Heartwood

by Belva Plain

  –—

  Theo sat up in his hospital bed, and listened to the cardiologist give him the news he’d already known—that he was a very sick man. The specialist was using technical terms—the words “myocardial infarction” were thrown around a few times—but what it all boiled down to was Dr. Theo Stern was sick. And he wasn’t going to be getting better. Not really. Oh, he’d live a while longer if he took all the precautions his distinguished colleague from the cardiology department was now laying out so carefully, but he wouldn’t be the man he had been. Never again. Theo shifted in the bed—he’d made the nurses crank it up as high as it would go, because there was no way he was going to take this news lying down—and watched Iris. She was sitting upright too, her spine was as straight as a board. Her hands were clasped lightly in her lap. She was nodding and she looked perfectly calm. Inside, he knew she wanted to scream. Or maybe she wanted to curl up in her bed like a child and close out the world; he’d seen her react both ways in a crisis. But someone had told her she must be strong—probably it had been Laura—so she was wearing a pretty dress and lipstick that matched it, and she was sitting upright and listening to the cardiologist.

  She was trying to behave as her mother would have, Theo knew. Anna would have been the rock everyone else could lean on today, and now Iris was trying to be that. Iris would always try to live up to her mother’s standards and she would always feel that she had failed. Theo knew that too. He looked again at his wife.

  Ah Iris, he thought. I wonder what you would do if you were to learn that your mother was a far more complicated woman than you ever dreamed. Because your mother had a secret, my darling. The perfect wife and mother, Anna Friedman, had a dark secret that I happen to know. And I will always wonder what it would do to you if you knew … Theo shook his head impatiently. What on earth had made him start thinking about all of that at this moment? He must be losing his mind! Iris saw the movement and thinking that he was upset about what the cardiologist was saying, reached over to stroke his hand comfortingly. Oh yes, Iris was determined to be strong for all of them today. She was going to be Anna all over again.

  –—

  The doctors said that it would be at least three weeks before Theo would be ready to leave the hospital. And as word of what had happened to Dr. Stern spread to his friends and colleagues, there was a stream of guests to his room, all making the same suggestion to Theo and Iris about the wisdom of moving to a … facility. Not a nursing home, everyone hastened to reassure, but some lovely retirement community where they could still have their own apartment. There would be a kitchen that would cook their meals in accordance with Theo’s new restricted diet. And, above all, although no one mentioned this, there would be a staff trained to handle heart attacks if Theo should have another one.

  “It would be the smartest thing they could do,” Janet said. “If they’d agree.”

  Iris might have, but the Stern children knew their father never would. So their parents’ home had to be adapted to the needs of a man who was now ill. Actually, the house was ideal for the purpose. During the years when Theo was retraining himself and the family hadn’t had much money, he and Iris had sold their big beautiful home, and purchased this one, which was small and laid out for practical use rather than for show. When Theo was launched again, they’d thought about moving to a more luxurious place, but they’d come to love their neighbors, so they never did. And thank heaven for that, Laura thought. Because if they had, they’d be downsizing again. Instead, with a few modifications, their compact little house could be set up to accommodate Theo’s needs and they could continue to live independently. Laura couldn’t imagine her proud father existing any other way.

  They’d been told by the cardiologist that Theo shouldn’t climb stairs—at least not for the foreseeable future—so he and Iris would need a bedroom on the first floor. Laura suggested using the sun porch on the side of the house, which had been closed in and insulated years earlier.

  “If you have any ideas about putting it together, please tell me,” said her mother.

  Of course Laura had ideas; after all, she’d been fixing up her own home for years. She called Robby and asked him if he could manage on his own with Katie for a while longer. She’d be home in time for Christmas, she assured him. Robby said she should stay as long as she needed to. He and Katie would decorate the house and he would even finish up the Christmas shopping on Laura’s list. When Laura looked back later, she thought his voice had sounded a little odd and overly cheerful when he said all of that. But she told herself that he was just trying to be positive because he knew she and her family were worried about Theo.

  Christina stayed on in New York too, and for the next two weeks she helped Laura paint walls, stencil woodwork, and sand floors. Even Iris got into the act, and while Laura knew her mother would never actually enjoy tufting a headboard, they did laugh a lot. And at night when they were finished working, Laura would whip up a meal for them.

  “How do you do this?” Christina demanded one night as they sat down to dinner. “You just started cooking half an hour ago. You should write a book.”

  “Yes,” Phil said. He’d been coming out to the house almost every night while Laura was there. Once he had brought a couple of friends and asked her to make her famous chestnut torte.

  “He went to a gourmet cookware shop in the city and bought me a springform pan,” Laura told Robby on the phone.

  “It’s sounds like you’re having a good time.”

  She was, she realized guiltily. Now that her father was on the mend, she loved being near her family and back in the part of the country where she’d grown up. And of course she loved being so close to Manhattan. Sometimes when she was visiting Theo in the hospital, she’d take a break and walk around the streets, hoping to catch a snippet of a conversation in a language she didn’t know, or to smell the aromas of a cuisine she’d never sampled as it wafted from the open doorway of a restaurant. At those moments, she would realize how badly she wished she could share such experiences with her daughter.

