Her Father's House

by Belva Plain

  They walk, they go to school, and soon they are arguing with you.

  “I've been very busy working out of the country, otherwise I would have come.”

  “Ah, yes, work. That's true. Come, Cookie. We'll get back into the carriage and have our lunch. Sit down, Mr. Wolfe, and watch your girl eat lunch.”

  Your girl. Bettina Wolfe.

  “You called her Cookie?”

  “That's what they call her. Her mother hugs her and calls her Cookie, so I do, too.”

  As he had been invited, Donald sat. If he had been asked to describe his feelings, he would very likely have fumbled with words. He was outside himself, observing himself as he observed his child.

  “She can drink from a cup, but she likes the bottle better sometimes,” Maria explained. “I give her the cup at night when she's in her pajamas. Her mother doesn't like to have milk stains on these good clothes. Not that you can't wash them out easily enough, but—” Maria did not finish.

  Something annoys her, Donald said to himself. And he asked her whether she always had to work on Sunday.

  “Yes, because I need the money. I have a family in Mexico. But I don't mind. What else would I do? Mr. Buzley pays me so much. He's a nice man, very, very nice, and I don't say it only because he pays me so much extra. No. It's too bad you can't see how he plays with Cookie. He gets down on the floor with her and plays. Yes, he's a very nice old man. You want to see a picture? I cut it out of the paper to show it here in the park. Nannies all like to ask you who your boss is, so I show them this.”

  There on a page of photographs taken at various social events were Mr. and Mrs. Howard Buzley at a charity dinner, he looking just as Donald recalled having seen him, and she superb with elaborate pendant earrings and naked shoulders. His eyes glanced over a gushing paragraph about “Mr. Howard Buzley with his lovely wife Lillian,” and glanced away.

  And wasn't that a great step upward in the world, to be in the Sunday newspaper, and mustn't she be thrilled!

  Maria kept talking. Understandably, she was feeling a certain drama, a bit of excitement in this situation. She must be wondering what he, the former husband, was thinking. It was only natural. Tomorrow she would be telling the other nannies about the father who meets the baby in the park.

  Cookie, with something in her mouth that looked like a cracker, but was, as Maria explained, a teething biscuit, was staring at him. Was she curious about him? How much thought was possible at eight months?

  For his part, he was thinking that he did not care about the name “Cookie” when two women passed, and he heard one say, “Isn't she adorable? It's the Buzleys' baby.” They walked on and he heard no more.

  But Maria had heard. He was convinced of it when suddenly she said, “If I'm still here when she starts to say some words, I'm going to teach her right away to say ‘Daddy.' ”

  He looked at her. She, returning the look, gave him the feeling that she wanted to tell him something, but was unsure about it.

  “What did you mean by ‘if I'm still here'?” he asked. “I thought you liked the job.”

  Maria shrugged. “I do like it. But you never know, do you? Oh, now she's sleepy. Do you want to rock her? Push the carriage back and forth a little.”

  The gentle, rocking motion began to soothe Donald. Before him passed a parade of children in bright clothes, a tiny redhead riding her three-wheeler and a troop of boys kicking fallen leaves. An autumn peace settled over the afternoon and, the better to feel it, he closed his eyes while the sun warmed his shoulders.

  Suddenly Maria's voice cut through the peace. “I don't understand. Have baby, go out all the time. All the time. Sleep and go.”

  “Were you speaking to me?” he asked, not sure whether he had correctly heard the murmured Spanish.

  “I'm sorry! I was talking to myself. I get angry sometimes. Excuse me.”

  “Excuse you for what, Maria?”

  “I didn't mean it for you, Mr. Wolfe. I'm sorry.”

  But of course she had meant it for him. And rather firmly he said to her, “Look at me, Maria. If there's anything wrong, you should tell me.”

  There was a silence. Perhaps she had spoken out of pique, or for some simple reason, such as resentment over having had a scolding from Lillian, and was now sorry she had revealed her feelings.

