After the Fire

by Belva Plain

  Well, that's only human nature, she was thinking, when on entering the house, she heard the telephone ring. That was a rare sound so early in the day; usually at that time it was Francine, who never missed a morning.

  This time, though, it was not Francine. It was Will Miller.

  “I phoned you the day before Thanksgiving. I didn't leave a message because I thought you might have forgotten me. Anyway, I'm in town for the day, and if you'd like to have an early dinner with me, I would like to have an early dinner with you. Will you?”

  There followed a thousandth particle of time in which electrons and neutrons whirled through Hyacinth's head, and there was no solid thought, but only fragments of it such as: He knows nothing about me. What if I'm seen? I have nothing to say. I don't know anymore how one talks to a man. I'm too tired to bother. I'm burned out. This is all fraudulent. I don't want to go.

  “Why yes, how nice of you,” she said.

  “Great. Since I have to get back early to Oxfield, would you mind six-thirty?”

  “That happens to be my favorite time. I always like early dinner.”

  “I'll come by for you at a quarter past.”

  The moment after the phone clicked off, and if she had known where to reach him, she would have called back and made an excuse. At any rate, it was too late now, and she was annoyed with herself.

  On the other hand, it might be enjoyable simply to avoid the long evenings in which, after getting tired of reading or listening to music or watching television, tired and determined not to succumb again to fright and tears, she had no choice left but bed and the hope that she would not lie awake listening for the creak of settling wood.

  Upstairs, she glanced at a mirror. Moira had said she looked wonderful, but there was no possible reason why she should. The effect of weight loss on an already slender face is not supposed to be flattering. Lingering now to study this effect, she found it on the contrary to be rather good. There were no hollows in her cheeks, yet the faint shadows underneath her eyes did seem to have made them grow larger. The long hair falling along her cheeks gave her a Renaissance look, not necessarily beautiful but interesting, perhaps even mysterious.

  “Get real. You are one big, damn fool!” she exclaimed, and was upbraiding herself for being one when the telephone rang again, surely Francine's ring this time.

  They spoke briefly, as usual. A covert decision had jointly been made not to discuss the issue that lay like a burning coal between them. The reason for Francine's calls was motherly. She wanted to know about Hy's plans for the day.

  “Believe it or not, I've been invited to dinner tonight,” Hy reported, and went on to explain Will Miller.

  “But Hyacinth, you don't dare. That's all you need, to have Gerald find out that you're running around with men on top of whatever else it is that he's already got against you.”

  Running around with men. Hyacinth felt a chill. If that were really all Gerald had against her!

  “You're right,” she agreed, “although this is totally innocent. I told you, it's only on account of that dress I made for Emma.”

  “No matter. You can't be seen anywhere with another man until the divorce is final and the papers are in your hand. And if you ever want to get your—”

  Children, she meant. Hyacinth, letting that pass, promised that this would be the only time.

  “I don't know where he is, so I can't call it off, you see.”

  “Well, go someplace where you won't know anybody. Do be careful.”

  As it happened, Hyacinth could hardly have been more careful. The chosen steakhouse was in a remodelled barn half an hour's ride from town; popular in the warm seasons and on weekends, it was unfrequented now in midweek and in a drenching December rain. There were no more than three or four couples far apart in the large room. The fireplace glowed, and conversation was low.

  “Very cozy,” remarked Hyacinth.

  “I thought you would like it. I thought it was your kind of place.”

  “But you don't know me,” she said.

  “One gets a feeling about people.”

  “Sometimes one is mistaken.”

  “Very true.”

  It was also true that, as she had feared, she did not remember how a woman starts a conversation with a new man. Once married, unless you were out in the world, you only met other women's husbands, and then your own husband was generally present. You didn't address a man. She certainly didn't address Arnie, or treat him any differently from the way you would treat a kind and conscientious cousin.

  He took off his glasses. “I really need them only for reading, but when I'm at work, I keep them on so I won't lose them. I'm a great one for losing things—car keys, gloves, anything.”

  She smiled acknowledgment. His eyes were deep set between prominent cheekbones and forehead. They were at once lively and earnest.

  “So tell me,” he began, “about Stephen Spender. Have you gone through the complete collection?”

  “Yes, I took it along on a plane trip to Florida and back. I kept thinking all the time that he was a man I would like to know.”

  “Yes, you do feel like that when you read or see anything really great. I would like to have met the sculptor who made the statue of Lincoln in the Memorial. So I know what you mean. Do you like Florida?”

  “I don't know it well enough to like it or not. This was a very short visit.”

  He was waiting for her to continue. And she knew that the pause was awkward. It was like one of those horrible moments at a party when a dozen people who have been talking crisscross around the dinner table all suddenly fall silent. He was probably thinking with regret that he had misread her; the first time in the coffee shop, she had been reasonably sociable, but not now. What could he know of the turmoil inside her, the sense of guilt because she was here under false pretenses?

  “What is it?” he asked gently. “I see so many changes of expression on your face. But if it's none of my business, and I know it isn't, tell me right now.”

  “I'm worried,” she said, making a quick decision. “I'm in the middle of a divorce, a nasty one, as I suppose most of them are.”

