Barbara Greer (11 page)

Preston Woodcock measured and mixed each drink precisely, according to formulas based on individual preferences which he had long known. As he finished each drink he presented it to John who waited at his side with a smaller silver tray. John then placed a linen cocktail napkin, folded, on the tray next to the glass and bore the tray, offering it with a barely perceptible, polite bow, to the person for whom Preston had concocted the drink. John served Edith first, then Woody. Then he placed within Preston Woodcock's easy reach the small silver pitcher that contained—prepared ahead of time and already chilled—Preston's special mixture of Martinis. Then he withdrew to a corner of the garden, perhaps twenty feet away, and stood, waiting for his next order.

As Barbara paused just inside the door watching this faultless ceremony, watching it momentarily end, she saw her father now fill his own glass. He lifted it and she could see his mouth forming the customary words of salute—a toast that took in memories of identical cocktail hours in the past, and hopes for a continuance of cocktail hours in the future: ‘Here's to another pleasant evening for all of us.' He smiled and the two others also smiled and lifted their glasses. Her father then sat back in his chair, crossing one pale trousered knee upon the other.

She thought suddenly, watching him, that her father looked a little tired. His face seemed somewhat haggard—older, perhaps, than when she had last seen him. He was four years older than her mother: he was fifty-seven. But ordinarily he managed to create about himself an atmosphere of youthfulness. His frame, his carriage and his step were still remarkably athletic. He had been captain of the track team at Yale and was a firm believer in regular exercise. In winter he played squash three times a week without fail and in summer played golf every Thursday and Saturday afternoon, and took a morning and an evening swim every day. As a result he concealed his age somewhat with a trim waistline and a healthy tan. He had the tan tonight but still there seemed to be a certain greyness and weariness in his face as she watched him reach for the silver pitcher and fill his glass. She opened the glass door and went down the steps. Seeing her, her father rose. ‘Hello, Daddy,' she said, and when he kissed her and squeezed her shoulders tightly, his smile was so warm and cheerful that the illusion she had had a moment before, of old age, vanished completely.

‘Baby!' he said. ‘It's great to see you. How're those two little boys? And Carson?'

‘Just wonderful, Daddy.'

‘Off on one of his trips, I understand.'

‘Yes. Off on one of his trips.'

‘Well, if it gets you back home, I don't mind these trips,' he said. ‘A light Scotch and water for you?'

‘Yes, please, Daddy.' She sat down in one of the chairs.

John greeted her when he brought her drink to her. ‘Good evening, Miss Barbara,' he said softly.

‘Hello, John. How have you been?'

He murmured a reply that she understood to be in the affirmative. John, whether by nature or as a result of eleven years of her mother's training, spoke in a voice that rarely rose above a whisper.

Her father smiled and raised his glass to her. ‘Welcome home, Barbara,' he said.

Her mother turned to her and said, ‘Barbara, one of the first things I want you to do tomorrow is go and see your grandmother. Will you promise to do that, dear? It won't be an easy visit—I know that. The poor dear is so confused these days. I went to see her yesterday and she kept asking me where your grandfather was. He hadn't been home for
days
, she said. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't say he'd been dead for five years, so I said he was at the mill and would be home in a little while—thinking that would get her mind off it. Then she turned to me and said, “No, he's dead.” What could I say then? I just sat there!'

‘She telephoned the mill last week and asked to speak to him,' Woody said. ‘Poor Betty at the switchboard didn't know what to do, so she gave the call to me.'

‘Really?' Preston asked. ‘You didn't tell me that, Woody.'

‘Didn't I, Uncle Pres? I guess I forgot, I meant to.'

‘Poor thing,' Barbara said.

‘She was ninety-three in April,' Edith said. ‘Heaven spare me from living that long.' She turned to her husband. ‘I know she's your mother, dear, and you love her, and I love her too! But ninety-three is too old—it's just too long for a person to live. I hate to say it. It sounds cruel, but it's true, don't you think?'

‘Oh, I know you're right, Edith,' he said. ‘The only thing I hope is—well, you know she sometimes tries to get out of her chair by herself. And I hope—all I hope is that Mother dies peacefully some night in her sleep—not in a fall or an accident.'

