by Belva Plain
Hiding, whispering, running from danger to danger … proud, strong woman in her doctor’s garb … bright, laughing woman swinging the car along the mountain roads … Surely, surely something could be done for her!
But there was nothing to be done. “It’s the Polish quota, it’s filled for years,” Hennie told him. She had gone to work as a volunteer in aid of refugees, as so many concerned and charitable women, including Marian, were doing.
In the spring the Nazis destroyed the brave republic of Czechoslovakia; Chamberlain had to admit that Hitler had lied and that the Munich agreement had been a fraud. In the spring, too, the Russians kicked out their foreign minister, Litvinov, because he was a defender of the peace and a Jew besides. And in August, to an astounded and disbelieving world, Stalin and Hitler, archenemies, announced their alliance.
Hitler invaded Poland on the first of September. This is the first step, Paul thought, before he double-crosses Russia and leapfrogs across the Polish border. Two days later, France and Britain entered the war and the Athenia was sunk off the coast of Ireland, not far from the spot where the Lusitania had gone down so many years before. And even though Paul had long predicted what had now come true, he felt a sense of unreality.
It was all this, beginning with the Nazi-Russian pact, that killed Dan Roth. Hennie, at least, was ever afterward to declare that it had. Certainly, Dan had never been a Communist but, like too many misguided liberals of his era, had merely argued that the Russian experiment ought to be given a fair chance. When the news of the alliance was confirmed, he was struck numb and dumb. And when the war broke out, the war that he had said would never, could never, happen, he retired into himself.
For several years he had been working in his laboratory on an idea for an electronic scanning device that he hoped would facilitate the diagnosis of hidden disease. He had had an exhilarated notion that he was approaching something valuable. Now he sat still at the workbench, sometimes with his head in his hands. How could they have done such a thing? So then their word meant nothing; all the high-sounding phrases about humanity and equality meant nothing.…
Later, Paul wondered what mysterious configuration of the stars had led him to Dan’s lab on that particular autumn night. Driving along the Hudson, he saw great liners that had been caught in midocean when war was declared, now tied up at the piers, awaiting instructions from their owners. There lay a familiar Cunarder, his favorite, Queen Mary; close to it lay the Normandie.
He had a quick recollection of departure, the long, mournful, heart-lifting call of the horn, a dark winter afternoon, and Leah’s mischievous face in the frame of a silver fox collar and a silly peacock-blue hat.
Only three years had passed since then, but they might have been a century for all that had happened. The war now menaced everything that made the world a home; the anticipation of summer, even the sweetness of art, and most of all the kindness of man to man. In his private world at home, the crisis had subsided; a graph would show a return to the previous even level. Except for an occasional wistful, worried glance from Marian, to which Paul responded by some sort of reassuring smile or word or gesture, all was outwardly as it had been before. Inwardly, he felt the pressure of her frightened need: Don’t leave me, Paul …
This evening he was feeling the stress of loneliness, a bone-deep ache, a need for someone who was close to him. Leah, of course, was out of bounds, Hank still avoided him, and Meg was hidden away in the country trying to put her life together. Then he thought of Hennie and Dan, that it would be nice to take them to dinner. Dan was no doubt still at work in his lab.
The lab was stuffy. Even with the windows open, the air that blew in was unseasonably hot.
“This heat’s not good for you,” Paul remonstrated. “Listen, I’ll give you the key to my cottage on the Island and I’ll get a car to drive you out. Why don’t you and Hennie use it for a couple of weeks?”
Dan shook his head. “I don’t want to leave this while the idea’s still fresh.”
“The idea will be there two weeks from now. You can take your thoughts with you.”
“I can’t give up two weeks at my stage of life, Paul.”
“Well, then,” Paul insisted, “at least take a weekend. I happen to know that Alfie’s been inviting you.”
“Let’s talk it over later. I’ll have dinner with you, that I’ll do.”
“You’re only stalling,” Paul said, “but come on.”
With effort, Dan got up. He took his jacket, closed the outer door, and was turning the key in the lock when he fell over.
For three days, he lay at the hospital in a coma. For three days and part of the nights, Paul and Hennie sat watching and waiting. They spoke little, each with his and her thoughts, and many of them, Paul felt sure, must have been the same thoughts.
“Simple, kind, gentle,” he heard her murmur to herself.
Overnight, two furrows had cut her cheeks, but her eyes were dry and she hardly took them away from Dan.
“Yes, he is all those things,” Paul might have said, and added to them many more: proud, brave, unselfish, impractical, hot-tempered—all of these were the sum of the man who lay now inert in the bed.
And, as if Hennie were taking up his thought, she said also, “We’ll never know what else was revolving in his brain. Now it will never come to light.”
For they knew, as they waited, what the end was to be.
She stroked Dan’s hands. The work of the hands. She must be thinking those words, Paul thought, and of the ways in which the hands had known her. Once she laid her head, ever so softly, on her husband’s shoulder. How many nights must they have lain like that!
They brought food, but she could not eat. Tearless and still she sat, watching Dan’s weak breath go in and out.
She looked up at Paul, who wanted her to take a rest.
