by Belva Plain
Then she looks back at Emily. They must decide soon; Alfie must not make her wait. It is the cruelest thing for a woman. Hennie’s lips move involuntarily, angrily, without a sound, upon the word: cruel.
She comes back to the moment and begins to cut the cake.
“It’s a Russian cream cake, and it’s the first time I’ve made it. I hope it’s good. One of my old pupils—my friend Olga—gave me her mother’s recipe. I made an extra to give to her; she has no place to bake, no place for anything, really, since her husband died. Tuberculosis, as usual. She and her little girl, a darling child, have to board. I’ve never seen the place, but I can imagine it. Here, take this plate, Paul.”
“I’ll need a bigger piece than that,” Paul complains.
“I don’t know where you put it,” Angelique remarks fondly. “It’s a good thing you don’t run to fat like your Uncle Alfie.”
Paul runs a finger inside his Buster Brown collar. His mother has made him dress up for this visit and he has arrived to stay the night at the Roths’, wearing his best clothes, complete with a Windsor scarf tied in a flopping bow, more suitable to his parents’ parlor, certainly, than to this one.
Paul is almost a man. Contained within the form of the twelve-year-old boy is the design of the man he will be. He has a thoughtful, rather formal expression, contradicted every now and then by his lively curiosity. One might say—and people do—that he looks aristocratic. How Dan despises the word! thinks Hennie, who does not often use the word herself. Nevertheless, it does describe Paul. One sees it in his posture and in his steady gaze, so strikingly blue in the dark face. Spirit and strength are there.
Suddenly troubled, Hennie tries to recall what he was like six years ago, at the age Freddy is now. Paul was bolder. Without fear he approached strange dogs; he sailed his boat in the Central Park lake, fell in, and was pulled out laughing. Whereas Freddy hangs back … he is perfectly healthy, rarely sick, but he won’t play and wrestle, even with Dan.
She wonders whether he is perhaps a musical genius. Dan says he has talent. Or is she merely the doting mother of an only child?
Oh, the world is so tough! On East Side streets rove gangs of homeless boys, some as young as Freddy, sleeping in hallways, running errands for pay in pennies, to the saloons and worse places than saloons. A merciless world. The child would never be able to survive in it. Thank God, he will not have to. Strange, that when she considers such a possibility for Paul, who most assuredly will never even have to pass through such streets, she can quite easily imagine him set down in that world and somehow coping with it.
Now Freddy challenges Paul: “I’ll beat you at checkers.”
They get out the board and lay it on the floor.
“Paul is so patient with Freddy,” remarks Angelique. “But then, neither of them has a brother.”
And why Paul hasn’t got one, why Florence doesn’t want more children, I’ll never understand! Hennie’s thoughts are bitter. In her place, I would have five children. The time Dan said he would not let it happen, it did. Now for six years we have been wanting another, and nothing happens.
“Yes,” Angelique continues, “it’s too bad Paul hasn’t a brother, then he wouldn’t be bothering you at your house so often.”
“Mama! He doesn’t bother! He likes it here and we want him.”
Surely she must know that Paul isn’t attracted to this house just to play with his little cousin! Of course he is amused by the younger boy, but he really comes because he loves the style and the freedom of their home. Dan, a fine teacher, makes him feel important. She can see them at the kitchen table talking while she is cooking, talking about politics, electricity, the opera, the labor movement, and everything under the sun. Dan is vigorous and earnest, making patterns in the air with his hands as he illustrates and explains. Paul is eager and impatient, sometimes argumentative. Always they are in the kitchen, because the fruit bowl and coffeepot are there and because Dan is most comfortable in the kitchen. She wonders whether he and Freddy, when Freddy is twelve, will be the same with one another.
Now she becomes aware that Uncle David is looking at her.
“What are you looking at, Uncle?”
“At you. You’ve grown so pretty. But then I always said you would.”
