41

 

       SUSAN

 

    It's Eric who likes honey loaf.  I don't tell her; there's no point.  It's the thought that counts.  At least up to a point.  She pronounces the J in Jarlsburg.  All the while she's talking I wonder if it's terrible of me to be noting these things and jotting them down in my mind's notebook.  It's Wes who usually does that and then recites them back to me on the way home.  It provides amusement, but I feel guilty doing it myself.

    The trip up to Grandpa's house is a quick one.  Wes drives, and we sit in the back, foil covered plates and bowls on our laps and at our feet.  She begins to tell me about some girl she says I should know, but I don't.  Of course I do, she says, Of course I do.  She was the church organist.  Long brown hair.  Fingernails that clicked on the keyboard.  Pregnant.  No husband.  She had been a quiet girl.  Parents were dairy farmers.  Cynthia, yes that was her name.  I listen and nod my head as attentively as I can.  Wes's head never moves.

    My first look at the house is one of those things that you never forget.  I literally sit and stare.  Even after the car has stopped, I just sit and look at it.  It is not the same house.  There is very little that even reminds me of the old place that used to frighten and thrill me as a child.  The front is still the same scaly green paint and the lot is the same, but the rest is different.  It is a motley expanse of walls and roofs.  A slab of concrete in the front.  Little brick boxes added to the sides.  The car is parked beside neatly stacked bricks, and the picnic tables are covered with some sort of panels.

    He appears from the other side of the house in his undershirt, a hammer swinging leisurely from his hand.  He smiles and helps us with the food.  He kisses me and shakes Wes's hand vigorously.  The smile never leaves his face.  At first I see it as the sort of simpleton's grin he wears to weather my mother's onslaughts, but as he talks I cannot take my eyes from his face.  It is a sheepishly proud grin, expecting praise and ready to wave it aside.  I look at the house again.  Something's happened here.

    How's your new job?

    Oh, okay.  Not so new now.  I'm pretty well used to it now.

    That's good.            That's good.

    He continues to grin, and I realize the surprise or whatever it is must still be registering on my face.  He waits, a sort of aggravating patience fueling him.

    Well, I start, You certainly have been busy.  Just look at this.  I don't know what else to say.

    It seems to be enough for now.  We take the food in the kitchen door.  Lunch takes on the feeling of a duty performed in appreciation of the work it took to prepare.  He compliments her on everything whether she had any real hand in it or not.  She accepts it all graciously, a small smile of almost gratitude on her lips.  Wes and I exchange looks; this is not my family.  This is some sort of absurdist play.  Grandpa says little.  He too is different, quiet, and          I don't know.

    When we've finished, Daddy takes us outside, leaving her to clean up.  We make a slow circle of the house, his arms waving continuously.  This'll be the living room.  And over here I was thinking of closing in the porch.  The kitchen is right behind          Here, all this.  It'll be bigger than what she has down to the other house.  We've already been to pick out new cabinets.  What do you think?  This isn't done yet, but I think you can see how it'll be when          Next week I plan to start ripping out the wall where the new and the old living rooms join together.  I think I'll panel this, a sort of dark wood maybe.  Mahogany, maybe.  And then that little room will make a nice little pantry.  I'm still not sure about the other side; I feel like there should be another room there, but I don't want to get too carried away, you know.  And then whatever's left, the front here, I thought I'd get covered with some nice aluminum siding.  What do you think?

    What's the difference between nice aluminum siding and  not-so-nice aluminum siding?

    He doesn't think it's funny and scowls, looking away.

    Daddy, I'm sorry.  I wasn't making fun, honestly.  I think that'll be just fine.  I just think it's cute how you talk about all this.

    Cute?

    You're so wrapped up in it.

    I guess I am, he admits, but the smile is gone, the laugh is missing from his voice.  I guess I am.

    I tap his belly, Looks like it's doing you some good.  Looks like you lost some weight, and I haven't seen you this tan in years.  Happy?

    Who can tell, he says.

    That's a strange answer.

    I don't know.  Lots of times you think you're happy and then something else comes along and you realize    well, I just don't know.

    It doesn't sound like him.  I watch his eyes.  They are the same yet different.  It's as if he's become younger, more romantic.  I remember thinking that it was his fate to take his satisfactions, his victories, in small ways and to be happy, or at least resolved to that.  I may have been wrong.  Once again he has the hope and idealism that must have died in him before I was born, for although I've never seen it before, I assume it was there sometime, that it was burnt or driven out by something, some nasty reality.  I have naturally assumed that it is there in us all and that it is destroyed in all but a few.  Never had it occurred to me that it could be renewed, brought back.  Nor did I ever think that perhaps some of us never have it.   I married Wes because I think it will never die in him.  His cynicism protects him from being crushed by reality, and yet he can keep his aspirations alive.  It occurs to me that this is what they mean about some people never growing up.  In that case I suppose my father is regressing.  I smile.  The thought is amusing but also sobering.  Redefining things like that is always a little frightening.

    What are you smiling about?

    Oh, nothing.  I look around me.  I seem to have lost a husband, I say.

    He's back around the other side.  He stopped to look at something.

    An architect's eye.

    Uh huh.

    There's an awkward silence.  We both look at the straight even rows of brick.  There's nothing interesting about it.

    And you, are you happy?  His voice is low, embarrassed.

    Well, if you'd have asked me half an hour ago I'd have said yes.  I laugh.  But after what you said I don't know.

    Oh, don't pay me any mind.  You know, your mind starts to go when you get to an age.

    Oh, you're not old.

    Well, I'm not young.

    I don't know about that.

    Oh, don't tell your mother that.  She's taken to telling me to act my age.  I tell her that I am my age and this is how I act, but that doesn't seem to work.

