Evergreen (86 page)

Jimmy was saying, explaining to one of Robby’s friends, “Janet and I don’t observe all that.” (They are talking about Rainaldo and Raimundo.) “But we do think the religious tradition should be selectively maintained. One doesn’t step out and away from such a long, gallant history. Besides, it’s important for children to have a sense of identity.”

High talk, fine talk. They have to analyze everything, give reasons for everything. It’s the disease of the times. But never mind their reasons, as long as some of them stay with the tradition.

Robby said, “I’ve been learning a lot from Laura about the immigrant generation. It’s fascinating to think that when they came here at the start of this century they were really skipping two or three hundred years in one stop. Out of the late middle ages, actually. Some hadn’t even seen a railroad!”

Quite true. I was ten years old before I saw one, nice boy. Nice boy with bright green eyes, so serious and interested in everything! Only I do hope you decide to buy a suit sometime. You can’t apply for a job wearing slacks and a shirt. Or maybe you can these days?

A very pretty girl spoke from the far end of the table. “There’ll have to be changes. We can’t just go on exploiting people and destroying the environment. It’s simply too late for ‘every man for himself.’ Otherwise there’ll never be any peace on earth.”

As if there ever could be, anyway! But no, I shouldn’t say that. What do I know of the future? One has to try. Maybe the vision and energy of these young will do what we didn’t do, didn’t even try to do or concern ourselves with. For us it was enough to take care of ourselves!

So I don’t know. It’s all for them to solve if they can.

Rainaldo—it must be he, because he spoke a little English—caught Anna’s eye. How rude of her. She’d been neglecting them. She smiled. He smiled back and, by way of making conversation, pointed to the candlesticks.

“Very beautiful silver, Aunt. Very old. Two hundred years, I think.”

“You’re right. They belonged to my great-grandmother. That’s your—let’s see, great, great, how many greats, four, no, five?”

Rainaldo threw up his hands. “Fantastic! It does something—” he pointed to his heart—”to think about it.”

“Yes,” Anna said, “it does.”

“In Mexico we also have very fine silver. I am used to see it. That picture—portrait, painting? That is Uncle Joseph, I think? My grandfather told me about him.”

The portrait hung behind her. From his end of the table Joseph had always faced himself. She turned.

“Yes, it’s a good likeness. I mean, he really did look like that.”

Not when he was young. In youth he had had an anxious look. But here in this portrait he was confident, a little stern perhaps. A patriarch presiding at the family table.

“Laura talks about him so much,” Robby said. “I wish I could have known him.”

“He was a simple man,” Anna explained, as if she had been asked to sum him up. “All he wanted, really, was to keep the family together. I think that everything else was just a means to that end.”

There was a little flurry of voices and laughter. A group stood up and came over to Anna’s table. Theo called out. “I want to ask everyone to drink to my mother-in-law. May she live a hundred and twenty years!” The glasses touched and he added, “It isn’t every man who can wish his mother-in-law long life and mean it.” His eyes met Anna’s and stayed in a long look.

“And I would like to drink to the memory of Papa,” Iris said softly. “On a day like this especially we remember him.”

It was inevitable, at any and every gathering, that the resemblance game be played.

“Do you look like him, Iris?” Doris Berg inquired. “Standing there beneath his picture it seems to me perhaps you do look a little like your father.”

Iris asked, “Do you think I do, Mama?”

She wants to be told she looks like him. “I’m never very good at seeing resemblances. I always think everyone looks like himself.”

Doris Berg persisted. “Oh, I don’t think so! Some people are carbon copies of each other. Jimmy looks just like Theo, and Philip looks like Iris. Iris does have a high forehead,
something like her father’s, but still,” doubtfully, head on one side, “still it’s hard to say … maybe you don’t look like him. You
are
a mystery, Iris.”

And Mary Malone said, “But our bride is her grandmother all over again! The red hair and the eyes, you couldn’t mistake those! What curious, wide eyes you had, Anna! I remember when I first met you, you looked as if you couldn’t see or know enough, as if you were just in love with the world.”

