Second Generation Read online

  “Chinese! Are you kidding?” Dan said. “In the twenty-five years since you first came to work for me, I never learned more than ten words of Chinese, and that includes being married to May Ling. Nobody can learn Chinese.”

  “Except five or six hundred million Chinese,” May Ling said sweetly. “And that includes myself. Father taught me Mandarin, and I picked up enough Cantonese and Shanghainese to get along in that as well. So sa qua trey bun.”

  “What the devil does that mean?”

  “Best left unsaid,” Feng Wo told him. “My daughter has many bad habits.”

  “Why don’t we ask Joe how he feels about it?” Dan said.

  “I like the idea,” Joe said.

  “Oh, not so quickly,” May Ling put in. “You really don’t know what you’re getting into, Joe. If father’s going to teach you to read and write, it means learning about five thousand ideographs—pictures, symbols. It’s picture writing, you know. Not like our alphabet at all.”

  “Then that does it,” Dan said. He had never completed high school himself. Most of what education he possessed had come from May Ling, out of books she had persuaded him to read and out of the gentle flow of her knowledge that he had absorbed almost without knowing it. Nevertheless, he was fanatically eager for his son to be educated, well educated. The drive to do what you do better than anyone else was still present in him. “Where’s his schoolwork? Where is anything else? And who is he going to talk Chinese to?”

  “To me,” May Ling said gently. “To my mother and father—and who knows who else? Why don’t we let him decide?”

  “I could try it,” Joe muttered uncertainly.

  A year later, he was able to write a two-page letter to Barbara at Sarah Lawrence, which she exhibited proudly to her friends and which was translated for her, not by any member of the faculty, but by a Chinese laundryman in Yonkers.

  Now, early in June of 1934, Joseph Lavette came home and informed his mother and father that he had been chosen to give the valedictory address at the commencement exercises of his high school. Dan, who was still in his work clothes, who had picked up May Ling at the library only a few minutes before, listened to his son in silence, nodded, and then went up the stairs to his room. Joseph stared at his mother.

  “Is he angry at me? Isn’t he pleased?”

  “Of course he’s pleased.” She threw her arms around Joseph and kissed him. “He’s as pleased and proud as I am. It’s a wonderful thing.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Give it a little time, Joe. He’s a strange man. I think this is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to him, but he can’t cope with it.”

  “Why? I didn’t ask for it, but God, I wanted to please him. I thought he’d be excited—”

  “Don’t say any more. Not now. One day we’ll talk about your father. He was too long away from you. The Chinese have an old saying that unless a man is to be doomed, sooner or later he must turn to himself and ask the question of why he exists. And find the answer. Your father tries, desperately. He’s not like any other man I ever knew. Do you understand me?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  May Ling went upstairs to the bedroom. Dan was standing in front of the window, looking out.

  “Well, Danny?”

  He turned to her. “I hurt him, didn’t I?”

  “He’ll understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I didn’t know what to say. There was nothing I could put into words.”

  “It’s not so astonishing, Danny. He’s a bright boy, and he worked hard. He’s well liked. But whatever he does, he feels it falls short of what you expect from him.”

  “My God, does he feel that?”

  “I think so.”

  “He’s my whole world,” Dan said.

  “He shouldn’t be,” May Ling said, a note of asperity in her voice. “You’re only forty-five years old. How can he be your whole world? He has his own life to live, and so have you. Did he ever tell you what he wants to do? Did you ever talk about it? Did you ever really sit down and talk to him?”

  “What does he want to do?”

  “He wants to be a doctor. He doesn’t think we can afford it.”

  “We damn well can!”

  “Then why not start by telling him that?”

