most original marriage. My brothers and sisters approved. My father, too, approved heartily of everything about the match—even, apparently, Mama Wong.
CARNEGIE / How graciously he agreed with Mama Wong even when she announced that the Bailey family had
third-generation problem.
— In China, this happen all the time, she said. One generation made it, second generation do nothing, third generation lost everything.
I pointed out that Blondie and her siblings were fourth-generation on her mother’s side. Nor could you exactly call Doc Bailey
do nothing.
He was an upstanding and well-loved pediatrician who had seen many a low-income child for free and had, what’s more, single-handedly established a number of clinics in underserved areas.
But Doc Bailey laughed modestly and insisted that Mama Wong was right. There had been a falling-off. How could there not be? Not everyone could pull himself up by the bootstraps the way his father had, fresh off the boat from Ulster. Grandpa Bailey had been remarkable even in his projects and hobbies. He had left behind silver brooches he had smithed. Leather items he had tooled. The younger Baileys were proud to be his descendants. Who wouldn’t be?
Mama Wong left the get-together triumphant.
— You see! she chortled, banging her open hand on her pocketbook. — Even Doc Bailey admits. You see!
I adored the Baileys, though. It was true they cherished their own cleverness; Gregory in particular felt no need of facts to be knowing.
Russia expert turned armaments expert?
he would say.
I’ll tell you why, there was no money in Russia anymore.
Or:
Japanese potter sues American author? Elementary, my dear Watson, some lawyer put him up to it.
Still, they were more like than unlike the people I had gone to school with. People whose mothers did not carry fish bait in their handbags. People who were not strong-armed into managing rental buildings in the summer. People who were not summoned in the middle of midterms to come fix hot-water heaters. The Baileys made me feel as though I were still in college; as if life were full of electives, as if there would always be a cafeteria about which to complain. As if one’s categorical imperative was to find oneself via the right seminar.
Nowhere was this sense stronger than here, at the family summer place. This had in fact at one point been Mr. Buck’s sleep-over camp; but at another, a boys’ day school. Besides Mr. Buck’s own cabin, there was a library and a mess hall. The cabins all had blackboards; the Baileys were still finding compasses and ink bottles and pen nibs among the pine needles. What with Renata’s husband the mapmaker ably charting where each artifact was found, this activity constituted one of the island’s principal pleasures, surpassed only by the restoring of Mr. Buck’s original abode. For Mr. Buck had been a Michelangelo of home improvements. His many windows opened via homemade crank-and-bicycle-chain mechanisms. The bathroom featured a chute for baby diapers, as well as a self-setting timer on the shower. (The water shut off when the timer ran out.) Was he not a kind of genius? So the Baileys agreed.
But every proper genius has limits, as the Baileys liked to point out, and so too did Mr. Buck. Exhibit A being the foundations of his cabins, for there were no foundations to speak of. He had simply built the cabins on wooden ties, placed directly on the ground; the Baileys would have given anything to know why. Or what to do about it, now that the water table was rising. The plateau sank a few inches every year.
— Have them replaced, I said when the subject first came up in my presence. — Jack up the buildings and have some footings poured.
— We hereby name you Sir Buildings and Grounds, intoned Gregory immediately. — Our Own Home Repair Counsel, whom we do love as we love ourself.
BLONDIE / Our place had become something of a headache. It was so far north, no one could get there very
CARNEGIE / How graciously he agreed with Mama Wong even when she announced that the Bailey family had
third-generation problem.
— In China, this happen all the time, she said. One generation made it, second generation do nothing, third generation lost everything.
I pointed out that Blondie and her siblings were fourth-generation on her mother’s side. Nor could you exactly call Doc Bailey
do nothing.
He was an upstanding and well-loved pediatrician who had seen many a low-income child for free and had, what’s more, single-handedly established a number of clinics in underserved areas.
But Doc Bailey laughed modestly and insisted that Mama Wong was right. There had been a falling-off. How could there not be? Not everyone could pull himself up by the bootstraps the way his father had, fresh off the boat from Ulster. Grandpa Bailey had been remarkable even in his projects and hobbies. He had left behind silver brooches he had smithed. Leather items he had tooled. The younger Baileys were proud to be his descendants. Who wouldn’t be?
Mama Wong left the get-together triumphant.
— You see! she chortled, banging her open hand on her pocketbook. — Even Doc Bailey admits. You see!
I adored the Baileys, though. It was true they cherished their own cleverness; Gregory in particular felt no need of facts to be knowing.
Russia expert turned armaments expert?
he would say.
I’ll tell you why, there was no money in Russia anymore.
Or:
Japanese potter sues American author? Elementary, my dear Watson, some lawyer put him up to it.
Still, they were more like than unlike the people I had gone to school with. People whose mothers did not carry fish bait in their handbags. People who were not strong-armed into managing rental buildings in the summer. People who were not summoned in the middle of midterms to come fix hot-water heaters. The Baileys made me feel as though I were still in college; as if life were full of electives, as if there would always be a cafeteria about which to complain. As if one’s categorical imperative was to find oneself via the right seminar.
Nowhere was this sense stronger than here, at the family summer place. This had in fact at one point been Mr. Buck’s sleep-over camp; but at another, a boys’ day school. Besides Mr. Buck’s own cabin, there was a library and a mess hall. The cabins all had blackboards; the Baileys were still finding compasses and ink bottles and pen nibs among the pine needles. What with Renata’s husband the mapmaker ably charting where each artifact was found, this activity constituted one of the island’s principal pleasures, surpassed only by the restoring of Mr. Buck’s original abode. For Mr. Buck had been a Michelangelo of home improvements. His many windows opened via homemade crank-and-bicycle-chain mechanisms. The bathroom featured a chute for baby diapers, as well as a self-setting timer on the shower. (The water shut off when the timer ran out.) Was he not a kind of genius? So the Baileys agreed.
But every proper genius has limits, as the Baileys liked to point out, and so too did Mr. Buck. Exhibit A being the foundations of his cabins, for there were no foundations to speak of. He had simply built the cabins on wooden ties, placed directly on the ground; the Baileys would have given anything to know why. Or what to do about it, now that the water table was rising. The plateau sank a few inches every year.
— Have them replaced, I said when the subject first came up in my presence. — Jack up the buildings and have some footings poured.
— We hereby name you Sir Buildings and Grounds, intoned Gregory immediately. — Our Own Home Repair Counsel, whom we do love as we love ourself.
BLONDIE / Our place had become something of a headache. It was so far north, no one could get there very
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