by Belva Plain
Most of these events turned out to be for Lillian in the daytime, since Donald, unlike many of the men in circles like these, was a worker with long hours, into which great balls and banquets seldom fit. But she, an unknown from the city's outer rim, was gradually being drawn toward its center. And Donald, seeing her pleasure, was glad.
Often, much later, whenever he tried to find a pattern behind events and a reason for the pattern, he would wonder whether this friendship—or was it just acquaintance?—with these people could have been the moving cause. But no, he would usually argue, an event is simply the result of a situation's meeting up with a particular character or temperament. In short, it would all have happened, anyway.
Perhaps it had been negligent of Donald not to have discussed with his wife in greater detail the ever-present subject of money. But because he felt himself to be prosperous it hadn't seemed important.
One day he came home to find a painting on prominent display between the windows.
“What's this?”
Lillian wore the proud look of a mother with a new baby. “I bought it this afternoon. Do you like it?”
“Yes, oh yes I do.”
It was a small-sized oil, suitably framed in what looked like old wood, of a winter scene with angular, dark branches and slender, short new growth half buried in blue-white snow, all these wrapped in a stillness of silvery gray air.
“Waiting for spring,” he said, stepping back for a better view. “I have a sense of late winter, of thaw. Maybe it's February. Where did you find it?”
“At that showing this afternoon. I couldn't take my eyes away. And it was a very good buy.”
“Really? How much?”
“Seventy-five hundred. It's worth much more. It's old. Nineteen-ten.”
“Seven thousand, five hundred— Lillian!”
“For goodness sake, you know what prices art commands these days. You've been around enough with me to recognize a bargain.”
“That depends on the point of view, the ability to pay.”
“I don't understand. I've not been extravagant, have I?”
She was staring at him as if she could scarcely believe him.
“No, but—come on in here to my desk. I need to show you some figures that I guess I should have shown you before this. Look here.”
Drawing on a pad, he made a simple chart: so much for income, so much for taxes, the remainder subdivided for rent, insurance, daily living, and savings.
“We have to start some real saving. Oh, we can live well, we do live well, but we have to be prudent. There will be children who will need money for their education. So we need to discuss all our big purchases, like this painting, for instance, before we go ahead.”
She did not answer at once. Frowning a little, she stood at the desk, caressing her smooth hands while she appeared to be studying her rings. It was a habit she had very lately developed, and it bothered him.
“I thought you made much more than this,” she said.
“I don't know what made you think so. It's a very handsome income.”
“I didn't mean that it wasn't a great deal of money, of course I didn't. I meant that if I had known this, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to take the painting. But Chloe kept saying, ‘For heaven's sake, treat yourself. You're dying to have it,' and I was embarrassed to walk away without it.”
“But how did you pay?”
“Chloe did. She gave them a check, so now we owe her.”
Feeling a strong rise of anger, he waited to let it subside before he should say something that he might later regret.
“I can pay part, Donald. It won't be much, but I still get salary every week from Buzley, don't I? So I can help.”
Making amends, she stumbled over her words. And when he saw her condition, his anger actually did subside.
“No,” he said, “I'll take care of it. Only next time, let's talk it over first. Agreed?”
“You can call it a birthday present and a Christmas present combined for the next few years, Donald,” she said, now almost in tears.
She was so contrite that he even began to feel sorry for her.
“Leave that to me. In the meantime, we'll enjoy the painting together. It'll be our treasure,” he added, and actually began to feel good about the whole matter.
Then suddenly later in the evening, she told him something else. “Do you remember the opera gala, Donald? The Sanders and their group have taken boxes as usual, and Chloe can get us two seats in her aunt's box. Actually, she's Frank's aunt, Gloria Sanders. You've read about her.”
“I haven't. What's she done?”
“Not done, exactly. But she goes everywhere, to all the openings. She's always in the newspaper. She's ages old, but she doesn't look it.”
“What opera are they having that night?”
“I don't know, I didn't ask.”
“Well, I'd like to know what I'm going to hear before I buy tickets.”
“I'm sure it will be wonderful, whatever it is. The important thing is to be there. It's the occasion that counts.”
“Not to me. How much are these seats?”
“They're expensive, but nowhere near what the whole box would cost.”
“I should hope not. How much?”
“You see, I didn't know anything until tonight about what to spend.” She looked at him doubtfully. “And so I said yes. They're a thousand dollars each.”
Objects, the lamp, the new painting, and on his lap the typewritten document over which he had been laboring, all spun slightly before Donald's eyes.
“I'm sorry, but you'll have to change your mind about accepting,” he said. “We'll go if you want to, but we'll sit in our usual seats. As seats go, they're B-plus. We don't have to have A seats in the boxes, plus a donation.”
“You're angry, Donald, and I'm sorry.”
“I'm trying not to be angry. You didn't know. But now you do know, and it won't happen again.”
“No harm done?”
“There's never any harm done between you and me.”
