Whispers

by Belva Plain

  And Lynn, seeing him, turned ice cold.

  “We’ll be there. In the parking lot. Yes. Yes.” He put the phone down. He was shaking. “That was Bruce. Emily’s had a hemorrhage. From menstruation, he thought. She’s in the hospital. Hurry. Hell meet us there.”

  The car squealed around the corner at the foot of the drive.

  “Take it easy, Robert. Not so fast. Listen, listen, it was just her period, that’s all it was.… But why a hemorrhage?” She babbled. “But it can’t be anything too bad. She’s in perfect health.…”

  “They don’t admit people to the hospital for nothing at all,” he said grimly.

  She wrung her hands in her lap and was quiet, while, in a frenzy, they rode through the town and into the hospital parking lot, where Bruce was waiting. Robert slammed the car door and began to run toward the entrance.

  “Stop, I have to talk to you first,” Bruce cried. “No, no, she’s not—you’re thinking she died, and I’m breaking it to you easily—but no, no, she’s upstairs and she’ll be fine, only she’s terrified.” The kind, earnest eyes matched the kind, earnest voice. “The fact is—well, I have to tell you, Emily had a miscarriage.”

  There was a total silence, as when the sounds of the world are drowned by a heavy snowfall. Traffic on the avenue and bustle in the parking lot all receded, leaving the three in that pool of silence, looking from one to the other.

  “She’s terrified,” Bruce repeated, and then begged Robert, “don’t be hard on her.”

  “How—” Lynn began.

  Bruce resumed steadily. “She telephoned us around noon. She was more worried about Annie than about herself. She didn’t want Annie to know. So Josie took Annie to our house, and I brought Emily here. The doctor says”—Bruce laid his hand on Lynn’s arm—“he said she was in the third month. Are you all right, Lynn?”

  Robert groaned, and at the piteous sound she turned to him. So he had been justified, more than justified, in his fears. And she cried inwardly: Oh, Emily, I trusted you! And she cried: Was this my fault? Robert will say it’s my fault.

  “Shall we go?” asked Bruce.

  On the long walk from the parking lot she rallied. I’m the one who is good in emergencies, remember? Say the mantra: Good in emergencies … Her legs were weak, yet they moved. Then it seemed as if the elevator would never come. When it did, they shared space with a patient on a stretcher; so Mom had been carried that day with the white sheet drawn up to a drained white face. No one spoke as they ascended, then stepped out into a foreboding wave of hospital smells, of disinfectant and cleaning fluids. Ether too? No, it couldn’t be, not in a corridor. But it sickened her, whatever it was, and she swallowed hard.

  “I asked for a private room,” Bruce said when they stopped at the end of the corridor. His voice rose half an octave, cheerfully. “Emily, your dad and mom are here.”

  A hot sunset light lay over the bed where Emily lay. Her body made only a slight ridge under the blanket, and the one arm that was exposed was frail; nothing of Emily had ever before seemed frail.

  Lynn took a cold, sweating hand in hers and whispered, “We’re here. Darling? We’re here.”

  She wanted to say, It’s going to be all right, it’s not the end of the world, nor the end of you, God forbid. There’s nothing that can’t be solved, can’t be gotten over, nothing, do you hear me? Nothing. She wanted to say all these, but no sounds came from her dry lips.

  Emily’s beautiful eyes wandered toward the ceiling. Tears rolled on her cheeks. And Robert, who had been standing on the other side of the bed, said faintly, “I have to sit down.”

  He’s going to be sick, Lynn thought, while Bruce and the nurse, who had been at the window, must have had the same thought, because the nurse shoved a chair across the room, and Bruce took Robert’s arm.

  “Put your head down. Sit,” he murmured.

  Robert laid his head on Emily’s coverlet, and the others walked toward the door out of his hearing.

  “Poor man.” The nurse clucked her tongue. “It’s funny how often men take things harder than we do. She’s going to be fine, Mrs. Ferguson. Mr. Lehman called Dr. Reeve. He’s the chief of gynecology here, you couldn’t get better.”

  Lynn’s voice quivered. “I’m so scared. Tell me the truth. She looks so awful. Please tell me the truth.”

