Authors: Howard Fast
"And how will you introduce me?"
"Ah, we come to that. Well, I suppose I could introduce you as a bloody mercenary who seduced me one night in Paris long ago."
"Come on, Bobby."
"Or I could explain that this is an old friend who was
staying at the Mark Hopkins until three weeks ago, when he moved into my house."
"Why did you take him in?"
"Pity, I suppose."
"I evoke pity?"
"I think you do. When you look at me in that beseeching, plaintive way"—she took her eyes off the road to glance at him—"like now. Sort of like a camel."
"Oh, Jesus Christ, no! Not like a camel."
"Camels are dear beasts."
"Camels are the ugliest, stupidest, foulest-smellest animals God ever contrived. You know, you never say anything nice to me."
"That doesn't mean I'm not fond of you."
"Since we sleep together and eat together and spend most of our days together, that's a reasonable assumption. Why won't you marry me?"
"Did I say I wouldn't?"
"You never said you would."
"I'm not sure I would. I'm not sure I wouldn't."
"That's just great."
"It takes time."
"Seven years?"
"That's one way of looking at it," Barbara agreed. "On the other hand, you have no visible means of support. You're footloose and fancy free. You remind me of my father, which may be why I'm taken with you, but that's a minus as well as a plus. You've spent much of your adult life at war, which is nothing I am enamored of, and you also confuse me. Jews are supposed to be intellectual, introverted, and abashed."
"Who said so?"
"Well, I've sort of accepted that. Maybe I'pi wrong. But as far as Palestine is concerned, it's the last place in the world I desire to go. I love San Francisco. It's my home; it's the place where I'm most comfortable. I don't ever want to travel again, and I don't ever want to live anywhere else."
"Bobby, what would I do here?"
"What would you do in Palestine? You're forty years old. From what you tell me, it's a bleak, inhospitable desert, a ruined land that has to be made over foot by foot. I'm a writer and I'm a woman. I want to have children, and I want them to grow up here. With all its faults, with
all the lying and the cheating and the dirt and the misery, it's the best place in the world that I have ever seen. I am sick to death of this Jew and gentile, black and white, Chicano and Anglo—God Almighty, won't we we ever grow up and become people?"
"The six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis, the children among them, they won't ever grow up, Bobby."
"And six million Bengalis died in the famine in India, and I saw a street where the dead were laid out like a carpet. Bernie, I love you. I'm trying to drive a car and think and talk, and it's not easy. But I love you. You and Marcel. Two men in my life, like the two sides of a coin, because you're as different from him as day from night, but you're the only two men I ever wanted. Bernie, what do we do? Do we spend our lives trying to atone for the dead? I know something about Palestine and the Jewish settlements there. But I will not put a gun in my hands and kill—not if my own life depended on it, not for anything, not for any dream or ideal. I've lived through the worst bloodbath this world ever saw, fifty million dead, and that's not the way and I won't go that way."
"What would I do?" he asked miserably.
"It doesn't matter to me. What does any man do? You studied agriculture. Look around you." They were m the Napa Valley now, driving north on Highway 29, the vineyards rolling away and up the hillsides on either side. "We'll buy a piece of land if you want to. Farm it. Make wine. Anything. Bernie, I wasn't going to tell you, but damn it, I will. I think I'm pregnant."
"What?"
"I'm one week late. Usually, that doesn't mean anything, but I'm as regular as clockwork. Anyway, I've got a feeling about it."
"That's wonderful!" he burst out. "Bobby, that's great, just absolutely great. We'll get married."
"Just hold on. Not so quick."
"You wouldn't get rid of it?"
"Oh, no, my lad. I'm going to have this kid, come hell or high water. I'm thirty-two years old, and I'm going to have this kid and others while I still can, even if I have to resort to artificial insemination. And I don't want one. I want three or four. But you and me, Bernie, we're two people. Maybe we're not so different. I think we both spent our lives expiating some kind of guilt. I grew up rich and you grew up lonely and poor, and I think that's some kind of cement that binds us together now. I'm not looking for bliss. I think you're a little crazy and kind of intractable, and we're going to have a lot of misery, but maybe we can work it out so that we have a lot of happiness as well. I'm willing to give it a try, but you've got to see me as a whole person, not just as a woman and not just as a mother, but as a whole human being who is half of your life. I'm not saying I wouldn't go to Palestine someday or even live there for a while, but my roots are here, and I think yours are too. Whatever we were in the beginning, it's this war that's made us what we are today. So I'll reverse the question. Will you marry me and live here with me?"
He didn't answer until they had turned into the dirt road, with the old stone buildings of Higate before them. Then he said, "O.K. I'll give it a try."
When Barbara came into the room where Sally was being dressed by her mother and by Sarah Levy, her grandmother, Sally broke free of them to throw her arms around Barbara. "Oh, Bobby, how perfectly wonderful to see you! And you're so beautiful! Why can't I look like you?"
Barbara felt quite foolish in the flowing shell pink organdy dress that had been decided upon for the maid of honor. Pink was decidedly not her color, but pink was what Sally would have, and Barbara's satin slippers were pink, and the broad-brimmed straw hat she carried and now tried to protect from Sally's embrace had a dripping garnish of tiny pink roses.
"Sally," Clair said, "if you don't get back here and let me finish the hem, you won't look like Barbara. You'll look plain silly."
"Do you like it?" Sally asked, turning, stepping back, swirling the folds of white organdy, to her mother's annoyance. "I think I look like granny did when she was my age. Don't I, granny? I saw a picture—only my hair's like straw. I don't know what to do with my hair. I wish I could cut it off, only Joe would kill me. That's because he's Chinese. He has a fixation on yellow hair."
