Family Secrets (17 page)

Many evenings Melissa and Lazarus, Lavinia and Jonah went to Papa’s house for dinner, but whenever they ate in their own house they always went to Papa’s to visit afterward. It was a nice way to spend the evenings, all the family together. Lavinia and Jonah were still newlyweds, really on their honeymoon if you wanted to be technical, and they were quite shameless, holding hands and kissing whenever they thought no one was looking. Everyone teased them.

Rosemary was taking tennis lessons during the day, and at night she went gallivanting around with the other young kids whose parents had summer homes in the neighborhood. Hazel spent her days knitting for Melissa’s expected baby; a little afghan, a carriage cover, a summer crib cover, a winter crib cover. She had even mastered a cap, although Mama had done most of it. Basil spent his days swimming, sunning, and playing tennis, and in the evenings he chased girls. In his white suit, with his hair slicked back, his face freshly shaved, smelling of eau de cologne, he fancied himself quite a devil. Especially when he could borrow Papa’s car. There was no place to take a girl in the car, but a drive in the car with Basil was quite thrill enough.

Andrew had two close friends, but his life was quieter, more mysterious. When he took a girl out he did not discuss it, he simply got dressed up and left the house. Since he had to get up early in the morning on weekdays, he usually stayed out late only on weekend nights. He was doing his best to live a moderate, dignified life.

If Jonah had been given his choice, this would not have been the way he would have chosen to spend his honeymoon. He would have preferred to get a job as head counselor at a camp in the mountains somewhere, and he and Lavinia could have a little cottage there for just the two of them. They would be able to ride bicycles together through the lovely, wooded bike paths and pick wild berries when they got thirsty. He was sure she wouldn’t be afraid to swim in a clear mountain lake, and he would be right by her side to protect her. But this summer plan was what Papa wanted, and what Lavinia wanted too, and so it was not up to him to disagree. He was really very lucky. Certainly he could not have afforded a cottage like this all by himself. He liked the beach and the ocean. And he was so fond of his in-laws that they seemed his own dear family. That is, Papa and Mama did. About the others he had varying opinions. But then, that was the way one felt about one’s own brothers and sisters too. You didn’t love them all alike, you couldn’t, because they weren’t all alike as people. Some of them you even had a hard time liking at all.

He was not too fond of Lazarus. He didn’t like the way Lazarus kept making fun of him for being “just a poor school teacher.” Sometimes Lazarus and Papa talked about the stock market, as both of them owned a great many stocks, but whenever Jonah tried to venture an opinion Lazarus laughed at him, so he stopped. The truth was that Jonah knew a good deal more about the market than any of them except Lavinia suspected. During the school term, whenever the teachers had time off, they would sit downstairs in the basement boiler room (which was the only place where they were allowed to smoke) and talk about the market. It was all wishful thinking because none of them could afford to buy any stocks, but perhaps because he was being intellectual and not emotional about it, Jonah had found that the market was as fascinating to him as any mathematical problem, and even more fascinating, because it concerned real businesses. It could be a lifelong study. It
had
to be, to make it pay off. Jonah supposed it didn’t make much difference to rich people if they lost a little money, but a little money was a lot to him. He couldn’t understand people like Lazarus buying on margin, even though the economy was booming. A small margin, yes, but the big margin everyone bought on seemed dangerous to Jonah. But try to say a word to Lazarus! “Oh shut up, what do you know?” was the answer.

Women were strange, Jonah thought. Melissa worshiped the guy. She thought he was a genius. She took his part even before he could open his mouth, which was pretty fast. She actually mothered her husband, and he seemed to demand it. Although Melissa was totally dependent on Lazarus, he was also totally dependent on her. It was a symbiotic relationship, to use one of those big words Lazarus was always showing off with. Both of them were the child, but if Jonah had to pick the one who was more the child he would pick Lazarus.

