Looking Back

by Belva Plain

  I am walking a tightrope. I am standing on the edge of a cliff where a gale wind may blow me over.

  Yet, she thought, to the stranger’s gaze we probably make a fine picture. And apparently they did, because one day when Larry was photographing them on the lawn, an old man out for a walk paused to watch.

  “Too beautiful to resist. Frame it,” he told Larry. “You’re a lucky man.”

  One framed copy was now in the living room, and the other on Larry’s desk at Balsan Real Estate. He had offered another to his father, but L.B. had graciously refused it because, he said, he did not display family pictures in the office. Larry thought that rather odd, especially so for a grandfather who had been so generous with a bank account in Stevie’s name, yet almost never came to see him. Didn’t Amanda agree?

  Well, she thought it was understandable. After all, he was a busy man, and he did have his own life, too.

  Like her, L.B. had a hidden life. There was far less pure joy in their relationship than before the baby’s birth, and yet it was a deeper relationship; there was less of the body and more of the spirit in it. They comforted each other. These days the room on Lane Avenue was bare, without flowers or gifts or festive picnic basket. Often they lay without speaking until it was time to leave, then embraced and parted. Weeks often passed before they met again.

  Months did pass. And before long Stevie Balsan was one year old. On Lane Avenue Amanda was obliged to issue an invitation to the party.

  “Larry’s going to tell you about it, so I’m warning you in advance. He’s invited the cousins, the ones who always come to your Christmas dinners. And of course the next-door neighbors will be there. There’s no way you can avoid it.”

  L.B. groaned. “I can’t look at the child. I want to dig a hole in the ground and crawl in.”

  “You can’t avoid it,” she repeated. “If only we could go away somewhere!”

  “‘If’ is a great big word.”

  “Need it be? Couldn’t we? Stevie doesn’t need me. He’d be better off without me. I try, oh, God knows, I try. But I’m not going to improve as time goes on and he grows older. I’m going to get worse, and he will feel something without knowing what he’s feeling or why. Yes, my poor little boy, he will be happier without me. What am I going to do?” When no answer came, she wrung her hands. “Yes, he would be better off not knowing me. Larry adores him. And Norma does, too. She even likes to baby-sit some evenings. I’ve told you, she and Lester come over, bring their books and watch Stevie. Oh,” she cried, “how can I talk like this? He’s my own baby and I love him so. What am I saying? And yet—”

  L.B. spoke gently. “You’re talking nonsense, darling, and you know it. Don’t you know you are?”

  “I suppose I do.” When she sighed, a gray sadness filled the room. “But enough for today. You have to come to the party. There’s no possible excuse that would make any sense.”

  Larry had arranged it all; the long tables, the rented chairs, and the balloons had been his work that week while Amanda was in the shop at Cagney Falls. Although the day was warm and blue, her mind was a year behind the date, remembering the snow and the sadness in it.

  Just yesterday, Stevie had begun to walk. Dressed in a yellow linen suit hand-embroidered with ducks and roosters that Cecile had brought, he trotted bravely across the lawn between the hands of Larry and Amanda. Then, smeared with icing and in the best of humor, he allowed himself to be passed from the lap of one elderly cousin to another.

  “Adorable!” they crowed in their delight. “What a beautiful disposition! Is he always like this?”

  It was Norma who answered. “Yes, isn’t he blessed to be so good-natured? And aren’t we blessed to have him? But, Stevie, you haven’t given your Grandpa a turn! Here, take him, Dad.”

  Amanda grew very busy picking up paper napkins and discarded paper cups.

  “Oh, leave the stuff. We can clean up later,” Larry protested. “Where’s the camera? Have you got it, Amanda? We need a picture of Stevie with Dad.”

  One of the cousins made a suggestion. “Let me take a family picture. Grandpa will hold Stevie with Dad and Mom standing on either side of Grandpa. Let me do it. Everybody says I have a hand with photography. Over here, so you don’t face the glare. That’s it.”

