Family Matters (30 page)

“Don't you talk about her that way!”

“You're her granddaughter, all right,” he said with a look at Betsy's belly.

She didn't even try to excuse him—to blame his brutal words on grief and outrage, the shock of Betsy's search and Emily's revelations. Pure, cold, limitless anger made her incoherent.

“How can you—how can you! Don't you understand
anything
?”

“I understand that I won't let her do this to my daughter. I'lI drag her up here if I die in the attempt. I'm damned if I'll let her get away with this.”

Half an hour later he had slammed out the door. And where was he now?

Hours went by. They had all risen early, and the morning was immensely long. They had lunch. Marion made large tuna-salad sandwiches for the three of them and then loudly did the dishes, humming to herself. Betsy retreated from her great-aunt's studied optimism, upstairs—not to Violet's room but to her grandfather's study. They had shouted at each other: had they ever done so before? She couldn't remember, ever, hearing his voice raised to her. Still, she wouldn't take back her words—she wished only that there could be more of them, that he were there, now, at his desk, and that they could talk quietly. There was more to be said.

The storm made the study dark. Snow clung to the two windows and kept out most of the daylight, but Betsy knew the room by heart, and she tried to take comfort from its familiarity. It was dominated by her grandfather's desk—a large, bland office model (the replacement for the quirky old oak piece in the attic)—but it bore his mark upon it, unmistakable. It was very neat, the working space of a man who didn't really have any work to do. In the center were a calculator, the university law review, a mugful of pens, a little pile of letters. But arranged in each corner were more personal things: an old iron bank he'd had since boyhood, a sand dollar, a small marble fish Violet had given him, a wooden egg that had been his mother's. Betsy picked each item up and turned it over in her hand. Each was warm to the touch, as if her grandfather had handled the things just before she came in, but they only made her lonelier. He had stalked off into the snow, leaving her behind in the empty house with nothing to do but wait and brood.

Betsy sat down heavily at the desk. The tuna fish had not agreed with her. Nothing agreed with her. The coming of the child oppressed her; in spite of all her cares, she could think of nothing else.
What am I doing?
she asked herself, and, resting her hands on her huge belly, she asked the child within,
Who are you? What will happen?

There were no answers; she had expected none. In fact, the questions had become rituals that set up a rhythm in her head whenever she lapsed into the blank, bovine trances that had come back during these last weeks of her pregnancy.

She longed for the birth, even as she dreaded it. She longed for her passivity to come to an end so her life could go forward. Sitting at her grandfather's desk, she felt a dull stupefaction stealing over her, and she blinked and sat up, wincing at the pain in her back. She leafed through the pile of letters on the desk: bills, a renewal letter from
Consumer Reports
, a notice of a board meeting. Pathetic, Betsy thought. The dregs of an active life. What would he do once Violet died? Go back to his board and his consultations and his club lunches with old cronies? His friends were dying off, she knew; this had begun to depress him before Violet's illness absorbed him utterly. What now? And what would he do with his resentment against Emily? Did it even exist anymore? And—the question kept coming back—was he dead with her somewhere in the snow?

The shelf over his desk was crowded with photographs. There was a faded one of Frank himself, in a stiff collar, smiling confidently at her—taken back in the days when he was deceiving Emily, Betsy thought. There was one of herself, with the dog, Poochie, in a stranglehold. A snapshot of Helen, dressed for church, in a hat with a veil. One of her parents, laughing, outside her father's shop.

Emily, it occurred to her, was missing from the shelf. Would her grandfather put up a picture of his old love, now that she'd been brought to light? One of her glamorous portraits? She belonged there, just as she belonged in the family plot. I'll bury the three of them all together, Betsy thought fatalistically, and imagined the three gaping holes in the frozen earth, like the stanza of a tragic ballad.

