by Belva Plain
“Yes, and she’s been a widow for almost ten years. Must she live like a nun as well?”
“Let her find someone to marry, then, not this.”
“ ‘This,’ as you put it, has harmed nobody, has it?”
“How can I tell? What if my grandparents knew?”
“They don’t need to know.”
“And your—and Cousin Marian?” The black eyes reproached him. “You—you always stood for so much in my mind.”
He was really only a boy after all, Paul thought, in spite of medical school and the surface sophistication of New York. He laid his hand on Hank’s arm.
“People, good people,” he began, “can be led into doing things that are less than ideal. Things that, if they could, they would choose not to do. You should know that.”
Hank’s mouth twisted. “Are you reminding me of Ben? You don’t have to. I remember him well. Both halves of him.”
“It’s a painful thing when idols break. Our mistake is to make idols of them in the first place.”
“But you! You stood for everything that was good. Except this last year, when you changed. All your talk of preparedness, your politics. We haven’t been able to talk to each other … and now this.”
“This … tell me, is it bad to be happy now and then, just tell me, is it bad?”
Hank didn’t answer at once. “I don’t want my mother to be hurt,” he said at last.
“I haven’t hurt her and I never will.”
“I think you should marry her.”
“There are complications, as you know.”
“Then you should work them out.”
Youth and the direct attack! “We’ll see” was all Paul could answer.
“Don’t you two ever talk about it?”
“No, we don’t.”
“That’s crazy! Why don’t you?”
“Marriage isn’t always what everybody wants. It’s not always the right solution.”
“How can you know what anyone wants if you don’t talk about it?”
“Perhaps we shall. And I know you should run up to your mother now. And don’t allow her to apologize. She has nothing to apologize for.”
About to put out his hand, Paul read Hank’s face and withdrew. Hank wasn’t ready. “I’m going,” he said. “I’ll let myself out.”
The spring night had turned raw, reminding him that Manhattan was an island between the winds of two rivers, and he walked fast through the swirl.
He had told Hank that they were harming no one, and it was true. They had simply drifted into a relationship that worked. It worked for him, anyway, and Leah had never said that it didn’t work for her. So it was a working relationship, just as in another way his relationship with Marian was working. Of course, if Marian were to know the truth … He had no idea what Marian might suspect about him. She never questioned him; the last thing she would want would be a session of that sort. She would think of it as a “scene” and she abhorred the vulgarity of scenes. Perhaps, too, she feared the truth that would emerge; as long as you didn’t put a thing into words, it didn’t exist.
For that matter, it was possible that Leah, in her very different way, was also avoiding the truth. And he thought, I suppose one really shouldn’t just go on like this, getting nowhere. Yet must one always be getting somewhere? Why not just stay where one is and enjoy the moment? On the other hand, one really ought to have direction. He had always made careful plans: in business, certainly, and on his charitable boards, where you had to have goals, and in his work for peace there surely was purpose.
It was axiomatic, too, that a woman craved security, wanting to know whether she was loved and for how long. The indignant son had come directly to the point: You ought to marry her.
Joyous Leah! She knew something about joy, she did. There would be a lot of laughter in a home that she made. Love? Well, but—where there was peace and laughter, was that not a kind of love or even love itself? And he tried to remember the time when he had known beyond the least doubt what love was. But it irked him, it tantalized him, because he could not bring the feeling back, because it was so engulfed in bitter, painful anger.
I have resolved to put you out of my mind, Anna. You and our Iris too. Out. You won’t take me in, so I put you out.
Maybe then, a life with Leah was the direction he ought to take. He really owed it to her. It was all the more credit to her that she had made no demands. It might be the best thing that had ever happened to him and to Leah too. Surely he could do better for her than either of her husbands had done, poor troubled Freddy and misguided Ben.
Arriving at the apartment house, he counted the windows up to the fifth floor. The light was on in the bedroom. She would be reading in her solitary bed. He foresaw the events of the next few minutes.
