by Belva Plain
“That other—he—will he ever come looking for me?” asked Eve in a voice so low and fearful that the wind almost carried it away.
“Darling, he doesn’t know you exist. And if he did know, you’d be the last person that he’d want to see. Anyway, it was a long war, and he may well be dead.”
As they walked, the pebbles flew, scuffing the tips of Eve’s shoes. Suddenly she looked up at Caroline, demanding, “How could he have left you like that after he—”
After we had “made love” she meant, and was too embarrassed to say it. Caroline, trying to remember what images of her own parents’ bed she might have harbored when she was twelve, found that she was unable to. Such images were forbidden, and had therefore been hidden away in the remotest chink of the brain.
“After we ‘made love’? Because he realized that he didn’t want me. He had made a mistake. It had been an aberration, which means a really crazy mistake. People think for a short time that they want a thing and then wonder whatever can have made them want it.” Expressively, Caroline threw her hands up. “Why, that’s all wrong! It’s not for me at all!”
“It was very wrong, all the same,” Eve said.
Caroline thought gratefully, She’s beginning to see that I am not the complete, sole villain.
“So then you quickly fell in love with Daddy, right?”
“Yes, that’s the way it was.”
Al Schulman might say, “Tell her everything,” but there had to be limits.
“And you’re still in love with him now?”
The enormous, questioning eyes were looking straight into Caroline’s face. “In love”—the stuff of movie magazines, words that came without meaning, as far from the actual tangle of human emotions as if they had been written for an English-speaking reader in Bulgarian or some other unknown language.
“I love him,” she replied.
There are so many, many ways.…
“He loves you, too. He always tells me so.”
“I know. Shall we go back home?”
“Not yet.”
“The afternoons are getting shorter. It will soon be time for dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“But maybe other people are.”
“I don’t care. I have too much on my mind.”
Caroline had to stifle her sigh. It wasn’t over yet, not by a long way. These questions and answers would have to be repeated over and over. These ghosts would rise and reappear.
Now Eve’s defiance sparked. “Jill said her mother said you had to get married so I would have a name.”
Did people have nothing else to talk about but someone else’s pain? True, most people had, like Emmy Schulman, been behaving with maturity and tact, but many had not. How quickly all this information had leaked out and spread! If only that fool of an Annie had kept still! They had written a nice thank-you letter from California without making mention of anything else. Maybe they hadn’t realized the damage she had caused. Joel said they must realize it and that the letter was to be ignored. But Caroline contradicted him. “If it weren’t for those wonderful, good souls we wouldn’t be here. Put this behind you, Joel. And besides, when will we see them again? They’re at the other end of the country.”
As for herself, she must keep her temper and her patience. “I did not have to do anything I didn’t want to do,” she told Eve. “I wanted you to have a father, a good one. And that’s what you have. What we both have, a man to love and trust. That’s what matters, Eve. Goodness matters.”
“Do you hate him?”
“Who?”
Temper flared again. “Him. That Walter. That Nazi you gave me for a father.”
“I thought we’d gone over all that, Eve.”
Why does anybody ask that question? Joel has never asked it, and he’s the one who’s entitled to if anybody is. But Lore asks it now and then, and it bothers me, though I don’t tell her so. There are so many feelings mixed in that single word and mixed in me: sadness, fury, astonishment, and contempt. What difference does it make now, anyway, whether I hate him or not? It was a long time ago.
“Susan says her parents think maybe you were a Nazi, too.”
“Eve, you positively stop me in my tracks! I ask you, have you ever heard anything more ridiculous than that?”
The two stood still. And suddenly, as Eve said no, they both burst out laughing.
The days, the weeks, and the months passed. Gradually the conversation at home turned to natural subjects: school, Lore’s hospital, and business in the Orangeries. Very, very gradually it became possible to put an arm around Eve, to kiss her and receive a kiss in return.
“We’re getting back to normal,” Joel said. “I think it’s going to be all right, don’t you?”
Without him, and without Lore, too, it would have been very different. They were a pair of sturdy people. Better not to think about how it would be if she had to cope with Eve alone, thought Caroline.
“Yes,” she replied, “I think so.”
Yet there remained in Eve an anguished curiosity that at odd times, in the midst of buying a pair of shoes, setting the table, or feeding the cat and dog, would surge to hurtful words that had to be spoken before they could subside.
You might, Caroline told Joel once, compare Eve’s anguish to a bleed that has to seep until it stops. It will take a long while until only the scar remains.
NINE
These were the Eisenhower years, when tourists began to fly across the Atlantic to Europe, and when television was no longer the novelty that had brought the neighbors in to see the first set on the block.
Nevertheless, most people still traveled by train or car, and that was how Joel and Caroline would have taken Eve out West if other things had not intervened.
They stood before the latest Orangerie, now nearing completion in a town some fifteen miles down the highway from Ivy. Most of the familiar orange awnings were already up, the lavish shrubbery was in place, and men were laying flagstones on the rear terrace where in summer, under cool shade, the tables would almost surely be crowded.
