‘Not the kind of meal,’ Gert yelled from the stove, ‘that y’fix when y’wanna talk to someone! Ha-ha!’
Edith laughed too. She had not sat down. ‘Help you?’ she asked. ‘Making a salad?’
‘No-o-o. Bored with salad! We got some good ice cream to finish with. Peach!’
The crackle and hissing abated as Gert forked out the last pieces and cut off the gas. Like a gypsy, or a leper, or a stranger, Dinah reappeared (she had gone to her room), snared some hot pieces of chicken with her fingers and dropped them on a plate, and disappeared again into the bowels of the house. Gert and Norm seemed to pay no attention. They sat and began.
‘Do you know a girl called – Lucy Beckman?’ Edith asked.
‘Beckman? From where?’ Gert bit into a wishbone.
‘Around Philly. Cliffie’s new girl friend. I – Yes, really!’ Edith said, smiling. Gert had interrupted her with an astonished exclamation. Edith described the girl, eighteen, slender, blondish, and with a rather sophisticated manner.
Gert didn’t know of such a girl, though she had known some people called Beckman ages ago in Flemington.
‘Cliffie’s se-erious?’ Norm asked.
‘Well – as he’s ever been.’ Edith was a little sorry she had brought the girl up, since she didn’t usually or ever talk about Cliffie’s social life. There hadn’t been any until now. But they were already on another subject. Lyndon Johnson again. The Vietnamese.
‘People have a right,’ Gert declaimed, slapping her plump fingers down on the table edge, ‘to their own kind of government! If they want socialism, communism —’
‘Honey, we know all that,’ said Norman, picking his teeth now. The Johnsons kept toothpicks on the table in a shot glass.
The old words rolled off Edith also. There was no wine. She was finishing the last of her second rye and water. ‘Socialism is not the same as communism,’ she said. ‘England has socialism – of a sort. Communism —’
‘England has mixed,’ Norm said. ‘Socialism and capitalism.’
‘But just the word communism means Moscow – old Stalinism,’ said Edith.
‘Not necessarily,’ Gert said.
Edith saw the hopelessness. But human voices were comforting, somehow. It was almost like reciting verses, she thought. ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ and ‘I shall not want.’ Edith said, ‘Since communism is coming, all this is a delaying action – Viet Nam —’
‘Right,’ said Gert, ‘but it doesn’t have to be Moscow communism – or socialism.’
I’m drifting to the right, Edith thought. I’m becoming a goddam Fascist, assuming that the Right means Fascist. ‘What did you think of my idea of observers, organizers, going into every Third World country and – administrating food, aid of all kinds from other countries, supervising —’
‘Not bad,’ said Norm.
Edith was cheered. ‘To cut down graft and wastage, so that —’
‘To perpetrate our way of life, you mean. Perpetuate, I mean.’ Gert laughed.
‘No,’ Edith said. ‘But I admit it’s another step toward authoritarianism. Didn’t I write a Bugle editorial two years ago on creeping authoritarianism?’
Gert tried to think.
They talked on. Edith was for ‘supervision’, Gert for ‘freedom of choice’. Of course Edith meant freedom of choice also, but how could there be freedom of choice in countries whose people could not read, whose greedy upper classes mis-spent money given by other countries, and food and tools were not properly distributed?
‘No use going on,’ Edith said, ‘until we get down to specific countries like India, or specific cases.’
‘But you’re talking like —’
A minute or so later, Edith was saying, ‘You can’t just pour money down a hole – as even Johnson said, and expect it to solve problems. Look at Operation Head-Start, mainly for black kids, let’s face it. It’s been called a failure, but it was a wonderful idea at first, to start those kids out in school two years before kids usually go to school, start them reading.’
‘Johnson said it was a failure?’ Gert asked in a surprised tone.
Edith nodded. ‘I read it somewhere. Well, it wasn’t the hoped-for success. There is one way to break this damned backwardness of the blacks,’ and she put backwardness in quotes by the tone of her voice, ‘that’s to take them away from their parents when they’re two or even one year old, and bring them up among middle-class whites – you know, with books and music in the house and a stable home life. Then we’d see —’
‘Wha-at? Pretty drastic,’ Gert said, now bringing a big blue plastic bowl of peach ice cream to the table.
‘Yes,’ Edith went on in a gentle voice, thinking a soft approach might sink in better, ‘but it’s the only way to break the vicious circle. No matter how good schools are, kids still spend more time out of school than in. If colored kids were brought up in white households, we’d see – or prove – that environmental and economic conditions are more important than heredity.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Norm.
Dinah had come in for the ice cream.
Edith wondered, however, if she really believed that environment was more important than heredity. Over the ice cream, she found herself reversing what she had said. She thought heredity was more important, had a slight edge on environment, and she said so. Then Gert got up in arms. This was racism.
‘Aryan crap!’ Gert said.
But Edith didn’t back down. Lincoln learned his sums by writing on the back of a shovel. Nobody had been pouring money into his school.