“You’re home, Paul? Did you have a good supper?” And without waiting for an answer, “I’m absolutely fagged out. It was a big success, but I think I’ll try to sleep late in the morning. Good night. Sleep well.”
He began to plan how he would go about talking to her about divorce. Maybe it wouldn’t be as hard as he had once thought. Divorce was no longer quite the scandal it had been in the years before the last war. Oh, Marian would weep and care and cling! But she didn’t care so much that she wouldn’t go off to Florida without him.…
He’d stay her friend and adviser all her life. He’d never abandon her. He’d buy her a better house in Florida, do anything to make her happy. And she would get over the divorce. It would be hard, but she would get over it.
There’s no hurry, though, he told himself, rising up in the elevator. Next winter, when she was in Florida, having a fine time with her numerous relatives and friends, he would go down there and convince her that it was quite possible for them to remain kind and loyal to each other, while making official what was already a separation. Yes, that’s what he would do. There was no use talking about it to Leah until it was over and done with.
A clear voice rang out at once from across the hall.
“Is that you, Paul? Did you have a good supper?”
Fourteen
The summer passed agreeably enough in the usual way. Paul and Marian went with three other couples to the same inn on a lake in Maine, where for the past ten summers they had spent three hearty weeks sailing, fishing, and swimming. He’d had a few queer twinges when he imagined himself informing the tight little group that this was the last time he would be with them. Home again in September, he spent a couple of balmy, gilded Saturdays at the Long Island cottage with Leah. Conveniently, Marian preferred the golf course at their Westchester club. He would have liked to take Hank along sometime, to reclaim his old affection and—yes, admit it—his respectful admiration. But Hank had spent the summer working in a Philadelphia hospital, obviously taking good care, whenever he came back to see his mother, not to encounter Paul.
“Hank’s getting over it. We’ve had some nice talks, he and I,” Leah assured him.
The assurance was too pat. Paul wanted to ask more about their “nice little talks,” but it was clear she didn’t want to tell him, so he didn’t ask.
No doubt she had admonished her son to be patient, had told him that he, Paul, must be gently and peacefully led; that he, Paul, if not nudged or needled, would of himself come round. And how right she was! By the end of the winter, he thought, it would be all over. How he longed for quiet at the heart of things! He had never really had it. Maybe now, at last, he would find that peace and purpose at the center which makes it easier to live through the disorder of the outer world.
His thoughts were rudely jerked back to that disorder by another letter from Ilse. Now, after two years of peace, during which Mario had gradually recovered as much of himself as he ever would, after two years in which she had mastered the language and supported herself on the staff of a small hospital, the persecutions had caught up with them. Italy, pressured by Hitler, had started down the same path: Jewish doctors were forbidden to treat non-Jewish patie
nts. Where was she to go? Palestine was practically closed and her wait on the Polish quota for the United States would take years. For a moment she came alive before his eyes; he met her clear, honest gaze and heard her bright laugh, and felt her despair.
The world was lurching toward some unfathomable darkness.
A strange thing happened one night at Madison Square Garden, where Paul had gone to hear Jabotinsky, the militant Zionist from Palestine. Friends who were emphatically anti-Zionist had invited Marian and him to hear the speaker “out of curiosity.” Unwillingly, and at Paul’s urging, Marian had accepted the invitation.
“I don’t see why you want to go,” she protested. “You don’t agree with the militants.”
“All the more reason why I ought to hear his argument.”
Thousands crowded the Garden. Paul scanned them soberly. In the difference between conservative Zionists like Justice Brandeis, who believed in using political persuasion and reasoned arguments to sway the British toward fair play in Palestine, and this militant group who believed that a Jewish army in Palestine was the only solution, lay the possibilities of terrible confrontation. Paul was silent and thoughtful, while Marian made conversation with the other couple.
Suddenly his attention was caught by a girl who was sitting in the row ahead, just in front of him. He looked and looked again. Could it be? He felt his heart accelerate.
