by Belva Plain
He thought now he had reached a decision. “For he who loves man loves the art.”—Aesculapius. These few words above the door would say it all, he thought again. He would submit it to the trustees at the next meeting, although most certainly they would be willing to leave it to his choice. Men like Moser, and most of them were like Moser, wouldn’t know very much about the Greeks and would care less.
Also, there was the question of a mural for the lobby. Martin wasn’t at all certain that one was indicated—you didn’t want the place to look like a post office or a courthouse. Yet there were those who pressed for it. And the idea might not be a bad one if the right artist were found to do it. He’d been collecting photographs of samples. Thoughtfully now, he held them to the light, visualizing the proportions, the way they might appear to visitors turning left from the corridor, as they would do. The figures mustn’t loom too large, or they would be lost in detail …
He had begun to enjoy himself, his tension loosening, when he heard Claire’s brakes screeching on the gravel drive. She drove too fast! No matter what you said, people of her type never learned. Impetuous, slam-bang, charming! Capable of stunning surprises, too. He was still not, maybe never would be, over the shock of learning that she had known about Mary and himself since she’d been sixteen and discovered those photographs.
In the beginning, he knew, he’d had Jessie to thank for their daughter’s discretion, and perhaps for her compassion. Now he had Claire herself to thank.
He opened the door for her.
“Hi, Dad, how’s everything?”
“Fine. I’ve just been going over designs for a mural in the lobby. Want to see? Or want coffee first? There’s some kept hot in the percolator.”
“Coffee first, please.” She followed him into the kitchen. “Have some, Dad?”
“No. It keeps me awake. I’ll just watch you.”
She studied him. “You’re a bit charged up, aren’t you? Well, I don’t blame you. They’ve really been racing along with that foundation. I watched the cement mixers and all the rest of the stuff today, and I got sort of charged up myself. Or choked up, thinking that it’s really happening at last, and you did it.”
“I and a few hundred others.”
“Oh, don’t be modest!”
Martin reflected, “Jessie always used to tell me that.”
“Anyway, it becomes you. You may be sleepless with excitement,” Claire said cheerfully, “but it becomes you.”
Blind, blind. She’s so happy herself that she sees nothing else. Happy over that fellow! Hell be arriving soon, Martin thought with a sinking in his chest, and I’ll have to see him. Funny how things change their proportions. Since this trouble of my own, I haven’t had time to think about that affair. I’ll have to, though.
“I did a delivery today,” Claire was saying. “It’s the happiest part of the hospital, isn’t it? Dr. Castle was there, but I did it all myself. The kid was dark blue and I was scared, but I put the suction tube in and the kid turned a nice pink and let out a good loud howl. I felt great.”
“Not sorry about turning down the Chicago internship?”
“Well, I did want it, but that was before I knew Ned. He’ll be here next month, you know.” As if Martin didn’t know! “He’s landed a terrific job: White, Davis and Fisher. They’re one of the three biggest in the business.” Claire got up and went to the cake box. “What a baker Hazel is! It’s a wonder you’re not fat.”
“I think I’ll have a cup after all,” Martin said. He poured the coffee and took a few swallows. Then, forcing cheerfulness, he inquired, “So, you’re growing sure of yourself, are you?”
“Yup. No butterflies in the stomach. There’s something about even a little clinical experience that gives you confidence.”
“For a woman who ranked number five in her class last June, I should think you’d have plenty of confidence.”
“This business of measuring people against each other is a mean thing when you think about it,” Claire reflected. Then she smiled, “Still, I must admit it’s kind of exhilarating when you happen to be at the top of the list.”
She wore contact lenses now and Martin wasn’t yet used to her face without glasses. It seemed less earnest. Could “genuine” be the right word for her, with the still-boyish curls and the charming tilted nose and the long neck? She has the world before her, he thought, including, damn it, Ned Lamb. I wish to Heaven—
And suddenly she turned somber. “Dad, I wish people wouldn’t make everything so hard for Ned and me. Mother simply will not open her mind.”
Small wonder, Martin thought grimly.
“It seems to me one ought to be able to come to terms with the past. Why should a new generation be tied to a past it had nothing to do with?”
Nothing to do with? Where did these young think they had come from? Risen out of the sea or sprung from the head of Zeus? He managed to murmur, “It’s not so simple. You’ve revived old pains. It’s not only the young who feel.” And he thought: I wish I could talk to her about Hazel … But some parental dignity and pride was shocked at the possibility.
“Oh,” she said quickly, “oh, Dad, I know.” He could see the frank compassion in her eyes. “You’d be surprised if you could know how well I understand many, many things.”
Martin smiled dubiously. “You think you do?”
“You and Mother both think you’re being asked to give up the peace you’ve made. Mary thinks so, too. Ned wrote me.”
“Well, wouldn’t we?”
“Yes, but—Oh, I grant it would be easier to start clean with a new family and no skeletons in the closet. Ifs not ideal that nobody speaks to anybody else.”
“Can’t you see what this means? Shall I give you all the old clichés about how marriage is hard enough without starting in with problems? How they come along fast enough through the ordinary business of living? I can give you those clichés, but you know them already. What you don’t know is that they’re all true.”
“I suppose they are, but they’ve never deterred anybody yet, have they?”
A cricket set up frantic, repetitious chirping in the kitchen. Like human chirping, Martin thought. We repeat and repeat, but we don’t change each other’s minds.