  Very quietly, Donald commanded her, “You started to say something about the baby's mother. You don't have to be afraid that I will repeat it. We are not friends, Mrs. Buzley and I, but I need to know, Maria. I need to know, and you must tell me.”

  “She's never home! She buys things for Cookie and kisses her, but that's not being a mother.”

  Very true, he had to agree, but not what you would call child abuse. Sighing, he gave Maria a compliment, thinking it better to drop the subject for the time being.

  “I'm glad the baby has you for a nanny, Maria.”

  “I'm glad, too.”

  “I'm going to give you my telephone number,” he said, producing a card. “Here's where you can reach me during the day. On the other side I'll write my home number.”

  “Will you come back next Sunday, Mr. Wolfe?”

  “Yes, I'm going to come every Sunday unless I have to be away from the city. Telephone me on Sunday in the morning, and if I don't answer, you'll know I'm away.”

  Maria nodded. “I will call you, Mr. Wolfe. Now I think we'll go home. The sun's gone in.”

  For a short distance Donald accompanied them. Then at parting, he took one more look at the sleeping baby, watched the carriage safely across the avenue, and went on his way.

  He was a person who especially disliked uncertainties, who would gladly undertake a mountain of hardships, as long as he could look ahead. But the future now was hidden in cloud; he had a very uneasy feeling that everything was not as right as it should be. The only sure thing was this newborn love for his child. And filled with these inconclusive thoughts, he walked rapidly toward home.

  If it had not been for Bettina, or Cookie—and how he disliked both names!—Donald would have most easily been able to put Lillian back in his past along with other things anybody would want to forget. But as the months passed, she kept reappearing in one way or another. It was amazing to him that these vignettes on the social page of the newspaper, if often enough repeated, could make a personage out of a person. Once you got started—and often it only took a hired publicist to make the start—you simply kept going because you were a name. He didn't put it past Lillian to have done just that.

  It was Maria who brought him these clippings, which Lillian must have displayed to her with pride. She also brought tattle, as harmless as those first reports about Lillian's being out all the time. Tattle of this sort embarrassed him; it was lowering to listen to it.

  Yet, occasionally there were certain reports that worried him, an account, for instance, of a furious quarrel between the Buzleys that had awakened Maria in the middle of the night. He had come to know Maria very well. One had only to use some common sense, plus a bit of intuition, to see her whole. She was an honest, canny little woman, no longer young, who had learned a great many things about humanity during the course of her hard years. In a miserable, hungry village, she had struggled to survive, and it would not be easy to fool her.

  Strange as it might seem to an outsider, what he most wanted to hear was that the Buzley home was a good one, a peaceful one; since Lillian's house was to be the child's primary home, let it be sound and solid. One particular argument, he found out, had been over Lillian's going out alone to a late-night party when Buzley had been detained at a meeting. I don't like that at all, Donald thought, not at all.

  “Cookie is lucky to have you for a father,” she said one day.

  “But you don't know anything about me,” he answered, “except that I am the divorced husband. I could have been a terrible man, it could have been all my fault.”

  “No, no, not your fault. I have eyes. I can see. She needs to have somebody talk to her. Look, Cookie
, what's that?” she cried, changing the subject.

  “A wow-wow.”

  “Good. And who's that?”

  “Daddy.”

  “I have to talk English to Cookie,” Maria explained. “It is her language. We play games. She's very smart. We say ‘peekaboo' and ‘where's Cookie?' She thinks it's funny when I say ‘where's Cookie?' Look, Mr. Wolfe. Two more teeth coming. Six teeth already. Show her your watch. What's that, Cookie?”

  “Tick tock.”

  Something was bothering Maria. He felt like telling her to come out with it, to stop dangling it in the air between them. Instead, he lifted the baby out of the carriage, and taking her by the hand, set off on a walk.

  There is something, he thought, about the sight of a tall man leading a doll-sized creature that makes people turn and smile. A man passing by with an active boy about two years old gave Donald just such a smile with an added twinkle. They recognized each other, these Sunday fathers. He wondered what their stories were, each one surely being unique, since no two people are alike. Yet how different were theirs from his?