‘Well, let's not talk about that,' Edith said quickly. And, to Barbara, she said, ‘I told her on the phone this afternoon that you were coming and she sounded delighted. She seemed perfectly clear about it. Sometimes she's perfectly clear! But if you get there and find that she doesn't know who you are, don't let it upset you, dear. Just say, “I'm your granddaughter, Barbara,” very gently, and keep reminding her, filling her in on details.'

‘Oh, I know how to handle her, Mother,' Barbara said.

‘I'm sure you do.'

Preston Woodcock reached for the little pitcher and slowly refilled his glass. Barbara, watching him, remembered what Nancy Rafferty had said the night before, about her father being a lush; but a nice lush. The remark had startled her at the time because she had never, that she could remember, seen her father drunk, or seen him show any of the outward signs of drunkenness. He drank, she had always thought, as much as other men drank. And of the couples she knew it was usually the men who seemed to drink, and enjoy drinking, more than the women. The informal rule at the farm had always been two, or at the most three, cocktails before dinner. Still, she realised now that her father, with his customary little pitcher and his habit of refilling his glass when it was only half empty, possibly drank more than three. But, she assured herself, even that did not make him a lush. He looked at her now and smiled. ‘Well,' he said, ‘how's everything down in Locustville, baby?'

‘Just the same,' she said. ‘Nothing very exciting has happened. Busy with the children, of course, and—'

‘Have you done any entertaining recently?' her mother said.

‘Nancy Rafferty stopped by yesterday,' Barbara said. ‘I asked her to stay for dinner and spend the night.'

‘Oh, that's nice,' Edith said. ‘I always liked Nancy. Such a sweet girl. Isn't it a pity she hasn't found a husband?' She lifted her wrist and turned the small gold watch that dangled among her bracelets. ‘It's getting late!' she said. ‘What on earth is keeping Peggy and Barney?'

‘I heard them talking in their room as I went by,' Preston said. ‘They'll probably be down in a minute.'

Edith turned to John who stood politely waiting. ‘John?' she said. ‘Will you run up, please, and just tap on Peggy's door? Tell her we're waiting for them in the garden.'

John started toward the house. Then Edith said. ‘Oh, here they come now.'

Barbara looked up. Barney Callahan stood in the open doorway, the light at his back. John, who was halfway up the steps, stopped, and Barney came down the steps to meet him. They stood together for a brief moment—John saying something, Barney listening, nodding. Though she could not hear what John was saying, she imagined him whispering, ‘Mrs. Woodcock sent me to call you,' because Barney now bowed slightly, acknowledging the message, and John also bowed. Barney's face was grave and, seeing this odd, rather courtly, little double bow—one man white-skinned and dark-suited, the other man dark-skinned and white-coated—the movement seemed like part of a cotillion figure, or a sharp, small vignette from a ballet. Barney turned, came down the steps, and as she sat forward, smiling, forming her lips to say hello, she saw that there was Peggy, whom she had not even noticed, right behind him.

5

On a brilliant afternoon in August of that summer two years ago, when Edith and Peggy Woodcock were in New York for a fitting of Peggy's wedding dress, Barbara and Barney Callahan sat together on the edge of the dock, looking across the motionless surface of the lake, and Barney said to her—

There are a lot of romantic stories about the poor little boy from the house in the village who falls in love with the beautiful girl who lives in the house on the hill. I suppose that's what you think about me wanting to marry Peggy. I'm sure it's what your mother thinks. Perhaps even Peggy thinks this, too. But my case is a little different. I wasn't born in Boston. I was born in Hancock, Massachusetts, which is a good distance away. If you don't know where Hancock is, it doesn't make any difference; it's a very small town and I hardly remember it. We moved from Hancock to Boston in 1936, when I was seven years old. I don't remember anything about the trip except that the car was a DeSoto and I got carsick about every twenty miles.

