The Sight of the Stars

No, she never had. There had been a succession of boyfriends, mostly solemn, not very attractive, fellow students in the Classics Department. Glancing down at the other end of the table, Adam read Emma’s mind. Louise had used her own savings to go with a group of young women on a tour of Europe last summer. So how, and where—

  “We met on the ship going over, and we fell in love. I know it sounds crazy.”

  Yes, coming from careful, prudent Louise, it did.

  “We spent every day in Paris and Rome together. Carlo changed his plans so we could go home on the same ship. He’s very responsible, so you don’t need to worry. He plans to come here next month, and you can meet him.”

  Adam’s thoughts were racing. Louise was such an innocent! He’d hardly trust her to get safely through traffic in any major city. What did she know about people who cheat, lie, and fool an innocent like her? She’d hardly ever been out of Chattahoochee.

  “Where does he live?” asked Emma.

  “In Brazil. Rio de Janeiro.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Jonathan very sternly.

  “I don’t think so. You will like him when you meet him.”

  Bernice, in her usual calm way, asked Louise to tell them more about Carlo, how old he was and what kind of work he did.

  “He’s twenty-five. He works in his father’s business, some kind of banking that I don’t know the first thing about.” Louise’s smile was enough to break Adam’s heart. “They have a ranch, too, about five thousand acres, he said. And Mom, you’ll be happy to hear that he knows a lot about music. He doesn’t play any instrument very well, but he goes to all the concerts. So now I guess I’ve told you everything I can, until you meet him.”

  Jonathan rebuked her. “You haven’t told us anything at all.”

  “Let’s get down to brass tacks,” said James in his best bedside manner. “You said he was coming to see Mom and Dad. So until that happens, it makes no sense for any of us to have an opinion. I suggest that we finish our dinner and go outdoors. It’s a wonderful day.”

  But it had not been a wonderful day; there were too many unanswered questions in it.

  “What do you make of it all?” Adam asked Emma when they were alone that night. “She walks in and calmly announces that she is going to be married and move a couple of thousand miles away. Just like that.”

  “You haven’t heard anything. Eileen told me confidentially that she’s going to have artificial insemination. She went to a medical school and described the kind of father she wanted for her child. She says she’s too busy with her editorial work on that women’s liberation magazine to think of getting tied up in marriage. Can you believe it?”

  Emma was brushing her hair with her back to him. But he caught her tearful face in the mirror, and for an instant he seemed to see what she would look like in old age. It made him terribly, terribly angry. It filled him with fury.

  These stupid daughters! Wrecking their lives while we can only stand and watch. It’s as if they had taken the years, the care, and the example we gave them, and tossed it all into the trash heap. My God, how it hurts! It’s an amputation. It’s a wreckers’ ball—

  “But at least,” he said, as if he were grasping something steady to hold to, “the boys are all fine, with their good wives, their good kids, and their common sense. They’re a blessing to count on. They’re family, our full old-fashioned family.”

  “Not quite full,” Emma said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have a brother.”

  “Emma, please. Every couple of months, especially on Thanksgiving, on this special day, he seems to pop into your head and bother me. Why?”

  “Just because it is a special day. Don’t you ever wonder where he is having his dinner, or whether he’s having any dinner?”

  “I don’t very often get angry with you, Emma, do I?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I don’t want to. But leave me alone about Leo. I gave him money, and if he’s lost it the way he lost all Pa’s, that’s his lookout. If you need somebody to worry about, think of Louise and Eileen. Aren’t they enough?”

  Restless, and as his thoughts churned, Adam walked down the hall to his little office, stared out into the night, and suddenly remembered something. He opened the bottom drawer of the desk; there lay a set of leather diaries, volumes thick enough to hold a lifetime of jotting. It had been one of those gifts that are too nice to discard, and yet are not used. Now that so much was happening and there were so many new children and grandchildren to think and worry about, he would use it.

  So we have finally met Carlo. I have to admit that he really is an extraordinary young man. He has what the French call “savoir faire.” Knowing exactly what, in the circumstances, a young woman’s parents would want to know about him, he presented us with a portfolio of papers and photographs, showing his parents, grandparents, city house, country house, bank accounts, and letters from various important people, including a bishop. He is Catholic, and expects Louise to become one, too, which she is going to do. We see no reason to disapprove, except that our girl will be so far away from us. But then I think of my father, and millions more like him, who left home knowing that they would never see it again. At least now we have airplanes, and will see Louise very often, I hope. We have to look at it that way.

  The wedding was beautiful. Louise looked, not pretty as always, but absolutely beautiful. We can only pray that she will be happy. But how will we know when and if she is not? She is so tender, and so easily hurt. I still wish she had a little of her sister’s spunk. It was hard to keep back tears when she left with Carlo, covered in rice, in a car that was covered in flowers, on the road to the airport.

  Emma whispered, “This is the kind of wedding Sabine wanted for us.”

