I had been brought back unconsulted and against my wishes to the house my father had been born in, to be saved from a life of poverty and provincialism, bare feet, suet puddings, unsanitary school slates, perhaps even from the inverted r’s of my mother’s family. With this surprising extra set of grandparents, until a few weeks ago no more than names, a new life was about to begin. It was a day that seemed to include months in it, or even years, a whole unknown past I was made to feel I should have known about, and a strange, unpredictable future.
* * *
The house was gloomy, there was no denying it, and everyone seemed nervous and unsettled. There was something ominous, threatening, lowering in the air. My father had been the oldest of eight children. All of them were dead, except for three — Aunt Marian, who was married and lived in Providence; Aunt Jenny, unmarried and the next-to-oldest after my father; and Uncle Neddy, the youngest. The latter two and my grandparents made up the family, though Aunt Jenny and Uncle Neddy were away a good deal of the nine months I lived there.
The old white house had long ago been a farmhouse out in the country. The city had crept out and past it; now there were houses all around and a trolley line went past the front lawn with its white picket fence. There was no doubt but what the neighborhood, compared to the old days, was deteriorating. The Catholics had been trying to buy the house for years; they wanted to build a church there. All the time I was there the subject was under debate — to sell or not to sell. However, there were still fifteen acres of land, an old apple orchard behind the house, and tall chestnut trees up on the hill. The life my grandparents still led was partly country, partly city. There were hens and two cows, and a large barn also up on the hill. They had their own cottage cheese and sometimes butter. There was a large vegetable garden, the greater part of which was planted in celery and asparagus. There were a Bartlett pear tree, a crab-apple tree, a dark green “summer house” with old robins’ nests in it, and two tremendous horse-chestnut trees and under them two wonderful swings with broad seats and thick ropes. The trees had been cared for and cemented and propped up, very old and spreading. We could easily climb into many of them and hang on by bars rather than branches. They were preserved at all costs, like Grandpa’s teeth.
There were also a weeping birch, a large bed of cannas, lilacs along one fence, lilies of the valley under them, and violets. Back of the house the lawn was graded in a long green wave, but a spring kept coming up there and in the next season the grading was soiled again at great expense. The house, Grandma said, was “a hundred and fifty years old.” There were awful rats in the attic and they could be heard fighting and scuttling at night. The cats were ugly, orange and white; they lived in the barn and ran away from me — not like my black Nanny in Nova Scotia.
Later that same day I met Aunt Jenny for the first time, although she kept insisting she had known me before as a baby. She didn’t seem particularly glad to see me. She was very tall, as so many people in the “States” seemed to be. She suggested that I walk up to the barn with her to get her car. As she turned to go and I saw her edgewise, I was amazed how tall and flat, like a paper doll, she looked. I tagged along slightly behind her. She had on a long jumper-like blue jersey garment, around whose middle was a wonderful chatelaine belt, all little chains, boxes, and medals that clinked as she moved her long legs. I wanted to examine it or ask her about it, but didn’t dare. We walked out through the conservatory and, farther up the driveway, up a small hill. The barn was on two levels: on the ground floor there were three cows; on the upper floor, which opened on the other side onto the hillside, there was a large garage. On its big swinging doors were nailed rows and rows of old license plates because all the family had been early motoring enthusiasts. In fact, Uncle Neddy had driven in one of the first auto races from Boston to New York.
In the barn stood the limousine we had recently arrived in, and a blue, rather high, lady-like car, Aunt Jenny’s Buick. She opened the screw top on the tank at the back and measured the gasoline with a yardstick. This was all fascinating, but what had caught my eye was a carriage sitting at the back of the garage, under the noses of the two cars. “Yes,” said Aunt Jenny, “that’s your grandma’s carriage. It hasn’t been used for many years now.” It was dark green. I climbed inside by the two little steps. There were black lamps on either side; inside was dark brown leather, musty-smelling. It made the most beautiful little house imaginable. I wanted to stay in it forever, but Aunt Jenny had finished her checking up and invited me to ride down as far as the house with her, so I had to go.
She had also been an early driver, but always a very bad one. Uncle Neddy later pointed out the exact spot where “Jenny tipped Papa over.” It was when she had her first car, a Ford, and had offered to show Grandpa how she could drive, and within two minutes of his getting into it, she had rounded the canna bed too fast and tipped over. They had landed inelegantly among the red and yellow cannas, squashing them flat. Grandpa had never driven with her again.
In the household there was a cook, a maid named Agnes, a gardener named Ed, and his son. A laundress came in once a week. Except for Ronald the chauffeur, they were all Swedish and spoke Swedish among themselves. I became very fond of Agnes, perhaps because Grandma fought with her constantly. When Agnes would polish the beautiful mahogany dining-room table, Grandma kept after her: “With the grain, Agnes, with the grain.” Ed, the gardener, in blue denim overalls and jacket, also fought regularly with Grandma, I don’t know what about — once, I think, about the correct way of banking celery. Anyway, every so often he would lay down his rake or hoe or stop milking a cow, and announce that he was through. His young son would immediately take over where Ed had left off. This had been going on for thirty years. The next morning at seven o’clock, Ed would be back on the job again. He had been the driver for Grandma’s horse-drawn carriage, but had refused flatly to learn to drive a car. One day the cook left dramatically, by the front door, out into a snowstorm. For four days Grandma cooked for us, very badly, and Grandpa had dinner at the hotel. Then another cook arrived, a very nice one this time, Swedish, fat, and cheerful. She and my dear Agnes hit it off immediately. Even dour Ed joined in the kitchen coffee parties. She made wonderful hard yellow coffee cakes, braided and frosted.
There was a dog, a Boston bull terrier nominally belonging to Aunt Jenny, and oddly named Beppo. At first I was afraid of him, but he immediately adopted me, perhaps as being on the same terms in the house as himself, and we became very attached. He was a clever dog; he wore a wide collar with brass studs, which was taken off every night before he went to bed. Every morning at eight o’clock he would come to my door with the collar in his mouth, and bang it against the door, meaning for us to get up and dressed and start the day together. Like most Boston terriers he had a delicate stomach; he vomited frequently. He jumped nervously at imaginary dangers, and barked another high hysterical bark. His hyperthyroid eyes glistened, and begged for sympathy and understanding. When he was “bad,” he was punished by being put in a large closet off the sewing room and left there, out of things, for half an hour. Once when I was playing with him, he disappeared and would not answer my calls. Finally he was found, seated gloomily by himself in the closet, facing the wall. He was punishing himself. We later found a smallish puddle of vomit in the conservatory. No one had ever before punished him for his attacks of gastritis, naturally; it was all his own idea, his peculiar Bostonian sense of guilt.