Jonah didn’t know much about women, never having gone out with girls before Lavinia, but he knew about people. His impression of women was that they were usually hysterics. The only girl he’d ever met whom he could really respect as a sensible, brilliant person was Lavinia. And his mother-in-law, although she hardly ever said a word, being a quiet person, was sensible too. Whatever Lucy did say made sense. The rest of them would hock you a chainik, by the hour. You had to be polite, to converse with them, but women just didn’t know how to shut up. It was one of the things that had driven him away from girls before he met Lavinia, the way they could bore you to death without even trying. Besides, you couldn’t do anything with them anyway. A nice girl wouldn’t kiss you until you were engaged, and then you couldn’t do much else so it was hardly worth it, and the kind of girls who ran around sleeping with guys, well, you never knew what you would catch from them. Who wanted somebody’s castoffs anyway? Jonah was proud that he had been a virgin when he married Lavinia. His very religious upbringing had helped, but his actual fear of being dominated by a shrew and trapped into an unwanted marriage had helped more. He didn’t intend to stay a poor school teacher forever. The slobs in his neighborhood didn’t attract him in the least. Lavinia was a princess. She was his dream. When he saw her he was glad he had waited.

“Jonah!” It was Papa. “Why don’t you let me teach you to play pinochle? You’ll like it.”

“Okay,” Jonah said, smiling, flattered to be noticed.

He had been watching Papa play pinochle with Lazarus for so many evenings now that he had more or less gotten the hang of it himself. He listened attentively as Papa showed him the game, and tried a few hands, finding it easy.

“Why don’t you play with Lazarus?” Papa said.

They seated themselves opposite each other at the card table. Lazarus shuffled and dealt. Jonah won.

“You cheated!” Lazarus screamed, his face red with rage.

“I did not!”

“You did!”

“Please, Lazarus,” Lucy said quietly. They all turned to look at her because she spoke so seldom. “I was watching. Jonah did not cheat.”

“I won’t play with him again,” Lazarus said sullenly.

Papa touched Jonah on the arm. “We still have something to talk about, you and I,” he said quietly.

“Yes, Papa?”

Papa looked around. Melissa had taken Lazarus to cool off on the porch, and Hazel didn’t count. Lavinia and Lucy were family and entitled to hear this secret. “I offered to take you into the business. Have you been thinking about it?”

“Yes, I have.”

“You could start in the fall. You get a nice vacation, then you quit the school, say goodbye, and come to work with me. Well?”

“It’s hard to say no,” Jonah said. “But I love teaching …”

“Then you should teach,” Lucy said. They all looked at her again, the soft, firm voice startling them as it always did. “A man should have something of his own.”

There was a silence. She was right, of course. What was a man, if he did not have something of his own?

Papa nodded. “Nu, it’s not a bad business, the school business. Good times and bad times, it goes on. The children always have to learn. It has security. I tell you what, Jonah. You stay in the school business, and every afternoon at three o’clock you come downtown and work for me. I’ll teach you
my
business.”

“What will you pay him?” Lavinia asked.

“Pay him? I don’t pay people to learn.”

“I don’t want to be paid,” Jonah said quickly. “I’d like to learn business.”

“It’s worth it,” Lavinia said. “Papa is a genius.”

Jonah smiled. “Maybe I should pay you, Papa.”

“Nu, so I’m a teacher too,” Papa said cheerfully.

“Don’t make him work too hard,” Lavinia said. “You know Jonah. He’d kill himself for you.”

“Don’t worry. You think I want a widow for a daughter?”

So in the end, each of them thought he had won.

TWENTY

Everett Bergman was the first baby in the Saffron family to be born in a hospital. He missed being a Christmas baby by one day. Melissa brought him home proudly, to his new white room, with a temporary nurse named Miss Gibbs. After discussing it with Lazarus, Melissa decided not to breast-feed. She really hadn’t wanted to anyway. Everett was a bad feeder from the start, cranky and always throwing up. It was assumed that he was allergic, but that he would grow out of it. Eventually he did stop throwing up, but he remained a picky eater, skinny and pinched-looking. Still, he was a beautiful child. He looked exactly like her, except that his hair was dark like his father’s. He had her lovely large eyes. At one he looked like a girl, at two a pretty little boy, at three a pale and skinny little boy, and at four years of age he somewhat resembled a little animal.

He was hyperactive, furtive, and nervous. He wouldn’t eat. He sometimes stammered. Melissa got rid of Miss Gibbs. Everett cried for two weeks, then seemed to forget her. He still stammered.

