by Belva Plain
I should see more of Ellen and Mark, she thought. Somehow, God only knows how, this sight of Freddie, my picking him up when he was crying there on the grass, has changed me. I never thought I could bear to hold a baby again.
“It’s time for his supper,” Mark said, standing up.
Cynthia said quickly, “If you’ll tell me what he eats, I’ll give it to him.”
Mark smiled. “You want to, don’t you?”
“Yes. May I?”
She saw, when he nodded, that he understood her. “He gets junior food, and after that a bottle. Everything’s in our tote bag in the hall. Wait. I’ll give it to you.”
“No, I’ll find it. He’ll go with me. He likes me.”
“Jenny has the high chair,” Annette called.
On Cynthia’s lap in the snuggery Freddie was already having his bottle when Marian, in coat and boots, passed the door.
“Pretty sight,” she called.
“Come in for a second. I want to thank you for helping Gran today. And for all the rest too.”
“Wasn’t it a horrendous day? And yet, crazy as it sounds, maybe some good will have come out of it.”
“I have a feeling it will. Uncle Gene and my father have got to do a lot of thinking after this. In fact, it seemed to me in there that they already have begun.”
“Death, or even the prospect of it, has a mighty powerful effect on people. I never realized how powerful until it hit me.”
“I think Gran said you’re a widow?”
“A sudden widow. We went to the city for a weekend vacation, had a wonderful dinner, saw a wonderful play, and went happily to bed in our hotel room. Toward morning I heard him get up, walk across the room, and fall.”
Marian sat down on the edge of a chair. Her face was without expression, and strangely, that seemed to move Cynthia more than tears might have done.
“He was tall, thin, and blond, part Scandinavian, and athletic. One of those people who you think are made to live long.”
“How awful for you.”
“Sometimes I was angry at him. So many hours, so many days wasted … And now gone. Forever. Never.” She threw out her hands, palms up. “And that’s it.” Then she rose, and, suddenly brisk and businesslike in her customary way, she concluded, “I don’t know why I got started on this. I’m sorry. That’s a sweet boy. Lovely eyes. I’d better run. It’s already dark.”
Why I got started. Cynthia smiled wryly. You wanted to teach me a lesson, that’s why. But it won’t work, Marian. No, because my situation is entirely different. Entirely.
When she carried Freddie back into the library, Ellen, awake now, took him from her, leaving her with empty hands. A bad feeling of utter detachment swept over her. And she stood uncertainly, hearing the fierce wind shake the windowpanes.
“I wouldn’t want to be out in a car tonight,” Annette remarked.
Andrew said promptly, “That reminds me. I’d better say good-bye to you all and start right now.”
“Absolutely not,” Annette protested, thinking: He wants to leave because Cynthia won’t even look at him. “That’s a ten-mile drive, and Jenny just heard on the radio that the roads are all ice. There’s plenty of room for you. This house is elastic. It stretches to fit.” And as he hesitated, she added with deliberate tactlessness, “You know that. You’ve been here often enough. Just sit down, Andrew.”
There came a restless stir in the room, as if everyone had sat too long or, having said all they were capable of saying, were uncomfortably aware of what was still unsaid.
Brenda was folding the red blankets that were no longer in use. And Annette made an announcement.
“Brenda has been making up beds for all you people tonight. Can you imagine? When I went upstairs, I found her working. You shouldn’t have, Brenda.”
“Well, Jenny is busy enough in the kitchen, and this really is a mob. Don’t worry, your linen closet is still neat. I am the original fusspot—Aaron, don’t sit in that chair, what are you thinking of? Your suit is still wet.”
Aaron bounced up. “I know it, but what am I going to do? I didn’t bring another suit.”
“Oh, my, you’re soaked,” cried Annette. “Doesn’t anyone, can’t anyone—” And she looked around the room in appeal. “You’re the nearest to his size, Gene.”
Embarrassed, Aaron laughed. “Only a six-inch difference.”
