“It’s human nature,” Pops told her.
“What? Human nature which? To think well of yourself? Or to be greedy and self-serving, and act as if yours was the only important life in town?”
Pops took the question as unloaded. “Both, I’d say. All.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Mumma said. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do.”
“I don’t want to live like that, to live here. Are your friends like that?”
“Well,” Pops said, and thought about it. “Not yet. Not all of them. I don’t have many friends.”
“I don’t much care for that kind of person,” Mumma warned him.
The only one of these connections of Grandmother’s whom she found sympathetic was an older woman, a widow, who over the years of war had lost not only a husband but also her two bachelor sons. This woman would have welcomed a young and growing family into her big empty house. But the square stucco building, overgrown with ivy, its garden unweeded and grass rarely mown, was so dark and dismal and steeped in sorrow and death Mumma was sure it would permanently distort her children’s characters. “You can’t expect a child not to be affected,” Mumma told Pops. “Think of all those children in Europe.”
“And Japan,” he said. “And the rest of the Far East, and now India, too, and the Mid-East.”
“Life is hard enough without growing up in a mausoleum,” Mumma agreed.
“Children would brighten it up, though, wouldn’t they? I remember playing with Allen and Rich in Mrs. Ralster’s garden. It was—We played hide-and-seek there, we all—” but that was not a line of thought he wanted to dwell on. “She was an avid gardener. I think she grew vegetables, too; she let us pick peas. She showed us how to shell them.”
“I’m not risking my children,” Mumma announced. “Meg and I will visit her, and I’ll think of something for her to do, maybe library work. Yes, libraries are quiet, it’s work a lady would be comfortable doing, librarians are kind people. She’ll be comfortable in a library. Where is the public library in Cambridge?”
Pops didn’t know. He didn’t know if Cambridge had a public library. Mumma thought that was just like him, just like his family. He agreed that it was, and did she want him to find out where it was? What did he think? she demanded, from which he deduced her answer. So he set about getting her that information, and finding out which family friends were on the board. The rest became history, once Mumma got started. (“Who do you think built up the children’s collection there? And funded the Ralster Children’s Reading Room?” “I thought it was Mrs. Ralster who did all that,” Jo would respond, or I would. “Yes, but who do you think put the idea into her head? Which made her last years so much happier than they were being before.”)
Their second week at Louisburg Square stretched into a third and entered a fourth and Labor Day grew close. Anne returned, twice, ostensibly for job interviews. She must have really had them, because by the end of the summer she had turned down a position at Mass General and decided to continue working in Bourne. This made no sense to Grandmother, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade her middle daughter to return to Boston, but Mumma had her theories. The end of summer meant a man’s wife would be returning, from the Cape or the Vineyard, Watch Hill or Blue Hill. The end of summer meant the end of the affair.
Meanwhile, Mumma had opened her mind to the possibility of purchasing a home rather than renting one, but she discovered that there were almost as few opportunities in that market. There were, however, two apartment buildings, side by side, unfortunately situated in North Cambridge, and also unfortunately in need of a great deal of repair, renovation, and redecoration. “I can’t believe those cousins of yours with all their money don’t fix the apartments up for the tenants,” Mumma said.
“They’d lose the income,” Pops said.
“They don’t need the income,” Mumma argued.
“I know, but they like it,” Pops said.
“Fixed up, the buildings will rent for more and sell for more. They’d be a good investment.”
“Real estate isn’t an investment. It’s property.”
“I’m not going to turn into one of those slum landlords,” Mumma warned him.
He agreed entirely. “I never thought you would.” They both understood without speaking of it whose vision and ambition was being served in this.
“Does that mean you don’t think I should make an offer on the buildings?” Mumma asked.
Pops said, “No. The opposite, in fact. But I’d be hopeless at the renovation and no good at overseeing the work any contractors were doing. You know how I am, I don’t—”
Mumma cut him off. “I was thinking of me, because I can do all of those things, and with one hand tied behind my back.”
“Then I’ll talk to Mr. Talziewicz and he’ll get you the money.”
“Mr. Talziewicz? I thought it was your money.”
“He’s the trustee.”
“The trustee?”
“Well, actually there are three, but Mr. Talziewicz is the only one who does anything. He’s the one we talk to about the trust funds while the other two—it’s a sinecure really, they’re cousins, much older and for one reason and another, they don’t have much. They do whatever Mr. Talziewicz says. He’s the one who actually manages the investments, the distributions, the taxes.”
“You have to ask him for your own money?” Mumma asked.
“Do you want me to?”
Then Mumma wasn’t so sure. Possibility, when it turns into prose, loses some of its allure. It gains substance, but that substance might well be not what one hoped for, or planned on, or could keep control over. Prose, like children, might grow into something ungovernable. “I have to think about it,” Mumma said.
However, the more she thought about it, the more confident Mumma was that she could make it work. “We could live there if we have to, if we want to,” she told Pops. “It’s not that bad.”
“You’ll find a house.”