‘Cool it, girls!’ Norm said, and he had to repeat it, because they were both talking at once.
‘Jesus!’ Gert said, exasperated.
The conflict left Edith dazed. She found herself wondering if the girl called Luce even existed? Of course. She had seen her, in her own living room, could even remember the pink shirt the girl had been wearing. Gert served coffee. Then she showed Edith the baby picture that Edith had noticed, and it was Derek’s baby son. Gert’s voice was friendly now, but Edith sensed that something had changed between them, maybe irreparably. Or was she imagining this, just because she had been hurt by Gert’s opposition? At any rate, by the time she said good night, the atmosphere had not thawed, she felt, though Norm seemed as usual, and Edith was for a second embarrassed at seeing the neat, purple paper bag beside her coat on the Johnsons’ old sofa. She had brought Gert a present, and to offer it now seemed like an appeasement, to take it home again, worse.
‘Oh, brought you something, Gert! And Norm. It’s for the house,’ Edith handed the bag to Gert.
‘Oh, gee!’ Then Gert pulled out the square of white linen tablecloth. ‘Oh, it’s gorgeous! From your old aunt, I bet!’
‘Yes. Well – just for décor,’ Edith said. ‘Bridge table size. Or it’ll hang over the edge a bit.’
‘Isn’t that pretty,’ said Norm, touching it carefully. ‘Bet it’s a hundred years old.’
Edith smiled. ‘Thank you, Gert, for a great dinner.’
Norm saw her down to her car. She drove homeward, still feeling uneasy, without knowing exactly why. She didn’t want to lose Gert’s friendship, or even see their friendship cool. Was it Cliffie worrying her? Or Brett? The thought of Brett sent a resentment, or anger, over her. His lawyer’s letter to Carstairs seemed merely petulant. If Brett or the lawyer wanted to accuse somebody, why didn’t they do it outright – accuse either her or Cliffie?
On Wednesday of the following week, Edith received a typewritten letter from Brett on the Post’s stationery. It said:
Dear Edith,
This morning I heard by letter from the lawyer of Dr Carstairs who dismisses my concern (about causes of George’s death) as ‘already clearly stated,’ and he says the doctor would be willing to answer further specific questions, should I wish.
My personal view is that Cliffie gave him an overdose. Of course – who cares about fighting for the old these days? Such things are done every day, I s
uppose. I asked C. direct, didn’t I? But what if I had questioned him for half an hour in a room alone? I can see him now, denying, like a madman. Well, never fear, my dear, I am not going to pursue the matter any further. Neither shall I turn loose of my own view. It will never be determined, probably. Certainly not after the peremptory disposal of my uncle’s remains.
It goes without saying that this situation does not make me any prouder of my son or fonder of him. He is a mystery to me and I think to you.
My uncle’s will is still under probate. I shall send you, however, a check for at least $10,000 when the estate comes to me.
Yours with love and all
good wishes,
Brett
Edith folded the letter slowly, absently carried it up to her workroom, where she kept all her papers. The coldness, she thought, and the snideness. Couldn’t he have written to Cliffie, for instance, a careful, tactful letter, if he wanted to worm the truth out of him? And she found her feelings settling once more into the groove they had been in when she had seen Brett last: The nerve of him, harping on the cause of George’s death, when George had been for years almost too weak to get out of bed to cross his room. A current of cold air could have carried him away in the winter, a fall on the floor one of the times he tried to get up for something. And now Brett was trying to stir up a case of murder!
She was not going to say anything to Carstairs. Let him speak to her again, if he chose to.
When Edith had recovered her calm, she sat down at her worktable and opened her diary to her last entry, which had been Sunday after the Johnsons’ dinner, and after she had run up the curtains for the spare room. She had written cheerfully about the progress on the room, and the coming of spring weather.
C. back on these shores again & coming with D. & baby Josephine next weekend. I have knitted a coat sweater – white with some pink. Shall give them lobster one night, squab the next, commanded in advance from the Cracker Barrel. Both are gourmets which puts me on my mettle.
Life here more cheerful since I putter around ‘improving the house’, painting & so forth. I am happy and feel well.
D. rings at least twice a week, says J. can say a whole sentence correctly & can read several letters of the alphabet. We shall see! She is not yet two years old.
26
Cliffie had gone several times to the Cartwheel Inn during the weeks after his date with Luce. He imagined that the plump proprietor winced or groaned silently when he saw him come in the door. Cliffie always looked around first to see if Luce might be there. He couldn’t prevent himself from looking around, though he always meant to go coolly to the bar and order a beer, and then look around, or maybe Luce, if she were there, would come up to him. This had never happened.
She hadn’t left her home address with the Cartwheel. That Cliffie had ascertained months ago. It was now October. Cliffie had even sounded out the waiters. He had inquired, trying to make his manner casual, if a girl named Lucy Beckman (or a girl looking like her) had possibly bought drinks or a meal and charged it to her family, leaving an address. No luck. He had asked at a couple of shops in Brunswick Corner, and one shopkeeper had asked him if he was a bill-collector. But most shopkeepers knew Cliffie, knew also that he was hung up on this girl. Cliffie didn’t like it that they knew or suspected, but it couldn’t be helped.
