The Vagabonds (14 page)

“Nothing. Nothing worth discussing.” David smiles at her. “Your sister’s just being a bitch.”

“And your brother’s being”—Claire bobs her head—“the perfect gentleman, of course. The completely decent and courteous man.”

“Whoa, both of you; what
happened
?”

“It doesn’t concern you,” says Claire. “It isn’t your business, really.”

“Of course it is. Of course it does.”

“He thinks he’s being patronized.”

“Not
thinks,
” says David. “Knows.”

Joanna sits. “By you? By us? About what?”

“My ‘lifestyle,’ as she calls it. My lack of commitment, my catch-as-catch—”

“No, not at all,” Claire interrupts. “It isn’t that. It’s just I don’t think David’s up to maintaining this place by himself. To taking care of it, I mean; I don’t think he should call it home unless he means to, really
wants
to, and I really don’t think he has any
idea
how much hard work it will be. Housekeeping.”

He shrugs.

“Don’t you
dare
pretend I’m being Martha Stewart and talking about casseroles or vacuuming the floor. I’m talking
responsibility,
about being here on a daily basis and being a caretaker. Caretaking.” She turns to him, both hands upraised. “Just let me finish, will you, just please let me finish just once! I’d rather we sell the house lock, stock and barrel than watch it fall apart.”

“What you mean is,” David says, “you’d rather we get rid of it. If Mom didn’t leave the place to
you,
you don’t want it belonging to anyone else.”

“Oh please,” Joanna says. “Are we arguing already? Beakes reads us the will just this morning and we’re at each other’s throats?”

“So when did you get so grown-up about it? So big-sisterish all of a sudden?”

“I
told
you it doesn’t concern you,” says Claire. “I
know
you know how hard it is. Housekeeping.”

“So I’ll
hire
someone,” David says. “There are people everywhere in Saratoga who make a living out of other people’s houses, out of—what did you call it?—caretaking. The house has stood two hundred years and it can stand some more. Just because Mom stayed here all alone doesn’t make the place a prison; it’s been in the family since, Christ knows, the early nineteenth century, and I’m free, white and thirty-five and able to take care of it . . .”

“Don’t turn this into Tara. Or some ancestral seat, a
manse.
It’s a gussied-up, broken-down farmhouse,” says Claire. “It’s a cottage on what used to be a meadow and now’s a side street going nowhere in a nowhere part of town. It’s dime-a-dozen real estate and nothing to write home about . . .”

“Except it’s home,” he says.

And this is true. I’m thirty-five years old, he thinks, and not a baby anymore; before I leave I’ll find a caretaker—the lawyer will know one, I’m certain, or maybe Mom had one already—to keep an eye out for the place. David pictures himself with an easel, a skylight, a smock and a canvas and model or bowl filled with fruit. What I want to do is paint, he thinks, I want to stop pretending I want to do anything else. He imagines himself with a palette knife, oil paint, a sunset emerging or maybe the contours of somebody’s leg, a brown leg draped over a chair . . .

Then David admits it: he dabbles, he’s indulged himself for years and is doing so again. He’s indulging himself in a daydream of art, a vision of steadfast production, but he has been a dilettante and is being that way still. His mother had known this about him; she’d understood he was playing at permanence, only pretending to call Berkeley home and working on web sites and, before that, advertising and a TV pilot that was in development and optioned twice and dropped . . .

“Is this about money?” asks Joanna.

“No, why?” Claire kicks off her shoes.

“Because I’m the one who suggested we sell. The shares in General Electric, I mean. And I need the money most.”

“All right,” says Claire. “You need it most.”

Joanna sits. She extracts her pack of cigarettes, then returns it to her handbag.

“GE’s a major government contractor. Or at least it used to be,” says David. “And if the trouble in Iraq goes on for years then maybe stock will rise again. But I think everything’s about to tank, and what we’d get for it today is more than we’ll get later . . .”

“So you do agree with me? You think we ought to sell?”

“It isn’t about the
money
at all. And it isn’t about
you,
Joanna,” Claire says. “It’s about, oh, continuity and knowing when to say good-bye to what you’ve left behind.”

“All right.”

