Family Happiness (4 page)

“It is the exact equivalent of cigarette smoking,” Henry, Sr., began, referring to the salmon. “Polly, I don't understand how you can let Pete and Dee-Dee near it.”

“Daddy, this salmon is very lightly smoked,” said Polly. “Mother and I have been all over the city to comparison-shop. This is not only the most lightly smoked, but the most lightly cured. It's barely been smoked at all.”

“That's even worse,” said Henry, Sr. “Fish flesh is the ideal breeding ground for parasites. At least smoking kills them.”

“Yes, Daddy,” said Polly. “But this salmon is adequately smoked, although not oversmoked.”

“And washed in pure soap and water,” mumbled Henry, Jr., but his mouth was already full and no one heard him.

“I, of course, would revise this entire menu,” Henry, Sr., said. “I worry about you eating such very old, unfertilized, dead eggs.” He had been saying this for years but nothing had ever changed. At
his
place was a little plate of goat's-milk cheese, the kind that is wrapped up in vine leaves. This he spread on toast points, and watched with disapproval while the rest of the family tucked into the smoked salmon and ancient eggs he considered so dangerous.

The big mahogany dining-room table sat twenty with its leaves in. Without, it sat twelve. There was plenty of room for silverware, elbows, and fidgety children. Wendy poured out the coffee, ever mindful that Kirby was being fed under the table. It was hard to dislike Kirby, because he was comical, but Wendy had always felt that dogs belonged in the country, at the homes of others, and should be let free to wander in pastures and fields. In the city they collected fleas and dirt and other unpleasant things on their paws and then brought these paws into contact with one's rugs.

Every Sunday she attempted to catch Henry, Jr.'s eye so that he might somehow discourage Andreya from feeding Kirby under the table, but this never worked. Henry had an enormous appetite and, once eating, concentrated on little else. He would start as soon as he sat down, and he bolted his food. He was now doing something else Wendy found objectionable. He and Polly called it “building a sandwich.” They liked to put layer upon layer upon layer of things on a toast point and then eat it in two bites. Wendy, Henry, Sr., and Paul found this disgusting. Polly adored it. In the privacy of her own kitchen she built sandwiches out of the most idiosyncratic ingredients and ate them in two bites, too. Henry Demarest liked a big sandwich, and whole pieces of toast were provided for him. He watched as the sandwich Henry, Jr., was building began to wobble. For an instant it looked as if the whole thing might pitch into his lap. Kirby, ever alert to these potential windfalls, had gotten up under the table. His head rested hopefully on Henry, Jr.'s knee and his tail swished back and forth against Polly's shins.

Now that everyone was seated, the conversation officially began. Usually the table divided into the legal half and the silent half, but Henry Demarest and Henry, Sr., had had their legal discussion, and, of course, Paul was away. The table was quieter without Paul, although he usually got through a meal saying little more than “yes” or “no” or “quite,” his favorite expression of noncommittal response. His mere presence gave weight and depth to the legal aspect of the table.

“Where is Paul, anyway?” Henry, Jr., asked.

“He's at the Conference on International Limits,” Henry, Sr., said.

“La Conférence des Frontières Internationales,” said Wendy, who loved to speak French whenever possible. “I wish Pete and Dee-Dee would start languages.”

“They have started,” Polly said. “But they barely speak their own language.”

“They speak beautifully,” Wendy said. “
You
children started languages young.”

“I didn't,” said Henry, Jr. “Pete and Dee-Dee speak everything better than me.”

“Than I,” said Polly. She looked at her children, who sat through this conversation trying not to giggle: she correctly suspected that Kirby was trying to lick their ankles.

“I let Andreya do the speaking,” said Henry, Jr., of his mostly mute wife. “She speaks every language under the sun.” Andreya spoke Czech, German, Russian, and French, but no one had ever heard her say very much of anything in any of these.

“Pol,” said Henry, Jr., “pass me the butter. Pass me the toast. Never mind. It's all on your side anyway. Build me a sandwich, will you?”

Polly built his sandwich and then passed the silver toast basket to her children.

“Don't grab, darling,” she said to Pete. “When something is passed to you, you take it gently.”

