First Papers (17 page)

“The shock—I’m so distracted—”

Eli exploded. “For God’s sake, I can’t stand all this,” but Joan said to her mother-in-law, “Of course it’s a shock.”

“I knew what we were in for,” Eli added. “If you take it this way, can you imagine
him?”

“But you decided in May, before the baby was born, and all these months you were living a lie with your own parents.”

“Right,” he said without any note of regret. “I wasn’t going to put Joan through it while she was pregnant. And not right afterward either. I wanted to keep it a secret for as long as we could, a year, maybe more.”

At the word, “secret,” Fran and Fee exchanged glances. Neither of them had ever had such a secret to keep in all their lives; it had changed their last two weeks at the beach, so they would not blurt it out right in front of Mama. And since getting home, they would talk about it in whispers, if they talked of it at all, and they had each taken a special oath not to tell their best friends. Neither one of them had betrayed the oath.

Until this evening, keeping the secret so well had seemed an achievement, something everybody would praise them for when it was at last revealed. But tonight, after Joan and Eli had told Mama, Joan had let something slip about the walk along the beach on Fran’s birthday, and telling the girls about Eaves then.

“You know?” their mother cried, turning on them in disbelief. “You knew this and never told me? For nearly two months, like—like conspirators, you let me live on in a fool’s bliss, while you both
knew?”

“Oh, Mama,” Fran said, in her special way.

It infuriated Alexandra. “Oh, Mama, oh, Mama—you take sides against me automatically,” she said. “Maybe you also are ashamed of your father’s and mother’s name.”

“That’s not fair,” Joan put in sharply. “Being ashamed never came into it. Not for one moment.”

“No, no,” Alexandra apologized quickly. “I shouldn’t have said it.” With her next breath she added, “Just the same, if our name was Rockefeller or Carnegie, you wouldn’t even
dream
of changing it.”

Fee looked at her mother with a new interest. Not once, never since the day she was born, had it even once occurred to her that her mother could be wrong, totally, absolutely, positively wrong. But now she was wrong.

“Why, Mama,” she began excitedly, “you’re saying something that’s the exact opposite of—”

There was silence from all of them. Suddenly Fee felt as if she were again standing up alone in the middle of the stage in the auditorium just after Miss Mainley had announced, “The next will be a recitation, ‘Sally Ann’s Experience,’ by Fira Ivarin, sixth grade.” Her breath stuck in her throat, and her heart squeezed with knowing she had to begin, that everybody was waiting, and that she couldn’t escape until she had recited.

“The opposite of what?” Mama asked, coaxing, as if she knew that whatever was to come, it would be a first step for her youngest child.

“Of what you always say about getting Americanized and being Americans. If our name
was
Carnegie or Rockefeller it would be American
already,
so Eli and Joan wouldn’t
have
to change it. They just
did
it for Americanizing, not out of being ashamed.”

“Thanks, kid,” Eli said, his eyes brightening. “You’ve got it straighter than Ma has.”

His praise made her feel marvelous. But then he said to Joan, “Maybe Fee’s just been elected to tell Pop.”

“No, I haven’t,” Fee shouted at him. “Don’t you make fun of me, don’t do it, don’t you dare be so mean and horrible to everybody.” And she ran from the room, sobbing, racing up the stairs two at a time.

Down below, they could hear her furious crying, and for a moment nobody spoke. Alexandra thought, Despite Fee’s point, I know and Eli knows that being ashamed of a foreign name like Ivarin did enter into it; I’m glad Fee didn’t see quite that far.

“I’ll come over tomorrow,” Joan said, “before Father Ivarin is awake, and I’ll tell him myself. Please wait until then.”

Alexandra shook her head. “I’ll tell him tonight.” She looked at Eli. “When he comes home, I will tell him. I couldn’t sleep in the same house with him all night, and keep silent about a thing like this.”

She dried her eyes on a kitchen towel and went to the sink for a glass of water. Behind her there was silence, and before she turned back to them she said, “It’s really time for you to go home. Otherwise Eli will be too exhausted tomorrow, and start another attack.”

