by Belva Plain
“I’d better get started on the cradle. We should have kept the one I made for you, Eve, but we gave it away. If I say so myself, it was a beauty.”
“Well, you’ve got eight months to make another, Daddy.”
Eve was curious about the proceedings, as if it were somehow quaint at this point to introduce a baby into the family. Her latest boyfriend’s mother had just had what the boyfriend called an “accident,” a baby at age forty. In her case, though, it was the fifth, so it couldn’t possibly be as interesting as Caroline’s was.
“Not really. There’ll be a lot to do before January. We’re going to move.” And Joel looked expectantly around the table.
“Move! What are you talking about?” cried Caroline.
“You, Mrs. Caroline, are going to have your lake-view house. Yes,” he said, beaming his triumph. “Yes, that house on the corner piece, the double lot, the house with the blue spruce that you always admire. It’s going up for sale. I heard about it at the bank this morning, and I made an offer right away, no dickering. I’ll pay the asking price and we can move in by September.”
“Oh, Joel, I told you not to take our savings and—”
“I’m not taking our savings. There’s a syndicate that wants to put up a garden apartment on this street. We’re right in the middle of the row, which puts us in the position of wrecking their plan if we should refuse to sell. I met with them last week right after you gave me the great news, and I told them they could have what they wanted if they’d pay enough to buy a house overlooking the lake.”
The three women were stunned. As if they were having the same thought, all turned to the window and looked out over what they still called “Angela’s vegetable garden,” where the dark earth was newly harrowed in preparation for seeding.
“It’ll seem so strange to move,” Eve said. “I’ve never lived anywhere else.”
“A move is very expensive,” Caroline said. “People tell me you always find a lot of unexpected things to be done after you move in.” A house near the lake had been a glamorous fantasy to enjoy, but the actuality, added to the surprise pregnancy, was suddenly daunting. “What do you think, Lore?”
“I think this house is good enough,” she replied. “It’s comfortable here, isn’t it? Do we need grandeur?”
Joel laughed. “It won’t be comfortable here with a fifth person in the house and all its—his or her—paraphernalia.”
“It takes a lot of maintenance, a lot of money, to keep those big lawns,” Lore argued. “And you don’t have time to do it yourself, tearing around to six places every day as you do.”
“Let me worry about that. You know what?” Joel teased. “You’re worried that there won’t be a room for you in the new place, that’s what it is, Lore. Listen. If you won’t come, we’ll drag you there by the hair. You’re going to have a room in the front of the house with a view of the lake whether you like it or not.”
“Oh, you,” said Lore.
She was pleased at being wanted. And Caroline, noting how, although Lore was not yet fifty, she had aged, how her sparse hair was graying and her bad teeth were being, one by one, replaced, felt, as so often, a soft pity. I am so rich, she told herself, not meaning the new house or the business or anything but human wealth; the goodness of Joel, the loveliness of Eve, the faithfulness of Lore, and the startling joy of the new life on the way.
THERE was too much to be done for them to spare a month on the western vacation. That would have to come some other summer. Papers for a sale and a purchase would take the usual amount of time, and the house with the blue spruce trees would have to be furnished before Caroline grew too uncomfortably large to go running about.
It was a lovely house, old and a bit neglected; the kitchen, for example, was dilapidated beyond what even a thorough cleaning could repair. The banister was dangerously rickety, and the front steps sagged. With pad and pencil in hand, Caroline went around making notes.
“Look at yourself,” Joel said with some delight. “And you were the woman who didn’t want to move.”
“Well, since you forced me, what else am I to do? Let’s see. Would it cost too much to change the window in the library? I always like a bow window with a wide ledge, where you can sit and read on a dark, rainy day. And when it’s light outside, the whole room is bright with it. The bow window could be extended to our bedroom above it, too. It would be lovely to wake up and watch the seasons move across the lake.”
“Why not? It’s no big job.”
