Part 6 (1/2)

The Morriseys bought their house in County Clare in the early sixties, before the crush of others- Germans mostly- had considered Irish property. It had been a bishop's residence, a bishop of the Church of Ireland, a Protestant, but it had fallen into decay. Repairs had to be done piecemeal. The Morriseys were both editors at a scholarly press, and they had three children who needed to be educated; it was twenty years before the house was really comfortable for guests.

The house looked out over a valley whose expanse could only be understood as therapeutic. So it was natural, given the enormous number of bedrooms and the green prospect, like a finger on the bruised or wounded heart, that the Morriseys' friends who were in trouble, or getting over trouble, ended up in the house. Sometimes these visits were more indefinite than Helen would have liked. But she and Richard must have known, buying such a house, that this outcome was inevitable. And it soon began to seem inevitable that friends from three continents- North America, Australia, where their son had lived, and Europe, where they had numerous connections- were always showing up, particularly now that the Morriseys had retired and were spending May to October of every year at Bishop's House.

Lavinia Willis ran into Rachel, Helen and Richard's daughter, on the Seventy-second Street subway platform. Lavinia was crying, or rather she was sitting on a bench trying not to cry, but tears kept appearing under the lenses of her sungla.s.ses. She was crying because she'd just broken up a fifteen-year-old love affair, and although she hadn't seen Rachel in three years, Rachel was the perfect person to run into if you were crying behind your sungla.s.ses. You'd be able to believe she hadn't noticed since it was perfectly possible that she hadn't. Rachel was an oboist and she often seemed not to have too much truck with the ordinary world.

She and Lavinia had been roommates at Berkeley during the troubled sixties, but had both avoided politics. Not that they were reactionary or opposed to what the demonstrations stood for. In Lavinia's case, it was that she had a horror of anything that she might understand as performance. In Rachel's case, it was simply that her devotion to her instrument, a mixture of pa.s.sion and ambition, cut her off from quite a lot.

Lavinia's parents had divorced and remarried, both unsuccessfully, and had divorced and remarried again. When Lavinia was at Berkeley, they were on their third partners. This made the decision of where to go on holidays a nightmare; even Rachel could see this. For all her musi-cianly abstraction, she had inherited something of her mother's thin skin for people in distress. She invited Lavinia to come home with her for Christmas of their freshman year.

Lavinia slept on a cot in the living room of the Morriseys' lightless, book-encrusted railroad apartment on the corner of 119th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. But she only did it once; in her soph.o.m.ore year she left Berkeley to get married. Everyone understood why she'd done it, or at least they understood that it had something to do with the extreme disorder of her parents' lives. Those who thought the marriage was a good thing were happy that Lavinia would have a comfortable and stable home, for clearly Bradford Willis was the essence of stability. Those who thought Lavinia was rus.h.i.+ng into something feared she had inherited her parents' heedlessness, a shaky understanding of marriage learned at her parents' joined or separated knees.

But it surprised everyone when, two years into the marriage, when Lavinia was only twenty-one and not finished with her degree at N.Y.U., she became pregnant. Before that, her professors hadn't known quite what to do with her. She was studying history, focusing on the Dutch renaissance; a period she liked because of its subtlety and attention to detail. They could see she was an outstanding student but, since she was married, they were reluctant to suggest graduate school. So it was something of a relief to them when she got pregnant; they no longer had to consider her.

Brad was in a management program at Chase Manhattan, and his parents were happy to help them with their rent. They lived on Eighty-first Street between Lexington and Third, but moved three blocks north a year and a half later when, surprising everyone again, Lavinia became pregnant a second time.

In those years, Helen Morrisey was more help to Lavinia than she would have guessed. She'd drop by once a month with a pot of jam and a book for Lavinia to read, something Lavinia in her fatigue had to work hard to concentrate on. But the mental effort rea.s.sured her, and she was strengthened by Helen's belief that she was still capable of abstract thought.

Helen would come on a Friday morning- she worked a four-day week- and talk to Lavinia about politics. She was a draft counselor and encouraged Lavinia to get involved but Lavinia said she was in an awkward position generationally; she'd feel uneasy advising men not much younger than herself. She was sure they'd see her as an East Side matron with two children, and it would make her feel finished, done-up. Helen absolutely understood. She left Lavinia the address of congressmen and senators to write to, and Lavinia did, regularly, following Helen's instructions, changing the text of her letters slightly each time in case that might mean something.

She loved Helen because Helen had a way of asking you for things that were a bit difficult for you, but not impossible. You felt enlarged doing the thing she asked you for, and never hopeless. She would do things for you, but she always made you believe they were things she wanted to do, and if she found them too onerous, she'd stop doing them. She made you feel that her life was full but not overcrowded. She and Richard always seemed to have room for people, partly because they worked as a tag team. More than Richard, Helen would suddenly need to be alone, and would wander off sometimes when someone was in the middle of a sentence, leaving Richard to say, to the bewildered speaker, ”Yes, yes, I know exactly what you mean.” They seemed to swim through people, lifting their heads occasionally to offer a meal, a blanket, a magazine. If you were in trouble, they conveyed their belief that your situation was only temporary. They knew you had it in you to overcome whatever was, at that moment, in your way.