  Actually, there were many people there who had been at our wedding. Jeff Horace is retired, but now and then he writes a feature article, and there is no doubt that he will be impressed enough by Carlo’s elegant, aristocratic-looking family to write one. Reilly, retired with the nice pension that Andy and I insisted on, looked old and rather bent, but he has the same jolly face. Archer, who has the same pension, looks happier since his wife died. (An awful thing to say, but true; she must have been a hellion.) Mr. Lawrence is dead, but Mrs. came, dressed soberly although not in black since, of course, nobody wears black at a wedding. Rudy and Rea have moved to the country, also with a nice pension, so there are new faces in our house.

  Eileen brought pictures of her Danny. You can often tell whether a baby is handsome, even at the age of three months, and this one is. I should think it would be hard for a woman not to know who her baby’s father is, but obviously it doesn’t bother her. Modern times! Somebody asked her whether her wedding will be coming next, and she laughed.

  “Not on your life,” she said. “I’ve got everything I want now without having to keep a man happy and pleased with me.”

  No, I don’t admire her spunk after all. I can’t imagine how, after living in our house, she could have such a thought about marriage. But, as long as she’s satisfied, I guess we must be, too.

  Carlo’s best man was his brother, Leo, which bothered me. I can never feel comfortable when I hear that name. I keep thinking, in spite of what I say to Emma, that I should probably try to find out where he is. Then I remember that he could have ruined my life and Emma’s, and have put the thought away.

  Adam wrote:

  It is well known that the older one grows, the faster time speeds. We had not seen Louise in a year and a half, and all we can think is that we have seen a transformation. She lives in a grand house on a street of grand stone houses that make our house look like a cottage. There she is, pregnant with twins, which may well run in our family because Jonathan has them, too. There is no trace of shyness in her behavior. She presided over a beautiful dinner party in our honor, and Carlo is proud of her for providing the entertainments that are part of his business. With all of this, she is active and hopes one
day to be director of a school where blind children can obtain a first-rate education.

  These people have an enormous family, so many aunts, uncles, and cousins that Emma and I felt almost envious. They all live close by, and Louise is the only one who wasn’t born in the neighborhood. Carlo’s brother Leo is especially close to him. I had to admit to Emma that I feel ridiculous being uncomfortable about the man’s name. But she said, and has said again, that it is not ridiculous. It is something that nags inside my head, she thinks. It is telling me to “do something” about my brother.

  But what should I do? I suppose I could hire detectives to find him, although it would probably not work, or at least it would take years; look at all the criminal cases that are unsolved. Besides, he doesn’t want to be found. He said so in no uncertain terms. So let us leave well enough alone. We are calm and happy with children and grandchildren, and ask for nothing more.

  Chapter 25

  One day there was a message from Jon on the answering machine. He left no number. He would call again. Goodness knew where he had been transferred now. They hardly ever stayed longer than eight months to a year in the same place. In some ways, it was an inconvenient way to live, Adam thought. But in most ways, there were great advantages in being able to see the world and enjoy a nice house wherever you went, along with continuing paid education for your children. Since Germany a few years ago, Jon and Lizzie had been living on bases in Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, and finally, back home now in North Carolina. It was just about time, Jon had explained, for a desk job, and possibly, in not too many years, a promotion to lieutenant general.

  Well, he had earned it. He had seen some mighty big changes, this man had, from peace through war to precarious peace, and from propeller to jet.

  The phone rang, and Jon spoke. “How are you, Dad?”

  “Fine. And you? On base or off, this time?”

  “Well, it’s not quite settled. Dad, Lizzie’s left me.”

  The words did not register. One can hear some foreign expressions that, because of the wars, have become fairly familiar so that they are recognized when heard, yet it takes a few seconds before the brain accepts and translates. So “left me” was not immediately clear to Adam.

  “‘Left you,’ ” he repeated.

  “Yes. She is in love with another man.”

  “That makes no sense” was all he could stammer out.

  “No, it doesn’t, does it?”

  “Who is he? Where is he?”

  “It doesn’t matter who he is. He’s in Europe, and she’s gone back to him.”

  Jon. Lizzie and Jon. What could he say? What does one say to a person who has just had or is about to have an amputation?

  Then he thought of something. “Your children. What about them?”

  “Dad, you’re forgetting. They aren’t babies anymore. They’re in the world. They have their own lives.” Jon’s voice broke. “Thank God they have.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “On the base.”

  “Shall Mom and I fly down, or would you rather come here? We need to talk and straighten this out.”

  “It can’t be straightened out. I’ve been trying for months, for a year, almost.”

  “Maybe if we did the talking? Or do her parents know?”

  “They know. But she’s in love. She says she’s loved this man for three years. We hadn’t been getting along so well, you see, but I didn’t know . . . I mean, I thought she was just tired of all those moves, and I told her there’d be no more of them, that I was getting a desk job, permanent, along with a permanent house . . . I didn’t know there was another reason.”

  “I can’t think of anything to say except that we need to see you. If your mother could talk to Lizzie—they were so fond of each other. Your mother won’t believe this.”

  “Nobody can. People always thought we were . . . we were perfect together.”

  “Jon, we’ve got to see you.”

  “All right. Soon, Dad. Soon. I’m hanging up now.”

  In total shock, Adam sat with one picture in his mind: the newlyweds, each twenty-two years old, triumphant, delighted, and innocent, at the front door. After a while he got up and went to deliver the news.