“Are you accusing me,” asks David, “of having done that or
not
having done that? I need to be clear . . .”

“I’m not accusing you of
anything.
” Claire rubs her hands against her hips. “Can’t we agree to disagree?”

“We’ve been doing so for years, for
decades . . .
”

“Stop it, stop it both of you,” Joanna says.

“Yes, Mom.”

“See what I mean? It’s like there’s some sort of poison,” says Claire, “some kind of rage he can’t control. All I did was say maybe we should think about it, think what it means to
maintain
this house and he’s treating me like some sort of absentee landlord or real estate agent who’s planning to evict—”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“Enough,” Joanna says. “That’s enough from both of you. I go away for twenty minutes and the two of you are fighting.”

“You said that already,” says David.

“‘Blessed are the meek,’” says Claire. “Or is it ‘poor’—I can’t remember. ‘Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.’”

And then they do control themselves; they have come to the edge of a genuine rupture, and they all pull back. They agree that they should get some air, should sleep on it, should let the dust settle a little. They understand these are clichés and what they’ve each been feeling in the aftermath of grief is a predictable set of reactions; what they ought to do is keep their options open. They will sell the stock and not the house and David will decide in time if he does or doesn’t want to buy his sisters out . . .

They call their homes in Wellfleet and Ann Arbor and leave messages on the machines. David puts his mother’s wheelchair outside the kitchen door, where Miller’s Medical Supply will pick it up, and while the afternoon darkens to dusk and then night they deal with their mother’s used useless possessions. There is no disagreement now, or at least no argument; they fill old suitcases and boxes and paper bags with bric-a-brac and clothing they know none of them will claim. They fill ten basement shelves. At seven o’clock he says, OK, enough, let’s call it quits this evening and go out to eat.

Again they take the rented Taurus and drive into town and choose a restaurant, not last night’s with the waitress and overcooked food but—at Claire’s suggestion, for, they have insisted, they want her to choose—a wine bar with young men who come up to them smiling. The place is called Toulouse, and there are several reproductions of posters by Toulouse-Lautrec: the entertainer Jane Avril lifts her thin leg enticingly above the bar, and La Goulue purses her lips. There are oversized posters of Aristide Bruant in costume, in profile, presenting the viewer with his broad back: the cabaret singer wears a black jacket and boots, red scarf and his signature black hat.

The meal takes a long time arriving. They make conversation, or try to, discussing terrorism, the prospect of war and El Niño or is it La Niña, and how old-fashioned this winter has been, how cold and hard the snow. They talk about the lawyer, and how they remember him watching them ride, and they try to remember the name of the stable where the girls had kept their ponies—Bliss and Checkers, says Joanna; at least I remember the names of the
ponies
—and whatever happened to that fat friend of yours—Chuck, Chucky?—who became a policeman and then the police chief in town. I don’t think he stayed here, says David, I don’t think they let you
be
police chief in the town you’re born in any longer; too many traffic tickets and DWIs to fix. Too many favors for people to call in . . .

They announce their travel plans. Claire’s on the afternoon flight tomorrow but it’s a quick trip from Metro, so anytime anyone needs her she’ll be back again. I’ll go with you, David offers, I
will
drive out to Wellfleet but I’ll keep the rental car so I can drive myself back; oh good, says Joanna, wonderful. They agree the grab, as Claire has called it—and she protests it isn’t her word—can wait a while, and should. The cottage and its contents will be fine. They will hire someone to keep an eye out for the furnace, to be a caretaker, and when they can they’ll meet again and schedule a formal division; I’m going to drive the silver home, Joanna says, and Claire says I’ll fly back a couple of cats.

It’s weird, Joanna says, to think we got here yesterday and think how much has changed. I never thought, she says, I never imagined, and smiles and lights a cigarette; my hour’s up, she says. Claire says, do give my love to Leah, and they promise they will do so, and she says, on Friday, please tell her break a leg. Give
my
love to Becky and Hannah, says David; and
Jim,
Joanna says. Friday is Valentine’s Day, they remind each other, and talk about old autocratic Henry Ford and why he and his cronies gave those shares to their young grandmother; was it a tip, they wonder, an act of generosity or some sort of payment for services rendered, and what would the service have been?