    Don't let her

    No, I won't.

    We look at each other for just a second; it's almost the way it used to be, talking and kidding each other.  Wes is coming up now, but I can't keep myself from saying something that comes to me.  I don't even know exactly what I mean.  She'd ruin this for you if she knew how.

    He continues to smile but shakes his head.  She can't.

    Before it can go any further, Wes comes up behind me and puts an arm around me.  Daddy continues to smile, but that conspiratory light is gone from his eye, from his voice.

    Well, I say.  I think I should go in and see if I can help out.  I should go talk to Grandpa too.  He didn't say much during lunch.

    They both nod, and I leave them to stand there trying to think of something to say to one another.  It's a little cruel, but I've decided that it will do them both good.  They've run from each other long enough.

    Everything has been put away or stacked on the counter to go home.  She turns to see who is coming through the door.  She wipes her hands dry on her shorts and rests them on her hips.  Well, did your father show you around?  What do you think?

    I don't know.  It's a surprise.  You expect to see Grandpa's little house when you get to the top of the hill, and instead there's all this.  It's such a surprise.  I never thought          I'm still trying to decide why he bought it in the first place.

    She smiles.

    The first thing I thought of when I saw it was that something was eating Grandpa's house.  That's what it looks like, a big house coming up behind it and devouring it, and you arrive just in time to see the last of it disappearing inside the mouth.

    She is still smiling. 

    And from the sound of it there won't even be that much by the next time we come.  Just the big aluminum teeth grinning.

    Her brow knits, the thinly penciled lines almost meeting.

    The siding, I explain.  The aluminum siding.         

    Her face alters, the smile wavers.  News to me.  And yet there is not the anger I would have expected only a few months ago, only a sort of sad dejected look.

    Well, I hurry, He seems happy.

    Yeah.

    Where's Grandpa?

    I helped him into his room.  He wanted to lie down.

    He didn't say much at lunch.  He usually asks me a lot of questions.

    Well, you know how he is. 

    No, it occurs to me that I don't.  How is he?

    You know, it's the same old stuff.  He gets tired quicker now and he doesn't talk as much.  Just sits and works his teeth around in his mouth most days.

    Has he been to the doctor?

    Oh Susan, of course he's been to the doctor.  What a question!

    Well, what's the doctor say?

    Same thing as usual.  You know how they are.

    Is he still going to that same old idiot on Willow Street?

    She nods, giving me a knowing look.

    Well, maybe if you'd

    You know he's not going to let me take him to anybody except Doc Yarborough.  The last time I took him out of town to that new fella in Landisville he wouldn't even take his undershirt off.  Sat there hugging himself like a big baby.  You think he's weak, you try getting those fingers to uncurl from something.  It's like          After I drove for forty-five minutes, he just sat there and hung onto his clothes.  And when I told Elvira you know what she did?  Laughed.  Said she thought it was cute.  I told her if she thought it was so cute she could pay for the gas.  Did she ever shut up then.      

    What was wrong with the new doctor?

    Foreigner.  Your grandfather said he was Polish or Armenian or something, and he wasn't touching him.

    How did he decide that?

    Said his name didn't sound right.

    What was it?

    I don't recall.  Had a lot of j's in it.

    That's silly

    Tell him that.

    I would but I don't think it would do any good. 

    She shakes her head.  You can't talk to him.  It's been his way too long.  It's the town too.  You just listen to Doug sometime.  I don't think he's ever seen a Jew in this town, and yet you listen to him go on sometimes.  You're just lucky you spent most of your growing up in the city.  At least you have an excuse if you don't like somebody.  I just hope Eric doesn't pick up too much of it.

    I smile at the distinction she makes between reasonable and unreasonable prejudice.  I wonder if she ever listens to herself.  What is Doug doing?  Still driving a truck?

    She shrugs.  Spends most of his time down at the fire hall.

    Oh no!  Most of the guys down there are hard pressed to keep their tee shirts down over their stomachs and their tongues in their mouths.

    Hicks.  She nods.

    I feel the urge to remind her that she came from here and that she chose to return, but angering her would serve no purpose.  I don't understand him.  He has more brains than that.

    Has to have something to occupy his time, she shrugs it off.

    What about a girl?  I don't think I've ever heard him mention a girl.  He's twenty-seven years old.

    Sure you have.  Remember that one a few years ago?  Lonnie.

    That was when he was in high school.

    Well, you said never.

    I meant not recently.

    There hasn't been anybody since then.  He was burned there, and I guess he's fire-shy now.  She married some boy from way over in Bucks County.  Has two kids.  Boys.  Retarded, both of them.  They live right here in town.

    But that's such a long time.  You'd think he'd be over that by now.

    She nods.  You'd think so.

    You ever speak to Aunt Elvira about it?

    She just gives me a look like it was a ridiculous question.  I should know better, her eyes say.

    Maybe you should talk to your grandfather now.  He'll be nodding off soon.

    I glance at my watch.  It's awfully early isn't it?

    She dismisses what I'm really asking.  He gets tired.

    I stand for a minute just looking at her.  She is not old and yet she is.  It's not the soft and innocent weariness I see in Aunt Elvira.  Nor is it the actual progressive weight of years that burns you out from the inside.  She's been like that too long.  It is more a self-inflicted punishment for something; I can't imagine what.  Or a reward.  Yes, that is more it.  I think she has rewarded herself with old age before her time.  While still a young woman she's decided that she's had enough, that she's put up with enough, that she deserves or has earned the luxury of her bitter attitudes and disposition.  It is eating at her from inside but more like a self-indulgent poison that she's taken than a cancer.  Giving up too soon and too easy, she's making the most of it.  She's taking us with her.

            Yes, maybe I should go in and see him.