by Belva Plain
To lose a child to sickness or to death is the worst thing, the very worst.…
“Mrs. Grey,” Nanny said. “She’s got another one of her no-talking spells. I can’t get a word out of her this morning.”
“It’s the second time this week, isn’t it?”
“The third. I can’t for the life of me figure it out. I’ve never seen a child behave this way.”
She must not show alarm to Nanny because it was contagious, and everyone in the house must clearly ignore what Tina was doing. Those were Dr. Vanderwater’s instructions. Tina’s refusal to speak was simply a device for getting attention, and the way to stop her was not to pay attention. Ultimately, she would find it didn’t work.
“I simply don’t know what to do, Mrs. Grey.”
Sally said quietly, “You do know what to do. Nothing.”
“What’s the trouble?” asked Dan, who was late for work.
“The same. She won’t talk.”
His slight frown deepened the pair of vertical short lines between his eyebrows. “I don’t know,” he murmured, as if to himself, and reached out to caress Susannah’s head. Nanny, seeing that there was no helpful advice forthcoming, went back downstairs to take care of Tina’s breakfast, leaving Sally and Dan alone. They were both looking at the baby; neither spoke until Dan began.
“We’re seeing the same thing. She looks just like Tina at that age.”
“Yes.” And then a painful cry flew out of Sally’s mouth. “Oh, Dan, what are we going to do?”
“I don’t see what else we can do but follow instructions as we are doing.”
“These silences of hers are so senseless. I can only think, sometimes it seems as if she wants to punish us.”
“Punish! For what? What in God’s name have we done?”
“I don’t know. She seems so defiant. The way she looks back at me when I say something and she simply refuses to answer.”
“Ah, Sally. Defiant? She’s five years old.”
“It’s possible. Children defy you when they’re two. And yet sometimes I do think it’s not defiance. I think she’s just plain scared.”
“Of what? There’s nothing to be scared of. Unless Susannah’s done it to her. That’s what we’ve all decided, isn’t it?”
“Tina’s getting worse, Dan. Let’s face it. And if the new baby’s the reason, I should think she’d be getting better instead.”
“Not necessarily. Not at all.”
“Well, then, give me your reasoning.”
“No, you give me your theory.”
At the changing table, Sally was diapering Susannah. For a moment she did not answer him. Then, although not quite certain of her answer, she gave it anyway.
“Sometimes I think we should take her back to Dr. Lisle.”
“No, and again no. That makes no sense.”
“Why? Dr. Vanderwater isn’t getting anywhere.”
“Everyone knows that behavior problems aren’t like a broken leg. You can’t say, ‘In six weeks,’ or whatever, ‘we’ll be ready to take the cast off.’ Give the man a chance.”
“I have a hunch he’s worried himself. Or perhaps, baffled would be more accurate.”
“Hunches aren’t worth much. And I doubt that Vanderwater is very often baffled, either. He’s the best man in his field that we have here. Dr. Lisle can’t come close. She’s not in his league.”
Sally felt hopeless. The day wasn’t an hour old, and already she was spent. When, after laying the baby in the playpen, she turned her face to Dan, he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
“Ah, Sally.” And putting his arms around her, he pleaded, “It kills me to see you like this. It’s not like you. Listen, honey. We have no choice. Patience is what this is all about. And thank God we don’t have a Down syndrome or one dying of cancer.”
Sally shuddered against his shoulder. “I know. But there are other things. Not like those, but other things.”
“I hope you don’t mean that stuff Dr. Lisle put in your head.”
“I’m not sure. I keep having crazy thoughts.”
“Yes, and they are pretty crazy. I thought you’d gotten rid of them.”
“I thought I had, too.”
“We’re not going to make any changes, Sally. You can’t keep shifting a child from one doctor to another every time another idea pops up in your head.
“I don’t like to leave you so despondent, but I have to go to work,” Dan said, releasing her.