The two couples, Melissa and Lazarus, Lavinia and Jonah, had been coming to the beach cottage every summer now. They had worked out a kind of life style: Melissa planned the meals, based around what Lazarus liked or disliked, or what Lazarus said was good for you; Lavinia fought with her, based on what she and Jonah liked or disliked; and a compromise was reached, based on what Lazarus liked and Jonah could tolerate. Then the two young wives would shop together and cook. Neither of them cooked very well, but the cottage was too small to accommodate a sleep-in cook. Many nights they solved the food problem by dining at Papa’s and Mama’s beach house, where there were always two in help and the food was good.

But before the evening meal, whether it was in their own house or at “the big house,” there was always the battle of feeding Everett. Usually Everett’s dinner consisted of what he had rejected at lunch. Melissa had been studying child psychology books, and the newest theory to make a stubborn child eat was to keep giving him what he had rejected until he gave in from hunger, or the food rotted, whichever came first. Everett would never give in from hunger. He liked meat and hated vegetables and all other foods. But Melissa’s child psychology book said that you had to give the child the food he hated most first, leaving the food he liked best for the end as a sort of bribe. Everett refused to be bribed.

So meal after meal he sat there, thirty pounds of hatred, and stared at his stringbeans.

“Hold his nose and stick it down,” said Lazarus, not really meaning it, but bored with this child, this irritating little disappointment. Lazarus did not like children. He had produced this son and heir because that was what a man did, but he resented the time and attention Melissa lavished on it—he would have to remember Everett was not an It—and he could not even remember to hug or touch the boy. Melissa was always hugging and kissing the brat, because she was so loving, but Lazarus liked hugging and kissing only Melissa. Someday the boy would grow up and he would be able to have an intelligent conversation with him, but now, what could you do with a kid? How could you amuse it?
Why
should you amuse it? It tore at the pages of his books when he was reading peacefully, it destroyed property, it tried to flush its new beach sandals down the toilet. Then Lazarus shrieked, and Melissa spanked, because that was what the book said to do. Then Everett cried and sulked and thought up something even more annoying to do.

Lavinia watched all this with pity and annoyance. Pity for the child, annoyance and pity for her sister, only annoyance at her brother-in-law. The man was a baby himself. He was obviously jealous of his son, resenting Melissa’s attentions to Everett. But poor Melissa, so dumb, so stubborn, insisted on doing everything wrong. Trying to be both mother and father to this boy, she was a failure at both. Lavinia had her own child psychology books.

“Give him the meat,” she said to Melissa. “For heaven’s sake, at least let him eat something. Look at him!”

“He has to learn,” said Melissa, near tears from pity for the boy and frustration at the world.

“So if he eats the meat, what harm is there?” Lavinia said. “Look how skinny he is. You make every meal a battle. Let him enjoy eating.”

“He’ll get spoiled,” Melissa said.

“Spoiled! He’ll starve!”

“They never starve,” Melissa said, sniffing.

Everett stared at his stringbeans. They were a grayish color, four days old now, entering their fifth.

“Throw that stuff away and start over, Melissa,” Lavinia said. “
I
wouldn’t even eat it. It looks disgusting. Give him the steak and some nice fresh carrots. Then he can have ice cream.”

“Everett hates carrots,” Melissa said.

“We’re all having carrots tonight. He’ll eat if he eats with us.”

“Children shouldn’t eat with grownups,” Melissa said.

“I don’t mind.”

“Lazarus minds. He works hard in the city all day, and at night he should have peace and quiet. Besides, it’s too late for Everett. He has to go to bed.”

“To bed hungry again,” Lavinia said. “You don’t know anything. That book is ridiculous. Use your mother’s instinct. A mother’s instinct is always right over a book, any time.”

“I only want to do what’s right,” Melissa said, and burst into tears. She hurled the plate of gray stringbeans to the floor.

Everett stared at her. She was doing exactly what he wanted to do, but why then was she crying? Nobody in this house liked him. He didn’t like them either. His left eyelid began to twitch. His stomach hurt sometimes, but he wasn’t really hungry. He wished he had a dog. They wouldn’t let him have a dog. They said dogs were dirty and brought fleas. Dogs messed the furniture. He wished he had a big, bad dog that tore up the whole house and bit everybody and he could just stand there and watch it and say: “Oh, what a surprise! I’m so sorry, everybody.” Inside he would be laughing. He would give the dog a big steak bone and they would eat it together.