by Belva Plain
Lore waved him away. “Foolishness. Get away with your foolishness.”
“I will not. Al Schulman’s told me so more than once, and I’ve heard it from other people, too. We have a fine hospital here since the county took it over. Remember, Lore, the old car we bought so you could get to work? Ten years old with holes in the roof? Now,” Joel said, “she’s bought her own spiffy Chrysler, and she’s a speed demon, a menace on the roads.”
“Lord, when I remember that business about your jaw.” Annie sighed. “All that needless worry. But thank God it turned out all right. Lore, you look great. You haven’t changed a bit.”
Lore laughed. “Yes, I’m still homely.”
“You look pretty darn good to me,” Jake said stoutly.
“Did we tell you that our daughter-in-law expects twins? No? I thought surely I did. Well, she’s only in her fourth month. I’ll send you a picture when they arrive. But I’m awfully slow at writing.” Annie apologized, “I mean well, but I always postpone it.”
“I haven’t been very good about it, either,” Caroline said.
“Oh, we understand. You’ve had a lot to bear, with what happened to your parents and all. But we have to look at the bright side. Life goes on, doesn’t it?”
If there is a cliché that fits, Annie or Jake will use it, Caroline thought, although not unkindly. She had actually not expected to be as moved as she was now by the sight of these two in their simple goodness. And she was on the verge of saying something that would convey her feelings to them when Joel spoke first.
“When you first saw me, I was sure I could never be happy again, that there was nothing left for me on this earth. But you two, Jake and Annie—you two have a lot to do in so many ways with what’s happened. Me sitting here with Caroline and Eve—” He wiped his eyes. “Excuse the emotion. I get sentimental. Maybe the wine helps. You understand how it is.”
Annie touched Joel’s hand. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Joel.”
Eve’s eyes were on them all, moving from one to the other, observing everything. No longer are they the eyes of a child, thought Caroline, although what does that expression mean? That children of her age are innocent? Ignorant? Not so. Let her not be too innocent, this joy of my life, lest someone harm her. Let her not be ignorant, either, except of one thing. There was only one thing in all the world she must never know. Never.
Annie had turned to Eve. “I knew you before you were born.”
Another cliché, well meant. Many times before, on every appropriate occasion, Eve had heard it spoken by people who had met them on their arrival in Ivy. Being well mannered, she smiled.
“You have your mother’s eyes. I suppose everybody tells you that you look like her. Two peas in a pod.”
“Yes.” And Eve, turning away from the scrutiny, bent down to feed a scrap to Peter.
Annie was curious, of course. Caroline could tell she would have liked to get her alone, woman to woman, the older woman in motherly fashion asking the younger what on earth had happened between her and Joel. How had it ever come about? Or has it come about? I passed the bedroom when I used the bathroom upstairs, and it looked as if …
I suppose I would be curious, too, Caroline admitted.
The conversation was winding down. It had been a long afternoon, and there was after all a limit to what people can say to each other after so many years’ absence and with nothing much more in common to start with beyond an enormous act of charity.
Joel was apologizing for the size of the house. “If only we had another bedroom here, we’d surely never let you go to a motel. You’d stay and get a good breakfast in the morning.”
“Think nothing of it,” Jake said. “We plan to start at the crack of dawn tomorrow, anyway. Take breakfast on the road. All we need are directions to the motel.”
“It’s not far, but there’s a detour where the street’s being torn up. Let’s see. You know how to get back to Main Street from here? Okay. Go past the war monument, that’ll be on your left. Make a right turn at the next light after the monument, go about a mile and a half, then when you see the detour sign, go past it to Remington Street—” Joel frowned. “No. It’ll be too easy for you to get lost. You’ll be going in circles. And my car’s in the shop till tomorrow afternoon, or I’d lead you. And Lore goes in the opposite direction, and she can’t be late. Tell you what. Let Eve ride with you as far as Remington. You can bring her home, drop her off, and go right back. It’ll cost you another fifteen minutes, that’s all, and Eve would love to do it. You’ll pass her new school on the way.”
