by Belva Plain
She has brought this pregnancy about, allowed it to happen, without asking Martin. Now she presses and curves against him, like a spoon fitting into another spoon. He understands her needs. She is so good to Claire, he thinks, as he so often does. His thoughts run on, darting and colliding with each other.
Claire is tenacious, spirited and serious. I missed so many of her good years. Jessie has done a superb job. I should like to tell her so. I saw a woman ahead of me on the street who looked like Jessie from the back. When I saw she wasn’t Jessie, I don’t know whether I was sorry or relieved. I wonder what I would have said if it had been? Why, I should simply have told her she’d done a superb job!
Claire is a merging of Mary’s blood with mine. I never thought of that until this minute. A stunning thought! I never had it before; I don’t know why. It shocks me.
I’ve had a dream of Mary on a ship, a sailing ship out of some other century. She was standing on the deck or at the prow. At first I thought she was a figurehead. Things are like that in dreams. The sails were swelling and the wind pulled at her skirt. I was on the dock. We stretched out our hands to each other. The water grew wider between us as the ship moved away. Then the wind whipped the scarf around her face so that I couldn’t see it anymore, and the ship went faster, straight out like an arrow, to the rim of the world.
It is said that loss grows dimmer with time. But is that true? There was a German-Jewish doctor in my company; Hertz was his name. He was a taciturn, persevering, thoughtful man. He had lost his wife and children. I used to wonder what he carried inside his head. Would it be easier or harder to know that Mary was dead?
It is also said one must force oneself to think of positive things. All right then: my work. I’m grateful for being so busy. I truly am. Think of something beautifully lazy, of swimming to the float and drowsing in the sun. No good. I can’t feel it. Think of something gay and funny. That day halfway between her house and London; I was late arriving at the country pub, and someone, some boorish old man, had been trying to flirt with her before I got there. We laughed so to see his face when I walked in. But it isn’t gay and funny, remembering it now.
He feels himself beginning to drift finally toward sleep. Cold air seeps through the blankets. It is raw as only an English house can be. The casement bangs, and an air raid warden’s shrilling startles him awake. He opens his eyes and stares into the street below. It is some sort of minor accident. This isn’t England. He’s home.
Hazel murmurs. She, too, is dreaming. And he feels so gentle toward her, as to a child lying there asleep, and so sorry, just so sorry. Now she stirs.
“What is it?” she asks. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, no,” Martin says. “Go back to sleep. It’s all right. Everythings’s all right.”
Chapter 23
At the far end of the apartment’s hall, looking on the courtyard, was a dank room used for storage. Even on the brightest afternoon, the bulb, which hung on a single wire from the ceiling, had to be lit Three stories below lay the gray cement floor of the court where ash cans stood along a wall. Ten stories above, by twisting one’s neck and pushing one’s eyebrows up, one could see a corner of sky.
Inevitably, Enoch was drawn to this room. His mother, who almost never complained about anything and who, Claire thought privately, really did spoil the boy, objected that he messed it up. But since the room was only a jumble, Claire didn’t see what additional harm the child could do.
There were cartons of dusty books, thick college texts of Martin’s in dark green and brown. There were two old microscopes, one of which had belonged to their grandfather, with its old-fashioned jars and bottles, some still half-full of a desiccated ointment An American flag, souvenir of a long-forgotten parade, drooped from a stick in a corner next to a dress form which Hazel had used in the days when she still made her own dresses. More busty even than Hazel was, the headless figure would have scared the devil out of you if you had come upon it suddenly in the dark. There was an old easychair from whose arms the dried leather rubbed off in ruddy pellets. There were thick black phonograph records of Galli-Curci and Caruso from the days of the windup Victrola, and a bicycle of Martin’s which he had no time anymore to use.
Now to all these had been added some possessions of Grandmother Farrell’s, sent on after the funeral by Aunt Alice so that Martin would have his fair share of things by which to remember their mother.
Claire sat down on a broken chair. It was raining hard. Some of the rain fell even in the narrow shaft between the buildings, trickling in the dust on the window.
“Gee,” Enoch said, “look at these National Geographics! There must be a hundred of them. Let’s take them all to my room.”
“No, you won’t. Your mother’ll have a fit if you drag those to your room. You can look at them in here till they come home. I’ll look at these old pictures.”
Old photo albums still retained an aura of the forbidden, and she had to think for a while why this should be so, before she remembered the albums at the house in Cyprus when she had been no more than five or six and found in them the pictures of her unknown pariah aunt. A mystery, Claire supposed, that would never be cleared up.
But in these snapshots of her father’s people, there were no mysteries, or none that she could see, at any rate. There were only nostalgia and a sort of sadness, which she had thought a person would have to be old to feel. She hadn’t expected to feel it when she was just sixteen. Yet she was feeling it. Probably it was because the death of that grandmother last month, a woman she had seen only four times in her life—and the last time when she was dying—had touched her deeply. She had known perfectly well that her mother had not wanted her to go with Hazel and Dad. Jessie would have liked to be able to forbid the trip. But since a death had been involved, she had very likely felt that objection would be shameful. So she had made none, except to indicate by her compressed lips and flat voice that she was not pleased.