Their waiter hovers; he refills their water glasses and empties the bottle of wine. “Another, sir?” he asks. David nods. Claire says—as soon as the waiter has minced off, the bottle dangling from his wrist—you’ve made another conquest, brother, you’re our big strong protector and he’ll stick you with the bill. The privilege of manhood, David says. We’ll split it, says Joanna, we’ll divide the bill in three. At meal’s end in fact they do so, and with a sense of completion, although little is settled between them and they are ready to leave. They think about their grandmother and who she was and how she lived her life.

Part Four

VIII

1940

E
lizabeth turned forty. Bone-weary on her birthday, she felt as though she turned sixty instead; she sent Alice off to school and cleaned the living room and baked herself a sponge cake and set the table for two. She spent the day alone. When Aaron came home after work and took off his overcoat and hung his hat in the closet, it was all she could manage to rise from the sofa and walk to the door and welcome him. “Hello, dear,” she offered, and gave him her cheek. “How are you feeling?” he asked her, and she said, “Better, thanks.” “So you’re feeling all right?” he inquired, and she answered—lying—“Fine.”

Her husband was wearing galoshes, and when he bent to remove them he reeked of his time at the office, the smell of tobacco and sweat. His hair bore the line of his hat brim, his breath was stale, and she noted this not because it upset her but because of the way she must look to him also: worn out, wan and old. He was twenty years her senior;
he
was the one who was sixty, but Aaron produced a gift-wrapped pink sweater and a bottle of perfume and said, “Happy birthday. Many happy returns.” Opening the packages, she found herself touched by his gesture, though the sweater did not fit her and the perfume was offensive: sharp and oversweet. He said, “Why don’t I take the birthday girl to dinner,” and she said no, she’d cooked it already and wanted to stay home. They sat together on the sofa and she said, “You must be tired,” and he admitted it, “Yes.”

Elizabeth felt tired every morning and each afternoon and night. It was as though the house had enlarged, as though the distance from the pantry to the stairwell and the bathroom to the bedroom had been extending, expanding. The shelves in the kitchen were too high to reach, the ceiling fixture lightbulbs impossible to change. The noises of the household—the radiators and the gramophone, the clanking water pipes and sound of the toilet when somebody flushed it—all these afflicted her. She lay on the living room sofa with a washcloth spread across her eyes and listened to the squirrels scampering along the roof, their chittering, the wind. You ought to see a doctor, Mom, said Alice, why not let him fix what’s wrong . . .

Because they fix nothing, she wanted to say, because calling a doctor is useless and they come too late. They always come too late. Alice was having a sleepover date; it was good for her to be away when Elizabeth felt indisposed or, as Aaron put it, blue. It was blue she saw when she opened her eyes and black when she closed them again; it was pain beyond the reach of pills or the syrup she took for digestion, and she did not tell her family how far beyond a doctor’s help she knew she had traveled already. We’ll celebrate this weekend, she promised her daughter, you go from school to Janey’s house and spend the night with Janey and sleep just as late as you can. We’ll bake a cake tomorrow; don’t worry, I’ll be fine . . .

In the course of time, of course, Alice would lose her bright-eyed hopefulness; her body would begin to change, and that part of the body called mind would change—but not just yet, not now. Now she was eight years old and ignorant and blissful because ignorance is bliss. Elizabeth wished to protect her. The recipe for sponge-cake, for example, is not something a person keeps hidden, and she would share it willingly, but how she felt on her own fortieth birthday was a different kind of secret and difficult to tell . . .

When she herself was bright-eyed and young and living in her parents’ house, she contracted influenza. She had been seventeen, unmarried and alone. Except she hadn’t minded, did not mind; there were widows everywhere and girls who loved soldiers and raised children by themselves, and Elizabeth was grateful and proud to be a mother; she admired Harold’s perfect hands, his feet, his bright enormous eyes and how he laughed and clapped and burbled all day long. Her pregnancy was painless, the delivery painless also, and for the first year of her baby’s life and last of the Great War she reveled in his company and was untroubled, fancy-free. In the light of the bedroom window she lay with Harold, her sunshine child, and then the pandemic came and claimed him and took him away.