and that sort of thing?”

  I have no idea what he replied. He said something. Quite a number of somethings, I expect. I dimly remember assuring him that whatever he suggested would be quite all right. I then withdrew. My stately calm lasted about halfway back to the lobby, then changed to wild exhilaration. I ran like a hare up the stairs leading to the roof, burst out into the sunshine, and for the first time noticed that it was a glorious day. Still clutching the camel-bag, I stood on the parapet with the wind whipping my hair, watching a big Pan Am plane taxi slowly into the middle distance and glorying that I wasn’t on it. It then occurred to me that my suitcases were on it. And that Dad and Jeanne were flying back from Stockholm especially to meet it. And that Uncle Frosty was now somewhere between this and downtown Portland, thinking me gone.

  Everybody thought me gone. My wardrobe was on my back, except for whatever odd bits might turn up in the camel-bag. I had about $47 in cash, one probably unredeemable airline ticket, all the same unsolved problems, and no plans. I hadn’t even an idea what to do next.

  The impulsive type. Quixotic. And in top form today.

  I threw a
last dazed look at my erstwhile transportation, now poised for takeoff, and crept back downstairs. Consequences settled on my mind like ravens. I’d have to cable Dad. Face that awful, cheery young man again and do something about my ticket. Explain the inexplicable to everybody and sundry . . . Well, I couldn’t do any of those ghastly things, not yet.

  The loudspeaker broke into my near panic with the information that the limousine to downtown Portland was departing in five minutes. Before the echoes had died away, I was hurrying toward the nearest doors, terrified that I might miss it. What I would do in downtown Portland was immaterial—my only thought was to get away from the airport. Dodging people and baggage carts, with a guilty eye on the Pan Am desk, I made it to the doors, banged through them, and found myself face to face with Uncle Frosty.

  I regarded him in silence. He smiled faintly, probably at my expression, and remarked, “My hunches seem to be in good working order today.”

  The scream of a jet engine cut through the last words; a large shape streaked past the terminal building, lifted, climbed steeply, and diminished into a silver flash.

  “There goes my plane,” I said, in somebody else’s voice.

  “Yes, we’ll have to phone your dad.” He glanced at his watch. “Within a couple of hours, or we’ll get him out of bed. I’ll do the talking.”

  “But what will you tell him? What is there to—”

  “I’ll tell him I’ve taken our favorite puzzle home with me until further notice, if it’s all the same to him—and it’s going to have to be.” He reached for the camel-bag. “Come on, you can have your hysterics in the car.”

  3

  One way Uncle Frosty differs from all my other parents is that I never have to cope with him. He copes with me. He’s been at it since I was five, when Dad brought me to the States right after the divorce. He’s the only thing I remember about my first day in America—a tall, tanned man, white-haired already at twenty-eight, standing in an echoey place full of people (Portland airport, I suppose), smiling down at me and saying, “Well, Greg, I’d know her anywhere.” Then he offered me a large, firm, reassuring kind of hand and said, “Come on, I’ve found out where they keep the ice cream in this place. Let’s go get some.” Dad says I never even looked back.