First Papers (45 page)

The picture of him, ruddy and tanned on the beach, a shiny red pail beside him while he squatted on his strong little haunches, sent her into a reverie and then to the telephone booth, still the single booth serving the whole of the tent city, larger by twenty new tents than it had been last year.

It was still early morning, not yet eight. It had rained heavily during the night, but the wet grey of the sand was already changing to a dry shimmering silver in the hot sun. She ambled along, seeing from afar that there was no one ahead of her waiting for the telephone. There hardly ever was. How many of the poor souls who scraped together dollars enough for a week or so out here, knew anybody at home with a telephone at their beck and call? In the stinking summer tenements of the poor, a telephone was unheard of, and in their sweatshops and pushcarts too.

Telephones are still for the rich, she thought, it’s a crime. Hastily she added, And of course for editors and lecturers and people like that, who have no choice. Again she felt like a traitor, and she hurried her pace for the rest of the way. In the booth, at the operator’s lilting “Number please?” her qualms dissolved. It always made her feel good, that “voice with a smile,” even though it was nothing but a calculated artifice to get more business. Joan’s number rang again and again, and when the operator chirped, “Your par-ty does not ans-wer,” she chirped back, “I’ll call a-gain, thank you,” and felt herself rather clever.

Outside the booth to wait, she realized that if Eli had found a cottage up there, Webby was in no need of his grandmother at all. She returned to the telephone, hurt in some unexpected way. This time the ringing had a sad useless sound, a confirmation of the message her heart had already given her.

She started home, the returned nickel moist in her hand. Married sons did not need rescue by loving mothers, and neither did their children. She should never have obeyed this simple impulse to phone about Webby, as if she alone could provide for his welfare during a blistering heat wave. As if
she
were aping the rich! Lady Bountiful to my suffering grandchild …

“Mrs. Ivarin, please, a moment.”

A woman was calling out to her from a nearby tent, speaking in Russian. It was unexpected, out here where Yiddish was the common language, and she answered happily in Russian though she could not clearly see the figure within the flaps of the tent. “I’ll wait, don’t hurry.”

In a moment a young woman came out, about thirty, Alexandra guessed, with a little girl of perhaps four at her side. The child’s face was tear-stained and pale, with no sunburn, and the center of her forehead was swollen and purplish blue. The woman, agitated by shyness, introduced herself as Sonya Mikhailovna Vladinski; her child was Natasha Stepanovna, and there was a baby asleep in the tent.

“Sophie Jabrowsky,” she said, “told me about you.”

“Oh, yes, Sophie,” Alexandra said with pleasure. “Is she here again? I hope so.”

“Later. But I can’t wait for her. She told me I should ask you about a private time for myself, but in Russian.” She raced ahead, afraid to be overcome with her stiffening shyness if she spoke slowly. Her Russian was a country Russian, Alexandra decided, not an illiterate’s speech, but not that of a much-schooled person either, and some of her words were hard to catch.

“Why, I would enjoy it,” Alexandra said. “I give so many lessons in English to foreigners, but not often English to Russians.”

“Not English lessons,” the young woman said. “Lessons about everything. Like the lectures, in your tent at night, for Sophie and all the women. Only, I will come alone, and pay.”

“You needn’t pay! Just come with the others; you would be welcome, as they are.”

“But I can’t understand except Russian.”

“You don’t know Yiddish at all?”

Sonya Mikhailovna did not. “In my town, Jews were not allowed. My husband is learning it now for his business.”

They had come to America only a few months before, and had met Sophie and her husband, who were Polish and could speak a Polish-Russian mixture they understood. One evening Sophie saw little Natasha banging her head on the floor in a fit, and Sophie told her that it was no fit, nothing but anger, and that there were modern ways to bring up children, different from the ways of Poland and Russia. Then Sophie told her all about Mrs. Ivarin and it made her half-sick with jealousy, until Sophie suggested that Mrs. Ivarin might take her as a pupil, for pay, for bringing-up-a-child lessons. Her husband said yes, he was making good money, what was twenty-five cents an hour, or even fifty cents, as some of his friends were now paying for their own lessons.

“He is a master jeweler,” Sonya ended. “He told me I should stop you right in the ocean, or anywhere, and ask you, beg you.”