It was over. The bride and groom had driven away on a camping trip. Celeste had appeared at the front door with boxes of rice. That was another tradition which Laura and Robby had wanted to dispense with, but Celeste had had other ideas and they had run down the driveway to their car through a rain of rice. Theo and Iris stood next to Anna until the car was out of sight. Their hands were joined.

Anna touched Theo’s arm. “She isn’t gone, Theo. You haven’t lost her.”

“How do you know?”

“Because. They go their separate ways, but there’s a chain that holds them to you all the same.” She almost, but not quite, believed it herself.

When the guests and the caterers were gone and only the family was left, Anna went upstairs.

“I’ve got to get this rig off,” she complained.

“I’ll help you,” Iris offered. “It was a lovely wedding after all, wasn’t it? I thought it was going to be so hippie.… Oh, that darn dog again!” For Albert had pushed the door open and greeted Anna with wet nose and dripping whiskers.

“Look at your dress!”

“It can be cleaned, I don’t mind. I’m worried about Albert. He’s apt to outlive me, and you don’t like dogs.”

“Mother, you’re so morbid!”

It was the second time that day that she’d been told that,
and she didn’t feel morbid at all. Didn’t people ever want to face facts?

“Still, I do believe Laura and Robby would take him. They’ll have plenty of space.… I must write and ask them.”

“Do please allow them to have their honeymoon first before you start talking to them about death. Let me put your corsage in water.”

Hideous things, orchids. I always liked cheerful flowers, like dahlias and asters, almost anything but orchids. Joseph always bought them for occasions; he seemed so pleased when he gave them to me. I never told him they remind me of snakes.

“Here, give me the necklace. I’ll just put it in this box overnight and take it to the vault for you in the morning. What’s this?”

“That’s not my jewelry box.” Anna was embarrassed. It was a fancy tin box that once, long ago, had held candy. In it she had hidden the last cutting of her own long red hair.

Iris lifted it out, a shining spiral that fell almost to her knees. “Mama, what hair! It’s beautiful! I’d forgotten how beautiful …”

“A long time ago.”

“It doesn’t seem so long. I remember at my wedding, you wore a pink dress. You used to wear a lot of pink, so clever with your hair. You were the most striking woman there. Nobody looked at me; they all looked at you.”

“Iris, I hate to tell you, but you do say the most idiotic things. You were a lovely bride, as lovely as any,” Anna argued firmly.

Iris’ eyes filled. My daughter looks at me and I can tell what she is thinking as clearly as though the bones of her forehead were transparent. She is remembering childhood and mothering and she’s guilty because she always loved Joseph more than she loved me. I put out my hand; she lays hers in it, but she doesn’t feel comfortable with my touch. She never has, though I don’t know why. But it’s
something she can’t help, any more than she can help loving Theo.

Janet knocked on the open door. “May I come in? I thought I’d bring the baby to visit.”

She laid the baby in Anna’s lap. Anna put her finger out and the tiny hand wound around it. The baby’s eyelids were shut like two fragile shells. Oh, to be young again, to produce a thing like this!

She felt a sudden panic. Something had gone absolutely blank in her head. She couldn’t remember: was it a boy or a girl, this child of Jimmy’s? I can’t remember, she thought in horror … I can’t shame myself by asking. They’ll think I’m senile and I’m not that at all, not yet, although God knows and I know that my arteries are hardening. A pity, because otherwise I can see things in a clearer light than ever.

“The baby’s not too thin?” She drew the blanket slyly away. A pink sweater. Ah, a girl. Of course. My great-granddaughter.

“The doctors don’t want them to be fat, Mama. You know that.”

Rebecca, that was the name. Rebecca Ruth, after Janet’s two grandmothers. Too bad Ruth couldn’t have lived to see her. Isn’t it funny that we should be great-grandmothers to the same child? A good name. Thank heavens, they hadn’t given her one of those phony names that people used these days, like Judy with an “i” on the end or Gloria with a “y” stuck in it for no good reason. Rebecca Ruth, you’ve just arrived and I’m about to leave. Well overlap by a few years at most. I’d like to live till you’re old enough to keep some memory of me. What vanity!