Gene, fidgeting, fussed over Roscoe, which was something that, not being a dog person, he did not usually do. “I keep a few things here. I’ll find something,” he said, looking self-conscious.
“So that’s solved,” said Annette.
We’ll see what happens at dinner, she thought. I’m not sure of anything, but we have made some progress, at least.…
“Why don’t we go up and rest?” she said cheerfully. “If you want to, I mean. I think we all deserve a rest. As for me, I need a nap before dinner. It’s at seven.”
The lunch table had been transformed for dinner, thought Andrew, who noticed such things, much as a woman wearing a sweater and skirt, however becoming, is transformed by a ballgown. Candles in silver holders glowed on pale yellow china edged in the Greek key pattern. The cream-colored roses in the large bowl had been augmented by smaller clusters going down the center of the table. Once again Annette had “done herself proud.” She might as well, he thought somewhat bitterly, have been adorning a wedding reception.… As indeed, she had once done.
With her customary attention to household details Annette surveyed the table and was satisfied. Very infrequently these days were festive meals served in this lovely room that had for so many years been used to bright lights and bright conversation. Life was quiet now in this house where she lived with Jenny and the dogs. And she thought again, Okay, there’s been progress since our near disaster today. But let’s see what happens next.
“We’ll serve ourselves from the sideboard and then sit wherever we want,” she said. “Gene, will you do the wine? And, Lewis, you’re a good carver, so please do the roast.”
“Ah, roast beef,” sighed Lewis. “The cholesterol special. But I love it. The first I’ve had in six months.”
“Aaron and Brenda, there’s pasta for you. Jenny makes a marvelous red sauce without meat. And we’ve lots of vegetables,” Annette assured them. At the same time she could scarcely keep from laughing because Aaron looked so ridiculous in the borrowed suit.
“If you want to laugh, go ahead,” Aaron said. “I had a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the way downstairs.”
“Are you some sort of mind-reader? Well, to tell the truth—”
Now Aaron laughed. “You don’t have to say so, everyone can see it.”
The trousers, at least six inches too long, were fastened up with safety pins. At the waist another large blanket pin, borrowed from Freddie’s tote bag, kept the trousers from falling down.
“Of course, as long as I sit no one can see it, so that saves my dignity.”
“Tell me, how is the pasta?”
“Perfect, thank you.”
“You went to so much trouble for us,” Brenda said.
“It was no trouble at all. It was a pleasure.”
Mark, observing from the other end of the table, had a sudden surge of pride in his mother. She was a gracious woman. He had never given any thought to her public persona, to how she might look to other people—not counting his father-in-law, and well he knew what that man’s prejudice had been! There she sat, quiet and confident in her fine dark dress and her narrow necklace of sculptured gold. And he felt a great tenderness for her.
Tenderness overflowed in him. Here were Ellen, his darling, and Lucy sitting high on Annette’s two-volume Oxford English Dictionary, and Freddie safely asleep upstairs in the portable crib; it went without saying that these had always been far more precious to him than was his own life. Tonight, though, it seemed as if his capacity to feel a unity with other human beings had expanded, too, so that, in varying degrees, he felt able to say that he “lo
ved”—however you wanted to define love—every soul in the room.
Annette, reading his expression, was moved by it. And again she thought she felt a kind of loosening in the atmosphere: people—twelve of them, a nice tidy number around the table—were beginning to converse a bit. She became suddenly aware that she had been sitting with strained, tight muscles, and must relax.
They all looked so civilized. And these were the same people, the same group, that had been so savage in the front hall this morning. Maybe they had been having some serious reflections during that little nap time.…
Her eyes roved from her two sons—was it purely an accident that had brought them to be sitting next to each other?—to Lucy in her pink dress, to the bronze lights in Ellen’s hair, to Aaron Sachs’s neat beard, and her eyes were satisfied.
When they reached Cynthia—ah, that was another matter! Perfect in gray silk and appropriate pearls, she sat like a statue, cool, remote, and without expression. And in Annette’s heart there was a painful contest between compassion and impatience. Cynthia’s father and mother, apparently, had taken steps toward Andrew. And yet, who was a mere grandmother to judge?