  ***

  Leona Asquith, Jean’s aunt, was seventy-two years old. She was a widowed lady of moderate wealth—moderate if one excluded her house on Beacon Hill, where the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century furniture and paintings were both authentic and priceless. Her living room held an unfinished Athenaeum Washington, which some experts held to be prior to the Stuart Washington in the Boston Museum, and in her library there were two authenticated Vandykes. Jean, who had already gained a national reputation as a sponsor and patroness of the Ashcan School of American painting, and who was one of the first eager buyers of John Sloan, Kuniyoshi, Reginald Marsh, George Biddle, and so many others, had no real interest in acquiring early American paintings for herself, but she did dream of a coup whereby she could bring the Asquith collection to a San Francisco art museum. This was one of the reasons she would go out of her way to spend time in Boston with a woman who regarded California as only slightly less barbaric than a wilderness to the south known as Texas.

  Her husband, John Whittier, on the other hand, loved Boston, at least the circle in Boston in which they moved, because its rigidity and folkways gave him a sense of comfort and belonging. At dinner in the Asquith house, the night before his departure for San Francisco, he expressed this and assured Mrs. Asquith that only the circumstances of the waterfront strike could make him cut short his visit. Jean and Tom were to stay for another week, much to Tom’s annoyance.

  “Oh, no,” was his first reaction when she told him that she expected him to remain with her in Boston, to be her escort, and to be very charming to his Aunt Leona. “I am bored. I am fed up to the ears. Mother, I’ve done four years at Princeton. I’ve paid my dues. This is the dullest, dreariest place on earth.”

  Jean looked at him thoughtfully. He was tall, slender, blue eyes under straight brows, a shock of straight brown hair that he parted on one side, a wide mouth, and a long, thin nose—very good-looking in a lackadaisical manner, almost indolent. There was apparently nothing in him of Dan Lavette, nothing of many generations of Italian fishermen, and Jean couldn’t decide whether that pleased or displeased her.

  “This is the place of your ancestors. I should think you’d be curious. I’ve always loved Boston.”

  “I’m not curious.”

  “And you haven’t paid your dues—not quite.”

  “Oh?”

  “It cost us almost three thousand dollars—hospital bills, five hundred to the girl to keep her quiet, and bribing a district attorney. Altogether, quite disgusting, but otherwise you would not have graduated.”

  “My God, did John tell you?”

  “Of course he did. I saw no reason why he should pay the costs.”

  “It was the one rotten scrape I got into. I admit I had too much to drink, and it happened. That’s all. Someday I’ll pay back the money.”

  “I’m sure you will,” Jean said gently. “Meanwhile, a few weeks in Boston is not too much penance. You’ll still have most of the summer before you go into the bank.”

  “Then that’s decided, that I go into the bank? God damn it, don’t I have one thing to say about it?”

  “Yes. Certainly. What would you like to do with your life?”

  “Do I have to do something with it right this minute? Can’t I have a few months to think about it? You and John may imagine that I just bummed away my years at Princeton, and I know all the smart-alecky wisecracks about the eating clubs, but if you look at my marks, you’ll see that I didn’t do half bad. I didn’t spend four years gettin
g drunk.”

  “I know that, and I did look at your marks. Many times.”

  “I just don’t see myself sitting in a bank eight hours a day.”

  “Tommy,” Jean said, “one day, not too many years from now, you and your sister, Barbara, are going to be very rich. The stock that my father left in trust for you will amount to many millions. In effect, the two of you own the Seldon Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in America. You know that. It’s not just money. Power goes with it, and some respect for the power and some knowledge of how to use it. That’s all I mean. Take the rest of the summer to decide. I’m not pressing you. But meanwhile you can be very helpful.”

  “All right, I’ll stick it out. And do what?”

  “Aside from being my escort and enduring some dinner parties and a few visits to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, I would like you to be very charming and delightful to your Aunt Leona. We’re her closest relatives, and I want her collection of paintings. I intend to turn the house on Russian Hill into an art museum. I’m not sure that I want her paintings there. My own taste runs to other things. But they’re invaluable, and having them would give me tremendous leverage.”