  How, thought Amanda, are we going to get through this day? And she glanced at her watch. It was still only two o’clock, and they would all probably stay until four. Larry would encourage them all to stay. Plainly, most of the neighbors had come because of him. He was always the friendly one, while she was Larry Balsan’s wife. She felt weak. Voices crisscrossed the lawn, sounding faint and far away.

  “Come, Stevie, let’s play ball.” That was Norma’s voice. She had spent the morning showing Stevie how she rolled the ball, which fascinated him.

  Bent over the table, Amanda fought the weakness. Busy cleaning up, she did not turn her head.

  “You play so well with him, Norma,” said one of the cousins, adding with more innocence than tact, “Don’t you want one of your own?”

  Unfazed, Norma replied, “No. But I could take Stevie,” she teased, and everybody laughed.

  “Come, see the pretty ball.”

  A cheap thing, made of felt, striped red, white and blue, it was her family’s birthday present. She had a vision of her mother and the other grandfather wrapping the package and taking it to the post office, three doors down from the intersection of Church and Main. It was so long since she had seen them, any of them except Mom. Regret surged like a lump into her throat, and she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  She had to talk to L.B.! As soon as everyone had departed, she got into her car on the pretext of returning some books to the library. L.B. had not yet gotten home, and she was able to reach him on the car phone.

  “Hell, wasn’t it?” he said. “Sheer hell.”

  “Poor Stevie. And poor us for doing this to him.”

  “I’ve told you before that Stevie will be all right. Who’s going to question his paternity? You’re not going to abandon him, and neither is Larry, and what Stevie will never know, what nobody will ever know, won’t worry him.”

  Only once before had L.B. spoken at all brusquely to her. And understanding that this day had been a torture for him, she told him so.

  At once he apologized. “Yes, I’ll admit it was a torture, and for you, too. Listen, Amanda, dearest girl, I keep telling you that we will weather this. I keep telling you that we must. Don’t you hear me? I’ll be waiting for you Saturday after next. Can you do it?”

  “I don’t know what might be going on that day, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing, and I mean nothing at all, will ever keep me away.”

  His confidence was like water to someone who has gone two days without a drink. But she needed to be alone for a while to savor that good drink, so instead of going right home, she drove to the library, there to select a few books at random, and provide an explanation for the extra half hour’s absence. Then she drove home.

  Stevie, tired out from the day’s excitement, was in his crib.

  “I put him in early,” Larry said. “He was starting to get cranky, and that’s rare for him. What a doll he is!”

  “He has your disposition,” Amanda said, meaning it.

  There sat Larry, comfortable at the kitchen table in his sweaty shirt, stained with the mashed carrots that Stevie had had for supper. With a soup spoon, he was eating from a carton of ice cream.

  “Left out on the picnic table in the sun,” he explained. “Almost the whole quart, too. Very wasteful, so rather than throw it out, I’m eating it. Tastes better when it’s soft, though.” And he grinned his familiar, childish grin.

  It did not fit his other persona, the one in the business suit who put through all those smart deals. Still, she thought, who of us hasn’t got several sides? And as expected, she sat down at the table, prepared to keep him company.

  She felt compelled to look at him. For the last two years, she had been war
ning him that he was putting on too much weight. There was an unmistakable bulge of belly over his belt, and under his chin, a roll of soft flesh. Above his pudgy cheeks his eyes looked small. She had never noticed them until this minute. Definitely, his eyes had grown smaller. A feeling of revulsion caused her to shrink within herself.

  “Ahhhh, chocolate chip,” he said, smacking his lips.

  Such mouth noises were always disgusting. He was clean, very clean, and yet he had such disgusting habits, like sitting on the bed while cutting his toenails and letting the pieces fall onto the rug. It was strange how you could feel kindly toward another human being, and at the same time dread the touch of his body.

  “Hot for April,” he said. “Remember how it snowed a year ago today?”

  Yes, she remembered.

  “If we had a swimming pool, I’d go in now, April or not. Skinny-dipping, that’s what I’d do. Sound good to you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said dutifully.