“An apartment would be all right for a temporary home, once the wiring and plumbing, furnace, a new roof—once they’re in place, with the bathrooms tiled, fresh paint on the walls, the kitchen…” (“And that was the start of me, the start of my business,” was the way Mumma liked to conclude her telling of this story. “I hope you girls know how important it is to marry the right man.”)
• • •
Brundy showed up at Louisburg Square the day after Pops got the check from Mr. Talziewicz and deposited it into Mumma’s bank account so that she could—after the ten business days required for the funds to travel the several city blocks from Temple Street to Brattle—conclude her purchase of the building. Mumma had arranged it so that the renovation work began immediately on signing of the contract; three-quarters of the tenants would be staying on, having decided that enduring renovations was their best option in this particular housing market, with this particular landlady. They must have been pleased to note that she arrived every morning to oversee the work, despite the toddler she pushed before her in a perambulator and the unborn child she was carrying. Mumma and Meg had returned to Louisburg Square after the morning’s labors, for a nap (Meg) and further study of building codes (Mumma) on the day Brundy came to the Louisburg Square house for the last time, and asked to see Mumma.
Martina made the trek up three flights of stairs, the last flight only dimly lit and entirely uncarpeted, to knock on the door of Mumma’s room and tell her that Mr. Brundy was downstairs and he was wondering if he could have a few minutes. Mumma didn’t want to leave Meg so far from anyone who might hear her cry out, but she was equally unwilling to wake her up, since whenever Meg was short of sleep her character suffered. So Martina agreed to wait upstairs for Mumma’s return and maybe she would just take a load off and lie down with the baby, because that way she could be sure nothing would happen to the dear little thing.
Mumma went down to where Brundy stood in the front hall. He had a large leather sui
tcase beside his long legs. He was jacketless and tieless. There was nothing odd about his casual attire; the temperature that day had risen to over ninety-three degrees and heavy, humid air choked the city, so she wasn’t surprised that he had decided not to put on the usual suit and tie, even for a day of business. In fact, he probably could have worn a bathing suit and Mumma wouldn’t have paid much attention. Her mind was occupied with radiators and venetian blinds, and now with the question of whether she should offer Brundy a sisterly kiss or whether to a Howland that would seem an untoward show of emotion. She didn’t even think to wonder what he was doing in the high-ceilinged foyer of his parents’ house, on a weekday, in the early afternoon, with a suitcase.
“I know you weren’t expecting me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t mind,” Mumma said, and she meant it. She enjoyed a handsome man, and Brundy was a very handsome man, especially now, with his fair skin tanned, his golden hair streaked blond by exposure to salt water and sun, his blue eyes as dark as an early evening sky. “It’s your house,” said Mumma, who never shied away from stating the obvious. (“People—Half the time they don’t see their noses in front of their faces, their forests for their trees.”) She told Brundy, “Martina is upstairs with Meg, but can I get you something cold? Iced tea or lemonade? You don’t want a drink at this hour, do you?”
“Not anymore,” he said, which caused her to look at him more carefully, however handsome he might be. (“You girls think it’s so easy if you’re pretty, but just because everybody’s looking at you doesn’t mean anybody’s seeing you. So count your blessings.”)
Handsome, fortunate Brundage North Howland III, who liked being called B-24, straight-backed, broad-shouldered, tall, and smiling, looked like a man who had already taken a snootful, although he didn’t smell like one. Mumma was puzzled, and curious. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I’ll make you coffee,” she announced.
Leaving his suitcase in the hallway, he followed her down the back staircase into the big cellar kitchen, its small windows too high up in the walls to see out of, although, since they faced the Square, they did let some daylight in. He sat down at the long table where Martina and the help took their meals. Brundy was accustomed to having his coffee made for him and brought to him. He never thought of offering to help, and that was probably part of why he got along so comfortably with Mumma, since she never thought of herself as helpless. Seated, he set his hands together on the table, fingers interlaced, and pronounced his good tidings: “I’ve left.”
“Left what?” Mumma was filling the percolator with water and measuring tablespoons of coffee from the can into the basket.
Brundy stood up then, as if unable to sit still for excitement, or maybe to give his announcement a proper formality. He stood up and said, “Everything,” then sat down again to specify, “Home, the firm, the family. Lally.”
“Unless you’d rather have hot tea? Coffee will be better for you.”
“Left my car, too,” he told her, confirming her opinion of his sobriety. She set the percolator on a burner and lit the gas, dropping the match into a little stoveside dish Martina kept handy for that use. Brundy reasoned, “Lally should have a car, don’t you think?”
Mumma got down cups and saucers and asked, “What do you like in your coffee?” At that, Brundy started to laugh. (“He laughed like a maniac. I had a bad minute there alone with a drunken maniac in that kitchen down in the cellar, while he was having a postwar nervous breakdown.”) Brundy laughed and laughed, while Mumma fixed him with her best gimlet eye to sober him up, or calm him down, she didn’t care which.
Eventually he said, rather quietly, considering, “I should be opening a bottle of champagne. We should be having a toast. I could kiss you.”
