Family Matters (17 page)

“Why, I'd love to see you, Betsy,” he said over the phone. “How's your summer? You caught me between Italy and the Cape. Come over for a drink.”

Crawford's wife, Thisbe, had died a year ago when a toilet had overflowed and she had tried to vacuum up the water, electrocuting herself. Crawford's grief had been real, his embarrassment greater. He had two teenage children, both difficult. Since he'd become a widower, relations had been strained between him and Betsy. She was one of three women in the department; the other two were married and past fifty. Betsy thought Crawford seemed always to be expecting something from her, she had no idea what; she didn't think it was encouragement he wanted, though she didn't like the way he eyed her legs. She was always very brisk and impersonal with him, but it wouldn't be easy to keep it up in her present situation.

He took it in instantly, ogling her smock-top dress and whistling. “I
see
.”

They sat in the living room of his house. His son was out; his daughter had kept to her room since the death of Elvis Presley. The hum of an air-conditioner shut out all other sounds and made it seem a tête-á-tête, intimate.

“I'm expecting at the end of January and what I wanted to talk about was a medical leave for the spring semester.”

He looked disappointed, as she'd expected him to. She hadn't come to gossip or weep on his shoulder. He supposed it was that photographer she'd taken up with. Where was
he
in this picture? My God, Betsy Ruscoe was the last person you'd expect it of! He said all this, and more, on the phone to various people as soon as she left.

“No marriage plans, Betsy?”

“Nope,” she answered cheerfully.

“Well …” He spread his hands, which were pink and freckled. He had gained weight since Thisbe died. “You're going to raise this child, I assume? Hence the semester off?” He lit a cigarette and let the match fall to the rug.

“Of course I am. What else would I do with it?”

“I really can't imagine. Don't be so antagonistic, Betsy. It's only natural that I should ask a few questions.”

“Sorry, Crawford. I suppose I've become a bit prickly.”

“
Become
, Betsy?” he asked, blowing out a cloud of smoke and imitating a smiling, twinkly-eyed man. Then he got down to business. “Well. As I see it, your only problem is the scandal. I don't see anything to prevent a medical leave. John Alderman will be delighted to take your Pope seminar—good opportunity for him—and as for the rest of your courses—”

“What scandal?”

He gave a sour smile. “You do have a way of zeroing in, Betsy. Well, the
scandal
, of course. You don't think there will be one?”

“Why should there be?”

“The students, Betsy. They'll just eat this up.”

“Oh, come on, Crawford. Half the women students have probably had abortions.”

“That's just it! They haven't gone through with it. You must admit there's a certain ostentatious visibleness to your condition.”

“What's
visibleness
got to do with it, Crawford? If I were married, no one would think twice.”

“Ah, but you're not. That's where the canker gnaws.” He couldn't get through the simplest conversation without some trite quote.

“Crawford, you're out of touch with reality,” she said blithely. “Times have changed since you were in short pants.”

“I'm not sure they've changed enough to encompass babies born out of wedlock to university professors. Essentially, Syracuse is a very small town.”

He flicked cigarette ashes on the rug and leaned back, watching her through narrowed eyes like someone in the movies. But Betsy saw that he was serious. She didn't let herself get irritated because she knew Crawford, for all his absurdity, could be a formidable enemy. She remembered when Roger Blake had called Crawford a pompous, sniveling asshole at a party once, and how Crawford had persecuted Roger with everything from eight o'clock classes to a cramped and airless office to unannounced classroom visitations. She really wanted the leave.

“I'm not exactly going to flaunt it, Crawford,” she said evenly. “I don't think ostentatious is a very good word.”

“Well—” He shrugged, not retracting it. “Be discreet. And be prepared for a certain amount of talk. I'll deal with any unpleasantness. I'll stick by you.” Why did the phrase sound different coming from him than it had from the Brodskys?

“I honestly don't think there will be any, Crawford. I think you're overestimating my importance—my ‘visibility' around this place—and underestimating the sophistication of our students.”

“Nevertheless, should anything come up, refer it to me.”