“Also, the same carpenters could build a nice fence around the property, so Peter won’t get out.”
“Peter? Not the baby?”
“Joel, do you really think the baby, when it walks, will be allowed out alone?”
“Just kidding. We really should stop calling it ‘it.’ Anyway, it might really be a ‘they’—twins.”
He was enjoying every minute of life these days. He must have been wanting and wanting a child without ever saying so.
“Do you think a rose plot in the center would look right? Roses need a lot of sun. Or perhaps over on the left against the fence would be better?”
“Of course, you know you’re trying to copy Father and Mama’s house,” observed Lore one day.
Caroline was, for the moment, shocked. Truly, she had not been aware of it, and she said so.
“The subconscious does strange things. Weil, maybe not so strange. And surely you think of all your past with your conscious mind. It’s only natural.”
Lore could rarely enough, but sometimes, be a real gloom. “I try not to,” Caroline said dryly. “That’s only natural, too.”
“Let’s buy Lore a phonograph for her room,” suggested Joel. “Then she can enjoy her music in peace and quiet when she wants to.”
Perhaps, Caroline thought, although he had never said so, she reminds Joel of someone he had known in that town, which also for obvious reasons, he rarely mentions. Or possibly it was simply his nature to empathize with people, whether with Vicky and her defects or the waitress in Number Three Orangerie, whose child was deaf.
As the weeks passed, Caroline became aware of her own euphoria, and other people noticed it, too. This was not uncommon in pregnant women, her doctor said. And so, far from shrinking from any reminder of her childhood’s home, she went on joyfully to duplicate a few things that she had especially loved about it.
There was the wallpaper in Mama’s sitting room, pale gray-green, with trailing crimson peonies in a Chinese effect. There was the pair of cloudy Venetian mirrors in the hall, and an old clock with a moon face over a mantel. Now that there was space enough for the books she wanted to own, she bought in secondhand shops complete sets of the Western world’s classics to read again and hope that her children would read. Children. The very sound of the word was pleasant to her ears.
On the walls of Joel’s small home office, she put photographs of famous buildings from around the world, he having lately revealed a new interest in architecture. Whereas Father had had photographs of Roman ruins, to Joel she gave an eclectic grouping: Angkor Wat, the Empire State Building, the Paris Opera, and the glass geometry of Mies van der Rohe. As she hung them, all in their uniform, narrow frames, she had a sudden recollection of the day in New York when he had described with awe his first and only visit to a museum. And touched by the recollection, she thought, We shall have to take time now for things like that. He has been hungry without realizing it.
All that summer and fall, the house was a family venture. Joel duplicated the perfect cradle. Lore sniffed with scorn of “bought, machine-made junk,” and sewed all the ruffled curtains by hand. Eve and her friends worked on a project, a combination flower and vegetable garden like the one being left behind in the old place.
“We’re in a race here,” Joel said as fall deepened and Caroline grew larger, “between you and the house.”
“The house will win,” she assured him. “We’ll be in it before the first.”
Through the streets of
Ivy she walked now, carrying the sweet fragrances of respectability and prosperity. Funny, I’m the same person, she often thought as she was met and greeted, who arrived here from New York carrying all I owned in a trunk. Some who, like Gertrude, had scorned, now fawned. And I want neither.
Meanwhile, the smoky fall air turned raw, the north wind churned the lake, and she was barely able to bend and fasten her boots.
Joel did it for her. He wanted to do things for her; it was as if he could not do enough. It surprised him that she had no cravings for strawberries at midnight, or pickles, or anything; or that she had no aches or pains and was seldom tired.
“How can you look so delicate, when you’re not?” he marveled, with head to the side as if he were making a sketch or a study of her. “It must be your bones, so light and slender, that and your skin. It’s like cream. You look like a girl. And after all these years, you’re having my child.”