  “She’s very weak, and she’s in quite some pain. This is like giving birth, you know, the same pains. But there’s nothing to be afraid of, you understand? Here, rest till the doctor comes back.”

  Rapid steps came purposefully down the hall. Dr. Reeve looked like a doctor, clean shaven, compact, and authoritative. He could play the part in a soap opera, Lynn thought hysterically; a foolish laugh rose to her throat and was silenced there. Were they really in a hospital room talking to this man about Emily?

  Robert stood up. “Bruce you talk, you do it,” he said, and then sat down again.

  Bruce conferred briefly with the doctor, who then turned back to the parents.

  “She’s losing a lot of blood,” he said, wasting no words. “We’ll need to do a D and C. She says she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Can I rely on that? Because if she’s had food within the last few hours, we’ll have to wait.”

  Lynn replied faintly, “I don’t know. We’ve been away. We just got home.”

  “You can rely on it,” Bruce said.

  “Fine. Then well take her up right away.” Dr. Reeve looked keenly at Robert and Lynn. “Why don’t you two go out with your brother and—”

  Bruce prompted. “I’m just a friend.”

  “Well, take them out and get something to eat.” He looked again at Robert, who was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Have a drink too. You can come back later in the evening.”

  “A good idea,” said Bruce, assenting. “We’ll do just that.”

  “No,” Robert said. “I’m not leaving here. No, we’ll stay.”

  “All right,” Bruce said quickly. “There’s a sun parlor at the end of the hall. We’ll sit there. And if you need us for anything, Doctor, that’s where we’ll be.”

  “Fine. I suggest you go there now, then.” The professional smile was sympathetic, but firm.

  He means, Lynn knew, that we are not to stand here watching them wheel Emily into the operating room. It’s plain to see that Robert can barely cope with this. Poor Robert. And she took his hand, twining her fingers through his as they went down the hall with Bruce.

  In restless, forlorn silence they waited. Bruce and Lynn thumbed through magazines, not reading, while Robert stared through the window wall at the treetops. It was long past visiting hours, and steps were few in the hall, when a familiar, distinctive clicking sound approached: Josie’s high heels, worn because Bruce was so much taller than she.

  “I got permission to come in,” she whispered. “I tracked Eudora down, and she went straight to your house, so I could bring Annie back there. Eudora’s a princess. Annie was having her bath and getting ready for bed when I left.”

  Josie was wise. She gave no comforting words, no warm hug that would have brought on tears. She simply did whatever was needed.

  Robert, with head in hands, was huddled in the sofa. All six feet four of him looked small. Lynn got up and caressed his bent head.

  “Our beautiful girl, our beautiful girl,” he moaned, and clearly she recalled his cry when Caroline’s tiny body lay before them. Our baby. Our beautiful baby.

  “She’s going to be fine. I know. Oh, darling, she will.”

  “I’d like to get my hands on that rotten little bastard. I’d like to kill him.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Time barely moved. Eventually it grew dark. Bruce stood up and turned on the lights, then returned to sit with Josie. They spoke in whispers, while Lynn and Robert sat hand in hand. No one looked at his watch, so no one knew what time it was when Dr. Reeve appeared in the doorway. He looked different in his crumpled green cotton pants, with a pinched face and circled eyes. Author
ity had come from the suit and the tie and the brisk walk. Now he looked like a tired workman. Such scattered thoughts went through Lynn’s head as he came toward them.

  “Your girl is all right,” he said. “She’s in the recovery room, but she’ll be back in her own room shortly. Mr. Lehman asked for a nurse through tonight and as long as needed. Good idea if you can afford it. Now, I suggest that you go home and come back again in the morning. Emily won’t know you for hours, and it’s already close to midnight.” He glanced at Robert. “If—it’s highly unlikely —if it should be necessary to call anyone, shall—” He glanced toward Bruce.

  Robert got up. It was as if the news had brought him back to life. “No, we’re the parents. We’re over the first shock, and we can handle whatever comes next. You can imagine what a shock it was, being away and finding this when we got home.”

  “Of course. But it must be good to have friends like these to handle an emergency for you.”

