by Belva Plain
Still in her forties, she looked younger, not because of any beauty, for she was large-boned, tall, and too plainly dressed—as now in her strict tan suit—but rather because of the vigor and enthusiasm that brought a certain charm to her long face, with its unfashionable coronet of brown hair.
Hennie had what her relatives called her “spiritual beauty.” She was a fighter for social justice, as was her husband, Dan, a teacher and scientist, an idealist who had refused a fortune from one of his electronic inventions because the War Department had bought it. Both of them had spoken and marched for many causes; Hennie had marched for woman suffrage and in behalf of striking garment workers; she had even been arrested once while picketing a shirtwaist factory. They had worked for peace all their lives and, now that the war was over, still wrote and spoke for the League of Nations, for the National Council for the Prevention of War, and to anyone else who would listen.
They were, in short, the family mavericks.
And they had had their grief. Their son, their only child, had come home from the war without his legs; and after that, they had lost him; he had left a baby, Henry—little Hank, now four—and his widow, Leah. A slum child, orphaned at the age of eight, Leah had been adopted by Hennie and Dan. From them she had learned all that they had to teach, had married their son, and had now traveled beyond them into a world they had no wish to enter. For Leah was ambitious; gifted with a sense of fashion, she had already opened her own luxurious establishment on Madison Avenue. Remarried to an equally ambitious young lawyer and accountant, she lived with him and Hank near the Metropolitan Museum in Georgian elegance, in the handsome private house with marble fireplaces and circular stairs that Dan’s money had bought for his wounded son. What he would not touch for himself, Dan had accepted for his son.
Leah bore no mark of early deprivation. Her glossy brown hair was coiffed short in the newest style; her narrow gold and diamond bracelets glittered at the pleated cuffs of her pale blue woolen sleeves; her alert, inquisitive round eyes surveyed Paul’s lovely room with expert appraisal as she waited.
No two women could have been more unlike than Hennie and Leah; yet they loved each other as mothers and daughters, when they are fortunate, can love.
Restless now, Hennie got up and went to stand at the window, pushing aside the silk curtains to strain and peer through the dark mist, as though she could hurry Paul home.
“Do you suppose anything can be wrong?” she asked. “It’s taken all day and no word. I don’t know why I have such a feeling that there must be.” Hennie was a worrier.
Leah, who was not, said cheerfully, “No, it’s a first baby. They don’t all have as easy a time as I did. You remember, Hank practically fell out,” she finished, with some complacency.
“They’ve waited so long,” Hennie fretted. “It would be awful for Paul if anything were to go wrong with this baby. Awful for Marian, too, of course.”
When they heard the key in the lock, they both sprang up and Hennie came toward Paul with outstretched hands.
“It’s all over. Marian’s fine. She almost wasn’t, but she’s fine.”
“Oh, thank heaven for that!”
“The baby’s dead. A boy.”
Paul was thinking of how clearly he could remember Hennie’s Freddy. He’d been six years old and they’d taken him to the hospital to see the new baby. The arms and legs had waved.… A dead baby must look like one of those life-size dolls one saw in expensive toy stores. Waxy. Would the eyes be open or shut? He felt sudden nausea.
Hennie had turned away. She was twisting the wedding ring on her blunt finger.
Leah said softly, “It’s awful, Paul. Awful. But you’ll have another. You must think of that. And Mimi must. Not right away. But soon. You will.”
They wanted to help him.
“Yes,” Hennie added, “a neighbor of ours, when we lived downtown, lost two in a row. Then she went on to have three more!”
Funny, that was what he had told himself, there in Mimi’s room tonight, and had felt so heartened … until that other thought had knocked the breath out of him. Now Leah was here, and he wouldn’t be able to talk to Hennie about it.
“I suppose I could say, at least we never knew him.”
“Ah, yes, that’s true,” Hennie said.