Here was the grandmother as a young woman of the Gibson Girl era, her neck collared to the ears in boned net The anxious, pretty eyes looked out under the brim of a stiff sailor hat. Living is hard, those eyes said.
In old age the eyes had been a faded, opaque gray, as if a curtain had already fallen between them and the living world. She had been sitting up in bed, awakening when they came into the room, and then drowsed off in the middle of a sentence with her mouth dropped open over her even, large false teeth. Just gliding gently out of the world, Claire had thought It was strange to think that if this woman had not lived, she would not be living either.
They had buried Jean Farrell in the cemetery in Cyprus, and during the long ride from the place of her death at Aunt Alice’s house, her son and daughter had relived their years.
“Remember the hot bricks in bed? Funny, when your feet are warm, the rest of you gets warm enough so you can fall asleep,” Martin had said.
And Alice had said softly, “The things you remember! Maple taffy! Isn’t that a foolish thing to be thinking of today?”
Martin had explained to Claire how maple taffy was made. “You collect the sap twice a day and boil it over a wood fire,” he had said carefully, as though this were a piece of knowledge so precious it must be preserved. “Then you fill a soup plate with snow and pour the hot syrup over it. When it cools, it gets hard and sticky like taffy.”
“Your father tells me,” Aunt Alice had said to Claire, “that you want to be a doctor.” She had spoken formally and politely, more formally to Claire than to Hazel, as though Claire were the stranger and Hazel were of her blood. “Your father used to keep mice and frogs in formaldehyde, under his bed. Do you remember, Martin, the time you had the dead snake there, and Mama found it when she was cleaning? And how she screeched?”
So it had gone. And at last they had reached Cyprus, driven down its principal street—“How it’s grown!” Alice had cried—and out past the house where Alice and Martin had lived.
Martin had sighed. “It was all far
ms here then.”
The town had spread around it Across the road from the house had been an industrial park. “Light industry,” the sign had said. Rows of muddy cars had stood in a gigantic parking lot.
“They’ve taken the porch off, or glassed it in, I see. They must live upstairs.”
Martin had pointed to where, on a frame house with a boxy glass front like a protruding abdomen, “Guido’s Pizzaburgers” was lettered large.
They came to the cemetery. Claire, having never been at a funeral before, had expected something intensely dramatic. But it had been very simple, just a short prayer before they lowered the coffin. Each of them had thrown in a handful of earth, and then walked away. And that had been all.
“I don’t suppose we ever really knew either of them,” Martin had said. He had turned Claire around and told her, “Take a last look. You may never be here again. Just remember that you come from decent people.” He had stopped a moment, and she had understood that he was thinking old thoughts.
“Look,” Enoch said now, “I opened it.”
“Opened what?”
“It came off. The hinge broke off.”
“That’s Dad’s old trunk. Don’t go prying in it, Enoch.”
He had already pulled out a uniform.
“Gee, look at the hat!” It came down over his little head, resting on his ears, while the visor grazed his eyebrows. “Gee, why didn’t Dad ever show me this before?”
“I guess he’d just as soon forget about the war.”
“Look at this! Dad used to be an explorer scout. Did you know that, Claire?”
“No. He did do a lot of climbing in the Adirondacks, though.”
“And what’s this? ‘Washington High School, Martin Thomas Farrell’?”
“That’s a diploma, what they give when you’re all finished. You’ll have one someday.”
“Will you?”
“I’d better, if I want to get into Smith and then med school. What have you got there? Don’t do that. Those are private letters. You’re not supposed to read other people’s mail.”
“It’s not letters. It’s pictures.”
“Here. Put them back in the envelope. You’re tearing it, Enoch! Give it to me!”
A packet of snapshots fell to the floor. They had been enlarged so that the faces were clear: her father’s and an unknown woman’s. They had been taken during the war, her father was in uniform. The woman was slender; her hair was short and curly. In one of the photographs they were holding each other’s hands. And one was an attempt at a portrait, for the woman was sitting on a garden bench, wearing a wide straw hat and a full skirt, like a Renoir lady. On the back of this was written: “You are everything to me and always will be.” The signature read: “Mary Fern.”
Those clustered words stood out as though they had come to life. Heat rose into Claire’s face, up to her forehead. She was shaken. Mother’s sister, Mary Fern! This, then, must be the reason one was forbidden to ask about her! Mary Fern and my father! He had intentionally kept these pictures, hidden them away; he so meticulous, precise to a fault, who never left things lying around, who reprimanded anyone else who did! He wouldn’t have kept them if they hadn’t meant “everything” to him, too!
“Look at these,” Enoch cried. “There’s a whole bunch of letters here, and look at the snowshoes! Claire! Did you know these were snowshoes? You walk on top of the snow with them. Golly, there’s a lot of good stuff in this trunk!”
“Come, come,” she said. “We’re putting everything away.”
She slipped the packet of snapshots into her purse, folded the uniforms into the trunk, replaced the scout badges and all the memorabilia of boyhood; then led Enoch out into the kitchen to feed him cookies and a glass of milk.