“I’m seeing Dr. Vanderwater this morning, you know.”
“Good. I hope he’ll ease your mind.”
Each time her eyes left the doctor’s face, they met the four sturdy, curly-haired boys in the photograph. Wholesome, they were, grinning and twinkling. The youngest, holding a ball between chubby hands, was laughing wide, showing his neat baby teeth. Tina had used to look like that not very long ago.…
“With all respect to you, Doctor,” Sally said. “I have to admit that I haven’t entirely put out of mind that other possibility.” She stopped. It was difficult to go on, and this very hesitance on her part made her angry. She, Sally Grey, who had always made her own way in the world and who had trembled before nobody and no situation! Now look at her!
And in a quivering voice, she went on. “I have such dreadful dreams, Doctor. Tina was standing in some high place, a window ledge or a precipice, and I wanted to catch her or call to her, but I was afraid that if I should startle her, she would fall, and anyway, I wasn’t able to move, my voice wouldn’t work—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. My dreams are hardly relevant. It’s only that I’m so afraid.”
“Because of that other diagnosis?”
She looked away from the man’s serious scrutiny to the wholesome boys and said very low, “My husband thinks it’s absolutely ridiculous, and he’s very smart, so maybe it is ridiculous.”
“Well, tell me why you can’t put the idea out of your mind other than what you’ve already told me, that Tina is no better than when she first came to me.”
She said hastily, “Oh, I don’t mean to complain—” when Dr. Vanderwater interrupted, “I’m not sensitive. If you have a complaint, say what it is.”
“That’s just the trouble. I know these things take time. I know it perfectly well. But there have been changes. Not wanting people to touch her. For instance, my husband has a cousin, a man she used to love. Now she won’t go near him.”
“You said she doesn’t want ‘people’ to touch her. Do I understand that you are singling out this man?”
“Well, yes and no.”
The doctor smiled slightly. “In my experience, an answer like that generally means yes. What is it about him in particular?”
She was feeling inept. What she had to say was vaporous and unconvincing, even to herself.
“He’s odd,” she said lamely. “Unmarried until a few weeks ago. Reclusive. Just—just queer, that’s all.”
“Your description fits a good many of the world’s geniuses. It hasn’t anything to do with being a sexual psychopath.”
“I know. But he’s always paid so much attention to Tina, hugs her and puts her on his lap and gives her presents. I’m not making it clear,” she apologized. She was making Clive sound like Santa Claus.
“I understand you. I haven’t changed my own opinion at all, but since you have these feelings, the most I can suggest is what I suggested before: Keep watch over the child, as I’m sure you do. I certainly don’t want to close off any possibilities. Evil does spring up in unexpected places. It can be anyone, even fathers, although I don’t think it is anyone.”
She was horrified. See the dank, dark pit where my thoughts have led me. The shame, that even for the fraction of a second such a thing should flash into a person’s head. And she closed her mind, snapping it shut as if she were locking a box, and throwing away the key.
“I’m going on vacation for a month, Mrs. Grey. Meanwhile, you know what to do. Try not to let yourself act too disturbed, either by ta
ntrums or silences. As your husband wisely said, patience is everything.”
Yes, she had probably sounded foolish to have mentioned without any evidence worth a penny her “husband’s cousin,” and she was overcome with shame. Poor Clive, married now and apparently, for the first time in his life, really, really enjoying life. “He walks around the office now as if he’d won either the Congressional Medal or the lottery,” Dan had said. On the other hand, a man could be married and still—
Then she thought, This is preposterous. The seed Dr. Lisle had sown had grown into a giant, strangling jungle weed inside her head. Clive, Ian, Uncle Oliver, Nanny’s nice son who comes to visit, the handyman who brings his little boy, that neighbor near her parents’ last summer—preposterous all. Yet what about the father of Tina’s friend Emma down the road? He’s a strange, unfriendly, dour man. I never really liked him—
“Oh my God, stop it, Sally!” she cried aloud.
