Family Matters Read online

  “There’s pens in the top drawer.”

  Betsy groped and found one. “All right. Now.”

  “Well, my parents—I mean Grandma and Grandpa—”

  “I know what you mean, you don’t have to say that every time. If we keep qualifying what we mean we’ll never get anywhere.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  Violet sighed. “Try to be patient with me, Betsy.” She leaned forward to Betsy and stretched out a hand, but didn’t touch her. “I’m sorry I dragged you out of bed. There are maroon shadows under your eyes.”

  “It’s okay, Mom, honestly it is.”

  “Are you using that moisturizer, Betsy? It’s important that you keep your looks if you want to—to—” Keep your looks and keep your man: the shadow of Judd reduced Violet to incoherence because the last thing she wanted Betsy to do was keep Judd. Betsy, who personally felt she didn’t have much worth keeping in the way of looks, saw the problem bogging her mother down. The moisturizers and cold creams and mascara wands and blushers she pressed on her daughter were keeping that man in her bed. Betsy stood up and hugged her mother with an affection that was suddenly exuberant. “I’m using it, don’t worry about it. Just tell me what you know about my grandmother.”

  Violent returned the embrace with surprising strength, but then she lay back, looking drained. She stared at Betsy. “Your grandmother!”

  Betsy nodded, pleased with the notion. “My grandmother! Maybe she’ll leave me all her money, maybe she’s really wealthy, maybe I’m the granddaughter she’s been longing for.”

  Violet giggled weakly. “Oh, Betsy. Do you know, I never thought about her being your grandmother. Isn’t that odd? Oh, we do get self-centered when we get old.” She smiled happily and settled into the pillows with a contented wiggle. Her bouts of contentment always amazed Betsy. She’s dying, she thought.

  “Well. Anyway.” Violet frowned, addressing herself to the paper in Betsy’s lap. “My parents and I lived at six sixty-six Spring Street. I’m not sure I’d remember the address if it weren’t for those three sixes—we moved from there when I was little. And my real mother—we can call her Emily, by the way—”

  “Why Emily?”

  “That was her name.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Marion told me.”

  “You know her name?”

  “Well, I’m not at all sure of her last name—wait, Betsy, we’ll get to that part. I’m ahead of myself. Wait.” Violet touched her brow with her long forefinger and closed her eyes. “She must have lived at six sixty-eight, on the right of our house as you went up the hill because—wait, the numbers went down—yes, the Rebhahns lived on the left, and that must have been six sixty-four, in fact I know it was.” She opened her eyes, triumphant. “Yes. She lived at six sixty-eight Spring Street—if it’s true that she lived next door, and I think it was. That has the ring of truth. When you tell a lie, you keep to the truth as much as you can.” You should know, Betsy thought. “I suspect Marion only lied about the marriage. Let’s accept the rest as true.”

  “What else can we do? We’ve got to have something to go on,” Betsy said, thinking: hopeless, hopeless.

  “Right. So she was a young, unmarried girl living at six sixty-eight Spring Street, and her name was Emily something, like Lofting or Loftig.”

  “Aunt Marion told you this?”

  “She told me the name, but I didn’t catch it right. To tell you the truth, I didn’t pay that much attention. I was in shock, Betsy. Imagine if you were to find out that I wasn’t your mother? Or that Daddy was never your father?”

  Betsy couldn’t imagine it. She brushed the attempt away. Besides, anytime she wished she could look in the mirror and see her mother’s bird face—eyes and beak, sharpened.

  “And, of course, this was thirty-five, thirty-six years ago that she told me. But it was something like that. Lofting. Or Loftig. There were a lot of German families in the neighborhood. Say Loftig. But check Lofting.”

  “I will.” Violet watched anxiously as Betsy wrote them both down. “Anything else?”

  “Not really.” Violet’s eyes became faraway. “Except I saw her once—did I tell you that?”

