The table talk, all about the campaign, its personalities and finances, was of no particular interest to him. No attempt was made to draw him into the talk; indeed, no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. Since they were not looking in his direction, it became possible for him to look in theirs and to reassess his previous judgments.
Holly was even prettier than he had remembered. Dressed as she now was in jeans and T-shirt, he could really see her shape. A little taller and a little heavier than Robbie, she still curved in the proper ways, Robbie’s ways. And she had spectacular hair, glossy, black with red lights or blue lights as she moved, or as the light moved.
The old lady, Frieda, seemed not as old as he had thought, perhaps because today her eyes were not red-rimmed by tears. She was quiet and barely noticeable. The old man with the bushy gray mustache was inoffensive except when he opened his mouth to emit his guttural, accented English. These people were unimportant. And Tom’s eyes shifted past them to the head of the table, where Arthur sat, and to the foot, where Margaret sat.
She caught his glance, looked away, and without saying anything, got up and put before him a cup of coffee and an ample, double-sized slice of coconut cake. It had been a long time since breakfast, and he was starved, yet had she asked him whether he wanted any dessert, he would have refused. As it was, he ate it all. Then he thought about her gesture. It was the kind of thing Mom did, treating her husband and sons regardless of their ages as if they were little boys, while at the same time guarding their adult dignity. He had for a long time been aware of this nuance, the subtlety of a loving woman. In this instant now, he suddenly saw Margaret as a person, and it terrified him.
Arthur was talking. He had removed his glasses so that his eyes became again the focal point of his face. They were earnest eyes, quite stern as he made some forceful point in reply to Mackenzie, stern eyes in a face gone momentarily stern, This man would make a forceful enemy. There was no weakness in him; why had he thought there was? Because he was small in contrast to Dad? Napoleon had been small. And suddenly, seeing Arthur also as a person, he was terrified again.
As on the first time, he felt trapped. It was as if a vise were steadily, inexorably closing in upon him. If he could have risen and run from this house, if he had not been more than a hundred miles from home with practically nothing in his pocket, he would have done it.
“Shall we sit outside for a while?” asked Margaret. “There’s a breeze. Fall’s coming.”
Fall. Back to school. Back to Robbie.
They were on the terrace where he and Holly had sat sulking apart that other time. A green-and-white-striped awning had been let down, and the dog, who had been sleeping out in the sun, came to lie down again under the awning.
“Star,” said Arthur, “did you know that Holly took him from the animal shelter? She’s been a volunteer there ever since junior high.”
The remark, addressed ostensibly to Mackenzie, was meant for Tom, he knew, for surely Mackenzie must long ago have been told about Star.
“His owner died and none of the relatives wanted him. That’s how he got to the shelter.”
The dog, hearing his name, got up and stretched. Then he walked over and put his nose on Tom’s knee, making it necessary for Tom to give some sort of response. Without speaking then, he stroked the silky head.
“Didn’t you say you have a dog?” asked Arthur.
“I said my brother has.” My brother.
“That must be what attracts him.”
Tom kept smoothing Star’s head. He was not going to be drawn into conversation. He was here, and for the second time, too. Wasn’t that enough for them? No, blood was what they wanted, his blood. And he did not look up from Star’s head.
No one spoke. Mourning doves crooned at the bird-feeder, agitating the silence. He thought of the trite expression “The silence rang.” But it did ring. And he knew that they were all waiting for him to speak. Mackenzie ought to help him out by saying something, anything. He was furious with Mackenzie.
Arthur said, “Tom, you haven’t spoken a word. You can’t keep this up. It’s unnatural. Surely you have something to say to us. Say it, then, no matter what it is.”
Hadn’t they heard enough from him? They knew where he stood. And now they were asking for more.
“Arthur, it’s too hard,” Margaret objected. “Let’s not force things. Tom will speak when he’s ready.”
