Going Ashore Page 6

  Still, she thought, neither of them would have married into apostasy like Victor, nor flustered poor Father Patenaude by listening to his sermons as if analyzing them for truth and intellectual content, as she herself did every week. The Father was horrified that the shop had been left to Victor instead of to them. “It might have been their redemption,” Marina had heard him say after the funeral, as she threaded her way out between the elaborate graves. “And they were so good to her; they loved their mother.”

  Certainly, their periodic descents on St. Eulalie Street had been more impressive than Victor’s monthly check and letter, or Marina’s faithful presence at Sunday dinner. Carol and Georgie, awash in the warm sea of Mother’s Day, had left in their wake a refrigerator for the shop that could hold fifteen cases of beer, a radio inlaid with wood in a waterfall pattern, a silver brush and mirror with Old English initials, a shrine containing a Madonna with blue glass eyes, a pearl-and-diamond pin shaped like a daisy, a Persian lamb coat with summer storage prepaid for ten years, two porcelain lamps of shepherd and shepherdess persuasion, and finally the gift that for some reason appealed most strongly to Carol and Georgie – a sherry decanter and ten tiny glasses, each of which sounded a note of gratifying purity when struck with a knife.

  The coat, the pin, the shrine, and the brush and mirror had been left to Marina, who, luckily, bore the same initials. Carol and Georgie, awarded similar tokens, had been warm in their assurances that neither of them wanted the shop. No one, they said, was more suited to shopkeeping than Victor – a remark that offended Victor’s wife into speechlessness for half an hour.

  She and Victor were standing on the sidewalk in front of the shop when the hired car drew up to the curb. Peggy Ann, when she saw them, made exaggerated gestures of melting away in the sun, and then incomprehensible ones of laying her head on a pillow, which drew an unflattering remark from Georgie.

  “Home,” Carol said, evidently without sarcasm, looking up and down the shadeless chasm of brick, here and there enlivened by Pepsi-Cola signs. A few children, sticky with popsicles, examined the New Jersey license of Victor’s Buick and then the shining splendor of the rented limousine. Not recognizing it, they turned back to the Buick and then suddenly scattered into the street, where Georgie had thrown a handful of quarters. Some of the children, Marina’s pupils at a parochial school named for Saint Valerie the Martyr, glanced at her shyly.

  “They look scared of you,” Georgie said. “What do you do, beat them?”

  “I’d like to,” Marina said.

  “I’m sure she doesn’t mean that,” Peggy Ann said, smiling.

  A wide ribbon of crepe hung on the shop door, and green shades were pulled at door and window, bearing in shadow the semicircle of words on the glass, “Rumania Fancy Groceries,” and then in smaller letters, “Mrs. Maria Boldescu.”

  “How many times did I get up on a ladder and wash that window!” Georgie said, as if the memory were enchanting.

  “Victor, too?” said Peggy Ann. “I’ll bet he was an old lazy.”

  No one replied, and Victor fitted the key into the padlock while Carol, restless, hummed and executed a little dance step. The smell of the shut-up store moved out to meet them. Carol, with a look of concern, went at once to the cash register, but Marina had forestalled him. “I took it all out when Mama took sick,” she said.

  “Good idea,” said Georgie, approving.

  “You were awfully clever to think of everything,” Peggy Ann said. “Although it seems to me that, with crepe on the door and everything, no one would break in.” She stopped, as if she had uttered an indelicate thought, and went on rapidly, “Oh, Victor, do look! What a sweet little store. Look at all the salami and my goodness, all the beer! Cases and cases!”

  “We bought Mama the beer license,” Carol said. He walked around, rattling change in his pocket.

  “She must have been pleased,” said Peggy Ann. “Victor, look at all the things – all the tins of soup, and the spaghetti.”