  “I wondered. I didn't think anybody would live alone in a house that size.”

  “Right now I am alone in it.”

  If he were to ask whether she had any children, what would she say? When he did not ask, she was thankful for not having to repeat the faltering explanation of their absence that she had given to Moira.

  “And so what do you do with your time while you wait for the worst to be over?”

  “Well, I'm an artist, as I told you, although I am afraid I haven't been working at it lately as much as I should.”

  “Understandable. Do you work at home?”

  “Yes, I have a good room for it, northern light and all.”

  “May I see it sometime?”

  “Oh, surely. You may be disappointed, though.”

  How coy that was, an arch reply that made her feel absurd, as if she had been fishing for a compliment. Words simply were not coming to her tongue.

  Making no comment about that, he asked instead about the dress that she was making for Sally Dodd.

  “I've scarcely begun it, to tell the truth. I wish I hadn't undertaken it.”

  “But you did promise it,” he said gravely, “and she's waiting for it.”

  “I know. I'll do it.”

  “In time for her cruise, you remember.”

  “Yes, yes.” And she repeated, “I'll do it.”

  His eyes were so intense! Like opals, their lucid gray had flecks of green when the candlelight flickered past them. Nothing would escape those eyes; they would see through you, your pretensions, your evasions, and your falsehood. No, she would not see him again, not just because of Francine's reason, which was a sound one, but for some other reason that she could not name.

  “Where did you learn to sew?” he asked.

  Glad of a changed subject, she answered promptly, “My grandmothe
r taught me. She's the last of her breed, I think, a totally domestic woman, born in 1910. She made an art of everything from cooking to hooking rugs. And cleaning floors, too, I shouldn't wonder.”

  “I had a great-grandmother like that. I never knew her, of course, nor the other one, either. That one was different. She worked with her husband in the first R. J. Miller store. We have a dark brown photograph of that store in Oxfield, taken in 1879. The two of them are standing at the doorway, and there's a buggy parked on the street. The street is a wide dirt road in the heart of Oxfield. I wonder what they'd say if they could see it today.” Will chuckled. “They were a great pair, or so I'm told. I guess the higher you climb on the family tree, the more virtuous the ancestors become.”

  He went on to explain how the business had grown, and she paid him the compliment of listening carefully. Actually though, his account was interesting. As the daughter of a salaried chemist and the wife of a doctor, she knew almost nothing about business, how risks are taken and money is made or lost.

  Freed of tension for a while, Hyacinth began to relax. Will had some marvelous stories to tell, such as, for instance, the time a new salesman, not recognizing the head of the company, refused to show him a certain leather belt because “it wouldn't be right. This belt is too expensive for you.” She liked his sense of humor. There was nothing caustic or mean about it. He had as well an appealing modesty. She had made a comment about an Indian sari shown in Miller's window, and from there the talk had drifted toward far places. He had seen Burma and Tibet. But unlike so many people who would leap to display and brag about what they had seen there, he made little of it.

  He's different, Hyacinth thought. So many people are only poor, thin surface. But he has depth. And she thought again how sometimes when you open a new book and read the first page, you do not want to put it down until you have read it all.

  They drove back through the town past Miller's windows, around the square, and into the street where Arnie's building had burned down.

  Will remarked, “I happened to be here that day, driving in very early. It was a fearful sight, the gathering crowd, the ambulance, and the flames that you could see through the broken windows. There's talk, or so I've heard, that it was arson.”

  “I didn't know.”

  “It was a fairly new building, too. Now you take an old firetrap like ours over there on the square, and you really worry. If I were in charge, I'd take it down and put up something with every possible safeguard. But you'd be surprised at the objections you hear. There's something about the old and the familiar that a lot of people love to keep. They find it's quaint, I suppose. Others would call it dowdy. Difference of opinion.”

  Now, for the rest of the short way home, she neither heard nor cared what else he would say. She had only an awful sense of the sword suspended above her head.

  At her door, Will took her hand. “You know I want to see you again,” he told her, “but I won't press you this minute. I hope you'll soon have your divorce behind you.”

  “I hope so,” she said.

  “I'll be away until after New Year's. I'll see you when I get back.”

  Watching him go down the walk and get into his car, she thought as she had the first time: Some young woman is going to be lucky.

  But there's no way I'll see him again. I'm sure he thinks I want to, and I'm sure most people would assume that I do, but I don't. I don't want any man, not any man, ever.

  Hyacinth had set the Christmas table with the same care she would have given to a formal dinner for twelve. Four candles surrounded the centerpiece of pink and red carnations, the flowers a present from Arnie, accompanied incredibly by a magnificent Danish silver bowl to hold them—all given as casually as one might give a piece of pottery. The children's milk was served in wineglasses. From the china to the nuts and dates in their traditional dishes, the family's traditions had been kept.

  Dressed for the occasion, they sat in their usual places. Jerry and Emma, she proud and pretty in the rose dress, sat at Hyacinth's left, and Francine at her right. Only the composition of the family had changed. A chair that would have been Jim's now stood against the wall. And the chair in which last year at this time Gerald had presided was occupied by Arnie who, though not a member of the family, was surely doing his best to warm the atmosphere.