  “Really saw her?” How she dramatizes, Betsy thought. “Really? Or imagined—wished—”

  “No, really. I was working at Chappell’s, in hats. I made fourteen dollars a week, Betsy. Can you imagine that?” She chuckled, but it was a faraway chuckle. Betsy had heard many times, especially lately, about her mother’s brief fourteen-dollar-a-week job, and the lunch she treated herself to every payday: a chicken salad sandwich, iced tea, and a hot-fudge sundae at Schrafft’s, all for fifty cents. “So one day your grandpa came in, and there was a woman with him. I was kind of surprised to see him, but I guessed he was going out to lunch, and maybe the woman was a client. He came in the front door with this woman. It was right near the hat department. He didn’t come over to me or anything. They just stood there, he and I waved and smiled, but the woman just stood looking at me, and then they left. Then, a couple of months later, when my aunt told me I was adopted, she said remember that woman in the store with Frank? Well, that was her. Emily. She wanted to have a look at me.”

  “But what was she like?”

  “Well—I didn’t notice her much, Betsy. Why would I? It was my father I kept looking at, trying to figure out what on earth he was doing there and why he didn’t come over. I asked him, by the way, and he said something about this client he took out to lunch and she wanted to stop in and pick up something for somebody, a gift, I don’t know, and then changed her mind. I hardly remember. But the woman … I know she was tall, like us, and she had a lot of brown hair. I have no idea how old she was. She looked very chic, I think. Most of all I remember she looked happy. Now isn’t that odd? She looked—joyful. Seeing me, I suppose. Seeing with her own eyes that her daughter was well, was grown-up and healthy, had parents who looked after her, with your grandpa a prosperous lawyer—a pillar of the community and all that. I suppose. But I could tell, even though she did nothing but stand there and look, that she was full of happiness, and then she took my dad’s arm and they walked away.”

  Betsy looked at her piece of blue stationery. It read:

  1922

  668 Spring St., Syracuse

  Emily Lofting/Loftig—unmarried?

  1941, seen Syracuse, Chappell’s Dep’t. Store, with Grandpa tall—brown hair—joyful—chic.

  “It’s not an awful lot to go on Mother.”

  “It’s enough,” Violet said confidently. “The woman in that article had less. What did you do with it? Read it.”

  “It’s right here. I will.” Betsy folded the clipping inside the blue stationery.

  “Will you get started right away?” Violet was smiling with excitement.

  “I give my last exam tomorrow—today. I could start Monday.”

  “Start with the voting lists. The city directory. Birth records.”

  “What does your birth certificate say?” Betsy asked suddenly.

  Violet looked at her wide-eyed. “I don’t know.”

  “You must know. You had to have it when you got married, didn’t you? Where is it?”

  Violet was thinking. “Grandma. Grandma. Your grandma. She went down to the county clerk’s office …” There was a pause while she frowned and tapped her forehead with her finger. “Think. Think.” She shook her head. “I can’t remember. I will, though, and I’ll call you.”

  “We’ll be over for dinner Saturday.”

  “But not a word in front of your grandpa!”

  “No, I know.”

  “Oh, what was it? My mother did something about my birth certificate when I got married. Now what? What?”

  “It’ll come to you. I’ll see if I can get a copy of it at the courthouse.” Betsy stood up. “Can I go home to bed?” She grinned, lest she be accused of testiness.

  Violet stopped frowning and smiled back.
“You’ve been wonderful, honey, coming over here and listening to my ramblings.”

  “Mother, I’m fascinated!”

  “Oh, good, good, good,” she said with the gleefulness which, Betsy thought, nothing could ever diminish. “Now just do me one favor. In the kitchen, up in the cupboard over the toaster? There’s a big bag of M and M’s. Get it for me?”

  Betsy got it, in the dark, thinking: A whole package of Mars Bars and God knows what else and now a bag of M & M’s. What’s it all doing to her? But she gave it to her mother, even ripping off a corner, feeling betrayed, feeling also that she should be amused, but not being. Violet poured herself a handful, greedily. “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

  When Betsy kissed her, Violet said, “Mmm,” with her mouth full.

