Freedom [272]
Edgar, obviously accustomed to letting Galina speak for him, sat picking scabs of mud off his socks while she explained that they were getting better at farming, that their rabbi and synagogue were wonderfully supportive, that Edgar was on the verge of being certified to produce kosher wine from the grandparental grapes, and that the game was amazing.
“Game?” Patty said.
“Deers,” Galina said. “Unbelievable numbers of deers. Edgar, how many did you shoot last fall?”
“Fourteen,” Edgar said.
“Fourteen on our property! And they keep coming and coming, it’s stupendous.”
“See, the thing is, though,” Patty said, trying to remember whether eating deer was even kosher, “it’s not really your property. It’s kind of Joyce’s now. And I’m just wondering, since Edgar’s so smart about business, whether it might make more sense for him to go back to work, and get a real income going, so that Joyce can make her own decision about this place.”
Galina was shaking her head adamantly. “There’s the insurances. The insurances want to take anything he makes, up to I don’t know how many hundred thousands.”
“Yes, well, but if Joyce could sell this place, you guys could pay off the insurances, I mean the insurance companies, and then you could get a fresh start.”
“That man is a fraudster!” Galina said with blazing eyes. “You heard the story, I guess? That crossing guard is one hundred percent guaranteed fraudster. I barely tapped him, barely touched him, and now he can’t walk?”
“Patty,” Edgar said, sounding remarkably much like Ray when he was being patronizing, “you really don’t understand the situation.”
“I’m sorry—what’s not to understand?”
“Your father wanted the farm to stay in the family,” Galina said. “He didn’t want it going in pockets of disgusting, obscene theater producers making so-called ‘art,’ or five-hundred-dollar psychiatrists who take your little sister’s money without ever making her better. This way, we always have the farm, your uncles will forget about it, and if there’s ever real need, instead of disgusting so-called ‘art’ or fraudster psychiatrists, Joyce can always sell part of it.”
“Edgar?” Patty said. “Is this your plan, too?”
“Yeah, basically.”
“Well, I guess it’s very selfless of you. Guarding the flame of Daddy’s wishes.”
Galina leaned into Patty’s face, as if to aid her comprehension. “We have the children,” she said. “We’ll soon have six mouths to feed. Your sisters think I want to go to Israel—I don’t want to go to Israel. We have good life here. And don’t you think we get credit for having the children your sisters won’t have?”
“They do seem like fun kids,” Patty admitted. Her nephew was dozing in her arms.
“So leave it alone,” Galina said. “Come and see the children whenever you want. We’re not bad people, we’re not kooks, we love having visitors.”
Patty drove back to Westchester, feeling sad and discouraged, and consoled herself with televised basketball (Joyce was up in Albany). The following afternoon, she returned to the city and saw Veronica, the baby of the family, the most damaged of them all. There had always been something otherworldly about Veronica. For a long time, it had had to do with her dark-eyed, slender, wood-sprite looks, to which she’d adapted in various self-destructive ways including anorexia, promiscuity, and hard drinking. Now her looks were mostly gone—she was heavier but not heavy like a fat person; she reminded Patty of her former friend Eliza, whom she’d once glimpsed, many years after college, in a crowded DMV office—and her otherworldliness was more spiritual: a nonconnection to ordinary logic, a sort of checked-out amusement regarding the existence of a world outside herself. She’d once shown great promise (at least in Joyce’s view) as both a painter and a ballerina, and had been hit on and dated by any number of worthy young men, but she’d since been bludgeoned by episodes of major depression beside which Patty’s own depressions were