Eve did not exactly “love to do it,” but on the other hand, it meant that she would not have to help with the dishes. Because of the company, there were an awful lot of extra-fancy ones tonight. That’s probably why Daddy was going to help instead of her. Mom was probably afraid she would break something, especially those crystal things. Anyway, Daddy often helped. He said it was only right, since Mom worked in the café offices all day.
“We came in by the lake,” Mrs. Sandler said when they were in the car. “Some lake! You can’t even see the other side.”
“Oh, it goes for miles and miles till it joins up with more lakes. We like to hike around our side here. When I was a little girl, Mom and I used to have a picnic there sometimes during school lunch hour. Not many kids did that, but Mom loves the lake, and I do, too.”
“Well, you’re a lucky girl to live here,” Mrs. Sandler said.
Eve was in the front seat with Mr. Sandler. He had made the suggestion himself. “Kids always like the front seat. I remember how our boys used to fight over it.”
He was a nice man. She was a nice person, too, or would be if she didn’t talk so much or ask so many questions. It was funny when you thought about it, how many ways there were for people to be different from each other, and how, in the first few minutes, you could like a new person very, very much or not like him at all. Daddy said it was wrong to be so quick to judge; you had to give a person a chance. Daddy was really, really fair.
“Now if I lived here,” Mrs. Sandler said, “I’d choose one of those houses facing the lake. They were gorgeous, weren’t they, Jake?”
He laughed. “Nothing but the best, eh?”
“We have friends who live in one of them. He’s our doctor, Dr. Schulman, and we visit them. Mom says that’s what she wants someday, a house like theirs with a view of the lake.”
“The way you folks are going, she’ll have it, too,” Mr. Sandler said. “Your father tells me how smart your mother is, and I can see that myself. She’s one smart woman.”
“Well, you’ve got a fine home, you really have,” Mrs. Sandler said. Her voice, blown forward across the back of the seat, was loud in Eve’s ears. “Lore’s in a class by herself, an angel. When I think of those two, Caroline and Joel, those young people fresh off the boat, I could still cry.”
“Well, that’s all past, so don’t. My wife’s got a heart as soft as mush, bless her,” said Mr. Sandler.
“Oh, you, Jake! I’m not crying, I’m only saying how wonderful they are. And what a wonderful day it’s been to see them here together, Caroline as beautiful as ever—after all she’s been through. And Joel’s turned out to be such a wonderful father after all that happened, such a wonderful father, as if he were Eve’s real father instead of only—”
“Dammit all, Annie, you’re talking so much that I can’t concentrate on my driving. Will you keep still for even half a second? Do you think you can? I almost hit the curb, dammit! Are we near—what was that road, Eve, Remington? Are we near it?”
“It’s the next one. Now you know the way, so you can take me home.”
In the light of the streetlamp, she saw his face. He had turned to look at her, but she was staring straight ahead, being impassive. It meant “having no expression, showing no emotion.” Mom was always telling her to use the dictionary. Mom said she had a gift for languages, so she would be impassive, while her heart was beginning to run so fast that maybe i
t would stop and she would drop dead here in their car.
As if he were Eve’s real father, Annie had said. And he stopped her. He’s furious with her, and she knows it because she hasn’t opened her mouth since. He hasn’t, either. He just keeps trying to get a look at me every time we pass a lighted spot. Eve’s real father. Instead of. Instead of what? Then who? I feel carsick, and I haven’t been carsick since I was four years old.
It seemed to take twice as long to go back as it had to get this far. No one spoke until, when they were almost home, Mr. Sandler said, “You were a big help, Eve. I never would have found the way by myself, but now I’ll be okay. So thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome,” she answered properly.
Be calm. Be impassive. And hope you don’t vomit until you get to the bathroom.
They drove away. Mrs. Sandler had changed to the front seat. Before they reached the corner, he would be giving her what-for. Giving her hell. Say it: hell. But had she been telling the truth? Of course she had been. Why would anybody make up a story like that? That somebody’s father wasn’t her father? And then they had acted so queerly right afterward.
