“How can you say such a thing?”
“Do you think a one of them would recognize me?”
No. Not a one of them. Deep down, she knew it, and he and she would stare at each other in absolute agreement even while she continued to protest.
Sometimes she shut herself in her room and pulled out Caleb’s old photo, which she had taken from her grandfather’s pocket after he died. She studied it as if it could be read, not merely looked at. The gleam of Caleb’s Panama, the set of his shoulders, the perfect crispness of his tie. Nowadays he did not even wear a tie. His old jauntiness had become, somehow, boldness; his speech had a sharp, unpleasant tang. There was something spineless and lackadaisical in the way he walked. And she could not help noticing that still, wearing Daniel’s clothes and Duncan’s aftershave, he had the musty cabbage smell of a public institution.
Well, after all, he had been away so long.
Yes, but he had gone by degrees, traveling only where led, merely proving himself adaptable, endlessly adaptable.
As Justine herself had.
Then a trembling would rise from the soles of her feet, turn her stomach queasy, pass through the hollow of her chest to beat in her throat like a second heart. She stuffed the snapshot beneath a stack of magazines and hurried out to join the others.
In the afternoons, with Duncan asleep on the floor beside his disks, Justine brought Caleb up to date on the family. Even though he seemed not to care, she sat at the table earnestly filling him with history. She was amazed at how little time it took to tell — all those events unfolding over months and years, summed up now in minutes. “Richard did get married but it was annulled, the girl’s father had it annulled because she was under age, and since then he’s lived downtown in a—”
“Now, which was Richard?”
“Why, Uncle Mark’s son,” she said.
When she told how her mother died she spoke without inflection, as if hoping he wouldn’t catch it, but of course he did. He made no comment. When she talked about fortune telling he only looked interested. What did he really think? She imagined that he was about to define her; that at last, after clearing his throat, he would sum her up, announce where she had been heading all her life. She tensed expectantly whenever she caught him looking around the house, or glancing at her clothes, or staring at some toothless woman in socks and Wedgies who came to have her cards read. Surely he was judging their life, whose skimpiness she had just begun to realize. Any moment now he would give his verdict. But he never did. She kept trying to explain herself, even so. “You see we have always just — Duncan has kept wanting us to move around,” she told him.
“Is that right,” said Caleb.
“He likes to travel.”
“But he hasn’t traveled far.”
“What?” She searched her memory for other family news, meanwhile absently cracking a coffee bean with her teeth. “Now Aunt Lucy, she always says—”
“Lucy? I didn’t remember Daniel had a Lucy.”
“Lucy is Two’s wife, Caleb. I told you that.”
“Ah yes.” He nodded. “It must be hard trying to keep all this straight.”
“I don’t have to try. They’re family. Now, what was I telling you about Aunt Lucy?”
“You said — who did you say she was?”
So that she grew exasperated. “Don’t you have any memory?” she asked him. “Don’t you feel any connection at all?”
“Memory, yes. Connection, no.”
She believed him. At night, tossing in her bed, she told Duncan, “We might as well have picked a stranger off the streets.”
“What makes you think so?”
“He’s not connected, he says. He admits it. That scroungy old man — if he had written a letter when he should have I bet Grandfather would be alive today. He doesn’t have a trace of the family left in him and he tells me so as if he’s proud of it. He doesn’t have a trace.”
“He does, though.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, use your head, Justine. Who do you know who acts more like a Peck? Consider that he has remained alone his whole life long, never let in anybody who wasn’t a blood relative. Never got close to White-Eye, never married that waitress, never was a father to Roy. Can’t you read between the lines? Look at what Luray said: it’s not as if he were a real relation. You say the Pecks haven’t left a trace?”
“You don’t know the first thing about it,” Justine said. “Of course he didn’t get close to White-Eye. He was careful and respectful. He had tact.” And she would flounce over on her side away from him, preparing for another night of insomnia.
Then the next afternoon, facing Caleb, who wore his brother’s pinstriped shirt, she was full of new hope and energy. “I think you’re going to like my cousin Claude,” she told him.
“Oh yes?”
“He collects engravings. He’s the only one besides you who’s interested in the arts.”
But, “I believe I’ll make coffee out of some of those beans, Justine,” he said. Then she would notice how metallic his eyes were, and how there was something raw and uncared-for about his skin, which was stretched too tightly across the bridge of his nose.
He had taken over the kitchen by now, as if he guessed how she felt about cooking. (The first supper she served him was hot dogs scorched in a skillet.) He prepared every meal so seriously and so tenderly that it tasted like a gift. “Eat it all,” he told them at suppertime. “If you don’t finish it, how can I make more? I want to get started on something new.” He would hum as he worked, clattering pots, cursing the scarcity of equipment. “But that’s all right, I can make do with anything. Put me in the pokiest diner and I will cook you up a seven-course meal. Why did I ever retire? I let Luray talk me into it. Here I’ve been thinking I had no means of support, but I do! I’m going to get a job and contribute to the household, I have it all worked out.”
But even Duncan looked doubtful when he heard that. “Well, look,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but age might stand in your way, don’t you think?”
“Never mind my age,” said Caleb. “Oh, for the quality places, yes. But there is always some little café by the tracks or the water where they don’t give a hang, and that’s where I’ll ask.”
“Well, at least why don’t you wait a little. If we move or anything, you don’t want to go through a whole new job application.”
“But we’re not moving,” said Justine.
“Oh, no hurry,” Caleb said. “I play it by ear. I wait to see what falls out and who is going in what direction. I always have.” He smiled. “It’s funny,” he said, “I’d forgotten the taste of garlic. Can you beat that? It’s peculiar how you associate some foods with people. Or times you used to have, or places . . . Bess always liked garlic-buttered popcorn. The two of us must have eaten bushels of it. Now you could bring me some and I don’t know, it would taste so unfamiliar somehow. I suppose everybody’s like that. Best friend I ever had liked Blue Peter sardines on saltine crackers, but maybe if I were to track him down today I’d find he doesn’t even remember them any more.”
Duncan listened so hard he forgot to eat. Justine slid a salt shaker back and forth. Why did Caleb have to talk about food all the time? No one else in the family did. All they asked was that their meals be nourishing, and not too unusual in taste. They tended to like white things, foods baked in cream sauce. They would have been horrified by the peppery shrimp casserole that Caleb had served tonight. “Listen!” Justine said suddenly. “How can we be sure you’re Caleb Peck?”