Betsy tried to imagine herself weeping on her knees to Crawford, and failed, but she promised. She supposed she ought to be grateful. She noticed, though, that he didn't offer her a second drink.

“‘She's somebody's mother, boys, you know,'” Crawford said as he was seeing her out. “‘For all she's aged and poor and slow.'” He held the door for her, smirking, with a cigarette between his teeth dribbling ash. From somewhere in the house came faintly the mournful twang of “Heartbreak Hotel.”

“Come off it, Crawford. It's not a joke.”

He sobered. “No, I know it's not. I'll see to it that it's treated with proper gravity.”

“Just forget it, Crawford. Don't see to anything but my leave. Please.”

He leaned forward. He had a thin moustache, like an eyebrow. For a dreadful moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but he merely looked deeply into her eyes. “Trust the old Crawford,” he said, puffing smoke out of the sides of his mouth. She fancied as she drove away that she could hear him dialing the phone.

She had never looked forward to getting back to school after the summer vacation, but this year she was indifferent. She was having trouble concentrating on reading Boswell for her Johnson-Boswell course; it occurred to her for the first time that Boswell could be a very dull dog. And she was unsure, now, of what her reception would be. Crawford's warning of a scandal didn't worry her, but his attitude did. She had a horror of being laughed at: would her students think this was
funny?
That Betsy Ruscoe, aging and unbeautiful spinster, whom they'd probably thought was destined to remain a virgin, whose chief passion was Alexander Pope, had been—knocked up? Why had she assumed they'd hardly notice? Of course they would. She didn't mind astonishing them, but she didn't want to amuse them. It was a hitch even her grandfather hadn't mentioned.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Never petite, she was filling out like a pear—a busty pear. She tried to imagine how she would look by Christmas—more like a butternut squash. She smiled at her reflection; she was thrilled by it. Let them laugh. She was happy.

One night soon after, Violet called, weeping softly. Her mother's voice on the phone, hushed and plaintive, was the voice of a ghost. “Betsy, it's taking so
long
.”

What did she mean? Her dying? Or Emily? “I'm trying, Mother,” Betsy ventured. “I just can't think. Listen—don't cry, Mom—can't we ask Aunt Marion? I know you don't want her to know, but she could probably give me a lead. I just don't know, really, where to go from here.”

“No!” Violet's voice rose, then quickly sank; she believed her nocturnal phone calls were a secret from Mrs. Foster. “No, honey, I can't let your grandpa find out. Especially now, he's so good to me, it would be so ungrateful.”

“I could ask her not to say anything.”

“Honey, you know my aunt! No! Please! I never would have mentioned this if I thought you'd tell her. Promise me, Betsy.” She was agitated, her voice strong and rising. Betsy promised, and Violet quieted down, placated, and sniffed back her tears.

When she hung up, Betsy wept for a minute or two herself, out of frustration. She had tried; she had gone through old records and newspapers and deeds and documents until her fingers were gray with dust. But her research had come to nothing. The Loftus family had vanished from Spring Street into oblivion. She could think of only two possible courses of action: to ask Aunt Marion without Violet's knowledge or to travel up to East Haddam and see if she could find any record of Emily there.

She shrank from asking her great-aunt. It was true that Marion was a blatherer, and that she and Frank were very close. Violet's illness and Betsy's maverick pregnancy had, in fact, united them more than ever. Betsy knew they hashed her over thoroughly, and while she didn't begrudge them the hashing she knew her mother was right. Secrets weren't safe with Marion. It was she, after all, who'd spilled the forbidden beans to Violet about her adoption.

But—what if Marion
did
tell Frank? Would it be so awful? Betsy didn't know. She doubted it. Though she was past middle age, and dying, Violet was still (everyone knew) his darling, his little girl, the apple of his old and tired eyes. Surely he would understand and sympathize with her natural curiosity about her mother, her dying whim. And it was, after all, her mother she sought—not her father.