But Arthur persisted. “No. Let us be free with one another. It’s the only way. We’ve been talking about Ralph’s campaign, and you said you’re for Johnson. Will you tell us more about it?”
The man was positively looking for trouble. Very well, let him find it. All the doubts about himself, the rage, self-pity, and fear that were balled up within Tom now burst apart and the shrapnel scattered.
“All right, I’ll say what I think. You won’t like it, but since you asked for it—I think Jim Johnson is the most honest man I’ve ever met next to my father. And a lot of people who won’t always admit it because in certain circles the things he says are not acceptable, a lot of them know in their hearts that he is right.”
“Right about being a Nazi?” Holly asked.
“That’s not so.”
“He admitted that he had been once.”
“Yes, had been. When he was a kid, somebody inveigled him into joining the American Nazis, but he didn’t stay there. As soon as he learned what they were, he got out. Jim’s too smart for that.”
“It all depends,” Arthur said quietly, “on what you mean by ‘smart.’ A wolf in sheep’s clothing is smart, too.”
The old man, Albert, spoke up. “The man is a danger not just to blacks and Jews. In the end he and his kind are a danger to everybody. People should realize that.”
“Well, sir, you need to open your mind.” Tom was dignified now, and cold, remembering that Bud had once advised him never to lose his temper in argument, for that was to show weakness. “You need to hear another point of view. Jim speaks for middle America, the real America, like my ancestors. The Rices arrived here before 1700. They came down over the Blue Ridge Mountains, they fought through the French and Indian Wars. Later, during the Revolution, Elijah Rice served under Marion the Swamp Fox and was decorated for bravery and—”
“And your great-uncle on my side, young man, received the Kaiser’s Iron Cross for bravery and wounds at the battle of the Marne. Some years later he was shoved into a gas oven at Auschwitz.” The old man, with furiously burning eyes, stood up to face Tom.
“Papa, please,” implored Margaret.
But the old man still stood, swaying a little on unsure legs. “I remember you said it was propaganda, that there was no Holocaust. Here, look.” And he rolled up the sleeves of his gingham sport shirt. “Look.” He thrust his arm in front of Tom. “What do you see?”
“Papa, please,” Margaret cried again.
“No, Margaret. These are things he must be told, so I’m telling them. This is the number they tattooed on me. I was in Auschwitz, too, but I was one of the lucky ones, if you can call it that, because I was still alive when the war ended. Don’t turn your eyes away. It’s important for you to see these things while some of us are still alive to show what liars your Jim Johnsons are. What did he say about propaganda? Turning crematoria into ovens? That there never were any ovens? Well, take me to him, I’ll shove this number into his face. How does he dare, how can he—”
“Papa,” Margaret said, “Tom was talking about the American Revolution, and this is—”
“No, Margaret. You want me to stop this unpleasant story, but I won’t. It’s important. It’s necessary.”
The gray mustache quivered, and the old voice cracked. In the face of this undignified emotionalism, Tom felt a certain calm superiority.
“Yes, Tom, I want you to know who you are. We left Germany before the war, my wife and I. I had another wife—her family had been in Germany for a thousand years, a thousand years, mind you—and a child, before Frie
da. I married Frieda much later, after I came to this country. That’s why I’m so much older than she.” He paused and wiped his forehead. “Ah, what’s the use. I think maybe I’m saying too much after all.”
Mackenzie said firmly, “You should go on. You were right when you said it is necessary. Go on, Albert.”
“Where was I? Oh yes, my wife and the little girl were in the south of France. Then the Nazis came, and the Vichy government, and we knew we had to move on. We thought of crossing the Pyrenees into Spain, then Lisbon, where we would wait in safety for some visa to anywhere in the world away from Europe. You hired a guide and went on foot across the mountains, a long, hard, dangerous trip. Guides could betray you, and German patrols lay in ambush. Nevertheless, we started out in a party of eight, people we had met along the way, and we would have gotten through if it had not been for my wife’s miscarriage. I have to sit down,” Albert said abruptly.