Poor Hennie! You didn’t rear a son to fight in the war you so violently hated that you had spent years of your life trying to prevent it, only to lose him because of it—
Then he thought: There’s no comparison between her poor Freddy and this. Yet comparisons weren’t the point, were they?
“Have you had anything to eat? I asked your cook to fix a plate in case you wanted anything.”
“Thanks, but I don’t.”
Hennie didn’t urge him, for which he was grateful. Mimi was always coaxing him to eat, to wear his galoshes, to take a sweater, to lie down and rest.
Hennie wanted to know whether he had been able to see Marian.
“Yes. She’s taking it very bravely.”
“You must get her away as soon as she’s able,” Leah exclaimed. “A trip abroad will do marvels for her. Do some shopping in Paris, then the Riviera—or perhaps Biarritz a little later in the summer.”
Paul felt an inward smile. How well she had learned, this young Leah, about life’s pretty toys and prizes!
“And start another baby,” she added boldly.
She went out to the hall and returned with a package wrapped in navy blue satin paper, smartly tied with a scarlet bow.
“My new logo.” LÉA, complete with accent, sprawled across the top of the box. “It’s a bed jacket for Mimi. Don’t forget to bring it to her tomorrow. I rushed the monogram.”
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” Hennie assured him. “I saw it. An extravagance.”
Paul murmured the appropriate thanks.
“Is there anything we can do for you, Paul? Do you want us to leave you alone and go home?” Hennie asked.
He didn’t want to be alone just yet. “No, stay. Unless you’re tired.”
“We’ll stay a little, then. Dan won’t be in before midnight anyway.”
They resumed their seats on either side of the fireplace. Between them, on a low marble table, lay a shallow bowl of gardenias, giving off the strong sweet smell that Paul hated. For no good reason it made him think of funerals, and he would have moved them into the pantry, except that Mimi loved gardenias, and it didn’t seem right to get rid of them just because she wasn’t there.
“Dan’s downtown, speaking about the League of Nations,” Hennie said, “otherwise you know he’d be here.”
“How’s he feeling?”
“Oh, angina comes and goes. He takes his nitroglycerin when he’s misbehaved, gone out in the wind or something else that he’s not supposed to do.”
“Shouldn’t he give up teaching? High school kids can wear you out.”
“It’s his life. That and his lab. Especially now that he’s got that new little place for himself on Canal Street. He’s working on two or three inventions, something about a bladeless steam turbine. He just couldn’t give it all up.”
“Hennie—you’re not worried about money?”
“We never were, were we? You know us. We don’t need much.”
“Well, if you—well, this is a day for straight talk. If anything should happen to Dan, I want you to know I’ll take care of you. You’re never to go without, do you hear?”
Leah interposed. “You don’t think Ben and I would let her go without?”
“I can go without almost anything except Dan.” Tears sprang to Hennie’s eyes. She raised her voice. “I worry. He’s too outspoken for these times! They’re hunting Bolsheviks at every peace meeting, dragging decent people off to jail for simply speaking the truth! You’d think we were back in seventeenth-century Salem hunting witches! And I don’t mind telling you, I’m terrified. Dan talks too much.”
Paul shook his head. “With that bad heart, he can’t afford to take risks. I
’ll speak to him.”
“It won’t do any good. You know how stubborn he is.… Oh, I shouldn’t bother you with my troubles after the day you’ve had!”
“You never trouble me,” he said.
And he wanted so much to tell her about the pressure that had almost torn him apart a little while ago. He wished he could tell her everything; he hadn’t told her “everything” since that afternoon before his wedding, when he had come to her in his anguish.
“Alfie telephoned,” Leah was saying, “the minute he heard that Mimi had gone to the hospital.”
Uncle Alfie was another generous soul. Now that he had made his fortune in real estate, his life’s pleasure was to give, whether money, advice, or vacations at his country place. Softhearted, he would be teary over Paul’s dead baby.
Hennie added, “Mama called too. She was awfully worried.”
