The Sight of the Stars

  Reilly nodded, hesitated, and spoke. “There was another guy at the bar who said something about a guy he used to see in his neighborhood, in the apartment house. Name was Arnring, he said. He wondered what had happened to him. I said I didn’t know, but if it was the same Arnring, he had moved away, out of town, about a hundred years ago.”

  How much Reilly knew, Adam had no idea. But he must know that something drastic had happened. He might even have heard something from the dressmaker gossips. Reilly enjoyed gossip as long as it was not cruel. He had brought up the subject because he was merely curious by nature, that was all. But this curiosity was not going to be satisfied, and Adam deftly changed the subject.

  Still, it lingered in his mind. Walking back to the store, he came to the bank and the corner where he had had his last sight of Leo, scurrying away while some young girls, tittering as Leo passed them, had brought an instant of compassion into Adam’s fury.

  That evening, he questioned Emma. “If by some chance Leo had slipped back into town, we’d know about it, don’t you think so?”

  “I imagine we would, sooner or later. But after all these years, you should try to find him anyway, Adam. You really should.”

  She had no idea . . . no idea . . .

  “If you can forget what Brown tried to do, why can’t you forget what Leo did? Life is so short. Haven’t we found that out? And you’ve seen how quickly things can happen. In an instant, everything changes. Think of your brother Jonathan.”

  “Jon was no Leo.”

  “But if he had been ‘difficult,’ shall we say, to put it mildly, and you had been angry at him for some reason, for any reason, and had not yet gotten over it when he died, how would you be feeling now?”

  “I repeat: ‘Jon was no Leo!’ You’re not making sense, Emma. Let’s drop the subject.”

  People, and life in general, were contrary and unpredictable. Leo, the solemn loner, had triumphed over Adam. Brother Jonathan, analytical and wise, had given up his life because of an unworthy woman.

  Adam looked around the beautiful living room, with the fire bright in the grate and autumn flowers everywhere. Here was the peaceful family home, here were the far-flung people come together as always for Thanksgiving.

  Here sat Louise, the shy and docile daughter who, having married the man she was determined to marry no matter how uncertain her parents had been about him, had become the competent mistress of a household and family in South America. Now in his mind’s eye Adam saw the house that still astonished Emma and himself whenever they went there to visit. Never could anyone who had known Louise as a child have imagined her as the mistress of that house and mother of four splendid children she now was. Nor could they have imagined her as the director of a charity school for the blind, which she was.

  Next to her sat Eileen, the sister who had never gotten along with her. Looking unmistakably contented, she who had once disdained the role of wife was accompanied by her husband, a large, rather masterly gentleman who raised horses far from the New York City that she had vowed she would never leave. With them was her Danny, a young man with the charm, wit, and blond hair that must derive from his anonymous father.

  Then there were Bernice and Andy with their sons; James and Sally with their girls; and their son Ray, now a finished neurosurgeon, who was holding his little Emma.

  Peaceful home, Adam thought again. In spite of sorrows, there was always so much for which to be grateful. And wouldn’t Pa have loved all this?

  The tall, attractive young man who sat across from him caught his eye and smiled. “A wonderful day,” he said in accented English. “I thank you for inviting me. It’s my first visit to the States.”

  He was Louise’s brother-in-law, but Adam had forgotten his name. “I’m not good at remembering names. I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t see me often enough to remember. My name is Leo.”

  Of course it was. How could he have forgotten?

  Or was the better question: Would he ever be able to forget?

  Chapter 26

  He wrote:

  Emma did a lovely thing. She bought a dog for us. Our poodles have long been dead, and there has been so much happening in our lives that we never replaced them. And yet, with everyone gone, the house felt empty. Yesterday she passed some people taking a large puppy into the pound, and, being Emma, she stopped to ask about him. He’s a mix of Irish setter and something else, red as a setter, but smaller. His owners died, and nobody wanted him. So she bought him and brought him home, complete with veterinarian’s instructions, a warm coat, new bowls, and a handsome basket. His name is Rusty. She could not have known, and I did not say, that his huge, clumsy paws and his mild gaze reminded me of Arthur.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleased and touched by a present.

