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Family Reunion

and Other Stories

Berry Fleming

New York

FAMILY REUNION

Any Southerner will understand the situation in our family but it is not easy to explain to foreigners without having them think we are involved in some sort of feud or dissension or discord, squirrel-guns and all that. You sometimes find that kind of thing back in the Blue Ridge Mountains but Georgia is generally quiet low-keyed country and Georgia families naturally tend to pattern out the same way.

I don’t know of any hostility, any hard feeling, any clash or conflict, any quarrel or estrangement or falling out or parting of the ways among our family—the Telfairs—or among the by-now-infinitely-extended branches of it connected by marriage or through the female line. We are not mad with our kinspeople, we just don’t pay any attention to them one way or another, often have forgotten they are kin; a relative of mine, second or third cousin or something, Albany Ochs, has his cotton office across the street from the Cotton Lane Press (where I fill a miserably rewarded managerial position as head of the firm and Editor-in-Chief), but we haven’t passed the time of day in eleven years—I’ll get back to the Press.

Never, I’d say, a close-knit family, we had already begun to come apart as far back as 1043 when a young Telfair (Taillefer then) ran away from the old Normandy farm and joined the army, advancing in time to become the minstrel who chanted the Song of Roland to inspire his fellow knights as they rode into the Battle of Hastings—according to Aunt Mathilda Jesup our head genealogist, who as if to prove it, sometimes herself used to chant softly at Christmas parties, “Taillefer who was famed for song, Mounted on a charger strong, Rode on before the Duke and sang Of Roland and of Charlemagne …”

The family continuing to disintegrate as two Taillefer brothers (Taliaferro by then) pulled out from home back in seventeen-something and migrated to the Isle de Vaches in the Caribbean, “Ash Island BWI” nowadays, as roughly translated by the British when they took over; and unraveling still further as one brother continued on to Georgia and founded our branch of the family that in time became Telfair, while the other remained under the burning tropical sun and sired Tollivers. There seems to have been no more communication between them after they separated than between myself and Cousin Albany across the street.

Unraveling, or you might say becoming disassembled, in a way that reminds you of dismantling an old-model car and finding numerous usable parts you can salvage, many of us still quite serviceable up to a point. If some emergency arises, making a phone call among us unavoidable, we usually play it safe and give the full name, as in, “This is Emma Cuthbert, Robert,” or if I am calling, “This is Bob Otis, Emma,” avoiding the awkward, “Who?” (or “WHO!”) if she had said just “Emma,” or I “Bob”—or “Robert.”

With the many members of the family who have left town (one or two on the run, our ill-wishers will tell you, with no justification—except possibly in the case of Great-uncle Pelham, certainly none in regard to Uncle Nolan down on Pelican Key who had left simply because he found his children tiresome, particularly the grandchildren) and are living in the North or West or Hong Kong or heaven knows where, they picture us as we were—or as they thought we were—when they left and don’t understand that the downpour of Time has soaked us as through-and-through as it has them. Most of them seem to have had a feeling of emancipation at leaving us, as if their real selves were waiting to embrace them at the prison gates; they have usually never again darkened our doors, as we say, and if they should happen to phone in from a distance will announce themselves as “Fred” or “Carrie” or what not and necessitate our “Who?” (or “WHO!” if they pronounce an odd sort of Southern name such as Verna-Lee or Minnie-Bell and we half grasp the unpalatable truth).—It was this way when I heard,

“Hello, Bob, this is Eastman.”

I said, “I beg your pardon. This is a bad connection,” to gain a second or two. “Who did you say?” I was in the midst of oiling my skates (I’ll clear this up later), had brought them down to the Press office because I had a little linseed oil there from painting days and some old paint rags with which I hoped to brighten up the steel rollers and clamps that locked over the welts of your shoes, intended to saddle soap the dried-out straps; also, frankly, I didn’t fancy my housekeeper finding me trying to recondition a pair of vintage skates. I dropped one of them getting to the phone—I handle the switchboard too, the phone, as part of my editorial duties.

He said, “Eastman, Bob. Eastman Bohlen.”

