by Belva Plain
His tone was so rueful that she had to respond. And she said what a moment before she would not have said to anyone. “Today’s trouble is different. This isn’t my week, it seems.”
“I’ve had some weeks like that myself. By the way, you didn’t inquire about me. Is it because you didn’t want to?”
“No, because I didn’t think it was necessary.”
“One could take that two ways. Can I take it to mean that if you aren’t going to any better place, you’ll go down the street for a drink?”
“What kind of a drink?”
Tom ran his eyes from her saddle shoes up to her yellow sweater and strand of small pearls. He smiled. “I would guess that a Coke might be your idea of a drink. Am I right?”
She nodded, and for the second time in his presence, felt how much better it is, after all, when your head is heavy with thoughts, not to hide away alone.
She had no intention of spilling these thoughts, however, to a stranger who would only be bored by them. Yet before an hour had gone by, Tom knew about Joel’s letter and what had led to it.
“I feel so lost,” she finished. “I feel untied, unattached. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or feel, or say.”
“Do? Nothing. Or rather, one thing. When you go back to your room, go to the telephone and tell your father that you hope he will be happy. And tell him that you love him.”
“But I’m still so terribly angry.”
“You can be angry at people you love. You do love him, don’t you? It seems to me that love has run all through everything you’ve been saying.”
When her eyes teared, he looked away until she had finished wiping them. “You’re very soft,” he said. “If you say anything to hurt him, you’ll feel terrible afterward. You’ll go to bed sorry about what you said and wishing you could take it back.”
She was silent. They went out to the street and walked a long way aimlessly before they turned around. By the time they got back to the campus, the sun had gone from sight.
“We haven’t had any dinner,” Tom said.
“I don’t mind. I’m not hungry. But you go ahead.”
“I’m not hungry, either.”
Now they were both silent. On the campus, lights were already going out, and Eve reminded herself of the time.
“I have to be in by midnight.”
“I’ll watch the clock. I don’t want you to be in any trouble,” Tom said.
They sat down beneath the palm where he had first seen her. Neither of them apparently wanted to leave.
Abruptly, Eve broke the stillness. “You’re right. I would be sorry if I were to tell Dad what I think about his marrying Vicky. You reminded me of how much I owe to him. He was my support in my worst time. He was always, for all of us—” She stopped. “I’m suddenly realizing that all evening we have been talking about me. That’s awful. Boring you with my problems, when you haven’t said a word about yourself.”
“We’ll get to me. But you’ve wanted to talk about yourself. You’ve needed to. That’s true, isn’t it?”
Yes, it was true. Never in all these years had she completely revealed herself to anyone. Psychologists called it “suppression.” And she had been satisfied to suppress, had felt no need to speak, until this had come up. And so there in the soft night, she spoke.
She told Tom Tappan the story of Caroline and Walter. She gave him descriptions of everyone and everything, from the little brown house to the house on the lake, and the Orangerie, and Lore, and baby Jane, and Peter the dog.
Then he spoke. He told her about his family’s home in the Midwest and his small beach bungalow from which he commuted daily, and what he called his “dabbling” in art. Most of all, he talked about his fascination with Central America.
“So you were there,” he said. “You saw Uxmal and Chichén Itzá, the carvings, the snakes, eagles, and the great, sacred jaguar. So you know what I’m talking about. I have to go back. I need another year or two of studying here, and then I’m going to join a group dig in Guatemala. There’s more, much more, in Guatemala. There are things deep in the jungle where I’m sure no explorer has yet been. There’s a whole civilization, people who had ballgames and dances, religion, art, and human sacrifice. I have to know more. I’m driven. It’s what I want to do with my life.”
“You make me feel as if I’ve known you a long time,” Eve said, surprised at herself as she spoke.
He looked at his watch. “Not counting our first, very short, short meeting, you’ve known me for exactly four hours and ten minutes. Now back to you. What about your life from now on?”
