An envelope of photographs dated August 1967. Twelve prints made from Kodachrome slides, shot on Old Hodge's Road, Huntington, Long Island. Four shots: various aspects of a house built about 1930, in some disrepair, pale yellow clapboard with peeling white trim, trellises (paint flaking) with climbing roses (overgrown), a suspicious-looking dark patch on the roof. Eight show a garden; two distance shots show it to be fairly extensive for a suburban plot. It too is overgrown, but full of peonies and honeysuckle, clematis and foxglove, delphinium, and low, delicate pale purple heatherlike flowers at what used to be the edges of the beds. One bed has been weeded and tended, a long rectangle filled with rosebushes in shades of yellow, peach, salmon pink.
Several of the garden shots contain the figure of a woman, pretty, slender, with browning blond hair, in her early thirties. She is posed like a model by the rosebushes, wearing white cotton shorts and a navy-and-white horizontally striped cotton knit shirt with white sandals. She has good legs.
“Beautiful! It's all beautiful!” Anastasia gushed for the fifteenth time.
Joy smiled in pleasure. “I love it! I loved it the minute I saw it! I just loved it! It needs work, but I think it's just great!” She pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen.
Dim afternoon light from two windows above it brightened the stained porcelain sink and the well-scrubbed wooden counter, softened the outlines of the old-fashioned appliances, the open wood shelves that lined two walls, stacked in a lovely homely way with dishes, cans, boxes of cereal, rice. The floor was covered with old, cracked linoleum. On the windowsill were two small green plants, thriving.
“What a lovely room!”
“I love it! We all just love it! It's bright in the morning when we have breakfast.” Joy walked to a bare wall that stood at a right angle to the sink. “And here,” she pointed, “I want to break through and put a door, and lay a terrace outside. Wouldn't that be terrific? Then on summer mornings we can have breakfast out there, looking out at the garden.”
“That would be wonderful, beautiful!” How are you going to pay for it?
Joy smiled happily. “Shall we have coffee or tea? I got in the habit of drinking tea when we were in the Philippines.”
“Tea is fine.” Anastasia sat on a wooden kitchen chair painted bright blue and yellow, one of a set that looked antique, and watched her sister prepare tea.
“I'm so glad you could come!” Joy cried heartily. “It's been such a long time since we talked, had an afternoon alone together.”
“Years.”
“We have so much to catch up on!” All Joy's statements emerged as pronouncements, loud, absolute, as if by speech alone she was trying to create a reality she feared did not exist. “We couldn't really talk at Jenny's birthday party.”
“Not with all the competition from paper bugles, burst balloons, and spilled ice cream,” Anastasia laughed. “Not to speak of screaming kids.”
“Weren't they? But I'm glad I had it. She's so disorientated. She was six months old when we left the Philippines, we spent the next three years in Panama, in California we lived on the base, she's not used to playing with children, she was always in the compounds, she had a hard time adjusting, it's hard for her.”
“The house is nice, butâ¦I don't understand it. Has she told you anything?” Bitten lower lip. “No.” “I wonder what's happening. Do you think Justin has left her?” “Why don't you ask her, Mom?” Bristle. “Oh, I couldn't do that.”
“I knew I wanted to live in this town. I just
love
this town, it's so pretty and countrylike, I love it! I wanted Jenny to get to know other children. Well, it turns out there aren't too many kids her age in this neighborhood, but she'll meet kids in school, when she starts school.”
The official version, the story she tells: kids disoriented by continual moving about, need solid stable home, neighborhood, friends, American friends. But why here, why not in Texas, where Justin is? Of course, everyone accepts the story because easterners think that to live in Texas is to drop off into hell. But is it, if your husband is there? She has left him, that's clear. “You found a really beautiful house.”
Joy turned, her face glowing. “Isn't it?”
And will Justin live here too? And if he doesn't, how will you afford it? It needs work. How are you going to pay for it?
“Let's have tea in the living room!” she suggested gaily, proposing a party. She stacked cups, saucers, and teapot on a tray. She opened the refrigerator. “I have some pound cake, and
one
apple tart!” She gave her loud, hard, forced laugh.
