The Golden Cup

by Belva Plain

  Leah nodded. Of course she was; she was probably always hungry.

  “Will you call me Aunt Hennie, dear, and tell me when you’re hungry or whenever you want something?”

  The child’s eyes filled again. It is the kindness, Hennie knew at once; it always brings tears, especially on the sort of day this has been. So she spoke briskly instead.

  “Go on, you two. It’s getting late.”

  Leah and Freddy went ahead. The boy chatted.

  “Once you learn checkers,” they heard him say, “maybe I’ll teach you how to play chess. I’m pretty good at it.”

  “I do believe he’s happy to have her,” Dan said.

  “Then do you still think this is a mistake?” Hennie asked.

  “Never mind what I think. I have to accept, it’s done.”

  “Look how the sun glints on her hair! She’s a charming little thing, you have to admit that.”

  “Oh, she’s a charmer all right, and will be. But you’re satisfied, and that’s all I care about, God knows. And I will help you with her, do the best I can. Don’t worry.”

  Hennie smiled. “I won’t.”

  5

  Freddy is in his room after supper, supposedly doing his homework. Twelve math problems await him, and a map on which he is required to outline the major rivers of the world, but he can’t think of numbers or rivers tonight. He can think only of what he has seen that afternoon. He lays his head on his arm and grieves.

  It was such a good day in the beginning. Walking to school with Bob Fisher, who has never noticed him before and suddenly seems to like him a little; having a piece of apple pie in his lunch box; getting an A-minus on his composition. Finally, and best of all, Mr. Cox asking him to play the piano at Friday’s assembly because the music teacher is sick.

  So Freddy runs out of school, not even looking for Bob Fisher to walk home together; he has to tell Dad about the piano; he can’t wait to see Dad’s pleased face. Dad wants him to be a real performer and keeps telling him he could be. He won’t mind being interrupted at the lab with news like that.

  He runs all the way with his schoolbag bouncing at his leg. He skids around corners, loses his breath, gets it back, arrives at the door, and rings the bell. Nobody answers. Dad must be there, though; he almost always is in the afternoons. Besides, it’s dull weather and the lights are on. Freddy rings again, harder; it sounds more like a buzzer than a bell, snarling enough to make you wince. Still no one answers.

  Maybe Dad’s taking a nap upstairs? Maybe … he couldn’t have died, like Leah’s mother, could he? A pang of fear darts through Freddy’s chest and fades as he ridicules himself. Worrywart. Then he remembers that he has a key. Of course! It’s in his schoolbag, the inside pocket, along with the house key they gave him for emergencies after that time he’d come from school and not found his mother waiting, the day she’d been arrested. That was the only time, though. He hadn’t liked that, didn’t want her to get mixed up in nasty things like fights and strikes.

  He finds the key and unlocks the door. Dad’s not at the benches. Ceiling lights blaze above the papers, the scattered plugs and fuses, all the stuff Freddy doesn’t comprehend or care about. So Dad’s been there; he must be upstairs, then.

  Freddy walks to the back of the building. He’s about to mount the stairs when he hears voices. What makes him stop to listen, instead of going straight up and showing himself? Something … something … the sound of laughter, pealing soprano laughter. Whose? Not his mother’s, he knows.

  Then Dad’s voice: “You are the funniest, most adorable girl …”

  Freddy is frozen at the foot of the stairs.

  Dad’s voice: “Oh, stay a while longer, can’t you? Come on, we’ve only begun …”

  A muffled answer. Giggles. Silence. And sounds. Sounds. He thinks he knows what they mean; he isn’t sure, but he’s been told things; the big boys talk in the bathrooms at school. Maybe he really does know; yet he doesn’t want to; this is his father. His father!

  He puts his hands over his ears and stares at the wall. There’s a spiderweb left over from last summer hanging in the corner. However did a spider get in here? His mind concentrates, while he understands that he is shutting out the moment. Suddenly he picks up his schoolbag and walks, almost runs, tiptoed this time, to the front door, and lets himself out.

