Promises

by Belva Plain

  She had a need to reach and touch the uttermost bounds of anguish. “No,” she said. “I must hear everything. There are children, aren’t there? And you don’t want to tell me.” She wiped her face. “How many children?”

  He got up from his knees, saying wearily, “Two. A boy and a girl.”

  Children. A wife. A house. She saw him so differently now. All of a sudden he was not the same desirable young man beside whom, only a few hours ago, she had walked so confidently with a light and hopeful heart. As if a spring, stretched to the snapping point, had indeed snapped, she jumped out of the chair, snatched her coat, and ran to the door.

  “Wait, Nina. What are you doing? Nina—”

  The door slammed in his face. Almost opposite, the elevator door had opened; before he was able to reach it, she was in the elevator going down, then out on the street and running. She was wild and well aware of it, aware that it made no sense to be running at night through the streets of a foreign city or of any city. She had no idea where she was going. Behind her lay disaster, smashed pride, and, far worse, smashed trust. How could he? Oh, God, how I hate him!

  People were looking at her, thinking, no doubt, that she was being pursued or was demented. Her breath came hard, as if blood had risen to her throat, and she had to stop, pretending to look into a shop window. Ahead at the top of the street lay a wide open space, quite surely the great square where they had watched the old clock and gone into the church behind the square; that was where she must go now, to the church.

  Someone had been rehearsing or practicing at the organ that afternoon, sending majestic waves of sound to the pinnacle of the ancient building. Bach, Keith had said. “When music moves you with such grandeur, it almost always turns out to be Bach.” The church was almost vacant now. Only a few old people sat facing the altar, and an old woman knelt in prayer. The cold was damp. And as she drew her coat more tightly around herself, the pretty coat, bought with such anticipation of joy, she was overcome with a conviction of irreparable loss.

  She needed to be home. If she could only make a wish and be instantly at home in her own place, burying her head in her own pillow and sleeping! Just sleeping! But she had no money, no tickets, nothing. She was helpless, dependent upon him. And she sat there, gazing at the votive candles and the old woman kneeling in prayer. God knew what her troubles might be, poor soul!

  After a long, long while when one by one the church emptied, she was left alone in a dark blue immensity. How many thousands of men and women, betrayed and deceived like herself, must, through all the centuries, have sat beneath this roof and pondered what to do! And ultimately made resolve, gotten up, and walked out to face what had to be faced. She could hardly sit there all night grieving and raging.…

  To be led by emotion instead of mind was to walk panicked through strange woods. You could only end at the point in the circle where you had started. She had no choice but to return to the hotel.

  From the distance of half a block she saw Keith standing in the doorway, looking up and down the freezing street. When he recognized her, he came running.

  “Nina! I’ve been hunting for you since eight o’clock. I was frantic. I thought something awful might have happened to you, that you might have—”

  “Have what? Committed suicide?”

  He had loosed his tie and was without his overcoat. In one way these proofs of his distress were satisfying to her; yet in another way they aroused a grudging pity.

  “You’d better go inside,” she said harshly. “Or you’ll get pneumonia.”

  When, in the room, he tried to help her remove her coat, she rebuffed him.

  “Don’t touch me, Keith.”

  “All right. I won’t touch you. But you have to listen. You have to hear the whole story.”

  “The story of your ‘intact family’?”

  “It’s not intact. I said, we’re thought of that way.”

  “So you’re still living together.”

  “Yes. In the same house. We aren’t sleeping together, I assure you.” He paused, and then said with difficulty, “My little boy is sick. Or not exactly sick, but recovering from surgery. He was born with a club foot, and the first operation didn’t work. There were complications, and he has to have another one, but not till next year. I can’t—can’t upset things now. He’s only eight years old. It’s not the time. You can see that, can’t you?” he pleaded.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Please take your coat off and sit down. Hear me out. Then judge.”

  She was silent.

