Ramona Ausubel - Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

The night before, he had begun to walk towards Harvard Square where there was a hotel, but Glory had run after him. “She’s going to forgive you,” she had said. “Yours is a good marriage and it’ll survive this. But in the meantime there’s no sense in being alone.” Edgar had slept in the guest room that night while John’s snores had rattled the walls. Edgar had felt displaced, distant. He had thought about the day they had received the keys to their new house in Cambridge. How he, Fern and Cricket had sat on the polished floor of the big empty living room, the bay windows a clean view into the thick green of a summer maple. It had smelled like fresh paint. Cricket had said, “Can this be my room?” and Edgar had laughed and said, “Maybe.” They had walked through the house: the kitchen with its views of the roses in the backyard and the lawn, the long creaky stairway to the huge basement, the winding staircase up one, two, three stories, with bedrooms everywhere. The bathrooms with their claw-foot tubs and leaded windows that made the leaves outside go slightly out of focus. Cricket had said, “Do we really get to live here?” She had only known the Army base. She had not realized that she was a child of privilege, that houses like this for people like her were supposed to be perfectly normal.

Edgar had known his daughter would adapt and come to think of this as regular. He had seen that they stood at a junction and a part of him had wanted to put the house back on the market and move into an apartment, but there were his girls at the window, and everything outside had been bright, bright green. “We do really get to live here,” he had said. Fern had kissed him on the back of the neck and laughed when the short hairs had pricked her lips. What would it be like not to fight against himself? Edgar had wondered. What would it be like to say yes instead of no? He had tried, he told himself. See?

Glory had come in in the middle of the night wearing a sheer mint-green nighty and undressed Edgar without asking first. She did what she wanted with him and then lay there smoking. It felt less than half as good as it had on the island. He knew Fern deserved to be angry, but here he stood in a doorway that she herself had cracked. From the slushes of his mind had sprung a question: Where else am I supposed to go? What other choice do I have?

In the grocery store Glory chose a box of black licorice. She said, “Have you thought about my idea? I really think we should go away. We won’t be able to enjoy each other properly if we stay home. This,” she said, sweeping her arm over the foodstuffs gathering in her cart, “is a waste of a good affair.” Love was not her ambition, escape was.

She had pitched this idea in the same hushed telephone conversation as the dinner party.

“Where?” he had asked.

“Mexico. Sunshine and revolution. Alcohol at sunset. You know how to sail, don’t you? We’ll sail.” Edgar had only had to hear that word. He had thought about the possibility of a storm or the chance that he was unprepared to travel all that way. He had thought about his wife and the damage those weeks could do. He knew he would miss his children. Then he had thought of the slice Chicago and duty were about to cut across his life. He was in the last weeks of his own time. The pretty girl was fine but he was in it for the saltwater, for the wind. In the health food store, the whole big room smelling like turmeric and curry powder and tea, he said yes to Glory as if this fact — his ambition sea more than sex — would protect him against the resulting damage.

“I knew you would come around,” she said.

Glory wheeled them to the flowers, which were cheap and themed for the season. Everywhere they looked, the men and women of retail had turned things orange, brown and yellow. She chose two bouquets, opened them and tore out the carnations. She said, “You have to be kind if you want her to be here when you get back.”

* * *

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL was a tightening for Cricket and the twins. Uniforms — navy and white, pleats — were new and stiff. The boys had neckties and the girls had headbands that pressed on their skullbones. Summer’s spaciousness, the salt of it, evaporated so fast. The children stood outside school kicking dirt for five more minutes before someone shooed them in. They tried to ruin their shiny shoes. They asked who was in which class and chewed the teacher’s names like unripe fruit. Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Lumpkins, Miss Studenberger, Miss Nolan. Escape was on everyone’s minds, though Cricket did take pleasure in her new backpack filled with sharp pencils, the perfect square of an eraser, unscratched paper. Her lunchbox, which did not yet smell like old peanut butter.

Cricket walked her brothers to their classroom and helped them find their cubbies. She knelt and said, “I’m just upstairs. Be good. Eat your lunch. Be nice to each other.” Their little desks made her sorry. All summer, they had been moat-diggers, clam-gatherers, sailors, tree-climbers. Now she watched the boys tuck themselves into the chairs, look ahead at the big blackboard. They would learn to read. They would learn to add small numbers together. Reprieve was a short break in the middle of the day to blast from one end of the playground to the other, a scummy orange ball in front of them.

Cricket, like all the fourth graders, was given a social studies textbook: The Building of America: Class, Race and Society . None of the children knew what that meant. Miss Nolan, wearing plaid pants and a sweater vest, her long black hair parted in the center, said, “This is high school level but by Christmas you’ll be ready. Our first unit is on Indians.” She looked around the room. “You will learn to become Americans this year. What does that mean to you?”

Hands shot up. “Fireworks. Freedom. The best country in the world. Number one in baseball.”

“Sure,” Miss Nolan said. “Pie is also good. But have you thought about the gas crisis or the recession? Have you thought about the Black Panthers or the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War? Have you thought about the Gold Rush or the Robber Barons? Have you thought about the Navajo? Have you thought about the Conquistadors or the Front Range mountains or the Great Plains?” Cricket had not. The less studious among the children began to worry about their upcoming homework. Cricket felt her temples warm up. She wanted to know all of this.

On the big table by the window there were art supplies. Miss Nolan walked over to them like they were treasure.

“When the first white men arrived in America,” she said, “they got sick and died because of Indian germs and the Indians got sick from the white men’s germs.” Cricket looked up at her, waiting to understand. “The Indians were sometimes kind and generous, and other times they weren’t. They did something called scalping, which is when you cut the skin off someone’s head. But the white men were cruel too. They killed many Indians and stole their wives. They forced the Indians to believe in God.”

The teacher handed out feathers and clothespins. She handed out scissors and glue. She stood in front of the room, which smelled like art projects come and gone — clay and paper and paint and paste. The school floors, no matter how hard or how often they were cleaned, were always speckled with tiny flecks of cut construction paper.

“Imagine that,” Miss Nolan said. “You are foreigners in a strange land. It’s vast and beautiful and you do not ever, ever want to go home.” Cricket was quiet; she was attentive and she was somewhat afraid. These were good kids, obedient kids. They had rules at home and they followed them. These children lived in fear of having a note sent home from the principal. The teacher looked at their idle hands, the supplies untouched.