“Just tea for me,” Anastasia said quietly, feeling that her every utterance was a damper on her sister's enthusiasm.
“You too? I don't seem to like sweets anymore, either. Neither does Mother. That's funny! The three women in the family don't like sweet things! And all the men do! Daddy loves his ice cream, and Justin gorges himself on chocolate. And Billy and Jonathan will eat anything as long as it's sweet!” Laughter.
Anastasia smiled, a strained smile.
Everywhere, dirt-darkened walls were cracked, the ceilings were peeling. There was a dark patch on the ceiling in the upstairs hall. Joy had seen Anastasia glance at it, and had said, tense-mouthed, “Yes, I have to get the roof fixed. I just haven't had time to get around to it.” But everywhere, too, light poured in through the generous windows, light and intimations of the luxurious wild gardens beyond, green and aromatic.
Anastasia stopped at a living room window. “You can smell the honeysuckle, even indoors!”
The room reflected Joy's travels. There were two low brass-ornamented Korean chests, a Chinese carpet between the couches in front of the fireplace, Chinese vases, and on the walls, scrolls and ink drawings. Chinese? From Hong Kong, probably. And Hummel figurines from Germany on a carved shelf, and a German grandfather clock in the hall, sending a steady inexorable recounting of time passing clicking up the wide curved staircase.
“Yes, we did go to Hong Kong, several times, when we had a four-or five-day pass,” Joy was saying. “It's really great! The Peninsula Hotel! Mmmm! Yummy! When you first get your room they come in with this big basket of beautiful soaps and let you choose the one you want. They're all done up in these gorgeous packages! You hate to open them!” Laughter.
The tea tray was set on a large round brass tray table. Joy, her legs crossed neatly at the ankle, poured.
“So what loot did you bring back from Panama?” Watch it: envy creeping into the voice.
“They have the most beautiful linens, Anastasia. Made of rice cloth, I'll show you later. Embroidered tablecloths, tea towelsâ¦oh, you know! I gave Mother a tablecloth for Christmas!”
“Oh, yes, that was gorgeous!”
“Oh! And these!” She dangled her tea napkin in the air.
“Yes, I was noticing them. They're Panamanian too? Beautiful!”
Tea sipped. Strong, smoky Lapsang souchong. Silence.
“So how are the kids?”
“They're great! They're really adjusting! Jonathan went out for Little League this summer, and he's the star of the team! He really loves it! Julie's not so outgoing, but she made a friend last term, and she goes over to see her on her bike just about every day, and they talk on the phone, they're never apart, I call them the Siamese Twins,” laughter, long long laughter, “so she's okay.” Joy wiped her eyes, which were damp from laughing. “It's just Jenny who's having a hard time, but there are two kids her age just two blocks away, so she'll be great!”
The enthusiasm, the emphasis: to make what she wants to happen seem to have already happened.
Carefully, Anastasia set down the delicate porcelain cup. Carefully, making her voice sound easy, relaxed, she asked, “And is Justin going to be able to get up to see the house?”
Joy set her cup down too, and wiped her lips on the lace-edged linen napkin. “He's in the middle of a big project, very hush-hush, some new plane they're testing. He's in charge of all the test pilots, it's a big job. He's always busy,” she finished, with an especially bright laugh.
“How does he live down there?”
“Oh, he lives on the base, they have quarters for unmarried officers, I mean officers without wives, I mean, if their wives are someplace else or they don't have one. They eat at the Officers' Club, it's really great, they can have steak every night, their rooms are cleaned for them, and their laundry done, the Army is very good to their own, they take good care of the officers. He doesn't miss me at all!” Protracted laughter, very bright.
Or the children either? Officers' quarters: is that why they don't visit him there? He didn't come last Christmas, well his tour didn't end until the end of the year but surely they would have let him take the last week of December off, Joy came, alone, with the kids. She doesn't want me to ask questions about him.
Joy burst out, “And how is Arden? She excited about going back to college?”
“Oh, very.” Try to think of something good to say. “She got a job in a fast-food joint and spent all her money on new clothes. Four pairs of jeans and twenty-five tops!” Anastasia laughed.
