Family Matters (36 page)

Judd disappeared swiftly down the hill, and Betsy took her grandfather's arm and guided him over the hard snow to the car. Her mother's death, like her parting with Judd, seemed to have occurred a long time ago. There was an immense distance between Betsy and her mother's last fevered whispers, and the coming of Emily, and her grandfather's anguished cry. Some of the furious revulsion Betsy had felt at Violet's bedside had left her. It was impossible to begrudge death when it was so easy, and so obviously a release. The proper emotion for it seemed to be affectionate regret—a kind of peaceful, generalized mourning for the fact of death itself, not Violet's gentle participation in it. And it was partly eclipsed by Emily's dramatic departure in a taxi late the night before, to catch the last train.

“Where is she?” Marion had asked her at the chapel that afternoon.

“Gone,” Betsy said, adding, “Don't mention her to Grandpa. She told him off, and it just about killed him.”

She said no more, leaving Marion wide-eyed. She kept to herself the tale of Frank's rage against Emily, the slammed doors and the cursing, and the difficulty with which she had kept her own silence.

“Ah, I'm an old man, Betsy,” he had said to her before she went up to bed. “It's true what she said—you're all I've got, and I'm damned lucky to have you.” He looked old and frail, his head seemed to tremble on his thin neck. That was true, too: Emily's observation that he had become an old, old man. Betsy said nothing to him, merely kissed him good night and went upstairs.

After the funeral, back at the house, Betsy left Frank with her attentive Aunt Marion and a contingent of friends, and, on impulse, went upstairs to the quiet of her mother's room. The weather had been too cold to air it out properly, and the room smelled vaguely of rubbing alcohol. Betsy smoothed the bed where Violet had lain for so long and then sat down on it, leaning back against the pillows. The old silver dinner bell, the one her mother had used for calling the nurses, was still on the table. And the little pile of books was there
—The Thurber Carnival, Carry on Jeeves, Three Men in a Boat
. Futile, to attack death with laughter. Violet had chosen, in the end, to accept rather than attack, and she had carried the secret of how to do it away with her.

Snow had begun to fall again outside the windows. From downstairs came the tinkle of glasses as drinks were fixed, and the sound of her grandfather's laughter. He and his old friend Ed Scott were reminiscing about their law-school days. Betsy heard Marion's loud hoots. But up in Violet's room, where death needn't be denied, all was peaceful. Betsy thought of her mother, tucked forever into the frozen earth. She would miss her most, she suspected, in the years to come, and as if to underscore the thought the baby kicked her, hard. Betsy smiled and, with effort, got to her feet, but before she went downstairs she put the silver bell in her pocket.

Frank urged her to go out to dinner with them—he and Marion and the Scotts were going to venture through the snow to a steak house. The invitation was clearly an overture, but she couldn't accept it. She was exhausted, and she wanted to go home. She had been in her grandfather's house for weeks, sleeping in her old room under the eyes of the longsuffering Madonna on the wall, and it was time to go.

“Forgive me, Grandpa,” she said to Frank. “I'm tired. What I really want to do is go home and take a hot bath and go to sleep for twelve hours.”

His face fell, and then Ed Scott called across the room, “Let her go, Frank—she's too young. Our conversation Won't be fit for her tender ears.” Frank guffawed and returned to his drink, but he looked quickly at Betsy with a touch of his old resentment.

Agnes Scott came over to her. “When are you due, honey?” she asked, with an air of getting it out in the open.

Ed, embarrassed at his wife's forthrightness, looked down into his glass and stirred the ice cubes with his finger. Her grandfather, Betsy noticed, had become very still, with his face turned away.

“Any day,” Betsy replied.

Mrs. Scott smiled. “Isn't it funny,” she said. “After all these years I can still remember the births of my three as clearly as anything—every pain!” She laughed the conspiratorial laugh of a Pregnancy Club member. “Why, I remember with Mary Patricia—”

“Yes, sir!” Frank broke in suddenly. “I'm going to be a great-grandfather! I'll tell you, Agnes, I can hardly wait! I think these modern women are terrific!”

