Going Ashore (8 page)

“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 that 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.”

“Tell 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.

“I never took sides,” Marina said. “I never knew any of you were even alive.” She brushed lint from her dyed suit and glanced across at Peggy Ann’s fragile and costly black summer frock. “Do I finish this story, or not?”

“Tell it, tell it,” said Georgie. “You don’t have to make it a speech. Callahan and Vronsky came and told Mama for six hundred there’d be no charge. So Mama paid it, so that’s the end.”

“They looked at Mama’s bankbook,” Marina said. “Vronsky had a girl my age at home, he said, just eighteen, so that meant he had to pat my behind. Mama had just the six, so they said that would do.”

“Six,” Georgie said. The injustice of the sum appeared to overwhelm him anew. “For a first offense. They would have settled for one-fifty each in those days.”

“You weren’t around to advise us,” Marina said. “The nice thing was that we had it to give. As I said before, that was the year I didn’t go any place.”

“For Christ’s sake stop harping on that,” Victor said. “Sure, Mama did it for me. Why wouldn’t she want to keep me out of trouble? Any mother would’ve done it.”

“Any,” said Peggy Ann, looking around the table. “Any mother.”

“You keep your snotty face out of this,” Carol said. He stood up, shouting. “Do you know what she had to do to get six hundred, how many bottles of milk and pounds of butter and cans of soup she had to sell?” He leaned over the table, tipping a glass of brandy. It dripped on Peggy Ann’s dress, and she began once more to cry.

Marina sat down, exhausted. “It was Victor’s insurance policy,” she said. “We looked at it that way. They wrote their names on the back of the calendar. They told Mama if he ever got in trouble again she should call them.”

“It was the only thing I ever did,” Victor told his wife, who pushed away his consoling hand. “The only thing in my whole life.”

“Then we paid the money for nothing,” said Marina. “It was your immunity. You should have kept on doing things, just for the hell of it. That’s why Mama kept the calendar: insurance for Heaven on the front and on the back for this earth. She told Father Patenaude about it afterward, but he never saw the joke.”

“Never mind all that,” said Carol, impatient. “Let’s get this the hell over with. You got the store, Vic; now we want to know what you’re going to do about this,” and he pointed again to the calendar.

“What can I do?” Victor said. “What do you want me to do, turn myself in?” Gaining confidence, he pushed back his chair. “It’s crazy to even talk about it. We came back here to talk about the store. I thought that was settled.”

“Well, it isn’t,” said Georgie. “Mama left it to you, but there’s a couple of guys who owe you six. You ought to collect it.”

“Collect it?” Victor said. He looked at Marina. “Are you in this, too? You want me to go out and beat up a couple of middle-aged cops, old men? Make a lot of trouble? And for what? You know we’d never get that money back.”

“For Mama,” Carol said, sitting down.

“I never heard anything so crazy,” Peggy Ann said. “Why should Victor get mixed up in all these old things?”

“If Mama had wanted it, she’d have said so in her lifetime,” Victor said.

“She left you the shop,” Georgie said, “and the calendar along with it.”

“How about it?” Victor asked Marina once more. “Did you plan this together, to show me up in front of my wife? Or are you so jealous because Mama left it to me? Do you think I ought to make a lot of trouble for Mama’s sake?”