by Belva Plain
Now, with equal ease, they were planning for the arrival of their twins.
One day as spring approached, the doctor had more news. “You know what, Cynthia? You have a boy and a girl in there.” He was an old man with an old man’s forgivable twinkle. “You’ve planned it well, haven’t you? That’s the way to do it.”
She was ecstatic. “I can’t believe it. Are you sure?”
“Sure as can be.”
Now there would have to be two extra bedrooms, since you wouldn’t keep a boy and girl together forever. Her mind’s eye, as she walked home through that warming afternoon, saw how the rooms might be decorated: cowboys in one, perhaps, and ballerinas in the other? No, too banal. As to names: both to begin with the same letter, as for instance in Janice and Jim? No, that was corny. How about Margaret, or just Daisy, which was what her mother was called, or perhaps Annette after Gran? Let Andrew choose the boy’s name. There were so many lovely problems to be worked out.
This time she had a bunch of crimson tulips next to the wine cooler when Andrew came home.
“We’ll need a pretty big place,” he said. “Don’t forget the nanny’s room.”
Certainly, because she would be returning to work, there would have to be a nanny, though both parents were decided that weekends were to be spent entirely with their children.
The remaining months were devoted to the new apartment. High on an upper floor from which you could see the park, this new home was one of the city’s most coveted luxuries, and maybe, thought Cynthia, a greater luxury than they should have undertaken. But Andrew thought otherwise.
“It’s not out of line,” he assured her. “Both of us are working and doing well. And even if you didn’t work, we could manage. We’d just cut way down on something else. This is an investment, a permanent home for the four of us, or maybe more?”
The birth, as predicted, went smoothly. Timothy and Laura, weighing together a total of nine and a half pounds, arrived on a breezy June day, conveniently, as Cynthia said, between four-thirty and five, allowing their father and their already doting grandparents to celebrate at dinner. Obviously, they were not identical twins, but they looked it, having Andrew’s eyes, Cynthia’s dimpled chin, and an unusual amount of her dark, lavish hair.
On the second morning they were brought to their pretty rooms and to the care of a good-natured nanny, Maria Luz, who had reared three babies of her own in Mexico. For the first few days there was a kind of pleasant confusion in the house, as friends arrived to coo and marvel, leaving behind them a mountain of tissue paper and shiny boxes out of which came enough tiny sweaters, embroidered suits, and dresses to outfit six babies. But eventually the house grew quiet, order was established, and a routine emerged so smoothly that you might almost think Timothy and Laura had always lived there.
They were easy babies, according to Maria Luz and the books on Cynthia’s night table. They did a minimal amount of crying, soon slept through the night, gained weight on schedule, and sat up when they were supposed to.
On Sunday afternoons in the park, people turned their heads as the double carriage passed. And Cynthia, healthy and vigorous with new clothes and a flat stomach, felt that she, that all of them, had been blessed.
“I never thought,” Andrew said, “I’d be so foolish about my children. I always thought that people who dragged snapshots out of their wallets without being asked were idiots. And now I do it myself.”
The months went by. The first birthday came with a party, presents, paper hats, and smeared icing, all joyously recorded by the video camera. Sooner than you would imagine, the carriage was stored, and a double stroller took its place. Laura and Tim were halfway through their second year.
And now into Cynthia’s mind there came a faint, unspoken shred of thought: Perhaps two were not enough? Perhaps it would soon be time to think about another? Why not? She had just been given a nice raise. Life was so good.…
It felt marvelous to be going home on a rare half day off with the first whiff of winter in the air. Walking fast in her sneakers while swinging the bag that held, along with her purchases, her smart, high-heeled office shoes, she would get there in time to give the baths, or one bath, at least, while Maria did the other. Tim was so active now that you had to wear a rubber apron, or you’d be drenched.
When she reached the front entrance of her building, she was still smiling at the thought. Joseph, the doorman, did not smile back, which was unusual. He looked, actually, stern. Angry about something? she wondered, and, dismissing the matter, went into the lobby. At the elevator her neighbor from the apartment across the hall came quickly forward on seeing her, and she, too, had a queer expression on her face, so queer that alarm ran down Cynthia’s back.
“Cindy,” the woman said.
Something had happened.…
“Let’s go up. They were looking for you, but—”
“What is it? What is it?”
“An accident. Cindy, oh, darling, you’ll need to be—”
The elevator stopped, the door slid open, and a low thrum of many voices surged toward them. Crowding there were her parents, Andrew’s parents and his brother, her best friend Louise, their doctor, Raymond Marx, and—
“Where’s Andrew?” she screamed and ran, pushing them all aside.
He was bowed on the sofa with his face in his hands. Hearing her, he looked up, weeping.
“Andy?” she whispered.
“Cindy. Darling. An accident. There’s been an accident. Oh, God.”
And so she knew. She thought she was tasting blood in her mouth.
“The babies?”
Somebody took her arm and sat her down beside Andrew. Dr. Marx was murmuring while he clasped hands tightly on her shoulders.
“There was a car, a taxi. Going around the corner, it jumped the curb.”
“My babies?”