“I am a woolly beast,” said Pete.

“Even a woolly beast can take a piece of toast without grabbing.”

“No, they can't,” Pete said. “They have huge, hairy paws.” He turned to his sister. “Woolly, woolly, woolly,” he growled. Dee-Dee shrieked and gave her brother a soft punch on the side.

“That's enough, you two,” said Henry Demarest. “Finish your sandwiches and then off to the library.” He turned to Wendy. “Does anything need to be rearranged in there?”

“I cleared away the breakables,” Wendy said.

“Woolly, woolly, woolly,” growled Pete.

“Enough,” said Polly, but she said it sweetly. She could not deny that she loved it when her children got slightly out of hand. They were allowed to bring any toys they liked with them on Sunday and they might take all of the cushions off the chairs and sofas in the library to make forts. Breakfast was rather a bore for them, but it was good training for their later life. They finished their milk and retreated upstairs to the library muttering, “Woolly, woolly, woolly,” under their breath.

Meanwhile, a conversation about the future of the aerospace industry had erupted. Henry, Sr., and Henry Demarest pondered the economic issues. Henry, Jr., launched into a speech on a theoretical point. Like most of his speeches—which were not frequent—this one involved the quoting of equations, a signal for Wendy to say, “Darling, no writing on the tablecloth.” Henry, Jr., had once actually done this, and Wendy had always been thankful that he had used pencil, not pen.

Henry, Sr., then spoke about the eroding of the ozone layer and the conflict between industrialism and the right of a citizen not to be poisoned by his environment. Polly called this speech and others like it “The History of Pollution,” since Henry, Sr., liked to give examples from the past, such as the blighting of the rye crop in medieval France and the spoiling of rural England during the Industrial Revolution. The spoiling of rural England was one of his most cherished topics. He found English agricultural history restful and read in it constantly.

“The common darnel weed was virtually lost in the twelfth century to the fouling of rivers and streams,” he said. “It is now extremely rare.”

During this recitation, Andreya had arranged her plate of salmon, tomato, onion, toast, and capers as if it were a still life done by a Japanese master. She did not eat salmon herself. She put it on her plate in order to feed it to Kirby. The family was used to her customary silence, but she was so bright-looking, so full of health and sparkle, that she did not look like a quiet or shy person. She smiled when everyone else smiled, and laughed when they all laughed, and no one except Polly felt guilty about not drawing her out.

Polly had tender feelings toward Andreya—the sort of feelings you might have for a woodland creature. Polly wished she could talk to Andreya, but she had no idea what she might say. This confused her, since Polly was generally good with the odd, the shy, and the mute.

This morning Andreya suddenly decided to talk to Polly, next to whom she always sat. She drew her chair a little closer to Polly's.

“Salmon is a pale pink when it is poached,” she said. “Why is it so very red when it is smoked? I cannot understand this.”

Polly confessed that she had often wondered the same thing and had never been able to figure it out.

“I am noticing these things,” said Andreya. “The yolk of an egg is greenish when boiled, while fried they are golden. When green beans are quickly steamed they are very green but too long steamed they become the color of army clothes. What is the name of this color?”

“Olive or drab,” said Polly. She was overcome: this was one of the longest sustained conversations she had ever had with Andreya.

“I find that fish is becoming whiter when cooked,” Andreya continued. “For this reason I find cooking so interesting.”

“I love to cook,” said Polly. “But when you cook all the time for four people the object is getting it done. I often forget how beautiful vegetables are. Carrots, for instance.”

“Oh, carrots,” said Andreya. “They are so beautiful with their leafy tops. And when you cut them they have rings inside like a tree. I am so very fond of root vegetables.” She pronounced “vegetables” with a hard
g
and all its syllables. “I when little was taught to make vegetable flowers—roses out of cabbage and so on. Have you ever done this?” Polly shook her head no. “But,” Andreya said, “I remember when you made the barnyard lunch for Dee-Dee's birthday. When you had pigs made of eggs dipped in beetroot juice and a pig yard made of spinach and a little fence of fried potatoes. That was an enchantment. It made me feel my girlhood once more.” She paused to slip Kirby a piece of toast. “I am always sad that we do not eat the leafy part of the carrot, as the tops are so nice to look at. I often long to see rice growing in its natural state. Have you seen this?”

