Looking Back

by Belva Plain

  “This used to be a plain place, I remember. Hardware store, drugstore, feed store, dry goods, gas station—you name it. Know what I mean, Amanda?”

  Indeed, she knew very well. “And now it’s gentrified,” she said.

  “Come on, let’s have a look. And take your time. Women always want to nose around the stores, don’t they?”

  There were people abroad, but nothing in the least like a crowd, so it was pleasant to walk at leisure and stop to look into shop windows, to pass from ladies’ sportswear to riding boots, children’s hand-embroidered dresses, books, jewelry, antiques, chocolates, and finally, a quaint colonial bank with stockbrokers’ offices upstairs.

  “It sparkles like Christmas,” Amanda said. “It seems as if you could buy anything you’d ever need right here.”

  Larry laughed. “All you’d need is the cash. Come on, I’ll buy you some ice cream. There’s a nice place around the corner.”

  “What? After all that food today? No thanks. Let’s just walk once down that side again so I can get another look in some of the windows, and that’ll be enough.”

  “Like it, do you?”

  “It’s charming. Quaint. I’d love to live here.”

  “You would, would you? Property around here is like gold, let me tell you. Like diamonds. Okay, we’ll walk back once and call it a day.”

  The street was a little treasure trove: in one window, a pink cardigan; in another, a bracelet of gold daisies; in another, a handsome set of copper-bottomed kitchen-ware—

  “We’ll come back one night soon,” Larry said. “There’s a good restaurant up the road. Used to be a livery stable, and now it’s chic. You need a reservation two weeks ahead, it’s that chic. Lot of baloney, isn’t it, in a way? But the food is good, I’ll give them that. It’s worth the drive.

  “Speaking of drives,” he said as they rode on, “we’ll have to get you a car, Amanda. Can’t live where we are without one. We’ve no such thing as a bus unless you want to hop the senior citizens’ bus into town, and I doubt they’ll let you on. What kind of car do you like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A small one. Maybe like that one ahead. Yes, something like that.”

  “Ho, ho. That’s a BMW. You’ve got good taste, all right.” He reached over and planted a kiss on top of her head. “But never mind. We’ll find something you’ll like.”

  The early exhilaration of the dance had left her, yet in its place there had returned the quiet feel of satisfaction and security that had been coming and going for the last week or more. Drowsiness began to overcome her, and she said so.

  “I’m falling asleep.”

  “It’s the sun. We’re driving toward it. Put your head on my shoulder and relax.”

  Vaguely, she heard him humming to himself. It was a homelike sound, out of tune and contented. Vaguely, she roused when they rumbled over the bridge and entered the city.

  “Can you believe, after where we’ve just been, that this is the same state? Even the same county? God, the mess! From the Lane Avenue slums to the terminal, it’s all going to wrack and ruin. The problem, when you really come down to it, is the railroad yards over there. Twenty-seven acres of bare, unused land, loaded with junk and going to waste. Something’s got to be done, and eventually it will be. I’d love to get my hands on it. But of course I’m talking through my hat. The railroad wants enough for it to pay off the national debt. Anyway, it’s all politics, people knowing the right people. Hey, did I wake you? Were you still asleep?”

  “Half and half.” Amanda yawned. “Yes, Norma told me about the railroad yards, I remember.”

  In a part of town that was newer than where the Balsan house stood, the streets were laid out in a grid. Clean little houses were shaded by trees no more than fifteen or twenty years old. Pocket-size yards were half the size of the Balsans’, and yet they contained probably every play apparatus that existed.

  “If a house can look happy, I think these do,” Larry said, stopping the car. “This one is trading up. Guy made quick money. They’ll have to paint before we can show it, or I’d make an appointment to take you there tomorrow. I think you’d like this, Amanda,” he said earnestly. “Have a look at the outside, anyway, while we’re here.”

