The Son

Chapter Seventeen. Jeannie McCullough

The Colonel died in 1936. Jonas left for Princeton the next year, returning only twice and fighting noisily with her father both times. He was no longer mentioned in the house. Her grandmother, too, had disappeared, but she had not died, only moved back to Dallas to be with her other family.

Her father and brothers took their supper in the pasture or ate it cold after working late. The three siblings would come home from school; her brothers would change quickly and ride out to meet their father; Jeannie would continue her studies. Every Saturday a tutor would drive in from San Antonio and assign her extra work. Her grandmother had insisted and her father agreed to anything that kept her occupied. One day she would rebel; she would do only half of what was assigned. She already knew what she would skip: it was Latin, it was definitely Latin, and the tutor would stare down his long sweaty nose while she triumphantly proclaimed she had not translated a word of Suetonius.

When her schoolwork was done, the silence in the house would begin to weigh on her, and she would put on her boots and clomp around just to hear the noise they made, then eat supper alone on the gallery. She would listen to the president’s radio address and sometimes, if she were especially annoyed, she would leave it on so that when her father came home, he would have to go out to the porch and turn it off. It gave her satisfaction, knowing how angry this made him.

By that time she’d given up working in the pastures. She knew she might be good at it if she continued to try, but the work was hot and long and boring and besides, no one wanted her there. Even the Colonel, who had founded the ranch, had not thrown a loop in the last thirty years of his life — he saw no point to cattle except the tax breaks. Oil was what one ought to be interested in, and now, whenever her great-uncle Phineas came to visit — always with a geologist in tow — she would sit in the backseat while Phineas and the geologist rode up front, talking about shale and sand and electric well logging, which got the geologist very excited. He did not mind that Jeannie was only thirteen; he was happy to ramble on about everything he knew. She could see it pleased Phineas that she listened. The oil business was booming; there were parts of South Texas where you didn’t need headlights to drive at night, there was so much gas being flared, the fire lighting the sky for miles around.

Her grandmother returned every so often, smelling of ancient perfume and peppermint drops, her stern face pointy above a black dress, it was always black, as if she were in mourning for something no one else understood. Nothing could be to her satisfaction: the maids were scolded, her father was scolded, her brothers were scolded; she went down to the bunkhouse and ordered the hands to wash their sheets. Jeannie would be prescribed a long bath to open her pores, which, according to her grandmother, were growing larger each month.

After she’d soaked her face, conditioned her hair, dried herself off, and dressed again, she would sit in the library on the couch while her grandmother cleaned under each fingernail, filing off the rough edges, pushing back the cuticles and rubbing cold cream into her skin. We will make a lady of you yet, she said, though Jeannie had not thrown a rope in over a year and the calluses were long gone from her hands. Every third visit she would bring her entire wardrobe to the library so that her grandmother might assess the fit of her dresses—that one makes you look like a servant girl on the prowl. The offending articles would be packed into a box that her grandmother took to Dallas for tailoring.

Her grandmother always had news from the city, which Jeannie found immensely boring, except for the stories of good girls being ruined, which had begun to feature prominently in her grandmother’s lectures. Still, she no longer fell asleep during these talks; there was a comfort in being told to stay out of the sun—your freckles are bad enough—to watch what she ate—you have your mother’s hips—to wash her hair once a day and to never wear pants. Then her grandmother would take up Jeannie’s hands, as if something might have changed in the ten minutes since she last touched them, but no, there were her stubby inelegant fingers, which no amount of piano lessons could ever fix. Her grandmother’s own fingers were knobby and arthritic and resembled the claws of an animal, but they had once been the hands of a lady, no matter how many years she had wasted on this ranch.

A MONTH OR so after she finished the eighth grade, her grandmother, after giving the usual news from Dallas, informed Jeannie that she had been accepted to the Greenfield boarding school in Connecticut. Jeannie had not known she’d applied. You leave in six weeks, her grandmother said. Tomorrow we’ll take the train to San Antonio and get you some proper clothes.

Her protests, which went on the rest of the summer, meant nothing. Clint and Paul considered it pointless to resist; her father was pleased that there might be a better place for her, going so far as to invoke Jonas as a reason she might be happy up north.