  “In another year, as soon as Eric is on his way, things will be different. There’ll be no money problems and no child problems. Cynthia can take care of the children. She’s a good mother.”

  Should she believe him? Nina asked herself.

  He had remembered his tie and, standing there before her in all his anxiety, was fastening a proper knot. It was so typical of him, this almost unconscious propriety, this weakness, if you wanted to call it such, that she was inexplicably touched.

  “I hardly know what else to tell you except that I’m terribly sorry,” he said, “and I’m asking you to forgive me.”

  Should she forgive him? she asked herself.

  “Am I being unreasonable, Nina?”

  “No, probably not.” Anger still lay like a hard knot in her chest, but it would not take much more to soften it. For pride’s sake, though, and to be certain, she had to press him further.

  “That’s your side of the story. What does—she—think about it?”

  “We’ve agreed not to discuss the divorce right now, to keep the quiet and peace for the children’s sake, especially for Eric. But it’ll be all right, I promise.” Keith smiled, his forehead wrinkling with the piteous smile. “So what if you and I go on as we are for a while? We’ll be seeing each other as we have been doing. We’ll even manage a trip now and then in a discreet way. Fortunately, my work takes me out of town and keeps me late in town.”

  “Then you don’t live in the city.”

  “No. I’m an hour’s train ride away, maybe a little more.”

  “I thought you lived with your mother.”

  “Lord, no. I never told you I did.”

  That was true. She had merely surmised that he did.

  “Does your mother have any idea—”

  “Lord, no, again. She’ll be told when it’s over, not before. My mother still thinks divorce is a horror.”

  “I don’t think that, but I do think I would hate to have it happen to me.”

  “Naturally. But if you were miserable, you would think differently.”

  “And are you miserable?”

  “Not since I met you.”

  There was a pause, during which Nina asked herself whether she really wanted to know certain things or might be better off not knowing them. But the question forced itself.

  “What is she like?”

  “Well, it’s hard to explain—”

  “It’s not hard. Describe her for me.”

  “Nina, must we? It’s very distasteful.”

  “A question of loyalty?”

  He shook his head. “No. Well. All right. I’ll make it short and sweet. She’s bright. She has a degree in psychology. She’s cranky.”

  “Go on.”

  “We don’t get along. There’s—it’s like nothing. You understand? I don’t even want to think about it. What else is there to say? Isn’t that enough?”

  “But you live together.”

  “What do you mean? Sex? I told you we don’t sleep together, since that’s what you obviously mean. We haven’t since Susan was born, and Susan is six.”

  So the woman, the wife, in spite of the name, the children, and the house, in spite of the ring and the license, really didn’t have him after all. The woman really didn’t have him. She gave a long, exhausted sigh, as when pain suddenly ceases. Yet there was one thing more important that she needed to hear.

  “Tell me what she looks like.” />
  “Looks like? Nothing much. Nothing any man would turn to stare at. About as old as God.”

  She could not help the little smile that quivered on her lips. Seeing it, Keith broke out into a grin.

  “Truce, Nina? Can we go on from here?”

  And when, with a little catch in her throat, she replied, “I guess so,” he took her into his arms. And swept by enormous relief, she wept on his shoulder.

  NINE

  “That was Nina on the phone,” Margaret said, returning to the dining room. “She’s coming next weekend for our anniversary. Isn’t that darling of her? It’s such an expensive flight, and it’s not as if we were doing anything unusual. She just wants to be with us.”

  “And Gil and Louise and Fred,” said Megan, “especially Fred. They’d make a nice couple, wouldn’t they?”

  “No, they wouldn’t. He’s much too old for her.”

  Megan objected, “Her boyfriend’s twelve years older than she is. She should marry Fred. Then she could live near us. Fred could build a house for them, and she’d have fun furnishing it. She could buy anything she wants. Fred could afford it.”

  “Money,” said Adam. “I’m tired of people’s talking about Fred’s money all the time, and I’m surprised to hear you doing it too.”

