Exiles in the Garden (13 page)

When are you going to have this elopement? the senator asked. I'm going to have to get out a news release. They'll be interested back home.

Lucia looked at Alec, but he only smiled, and took her hand. He said to his father, Next week.

And then what?

Ten days on the Eastern Shore, Chestertown. I've rented a sailboat.

Lucia looked at him again. This was the first she had heard about a sailboat.

We'll go cruising, Alec said.

You seem to have thought of everything, the senator said.

Alec has been wonderful, Lucia said.

And where will you live?

We've bought a place in Georgetown, Alec said. Small. But it has a back yard with a rose garden. You'll love it when you see it. He turned to his mother and added, It's just down the street from Mrs. Wheatley's.

A pretty house, Lucia said. Wonderful shade trees all around. The street reminds me of a street I knew well in Zurich.

That's nice, dear. I myself have never been to Zurich.

We'd like to be at the wedding, the senator said.

It's all arranged, Alec said.

Does that mean yes or no? the senator asked.

I know you will be very happy, Alec's mother said.

That evening, out of Alec's hearing, Margaret Malone invited Lucia for tea, just the two of them, so that they might come to know each other better. Friday afternoon, she said, and when Lucia responded that she was working at the zoo until four, Mrs. Malone said that was perfectly all right. Come when you can, come as you are. They sat on the screened-in porch facing a wide lawn with shade trees; the sprinklers were working because of the dry spell. The family cat was asleep in the big wing chair—Kim's chair, Alec's mother explained, but the cat appropriated it when the senator was absent. Did you have cats when you were a child?

Dogs, Lucia said. Spaniels.

This cat is sixteen years old.

Alec and I have never discussed pets, Lucia said.

Pets are not at the top of Alec's list.

They're not?

Not in my hearing, Mrs. Malone said, smiling briefly, pouring tea and offering the accessories, sugar, milk, lemon slices, little cakes on a flowered plate. She lit a cigarette and looked hopefully at her daughter-in-law-to-be.

Mrs. Malone, Lucia began.

Call me Mag, please. Everyone does.

I know you're disappointed about our wedding plans. Lucia paused, gathering her thoughts. She said, Alec wants something for us alone, only us, for us to remember. I have no family so of course I agree with him. Whatever he wants, I want. I think he does not want a commotion.

Commotion, Mag said.

Too many people, Lucia said. Then it becomes something for them and not for us.

But—his father and me?

And the others, Lucia said, believing already that she had said both too much and not enough and was putting the case badly. She wished she could have spoken in French, the language of diplomacy. Even German. Mag Malone was tapping her cigarette on the edge of a glass ashtray. She looked out the window when the sprinklers abruptly ceased but her exasperated expression did not go away. Lucia said, The Johnsons and the ... others. She could not remember the names of the senators and statesmen they knew so well, so well they were like family and would be insulted if they were left off the guest list.

But if your parents were alive—

They aren't, Lucia said. They are both gone.

—you would want them there.

Lucia shrugged, a slight movement of her shoulders. The subject was impossible.

I see, Mag said. She had never met a girl so literal and wondered if that was a specific trait of the Swiss, like French cynicism or German anxiety. Lucia was a wonderful-looking girl and appeared devoted to Alec but there was something elusive about her, a strange trait in one so literal. Mag did not know how far to go with this Swiss, soon to be a member of her family, the mother of her grandchildren. She wanted grandchildren more than anything. All her friends had grandchildren. She did not want to make an enemy of her daughter-in-law-to-be, but Mag had always been direct and saw no reason not to be direct now.

