Remembrance (15 page)

“Yeah, she's here. You okay, Brad?”

“Just great. All of you? Greg? Dad?”

“Greg got his discharge a few weeks ago.” But it was no great shakes, as they all knew. He had served out the entire war at a desk in Fort Dix, New Jersey, spending weekends at home, or in Southampton in the summer. He had felt desperately guilty about it, as he had finally told his younger brother. But because B.J. had been so quick to get himself sent overseas and had several times had assignments in dangerous zones, their parents had been able to pull strings so that only one of their children was jeopardized. Greg had been safe in New Jersey at all times. And Teddy of course had been in college since 1941, with every intention of joining the army when he got out.

“What's he going to do now?”

“Why don't you ask him?” Teddy said with faint hesitation, and then, “Dad's going to take him into the law firm. What about you, Brad? Aren't you ever coming home?”

“Eventually. Nobody's said anything to me about it yet over here.”

“Are you ready to come home yet?” There was an odd questioning tone in Teddy's voice and Brad suddenly wondered what he knew.

“Maybe not. It's damn nice over here, Ted. Listen, if I'm still here next spring when you graduate, why don't you come out to see us—me …”he corrected quickly with a rapid glance at Serena across the desk.

“You think you'll still be there then?” Teddy sounded disappointed. “Hell, aren't you ever going to muster out, B.J.?”

There was a moment's pause. “I don't think so, Ted. I like the army. I never thought I would. But I think this is just right for me. And …”He looked at Serena with tenderness in his eyes. He wanted to tell Teddy about her, but he felt he ought to tell his mother first. “Listen, I'll talk to you later. Go get Mother, Ted. And listen,” B.J. said as an afterthought, “don't say anything to them, Ted. Mom's going to have a fit when I tell her I'm staying in the army.”

“Brad …” There was that strange tone in his voice again. “I think she knows.” It was as though he were warning his older brother of something.

“Anything wrong?” Brad was suddenly tense.

“No.” He'd find out soon enough. “I'll go get Mom.”

As it so happened, she was in the dining room having breakfast with Greg and Pattie Atherton, who had come for a special pre-Christmas breakfast “with them all. When Ted went to the doorway and beckoned his mother urgently, she came quickly, with a worried frown.”

“Is something wrong, Ted?”

“No, Mom, it's Brad on the phone. He called us to wish us a Merry Christmas.” And as he said it he hoped that his mother would allow it to remain merry. She took the phone from her youngest son, smoothing a hand over her snowy white hair, and sat down quickly in her desk chair. She was dressed elegantly in a black Dior suit that did extremely well by her still-streamlined youthful figure. She was a woman of fifty-eight, but she could easily have concealed ten or twelve of those years, had she chosen to, which she never did. She had B.J.'s same slate-gray eyes, and the features were much the same too, but whereas on B.J. everything looked easygoing and gentle, on his mother everything looked eternally tense. One always had the feeling that she was listening for something, some superhuman, extraterrestrial whine that was audible only to her. There was always about her a kind of electric tension, and she seemed ever about to pounce, which she did frequently, mostly on her husband, and often on her sons. She was a woman one spoke to carefully and handled with the utmost caution, so as not to set her off, or “get her started,” as her family called it. “Don't get your mother started, boys,” her husband had always implored his sons. And in order not to himself, he hardly ever spoke, but he nodded constant agreement. When they were younger, the boys used to imitate him a lot, B.J. having perfected his father's constant noncommittal, almost mechanical “Ummmmmm.…”

“Hi, Mom. How's everything in New York?”

“Interesting. Very interesting. Eleanor was here for lunch yesterday.” He knew she referred to Mrs. Roosevelt. “The political news these days is certainly ever changing. It's a hard time for her, for all of us really. There are a lot of readjustments going on after the war. But never mind all that, Brad darling. More to the point, how are
you?”
She said it with an emphasis that ten years before would have made him extremely nervous. But he had got over being intimidated by his mother when he gave up his job in Washington and moved to Pittsburgh to suit himself. It had been a move of which she had violently disapproved, and for the first time in his life he had decided that that wasn't going to change anything for him. “Are you all right, darling? Healthy? Happy? Coming home?”