This was no help and I was about to tell him he had dialed the wrong Bob, though I did remember that our present-day 10th Street used to be Bohlen Street when I was a boy before we decided to use numbers like New York; I mean Bohlen was a Fredericksville name, or had been. He repeated “Eastman Bohlen” as if remembering the bad connection, and I gave up, decided to “come along quietly,” as the police say—are said to say.

I said, “Eastman! Oh, excuse me. Certainly. Of course!” with the thoroughly phony delight of a Southerner spotting a houseguest just leaving the plane. “How are you, Eastman? How have you been?”—“Where are you?” would have made more sense, with all the geographical dispersion our family represented, but I was still trying to collect myself, collect the rag and oil and saddle soap and dropped skate; I was also, I suppose, subconsciously afraid if I asked him where he was it would bring him in from Istanbul or Singapore to the Jonathan Copp Hotel round the corner on 7th Street. If he was the Eastman who began to come out of the shadows, I hadn’t seen him in forty years, not since he had passed through, traveling for, I believe, the Borden Company, vice president now or something, I seem to have heard, I can’t imagine how.

He came right to the point, itself an indication, I felt, of the changes that had overtaken him in his years Up There or Out There or wherever the Company had flung him—we in the South like to beat around the bush for a few minutes (even on Long Distance) before we get down to business, let the engine warm up a little. “I have some sad news for you, Bob,” voice dropping to a cello register.

He let that sink in for a second or two as if to give me a chance to sit down, then said, “Dad passed last night in Chicago.”

I said, “Passed the night in Chicago?” Stupid of me of course but I was still not adjusted to the sound of far-off family on the phone—(all this talk about Decline of the Family! “Farewell to the Family!”).

“Dad died last night in Chicago, Robert,” patiently. “I flew in from Seattle this morning.”

I exclaimed and mumbled in what I honestly meant to be the right way, considering that I had never seen “Dad,” or a picture of him, didn’t even know for sure what his first name was, a cousin of Papa’s or something, I think. He had gone north years and years ago, married Up There, a Pennsylvania lady I believe, had never been back to Georgia that I knew of, in any case had clearly shaken Georgia’s pink dust off his (probably) custom-made shoes. He had sent Eastman down at one time to board with Aunt Mathilda for a few months, I forget the circumstances, I believe he and the Pennsylvania lady went to Genoa on something connected with cotton and didn’t need Eastman for a while.

And what mumbling I did was not on the main track of my uneasiness, which was that Eastman was preparing the way to ask me to come to Chicago for the funeral—representing the family (capital F in his mind, I thought), or even bringing along a planeload of the more presentable members, the possibility throwing me back into a sickly memory of the European “Student Tour” I once conducted at an inadequate rakeoff in my foolish youth. A trip to Chicago was out of the question for me in ways I couldn’t briefly summarize for Eastman, the printer calling for the manuscript of our new novel (I had promised to deliver it in Rockbridge tomorrow—eighty miles), the skates matter, the matter of the Traveling Representative (I’ll get around to those things shortly).

But as everybody knows, you brace for the wrong calamities. Eastman said, “Dad left a request to be buried at home.”

I said, “At home, yes,” with a Long-Distance nod of understanding, listening for Eastman to give me directions about reaching the particular Chicago suburb “Dad” called home, though I was satisfied it would be one of the doggier, (he had done very well for himself, in cotton I understood from somewhere). Eastman said, “With the Family,” and I said, “You mean here!”

“Fredericksville was always ‘home’ to him, Bob. He liked to say, ‘Once a Southerner always a Southerner.’ Roots, you know.”

I said, Yes, I knew; caught myself about to say with all those roots he might have dropped in every fifty years or so to see the old cotton-patch firsthand, indescribably glad he hadn’t for the disruptions of that even exceeding the ones in prospect, Eastman continuing with, “His cronies on the Cotton Exchange and the Board of Trade and at his clubs all called him ‘Planter,’ which he enjoyed, ‘Old Southern Cotton Planter’”—he wouldn’t have known a boll from the weevil. “Always very fond of your dad, Bob,” (and why not? Papa staked him when he went north I seem to remember, all repaid in due time, with interest—2½ percent I believe, fair enough in those simple-minded days, to give you an idea of how long he had been gone; poor millionaire cotton planter with no place to lay his head, no place he wanted them Up There to lay it).

