by Belva Plain
Forcing her hands away from her robe, he slid it to the floor.
“Donal, stop this. You’re acting a role. You don’t mean it. You only want to—”
“Are you telling me what I want?”
He threw her back onto the bed. His contorted face, his furious strength, and the pain in her wrenched back all terrified her. “No, Donal, don’t do this to me. Don’t.”
“Now. Come willingly or else I’ll force you. We’re having it my way, I said.”
She struggled, pounding him with her fists. He caught them, pinned her down, and ripped the nightdress. She heard the silk part, and heard her own strangled cries. Otherwise the struggle was soundless. It had to be; the hall just outside the door was surrounded by the rooms where the children slept. So she was bound to lose in the struggle. Cold tears trailed down her temples. Her knuckles stopped up her mouth.
The shame of it! How ugly it was! An act of contempt. And for the first time in all the hundreds of times that this man had entered her, she felt nothing, nothing at all but horror.
When at last he got up, she turned her face into the pillow and sobbed.
“I’ll let you sleep alone tonight,” he said. “I’m going to Washington tomorrow for a couple of days, but when I come back you’ll throw that thing away and we’ll live the way we used to. You’ll get to like it.” He patted her shoulder. “Cry it out. You’ll feel better,” and softly he closed the door.
Self-loathing like this was not to be borne. When the sobbing stopped, Meg turned over and lay staring at the ceiling. Once in a while, a car passed through the street; she heard the swish of tires and the rustle of dead leaves in the wind that the car made.… Lights passed over the ceiling and darkness surged back. She fell asleep, woke trembling, and relived her disgrace. Her fury rose and choked her, fury at him and at herself for being so helpless, even for being a woman. No, it was not to be borne.
The room grew lighter. She lay without moving, fearful of making a sound: he might hear her and come back. Then, remembering that he had said he was leaving early for Washington, she felt relief. She raised herself on one elbow and looked at the bedside clock. It was almost eight, long past her time to get up and have breakfast with the children. She went to the mirror and was dismayed at what she saw: the bloated cheeks and the swollen eyes with shining red rims like wounds. If she could get some ice downstairs—but then the maids would see her. She heard the front door close and children’s voices on their way to school. They must have been told to let their mother sleep. There was a light tap at the door.
“Mrs. Powers? Are you all right?”
“Jenny, I’m all right, thank you. I’ve been fighting a bad cold all night, an infection or something. My nose and my eyes are all swollen.”
“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“No, thank you. I’m going to get up in a minute. I might go out and get a little air. Maybe that’s what I need.”
In the shower, she splashed her face with cold water, making some improvement. With makeup and a hat pulled down to shadow her face, she might be presentable. She had to get out of the house. The walls were contracting. She flung out her arms to thrust the walls apart.
Once in the open air, she breathed more easily. A wave of cold was coming from the north; one felt it in the bones. The birds knew it. Sparrows and one lone cardinal were huddled in fluffed feathers on the front lawn. Frost had browned the tips of the yellow chrysanthemums on people’s doorsteps. She raised her eyes to the second stories of each house as she passed, wondering what really went on behind other bedroom windows.
It was two miles to the village center, a small center with a post office, a card shop, and a tearoom facing the railroad station. She went into the card shop and after buying some Christmas cards, stood outside not knowing what to do next. A train passed through without stopping. For a moment she thought how wonderful it must be just to get on a train with a couple of books and sit there alone, watching the land roll by. Just going, with nothing and nobody to think about. Such luxury, such peace! After a while one would go into the dining car … they always had delicious food … a good thick soup, a hot roll.
Then, feeling hungry, she walked down the short block to the tearoom. It was eleven-thirty, a reasonable enough time to eat. The place was empty except for one woman who sat at a table with a suitcase beside her; she was probably a stranger waiting for the next train. She sat down and ordered a salad and tea. From Donal, she had acquired the tea habit. What had she not acquired from Donal? Five children and a safe-deposit box full of jewelry that she seldom wore.
She sat there eating slowly and thinking about her children. The two boys needed their father. Virile and active, they were already beyond her. The twin girls were Donal’s girls, quick and smart. Somehow they reminded Meg of Leah; like her, they would get along. Already they knew what to wear, what to say, and what they wanted. They, too, in a certain way were beyond their mother. Only Agnes, the young one, was different. Small and weak, she clung to her mother, perhaps more out of need than affection. Poorly coordinated in a family of athletes, pallid and uncompetitive, she would always be scorned by the robust, the joyous, and the fleet. How well Meg knew! Such children take refuge in writing melancholy poems about the stars or the suffering poor.
She sighed. She had finished the salad, but still didn’t want to go home, so she ordered another cup of tea with a dessert, and prolonged the eating of it. It bothered her that there was nothing to look at, and she wished she had bought a magazine so that she might linger. Every time she glanced up from her plate, she looked into the face of the woman with the suitcase. The woman, having for some reason changed her chair, now sat opposite. She was having a conversation with the waitress, talking with her mouth full, eating the way squirrels eat nuts, munching with their front teeth. It was irritating to watch, yet Meg was drawn back to look and suffer disgust; as soon as the woman had chewed enough, she stowed the mouthful in the pocket of her cheek and took another mouthful, talking, talking all the while. The bulge of her cheek grew larger. When would she swallow what she had already chewed? Meg wondered and couldn’t bring herself to look away.
