Disturbances in the Field Read online

  “I didn’t know that. I thought you …”

  “I know. I mean, I knew you didn’t know. That was part of …”

  “Oh Evelyn.” We link arms.

  Oh Evelyn, why did you go so far? Princess of the Beach. Now landlocked.

  “That sand woman,” says Evelyn.

  “Remember how I knocked her in? God, I was a little sadist, wasn’t I?” Evelyn doesn’t answer. There are so many things I want to know, but to talk with her of the present feels strange. The past is more comfortable. Still …

  “How are you up in your Alps, Evelyn? Are you happy?”

  She smiles. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I imagine Rene is very busy. What do you do with yourself?”

  She shrugs and brushes her hair off her neck. So warm for this time of year. Our necks are damp. “There are things to do. I have some friends. In the winters I ski. Do you go skiing?”

  “No. Not enough time.”

  Why no children, I want to know. She had a miscarriage, a bloody rush to the hospital, but that shouldn’t … Did they take it all out and no one told me? What about work? Isn’t there anything she wanted to do with a passion? I can’t ask those things. Those are the kinds of things Evelyn would tell the sunflower. She was the closest person to me once, and I don’t understand her at all. I don’t understand how to be without doing.

  “When they used to leave us alone,” she says.

  “Yes, in their bed.”

  “Then I was scared.” She laughs. “You too.”

  “I shouldn’t have been. I was eleven.”

  “Oh Lydia. You’re still setting standards.”

  What do you do in New York when you’re not with me? Is it a man? Or the change of flat city streets? Fancy shops? Museums? I don’t care, I’d just like to know.

  “That time you played the ‘Trout’ at Columbia,” she says. “You were wonderful.”

  “We had that pizza after. So many of us, they had to push tables together.”

  “Daddy talked about the concert all the way home. He couldn’t get over it. Anchovies, was it?”

  “Sausages. But he used to tease me about the piano lessons. Remember? My little Paderewski. It really irked me.”

  “I know,” says Evelyn. “But he was very proud. That George. You were sleeping with him, weren’t you?”

  “How could you tell? You were only seventeen.”

  “I don’t know. I could tell.”

  “Do you think Mother and Daddy knew?”

  “No. I liked Victor better, though.”

  “So did I. George will be at the Seder.”

  “Oh. You don’t still … ? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask …”

  “Oh no. It’s all forgotten. We’re friends, that’s all.”

  “Yes,” says Evelyn. “Sometimes that’s easier.”

  What on earth does she mean? Some love affair? Or with Rene, nothing? I have seen Rene several times. A solid, portly, courtly banker, master of four languages and fifteen years older than Evelyn. In his early fifties now. He collects objets d’art. Perhaps she is one. He treats her adoringly. Dotingly, in a way that seems to preclude any grownup passion she might return. He has traveled everywhere and seen everything and talks well. After his visits, lying in bed, I try to figure out who he is, for he gives little indication. He uses the passive voice, and the pronoun “one,” like an Englishman. Victor reminds me that he’s a banker. “So? What is that supposed to mean?” “The mind of a banker,” says Victor, “—it’s so simple, Lyd, why can’t you see?—is on money.” But I am always looking for something else in him, what Evelyn sees. Victor says security, ease. “Plus, well, he’s a cultivated man, better than your average American banker. Sweetheart, your knee seems to be somewhere in my liver. Would you mind?” “Sorry. Do you like her?” “Sure I like her.” “Would you like her, I mean?” He pauses, visualizing. “She’s a little airy for my tastes.” “Phil thinks I’m airy.” “Hah! What does he know about women, a mere boy.” Victor sees into things and I suppose he is right about Rene. But why? What made her run for cover so early? I study her profile against the passing trees.

  “You were always so busy with so many things,” says Evelyn, “and I …”

  “You what?”

  “I didn’t know how to care about things.”

  This time I am silent, waiting.

  “Maybe,” she gropes, “because you did so much, it left me …”

  “Don’t say it left you nothing to do, Evelyn. There are plenty of things to go around.”

  “I Wasn’t going to. I was going to say it left me free to … As if you would do it for me.”