"Sally," Clair said sharply, "no more of that. Joe is Barbara's brother. He is not Chinese. Heaven help me, what do I do with her?" Clair asked Barbara.
Barbara laughed. "In one hour, she'll be off your hands."
"Poor Joe."
"Poor Joe indeed," Sally said.
"You look very beautiful," Barbara told her, thinking that the years had changed very little of Sally. She still had the tiny breasts she had bemoaned; she was taller, but still very slender, and with her yellow hair falling over her shoulders, in the white organdy wedding gown, with a veil of tulle and a white Juliet cap, she looked like something out of a Mucha print, an illustration for an unlikely tale of a time long ago.
"Bobby," she exclaimed, "we are truly going to be sisters. Isn't that wonderful? And Adam is Joe's best man, so it's brother, sister, brother, sister, and if only Adam would marry you. No. I forgot. You have that marvelous, romantic soldier. I remember the letter so well, and he's here. I caught a glimpse of him through the window. Bobby, why don't you marry him? We'll have a double wedding. I mean, Adam is impractical. He's totally gaga over his Eloise. Peaches and cream. Well, if that's his taste, it's his taste. She's all fluff, if you ask me."
"If you ask me," Sarah said hopelessly, "you'll talk Joe to death. Please stand still."
"Are you going to marry him? Barbara, how did he ever find you?"
"In the telephone book."
"Of course. No one ever thinks of telephone books. Don't you think he's marvelously romantic, Bobby? You know, he looks like Spencer Tracy, except that he's a foot taller and his nose. Well, I like a man with a good nose. It shows character. Poor Joe. Mom's right. Mom you're right," she told her mother.
"Thank you. Now hold still."
"I mean," she explained to Barbara, "that poor Joe never had a chance. I threw myself at him. I confess it."
"I think Joe loves you very much. I wouldn't feel sorry for him. He's lucky."
"Do you think so, Bobby? Bless you. I'm so happy, but quite nervous. Do you know, we've never had intercourse."
"Sally!" her grandmother said sharply.
"Granny, don't be shocked. If I said we had, then you'd have good reason. He's hopelessly old-fashioned. Can you imagine, here it's nineteen forty-six and I'm twenty years old and I'm a virgin."
"Sally," Clair said, "if you wish to discuss your virginity, you can take it up with Barbara later. Right now we're trying to fit this dress. I suggest you hold still and be quiet for five minutes."
"Anyway," Sarah said, looking out of the window, "Dan is here with your mother, Barbara."
Barbara ran downstairs to greet them. A slow stream of cars, bumper to bumper, was coming up the road to the winery. On the lawn, facing the main house, a green-and-white-striped pavilion had been erected, with chairs set up on a dance floor. Another huge tent housed the tables, and beyond that, Chicano winery workers were preparing the barbecue under the careful eye of Rudy Gomez, Jake's foreman. Jake himself, already resplendent in a white dinner jacket, was greeting the guests, and when Barbara appeared, Dan was introducing Jean. Joe stood at the other end of the garden, talking to Judge Henderson of San Francisco, who was to perform the ceremony. Barbara looked around for Bernie, and not finding him, walked quickly over to where Joe stood. Joe introduced her to Judge Henderson.
"Well, young lady, your mother's daughter, true enough. She was the belle of the city at your age, and you do her proud."
Barbara begged Joe's presence, "for just a few minutes, please, sir." She took Joe aside and said to him, "Joe, my mother's here. Whatever you feel deep inside, it was a great act of courage for her to come here."
"I know."
"I want you to meet her now."
She led Joe over to where Dan stood with Jean. "She's a beauty," Joe whispered to her. Jean, in a simple beige chiffon dress, her face shadowed by a wide straw brim, was indeed an imposing and handsome woman.
"Mother," Barbara said, "this is my brother Joe. I want you to meet him and know him and love him—as I do."
They stood looking at each other for a long moment. Joe appeared at a loss. Then Jean walked to him, put her arms around him, and kissed him. He stepped back, looking at Jean and then at Dan. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Finally he said, "I'm glad you came. I'm very glad." Then he turned and walked off.
Barbara took her mother's arm. "It's all right, mother. Give it time. Everything's piled together today. Joe's scared. Sally's scared. These are all good people, but I
think the only time they see each other is at weddings and
funerals."
"I shouldn't have come," Jean whispered.
"You damn well should have," Dan said.
"I shouldn't have kissed him."
"Thank heavens you did," Barbara told her. "Nothing today is going to be easy. This place is dripping with emotion, and I don't know whether I can stand it myself. I've been so long without family, and now they're everywhere I look."
"Where's your soldier?" Dan asked her.
"Don't call him that, please. He's around somewhere. Now listen to me, both of you. He's Jewish. He has no job and he has no real prospects, and he's been living with me in my house these past three weeks, and I'm going to marry him. That's it, flat and straight, and I'm glad I got it out before you meet him. So both of you digest that, and you'll meet him as soon as I can find him."
With that, she ran off, and Jean said to Dan, "Well, this is certainly going to be a day."
"I think you can say that again."
Adam Levy, with Eloise and her small son, had climbed up the hillside to a point where the wedding party, the houses, and the guests were below them. They had gone up steps, so it had not been a hard climb, and now, a hundred feet higher than the gardens, they could look out over the whole vista of Higate, the stone buildings, the gently rolling vineyards, the pastures where cattle grazed, the line of cars crawling up to the main house, and the swirl of guests eddying into the gardens and the pavilions.
"I can see the whole world," Freddie said.
"My whole world when you and Freddie are in it," Adam said to Eloise. "There's a real mixing of the Levys and the Lavettes. It began forty years ago."
"Adam, I'm frightened," she whispered to him.