  Much offended, Megan cried, “That’s not fair, Dad! I didn’t mean anything so terribly bad. I only said—and besides, I don’t remember hearing anyone in this family talking about Fred’s money ‘all the time.’ ”

  “Well, maybe Fred talks so much about it that nobody else ever gets a chance to.”

  Margaret gave Adam a look of severe disapproval. He really was too critical, too touchy, these days. To be sure, it wasn’t that often, just sporadically, when the mood came over him, but it was such an unreasonable mood, set off by a totally innocuous remark such as this one of Megan’s now. Of course, Fred, innocent Fred, had long been a target for Adam’s cranky arrows.…

  Megan was glowering at her father; at fifteen she was quite naturally going through her own sensitive stage.

  Deciding to gloss over the incident with humor, Margaret said, “Well, if you all plan to do any matchmaking, next weekend is your chance. One of you girls talk to Fred, and one of you talk to Nina.”

  “Aw, Mom,” Danny said in disgust. “Women make me sick, talking about weddings.”

  “When is Nina’s wedding going to be?” asked Julie.

  “I have a hunch,” Margaret said, “that the real reason she’s coming home is to discuss it.”

  It occurred to her that Nina might even be bringing Keith along to surprise them. For the past year and a half he had been brought into every telephone conversation and mentioned in every letter. If the man was as wonderful as Nina said he was, what were they waiting for? Margaret was no believer in delaying the march of life. Goodness knew, she had not delayed it long! And she looked around the table, as she often found herself doing whenever her children were assembled there: at Megan’s serious expression, with eyes alert and mouth a bit too determined; at Julie, the dreamer, so quick to laugh and equally quick to cry: at Danny, already three quarters a man and still one quarter baby boy.

  “If she has a real wedding,” Julie mused, “I suppose Megan and I will be bridesmaids. I’d love a long dress. Pink. A long pink dress and a bouquet of red roses.”

  “She might not even want a big wedding,” Megan said with a hint of scorn in her emphasis. “Nina’s practical, and a wedding can be an awful waste. Over in a few minutes, and it costs a fortune.”

  Margaret disagreed. “I never thought so. It’s really never over. You remember it for the rest of your life. We had such a lovely wedding. And I had the most wonderful dress, all handmade. Your mother sewed love into that dress, Adam.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He was annoyed. Perhaps, or even probably, she thought, it’s because I’ve invited Fred and my cousins to our anniversary barbecue. They annoy him.… I’m sure they have no idea that they do, especially since he and Fred were so close when they were young. But it’s a tradition by now, and they would think it strange if they weren’t asked. Besides, they’re very dear to me, and I want them here. They don’t come that often. And she felt a rise of righteous indignation.

  Adam was holding the coffee cup between both hands. Above the rim his eyes looked out, unfocused, toward the opposite wall. On her own forehead as she watched him, she felt the gathering of a troubled little frown, but he did not seem to see it, nor turn to look at her. And again, as she had several times before, she had an impression of absence, as though he wasn’t there. Sometimes, even when they were talking together, whether about what was happening in Washington or Bosnia, or else, as now, about something insignificant, he simply wasn’t there.

  Driving the car she had rented at the airport, Nina arrived at noon. With an overnight case in one hand and a broad, square box in the other, she came rushing up the walk. Exclamations came rushing too.

  “What glorious weather! You always manage to have such perfect weather on your day. It’s so wonderful to be here. It feels like years since I saw you. How long is it? Since you had that blizzard? Danny, you’re going to be seven feet tall if you don’t stop growing. Here, take this before my arm breaks. It’s your present. Married eighteen years! Does it seem possible?”

  She comes in like a fresh wind, Margaret thought. They are all truly happy to see her; you can tell in their faces that there is nothing perfunctory in this welcome. Nina is loved.