There was a short pause after this speech, and his eyes met Betsy's with a sheepish look. She forced a smile, wondering why she kept being so grudging with him. He was doing his best.

“Don't let your grandfather spoil the baby,” Agnes Scott said, unfazed by the interruption. “I see it coming on.”

Marion sat in the chintz-covered armchair sipping at her Scotch and soda. “He spoils everyone, Agnes,” she said. In the kitchen, after the funeral, she had taken Betsy aside and said, “I think he really needs me, Betsy. I think I can be a real comfort to him.” Her eyes had sparkled and her cheeks glowed with a flush that wasn't rouge. “He's just an old pussycat,” she said to the Scotts, beaming at Frank over the top of her glass.

The older people would drop Betsy off on their way to dinner. They were noisily high-spirited on the way. The grownups had behaved that way after Helen's funeral, too, she recalled, and Betsy—a prim teenager—had thought it shocking—the dirty jokes and the amount of alcohol consumed. Now she laughed with them, even when the jokes were about Frank's imminent great-grandfatherhood (her part in the phenomenon was delicately glossed over) and what that implied about Frank's age and capabilities.

“I never heard of any great-grandfather who could still cut the mustard, Frank,” Ed Scott said a couple of times.

“But he's
young
to be a great-grandfather!” Marion insisted. She reached forward from the back seat and patted Frank possessively on the shoulder.

As they approached the east side of town, her grandfather became silent, and Betsy, sitting beside him, wondered if he was grieving. They reached Oakwood Cemetery, and the jokes from the back seat became louder as they passed, but Frank didn't laugh. When they reached her apartment, he insisted on walking her up to the door. Betsy didn't object, knowing there was something he wanted to say.

“We're looking forward to that baby!” Agnes called as Betsy got out of the car.

“So am I,” she replied, and shut the door on their boozy, comfortable laughter.

Frank guided her with exaggerated care up the Brodskys' immaculately shoveled walk. The porch was lit in anticipation of her return. When he had piloted her safely to its light, Frank said abruptly, “Your young man was at the funeral.”

His formal diction made her laugh. “He's not my young man, Grandpa. Not anymore.”

“Then why did he come?”

It was, of course, exactly as she had put it to herself, but her answer to him was different. “Simply as a friend of the family. He always liked Mom and you.”

“And you, I hope.”

“But that's over, Grandpa. His coming today didn't mean anything. Please don't start fantasizing about a last-minute wedding to legitimize everything.”

Betsy spoke sharply and his face showed he was hurt, but he persisted. “Would you take him back?”

She was contrite and took the question seriously, but, “I don't know, Grandpa,” was all she could say.

He looked at her with a sly smile. “Damn the old lady, she probably hit the nail on the head. I'm a selfish bastard. But sometimes it seems to me, Betsy, that if you and Judd got married everything would be all right.”

“I don't see that.”

“What? That I'm a selfish bastard?” His smile widened, and he shrugged. “That's what she said!”

She didn't return his smile. “Is that what Emily is to be, then? Just a wacky, eccentric old lady? Is that all the effect you'll admit she had on you, that you can pigeonhole her that way and forget about her?”

His smile disappeared. “She's not just wacky and eccentric, Betsy,” he snapped. “She's unbalanced! You heard what she said!”

“I did hear her, and I agreed with most of the things she said. At any rate, I think she had a right to say them.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” he said, and started to go back down the steps. “Then I
am
a selfish bastard. That's what you think of your grandfather.”

She caught his arm. “It doesn't matter what I think, Grandpa. But I want to say something—not about Emily, but about Mom.”

He turned, curious but impatient. “It's cold out here,” he said irritably.

“I just want to say this one thing. Before you came, she was asking for you—”

“I know that!” he cried out. “You told me that, everyone's told me that. Are you going to reproach me for not being with her before she died? Christ! Why do you think I wasn't? Who do you think I went all the way to East Jesus, Connecticut, to get that damned woman
for
?”

