Anna, my love. My love.
There was the car now. He looked at his watch. She’d come home early, not wanting to leave him so long. He heard the garage door go down, then her steps on the gravel drive. Another car came, and a door slammed. More steps. Whose?
Then Theo’s and Anna’s voices, coming upstairs, the voices of Jimmy and Steve below them.
“Good afternoon.” Theo’s mock-professor voice. “How is the patient today?” And in his normal voice, “We drew up to the stop light at the same time and the boys and I got the idea of coming along to see you.”
“You’re always a sight for sore eyes, you people. How’s everything, Theo?”
His long-established greeting. It meant: How are you doing at the office? Busy enough but not overworked, I hope. Paying your bills with something left over after taxes. It meant: Is everything smooth at home? No troubles with the kids?
Theo’s long-established answers reassured him. Yes, yes, everything was fine and there was nice news: Jimmy had made the tennis team.
“Well, congratulations!” Joseph said. “And you, Steve? You upset about something?” For Steve was frowning, with what Anna called his “buttoned-up” expression.
“No.”
“Go ahead,” Theo said. “You can tell Grandpa.” And, since Steve stayed silent, he went on, “Steve was at my office just now to do some papers on the copying machine. And he happened to overhear a conversation with a patient, a girl who’s going to have surgery because she doesn’t like the shape of her nose. Steve’s disgusted, not just with her, but with me! He thinks I should have booted the girl down the stairs along with her nose.”
Steve spoke up. “I said, with all the wounded and suffering people in the world you should be ashamed to waste your work on a spoiled bourgeoise.”
“Suffering is a matter of degree,” Theo said. “If her nose makes her miserable, even though that may seem ridiculous to you, it really isn’t ridiculous at all.”
“I don’t go for that argument. The fact is, you treat people like her because you make money doing it and that’s the only reason. The profit system again.”
“What’s wrong with the profit system?” Joseph demanded.
“What’s wrong? The profit system is wrecking the environment and destroying the human spirit. That’s all.”
The stance of the boy, his slight figure leaning against the wall, the proud lift of his head, angered his grandfather.
“Destroying the environment! What the devil do they teach these kids in school, anyway?”
“School!” Steve was scornful. “I do my own thinking! School doesn’t teach anything, except cramming for high marks.”
Joseph threw up his hands. “Bah! Socialist poppycock! It all comes down to one thing, this sort of talk. Envy. All this leveling business, pass-fail grades and that stuff; it’s the people who get Cs and Ds who want it. They may give you all sorts of high-flown moral reasons, but the plain fact is they envy the people who get As.”
“That doesn’t apply to me,” Steve said stiffly and accurately, for he had always been an A student. “I’m not envious of anybody or anything. What I am much more is guilty, and you all should be too.”
Jimmy swung his tennis racket. “Aw, come on, Steve, lay off, will ya?”
But Joseph had been goaded and wanted to pursue the subject. “Guilty about what?”
“About living the way we do. You ought to be guilty about living in a house like this while millions of human beings live in shanties!”
“It took brains and hard labor to earn this house! Don’t you think a man deserves some rewards for his brains and labor?”
“There’s a lot of luck involved in making money.” Steve spoke quietly now, while Joseph could hear his own angry panting breath. “Luck and a little chicanery here and there, besides.”
“Steve! That’s going too far!” Theo said furiously.
Joseph raised his hand. “Leave him! Chicanery, is it? I want you to know that your grandfather has never been party to a crooked deal! Do you hear that? Not a thing to be ashamed of. I’ve built honestly. People need shelter and I build it for them. Most of them never lived so well before. And I’m supposed to be a louse because I make some money doing it?”
“Joseph! You’re getting too excited!” Anna cried. “You’re not supposed—Boys, why don’t you go outside for a while and practice serves against the garage wall?”
“Or start walking home,” Theo said. “I’ll catch up with you on the way.” And when they had gone downstairs, “I’m sorry. Steve is tough to cope with. We have this all the time.”