  He stood up, shoving the chair against the table so sharply that everything clattered and tumbled. Then he yawned.

  “Since we can’t go skinny-dipping, how about a skinny shower together? I’m right in the mood. How about you?”

  “Another time,” she said. “It’s been such a long day.”

  The yawn, the grin, and the eyes’ laughter were instantly wiped away. A hard stare took their place.

  “You never want anything I want!” he cried.

  “That’s not true, Larry. I—”

  “‘Not true, Larry!’” he mocked. “How often have I heard that for one reason or another? What is it? You never want me! I’m always the one who makes the first move, and then you’ll go along unless you can wangle some excuse as you’re doing right now. You think I don’t see? Look at my eyes. Am I blind?”

  She looked. The small eyes were wide now, and glaring with anger. This was an attack, and she had had no time to prepare any defense, so she was able only to respond weakly, “No, no, Larry. No, no.”

  “Yes, yes! What is it? Am I filthy or diseased or something?”

  “No, Larry, listen, you’re wrong, I—”

  “Have you got another man? Yes, that’s it. You’ve got somebody out there in Cagney Falls. Yes, that’s it.”

  Hold on, hold on, she was saying to herself. There’s the baby. Angry voices in the house can damage even one that young.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “There’s nothing out in Cagney Falls except a shop and the women who shop in it.”

  “Can’t you see how I feel?” he cried out again. “You’re so cool. You’re like an ice cube. How can I melt you?”

  “I don’t mean to be cool, Larry. I never want to hurt your feelings. If I do, I’m sorry. It’s only my way, the way I’m made, just as you are the way you’re made.” And seeing that his brief, hot flame was already starting to die, she continued, “You always tell me how kind I am, and how good to you. Isn’t that true? Don’t you always say so?”

  “I guess so,” he muttered.

  “Of course it is. And here we are in a fuss about taking a shower,” she said with a small, reproving smile such as one gives to a darling child who has somehow misbehaved.

  He muttered again, “Well, I guess you’re right.”

  It was so easy to manipulate him that it was pitiable. And with this thought, true tears of pity began to gather and glisten in her eyes.

  Seeing them, he was all contrition. Naturally, he misunderstood them as having been caused by his anger.

  “Ah, don’t cry, Amanda. I said a stupid thing. A man in Cagney Falls—forget I said it. I’m too sleepy for a shower right now, anyway. Shouldn’t have eaten all that ice cream. I’m stuffed.”

  So fast had that explosive anger evaporated. It was like the thread of pure smoke that is left after an explosion; it rises, floats, and disappears into the sky. Grumbling good-naturedly, Larry went up to bed.

  “She was positively rude again,” Norma said on the way home. “Do you mean you didn’t notice it, Lester?”

  “I wasn’t paying much attention. I was sitting in the shade, talking to Peter. He’s a very interesting guy, an artist, entirely out of my line. I know almost nothing about architecture.”

  “That family shot with Dad holding Stevie,” she persisted. “You must have seen her face.”

  “Her face is a work of art, too,” Lester said, laughing. “You can’t deny that.”

  “I’m not trying to deny anything. She has a new expression. It’s stony, it’s frozen. I wonder what’s wrong. Something is. I’ve sensed some kind of rebellion ever since Stevie was born. I still think she never wanted a baby.”

  “Let’s not get caught up in pop psychology.” Lester knew how to chide with good humor. “If what you say about her expression is true, it was probably a sick stomach, or she’s coming down with a cold.”

  “No. Something is wrong. I’m not fooled, Lester.”

  In another car traveling in the opposite direction, Cecile remarked that she distinctly felt some enmity between Amanda and Mr. Balsan. “I wonder what it could be.”

  “It doesn’t have to ‘be’ anything. Sometimes people just don’t like each other, especially when they’re in-laws.”

  “They’re both such fine people.”

  “Tine’? That doesn’t mean anything. Fine people tear each other apart every day, especially in families. Usually it’s about money.”