“Yes to the first three, no to the fourth question, I'm afraid. At least they don't appear to be shipping me Stateside for the moment. But I'm fine, everything's just fine.” He saw Serena's expectant eyes upon him, and for the first time in a long time he realized that he was afraid of his mother. But this time he had to stand up to her, not only for himself, but for Serena. It gave him added courage as he plunged in. “I've got some good news for you.”

“Another promotion, Brad?” She sounded pleased. As much as she disliked having him in the army, as long as he insisted on being in it, his frequent promotions pacified her and pleased her with their prestige.

“Not exactly, Mom. Better than that in fact.” He swallowed hard, realizing suddenly what he had done. Serena was right. He should have called her first. Christ, imagine telling her like this when it was all over. He could feel a thin veil of sweat break out along his hairline and prayed that Serena wouldn't see. “I just got married.” He wanted to close his eyes and gulp air, but he couldn't, not with those expectant, trusting green eyes on him. Instead he smiled at Serena and gestured that everything was going fine.

“You
what!
You're joking of course.” There was a silence, but before that there had been a tight edge in her voice. He could imagine the tenseness in her face by listening to the tone of her voice. He could picture the elegant almost bony hand with the heavy diamond rings clutching the phone. “What's this all about?”

“It's about a wonderful young lady whom I met in Rome. We were married this morning, Mother, in the English church here.”

There was an endless pause while he waited. At her end her face was suddenly grim, her eyes the color of the Atlantic before a hurricane. “Is there some adequate reason why you've kept this a secret, Brad?”

“No. I just wanted it to be a surprise.”

His mother's voice was glacial. “I assume she's pregnant.”

Slowly Brad was beginning to burn. Nothing ever changed. No matter how old they got, she still treated them the same way. Like naughty, demented little puppets. It was what had driven him away years before. He always kind of forgot that part of it and he was realizing that things were no different now.

“No, you're mistaken.” For Serena's sake he went on as though all were well. “Her name is Serena, and she's blond and very beautiful.” He felt faintly crazy as he said it all, and all he wanted was to get off the phone. “And we're very happy.”

“How enchanting.” His mother's words shot into the phone like bullets. “Do you expect me to applaud? Is it possible that this is the girl Pattie told me about in November?” His mother's tone would have cracked marble. “I believe she mentioned that the girl was a maid in the place where you lived. Or is this someone else?” By what right do you ask, damn you, he wanted to shout at her, but he controlled himself as best he could and attempted not to fly into a rage.

“I don't think that's something I want to discuss with you now. I think when Pattie was in Rome she saw things with jaundiced eyes—”

“Why?” His mother cut him off. “Because she broke off the engagement?”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Isn't that what happened?”

“Not exactly. I told her that things had changed and I wanted to call off the engagement.”

“Not by the account I heard.” Margaret Fullerton did not sound as though she believed her son. “Pattie said that you were having an affair with your scrub girl, and when she caught you at it, she gave back the ring and came home.”

“It's a nice tight little story, Mother. The only trouble is that it's not true. The only thing true about it”—he realized that it made sense to admit at least that much to his mother, in case she heard something later on—”is that Serena was working at the palazzo. Her parents owned it before the war. But her father was among the aristocracy against Mussolini, and both of her parents were killed early on in the war. It's a long story and I won't give you all the details now. She's a principessa by birth and spent the war at a convent in the States, and when she returned to Italy last summer, she found that the rest of her family had died, she had no one and nothing left, so she went back to the palazzo to see it, and was taken in by one of the maids. She's had a grim time of it, Mother.” He smiled at Serena. “But that's all over now.”

“How charming. A little match girl. A war bride.” Her tone was venomous. “My dear boy, do you have any idea how many nobodies are wandering around Europe now pretending that they were once princes and counts and dukes? My God, they're even doing it over here. There's a waiter in your father's club who claims that he's a Russian prince. Perhaps,” his mother suggested sweetly, “you'd like to introduce your bride to him. I'm sure he'd be a much more suitable companion for her than you are.”