But Betsy knew she couldn't ask. It wasn't only that she had promised; the most stringent ethical code wouldn't hold her to such a promise if breaking it would help her mother. But the tone of Marion's old letters held her back, the aura of strangeness, almost of horror, that surrounded Violet's birth and adoption. Frank had had the opportunity to confide, and had deliberately let it go by. There was more to it than she or Violet was aware of, and it was that part of it that she hesitated to recall to her grandfather.

She made preparations for a trip to Connecticut. She told Violet her destination, and Violet smiled happily. She was having a weak day, but Dr. Baird had assured Betsy there was a long way to go. Don't die while I'm gone, Betsy begged silently, and pressed her mother's hand. Violet understood. “I'll be all right,” she whispered. “Stay as long as you need to.” Her cheeks were flushed. She was thinner, and her nose had sharpened. Now and then her eyes closed briefly as if in utter weariness or in pain. But she seemed more contented than ever, and her bouts of petulance had gone. “You'll find her, honey. I know you will.” And she closed her large, calm eyes as if she really did have a secret source of knowledge.

Betsy told her grandfather she was going to New Haven to do a job of research in the rare-book library at Yale.

“In your condition!” he protested, looking at her sharply, and she blushed for her lie.

She wouldn't have put it past him to know all, to have listened in on all her midnight talks with Violet, to have spied on her visits to the attic, to have dogged her to the courthouse. When she was a child, he had, during their long talks out in the garden, been able to cut through her chatter to the heart of things, and reveal it to her before she grasped it herself. He always
knew
. He had infinite wisdom, like God. He could probably look into her eyes and see the whole thing: Harold and Cora, her letter to the Middlesex County Courthouse, her canceled check for $2.50, her Connecticut map with the route to Haddam traced over in red.…

“I've got another week before school starts, Grandpa, and I'm working on something important. Don't you want me to be a full professor someday?”

He smiled, disarmed. He was proud of her career, delighted in her modest fame, her publications, her elevation to associate professor so young, and now the possibility of a full professorship.

“Well, take care of yourself.” He had his wallet out. “Here. Stay at a good hotel in a safe neighborhood and get yourself some protein to eat.”

She tried to wave the money away, but he insisted. “You don't have money to throw around anymore. Consider it as my investment in your future career. Come on. Take it.” He pressed the little wad of bills into her hand.

Betsy took it, not without guilt. What would he say if she told him he had just made a contribution to the Emily Loftus Research Fund?

She headed east on a hot morning at the end of August. She had her strategy all planned. She would go to the courthouse in Haddam, the county seat, and tell them her plight. She pictured a nice gray-haired old gent, a New England Frank, who'd lived there all his life and would be a fountain of information. Emily Loftus, aged seventeen: surely there would be a way of finding out where she had lived. Maybe with a Loftus relative? in a rooming house? in a home for wayward girls? Maybe whoever had given her refuge lived there still. “Ah, yes, Great-aunt Emily. Her name is Bainbridge now. She lives in Springfield, here's her address.…”

But though her brain moved in these directions, and though she traveled steadily east, Betsy knew it was all moonshine. Why should there be a record in Haddam, or East Haddam, or any Haddam? It was absurd. The idea would have been to keep the girl under wraps—and surely fifty-five years would be enough to turn any trail cold. But she had to look somewhere.

She turned south on Route 91 and got on Route 9 past Hartford. With a pang, she saw the signs for New Haven; she couldn't recall ever having lied to her grandfather before. She had kept things from him often enough, as a matter of survival, but though she could fool herself she was compulsively honest with others, particularly since she had learned, early on, what a liar Violet was—poor Violet, the dramatizer, doing her best with the colorless life that had been thrust upon her, that she didn't deserve. But Betsy was a literalist, lacking the imagination and confidence for whoppers. Heading down Route 9, she thought she might better stop off in New Haven on her way home and inspect the Boswell papers at Yale.

She pulled into Haddam (pop. 5,000) late in the afternoon, hot and tired and hungry. She felt that her waist had expanded several inches on the trip, and her back ached. The only motel in town seemed to be one on the outskirts—cabins backed by woods, called the Traveller's Rest. It didn't look promising, but it was nearly full, and the woman at the desk told her she was lucky to get a room anywhere in August without a reservation.