6
On Christmas morning Paul drove down with Leah and Bill to Meg’s house. This was not their holiday, but it was most people’s, and it was very welcome, a beautiful time for what was left of the family to be together, along with a pleasant assemblage of friends and neighbors who came every year.
Three of Meg’s children were there, Agnes in from New Mexico, Lucy with her current man, and also, to Paul’s slight discomfiture, Timothy. The two exchanged the briefest of greetings and turned toward other people.
The scene was a Rockwell illustration or a Currier and Ives print, Paul thought. Outdoors, the lawn was white, and on the old stone wall, snow lay frozen into crested billows, like waves caught in midsurge. A splendid tree, covered with a lifetime’s collection of glass ornaments, glittered in the living room. On the mantel stood an array of Christmas cards and at either end hung red cotton stockings.
“Stockings for the dogs, too,” Meg said. “We never forget Penny and Dave at Christmas.”
Penny and Dave were a pair of Irish water spaniels who shared the master bedroom with Larry and Meg. Their mild gold-brown eyes, flanked by drooping chocolate-brown ears, observed the party from the dining-room corner where they had gone to lie down when dinner began.
Things changed. Meg’s proper mother would never have allowed dogs in the dining room during dinner. There were no more maids in gray silk uniforms to serve the meal, which had been prepared by Meg and was served by an elderly helper. But other things did not change. The old house was there, only slightly modified by the transformation of the solarium into an office wing, with boarding kennels across the courtyard. And the dinner table was the same. Pine branches trimmed with smaller glittering balls and narrow red velvet bows made the centerpiece. There were turkey, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, turnips, mashed potatoes and creamed onions, hot rolls and homemade cranberry sauce with orange peel, just as Paul remembered it; cider and wine and a bowl of eggnog on the sideboard, marzipan and stuffed dates in Grandmother Angelique’s silver bowls between the candelabra on the table.
He would not have wanted to miss this day. It’s the continuity that charms, he reflected, the fact that some things in a world that is so frantically whirling can remain; it gives you an anchor. One didn’t find many places like this anymore; young Meg—“young Meg” was almost sixty now—was still living in her parents’ house. And he, her cousin, still kept in touch. He looked down the length of the table. Lucy and Leah were chatting; you’d think they’d see enough of each other in the shop every day. Paul stole a quick look at Tim, who, in his open-collared, wrinkled, plaid woolen shirt was obviously “making a statement” to all who were dressed in conventional holiday clothes. Childish, when you came down to it, Paul thought. A childish defiance. At one time he would not even have noticed Tim’s shirt or cared if he had noticed it. It was the event in Jerusalem that made the difference. So now his thoughts went to Thomas, the brother whom he had never favored, and he found himself wishing that Thomas were here today or that he would be safe in Vietnam. And once again he felt the familiar awareness of blood-tie.
A man’s voice interrupted his mental wanderings.
“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
Paul looked across at an urbane gentleman in his mid-forties.
“I’m Paul Werner,” he said cordially, “a cousin of Meg’s.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Meg, who, at the foot of the table, sat between Paul and the stranger. “I thought I had introduced you. This is Mr. Jordaine, Victor Jordaine, a good friend of Tim’s.”
Jordaine picked up the conversation. “Of course I know who you are.”
“How so?”
The man looked surprised. “The Werner banking house? How could I not know?”
Paul didn’t like the remark, which it seemed to him smacked too much of flattery. And he replied, “It depends what business you’re in, I suppose, or where you’re from, whether you know it or not.”
“I’m in a number of businesses. And generally speaking, I say I’m from Europe. That covers a good deal of space.” Jordaine smiled pleasantly.
Mindful of his duty as a guest to continue the conversation, Paul remarked, “You must enjoy traveling.”
“Not really. I do what I must do for business. And I hate hotels. I keep my own apartment in a few cities, Paris, London, et cetera.”