She is not “pretty.” It is true, though, that a change has been made in her; she has acquired a bloom, so that one is now more than ever aware of her rich hair and her leaf-shaped eyes. Dan has done it, it’s he who has taught her. She remembers standing with him at the window of the salon de coiffures, looking at the model heads with their winsome faces, and being urged to go in. Dan likes a woman to be well-groomed; he points them out, the vivid ones, the smooth ones … And each time a tiny chill of fear darts through her and is suppressed.
“You do look well,” Angelique, who has overheard, says critically. “It’s a wonder, too, hard as you work keeping the house, caring for the child, and still giving time at the settlement house to your poor families.”
“I only do what I like,” Hennie answers mildly.
“Well, you are two busy people,” Mama says. She is leading up to something. “Florence mentioned that Dan is being made head of the science department.”
“It’s not official yet, that’s why we haven’t talked much about it.”
“And he’s still doing his experiments?”
“Oh, yes, he spends every spare minute in his lab. Right now he’s working with high-voltage transformers—way too much for me to understand, I have to admit.”
Mama speaks in her dry voice of polite disapproval. “It must be fascinating. Still, there’s no money in it.”
Uncle David speaks up. “I’m sure he doesn’t do it for that reason, Angelique.”
“But you could make a lot of money if you wanted to, Dan,” Alfie says.
Dan seems to be amused. “How is that, Alfie?”
“Well, I’m no scientist, but from what I read, there’s a lot of stuff being done like the stuff you talk about. There was something in the paper about sending electricity through the air, some fellow’s idea, and J. P. Morgan’s building a tower somewhere on Long Island for it. Two hundred feet high. Fellow stands to make a fortune, I should think.”
Paul is interested. “What do you mean, sending electricity through the air?”
“Talk through the air. People will hear you miles away, that’s what I read. Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not impossible,” Dan says quickly. “It will come sooner than you think.”
“Well, then, I’m right!” Alfie cries. “Why don’t you try to sell something like that, Uncle Dan?”
Dan answers him, “Those men are geniuses. I’m no genius, neither financial nor scientific. I just plod along and I’m satisfied that way.” He is shutting Alfie off, nicely but definitely. “Now, how about making that lemonade you and Emily were talking about?”
None of you in this family, except Uncle David, understands him, Hennie thinks. Not you, Mama, who measure things by what they cost. Nor you, Florence, with your dull, tailored man who “provides so well.” Can you ever know what it is to look at your man across the room in a crowd and catch his eye and be so proud? Proud because he’s worth more than any other man there? Or to wake up sometimes in the middle of the night with him lying there next to you, and feel that flooding sweetness that is so sweet you could almost cry with it?
The sound of Dan’s laughter comes now from the kitchen, where he has followed Alfie and Emily. His laughter has a special note of gaiety that tells her he is enjoying himself enormously.
He comes back now carrying the pitcher, and pours two glasses for Papa and Uncle David. He is good to them both, especially to Papa, who is growing old, going downhill faster than Uncle David.
“That Alfie certainly knows how to pick a girl,” Dan says. “She’s a fine one, all right. Heads are going to turn when he walks in with her, wherever he goes.”
Angelique reproves him. “Fine she may b
e, but hardly our first choice, as even you can understand.”
“Oh, yes,” Dan says, “and I’m sure you understand that your son isn’t her parents’ first choice, either.”
“Choice? They’re in terror that something will come of it every time Alfie crosses their doorstep!”
Dan shrugs. “Perhaps nothing will. At his age a man can expect ten love affairs before he’s through. If he is ever through,” he adds mischievously.
Uncle David’s glass has traveled halfway to his mouth; he sets it down with a clink.
“Any man worth his salt knows when it’s time to be through.” He snaps the words. “Either keep a woman’s trust or leave her alone in the first place. Either or, and no two ways about it.”