  And so when the very short walk was over and the baby back in the carriage, he spoke bluntly to Maria.

  “Tell me what you meant when you said that she needs to be talked to. What's going on in the family? If you trust me, you will answer me, Maria.”

  “It's the same, Mr. Wolfe. We live alone, just baby and I, Mr. and Mrs. go out, the cook goes home every night, and we are alone.” She stopped.

  “You've told me that many times,” Donald said patiently. “There's something else you haven't told me. What is it?”

  There was a long, long pause. And then Maria said, “I hate to say it. . . . I think she has another man, Mr. Wolfe.”

  “Another man? Mrs. Buzley has another man?”

  “I think so. He telephones in the morning when Mr. Buzley is gone. I heard a few times. And I saw once. She came home in a taxi. Yes, I think so, I do.”

  It seemed to Donald that he was looking at the approach of disaster, a speeding car in the wrong lane, and he sighed. “A young man, Maria?”

  “Younger than Mr. Buzley.”

  “But you could be making a terrible mistake.”

  “I could, but I don't think so.”

  So he left it at that and went away. What, after all, could he do?

  Sometimes he almost wished that his baby would remain a baby. Time raced; she was almost two. Life was only going to be more complicated with the years, when unanswerable questions would be asked. They plagued him now, and would have plagued him even more if he had not put up some sort of resistance to them. Who is the man whom Maria suspects? Or is there such a man? And why those nighttime arguments? Are Lillian and Buzley going to stay together?

  One morning as Donald was prepared to leave for the office, Maria telephoned with news: Cookie was sick. She had been up all night, hot with fever. The woman at the doctor's office had not understood her, and what should she do?

  “Where is her mother?” Donald asked.

  “They went away, someplace far away, to ski.”

  “Can't you reach them?”

  “They left the telephone number, but maybe I wrote the wrong one down, I don't know. I don't think so, but nobody can find them.”

  Donald looked at the clock. There was on his desk a pile of documents that had to be checked before a noon conference. “There's something to be said for a two-parent family,” he muttered, “with parents who pay a little more attention to their children, too.” Then, after instructing Maria to wrap the baby very warmly and expect him in fifteen minutes, he threw on an overcoat to ward off the snow, rushed downstairs, and hailed a taxi.

  Cookie's tear-wet face was so painfully red that it terrified him. Maria's ominous silence terrified him. The taxi, whose driver Donald had urged to hurry, also terrified him as it skidded through the slippery streets.

  I don't know anything about children, he was thinking in his fear. If I were living with her mother, I would know things, would know what to do. What if she's dying? Damn the driver! Is he going to take all day? Hurry, hurry, Donald wanted to cry as the man fumbled with the fare, as the elevator took forever to arrive, and as the receptionist wasted time on the telephone before acknowledging their presence.

  “You look scared to death,” remarked the doctor. “Take it easy, Mr. Buzley. My guess is strep throat. There's an awful lot of it around this season. We're going to take a culture and by tomorrow we'll know whether it is or not. In the meantime we'll start the young lady on some antibiotics right now. Is she allergic to penicillin?”

  Donald said helplessly that he did not know. Neither did Maria.

  “No matter. We'll give her something else to make sure. Here, Maria—that is your name, isn't it? I'm writing down all the instructions for you. Maria takes wonderful care of Bettina,” the doctor said, turning to Donald. “We're old friends by now. How is Mrs. Buzley? I haven't seen her in so long, I thought perhaps she had been ill.”

  You talk too much, but you mean no harm, thought Donald as he replied, “No, she's all right.”

  “That's good. Well, take this lady home and expect our call in the morning.”

  Back home, Donald tried to cope with his fury. Fine, he thought, fine mother! Buy an absurd mink blanket for the child's stroller—to match Mrs. Buzley's new coat, Maria said—and then go a thousand miles away after leaving the child in the sole care of a frightened woman who scarcely knows her way around the city.