The opera was Tosca. It had become one of Donald's favorites, not only through these past few years of operagoing, but also because of a childhood memory, when his mother had used to turn on the radio for the Saturday afternoon broadcast. The house had been very small, and from his room he had been able to hear what was to him merely a jumble of voices, violins, and drums. Now and then, though, he had been summoned to listen to something that, his mother said, must not be missed. Most of the time, he would have preferred to miss it, but occasionally, something did catch his ear, a stirring march, or a woman's voice as pure as a flute. So when he heard “Vissi d'arte,” he knew he had heard it before.
Now on this festive evening, he was to hear it again. Here in this splendid hall he sat with his lovely wife glowing in crimson silk, while on the other side of the orchestra pit, a musical drama of incredible tragic beauty was being played. A thrill quivered through his nerves. He felt as if he was being given all the best that life has to give.
In this exultant mood, he stood among the crowd in the lobby between the acts. “She's the best Tosca I've ever heard. Of course, I've only heard one other,” he said, laughing at himself. “What are you looking at?”
Lillian had turned to peer at a group standing near the bar.
“Over there,” she whispered. “Quick! There's the Sanders' aunt I was telling you about. That emerald pendant—can you believe it? Eight carats at least, maybe ten. Have you any idea what it's worth?”
“None at all,” he said.
Whether or not his tone had revealed his abrupt change of mood, he could not tell because she continued her train of thought.
“It must be great to sit like royalty in a box and let your jewels glitter. When you come down to it, there's nothing like opera for dignity. It has a kind of stateliness, don't you think?”
“I guess so,” he said.
The next morning was Sunday, so there was time enough to lie in bed
and think while Lillian slept. He knew her face in every detail and yet, what did he really know of her? Or anybody? A secret inside a riddle inside an enigma. He had been stupid to let himself be hurt by something as trivial as her relative indifference to Tosca. What, Donald, is she supposed to be? A carbon copy of you? Who do you think you are, anyway?
Still, it was something that bothered him. By the time she woke up, he had decided to tell her.
“I had a bad dream. I felt that you were drifting away from me.”
“That's crazy,” she said with her head on his shoulder. “Absolutely crazy.”
“I guess it is. But I do wish you'd make some other friends besides people you've met through Chloe. I don't mean that you should give them up, only that it would be nice if you went out in the afternoons with some different people. A little variety . . . you know what I mean?”
“It's hard to make friends in this city. Everybody's too busy with their own affairs. I'm lucky that Chloe's done so much for me.”
“What about my little group? Ed's wife. Or Susan. Or Polly. You especially liked Polly, you told me.”
“I do see them now and then. But they all have a kid or two, or else they're pregnant and can't talk about anything else.”
He felt himself smiling up at the ceiling. “Maybe that tells you something. Or is it too soon?”
“Donald! We were married last September. What's the rush? Anyway, I'll be starting work on my degree. One thing at a time.”
Something compelled him to keep holding on to the subject. With his next remark, he surprised himself, for he had not planned to make it.
“You see quite a good deal of Cindy, don't you?”
“A good deal? No. But I do keep in touch with her. Why? Do you mind?”
“I would have no right to mind whom you see. But as it happens, I don't mind. I think it's interesting that you can feel comfortable with two such extremes, Chloe Sanders and Cindy. By the way, how is she?”
“The same. She finds a lousy job, she keeps it for a week or two, and loses it. If she could stop drinking—but she can't.”
“And you keep helping her.”
“She's a good soul. I can't stand by and let her drown.”
Kindness like this could not help but touch one's heart. “You wonder,” he said, “if Cindy had come out of Chloe Sanders's home, would she have been different? A question that everybody asks, and it has no answer. But if there's any way I can help your friend, I will. Just tell me.”
“You're a good man, Donald. So good that you're making me sad.”
“Sad? Good Lord, I want you to be happy. I want you to be the happiest woman in New York.”
Spring was late that year. Cold rain, driven by powerful winds, sped through the gray streets.
“Everything gray,” sighed Lillian, standing at the window. “It's depressing.”
She had been making these remarks all week, and he was tired of hearing them. “No, it's just winter,” he said firmly. “And there's nothing we can do about it.”
“Easy for you to talk. You'll get on a plane and fly away, come home, and fly out again.”
“I don't always enjoy it. Not always,” Donald said. “But I have no choice.”
“It seems to me that once in a while you could say no.”
“That's too ridiculous to deserve an answer. You know better.”
“All right, I do know better. But you can't imagine what it's like being alone here. It's horrible. You look out of the window and all you see are walls. If we were higher up, at least, you'd have—”
His thoughts interrupted her. She never liked the apartment. She only pretended that she did.
“We miss so many things. I do, at least. Nobody asks a woman alone to go out for the evening. Those tickets for the Plaza dinner went to waste because they only gave you two days' notice to fly to Geneva.”