  The dog, and the fact that Adam no longer had the same responsibilities in the store, made a difference. Emma no longer had as many pupils, either. In the afternoons, they were able to take long walks with Rusty and sometimes drive with him to that remote place on the riverbank that now felt like their private property.

  “Do you remember our first time here?” Emma asked one day as they unpacked the lunch basket. “We had Rea’s doughnuts. There simply are no doughnuts anywhere like the ones she used to make.”

  Indeed he remembered. He remembered the coots that were still sailing down the river exactly as if the world hadn’t changed, which for them, it had not. He remembered that Emma had wanted him to make love to her, and that he had been afraid to try any foolery with Sabine Rothirsch’s niece. He looked at her now. There were a few strands of gray in her hair, as in his own. The years had been kind to them. He leaned over and kissed her.

  They ate their sandwiches. Rusty paddled in the water, shook himself, and lay down to gnaw on the bone that had been brought for his entertainment.

  “I heard something interesting this week,” Emma said. “Somebody who had recently been in Paris found out what happened to Blanche. Apparently she had been living the high life in a beautiful apartment on the Isle St. Louis, but then the Nazis came and got her.”

  “They got a lot of people.”

  He did not want to hear about Blanche, and yet he could not keep from asking who Emma’s informant was.

  “A woman at the music school. I hardly know her. She had heard it from an old lady who used to work in Blanche’s department. And the old lady heard it from the man in Paris who thought a friend of Blanche’s might want to know what had happened.”

  “Do these people have nothing better to do than rake over every little piece of ancient history that they can dig up?”

  “Why not? No harm was meant. Why are you so angry?”

  “I’m not really angry, just annoyed. Do I need to explain that the subject is—shall I say ‘unpleasant’?”

  “Not to me, Adam. Not anymore. That’s long past. As you said, it’s ancient history.”

  Mollified by her voice, he said quietly, “Okay. Maybe I don’t like ancient history.”

  She was not finished. “I know you don’t. You also don’t like to tie up loose ends.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m talking about your brother Leo.”

  Would no one ever leave the subject alone? If it wasn’t Reilly who brought it up, then it was Emma.

  “You’ve come to terms with other things in your life. So why can’t you do it with Leo before it’s too late? Who knows how long any of us is going to live?”

  “I wish you would stop bringing this up, Emma. You mean well, but of course you can’t read my mind, so you can’t understand. Then why do you bring it up again?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It’s just that there’s such a thing as forgiveness.”

  “Exactly what does ‘forgiveness’ mean? It’s not that I wish him any harm. I truly don’t. But I don’t want to be bothered with him. I don’t want him to appear at our door.”

  “Because of me? I wouldn’t care what he might say. Tr
uly I wouldn’t.”

  God only knows what he might invent . . .

  “I don’t mean to preach or sound holy, Adam, but it seems to be so—so narrow-minded that you can’t accept the fact that, yes, he did something awful to you, but it’s over with. Let’s put it behind us.”

  “Narrow-minded? How can you say such a thing to me of all people? With all my faults, you have to admit that my mind is open to everybody. Why, right here in our own family, we—I—have loved and accepted everyone. My grandson Raymond is Jewish, my son Andy’s wife is a Methodist, my daughter Louise married a Catholic, and in my business we have both whites and blacks. So what are you talking about?”

  “I didn’t mean that kind of narrow-mindedness, although God knows there’s enough of it in this world. I just said ‘forgiveness.’ Opening your heart is what I meant. You’ll feel better if you do. Leo will stop haunting you. You’ve done this for other people. I’ve seen it. Theo Brown and—”

  “They weren’t my brothers.”

  “He hurt you dreadfully, poor man.”