No, it was absurd, here among these thousands! Yet why not? And he strained to listen. The girl was talking to her companion, a girl of her own age. She had a mellow, attractive voice.
“Well, I don’t think violence is ever the answer. It may accomplish something immediate, but in the end there’ll be more trouble. More ill will,” she finished.
Then, as if she had felt Paul’s eyes boring at the back of her head, she turned with a look of surprise and turned back again to the other girl.
Yes, he thought, the long nose, the long chin. He could see her face now in three-quarter profile. Yes, it may be. Should I ask on some pretext? No, it’s idiotic.
“Well, Iris, you may be right,” the other girl said.
Later, he did not remember having made any decision to do what he did. He simply leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder.
“Miss, excuse me,” he said.
She turned about in the seat, opening astonished eyes. His mother’s eyes, like the rest of her face.
“You know,” he said, with his heart racing faster and faster, “I think we’ve met before. It’s been years, but I think we met a long time ago when you were a schoolgirl. Paul Werner is my name. I met you and your mother accidentally in a restaurant and we had lunch.”
Recognition shone in the great eyes. “Oh, yes, I do remember. How odd that we should meet by accident again!” She turned all the way around in her seat. “This is my friend, Milly Kohn.”
“My wife. And Mr. and Mrs. Berg,” Paul said properly.
Neither of the Bergs nor Marian seemed to want anything more than an acknowledgment of the introduction. They returned to their conversation, leaving Paul to make something out of the occasion.
He spoke quickly, before Iris could return to her companion and dismiss him. “Are you a follower of Jabotinsky’s?”
“I? Oh, heavens, no. He’s far too extreme. At least, I think so. At home we are all admirers of Weizmann. I only came out of curiosity.”
“I, too. It will be too bad for him if all these people also came only out of curiosity.”
Milly giggled, while Iris said, “He’s an interesting man. My father says he read that, growing up in Italy, Jabotinsky got a lot of his ideas from the Italian independence fighters.”
“So I read, too,” Paul answered.
Milly, having something to say, then gave him a minute or two, while pretending interest, to watch Iris. Yes, she had a fine intelligent expression, with a small frown of concentration. On second and third look, she wasn’t entirely like his mother, either. His mother had been regal; her eyes had made calm survey, while Iris with the same eyes, heavy-lidded and heavy-lashed, appealed. It was unmistakable. And so earnest, to be only nineteen! He understood what Anna had meant. The dress, of a color neither tan nor gray, was prim; the white collar was almost clerical. She certainly had not inherited her mother’s taste, for even when Anna had had no means at all, she had had style, a way of tying a belt around her waist or a flowery scarf around her throat.
He was perplexed. The situation was so bizarre, not unique, for surely this business of concealed paternity had been happening since the beginning of time! But bizarre for me, he thought in painful mockery of self, for me, paragon of respectability that I am supposed to be. He imagined himself opening his mouth, right now, this very minute, and saying to Marian: Do you see this young woman? She’s my daughter.
He felt a wave of dizzying weakness. The overhead lights were painfully, unbearably brilliant. He wanted to get out, to go home and lie down in a dark room. What did he care about Jabotinsky, about Palestine, England, Germany, or the world? And at the same time he wanted to prolong the moment, to keep the girl talking, to fill his eyes and his ears with the look and the sound of her.
“Of course he wants to seize Palestine from the British,” Iris was saying, “and who can disagree? It’s such blatant cruelty, not letting those desperate, tortured people get in. My mother lost a brother and his whole family when Hitler took Austria.”
“I have relatives in Germany, too,” Paul said. “Not as close as a brother, only distant cousins, but I’m very fond of them and worried about them.”
“How can you explain a world like this to children?” Iris cried. “I teach fourth grade. Some of them read the newspapers and they all listen to the radio. It’s very hard … well, I do the best I can.”
Yes, I’m sure you do and always will; it’s written all over you, Paul thought.