She felt a cry rising in her throat: “It’s disgusting the way you eat!” was what she wanted to say, and knew at the same time that she was running out of control. She stood up, paid her bill, and walked rapidly home, almost running. Rounding the hedge, she saw that there was a car in the driveway, a bright little car with its top down, Paul’s car.
He was in the library reading the Times.
“But what are you doing here?” she asked.
He read the meaning behind her intonation. “Why have I risked another meeting with your husband? Because I’m not at all afraid of one. However,” he smiled, “I wasn’t disappointed to hear that he’s away.”
She sat down and ran her hand through her windblown hair. “I look a mess. I can’t believe you came just when I needed you. How did you know?”
“I didn’t exactly know, but I rather thought you might. Last night was a shocker for all of us.”
The light was cruel on her face but, having no pride in her face just then, she turned it up toward Paul and asked him directly, “How was it in your house after the revelation?”
With equal directness, he replied, “Painful and sad. I shall have to be very careful of poor Marian.”
His voice was so gentle. Gentle and yet positive. In him one saw how a man could be positive and soft at the same time. Feeling a rush of tears, she got up and walked to the other end of the room. When the spasm was over, she apologized.
“I shouldn’t be so weak.”
“Is that how you see yourself? Weak?”
“I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I think that courage is being able to go forth and fight and change things. Then sometimes I think courage is the fortitude that hangs on, and bears whatever has to be borne for some greater reason than oneself. Which is it?”
“Funny,” Paul said, “that’s wha
t I sometimes wondered about you. I’ve often thought you must have had conflicts. Unanswered questions. Being you, you must have had them.”
Meg was astonished. “But I’ve been very happy, too.”
“Nothing’s ever pure black or pure white, is it?” He sighed. “But I still think I should have fought harder that time I came to Boston.”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t have done any good.”
“That’s what Leah said. Perhaps I should make up for it now.”
“In what way?”
“By giving you any help you may need. Unless I’m all wrong and you don’t need any.”
She thought of last night’s demeaning horror. We’ll do it my way. More childbearing. And she was only thirty-four.
“I need it,” she whispered.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Not now. I can’t.” She raised her voice. “I can’t bear it.”
“Can’t bear talking about it?”
“Or living it.”
“Then it’s time to change …”
“Do you really think I can leave here, or should?”
Paul looked down at her. “Dear Meg, I think you should finally do whatever is best for Meg. It’s time. You’ve always done things to please everyone else. The only exception was your marriage, and that was the one time when you should have listened to your parents. But one owes something to oneself.”
“There’s so much to consider. The children’s school—”
“Children change schools. They’ll manage.”
“And they love their father, they really do. All except Agnes.”
“They can still see him. Hank lost his father, the only one he knew, and he’s survived.”
The unspoken loomed: Ben’s death. And Meg, shuddering, met Paul’s gaze.
“I think you really do want to end it here,” he said.
“Yes … yes, I do. But where would I go?”
Paul considered. “For the moment, back to the farm, I should think, to Laurel Hill. They’ve got enough room, that’s for sure.”
“Isn’t it childish to run home to my parents?”
“Meg, listen to me. There’s nothing wrong in needing some moral support. We all have our times, every one of us, even the strongest on whom others lean, when we would like to lean on somebody else.”
And again he looked out of the window. She followed his glance.
“The world looks so large and threatening out there.”
He turned quickly to her. “It is large and threatening. But you have to walk out into it and make a place. Listen, Meg, you can do it. Stay for a while at Laurel Hill, just temporarily, until you can see what comes next. I think you ought to be thinking of a job or training for one.”
“With five children, Paul?”
“Why not? You’ll still be young when they’re grown and gone, and then what? Yes, you must consider something to do with your life.”
“Donal will be stunned. I’m sure he doesn’t believe I have it in me.”
“Well, you have, haven’t you?”
She looked around the room, her thoughts flitting with her eyes. In a corner stood the radio, the fancy-carved console that brought the violence of Father Coughlin into the house. On the desk lay the telephone, perhaps the very instrument that had sent forth or received—no matter which—the violent word of a good man’s death.
“Yes,” she said softly, “I think maybe I have got it in me after all.”
Paul was glad he had gone to Meg, glad of the powerful instinct that had led him to her that morning. Quite obviously there had been a fearful crisis of some sort. He wasn’t sure, he could only hope, that she would be able to surmount it.
“Revelations,” she had called the previous night’s horrendous disclosures. And guiding his car through traffic, hurrying home to take Marian to dinner and a cheerful comedy at the theater, he reflected on the curious contrast: A revelation had removed whatever possibility there had ever been of ending his own marriage, while another revelation had done just the opposite for Meg.