  “Wait till you see what’s in this box. I hope you’ll really like it. Keith says you will. It was his idea. He says he’s heard so much about you that he almost knows you. Here, be careful with those scissors, Danny. It’s fragile.”

  The fragile object was a large Japanese garden in a moss-green container half the size of a card table. Luxuriant bonsai trees surrounded a traditional house and a smooth stretch of raked ground with a low, red-painted shrine in one corner; a delicate arched bridge covered a make-believe pond. The effect was of an exquisite calm.

  “Take that vase off the table between the windows,” Nina commanded. “It has no meaning. It’s dinky. Now, let’s put this in its place.” She stepped back. “So how’s that instead?”

  “Your taste, Nina!” Louise cried. “Why, it changes the whole room.”

  “But this time it was really Keith’s taste.”

  “He sounds like an interesting man,” Gilbert said. “When are we going to meet him?”

  “Oh, one of these days.”

  Margaret was thinking: When she smiles, a light, all pink and pearl, goes on inside her. It glows right through her skin.

  And then the whole day glowed. All was as it had been year after year: the croquet contest, Louise’s harmless local gossip, the girls and Nina hovering together, Gilbert’s old jokes, Fred’s private recipe for the punch, Adam’s secret barbecue sauce, and, naturally, the anniversary cake. After the croquet contest, as the afternoon grew late, Megan’s boyfriend, who had just gotten his driver’s license, came proudly by to take her to a party. Danny departed for the ball field, and the cousins went home. Adam, inviting Fred to stay awhile, told Margaret with this gesture that he wished to make amends. She smiled her thanks.

  The two women went upstairs, where Nina stretched out in the big chair with her feet on the ottoman.

  “My eyes still see you there doing your homework,” Margaret said. “It almost seems as if you’ve never left at all.”

  “I know. I felt that way the moment I turned the corner and saw the house.” Nina yawned, apologizing. “Excuse me. I’m just feeling relaxed. In New York, somehow, I never do. I’m always running someplace. But I love it all the same.”

  As she stretched, she kicked off her shoes, beige leather strips that matched her short linen dress, and heels three inches high.

  “How on earth do you walk in those?” asked Margaret.

  “I don’t. If I plan to walk, I wear sneakers until I get where I’m going. Everybody does.
”

  Margaret, regarding this smart young woman whom she had reared, could never decide whether their relationship was mother to daughter or sister to sister. Depending upon the circumstances, however, not the least of which was Nina’s passing mood, the relationship always managed to make its own choice. At the moment it had apparently chosen the mother-daughter way.

  “That’s a lovely dress,” she remarked. “But linen wrinkles so. I’ll press it for you. As I recall,” she teased, “you were never very good at ironing, were you? Unless you’ve learned.”

  “Lord, no. I send things out. Don’t bother about this, though. Linen is supposed to wrinkle. Nobody minds. Keith likes the look of linen, so I wear it a lot, especially if it’s black and sleeveless.”

  “So you dress to please him. That’s nice. Nice that he takes such an interest too.”

  Nina smiled. And Margaret, with some tenderness, recognized that certain little smile that women have when they are remembering some secret intimacy.

  “He loves black. I had a beautiful new black coat to wear to Europe last winter.”

  Margaret, having been a daughter and being now the mother of daughters, knew not to be inquisitive. Still, she was unable to suppress a remark, half an observation and half a casual question: “I thought when you went to Europe that he must be pretty serious.”

  “He’s very serious.”

  “Then you’re engaged?”

  Her glance, going automatically to Nina’s hand, saw the gold bangle bracelets on her wrist but no ring.

  Nina missed nothing. “No, I haven’t got a ring,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t have one either. Adam couldn’t afford it then, and I’ve never thought about it since.”

  “Oh, Keith can afford one. That’s not the problem.” It was as if Margaret was waiting to hear what the problem was, and Nina was waiting to be asked.

  Nina spoke first. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Don’t you want to know the rest?”