I didn’t know why Eastman was calling me particularly, with all the family to choose from; he could hardly have given me a wider berth over the years, or I him. His fastening on me gave me a feeling of being caught in the mainstream of all this, reminded me of the time I found myself shooting the rapids on the Chestatee; I’m not a sport, I wanted out, then and now. I said, Well, I didn’t see any reason Cousin (mumble—I couldn’t remember “Dad’s” name) shouldn’t be buried here in the Telfair Plot, all Eastman needed to do was call Mr. Grimes and give him the go-ahead, or have his man in Chicago call Mr. Grimes. “Wait a second, Eastman, I’ll get his number for you,” needing to get off the phone if only for a minute, a hot line.

And getting hotter. He didn’t seem to hear that about Mr. Grimes; went on, “Dad would want everybody to be invited, all the Family, wouldn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, used to talk about Uncle Asa and Aunt Sarah and Grandmother Vidalia” (I never heard of such people); “he loved the South, all the Family. It would have to be a phone invitation, not time for the mails, nothing printed or formal, you know, nothing engraved.” (I came within a hair of blurting out, “Except ‘Dad,’ of course,” but something saved me.) “Who would be the right person to handle the phone? I’m a little out of touch.”

I thought I saw what he was getting at and considering everything I didn’t like the job, the “little out of touch” applying to me too as I have explained. I said I believed a funeral notice in the paper would be quite adequate and Mr. Grimes would take care of that; I didn’t like to admit we didn’t know kith from kin, had lost names and addresses and would certainly overlook somebody if we tried to phone, whereas Mr. Grimes could have one of his people run us through their floppy disks and not miss anybody. I said, “Everybody over forty reads the Funeral Notices,” (after Ann Landers and the Horoscope, I wanted to say, but it was obviously no time for fun).

But that didn’t satisfy him. “So impersonal,” he said. “I’m sure Dad would want at least a phone call, the human voice,” (we tend to get argumentative if we live Up There for very long). “I thought perhaps you, Bob, as Head of the Clan—”

“Clan!” He seemed to picture us in kilts following the pipes over the gorse back into the Highlands but if there is a Scotch name among all our different ones I can’t remember it. “There’s no ‘Clan,’ Eastman, and nobody has elected me head of it.” He said it wasn’t a matter of being elected, that primogeniture took care of it and I said that Uncle Brownell had a lot more primogeniture than I had I was glad to say.

“‘Uncle Brownell?’ I don’t think I remember him.”

“Down at The Homestead.”

“Oh, there’s a homestead, Bob?” eagerly, as if that would balance out the want of the Clan.

I explained it wasn’t really a homestead, people just called it that. “Uncle Brownell and the Bank operate the old house on Bay Street as Trustees under a will, too complicated to go into now, Eastman.”

“Well, maybe he will phone out the invitations, Bob. Not the Bank anyway, please, if you don’t mind; they’d put a tape on it. Somebody in the Family. Maybe Aunt Mathilda will help him, she always used to like telephones.”

I told him Aunt Mathilda had been gone—a Southernism I don’t believe he understood after all his time Up There, taking it in a geographical sense and asking “Where?,” when all it means is you’ve cashed in your chips. I wasn’t sure she had because we tend to last a long time, but Eastman was talking about forty years ago and I hadn’t heard her name in twenty. He said, “Well, if she’s moved away, one of the other aunts, it wouldn’t matter a great deal as long as nobody’s invitation is overlooked. Everyone should be invited to the church, Bob, a morning service, eleven-fifteenish I should say—”

“Church, Eastman!” It was hard to believe. We usually assemble for a few minutes (five or ten) at the grave—on the way back to the bottle, (it’s not quite fair to say that, some of us won’t let that kind of bottle in the house; but most of us will).

“Oh yes. I’m sure Dad would want a church service. Episcopal, of course.”