Searching for Caleb

16

Down the curved, gleaming staircase (which in her girlhood she used to descend holding onto her chest, to prevent exercising off what little she had), across the porch where her great-grandmother had often sat listing the three permissible excuses for typing a note of condolence (paralytic stroke, severed tendons, and amputation) Justine moved dimly beside her husband, wearing the suit she had worn to her mother’s funeral and clutching one frayed white glove. (She had not been able to find the other.) She entered her uncle Mark’s car; she rode through Roland Park, alighted in front of the church, and climbed the steps leaning backward slightly as if she feared what she would find inside. But inside there was only a density of carpet and shadowy pastel light from the windows, and up front an anonymous coffin. Then a cemetery as flat and well mown as a golf course, rows upon rows of glazed granite headstones including PECK Justin Montague, PECK Laura Baum, MAYHEW Caroline Peck and finally an admirably well cut rectangular ditch beside which the coffin lay like something forgotten, abandoned at the brink, while more words were said. Afterwards the family went home to receive their callers, who had been streaming in for the past two days and continued even now that it was over — elderly gentlemen, ladies in hats and gloves and veils and crocheted shawls in spite of the heat. “My,” they said to Justine, “are you that little girl of Caroline’s? But you used to be so — well, you certainly have — now, this is your husband, isn’t it? Him I recognize.”

Him they recognized. From her new distance Justine turned and looked at him, at his boyish pointy chin and his gawky way of standing, twining one leg about the other and rocking slightly with his hands in his back pockets so that his elbows jutted out to spear passers-by. The upturned corners of his mouth made him appear to be smiling mysteriously, teasingly, and perhaps he was. “Why, Duncan!” said Justine, dropping her glove. “You haven’t changed a bit!”

An old lady mumbled, embarrassed at her mistake. Plainly these two were not married and perhaps not even related, in spite of the resemblance. Then Duncan stooped for the glove and handed it formally to Justine, and Justine turned and went off alone.

Not only had Duncan remained the same but so had her aunts and uncles, solidified in their flowery dresses and summer suits, and her cluster of cousins passing trays of tea cakes as they had when they were children. Only Justine stood swaybacked, chewing the empty finger of her glove, in a distant corner of the room.

“You were that little girl who used to be so sweet,” a spindle-shanked lady told her. “And still are, I’m sure. You used to bring me little handfuls of flowers. You would never stay and talk because you were too shy.”

Justine removed the glove from her mouth and gave her a sweet, shy smile, but the lady was not deceived and moved on immediately.

When the guests were gone Duncan escaped to bed, but the rest of the family had a light supper in the kitchen, working around Sulie, who was dusting the pipes under the sink. They laid out memories of Grandfather Peck, one by one. Aunt Lucy cried a little. Aunt Sarah became irritable and informed Justine that there was no call to wear a hat in her own family’s house. “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Justine, removing it. Then she didn’t know what to do with it. She balanced it on her lap, leaving her sandwich untouched. She was feeling very tired. Really she would have liked to go off to sleep. But she stayed on, and by the time the aunts and uncles had risen to go she had her second wind and remained in the kitchen with the cousins, who discussed memories of their own. They remembered their grandfather’s expression at that picnic for which Duncan had made him a Noxzema and olive sandwich, and first they sputtered into their iced tea and then laughed outright. Justine looked around at each blond, lit-up face, remembering times when she had been a member here. When she and the girls were eleven and twelve and thirteen, what on earth had they all found so funny that it made them laugh until they squeaked?

Esther was now the supervisor of a nursery school. Alice was a librarian, while Sally, the prettier twin, had returned from her month-long marriage a little less outgoing than she used to be and now taught piano in the privacy of Great-Grandma’s house, on a modern blond upright that looked peculiar in the wine-colored parlor. Richard had a high-rise apartment downtown, and Claude lived over the garage behind Uncle Two’s and spent all his money on steel engravings that nobody liked. New little lines were pricked in all their faces and their hair was dryer and duller, their hands growing freckles; but still they were the same. Only Justine was different, and when she tried to talk to them she had the sense of swimming hard against a strong current. Frustration made her clumsy, and she spilled a glass of ice cubes into Claude’s lap but everyone said it didn’t matter a bit.

Upstairs, in her old pink-and-white bedroom, she undressed in the dark so as not to wake Duncan and lay down beside him. It was going to be one of those nights when she couldn’t sleep. She felt a familiar alertness in her legs, as if she were tightrope-walking on a rubber band. Voices swam in and out of her hearing: Duncan at twelve, explaining shotgun poker; Richard asking if he could come too; Aunt Bea naming all the wedding gifts she had received in the summer of 1930; and her grandfather calling, “Wait for me, Justine! There’s no need to rush so.” But she had rushed anyway. She had been so quick and brash, so loud, so impatient, which must explain that constant look of puzzlement he had worn in his later years; for where was the old slow, tender Justine?