Mom, still in the kitchen, heard her running upstairs. “Where are you going?” she called. “Will they find their way all right?”
Instead of going to the bathroom, Eve had run to her bedroom and lain down on the bed. Nausea had turned into dizziness, and the walls were slowly circling. Real father. She closed her eyes. If Daddy isn’t my father, then is Mom not mine, either? And am I not Eve but somebody else? Who?
“Where are you?” Mom called from the foot of the stairs. “Come on down.”
She wasn’t able and didn’t want to go down. She just wanted to lie still.
“Why, you’ve locked the door!” Mom cried, rattling the knob. “What’s wrong, Eve?”
“Nothing.”
Mom said quietly, “Eve, we don’t play games with each other, do we? Please open the door. Are you sick?”
“Please let me alone. I’m not sick. I just need to be alone.”
“But I need to know what’s happened. Have you hurt yourself? You have to tell me.”
“I haven’t hurt myself.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly, Mom. Mom, go away.”
“What’s going on?” That was Daddy’s voice.
“She won’t let me in. She’s locked the door.”
“Leave her alone, Caroline. She’s entitled to privacy. She’s collecting her thoughts, and she’ll come out when she’s ready.”
Eve whispered into the pile of stuffed animals, a polar bear, a kangaroo, and a monkey, on the pillow. She whispered, and without a sound, cried.
“People need privacy.… She’s collecting her thoughts,” Daddy said. He always understands better than anyone else does, even better than Mom and Lore. Is it really possible, what Mrs. Sandler said about my “real father”? No, it couldn’t be. It’s too stupid, a stupid mistake. Yes, it can be. Even stupid people don’t make a mistake like that.
After a while, another thought came to her, and she sat up. Maybe I am adopted. So many people are, and there’s nothing bad about being adopted. You can be perfectly happy. There’s that boy Edgar in school. He knows he’s adopted. Everybody knows he is, and it doesn’t make any difference. But if I am, they should have told me.
Mom and Daddy were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee when, having wiped her face, Eve came downstairs. Plainly, they had been discussing her; she could see the worry in their faces, even in Daddy’s, and he was never a worrier like Mom.
“Come sit down,” Mom said. “Would you like a hot chocolate?”
Eve shook her head. She didn’t want to be babied and soothed with hot chocolate or anything else. She wanted the truth, the truth that would say Mrs. Sandler didn’t know what she was talking about. Still, if they were to tell her that, she wasn’t sure she would quite believe them. It was very complicated.
Daddy said gently, “Sit down with us, anyway. If there’s something you want to tell us, something that’s bothering you, we’re ready to listen. But you don’t have to say anything at all unless you’re ready to.”
She sat down opposite him and studied his face while he stirred milk into his coffee. He wasn’t allowed to have sugar because of his diabetes. She hoped so much that he would never be really sick; some people died of diabetes. At the thought of that, she felt her eyes sting again, and she wiped them angrily. It really made no difference, though, because they could certainly see that she had been crying. Her eyes were small and ugly under their puffed, shiny lids. In the movies, women looked so lovely when they cried. Their eyes got bright, while the tears slid down their perfect cheeks.
Her parents were pretending not to see her tears, which was nice of them. They were really nice people, not like some people’s parents, like Vicky’s cranky mother, who really wasn’t her mother. But maybe these were not her parents. The thought kept fighting itself in her head. She didn’t look in the least like Daddy. He had a long nose and light-brown curly hair. His cheeks went pink when he laughed, and—
“Are you looking at a fly on my forehead, or what?” he asked.
He wanted to be funny, to make her fears go away, but it wasn’t going to work.
“Mrs. Sandler said you aren’t my father,” she said.
Two coffee cups clinked on their saucers. Mom’s cup overturned, and she cried out, “What? What is this? Has she gone out of her mind?”
