by Belva Plain
Since that awful night and through the days that followed she had scarcely cried; no doubt she had been too shocked and terrified to cry. But lately, tears were always hovering just behind her eyes. He stood watching her wipe them away.
“I’m not crying. Why should you? Maybe I’ll do some good with my death. My body, what’s left of the wreck, is going to science. Maybe some clever brain will find a clue in some piece of Clive Grey. ‘Aha!’ it will say, ‘here I am, the answer to the riddle of cancer, and it’s about time you found me.’ ”
“Ah, don’t!”
She burst into weeping and ran out, up the stairs and into the room where she now slept alone. It was cold; she was cold. The chill seeped into her bones, and she took a thick sweater from the closet. Hand knit, read the label, and Made in France. One of Clive’s presents. But wasn’t everything Clive’s gift? And now she turned hot with shame. It was all so ugly. Ugly.
At the window she stood looking out at the snow-covered garden, the place where the rose bed lay, and wondered where they would be when it next came into bloom. Perhaps it was true that he would be dead by then, his wretched, pitiful life over. Really, really he didn’t deserve such an end. And I, she thought, and I didn’t mean things to turn out this way. I don’t know what I could have been thinking of, or whether I was thinking at all, but only feeling, wanting …
From the stair landing the tall clock chimed the half hour. She remembered the day they had bought it, remembered Clive’s delight; “a gem,” he had called it. Every Sunday morning he wound it and every Sunday morning explained again how one must be careful not to overwind it. He was such a good soul! If only she could have loved him in the way he wanted! He loved me so, she thought. I was for him what Ian was for me.…
Through the fog of tears she stood gazing into the dark afternoon. Presently she heard Clive coming up the stairs and into the room, but she did not turn until he touched her shoulder.
“I shouldn’t have spoken like that just now,” he said gently. “I’m terribly sorry. Terribly ashamed.”
“That’s all right. I understand.”
“The trouble is all these thoughts. I try to drive them away, and mostly I’m able to, but every few days they’re back again. I ask myself whether you and Ian can possibly have known each other before we were married. He behaved so strangely that day I brought you to meet Father. Then I tell myself that’s so far-fetched it’s ridiculous.”
She said nothing. What good would the truth do him now?
“If only I could wipe out of my head the picture of you two in bed!” Closing his eyes, Clive shook his head as if he were actually trying to dispel the picture. Then, opening them, he said ruefully, “But this sort of thing won’t help either of us. I know that.”
“It’s all right. I understand,” she repeated.
“Yes, I guess you do. You’ve been very kind to me since—since everything happened.”
“I’ve wanted to be. It’s the way I feel.”
“Christ, life is hard.”
“You never know what’s coming next, do you?”
“Are you worried about the future? You needn’t be. You’ll be all right,” he said. “You really will.”
“Did you mean that about the cem—about dying?”
“No. People say things when they’re angry.”
“I hope you didn’t mean it, Clive. You’re too young to die.”
“I guess Sam Jenks down our street feels that way, too,” Clive said. “But then, he’s only ninety-one.”
“I guess so.”
“Come on, smile. I don’t want to see you sad. And I want you to stay here, Roxanne. This is your home. If you want to stay, that is.”
“Thank you. I do.”
“Then come downstairs. We can watch the news together. Take my hand.”
“One good thing he has going for him,” Dan said, “is Roxanne, surprisingly enough.”
They were on their way that Sunday afternoon to visit Clive. During the past week, he had been at the office only once, and then for just half a day.
“Yes,” Dan continued, “I wouldn’t have thought by the looks of her in the beginning, that she’d turn out to be so domestic, so devoted. She’s certainly trying hard to pull him through. And you know, in spite of everything, I’m willing to bet he’ll make it. He certainly looks bad, but that’s to be expected, with chemotherapy. It’s Oliver who’s really set him back. Damn! The police don’t seem to be getting anywhere. They haven’t even found the weapon yet.”
“What will they do if they find it?” asked Sally.
