Families and Survivors (8 page)

Andrew says, “You’re thinking of my father. A writer.
He was very popular for a while. A brief career, poor guy,” he adds.

“Oh, of course. My mother was mad for him.”

“He was an unusual talent,” Michael announces, frowning more intensely and giving Kate the impression that he would prefer not to share the talents of “Andrew Chapin” with Kate’s mother. (Poor Jane Flickinger: Kate smiles involuntarily at this summoning of her mother, for whom she feels a kind of tolerant affection.)

Michael is, in fact, fascinated by the elder Andrew Chapin (who wrote delicately of exacerbated New England consciences, who hinted at wild sexual distortions; it was Martin who first gave Michael those books). And Michael is impressed with knowing the writer’s son—as Andrew is fascinated by Michael. And given the perversity of human attractions it is perhaps not odd that they are drawn to qualities in the other that each man himself could have done without: a famous father, Jewishness. Andrew also envies Michael’s laziness (he castigates his own compulsive habits of work); Michael’s unbridled appetite (Andrew has ulcers and a generally difficult stomach).

Much later in life Louisa is to decide that to love Michael is to hate oneself.

Andrew is a trim dark boy, with interesting heavy eyebrows, who reminds Kate very slightly of David, except that David’s face is witty, wry, whereas this boy is very serious. (In fact he is desperate: he wants to write, to be a writer, and he cannot write.) He is also very rich; the first Andrew invested his meteoric twenties’ earnings very astutely. Sally, his wife, is a small neat blonde, with soft peach fuzz on her chin (later to bristle), who “adores” her husband. She is a bright girl in her own right, but she is brainwashed by currently popular ideas about the functions of wives.
Also, her own parents divorced and frequently remarried—she won’t do that (she is only to marry twice).

Kate has just been struck with an idea—or, rather, a perception so startling that she thinks she must be drunk, although she knows that she is not: looking at Michael, at his broad Slavic brow and arrogant nose, she sees that beneath his soft flesh and fair hair is the skull of Jack Calloway. Not that they look alike—Jack’s skin is florid and his hair quite dark—but the bones are the same. What can this mean? Has Louisa noticed? Why didn’t someone stop this marriage?

Michael has gone back to lecturing Andrew on Trilling. “Also,” he winds up, “I always thought that story of his—what was the name? Time or something.”

“ ‘Of This Time, Of That Place,’ ” Kate surprisingly (to Michael) fills in for him. It happens to be a favorite story of hers.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” Michael says. “Anyway, I always thought it was a very homosexual story.”

“What on earth do you mean by that?” Kate bursts out. “I don’t think you mean anything at all.” She hopes that this is the worst that she is going to say, and fears that it is not.

Michael takes on a patient tone. “Naturally I don’t mean literally homosexual, but the central concern is with relationships between men. One might in the same way say that Hemingway is a homosexual writer.”

“God,” says Kate, who is beginning to feel that she has had more than she can stand. This is the intellectual world? She repeats, “I don’t think you mean anything at all.”

Michael is enjoying this exchange. Attracted to Kate, and very self-absorbed, he has a poor sense of audience—of how he is coming across. He believes that Kate is enjoying the conversation, too (or that she should). He says, “I mean
homosexual in the sense that I might describe your relationship with Louisa as homosexual, in that it was most intense in your prepuberty days, wasn’t it? A sort or preadolescent love affair.”

“
NO
!” Kate cries out, meaning no to everything he says.

At last Michael understands that she is irritated, and he does not help by saying, “I think you’re being a little literal.”

“
I’m
literal! You’re the literal one! You’ve got to put the same label on everything.”

Louisa has risen and is clearing the table. She looks very uncomfortable. Kate makes a gesture to help, but she is refused, and she is then spurred on by the sight of her pregnant friend bearing piles of dirty dishes.

“And why does Louisa have to work in a purchasing department? Why aren’t you working and letting her get a degree in something? I’m sure she’d rather.”

“You don’t see a difference in roles?” Michael asks, again warming to the discussion. “I prefer the tension between opposites. Louisa’s femaleness makes me feel more male. You don’t believe in sexual polarity?”

“No, I don’t think so,” says Kate, and for the first time she begins to be aware of what she does think, and in her enthusiasm about a new idea her anger at Michael somewhat diminishes. “I believe in a man and a woman living together, being friends. I don’t think it matters who does what. David is a better cook than I am. While he was interning and I was working, we sort of cooked together—it was fun. I don’t think it matters who does dishes or stays at home with kids.”