  Marina, parting the blue chintz curtains at the end of the counter, moved into the kitchen behind the shop. She lifted her hand and, without glancing up, caught the string of an overhead light. Two doors, varnished to simulate oak, led off to the bedrooms – the one she had shared with her mother, until, at twenty-three, she had overcome her mother’s objections to her having a place of her own, and the other room in which had slept, singly or together, the three boys. The kitchen window looked out on a fenced-in yard where Mrs. Boldescu had tried to grow vegetables and a few flowers, finally managing a tough and spiky grass. Marina opened the window and pushed back the shutters, admitting a shifting layer of soot. Weeds grew as high as the sill, and wild rhubarb, uncontrolled in this summer of illness, flourished along the fence. A breath of city air entered the room, and an old calendar bearing a picture of the shrine at St. Anne de Beaupré suddenly flapped on its pin. She straightened it, and then, from some remembered prudence, turned out the light.

  Carol, who had come in behind her, glanced at the calendar and then at her. Then he said, “Now that we’re alone, tell me just one thing. Was that a nice funeral or wasn’t it?”

  “It was charming,” she said. “It was nice that you and Georgie were both free for it at once.”

  Carol laughed; evidently he expected this sour, womanly reprimand, and now that their mother was dead he would expect it still more from Marina. “You ought to get married,” he said.

  “Thanks. The boys I grew up with were all so charming.” She sat down, tipping her chair against the wall in a way her mother had disliked. She and Carol were alone as they had seldom been in childhood, able now to take stock of each other. Twenty, fifteen years before they had avoided each other like uncongenial castaways, each pursuing some elusive path that led away from St. Eulalie Street. Considering the way they had lived, crowded as peas in a pod, their privacy, she now thought, must have been a powerful act of will. In the darkening room, she saw herself ironing her middy blouse, the only one she owned, a book propped insecurely on the ironing board. Georgie and Carol came and went like cats, and Victor shouted outside in a game of kick-the-can. Again, she did her homework under the overhead light while Georgie and Carol, shut in their room for punishment, climbed out the window and were fetched home by the police. At last, her memory alighted on one shining summer with both the older boys “away” (this was the only word Mrs. Boldescu had ever used) and Marina, afloat with happiness, saying to every customer in the shop, “I’m going to France; have you heard? I’m going to France.”

  “I’m talking to you,” said Carol. “Don’t judge all the boys you knew by me. Look at old Victor.”

  “The pride of the street,” said Marina, remembering that summer.

  “Was he?” said Peggy Ann. She stood in the doorway, holding back the curtains with either hand. “I never get a thing out of him, about the store, or his childhood, or anything. Victor, do look at this room! It’s just like a farmhouse kitchen! And the adorable shrine … Did your mother bring it from Rumania?”

  “I bought that,” said Carol. He looked at it, troubled. “Does it look foreign or something?” he said to Marina. “It came from Boston.”

  “I would have said Rumania,” said Peggy Ann. She sat down and smiled at the coal-and-wood stove.

  “Well,” Victor said, smiling at them all. “Well, the old place.” He dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.

  “It’s all yours now,” Georgie said. He sat down at the round table under the light, Carol beside him. Victor, after glancing about uncertainly, sat opposite, so that they appeared to face him like inquisitors. “Yours,” Georgie repeated with finality.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Victor said, unnecessarily straightening his necktie. “I mean to say, I think Mama meant me to have it in trust, for the rest of you. My idea was –”

  “We ought to have a drink,” Georgie said. He looked at Marina, who was sitting a little apart, as if to confound the prophecy of the graveyard th
at they would someday all lie together. “Would it be all right, today I mean?”

  “You’re old enough to know if you want a drink,” Marina said. She had no intention of becoming the new matriarch of the family; but the others still waited, uncertain, and she finally found in a cupboard a bottle and the glasses that were her brothers’ special pride. “Mama’s brandy,” she said. “Let’s drink to Victor, the heir.”