“I don’t know yet. There’s so much to learn, and I’m only beginning. I’m taking a course in archaeology, a beginner’s course, but sometimes I think about earning my degree in European literature. Or maybe when I’m through with college, I might like to have a marvelous bookstore, the kind with all sorts of odd, rare books that you don’t find in most places. Or—well, I’ve grown up watching my mother, and maybe I’d like to work at the business she began. She had visions of making it grow from coast to coast. All I know right now is that I’m going to do something important. Important to me, at least,” she added, to amend what had perhaps sounded childish.
In the very faint light she could barely discern his smile, but her ears could detect it in his voice.
“You’ll come with me to Guatemala,” he said. “That’s what you’ll do.”
A year later Tom’s prediction about going away with him no longer seemed extravagant. It seemed natural. It was visible to anyone who had eyes to see that they were a couple. They were seen as such on the campus, but not seen at all at Tom’s beach bungalow.
He called it his “shack.” And perhaps it was one, bleached gray, veiled by beach grapes, and except for sparse, essential furniture, bare. It was clean and sunny, with a far view of Eve’s romantic ocean.
To its wide deck she often brought her work, spreading out textbooks and papers on half of the table, where on the other half Tom spread his paints. There was always a painting in progress on the easel. There were ships on the horizon. Gulls called and sailed in the sky.
At night, when the gulls were still, they lay warmly in bed, listening to the breeze, or the squall, or the gale. Often after he fell asleep, for he slept more quickly and soundly than she did, Eve lay awake, or half awake, sliding in and out of memory. And it came to her that for the first time, she truly understood her mother. Ignorant, priggish little child that I was, she thought, when I blamed her for what happened with—him. She had felt for him what I feel for Tom when he puts his arms around me, and when I do not see him for a few days that feel like a year. Yes, now I know how it is. He is everything to me. Everything. I can’t take my eyes away from him. And it happened so quickly to us both! A few hours only … And for my mother, it must have been the same. Only, he betrayed her. How did she live through it? If Tom ever does that to me, I will die.
At home she had told Lore and Dad, but not Vicky, about Tom. She could never speak intimately to Vicky. It was enough that the surface between them was smooth; for the sake of peace in the house, it would always be smooth. Let Dad be content. She was glad that he seemed to be so, and she was relieved, too, that she need not worry about him. Indeed, the longer she was away from Ivy, the more it receded from her and no longer seemed like “home.” Automatically now, “home” meant here on the rim of the Pacific, or more exactly, it meant wherever Tom was.
In another year she would graduate and go to Guatemala with him. His direction had now become hers. She was studying archaeology with total seriousness, and eventually would also earn a graduate degree. Who knew where they might yet go together to study and work? The world was large, a great blue ball swimming around the sun. She was filled with the joy of it.
THIRTEEN
Shortly before examination week in her senior year, Eve was called home. Lore came straight to the point. “Joel had a stroke last night. But please, please don’t be too frightened
. It’s a mild one.”
Visions of horror shot before Eve’s eyes. “Is he paralyzed?”
“No, no, except for a slight weakness on one side. His speech hasn’t been affected, and he can walk.”
“I’ll be right home. I’ll take a night flight.”
“Eve, don’t panic. You don’t have to rush tonight. It’s not bad. You’ll see.”
Tom drove her to the airport, first having packed a few textbooks into her carry-on bag. “You may have time sitting around, and you might just as well use it,” he advised. “Give Joel all my good wishes and tell him I feel related to him already.”
He looks like a husband, Eve thought, as he stood watching her at the airport until they were out of each other’s sight.
By the time she had gotten through all the connections and waits and reached Ivy, it was after noon. The taxi crawled to the door; it seemed as if even the transcontinental plane had crawled. Tremulous and hoping, she sped up the front steps, stumbling once, and lightly touched the bell.