  “‘Poor man’? Who? Leo, or me?”

  “Both,” said Emma.

  That night Emma went to bed with a chill and fever. In the morning when she was feeling no better, Adam called their old friend Dr. Bassett, who prescribed an antibiotic. On the third day, she was neither better nor worse. On the fifth day, she died.

  As if from a vast distance, Adam heard words that meant nothing to him. What difference did they make, these explanations, these neutered, gentle voices, these terms like “endocarditis,” “bacterial,” “heart valves”?

  He became aware that, at the other end of the room, Andy was talking on the telephone.

  “Mom left us an hour ago,” he heard, so Andy must have been talking to James. “Endocarditis and stroke. Yes, our old friend Dr. Bassett came. Yes. Very quiet. Probably hasn’t accepted it yet. Bernice and I will stay here all night, or a couple of nights. Yes. Oh, a girl? Six pounds two? About the same time Mom died. I’ll tell him now. Tomorrow? What time? Let me know so I can send a car to the airport for everyone.”

  So one dies, and another is born. When Adam got up from the chair and went outside, the dog went along. It seemed to him that the dog understood his grief. Or was this really grief? It seemed to him that he was feeling nothing. The world had simply stopped, and it was of no importance because the black sky was studded with stars and this little earth was as nothing among them.

  After a while, he went back inside where Bernice and Andy were sitting in the living room. He sensed by the way they looked at him that they were asking whether they could help. But he walked on past them, went to the desk in his little den, and pulled out the diary.

  What could he write? He felt as if he must mark this night with a poem, something memorable, or a profound prayer. But he could think of nothing like that, so he simply wrote the date and three words: Emma died tonight.

  Then he put his head down on the book and closed his dry eyes. He was sitting there with his heart shuddering in his chest, when Andy came and led him up the stairs.

  “I’m living too long,” Adam said one day in the second month of mourning. “I dread the coming of spring without Emma. Did you know that every year when the tree frogs sang, she always said how glad she was to have lived to see another spring? Yes, I’m living too long.”

  In her soft way, Bernice rebuked him. “She wouldn’t want you to say that, or feel that way, Dad. She accepted what has to be accepted.”

  “I know. But this house is unbearable. Everywhere I walk in it, I see her. The silence is unbearable. I need to get out of here.”

  “Where would you go?” asked Andy.

  “I don’t know. Somewhere in town, I guess. Find an apartment, two rooms near the store, the way I began.”

  Andy smiled. “You wouldn’t be able to take Rusty, so you’d better stay here.”

  “You’re joking, but I’m serious. I’ll give you this house. Sell your place and move in here. It’s much nicer here than where you are now. You know it is. I’ll make a present of the house and everything in it.”

  “Rusty, too?”

  “I’m not joking, I tell you. Will you take it or won’t you?”

  Bernice spoke promptly. “If Andy agrees, I would answer yes. But there’d be one condition. Only if you will stay here, Dad.”

  “With all our crew?” Andy wondered. “Two girls, two fellows with girlfriends? Their noise can shatter your eardrums.”

  “It’s the silence that’s hard for Dad to hear, Andy. I rather think he would welcome some happy noise.”

  So it was that Adam Arnring’s life entered a new phase, a phase he never could have imagined.

  Chapter 27

  One day when Adam opened the bottom drawer in his desk, he caught sight of the diary, concealed by a pile of papers. It had been years, four or five, since he had put a word in it. Opening it now, he discovered the last ones he had written: Emma died tonight. He sat there staring at them. Then suddenly, feeling an irresistible compulsion, he picked up the pen and began to write. There ought to be some record, some notice taken, of the kind of human being Emma had been and the life she had lived.

  So he wrote every day, and sometimes more often, as the long past unraveled in his memory. After a while it began to seem as though he were talking to Emma.

