Evergreen (28 page)

He drove north on the Albany Post Road, then crossed the river at West Point. It grew colder. The little villages were still shut into the silence of winter and there was snow on the slopes. He stopped for lunch in a place that smelled of hot grease. When the door opened cold air came in with the noisy men who pushed to the counter, bantering mock-sexy innuendoes with the middle-aged waitress. He had a desolate, hopeless feeling. He thought of turning around and going back, but he did not. Instead he filled the tank at the next gas station and drove. The farms grew larger and farther apart. There were miles of woods; of old, unpainted houses and shaggy cattle penned in barnyards. Toward evening he drove into Brewerstown.

He thought he had driven into the eighteenth century. He felt an absolute surge of delight and recognition. My time, my place! But of course that was absurd; it was only in pictures that Maury could have known this place. Yet he knew it perfectly. He knew the wide, wide streets and the elms that would form a dark green aisle in leaf. He knew the white church with the graveyard on one side, the parish house on the other. And all the white fences, the brick walks, the fanlights, the driveways lined with rhododendrons. It took half a century to grow rhododendrons that size.

The town was shut down for the night, except for a drugstore on the main street. Maury went to the telephone book and marked down the address and the telephone number. The store was empty except for the man behind the counter.

“Is Lake Road far from here?” Maury asked.

“Depends where you want to go on Lake Road. It goes
five, six miles around the lake, then joins up with the highway. Who you lookin’ for?”

Maury shook his head. “Oh, I don’t plan to visit tonight I’ll call first.”

He dropped a nickel into the slot and gave the number to the operator.

“The line is busy,” she said.

He wondered whether he would have the courage to try again. The man behind the counter looked at him curiously while he waited.

“You’re not from these parts?”

“New York City.”

“Ayeh. Been in New York once. Didn’t like it.”

“Well. Can’t blame you. This is a beautiful town.”

“Ayeh. My folks came here when they was just Indians around.”

Maury put the nickel in again. This time someone answered. “Is Agatha at home, please?”

“Miss Agatha?” He was relieved to know it was a maid. “Who shall I say is calling?”

“Just a friend. A friend from New York.”

When she came to the phone he whispered, “Aggie, I’m here in town.”

“Oh, my God, why?”

“Because I was going out of my mind without seeing you.”

“But what am I going to say? What am I going to do?”

Suddenly he was decisive. “Say you need something at the drugstore. Anything. I’ll be waiting down the block in a tan Maxwell. How long will you be?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“That’s just about as long as I can hold out,” he said.

They drove about two miles out of town and stopped the car. When they put their arms around each other it was like the healing of a wound.

“I have to know,” Maury said, “what’s going to become of us.”

She began to cry. “Don’t, don’t,” he murmured. “Ever
since that Christmas dance in the city I’ve been thinking the world is full of enemies, people who want to take you away from me …”

“Nobody can do that,” she said fiercely.

“Then will you marry me? In June, after I graduate? Will you, Agatha?”

“Yes, yes, I will.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

At least he knew now where they were going. He hadn’t the faintest idea how they were going to get there, how he would manage law school and this marriage, but he had her promise. It sustained him, through the spring session, through the finals, through commencement.

His mother had a habit of drinking a late cup of coffee in the kitchen before going to bed. He sat there with her on the night after commencement. He had known all day that there was something she wanted to say, he knew her so well.

“Maury,” she began now, “you have a girl, haven’t you? And she isn’t Jewish.”

He felt a giggle, an absurd shocked giggle and quelled it. “How did you guess?”

“What other reason could there be for you to be so secretive?”

He didn’t answer.

“That’s where you went when you borrowed Pa’s car last spring, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“What are you going to do?”

“Marry her, Ma.”

“You know, of course, what trouble this is going to make?”

“I know. And I’m sorry.”

