by Belva Plain
“A lie by omission, then, wasn’t it?”
“When you were a year older than Emily is now, and someone had told you to stay away from Robert for another four years, and probably lose him in doing so, would you have obeyed?” asked Bruce.
Her glance fell under his chastisement. “No,” she said, and then, recovering, protested, “but that was different. Robert was older. He was a man.”
“Nonsense,” said Josie. The voice was tired, but the word was crisp. “Nonsense.” She raised herself on the pillow. “If I’ve ever seen a real man, I’ve seen one in young Harris.”
“But Yale,” Lynn lamented. “To give that up! It has crushed Robert.” She appealed, “Don’t you understand that?”
“But Emily,” said Josie. “It is a question of priorities.”
Bruce’s eyebrows drew together in his familiar expression of concern as he spoke.
“Yes, I can understand Robert. She should have told you, she should have been candid, but she wasn’t. She was afraid to be candid, and that has to be understood too.”
“You are leaving her alone with her mistake,” Josie remonstrated. “Leaving her alone to pick up the pieces by herself.”
In their quiet way they were scolding Lynn.
“She’s an extraordinary girl,” Josie said, making a little show of vigor. “Of all people Robert knows that. I must have heard him say so a thousand times at least. Does he want to take everything away, her chance at medical school, all that, so he can have the miserable satisfaction of saying later: ‘I told you so. You transgressed, so you’ve paid for it, paid for it with the rest of your life’?”
How she hated Robert! Hatred had given her strength enough to speak out, and now having spoken, she lay back, exhausted.
And something happened to Lynn that had never happened before in her life: Thoughts that should not have been revealed took shape in speech, and she heard herself saying without any rancor at all, “You have always despised Robert.”
“Yes,” Josie said simply. “I have,” and closed her eyes.
Lynn was feeling faint. It was the overpowering scent of gardenias, a little pot of them on the window ledge. Josie would not have said that if it were not for the medication and the pain. Bruce, shaking his head and with silent lips, spelled out the same: It is the medicine.
“Let her go,” said Josie, faintly now.
They had to lean toward her, not sure they had heard correctly. Lynn stroked the hot forehead and pushed back the tousled hair.
“What did you say, darling?” Bruce asked.
“Let her go. She had highest honors.…” Josie’s breathing was hard. “A good girl … woman.… Let her get away.… She needs … Take my money for her.”
Lynn struggled against tears. “No, darling. We can’t do that. You are an angel, but we can’t do that.”
“Yes, I said!” Josie’s hands went frantic as pain struck again. “Bruce, listen to me.”
“Dearest, I’m listening. We’ll do what you say. I promise I’ll give whatever Emily needs. She’ll take it from me.”
“No,” Josie gasped. “Mine … Power of attorney … Not your name … Not you involved … at office. Not you.”
Bruce turned helplessly to Lynn. “She means that my interference would complicate things between Robert and me. Yes, I see. And it would be terribly hard for you too. Lynn, will you let me take it for Emily out of Josie’s account? Will you?”
Past reasoning about what was right, and yet feeling somehow that it probably was right, confused and troubled and in anguish for Josie, she bowed her head in assent.
As she went out and met the nurse who came hurrying in, she heard Josie’s anguished cry repeated. “Let Emily go!”
Robert was beaten. Emily, swollen eyed and half sick, had taken a bowl of cereal to her room, so that Lynn sat alone with him at the dinner table. Unspeaking, they sat over the barely eaten food.
Only once he groaned, “Ruined her life. Ruined it.”
“Would you consider another place, someplace where Harris wasn’t?” Lynn asked.
“No. Maybe in a year or two. I’ll see. She must learn a lesson. Parents cannot be defied. No.”
Lynn’s father had been full of old-time sayings: The rigid tree breaks in the storm, but the soft one bends and bounces back.
She would have liked to tell that to Robert out of compassion, to console and warn, but it would have been useless this night, so she said nothing and waited instead until he had fallen asleep before going in to Emily.