“Wait for me,” she heard Meg say, and she clearly saw Meg’s five-year-old face, apple-round, rosy with heat, in the shadows of a spiral staircase in a lighthouse on the New Jersey coastline. They had stopped there on the way back from an unsuccessful job interview. (Justine had always wanted to live in a lighthouse.) Justine had climbed up and up, tumbling over her feet in her haste to see what was at the top, while Meg trudged panting behind. There were two hundred and seventy-eight steps, a sign outside had said. But when Justine reached the top, she found the catwalk enclosed in clear plastic, which clouded the view. The only room was a small dark alcove in which a uniformed park guard sat tipping his chair, reading a paperback Mickey Spillane. So she didn’t want to live there after all. She descended more slowly, still breathless from her upward run, and on the next to the last flight she found Meg sobbing on a windowsill while Duncan tried to comfort her. “Oh, honey!” Justine cried. “I forgot all about you!” But had that taught her anything? She had only speeded up with every year, gathering momentum. Racing toward some undefined future and letting the past roll up behind her, swooping Meg along under one arm but neglecting to listen to her or to ask if she wanted this trip at all. So Meg grew up alone, self-reared, and left home alone for a sad stunted life she had not really wanted; and Grandfather Peck became ever more lost and bewildered stumbling through a series of paper shanties. And Justine awoke one day to wonder how it had happened: what she had mislaid was Justine herself.

But Duncan, who had changed her whole life and taken all her past away from her, slept on as cool as ever, and on the crown of his head was the same little sprig of a cowlick he had had when he was four.

In the morning everyone suggested they stay a while, but Duncan said he was anxious to get going. He barely tolerated the lengthy discussion on traffic conditions, alternate routes, and whether or not to take a Thermos. He acted jittery and exasperated during the loading of the car trunk, while the uncles were padding more of Meg’s wedding presents with the flowered sheets that Aunt Lucy had insisted they accept. (“I can’t forget that bare mattress in your little home,” she had said, shuddering. “Nobody just washes their linens and puts them right back on. You give them a rest in a cupboard first, which increases their life span by sixty-six percent.”) Then there were the ritual cold drinks out on the porch, with Duncan finishing first and nervously rattling his ice cubes while waiting for Justine. Justine took extra long, to make up for him. She kept gazing around her at her family. “If only you could have got in touch with Meg!” Aunt Sarah told her.

“We’ll call and break the news as soon as she gets back from the beach.”

“She’ll feel terrible, missing the funeral.”

There was a quavering in the air, thin sad thoughts hovering among them. Uncle Two cleared his throat sharply. “Well!” he said. “I never asked how the health food business was going.”

“Antiques,” Duncan said.

“Antiques, then.”

“It’s okay.” He looked off across the lawn and tapped his glass. “Justine, we have to get started if we want to beat the heat.”

“Oh. All right,” she said. But she would rather have stayed. It gave her a tearing feeling to have to rise and kiss each soft, kind face in turn.

The family descended the steps with elaborate care, proving their reluctance to say goodbye — except for Duncan, of course, who danced down the walk ahead of them tossing and catching a spangle of car keys. “Duncan, boy,” said Uncle Mark, “if your grandfather left any unpaid bills, now, medical expenses and so on—”

“I’ll let you know.”

“And I suppose I’d better write those detective fellows, tell them to close their case.” He opened the car door for Justine. “Durned people have been spending money like water anyway,” he told her. “I’m glad to be shed of them.”

Justine threw Duncan a glance, but he wouldn’t meet it. He had made her promise to keep Caleb’s secret forever, unless he changed his mind and wrote. So all she could say to her uncle was, “I’ll tell Eli myself, if you like.”

“His latest expenditures are downright bizarre,” her uncle said. “Why would he want to bribe a florist?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

She climbed into the car, and Duncan started the motor. “Finally,” he muttered. Then they were off, zooming down the road scattering a cloud of maple-seed propellers while Justine leaned out the window to wave. Aunt Lucy shouted something. “What?” Justine called. Aunt Lucy shouted again.

“Duncan, stop,” said Justine. “Your mother’s trying to tell us something.”

Duncan slammed on the brakes. The car whined into reverse. “What?” Justine called.

“I said, Don’t forget to rest your linens!”

Duncan clapped a hand to his head, but Justine only nodded and called, “Thank you, Aunt Lucy,” and blew her a kiss, and then more kisses for all the others, until Duncan jerked the car into forward again and bore her away.