“That depends on where they find it, on where it was bought, whether licensed or not, all sorts of clues.”
She was thinking: When can I tell him, how can I? To put this weight upon him, to make him an accessory after the fact … I can’t. Can’t tell the doctor that I’m ill, that I don’t sleep, that food doesn’t want to go down and sometimes comes back up. I am ill …
The car drove past the mini-mall. People were shopping; their station wagons were filled with children and dogs. The sweetshop window was decorated with boxes of valentine chocolates, red hearts in white paper frills. She must remember to get two tiny chocolate hearts for the girls. Susannah was old enough now to hold out her arms and demand everything that Tina had.
She thought: What will happen to them if I am found out and sent to prison? And to Dan. And to my shattered parents.
“It baffles me,” Dan said, “that Ian can be so hardheaded about that marriage. He simply ignores the woman. It’s just not right. You’d think he was a duke whose brother had married out of the aristocracy. I never thought he had that kind of snob stuff in him.”
All, all unimportant, Sally was thinking. Even if by some chance they never found her out—and she didn’t believe that for a moment, because they always did find out—she would have to live with this thing inside her, a thing as lethal as whatever had grown inside Clive. And she asked herself whether it was possible to harbor such a thing without cracking, without going crazy and blurting it all out in a public place, on the street or at the market. Or what if she were to dream aloud, to talk in her sleep some night?
“You’re so quiet,” Dan said. “What is it?”
She was staring ahead through the windshield, but still she sensed that his head was turned toward her and she turned back to smile at him.
“No, I just haven’t anything too much to say.”
He laughed, retorting, “That’s certainly not like you.” And added then, “But I can read your mind. You’re thinking, as usual, about Tina.”
“I’m thinking,” she remembered truthfully, “that I see some signs of improvement.”
“Enumerate them for me.”
“Well, she hasn’t had one of her no-talking spells for two weeks now. She hasn’t been glued to that darn carousel as much. And you saw her on the floor this morning rolling the felt ball to the baby.”
“That was a whale of a tantrum she had yesterday, though.”
“We have to take it bit by bit, Dan.”
At the latest interview, Dr. Lisle had advised her not to bring up the painful subject with Tina. If the child should mention it, Sally was simply to say that the bad man had gone away, and she would never see him again. Sometimes Sally hoped that her own personal dilemma would be solved if Tina herself were to tell Dan what had happened. But Tina had not talked of it at all and maybe it was just as well, because if Dan were to learn about it from the child, he wouldn’t believe it. Or so she thought. But it was all a guess.
Clive was lying back on his lounge chair in the den with a plaid afghan over his legs when Sally and Dan went in.
“Happy made it,” Roxanne explained. “It’s the Black Watch plaid. She’s teaching me to knit and I’ve started one to put in the living room. It’s lemon yellow, a plain stitch, nothing as hard as doing a plaid. You do feel cold when you don’t exercise.”
She looked so patient, sitting here with her work on her lap
. Sunshine flowed over her, while all around her the room sparkled like a blue jewel. And Sally recalled her first sight and first impression of her. The change was—it was astonishing.
Their chairs were drawn in a circle about the patient. Dan led the talk toward neutral subjects, as far as possible from cancer or Oliver or anything that would be distressful.
Nevertheless, at one point he saw fit to mention the pleasant news about Amanda’s withdrawal of the lawsuit. He had never been able to hold his anger for very long, and to Sally’s relief had had a civilized conversation with his sister, in which with a whole heart, he had thanked her.
“Of course, I can never forgive her unspeakable accusations against Oliver,” he had told Sally, “because ‘unspeakable’ is the only fit word for them. But she’s done a very decent thing now, and so I’m willing to say she had a mental aberration about Oliver and let it go at that.”
“What is her stand with regard to the forest sale?” Clive wanted to know.
“No stand. She doesn’t care what we do.”
“And you, Dan?”