Dan makes no comment but busies himself with the pitcher and the tray. Uncle David brings the glass back to his lips. Over the rim his old eyes catch Hennie’s for a fraction of an instant before concealing themselves again behind the protection of his glasses and his hanging gray eyebrows.
What have they meant to say, those kind, clever eyes? Anything new that Hennie does not know? Or have they revealed only a flickering recall of words once spoken, and never spoken since? Probably so. When the darting doubt pays its unwelcome visits—just now and then, and mostly in the chill of a night of poor sleep—Hennie keeps it to herself. It is essential to her peace that doubt be stifled. Talking about it would only make it more real.…
Angelique is caught up in her own worries.
“I certainly hope he’ll have another love affair, as many as he wants. I’ve nothing personal against Emily, but”—here she becomes indignant—“I would despise one of those drab interfaith marriages with a judge officiating or, worse yet, God forbid, a clerk at City Hall.” She sighs. “But what can we do? You may be sure we’ve talked to Alfie, but we can hardly tie him up and lock him in the house.”
“A man is a rebellious animal,” Dan says. “The more you try to tie him, the harder he’ll try to get away.”
There is no answer to that, and no one makes any, not even Uncle David. The mantel clock strikes the half hour.
“Thirty minutes to go before the twentieth century begins,” says Alfie.
“Half past eleven! Oh, Freddy’s falling asleep over the checkerboard,” Hennie says. “Dan, he belongs in bed.”
“Let him see this new year in. It’s something he’ll remember.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Hennie agrees, and is struck again with a feeling for the drama of the hour. “What a splendid century it will be! I feel great events coming, although I can’t imagine what!”
“Ah, but the last one had its splendors too,” says Uncle David, who is thinking how little of the new century he will live to see. “It had its causes and its heroes—”
“And it goes out in shame,” Dan interrupts, “with a dirty war in Cuba.”
“True, true.” Uncle David sighs.
“However,” Dan resumes briskly, “I don’t lose confidence. This twentieth century will be better, Hennie is right. The young will make it better.”
The clock rattles, lurching toward midnight. They open the windows and lean out into the freezing air. The city is almost as light as day; every light—gas, electric, or candle—must be ablaze. Down in the street, a crowd is massed. Tin horns squawk and blare; whistles shrill and someone beats a drum.
Suddenly a tremendous shout goes up, a roar like thunder or surf, as if every throat in the city has opened to hail the first of January.
“Twelve o’clock. Nineteen hundred,” Dan says.
For a moment they are all stilled. Then the spell breaks. There are kisses and toasts. Freddy is woken up and, held in his father’s arms, is allowed a sip of wine. Coats are collected as the gathering breaks up. Alfie and Emily have embraced without embarrassment. Henry and Angelique have decorously kissed each other. Hennie and Dan, looking into one another’s eyes, decide to wait until the house is quiet and they are alone.
Their bodies, joined and now released, have made a golden heat in the winter night. Dan laughs.
“How wonderful it is!” he says. “Do you ever think how really wonderful it is?”
“Yes, always,” she whispers seriously.
She marvels that they have given one another so much joy, that she has given it to him, and can again, and will.
“No one would think, to look at you, that you could be like this,” he tells her. “You do look like such a lady, you know.”
“Surely not prim?” She is anxious, for he despises primness.
“Not prim, just very earnest, very correct. But that’s all right.” He chuckles. “Let people think what they want of you. I have you. I know you.”
She kisses his neck. “You do have me. Always. You and only you.”
“Well,” he says in mock indignation, “I should hope so! If any man thinks he can—well, he’s risking his head!”
But you? she thinks.
Hands that linger a little too long when hands are shaken or a coat is helped on; eyes that call and answer, that sparkle and glint—
No, no! You imagine things, Hennie; you remember too much; after all this time, here in this home that you’ve made together, with your beloved child asleep under this safe roof, here in your husband’s arms, you still remember. But you mustn’t, you can’t. In the name of wholeness or sanity, in the name of life, you can’t. You must insist to yourself that everything is exactly what you want it to be.