Mag said, It's hard for me to admit that I never understood Alec, even as a little boy. I never understood what made him tick and I still don't. But that isn't the point actually. The point is that he never understood us, his father and me. I am bound to say that he didn't make much effort. He never asked us the usual questions—how did you meet, where did you go on dates, how did you know you were right for each other, and if there were doubts, what were they? I think Alec made his own world but what that world is I cannot say. I don't know if he has a destination. I think he has an ad hoc sort of life, but of course I may be mistaken. His father and I live in a public world, not every hour of every day but often enough, and it's a glass house, too, not always but sometimes. Not to everyone's taste, glass houses. I imagine it can be difficult for a child, a father in the public eye. But politics is Kim's life and it is my life also, has been from the beginning. What you would call the rhythm of our life is governed by election cycles and by whatever important matter is before the Senate. There's always something, on the floor or in one of Kim's committees. That's public business. I can hardly remember the time when our life was not public. Alec has never understood or if he has understood he has never appreciated that his father does serious work, essential work, the people's business. He is frequently away and so am I. Our dinner hour is interrupted. Weekends, too. Our schedule fits into the political calendar, not the other way around. In that sense our time is not our own and that's the bargain you make. I should say the bargain you choose because no one forces you. No one holds a gun to your head. Kim doesn't regret it and I don't either except we seem to be estranged from our only son. We have friends who are in the same boat. We all knew there would be a price for the life we chose. We none of us thought the price would be our children's affection.

Lucia waited for Mag to say more but evidently she had said all she was going to.

Lucia said, Things look different to a child than to a parent.

Yes, they do. And unfortunately they are the ones who must adapt.

And if they don't?

They will be disappointed.

I don't think Alec is disappointed.

I hope not, Mag said.

Definitely, Lucia replied.

Have you spoken to him of this—estrangement?

Never, Lucia said.

Alec hasn't brought it up?

No. Not once.

Mag took a cigarette from the box on the table but did not light it. She said, Kim thinks the sun rises and sets by Alec. He wanted very much for Alec to follow him into politics. It was not a stupid dynasty thing. Kim thinks of public service as an honorable way to spend your time, making a life of the public's business. Politics can get nasty. Your hands get dirty. You lose things you thought you could never lose. You compromise again and again. Kim did things he wasn't proud of and I wasn't proud of, either. But we got through it. And the business got done. And every six years you go back home to see if the public has approved. And if they have not, you're out the door. Kim thought Alec had the temperament for politics but Kim was wrong. If I were a sentimentalist I would say Kim's heart was broken. But it wasn't broken, only hardened. I hope you and Alec have many children and that they bring you great joy. Mag moved her cigarette back and forth in her fingers, her expression drawn. Then she asked Lucia if she had been close to her mother.

Yes, Lucia said, I was.

Did she work?

She taught European history.

And your father?

I barely knew him, Lucia said. He went away one day and did not come back.

I'm sorry, Lucia.

He is
disparu,
Lucia said, using the French word without realizing she had.

What did he do, dear?

My father?

Yes, his business.

He—And Lucia paused there. Her mother had never spoken of her father's work. She said he was a political man, that they were political together. Lucia said, He was killed in the war. The Germans killed him.

Mag nodded slowly and lit her cigarette. She stared through the screen to the lawn, darkening now at dusk. The grass was still damp from the sprinklers. She remembered the day years ago when they bought the house, fearing that the price was beyond their means. Her mother lent them money for the down payment, an embarrassment for Kim. He didn't want to take it but Mag insisted, forcing his hand. She wanted the house. She wanted to begin life in Washington on a correct footing. She was pregnant and wanted a decent bedroom for the baby and room for the other babies that were sure to follow, and those were arguments that Kim could not challenge. They both understood they would be in Washington for many years. Now Alec had gone and bought a house without telling them, not that he needed permission but simply to share the news. Eleanora Wheatley, daughter of a suffragette and a merchant prince, had a word for men like Alec. She called them egoists.

Mag said, I mentioned a moment ago that Alec had made his own world and that I didn't know what that world was. Well, we all make our own worlds and those worlds tend to be mysterious to outsiders. Even a spouse sometimes, if she is unlucky. I do fear that Alec is forever searching for the thing that is just beyond his reach. But the point is, Lucia, I don't know what my son believes in and I wonder if he does.