A few days later, Hank came in from Philadelphia on the early train.
“Ever since I heard Donal Powers I haven’t been able to sleep,” he began. “I’ve got to separate myself from this dirty business and I want to do it now.”
Paul rang for Miss Briggs. “Please bring the file for Mr. Henry Roth.”
He would be as formal and stiff as Hank, who, for the second time, refused to sit down.
“I shan’t be here long enough to sit.”
How young he still is! Paul thought. And he said quietly, “It will be longer than you think. There are things to explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain. I want to sell out, that’s all.”
“But that’s not all. There’s the question of how to invest the proceeds.”
“The proceeds? Give them to charity. I’ll select the charities. The peace movement, for one thing.”
Paul raised his eyebrows. “You surely don’t mean to give away all you own?”
“That’s exactly what I do mean.”
“You’re a fairly wealthy young man, Hank. Do you want to know what you’re worth?”
“I’m worth nothing unless I get rid of that stuff. Gun money. I want no part of it.”
In back of the angry young man, Paul saw the stricken, disillusioned boy at Ben’s funeral and in back of him, the freckled child wearing his first baseball cap.
“You’d better talk to Dan. He wouldn’t approve of this, I can tell you.”
“How can you know what my grandfather would think? You two live on different planets.”
“But it happens that I talked to Dan myself just yesterday. We’re not as different as you think we are.”
Hank raised sullen eyes and Paul continued.
“I was caught in the same sort of moral conflict that Dan knew when his first patent was sold to the War Department, just before the last war. It’s true he didn’t keep anything for himself, but he did keep it for his son, your father, and that was the seed money on which you’ve been living ever since.”
“All right. I don’t have a son or anyone to give it to except the unknown poor. I can do the same as he did and live the same as he does.”
“You’ve never lived in a walk-up flat. You buy books, you ride a horse. All your pleasures cost money. Even the money you give away now is a form of pleasure to you, whether you admit it or not. It would be harder than you can have any idea of for you to be poor.”
“Hennie and Dan have lived in a walk-up flat and they’ve seemed satisfied.”
“They’re very special people, Hank.”
“And I’m not?”
“I don’t know whether you will ever be special in their way. It’s too soon to tell.”
“I can tell. If I don’t know myself, who does?”
“To know yourself is the hardest thing of all.”
Hank didn’t answer.
“You’ll need money for medical school. Where is it to come from?”
“Poor boys go to medical school. They earn their way.”
“It’s damned hard. You should know that by now. Permit me to tell you that you’re talking like a child.” Paul’s impatience was growing. “You haven’t talked to your mother about this either, have you?”
Hank flushed. “My mother and I don’t agree on everything, as you should know,” he added.
Paul ignored the jibe. “Your mother’s a very practical woman. She’s made her way in the world as few women have.”
“If that’s the kind of way she wants.”
“Are you still that angry, Hank?”
“I happen to love my mother, but we’re different. Things mean so much to her and nothing to me.”
“You just might have a child someday to whom they would mean something.”
“I can’t guide my behavior today because of a child I might or might not have someday.”
Was I that determined? Paul wondered, so sur
e of where I stood when I was twenty-one? And knowing that he had not been, he could not help but feel a wistful admiration, in spite of his impatience with the young man who stood before him.
“It’s curious,” he began, “the way this fortune has been handed about like a hot potato. Your grandfather giving it to your father, your father leaving it to your mother, your mother turning it over to you—”
“That never worried her. As you just said, she can take care of herself.”
“She’s young yet. Suppose Bill were to get sick or have an accident? And that she would then be sick, unable to work? A widow, with an only son—wouldn’t you be the one she’d have to turn to?”
Hank’s lips tightened. His resentment was almost palpable. He despises me, Paul thought. Nevertheless, he continued.
“I sometimes find that the most world-minded people can neglect the needs on their own doorsteps.”
“What are you trying to say? I like people to be direct.”
“So do I. So here it is. I propose that you divide the market value of the trust. Give ten percent away to your good causes and split the rest in half. Give one-half of that to your mother and keep the other to educate yourself and have a nest egg. You can always give money away later on if you still feel the way you do now.”
Hank was silent. A stubborn hothead! The kind who jumps feetfirst into a pool without seeing whether there’s any water in it. And Paul waited for him to speak.
“She does love the house,” he said at last.
“And you don’t.”
“It’s not my kind of place.”
Again, Paul waited.
“She even offered to buy it from me.”
“That should tell you something, shouldn’t it?”
And when Hank didn’t answer, but sat staring out of the window, Paul repeated, “You can always give away what you have. There’ll always be need for it, rest assured.”
Hank looked up quickly. “I rest assured. Especially after the war that’s coming. I can count on you people to wreck whatever’s left of the world.”
If he dared strike me with his fists, Paul thought, he would.
“All right. Draw the papers,” Hank said. “My mother can have the house and whatever you think she ought to have.”