Polly said she had not, and silence fell between them.

Down at the other end of the table, the three Henrys had returned to their debate about pure air, citizens' rights, and the aerospace industry.

“Citizens,” Henry, Jr., said. “They just want to get from place to place fastest, so who cares?”

“The fact is that some people don't want to get from place to place fastest,” said Henry Demarest. “And they are worried that what is being ruined can never be reclaimed.”

“The idea of balance is an entirely modern one,” said Henry, Sr., “based as it is on a confrontation with forces our forebears could not have imagined.”

Polly watched as Andreya made herself a sandwich. The result looked like a corner of a Mondrian painting. Andreya was neat as a kitten. She turned to Polly again. Her eyes were brilliantly intense and she spoke as if revealing a secret. “There are blue fruits,” she said. “But there are no blue vegetables. Why is this?”

Before Polly could attempt to deal with this question, Wendy, who believed that talk at the table must be shared by all, decided, as she decided every Sunday, to break up the legal half of the table in behalf of general conversation. During baseball season this was not necessary, since all her children, plus Henry Demarest and even Andreya, loved the sport.

“Polly,” she said, “when we had lunch last week, didn't we bump into that nice friend of Henry, Jr.'s—Bill Fredrich?”

“Tom,” said Polly and Henry, Jr., at the same time. Tom Fredrich had been a friend of Henry, Jr.'s since college.

“I said, ‘Tom,' didn't I?” Wendy asked.

“You said ‘Bill,'” said Henry, Jr.

“Well, I think of him as Bill but I always mean to say ‘Tom.' He's one of your kite-flyers, isn't he?”

Henry, Jr.'s other topics of conversation included kiteflying, where his car had broken down, what was wrong with it, and taking the dog to the vet.

“We don't like Tom anymore,” Henry, Jr., said. “We think he's nuts. He took us kite-flying at his parents' house in the country. He bought himself a very expensive kite which wouldn't fly and he got furious because our cheap little kite did. When his kite got caught in a tree, he got his father's twenty-two and shot it.”

“My goodness,” Wendy said. “Isn't that terribly dangerous?”

“Not unless you happen to be in the tree with the kite,” said Henry Demarest.

Wendy also believed that each person must have his or her say. This was difficult in the case of Paul, whose silence was hard and glistening, like chrome. But even Paul made a speech from time to time, and when he did, all at the table sat quietly. Polly said that her hands automatically folded whenever her older brother began to speak.

Polly had always wondered if no one ever asked her anything about herself—she was mostly asked about her children or about Henry when he was away—because she was just a girl, and she had concluded that the answer was no. It was that she was so level, so organized, so normal, so firm in her routine. Besides, her job was not really interesting to anyone at the table. Wendy really could not keep straight what she did. She said she could remember “lawyer” and “professor” and even “aeronautical engineer,” but she claimed she should not be expected to remember “Coordinator of Research in Reading Projects and Methods.” She referred to Polly's place of work as “your little office,” although she was not without pride that Polly worked for the betterment of society through education. And, of course, Polly was knowable—it was one of her charms. She was open and straightforward and generally full of conversation. It was her job to give attention, not to be the center of it. She looked at her mother, who was about to hold forth on foreign-language training for young children. Polly stood up.

“Well, you all,” she said, “I've got another of those awful reading seminars downtown and I must dash.”

“Oh, darling,” Wendy said, “must you? You've barely gotten here.”

“I must,” said Polly. “I'm seeing you for lunch tomorrow anyway, Mum, so you'll have tons of me. These seminars are boring but invaluable, I'm afraid.”

She went around the table kissing everyone good-bye. She loved the way her family smelled, even Henry, Jr., who smelled of baby soap. She kissed her husband on the top of his fragrant head. “Henry, don't let the children eat another thing until I get home except for a glass of milk and a cookie at four. I'll be home by six. At five-thirty take the brown crock out of the fridge and put it into the oven. It's veal stew. The lettuce is washed. All you have to do is make the salad dressing. Good-bye, everybody.”