“I’m memorizing everything,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you understand? I shall never see him again. Don’t you understand?”
Hank came to see his grandfather. For some minutes he stood looking down at the figure on the bed. Dan had suddenly grown smaller, curled like a fetus.
“Dammit! Damn them all! They’ve taken all the skills of your mind to use them again for wars and the killing that you hated,” Hank cried.
Dan all over again! Paul thought, as always. And he knew what the young man was remembering. He could see the small boy sitting on the piano bench while Dan placed his fingers on the keys. He could see all the birthday celebrations as the boy grew older in the house that Dan had given. And he would have liked to embrace Hank now, but the rift had not healed; Hank’s glance was cold.
Then his own memories crowded: the kitchen in the downtown flat where, as a schoolboy, he had talked with Dan about world affairs, subjects that were seldom talked about at home, and Dan had listened to him as though he were a person with opinions worth hearing. He helped me grow up, Paul thought.
So they all watched and waited. On the evening of the third day, the doctor insisted that Hennie go home to rest. So it was Paul who was alone with Dan when he died.
How different was death from the fictional portrayal, in which the dying man lies in dignity and speaks some simple words, some heartbreaking good-bye, and in full consciousness takes his last breath! The reality was a slipping away, a slipping so imperceptible that there seemed to be no change from one moment to the next, so that only the measurement of the pulse could tell the difference between being here and being there. Gone, with no word and no smile, gone with nothing. How small! one thinks. But only a few days ago, he was large! And where is all his knowledge gone? Vanished. And Paul thought, I wish I could have the certainty that some have, that there is a beautiful life after death, in which nothing perishes that is dear, and all will survive in some vast blue eternity.
People came flocking to Hennie’s little home: the Orthodox in black coats and side curls, the nonbelievers, labor organizers, workmen, teachers, and former pupils, now middle-aged.
Even Donal Powers came. Fortunately for me, Paul thought, it was during an hour when I wasn’t there. He was reminded again of the time when Dan had been freed from his prison cell, and that Donal Powers was the one who had freed him. Even as he knew that his feeling was a narrow and petty one, he knew also that he would never get over it.
It was during the week of mourning for Dan that Meg Powers reached a decision. A fleeting idea from long ago, one never seriously taken, had returned one day. She had dismissed it as foolish. But it had come back again. After a while, as the months moved by, it had begun to possess her.
Why should she not go back to school and become a veterinarian?
She talked to herself. That’s laughable.
Don’t laugh. There’s nothing funny about it.
It’s ridiculous. You’re thirty-five years old, with two sons and three daughters.
What’s that got to do with it? You know you come rightfully by the idea.
That’s true, I do.
And she remembered long-forgotten sick or wounded creatures, rabbits, stray cats, and broken-winged birds that she, in her lonely childhood, had cared for. A moment later she thought: Pure sentimental folly! How do I know I have the aptitude or the persistence to follow it through?
Yet she could see herself doing it. Was she to stifle, while her children grew up and away, waiting for Donal’s monthly check?
She went to see him. It was the first time she had been in his office—in the old days, he hadn’t even had a real office—and she was more than uneasy. From behind three telephones on a sleek desk, he frowned.
“I thought we had reached a financial agreement.”
“We did. But there’s something I want to add. I’ve been doing some thinking about myself and I—”
“If you don’t take too long. I’ve just come back from paying a condolence call at your aunt’s, and I’m late for an appointment.”
“I can say it in a very few words. I’d like you to give—to lend—me some extra money for a couple of years. I’ll pay you back.”
“Extra money for what?”
“I want to go back to school, and the tuition’s expensive.”
Donal raised his eyebrows. “You went to college. You graduated.”
“I know. This is different. A profession.”
She hesitated. He was ready to scoff; the lifted eyebrows and the one-sided twitch of the mouth were all too familiar. Nevertheless, she continued.
“I would like to be a veterinarian. It will take four years.”
“What!” The word was a hoot of astonishment, followed by laughter. “If that isn’t the craziest—whatever put that in your head?”
She faced the laughter. “It was always a thought, because of the way I feel about animals. A vague thought, something I’d have liked to do, but knew was impossible, so I stopped thinking about it. Now it’s occurred to me that it’s not impossible.”
“It’s absurd. What do your parents have to say?”
“Naturally, my mother says it’s outlandish for a woman and Dad just wants me at home,” she answered truthfully.
“Right they are. I couldn’t agree more.”
“You never thought my parents’ opinions were worth very much before.”
“There’s always a first time.”
“I’ve had an interview at the University of Pennsylvania. They were very encouraging and I think they may accept me.”
“You haven’t wasted any time, have you?”
“No. I wrote to Wellesley for my transcript. I was an A student.”
“Why don’t you put this nonsense out of your head? You’ve got enough to do being a mother.”
“I can do both. The boys will be away at school and the girls are at school all day. I can do it. Look at Leah! She seems to have raised Hank all right.”
“That woman! Is she the best example you can find? No, I don’t want to look at her, nor at anybody else, for that matter.”