They managed to convey that to their own children because the three of them prospered quietly, unspectacularly. Rachel moved back to New York where she taught at the Manhattan School of Music and played in various chamber orchestras. Neal was working in ecological waste management in Melbourne. Clara was the only one who had made money. She and her girlfriend ran a catering business in San Francisco that had, for some reason they didn't understand, become fas.h.i.+onable. When Helen talked about her children she said she felt they all worked too hard. Only Neal had children, two sets, by his two marriages (his first wife had died in a train wreck), but they were in Australia. So Helen had room, in her grandmotherly imagination, for Lavinia's boys. She liked boys increasingly as she aged and grew more boyishly valorous herself, more romantic about the untrammeled, the ramshackle, the hand-to-mouth.

When the boys were ten and eleven, Lavinia went to Teachers College at Columbia for a master's. She got a job teaching history at the Watson School, the best girls' school in New York. She was considered a thrilling teacher, demanding and imperious, although everyone understood this was a mask thrown up by shyness, and that her heart rejoiced and bled at the triumphs and failures of her girls. They adored her; they fell in love with her. She grew, with middle age, into a surprising voluptuousness: her field hockey player's body somehow suddenly understood itself. Men looked at her, as she left her thirties, in the dangerous way they'd looked at her mother, a way that, before this time, she'd tried to forestall.

But as she approached forty, it began to seem ridiculous to forestall it any longer. She had a series of enjoyable but otherwise pointless affairs. One day she was in the back of a cab, changing under her coat from a silk blouse to a cotton s.h.i.+rt. She'd left the house in the cotton, to keep Brad from suspecting, and had changed into the silk in the cab on the way to the hotel. Now she had to change back, and wipe the perfume from her neck with a Handi-Wipe. She caught a glimpse of herself in the driver's mirror and felt grotesque. She was only thirty-eight; she'd been married eighteen years, she'd done all right with her marriage. The apartment was elegant, they had a nice house for the weekends in Dutchess County. But here she was, changing her blouse in a cab. Her youthfulness seemed like a gift and a challenge it would be not only foolish but ungrateful to ignore. She knew Brad would be hurt, but she imagined it would take him about a year to remarry. He was shocked, at first, mainly by his failure to foresee the breakup. He was more hurt than she knew, but she was right that, within a year and a half, he'd married again, a Swiss woman who sometimes wore little hats to dinner parties, and who ruled his social calendar with an iron hand.

For several years, again to everyone's surprise, Lavinia didn't settle down. Then she met Joe Walsh, who was so clearly the wrong type that everyone knew it couldn't last, not long anyway.

But it went on for fifteen years. He was a ”player” in the Koch administration, n.o.body was exactly sure what he did, only that it was something that had something to do with City Hall. When Koch lost, he kept doing whatever it was he did for d.i.n.kins, which was unusual, people thought, and must mean that he really knew what he was doing, whatever that was. As all Lavinia's friends began drinking less in the late eighties, Joe didn't. For a while, people thought it was just that he was drinking as he always had and they noticed it more because they'd stopped. But then they had to admit to themselves- they wondered if Lavinia had admitted it- that Joe was, if not an alcoholic, then a problem drinker. He also kept smoking when everyone else had quit, and even took up cigars. One night, after a dinner at the Morriseys' on 119th Street, he earned Richard's enmity forever by putting his cigar out in the water of a gla.s.s bowl Helen had filled with nasturtiums. Richard had grown used to the transgressions of his friends, his children, and his children's friends, but he adored his wife as if they were new lovers, and seeing her face when the cigar sizzled in the nasturtium water, he knew that she felt violated, and this he could not forgive.

It was soon after that night that Lavinia decided she'd had enough of Joe. Fifteen years of feverish arguments followed by feverish lovemaking, sour-mouthed morning accusations, resolutions, and recriminations seemed suddenly to settle in her spine like the aftermath of a debilitating fever. She realized that this feeling of bruised exhaustion had become so habitual that she hadn't noticed it. But she noticed it now. And so the next time Joe did something mortifying- he insulted one of their guests on the new color of her hair, asking her who, for G.o.d's sake, she thought she was kidding- Lavinia simply said, ”I've had enough.” It was her apartment they were living in. She gave him a month to find a place to live.

Of course, she would have to go somewhere while he was still in the apartment, and she didn't have time to make plans. But plans had to be made. That was why she was crying when she ran into Rachel on the subway platform. ”My parents would love to have you, I know they would,” Rachel said. ”I'll phone them tonight. You're still at the same number?”

Lavinia said yes she was, that was what was ghastly about it. She was sleeping in her son's room, in the bottom bunk of his childhood bed.

The next morning, Helen phoned as if she knew exactly the right moment to call; it was eleven in the morning but Joe had just left for work. She said that of course Lavinia must come to them, only she'd have to get herself to Bishop's House from Shannon. It was only forty-five minutes, but anyway, Helen said, she'd be happier with her own car, she'd want to see the countryside and not be dependent on the Morriseys to shepherd her.