  She is persuasive in her fuzziness. I am almost ready to agree. Then I think, Nonsense, Evelyn. You have a poetic vision, but life is not a poem, balanced. “I don’t think so. I guess it’s just our different natures.”

  She sighs. “I guess so.”

  “Why don’t you adopt a child?” I say on impulse. “There are so many needy children.”

  “It’s such a big job. Maybe I wouldn’t love it enough. And then … you have so many.”

  “Jesus, Evelyn, what does that have to do with it?”

  “Don’t get angry. Look at that man, Lydia! He’s riding a unicycle. Isn’t that fantastic!”

  Why haven’t you come more often? It’s easier for you than for me: rich, free. You should be a happy woman. I think all this.

  “Lydie.” She squeezes my arm. “I’m not unhappy, you know. I wish you could understand.”

  The night of the Seder arrives. It will be a crowd—the six of us and Evelyn; Nina; George; Gabrielle and Don with their children: Roger, a freshman at Amherst, and Cynthia, who is fourteen. (Esther is not here: she is a social worker in Washington. Darryl is not coming after all; his parents had tickets to Ain’t Misbehavin’. I asked George if he would like to bring Elinor, the biofeedback woman he mentioned two months ago, but he said, Alas, she is a thing of the past.) Even so, the preparations have not been burdensome. Evelyn rolled up her sleeves—in a kitchen she is down-to-earth and competent. Althea was indispensable with her lists, crisply issuing directions. Victor helped, and even the little ones. Little ones—they laugh at me. Eleven and nine.

  Phil walks around examining critically. “Why do you need so much matzo piled up here? It’s really cruddy stuff.”

  “That’s the bread of affliction, kiddo,” says Victor, patting his shoulder. “It’s not supposed to be any good.”

  “And the lettuce. Do you have to ruin it, drenching it in this salty gook?”

  “Bitter herbs. Because it was bitter, being slaves.”

  “You have thirteen at the table. It’s unlucky. She should have talked Darryl into coming.”

  “That’s okay,” says Victor. “We have Elijah. He makes fourteen. There’s even a glass of wine for him. Hey, Lyd, aren’t we supposed to leave the door open for Elijah?”

  “I think in a New York apartment we could get a special dispensation.”

  We gather. Victor performs in English, gallantly. He goes to hide the matzo for the children to find later on. He says blessings as if he meant them. He looks around benevolently at the crowd, winking handsomely at Cynthia, who is overweight and has acne. He always makes a point of flirting with Cynthia. Watching him, I remember our first real talk, in a bar twenty years ago. He said I could get to love him and I have. He said he would be a painter, he said he saw in me great potential for arrogance, he said we were the same. He was coercive, but everything he said turned out to be the truth.

  Vivian, the youngest, asks the four questions. “Why is this night different from all other nights?” She puts down the book and raises her eyes shyly. “Because this night we have Aunt Evelyn with us.”

  Evelyn, alongside her, draws in a quick breath, hugs Vivie close, and says, “Oh love!” Then she hides her face in her hands for a second.

  Victor reads the story of the four sons, one wise, one contrary, one simple, and one who does not even kno
w how to ask a question. When the wise son asks the meaning of the Passover he is told all, down to the last detail. The simple son gets a simple, serviceable explanation. And the son who does not even know how to ask a question is given an even simpler account. Each according to his needs. All but the contrary son. In older editions, I remember, he is called the wicked son.

  Victor reads: “‘The contrary son asks: “What is the meaning of this service to you?” Saying you, he excludes himself, and because he excludes himself from the group, he denies a basic principle. You may therefore tell him plainly: “Because of what the Eternal did for me when I came forth from Egypt, I do this.” For me and not for him; had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.’”

  I cannot look in Phil’s direction, but across the table, Victor’s eyes and mine meet.

  “I have to pause a moment to editorialize. That’s what the old rabbis did, you know,” says Victor, placing the book face down. He frowns, strokes his beard in an unctuous, rabbinical manner so that the children laugh. “This seems a little harsh, doesn’t it? A little vindictive. Those old Jews were tough guys, very fussy. Chosen, not chosen, who’s to say? I’ll tell you what. At this Seder, in this house, kids, everyone is redeemed whether he likes it or not. No one is excluded.”

