John wasn’t sure just when his fear of his father hardened into contempt.It was a gradual process, starting in his early teen years when he formed an elite group of friends, continuing when puberty gave him the confidence of height and a physical par with Eugene, and culminating with his parents’ divorce and his mother’s subsequent death.
He wasn’t sorry to see the fear go.Long after childhood, he could vividly remember the quaking he’d felt when Eugene’s loud bellow told him that he’d disappointed his father again.Sometimes, it had been the way he looked: “Too new, for pity’s sake.”Sometimes it had been the way he acted: “Starchy, boy, where’s your sense of adventure?”Sometimes it had to do with the business: “What do you mean you don’t want to work in the mine?”It wasn’t only the voice that made him tremble but the flashing eyes and the cheeks that grew red with temper.“You’ve got the whole summer lying out there ahead of you, with nothing better to do.Hell, by the time I was your age I’d been workin’ for three years shovelin’ manure at Grady’s farm!”
John shrank back against the paneled wall of his bedroom, but the painted pine offered no protection from this man who didn’t like him.“Why do I have to work?”his small, eight-year-old voice asked.
“To learn.And you won’t be doing anything killing.You’ll be helping out with little things like carrying water and running errands.I’m no slave driver, for pity’s sake.”
There was no solace in that, since John had no idea what a slave driver was.The wordworkwas enough.But the wordsTiminy Covewere even worse.His very first memory of the place was of being lost in the woods, and lost was what he’d felt every time he’d been there since.Timiny Cove was filled with people who didn’t dress like he did, didn’t live like he did, didn’t like what he did.
“I want to stay here,” he protested, but his voice sounded feeble next to his father’s full boom.
“And do what?”
“Play with Timmy and Doug.”
“Timmy and Doug?What for?”
“I like Timmy and Doug.”
“Well, that’s just fine, since they’re your cousins.But what they can teach you about business ain’t worth a tinker’s damn.With due respect for your mama’s family, the Wrights have had their money since the Pilgrims landed.They don’t work.We St.Georges do.”Under his breath he mumbled, “You wanna play with Timmy and Doug.”Then he thundered so loud that John jumped, “For pity’ssake, you do enough of that here.Your mother’s got you runnin’ around with your cousins and a whole bunch of other little boys with fancy names.Well, enough!There are some fancy names up in Timiny Cove, too, and the boys there can teach you a whole lot more about living than any Saltonstall ever could.So this summer you can do your playin’ with the Duffys and the Greenleafs and the Pelletiers, and you’ll learn a thing or two along the way.”
Given no choice in the matter, John tried.He worked for his father that summer and hated every minute of it.He didn’t like the dirt, didn’t like the smell, didn’t like the men.Mostly he didn’t like the way Eugene kept yelling at him.In his father’s eyes, he could do no right.If he was sent for a tool, he brought the wrong one.If he was sent for the medical box, he brought it too slowly.If he was sent for water, he spilled too much along the way.John knew that Eugene yelled at other people, but never as loudly as at him.
He did learn, though.During that summer and the ones that followed, he learned what went into the mining operation, when to use a hammer versus a chisel, how to blast open a new pocket, how to care for each crystal unearthed.He also learned that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in the family business if it meant hanging around with the men at the mine, and he certainly didn’t want it if it meant working with his father.
His father and the miners were alike.Eugene was one of them, a local.It didn’t matter that he was the boss, that he lived in the biggest house in town, and that he had an even finer one in Boston.He could drink with the others,tell jokes with the others, spend his Saturday mornings on the bruised brown bench on the town green passing the time of day with the others.He fit into the Timiny Cove life as only a native could.
John never would.He’d been born in Boston and had spent his earliest years in a neat little house in Brookline before his father bought the Beacon Hill home.He loved the city.He found it stately and genteel, civilized in ways that Timiny Cove would never be.Of course, he viewed it through the eyes of a Wright, and a Wright was a person of status.
Eugene St.George had none of that status.He may have risen a little when he married John’s mother, but when they went places as a family, even John could see that Sybil was the one who drew the respect.Not that Eugene didn’t hold his own.He looked right and talked right.John had often wondered how he did it, coming from the backwoods and all, until he found a book of etiquette lying open in the library one day.So Eugene never embarrassed them.Neither, though, did he impress the Brahmans of Boston.