Vicky opened the door. “You’re here?” she exclaimed with her owl eyes widened. “My goodness, you needn’t have come all this way.”
The old, stifled anger was prepared to flash in Eve. “For Dad I needn’t have come?”
“You’re certainly welcome, but he’s doing fine. He’s upstairs taking a nap, so that’s why I’m going out for an hour.”
You don’t have to explain yourself. And you don’t have to tell me I’m “welcome” in my father’s home. It’s my home, too, remember?
She said quietly, “I’m going upstairs to wash and change these clothes that I slept in.”
“Don’t wake him.”
“Of course not.”
When did we begin to hate each other? Or is hate too strong a word? To think she was my baby-sitter when Mom and Lore were at work!
Walking in rubber-soled shoes, she peeked into the bedroom. Her first thought was that Mom wouldn’t recognize the room. Understandably, the bride, Vicky, had immediately bought a new bed, a thing of white and gold and shining, coral-colored silk, but in addition, everything had more recently been changed to coral or pink. A mirror covered one wall. And she wondered what Dad could be thinking of it all as he lay there in Caroline’s room.
He opened his eyes. “I’m not asleep,” he said.
“I was so quiet.”
“But I’ve been expecting you. When I heard the doorbell, I felt it was you.”
When she bent to kiss him, she saw that he had tears in his eyes. His familiar, round cheeks were sunken. It seemed extraordinary that in the few months since she had last seen him, this change could happen, extraordinary in the first place that he, the strong one who had always been there to care for other people’s aches and ailments, was lying weakly in the bed.
His voice was barely above a murmur. “I knew you would come. Still, you shouldn’t have come all this way.”
“But I wanted to see you, Dad.”
“How’s Tom? When are you going to bring him with you?”
“He’ll come the next time, I promise. He wants to come. But this is exam—” She stopped. It was careless of her to let him know that she had felt it necessary to hurry home in this crucial week.
But he had not noticed, asking instead whether she had seen Jane.
“I haven’t seen anyone but Vicky.”
“Lore must have taken her for a walk. She comes here almost every day after work. Lore doesn’t live here anymore, you know; she’s taken an apartment.”
Eve knew. Lore had long been complaining about the noisy evenings when Vicky’s friends occupied the house. Lore didn’t know how Joel stood it.
“Jane’s adorable,” Eve said now, wanting to change the subject.
Joel smiled. “She’s very different from what you were at that age. She’s feisty. I think maybe she takes after some of my brothers.”
“Maybe so. She looks like you, though.”
“God help her. I hope not.”
“Dad! What’s bad about looking like you? She’s darling, curls and all.”
“I’ve made a new will, Eve. I want you to know.”
“It’s much too soon to be thinking about wills.”
“That’s foolish talk. People die, even young people.”
Both heads turned to Caroline in the fine dark frame on Joel’s chest of drawers. At least Vicky hadn’t changed that.
“It was time to update. I hadn’t realized how far the business has spread upward and outward since the previous will. It seems some kind of a little miracle when I think about it. There’ll be plenty and more than plenty for everybody—for you two girls and Vicky and Lore, when I go.”
“Dad! You’re not going anyplace except to California to see Tom and me. You’re going to approve of him. He’s smart, and funny, and good.”
“Well, he’d better be good. When I see him, I’ll tell him so. Then we’ll celebrate. I’m going to be all right, you know.”
“Of course you are.”
A tender, prescient sorrow brought a lump to Eve’s throat. And drawing a chair close to the bed, she held his hand while, both knowing well what they were doing, they talked deliberately of trivial and pleasant things. After a while, when Vicky came in to bring loud, manufactured cheer, Eve went downstairs.
“I think,” she told Lore, “I’ll call Dr. Al and find out exactly what’s happening to Dad.”
“He’s not on the case anymore. She’s brought all her own people in. Schulman’s too old, she says.”
“Too old? I wouldn’t care if he was two hundred. Everybody knows he’s the best internist on the hospital staff. You yourself always say so.”