“I’ve told you. Let Ian do what he thinks best. I’ll go along. One thing the business doesn’t need is another battle.”
Clive sat up in the chair. “I want you to do something for me, Dan,” he said emphatically. “I want you to vote against the sale.”
Heaven help us, Sally said to herself, seeing Dan’s deep sigh. Here we go again, just when we were all through with it.
Dan said quietly, “I don’t advise it, Clive. When I gave Ian the go-ahead, I meant it. This issue has torn the firm apart and it’s not healthy.”
“If you go my way, we can outvote him. Now with Amanda willing to go with the majority, Ian won’t fight us in court.”
“Maybe and maybe not. It’s not only the firm, though, but the family that can be torn apart.”
“You don’t want to see a bunch of investors, foreigners at that, bringing in their bulldozers,” Clive argued.
“Very true, but I don’t like to go back on my word. Ian and I weren’t even on speaking terms for weeks, you know that. Actually, it was your father’s death that brought us together and back to normal. So I don’t want to do it, Clive. I really don’t.”
Now Clive pleaded, “I’ve never asked anything of you before, have I, Dan?”
“No.”
Nor has Dan ever asked anything of you, thought Sally, protecting Dan.
“Well, then, since you agree with me in principle, why must you humor Ian? It’s time my brother learned he can’t have everything in sight, can’t grab anything that happens to please him but belongs to somebody else. It’s time.” And as if this effort to convince had been too much, Clive fell back in the chair. Still he was not finished. “Greed!” he cried. “Greed.” And he waved his arms as if he were making appeal to the heavens. “What is it all about?”
“Twenty-eight million dollars, that’s what it’s all about,” Dan said dryly.
“May he rot in hell with his twenty-eight million dollars!”
This outburst silenced them all. Roxanne, who had been knitting, put the work down, and, unnoticed, the ball of yellow wool fell to the floor where the pug puppy seized it. Embarrassed and puzzled by Clive’s atypical behavior, Sally studied a painting of two colts on the opposite wall.
Dan said mildly, “I’m curious about your interest in preservation. It was always my impression that a few square miles of wilderness more or less didn’t matter much to you. In fact, I’ve heard you say so many times.”
“That’s true, but this is not for me. It’s for Father’s sake.”
Once more Clive heaved himself upright, trembling in the chair. His eyes behind his glasses were bright with tears as he repeated, “For Father’s sake. This was his love. All my life and for most of yours, Dan, that love of his was as much a part of him as his arms and legs. We used to go walking there and he’d point out every bird and tree. I was never much interested, but I knew what it meant to him. ‘Hold on to this,’ he’d say. ‘Keep it intact for the generations. Promise me that when you’re a man you will remember what I’m saying.’ ” Two tears slipped down Clive’s cheeks. “Please, Dan, do this for me. I want to think that if in some way Father still has consciousness somewhere, he’ll see that I remember. And even if he hasn’t—”
Dan started to say, “It’s very difficult”—and was interrupted.
“He was a father to you, too, Dan.”
“I know that, Clive.”
Sally’s heart began the hammering that was becoming all too familiar and all too frightening. And yet, right now might not a heart attack be the best solution for her?
“Please, Dan, for our father’s sake.”
The man was piteous. It was quite clear to her that, knowing her husband as she did, he would give in. His great sigh was visible again when finally he gave his answer.
“Okay, Clive, I’ll talk to Ian. I can’t promise what will come of it, but I’ll do my best. Who knows,” Dan said, affecting cheer, “maybe I’ll be lucky and he’ll even come to agree with you.”
“So you’re back to square one,” Sally said that night. “Clive shouldn’t have asked that of you. It’s been an awful year and you’ve had enough.”
“The European group is due here next month, too. The whole thing’s finalized, financing and all. Ian will have a fair-sized fit when I walk in with my change of mind.”
“Don’t do it, then.”
“Sally, I have to. You heard Clive. He’s got right on his side. This is the least we—I—can do out of respect for Oliver’s memory.”