His mother stirred her coffee. The spoon made a pleasant, comforting sound against the cup. She began to speak softly. “My mind is so often divided. I can see two sides of
everything, as though I were holding a ball between my hands. I think: Maury, you’re right. If you really love another human being—if it’s real, and God knows there is so little real love and it’s made up of so many things that even at my age I don’t understand it, so I suppose I should use the word ‘want’ rather than ‘love’ … if you really want to be with a person, why shouldn’t you be? Life is short enough; why suffer and sacrifice? One is born with a label, one could just as easily have been born something else. You see what I mean, Maury?”

“I see. But what is the other side?”

“The other side,” she said quietly, “is that you
were
born what you are, nothing can change it and your father is right. So that side says to me: Tell Maury to listen to his father.”

“You know what he’s going to say? You’ve discussed it with him?”

“Of course I haven’t! And of course I know what he’s going to say, just as you know it.” She swallowed her coffee.

What a beautiful face! he thought. She has a lovely, serious, gentle face, my mother …

“He’ll say,” she went on, “and he’ll be right—he’ll say that you come from a proud, ancient people. You may not always think so when you look around at the children of the eastern ghettos. We’re not educated; were often noisy; we don’t have the finest manners; where could we learn them? But were only one very small part of the history of our people.”

“I know. I understand.”

“Sometimes I’ve wondered,” she said, “I’ve wondered whether perhaps, since you’ve been in a different world at college, whether you might have been ashamed of me, only a little? A foreign-born mother with an accent. Has that brothered you?”

“No, Ma, no,” he said, and felt a touch like pain. She was so assured, with her tall carriage, and good clothes or what remained of them, her books and her courses. He
thought: Has this been inside her all the time? We don’t know anything about anybody, after all.

And it seemed to him as he sat in the cold, white kitchen among the looming white boxes, the tall rectangular bulk of the refrigerator and the lower bulk of the stove, with the chilling glare of the ceiling light in his eyes, that it was an operating room and he was helpless, pinned down, fastened and exposed like a patient on the table.

“Ma, I can’t, I can’t.”

“Can’t leave her?”

He could hardly speak. For a grown man to weep! The thing in his throat was a lump of tears. “Can’t leave her,” he repeated thickly, and closed his eyes.

She was silent. He did not look at her, but he felt a stir of warmth in the air behind him and knew that she was standing very close, not touching. Then she did touch him, her hand stroking his hair.

“Maury, Maury, I’m sorry. Living can be so terribly hard.”

“Now, you wanted to talk to me, Maury?” Pa asked.

They were in his den among his familiar things: cigar smoke, the mahogany humidor and all the photographs of Ma and his children and his own parents, the father in a derby hat with the tiny wife next to him, wearing a plumed hat and an 1880s dress. The globe stood in front of the window. It was Iris’ present. She always gave presents like that, a globe or books or antique maps.

“I suppose Ma has mentioned what I want to talk about,” Maury said.

“She has. But you must know there is really nothing to talk about,” his father said gently. “Not that I refuse to talk. I’m willing to listen.”

Maury began. “What else is there to say but that I love Agatha? I love her so—”

“I’m sorry. Sorry to see your pain.”

“It needn’t be pain. It could be so simple.”

“It’s never simple.”

“It was for you and Ma, wasn’t it?”

“It’s never simple, I tell you. And your mother was a Jewish girl.”

“Pa, tell me, you’re a practical, rational man. Is it so strange for me to be in love with Agatha? She’s such a lovely person. You would really like her. She’s so intelligent and happy and kindhearted.”

“I believe you. I don’t think you would care about anyone who wasn’t all of those things. Still, to marry her—it’s impossible.”

“How can you feel that way and still be such friends with Mr. Malone?”

“Why not? Malone and I understand each other, that’s why were friends. He’s a good Catholic and he expects his children to marry Catholics. And I respect him for it.”

“But why? Really why? You still haven’t explained. I’ll grant that it’s easier not to marry out, but—”

Joseph stood up. “Come,” he said, spinning the globe. “There, that’s Palestine. That’s where it started. We came from there. There we gave the world the Ten Commandments, and if everybody would obey them there would be no trouble. There we gave the Christian world its God. And from there we were burned out and dispossessed and driven here—” his finger made a long sweep across Africa, up into Spain. “And here—” a sweep of the palm across Europe, eastward into Poland and Russia. “And then here, across the Atlantic, and everywhere else you can think of. Africa, Australia—”

“Yes, yes,” Maury said impatiently, “I’ve had a bit of education. I know our history.”

