Chapter 2 #4
Alice’s mother smiled, her cheeks flushing. She smoothed down her hair. She liked any kind of visitor but especially the right kind, and the kitchen was tidy.
‘We’re delighted to see you, Mr Kynaston. Come in, come in,’ she said.
‘Wilder, please. I insist. Dear Bob was like a brother to me. We’re practically family.’
‘Wilder, please come in.’ Mr Kynaston disappeared, then entered through the little front door into the kitchen, as Betsy hurriedly moved the apple peelings into a bucket under the sink and tidied, her birdlike gaze darting around to see what was out of place.
‘I hope I haven’t interrupted anything,’ he said.
‘You’ve come at the perfect time. We’ve been collecting the apples, that’s all.’
‘Of course.’ He clapped his hands. ‘You must be exhausted. How ’bout I fix you some supper instead and you sit down?’
‘No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said her mother, but Wilder was taking off his jacket and laying it across the back of a dining chair.
‘It’s the least I can do. I’ve meant so many times to come and make sure you’re both all right.
I was walking past from the train and I thought I’d look in, and here you both are.
He’d be so proud of you, seeing you two like this.
’ He looked around rather helplessly, as if not sure where to start, so Betsy took out a couple of pans and started to peel potatoes.
Alice thought that he had such friendly eyes, Mr Kynaston, kind and understanding, as if he saw through you – not in a bad way but to the part of you that was good, and special.
‘Now, Betsy, put down that peeler. I’m going to make supper and I won’t take no for an answer,’ he went on hurriedly, wrapping a white frilled apron that she handed him around his waist. ‘Every now and then I’m sure it’s pleasant to have someone else cook for you, isn’t that right, Alice?
Will you help me, while your mom sits still and has a little glass of brandy?
’ He finished tying the apron around his waist and fished a hipflask from his pocket.
He fetched a tiny glass from the dresser, poured some amber liquid into it and handed it to Alice’s mother, all of it done in a matter of seconds. ‘There. Drink that.’
Wilder Kynaston was, like his little sister, excellent company, and Alice hadn’t realized how much she and her mother needed another person in the house, a break from each other and their respective griefs.
He did not, in the end, do much of the cooking, but he quickly fried the pork loin in butter and the rest of the brandy from his hipflask, and it was delicious.
He could make a good salad dressing too, explaining everything so clearly that sometimes she forgot this was Wilder Kynaston, winner of the National Book Award for Where Munsee Lived and the Pulitzer for his short stories, a hero of modern American literature.
Most of all, he took up space, and filled the dark corners with his warm voice, and it was very welcome.
He made her mother laugh, her initial frostiness melting little by little as they set the table, telling the story of how the plates they were using had come from his great-aunt, of the scrapes Teddy had gotten into when she was a little girl in this gatehouse when they had no one living here, of the time he’d climbed every apple tree in the orchard and knocked off so many of the apples that his father had beaten him with a switch.
Coming back down from the bathroom, Alice paused on the stairs, looking down into the kitchen-diner.
The lingering scents of butter and wood and apples hung in the air.
She could hear the snatches of conversation.
It had been a long time, a couple of years now, since she’d stood on the stairs listening to her parents talk, laugh, discuss the day over supper.
Her father had usually been outside looking at the trees or working on them or going through papers for Mr Kynaston; or he’d been ill, locked away, out of reach.
Settling herself back next to him, Alice gave him a shy smile as he handed a glass of wine to her mother.
‘Isn’t this pleasant,’ her mother said. ‘Company again.’
‘Pleasant is the word,’ Wilder said, raising his glass to Alice, and then to Betsy.
‘I hope you don’t mind if we drink a toast to Bob.
I feel it’s appropriate, at this hour, gathering in the apples, the three of us around this table.
It’s what he would have wanted, I’m sure.
We laugh at death, and we run from it, and we embrace it.
The contradictions are the jagged edges of our little life.
Come, away! ’ he said softly. ‘ This case of that huge spirit now is cold./ Ah, women, women! Come: we have no friend / But resolution, and the briefest end. ’
He was silent for a moment, staring into the red liquid.
‘That huge spirit,’ he said quietly.
‘That’s lovely,’ said Betsy politely, sipping at her wine.
The last apples her father had grown had been gathered in.
They had gone from blossom to the tight green globes they were in June at the time of his death; now they were in the apple store.