  “No,” said Victor, “honestly, now, I keep trying to tell you. I’m not exactly the heir in the way you mean.” He was still talking as the others picked up their glasses and drank. Marina filled the glasses again and then sat away from the table, tipping her chair against the wall. The kitchen was cool after the flat glare of the cemetery and the stuffiness of the drive home. Sounds filtered through the shop from the street; a cat dropped from the fence and sniffed the wild rhubarb plants. The calendar, its shrine surrounded by a painted garland of leaves, stared at her from the opposite wall.

  Her brothers talked on, Victor with some sustained and baffling delicacy retreating from the idea of his inheritance. Opening her eyes, Marina saw the calendar again and remembered the summer – the calendar bore its date – when she had looked at the room and thought, Soon I’ll never have to see any of this again unless I want to.

  “… would care to live here again,” Peggy Ann’s high voice cut into a silence. Carol refilled the glasses, and the conversation rose. Peggy Ann leaned toward Marina and repeated, “I was saying, we think we should keep the store and all, but I don’t think Victor would care to live here again.”

  “I can’t imagine why not,” Marina said, looking thoughtfully at the torn linoleum. “Mama thought it was Heaven. Where she grew up, they all lived in one room, along with a goat.”

  “I know,” Peggy Ann said, distracted. “It would make a difference in your point of view, wouldn’t it? But you know, Victor left so young.”

  “You might say that all of my brothers left young, one way or another,” said Marina. “You might even say I was the patsy.” She handed her glass to Carol, who filled it, frowning a little; he did not like women to drink. “You might even say,” Marina went on, “that it was Victor’s fault.”

  “I don’t see how it could be Victor’s fault,” Peggy Ann said. “He was so different from the rest, don’t you think?” She folded her hands and regarded them primly. “I mean to say, he’s a C.P.A. now, and awfully well thought of. And we own our own home.”

  “A triumph of education,” said Marina. “The boy who went to college.” She finished her brandy and extended the glass, this time to Georgie.

  “You’re educated,” said Peggy Ann graciously. “Victor’s awfully proud of you. He tells everyone how you teach in the very same school you went to! It must be wonderful for those children, having someone from the same – who understands the sort of home background. I mean it must help you a lot, too, to have come from the same –” She sighed and looked about the room for succor. “You must have liked your school,” she said at last. “Victor hated his. Somebody beat him with a snow shovel or something.”

  “I loved mine,” Marina said. She looked into the depths of her glass. “Loved it. I had a medal every week that said on it ‘Perfection.’ Just the same, I was ungrateful. I used to say to myself, Well, all told, I don’t give a goddamn if I never see these dark green walls again…. But then, as you say, the home background helps a lot. I look at my pupils, and I see nine little Carols for every little Victor. I don’t see myself anywhere, though, so I guess there’s nothing much between the Victors and the Carols.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” said Peggy Ann. She slid back her white organdie cuff and glanced at her watch. “The boys do talk on, don’t they? Of course, they haven’t seen each other for so long … There’s something we wanted to talk to you about, but I guess Victor’s just never going to get around to it.” She smiled at Marina, wide-eyed, and went on. “We wondered if you wouldn’t want to have this little apartment for your own.”

  “My own?”

  “To live in,” Peggy Ann said. “We thought it was such a good idea. You’d be right near your school, and you wouldn’t have to pay any rent – only the heat and gas. If there is heat or gas,” she said uncertainly, glancing around. “It was Victor’s idea. He thinks the store belongs to the family and you should all get something out of it. Victor says you really deserve something, because you always took such good care of your mother, and you made so many sacrifices and everything.”

  “Live here?” said Marina. She straightened her chair suddenly and put down her glass. “Courtesy of Victor?” She looked across the table at her brother, and then, rising, unhooked the calendar from its pin. “Victor –” she said, cutting through a remark of Carol’s – “dear, sweet little Victor. Now that you’re proprietor of Rumania Fancy Groceries, there’s a keepsake I want you to take home. You might like to frame it.” She placed the calendar carefully before him on the table.

  “I was just coming to that,” said Carol. “I was just going to say –”

  “Well, I said it,” said Marina, “so shut up.”

  “What a memory,” Georgie said. “God – women and elephants!” He pulled the calendar toward him and read aloud, “Nineteen thirty-seven.”