Clive’s house was charming. Lila Burns had performed a miracle in little less than a month, Sally thought as Roxanne showed Happy and her through the completed rooms. Lila, given the magic wand of money almost unlimited, had filled the house with oriental rugs and handwoven carpets, with polished brass, English silver, and French porcelains, with eighteenth-century mahogany and curly maple, and nineteenth-century genre paintings. Clive had known what he wanted, and Lila had understood perfectly. In the dark red den, one wall was almost covered with gilt-framed horses. In the blue and white living room, the fireplace was bordered with flowered tiles. Scarlet gladioli stood in a jug on a chest between the windows.
Roxanne put a tray with iced tea and cookies on the table and sat down. The August day was miserably humid; one felt it even in the air-conditioned room. Sally’s skin was clammy, and her dress clung to her, yet Roxanne in white linen looked fresh.
“I love your dress,” Happy said.
“Do you? It’s from my trousseau. Clive picked it out. He buys everything for me.”
“You’re lucky he has good taste,” Sally observed. “Now, if I had to depend on Dan, oh, that would be something! He says, ‘That’s a nice dress, is it new?’ ‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s four years old.’ ”
The women laughed. Conversations were moving easily among them. Ever since Roxanne and Clive had returned from their wedding trip, the two older women had made an effort to welcome her. And Sally, who always tended to analyze motives, her own as well as other people’s, concluded that this particular motive stemmed from well-bred courtesy, a practical need for family peace, from curiosity, and from compassion. A strange mixture!
And so, with that compassion, she tried to imagine the need that had propelled Clive into this sudden marriage. She tried to imagine the kinds of deprivation that had turned the young woman sitting opposite into one who would “settle” for a house and some jewelry in return for Clive. She was surely not in love! It could not possibly be for her what it had been for Sally Grey on that day in Paris six years ago, and still was.
Roxanne remarked, “Don’t summer afternoons make you lazy!”
Summer afternoons. Henry James had called those the most beautiful words in the English language. But that depended somewhat, didn’t it, on where you were spending the afternoon, on who and where you were: a girl packing cartons in a vast, noisy shipping shed, or a lady drinking iced tea in her own cool, blue and white room. And a rush of pity, contradictory and perverse, traveled through Sally’s veins.
“Sometimes I don’t know myself,” Roxanne remarked. “Sometimes I wake up and for a minute, I don’t know where I am. Or, if I do know, I think that this can’t ever last. All this money Clive spent—” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. He says you aren’t supposed to talk about what things cost.”
Sally laughed. “That’s right. Don’t talk about it. Just let people see it.”
“What I like about you,” Roxanne said, “is your sense of humor. You see right through things.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Oh, I do want to do everything right! Clive’s been so good to me. Did you know he’s paid for my sister to go to camp this month? And he’s arranging to send her away to school. She wants to go to Florida, so he’s asking about a school down there. He’s been so good to us.”
“It works both ways,” Sally said. “Dan tells me Clive’s a different man in the office. He used to be”—and about to say “laconic,” she changed to “quiet” instead—“very much to himself, you know. But now he tells about how you feed him, what a great cook you are and how you took care of him when he got sick on the ship, and—”
Happy interrupted. “Clive was sick? I didn’t know that.”
“He was having coughing spells, as usual, but one night he really couldn’t stop, so we got the ship’s doctor to give him some medicine. The cough stopped, but he had some fever with it, and his ribs hurt. ‘Smoker’s cough,’ Clive said.”
Happy loved medical conversations. At home she had a shelf filled with popular books of medical advice. She said now, “I disapprove. What Clive said doesn’t matter at all. It’s what the doctors say that matters. He ought to look into it, Roxanne.”
“Well, the doctor told him to do that as soon as he got home, but he’s stubborn, he hasn’t gone yet. I think he’s having too good a time with this house.”