After they were sold there would be nothing left behind that he had grown, or made.
Alice put down her fork, blinking hard into the distance, the pork a dry lump of meat in her gullet.
Her mother said politely, ‘How is the new novel? Dare we ask?’
‘Oh,’ he said with a weary smile. ‘Terrible.’
Alice’s mother cleared her throat. ‘I remember Bob saying,’ she began with a smile, ‘that Garson Quayle was an awfully funny book. He said not enough people concentrated on your humour. I hope you don’t mind me saying.’
Wilder laughed and pushed his hair out of his eyes. ‘Not at all, Betsy. I trusted Bob’s opinion almost more than anyone’s, so thank you for that kindness.’
Her mother nodded, and shrugged, raising her glass again. My God , Alice thought. Mom is … flirting with Mr Kynaston. She thinks he’s flirting with her. ‘The only joke relating to this book so far is that my editor thinks he’s getting it by Christmas.’
‘What’s it about, Mr Kynaston?’ said Alice.
‘Well, Alice, it’s – about a young girl.
She reminds me of Teddy, in fact. A Daisy Buchanan type.
You’d like her. And she sees the hypocrisy of the changing world.
And how screwed we all are. It’s … how shall I put it …
’ He banged his hand on the table, quite gently.
‘It’s not coming together. I left here because there were …
distractions. But those distractions were nothing compared with what’s going on in the city.
’ He dabbed his napkin daintily to his mouth and sat back in the creaking wooden chair.
‘This is wonderful. I didn’t have one home-cooked meal in New York, you know.
The closest I came was drinks with my agent at his apartment.
My agent has two daughters. This past summer they both dropped out of school.
One of them ran away to Monterey – hitched her way there across the country, like something out of a story – and she never came back.
The other just goes to the beach or lies in bed all day.
Has a boyfriend who never washes his hair. ’ He grimaced.
Alice’s mother clicked her tongue. ‘My, my. The world sure is an interesting place right now. Bob always says change comes too slowly, then it comes too fast.’ Her eyes were bright. ‘Too fast.’
‘I’d agree with that,’ said Wilder, mouthing the words himself. ‘I don’t recognize the city any more. Yes, sir.’
Betsy looked appalled. ‘The hippies and the drugs and the draft nonsense there in California – it’s not going to come to New York, is it?’
‘It already has, my dear. Beatniks. Hippies. Flower power. Dropouts everywhere. Clubs full of marijuana smoke. Poetry, people with guitars, girls handing out flowers on the street. Signs about the draft, using the coarsest language. Peyote, Betsy. And the coloureds, the Negroes – never seen so many of them, you know, they’re agitating, all of them, this …
’ He scratched his head. ‘I should be making notes while I’m there, but I don’t – ha!
Someone will write a novel about it, but it won’t be me.
Here’s a funny thing.’ He leaned forward.
‘It’s a revolution, and no one’s noticed.
The streets are alive. Young people high and driving round in cars listening to all sorts of outlandish music.
They’re swarming here from all over the country. And no one’s noticed.’
‘Oh, my word,’ said Betsy, shaking her head.
Alice said, ‘But, Mom, you and Dad, you marched against McCarthy, the Red Scare, the bomb. Isn’t this the same thing?’
Her mother got up and started collecting the plates with a clattering sound.
‘Your father believed in all of that. I just want people to get along.’ She swallowed, and Alice felt a new, and alarming, contempt for her, a sour taste in the back of her mouth.
‘This is about good manners and supporting our troops and respect and, well, I just don’t like it. It feels dangerous.’
‘Amen,’ said Wilder.
Alice said hotly, ‘But the boys posted out there, they say –’
‘We don’t want to talk about it, Allie! Now fetch some coffee for Mr – for Wilder.’ Alice got up and put some water on the range for the coffee pot. Betsy busied herself, clearing away, tidying. She smiled awkwardly at Wilder. There was a heavy, dull silence for several moments, then he said:
‘And you, Miss Alice, our representative sample of the decline of civilization. May I ask how is school going?’
‘It’s good, thank you.’ Alice folded her napkin and put it on the table. She was not hungry any more.
‘What about your SATs? In my day it was all terribly simple, but I’ve heard they make it devilish tricky now.’
‘They’re okay.’
‘Elizabeth Finkelstein told me you were scoring 1400 in practice tests. What colleges are you thinking about?’