  “The year I did not go to France,” said Marina. “The year I had the scholarship to Grenoble.”

  “I remember,” Victor said, smiling a little but glancing uneasily at his wife.

  “You should,” his sister said. “You damn well should remember.”

  “Victor, what is it?” said Peggy Ann. “You know, we should start back before dark.” She looked appealingly at Marina standing over the table.

  Turning the calendar over, Georgie read, “Sergeant-detectives Callahan and Vronsky, and two phone numbers. You ought to know them by heart, Vic.”

  “Not exactly,” Victor said. He shook his head, amused and rueful. “I’d rather just forget it.”

  “We haven’t,” Carol said. He pushed the calendar back toward his brother, staring at him.

  “It’s a long time ago now,” Victor said, relaxing in his chair as if the effort of leaving were hopeless. “You sort of started it all, as I remember.”

  “I started it,” said Marina. She moved around the table to stand between Carol and Georgie, the better to face Victor. “I had the scholarship in France and Mama had the money to send me.”

  “What has that –” Carol began, annoyed, glancing up at her.

  “Women,” Georgie said. “They always have to be first in the act. It was Carol started it.”

  “Your brother-in-law, Carol,” said Marina to Peggy Ann, “was arrested for some schoolboy prank one Sunday morning as the Boldescu family returned from church. Brother Georgie was ‘away,’ and after Carol’s departure, amid the tears of his sister and mother –”

  “Peggy Ann doesn’t want to hear this,” Victor said.

  “– a gun was discovered on a shelf in the shop, between two tins of chocolate empire biscuits,” said Marina. “Which our mother took and with a rich Rumanian curse –”

  “That part’s a lie,” said Georgie, shouting.

  “– flung as far as she could out the kitchen window. I guess her arm wasn’t too good, because it fell in the snow by the fence.”

  “She never swore in her life,” said Georgie. “That’s a lousy thing to say the day of her funeral.” His voice went hoarse, brandy having failed to restore the ravages of weeping.

  “Since when do you drink so much, too?” Carol asked her. “I’d like Mama to see you.” Virtuously, he pushed her empty glass out of her reach.

  “In the spring,” said Marina, “after the snow melted some, little brother Victor wandered out in the yard –”

  “I was a kid,” Victor told his wife, who wore a faint, puzzled smile, as if the end of this could only be a wonderful joke.

  “A stripling,” Marina said. “Full of admiration for the pranks of his older brothers.”

  “Tel
l the story or shut up,” said Carol.

  “Found the little gun,” said Marina, “all wet and rusty. Was it, Vic? I’ve forgotten that part. Anyway he took it to school and after making sure that every boy in class had admired it –”

  “The dumb little bastard,” said Carol, looking moodily at the floor.

  “– took it to a pawnshop that can be seen from the front door here, and, instead of pawning it, poked it into the stomach of a Mr. Levinson. It was noon –”

  “Twelve o’clock noon,” said Carol. “Jesus.”

  “I don’t believe this,” said Peggy Ann. Her eyebrows drew together, fumbling in her handbag, she found a handkerchief with a rolled tiny black border. “I don’t believe it.”

  “As I said, it was noon,” said Marina. She clutched the back of Carol’s chair, looking straight at Victor. “Little children were passing by. Mr. Levinson called out to them – small girls in convent dresses, I think they were. Victor must have been nervous, because he took one look at the little girls and cut for home, running down the street waving the gun like a flag.”

  “It isn’t true,” said Peggy Ann, mopping her eyes. “Anyway, if he ever did do anything wrong, he had plenty of examples. I name no names.”

  “Don’t cry,” Victor told her. “Marina’s acting crazy. You heard what Carol said; she’s an old maid. She always took sides against me, even though I never gave Mama half the trouble –”

  “We know,” Georgie said, smiling. “Mama knew it. That’s why she left you the store. See?” He tapped Victor affectionately on the arm, and Victor jumped.