As Jordaine spoke, Paul tried to “place” him. He had a very faint foreign accent. And he certainly did not resemble any of Meg’s other friends here. Those were hearty country types, or rather they were city people who, through taste and habit, had evolved into country types; the kind of people who showed dogs, kept sheep, talked about fescue grass, and, like responsible citizens, manned the polls at election time. This man in his dark, expensive suit with his dark, sardonic face was different.
Meg, the proper hostess, explained, “Mr. Jordaine is our neighbor. He has a lovely house down the road.”
“Thanks to your son, my good friend, who let me know it was available.”
“Oh, you’re a friend of Thomas’s?” Paul asked.
“No, of Tim’s. I’ve never met Thomas.”
Despite the fact that it was none of his business, Paul was curious. Surely Jordaine and Tim made a strange pair? But making no comment, he waited for someone to say more.
“The house down the road is only rented. I needed a place to stay while my New York condominium is being built. In the meantime I stay at the Waldorf during the week when I’m in the States. But as I said, I hate hotels.”
Suddenly Paul lost interest. At the far end of the long table a vigorous discussion, in which Tim’s voice dominated, was taking place. His emphatic tone had brought a pause in the general conversation.
“When you make a political statement and nobody listens to it, then violent action is the only remedy.”
“I don’t agree,” Bill replied. “Of course, there’s much to be said against this war in Vietnam. I myself am one of those who think it’s a bad mistake for us to be there, but I still don’t see what bombing the telephone company is going to accomplish. Except to destroy valuable property, and maybe lives too.”
“You’re a lawyer, so quite naturally you take a legalistic point of view,” Timothy retorted. “You represent the propertied classes. That’s what most lawyers do, isn’t it? Unless they happen to be pro bono people, and I doubt you’re one of those, are you?”
“Bill does plenty of pro bono work!” Leah cried indignantly.
Bill waved her aside, as if to say that he was able to defend himself, and proceeded calmly. “This is, thank God, a government of laws. If you don’t agree with the laws, make it known by your vote, that’s all. That’s our system.”
“Again, spoken like a lawyer,” Timothy argued. “One gets fast nowhere that way. Young people, and I still count myself one of them, don’t want to wait an eternity. They want to get things done.”
“Your brother wouldn’t agree with you,” Lucy said angrily. “He’s in Vietnam now. Remember?”
“Our brother. It’s been a long time since he and I agreed on anything, if you remember.”
Larry, good Larry, intervened. Although he must surely be used to the hostility among his wife’s children by now, Paul sympathized with him.
“Well, these are hard times. One hears so many theories, the domino effect and appeasement and what-all. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, it’s Christmas, and—”
One of the neighbors, whom Paul remembered as an elderly type of dignified curmudgeon, interrupted.
“That’s the trouble with the young today. Still wet behind the ears and think they ought to run the country. What’s happening on the college campuses is a disgrace. I don’t understand it. They all live on the fat of the land. What more do they want?”
“Oh,” said Timothy, quietly now, “I can easily tell you what they want. You say they live on the fat of the land. Yes, many of them do, but the interesting thing is they don’t want to live
on it. They’re sick of fat. This isn’t the fifties any longer. This generation’s different. This generation questions the society in which it lives.”
“Marxism,” Lucy said scornfully. “That’s what it is. You don’t just want to get out of Vietnam. You also want to tear up the country.”
“Possibly. Tear it up to rebuild it. It’s the old cliché: You don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
Agnes admonished Tim mildly, “You shouldn’t let people think you’re a Communist, Tim, because you’re not. You’re a freethinker.”
Tim smiled at his sister. “That’s right. Agnes understands. Russian Communism is the last thing I’d want. I’m of the New Left, not the old. I suppose I’m more an anarchist, actually, than anything else. I don’t want government to order me around, to tell me to go to war or what to wear, or to be anything except my freeborn self. That’s what the young people want today, to be spontaneous, to seek their natural pleasures. A cultural revolution, that’s what it’s all about,” he finished.