A
LEC AND LUCIA
were married by a justice of the peace in Elkton, Alec's parents in attendance. The bride wore white. After a glass of champagne at an inn nearby, Alec and Lucia motored to Chestertown to pick up the boat for what turned out to be ten days of perfect weather on Chesapeake Bay. At the sports shop Lucia bought a black bikini and Alec a long-billed fisherman's hat. Lucia took up sailing as if she were born to it, having an instinct both for wind and for tide. On a broad reach, mainsail and jib bellied in the breeze, the vessel heeled over, Lucia was reminded of a thrilling downhill run, snow flying all around her, the destination out of sight but not in doubt. In the evenings they put in at one or another of the port towns, anchoring and taking the dinghy ashore for a dinner of soft-shell crabs or grilled fish. They talked constantly about the life they would have together, and whatever qualms were present disappeared in the Maryland twilight. Back on the boat by nine, asleep by ten, sometimes twelve, depending on how athletic their inclinations. They were excited at all hours, at noon when becalmed and in the early morning not becalmed, the anchor dragging. Alec poked his head above the gunwale in time to see the sandbar and hit the tiller with his bare foot, the sudden movement causing Lucia to cry out, a sound somewhere between an ambulance siren and an animal's howl. At the end of the week they decided to buy a sailboat as soon as finances allowed.

Bliss, she said.

Mathilde was born one year later. They had always led a quiet private life and now that they were a nation of three became even closer, Mathilde the center of attention. Lucia sang Swiss lullabies to her while Alec took pictures, hundreds of them. He enjoyed making shots of a subject who refused to obey commands; all responsibility rested with the photographer. Lucia settled happily into motherhood and after a short time returned to her work at the zoo one day a week. The sailboat was put on hold. Instead, Alec bought a Ford station wagon.

Alec's mother offered to look after Mathilde, which she did with almost comical enthusiasm. The first day she arrived with boxes of English tea and the silver tea set that had belonged to her mother. It's yours and Mathilde's now, she said; so when Lucia arrived home from work at the zoo she and her mother-in-law enjoyed a cup of tea together while Mathilde made noises from her crib. Mag Malone was always eager for news of Alec, how he was taking to fatherhood and particularly how things were going at the newspaper. Fine, Lucia said, though truthfully Alec did not speak much of the newspaper, only if there had been an interesting shoot, and those did seem to be few and far between. I think he will move on someday, Lucia said. When, I don't know. What will he do? Mag asked, alarmed because the sons of many of their friends seemed rootless, itinerant almost. I don't know that either, Lucia said. I think he is somewhat bored by news. I think that since he has become a father Alec is an indoor man. Did I tell you he bought a new car?

Alec's work had settled into an undemanding routine. He wondered if this work was too routine and too undemanding for a man just shy of thirty years old. He did feel at odds with the advent of the Count and Countess d'An and their menagerie next door. Suddenly he and Lucia were part of the émigré community, visiting two or three nights a week in the big garden with the towering cedar and the fountain that splashed all day and all night. The community seemed to Alec to look backward, concerned with old wounds, grievances that went back generations, and these were irreconcilable so they stayed on in America as if on the platform of a railway station, waiting for a train that never arrived. Someone somewhere should have come to their rescue. Taken an interest. Given assistance. Stood up to the Nazis, the Soviets, and their collaborators. Probably large nations always manhandled small ones, though that was not the way Lucia spoke of diminutive landlocked mountainous prosperous Switzerland, charting its own harmless course for centuries without civil unrest or war, unless you counted the unpleasantness caused by the megalomaniacal Bonaparte, author of the bloody battles of Zurich. One night Alec mentioned cuckoo clocks, making a joke. But his remark was not taken as a joke. Lucia was offended. After a moment of cold silence she said, An old complaint. I have heard it before. The truth was, Switzerland was the envy of its neighbors.

Mag had warned her. Alec sometimes caused offense without meaning to.

A gentleman never offends someone unintentionally, Lucia said, quoting the Count d'An.

So true, Mag said, feeling disloyal but sympathetic to her daughter-in-law. She was reminded of certain senators who were mindlessly partial to their states. The more obscure the state, the more partial they were to it. All in all, a harmless bias, though tiresome.