“I’m still not used to it,” Joel said. “Number six! Can you believe it? How could we have dreamed when we started in Ricci’s little place that we’d see anything like this?”
Caroline smiled at him. “Nothing succeeds like success. That’s what they say, isn’t it? This all began with your good bread, you know.”
“And your imagination.”
“Aren’t we a mutual admiration society this morning? Come on, we need to start back. I’ve that appointment with Al Schulman.”
“Didn’t you just have your annual checkup?”
“Last week. But I always go back to get the report.”
“And thank God, it’s always good. Strong as a horse, you are. Just let me remind the masons to curve the corners of the terrace. If somebody should trip, at least he won’t strike a sharp point.”
She watched him walk away. At forty, he was still trim, just beginning to acquire the slightly round-shouldered look of the deskbound, as well as the equally slight swagger of the man who was casually conscious of his good, hand-tailored suit and his real-estate investments. But Joel was one who must be forgiven for his pride, and it wasn’t much pride, at that. From the hot bake oven to all this! And she had to smile to herself, remembering the first little room at Ricci’s that she had decorated with some chintz and an orange tree ordered from a catalog.
“Why didn’t I think of it first?” he always said. “I was supposed to be the businessman.”
Like too many men, he took pride in saying that he had never had a vacation. It worried her, especially because of his diabetes. He was careless about what he ate, and he worked too hard. It was a triumph for her that he had finally agreed to the trip West. Most likely he had agreed because of Eve.
“I want Eve to love this country as I do,” she had explained. “The best way to love it is to know it. You should, too, Joel. All we’ve had are a few hasty glances a
t Chicago and New York, those and the local towns with their Elm and Maple streets.”
“How about seeing Europe?” he had asked.
“Maybe someday when we can afford it.”
“No problem about that right now.” His grin showed pleasure in his ability to be generous; often she found herself checking his tendency to spend too much on everything and everybody.
He had pursued the question. “Don’t you want it now?”
“Not particularly. I went all over a good part of Europe when I was a child, from Norway to Greece, from one fancy hotel to another.”
“That’s not the reason. You don’t want to go for the same reason I don’t.”
“So you were just testing me?”
“I was. It’s far too soon after what’s happened there. We’ll need a lot more time before we’ll feel comfortable.”
So they were buying a station wagon and heading west. There were to be four of them, including Lore.
“It’s such a beautiful thing to see, the way Joel includes Lore,” remarked Emmy Schulman. “You don’t see many men being as thoughtful to their wives’ families. But then, he is special.”
“Goodness, he’d even take Vicky if he could find somebody to fill her place in the office. He’s had special sympathy for her since she was a young girl being browbeaten by Gertrude. Now, after all these years, she almost seems like some sort of third cousin to us.”
“I never liked her, to tell you the truth,” Emmy said, which was an odd remark coming from one who was usually forgiving.
Vicky did have a reputation of sorts. Nearing thirty, but looking younger, she had not married, but was always seen with a presentable man. Her smart clothes were just on this side of vulgarity, and so were her manners, alert yet jovial, and quick with a retort that was almost, but not quite, rude.
In the office she was irreplaceable, an absolute whiz with numbers. “She could run that office single-handed,” Joel declared.
Nevertheless, Caroline, who liked her well enough, was pleased that she was not going along; in a subtle way, she would destroy the atmosphere.
“I’ll drop you off at Al’s office,” he said now, “then go check on the station wagon.”
“If you think of it, will you get a new dog bed for the trip? The shop is across the street from the car place.”
Peter Number Three was a stray, a terrier mix that the dogcatcher had found abandoned on the highway. Pure white—when he was fresh out of the bath—and floppy-eared, he bore no resemblance to Peter the Second other than his expression, which was sad. Joel could never resist a forlorn face.
“Do we have to bring him?” he asked now. “He’ll be a big responsibility.”
“Eve won’t put him in a kennel. And she’ll take all the responsibility.”
“Okay, then. I’ll take her word. Her word’s her bond.”
“That’s true.”
“She’s come a long way in the last four years, don’t you think? She seems so much older than sixteen. I wonder whether that bad time, that shock is the reason, or part of it, at least.”
“I don’t know, but she’s much more mature than I was at sixteen, and for some time after that, too.”
“She never mentions it to me, hasn’t asked since that first year. Does she ever talk to you about anything?”
“Anything” meant “him,” Caroline understood. Not half a dozen times had Eve made any reference to what must have been her most salient discovery about herself. Yet, painfully, Caroline recalled each one. There had been the time, for instance, when Eve had remarked, “I suppose, if a person grew up in a terrible family like his, maybe he couldn’t help being like the rest of them.” And, as if he had been standing there in front of her, Caroline had seen again the bullheaded, crop-haired monster with the Fascist regalia on his lapel, crossing the sidewalk in front of his house. Eve’s grandfather! She scarcely remembered how she had answered.
“No,” she said now, “we don’t talk about it.”
Joel did not answer. The conversation was heading into deep waters, and she changed it abruptly.
“Lore is so excited about this vacation. It’s a pleasure to hear her.”