“In my book,” Lucy told him, “your cultural revolution has nothing to do with bombing the telephone building.”
“Well, I assure you all that I personally am not making bombs,” Tim said. “But I have to tell you that the young people who do make them are very often the most idealistic, the most committed, the most talented. They’re willing to risk everything, even their lives, to stop this war. I take my hat off to them.”
“Bullshit,” Lucy said.
“Oh, my,” said her mother.
Paul’s glance met Victor Jordaine’s, which was amused. To Paul that seemed like a cold reaction, since there had been nothing funny in seeing so much hostility between brother and sister. It troubled him that this should have happened at Meg’s beautiful table. And he was angry at the cause, at Tim, who sat untroubled in his blond glory, as sure of himself as he had been at the table in Jerusalem. And suddenly Paul remembered Dr. Stern and the boy Steve.
“Victor,” called Tim, “you haven’t said a word!”
Jordaine, still with the amused expression, answered quietly, “I listen, I’m a European. Vietnam is not my business. I let you Americans worry about it.”
“If you’ve all had enough of everything else,” Larry called out, “I’d say it’s time to bring on the plum pudding.”
So it was carried in, flaming, with a sprig of holly on top. Then pies were brought, and the tension gradually subsided into the relief of trivial conversation about someone’s departure for the Caribbean, and someone else’s entry at the Westminster Kennel Club Show in the coming February.
After dessert the company dispersed. The house was large enough for people to separate; some went across the hall to the piano, where somebody began to play; some went to look at a Christmas program on television; others went out for a tramp in the snow to walk off the food. Paul, Meg, and Leah were left alone in Meg’s little study for a while.
“I’m sorry about Timothy,” Meg began, “I worry about the things that are going on, all the things he favors.”
Neither of the others made comment, since there was really none to make, and she finished, with a small sigh, “However, one’s children grow up and go their way. The best thing, Larry always tells me, is not to ask questions. You probably won’t like the answers, and there’s nothing you can do about them anyway.”
There was a silence that Leah broke by saying, “Well, Lucy should be one comfort to you. I’ll stand up for her any day.”
Meg nodded. “I’m glad. She’s as different from me as she can be, and still we have always been warm together.”
From there the conversation went to neutral topics, Meg remarking that young Mrs. Donnelly was getting better looking every day, and Leah reporting that Mrs. Somebody Else had been in the shop for Florida clothes, when Paul, who was scarcely paying attention to such feminine topics, thought suddenly of something else.
“That man, Victor Jordaine, puzzled me in a way. Who is he?”
“Oh, he’s somebody Tim knows. He’s rented this huge house with elaborate gardens and an indoor pool. He’ll probably buy it, he says. He must be enormously rich. I don’t know how Tim knows him. He doesn’t seem to be Tim’s type, does he?” Meg gave a shrug. “But then—” She stopped for a moment and then said, “You know something? Maybe the reason I feel strange with the man is—well, he reminds me of Donal.”
Paul couldn’t remember when Meg had last mentioned her first husband’s name, it had been so many years ago.
“Doesn’t he remind you?” Meg asked now.
“Maybe. Indefinably,” Paul replied. Both men had a certain kind of sharp good looks and an air of arrogant accomplishment. But otherwise the comparison was unfair to Jordaine, for Paul had despised Donal, had hated him for his Nazi sympathies and for the misery he had brought to Meg. About Jordaine he felt only passing curiosity.
“He’s a big spender, all right,” Leah remarked, explaining to Paul. “I met him here a while ago. He’d walked over from his place, and when he heard I was Leah of Léa, he was so interested that I was amazed. He knows about the best shops everywhere, in Europe naturally, but here too. And he’s been coming in ever since to buy things for his ladies.” Leah was relishing the account. “Lucy’s funny, she plays dumb and can draw information out of people in the sweetest, most innocent way. So she found out he’s not married; he may have been, probably has been, but he either has a different woman in every city he visits, or else his affairs are very short lived, because he buys things in so many different sizes. He wanted to take Lucy out, but she wouldn’t go, says he’s not her type.”