Meg stared at him. Nothing could move him if he didn’t want it to. Taking a memorandum pad from a drawer, he began to write. When he was finished, he looked up.
“I’ve a dozen things to do this morning. Can we bring this to a close?”
“Then you won’t advance the money? Let’s say my idea is stupid; all right, that’s my misfortune, isn’t it? But once I start, I’ll go through to the end, and I’ll repay the loan with interest. A business proposition, Donal, nothing more. That’s all I’m asking.”
“The answer is no, Meg, and now please go away and don’t bother me with this. If you want to talk about something sensible, I’ll be glad to listen.”
It would mean nothing to him, less than the price of one of the bracelets he had brought home during their smiling years. He stood up as if to escort her to the door, but she brushed past him, quivering with anger.
“Thank you for nothing. I’ll ask my cousin Paul.”
“You do that,” Donal said.
That afternoon Meg sat for a while with Paul on the front stoop of Hennie’s house. Perhaps they lingered because sunshine had warmed the stone and brought a cheerful life to the modest street: gossiping women, children on roller skates and an ice-cream vendor ringing a bell on the corner. It was a different world from that which either of them knew, it was Dan’s world, and perhaps that is why they lingered.
Presently, after a peaceful silence, Paul said, “So Meg, dear, don’t worry about the money. Let me know what you need for tuition and a little apartment in Philadelphia. Hank’s down there. I’m sure he’ll help you find one.”
“Paul, I’m going to straighten out my life this time, I really am.”
“Of course you are. You’re on the way. And sooner or later on the way you’ll meet another man, too, the right one.”
“Man! Who’d want a woman with five children?”
“Why not? You’re still a very lovely woman, Meg.”
She was thinking that if he weren’t her cousin, she could love him.… And she wondered about Leah and him. Somehow she couldn’t quite see them together. But for that matter, she had never thought that he really belonged with Marian, either. It was too mysterious, this business of coupling! No one had thought that she and Donal belonged, and yet they had been happy for a long time, and probably would be still if the truth hadn’t come out. All very strange.
And following this train of thought, she said, “They were an amazing couple, Dan and Hennie. You almost thought of them as one person, they were so alike.”
“That they were.”
“A once-in-a-lifetime love, I suppose.”
“Once in a lifetime,” Paul repeated.
Something in his tone, a vibration in his voice, made her turn to look at him. He was gazing out over the street; yet she had a feeling that he wasn’t seeing the street at all.
I wonder—she thought, and stopped herself. No sense wandering into useless speculations. Besides, it was growing late.
“Paul, how do I begin to thank you?”
“By doing well, that’s all I want,” he said quickly.
“I’m going to pay you back the minute I begin to earn. With interest.”
“Oh, of course. Prime rate plus one percent,” he said, and kissed her.
Meg was accepted by the veterinary school. Together with the three girls, she moved into a small, neat apartment near the university, furnishing it with a few simple pieces that she bought, plus all her books and a few odds and ends of furniture contributed by Alfie and Emily, who were aghast at the whole business. The result was cheerful, but so modest that Lucy and Loretta were quite dismayed. Agnes, who had been given a little north bedroom, once a maid’s room, where she could place an easel at the window, had no complaint.
Timmy and Tom left for Choate, where they immediately made the football team and wrote enthusiastic letters home, which surprised no one, enthusiasm having always been the salient quality of the brothers.
Donal bought the Fifth Avenue apartment he had talked about, a handso
me spread not far from the Plaza Hotel. Meg never saw it, but the children gave her detailed descriptions, more detailed than she wanted to hear. Lucy and Loretta were enormously impressed. Twelve years old now, they were better informed about trends and styles and prices than their mother had ever been, and far more interested in them, surely, than she was now.
“You should see my bedroom,” Loretta reported. “It looks right out onto the park. Daddy’s decorator brought in an artist who painted a mural on one wall, a garden walk, going downhill toward a pond with two swans floating on it. Absolutely gorgeous.”
After their week in New York, the twins returned to Philadelphia wearing new white fur coats. Donal had taken them to two Broadway shows and to dinner at the Waldorf. They couldn’t wait to go back.
Agnes, who hadn’t gone because she had a cold, was due to go the next time. “But I don’t want a fur coat,” Meg overheard her say. “I think it very cruel. Mother thinks so, too, and so does Hank.”
“Hank is a jerk,” Loretta said.
Hank, now in his third year, had taken it upon himself to look out for Meg. On her behalf, he complained to the janitor and finally got some small repairs made. He counseled her before a test and complimented her when she did well—and she did surprisingly well for someone who had so long ago gotten away from the habit of study. Apparently he had plenty of time to give, for unlike most of his friends, he had not yet fallen in love and his dates were casual.
His mother, on the other hand, having made up her mind to do so, had fallen very much in love, this time with her new husband, who was obviously very much in love with her. Their life was busy. Sherman had one of the largest and wealthiest law practices in the city, while Leah had expanded the shop, which now encompassed three floors and catered to the most fashionable trade in New York. Well known, then, in their respective circles, the Shermans were invited everywhere. Openhanded and openhearted, they gave generously, and were seen at all the charity balls.