The girl wept when Lynn told her what Josie was going to do. She wept and was glad and grateful. Also, she was hesitant.
“Does Dad know?”
“I hadn’t the heart to tell him tonight.”
“The heart?”
“The strength, I should have said. He will be very, very angry.”
The two looked at each other. And Lynn said honestly, “I was angry, too, you know that. It was Josie and Bruce who said, mostly Josie—” She could not go on.
“I know, Mom. I understand.”
“Do you, Emily?”
“More than you have ever realized.”
The morning began with dread. In the kitchen Lynn made the coffee and orange juice, moving on tiptoe, moving the utensils without a sound, to let Robert sleep another minute and to postpone the moment when he would appear and she would have to speak.
Perhaps with the same motive Emily came in on tiptoe, whispering.
“Uncle Bruce called on my phone. I have to rush over now with the college bill to get the check before he leaves for the hospital. They are so good to me, Mom! I don’t understand why they want to do this for me.”
“They love you, that’s why.” And she said also, “They trust you.”
“And you? Do you trust me too?”
“You’re old enough to be trusted, so I will have to.”
“You won’t be sorry, Mom. I promise. And I’m going to pay back every cent. I can’t tell how long it will take me, but I’ll do it.”
So young and so sure of herself! Well, the world wouldn’t survive for very long if people weren’t sure of themselves at nineteen. And her heart ached over Emily’s youth and courage.
“If I had money of my own I would do anything and everything for you. You know that, Emily. Oh, I wish I had money of my own! But—” She stopped before completing the sentence in her head. Your father never let me, he said it wasn’t necessary because he gave me whatever I wanted, which was true, but it was being treated like a child, an imbecile, damn it—
She took a deep breath and spoke aloud.
“You’d better leave if Bruce is waiting.”
“Was that Emily going out?” asked Robert as he entered the kitchen. “I heard her phone ring a while ago. That young bastard, I suppose.”
“No, it was Bruce. Josie is going to pay for Emily at Tulane.” And she waited for the explosion.
He sat down. “You can’t really have said what I think you said. Maybe you should say it again.”
She drew a deep breath. “When I was at the hospital, I told them about Emily. Josie can’t bear”—she must be careful not to bring Bruce into this affair—“Josie can’t bear to have Emily waste a year, and so she offered, she insisted on paying.”
Robert’s right hand made a fist. “That damnable woman! That damnable, interfering witch of a woman! I had her number the first time I saw her, and you know I did.” The fist came down hard on the table, rattling the empty cups. “I’d like to smash this fist into her. I hope she rots. I’d like her to tell me to my face how I should deal with my own family.”
“She’s dying. She can hardly talk.”
“Hardly talk? Then who masterminded this scheme? It must have been Bruce.”
“No, it was Josie. She asked him, since he has power of attorney, to write a check, and he simply agreed. It was her idea, not his. She meant so well,” Lynn pleaded.
“The hell it was only her idea! It was his too. And yours
too. You could have put a stop to it. You’re only the girl’s mother, aren’t you? You could have said, if you had any respect for your husband’s judgment, for his wishes, you could have said no. Positively no. Well, say something. Why don’t you?”
“Because I’ve been thinking, probably we were too harsh. It’s Emily’s life, after all,” she said disconsolately. “Her life.”
“God, I’m cursed! My wife, my daughter, the whole lot of you. The only one who hasn’t disappointed me is the boy, and who knows how he’ll turn against me when his time comes?” Robert sprang up so abruptly that he upset the coffeepot, which, as it smashed, sent a brown river meandering across the floor. And Juliet, who had been lying under the table, ran with her tail between her legs. “The humiliation! Think of it: that weakling, that excuse for a man, comes into my home and takes over. The next thing, hell be sleeping with my wife.”
“You’re revolting, Robert. Let me tell you, I have no desire to sleep with Bruce. But if you had a few of his qualities, it might be better for us all.”
“His qualities! You have the gall to say it would be better for the family if I were like him?”