“You’ve already had enough to drink. Champagne isn’t necessary,” Mumma told him.
“Believe me, I know that. But I could kiss you anyway. I’m going to Paris. I’m getting a divorce. I’ll get another car, over there.”
“Over there Paris?”
“Where else?”
“Mexico?” Mumma suggested. “Rio de Janeiro, Morocco, or California?”
Then the coffee started to percolate and she fell into thought, as she waited for it to brew. She poured two cups and sat down next to him, still thinking. They drank in silence. “Paris is probably your best choice,” Mumma conceded.
“I know some French already. I’m good at languages.”
“Not me,” Mumma said. She raised her cup to her lips again and took a swallow. “Well, B-24, I hope you find someone to love you there.”
This conversation about Brundy’s homosexuality had both more content and more sympathy than any of the other Howland conversations on the subject. After his abrupt departure from Wampanoag and the country, all of the Howlands, except for Mumma and Pops, referred to him as Poor Brundy, weaving the myth around him of a young man so disturbed by his wartime experiences that he was able to live only in a country where nobody spoke his language, so that nobody could understand the extent of his mental lapses. That was the Howland family line on the eldest son, the sum total of what they said when they spoke of him at all, which was almost never. “Poor Brundy, he was never the same. One of the walking wounded, Poor Brundy.”
Mumma and Pops, in this as in much else, differed from the family. The two brothers in fact, somehow, by virtue of living so far apart from each other perhaps, grew closer. They maintained a regular correspondence, and later, when Pops took Mumma to Europe, they spent a lot of time in Paris with Brundy. The three of them—sometimes four, if Brundy took a friend—traveled together in Italy and Greece, Yugoslavia, Scotland, Portugal. Uncle Brundy always sent us chocolates for Christmas, boxes and boxes of Belgian and French and Swiss and Italian chocolates. “I can’t choose between them, and I don’t want to. Have them all,” was his message. He remembered our birthdays, with a card and a check. He was our favorite uncle. Uncle Brundy’s sexual orientation was not one of Mumma’s bugbears, as Brundy probably sensed from the first. They drank coffee together in the cellar kitchen of the Louisburg Square house. “I came to get my passport,” he announced jubilantly.
“Meg’s asleep,” she told him, then saw the need for further explanation. “In your room.”
“And I have to talk to Old Tally, before I can leave. I better get to him before Dad does.”
“Old Tally?”
“Talziewicz. The trustee.”
“You call him Old Tally?”
“Spencer’s told you about him, hasn’t he? Of course, Old Tally is a Jew, but a lot’s going to be different about Jews now. After Hitler, and all.”
“I never minded Jews,” Mumma told him. “Even before. But then, I could be Jewish. I could be anything, which is part of what your family thinks is wrong with me.”
Brundy laughed again and offered, “You could come to Paris with me.”
“It would never work, believe me,” Mumma told him.
“Dad would rather I was running off with Spencer’s wife.”
“So you did tell him.”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
Mumma stared at him. “What about Lally?”
“She’ll be relieved. I’ve been making her nervous.”
“She’s your wife and she hasn’t guessed?”
“Lally’s a nice girl. She doesn’t know about things like me.”
Mumma got up to refill their cups, and didn’t sit down again. “You have to tell your wife. You could ruin her life going off without telling her.”
“She was ruining mine,” Brundy maintained.
Mumma lost patience with him. “That was you ruining it. And I don’t mean because of that.” However enlightened her attitudes, Mumma couldn’t actually say any of the words out loud, at least not to his face. “Because of pretending it wasn’t true, that’s what was ruining your life.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Not much,” Mumma admitted. Then she claimed, “I have to
know something, don’t I? If I’m a human being and you are too, how much difference can there be? Besides, what do you have to lose by telling her? I mean, you personally, since you’re leaving anyway.”
“You can explain it to her. You have my permission.”
“Yellowbelly.”
“Of course,” he said. “What do you expect? You’re impossible, Rida. Let me ask you, since you’re Miss American Honesty, does Spencer know what he’s gotten himself into with you?”
“Of course he does. I’m good for him and he knows it. You don’t know anything about your brother, none of you do.”
“Well, he doesn’t know anything about me, and neither do they, so we’re all even. Except you,” he added, more wary now. “I’m going upstairs; I’ll take Phyllis’s room. In three days I sail from New York, so—”
“You can’t stay here,” Mumma told him.
“This is my home.”
“You just said you left home.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. So I guess you’re not so open-minded after all.”
Mumma, who knew perfectly well that she was practical rather than open-minded, pointed out to him, “They’ll call here to ask for you. This is the first place they’ll call and I’m not much of a liar, so you’d better find a hotel. But we should go to a restaurant for dinner. Spencer will want to have dinner with you.”
“You won’t let me stay in the same house but you’ll go out for dinner with me?”
“I want to talk to you about investing in real estate,” Mumma explained. “So tell me what restaurant and what time, and go get a hotel room so you can telephone for your appointment with Mr. Talziewicz. They might just show up here, instead of calling.”