I’m not Jonas, she protested, but everyone knew this was only partially true. Her grandmother gave her pearls and four sets of kid gloves, but this did nothing to assuage her anger; she did not even look at her father when he put her on the train north. She did look at the pearls for a long time that evening, after closing the curtains to her sleeping compartment. They were worth twenty thousand dollars, her grandmother had said; she would not have any granddaughter of hers looking common.

JONAS WAS SUPPOSED to meet her at Penn Station but was an hour late. In which time she stumbled in on a man, his pants down and his rear end very white, pushing up against a woman in a red bustle in the far stall of the ladies’ toilet. She rushed out but after five minutes realized she had no choice and went back into the same restroom, choosing the stall farthest from the man and his friend. Miraculously, her luggage was not stolen. I hate it here, was the first thing she said to Jonas, who got her luggage properly stowed and then took her to lunch. They walked among the tall buildings. Don’t look up so much, he said. You don’t want to be a tourist.

But she couldn’t help it. Pictures didn’t capture the size of the buildings, which leaned ominously over the streets, ready to fall and crush her at any moment, if a taxicab didn’t get her first. The din of all the trucks and shouting people left her ears ringing and she had a rushing in her heart that didn’t go away until she was well north of the city, on the train to Greenfield, back among trees and pastures. There were a few stray cattle and sheep grazing in the distance, Holsteins and Jerseys, at least I know about that, she thought, it would be something to talk about with her new classmates.

THERE WERE NUMEROUS things that appealed to her about Greenfield. The old stone buildings with their steeply pitched roofs and tall ivy walls, the sunlight like a gauze across the landscape — what passed for summer was like winter in Texas — the dense forests and rolling fields at the edge of the campus. She had not known there were so many shades of green, she had not known there was so much rain and moisture on earth. The campus was only forty years old, though it might have easily been four hundred, the way the vines had taken over the buildings and trees brushed the windows in the breeze. In the few moments she had to herself each day, it was hard not to feel like someone important, as if she were only steps away from being swept up by some prince, or prime minister’s son, who, she now knew, would be English instead of Spanish, though other times she wondered if she did not want to be swept up at all, if perhaps she would be a prime minister herself — it was not inconceivable, times were changing. She could see herself behind a great wooden desk, writing letters to her loyal citizenry.

She did not have much time alone. The days were rigidly ordered: wake-up bell followed by breakfast and chapel, followed by classes, lunch, classes, athletics, dinner, and study hall. Lights out at eleven P.M., a monitor stalking the halls to enforce it.

Her roommate, a small Jewish girl named Esther, cried herself to sleep every night and at the end of the first week, when Jeannie returned from dinner, Esther and all her things were gone. Her father had owned factories in Poland, but he had lost everything to the Germans; the tuition check had not cleared. Jeannie was moved into a nicer room. Her new roommate was a girl named Corkie, who was shy but pleasant, and, unlike Esther, seemed comfortable at their new school. She knew everyone, though Jeannie sensed that she did not have many friends. Corkie had shoulders as thick as a cedar chopper’s, and she was tall, and she went about everything with a kind of resignation: to her long face that would never be pretty, to the red bumps above her lip, to her split and frazzled hair. From the way she dressed — in drab, frumpy clothes — and the inattention she gave her appearance, Jeannie thought she must come from a very poor family, and so she went out of her way to be nice, bringing Corkie desserts she’d smuggled from the dining hall, as she had once carried the buckets of clabber to her father’s vaqueros.

That Monday, when asked at lunch who her new roommate was, she told them Corkie Halloran.

“Oh, you mean the Mighty Sappho?”

That was Topsy Babcock. She was small and pretty with pale blond hair and skin to match, a smile that turned on and off like a traffic switch. Sometimes the smile meant approval, other times disapproval — she was not a person you wanted to disappoint. The others at the table laughed at Corkie Halloran, and Jeannie laughed with them, though she did not know why.

“She was at Spence but they say she was spending a little too much time with one particular girl, if you know what I mean.”

“They should have sent her to St. Paul’s — she would have fit in perfectly!”

Everyone thought this was hilarious. Jeannie just nodded.