Joy howled. “Aren't they something?” She wiped her eyes. “She still at Cornell?”
“Yes. She wants to be a poet. She has talent. But you can't earn a living writing poetry.”
“Well, once upon a time they might have told you you can't earn a living taking photographs, and now look at you!”
Anastasia smiled wryly, nodded. “Except I never imagined I'd earn a living taking photographs.”
“But you didn't want to do anything else, either, and you
wouldn't
do anything else.”
Anastasia gazed at Joy. “That's right.” Profound. When had that happened, that Joy became profound?
“And Billy's a senior?”
Anastasia nodded. “Going into his senior year this fall. And Franny's going,” she shifted to a childish accent, “to kindergarten!” They both laughed then, together. Why am I laughing? Just the thought of her, so cute, looking up at you with those eyes, so serious and self-important. “She's full of self-importance,” Anastasia went on. “She feels she is now an adult, going to school like her big sister and brother, she has a pencil box and a notebook, never mind that they're going to make her cut out paper dolls.”
Again the sisters laughed together.
Got past Billy safely.
“And Toni's fine?” Joy poured fresh cups of tea, adding hot water to the strong brew from a beautiful little pewter kettle set on a stand with a candle.
Where did she get
that
?
Anastasia nodded, sipped. “He's a little frustrated. All these years and he's only published four short stories in little magazines that don't pay anything. He's talking about changing his style.”
Changing his style: silk shirts and martinis before dinner.
“What about that novel he was writing? About the Army or something? I remember he was asking Justin questions the last time we came home at Christmasâ¦was that 1963? Did he ever finish it?”
“He's given up on that, wisely, I think.”
Joy registered dismay. At the fact? Or at a wife criticizing her husband?
“He just didn't know enough about military life, war, any of it. He's started another, about a boy growing up in a town rather like Dayton, Ohio, in a Polish family,” Anastasia grinned. “Not at all autobiographical, of course. But I like it, I think it's really terrific. It
is
in a different style from the other oneâspare, plain, no dramatics, there's the continuity of chronology but it's really a set of vignettes strung together, each one a pow in the eye, it hits you, hard, it's true and powerfulâ¦.”
Joy was nodding her head with a fixed smile, glazed eyes. Enough of that.
“And tell me what you've been doing! Have you been traveling?” Joy's voice was strained; she emphasized each word as if she were talking to a child, asking about first grade. Why was that? “Where have you been recently?”
“Ohâwell, last week I was in Nigeriaâ¦.”
“Nigeria! Now where is that?”
“Africa. There's a war going on thereâ¦.”
“Oh, my! Did you see any of that?”
Why did she sound as if she were speaking a part in a play?
“Well, yes of course! I was sent there to photograph the war.” Why does my voice sound so tight, so angry?
“Isn't that dangerous?”
“A little. But they're not especially interested in Americans, they're fighting each other, Christian and Moslem, it's terrible, it's causing such starvation, you might have seen my pictures of Biafran children.”
“Oh! Right! So Nigeria is the same as Biafra?”
Change the subject. Change the subject. How, gracefullyâ¦
“So those childrenâ¦but it's terrible! Terrible! Oh, my heart just ached when I saw those pictures! I just wanted to scoop those little babies up in my arms and pour milk into them, it was terribleâ¦.”
“Yes.” No more. Change the subject. Put down the teacup. Yawn. Stretch. Look out the window. “How lovely the garden is from here.”
Joy looked out, smiled. “Yes.”
Forget jealousy. Forget anger. Think about her. “It must be comforting to you after all these years, to have your own home. A place you chose, a place you can fix up as you like.”
Tears sprang into Joy's eyes. She pressed her lips together. She nodded.
“How did Mother like the house?”
“We-elâ¦you know Mother.”
Anastasia smiled broadly. So did Joy.
“She liked the house, she loved the garden, but she said it was too much for me. And she
hated
the kitchen!” Joy laughed. “Guess what she hated the most?”
Anastasia considered the old-fashioned sink and stove, the cracked linoleum, the non-self-defrosting refrigerator. “The wooden shelves and counters,” she guessed. “My favorite thing in the whole room.”