  She looked. Awfully cramped, she thought. Yet at least it was not a big old box like the Balsans’ brown bulk. It was even rather cute when you thought about it. And you could always “trade up,” as these people were doing.

  Larry’s arm went around her. And she saw in his anxious eyes that he was searching her expression; she saw how earnestly he wished to please her. And a flood of grateful warmth, like hot water on cold hands or hot tea on a shivering day, poured through her.

  “What do you think? Do you like it?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I like it very much. And I thank you for everything.”

  She was loved, really loved. She knew who she was. She knew where she was, and where she would be. Like the bride on this romantic day, she turned to him as if to give him her whole heart, and gave him her brilliant smile.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Side by side on the float they lay, well anointed with sunblock, their faces covered by their straw hats and their toes pointed toward the sky. The float rocked to the rhythmical slap of the waves. Gulls called urgently. Cecile pushed the hat off to see what could be happening, but there was only a sailboat creeping along the line of the horizon. And in another moment, the raucous birds had slid away down the sky, leaving the blue air and the quiet as before.

  Peter’s hands lay still at his sides. The gold ring on the left one matched her own. How was it possible that such a small article, or that the few words spoken by an authorized person in the garden at home, or that the license signed in the town hall, could make such a difference? It was popular these days to insist that it made no difference at all; indeed, she herself had thought, whenever for a few days at a time they had gone away somewhere together, that they were already two people united. Yet now as she looked at the ring on his hand, then back at her own, she was filled with a kind of awe.

  He stirred, stretched, and sat up. “Were you admiring my beauty while I slept?”

  “I was thinking of how I love you. If you were to hurt your little finger, I believe mine would bleed, too. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he said gravely. “Yes. It is the same for me. Come, I’ll race you back.”

  The tide was against them. But she was a strong swimmer, and the race would be an even one, as always, with Peter only one or two lengths ahead. It pleased her to be such a good match for him in everything they both did well: At tennis or on an uphill hike, or at a dance, they were in harmony.

  Now, reaching the sheltered cove below the house, they sat together on the warm, sea-smelling beach grass, opened the picnic basket that they had left there, and talked. There was no end to the things they had to talk about. They were discovering a new world, filled with curiosities and wonders. And the golden day, like all their days, drifted.

  Above them, the house stood in a circle of palms. Indoors, the rooms were cool, as the sea breeze swept through. Those that faced the water were aquamarine, furnished in haphazard charm with English antiques and Chinese rattan and, everywhere, with flowers.

  “You know that famous Winslow Homer painting, the lemon-colored house with the dazzling white roof? It could have been this house,” Peter said. “He painted the house, or else your relatives copied his painting.”

  “Either one is possible. It’s been in the family forever; I’ve forgotten how many generations. Dad’s great-aunt is really generous with it. She goes somewhere else whenever there’s a honeymoon or a convalescing relative who needs some rest in the Bermuda sun.”

  “You have such an interesting family. Some cousin of yours at the wedding was telling me about your mother’s being on the governor’s commission for slum clearance. Was that it? Or suburban sprawl? I wasn’t really hearing things too clearly that day. I don’t even know how I stood up a
t all. I was weak in the knees, and my head was in a fog. But tell me more about your mother.”

  “I don’t know how to start. Well, maybe I’ll just say that she gets things done. She doesn’t only run fund-raising luncheons and have her name on letterheads, either, although she does do some of that, too, because it’s part of the picture. She and Dad are real citizens. They’ve made a difference. For instance, the children’s cancer department at the hospital is their doing. And there’s the new park that they fought for against the syndicate that wanted to build an office park. Some park that would have been! I grew up hearing about all these things, and I’m sure they grew up the same way. My grandparents were givers, too.”

  “I had no idea there was that much wealth behind you. Where did it come from?”

  Cecile shrugged. She had only a general idea that there were many sources and many legacies.