‘At least,’ Cliffie said to one of the shop owners – Bart Newman, gifts, candy – ‘it’s like having a poster up saying “wanted”. A lot of people are keeping their eyes open.’ That had been on a sunny morning when he had been feeling especially optimistic, friendly with everyone, even happy. Luce made him happy and unhappy too, as they said in a lot of popular songs.
His mother was sympathetic, mostly. But twice she had said to him, shaking her head nervously as she often did lately, ‘I sometimes feel that girl was a dream of both of us. It’s funny.’
‘But you saw her, Mom!’ Cliffie had replied.
Then his mother, the second time, had looked away, as if she wasn’t even going to admit that she had seen her.
For three days last summer Cliffie had run an item in the Philadelphia Inquirer: ‘Would Luce Beckman please contact C. H., Brunswick Corner. Urgent, desperate.’ Plus his phone number. This had brought no result, and Cliffie had thought that to keep on with it would be money down the drain.
By October, Cliffie had lost about twenty pounds. He bought a few new trousers, rather than bunch his old ones up with a belt. He still worked off and on at the Chop House, and some of the fellows there had joked about his new slenderness, asking him if it was due to a diet or a girl. Cliffie did not appreciate that. In fact, the fellows probably knew it was a girl, probably had heard about Luce. But Cliffie was more annoyed by their subtly cynical attitude which seemed to imply that it didn’t matter much if it was a girl or not, because he would never get a girl anyway.
To add to Cliffie’s ill-ease in town, his mother seemed to be in increasingly hot water – or tepid maybe – because of things she wrote in the Bugle editorials. This fall it was something she had written about birth control. If it wasn’t one thing – griping about the one thousand new houses being built on the south side of Brunswick Corner – it was something else. Cliffie hadn’t read the birth control piece, but he was sure his mother had been for it, and though Cliffie was for it too and thought most intelligent people were for it, it was amazing the number of apparently bright people who weren’t for it. Surely they couldn’t all be Catholics. Two women, one old, one youngish, had said something to Cliffie on the street. The old one: ‘How’s your mother standing up against all the letters about that child – birth…’
‘Oh – just letting ’em blow away,’ Cliffie had replied with a smile, disgusted with the old hag. It had been a windy day, and he had thought his words appropriate. Cliffie knew what his mother had written concerned abortion too, because the younger woman (pregnant), had used the word abortion. Cliffie hated the word, had never applied himself to unraveling all the fuss about it, and he had come off badly in this brief encounter, not replying anything intelligent. He wanted to ask his mother exactly what she had said (the Bugle issue it had appeared in now being so old, he had no idea of its date), yet the subject was so distasteful, Cliffie could not bring himself to ask a question. His mother would enlighten him, Cliffie was sure, if he asked about it, because he could see that his mother felt sure of herself, really defiant of the others. Once his mother had had quite a conversation (probably about this) on the phone with Gert Johnson, and when Cliffie had asked what it was all about, his mother had said, ‘Oh, Gert thinks something I wrote was too strong. Where does one get if things aren’t strong?’ The way his mother had said ‘too strong’ might as well have been a sneer at Gert.
His mother also talked a lot against Nixon, and just as bitterly. How anyone could get so excited over those stuffed shirts in Washington, Cliffie couldn’t understand. They were all alike. Years ago when he had taken more interest in professional football teams, his mother had said they were all alike. But he could throw it back at her in regard to presidents, governors, no matter what in politics. We all have our games, Cliffie thought, and felt it a philosophical observation. All in the mind, after all.
It had occurred to Cliffie to make a dummy of Luce for his room. He wouldn’t necessarily sleep with it, of course, but what a pleasure it would be to be able to see a life-sized figure of her, pretty and slim in her dark blue slacks, pink shirt – all made of what? Straw stitched into canvas, he supposed. The problem of the materials threw him off. He perhaps wouldn’t be able to hide it from his mother. But if he lived alone, he felt he would have made a dummy of Luce. Stuck it away in his closet when people came, maybe, unless he was lucky enough to know the kind of people who could laugh at it, as he would laugh, if he had people in.
Cliffie now had over six hundred dollars in his savings account, earning four-and-a-half percent interest a year, and over a hundred in his checking account. His mother didn’t know these
figures. It made him feel good to have some money behind him. It meant potential freedom, such as taking a trip somewhere. He saved quite a bit – maybe three-quarters – of his salary and tips from the Chop House and other odd jobs, and gave his mother at least fifteen dollars a week, sometimes twenty. She was always talking about ‘just making it’ or ‘breaking even’ at the end of a month. If she were ever in real straits, meaning if the house was, Cliffie imagined crashing through with a few hundred to bail them out, imagined being a hero for a while. But Cliffie knew he would not enjoy having to do that. Better to prod his father, Cliffie thought, if need be – earning a New York salary and married to a rich woman to boot!