They had their final Thanksgiving dinner in the old house. Lore and Eve did the cooking: the turkey, the pumpkin pie, and as always, Lore’s chocolate cake. Joel shoveled the first heavy snow from the walk, put an awkward bunch of flowers on the table, brought champagne for toasts, and scarcely permitted Caroline to move.
Like a reluctant queen, she let him have his way. And from her place at the well-used table, she looked around her at the simple room in which more than a few thousand meals had been eaten. Their real start had been made here in this house; here they had woven themselves into a family and endured and come through. Now tomorrow was moving day, and as on every momentous occasion, one’s thoughts could not help but be complex.
So ends, thought Caroline, so ends our time in the little brown house.
ON a snowy day shortly before the New Year, Jane Hirsch, wrapped in a hand-embroidered pink blanket made by Lore, came home to the new white house and was placed in the cradle made by her father, alongside the bed where her mother rested.
“God, she’s beautiful,” Joel said.
Caroline smiled. The baby was healthy and chubby, with Joel’s round face. Perhaps she would grow up to be beautiful, but right now she was too young to be either beautiful or homely. Only let her not suffer too much, thought Caroline.
It was dark outside, the lake was glowing like mother-of-pearl, and Caroline, gazing, felt a deep peace.
“So now you have your view of the lake,” Joel said, following her gaze.
“I have everything,” she answered.
They both bent over the cradle to examine again this fascinating stranger.
“Look at the size of her fingers. Amazing, aren’t they?” His voice was roughened by emotion. “My mother would love her. My father would, too. He was a big man, Caroline, almost six feet and a half, not like me. But he had very fine hands, like an artist’s or a musician’s. He was a person who understood people. Strangers recognized that in the first minute. I wish our Jane could know this grandfather of hers.”
She was silent. And he said quickly, “Her other grandfather too, of course. Lore has told me so many things about him.”
But she was not thinking of Father. She was thinking of Eve’s other inheritance, of the brutes. In her mind, when she was forced to remember their existence, that was the name she gave them: brutes. Those who slaughter and tear.
“Are you thinking of our Eve?” Joel asked softly.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I don’t know how I did, but I did. Sometimes that happens to me when you are silent.”
“You are extraordinary,” she said, meaning it.
“I know I should not ask, but—do you feel different now that we have this baby?” He knelt down on the rug so that his face was on a level with hers. “What I am trying to say is—do you still ever think of—of him?”
“Of him? Why would any thinking, intelligent woman want to waste a second of time on a Nazi monster?”
“Feelings aren’t guided by intelligence.”
“I know that. But my answer, anyway, is no, I don’t.”
“I can’t think where I heard a saying, something about how with every couple there is one who loves and one who is loved.”
“Some French author wrote it. But it’s not necessarily true. I hope you don’t believe it.”
She reached over and stroked his hair. He trembled, and she kept stroking. When at last he raised his head, he put something in her hand.
“Open it.”
It was a velvet box, ring-size, and it made her want to cry. He was too good to her.… “Open it,” he said again.
The lamplight flashed upon a ruby within a narrow circle of diamonds.
“Mama’s ring,” she said, and then did cry.
“I tried to remember the size. I wanted to duplicate it. Of course, it’s not her ring, but you can pretend it is.”
“Oh, my dear, I don’t deserve it,” she said.
“What are you talking about? Don’t deserve it? That’s crazy. My beloved wife!”
Where had he heard such old-fashioned expressions? People in this flippant age didn’t talk that way anymore. And maybe people didn’t kiss people’s hands anymore, either, yet on sudden impulse she took his hands and kissed them, one and then the other.
There was such an ache inside her, the familiar ache of tenderness and pity. And suddenly she remembered a wistful remark, a request really, that he had made a long time ago about having another child; she had denied him so long, and she was sorry. If only she could have felt for him then and could feel now the passion and the longing that he had for her!
The baby stirred and whimpered. When the whimper ran to a wail, Joel picked her up.
“Jane’s wet, I think, or can she be hungry?”