“Yes, and better for you too.”
Robert’s eyes burned right through Lynn. He took a deep breath, a long step, and slapped her. Pressed as she was against the wall, she had no room to evade him, but could only twist helplessly. His open palm struck swiftly, stinging one cheek, then the other, and then the first, in succession; his ring, his marriage band, grazed her cheek as her head slammed against the wall, and she cried out. The dog came flying and yelping back into the kitchen. The backyard gate swung shut with a clang. Eudora’s key turned in the lock at the kitchen door, and her face appeared in the upper half. Robert fled. Lynn fled.…
Panting and groping in the closet for his attaché case, he mumbled, “Fine condition for the commuter train. Smile the good-morning greeting, read the newspaper, act like all the other men, after a scene like this. Yes, fine condition,” he repeated as the front door closed upon him.
On the sofa in the back den she sobbed. The attack had pained, but that was not the whole reason for her sobs. Not at all. A sudden light had flared in her head. It was so hot that it hurt.
For this attack was different from all the others. It had brought an end to the excuses and dodges, the concealment that had made the reality tolerable. There was no doubt that Eudora had seen, and now she knew. And it was this knowing that would take away Lynn’s dignity. It had stripped her at last. It had damaged her very soul, or whatever you wanted to name the thing that, apart from blood or bone, was your self.
So she lay, and cried, and tried to think.
There came a knock at the door and a call. “Mrs. Ferguson? Are you all right? Is anything the matter?”
“Yes, thank you, I’m all right.”
The door opened, and Lynn was revealed in her rumpled wet-eyed state. Now she had to sit up and make the best of it.
“I’m upset,” she said. “I’ve been crying because of Mrs.—of my friend, Josie.”
“Oh, sure, it’s awful hard.” Eudora’s face was kind—she was a kind woman—but her eyes spoke, too, and they were saying plainly, “I know the truth, but I will pretend for your sake that I don’t.”
Kind as she was, she would talk at her other jobs. It was only human nature. The story was too juicy to be withheld. It would be all over the country club. It would be whispered behind Lynn’s back. Whispered.
Up and down she walked now, past Robert’s austere face framed in sterling silver, and past her own soft, childish face, her dreaming eyes beneath blond bangs and a bridal veil held by clustered lilies of the valley.
“I will leave him,” she said aloud. And the sound of her voice, the sound of those daring, impossible words, those unthinkable words, stopped her in her walk, and the shock chilled her bones.
Eudora was singing as she carried Bobby down the stairs.
“Big fat boy. Beautiful, big fat boy, Eudora’s boy. You beautiful—”
They went into the kitchen. And Lynn stood listening, asking herself, How much should I bear? How much can I bear? I shall have to keep my head. Am I to tear the roof down over his head?
“Beautiful big fat boy—”
Josie is dying. Emily is leaving. Let me take one day at a time. That’s it. One day at a time.
She went into the kitchen, into the light near the window, and inquired anxiously, “Do I look all right, Eudora? I don’t want Josie to see that I’ve been crying because of her.”
Eudora considered. “You look all right. Put a little powder on, maybe. Up on your left cheek,” she explained with tact.
In the hospital’s corridors there are the smells of antiseptics and anxiety. So many large things are compressed in a narrow space, in a short time, as one walks: the night they came in their terror, rushing to see Emily, the gusty morning when Bobby came squalling into the world, and now, as the door opens off the corridor, there is Josie on the high bed with her wasted hands, on which the plain wedding band has been tied with a string.
Bruce got up from his chair in the corner.
“She went into a coma last night,” he said, answering Lynn’s unspoken question.
The sorrow in him was tangible. It made her chest ache to look at him. All the clichés were true; the heart does weigh heavily in the chest, heavy and sorely bruised.
“Why? Why?” she asked.
He shook his head, and they sat down together on either side of Josie’s bed, where she lay as in peaceful sleep. As if a loving hand had passed across her face, the agony and torment were wiped away.