“Did you know that I fell into the water?” Lucy’s voice rang out, addressing nobody in particular. “I don’t remember how I got out, but I did.”
“It was Aunt Daisy who rescued you,” Ellen said. “You should thank her properly.”
Lucy scrambled down, knocking the dictionaries to the floor, ran toward Daisy, gave her a tight hug, and proclaimed, “I’m going to tell everybody in my class what you did.”
A handful, thought Daisy, returning the hug. Enough spunk for two her age. Must keep Ellen hopping. Very, very sweet, all the same. Silly of me, but in a way now, I feel possessive about her.
“With every minute it becomes more incredible,” Gene was saying. “What Daisy did! How can I ever express or thank … all of you … If I live to be a hundred … Excuse me.” And with some embarrassment he wiped his eyes.
Awkwardly, Lewis patted his brother’s arm. “That’s all right. You already did, and we all know. We know.”
Aaron, who sat across from the two men, was surprising himself with his own reflections. Funny, I never imagined that men like these would show tears. All that stiff-upper-lip business. Of course, I don’t ever get this close. It’s another world. Same city, but another world. And yet, here we sit with the same feelings—that little girl, that little mother today—we sit here feeding ourselves, all hungry, same stomachs, same bones, as I should know. The few times I ever saw the older one, I had no particular opinion one way or the other. He was a gentleman, that was all. Cool. Both brothers the same, I see. The only difference is, the first one’s daughter didn’t marry my son. It looks as if they’re getting together. I hope so for Annette’s sake. Their sakes too. This business in a family is wrong. Wrong.
“For the rest of my life,” Gene was saying, “I’ll have nightmares about what could have happened.”
“Well, it didn’t,” Lewis said. “And as for nightmares, we’ve both had our share of them, I guess.”
As his words carried, talk ceased. Annette, who had been talking to Brenda, pricked up her ears. Daisy, who had begun to say something cordial to Andrew—for although she had been so furious with him, he had been so kind to her today, as she had already told Cynthia—now stopped.
“Yes,” Lewis repeated, “we’ve surely had plenty of them.”
I admit to myself, he was thinking, that perhaps I was foolishly influenced after all. If it hadn’t been for the Sprague family, the grandfather a judge, with all the prestige, I probably would have gone right in and demanded the truth. I would have raised hell.
“I seem to be having some second thoughts about things today,” he said.
Gene nodded. “Yes, yes, I know what you mean. I guess circumstances alter cases, don’t they? Cliché. But clichés are true.”
And he wondered whether it was indeed possible that Jerry Victor really was a troublemaker with his own private agenda. Not that, if he had been, it would have altered the fact that Sprague had obviously been guilty; it would only in part have explained some of Lewis’s reluctance to challenge Sprague. Perhaps, if Sprague had been my friend, I, too, would have hesitated. I have been quick to condemn. I have been closing my mind against Lewis, without even trying to understand, or forgive.
Annette watched her two sons. It must have been hard for Gene to be second all the time, always having to wait, being the younger, for the privileges of age, even to wait to go into the business. Of course, it couldn’t have been otherwise, but still, that can put a chip of envy on a younger brother’s shoulder. Then the older one sees the chip …
And suddenly words came out of her mouth, words she had certainly not intended to say.
“You’ve been too proud to talk things out, both of you. Too proud. Your father was like that too.”
“The first time you ever said anything critical about Dad!” exclaimed Lewis.
“Well, what did you think? That he was perfect? Who is, pray tell me? Pride,” she repeated, almost angrily.
“ ‘A man’s pride shall bring him low,’ ” said Aaron, “ ‘but he that is of a lowly spirit shall attain to honor.’ ”
“Aaron!” Brenda wailed. “What on earth is wrong with you?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him. That’s from the Bible,” Daisy said. “My father always quoted from the Bible.”
“But the time and place!” Then, in spite of herself, Brenda had to laugh. “I’ll tell you what, he’s had too much wine.”