THE NEXT WEEKEND Corkie invited several people to her parents’ house, which was only forty minutes from school. To Jeannie’s surprise, many of the people who had made fun of her at lunch went along: Topsy Babcock, Natalie Martin, Kiki Fell, and Bootsie Elliot. Jeannie expected some old jalopy, or perhaps a truck, but instead they were picked up by a uniformed driver in a seven-seat Packard.

Kiki said: “You’re the one who got stuck with that Jewish girl, aren’t you?” She was the dark-haired version of Topsy, though her hair was cut just below her ears, almost as short as a boy’s, and it was said she’d had a surgery to make her nose smaller. Since arriving at Greenfield Jeannie had spent more and more time in front of the mirror at bedtime, inspecting herself. Her nose had straightened considerably but her eyes had no character, they were the color of fog or rain. Her chin was pointy, her forehead high, and the scar across her eyebrow — which she had always been proud of because it was like the scars her brothers had — made her look like a man. It was a deep scar, you could not miss it.

“McCullough…” Topsy was saying. “That’s Jewish, isn’t it?”

The other girls tittered, except Corkie, who looked out the window.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m kidding. Of course it’s not.”

Jeannie was quiet the rest of the drive. There were very few houses. The roads were small and winding and yet they were paved. There were tall hedgerows, red barns, the ubiquitous stone walls. Everything was in shadow, the sun came weakly through the trees and the sky felt small and closed in. There was a chill in the air, though it was only September.

Topsy and Kiki and Bootsie had gone to primary school together; the others seemed to know each other in the same ways, she guessed, that she knew the children of the Midkiffs and Reynoldses. The second silent girl in the car, Natalie, had long chestnut hair and a large chest that she slouched to conceal. She made a point of looking out the window, not making eye contact with Jeannie, though, like everyone else, she smiled at whatever Topsy said.

It was a relief when the car turned into a stone gate and made its way up a long driveway with big trees on both sides. There were acres of grass, she had never seen so much green healthy grass in her life; she tried to calculate the number of head you could support here (an acre per head? It seemed possible) but knew better than to say this out loud.

At the top of the hill the house appeared. She began to feel embarrassed. It was not any larger than the Colonel’s house, but it was more grand, with arches and pillars and towers, dark granite, marble statuary, a look of weathering as if it had been standing since the time of kings.

“What does your father do?”

The girls all looked at her. Corkie gave her a look as well and she knew she’d made some sort of mistake. But it was too late. Corkie said: “He goes to his firm in New York and he plays racquets at the club and he rides and shoots a lot. And he works on his novel.”

“What kind of firm is it?”

“You know…” Corkie shrugged.

Bootsie Clark said: “Poppy’s father rides and shoots as well, I imagine.” Poppy was what the others had decided to call Jeannie. “He’s a cowboy. Isn’t that right?”

“Cowboys are hired men.”

“So what does your father call himself?”

“A cattleman.” She was about to add, but that’s not where our money comes from, when the other girls cut in:

“Does he go on those epic rides, then? Up to Kansas?”

“Those ended in the eighteen hundreds.”

“That’s too bad,” said Bootsie. “They looked very exciting.”

She was not sure if it was worse to respond or to let it drop. “They didn’t really drive them like in the pictures. They had to walk them or they’d lose all their weight.”

“How does Corkie’s house look?” said Natalie, changing the subject. “I guess yours must be bigger.”

“Not really.”

“Of course it is. We hear everything is bigger in Texas.”

She shrugged. “It’s not as nice as this, though. It’s not nearly as green.”

“How many acres do you have?”

It was a rude question — the last thing you would ask someone in Texas — but she knew she had to answer. “Three hundred ninety-six sections.”

“That’s not so much,” said Topsy.

“She said sections, not acres.”

“How much is a section?”

“They don’t even call them acres. An acre is too small.”

“How much is a section,” Kiki asked, for the second time.

“Six hundred forty acres.”

For some reason this caused all the girls, with the exception of Corkie, to break into hysterical laughter. Corkie was watching the driver, waiting for him to open the door.

“Are you going to be a cattlewoman as well?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What are you going to be, then?”

“She’s going to be someone’s wife,” said Corkie. “Just like the rest of us.”