“Both, probably. Give her to me.”
Then, while her hands fussed over the infant, her thoughts took another turn, and she rebuked herself. What is this drive for perfection in all things? she asked. It makes no sense. After all you have seen of life and do see now whenever you look around at the world, you ought to know better. A few minutes ago, until Joel asked you a certain question, you were filled with peace. And well you should be filled with peace. Look again at this baby and this man. Raise your eyes and look around at the calm, safe night that surrounds your home.…
“What are you seeing again out there?” asked Joel.
“The starlight on the lake. It will be a bright day tomorrow.”
He smiled. “Every day is bright,” he said.
TEN
In the North, the year moves to the dance of the thermometer. Snow falls, deepens, piles high on the below-zero nights, and thaws in late winter above thirty-two, after which it can blast a blizzard in early spring. Caroline was impatient to see the ice gone from the sidewalks so that Jane might be exhibited abroad. Eve wanted to get seeds into the garden plot that she and her friends had dug. Joel was impatient to get a sandbox readied for Jane.
Lore was amused. “The baby’s not even sitting up yet, and you’re talking about a sandbox. Anybody’d think, the way you carry on, that this is the first baby the world’s ever seen.”
Joel spoke quickly. “Not the first. The second.”
He was always careful to refer to Eve along with Jane, and Eve understood why. She was, after all, not the average sixteen-year-old high school sophomore, who would hardly be jealous of a new baby in the family. She had a past, and she could almost be envious of the baby who had none. But she was not.
No, Eve often told herself, it is not so much my past as it is two other people’s, Mom’s and his. Occasionally, prompted by some event or remark, she would ask herself honestly: How much thought do I really ever give to him? She certainly tried to give no thought at all, for what could not be changed must be accepted and buried. Yet that was impossible. For one thing, too many people in Ivy knew. She could tell who knew by the sudden change of subject that sometimes occurred. It was kindly meant, in order not to embarrass her. Yet she felt discomfort. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to meet him; then,
at the very thought of it, she would shudder. He was nothing to her. She had a father, a real one, and his name was Joel.
As to Mom, all anger was gone. Only sympathy was left of that first raging grief, sympathy and a vow never to repeat Mom’s foolish mistake. Eve could not imagine herself being so naive, so impractical, as to allow any man to trick her like that. Poor, childish Mom! Eighteen, she had been, and Eve, at sixteen, knew better.
It’s good to see Mom so happy now with this baby, she thought. You can tell how happy she is because she stays home to take care of her. Jane’s a cute thing, already able to smile. I didn’t know babies that young knew enough to smile back when you smile at them. It’s so cute to look at her fat, crinkly cheeks and her pink mouth with no teeth. I think she’s going to look like Daddy, which is all right, because although you wouldn’t call him terribly handsome, he has such a nice face, and people like him right away. My friends all like him. They like to come to our house, and that makes me feel sort of proud because lots of parents don’t make you feel welcome. They’re afraid you’ll break things, I guess. Anyway, they come here. They like to look at Jane, out for an airing in the yard. And they like Lore’s cookies. She makes them when she gets home from the hospital. You’d think she’d be too tired, but she never is.
“Tired?” said Lore. “I’m as strong as I ever was, and I go back a long time. I rocked your mother in her carriage and you in your cradle. Now I’m rocking Jane, And if I’m alive, Eve, I’ll rock your babies, too.”
By June, when Jane was six months old, she napped in the garden, where roses were already flourishing in a circular bed with a sundial in the center. When he came home, Joel liked to find Caroline reading there beside the carriage and the sleeping dog.
“It’s good to see you resting,” he told her. “As long as I’ve known you, I think I can count the times I ever saw you not busy.”
“Well, you do know I’m going back to work, don’t you? I’m staying home until Jane goes to nursery school. Are things doing all right in the office without me? Not that I’m indispensable, I know, but still, I worry.”