Upstairs, Fee lay in the dark, waiting for her father to get home. When Franny came up to bed, she pretended to be asleep, her face turned toward the wall, and her arm over her eyes, so her sister couldn’t see whether her eyelids moved.

“Fee,” Fran whispered as she came in, “are you asleep?”

She didn’t answer; she could hear Fran come around to try to see better, but behind her concealing arm, she felt safe.

“I don’t believe you,” Fran announced after a second or two, but she left Fee’s bed and began to undress.

When the light went out, Fee opened her eyes, and lay still, trying to guess what would happen when Papa heard about it. She tried to remember back to the promise on the beach, back to that first instant, that first knowing about Eaves, to see how she and Fran could ever have thought it was all right to keep it a secret from Mama just because Eli and Joan said they should.

Had Eli and Joan made them promise before they told them what the secret was? Or had they first told them about Eaves, and then later on asked them to keep it a secret? It was terrible not to remember.

If you promised to keep a secret before you knew what it was, then you were not responsible for keeping it. At least not as responsible as if you first heard the secret, and then afterwards promised not to tell. Had Eli and Joan told them first, and then made them promise? If it had been in that order, then they really couldn’t help keeping Mama in a fool’s paradise; there was no way out. She wished she hadn’t made Fran think she was asleep; Fran might remember which came first, the secret or the promise.

Maybe she ought to go downstairs now, to explain to Mama that they would rather die than hurt or fool her, but that it had been impossible to do anything except what they did do. It was so mixed up, if being proud of being able to keep a secret could suddenly turn into being so ashamed.

A fool’s bliss, Mama had said. She meant “a fool’s paradise,” and tonight nobody would have joked or teased her about the right way to say it. But at other times they would have, and Mama would have laughed and said, “a fool’s paradise, all right. A brochure.”

They would have all burst out laughing at “brochure.” It was a word that was special for them all, a family word, a family joke that never failed, with Mama laughing as hard as any of them, even though the joke was on her.

It had happened a long time ago, when Fee was only nine, and at first Fee had laughed only because Eli and Fran and Papa had all laughed so hard. Only later did she understand for herself how funny it was and every time the word “brochure” was spoken after that, it just got funnier and more of a special private word.

In a way, it was dirty too, but nobody thought of that any more. The day it happened, Mama had been talking about one of Dr. Wiley’s worst enemies, a bad man who owned a big food company and wouldn’t stop using preservatives in canned goods, benzoate of soda and coal-tar dyes and things like that, even though Dr. Wiley was part of the Government and Congress had just passed the Pure Food Laws he wanted, laws that everybody had to obey.

This bad man was stubborn and said Dr. Wiley had no right to interfere with a man’s private business, and that he was going to fight back.

“So he let out a big brochure—” Mama said.

That was as far as she got. There was a roar of laughter from Papa and Eli and Fran; through the laughter, Mama kept trying to explain that this stubborn angry businessman had written a booklet, had it printed on rich heavy paper, and then had mailed thousands of copies to lots of important people. But it was no use. They wouldn’t listen or stop laughing and at last, in a questioning tone, Mama herself repeated, “let out a big brochure.” “Oh, I
see,”
she said, and began to laugh with them, which started them off once more.

Now in the darkness, Fee remembered how jolly their laughter had sounded, and wished desperately that it were that night again, instead of this awful one of waiting until Papa got home and heard what Eli had done.

Everything was so happy then, with Mama explaining that no matter how brilliant you were about any language you learned when you were grown up, you still could make mistakes in slang or in idioms. Papa had agreed, and told them he had never felt he really knew the English language until the night he had had his first dream in English, instead of in Russian.

This was like a dream too, a nightmare of Mama turning on Fran and her as if they were traitors. It was Eli’s fault, for starting it all. Eli was a wonderful brother, but he certainly had a way of doing something and then not worrying about what would happen. Right this minute he probably was sound asleep, not lying awake wondering what his father would do when he walked up the hill tonight and came into the house and listened to what Mama would tell him.