THAT AFTERNOON, THEY went riding. Below the main house was a stable with twenty or so horses, an immense corral that they called an arena, and a large pasture. It was all set in a manicured wood but she did not ask where the property ended. There were men in the shadows, cutting branches and loading them into a cart.

She was wearing jodhpurs and knee-high boots borrowed from Corkie’s younger sister. She felt ridiculous, but everyone else was dressed the same way. She presumed they were going for a long ride, four or five hours, and she wished she had eaten more at lunch.

“I imagine you must have horses,” said Natalie.

“Yes,” she said. “Do you?”

“There isn’t really enough room for them in Tuxedo Park.” She shrugged.

“There’s room for Jews, though,” said Topsy.

“Topsy and Natalie were neighbors with the girl you roomed with.”

“Her father bought a house there ten years ago,” said Topsy, “but they wouldn’t admit him to the club, so his family couldn’t so much as dip a finger in the lake. If they ever heard them splashing around down there, someone would call the police.”

“Tell her about the wedding.”

“They had a wedding last summer, and all the kids in Tuxedo Park went and turned the signs around, so none of the guests could find their house. Completely ruined the ceremony.” She smiled. “The problem is when people think that just because they have money…”

Jeannie nodded. The horses were brought out. They were sorrels, smaller chested and longer legged than cow horses.

“I had them put my sister’s saddle on this one,” said Corkie. She handed the reins over. “You’re about her height.” The saddle was simple, without a pommel or high cantle, and when Jeannie climbed up, the stirrups felt short and awkward, as if they had been set for a child.

The horse was tall and long legged, near sixteen hands; it looked like a fast horse but it did not look nearly as fast as it really was. It was so much more powerful than a cow horse that it felt closer to an automobile. With a cow horse (quarter horse, these girls called it) there was a negotiation, there were times you let the animal have its way, but this horse was both fast and anxious to please; giving it its head just confused it, like letting go of the steering wheel of a car. It seemed — like everything else in these girls’ lives — to have been created just to serve them.

She found she barely needed the reins; the horse responded if she even tensed her legs; he was so responsive, in fact, that he was difficult to ride at first. She wondered if she was a sloppier rider than she thought. She was uncomfortable in the saddle and when they hit a gallop she had a hard time maintaining her seat. They were going fast down a groomed path and there were a series of hurdles ahead; Corkie went over the first one and Jeannie got a bad feeling but followed anyway. There was nothing to worry about. The horse cleared the gate without any input from her at all.

After an hour the rest of the girls were tired and decided to return to the stables. She put her heels in and brushed through a small gap between Topsy and Bootsie, hoping to spook them, then passed Corkie as well. The horse was enjoying itself, so she did a hot lap of the corral (arena, she corrected herself), which was nearly a half mile in circumference. It was a good horse; it did not want to stop and she was overcome with sadness, for the life it lived in this corral and these few miles of manicured trail, ridden by these girls who spent longer getting dressed than they did in the saddle. A pointless existence.

By the time she’d cooled the animal down and walked back to the stable, the other girls were waiting and their horses were already being curried by the groom and his children.

Bootsie was saying: “She does ride like a cowboy, doesn’t she?”

“Does it feel strange, not having a handle to hold?”

“You don’t touch the saddle horn,” said Jeannie. She knew she’d looked awkward at first, but she thought she’d recovered well. It was plain she was a better rider than any of them, perhaps even Corkie. It was equally plain that none of them would admit it. Or they would find some way to turn it into an insult. She had an impulse to get back on the horse, gallop into the woods, and begin her long journey back to Texas. Certainly no harder than anything the Colonel had done. Her father would pay for the horse.

“Then why is it there?” said Bootsie, still talking about the saddle horn.

“It’s for holding your tools. Tying your rope to and such.”

“Well, you looked uncomfortable. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

“I’m a better rider than all of you,” she said. She felt her face get hot; she had been pressed into saying something she wasn’t sure of. “Except Corkie,” she added.

“Still,” said Bootsie. “You looked strange.”

“That was nothing compared to what we do at home.”

“Because it’s bigger down there, I’m sure.”

