Peter said, “I think the house is its own reward.”
The stone wall in the garden was reddened by the afternoon sun. The kitchen windows gleamed like water. Roses bloomed with a soft fire — there would be one or two still glowing as late as Thanksgiving, Peter remembered — and zinnias and asters flourished along the path to the door. It was a house to come home to. That the young Wrens were inside watching television seemed not hopeless, just sad. Meg’s modesty and Jack’s busyness perhaps did not perfectly serve their offspring.
“Children tend toward the mean,” Peter suggested.
“The mean and nasty,” Jack said.
“The mean between Jack and me?” Meg said, doubtfully.
“The mean of their own generation,” said Peter, smiling.
“Is that unavoidable?” she said, not smiling.
He didn’t like to drive, didn’t own a car, but if he lived here he could drive the kids to school and back, and Meg could work at home. She was a valued programmer; her company would allow her that privilege. These days any arrangement was possible. And eventually his aunt’s legacy, unexhausted, would go to the children.
IN THE MORNINGS the young of Congdon Street went off to school, the bigger ones shepherding the smaller. Even the smallest had pilgrim backpacks. Some mothers walked along behind, not interfering, just watchful. Peter wondered if the women took turns as monitors. The daytime danger was from traffic. Peter, too, kept an eye on the children from his window. Sometimes, out early to buy the paper, he found himself in their midst; a little crowd of small Asians and Central Americans would divide briefly for his sake and then reunite behind him. He felt like a maypole. The children wore every shade of corduroy. How were they faring in the Land of Opportunity? he wondered. The manager of the Cambodian building, N. Gordon, was being brought to court because of his failure to maintain the building properly. The failure was not his fault, his lawyer had countered. The place was overcrowded; these people kept subletting to one another.
Peter went out every day. He now recognized some of the slow-moving white-haired women, and smiled at them. He used the main library downtown. He read a book about Dickens and Sabbatarians and another about Dickens and Jews. Sometimes he met a former colleague or student for lunch. He went to afternoon movies and sat in the back row with his long legs on the seat in front of him. He went to friends’ houses for dinner, or fixed himself healthful meals at home.
THE WRENS gave an annual afternoon party on the Sunday after the Game. Meg did the work herself, with some assistance from the family and from Peter. She baked cheddar cheese puffs. She twisted salami into flutes and arranged crudités around a bowl of yogurt. Peter remembered his aunt’s cook’s zealously constructed trifles, each layer less edible than the one before. Meg’s canapés were at least tasty.
That morning Peter stood at the kitchen counter, spreading fish paste onto little squares of pumpernickel and admiring the view out the window. A stand of spruces made him think of Christmas. Beside him, Meg sliced cucumbers. They were both wearing jeans; both had a birch-tree litheness. He might have been her older brother.
The crowd at the party was, as always, varied — local gentry, old friends, coworkers, a pair of ancient female cousins of Jack’s. Also there was a group of parents from the children’s school, including two notables, both Jews: a psychologist who was also a TV commentator, and Geronimus Barron, Peter’s former neighbor. Their wives were not particularly attractive, just assured. A generation ago, Peter reflected, Jewish wives had been well dressed and cultivated and full of leisure. Now they were all practicing medicine. You couldn’t keep up with people like that.
He was popular at this party. People remembered him from year to year. A friend of Meg’s whose husband was leaving her had once wept on his shoulder in the pantry. That couple seemed to have reconciled, he noticed. The Wrens’ dentist fancied himself a devotee of Dickens, although Peter was under the impression that he had read only Oliver Twist. The cousins made much of him. “We’d like to talk to you more often than once in a blue moon.”
“Would be lovely,” he said.
“We’ll have to get Peggy to arrange it.” Peggy?
“Happy families are not alike,” someone was saying.
“More to be pitied than censored. She snoops to conquer.” Who was that punster? Oh, the TV psychologist … And somehow Geronimus Barron was at his side. How long had he been standing there?
“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Loy.”
“Peter,” Peter corrected. “I didn’t hear you come up, Geronimus. You were as quiet as a tiger.”
“Is that what a corporate takeover feels like?” asked one of the cousins.
“I don’t know,” Geronimus said. He had a habit of answering as precisely as possible whatever question had been posed. This gave him an obedient air. “I don’t want to take you over, Mr. Loy — Peter — but I wish you were part of my staff. Margaret says that you’re the last of the lucid thinkers.”
Margaret? Geronimus, hands in pockets, smiled a courteous refusal to the teenager passing a tray of wine. The cousins, as if to make amends for so abstemious a guest, took two glasses each. How old was this quiet tycoon? Peter wondered. Forty? You could put him naked and empty-handed on a desert island, and in five years he’d be chief minister to the native king. Maimonides had risen to court physician in record time … “What else does Margaret say?”
“Peggy never talks much,” said one cousin.
“Still waters run deep,” said the other.
“She and I serve together on the scholarship committee,” Geronimus said, and the talk turned to minority recruitment. Peter had just received the latest bulletin from the boarding school he himself had attended. The school had recently invited two South Bronx boys to study there, and two unhappier faces had never before been immortalized on high-quality vellum. Entrapment, Peter called it. Geronimus listened.
THE NEXT MORNING Meg said that she would drop the children at school before leaving Peter at Harvard Square. Peter was pleased to be part of this family ritual. A curved line of automobiles humped forward slowly. Only one car at a time was allowed to disburden itself. The students getting out of the cars had the ragamuffin look of the rich. Meg wore a ski sweater and did not look rich, just wholesome. “Think of Jack’s long drive every day,” she was saying as they left the school grounds. “It’s no wonder he can’t finish his doctor-ate — he spends all his time on the highway. Sometimes I think we should splurge on a chauffeur. It would give Jack two more hours a day to work on his thesis. He could sit in the backseat with a laptop. Is that mad?”
“On the contrary. It’s innovative. It’s the sort of solution Geronimus Barron would think up.”
“Is it? Jack won’t hear of it.”
“Give him time.” He glanced at her worried profile. “Jack is flexible,” he said. But that was a lie. Jack was rigid. He, Peter, was the flexible one. His was a flexibility achieved late in life, after unhappiness and disappointment, and he was proud of it. Postponed achievements were perhaps the best. Maimonides had married for the first time in late middle age, and had even sired a son … Meg turned toward him with a warm, even a marital, smile. “I wish I could take you all the way to your apartment, but I have an early conference.”
“I have to go to Widener,” he lied again.