“Well, you would have made an awfully pretty suffragette,” says Andrew, laughing. And he has succeeded in lightening the moment (not only because he is a nice man; he is also strongly attracted to Kate).

Kate blushes, both for the compliment and for what she has said. “But I mean it,” she says, purposely exaggerating her forthrightness—this is a way she has.

Sally Chapin looks incredulously at Kate; she can hardly believe that such a pretty and well-dressed girl could have such—such ideas. And her vocabulary comes up with no word to describe Kate’s point of view. “Masculine” is the word most generally used (at that time) to describe unfortunate behavior in women, but that does not seem quite appropriate.

“Kate, I really don’t think you’ve given this much thought,” Louisa says.

“No, I haven’t,” says honest Kate, “but you know how I am. Instinctual.”

“Well, Michael thinks all the time. He’s extremely intellectual.” Louisa feels the old thrill of defending Michael: there was a triumphant moment, some years ago at Michael’s parents’ house, when Louisa told his mother
please
to stop interrupting what Michael was saying.

Kate then says, “Oh, God, my train! I have to go!”

Andrew, who has just become conscious of how attracted he is, and who for the first time is a little irritated by Michael, asks, “Can’t we take you to your train? We have to go, too. Louisa, Michael—okay?”

Louisa agrees, and so, because of the rush, the farewells are minimized, and what might have been somewhat awkward is capsuled.

“Goodbye—great to see you—thanks!”

Everyone says these things, and then Louisa and Michael are left alone.

This is often a bad moment for them, but the evening has produced a mood of affectionate rapport. They have, at times, almost the quality of a conspiracy, an alliance against all other people, which other people sometimes sense (Sally Chapin does) and find unpleasant.

“God, she’s really got much worse,” Louisa says. “She used to be sort of marvelous.”

“Really? She did? I got a strong sense that there’s something terribly wrong with her marriage, didn’t you?” poor Michael says eagerly. “She seemed so defensive, as though she were projecting.”

“I’m sure you’re right. He’s probably some real jerk, and she’s sorry she married him.”

“Do you ever get the feeling that Andrew Chapin is essentially boring?”

“Well, yes, and God knows Sally is.”

“
Yes.
Well, time for bed?” he says, smiling.

“I think I’m frustrated, that’s what’s wrong with me,” laughs Kate, somewhat embarrassed, as she settles into the Chapins’ car. “I really didn’t mean to be so disagreeable.”

“You really weren’t,” says gentlemanly Andrew, who is kind.

“Michael can be awfully—psychological,” Sally says softly. She has just realized with a start that she doesn’t like Michael at all. (In fact—it is years before she knows this—Sally likes very few people.) And she thinks this violent “different” girl is interesting.

“Well, it is his field,” Andrew reminds her, out of a feeling that someone should stand up for Michael.

At the station, where they are just in time—the train is coming up from the South (southern California)—Kate thanks them in her enthusiastic way. She says, “Please call me when you come up to the city. David Harrington.” She says this proudly; she likes David’s name, likes wearing it. “I’d love to see you.”

But by the time they do call her, or, rather, Andrew does, she is not at first quite sure who he is.

From birth, Maude Wasserman, the daughter of Louisa and Michael, has been a startling child. She refused to be breast-fed (which did not help Louisa’s own feelings about her breasts); she would not go to sleep without music playing in her room. By the time she was one, she had begun to talk, and she wanted to be read to all the time; she demanded new Little Golden Books on every trip to the market. She memorized her favorites,
Crispin’s Crispian
(“Crispin was a dog who belonged to himself …”) and
The Sailor Dog
(“Born in the teeth of a gale, Scupper was a sailor …”). But at two she still did not walk. Michael, who had great faith in tests, had her tested with every available battery of psychological-neurological-muscular tests, all of which revealed nothing, except that she was unusually bright. She was a remarkably fast crawler. She had a great many inexplicable and alarming chest infections. She was very blond. (Louisa’s hair by now had darkened to a blacky brown.)

On the Easter Sunday in April which is a month before Maude is to be three, she is as tall as a five-year-old, and she almost knows how to read.

“I don’t want to wear the blue,” she screams at Louisa, reddening dangerously. “I won’t go!”