  “We appreciate them. Bruce and Josie are the best.”

  “Well,” Bruce said brightly now, “all’s well that ends well. What I suggest is that we get something to eat. I personally could eat shoe leather at this point.”

  Josie went considerately on tiptoe through the corridor. “Darn heels sound like hammers,” she whispered. “Listen. We’re all too tired to go home and forage for food. What about the all-night diner on the highway? We can get a quick hamburger or something.”

  When they were settled in a booth, she explained, “I told Annie that Emily had a sick stomach, a little problem. She was scared at first, but then she accepted my story and seems fine.”

  “She mustn’t ever know, of course,” Lynn said.

  “I knew you would feel that way about it, and that’s why I told her what I did.”

  The emphasis on you prompted Lynn to ask, “Why? Wouldn’t you feel that way?”

  “I’m not sure. Kids know much more about what’s going on around them than you may think.”

  “I’m sure Emily didn’t tell her about—about what was going on between herself and Harris, for God’s sake!”

  “I’m sure Emily didn’t, but as I said, kids are smart, and Annie is especially so. Smart and secretive,” Josie added. “Annie could say a lot of things if she wanted to or dared to.”

  Robert, who had said nothing since he sat down, now burst out. “Never mind what Annie knows or doesn’t know! It’s Emily who’s tearing me to shreds. The thought of her—” He turned upon Lynn. “I want you to know, I blame you as much as Emily. I told you when she was only fifteen years old that you were too lax with her. You have no backbone. You let people walk all over you. And you’re not alert. You don’t look around and watch what’s going on. You never did.”

  Caroline, Lynn thought, and her will ebbed hopelessly.

  “Now here we are,” Robert said. “Yes, here we are.”

  “That’s hardly fair, Robert,” Josie protested angrily, “and not true. I don’t know of a wiser, more caring mother than Lynn. You mustn’t do this to her.”

  “I don’t care. This was all avoidable. Is this what I work for, to see my daughter ruined, thrown away on a penniless bastard? Ruined—ruined.”

  The fluorescent bulbs above them glared on Robert, turning his exhausted face dark green.

  Bruce said quietly, “You mustn’t think of Emily as being ruined, Robert. This is a terrible thing, I know it is, but still, at seventeen she has a wonderful long life ahead. You mustn’t,” he said more sternly, “allow her to think otherwise.”

  Robert flexed his fingers. “I want to get my hands on the bastard. I just want to get my hands on him.”

  Despair sank like a stone in Lynn’s chest. A few hours before they had been feeling—or she had been feeling on Robert’s behalf—the glow of his success. They had been driving home through the bright fall afternoon with music on the radio, the new baby on the way, and—

  “I could kill him,” Robert said again. “Home now, sleeping like a log, not giving a damn, while Emily is—” He broke off. “Does the bastard even know, I wonder?”

  “Of course he does,” Bruce said. “He’s quite frantic. He wanted to go to the hospital, but I told him he couldn’t. I told him to call me for information. As a matter of fact, I will telephone him when we get home. He’s waiting up.”

  Lynn was inwardly saying her mantra again: Good in emergencies. Now she made inquiry. “The third month. What was she—what were they—intending to do? Did she say? I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  Bruce answered her. “On the way to the hospital Emily told me that she hadn’t known really what to do. She had intended to get up courage to talk to you both this week, but she didn’t want to spoil her father’s important trip to Maine, to get him upset before the big meeting.”

  Robert made correction. “It wasn’t a big meeting. I don’t know where she got that idea. It wasn’t that important.”

  “Well, anyway, that’s the story. They were, I gather, quite beside themselves this last month, the two of them. They didn’t know where to turn.”

  Lynn burst into tears and covered her face. “Poor baby. The poor baby.”

  Bruce and Josie got up. “Let’s go. Get whatever rest you can,” Josie commanded. “I have to go to work in the morning, although I suppose I could phone in.”

  Lynn recovered. “No. Go to work. You’ve done enough. You’ve been wonderful.”