“Because we’re roping big animals and trying not to get gored by their horns.”

“I believe she said we’d be gored,” said Topsy.

“She meant bored. To actual death.”

“I’m going inside,” said Corkie. She was standing against the stall door, looking tired. “Dinner will be ready soon.”

THAT NIGHT, SHE couldn’t sleep, and after a good deal of wandering down dark hallways, she found her way to the kitchen for a glass of milk. She had just gone into the icebox when she heard someone behind her.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” said a voice. It was one of the maids.

“I’m sorry.”

The woman’s face softened. “You just ask, sweetie. We’ll bring you whatever you need.”

After drinking her milk she decided to go outside. It was dark, but there was a light on at the stable and she made her way down the hill in the wet grass — wet, everything here was wet — she was not sure what she had in mind. To talk to her horse, sneak him out for a night ride, to ride away and never come back. As she approached the stable she saw the light was coming from an upper window, in what she had presumed was the hayloft. There was a person moving behind a thin curtain, the faint sound of music. She was close enough to smell the stalls. The person passed behind the curtain again and she realized it was the groom. He lived with his family above the horses. She watched as he sat down in an armchair and appeared to close his eyes, listening quietly to the radio. She could not believe it. Even the lowest hands, who did nothing but stretch fence all day, slept in the bunkhouse. They did not live with animals.

She felt very tired and turned to go back to the house, her legs cold and damp from the dew. It was only September, it was just the beginning. Things will get better, she told herself. She thought of the Colonel being held by the Indians; if he had survived that, she could survive this, but even that did not feel true, it was just words, it was a different time.

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.

“Are they real?”

“Of course,” she said. He looked past her, to the street outside, to see if anyone was waiting for her. Then he put the pearls in his mouth as if he planned to eat them. Instead he rubbed each one against a front tooth. Afterward, he looked them over with a magnifier.

“Did a policeman send you in here?”

“No,” she said.

“I am interested in why you brought these here.”

“I saw the window.” She shrugged.

“They’re yours to sell.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her, but he didn’t say anything.

“What sort of hat is that?” she asked, trying to be polite.

He said something that sounded like hichpah. “I’m Jewish. Unfortunately a bad one, working on the Sabbath. Don’t worry, I won’t eat you. But I can’t buy your pearls, either.”

“I don’t have any money. I went to the banks but they’re closed and I have to get home to my family.”

“I’m sorry.”

They stood looking at each other and finally he told her: “I’ll go wake up my brother. But he is just going to tell you the same thing.”

Another man, much more nicely dressed, came in from the back. He looked over the pearls, and ran them over the edge of his teeth, then looked at them with another loupe, then under a very bright light, and then under what appeared to be a microscope.

“Obviously these are worth several thousand dollars…”

“They are worth twenty,” she said.

“They are worth eight,” he said. “On a good day, to the perfect buyer.”

“That would be fine.”

He smiled. “I can’t buy them from you. You’re too young. I’m sorry.”

She felt her eyes get wet. She wanted to take the pearls back and run out into the street, but instead she made herself stand there so they could see that she was crying.

“You’re too young,” he repeated.

“I don’t care. I’m not leaving.”

The two of them looked at each other and began to discuss things in a foreign language. Finally the better-dressed one said: “We can give you five hundred dollars. I’d like to offer more, but I can’t.”

Through her tears she said: “I will take a thousand.”

THAT NIGHT SHE was on a train to Baltimore. Four days later, when her grandmother picked her up in San Antonio, she told her the pearls had been stolen.

IT WAS NOT a story she had told many people and even Hank had never grasped its significance. It had been the turning point of her life, in some sense its most important moment; she had seen the world and retreated, while Jonas, for all his other failings, had not. There were times she imagined how she might have turned out had she stayed in the North. Like Jonas, she knew, settled and comfortable, she would have been someone’s wife. And that was not who she had wanted to be.

And yet Jonas had four children who adored him, a dozen grandchildren. Her houses, all three of them, were empty. Pointless monuments. Her life’s work would pass to a grandson she barely knew — who would likely crumble under its weight. It is not fair, she thought. She wanted to weep.

She looked around her. She was certain now. There was a smell in the room, it was gas.