BARBARA GRIZZUTI HARRISON
419
After they dropped Sadie home, Clara and her brother went to
a bar.
"Remember that Edsel the Old Man bought me?"
"I remember."
"I paid him back. A hundred a month."
"I never knew that."
"Now you know."
"I talk too much," Clara said.
"Yeah. But you got the charm in this family ."
"I do?"
"Yeah."
"Do me a favor? Take my side more often ."
"Hey. There aren't any sides. We're all on the same side."
That's his charm, Clara thought; he believes it.
The old man hadn't spoken to his sister for years. Not since
their mother-Clara's grandmother-had died. Really such a silly
will to quarrel over- a couple of acres on a highway and a ram–
shackle summer cottage was all she'd left. And after all, the old
man's sister deserved it: she'd nursed the mean-tempered woman all
through her final illness; she'd never married. But the old man was
unable to forget that he'd pruned the pear trees that were the only
glory of the summer place; he felt entitled. The business stuck in his
craw: "What does an old maid want with pear trees?" he asked, a
constant refrain. It had become a joke between Clara and her
brother: "What does an old maid want with pear trees?" they chanted
whenever events confounded them, whenever they met after long
separations; when Clara married, her brother startled the priest by
saying, "What does an old maid want with pear trees?" Once when
they were playing poker, Clara's brother said "What does an old
maid want with pear trees?" just before the last raise, and Clara
laughed so hard she wet her pants, and lost the hand even though
she had aces over kings.
Now the old man was calling his sister every day. Sadie
suspected Clara of having given him her phone number to foment
trouble - Sadie saw any possible reconciliation as trouble, it hurt
her, she was sensitive- but the fact was that the old man had, over
all the intervening years, remembered. He talked to his sister in
Italian: "They're trying to kill me . Get me out. They do terrible
things ." So now Sadie and the old man's sister called each other
every day, Sadie tearfully pleading that the doctors knew best; she