  “Oil, and railroad stocks, a part of it. Also, one of my great-grandfathers invented some machine that clamps metal parts together and—oh, I don’t know how—but they use it all over the world in construction.”

  Peter smiled, and shaking his head as if to marvel, said, “People would never guess this stuff about you unless they happened to see where you live.”

  “We’ve been lucky,” she said simply.

  “Do you never feel uncomfortable with it?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “Don’t mind me. I’m only curious because I would.”

  “What, feel uncomfortable?”

  “Yes. Of course I can’t be sure. But I think I would.”

  “But you married me, and so now—”

  “And so now it’s still yours. It isn’t mine.”

  “This is a silly conversation,” she said, changing the subject. “I forgot to tell you that the maid gave me a message. One of Aunt Susan’s friends wants to know whether we’d like to have dinner at their house one night.”

  “We only have four left.”

  “Okay, you’ve given the answer. I don’t want to go, either. What do you want to do?”

  “Tonight? Have an enormous dinner, as always. The woman who cooks here—what is her name again?”

  “Sylvestrina. She likes to be called Sally, and I don’t blame her.”

  “She’s a fabulous cook. I told her so this morning.”

  “Well, that’s fine so far. What about after dinner?”

  “Sit in that wicker double chair and listen to music until the stars come out.”

  “Fine again. What music? There must be a thousand CDs in the cabinet. You choose.”

  “A pianist. The night’s so still outside that an orchestra would tear it apart. Does that make any sense?”

  “Perfect sense. And after the music?”

  “Let’s swim. Swim naked as fish.”

  “And after that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Peter said. “I do have a couple of possibilities in mind.”

  Although a month ago they would have sworn that they already knew everything there was to know about each other, their discoveries kept coming. They walked, they swam, they sailed, and always they talked. No subject was out of their range, from the number of children they might want, to their opinions about the political situation in China, and to their own tastes in food.

  “I absolutely need something chocolate every day,” Cecile told Peter.

  “I can take it or leave it. What I really like is Indian rice and meat, spicy, with plenty of curry.”

  Each of them talked about work. Cecile had a special earnestness and pride. She was not, at least for the present, planning a “career” in the usual meaning of the word. Next month she was going to volunteer at the Children’s Hospital, where she had worked for the last two summers. She had loved it there, and now they had filled her request for a five-day schedule, including time for some courses in social work.

  “My sociology major helped me in my understanding of family problems. Sometimes I’m even surprised at myself, because the professional staff actually respects my work.”

  Then Peter talked about his plans. The new job was only temporary. As soon as he had gotten started, had made a bit of a name in his specialty, he wanted to be independent. Simply by hearing him talk about historic restoration, or by leafing through his photographs and books, Cecile herself had become interested. All of it meshed with history. The small brick inn from 1857 was supposed to have served a meal to the man who had shot Lincoln. True or untrue, the building was worth saving, as was the watchtower on the Atlantic coast where once great whalers had departed and arrived. She had even gone along with him last year on an expedition to a country railroad station; decked out in Victorian wooden lace and curlicues, it was being transformed into an inviting restaurant. Here, too, in Bermuda, he had been making quick sketches as they strolled.

  Yes, the two of them, absorbed in their work and in love with each other, were going to be perfect together.

  On their next-to-last day, wanting to waste not even one lovely hour, they rose very early. Peter had to check something on his sketch of the old Gothic church.

  “You may wonder why I’m doing this,” he said. “True, I may never actually need to know much about the construction of a Gothic church, but you never know. In that course I took last summer, we went to a fine nineteenth-century church that had been almost entirely wrecked by fire. There was a bitter struggle going on between those who wanted to restore it and those who wanted to destroy it and build a new church on the site.”

  “And what happened?”

  “The usual thing. Last I heard they were still arguing about costs.”

