Philipp Meyer - The Son

Back in the main house, she heard a noise and saw a light at the end of a corridor and made her way toward it. It was a library or study of some sort; a fire was going and there was a person sitting in a leather chair, smoking a pipe. She approached and when she got close enough the man looked up at her.

“Excuse me,” she said.

It was Corkie’s father. He looked almost like a boy in the dim light; he must have been very young when his children were born. He was very handsome. Much more so than his daughter. He took off his reading classes and she saw his eyes were wet, as if he was upset about something. He rubbed them and said, “You’re the gal from Texas, right?”

She nodded.

“How are you finding it here?”

“It’s green. The grass is nice.” It was all she could think of and then she was afraid to say anything else.

“Ah, the lawn,” he said. “Yes, thank you.” He added: “My great-grandfather spent some time in your state before it was admitted to the Union. In fact he was instrumental in that process. But then we had the Civil War, so back he came. I’ve always wanted to go and see it myself.”

“You should.”

“Yes, one of these days. It seems to be where everyone goes to make money now. I suppose I should see it.”

She was quiet.

“Well.” He nodded. “I ought to get back to work.” He put his spectacles on. “Good night.”

THE NEXT MORNING, after breakfast, Corkie whispered that she ought not talk to her father while he was working in the library.

“He’s finishing his novel,” she said. “He’s been writing it a long time and he can’t be disturbed.”

She nodded and apologized. She was trying to recall if she’d ever seen her own father crying. She hadn’t.

THE NEXT WEEKEND she took the train to see Jonas at Princeton. The ride was pleasant and she felt very grown-up, in a strange land traveling by herself. She did not think she could ever get used to how green everything was. And yet everywhere you stopped, there was a faint odor of mold, of decay, as if no matter what you did, the trees would come back, the vines would grow over, your work would be covered up and you would rot into the moist earth, no different from anyone who had come before you. It had once been like Texas, but now it was just people, endless people; there was no room for anything new.

Jonas met her in the train station and she hugged him for a long time. She was wearing her pearls and a nice dress.

“How are you doing up there?”

“Oh, fine.”

He fingered the pearls, was on the verge of commenting, then decided against it.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “It’s better that you’re here than being stuck in McCullough or Carrizo. You’re not going to learn anything down there.”

“The people are cold.”

“They can be.”

“I sat on the train with two men and neither of them even said hello to me. It was like that for a whole hour.”

“It’s different here,” he said.

Later they spent time with Jonas’s friends: Chip, Nelson, and Bundy. It was only two in the afternoon, but they had all been drinking. Chip burst out laughing when he heard Jeannie’s accent. He was soft around the middle, not exactly fat, just soft everywhere, with a deep sunburn and a confidence out of proportion to his appearance.

“Goddamn, McCulloughs. You two are from Texas. For a while we didn’t believe you — this one hides it so well.” He pointed at Jonas. Then he cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, assessing Jeannie. “Bundy, this one doesn’t appear to have a drop of the tar baby, either. We must be sitting with the only pure-blood southerners who ever lived.”

She reddened and Bundy touched her shoulder. “Don’t worry about him. We’re all so inbred we don’t know how to act when someone new comes in.”

Chip was not through with her: “What are your opinions on this war, Mizz McCullough? Should we send in the Marines or wait?”

She must have had a blank look.

“The one Hitler started? Last week?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“My God, McCullough. What the hell are they teaching you at Greenfield, anyway?”

“The blessed M-R-S,” said Nelson.

“Dump that bunch of slags and go to Porter’s.” He waved his hand. “We’ll get it arranged. You are not going to learn a goddamn thing at Greenfield.”

It had gone on like that for hours. She knew nothing the older boys hadn’t heard before, nothing they hadn’t already considered. Finally she and Jonas went for a walk around campus.

“They’re just kidding around, Jeannie.”

“I hate them,” she said. “I hate everyone I’ve met here.”

She had thought they would spend the evening together but Jonas had work to do. Next time, he said, she could stay in his room and meet more of his friends. They were good people to know — it would be nothing to get her into Barnard when the time came. But for now he was exhausted and behind in his studies. Because you have been drinking all afternoon with your friends, she thought.

She considered mentioning that she had spent three hours on the train coming to see him, and would now have to spend three hours going back to Greenfield, but she was too angry to say anything. When she got to New York it was already dark and the train to Connecticut did not leave for some time. She walked around outside the station, looking in the pawnshop windows, getting bumped by all the people walking, men staring at her in ways that would have gotten them shot or at least held for questioning in Texas. The newspapers were all screaming about the war, the Germans had taken Poland. As miserable as she’d been at Greenfield, she’d only faintly registered the war’s existence, and, even now, it seemed more important that she make her train.

She did not get back to Greenfield until just before lights-out and as she’d forgotten to eat, she had to go to bed hungry. The next morning Corkie let her know they’d announced the fall dance. She would need to invite a date, preferably several. Even Corkie, who did not care about those things, had already drawn up a list of two dozen young men, intending to write invitations to all of them. Jeannie excused herself, then went to the library and spent the day there.

It would be a disaster. Not only did she have no one to invite — the only boys she’d met here were Jonas’s friends — but the previous weekend, when the girls had gotten into Corkie’s parents’ wine and danced afterward, she had not known any of the steps. Charleston, hat dance, waltz, box step. She had not known any of it. Corkie had tried to show her, but it was pointless, utterly pointless; it would take years, years to learn these things, it would be utter humiliation. Even riding with these girls — the one thing she had nearly mastered — had been somehow degrading.

Meanwhile, the rest of them were already talking about the dances they would attend later, the big ones around Christmas; at fourteen they were now old enough. She realized that her classmates had spent their entire lives preparing for this moment; while she had been off visiting Jonas, they had spent the day shopping for dresses with their mothers. And of course they all knew dozens of eligible boys, who would all have to come several hours from other schools.

That Saturday she packed a small overnight bag, telling Corkie she was going to visit Jonas again. She took the train into New York and went looking for a bank — she did not have enough money to make the trip she wanted to make — but it turned out that banks were closed on weekends. All of them? Yes. Finally she walked into one of the pawnshops near the train station. The man inside was in his fifties, looked as if he didn’t eat much or see the sunlight, and spoke in a heavy foreign accent. She had never seen a Jew like him. She handed over her grandmother’s pearls.