Alison Lurie: Foreign Affairs

With great difficulty, Vinnie remembers her manners and focuses again on Barbie. “That’s awful,” she says. “An awful shock for you.” She frowns, recognizing that her remark is as much of a cliché as The Barbarian’s.

“Uh, well.” Barbie chews and swallows. “I mean, naturally it was, but in a way we were sorta prepared for it. Dad had been alerted, after all.”

“Alerted?”

“Oh, yeh. He’d had a couple of what d’you call them, episodes, already. The doctor in Tulsa told him he oughta take it real easy: he was s’posed to give up alcohol and cigarettes and avoid exertion as much as possible. Even then there was always some risk. I mean, he could’ve gone anytime. Maybe he didn’t mention that to you, I guess.” She blinks slowly.

“No, he didn’t mention it,” Vinnie says. Images of Chuck drinking and smoking appear in her mind, followed by one of him engaged in a particular kind of exertion.

“He shouldn’t have climbed all those stairs in that dumb old town hall,” Barbie says. “But that was how Dad was, y’know. When he got some project in his head, he had to finish it.

“Like I remember once when we were kids, I said I wished we had a treehouse,” she goes on. “And Dad got interested, and started drawing plans, and the next Saturday he was up in our big catalpa tree all day building it. Gary and me were helping him, and he made Consuelo-she was our cook then-bring out sandwiches for all of us so we wouldn’t have to stop working for lunch. By the time we got done it was nearly dark, and we had a picnic up there, we had… pink… lemonade… Excuse me.” She snuffles back tears.

“That’s all right.” Vinnie passes Barbie another napkin, since she seems to have lost her own.

“Thanks… It’s just…” She blows her nose loudly on the hand-hemmed linen. “I’m okay now. I haven’t been crying much. Just at first when Mom got the cable, and on the plane. And then with the cremains.”

“Cremains?” Vinnie repeats, baffled.

“Yeh. Ashes, I guess you could call them. See, Mom decided to have Dad cremated over here. Well, like she said, there wasn’t anything else to do, really. Professor Gilson arranged it: he was wonderful. He didn’t know Dad had passed till Mom phoned him, but then he got in touch with the hospital, and him and his students took care of everything. They found me a place to stay and met me at the train; they were just great, honestly. They really thought a lot of Dad. I’m so stupid, I didn’t know what to do about anything, but they helped me, like, finalize everything: pay the bills, and sort out Dad’s stuff, decide what to send home, and what to give away.”

“That’s good,” Vinnie says, trying to prevent herself from imagining the process.

“They took care of everything, really. Except for the cremains. That was kinda weird and awful, y’know. Professor Gilson had them saved for me. I thought they’d be in a big heavy silver urn or something, but it wasn’t anything like that.” Barbie snuffles, stops.

“Nothing like that,” Vinnie prompts.

“Naw. They were in a, I don’t know, a kinda waxed cardboard carton like you get with store-packed ice cream, about that size. Inside it was a plastic bag full of this kinda pale gritty gray stuff. I couldn’t believe that was all that was left of Dad, just a coupla pounds of what looked like health-food soy mix.” Barbie snuffles again, swallows.

“Then I didn’t know what to do with it,” she continues. “I didn’t know if it was legal to take cremains on a plane. I mean, suppose there was a customs inspection? I couldn’t see putting that carton in the suitcase with my clothes anyhow, y’know?” She begins to tear up again. “Sorry. I’m so stupid.”

Barbie’s continual assertion of her lack of intelligence has begun to annoy Vinnie. Stop telling me how stupid you are, she wants to say. You graduated from the University of Oklahoma, you can’t be all that stupid.

“That’s all right,” she says instead. “I think you’ve done very well, considering everything.” Almost against her will, she reclassifies The Barbarian as an innocent peasant-the victim rather than the accomplice of that Visigoth realtor her mother, who is no doubt responsible for Barbie’s low opinion of her own intelligence.

“Anyhow, when I phoned home next, Mom said not to bother,” Barbie resumes presently. “She said what I should do was scatter the cremains somewhere. So Professor Gilson drove me out in the country to a place he said Dad had liked. It was nothing special. Just this little field, on the side of a hill, that one of Dad’s ancestors owned once. It wasn’t a bad place really: kinda quiet. And Professor Gilson said hopefully it’ll never be built over; it’s too out-of-the way, and the land is too steep.

“So I climbed over the fence by these wooden steps they have here, what did he call them?”

“A stile?” Vinnie suggests.

“Yeh. That’s right. Anyhow, I got over it. And I walked up the field a ways, and sorta dumped the cremains out into the long grass and flowers. I guess I shoulda scattered them around more, but I was crying too much, and I couldn’t put my hand into the bag. It seemed kinda rude, y’know?”

“Yes, I see what you mean.”

“Poor old Dad.” His daughter sighs and reaches for the last watercress sandwich. “Mom was right. It was pathetic really, his chasing around the country looking for ancestors.”

“1 don’t see that,” Vinnie says a little snappishly. “Why shouldn’t your father have been interested in his genealogy? A great many people are.”

“Sure, I know. But they’ve mostly got someone worthwhile in their family tree. Like Mom: her side of the family is real distinguished. She’s a D.A.R., and she’s descended from a whole lot of judges and generals. Hiram Fudd, the senator, y’know, he was her great-uncle.”

“Really,” Vinnie remarks. In her mind a catalpa tree appears, with monkeys dressed as judges and generals and senators sitting in the treehouse and on the nearby branches.

“I guess Dad thought if he went back far enough he might find somebody he could be proud of too. Professor Gilson told me he was looking for months, all over the country; but all he ever came up with was a lot of farm workers and a blacksmith and this old hermit… At least I guess that’s what he was doing down there, besides helping Professor Gilson out sometimes. Mom wondered if maybe he’d got involved with… uh, you know, a woman.” Barbie blinks at Vinnie, but inquiringly rather than suspiciously. It is clear that in her mind Professor Miner is not “a woman” and probably never has been one. “I mean, do you think there coulda been anything like that?”

“I have no idea,” Vinnie says frostily, thanking heaven for the existence of British Telecom. Because of it, there will be no incriminating and distressing letters from her for Barbie or her mother to find later among Chuck’s effects. And she too has nothing of Chuck’s, not even a note-only a few of his winter clothes.

“I sorta don’t believe it. Dad wasn’t like that. He was a very loyal person, y’know.” Barbie blinks.

“Mm.” Vinnie glances involuntarily in the direction of the hall closet, where she seems to see Chuck’s sheepskin-lined winter coat glowing with a guilty fluorescence. “More tea?” She holds up the pot, aware that tea is all she can offer now: Barbie, in spite or perhaps because of her grief, has eaten all the watercress sandwiches and walnut cake.

Chuck’s daughter shakes her head, causing her long sun-bleached hair to flop about. “No, thanks very much. I guess I oughta be going.” She gets up clumsily.

“Well, thanks for everything, Professor Miner,” she says, moving into the hall. “It was real nice to meet you. Oh, hey. I almost forgot to give you Dad’s picture. Boy, am I stupid. Here.”