It relieved Tom not to have the man standing above him, blocking the view of middle space. There had been no place to which he could direct his gaze, since the dog had moved away, except the old man’s chest. Now, while a volley of words continued, he looked out to the lawn.
“I’ll make it short. As soon as my wife was able to walk well enough, though not well enough to cross a mountain range, we returned to the place in Toulouse where we had been hiding. What’s the use of even trying to describe our days there? Huddled in a room, afraid to go out on the streets except for a quick foray to get food. So? So they caught us and interned us, women and children in one camp, men in another. After that came the long train to Auschwitz. I never saw them again. They died, my wife and our little Lotte. I lived. That’s all.”
“You’re wearing yourself out,” Frieda said. “It’s not good for you to relive all that, not worth it.”
“But it’s good for Tom. It’s worth it for Tom. Now I want him to hear your story.”
Frieda was reluctant, and in Tom’s opinion, that was to her credit. Who wanted to stand there or sit there and spill his guts out to a stranger? For I am a stranger, he said to himself, a stranger to them and their sadness. Of course, it’s terribly sad about his wife and the little girl. And it has to be true, he couldn’t have made it up, there are the numbers on his arm, he wasn’t lying, his eyes were wet. Still, there has to be more to it, there has to be a reason why all this happened. When you read Hitler’s book, you get the other side of the story, loud and clear. Anyway, what has it all got to do with me?
Frieda was hastening through her narrative. “I was born here after my parents escaped. My father was a young doctor in Germany when the troubles began. He had just married my mother. The two of them went to Italy, where he learned Italian and got a license to practice. Then came Mussolini; so they fled again, this time to New York, where he had to learn a second new language and start all over. But for me, life was easy, I was an American child. I grew up, married Albert, we had Margaret, and when she married Arthur, we came here to be near them. That’s all. A short story.”
“But far from simple,” Mackenzie observed, and looked meaningfully toward Tom.
Again Tom had the feeling that the entire performance this day had been rehearsed. They were trying to rope him in, to make him one of them. But he wasn’t one of them. The very thought made him sick. These people were victims, always beaten, always losing …
And he had a vision of them down through the years ahead, continually reaching for him by letter, telephone, and in person. He would be asked again and again to come back here. Mom would plead with him to go. Dad would defend his refusal, and the home that had been calm would be destroyed by quarreling. Worse yet, the news about this horror would leak out. The world was not so big that such a thing could remain hidden forever. AMAZING BABY SWITCH would scream out of the headlines in those papers that they sell at the supermarket checkout counter.… He felt breathless, stifled.
“Well, have you any thoughts about what you’ve heard?” asked Arthur.
“Not many.”
“A few thoughts, then. I would like to hear your few thoughts.”
He would not look at Arthur, but kept his gaze upon the lawn and on the trees through which the wind was briskly moving. It reassured him to see that air was circulating, that he was not going to be smothered.
Patiently, Arthur repeated, “Your thoughts?”
Tom forced himself to come to. “I’m sorry the little girl died. All of them. It was sad.”
“They were your people. Did you feel that?”
“No, I’m not Jewish. I’m a Methodist.”
“You’re perfectly free to be a Methodist, but they were still your people.”
“No.”
“Well, let’s allow for the moment that they weren’t. Should anyone at all write the things that appear in that paper for which you write? Should anyone?”
“I got hold of a copy,” Holly said. “It has your name on the masthead. Your disgraceful name.”
“Holly!” warned Margaret.
So that was what they had been leading up to.
“Your church doesn’t agree with the ugly lies in that paper.”
The man hung on like a bulldog with its teeth in someone’s leg. And Tom flared up.
“Look, I came here because you wanted me to. I didn’t come to defend myself. I didn’t expect to be attacked.”
Margaret said softly, “It’s only that we want you to accept us as we are, Tom.”