“Of course I do. But you try telling her anything she doesn’t want to hear. You might as well reason with the refrigerator or the stove.” And Lore threw up her hands.
“Who’s a wefwidguwator? Vicky?” demanded Jane, coming in from the yard.
“That’s grown-up talk, honey. Don’t you see who’s here?”
Milk and a cookie, one of Lore’s huge chocolate chip specialties, were waiting on the kitchen table. But Jane, giving a cry at sight of Eve, ran past them, jolted the table, upset the milk, and rushed to her.
“What have you got for me, Eve?”
At Christmas, the last time she had been home, Eve had brought a splendid doll and a box of puzzles. Now, in her haste, she had brought nothing.
“Darling,” she said, hugging Jane, “I didn’t have time yesterday. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t love me.”
“You see what I say about spoiling?” Lore scolded.
“It’s deeper than that,” Eve said.
But that sort of pop psychology was ridiculous. As if some sudden wisdom could have revealed itself only to her! Yet, must the child not have been affected by all the changes in the house?
And hugging her close, she promised, “Tomorrow you and I will go to buy something nice for you. Where’s Peter?”
“Outside. He likes it there. I’m going out with him, too.”
“You can take your milk and cookie and sit on the step,” Lore said. “Here, I’ll help you. Take a biscuit for Peter so he won’t grab your cookie.”
“A handful, as they say,” she remarked when she came back. “Extremely smart. She sees everything. She told me the other day that Vicky doesn’t like her.”
“Is that true?”
“I haven’t seen anything really wrong. I’ve only sensed that the child’s in her way, and if I sense it, you can be sure Jane does.”
“Does Dad see it?”
“Who can say? He’s too reserved, too much of a gentleman to complain to me about his wife, if he has any complaints.”
“Well, do you think he has?”
“I’ll tell you what I think. I think he has regrets. I think he knows he made a foolish mistake on impulse, and now he feels guilty, poor man.”
“I could say ‘I told you so,’ but I won’t.”
“No, it wouldn’t do
any good, would it?” Lore agreed.
Eve, sighing, wondered aloud, “What’s going to happen to Dad?”
“If I had a crystal ball I could tell you.”
“But you see so much in the hospital.”
“Each case is different.”
“You didn’t make too much of it on the telephone.”
“I didn’t want to scare you to death. The fact is, though, it is a mild stroke, and although he’s bound to have another one, it may be years away. Let’s hope.”
“First Mom, and now this. I’m going over to the Schulmans’ tonight and get Dr. Al’s opinion.”
“You don’t have to. He’s coming over here. He visits Joel every evening, just as a friend. Vicky may not like it, but he comes anyway.”
Eve sat with Dr. Al—Dad always said that respect demanded that a young woman of her age use the title—in the sunroom, now refurbished in feverish pink. From above came intermittent spurts of ear-splitting talk and laughter.
Dr. Schulman frowned slightly. “The young crowd,” he said. “Well, maybe they entertain him, I don’t know. I don’t suppose it does him any harm, and they mean well.”
“Not his style, Dr. Al.”
“A new era, Eve.”
She would have liked to go up and throw them all out of Dad’s room with their racket. Then, if he wanted her to, she would play the soft music he liked, or would read aloud, for he had always enjoyed that. And now especially—
“Lore told me his sight is affected.”
“It’s blurred. He can’t see equally in every direction. Diabetic retinopathy, it’s called.”
“Explain it, please.”
“Okay. Diabetes is associated with vascular problems, which can cause bleeding into the retina, or lead to amputation of a leg, for that matter. Fortunately, Joel doesn’t have that problem. But vascular trouble can lead to heart attack or stroke, and Joel does have that.”
“Oh, I wish you were taking care of him. It’s outrageous that you aren’t.”
“Don’t make an issue of it, Eve. As things are, I know pretty well what’s happening.”