“He’s angry inside,” Anna said. “Maybe because Jimmy is taller?” she questioned thoughtfully. “That can be very hard, having your younger brother grow taller than you. And now he’s breaking out with acne besides.”
“My wife, with the excuses,” Joseph grumbled. “With the psychology.”
“Never mind,” Anna said. “There are things going on inside of a child that we can’t guess at. Iris said the guide told her Steve’s IQ is a good bit higher than Jimmy’s, and still Jimmy does just as well, and he seems so much more interested in things, his stamps and animals and tennis and—”
“Jimmy!” Joseph interrupted. “Jimmy’s always been easy on the nerves. His own and everybody else’s.”
“Jimmy has always had an accepting attitude,” Theo said. “He enjoys life. No credit to him, he’s very, very lucky to have been made that way. He just seems to look at things clearly and calmly. A couple of nights ago he asked: ‘If you and Mother should die what would happen to this house?’ I was taken aback for a second and then I realized it was a perfectly reasonable question. But Steve flew into a rage with Jimmy. He had furious tears in his eyes. I’m sure it wasn’t because of thinking that Jimmy might have hurt our feelings. Goodness knows, Steve never takes much heed of other people’s feelings! It must have been because he’s terrified of death, poor guy, of our deaths and being left alone.” Theo sighed and no one spoke for a moment. Then he stood up. “Ah, well, they don’t know when they’re well off, do they? I suppose we didn’t either, at that age. But it will all pass. I just hope Steve doesn’t get involved in anything too deeply before it does. He’s been talking about going south this summer on one of those marches.”
Joseph intercepted Anna’s distress signal. “Anna, stop protecting me. I’m not dead or dying yet.”
“Of course you aren’t! It’s just that you get too upset. You always do!”
“Mama’s right,” Theo apologized. “I shouldn’t have brought the subject up. Don’t worry, I’ll handle things.”
“I know you will, Theo. But it isn’t easy. What we do for our children! We spend our life’s blood—”
“There was a very fine speaker at the luncheon,” Anna said. “The subject was hospital costs. You would have been interested, Theo.”
Joseph smiled. Transparent! Keep the conversation impersonal. Don’t upset the old man. We’ll just take up the time until the visit’s over.
Anna and Theo forgot how clearly words carried up the stairs, even though, a few minutes later, they spoke so quietly at the front door.
Joseph could hear Theo say, “He’s rather low in spirits today, isn’t he? To be so upset about Steve—I don’t think it can really just be Steve’s nonsense.”
“No, no, I know him. I should, shouldn’t I? He’s thinking about Maury and Eric. He gets this way sometimes, even before the attack, he did.” Anna’s voice lowered. “He can’t bear to hear the mention of their names. I always try, when the day comes around that either of their names is called on the roll of the dead at temple, I always try to make some excuse not to go. I say I don’t feel well or something.”
“And does it work?”
Anna laughed. “Of course not! But I try.”
You never know with Anna, what she’s hiding, what planning, always to spare me. She thinks I don’t know that for a time years back things weren’t going well between Iris a
nd Theo. They all covered up, but I knew. I didn’t ask because I guess I was afraid to know. Anyway, they wouldn’t have told me.
Thank God it’s all right now; I can tell that too. He’s a good man, Theo is. I like to see him come walking up from the tennis courts with the kids, talking French or German with them. And good to Iris: his voice is gentle when he speaks to her. I hear that. He’d better be.
My dear, my heart. From the day she was born, the homely, tender, appealing little thing.… Yet she’s done well. She’s turned out to be a good-looking woman in her way, not in the popular fashion, but different looking, distinguished. That’s the word: distinguished. Iris.
That kid Steve had better not cause her any heartache. I’ll tell him so one of these days, too. Chicanery, he said. What a word! Luck! He makes it sound so cheap, like crapshooting or slot machines. Luck! All that labor, getting up before five to reach the building sites in those early years! Scrambling for contacts and financing, sweating out the mortgage payments, that was luck?