“That's not what I was going to say,” Betsy replied calmly. “I don't blame you for that—I'm grateful. But just before she died it seemed to me that her whole miserable life rose up from her body and went whirling around the room, and I saw it for the first time. All those rotten years with you and Grandma, all the lies and secrets, and that sick meanness she had to grow up with, when she had to take the brunt of all the rage and misery Grandma had stored up because of you and your crummy little affair—”

“Betsy!”

“And then she gave up any chance for a life of her own—she did the good-daughterly thing and came back home. What else did she know how to do? She was like some Victorian maiden aunt, with all the life squeezed out of her by—by corsets and convention and all the comforts—”

“
You
—
are
—
exaggerating!
” her grandfather said, with an attempt at thundering, but his face was bloodless.

Betsy laughed shakily. “You say that word as if it's a sin—the way Grandma would have said ‘fornicating'! Of course I'm exaggerating. It's time I exaggerated—time someone did something that's not hopelessly genteel.”

“You took care of that already—about nine months ago,” he said, turning again to go down the steps.

“
You
can say that—
you!
After knocking up a seventeen-year-old girl and refusing to take the consequences.”

“That's none of your business.”

“It
is
my business. I'm the product of this family—I'm the end result of the lies and evasions, all the smiles that have been smiled in this family to cover up the awful truth. All except Grandma.
She
never smiled, and she was absolutely right!”

She let the words pour out though she could see how they wounded him, though his face was unhealthily white and waxy-looking, though some of the words almost strangled her with their violence.

“I'm not used to talking like this, Grandpa, but I have a little more to say.” She took his coat sleeve. “I never understood Grandma. I always thought she was the mad beast you let everyone assume she was, but I've got to admire her. She may not have told the truth either, but at least she didn't pretend the lies were pleasant. Poor Grandma, all she loved was the church and the television and the stove—and why not? They never let her down, they never deserted her. God, when I think of the waste of her life, and my mother's—”

Marion had gotten out of the car and was coming up the steps, holding her coat around her. “Frank, it's freezing out here, and whatever you two are talking about can wait.” Her voice was shrill: she had heard.

“I don't think it can!” said Betsy, realizing she had become loud and angry but unable to tone down. Her teeth were chattering, with frustration as much as cold.

“The Brodskys will hear you,” Marion hissed, coming over to her. “You'd better get up to bed. Your condition is making you hysterical, and you're upsetting your grandfather.”

“Listen to her,” Betsy said with conscious rudeness. “Listen to the bohemian—the free spirit.”

“Don't speak to your aunt that way,” Frank said. “I don't care what you say to me, Betsy. I know you're all wrought up. But—”

“Oh, stop it!” she cried. “Stop
doing
it!” She fumbled in her bag for her door key, found it, and turned to go in. “Listen,” she said more quietly. “Why don't you go down to Florida or someplace, Grandpa? Take a vacation—take Aunt Marion. But go away and leave me alone, let me have my baby in peace.”

Marion had her arm through Frank's, and she said, “
I
think that's an excellent idea, Frank, as a matter of fact.”

“No,” he interrupted, “I'm not going to desert her at a time like this. She's upset, God knows we're all upset, we have a right to be, but we'll stick together.” He put out his hand and touched Betsy's arm. “You get some sleep, Betsy. You'll feel differently about all this in the morning.”

She took a deep breath. “I will not feel any differently, Grandpa.” She meant to go on, but he was already on his way down the steps, with Marion on his arm. Betsy went inside and slammed the door as hard as she could.

Her apartment was warm, and got warmer as she drew a bath. The Brodskys had pushed the thermostat up high for her return, hanging the expense for the sake of perpetuating the race.

She took the hot bath she'd been looking forward to all day and lay in the water a long time. She put her grandfather from her mind. Deliberately, she thought of nothing, registering the baby's kicks and admiring her big pink belly with its flattened-out navel. She had just dried off and was in her nightgown and bathrobe when the doorbell rang: Judd. She had forgotten him.

She rubbed some blusher into her cheeks and ran a comb through her hair before she went to the door. It was Mr. and Mrs. Brodsky, with a covered pot and Betsy's accumulated mail.