  Tom shook his head. “I don’t understand that. If you don’t like them—”

  “I do like them. They’re splendid. But I want to found a museum of modern art. I could give these to some established museum and trade off, and at the same time there would be a Seldon Gallery of these paintings. There are ways to do it. I’m tired of hearing about the Crockers. The name of Seldon is just as important.”

  “Our name’s Lavette, mother—except that yours is Whittier now.”

  “And we’re still Seldons. I’m not asking any great task of you. Take Aunt Leona to lunch at the Copley Plaza. Be pleasant. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I suppose I can do that.”

  “I suppose you can.”

  Aunt Leona Asquith was delighted with the invitation.

  She came downstairs, where her great-nephew was waiting, wearing a dress of beige crêpe de Chine with white satin cording, a short cape of summer ermine draped over her arm against a possible chill, and a broad-brimmed, cream-colored Panama hat. Tom, like most men of his age, accepted older women without actually seeing them. Now, suddenly, he realized that his Aunt Leona had a very trim figure for her seventy-two years, and that once she must have been an exceptionally attractive woman.

  “Dear boy,” she said, once they were seated in the back of her chauffeur-driven Packard, “this is really very considerate of you. Oh, I know that your mother blackmailed you into it. Nevertheless, you are the most handsome escort I have had in years. Your mother, like so many modern women, has found a substitute for sex. By the way, have you read Havelock Ellis?”

  Bewildered, Tom shook his head. “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “A pity. You must. What was I saying? Yes, a substitute for sex. What do you think of John Whittier?”

  “Mother seems to like him. She married him.”

  “He’s a parody of what he appears to think Boston society is all about. Of course, he hasn’t the faintest notion of what Boston is. Your great-great-grandfather, my grandfather, was in the rum trade with Jamaica. It was better than the slave trade, and it permitted his brother to be both wealthy and Abolitionist, and grandfather was a pillar of the Congregational church. Nevertheless, he had a black mistress in Jamaica, and according to the family mythology, he birthed five black children there—aside from his proper family here in Boston. By the way, do you ever see your father?”

  Confused, taken aback, Tom replied that he had not seen Dan Lavette since the divorce.

  “Why?” his aunt asked pointedly.

  “I don’t know,” Tom said uncertainly. “He was never very close to me.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “I don’t know. Barbara does. She saw him last year. He’s living in Los Angeles—”

  “Yes, with his Chinese mistress, whom he married. Good heavens, you talk as if you were John Whittier’s son. I met Dan Lavette once. Don’t mumble.”

  At the Copley Plaza, in the dining room, the headwaiter greeted Leona Asquith by name and kissed her hand. At the table, she said to Tom, “Do the ordering, Thomas. I think it ought to be broiled lobster for both of us. Whatever elements of civilization have crept into that West Coast of yours, lobster is something they do not have. We’ll have a Chardonnay to go with it.” She was slightly deaf, and like so many slightly deaf people, tended to make her already high-pitched voice even more strident. It embarrassed Tom to have her conversation overheard by the tables around them.

  “A substitute for sex, did I say that? Yes, She does it with those wretched pictures she collects, and being president of a bank. Thank heavens that’s over. And now she wants my collection, and you are to be very charming to me.”

  “Oh, no, no. Not at all,” Tom protested, dropping his voice as if pleading with her to drop hers.

  “Don’t mumble, Thomas. It’s quite transparent, but then, people are transparent, all of us, although we all pretend to ourselves that we are well hidden. So you’re trapped here and bored to tears.”

  “No. I’m not bored, Aunt Leona.” Which was very much the truth. At the moment, he was nervous and bewildered, but not bored.

  “You need a girl,” she said flatly.

  He stared at her.

  “Well, you do like women, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Certainly.”

  “How long will you be here now?”

  “Another week or so, I think.”

  “That’s not time enough for anything. Do you want a drink?”

  “I think so.”

  “You do mumble so. Order a martini for each of us. A week, you said. Well, I know a very respectable lady who runs a bawdy house. I think I’ll send you there.”