Grandmother Angelique, going toward eighty, had been looking forward to being a great-grandmother again. She, too, would be genuinely sorry.
At least I am blessed with a family who cares, Paul thought.
“Now I’m really going,” said Hennie. “Good night, Paul dear. Do try to get some sleep.”
“I’ll have the doorman call a cab for you.”
“No, I’ll walk. I’ve an umbrella and it’s only a few blocks.”
Only a few blocks—and a world of distance—from this apartment or from Leah’s house to the East River and Dan’s walk-up flat. And yet the simple places in which Hennie and Dan had lived had always been, and were still now, a kind of other home for Paul. He, who so cherished the beauty that dazzles the eye, could surely find none in those sparsely furnished rooms, but it was another kind of beauty that he found there, something that spoke to the other side of his soul. He went with the two women to the elevator and kissed Hennie’s cheek with extra tenderness.
When he walked back to the apartment, the telephone was ringing.
Back in the waiting room, he sat with the intern who had been sent downstairs to talk to him.
“She began to hemorrhage about an hour after you left there. We called Dr. Lyons and couldn’t get him right away. He’d left for home, and must have stopped off somewhere. We made several calls and just missed him each time, but finally—”
“Yes, yes,” Paul interrupted furiously. Why couldn’t the fellow get to the point? “You got him. And then? And now?”
Flushing, the young man spoke faster, “The internal bleeding resumed and—”
“Hemorrhage, you’re saying?”
“Yes. I stopped it as best I could, using—”
“How is she now? Now?”
“Well, Dr. Lyons operated. He’s still upstairs. I believe she’s back in her room.”
Another trip through the silent corridors. Again his shoe squeaked. It didn’t seem to squeak anyplace but here. Dr. Lyons was just leaving the room when Paul reached it.
“Oh, Mr. Werner. Come into the solarium for a minute. Your wife’s not quite awake yet.”
Weak lamplight quivered at the end of the hall. They sat down on the kind of wicker chairs that belong on a summer porch. A sense of unreality shook Paul, here in this place, past midnight.
“You operated? What happened?”
“It was a bad time. There’d been too much tearing after all. We couldn’t seem to stop the bleeding. So there was no choice but to do a hysterectomy.”
“Hysterectomy! My God! You had to?”
“I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had to.” The voice was gently reproachful; the eyes were circled black, like an owl’s.
Paul took out a handkerchief and scrubbed his wet palms.
“A nasty combination of events, Mr. Werner. Nasty. Just about everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong.”
“But she—there’s no danger now?”
“I’d say she’s probably out of the woods. Barring infection, heaven forbid. We’ll just keep our fingers crossed.”
The end of the road. Miles and miles through wastelands and over mountains; then the weather clears, it’s all blue and silver, you’re almost where you want to go, until you come to the blank wall, hundreds of feet high, all stone, and the road stops.
“How will this affect her? All through her life, I mean?”
“Well, naturally, it’s pretty sad to have a hysterectomy this young, but it shouldn’t keep her from having a normal life, from being a woman in every respect.”
Sex, he meant. There’d be no difference. Except—no children.
Words slipped out of Paul’s mouth. “You have children, Doctor? Boys?”
“Three—a girl and two boys.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked that.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Werner.”
They stood up, hesitating in the gloom.
“Is there anything else you’d want me to explain to you? We could go downstairs to my office. I have books and diagrams that might make things clearer.”
“Diagrams.”
“Well, some people want them and they’re entitled to them.”
“I don’t,” Paul said. The sweat was pouring again on his palms. What questions? What difference now?
“You can always call me if there’s anything else you want to know. Call me anytime or come in.”
Paul remembered civility. “You’ve had a hard day, Doctor. Go home and rest.”
“Not as hard as that girl of yours has had. And you’ve had.”
Poor Mimi. Poor Mimi.
