by Belva Plain
So where to hide the portrait until he was feeling more himself? They didn’t have many closets in the house, and the few they did have were small and full to the bursting point. It would be impossible to conceal a large painting in one of them. The same was true of all other potential storage places he could think of; everything was so full. He and Iris had accumulated so many things during all their years together … so many things … and so many years … He forced his mind to stop drifting.
The only place where the picture would be safe from Iris was the cellar. Going all the way down into it, and then climbing back up the stairs would not be a good idea for a man who had been experiencing chest pain—even though it was better since the brandy—but there was a ledge on the wall at the side of the staircase. He could walk down a couple of steps, put the painting on the ledge and come back up to wait for his wife. Two steps weren’t going to hurt him, and the painting would be safely out of sight on the ledge.
The two steps didn’t hurt him. But holding the painting up to put it on the ledge brought the pain back. Excruciating pain. Pain he knew from his last heart attack. His legs buckled with the force of it so that he had to drag himself back up the two steps, and he only managed to get halfway through the cellar doorway before he collapsed. But the portrait was hidden.
–—
He came to slowly, fighting his way through mists. He was in a hospital room—intensive care. He wanted to ask what had happened but he didn’t seem to be able to form words. Or maybe he was just too tired to try. Doctors and nurses came in and out of the room—speaking in soft, soothing voices. He wanted to tell them not to bother being so kind. You don’t have to be so careful with me, he wanted to say. I’m one of you, I’ve seen this happen before and I know what’s going on. He wanted to reassure them that it was all right. I wasn’t sure it would be, he would tell them. Right up to the end I didn’t know how I would feel about dying, but now I am dying and it’s all right. I’ve been a lucky, lucky man, you see. How could a man who has been so lucky have any regrets? He would have said all of this if he could have formed the words. And then he would have told them all his wonderful, glorious joke. I am here in this bed because I went on a lover’s quest, he would have said. I am Tristan. I, the practical man of science, am Romeo. They probably wouldn’t have understood, but Paul Werner would have. So would Anna.
–—
Faces passed in front of him and he would have liked to have talked to them. To his sons, all three of them with desperate smiles, hoping he wouldn’t see their red, wet eyes, he would have said, Please, know what you have done for me. You healed my heart and made it whole. You gave me laughter and tears and a purpose. Because of you, my name will live on when so many others were lost. Please remember that, and don’t be sad. When Laura’s bright face and dry eyes passed in front of him—no weeping for her, at least not where anyone would see it—he would have said, Be happy, my little girl. You are good and beautiful and strong and do not be afraid of that. Be happy.
Iris’s face did not pass in front of him in the same way that others did. Hers was a constant he could see whenever he floated back to his hospital bed from the mists that were taking him away more and more. He didn’t mind the mists, because in them time was fluid. Sometimes he was a boy playing outside the mountain lodge his family owned in the Arlberg, sometimes he was a young father at the beach watching Steve and Jimmy running at the edge of the ocean. In the mists he was strong again, able to run after his wayward boys, and able to tell his daughter how beautiful she was. When he came back from the mists, he was in his hospital bed, lying on his back, with machines hissing and beeping. And he was unable to say what was in his mind and heart.
He would have given in to the mists already, if it hadn’t been for Iris. She sat upright next to his bed, holding her body together with her arms, with her love in her eyes. For her sake, he would have tried to stop the process that he as a doctor knew he’d already begun. But I can’t stop it, Iris. Not even for you. And the truth is, my darling, I don’t want to. I’m so tired.
But before he could float away there was something he had to do. He had to find a way to say these words to Iris: I told you something many years ago, while I was still so full of rage and pain. I said, “When I die, there will be no funeral for me. No rabbi who never knew me saying words that have no meaning for me, over my dead carcass.” That is what I said to you, and I have never told you that I have changed my mind. I still don’t believe in your religion, my Iris. But I know you will need it. So sit shiva for me, if that will help you. Say the Kaddish for me and give yourself whatever comfort you can. And then go on to smile and live. That is how you will honor me, Iris. That and remembering that I love you. These were the words he had to say. He had to say them before he could go.
And so the next time the mists came for him, when he looked over to the place where Iris sat and saw her, he didn’t let himself float away. With a huge effort of muscles and blood and nerve cells, he gathered up all his strength and he pushed the words he needed from his brain. The mists rushed at him, but he threw them back, and forced the words he needed to his lips. At his side came the sounds of machines, of the monitors attached to his body, whining out warnings. But he kept on pushing. People ran into the room, Iris’s face was the color of his bedsheets, her eyes were huge and black with panic, and there was a roaring in his own ears that drowned out the monitors, but he had to keep on pushing. Had to keep on fighting. And then, finally, miraculously, a word came out of his mouth. It was only one word, not the speech he’d wanted to make. But it would have to do. Because that one word had taken all his strength. It was up to all of them now, Iris and his children, to do what they could. He was finished. The mists came back and now he let them overtake him.