The soft murmur cut like a blade into her ears. “My babies?” she screamed again.
“It struck the stroller.”
“Not my babies?”
“Oh, Cindy, Cindy …”
Those were the last words she remembered.
When she awoke, she was in bed. Andrew, fully dressed, was lying across the foot of the bed, which was odd. When she stretched her arm out, the sleeve of her nightgown fell back, which was normal. Sunlight fell over the ceiling, and that was also normal.
Yet there was something different. Then it all flooded; great waves of anguish and disbelief broke over her. “No! It didn’t happen! It’s a crazy dream, isn’t it? It’s a lie, isn’t it? Where are they? I have to see my babies.”
Andrew, trying to take her into his arms, knelt beside the bed. But she was frantic; she pushed him away and ran to the door. When it opened, a nurse in white came in with a bottle and tumbler in her hand.
“Take this,” she said gently. “It will quiet you.”
“I don’t want to be quiet. I want my babies. For God’s sake, can’t you hear me?” The cry was a howl. It shattered her own ears. I am going insane, she thought.
“You must take it, Mrs. Wills. And you, too, Mr. Wills. You need to sleep. You’ve been awake since yesterday morning.”
“Cynthia,” her mother said, “darling, take the medicine. Please. Please. Get back to bed. The doctor said—”
“I want to look at them. They need me.”
“Darling, you can’t see them.”
“Why? Why?”
“Oh, Cindy—”
“Then they’re dead. That’s it? Dead?”
“Oh, Cindy—”
“Who did it? Why? Oh, God, let me kill him too. Oh, God.”
“Please. Think of Andrew. He needs you. You need each other.”
Whether they gave her another pill or a hypodermic needle, she did not know. She knew only that the sunlight faded.
When she awoke, it was night. The lamps were lit. A few people were talking in low voices. Now she was alert enough to understand what they were saying.
The taxi, goi
ng, as witnesses said, much too fast, had smashed the stroller, which had just left the curb. The twins had died instantly. Poor Maria Luz, injured, had been taken to a hospital, treated for shock, and released. She was now staying with relatives. The children would be buried in the Byrne family plot in the country.
These were the facts. This was all. So it ended. The charmed life was over.
On the third morning Cynthia was awakened by the sound of hangers rattling on the rods in her closet.
“I’m looking for something she can wear. It will be cold.” That was her mother’s voice.
“You’ll have to ask her. I don’t know,” said Andrew.
“The doctor gives her too much stuff. She’s half asleep all the time.”
“Just till the funeral’s over. No more after that, he said.”
“Well, I suppose—oh, there you are! Darling, I’m searching through your things for something black.”
They were both in black, her mother in a correct black suit and Andy in the same, with the tie that he had needed to buy for his uncle’s funeral. What sense did it make to care what one wore? The only appropriate thing was sackcloth and ashes, anyway.
“I never wear black,” she said.
“Darling, navy blue will do very well. This wool dress, with a warm coat, will be fine. Shall I help you dress?”
“No, I’ll be all right, Mom. Thanks.”
“Then I’ll leave you. Your father’s arranged for the car. There’s just time for a quick bite before we start.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You must take something. Andrew, make her eat. And you eat something too.”
“They’ve taken care of everything. They’ve been wonderful,” Andrew said when Daisy left.
“Have they—I mean, are Tim and Laura—do we—”
“They’re up there already. Oh, God, Cindy.”
For long minutes they held on to each other. It was as if one or the other, alone, would have fallen. When at last they straightened themselves he fastened the back of her dress, she brought him an extra handkerchief, and they went out together.
In the limousine silence held almost all the way, broken briefly when Cynthia’s father gave directions to the driver. Andrew’s right hand, joined with her left, rested on the seat between them. Once she spoke.
“Does this seem real to you?”
In answer he shook his head. For her, reality kept flickering in through a dull sense of detachment that was equally terrifying. Was she about to lose her mind?
Reality was the memory of another time in another long limousine, not grim black like this one but white, festooned by one of their friends, a practical joker, with a JUST MARRIED sign: she had worn a pale green linen suit and they had, as now, been sitting on the backseat holding hands. Reality was coming home from the hospital with one wrapped-up baby in her arms and another in Andrew’s.
And she blinked hard, forcing the pictures to fade. This was no time for such pictures, going now where they were going.
“We’re almost there,” her father said suddenly.
The car rounded a turn and passed a parking lot filled and overflowing onto the roadside. It stopped at a walk that overflowed with people. And she wanted to flee, to hide from sympathetic eyes and soft, murmured words. Yet it was very kind of all these people to be here. So she understood what was expected of her.
She was expected to take Andrew’s arm, to walk in and go straight down toward the two little white caskets. And she did so.
An odd other and outer self that had been observing her for the last two days took note of the flowers that lay in wreaths and baskets and sheaves on the floor. They, like the sprays of lilies on the caskets, were white. For purity and innocence, they stood.
But Tim had not been innocent! He had been a rogue, a rascal who stole Laura’s cookie right out of her hand and made her cry. Andrew was—no, had been—boastful about his boy. “Tim is one tough guy,” he always says—no, used to say. One tough guy.