  You would be happy to see how Andy and his family take care of the house. Bernice sprays the rosebushes that you always worried about. She has a piano tuner come once a year so the tone is still perfect. Tim is taking lessons, but even though he keeps them up, I can tell he hasn’t got the touch. Still, he likes to play popular melodies, so he’ll entertain his friends and himself when he goes to law school. And most likely he’ll entertain himself for the rest of his life. Your piano won’t go to waste.

  Louise’s son Giorgio is a different story. You were the first to notice his promise when he took his first violin lessons. Louise writes that he is becoming something of a prodigy at the age of fifteen. He has already been invited to play with a fine little orchestra at home, and who knows but that someday we shall be hearing him in the United States, too?

  The sorry thoughts I have when I look around at all the faces is that we almost never hear anything from Jon’s children, except for a rather formal Christmas card from various scattered places, here and abroad. I regret to say that their mother must have poisoned their minds in some way. I ask again: Is it possible that Jon was at fault, so that she left him for another man? We’ll never know. And perhaps it is just as well.

  All of us here get loving letters and phone calls from the family in New York. Ray is becoming a name in neurosurgery, James says. He is teaching now at one of the city’s great medical schools. Almost more important is the fact that he has wonderful children, especially the little girl, Emma. She does not look like you, but in a way that is hard to describe, she reminds me of you: very bright, gentle, sure of herself, and quick to get the point.

  Adam wrote furiously, driven by what force he could not explain, to get everything down and omit nothing. Nothing? Well, he knew what he was leaving out. And sometimes he toyed with the idea of doing something about Leo, but then he did not do it.

  In pain, he wrote about James’s sudden death of heart failure at the age of fifty. One of his sons was gone now, yet he lived on, still strong, unbent, with a full head of thick white hair and a few gray hairs in it. In pleasure he wrote about a visit with Andy and Bernice to the Cace Arnring in New York and a happy side trip to Eileen on the horse farm. He wrote about looking forward to yet another Thanksgiving, and to the summer visits of Ray with his family, when he would see young Emma; although of course he would never say so or in any way let it be known, she was Number One. She was his darling.

  “So you didn’t want to go with your dad and mother to see the hospital this afternoon?” Adam asked one summer day.

  “I’m not interested in hospitals,” Emma said.

  “No? Why not?”


  “I don’t know. I just wanted to be outside here. It’s so different from New York. I like looking around at everything, all the flowers and trees, and the dog. We don’t have a dog because Mom doesn’t want one, which is selfish, don’t you think so? Otherwise, she isn’t selfish at all, but I would love to have a dog like Rusty.”

  “Rusty wouldn’t be happy in the city, you know that. He needs a lot of space to run around in.”

  Space enough there was; a steep meadow climbed the hill at the back of the house; another meadow slid down a hill at the front of the house. And around the house lay level acres where a soft breeze blew through the cottonwood trees, the oaks, and the spruce.

  Adam was in his big chair with Rusty on the ground beside him, while Emma was sprawled on the grass with her chin between her hands.

  “Oh, I would love to live here,” she said. “That’s why I like to come every summer.”

  “Well, your dad’s a doctor, and he works in New York, so you have to live there.”

  “I know, but wherever we go, he wants to see the hospitals.”

  “That’s natural.”

  “He says he doesn’t understand why you didn’t have them change the name of the one here from Chattahoochee to Arnring after you gave them all that money. But I understand why.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, it’s because you don’t like to show off and be stuck up.”

  “Well! Eleven years old, and you know how to read minds!”

  He was laughing inside, but with her, not at her. He looked quite nice when he laughed, too. You would never think that he was so old; you’d expect him to be all shriveled up and bent over and bald, but he wasn’t. He must have been a very handsome man when he was young, because he looked so handsome in pictures. It gave Emma a soft, funny feeling to be here with him, first because he was her great-grandfather, and she didn’t know anybody who had a great-grandfather. Even a lot of her friends’ grandparents were already dead. The second reason for that soft feeling was that she knew he was not going to live forever.