And Emily's house in East Haddam—that gem shining now, empty, in the snow. What if Emily, lost in the storm,
had
left it to her? What on earth would she do with it? She fancied Emily would scream from the grave like a soul in torment if she sold it. She wondered about offering it to the state as a landmark: the Emily Loftus House—a museum of theatrical memorabilia? Under that memorial, Emily would surely rest in peace. Betsy smiled to herself. She would go up there in the spring with the baby. The sun would shine on Emily's treasured fanlight, there would be blossoms on the apple tree, the baby would snuggle against her. “This was your great-grandmother Emily's house,” she would say, putting the old key in the old lock. Inside, Emily's sturdy spirit would hover around her and the baby, showering blessings.…

No. Panic overwhelmed her. She knew she couldn't bear it if they all died, and in her panic she knew they wouldn't. Comfort and confidence came to her from all corners of the room. She was sure of it: Frank and Emily were safe. Her grandfather's room breathed life—it was in the smiling faces of the photographs on the shelf, in the little man on Frank's old mechanical bank who would doff his hat if you put a penny in.…

They would be safe. That particular oppression would not fall upon her. The certainty calmed her, until down the hall she thought she heard Violet stir and cry out, and the panic returned. What did anyone else's life matter? Violet would die. Before much longer, she would be motherless and alone. Betsy wanted to whimper—she was always wanting to whimper lately, to go someplace and cry, but where did one go in such pain if not to one's mother? The subtle terror of it possessed her. The terror not of one's own death but of one's last parent's death—the death that confers adulthood, ready or not. I don't want my mother to die, she cried silently. I don't want to be the mother!

As if in protest, the baby began to thrash around inside her, and Betsy calmed again. All right. All right. I didn't mean it. But the calm came with difficulty, the peace was hopelessly shattered, and she got up and walked down the hall to Violet's room.

Terry was crying. She looked up guiltily from her tissue, caught in the act, as if it were a dereliction of duty. Betsy stood in the doorway, and they exchanged sad, silent smiles. Violet slept, her wasted face calm. As they watched, she twitched and mumbled, but didn't wake.

Betsy went back downstairs. Marion was in the kitchen, with the radio, still drinking coffee. Her pendulous red face was freshly made up, her tiny mouth gleamed with rosy, improbable lipstick, and she looked up eagerly when Betsy came in.

“How is she?”

“The same.”

“The snow seems to be letting up.”

It was hard to tell. Out the window, all was white, fading to blue-gray. As Betsy looked, a streetlight went on, and against its light she couldn't see any snow falling.

“Look at that,” said Marion. “Streetlights on at two-thirty in the afternoon. That's the worst of winter, in my opinion—the dark.”

“I think you were right—it
is
stopping.”

Her aunt snapped off the radio. “Let's take a break from this, then.” Betsy went to the stove for a cup of coffee, thankful for the silence. Without warning, it was broken by a sudden harsh sob from her aunt.

Betsy turned. “Aunt Marion!”

Her great-aunt's face was crumpled, weeping. She sat hunched at the table, one hand over her eyes, the other stretched out blindly.

“Betsy …”

Betsy went to her, knelt down, and took her hand. “Aunt Marion, what is it? What is it all of a sudden?”

“I can't stand the waiting anymore, Betsy. Go ahead—call the troopers. I can't take this.”

It was Betsy's turn to speak patiently, rationally—out of her own irrational certainty. “He'll be here, don't worry.” As she spoke, she wondered at Marion's emotion and then realized how much Frank must mean to his sister-in-law. They were, after all, old friends.

Marion raised her naked red face to Betsy. Her makeup was all rubbed off or collected into furrows. The red lips stood out garishly, and her face was shiny with tears in the light from the window. Betsy remembered Judd's photographs.

“Don't cry, Aunt Marion.” She took a table napkin and wiped her face, but the tears started again, and Marion buried her head in her hands and moaned.

“I can't bear it if he goes before me. I can't.”

Betsy did her best to provide comfort, wondering. She remembered what Marion had said of Will, her own father: “It's a blessing Will went before Violet. He worshiped her.” She put her arm around her and waited for the crying to stop; she didn't know what else to do.

Finally, Marion raised her head and sat up. She took a tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. “I'm sorry, honey,” she said. “I'm upset.”