“That's a rotten thing to say.” His eyes flayed. “I called to tell you the news. That's all. I think we've said enough for now.” Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Serena's eyes fill with tears. She knew what was happening and it tore at his heart. He wanted to make everything right for his wife and he didn't give a damn what his mother said. “Good-bye, Mother. I'll speak to you again soon.”

His mother offered no congratulations. “Before you go, you might like to know that your brother Gregory just got engaged.”

“Really? To whom?” But he didn't really care now. He was too incensed about his mother's behavior and her reaction to the news of his marriage to Serena. Only one thing struck him odd before she told him, and that was that Ted hadn't said a word about Greg.

“He got engaged to Partie.” She said it with pleasure, almost with glee.

“Atherton?” B.J. was stunned.

“Yes, Pattie Atherton. I didn't write to you because I wasn't sure, and I didn't want to cause you unnecessary pain.” Bullshit. She wanted to maximize the shock. B.J. knew his mother better than that. “She began seeing him almost as soon as she got back from Rome.”

“That's terrific.” He marveled at what a manipulative scheming little bitch Pattie was. At least she had chosen the right brother this time. Greg would do everything she wanted him to. She had made the right choice for herself. But B.J. found himself wondering if she would destroy his brother. He hoped not, but he was almost sure that she would. He was dying to ask Ted what he thought of it, but he knew that now he wouldn't be able to speak to him again. “When are they getting married, Mother?”

“In June. Just before he turns thirty.” How touching. And Pattie would be twenty-four, and the perfect bride in a white lace dress. Suddenly the mental picture of it made him almost ill. His brother devoured by that bitch. “I'm sure it would be painful for you, Brad. But I think you should be here.”

“Of course. I wouldn't miss it.” He felt more like himself now, but he was still awed by his mother's skill.

“And you can leave the little war bride at home.”

“That's not even a remote possibility, Mother. We look forward to seeing you all then, and for now Merry Christmas. I won't bother to speak to Greg now, but give him my best.” He didn't give a damn about speaking to Greg. They had never been close and they were less so now, and he had had enough of his mother and her vicious attitude about Serena. He wanted to get off the phone at all costs. He was only sorry that Serena was in the room while he spoke to his mother. He truly wished that he could tell her all that he was thinking. But he would have to do that by letter, and without delay.

“I think he's still in the dining room with Pattie. We were just finishing breakfast when you called. Pattie came by early today, they're going to Tiffany's first thing this morning to pick out the ring.”

“Marvelous.”

“It could have been you, Brad.”

“I'm glad it's not.” There was a pregnant silence.

“I wish it were. Instead of what you've just done.”

“You won't feel that way when you meet Serena.”

There was an odd silence. “I don't normally socialize with maids.”

Brad wanted to explode at her reaction, but knew he could not, for Serena's sake.

“You're a fool, Brad.” She rushed on into his silence. “You ought to be ashamed. A man with your connections and your chances, and look what you've just done with your life. It makes me want to weep for what you're throwing away. Do you think you'll ever make it in politics now, with that kind of woman as your wife? For all you know she's a common prostitute calling herself a princess. Pattie said she looked like a tramp.”

“I'll let you judge for yourself. She's ten times the lady Pattie is. That little slut has been giving it away free for years!” He was beginning to lose his cool at last.

“How dare you speak of your brother's fiancée in those disgusting terms.”

“Then don't you ever”—his voice flew into the phone like a torpedo, and at her end Margaret Fullerton was taken aback —”don't you ever speak about my wife that way again. Is that clear? She's my wife now. Whatever you think, you'd damn well better keep it to yourself from now on. She's mine. That's all. That's all you need to know. And I expect everyone in this family, including that little bitch Pattie, to treat her with respect. You bloody well ought to love her, all of you, because she's a damn sight better than any of you, but whether you love her or not, you'd better be polite to her, and to me when you speak about her, or you'll never see me again.”

“I won't tolerate your threats, Bradford.” Her voice was like granite.