  Judd was up. So much for Betsy’s home-going reveries of slipping cozily and silently into bed beside him and snuggling up to his warmth. He was in the living room with the light on, reading the newspaper. He threw it down when Betsy came in.

  “It’s five-twenty-five in the morning.”

  He wore a short plaid bathrobe over nothing. His slender, hairy legs were crossed and the dangling foot danced up and down. He looked elegant and angry.

  “Didn’t you see my note?”

  “What note?”

  “On the table by the saltshaker. You know.”

  “Why would I look on the table? Did you think I was going to make myself breakfast?”

  She regarded him with sadness. Another failure. To establish shared rituals, patterns, habits, traditions was one of her modest goals—which was, in turn, to lead to the more ambitious ones.

  “I always leave notes there.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t always look there—okay?” He bounced his foot, with its long toes, up and down. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his bathrobe as if there were weapons there. “I’m not a mind reader, sweetiepie.” He used the rare nasty tone that made her despair. The whole thing is a house of cards, she thought, and she determined to help him push it over. As always at such moments, she felt very cold and calm.

  “And what does this famous note say?”

  “You know where it is,” she snapped back. “See for yourself. I’m going back to bed.”

  She turned her back on him and made for the bedroom. She heard him get up, cursing, and stalk into the kitchen.

  “God damn it!”

  She pulled off her clothes in slow motion, holding her T-shirt daintily by its shoulders before she laid it gently in a drawer. Her jeans she smoothed and draped over a hanger. How neat I am, how complete I am without him; this was what her fastidious movements meant.

  He came in, watching her. “Your mother! I might have known. And it was your God damned mother who woke me up at ten minutes after four.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The phone rings—right? I answer it, there’s a little whoop—” He demonstrated, in falsetto. “And then click! I knew it was your mother.”

  Betsy pulled her nightgown over her head. So her mother had called again while she was on her way over. Why? And then, knowing she’d awakened him, saying nothing about it … The deviousness of Violet was incredible, but so was her inability to get away with things. The uncontrollable whoop of surprise and dismay was just like her. In spite of herself, Betsy felt a rush of tenderness for her mother.

  She got into bed, leaving Judd to turn out the light. She buried her face in the pillow; she didn’t want to see him take off his bathrobe and be naked. The bathrobe was flung on a chair, the light switch clicked. After a pause he got in beside her.

  I can’t keep living like this, she said lucidly to herself. Better to live alone than to put up with this.

  His hand was on her thigh. Immediately, her stomach muscles quivered, and she turned to him gasping. They had four or five ways of making love, depending on circumstances. They did it now swiftly and without frills, and by 5:45 they were both comfortably asleep, back to back. In the morning, they discussed who would pick up Sanka and macaroni at the supermarket, whether or not to go to a movie that night, and what a hell of a lot of noise the God damned garbage men were making. It was the way all their quarrels ended—with lovemaking, careful forgetting, and the dawn of a new day.

  In the evening, they were both weary, and willing to be nicer than ever. Macaroni and cheese, hamburgers, a green salad, and a bottle of wine—Judd’s favorite supper, and he did the dishes. They went to a terrible movie, which they both enjoyed, about a killer whale who gets revenge on the humans who killed his mate. The night was warm, and they took a slow walk home, holding hands. It was very nice, and the niceness of it lulled Betsy, as it always did. She felt plump and ripe with contentment, an earth goddess. She woke up Saturday thinking that if they got married in the summer they could have such a nice vacation—it would be nice, very nice.…

  She lay sleepily in bed, watching Judd. He had an early assignment to photograph a new shopping mall, and she observed with interest while he got dressed. She loved watching him do things—anything. She liked the economical way he moved, dancerlike. He put on low-slung underpants and tight jeans and a white shirt with the cuffs rolled back precisely twice, and a red and green patterned tie that he knotted loosely, leaving his top button open. He always wore a tie. This delighted Betsy; on Judd, it looked rakish and original. In the summer he wore a straw hat. He also owned a white duck suit and a long woolen cape. A dashing man, she always summed him up—not handsome (hooked nose, small blue eyes, and pitted cheeks), but dashing as the devil. His name was Judd Vandoss, he was thirty-one years old, a successful free-lance photographer. He had moved in with Betsy the preceding winter after deflowering her on New Year’s Eve. The bizarreness of the feat appealed to his imagination.