“What does she get out of life? Work, work, and a concert in the city now and then.”
“She loves her work, you know that.”
“True, but I’d hate to think that work was all I had.”
They were on the lake drive passing the Schulmans’ house. He slowed the car to look at the neat front walk between low juniper hedges and the side lawn, on which jonquils in scattered clusters were coming into bloom.
“You know,” he said, “we ought to buy a house here. You’ve always dreamed about living by the lake. What are we waiting for? We’re not kids anymore.”
“They’re much too expensive, Joel.”
“We’ve got enough in the bank to buy two of them, my dear.”
She let her eyes rove up and down the street. There was no ostentation about these quiet houses set among the comfort of large, old trees; just so had stood the white stone house of her childhood; solid, made to last, to keep and hand down in a family. How well she remembered it! And then she remembered herself only a few years ago, a scared and penniless outsider invited by kind women to a ladies’ luncheon on that street.…
“No,” she said, “leave it in the bank. We’re fine where we are.”
“Think about it,” Joel replied. “Should I come back for you at the doctor’s, or will you walk?”
“I’m going to stop at our Main Street place, anyway, before I go home. I’ll walk.”
The woman who went up the steps at the doctor’s office was not the woman who came down them half an hour later.
Dr. Schulman took both her hands and laughed at her bewilderment. “Well,” he said. “Well. Have I got a surprise for you!”
“Don’t tell me you won the lottery.”
“Much, much better than that. Caroline, you’re going to have a baby.”
“Al, you must be out of your mind.”
“Not today, at any rate. It showed up in your routine specimen. Somebody at the lab mistakenly added a pregnancy check, and there it was. Are you dazed? Yes, of course you are. But happy, too, I hope.”
“Al, are you absolutely sure of it?”
“Yes, I asked for a second check. There’s no question. You look dumbstruck. Sit down.”
“I am dumbstruck. Good Lord, I’m thirty-six.”
“So? Women have babies at thirty-six.”
“But after all these years! It seems ridiculous.”
“It seems quite wonderful, Caroline. Here’s Eve soon to leave for college, and here’s a newcomer to liven the household.”
All kinds of doubts went scurrying through her mind. “I wonder how Eve will take another shock, when she’s barely out of the first—if you can say she’ll ever really be out of it. And you can’t.”
“Eve will be fine. She’s had much more than this to take, and she took it.”
“I hope so.”
“For that matter,” Dr. Schulman said, “so did you, when your turns came.”
“I wonder what Joel will do.”
Here Schulman laughed again. “Joel? He will want to announce it on national television. He will burst his buttons. Go on home, my dear, and make an appointment with Arnold Baker. He’s the best obstetrician in the area.”
Weak in the knees from sudden panic, she walked out into the spring sunshine. The day was now completely altered; where before there had been a lazy quality to the air—spring fever—there was now a quality of urgent hurry, as if time were pressing; a thousand changes to be made, words to be spoken and things to be done, all at once. Questions, exclamations, words. Only until she almost tripped and fell over a curb did she realize that she had been running.
Al Schulman calls it “wonderful,” she thought. Of course, every birth is a natural wonder, whether it’s wanted or not. I certainly can’t say that this one was wanted, though. Still, I
can’t even say it wasn’t wanted, because the fact is I haven’t thought about it for years. I simply assumed, and eventually I suppose Joel assumed, too, that it wasn’t going to be. But here we are. It will take getting used to.
It’s amazing how quickly you forget what to do with a baby. When I see that new one next door asleep in his carriage, I’m ashamed to say that I can barely remember Eve at that age. Lore says it’s because of the circumstances. I was still holding on by the skin of my teeth.
This time, though, it will be different. This one, at least, has a sure place in which to lay its little head. This one’s father is a man. What would it look like, he or she, like Eve again, or will it have Joel’s face, round and pink? What an adventure it is to wait through these slow months for your surprise!
Then she began to feel foolish. She would be so conspicuous pushing a baby carriage. And yet, an incredible new life! All these emotions were pulsing in her body. And, too, knife-sharp, was the recollection of that other day, of the doctor on the ship who had known at once that she was pregnant and told her not to speak of it. “Moral turpitude,” he’d said. Moral turpitude! Her Eve, her graceful, tender, thoughtful Eve. Her chest was filled with hot indignation.
Ah, but now the required ring was on her finger. The title was attached to her name. Not even Vicky’s carping Gertrude could have anything to say except, perhaps, that thirty-six is too old.
Me! At that she had to laugh. And she walked fast now, laughing her way homeward.
JOEL, as Al Schulman had predicted, was really bursting his buttons. Unfastening his vest—he always wore a proper vest under his jacket—he helped himself to another piece of the whipped-cream masterpiece that Lore had baked for the celebration.
“Two portions, Joel. You know you shouldn’t,” warned Caroline.
“To hell with diabetes. Pour me another glass of wine.”
This was the first time any of them had seen him even slightly tipsy. His face was one big, crinkling smile.
“When did you say? When?” he demanded again.
“I’ve told you a hundred times. December. Late December.”