And with some other things, too, Sally thought, a small, ribald smile barely touching her mouth.
“Clive said you had a special recipe for chocolate cake, Happy. I was wondering whether you’d give it to me. I love to cook, you know.”
“Why, of course I will. Get me a pencil and paper. I’ll give it to you right now. Those two brothers are perfect fiends for chocolate.”
“She certainly doesn’t look domestic, but you never know,” said Happy as the two visitors drove away together.
“She’s a fast learner. Did you notice what she said about not mentioning the price of things? Clive’s transforming her. Even her speech is changing. She didn’t use one swear word all the time we were there.”
“She’ll soon be too elegant for you and me,” Happy laughed. “You should have heard me the other night when I cracked my elbow on the corner of the bathroom counter.”
“Remember what she said about her father that first day? She must have had a horrible life.”
“I was awfully embarrassed not to know that Clive had been sick while they were away. That’s Ian’s fault. He’s so annoyed about that marriage that he won’t mention anything concerning Clive. And it’s not as if Ian were the kind of man who’d care about a society match or anything.”
“No. Although he did make one himself, didn’t he?” Sally teased.
“Big deal. You know what I meant. With all respects to Oliver, Ian’s not like Oliver in that way. I can’t understand why he’s acting like this. He hasn’t even been in Clive’s house, and it’s over a month now. I’ve told him he’s being damned rude. Practically everybody we know has been there. Of course, they’re all curious, we know that. But what’s the difference?”
“Does he explain himself at all?”
“Oh, he hinted something once about a man’s buying a wife, and if that’s what a man wants to do, good luck to him.”
“I hope so, and to her, too. You really can’t dislike her. At least, I can’t.”
“I have a feeling it’s not going to be easy sailing for them. I have a feeling that Clive’s a sick man, sicker than he wants to admit.”
It crossed Sally’s mind that Happy might also have feelings about Tina. She had, after all, seen and heard plenty at the nursery school. But Happy would be too polite to speak of the subject unless spoken to. And Sally, resolved to preserve Tina’s privacy, had no intention of speaking to anyone.
Back to the current subject of Clive’s marriage, she reflected, “It’s really extraordinary. Dan never expected him to be married at all, while I never ruled it out. People marry so much later these days, although goodness knows we didn’t. I expected him to bring back some quiet, unobtrusive intel
lectual out of a library or a laboratory.”
“Well,” said Happy, repeating in her careful way, “it just goes to show, you never, never know, do you?”
In the airy, mirrored dressing room, Roxanne stood looking at herself. Clive was right. Simplicity was richer-looking. And with a grimace, she remembered the red satin dress, too slippery, too loud, too ruffled, too low-cut, that she had worn at their first dinner. This plain white linen, which had cost three times as much as the other, was far more flattering to her skin, her figure, and her hair.
Carefully, guarding against lipstick stains, she took it off and put it away. Three sides of the large closet were lined with clothes, silks, cottons, linens, a Scottish tweed suit ready for fall, a leather jacket bought in Italy, and shoes and bags and the pale straw hat in which she had been married. Three or four times during every day she was drawn to this closet simply to look again at all her beautiful things. They made her so happy! As she had said, it was like a dream.
Yet, when you wake up from such dreams, you are not always happy.… She thought: The truth is that I feel—well, I feel nasty. I feel as if I had stolen all this. Well, haven’t I? Can he really believe I went mad with love for him? Or that I am dying for night to come so that we can get into that Chippendale or whatever-you-call-it bed together? It isn’t exactly comfortable to know that you’re a liar or to put on a smiling act when you’re taking a walk or eating your dinner, a passionate act when you’re in bed. Yes, I feel nasty.
She walked to the window. Below lay the rolling lawn and the stand of spruce with which Clive said he had “fallen in love.” Colorado blue spruce, they were. Well, a tree was a tree. But they were pretty.