  “Oh no,” he said to himself. “I am not hearing this. It’s not happening.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s decided. It’s what you need, and you’ll stop looking so wretchedly sour. Now I want you to tell me about this John Whittier your mother married. Tell me all about him.”

  ***

  Barbara carefully backed her Ford station wagon into the alley on Bryant Street, then went into the kitchen and asked for help to unload. It was eleven o’clock in the morning on the third day of July in 1934, and already the makeshift stove was smoking hot, piled with pots of stew to feed anywhere from two hundred to five hundred men. The kitchen was dirty, steaming, the garbage cans overflowing and spilling onto the floor, with two longshoremen washing tin cups and bowls and arguing about a third man who was, according to their definition, either a fink or a pimp. Dominick and another longshoreman by the name of Franco Guzie were slicing stale, three-day-old bread. Volunteers from the bakery workers’ union bought the unsold bread, paying for it out of union funds, and delivered it twice a week to the various soup kitchens the maritime strikers had set up. Sometimes it amounted to several hundred loaves, sometimes only a few dozen.

  Salone looked up as Barbara came into the kitchen. Guzie shouted for a little quiet. “What have you got, Bobby?” Dominick asked her.

  She was looking at the garbage. “Don’t you ever clean this place?”

  “It gets done,” he said. “Is that what you come for—to tell us the place stinks?”

  “No. I have a load outside.”

  “Come on, Franco,” Dominick said.

  She led the two of them out to the station wagon. “Jesus Christ,” Guzie whispered. “What the hell have you got there?”

  “I was down on the Peninsula, so I picked it up off the roadside stands,” Barbara said proudly. “A lot cheaper there than here. Two hundred pounds of potatoes, two hundred pounds of onions, two bushels of cabbage, two crates of carrots, a hundred pounds of squash, and five hams. I got the hams at Tulip Farm in Belmont. Th
ey wanted twenty-five cents a pound, and I got them down to twenty. What do you think of that?” She was pleased with herself, as eager for praise as she had been as a child doing something noteworthy and deserving.

  “What do we do with smoked ham?” Dominick said sourly. “You can’t put it in stew.”

  “Who says you can’t?” Guzie demanded. “Gives the stew a flavor. God damn it, Bobby, this is a bonanza. You’re some lady, kid, you’re some lady. I wish we had ten like you, ten like you. Don’t pay no attention to this punk.”

  After they had carried the food inside, Barbara parked her car. Then she came back to the kitchen, put on an apron, and began to clean up. She hated this kind of work, yet she took a perverse satisfaction in forcing herself to do it. Dominick had finished slicing the bread. He stood watching her as she swept the garbage together and stuffed it into the cans. The smell made her gag.

  “Take the cans out of here,” she said to him. “This shouldn’t be here with the cooking. You know that.”

  “Now you’re running the joint.”

  “What? Oh, don’t be an ass, Nick.”

  “‘Don’t be an ass.’ That’s real classy talk. I’m sorry, duchess. I beg your pardon.”

  “Knock it off,” Guzie said, and he picked up the can and carried it out.

  Fat Irma Montessa, the acknowledged boss of the kitchen, shouted at Barbara, “Bobby, you forget about the cleaning, because with these pigs here, you can’t keep nothing clean. The feeders are here, and we got to start serving. You want to help me?”

  At the front of the store, standing behind the table next to Irma who was ladling the stew into tin bowls, passing out the bowls to the line of strikers and adding bread and chili pepper for those who wanted it, Barbara said to her, “What’s come over Dominick?”

  “Men turn lousy, sweetie. Up and down. It’s in their nature. Too much strike.”

  “It’s not like him.”

  “Sure it is. What do you expect from a guinea longshoreman?”

  Barbara had never heard the expression before. She finished serving the meal. She had been up at six that morning to drive down to Belmont for the food, and by now the sour smell of the stew filled her with nausea, so she went out into the alley for a breath of fresh air. Dominick was there, puffing on a cigarette.