Elijah Eaves. It sounded silly and crazy now, though it hadn’t when she first heard about it. About a week after that walk on the beach, Fran had said as a joke, “Maybe I’ll do it too, before I start teaching.” And Fran had started mimicking her own future pupils in her future classroom. “Yes, Miss Eaves. I’m sorry, Miss Eaves. Good afternoon, Miss Eaves.”

Francesca Eaves, Fee thought now. Fira Eaves. She squirmed and wondered if Fran really had been joking. Maybe she should wake her; she would die unless she could hear Fran promise never never to change her name to Eaves, to stay Francesca Ivarin until she got married, and say that Fira would be Fira Ivarin until she married too.

Then when they became Francesca Somebody-Else, and Fira Somebody-Else, it would make Mama and Papa happy, not miserable and angry, the way they were if you changed on purpose.

“Fran,” she whispered in the dark. “Franny, are you still awake?”

Fran flopped around, but she didn’t answer. Fee tried again a moment later, but there was no doubt about it: she was asleep, and not just paying Fee back. It was comfortable to know that Fran could sleep, and Fee closed her eyes and wondered if maybe she could sleep now too.

It was after two when Shag’s huge barking outdoors announced that Stefan was coming home at last. Alexandra went to the front door, but at once changed her mind and returned to the kitchen where she would normally be if she were downstairs at this hour, after giving a late lesson or sewing longer than usual.

She could never do what Joan suggested, and explain her swollen eyes by saying Webby had a sudden high fever. She was never successful with lies, even small social lies to save a friend’s feelings about a new hat or a suggested visit, and with something as awful as this, she could not even wait in silence. All evening she had rehearsed what she would say when he did get home. She must not burst out with it; she must help him by seeming calm and strong. To conceal her pain was impossible, but she must somehow manage, must, must, must manage not to let the tears come, nor the break in her voice. If only he could be spared the news itself.

“It won’t break his heart,” Eli had said angrily, “Nothing could.” How cold Eli could be, how indifferent. What was wrong with the boy, that he was capable of such words, so inconsiderate, so—well, let it be said, so cruel? Somewhere along the road from babyhood, Eli had turned a corner and lost his sweetness, his goodness, which was there at the beginning. Was it when Francesca was born?

Eli was nearly six then, and for those six years, he had been undisputed king of the world, his baby world, the only world he knew. Was it rage then, at being toppled from the throne? But all famines knew this problem, this jealousy of the firstborn when the second child arrived to dispute his lordly singleness. And surely she had prepared Eli as wisely, as lovingly for the change in his solitary status as any mother could, anywhere on earth.

She would not chide herself too constantly for the faults that showed in Eli or in any of the children. Parents could do much, could love, help, shape, lead, but in the end there surely remained in each being some mysteries of goodness or badness, of strength or weakness, of softness or stoniness.

And Elijah did have this capacity to deal out a blow without the capacity to imagine its stab. “Raise the roof,” he could say, but apparently it was beyond him to predict the pain there would be for her or for his father.

If Elijah were not the only son.

If the baby Stefan had lived, there would have been other grandchildren; they would be named Ivarin, and perhaps one at least would be a boy. Then Stefan would not need to feel the way he would now: It will all end with me.

Francesca would marry, and Fira, and their names would be the names of their husbands, and their children’s names would be the unknown names too. Ivarin would disappear from the face of America forever.

But that is wrong, Alexandra thought, when we love it so.

When we have worked for it so much, both of us, teaching its new citizens, helping to form its young labor unions which some day will be thought right and good, instead of something crazy and radical. The time will come when it is normal to belong to a union, when every capitalist will bargain and arbitrate instead of beating or slugging or shooting down strikers. The time will come when nobody need starve if they are laid off, when they will save out a few pennies a week during all the years they work, to make some kind of public fund to give them security and dignity when they are at last too old.

All of it will come, and when it does, the name of Ivarin should not have vanished from the face of America, when Stiva worked so deeply, and I too, it must be said, to make greenhorns into Americans, and to make America’s workers different from the serfs and slaves and wretches of Europe.

The door opened, and Stefan called, “Alexandra, is that you?”