By now Alexandra was dumfounded. From shyness, her new acquaintance had shifted to loquacity, unhalting, free of self-consciousness. It was a novel idea; never had she given “a lesson” in so formless an area as she covered with her immigrant women in the evenings.

“It would not be a strict lesson,” she said. “It would be more like a chat.”

Sonya gave a small jump. “When can I start? Tonight?”

“If you like. My tent is in the first—”

But her new pupil knew where the tent was. She had found that out from the postman, who had been helpful enough to point out Mrs. Ivarin, so she would know whom to stop in the ocean.

Alexandra laughed, and as she moved off, she remembered the nickel, now moist in her palm, and went back to the booth once more. When Joan did not answer, she called home.

“Hello,” Fran answered at the third ring. “Papa’s not up yet.”

“Of course not. How are you, Fran?”

“All right, I guess. It’s so hot.”

“You’ve been running. Could you hear the phone out on the court?”

“I wasn’t out. I just ran down from my room.”

“Why, dear, is it still raining there?”

“No, I just wasn’t playing.”

“Waiting your turn, like a good girl?”

Something was wrong, Alexandra thought. Fran sounded solemn, not the overjoyed young mistress of the glory and grandeur that was Rome. Or was it Greece?

“Mama? Are we cut off?”

“I was thinking. Do you know if Joan and the kids are up with Eli yet?”

“No, they’re still waiting around. Every house up there costs too much, he says.”

“Well, I had an idea, about Webby, and whenever I see our empty cot in the tent, it comes again. Maybe when you come out on the fifteenth, you could bring Webby out too.”

“Gee, that is an idea.”

The way she said it was strange; by now Alexandra was sure of it. But to ask one question was to be instructed on the importance of any daughter’s privacy. “Yes, it is,” she said, and waited.

“I just wondered,” Fran said finally. “Is there any reason you want Webby to wait until the fifteenth? That’s five days off.”

“It’s the day you’re coming.”

“But suppose I came right away, and brought him, I mean tomorrow.”

“But the tennis?”

“Well, I suddenly thought.”

Alexandra thought, Is the child crying? “Is everything all right, dear?”

“Yes.”

“Is Papa in a mood?”

“No. I hardly ever see him.”

“And the Paiges in the evening—is that nice?”

“Oh yes, they’re just wonderful. But I—” There was a pause, and then Fran said, “I’m sort of blue, that’s all, and I kind of miss everybody.”

This was tribute. This was accolade. From Fran it was the sweetest praise Alexandra had won for a long time. Doubtless some romantic upset had soured Fran’s plan to stay and queen it at her precious tennis court, but the sweetness remained.

“Come out the minute you can,” Alexandra said firmly. “I’ll try Joan until I get her, and I’ll phone you around five tonight, to arrange things. Tell Papa.”

“Is it silly, changing my mind about the tennis and all?”

“Not one bit. Only fools stick a thing out just because they said they would.”

“You won’t tell anybody about me being blue?”

“Don’t worry, dear. I’m like the grave.”

The phrase set off distant echoes in Alexandra’s mind, vague and accusatory. But she was too contented to worry about what they could mean.

When she called back at five, two disappointments awaited her: Webby had a cold and could not come, and Fran had changed her mind about leaving at once. But Alexandra’s spirits remained high; tonight she would give her very first “private lecture” for pay. It was going to be another wonderful summer.

Garry and Letty did decide on the same place in the Laurentians they had chosen the year before, but a variation sprang up after they started.

While they were with Letty’s family, a note arrived from Lucinda and Hank Stiles, forwarded from New York, asking them “to come up to this heavenly place for a weekend, preferably this one.”

The heavenly place, they both knew, was the Stileses’ cottage on Mt. Desert, but the weekend was the one just beginning. Letty promptly called Lucinda, and explained.

“I knew you’d be in Rockland or Augusta or some place near,” Cindy said, “but I couldn’t remember when. Can’t you start a day later for Canada, and stop over with us for Monday?” Their weekend guests would be gone, but Hank’s brother was staying on, and so was her sister Connie. “You let me talk to Garry,” Cindy ended.