My God, she thought. My God. All my life now is an act. Pretend health, pretend good humor and energy, pretend even joy in the act of love. For all I can see while I lie in Dan’s arms is that man’s face with the words coming out of his mouth, taking shape in the darkness before me: You do that, and I’ll accuse Dan of molesting … his own daughter.…
“Here are your copies of the stuff that arrived this morning from Sweden,” Ian said, coming into Dan’s office. “Better look them over and see whether there’s anything you want to change or just think about before we meet.”
Dan had not been looking forward to this moment, but it had to be gotten through, so he said starkly, “Ian, I’m going to change the whole thing. The fact is, I’ve changed my mind.”
“You what?”
“I’ve decided I can’t go along with the deal. I’m back to my original position. I don’t want to sell.”
Ian slapped the papers onto the desk, scattering pencils and paper clips. “God damn it,” he shouted, “you stood right here and said to me, ‘Do whatever you want. I leave it to you.’ Didn’t you? Didn’t you, Dan?”
“I did, and I don’t like to go back on my word. This isn’t easy for me, Ian. But the way Clive put it—I can’t help myself. When he spoke about your father and what Grey’s Woods have meant to him, well, he convinced me. Besides, it was pathetic seeing him there like that.”
“Of course it was pathetic,” Ian said impatiently, “I’ve seen him. He’s dying. He’ll be dead before the deal can be consummated.”
“I don’t agree. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and that’s not a cliché.”
“There you go, the invincible optimist. Step out of fairyland into the real world. You’re talking about a death that’s as visible as the nose on your face, and you’re also talking about twenty-eight million dollars.”
“I don’t need them, nor do you. Each of us is doing pretty well. I wish I could make you see that and drop the whole idea.”
Ian groaned. “Here we go again. Listen, I’m losing patience. Suppose you cut out this nonsense and get down to business. I want your word once more that you won’t throw any monkey wrench into that meeting next month.”
“I can’t give my word. It’s a matter of principle and I should have stuck with my word. My mistake was made when I betrayed it. I don’t know any other way to make clear to you that my mind’s made up.”
The two men glared at each other, Dan in his desk chair and Ian standing. Presently, Ian went to the window and stood in a thoughtful pose, caressing his chin.
“Suppose,” he said slowly, still with his back to Dan, “suppose I could tell you something that will force you to change your mind?”
Was this exchange to go on all day? Already wearied of it, Dan said shortly, “Nobody forces me, Ian. You’ve lived alongside me long enough and well enough to know that.”
“All right, I didn’t mean ‘force’ exactly. What I meant was, I’ve done something for you, so maybe you’ll want to do something for me in exchange.”
“And just what is it,” demanded Dan, “that you’ve done for me?”
“It’s this way. Suppose,” Ian said slowly, “suppose I were to tell you that it’s your wife who killed my father.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it was Sally who murdered Oliver.”
The window that Dan faced was a brilliant blue, all blazing sky, deep cobalt. The brilliance was killing his eyes.
Ian’s voice was neither sharp nor angry; it was merely flat, as if to say It is going to rain. “I said Sally shot Oliver. I passed her car on the road that night just before I turned off to Red Hill.”
Dan sprang up. His fists were clenched to batter, to maim, to destroy. He went berserk. Ian grasped his wrists before the fists made contact with his face, and they wrestled. Equal in size and strength, they struggled their way around the room, swaying and panting. A chair crashed; they tripped on the telephone wire and fell heavily against furniture, smashing Ian’s knee and bloodying Dan’s cheek. Grunting and tearing at each other, they thrashed about on the floor.
Suddenly Dan lost his strength. He got up and collapsed into the desk chair. Between gasps he spoke.
“You’re foul. I always knew you loved money too much, and women. No, I never spoke of it. It was no business of mine. But that you could be as foul as this, that you could tell a filthy lie like this, I could never have expected.”
Ian was short of breath. He took a drink of water from the carafe, straightened his tie, and said, quietly now.