She was sitting in a wicker chair close to his, and now impulsively, she laid her hand over his hand, pressing it so hard that he turned to her in astonishment. Her expression was so intense that it frightened him. It repelled him. This was the first time she had touched him, and he had an awful thought, shocking himself with the awareness that, in spite of Bud’s denials, this was the woman within whose body he had come to life. It had never crossed his mind to think of Mom in that way; if it had, he would have shrunk from the thought as from an obscenity. And now this woman, this strange woman—
He jerked his hand away. Everyone saw him. The gesture was unmistakable.
“I just want to be let alone, now and forever. It’s a free country, isn’t it? Why won’t you let me alone?”
Margaret stood up trembling, and Holly put her arms around her.
“Today was my mistake,” said Mackenzie, “I hoped it would be otherwise. God knows, I don’t want to make things harder for you people.”
“Or for Tom,” Margaret amended.
“Well,” said Mackenzie. “Well. Suppose we call it a day. Tom, let’s go.”
Tom was still not feeling well. It was still an effort to breathe. Mackenzie was angry, and would have plenty to tell Mom, no doubt about it. The affair was a mess. He had stupidly allowed them to make him lose his cool. So now, through civility, he had to try to retrieve it.
“I did not intend to be offensive,” he said stiffly. “Please excuse me if I was.”
“Oh, Tom,” said Margaret, still holding Holly.
Arthur went to the door with them. “Thank you for everything,” he said to Mackenzie, and shook his hand.
“Another time it will be better,” he told Tom, and did not touch him.
As they drove away, Arthur was still standing at the door watching them go. On his face was the same stern, grieving gaze.
They went a mile or two before Mackenzie spoke, saying dryly, “Didn’t go so well, did it?”
“What made you think it would?”
“I don’t know. I sort of hoped.”
They drove another short way before Mackenzie spoke again. “You hurt them, you know.”
Tom knew well how much he had, especially when he had rejected Margaret’s hand. He hadn’t really meant to do that. It had been automatic, something he couldn’t help. So he shouldn’t be condemned for it.
“They wouldn’t let me be. You heard how he forced answers out of me. Then he didn’t like my answers.”
“They weren’t very likable.”
“To you
, and them.”
“I don’t understand. Your mom says you’re softhearted. Yet I saw that you were annoyed with Albert’s terrible story. I don’t understand.”
“I was only annoyed because they tried to connect me with their misfortune. These—Jews—are losers, and I’m not one of them.”
“No, you’re wrong. They’re not losers, they’re victors. People who can survive such horrors are victors.”
“But first they’re victims, and there’s a reason. I could give you some literature on the subject and you’d see why.”
“You’re talking nonsense, evil nonsense. Someday you’ll find that out.”
Mackenzie spoke sharply. It was too bad. There were a hundred miles to go sitting next to a man who didn’t like him. When he put on a tape, Beethoven this time, he didn’t ask for Tom’s preference.
A neighbor from across the street was standing at the front door looking up and down the road when they arrived at the house. Mackenzie had barely stopped the car, when she ran to it, crying frantically, “Tom, Tom! Where’s your mother?”
“I don’t know. What’s the matter?”
“It’s Timmy. He’s awfully sick, the worst I’ve ever seen, worse than three years ago, remember Labor Day weekend when you had to rush him to the hospital? He couldn’t get his breath, and the pain in his chest was that bad, remember—”
Tom’s heart had begun to race. “Yes, yes. Where is he?”
“I called your father and he said it would take too long for him to come get him at home, so he asked me to take him to the hospital. And your father said he’d meet us in the emergency room.” The woman was almost sobbing. “Your mother left first thing this morning, I saw her leave but I don’t know where she went, she never stays away the whole day shopping! Oh, I wish I knew where she went!”
“Get back in the car, Tom,” Mackenzie said, for Tom had jumped out. “Come on, I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
They rode for a few blocks, while Tom, turning away from Mackenzie, looked out of the side window. Mackenzie saw him gulp, his Adam’s apple bobbing and all the color draining out of his face.