  After their final leisurely breakfast on the terrace above the beach, they wandered slowly toward Hamilton. A cruise ship had docked, and the streets were bustling with shoppers. But the church, a good distance removed from the crowd, was blessedly quiet. They were, in fact, the only two people inside it, so that undisturbed by voices or footsteps other than their own, they wandered along the walls, reading national history and poignant personal histories on plaques and in memorials on stained glass.

  Outdoors again, the yard, except for the chirp of sparrows, was just as still, and Cecile sat on the grass while Peter, for the second time, went about examining downspouts, looking for gargoyles, and studying the clerestory. She, in her own way as intent as he was, watched him. His tall figure crossed from sun into shadow when he moved around the building, and his face had a slight, intense frown when he braced his sketchbook against the wall. She was so proud of him! Why, that’s what it was all about, this union, this oneness, as Norma would say, translating from the Latin in her usual funny way. One-ness. From now on they were responsible for each other, this Peter and this Cecile. There would be no severance, no “see you soon.” Instead, they would rise from the same bed and eat breakfast together; in the evening they would eat their meal together again and return to the bed. After a while there would be children and serious things to talk about. There would also be the daily trivial things that must be seen to. Only a few days ago when going into Hamilton for lunch, had she not stopped him from wearing a brown sweater with navy blue slacks?

  Now, reminding herself of her mother, Cecile had to laugh. Harriet Newman, for all her work in important public causes, was a thoroughly fastidious housewife. Yet why not? What’s bad about having a tidy home, good meals, and clean clothes?

  I never thought until now, Cecile thought, about how intimate this business of marriage would be, this being inside each other’s heads, this taking care of each other for the rest of our lives.

  “That’s it,” Peter said now, putting the sketchbook back in his pocket. “I’ll probably never use it, but at least I have it. What’s on the program now? Back to the house and the beach, I hope.”

  “Of course. But with one quick stop, really quick. We need a parting present for Sally, with thanks for all our marvelous meals.”

  “I have a nice big check for her.”

  “Yes, but a present, somethin
g in a box with ribbon on it, would be nice, too. They’re known for sweaters here in Bermuda, really beautiful ones, something she would never buy for herself.”

  The crowds from the ship had thinned since early morning, most likely because it was now lunchtime. Holding Sally’s gift in hand, Cecile kept slow pace with Peter, taking only quick glances at the shop windows as they walked past. Then suddenly, she stopped.

  “Look, Peter. Those must be the most gorgeous girandoles I’ve ever seen. They don’t usually come in such interesting colors.”

  Six porcelain arms, each holding a white tapers extended from a graceful painted body with coral flowers and brown leaves.

  “A perfect pair. So often on these old pieces there’s something missing or chipped. They would be wonderful on the sideboard in a dining room, Peter.”

  “Must cost a fortune.”

  “No, I can read the sticker. Not bad at all. What about using my cousin Luke’s wedding check?”

  “Cele, you do what you want with the wedding checks. But where will you put these things? We have no sideboard and no dining room.”

  He was smiling as if in amusement at her “feminine” foibles. He looked the way her father looked whenever her mother bought something frivolous—which happened seldom enough—such as, once, a pair of pink velvet slippers with heels like steeples.

  She smiled back. For two weeks now she had been keeping the most marvelous secret, waiting for the moment when he could behold the secret for himself. But suddenly her resolve broke into overwhelming excitement, and it burst right out of her mouth.

  “Darling, we do have one! A house, with a dining room! I wasn’t going to say a word until we got home. I wanted to surprise you, but I can’t hold it in anymore. It’s a house you will fall in love with. Wait till you see it.”

  “What are you talking about, Cecile?”

  “There’s a wonderful place in Cagney Falls. It’s not in the town, but in the township, a lovely house with an acre and a half, maybe two. The people want to sell and my father knows them slightly—at least, well enough to have asked them to hold off until we get back to look at it. I’ve seen the outside, and it’s just your taste, very simple, cut stone with white shutters and the traditional colonial doorway. You’d think it was built before the Revolution.”