  “I miss you and Katie,” she said now to Robby. “I wish you were here.”

  I wish I could take Katie to see Swan Lake at the ballet, the way my grandmother took me. We could go to Serendipity afterward for Frrrozen Hot Chocolate—that was always a favorite of mine. And I want Katie to see snow. That’s what I want most of all, for her to see the way that soft white blanket transforms everything so you don’t even recognize your own front yard. And to hear that eerie silence when the world is cold and still …

  “Well, stay as long as you like,” Robby’s voice broke into her thoughts. “There’s no hurry about getting home, Katie and I have the holiday under control.” This was the second time he’d told her to stay in New York in that same odd, overly cheerful tone of voice, and this time she didn’t ignore it.

  “Are you sure everything’s okay? You don’t need me?” she asked.

  “Laura, for God’s sake, I have an excellent command of the English language. If I said everything’s fine, it is!”

  Given that overreaction—and Robby’s strained cheeriness—she should have known something was up. But at that moment she was enjoying herself so much that she didn’t want to think about what might be happening on the West Coast. So she pushed the phone call to the back of her mind, and for a few more days she let herself bask in everyone’s compliments on her cooking and her decorating skills. She walked down Fifth Avenue and looked at the windows at Saks, which had been decorated for Christmas, and daydreamed about taking Katie to see them. She imagined watching her daughter learn to ice-skate. And she tried not to think about going back to California.

  Chapter Ten

  Sometimes, in a close family, it can seem as if your siblings know what you’re thinking before you do. And they have a spooky way of sensing that you’re about to make a change when you still think you’re going to stay with the status quo. At least, that was how it felt to Laura when she looked back on the chilly
night in late December when she found herself sitting in her parents’ kitchen in Westchester with her three brothers. The work on the downstairs bedroom was finished, Theo would be coming home from the hospital the next day, and Laura was scheduled to leave for California the day after that. So the family had gathered for a good-bye dinner for Laura. And then somehow Iris, Christina, and Janet weren’t around and Laura was sitting at the table drinking coffee with Steve, Phil, and Jimmy. It was Phil who asked the question.

  “Laura, how long has Robby been working on his dissertation?”

  It took her totally by surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s been seven years, right?” Phil went on.

  “You don’t understand what’s involved. Writing a dissertation takes time. He can’t rush it …”

  “You call seven years rushing it?” Her younger brother was going to be relentless. He could do that sometimes. “How close is Robby to finishing?”

  “I don’t see where that’s any of your business,” she started to say, but Jimmy leaned in.

  “Not everyone is meant to be an academic,” he said.

  “Getting his doctorate is Robby’s dream.”

  “We all have dreams, but sometimes we can’t make them into reality. There’s no disgrace in that, as long as we accept it and move on,” said Phil, who had done just that. His was the voice of experience.

  “But wallowing in your failure and making your loved ones share it is just selfish,” said Steve, her brother who had turned his own life around. His was another voice of experience.

  “Is Robby going to be finished this year?” Jimmy asked. “Or next? Or the year after?”

  It was a question she’d been asking herself—and refusing to admit she was asking it—for months. “He’ll be finished when he’s finished,” she said. “Now, let’s change the subject. Anyone want more coffee?”

  But her brothers were the Stern boys—they didn’t quit just because someone told them to. Especially not if that someone was their sister. “Maybe a fresh start would be good for both of you,” Jimmy said.

  “It might even be better for Robby than it would be for you, Laura,” Steve put in gently. That made her eyes start to sting. Gentleness didn’t come easily to Steve. “How much longer is he going to go on doing the dirty work for Professor Hawkins, and watching his contemporaries pass him by?”

  “And how much longer can he stand knowing that he’s the failure of his department?” Phil demanded. “You know that’s what the rest of them are saying, Laura. Universities are nasty little hotbeds of gossip.”

  She did know it. The tears were now threatening to fill her eyes.

  “I think what we’re all saying is, maybe it’s gone on long enough,” Jimmy said.

  “It has gone on long enough,” Phil put in. “If Robby doesn’t know it, then you should tell him.”

  Laura blinked the tears back. “I’d never do that! And we are going to change the damn subject right now!”

  They saw how upset she was and they finally backed off. The subject was changed. But after they had all gone home for the night, Laura made herself be honest about the real reason why she’d reacted so strongly to their suggestions. She’d been having her own doubts about Robby’s future and she’d been giving in to daydreams about moving back East. That was not only disloyal to her husband, practically speaking, it was impossible. Robby was thirty-three, which certainly wasn’t old, but it wasn’t twenty-three either, and he had a wife and child to support. He couldn’t just start over in a new career. More important, he’d never wanted to be anything but an archaeologist and it would crush him to admit that he was failing at his dream. No, Laura’s role was clear. She must keep on believing in him—and help him to believe in himself. Women had been doing that for generations, and she could do it too. Armed with that new resolve, she began packing for the trip back to California. But on the night before she was scheduled to leave, she got a phone call from Robby.