  So, because a week later the anger was still hot inside him, Donald went to the telephone and called Lillian.

  “Who?” she said. “Oh, Donald? I didn't recognize your voice. I'm half-asleep.”

  “Well, wake up. It's time you did.” He spoke roughly. “Wake up and pay attention to your child.”

  “Got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning, did you?”

  “Do you by any chance know, did Maria tell you what happened while you were away on your ski trip?”

  “Cookie had a bad cold. What are you fussing about?”

  “For your information, she did not have a cold. She had a strep throat. Maria did her best, but she was terrified. Who knows what might have developed if I hadn't been here in the city to take charge?”

  “Well, that's always your function in life, isn't it—to preach and to take charge? Listen, Donald, you're all wrought up. But I don't want to argue with you because I don't dislike you and because I'm a really nice person. Try to remember that.”

  “I'm not wrought up,” he said, dropping his voice. “I'm only concerned because you don't pay enough attention to Bettina. I'm justifiably concerned. You went away and left a useless phone number. You left this woman here helpless.”

  “It wasn't a useless number. What happened was that people we know were giving a housewarming at their new place on the mountain. We stayed an extra day to talk to their builder because we're thinking maybe we'll build something for ourselves.”

  “Don't quibble with me, Lillian. You're a skillful manipulator of language, but it won't work with me.”

  “I really thought we had decided to end things finally in a friendly, civilized way, Donald.”

  “Unfortunately, you and I will never have a final ending. Our child is the reason it can't be as final as we'd like. You are neglecting her, and I won't keep quiet about it.”

  “Neglecting her? You're making a fool of yourself. Have you seen this home? Yes, you have, and you can still use the word ‘neglect'? You're an idiot. Do hang up and let me alone.”

  “I'm not finished. I want you to listen to me—”

  “No. Sorry. Don't bother me.” The receiver slammed in Donald's ear.

  Well might he use the word “neglect,” but it would be difficult to prove in the face of every luxury, the Fifth Avenue apartment, the nanny, the summers at the beach house—and even a blond mink blanket for the stroller! Imagine that! Besides, everyone knows that she hugs and kisses Cookie, doesn't she? Would anyone believe that the
child is neglected?

  He was late for an early conference with Mr. Pratt, and if there was anything that Augustus Pratt despised, it was lateness. In addition, the snow that had been falling all night showed no signs of stopping, so that his noon flight to the meeting in Washington, which was the subject of the morning's conference, might well be delayed or canceled. He'd have to settle for the train. Donald Wolfe was in a bad mood.

  Still frazzled, he boarded the train. Red-faced passengers, people with wet coats and windblown hair, came in stamping their feet and rubbing their cold hands, even as he was doing. He was resenting his own bad mood and the long ride ahead. The morning's telephone call still rankled. He was too disturbed even to open the book he had bought for the journey, and lost in a welter of indeterminate, useless thoughts, he rested his eyes on the incessant, whirling snow beyond the tracks.

  “That's a wonderful book,” someone said.

  He had barely noticed the person in the next seat except to see that she was a young woman, and breathless, because the train had already been about to start when she came rushing in.

  “Oh yes, Bleak House. I haven't read it since high school.”

  “Look.” And opening an overstuffed tote bag, she took out a copy of Bleak House.

  “I tutor high school kids sometimes, so I'm reading it for the second time, too.”

  Now Donald looked at her. She was freckled and neat-featured, with reddish hair. She could have been Augustus Pratt's daughter.

  “You're a full-time teacher?” he asked politely.

  “No, I'm a farmer, a farmer's wife. I love books, and since where we live there aren't that many families who do love books, I like to help kids who don't get help at home.”

  “Where is that? Where do you live?”

  “Well, if you look at the map, you'll see that there's a corner of Georgia where three states meet. It's where the Great Smokies end, or begin, depending on your point of view. But I'm keeping you from your book.”