  “A thirty-four-year-old virgin! How could it happen? It’s like a miracle.”

  It was, as far as Betsy was concerned. Her other beaux had never achieved it. She could count them on three fingers, starting with Ron, her high school steady, gawky as she but not as bright, who copied her homework and shyly felt her up, but not very far, in the movies. He was a creep (she confessed honestly to herself at age sixteen), but she was lucky to get him. In college there had been Paul: They had done lots of kissing, mostly at Betsy’s instigation, but never seemed to get around to anything else. It was all talk and no cigar, and to preserve her self-respect Betsy had had to type him glibly as a latent homosexual. And there was Alan, her linguistics professor in graduate school, who was married; it was sneaking around to her apartment he liked, more than what they did there, and he was afraid to get involved in a real affair.

  These were the only men she had ever spent more than a few evenings with. Until Judd, and the miracle, and the continuing series of miracles, not least of which was her feeling for him. She hadn’t expected overpowering love to come to her at thirty-four. She’d given up on it.

  For almost five months they had lived together in pleased astonishment. All winter they had met chiefly and most intensely in bed. It was only now, with the coming of spring, that they had begun to draw back and look at each other. They were still pleased—the rootless wanderer and the passionate virgin who had been saved for him. But Betsy had to admit, though only to herself, that she was tired. She’d had no idea a love affair would require so much study. She might have been back in graduate school, but it was more complicated than graduate school. She was a student and a spy, engaged in constant, wary espionage, puzzling out how to please him, disguising her own feelings and looking for clues to his. She was aware of it when the obviousness of her devotion began to annoy him—talk of love made him curt and uncomfortable—and she had to teach herself the technique of hiding it. She wanted it to be there for him, as a secure background to his life in case he wanted that security (and she had very little idea of what he did want), but she didn’t wish to smother him with it. So, instead of declaring her love, she scrubbed out the tub after him, she let him have the Arts and Leisure section
of the Sunday Times first, she learned to make omelets and macaroni and cheese, she helped him to quit smoking, and on mornings when he had an assignment and she didn’t have a class she got up early with him and made his breakfast.

  She did so now while he shaved. She had combed her hair, slapped on a little blusher because she was pale, and put on a silk-embroidered kimono she knew was becoming. She wouldn’t see him until dinner, and she wanted him to be left with an attractive image of her to carry through the day. This sort of thing, too, she had taught herself.

  She made him a cheese omelet with parsley in the corners, whole wheat toast, fresh orange juice, and coffee. She had coffee and juice. She was going back to bed; it was the first day of her long summer vacation.

  “I won’t be back for dinner, Bets.”

  “Oh, no!” Involuntarily, she expressed her dismay, and then checked it at his look of outrage. He loathed nets cast out to snare his freedom. “It’s just that Grandpa was really looking forward to having us both.”

  “So was I, I really was.”

  Betsy analyzed his regret swiftly: 90 percent genuine, 10 percent appeasement—not a bad mix.

  “But when I spoke to Jerry yesterday he said we’d be doing night shots, too. I completely forgot to connect it up with dinner or I would have mentioned it last night. But I just realized—hell, I won’t be back till ten at the earliest. More like eleven.”

  “I won’t see you all day!”

  Almost a wail—not quite, but he punished it. “Well, I’ll have some free time this afternoon between shootings, but I can’t see myself coming all the way back here. This place is way out Route 20, almost to Rochester. I thought if I have the time I’d go out and try to get some shots on one of the lakes for that wildlife competition.”

  “Heavens, no, don’t come all the way back.”

  He inspected her for irony but found only loving tenderness. He sat down to his eggs.

  “Tell your grandfather I’m really sorry. And your mother.” He raised his head. “How is she, anyway? I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks.”