Lavinia left two days after she spoke to Helen. She slept five hours of the six-hour flight, so she hadn't a lot of time for speculating about what her stay at Bishop's House would be like. She knew it would leave her feeling quiet and without malice- ”all pa.s.sion spent” was the phrase that kept going through her head. She reminded herself that Helen and Richard were eighty and eighty-two, and was prepared to do a lot of the cooking.

The drive from Shannon was as easy as Helen had said it would be. Lavinia had never been to Ireland before, and kept trying to resist making cliched remarks to herself about the quality of the greenness. But she couldn't help it; it was so purely green, so without blue or yellow, or purple even, that she wanted it in her mouth, which felt scalded from recriminations, or against her eyelids, which had been abraded by hot tears.

She'd brought a dozen bagels and two pounds of hazelnut coffee, which she knew Helen especially liked. They'd be pleased by the gift, its cheapness, its knowledge of their habits. The coffee smell seeped through the s.h.i.+ny fabric of her suitcase and made her anxious for arrival, anxious to feel at home.

The front of Bishop's House was white stucco; it was surrounded by old trees, elms and chestnuts, at once domestic and venerable. The kind, Lavinia thought, you just don't get in America. There were two cars parked in front of the house, a small white Ford and a black convertible sports car. It was a 1965 Karmann Ghia, Lavinia knew, because Brad's parents had bought them one as a wedding present. It was in perfect condition and Lavinia wondered if restoring old cars was a hobby Richard had taken up. It seemed unlikely.

How wonderful they looked, Lavinia thought, both of them opening their arms to embrace her. They were so American, the best of America, forthright and reserved and generous. They became more themselves as they grew older, softer and more tolerant. Tears of love came to her eyes and she buried them in the wool of Richard's shoulder.

”I'll take you to your room,” Helen said. The huge black front door opened to a hallway, tiled black and white. Almost directly behind the door was a wide mahogany staircase with a red stair carpet that had faded in places from the sun. Lavinia's room was the second door from the staircase; she knew from Rachel that Bishop's House had six bedrooms.

”You look done in,” Helen said. ”You probably want a sleep, but I'd resist it. Try to stay awake till nine or so, get yourself on Irish time. I'll make coffee and we'll have a walk.”

”Look what I've brought you,” Lavinia said, flouris.h.i.+ng her Zabar's bags.

”Hazelnut,” said Helen. ”You're a perfect angel, as always. I'm afraid I'm not, neither perfect nor an angel. I'm afraid I'm a bit of an old fool, I've allowed something stupid to happen.”

Lavinia's heart sank; she was afraid Helen was going to tell her that she was ill, or that Richard was, and that she'd have to leave because one of them was going to the hospital. She couldn't bear the thought; she could have taken the illness or death of one of her own parents more lightly than Helen's or Richard's. It was absolutely essential to the well-being of the world that they be in it.

Helen sat down on the bed and patted it so that Lavinia would sit beside her.

”Do you remember our friend Nigel Henderson?”

”I'm afraid I don't,” Lavinia said.

”You must have met him one time or another. He and his wife Liz lived next door to us for three years. He was on lend-lease to Columbia back in the seventies. They're English. Perhaps you were too busy with the children.”

”I'm not young enough for you to be erasing whole decades,” Lavinia said.

”Nonsense, you're a baby. It's just that you're getting over a love affair. It makes everyone feel ancient,” Helen said, making Lavinia wonder, for the first time, if she'd been unfaithful to Richard.

”Poor old Nigel,” Helen said. ”He's sort of a mess. Liz left him for a woman, and he stopped taking an interest in teaching. He shacked up with one of his students and took early retirement. They were going to live in Bali or something but it never came off. She took off instead. Anyway, here he is, no job, no girlfriend, and I'm afraid he's just been told he has terminal cancer.”

”How terrible,” Lavinia said. ”How old is he?”

”Fifty-six.”

”My age,” Lavinia said.

”So you see when he phoned two days ago, really sounding desperate, asking if he could come over on the car ferry, we didn't feel we could say no.”

”Of course not,” Lavinia said.

”He's always been a bit pathetic, one of those overgrown boys, but this is really dreadful.”

”Dreadful,” said Lavinia.

”And dreadful for you. You come here to be petted and recover your spirits and we turn you into an angel of mercy.”

”Maybe it'll be good for me,” Lavinia said. ”Put my own trouble in perspective.”

”And there's always the Irish countryside. Nothing can spoil that.”

The kitchen was in the bas.e.m.e.nt and was dark, but Helen had made it cheerful with flowering plants and brightly colored pottery. Richard was at the stone sink, filling an electric kettle.

”Angelic Lavinia brought us some hazelnut coffee,” Helen said.

”Good G.o.d,” a voice said from the other darker end of the kitchen. ”You Americans can never leave well enough alone.”

”This is Nigel,” Helen said. ”We make him go to that dark corner if he has to smoke.”