“I wish she would settle on a type,” Meg complained, “and marry again. I keep praying she’ll be as lucky as I’ve been.”
Leah wasn’t finished with Mr. Jordaine. “The things he buys! They’re to die over! Some girl must have died over the last thing, I can tell you, positively the creamiest coat, as soft as butter and lined with black mink.”
“Well, I didn’t like what he gave me,” Meg said. “No offense, Leah, you know that. It was very, very nice, but not for me. And it’s really ostentatious to bring a thing like that, anyway, just because Tim invited him here to dinner. Good heavens, people bring a box of candy or a few flowers or something.”
Leah wanted to know what Jordaine had given her.
“A pocketbook, a dark red lizard with a studded frame and a swan-shaped clasp. Very pretty, but nothing I need in my life. Frightfully expensive, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I remember that bag! Was that for you? He’d bought about six different things that day. He was going to Rome for the weekend, he said, and didn’t want to arrive empty-handed. It’s fine if you want to return it, Meg. Money back, guaranteed.” Leah laughed.
“No, no, I’ll buy something I can have use for. I could use a nice sweater. I seem to live in them.”
“You’ll have to buy a lot of sweaters to equal that bag,” Leah told her.
When the hikers returned, rubbing cold hands and stamping snow off their feet in the entryway, everyone reassembled for the last sociability before going home. Meg was commandeered to play the piano; some sang show tunes from Oklahoma! and My Fair Lady, while some just listened. Finally, Meg and Paul made everyone laugh with their silly song, “The Frigidaire Can Never Replace the Iceman.” Meg explained, “We used to have a brown icebox on the back porch. The iceman’s name was Elmer, I remember, and one day he …”
Paul was thinking, as she told her little story, how he envied Larry and Meg. To open your house to people in welcome, to see them depart well fed and merry, then to shut the door upon them and be alone together!
Outside as they got into Bill’s car, he looked back at the house. The front door, on which hung a great wreath with a red satin bow, had been closed. In each window, upstairs and downstairs, there shone a candle flame. The cold was so intense that a branch snapped with the sound of a gunshot. But the house was warm, a bright ship in an ocean of darkness.
He mi
ssed Ilse, half a world away. It was probably raining in Jerusalem; a steady, cold, winter rain it would be, as on the night when she had told him she wasn’t going home with him.
Ah, well!
“A nice day,” Bill said, as they turned onto the highway. “Nice people, a lot of them.”
“They’re a varied bunch. Meg’s family, I mean.” Leah spoke thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s wonderful to have a large family. I never had one, so I wouldn’t know. But there’s so much conflict in Meg’s crew that they’re really better off as they are, dispersed all over the country. I noticed you and Tim didn’t have much to say to each other, Paul.”
“No, not after Israel. I have little use for him. Or he for me, I daresay.”
“He’s making his name known in this country, all right,” Bill said. “Oh, if that crowd would limit itself to speech, there’d be no harm, maybe even a lot of good. I’m always for airing opinions, the more the better. But when they get to ugly confrontations, I don’t like it. This has to be a country of laws. I don’t like to see kids battling cops.”
Paul was thinking again of Dr. Stern’s son. My grandson. Had Stern said where his son was? Could it be where Timothy was? Well, whether or not, he hoped the boy wouldn’t get involved with him or anybody like him, wouldn’t let himself be led off course. But universities were large places, after all, and there would be many other competing influences. One shouldn’t assume anything. Yet he wondered about the boy. A worry, Stern had said.
Then Iris must have much to worry about, the boy, and Stern himself.
Bill was passing the time on the ride home with casual remarks that Leah answered, which left Paul, alone on the backseat, first to his thoughts and gradually to drowsiness. Then Bill’s voice woke him.