The Inn at Lake Devine Part 16

"Whenever you're ready. It doesn't need a thing." She looked too pleased with herself, so I said, "I suppose you think all is forgiven."

She walked over to my bookcase and aligned the edges of my Golden Books Encyclopedia. "Did you get him?" she asked.

"I left a message."

"With whom?"

"With his mother."

"Oy."

I said, "I can handle Ingrid."

"You think she'll tell him?"

"If I don't hear from him, I'll try again."

My mother turned around, crimped a handful of her hair, and let it spring back. "Natalie?"

I waited.

"Why not just leave things the way they are?"

"Which is how?"

It was the speech she came to deliver: "You're doing fine. Lots of exciting things happening. If you hadn't heard from him, you'd be looking forward to the restaurant opening, and you'd meet someone-everyone does-and you'd forget about this boy."

I said, "You don't know how I feel."

She took my plate and moved it to my night table. "Then tell me."

I said, "You lost that privilege."

"For how long?"

I said, "Indefinitely. Please turn out the overhead as you leave."

"It's not even eight o'clock."

"Then I'll go out."

"You just came back. What if he calls when you're out?"

I said he wouldn't.

"Where will you be?"

I shrugged. "Maybe I'll drive by the house in the Highlands."

"You won't see anything in the dark. I'll take you tomorrow."

"What about the landlord?"

"We don't need him. I have the keys."

"But he'd have to approve me, right?"

"Phfff. My daughter?"

I was starting to say, "Your estranged daughter," when the phone rang in the hall. My father answered on the second ring, brusquely I thought. His voice softened-Pammy.

"I'm in here!" my mother called.

Ignoring her, he answered in a code that told me Pammy had been briefed and was now checking to see if I'd returned alive.

"Does Pammy know Kris tried to call me?" I asked.

My mother began her defense of Pammy's awkward position, but I interrupted with a heretofore unexpressed accusation. "It's all her fault anyway," I snapped.

"Her fault?"

My father was still on the phone. I heard him ask if Danny's plow was up and running.

Precisely: his plow, his s...o...b..ower, his lawn mower, his rototiller, his high school diploma and no degree. Pammy had used up our family's mixed-marriage chit, even our liberal-dating chit. It was up to me to bring home the perfect Jewish son-in-law. I said, "You and Daddy had one church wedding. How could you hold your head up in Newton Centre if both daughters strayed?"

Instead of disputing my thesis, she spat out, "We couldn't have done a thing to stop that marriage!"

My father called, all pleasantness, "Natalie! Your sister wants to talk to you."

"I'm busy."

"She'll talk to her tomorrow," my mother said, and to me, "She's going to offer you her sleep sofa for the next few days, but I think after you see the apartment you'll want that option."

I said, "You're being suspiciously helpful."

My mother a.s.sumed an expression I'd seen her flash Pammy at the office, a girlfriends' pact implying, This is just between us; your father thinks I'm in here singing a different tune. "I never had a few years on my own," she whispered, "not even the two years in college. When I was your age I already had two babies. He doesn't think of that. He thinks I'm in here telling you that we know best. I'm going to say that you wouldn't budge; you're moving out and you wouldn't listen to me. Okay?"

"Just like that?"

She looked perplexed, "Just like what?"

"Is this your way of apologizing-taking my side against Daddy?"

She replied, no longer whispering, "I may be helping you find an apartment, but I'm with your father on the other matter."

"There is no other matter," I said. "You and Daddy took care of that."

She came closer, hooked my hair behind my ears, one side at a time. "Look. If you were saying, 'I'm madly in love with him,' that would be one thing, but you're not. You're waiting to see what it's going to turn into. What I'm saying is, If you can nip it in the bud, do it. Before you get in too deep. Even if you feel lousy in the short run, in the long run it's for the better. On all sides."

I said, "You're way ahead of yourself."

"Why even be friends with a boy from that family? You spent one week at that place, less than a week, you come home, you never mention him, and now you're pining for him?"

"I wanted to know he called. I'm not pining."

"And what? All of a sudden we're the enemy, because of a boy you're not pining for?"

"It's the principle of the thing, the cover-up. You lied to me and you lied to Kris-"

"I know who I'm dealing with! I know what kind of people they are and how they think. You don't." She raised her voice. "Not everyone grows up in Newton. My sisters and I got called a lot of names, by all kinds of kids-kids from nice families, kids whose fathers worked for my father."