“I think you can see her now. She’ll be waking up, but she’ll be groggy, so don’t stay more than a minute. Then go home and have a brandy. Two brandies.” Dr. Lyons winked. “Even if it is against the law.”
Again she lay like stone on the catafalque, and again the nurse rustled tactfully away. He stood above her. She was as pale as the sheet that was drawn around her neck. Her cheeks seemed to have sunk since the last time he’d seen her just a few hours before, making her proud, arched nose more prominent. He touched her spread hair.
“Mimi,” he whispered.
To have been as happy as she had been only yesterday, to have anticipated everything; to have suffered all that hellish pain and end with nothing!
No child now, or ever.
It was wrong, it was unfair, it was cruel. What had either one of them done to be punished like this? His anger boiled.
She opened her eyes. “Paul?”
“I’m here, don’t be afraid.”
Her lips barely opened, so that he had to bend down to hear her.
“Not … only sleepy.”
“I know. You’ve had a little operation. You’re fine though, the doctor says. Can you hear me?”
“Yes. Sleepy.”
He stood there, stroking her hair. He felt powerless. He wasn’t used to feeling powerless. One planned things with care, one took precautions, was reasonable, industrious, and considerate. Then a whirlwind came and one was nothing more than a scrap, after all, blown ahead of the wind.
She stirred. He bent down, thinking she had said something, and spoke her name, but she had only sighed. Then he remembered he was to stay just for a minute, and took another look at her, listened to her even breathing, and went out.
He walked home. There were no cabs on the avenue, and anyway, he needed to walk off the turbulence inside him. It had begun to rain heavily and he had forgotten his umbrella, but he didn’t care. He could have walked the length of Manhattan and back.
The night elevator operator looked at him with curiosity. “You’ve got yourself soaked, Mr. Werner.” Then as the elevator rose, “I hope everything will turn out fine for the missus.”
“Thanks, Tom.”
He wants to know what happened, Paul thought. It’s a natural curiosity. This is a situation that, when it becomes known, will arouse excitement and sympathy in equal amounts. The possibility of tragedy always does. Accidents. Deaths. Crimes. All those uncomplicated sorrows.
But what if the sorrow is not uncomplica
ted? What if there are other hidden factors? Guilt, for instance? And the pressure came back, along with the roaring in his ears.
He turned on a lamp and sat down in his front hall, holding his head in his hands. This time, though, he felt no urge to seek out Hennie. This time he knew there would be no use in confiding, after all. Perhaps, too, given the terrible events of the day, he would be too miserably ashamed to confide, even to Hennie, whose mind was so open, who made no judgments. Yes, he would be ashamed.
He hadn’t been ashamed that other time; he’d been so desperate, so torn apart before the wedding, torn between Mimi and Anna …
Into his parents’ house she had come as a maid, only another in a stream of young foreign girls who stayed awhile, married, and left; there had been nothing different except that he had fallen in love with her, and she with him, in a way that he had not thought possible before or since.
But he had married Mimi. He had been promised to her.…
He stood up. Always, always that face before his eyes! When would it go away and leave him?
He had thought, during the glad months of Mimi’s pregnancy, that he was teaching himself at last to say a final farewell to Anna. He had been—how absurdly!—trying to convince himself that she might possibly have been some sort of aberration, one of those sexual delights that can beset and confuse a man or woman, and ultimately will vanish; that it was only Mimi who was real and right and would last.
Absurd indeed.
And today in that hospital, he had been filled with a new horror. What if it had been Anna, he had thought, whose life was slipping away upstairs? The thought had shattered him. Would he have had an instant’s care for the loss of the baby, for the children they would never have? No, much as he longed for a child, a son, he would have gone on his knees and begged for Anna’s life. What worth could any child, could ten children, have, compared with her?
And today what had he mourned for, what was he mourning for now? For his wife, whom he had almost lost or might yet lose? No, not for her, but only for the child, for the children he would never have.
“God help me,” he said aloud, thrusting his fist into his palm.