It was true that he had been away unusually often during this, the first winter of their marriage. Orton and Pratt had among its clients a company that had been defrauded of hundreds of millions by a man who was still at large. He had been seen, or reports had come in from people who claimed to have seen him, in places as various and scattered as Brazil, Switzerland, and Baluchistan. The company's subsidiaries had interests forming a complicated web that kept a dozen lawyers like Donald busy all over the globe.
“I work for an international law firm, remember? There's nothing I can do about it, Lillian. Or that I want to do, either,” he added.
He had not meant to be curt. He wanted peace and contentment, and since he worked for it, it seemed to him that he deserved to have it. And wanting just to shut everything out, he closed his eyes and laid his head on the chair's pillowed back while a heavy silence like a fog crept through the room.
When he woke up again, there she was, willowy in her slender skirt while one graceful hand toyed with her long necklace, reminding him somehow of one of her favorite paintings; as usual, he failed to remember the artist, some Frenchman, he was very famous. . . .
This has got to stop. I am too touchy, he thought, and surely not for the first time. Why do I let every little tiff trouble me so? Lighten up! What did I expect? A snug little love nest with never a cross word? People aren't like that. I'm not like that. She's not like that. This is marriage. This is life.
“I'll do what I can,” he said. “Don't you think I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else in the world? Don't you know that?”
With outstretched arms, she came to him. “When you talk like this, I feel so sorry, Donald, so ashamed of myself. You're too good to me.”
He did do what he could. In June, somebody who owned what was said to be a fabulous estate in Westchester was giving a party to which Donald and Lillian, no doubt by way of the Sanders connection, were invited.
Early in the month, he gave Mr. Pratt the date. “I was wondering whether, since we're probably going to have a meeting soon again in Geneva, whether it would be possible to work around that date a bit? My wife—well, you know how it is, she has her heart set on going to this party. I don't even know the people or anything about them.”
“You haven't heard about Tommy Fox? About the few billions he made in Mexico? No? Well, it's a couple of years back, and I guess you forgot.” Pratt twinkled. “Or you don't keep up with the social news. Well, tell your wife not to worry.”
So it was that on a fine, cool evening long before sunset, Donald and Lillian drove out of the city in a sumptuous, attention-getting, imported sports car. He had asked her to rent a car for the occasion, and this was her choice. It suited the occasion, she said. It was worth a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.
“A hundred and seventy-five? It's not much larger than two trash cans tied together, in my opinion.”
“Well, it's a two-seater, what do you expect?” She laughed. “And it can go over one hundred twenty miles an hour, I'm sure you'll be glad to know.”
“Great! I'll try it as soon as we're off Riverside Drive.”
She was full of excitement. Her dress matched her eyes, he remarked. Not exactly, she said. The dress had violet mixed with the blue, and the color was called “periwinkle.” Around her throat lay a narrow diamond necklace about which there could have been some fairly heated discussion if he had not made up his mind that nothing would mar this event, or any event in the future.
“Chloe insisted on lending it to me,” she had explained. “You see, what happened is that Frank just gave her another one for her birthday. Of course it's very different from this one, but still she really didn't need it. So now she has two, and she said there's no reason why this one should go to waste when she wants to lend it to me for tonight.”
Donald's mother would have said that borrowed jewelry was tacky. It was funny how a man who seldom gave thought to his old life anymore could suddenly find a quirky memory like that one popping into his head.
Nevertheless, the necklace was an enhancement, drawing the eye to the pure curve of Lillian's chin, to
the red of her plump lips and the blue of her eyes. Men would look at her this evening; they always did. Well, let them look. He reached over and for a moment or two held her hand.
The house that they reached was enormous and obviously quite new. White Corinthian columns gave it the look of a Southern plantation; the huge, double front doors, heavy and dark brown, were definitely Victorian, while from each side of the main building there jutted a flat-roofed wing that could easily be mistaken for a storage warehouse, he thought, except for its vast plate-glass windows.
Pretty awful, he thought. His work had taken him to some great mansions here and abroad, and none of them had ever looked like this.
At the rear of the house on a wide open space that apparently had been cleared out of the surrounding woodlands, a colorful crowd moved about, while waiters in contrasting white moved among them carrying trays.
“What a picture!” Lillian cried. “They've invited two hundred fifty people, I heard. Oh, Donald, look at that—”
That, to their right down a gentle slope, was a sizable pond near the edge of the woodland. At its center rose a quaint gazebo of wooden filigree such as one may see in an old-fashioned garden.
“Do you swim out to it?” she wondered.
A man, passing and overhearing, replied, “No, it's just for water lilies and for beauty.” Laughing, he added, “For algae, too. But everybody wants a pond these days. They've already had their pools forever. By the way, am I supposed to know you? I'm Roy Fox, Tommy's brother.”
Introductions were made, hands were shaken, and the three walked on toward the enormous tent in the distance.
“We're very close old friends of Chloe and Frank,” Lillian said.