  Victor invites the company to spill a drop of wine for each of the ten plagues God sent down on the Egyptians. Everyone spills, uproarious; the tablecloth is spattered red. And for each plague they bang a fist on the table. What rejoicing at the oppressors’ destruction; it has always made me cringe. Blood. Frogs. Vermin. Beasts. Murrain. (“Murrain? What’s murrain?” Vivian asks every year. “Cattle disease, same as last time,” Phil reminds her.) Boils. (“Ugh!” Alan starts a wave of scratching.) Hail. Locusts. Darkness. (Evelyn glances at me. She remembers I turned on the light after I thought she was asleep.) Slaying of the firstborn.

  Don looks dubious. What vengeful people, he may be thinking. How un-Christian indeed. He is too polite to say it, of course. Perhaps it is simply all the spilling and banging and scratching that distresses him. His own well-bred children, Roger and Cynthia, whose ancestors were never slaves, are having a fine time, joining the horseplay with the rest. Gabrielle, at peace with herself at last, looks on benignly. Nina and George look nostalgic, he for his youth, she for the youth she did not have. Maybe they will go back to her apartment afterwards and make love. They had a brief summer affair towards the end of college, and from time to time they revive it, pointlessly, Nina tells me. But it does cheer them up. I can’t imagine how it feels, what is called casual sex. Nina says it’s not really so casual, with her and George. They are very fond of each other. “Maybe you should get married,” I once quipped. “Married! We can’t take each other that seriously.”

  We sing “Dayenu,” enumerating God’s miracles, among which are blood, vermin, boils, locusts, and so on. Had he merely delivered us—enough! But he delivered us and castigated them. The deliverance, the manna, the Sabbath—all that would have been enough. But he gave us the commandments, the temple, the land of Israel. Enough! Enough! The table is full and rowdy. Is this also a song of fullness of heart? Darkness? Hail? Slaying of the firstborn? Forty years in the desert? Thank you so much for the deliverance. But enough. A little too much, maybe.

  “Next year in Jerusalem,” Victor concludes, having skipped the boring, holier parts.

  “Next year a senior,” cries Althea. “Thank God.”

  “Next year in Paris,” murmurs Gabrielle.

  “Next year the ski trip,” says Vivian. “I’ll be in fifth grade.”

  “Still the ski trip? It’s ten months away. That’s a long time, Vivie.”

  “That’s why I said next year the ski trip.”

  She will not rest content until the school’s chartered bus whisks her off at dawn with the other fifth and sixth-graders, to somewhere north, three hours out of the city. The ski trip is a hallowed tradition; the children come back at night exhausted and windburned, their noses running. Some stay home and cough for a few days. Then they talk about it for a month. This February was Alan’s first time. He spared Vivie no detail of the day’s joys—the bumpy, tortuous, singing bus ride, the chair lifts, the hot chocolate, the ever-more-difficult hills. He tortured her with details, in the name of brotherly love. Vivie regained her good spirits after a week or so, but her ardor for the ski trip, marinating in envy, lies simmering beneath. Next year. I only hope she does not break a leg.

  Althea and Evelyn and I bring on the feast, and some time after the last macaroon has been consumed, after the kids have found the hidden matzo and been rewarded, after Elijah has been and gone and the sated company, sprawled on pillows on the floor, begins to think of rising and heading home, Alan announces that at camp to end a celebration they would join hands and do a simple dance while they sang “Simple Gifts.”

  “Dance?” says Don. “I don’t think I can move.”

  But Gabrielle charms away his inertia and Alan prevails. The dance is so simple, hardly more than a stately, circular parade breaking every few bars into revolving couples, that even Phil agrees to do it. Alan plays the song for us and those who know the words sing. It happens that Nina knows the words from her childhood spent in Sunday school. George knows the words from singing in an amateur group of political activists and pacifists. Roger knows the words from the Amherst chorus. Gabrielle knows the words from having written a college paper on Martha Graham’s choreography for Appalachian Spring. It astonishes me that so many people have known for a long time what I only lately learned. Dancing in a stately parade around the disorderly, wine-sprinkled table, we repeat the verses till by the end everyone knows the words.