  “I’ll call Lizzie’s parents,” Emma said promptly. “We really haven’t been all that close since they moved so far away, and that’s too bad, but we always got along so well, and I’ll call right now.”

  Adam opened the door and sat down on the terrace. There was nothing wrong with his heart, the doctors said; it was purely emotion that hurried its beat. He knew that as well as he knew that only the sight of the natural world—sky, sea, and space—would slow its beat.

  Far above him a swirl, a cascade of small birds sped toward the south, skimmed the distant trees, and disappeared beyond the horizon. Their life was so simple! Why then did human beings not keep theirs simple, too? Love, marry, beget, stay “till death do us part”?

  Always, always these conflicts! Lizzie and Jon, so perfect together! But also—and now he became aware that his fists were clenched—also his Emma’s unknown parents, his own discarded mother, and always, always, Leo’s taunts across the kitchen table: Bastard! Bastard! And his own cruel words in return.

  “I spoke to Lizzie’s mother,” Emma reported now. “She was not rude, but she was very, very cool. ‘There are two sides to every story,’ she kept saying.”

  Adam sighed. “Yes, we know. His and hers. But then there’s a third side; the truth. And who is to discover it?”

  “Every day at my work in a big-city hospital,” James writes, “I see illness, death, and grief. It seems to me that the best medicine for disappointment and grief is work. Each of you has plenty of it, music for one, and the store for the other. Work all day, and if you get tired enough by the time night comes, you will sleep better.”

  So every day Adam went to the office and read reports, of which there was surely never any shortage. Then he would wait for Andy to come and ask for the advice and opinions that he did not need at all; he was only being kind to his father.

  Leaving the store one afternoon many months later, Adam discovered Reilly standing on the sidewalk looking at a display of resort fashions.

  “Coming to work, Reilly? You’re late again,” he joked.

  “I wish I was. I was a kid when I went to work for old man Rothirsch. This place is all I ever knew.”

  “Let’s have lunch,” Adam said, although he had planned to go straight home.

  “Okay, but nothing fancy.”

  “No, fancy. What are you doing, saving my money again?”

  “No, saving Andy’s money.”

  It was the same old banter, and it felt good. “We’ll eat where the lawyers eat. It’s still the best place in town.”

  At the restaurant they sat down and studied the menu. “Have lobster,” Adam said.

  “Costs a fortune.”

  “Don’t argue. Lobster for two,” he told the waiter, and then asked Reilly whether he remembered the time he had urged Adam not to be seen in this place with Miss Emma Rothirsch.

  “Sure do. It was on account of Mr. Lawrence. Dead now. Everybody’s dead, or on the way there. Even Archer, that darn stiff-upper-lip Englishman. Used to make me so darn mad. Best friend I ever had, along with you, Adam.”

  Reilly was an old man now, how old Adam could only guess. The jolly, innocent face was lost in a mass of wrinkles; the sparse hair was gray, and only the brown, friendly eyes were the same.

  “How’s the family, Reilly?”

  “Good, thanks be. And thanks to you, I was able to help them along. The grandkids are all married and have kids of their own. You remember Tom, used to wait at the door for me on his roller skates? He’s got a store, his own store, hardware, in Milltown. Doing well, too. You wouldn’t recognize him. Guess I wouldn’t recognize your James, either.”

  “Well, James is the same. Busy, busy. In a couple of years, his son will be starting his own practice. Neurosurgery,
he wants. Sometimes I think of my brother Jonathan. He would have gone out to India, or Africa, and worked in the jungle.”

  “You think he would. But you never know how people will turn out.”

  “Yes, I guess you’re right. Louise, that shy little thing—remember how she was? Used to come into the store and never say a word? Well, she couldn’t be more different now. And our Eileen, the tomboy, the feminist who didn’t believe in marriage—have I told you the latest?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s actually funny. Her Danny—and he’s really a nice kid who loves Eileen and bosses her around—well, he knows a girl in his class who is the total opposite of anything that Eileen stands for. But she has a father, a widower who wants to marry Eileen. And it looks as though he will. So it only goes to show that you really never know, do you?”

  “I wonder whether you’ve heard anything about Theo Brown.”

  “Not in years. Didn’t he move out of town and open an office someplace else?”

  “Yeah, but things didn’t go too well. I was having a couple of drinks last night with some guys who used to drive for him. Said he was in a nursing home, running out of money. Knowing him, you know it’s a high-class, expensive place, and they’re about to put him out of it.”

  “Pretty sick, is he?”

  “He’s got a couple of months to go, they said.”

  He tried to get ahead, Adam thought. He tried desperately, even tried a deception of which, being the decent man I once knew him to be, he must have been ashamed. Lying there now, alone and waiting for death, he must think of many, many things. . . .

  Adam shuddered. And then he asked a question. “How much does it cost?”

  “Why, I don’t know. A lot, I’m sure.”

  “Ask your guys where he is and I’ll call the place. They can send the bill to me.”

  “You’re going to do that for him after what he did to you, or tried to do?”

  “Ah, why not? But just keep it to yourself, Reilly, will you?”