Early on, John felt the sting of being a St.George.More than once when he went to a friend’s house, the shout from the door was, “It’s that St.George boy,” in a tone of voice that made him swallow hard and hold his chin high.The name should have been regal, he thought.On a blue-blood’s tongue, it wasn’t.Even then, he knew he had an uphill battle to wage.
What mystified him, given his mother’s family, was why they had allowed the wedding.Sybil and Eugene were from different worlds.Sybil was a lady, and whileEugene did his best to be a gentleman to match, he never quite seemed polished.
“Earthiness,” his mother had once said, grinning at Eugene at the time.“Earthiness is very exciting in a man.”
But John couldn’t see it.He found nothing exciting in dirt or sweat.The Wright side of the family had nothing to do with either and lived an exciting enough life shuttling between Boston and Cape Cod.In time, his mother seemed to see that too, because she had terrible arguments with Eugene about buying a summer house and joining the club.Eugene didn’t want either.He said that they had enough going for them between Boston and Timiny Cove, and that if Sybil wanted to summer on the Cape, she could just move in with her family.
She did that for a summer or two, while John suffered in Maine with Eugene.By the time he was old enough to understand what his mother meant by the appeal of earthiness in a man, his parents had split up.
It was inevitable.The way it happened, though, was wrong.Even at fifteen John knew that.Eugene announced one day that he wanted the divorce, that he would pay Sybil to file for it, pay for her to travel to a place where the divorce could be granted without delay.If she protested, he said, he would simply move to Maine and let her come along like a good wife or be branded the offending party.In either case, he would get his divorce.Whether it was sooner or later, more or less painful, depended on her.
She was devastated.She didn’t want a divorce.It just wasn’t done.It represented failure.
The Wrights, who had never cared for Eugene, argued otherwise.In their opinion, Sybil had married beneathher class and was now simply freeing herself from a man who would be nothing but a burden in the years to come.
Such was the story they passed among their friends.John heard it more than once.Living with his mother for all but the summers, he had even greater exposure to the Wright circle than before.He wasn’t offended when people criticized Eugene.Eugene was of a lower class.The fact that John had chosen to remain in Boston with his mother was proof that he was his mother’s son, a Wright in all but name.
That was what he kept telling himself, though the mirror told him different.At sixteen, he was becoming quite a man, tall and broad, with eyes that flashed vividly when he was angry and a voice that sounded self-assured even when he wasn’t.A handsome devil he was, and he knew it, but at sixteen he looked just like his father had at that age, if the observations of old-timers lounging on the porch of the post office in Timiny Cove were correct.John’s saving grace, as far as he was concerned, was his skin, which was less ruddy, smoother than his father’s, and his hair, which was darker, finer, and more easily groomed.
And, of course, he had class.Physical attributes alone meant nothing.Far more important in life, he told himself, was what he did with those attributes, which was where his Wright genes took over.He believed that he had more class at sixteen than Eugene St.George would ever have.He could go anywhere, do anything, and be sure of himself, because of the exposure he’d had.He knew the right people.If some of those right people still seemed wary of him, he assured himself, it would pass with time.
His life in Boston was rewarding.He attended the mostprestigious prep school, wore the nattiest clothes, played a solid game of tennis on the clay courts at his grandparents’ club, and partied to his heart’s content.Eugene bought him a car to drive to Maine and back, but John took perverse delight in using it for all else but that.The car was shiny and new, everything Timiny Cove wasn’t, and the girls loved it.Not for a minute did John feel guilty about showing it off.After all, he was one of the privileged.
The carefree carousing he did was some solace for the fact that, a week after Sybil obtained her divorce, Eugene remarried.It came as a surprise to John, whose mind was on his own sexuality, not on his father’s.It hadn’t occurred to him to associate Eugene with another woman.
Before he could respond one way or another to the marriage, he had to cope with his mother’s reaction to it.She was stunned, then appalled, then furious that she hadn’t seen what was happening.Piecing things together, she realized that Eugene had been having an affair with Patricia for more than a year.The pain of that seemed her undoing more than the divorce itself.She lost something, became less enthusiastic about everything, including John.
