Edith Pearlman - Binocular Vision - New & Selected Stories

“Not another minute,” Myrrh said, clumping down the final stairs. “Decadence. Hospitality betrayed. Are youth and beauty always to have their way?”

“The family is here for another two days, three at most.”

“I am retiring to my brother’s house tonight.”

Gran puffed. “The arrangement is that you will stay here for the summer. As always.”

“Funk the arrangement.”

“Fuck. The first bus isn’t until six o’clock.”

“I am leaving this sinkhole now. I will walk if necessary.”

Silence.

“Do you hear my words, Grace?”

Silence.

“I am capable of waking up the entire dissolute, spoiled-rotten household, aswim in its liquidity—”

Gran sighed. Her gaze rested on Myrrh, then traveled upward to Angelica, then traveled upward farther. “Girls! Get back to bed.” Angelica looked over her shoulder in time to see three bedroom doors close, her own parents’ last — she got a glimpse of Mama’s interested dark eyes. Gran now glared at Angelica. “Shoes.”

Angelica descended the stairs, edged around Myrrh, ran into the kitchen. Another cigarette smoldered there. She stubbed it out, found her deck shoes, returned to the hall. Gran tossed her something. She caught the something — the keys to the Volvo.

She had never driven at night, but it turned out to be easy to slip through the black-lacquer woods. There were some silver filaments — pine needles picked out by the moon. The long road ahead of them, their road, was soft and gray, like the dust in the fringe of the scarf on the piano. Would Russian prepositions be sensible? There were about a hundred tenses, she’d heard: the iterative, the durative, the … They reached the two-lane highway. In the back the elderly women were silent, the suitcase upended between them like a shared suitor. They reached the town.

“Où doit-on aller?” Angelica asked her grandmother.

“Après la gare, au droit.”

“Cut the frog talk,” Myrrh said, her voice piercing Angelica’s nape. “Yid. Incesticator. Won’t anyone outside do?”

“Myrrh,” Angelica wailed.

“Exocrat!”

“Turn right here,” Gran said. “Here!” and Angelica had to step on the brake, and reverse, and go backward. Finally she was able to turn. A few hundred yards along this road was a sign — BILL’S CABINS — and an office with a porch where a weak bulb burned. A narrow figure appeared under the bulb.

Gran opened her window. “Bill?”

“Miss Larcom?”

“Here’s Myrrh, for a night. She’ll take the 6:00 a.m.” She thrust some bills at Myrrh. “For the cabin and the bus ticket.” Myrrh dragged her suitcase out of the car and slammed the door and passed in front of the headlights — head bent under the hat, shoulders rounded within the coat: a figure she’d like to draw, Angelica thought, and she’d leave the drawing untitled and some shrewd gallery owner would call it Exile . Myrrh stopped at the porch.

“Cabin three,” Bill said.

“Okay,” Myrrh said.

“Drive,” Gran said.

The ride home was shorter than the ride there — an eternal truth of the space-time continuum, Toby had once pointed out. Angelica and her grandmother went into the kitchen and sat down at the oak table. Gran turned off the lamp and lit a cigarette. Angelica handed Gran the keys, which caught the dull light from the window. The shadowy room slowly revealed its known treasures — pewter in a cupboard, the old stove with its cobalt pilot, some revolutionary’s portrait, several upended brooms flaring from an umbrella holder.

“All in all,” Gran said without preamble, “a continued liaison would be a great deal of trouble. For you, for him, for all of us. Your great-grandfather didn’t rescue his line so it could get tangled up with itself like rotten old lace, like some altar cloth from Antwerp. I suppose I mean Bruges.”

“Bruges, yes.” Angelica swallowed. “You are part of the lace now.”

“Not noticeably,” Gran said. “The Larcom influence has not made itself felt.”

Was that any wonder? The Larcoms had no golden-age ancestors, no diamonds hidden in coats, no displacements, no rebirths, no tragedies. No money.

Angelica said: “Consensual incest is not considered a crime.”

“I believe you are quoting Toby. We’re not talking about incest as criminal. Funk that. We’re talking about incest as undutiful. Broadening the group to insure its survival — that is your responsibility, yours and your coevals.” She lit a new cigarette, and in the flame of the match her eyes gleamed, the whites white, the irises almost white. “You will tire of this sooner or later,” she said. “Tire of it now, beloved daughter of my daughter.”

For sixteen years she had addressed Angelica by name only. The sudden endearment — a declaration, really — was worth ten of Gramp’s long-winded blessings. What a rich phrase. You could live a life on the income it yielded.

Angelica gazed steadily at her grandmother. “I will do as you say.” She offered her right hand to confirm the agreement. But Gran just continued to smoke.

THE NEXT SUMMER Gran lay ill in the Manhattan brownstone. Gramp crouched on a hassock in a corner of the bedroom. No one had the heart to open the house in Maine. The three daughters came, left, came again. Angelica’s mother brought Angelica from Paris. During their sad week in New York — Gran had stopped talk-ing — Toby’s mother flew up from Washington with Toby. The two cousins were shooed out of the house. They sat in awkward silence at a delicatessen. They slouched through a museum.

“I have discovered astronomy,” Toby said.

“Our stars are our destinies.”

“That’s astrology, as of course you know. What you and I need is a bed.” What they needed was a bedroom full of cast-off furniture and a diamonded diamond window. But one more time, why not … She allowed herself to be led to a grimy hotel where, taking off only their lower garments, they each enjoyed a brief spasm of relief — first Toby, then Angelica, taking turns as if under a nurse-maid’s eye.

“I will begin Russian next year,” Angelica said, adjusting her sandal.

“Yes, well then, so will I,” he said without conviction.

Gran died in August. An important rabbi conducted a dignified graveside ceremony. The Buenos Aires daughter began a eulogy of her own but broke down midway. Then prayers; then everybody wept: the three daughters, the three sons-in-law, the nine grandchildren, the great-uncle from South Africa and his brood, the great-aunt from Jerusalem. One by one they threw clods of earth onto the pine coffin. And the Presbyterian relatives, Myrrh included, followed suit, and then offered condolences to speechless Gramp. They were odd, stubborn, unchosen: yet in Angelica’s veins their Maine blood kept company with the overwrought Antwerp stuff; and maybe someday she would have a stark daughter who collected beetles and preferred Route 201 to the Boulevard Raspail and played a flute that caught the light … Cousin Myrrh was extending her hand. Angelica took it.

All of Great-grandfather’s descendants stayed the week, and then returned home, if that’s what they called it. “Good-bye, beloved mother of my mother,” Angelica whispered to the thick indifference of the Air France window. “Good-bye, Tobski,” she added, an afterthought.

THEY FLEW FROM BOSTON to Bangor on a mild February morning. Gail pretended to read a dumb novel selected by her group. Max brought some scientific tome. But he kept the volume closed on his knees, and on top of it he had opened the Beethoven score, opus 66, which he was practicing on his wide thighs. Gail playfully inserted a manicured nail between two of his busy fingers, and with uncharacteristic irritation he flicked her hand away.