“Wait. Wait, Caroline.” For a few seconds, no one said anything. Daddy gave a long sigh. Then he spoke slowly. “What exactly did she tell you, Eve?”
“She said you were a wonderful father, as if you were my real father, ‘instead of,’ she said, but she didn’t finish because Mr. Sandler didn’t let her.”
“I see.”
He wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked from him to Mom, whose face had gone red, as if she had smeared it all over with rouge. Why did neither of them say right out that Mrs. Sandler was an idiot or a liar?
And then Mom did say it, or almost. “Annie Sandler often doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She can say the most ridiculous things.”
Eve got out of her chair. It felt awful, sitting there between them. It felt like stretching a rubber band, knowing that it’s bound to snap if you keep on, but keeping on anyway until it does snap and stab you. She stood up, clenching her fists at her sides.
“You’re not answering me. You’re not telling me anything. I think I’m adopted, and you don’t want to hurt my feelings.”
Now they were looking at each other as if they were asking: What shall we do? So that’s it, Eve thought. They adopted me because they weren’t able to have a baby of their own. Some women can’t. Yes.
But then, why do strangers always exclaim when we’re introduced: My! Anybody can see that you two are mother and daughter! And what about the times we stand together at a mirror and laugh at how alike we are? Lore’s known Mom since Mom was a baby, and she says—No. Not adopted. I’ve got to be Mom’s child.
“If you won’t tell me what Mrs. Sandler meant, I’m going to phone her at the motel right now and ask her.”
“Don’t do that!” Mom screamed. “You can’t do that.”
“But you won’t answer me. Daddy, are you my father?”
He seemed so sad, the way he looked at her. And he sounded sad, too, even though what he answered wasn’t sad at all.
“I’ve been your father since you were born, Eve. I built your cradle for you.”
Oh, there is something they don’t want to say. They can’t fool me. And Mom is trying not to cry. The red has gone from her face. It looks terrible.
And Eve persisted, “What did she mean when she said, ‘instead of’?”
She waited. Daddy was looking toward Mom. And suddenly, in that same low, sad voice, he said, “Caroline, the truth has to be told. If we don’t do it, Eve will never again believe anything we say.”
Mom stared at him. She was
really crying now, sobbing. “For God’s sake, what are you doing, Joel?”
“Do you think I want to do it? But it has to be done.”
Eve’s legs were shaking. Her heart was running again as it had run before when she thought it might stop.
“Take hold of yourself, Caroline. It’s our fault. We should have brought the whole thing into the light from the very start.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing! Why? Why?”
They were talking over her head, as if she wasn’t there. The clock was ticking, the cat was sleeping on the window ledge, and her heart was going to stop and kill her.
“I do know, Caroline. This was bound to come out.”
“From across the ocean? How?”
“Well, you see that it has.”
“You’ll destroy everything.”
“No. We’ll destroy everything if we don’t do it.”
“I beg you, Joel.”
Daddy took his handkerchief and wiped Mom’s wet face. She was scared, and he was almost crying himself.
“Go upstairs,” he told Mom. “Let me talk to Eve alone. It’ll be easier for you that way.”
“No,” Mom said. “I’ll stay. Get it over with. Go ahead. You’ve gone this far, too far already, so get it over with.”
“Listen to me, Eve,” Daddy began. “You can make a long, long story out of almost anything if you want to, or you can just tell the simple truth, which is all that matters. There was a man in Europe whom your mother thought she loved. They were going to be married. She was very young, and she made a mistake. She didn’t know then that he was not a good man. He went away. So she came here to America without him, knowing that a baby—you—were going to be born. Do you understand so far?”
“Yes.”
Of course. Don’t you think I know anything? I think about things like that a lot. It’s really sort of nasty when you do think about it, the way they make babies when they’re in bed. Still, it’s the only way to make a baby, and only married people are supposed to do it. I suppose Daddy and Mom do it, although they haven’t had another baby. But now I see. She did it with somebody else, not with him, so that’s why he’s really not my father.