  “It was a party, Laura, just a party.” Robby’s voice on the phone was belligerent. It got that way when he was scared. “It was just some kids getting together in someone’s apartment to celebrate before they went home for the holiday break. They invited me to come over for a while, which was a compliment as far as I was concerned, so I lined up a sitter for Katie and I went. To a party in a private home. I didn’t break any of Hawkins’s damn rules about going to a bar with my students.”

  “He wasn’t talking about going to a bar, Robby. He felt you’d used bad judgment.”

  “Well, I didn’t. And I’m tired of being punished because some jerk on the alumni committee—who has more money than is good for him—didn’t want to face that his daughter is a sick girl! That’s what all of this was really about—”

  “Robby!” she broke in. “What happened?”

  “Nothing! Certainly not anything that should shock someone who works with today’s kids. I mean, if Hawkins doesn’t know by now that most of his students have experimented with pot—”

  “Oh God. There were drugs at the party?”

  “Pot, Laura. Don’t say ‘drugs’ in that melodramatic way. It was just a little marijuana.”

  “Which is illegal. Don’t tell me you—”

  “Of course I didn’t do pot with my students! I’m not an idiot. And besides, I’ve tried the stuff, and I don’t like it.”

  That was what he’d tell the students when he refused to smoke it. He’d say it in a way that would let them know that he wasn’t disapproving of them. No indeed. Oh-so-cool-and-hip Mr. McAllister had already tried “the stuff” and he just didn’t happen to like it. And of course he wouldn’t mention the law the kids were breaking, or the rules of the university they were violating. Above all, he wouldn’t say that he was going to leave the party if the drug use continued because he was bound by his job to report it. He’d stay, and he’d smile in that charming way of his, and he’d say, “Please don’t call me Mr. McAllister tonight. That’s my father. I’m Robby.” That was his idea of setting boundaries, as he’d been told to do. Fear grabbed at Laura deep in her stomach and twisted it. She was sure she knew how the evening had ended.

  “What happened next?”

  “The party got noisy. Really noisy.” There was a pause. When he spoke again the belligerent tone was gone. Now he was starting to feel sorry for himself. “That was my one big mistake, Laura. I should have made the kids keep the noise down. But to tell you the truth I was having fun—more than I’ve had in a while. So I didn’t say anything. And of course one of the neighbors called the cops.”

  She could picture it. “I see.”

  “The locals called the campus police—town and gown courtesy, I think. So it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “They saw the pot. And they reported it. But only to the university. And the university didn’t want anyone going to jail.” He drew in a deep breath. His voice was getting wobbly. Now his eyes would be filling with tears. “The upshot is, three kids have been suspended, the boy who threw the party was expelled, and … and next year your husband will no longer be a teaching adjunct at Custis University. Hawkins, the damn hypocrite, has informed me that he will be canning me.”

  There it was. The knot in her stomach let go. The worst had happened.

  “He said he was going to keep me on until the end of the school year so no one would say he was firing me because of the party,” Robby went on. “He seemed to think I should be grateful to him, but I knew he was really covering his own behind. He’s afraid the whole mess will reflect badly on him so he’s just going to bury it. He doesn’t even want to try to stand up for me.”

  “I guess that was to be expected,” she finally managed to say.

  “It didn’t have to be, damn it! I’m a good teacher, Laura. One of the best. Everyone says so. He doesn’t have to do this!”

  “What about your thesis?”

  “Oh, I’m free to pursue that anywhere I want to—just not
with him as my advisor.”

  So Robby had finally done it. He’d lost his slender foothold at the university. And since there was no way he’d find a place in another doctoral program at another university without Hawkins putting in a good word, his dream was gone too. The dream that Laura had made her own for seven years.

  “Laura, are you there? Look, if it does any good, I know I screwed up. I’m not saying Hawkins hasn’t been gunning for me because he has. But I knew that and I should have been more careful. So I know you’ve got to be angry …”

  She heard the hurt in his voice, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to comfort him or try to find a way to make him feel better. The phone was in her mother’s kitchen; she looked at the cabinets above the sink. They were badly scuffed; she wished she’d had time to paint them before going back to California. Back to … what?

  “Robby, what about our house?”

  “It’s faculty housing. We’ll lose it as soon as the school year ends.”

  And his salary would stop. It had never seemed like enough, but now that she knew it would be gone, it felt like a fortune. And it would be gone in … how many months? Four and a half? Then all they’d have would be her small savings account, and they’d need that for the move … Where will we go? With a little girl and a huge dog and no job, how will we live?

  “Do you think you could talk to Hawkins, and explain?”

  “Are you out of your mind? You want me to crawl to him? I won’t do it. And there’s no way I’m going back to Blair’s Falls either.”

  That, at least, was a tiny bit of good news. Laura had finally seen his little hometown and she had not been impressed. Plus, her in-laws were about as fond of her as she was of them.

  “My father would love to see me come home with my tail between my legs! The son of a bitch has been waiting for me to fail all of my life. And it would break my mother’s heart. I can’t do that to her … I can’t …” Robby was sobbing. And she finally felt sorry for him.