  He drags himself home, feeling sick at his stomach. One thing: He has to keep this to himself. He can’t tell his father or ask him anything, ever. Ever! He can’t say exactly why he feels he can’t; he just knows it would be awful. And maybe, after all, there was nothing to it? Maybe he was imagining things? No. No.

  The woman, laughing. What right had she to be upstairs in that private room? Suddenly he is furious at the unknown woman.

  At home, at supper, his father is no different from the way he is every night, when he comes in and kisses Mama, unfolds his napkin, and starts to talk about whatever is in The New York Times that day. But Freddy can hardly look at him. He lets Leah do the talking; he often does that anyway, because Leah is jolly and he likes to listen to her.

  His mind touches Leah now. It’s been a year since she came. She doesn’t cry anymore, never did cry much, even at first. She’s very brave. Looks forward, Mama says, as we all must, not back. Maybe, though, death doesn’t hurt as much as betrayal. Leah’s lost her mother, but she has beautiful things to remember about her. Beautiful. Soothing. Not ugly, like today.

  Freddy raises his head from the desk. I’ve lost something, he thinks. My father. Not altogether, of course not. But something I’ll never get back, just the same.

  He’d better not ask me to play for him tonight. He’d better not, that’s all.

  He sighs and opens the math book.

  6

  It was a raw night in darkest December, Christmas week, and the twenty-third wedding anniversary of Walter and Florence Werner. The house, which was oppressive by day, especially when the day was cheerful out of doors, was warm and bright with celebration.

  In the large, square dining room the company was enclosed as in a velvet box. The walls, paneled in waxed oak, glowed in the light from half a dozen candelabra. Plum-colored draperies of heavy brocatelle covered the windows; a plum-colored Oriental rug covered the floor. Under the ruby glitter of a Bohemian glass chandelier, the table, set for twenty-four, flashed with the white light of silver and diamonds.

  At its head, as soon as the tureen of turtle soup had been removed, Walter Werner began to carve an enormous roast. Two young waitresses went around the table to serve. In silver platters, bowls, decanters, pitchers, and repoussé baskets, they bore the food and drink: hothouse asparagus, lobster mousse, creamed oysters, brandied peaches, salads, sauces, pastry rolls, soufflés, puddings, cakes and cheeses, grapes and wines.

  At the foot of the table sat Florence. Hennie had an odd thought: The foot becomes the head because Florence is sitting there. Florence is stately; Walter, with receding hair and glasses, is not. Besides, to be fair, the ornaments help Florence. Passementerie and nine yards of ivory peau de soie sweep the carpet. Fluted lace is gathered low on her white shoulders, and the diamond star gleams on a satin band around her throat. Florence has authority. She sits erect, looking taller than she is.

  Mama’s eyes never leave Florence. She is proud of this daughter who has regained what Mama once, so briefly, so gloriously, knew.

  Hennie, to her own surprise, was enjoying herself. It didn’t concern her that she was something of an oddity in this company, a woman “out of step,” who had actually, however briefly, been arrested by the police! She could even feel a faint amusement because of it. Family was family; various members might go their various ways and still accept each other.

  So she ate and drank, observing her sister’s triumph with pleasure. The old secret rivalry between them had long ago eased away; they were equals, two married women, two mothers, with the respect that only marriage and motherhood can bestow.

  Apropos of that, it was heartenin
g to see what a few years of married life had done for Alfie and Emily. Never would Hennie forget that somber morning when she had gone with them to City Hall! It had been, in spite of the love that was palpable between the two, a depressing experience.

  So many dreary scenes had preceded it! Such bitter insults spoken, such bridling pride! Alfie heard it in his home, while Emily heard worse in hers. The two fathers, tied by financial need into their partnership, had arrived at a point where they spoke only what was necessary to each other. Actually they had no reason to be angry at each other, since each had done his utmost to prevent the marriage, to keep his child in the family’s community and faith.

  Alfie and Emily would not be separated.

  She had been crying, and looked quite unbridelike in her plain dark suit. Hennie, in the dingy ladies’ room, had encouraged her, sponging her worried cheeks and her eyelids with cold water.