“Well, of course you are—” Betsy started to say, reasonably enough, but Marion forged ahead.

“I always loved your grandfather, you know. I mean, I've been in love with him, for years. You never knew, no one did.”

Oh God, the poor woman, here we go. “I knew you two were fond of each other, of course—”

She was cut off again. “Fond! Fond of each other!” She gave her brittle laugh. “He was the great love of my life. There was a time when I was eloser to him than anyone. I mean, we'd gone through it all together. I was always there for him. When Helen went off the deep end. And when she kicked him out of bed for good, and then Emily—you see what I'm saying, Betsy?”

“I suppose I do,” she replied reluctantly and felt a vague anger rise in her.

Marion went on before she could say more. “I'm sure your mother told you I was a trollop. Did she? A scarlet woman?” She raised her head and patted her upswept hair with something of her old dignity. “Glamorizing as usual, that's Violet. I was no trollop. I had lovers, of course—not casual affairs, either, like young people today, but real love affairs. And I'm not referring to you and that photographer, either, so don't get huffy.”

Betsy wasn't feeling huffy, she was feeling oppressed. Would life ever go forward instead of back? She was caught in a web of other people's memories. She wanted all this to be over. She longed to be home, in her own bright apartment with Dr. Spock and Dr. Johnson, changing her baby's diapers and working on her book.

“I had a special friendship for many years with a man in New York,” her great-aunt continued imperturbably. “A married man. He didn't keep me, I always made enough to support myself. Oh, he helped out, but I could have gotten along without him. The bohemian life, you know. The Village in the twenties and thirties. We were going to go to Paris, he and I—”

Betsy listened, amazed in spite of herself, not at the story—which was, generally, what her mother had told her—but at Marion's willful vulnerability. She was letting down her pride, drawing her own sting. Betsy wished she wouldn't do it. She liked their old, distant, abrasive relationship, and she knew the reminiscences would end in more tears.

“He died in nineteen fifty-six, and that's when I decided to move back here to my old hometown. It wasn't easy, to leave the city for this dreary upstate backwater, and I missed Sam—Sam Hemming was his name, no harm in your knowing now. I saw him three times a week for eighteen years. Heart attack, and he wasn't sixty yet! Well then, there we were, your grandfather and I. Helen was dead—not that she was ever a real wife to him, poor woman. And Emily Loftus had given him her final ultimatum years before—he was through with her. So he and I just drifted, quite naturally, into an affair of the heart.” Marion pronounced the old-fashioned phrase with a self-conscious, girlish smile. “It would have been odd if we hadn't. I wasn't a young woman, Betsy, but I fell in love with him like a kid, and I thought—right up until the end, I thought—” She paused, took a quavery breath, and went on. “I can't tell you what a shock it was to me when you located Emily Loftus after all these years—and then, when Frank went trotting off after her, just like her little puppy dog again. I mean, I always thought …”

“You thought
what
?” Betsy asked when Marion hesitated.

“I thought he might marry me.”

It was as if a light went on in the dark kitchen. Betsy looked across the table at Marion and saw herself. She stood up. “I won't have it!” she announced. “I won't put up with this, I won't listen.” Marion looked up at her and blinked. Betsy took a step away and then came back. “I'm
glad
I'm not related to you,” she said, leaning heavily on the table. “I wish I weren't related to any of you. It's not
good
for me, it's not healthy to be part of a line of—hopers and adapters and waiters. If life doesn't fit right, you twist and turn yourself to fit it until you're deformed, and then you smile so hard no one notices the deformity.”

“What
are
you talking about?” Marion asked in her best ironic tone.

Betsy had meant to storm from the room, but her eloquence had worn her out. She was hot, she felt shaky and sweaty, and her head hurt. “You know what I'm talking about. I won't put up with it,” she said again, but without intensity. She sat down and drank some coffee, staring down into her cup so she wouldn't have to look at her great-aunt's face. She recognized that her brief glimpse of herself in Marion was a genuine illumination. That was the road she was headed down, and she was rocked by the knowledge. “I won't,” she repeated.