–—
“Oh my God,” Iris cried. “What happened?”
“He said your name, Mom,” Jimmy told her.
“Even though the doctors told you he’d never talk again,” Steven said.
“That’s how much he loved you,” Phil said.
“Good-bye, Daddy,” Laura whispered.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Iris wasn’t going to cry. She had promised herself she wouldn’t and she could keep that promise—as long as she didn’t let herself think too much. That had always been her biggest failing: she thought too much. Mama used to say that, and Theo had said it more than once too. Not lately, but back in the days when they were young. The days that were gone forever. But she wasn’t going to think about that. She wasn’t going to think about what was gone.
It was afternoon, and her children were sitting around her in her living room, waiting for her to tell them what she wanted them to do; their father had died that morning. But she wasn’t going to let herself think about that. If she did, there was a scream in her throat waiting to burst out. Her survival depended on focusing on what was in front of her. She studied her children’s faces.
Steven, her brilliant oldest, was weeping silently, tears he couldn’t stop pouring down. He would relive all the bad times he had caused his father, she knew, and he would blame himself all over again for them. But sitting next to him was the small tigress named Christina who would not let grief or guilt take him over. The girl Iris had learned to love would protect her most difficult child from everyone, including himself.
Iris’s gaze moved on to Jimmy. Doctor that he was, he was trying to take comfort somehow from the fact that there had been little suffering, that his father’s life had been extended after the first heart attack by good care. He wanted to be brave, this loving, accepting second son of hers, but he was holding his wife’s hand so tightly that there was a danger that he might break the bones. That was all right, Janet was strong enough and she would keep him safe.
Phil did not have anyone to keep him safe, and that was a worry. But Phil didn’t have the same needs that her other two sons did. Perhaps it was being the youngest, and always having been more on his own, or perhaps it was th
at he had already lost something precious and had learned to get through it. Phil would take care of himself.
That left Laura. Robby was coming back to New York to be with her. He was already on his way. That was as it should be, her husband would be at her side. The man she had married. The father of her child. Not that other one with his wild black hair. Perhaps now she would understand, this was what life was all about. When your father died, it was your husband who held you when you started to sway at the graveside, your husband who stayed with you at your mother’s house on that horrible first night. He was the one you turned to with your aching, broken heart … And when you didn’t have your husband, your Theo, with his compassion, and his humanity that had always been greater than yours … what did you do? Dear God …
No! I will not think about me. I will not let my mind drift to Theo. Because it will drive me mad. I will think about my children sitting here. I will smile at them, and reassure them.
But before she could do that, Laura started talking. “Mom, we have to make plans,” she said ever so gently.
But there were no plans to be made. That had been made clear to Iris long ago. “There’s nothing to be done,” she told the faces surrounding her.
None of them understood. “You should call your synagogue, your rabbi will know how to advise you,” Janet said.
“He’ll help you with the service,” said Jimmy.
“No,” she told them.
“You shouldn’t try to make the decisions by yourself, Mom,” Steve said.
“It’s the rabbi’s job.” That was Phil.
“There will be no service.”
No one will say the beautiful words I love, “Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, the True Judge.” No one will say the Kaddish for him. We will not sit shiva. Not for seven days, not for three days, not for one. His death will go unmarked—the man I loved for more than thirty years. I will not honor him because it was what he wanted. And suddenly, the scream in her throat had words. And it will kill me!
But she couldn’t let the scream out. Because it would rake the roof of her house and echo up and down her quiet street and she would not be able to stop it.
“I’m going to my room,” she told her children. She ran from the living room. But not to go to the bedroom she and Theo had been using for the last three years. No, not to the space they had furnished for a sick man who should not be climbing stairs every night. She ran up those stairs now, to their real room. She opened the door, and there it was—their bed.
She and Theo had bought it when they were first married, and they had never replaced it; not during their plush years when they lived in the big house they never could quite afford and not during the hard years when they had moved to this small house and had to squeeze it into the cramped master bedroom. She closed the door behind her and sat on the bed. This was where she had slept at Theo’s side for more than a quarter of a century. It was where they had made love with joy and passion, and it was where they had had sex out of need and habit. They had comforted each other in this bed, they had ignored each other too, and quarreled and made up. They had conceived four children here.
There was a knock on the door. “Mom, it’s Laura. I’m coming in.”
Don’t.
But Laura walked in and sat next to her on the bed. “What do you mean you’re not going to have a service for Dad?” she asked.
Iris felt the scream starting to rise again. “Those were his wishes,” she forced herself to say calmly.
“But what about you? Your faith is important to you.”
Please, Laura, go away. Or keep your mouth shut.