  ’Tis a gift to be simple

  ’Tis a gift to be free

  ’Tis a gift to come round

  Where we want to be.

  And when we find ourselves

  In the place that is right

  We will be in the valley

  Of love and delight.

  When true simplicity is gained

  To bow and to bend

  We shall not be ashamed.

  To turn and to turn

  Will be our delight

  Till by turning, turning

  We come round right.

  “I don’t know if I like all this talk about bowing and bending,” says Don. George tells him genially, “Ah, shut up and keep singing.” He looks a bit startled but obeys. And so they all go home. Our Seder may not have been faithful to the letter; we even had dry wine instead of sweet. Nonetheless Elijah came and drank.

  “I’m going to become a Quaker when I’m older,” says Alan, clearing the table.

  Victor, aproned at the sink, looks over his shoulder at me. We telegraph: That would be odd, wouldn’t it, but we don’t need to think about it now, do we? Plenty of time.

  “That’s nice, dear.”

  “Yuk, how could you sit through all those silent meetings?” says Vivie. “They are so boring.”

  “How would you know? You hardly ever came.”

  “Well, what’s it your business?”

  “Kids, please, it’s late,” says Victor. “We’re all tired.”

  “But it’s true. She hardly ever came. The counselors used to go looking for her.”

  “I can be silent alone,” says Vivie.

  “Yeah, it’s not hard when you’re sleeping in your bunk.”

  “Oh, don’t bicker. We had such a nice time. Quakers are peaceful, Alan.”

  “I might decide to have a bar mitzvah anyway,” he adds.

  Evelyn and Althea giggle. Even Phil grins.

  “That’s nice, dear.” Plenty of time for that one too. Obviously what he likes is ceremony. Having things. The Seder was his idea.

  “Good night,” I say to Vivie, tucking her in. “Sweet dreams, sweet Vivian.”

  “I’m going to dream about the ski trip.” And pulls the covers over her head. How can she breathe that way?

  More Schooling: The “Trout,” 19
58

  GABRIELLE WANTED US TO take a course in Chaucer with her. She had decided to major in English—in case the dancing did not work out, she could always be a writer. Chaucer? Nina frowned. Aristotle didn’t say whether friendship went that far. We were juniors now, supposed to be serious and focused. Nina had not gone home over the summer but worked in a laboratory in the city. The nervous smile was growing extinct, and in its place was a new species, wry and enigmatic. Chaucer. She smiled doubtfully. “Just three hours a week,” said Gaby.

  “No one would take Organic Chemistry or Logic with me. No one cares about the beauties of the basic syllogism. Sixty-four permutations!”

  “They’re too hard for us,” Gaby said craftily. “Chaucer is entertainment. Divertissement.”

  The professor’s head was large, heavy with the weight of his scholarship, and his body was fleshy, but he moved with a sprightliness befitting his subject. Just as Professor Boles had seemed close kin to the pre-Socratics, Professor Mansfield appeared to live and move and have his being in the days when that plucky band wended on their pilgrymage to Caunterbury with ful devout corage, and to regard us—our strange garb, our unadorned accents—as curiosities. Like the Host of the Canterbury Tales, he was bold of his speche, and wys, and wel ytaught; like the Host he praised us for being so merry a company, and offered to guide us on our journey, on which no translations were permitted; we had to learn Middle English. My text was soon dense with scribbled definitions, the pages richly ornamented like a medieval manuscript. We were required to memorize twelve lines from every tale, and each day, to open the class, Professor Mansfield would choose someone to perform. At the back of the room sat a cluster of males who had crossed the street into our domain. I knew two of them slightly from the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, George Silver and Ray Fielding; one of the pleasures of the course was hearing Ray deliver his Middle English lines with the brilliance of a born actor.

  Diverting, as Gabrielle had promised, until “The Clerk’s Tale” of Patient Griselda, a parable teaching how to submit to the reversals of fortune, to take whatever adversity God sends with “virtuous sufferance.” Griselda was a gauntlet tossed down from the fourteenth century; she roused in us something deeper than even the philosophers had done.