“Hennie?”
“Yes?”
“Dear heart,” he says.
Dear heart. This is his loving name for her.
“We’ve come a long way together.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a marvelous woman. You’re so good for me. You make peace for me.” She is good for him. She knows it’s true.
“The boy had a good time tonight, didn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, he felt important.”
Dan yawns. “If we go to sleep right now, we can wake up early enough to start the day right, if you know what I mean.”
She knows. “Oh, haven’t you had enough?” she asks, moving closer.
“It’s just that they say what you do on New Year’s Day, you’ll do every day all year. That would really be nice, don’t you think so?”
Now Hennie laughs. “Very nice, darling.”
No, there is no doubt that she pleases him. A man can’t pretend. If she were only sure that she is the only one.…
Stop it, Hennie. Stop it right now.
“I’m falling asleep,” he says.
“Me too.”
She closes her eyes. The warmth makes her drowsy at last. She seems to be seeing pink through her lids as sleep comes. Why, it’s nine whole years since the fire that changed their lives! And still they love each other, and always will.
Of course they will … Won’t they?
4
Beneath the pastel shimmer of the time that has come to be known as the Belle Epoque, with its sensuous, curvaceous art and its exotic music, under all the lavish beauty, the bottom seethed, sullen and dark.
A long line of anarchists, beginning with the assassins of the Italian king, the Austrian empress, and the American president, brought terror to Europe and America. Groups less radical but equally determined—socialists, suffragettes, and advocates of disarmament—met and marched, petitioned and wrote. Crusading journalists and novelists exposed the corruption of the cities, the filth of the stockyards, the evils of child labor, and the brutalities in the Pennsylvania oil fields.
In New York City there were rent strikes and meat strikes. Housewives rioted in the streets and poured kerosene on overpriced meat. Twenty thousand shirtwaist workers struck for decent wages and conditions.
“They’re working seventy hours a week for less than five dollars! It makes me sick to wear this Gibson Girl thing,” declared Hennie, plucking at the spiraling white ruffle on her shirt. “Do you know, Dan, they have to pay for the chairs they sit on? Pay for their own ne
edles and their lockers and put up with … advances … from the men besides?”
“Oh-ho.” Dan laughed. “ ‘Advances,’ hey?”
“How can you laugh? It’s outrageous! Here, help unbutton me. How is a woman supposed to get in or out of this thing with all these slippery little buttons down the back? Unless she has a lady’s maid or a husband to help her to bed.”
Dan’s face appeared in the mirror above her head as he bent to the buttons.
“Indignation becomes you,” he said, and kissed the back of her neck.
“Oh, Dan, I feel this more than I’ve felt almost anything! It’s personal. I know so many of the girls. They almost all come into the settlement; they’re so young and here alone, just off the boat, lots of them from Italy this past year or two.”
Dan was abruptly serious. “They ought to unionize, of course.”
“I know. But they all hope to get married and quit, so the union organizers haven’t ever gotten very far with them. And then I think of Olga. She’s not well; I’m afraid it’s …” She paused, reflecting. “You know, I ought to be doing something.”
“You? What can you do?”
“I could picket, for one thing. I could at least do that.”
In the second month of the strike the girls still marched outside the factory. Two by two they paced, carrying their defiant placards; their defiant songs in Yiddish and Italian rang with vigor. When one dropped out because of sickness or discouragement, two came to take her place.
Oh, it was cold! The January wind slashed around the corner of the street at which, after fifty paces, they turned and walked back.
Hennie came every day while Freddy was at school. Whenever she could, she found her place beside Olga Zaretkin.
“You ought to take my coat,” she said one day. “It’s a lot heavier than yours. You’re shivering.”
The girl’s thin coat was held up protectively around her throat, leaving her thin wrists bare between sleeve and glove.