He says we don’t give value for the money. Granted, we don’t give the value they gave in this house that I’m living in. How can we, with the building trades unions getting more and more every year? Squeezing the bosses dry. Still, I know a man wants his family to live decently, wants to give them things. I ought to know! So what’s the answer? That I don’t know. I’m sorry I don’t.
I understand in a way what Steve means, even though he thinks I don’t. He’s a smart boy, the smartest of the lot. But I can’t take to him the way I do to the others, my baby guy Philip or Jimmy. Jimmy has merry eyes. I just thought of that. Maybe because of Steve’s stringy long hair? And I like immaculate fingernails, especially when I’m eating. I can’t help it, I hate dirt. Damned arrogant kid! And still, you can feel something. So unhappy. Poor Steve. Wish I could get to him. Poor kid.
Anna came back with a tray, two cups of tea and a small plate of biscuits. “You’re to have this and then a nap. Doctor’s orders, so don’t grumble.”
“Who the hell needs a nap?”
“You do,” she said calmly. “You want to get back to the office, so do what you’re told.”
She sat down, stirring the tea. Her face was placid, dignified. Firmness in the softness. Remarkable woman! Why do I always think of what my father would have said? Quality, he’d have said. He used to pick up a fine piece of cloth and smooth it between his thumb and finger. “Quality. You can always tell,” he’d say.
“What are you thinking?” Anna asked.
“Of you. I didn’t make a mistake when I saw you sitting on the stoop at Levinsons’.”
“I’m glad.”
“Are you, Anna? Sometimes I wonder. I’ve had too much time to think, this past month. You remember, just before I had the attack, we were at that benefit for the blind? You were talking to that fellow who publishes the art books, and I thought, “There’s the kind of man she ought to have married, the kind of man who speaks her language.’”
“You want to get rid of me?”
“Don’t make a joke of it! I’m serious.” He reflected: ought he to tell her the rest? Yes, yes, have it all out, all of it. “I know I promised you once never to talk about the subject again, but lately I haven’t been able to put it out of my mind. About you and Werner—he was a man who spoke your language, wasn’t he?”
Anna sighed deeply. “Oh, Joseph! Not again?”
“I’m sorry. I know you assured me there never was anything, but so many things don’t fit: words, gestures, incidents. I needn’t go over them again, because you know them and I know them. But they don’t quite fit, and my sense, my instinct—”
“Senses and instincts don’t prove anything,” Anna interrupted. “I gave you rational answers. I can’t do more than that. I feel as though I were using a sword against cobwebs when you talk about ‘instincts.’”
Even in her quiet denial he heard defiance. If he were not still an invalid she would have been more vehement, he knew, more angry. He mustn’t press too hard, mustn’t look for trouble. He was lucky, after all, to have had her all these years, he told himself for the thousandth time. A woman like Anna could have had anyone.
“Don’t torment yourself, Joseph. Don’t ask me these questions. Even if you can’t believe me, and I’m sorry you can’t, just don’t ask me anymore.”
So he would never really know, never really. To wipe out his doubts, to know that she was totally his and always had been, that there had never, never been anyone else—what he would not give! The remaining years of his life, that’s what he would give.
“I would like to be truly at peace,” he said aloud.
“Then be at peace. I can’t say any more than that.” Anna finished her tea and stood up to stroke his forehead. Her hand was warm from the teacup, and he smelled her perfume again.
He didn’t move, enjoying the sweep of her hand across his forehead, hoping she wouldn’t stop. “It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” he said, wanting to detain her.
“Very. It’s home.”
This quiet house, the view of trees, he thought suddenly, these go always to the people at the top. In Buenos Aires or Peking, no matter what the system, the quiet rooms and view of trees belong always to the people at the top.
“If anybody thinks there can ever be a world where you can get this without effort he’s crazy,” he said suddenly. “I sweated to get it, Anna, I sweated.”