The other self was watching her carefully. It told her to remember everything because this was the last day she would ever touch them or touch, rather, the flowers and the smooth white lids. She leaned forward to put the tips of her fingers on the lids. The wood was smooth as satin and cold. The lily petals were cold too.
An organ was making soft, tentative sounds like whispers or footsteps in a room where a child is asleep. When it stopped a rich, manly voice began to speak. The words were poetic and half familiar, all about mercy and love. Prayers. Beautiful, gentle words. Well-meaning. At her back there were crowd sounds, the light occasional coughs and tiny rustlings of polite, well-meaning people. She wondered when it was all going to be over.
And suddenly it was. The organ resumed its quiet song, men appeared to bear the little caskets away, and somebody said, “Come, Cynthia.” Two by two people moved toward the door with Andrew and Cynthia in the lead.
Daylight burst into their faces. Following it eastward, they walked on the graveled path between last summer’s stalks of dead brown grass and entered the burial ground.
Many generations of Byrnes and others among the forebears of Laura and Tim lay here in this old place. It had never been a sad place, just vaguely interesting when you were a child brought to it on Memorial Day and then most interesting when you were old enough to be curious about history. So many children were buried under these gray, time-ravaged headstones with their worn inscriptions. Molly, aged three, now with the angels. Susannah, aged two. A second summer death, most likely the result of drinking unclean cow’s milk after her mother weaned her. Ethan, aged eighteen months and sixteen days. Eighteen months, thought Cynthia. Like mine. I must remember to count the days. But I can’t think this minute and there is no time.
For they had reached the hole in the ground, the hole with the green drapery that was meant to conceal the stony, clodded earth which, considerately, would not be shoveled in until everyone had walked away.
The crowd had dwindled to relatives and intimates: Gran with swollen, pink eyes, Andrew’s people, cousin Ellen who wept behind a handkerchief, the boss and staff from the magazine and—and I can’t believe it, thought Cynthia, there’s poor Maria Luz with a relative who somehow found the way here. All come to say good-bye to Laura and Tim.
Oh, my Tim, my Laura, you weren’t here very long but you will never be forgotten, not your smiles, your first teeth, your long eyelashes, your cries and red cheeks and fat hands—
“Amen,” spoke the fine voice, and the circular gathering responded, “Amen.”
Someone, Andrew’s mother or her own, or someone else, said quietly, “It’s over, Cynthia.”
Once more she took Andrew’s hand. It was wet on the back where he had used it to wipe his eyes. The little crowd parted to let them proceed to their car. Low comments floated past them as they walked. “I heard it was the taxi’s fault.” “I was at their wedding.” “Remarkably brave.”
“Saddest thing I’ve ever seen.” A woman looked into Cynthia’s face as though she wanted to say something and didn’t know how to say it.
At the end of the path they got into the car and went home the way they had come.
For a long time they held on to each other. No matter how their parents loved them and mourned with them, this agony was still Cynthia’s and Andrew’s. They became very solitary. They took long walks in the snow through the park, where once they had so proudly wheeled their twins, where and when the future was theirs and the world a field of flowers.
In the evenings they listened to music together. The broadcast news meant nothing to them. The apartment was completely quiet now. No more did they keep their ears open for a cry or a call. Only the great, solemn music broke the silence. Friends telephoned with tactful invitations to dinner or a movie; with equal tact they accepted refusal.
Once every week they went for a counseling session. Everyone knew that was what you did when tragedy struck. Andrew was the first to stop going.
“It’s only rubbing salt in the wound,” he said. “Nobody needs to tell me that I have to get on with my life. Don’t I know well enough that there’ll be a line waiting for my good job if I lose it?”
“What good job? We don’t need any job.”
“We have to eat, Cindy.”
“Do we? I don’t know why. I’m never hungry, and I don’t care where I live. I don’t need anything.”
“I know. But we can’t kill ourselves.”
“If it weren’t for you, I would.”
He sighed. “Don’t say that, Cindy.”
“Why not? It’s true.” She got up and began to pace the floor, from the window to the bookshelves and back again.
“I shouldn’t have been working. I should have been taking care of my own children. I’ll never forgive myself, never. I look at myself in the mirror, and I see guilt written on my forehead. Yes, believe it, in big red letters: G-U-I-L-T.”
“Darling, that’s foolish. It was a ghastly accident that could have happened to you, or me, or anybody.”
“You know what? I’m going to quit the stupid job. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“I wouldn’t do that so hastily. You’ve taken a long leave of absence, so wait till that’s over and then decide. It’s too soon after—after everything to make such a big change.”
It was impossible to imagine going back to that office, receiving condolences and pitying looks, being chic, being “with it,” and brave. She would have to find something completely different, where there were no reminders, among people she had never seen before.
Certainly she would find something else, but not yet. She was not ready yet. And anyhow, my job is ridiculous, she thought. It has no real meaning. Fashion! Silly dresses for women who don’t know what real life is all about. Hemlines are longer, or are they shorter again this season? I don’t know. I know that jackets have to be fitted this year, so of course you must throw last year’s jackets away, mustn’t you?