  Hyacinth was also doing her best to ward off a gloomy, chilling sense of flying time: In a handful of days, in a few hours, it would all be over. The cheer was false. For two weeks past or longer, it had deluded her. Deliberate in her joy, she had fooled herself with all the “normal” preparations, buying presents, baking and cooking, and opening the two bedroom doors that had been shut. It had begun to snow, and she had even bought new sleds, one of them for herself; they would drive out to Nod's Hill, take sandwiches and a Thermos of cocoa. They would—oh, these “normal” preparations! She could barely talk to them without being afraid to break down! So far she had not done so, and pray God that when the time came for them to leave, she would not do so.

  Emma was making an announcement: “It doesn't snow in Florida. Mommy, don't you hear me? I said it doesn't snow in Florida.”

  “Everybody knows that,” Jerry said.

  “Who cares?”

  Last summer Emma would either have cried or become indignant at that. Now she had learned to give a scornful retort. She was preparing for kindergarten, getting ready for the real world. If you don't see a child every day, if you have to wait weeks or months, you'll be seeing a new child each time. You'll have missed everything.

  “How is Charlie?” asked Hyacinth.

  Emma replied, “He doesn't weewee in the house anymore. Daddy taught him not to.”

  Without intending to, Hy glanced at Francine. There had been surprisingly little mention of Daddy since the children's arrival, she thought, but each time there had been a barely visible change in Francine's face. Anyone familiar with her usual animation would know that she was being too quiet. And I was hoping she would keep up the chatter. Instead, it's Arnie who fills and refills the silences that make children restless. He did so now.

  “Tell about my new horse, Jerry.”

  “Oh, yeah. It's a Tennessee Walker, so big—you should see. And you know what color? Pinto. That means spots. Brown spots on white. I can't ride him, he's too big. But Uncle Arnie's teaching me to ride the pony.”

  “Nanny takes me to visit the stables sometimes,” Emma said. “And then I can get a ride. Daddy doesn't come. He likes his boat. He takes us on his boat. It has sails.”

  “That's nice.” Hyacinth smiled. Boats and horses, she thought. I suppose they're only different in degree from the toys in their rooms upstairs now. We're both buying love. But never say anything against Gerald. Don't poison their minds. You will only hurt them. It's elementary. Francine knows that, too.

  “When are you coming to Florida with us, Mommy?” Emma asked. “I miss you.”

  “She cried,” Jerry said. “I didn't because I'm older, and besides, I told her we can come here to see you. Daddy said so.”

  Now Emma wailed. “But why? Why do we have to come here to see Mommy?”

  Of the three adults, none had an immediate answer until Francine said, “You see, Granny is sick, and your mommy wants to stay near her for a while.”

  “Granny can go to Florida, too.”

  “No, Emma. She's too old.”

  “Then you stay with her. I want Mommy to come to Florida.”

  Why doesn't he just die, thought Hyacinth. Just die and let the rest of us live in peace. But no, he will live to be a hundred. So it's I who should die….

  “I think you're getting a divorce,” Jerry said. “That's what it is.”

  He was waiting for an answer. We should have told them right away. I guess we—I—thought something might happen, some magic, some miracle, and all this pain would go away. No, actually I knew it would have to be done and was only putting it off until the paperwork was finished, and then there'd be no more excuse.<
br />
  “You're probably right,” Arnie said, coming to the rescue. He spoke calmly, as if a divorce were really nothing much, nothing to get excited about.

  Well, in many places, it isn't. Perhaps not even for children these days, it isn't. But not for my children. My children are soft.

  “A lot of kids in my class,” Jerry said importantly, “a lot of them have parents who are divorced. But they all live with their mothers. The dad comes to visit.”

  Arnie agreed. “As long as you can see them both and everybody's happy, there's nothing to worry about.”

  Emma's eyes were wide, and her mouth about to tremble with a sob. “Are you happy, Mommy? Don't you want to live in our house?”

  Our house. How do you answer that? Then mercifully, inspiration came. “We can have two houses and can take turns and be very happy.”

  How am I able to do this? In another minute, I'll crack.

  As if Francine had guessed how close Hyacinth was to that cracking, she stood and brightly gave an order. “Kids, we can talk about this later. The cake is out of the refrigerator, it's got chocolate whipped cream on top, and we need to eat it right away. So each of you take his plate and help me clear the table. Your mother's done all the cooking, so now it's our turn.”

  From her seat facing the window, Hyacinth saw by the streetlamp's glow that it had begun to sleet. “Sleet,” she said, and ran not so much to pull the curtains closed as to control and hide the start of tears. By his silence, she understood that Arnie was making it easier for her to hide them. Somehow, when you looked at him or heard his speech, you would probably not expect him to have such delicacy of feeling. And yet this was not by any means the first time he had revealed it.

  The dessert was superb, a specialty out of Granny's recipe book. It brought the silence of appetite and satisfaction to the table. Only Francine, who was a self-styled “chocolate” freak, hardly touched it. When several portions had been had and the cake was demolished, she spoke.