  “Rubbish,” said Bruce. “If you need either of us, you know where we are. You two will come through this all right, though, and so will Emily. Only one thing: Be kind to each other tonight. No recriminations. This is not your fault. Not yours, Robert, and not Lynn’s. Have I got your word?” he asked, leaning into the car where Robert had already started the engine. “Robert? Have I got your word?” he repeated sternly.

  “Yes, yes,” Robert muttered, and grumbled as he drove away. “I don’t know what he thinks I’m going to do to you.”

  That you are going to go on blaming me, she said to herself. That’s what he thought. But now you won’t, thank God. I don’t think I can bear a harsh word tonight. And yet, was any of it my fault? Perhaps …

  Home again, she walked restlessly through the house. Setting the table for breakfast, she thought: Disaster strikes and yet people eat, or try to. She let the dog out and, while Juliet rummaged in the bushes, watched the stars. The sky was sprinkled with them; far off at a distance beyond calculation, could there be some living, thinking creature like herself, and in such pain?

  She went upstairs to Emily’s room, wanting to feel her presence, wanting to find some clue to her child’s life. The closet and the desk were neat, for Emily was orderly, like Robert. There hung the shirts, not much larger than a hand towel. There stood the shoes, sneakers next to a pair of three-inch heels. On the bedside table lay a copy of Elle and a book: Studies of Marital Abuse.

  Lynn opened the book to the first chapter: “The Battered Woman in the Upper Middle Class.” She closed the book.

  Are we now marked by this forever? Is it engraved on Emily’s mind forever?

  “Come,” Robert said from the doorway. “This won’t do you any good.” He spoke not unkindly. “What’s that she’s reading?” And he took hold of the book before Lynn could hide it. “What the devil is this trash? The battered woman! She’d have done better to read about the pregnant high school girl.”

  “The one has nothing to do with the other.”

  Yet perhaps it had. Things are entwined, braided into each other.…

  “Somebody comes out with a ‘study,’ ” Robert scoffed. “Then somebody else has to write another. It’s all a money-making, publicity-seeking lot of trash. Exaggerations. Lies, half of it. Throw the damn book out.”

  “No. It belongs to Emily. Don’t you touch it, Robert.”

  “All right,” he grumbled. “All right. We’ve got enough trouble tonight. Come to bed.”

  Neither of them slept. It began to rain. Drops loud as an onslaught of stones beat the
windows, making the night cruel. Turning and turning in the bed, Lynn saw the hall light reflected upward on the ceiling. Robert would be sitting downstairs in his usual corner, his “mournful” corner, alone. If anything were to happen to Emily, it would kill him. But she had poor Annie—why did she always think “poor Annie,” as if the child were some neglected misfit, disabled and deserted, when she was none of these? And then there was this baby, the boy Robert wanted. But nothing would happen to Emily, the doctor had said. He’d said it. Her thoughts ran, circled, and returned all night.

  The doctor was just leaving Emily’s room after early rounds when Robert and Lynn came down the hall. He spoke to them quickly in his succinct, flat manner. For after all, Emily could mean no more to him than another problem to be solved as skillfully as he could.

  “She’s still in some pain, but it’s lessening. She has anemia from the blood loss, and we’ve just given her a transfusion, so don’t be shocked when you see her. It’s all to be expected.” He swung away, took a few steps, and turned back. “I have a daughter her age, so I know.” He stopped. “She’ll have her life,” he said then with an abrupt smile, and this time walked away.

  A lump in Lynn’s throat was almost too painful to admit speech, but she called after him.

  “Thank you for everything. Thank you.”

  The nurse, who had been sitting by the bed, stood up when, with questioning faces, they entered the room.

  “Come in. She’s not sleeping, just resting. She’ll be glad to see you.”

  Lynn stood over the bed. Glad, she thought bitterly. Glad, I doubt. Bruce said she was terrified.

  The girl’s face was dead white, frozen, carved in ice.

  Robert said softly, “Emily, it’s Dad, Dad and Mom.”

  “I know. I’m very tired,” Emily whispered with her eyes shut.

  “Of course you are. Emily, we love you,” Robert said. “We love you so.” His voice was so low that he repeated the words. He wanted to make certain that she had heard him. Kneeling on the floor, he brought his face level with hers. “Emily, we love you.” Then he put his face down again on the coverlet.