  “Do I look too awful, Hennie?”

  “Not at all, dear. Besides, the hat brim shades your face very prettily.”

  “I did so want a white dress and veil and everything! I don’t even mind so much not having them, but that my parents wouldn’t come today I couldn’t have believed!”

  The Hugheses had chosen to be out of town. Henry and Angelique, to their credit, had consented to appear, although Angelique’s expression as they stood before the marriage clerk had surely not been one to strike joy into the heart. All in all, it had been a sorry start.

  Yet here they now sat, having marvelously survived, happy with each other and in the possession of a baby girl, whose arrival had produced between the hostile grandparents a kind of chilly peace. A fragile peace.… The world was not going to go out of its way to make things easy for a pair like Alfie and Emily. Or for the baby either, who would belong—where would she belong?

  For a moment Hennie rested a tender gaze upon her brother and his wife, then slid the gaze down the table toward her own children. Freddy and Leah were far down on the other side, so that she could see them only in three-quarter profile.

  Freddy seemed to be silent; he missed no nuance, however, and would make his private comments to her later.

  Leah’s robust laugh rang; she was lively as ever; her face was frank, gay, and bold. After two years, she was completely at home in the household and had become their own daughter—or Hennie’s own, anyway. It was a wonder and a blessing that the little girl had been able to recover as she had.

  Angelique hadn’t seen it quite that way. “She doesn’t seem as sad as I expected, a child without a mother,” she had observed critically, and then gone on to say, “I do hope she doesn’t use Yiddish expressions in front of Freddy. It’s a perversion of German, that’s all it is.”

  And Hennie had answered, “Well, I don’t know to whom she would speak it, since no one in this house understands it.”

  “Be that as it may, I still think you are making a terrible mistake.”

  “Be that as it may,” Hennie had told her mother, “I do not think I am.”

  Only Dan troubled her still.

  “Don’t you like the child, Dan?”

  “How can one dislike a child? But she isn’t going to be a child forever,” he would answer somewhat doubtfully.

  So he could still make Hennie feel that she had perhaps been too hasty, not quite sensible in what she had done.

  Nevertheless, the girl was thriving. Eager to learn, she had quickly put the slum experience behind her; she did her schoolwork well and filled the house with the schoolgirl chatter of her friends.

  She’s what I wanted to be and wasn’t, Hennie thought.

  “You’re so quiet, Hennie,” Florence said now.

  The remark was a reminder to be sociable, to play the expected role of dinner guest.

  “Sorry,” Hennie said, smiling quickly. “Too much food, I guess.”

  But she went back to observation. Many separate conversations were taking place. The entire family, even to the least important Werners, were gathered; poor relatives, fading couples related in second or third degree of cousinship, were always invited to such celebrations because “blood is thicker than water.” The women had trotted out their small garnets and made-over gowns for the rare excitement. Now, gushing to each other, they praised everything, the food, the flowers, and the house, while Walter and the more affluent men talked business, interest rates, bond yields, puts and calls.

  Dan was absorbed with the partner on his left. He had been attentive to her from the start of the meal. They had put him next to a daughter of one of the Werner cousins, a vivacious girl who was evidently having a wonderful time—as was Dan. His laugh had a distinctive timbre; it was the sensual laugh that Hennie recognized. He leaned to the girl, as if they had some very private joke, while she fluttered toward his attention and bloomed, no doubt misreading that intention.

  If only he wouldn’t do that! She wished, she wished he wouldn’t! It meant nothing, but how were other people to know it? He made himself conspicuous; he made Hennie conspicuous; people glanced to see whether she was angry, feeling sorry for her, the little wife, the patient little thing. She couldn’t very well say to them, although she would have liked to: Mind your business, you needn’t feel sorry for me, he really loves me and only me. She must pretend not to notice. To reveal that she did was to weaken and shame her all the more. Above all, she must not let Dan know that she saw or cared.

  The funny thing was that Dan hadn’t wanted to come tonight. Of course, he never was enthusiastic about coming to this house anyway, but on this night he had a special reason. They were missing a neighborhood party in their building. It was the kind of gathering in which he was most at home, even if—and this was surely a contradiction!—there were no attractive women there.