There came a hush then. Jabotinsky walked out to the podium and the crowd stood roaring and cheering until he opened his mouth to speak.
Later, Paul could not have repeated a word the man said. He was only aware of the dark head in front of him. She had a thin gold chain around her neck. When she raised a hand, he saw that she wore a class ring. She was concentrating. He could see, when she turned to the side, the rise and fall of her breathing. His flesh, breathing.
When the speech ended and the cheers rang, Marian was in a hurry to leave, urging, “Let’s get out before the rush.”
Iris looked back. “Well, good-bye,” she said politely.
Paul took his time putting on his coat. “What did you think about it?” he asked.
She was doubtful. “Most people here seem to be thrilled. It is kind of thrilling, though, isn’t it? A Jewish brigade? And yet Weizmann and Brandeis are against it, so I’ll stay with them. They surely know more than I do.”
“I think you’re right.”
Marian and the Bergs were already pushing out toward the aisle. “Do come, Paul, will you? We’ll be caught in the downstairs crush.”
“It was nice talking to you,” Iris said as Paul lingered. He thought she looked faintly puzzled by his attention, although perhaps he only imagined it. At any rate, she would surely mention the encounter at home. He had an instant’s image of her telling Anna …
“Nice talking to you too,” he said.
And he followed Marian downstairs, moving slowly through the crush, thinking they would never reach the street and the fresh air, thinking that the pressure in his head would shatter him.
When they had parted from the Bergs, who lived downtown near Washington Square, Marian said seriously, “I thought you’d never get through talking to that girl. Who was she, anyway?”
Despising his lie, he answered, “I met her a couple of years ago with her parents.”
“And who are they?”
“Just some clients.” Then he couldn’t resist a question, a useless question. “What did you think of her?”
“Oh, I don’t know. There was nothing remarkable about
her. I’m surprised you remembered her that well.”
“You know I seldom forget a face. It’s one of my accomplishments, my dear.”
The following day, the telephone rang on Paul’s private line in his office.
“Something happened this afternoon,” Leah began.
Since he was not in the calmest mood, alarm sprang instantly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing bad. It’s just that I need to talk to you. I really do.”
Relieved, he forced himself to sound almost jovial. “I don’t think that’ll be too hard to arrange.”
“Can you come over this evening?”
“Oh, golly, Marian and I have a dinner invitation at eight. People I hardly know, darn it. So will tomorrow do?”
“You could stop in on your way home from the office, couldn’t you? It won’t take long.”
On his way uptown, he tried to guess what she might want. Obviously, it was no disaster, so why the haste?
She was sitting in the library in front of the fireplace when he came upstairs. A small pile of cigarette stubs lay in the ashtray; evidently she had been sitting there for some time, not reading or listening to music, both of which she liked to do at the end of the day. One leg was curled under her; one hand gripped the arm of the chair; even the puffed smoke rising from the cigarette was agitated.
“Bill Sherman wants to marry me,” she said abruptly. “He’s been waiting long enough, he says. Too long.”
An emotional crisis now loomed: crisis on top of crisis.
“He wants an answer.”
“Well, I surely can’t blame him,” Paul said, and thought: I’m dodging; I don’t know how to meet this.
“He wants the answer tonight.”
“Tonight?” Paul repeated.
Leah ground out the cigarette and regarded him. He found himself looking directly into her eyes; it would have been impossible for him, without shaming himself, to look away.
“I can understand all right, but still, tonight,” he faltered.
“Listen, Paul, I’m not about to throw down my glove. This is no ultimatum, at least not in the way you might expect.” Her tense low voice went husky, and she spoke so rapidly, without a second’s pause to search for words, that he supposed she must have rehearsed what she was going to say. “And yet, in a sense, perhaps it is. You do what you have to do, and then I’ll know what I have to do. I’m not about to cry on your shoulder. That’s never been my way. You know that. You know me almost as long and surely as well as anyone does.”