Darkness had come abruptly, giving a forest eeriness to the afternoon. Disturbed, without aim, she wandered through the rooms, turning the lights on as she went At Hazel’s bedroom door she paused. All the cloying sentimentality with which Hazel had furnished her home was concentrated here.
A hanging cabinet was cluttered with china figurines of men in powdered wigs and women in hoop skirts. The carpet had blue roses all over it. A lamp was shaped like a child holding a puppy. And on the desk there was a photograph of Martin, his ascetic face completely out of keeping with the rest of the room.
On a table in the den lay a stack of magazines, professional archives and reports of congresses, along with notes in Martin’s crabbed writing.
“ … approaches to mental disease,” Claire read. “… ambivalence of brain and mind.” She stood there, trying to fit what she knew of this part of her father’s life-analytical, austere and serious—with the man in the snapshots.
But it was naive, it was absolutely childish to suppose a parent was only what one saw on the outside! Certainly one knew better than that. Still, one’s father! That there could be such—such taint in one’s own family; things not clean, not good!
“You come from decent people,” he had reminded her at his mother’s funeral …
The door opened, and Hazel came in with Martin. “We hurried back as fast as we could.” She was out of breath and anxious with haste. “You’re a dear to babysit for us, Claire. Was Enoch a good boy?”
“Oh yes. And the babies are still napping.”
“Ill get them up,” Hazel said, discarding her raincoat.
For a moment Claire stared at her father. It crossed her mind that, in the flash of a few seconds, her concept of him had changed. It was the angle of view that mattered. As the little boy with a scout badge, as the brother of Alice—that was one way to see him. The woman who had written You are everything to me must have seen him differently. Hazel had still another view. And Jessie? Whatever her view might be was well hidden.
Hazel came back with the newest baby, Marjorie, drooped over her shoulder. The mother and the child wore the same expression of innocent, domestic tranquility.
“You’ll stay for supper, Claire?” Martin asked.
His eyes regarded her with affection. In them she read how much pride he had in her and how he would want her to have the same in him. She brushed at her own eyes as though cobwebs hung before them.
“Thank you,” she said coldly, “I’m going home.”
Only an hour before she would not have believed she could despise him.
* * *
They talked till past eleven. Jessie parted the curtains and stood thoughtfully looking out into the night. Over her shoulder Claire could see that the rain had stopped; a ghostly glitter lay on the walls and trees, matching her own fearful mood. The curtains fell back with a taffeta rustle as Jessie turned around.
“You shouldn’t have taken the pictures,” she said.
“I had stuck them in my purse and I didn’t know what to do with them.”
They lay spread out now on the coffee table. Claire picked one up, then slapped it down.
“How I would hate her if I were you! Both her and Dad, but her the most!”
“Oh, I’ve had my fill of hatred, make no mistake about that! But you can’t keep it up, year in, year out. It’s corrosive. I guess that’s why I kept the whole business to myself until now. I didn’t want you to be corroded. Also, to be honest, there was a little matter of my own pride.” And Jessie smiled slightly, in the self-mockery that was her habit.
“She spoiled your one chance. She could have had dozens, couldn’t she? And she took your only one.”
“Damn it, yes, she did.”
The love seat at the fireplace held small silk pillows, round as jewels: amethyst, topaz, garnet. Jessie fussed with them now, patting and rearranging. Presently she said, “Yet I always knew I’d been foolish to marry Martin. And after all that—happened—it would have been more foolish to hold him. I could have done it, you know. He wanted to stay. Because of you and a sense of obligation. But I didn’t want that. I couldn’t bear what I knew he must be feeling toward me, in spite of his merciful denials.”
What could
it have been like in bed? Claire wondered. All those books that were passed around among her friends—somehow one always thought of strong and handsome people doing the things that were described in those books. In sudden shame she flushed and could not look at her mother.
Jessie was moving around the room again, at the magazine rack now. She spoke abruptly.
“I heard from Aunt Milly that Fern’s husband was killed in the war.”
“How horrible!” And Claire had a quick flash, out of some old war movie, of a sky torn by terrible guns and battering rain, of a man lying in the mud with a leg torn away. “How horrible!”
“Yes. She’s had her share too. But she ought,” Jessie said somberly, “she ought to have married Martin in the first place. I knew it the first time I saw them together. Before they knew it.”
“What? Love at first sight?”
“Don’t scoff! It happens.”
“Pulp magazine stuff.”
Jessie smiled. The smile enlivened her mouth, but her eyes were still. “You’ll find out.”
“It’s just not real.”
“You’re sure you know what’s real and what isn’t? You’re sixteen and you already know that?”
“Well, I read, don’t I? I see things, don’t I?”
“But you haven’t lived them.”
Jessie played with the gold chains at her neck. She wore too many and they were too valuable. Why were they so important to her? Claire wondered. The thought was new. And all this business about love—how did Jessie know? Because she had gone through it herself? And this thought, too, was new.
“So what you’re saying is that they couldn’t help it?” Claire asked.
“I suppose I am.”
“That sounds almost noble.”
“Noble! Good God, I? You know better than that, after living with me all your life. No, it’s just that I’ve had to come to terms with things or go crazy. And people like me can’t afford to go crazy.”