I said, "What happened to you in Fitchburg in the nineteen thirties is not a good enough reason to lie about who calls me."

She was shaking her head, her eyes closed, but I persisted. "If you disapprove of someone just because he's Protestant, Lutheran, whatever he is, then you're prejudiced-"

"I'm prejudiced?" she yelled. "They don't want Jews at their hotel but they're going to welcome you with open arms? Because this isn't my problem; this isn't me worrying about another church wedding. This is me hoping that at least one of my daughters marries into a family who's thrilled to have her."

I tried to stop her, but she was ranting: "Wait until he gets angry at you and calls you a name. What do you think will be the first word that comes out of his mouth in anger? Kike? Dirty Jew?" She dodged me and strode over to my bureau, to my silver-framed photograph of my teenage great-aunt. "What do you think she'd say?" my mother asked fiercely, shaking the frame in my face. "Whose side do you think she'd be taking?"

"Put her down," I ordered.

She did, without reb.u.t.tal, as if she knew she'd gone too far.

I repositioned Nesha's frame in its hallowed spot. Knowing my mother was watching, chastened, I took the first step. I slid my trunk out from under my bed and unlatched it. It was stuffed with the house supply of gaudy afghans, crocheted by my Bubbe Marx in the colors she favored, without regard to my mother's decor. I dumped them out, then took one back, a child-size blanket in several shades of pink I had for a long time considered beautiful.

"What are you doing?" my mother asked.

"Packing."

"For where?"

"Israel," I said. "Miami Beach."

"Natalie-"

I said, "I want to hear you admit you were wrong."

She didn't move, and didn't speak until she said, "I found you an apartment, didn't I?"

"That's right. And a job. Several jobs. Not to mention inventing Pammy's entire career in real estate."

She liked being reminded of that, of her powers and her salesmans.h.i.+p, and I knew if I turned around I'd see a pinched, pleased smile. I also knew that tomorrow she would show me the apartment, buy me lunch, and later-with my father's truck transporting my few possessions and with all forgiven-they would together move me the half-mile to my new home.

SEVENTEEN.

Ingrid didn't know-or wasn't saying-that her son's first stop was Newton, Ma.s.sachusetts, and from there an even more tribal place. He found Irving Circle from a street atlas, rang our doorbell, saw signs of life in the Loftus house, rang its doorbell, and asked Sh.e.l.ley, who had cotton batting separating her toes for a pedicure, where Natalie Marx might be at this time of day.

"I'll call her mother," said Sh.e.l.ley. "You wait on the porch."

Reached at Audrey Marx Properties, my mother asked, "Who wants to know?"

Sh.e.l.ley put the phone down and returned to announce in its full goyishe glory, "Kristofer Berry."

"Send him over," my mother instructed.

Sh.e.l.ley offered to lead this Kristofer to Mrs. Marx's office if he waited a few minutes so she could put on something decent, but he declined.

Not ten minutes later he walked into Audrey Marx Properties wearing a down vest over a red chamois s.h.i.+rt. My mother shook his hand and asked, "Aren't you freezing like that?"

Kris told her no; he was from Vermont. She gestured toward the a.s.sociate churning at her elbow: "My daughter Pamela."

"I was looking for your daughter Natalie," he said.

"Natalie," my mother announced grandly, "is no longer helping us out because she's accepted a start-up position in her own field, not far from Valle's."

Pammy pointed out that Kris wouldn't know what that meant.

"One-point-six miles from here. A nifty, nifty location. We've got our fingers crossed."

Kris asked if I was there now.

My mother glanced up at her Better Homes and Gardens wall clock. "My," she said. "What time did you leave Vermont to get here so early?"

"Eight, eight-thirty. It's not that far." He tried again: Might he call me at work?

My mother explained I was home, gearing up for my not quite up-and-running marvelous new opportunity.

"She wasn't there," he said.

"She's at her place," Pammy volunteered.

Kris said he wouldn't know; hadn't seen or talked to me since December.

"It just happened. Just," my mother said. "She moved in last night."

He asked if he could make a call.

"No phone," she said.

Kris looked over my mother's head to the battery of phones. One rang on cue.