It took little persuasion. They loved the iced waters of Maine and the islands and bays and coves washed by them, and their one-day stay with the Stileses stretched to three. The cottage was really a cottage, and not one of the vast estates along the shores of Bar Harbor that often went by the same name in the stylish snobbery of understatement. It had been built twenty-five years before by their parents, when Peter was fifteen and Hank a toddler. Now they owned it jointly, and they took turns at it summer by summer. This summer was Hank and Cindy’s turn, though with Peter still a bachelor, and a Wall Streeter as well, all summers now tended to be their turn.

Cindy and Connie welcomed Garry and Letty as if they were the first attractive people to appear for years. It was a trait of all the Aldriches, Garry realized, absent only during business hours at the Aldrich Chemical Plant, where the relationship of employee and owner was always clear, except on those rare occasions when Mr. Aldrich appeared in the laboratory. There, where Garry had again been promoted and was now second-in-command of research in synthetics, they met more casually, as men of unrelated but essential abilities who were both doing rather well.

Garry and Letty had celebrated his promotion by buying a new $500 Ford runabout for their trip, and she had chipped in from her own profits, so they both had a sense of high occasion over it. This vacation was also the first time she could leave the shop in charge of somebody else, a Mrs. Everrett (“two r’s and two t’s”) a saleswoman with “social and antique references both.” That was a milestone too.

Now, looking out at the choppy Maine sea, Letty thought, I’m so lucky. Everything she had longed for was hers, really, Garry, and her own success, and through it getting to know people like these, born to a life that was amusing and endlessly charming. It had been lucky, having Mrs. Aldrich take her under her wing, but luck was only the start of anything you wanted. Then it was a decision you could make, about caring enough for people to remain close for a good long time. She did care enough.

“Want a swim before lunch?” Hank asked. They were down at the edge of the water, all of them except Hank and Cindy’s baby, and they were in bathing suits, sitting around, talking and joking. Whatever anybody said seemed funny, and they laughed easily and often, like children.

“Let’s go out in the boat first,” Peter Stiles said, “that wind’s going to turn into a blow.” The boat had belonged to their parents too; it was a thirty-foot sloop, old and slim and beautiful; its mainsail was patched in three triangles that seemed blind-white against the weatherbeaten grey-white of the rest of the canvas. Peter sailed it as if he were showing off its skills to restore its own awareness of eternal youth, and Letty thought, He doesn’t have to memorize what somebody else tells him about it being a good little ship.

“Why the funny smile, Letty?”

“Was I smiling?” She looked up and flushed. It was Peter, and she realized she had been gazing at him as if he were an actor on a stage, staring straight up at him as if she had paid for a seat, and with it the right to watch his every gesture. “I didn’t know I was.”

“It’s not a crime. Smile some more.”

Letty did, but looked past him out at the sea. Her face and throat were reddening, and it bothered her to know it. As she watched the edges of the waves blow white, she thought he said something more to her, faintly mocking or teasing, but she did not look up again. Garry’s back was to her. She was glad, and immediately flustered that she should be glad.

The three-day visit sped by; the long lazy hours of vacation one read about were lies, for these were short busy ones, flying by like balloons in bright colors. And then, on the last evening of their visit, at the table in the airy dining room facing away from the sea, the balloons burst. It started casually, with Peter saying something about a Congressman Underwood and what his tariff act could do to Wall Street.

“President Wilson running around making personal pleas for it,” he said with the first annoyance he had shown about anything, “wanting tariffs knocked down all over the place.”

“I gather you’re not a Wilson man,” Garry said.

“Good Lord!” Peter said. “I voted for Taft.”

“Don’t sound so righteous,” Hank said sharply.

“Hank, please,” Cindy said, elongating the “please” so it was a moan. “No speeches for Teddy Roosevelt. That’s over and done with.”

“No speeches,” Hank agreed, still looking at his brother.
“But
if Garry did vote for Wilson, I fail to see why he should be given the ‘Good Lord, no’ treatment.”

Peter said, “I didn’t give him anything of the sort, and Garry knows it.”

An instant of pause followed and then Garry said, “I didn’t vote for Wilson. I voted for Debs.”

“You what?” Hank said.

“Didn’t vote for Wilson,” Garry answered. “I voted for Eugene V. Debs.”