Anna thought, I sweated for it, too. She said, “I know you did. And that’s why it’s time you stopped, isn’t it? Look, here’s George come up to see you.”
The door, which had been left ajar, was pushed toward the wall and the huge black dog came lumbering in.
“It’s chilly for May and he hates the cold.”
“He’s getting old,” Joseph said glumly. This was George the Second, son of the George who had come with Eric to their house. And George the Second had a son, Albert, born just before Eric went away.
“I know. The young one wants to be outside, though. Would you like it if George took a nap with you?”
“Apparently he intends to, whether I like it or not.” For George had stretched out on the couch, considerately leaving just enough room for Joseph.
“All right, lie down now. Philip will be here before you know it. And Laura said she might come too.”
He lay down obediently and Anna closed the door behind her. Two or three times a week, Philip stopped in on the way home from his music lesson or religious school. What a schedule for such a little fellow, only seven! But that’s the way they did it these days. And come to think of it, it hadn’t been so different for Maury and Iris, either. We all push our children to excel, we want the best of all worlds for them. Only this child, this Philip, is really something special! I worry about him when they drop him off at the corner. He’s got two streets to cross, and so much traffic. Of course there’s a light. But he’s such a little fellow.
As soon as I’m out and around again I’m going to stop in at F.A.O. Schwarz and I’m going to buy the most lavish, expensive, magnificent toy they have in the place. Anna and Iris won’t approve but for once I won’t care, I want to buy something for a spoiled rich kid. Something I never could have dreamed of when I was his age. I don’t know what, but I’ll find something.
He couldn’t fall asleep. Too much rest, that was the trouble. Maybe get up and read. Anna had had a book up here the other day. She’d said something about beautiful essays by some important guy, and he’d seen she wanted to talk about it, so he’d asked her to read him a page or two. And it had been rather pretty. For a moment he had seen what she meant.
Too bad he hadn’t read anything, all his life. He’d always admired scholars, but you had to be born a scholar, not made. Yet those teachers Iris was always having over at her house, nice people all of them, so genteel and with so much knowledge, poor bastards! They couldn’t even afford the ten dollars it took to buy one of the books they loved so much. What sense did that make? Still, it would be a good
thing to have had both worlds. There was so little he knew. Living with Anna, he was always aware of it, although she never allowed him to talk that way about himself. That time they’d been in Mexico City and her relatives had taken them to see those tremendous ruins: what a feat of construction! Anna had known all about the builders. Aztecs, were they? She had read about their palaces and priests and what the Spaniards had done to them. Yes, Anna knew so much.
Was that the book she’d been reading the other day? It had had a red cover; she’d left it on the chair. He got up. Yes, a book of essays. He’d glanced at it after she’d left the room. There had been one on growing old which she would certainly not have let him see, would have hidden from him. But he remembered it, page forty-three. Your memory is still pretty good, what do you think, hey, Joseph? The arteries can’t be too hard with a memory like that.
Here it was. “On Growing Old.” His eyes scanned the page. “… taut strings loosen, knots untie; the fingers open and drop what they have been holding to so tightly. The shoulders lighten, freed of what they have been carrying. Go, let go; where the wind sweeps and the tide takes, let go.”
43
Anna walked up Fifth Avenue in shafted light, from October gilt to shadow and back again. She was youthfully exhilarated and enjoying it.
A week ago she wouldn’t have believed it possible that Joseph would take a vacation! They had just broken ground for a new apartment complex in south Jersey; his little round room was awash with papers and blueprints. But then the Malones had arrived home to visit their newest grandchild and, with their descriptions of the West’s great spaces, had at last caught Joseph’s fancy. He had agreed to go back with them.
She could have been a wanderer. The Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, the Navajo reservations—she had wandered through all of them in her mind. This would be a journey to known, desired places. Perhaps Joseph could be persuaded, since they would have come so far anyway, to continue on to the coast?