There were five of us then, including my mother and father. Later on, there were six. I have one brother and two sisters. I am the oldest. Not quite enough children, I suppose, to qualify us as a good Catholic family. But it was a good-sized family just the same. My father owns a drugstore which he inherited from an uncle—this was why we left Hancock, dreaming of an inheritance and a life of ease! But my father is not a pharmacist, which is probably why the drugstore has never made as much money for him as it made for his uncle. There's nothing my father can do with the store but rent it to a druggist. Most of the time, my father stays home. He's never been well. What it is, I'm sure, is just hypochondria.

He's one of those men who's had twenty-seven doctors give up on him. They can't find anything wrong with him, but that doesn't make his ailments any less real—to him. He's done a lot of different things. He has made money at some of them. He had an oil burner service, once, that made money. He owned a restaurant once, too, and made money. But during the depression he didn't make much money at anything he tried, and he tried a lot of things. Something has always gone wrong with every job he's ever had. If he was working for someone else, he'd get mad at his boss and quit, or if he was working for himself, he'd get discouraged and lose interest, or else get sick and not be able to carry on.

He made a significant remark to me once. He said, ‘It's funny, whenever I start making good money at a job. I get scared.' This is why it's probably just as well that he doesn't do anything any more but stay at home and collect a monthly rent cheque—most of which must go to pay doctor's bills. Doctors have charged him thousands of dollars for telling him that he's perfectly healthy. From all this you may gather that I don't have much use for my father, and you're right. I don't. But anyway, my father is not the interesting one. The interesting one is my mother.

My mother is an artist, a painter. She has painted hundreds and hundreds of pictures. Her canvases are all over the house, either hanging or stacked away in closets. I don't know much about art myself, but some of her pictures seem very good to me. I once asked her why she didn't show them, or try to sell them, but she said no, she didn't think they were good enough and—besides—she didn't paint pictures to sell; she painted them for her own personal enjoyment, for the sense of fulfillment that a finished picture gave her.

But there is something essentially wrong with the pictures my mother paints. It is probably because they reflect her personal point of view too strongly, and her personal point of view is a curious one. She is an extremely religious woman, but it is an odd, old-fashioned and rather stubborn religiosity. She is a Catholic because she was born a Catholic and she has never seen any reason to question her faith beyond this point. She is not at all an intellectual Catholic, as many Catholics are. Her Catholicism is completely mindless and emotional. She has never tried to understand—I truly think—Catholicism at all. She accepts its teachings at face value. The Church says so, therefore that is the way it is. There is nothing more to it. This has always struck me as a strange point of view for an artist to have. But then, everything about my mother is contradictory.

In a church, I think, she might as well be in a jungle. What goes on there affects her deeply and emotionally, stirs her the way kneeling in the centre of a jungle full of wild, terrifying noises would stir a person. The church affects her heart, not her mind. She will kneel for hours in a church with her beads, transfixed, with angel choirs singing to her and saints smiling down upon her, with tears streaming down her face, beseeching the Blessed Virgin for something. For what? She would not be able to tell you in exact words. Beauty. Happiness. Purpose. Saintliness! She is a very romantic person, a sentimental Catholic. She talks a great deal about the Eternal Verities and her paintings reflect her search for these. A wistful picture of rain falling on a flower garden, which she calls ‘Benediction.' She paints cathedrals she recalls from childhood, the Shrine at Lourdes—which she has never seen, scenes of mountains, pastures, forests, saints' faces with tearful smiles that look much like her own. She paints birds building nests, little children kneeling in shafts of sunlight, and also symbolic pictures—Truth, glittering like a sword in the shadows, Honour bursting like a flower from the rubble of the world, Virtue lifting her lovely head from a wallow of seaminess, souls rising at the sound of the Last Trump, the human spirit winding its arduous way toward God, Daybreak at Eden—a confusion of styles and thoughts and images. Nothing so prosaic as the Stations of the Cross! But everything she does reflects her own personal, human, sentimental and nostalgic view of herself, life and the after-life. To hear her talk, you would think that Good and Evil exist in strict terms of black and white to her—virtue and sin. But oddly enough as she has lived her life, they have become all mixed up. Anyway, she brought me up that way. Like a beacon in the night, so shone my mother in a naughty world.