  “There’s life among those people,” Dan had grumbled. “At your sister’s house, the only head that’s alive is Paul’s. He’s the only one who ever has anything worthwhile to say.” And he added, “The only man in the family I can really talk to, now that Uncle David’s in the home.”

  Paul was talking quietly to his partner, young Miss Marian, “Mimi,” Mayer. Freckled and fair and not quite sixteen, she was not destined to be a beauty, but she was already self-assured, with a definite elegance.

  “The Mayers are like family,” Florence always said with a prideful smile, whenever they had to be introduced, forgetting how often she had said it before.

  They have the simplicity of great wealth, Hennie reflected, or perhaps not so much great as accustomed and well-worn. She wondered, and then was almost certain, that the families had hopes that Paul and Marian, in time, would— The thought fled. Absurd. One didn’t “arrange” marriages in America in the twentieth century.

  Paul’s thoughts were random. Like Hennie and like Freddy, he was an observer. These dinners, these social games, he often found to be boring, and sometimes, in a way that he could not explain, he even felt a certain sadness in what he saw. For instance, his two grandfathers …

  His mother’s father had little to say; he seldom did. His unfocused eyes, fixed on the opposite wall as he took the fork from his plate to his mouth and back again, were somber. He ate as though his mind were not there at all.

  The Werner grandpa, on the other hand, was the master wherever he went, even here in this house that belonged to his son. It was from him that the bounty flowed and would flow on eventually to Paul. And stirring in his seat, he glanced over at the old man’s bulky chest, across which a series of gold chains were looped; they couldn’t all be watch chains, so what were they? He spoke English with a heavy accent, as though he had arrived in this country just last year; although he had been here since he was younger than Paul was now, he still kept German as the language of his household. Identified with Germany, he went back there every other year. Paul was sorry that he disliked the man as much as he did.

  He didn’t care much for the Werner grandmother either, any more than he did for the De Rivera one, and was amused that the two old women—althoug
h no one in the family would ever admit it—despised each other, the one because the other was a German upstart and the other because the Sephardic snob had no money. The latter was slender and fashionable, while the German put away enormous amounts of food and showed it. Her pink flesh was stuffed into striped black silk, but she would look more comfortable, Paul thought, wearing an apron and rolling strudel dough.

  Still, he thought, they weren’t bad people, any of them; really, he had no right …

  The desserts were being carried in: the walnut cake with mocha icing that was a family tradition on important occasions; ices with raspberries and strawberries from Long Island’s hothouses; blue flames spinning on top of a plum pudding. Around and around went the two waitresses, and Paul’s eyes followed them; deftly and swiftly they moved, wearing the blank expressions of Oriental dancers, although one was Irish and the other Hungarian.

  What could they be thinking? Were they envious, impressed, resigned, or simply hoping not to drop a plate? He often thought about the maids who lived beneath this roof, who had come from God knew where and for what reason, and would go on to God knew where.

  The meal had continued for hours; the air was too heavy now with the heat of the candles and human bodies. Gardenias, opening in the warmth, began to brown at the tips of their creamy petals. At last Florence stood to signal the end and the party adjourned.

  Between the double parlors, the sliding doors had been moved back to make one room that extended the depth of the house. In the little bustle of finding seats, Paul came up beside Freddy.

  “Is it too awful for you?” he asked.

  Freddy’s eyes widened with surprise. “Awful? Why, it’s so beautiful! You know I always love it here.”

  At the side of the room, next to the fringed portieres that hid the hall, stood the Christmas tree. Ten feet tall, it was hung with silver icicles and crimson balls, and crowned by a gilded cherub. Freddy stood admiring the shimmer. And then fear struck him. He had overheard his mother, before they left home, imploring his father to make no comment about the tree. Last year Dad had said something, and you could see that Aunt Florence had not liked that at all. She had been polite as she always was—how wonderful to live among people who were always quiet and not so emotional about things—but she had been very angry. Freddy had felt it.