But I’m the link, the only one in this house tonight who ties them all together, Rainaldo and Raimundo, Philip and Steve.… I hold up my hand. Is it true that some of the cells in me are the same as in this baby? I wish I knew more about biology. I wish I knew more about everything. Think of the things Rebecca Ruth will see and know! Things I can’t even conceive of. And my mother stood at
the door of our house, talking of a marvelous time when every woman might learn to read.

But one thing was true then that’s still true now. I told Theo there’s a tie that holds us all together, and I said it to comfort him, but I meant it. It’s there, or nothing has any value at all. And I know
that’s
not true. It’s the lifeline of the family, and if we can hold to it then we can make good children and the world will be better. Maybe that’s putting it all too simply in these tangled times, but then, the truest things are always simple, aren’t they?

Oh, I’d like to stay a little longer to see what Philip does with his talent, to watch over Iris (though I’m certain she doesn’t need it anymore). How can I die and leave them all? I worry so! You silly fool, you think they can’t manage without you? Anna, the indispensable!

The baby stirred and puckered her peach face. “I’ll take her,” Janet said, “it’s feeding time again.”

Anna thought of something. “I should like to have my picture taken with her. It will be a fine thing for her to have. Not many people can know what their great-grandmothers looked like. Why, I’ve been curious all my life about the people who came before me! And there was never any way to find out. Certainly no pictures.”

“We’ll have a photographer come in the morning,” Iris declared. “We’ll take the boys from Mexico—I never remember those names! Well take the whole family. Here’s Philip. You played wonderfully, darling.”

“Nana,” Philip said, “I’ve come with the tape recorder. I hope you haven’t forgotten. Nana and I,” he explained to Janet, “are doing the story of her life for posterity. It was my idea. Because of what Nana always says about families and people knowing their ancestors. All that stuff.”

Anna clasped her hands. “I don’t know what to say! It’s not as if I’d had a heroic life or anything.”

“Nana! You’re not backing out?”

She was suddenly quite, quite tired. But he looked so disappointed! He has my father’s pale eyes, set far apart, and he moves like him, clumsily. How can he understand
what life was like for his great-grandfather, maker of boots and harness? For him it’s a story, picturesque and touching. For him my father is truly dead, as we all are when the last person who knew our faces and heard our voices is gone. The most we do is to save a little part of the life that was.

“No,” she said, “I’m not backing out.”

“Great!” He straightened up from the machine. “Just sit back comfortably, Nana, and begin at the beginning.”

The beginning? Sometimes it was so cloudy and far away that she thought it had never been like that at all. Then again, it was like the morning of today, so that you could reach out and touch it, could feel it and smell the air. Soft, foggy, fragrant air of Europe. Keen American air. Beautiful America, more wonderful, painful, generous, difficult and kind than she could have dreamed when she had been a child and longed so much to see it

“Just say whatever comes into your head, as far back as you can remember. It doesn’t matter what Only don’t leave anything out.”

She wanted to laugh, but the boy-face was so earnest, so eager.

“Relax, Nana. I’ll tell you when I’m about to start.”

She closed her eyes. The lamp light shone through her lids, making a tracery of red. Veins, like a design in lace. Yes, think. All a brilliant muddle, a heap of flowers, or colored paper blown in the wind. Eric, coming bravely toward them over the grass. Maury in the Yale processional and Maury on the kitchen floor, eating an apple. Iris, frail child, holding Joseph’s hand. Birdsong over Eric’s grave. And Joseph’s whisper:
How lovely you are
.

A jumble and a flickering, far, far back. Do I really remember that my mother wore a dark blue shawl with a small white pattern? Can it be possible that I remember her voice at prayer, that it was low for a woman?
Blessed be Thou O Lord, King of the universe
, she said, in that childhood room for whose warmth and safety we search all the rest of our lives and never find again.

“Are you ready, Nana? I’m starting the tape.”

“There was a town. Yes, that’s a good beginning.” The words were rapid and clear. “It was on the other side of the world and not much of a town, just one wide, muddy street running to the river. It may be there still, for all I know, although my people are long gone. There was a board fence around my father’s house, and in the kitchen a black iron stove. There were red flowers on the wallpaper, and my mother sang.”