“ ‘Wine is a mocker and strong drink is riotous,’ ” retorted Aaron with a wink.
At that the laughter was so loud that Jenny peeked through the kitchen door, smiled, and shook her head in amazement.
“I want to dance,” said Lucy. “We always dance.”
Ellen explained. “Mark and I like to dance sometimes. We put on a CD and roll back the rugs. Lucy has her own CD. She wants to be a ballerina.”
“What’s Lucy’s music?” Annette asked.
“ ‘Gaîté parisienne.’ Have you got it?”
“Oh, yes, but this rug doesn’t roll back.”
“That’s all right, I’ll dance in the hall,” said Lucy.
She was getting too much attention, Ellen knew, but today, why not? Today, she could have anything.
So the music started. Everyone stood up and watched Lucy perform. Filled with a sense of her own importance, but even more so with rhythm, she twirled her skirt and curved her arms above her head.
“Who’ll dance with me?” she cried.
“I will,” said Aaron in prompt response.
And, adorned with safety pins, with one hand holding his trousers up and the other hand in Lucy’s, he whirled with her down the length of the hall and back.
“What a good sport!” Daisy whispered to Annette in the midst of the general laughter. “I have to take my thoughts back. Both of them seemed so awkward and out of place this morning in the library, as if they resented being here.”
“You never know about people till you know them,” Annette responded.
She was thinking about Daisy. Who could say what quirk or insecurity had made Daisy put on what Annette called her “airs”? But so good, so incredibly brave … And she took Daisy’s hand in a warm squeeze.
“Come, Mark and Ellen, join us,” cried Aaron.
You can see how nice he is to Ellen, Gene thought. And the way he brought Lucy back to life. Of course, he’s a doctor and you expect it, but still, the sight of him breathing life into her … And Brenda, the way she pitched in, making all those beds, bringing coffee and blankets …
Lucy called, “Come on, Papa Gene, you dance too.”
So Papa Gene joined the whirl and gallop until, at last, Aaron brought it to a stop.
“I’m out of breath. Besides, I’m tripping over my trousers. Gene’s trousers, I should say.”
“It’s clear where my husband gets his sense
of humor,” Ellen remarked when they had all sat down again.
Mark shook his head. “Mine’s not half as good as Dad’s. The funny thing is that he’s quite serious while he’s being funny. And when he’s really serious, angry about something—watch out! Right, Mom?”
“Oh, my. Men,” said Brenda.
“Men,” echoed Ellen.
“When men are angry, they’re like babies,” Daisy said.
It’s like old times in this house, Annette was thinking, with a little normal jibing and a lot of hilarity. But what if we hadn’t come so near to tragedy? It would be shameful if it had to take a tragedy to bring about peace.
No, she resolved. Stubborn as I am, I would have found a way. I know I would.
When the dessert, a fluffy white meringue with strawberries, had been sliced and passed around, Mark stood up with his wineglass in hand.
“I’m proposing a toast to you, Gran. Let’s face it, this morning we were all pretty upset because of your little plan.” He smiled. “And now instead we need to apologize, to thank you and wish you a hundred and twenty years.”
“Thanks, but a hundred will do very well. Seriously, I really took a chance, didn’t I? Last night I was so scared that I called my friend Marian to come to my aid. And now look. I look at you all … I’d better stop before I get teary.”
Yes, she looks, but not very long at me, thought Cynthia, nor at Andrew. You destroyed everything that I felt for you, she told him silently.
She looked at him quickly and looked away. He was staring down at his plate. He doesn’t even know what he did, she thought. And my parents, who love me, do not really know either. I saw them talking to him before. What a total about-face! How can they do that? They are hoping I will go back to him. Oh, I saw my mother leaning on him up the hill to the house. He brought hot towels for her and a blanket and coffee. Very nice, very kind, but what has that got to do with me? When I look at Mark and Ellen, I am so glad for them. They deserve each other. And Dad, with Uncle Gene—I’m so glad for them too. It was time and past time. But all that, too, has nothing to do with what has happened to me.