They are invited to an Easter-egg hunt at the Chapins’ house, which is next door. After Maude was born, and despite a lot of discussion about the inadvisability of living next door to close friends, Louisa and Michael moved next to Andrew and Sally; it was as though they could not bear to be alone, once isolated with a baby (or so Louisa later thinks of that move).

“I want to wear the pink!” Maude screams.

The pink dress is almost outgrown; it makes Maude look too tall. Weedish, neglected.

Nearly sick with indecision (these small crises are more than she can stand), Louisa yields, but she says, “Are you sure you don’t want to wear the blue? It’s new.”

And then (startlingly) Maude changes her mind. “The blue! I don’t want to wear the pink—it’s babyish!”

(An uncomforting victory.)

Louisa herself is wearing pale green. It is a new dress, a present from her mother, from Caroline in Virginia, and perhaps for that reason (she has never really trusted Caroline) Louisa is unsure of the color—of how she looks.

As they say goodbye to each other, Louisa and Michael avoid each other’s eyes, and they no longer kiss—ever. Michael says, “Honey, have a good time!” to both of them, and Louisa grasps her daughter’s hand.

A familiar but never quite named panic fills her chest, and she holds Maude’s hand hard. (Does Maude feel it, too, her mother’s terror, wherever she goes?)

The two houses are separated by a rough seven-foot redwood fence which was erected by Louisa and Michael’s
landlady, Mrs. Cornwallis, who is a small and violent woman, probably insane. (They put up a political poster, cut and rearranged to spell “Nix—on—Ike,” and she telephoned: “You get that thing down! Get it down! I won’t have my house defaced.” Well, it was her house, wasn’t it? Michael says this; and sick, though separately so, they take it down.) Their house—Mrs. Cornwallis’s house—is redwood, like the fence; it is a cube, new and raw, and the lawn is also new, not doing well. The rent takes exactly half their income from Michael’s instructor job.

The Chapins’ house is their own, the down payment a present from generous parents. It is five years old, an old house for that neighborhood, in California. It is white, and a small vined porch gives it a friendly look.

As Louisa and Maude go down the front path to the driveway, down the driveway to the sidewalk, festive smells and sounds drift over the high fence: smoke, and the swish of a garden hose, ice in glasses, flowers and new-mown grass. Spring earth—it is Easter Sunday.

There are two cars in the Chapins’ driveway: their new Ford station wagon (blue) and an old (1946) Chrysler convertible, with real wood. In perfect condition. It is the Magowans’ car—dazzling and splendid friends of the Chapins, with three marvelous children. Douglas, Allison, and Jennifer.

Of course they would be there, Louisa had known that; still, their wonderful car further lowers her heart.

As they approach the house—Louisa and Maude, clutching hands—Andrew comes around a corner, dark Andrew, barefoot, in jeans and a white T-shirt, carrying the hose. He grins a crooked welcome. “What pretty ladies! Say, Lou, that dress matches your eyes.”

And in that sunstruck instant all Louisa’s dread dissolves. Her blood warms, and she looks at Andrew, her kind
old familiar friend, and she thinks: Of course, I am in love with Andrew.

Her heart in her eyes, she only says, “Michael had to work on his thesis.” She begins to laugh, somewhat hysterically. “He hates Easter parties.”

Andrew laughs, too; they share an interest in Michael’s Jewishness. It still seems a little exotic to them both. Michael and Andrew (and Louisa) are agreed that the best American writers (now) are either Southern or Jewish, which holds out no hope for poor Andrew—but as they see it, Maude can’t miss, with her dual heritage. (And curiously enough this prophecy or wish turns out remarkably to be true: at an early age Maude begins to write, and she goes on.)

Maude is smiling; she has always liked Andrew.

The three of them go around the side of the house, with Maude in front, then Andrew, then Louisa. Andrew holds back a branch of shrubbery for Louisa, and their hands meet briefly. Electric! He smiles at her, and she is incredibly happy.

All the Magowans are blond—large blond people, three large blond children, and Alex and Grace. Since Sally Chapin is also fair, as are her children, and Maude, the yard seems full of blondness—yellow hair all over, like patches of sunshine. This lightness of complexion is one of the things that ordinarily alienate Louisa—making her feel dark, a stranger. But today she looks at Andrew, who is darker than she, and terribly familiar. (In fact, he looks like someone from the depths of her life, but who?)