“I’m going to honor your father’s wishes.”
“Dad would want you to have whatever you need. Mom, look at me, please. And listen to me. You have to do what’s right for you now.”
Don’t say that.
“You have to do what feels good to you.”
No!
“Give yourself what you need.”
No!
“Dad is gone …”
And without warning the scream broke loose. But when it came out of Iris’s mouth, it wasn’t the wail of anguish she had feared, it was a cold hiss of fury. “I see,” she heard herself spit at the daughter she loved. “Now I’m supposed to be like you, is that it? I’m supposed to do what pleases me, and to hell with everyone else.”
Laura’s face went white with surprise, and she pulled back as if she’d been hit. But Iris didn’t care. It felt good to lash out, good to let all the anger go. “Now you say I’m supposed to please myself. I guess I should have done it all along. I shouldn’t have tried to be a good wife, I should have slept around. Slept with any man if it felt good to me. You know all about that, don’t you?” She watched the realization dawn in Laura’s eyes.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “How did you—?”
“What difference does it make how I found out?” And finally Iris was screaming. “What goddamned difference? You can’t deny it.”
“No. I can’t.”
“Get out of here.”
“Mom, it isn’t the way you think.”
“You mean it isn’t ugly and cheap? Because that’s what I think!”
“Did Daddy know?”
“Yes. I told him.”
“You … How could you? You had no right.”
“I had every right, and he had every right to know. He was your father. Of course I told him.”
Now Laura was crying. Well, let her. She should cry. Your father took your side. But I am not going to tell you that.
“It was none of your business,” Laura sobbed.
“None of my business? You’re my child. Robby has been in my family for more than ten years. He’s Katie’s father and she loves him. Do you think all of that just goes away because you decide that you’re not in love with your husband anymore, or that he doesn’t understand you, or any one of the hundreds of tawdry clichés people tell themselves when they want to justify having sex on the side?”
“It isn’t like that—”
“No? What is it, Laura?”
“I don’t have to answer that. Not to you, or anyone else.”
“Fine, then I’ll tell you what it is. It’s the end of a marriage, and a home and a little girl’s childhood. It’s a betrayal of trust. It’s cruel and it’s selfish and it’s cowardly. I’m ashamed of you.” She was crying now too. The sobs were wrenching themselves out of someplace too deep inside to reach, and she was gulping for air. “I never thought I’d hear myself saying that, but I am. So ashamed.”
“That’s your problem, not mine.”
“Get out of my room, Laura. Leave me alone.”
The next thing she heard was the sound of the bedroom door closing behind her daughter.
Chapter Twenty-eight
In the end there was a service for Theo—a nondenominational memorial service held in the auditorium of the hospital where he had given lectures and taught several seminars. The room was big, but not nearly large enough for the crowd that spilled out into the hospital corridors. As she stood at the door greeting people it seemed to Laura as if everyone who had ever met her father had turned out to honor him. There were those he’d worked with: the nurses, doctors, technicians, secretaries and janitors at the hospital, some of them still wearing their uniforms so they could hurry back after the service to finish a shift. There were the patients he’d treated, and their families. His students came, as did many of Iris’s students and colleagues. And then there were the friends and neighbors who had shared lemonade on the porch with Theo and Iris and had attended barbeques in their small backyard. On and on the people came to celebrate the life of a man who had arrived in this country knowing no one. Only in America.
There were flowers in vases—at the end of the service each woman would be handed a rose as she left the auditorium—but no music. Flowers were not a part of the Jewish tradition—but then, as Janet pointed out, this was not even close to being a t
raditional ceremony. In the days before the service so many friends had asked if they could say a few words that it became clear to the family that they would have to choose a list of speakers or they’d never be able to leave the auditorium. Steven gave the formal eulogy, stumbling a bit over the words he’d so carefully written, but it was Robby who had brought them all to laughter and tears with the stories he told. But then, Laura thought, Robby had always been good in front of an audience.
It felt unreal to Laura to watch how easily he slipped back into the role of a beloved son-in-law to Iris in the days that followed. He brought her cups of tea and little meals on small plates that she could nibble, and Laura could see how grateful Iris was to have him there. Laura couldn’t begin to figure out how she felt about her husband’s return. There was a comfort in the fact that he was a familiar presence, and he was eager to please in a way that he hadn’t been for a long time. But in some ways he seemed alien, like someone she had known years ago when she was a totally different person. That didn’t make any sense, she knew, but she wasn’t thinking clearly. She was too raw from her father’s death—and her confrontation with her mother.
That had been so ugly … She’d thought surely she and Iris would have to talk about it again when they were both cooler. But they hadn’t, not until a week after the service. Then Iris had asked Laura to come upstairs to her bedroom—she’d taken to sleeping in the master bedroom again—when Robby and Katie were out on the porch.