  “You know, now and then I recall that day—how long ago now?—when I was sure I saw them both on that horrible street, Lane Avenue, near the bridge. I wonder why I still think of it.”

  “Who knows? But it’s funny that you should mention Lane Avenue: Just today, I finished my final plan for it. You won’t recognize the grand, curved boulevard I’ve made out of that street.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Give me time,” said L.B. “This is like unraveling a knot, or finding the exit out of a maze.”

  “Well, can you unravel the knot? And is there any exit from this maze? Are we perhaps trapped in it?” “No, but I need to think. Just give me time.” May passed, and June arrived with birdsong and early roses. Lavish with breezes and greenery, with fragrance and butterflies, the earth outdid itself this summer. Larry walked around the yard singing: “Oh, what a beautiful morning, Oh, what a beautiful day.” The maple planted last year had grown half a foot. Stevie said “Mama,” after which Larry was ready to enroll him at Harvard.

  It was all unbearable. Amanda was floundering. Her nerves wore thin. She cried at a television movie about a starving, mistreated dog. She cried one day when Stevie, when she gave him a cookie, put his arms around her neck.

  What was to become of them all?

  The bus lurched. It gave off fumes that made her almost as sick as she had been on those nauseated mornings during her pregnancy. She put a sugary mint into her mouth as Larry had recommended then, and closed her eyes. Ahead of her a pair of middle-aged ladies, no doubt on the way to the midtown department stores, were having a discreet conversation. Their voices were well modulated, and their accents pure. Very likely they were teachers; they looked like the guests that Norma and Lester invited to their little dinners. And she wondered what they would say if they knew that she, as quietly dressed as they in a dark cotton suit, as well mannered and well educated as they, was on her way to a room to which she possessed a key, there to meet and probably make love to her husband’s father.

  Once past the central avenues where the bus lost most of its passengers, it struggled through the narrow streets that by now were so familiar to Amanda that she could have described each structure in detail, and rumbled around the corner of Lane Avenue, where she left it.

  At the entrance of the building that now seemed more like home than the place that was officially her home, she was greeted by some teenagers who lived in the flat across the hall. They did not exactly smirk at her, but an unmistakable glint in the eye and a half smile on the mouth showed clearly that she was not fooling them; they knew wh
y she was there. This small incident so dismayed her that she ran stumbling up the stairs and pounded on the door.

  L.B. took her into his arms, where she clung and buried her face in his shoulder.

  “What is it? What happened?”

  “It got to be too much for me today. I don’t know why. It’s one of those days.”

  “Yes, yes,” he murmured, holding her tightly.

  “It’s very hard to live two lives, L.B.”

  They stood together feeling their unity breast to breast, while she wept softly.

  “Go on, darling, cry. Don’t hold it in. Crying will help you.”

  A siren startled them. “Noon,” he said. “We’ve never been here this early in the day, so I brought lunch—chicken sandwiches, salad, Georgia peaches, and a nice wine—to celebrate.”

  He was beseeching her. He wanted to lift her out of her mood, but the mood lay too heavily upon her to be so easily lifted. She had come, after all, to beseech him.

  “Celebrate?” she asked. “Have we got any reason to?”

  “We’re together,” he replied staunchly. “Isn’t that enough reason? Come, let’s eat.”

  He poured the wine, and without a toast or any expressed wish, they touched glasses. They ate in silence. Now and then, their eyes met solemnly. The air was heavy with their trouble and with noon heat.

  “Take off your jacket,” L.B. said after a while.

  Her silk blouse clung. She took it off so that the short pearl necklace lay on the flesh between her breasts. Again their eyes met; still without speaking a word, they stood up and went to the couch together.

  The sun had moved so far that the room was in shadow, when a rumble of thunder came out of the distance.

  “I am thinking of the first time,” she said, breaking the dreamlike silence between them. “Do you remember the storm? The thunder was like a roar in the sky, and I was so afraid.”

  “Of the storm?”

  “Of you,” she said, “and of myself because I had fallen in love with you.”