“You know, but you only read the words, you didn’t feel them. Maury, all this history, this wandering, has been written in
blood
. And it is still being written today, right now, while you and I stand here. Tonight in Germany our people are being tortured for no reason at all and the world does nothing, it doesn’t care. Oh,” he said passionately, “how we have suffered, this People of the Book, this proud, strong people who have enriched the world! My son, we
need every soul we can hold on to. There are so few of us and we need each other. How can you turn your back on your people? How can you?”

He was moved, and angered that he was moved. His father had never been so eloquent. It was not like him, silent man that he was, not gifted with words. Tears had even come into his eyes as he spoke. He has no right to do this to me, Maury thought, and he knew he was losing the battle, knew he had already lost it.

He made one more try. “Pa, I wouldn’t turn my back. I wouldn’t change. Did you think I would convert? I’ll stay what I am and Agatha will stay what she is.”

“And your children? What will they be? I’ll tell you: nothing! And you ask me, you come in casually and ask me to accept, as if it were only a small thing, that I should live to see my grandson, son of my son, a nothing? Why don’t you come in and ask for my right arm? Why don’t you?”

“Pa, will you at least meet Agatha? Let me bring her here. Then you can talk to her and—”

“No, no, I tell you. There’s no sense in it!”

“Then you’re no different from her people. You’re just as much of a bigot.”

“What? No difference between the murderers and the murdered? You must be crazy! So her people are against it too, are they?”

“Of course! What did you think?”

“So you see, you see how impossible it is? Oh, Maury, listen to me, I want to reach your heart and your mind. Believe me, there is nothing a human being can’t get over. You don’t think so now, but take it on faith, please do. Parents lose children, husbands and wives die and hearts break, but they go on living. And eventually the break heals.

“Believe me now, you’ll suffer for a couple of months, I know you will. But then it’ll be over and you’ll meet a fine girl of your own kind, and she’ll meet another man, this Agatha. It’ll be better for her, too.”

Something burst in Maury. “I don’t want to hear that! Don’t dare tell me that!”

“Maurice, don’t raise your voice to me. I’m trying to help you, but this sort of thing won’t do any good.”

He went to the door. He wanted to break something, throw the lamp to the floor, smash things. God damn world! God damn life! “What will you do if we get married anyway?” he asked.

His father’s face looked sick. It looked green. “Maurice,” he said very low, “I hope you won’t do that. I hope for your mother’s sake, for mine and for us all that you won’t do that. I beg you, I warn you, don’t bring the unthinkable to pass.”

Agatha was tearful on the telephone. “I talked to my parents, Maury. Or at least I tried to. They were absolutely horrified, I thought my father had lost his mind, he went into such a tirade. He said he thought I must be insane! I can’t begin to tell you the things he said!”

“I can imagine,” Maury said grimly.

“He went on about our family, our ancestors, and what they stood for and what America stands for, and the church, and all our friends. And he said that if—if I did this I’d be no daughter of his. First my mother cried and then she got furious at me because Daddy turned absolutely white and she thought he was going to have a heart attack. She made me get out of the room. Oh, Maury, how terrible to be married this way, to walk out of your home like this!”

He thought for a moment. “Do you suppose if I spoke to Chris he could talk to them?”

“Oh, Maury, I don’t know. Try it!”

“He’s coming to New York for the weekend. I’ll go see him at his hotel.”

“Oh, yes,” Chris said, “my parents spoke very well of you. ‘A very attractive young man,’ my mother said. I remember her words.”

“Well, then, if they thought well of me, maybe they or
you would talk to Aggie’s parents? It would help a lot, I think.”

“I don’t really think it would,” Chris said gently.

“You don’t? Aggie thought it would.”

“Aggie knows better. She’s grasping at straws.”

Maury put his head in his hands. He thought he had spoken so persuasively.