After a long time the noontime sun came glaring into the room. Someone pulled the shade, making a watered-green gloom on the walls. When later the room became too dark, the shades were raised again to let in a tawny summer afternoon.
A doctor came, murmuring something to Bruce, and then more audibly, he addressed them both.
“This can go on for days, or it may not. We can’t tell. In any case, there’s no point in staying here around the clock. I think you should go home, Bruce. You were here until three o’clock this morning, they tell me. Go home.”
At the hospital’s front steps they met the other world where cars passed, glittering in the light, and small girls played hopscotch and a couple strolled, thoughtfully eating double ice cream cones.
“Can you give me a lift?” Bruce asked. “My car’s in the shop. I was lucky to get a taxi last night.”
“Of course.”
There was little to talk about until Lynn was compelled to say something about Emily.
“How can anyone say thank you? Thank you for saving a person when he was drowning, thank you for curing a person’s blindness? How does one say such things?”
“How do I say thank you for being my support? We don’t need words, Lynn.”
Numbed by her dual sorrow, she drove without thinking, as if the car, like an obedient, well-trained horse, knew the route by itself.
“We go back a long time,” Bruce said suddenly. “Eighteen years. Emily was a baby.” He placed his hand over Lynn’s. “Don’t worry too much about her. I have a feeling that she will do very, very well.”
“Perhaps. But do you know,” she said sadly, “that I am glad she’s leaving? I never thought I could say that, but I can.” And a little sob escaped from her throat.
The car had stopped in front of his house, and he gave her a quick look, saying, “You don’t want to go home like this. Come in and we’ll talk.”
“No, I’m not going to burden you with my troubles. You have enough and far more.”
“Let’s say I don’t want to be alone.”
“In that case, I will.”
The house, though tidy, had the abandoned air that comes when there is no woman in it. The curtains that were usually drawn at night were still drawn, and the philodendron on the mantel were turning yellow. Lynn shuddered in the gloom and pulled the curtains back.
In the bay stoo
d Josie’s prize gardenias that she had nourished and brought all the way here when they moved.
“Gardenias need water,” Lynn said. “It would be a pity to lose these.”
That was a foolish remark. What could it matter to this man if the plant should die? But she was restless, and it soothed her at this moment to fuss with it.
“Bruce, I see a couple of mealybugs. I need cotton swabs and some alcohol. Where does Josie keep all that stuff?”
“I’ll get it.”
A nervous exchange of trivia came next.
“You can’t ever seem to get rid of them,” said Lynn as she rubbed each dark leaf.
“Josie told me.”
“It’s her pet plant. A miracle that it survived the move at all.”
“So she says.”
“I’ve never had any luck with gardenias. Josie has a green thumb.”
“That’s true.”
In the bay, when Lynn had cleaned each leaf, topside and under, they stood looking out at the yard, where a flock of pigeons had taken possession of the bird feeder.
“See that one?” Bruce pointed. “The white one? It’s her favorite. She claims it knows her.”
He can barely see the bird, Lynn thought, with those blurred eyes.
“I want a brandy,” he said, he who scarcely drank even wine. “What about you?”
She smiled wanly. “It wouldn’t hurt.”
They sat on either side of the fireplace, she on the sofa, he in his easy chair. He removed his glasses; she did not remember having ever seen him without them, and it seemed to her now that perhaps she had never really seen him before. The glasses had in some way given him a benevolent look; the simplicity of the man she had pictured in her head, striding on a hill alongside a bevy of large dogs, or else the one whom she had actually known, as he sanded old wood and looked up with that benevolent smile, was gone. This man was bitter.
He caught her studying him.
“What is it?” he asked.
She could say only, “I’m so sorry for you. My heart hurts.”
“No, feel sorry for her. She gave so much to everybody. Everyone who really knew her … And now they’re taking her short life away. Feel sorry for her.”
“Oh, God, I do! But you, she worries about you, Bruce. She told me. About leaving you alone.”