“How about some sleep?” he said kindly. “We’ll solve nothing tonight.”
Claire yawned. “I’ve been looking forward to these two days. I plan to spend every minute on the beach tomorrow. The last of the year.”
He watched her go up the stairs. Superb product to have come out of so strange a marriage! And with an ache of understanding, he fancied he knew how Jessie must feel about this daughter of her flesh. Then he turned out the lights all over the first floor and stood a while in the dark hall before going up to bed. Over the creaking in the old walls and the swish of passing cars on the quiet road, he seemed to hear voices filling a vast room. All the voices in a foreign, low cacophony were saying urgent, serious things to one another, yet, heard all together, they made only a contradictory buzz and murmur so that you could make no sense of anything. You knew only that many things had gone wrong.
“I’m tired of thinking,” he said, as he went up.
* * *
He woke with the uncomfortable sensation of being looked at. Hazel was sitting on the other bed in her nightgown, staring at him.
“How long has this been going on?” he demanded.
“Why? Can’t I look at you?”
He got up out of bed without answering. From the closet he took a suit and from the dresser drawer, a shirt Then, returning to the closet, he selected a tie, took his shoes and went into the bathroom to dress. He was trembling. Another day. When he came out of the bathroom, she was still sitting there.
In the dining room Esther, the new maid, had put his orange juice, coffee and toast on the table. She was from the South, a young brown girl who actually looked pretty in a pink cotton uniform.
“Eggs or cereal this morning, Doctor?”
“Eggs, ple
ase,” he began. Then, the thought of eggs suddenly sticking in his throat, he changed his mind. “Neither. I’m not hungry.”
When he had swallowed the coffee, he remembered that he hadn’t shaved. He ran his hand over his chin to feel the bristles and went back upstairs. Hazel was still sitting on the edge of the bed.
In the bathroom he scraped once over, a sloppy job, but he was already late and it would have to do. He had left the bathroom door open so that the bedroom was reflected in the mirror: the unmade beds, the clutter on the dressing table, and then Marjorie coming in to have her braids done. She had thick mouse-colored hair, the kind that she would probably want to bleach when she was sixteen.
“Hi,” he said through the mirror. “What are you doing today?”
“Jane’s mother’s taking us to her grandmother’s. They’ve got a pool.”
“That ought to be great.” He spoke heartily. The heartiness was a form of condescension to the child, not like his usual manner, but he was conscious of trying to brighten the atmosphere. He wondered whether the child saw anything odd in the way her mother had been sitting on the edge of the bed, still in her nightgown.
The little girl stood patiently with head bowed to the brush and comb. There was such pathos in the nape with the center part ending in those babyish wisps! He watched as Hazel worked the braids. How many hundreds of mornings would she have worked these braids before Marjorie had grown up or cut them off? Now Hazel fastened the ends with rubber bands and a narrow black ribbon tie on each. For an instant she put her face down between the girl’s frail shoulder blades which, in spite of the baby fat, were outlined beneath the thin cotton of her summer dress. It looked to Martin as though she had placed a kiss there. Then, turning the child about, she kissed her again on the cheek.
“Have a good time, darling,” she said.
“Have a good time,” Martin called and they heard Marjorie clattering down the stairs.
When he came out of the bathroom, Hazel stood up. She seemed to have lost more weight during the night, her eyes were so large.
“Hazel, how long will this go on?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s been weeks. What do you want of me? I’ve said a hundred times how sorry I am. What else can I do? How can I make it up to you? I’ve asked and I’ve asked. Tell me what you want of me,” he said desperately, “and I’ll do it.”
“What I want you can’t give.”
“What is it?”
“I want it not to have happened,” she whispered. Martin threw up his hands.
“Oh God!” she cried. “What does a woman have to do to be like—like Flo Horvath, or the woman next door, or practically anybody up or down this road, with nothing to think about except what to have for dinner or what dress to wear next Saturday? Should it be the blue with white dots or the yellow with brown stripes?”
“Listen,” he said. “You’ve got to stop feeling sorry for yourself. You try my patience, Hazel. You do.”
“I can’t.”
“How can you know what any other woman has to think about? You think you’re the only one who’s had any trouble? People don’t—don’t—” he stumbled, “dine on champagne and strawberries every day. That’s not life.”
She clasped her hands. “Champagne! It would be good to have a taste of that Oh, I know one needs bread and meat and you’ve given me that, and I’ve always been grateful—”
“Bread and meat? What are you talking about?”
“I mean, you’ve given me a home and you’re a good father: you’ve been kind, very kind. At God knows what cost and effort! Oh, how my heart goes out to Claire’s mother!” This must be the fiftieth time she’s said that in these last two months, Martin thought. “I always felt so terribly sorry for Jessie. It was such a sad story. So many errors that ended in sadness. Why, I even felt sorry for—for Fern, Mary, whatever you call her. Isn’t that a joke? Sorry for her?”
Martin stood with a hand on the doorknob and that queer weakness draining through him again. It would follow him all day. Sitting in the train he would be unable to read the newspaper. At the office and in the hospital he would dread the homecoming, and yet at the same time look forward to it with the hope that this day, maybe at last, something might have changed while he was gone.
“I remember the first time you talked to me, the night you operated on the Moser girl. I remember every word. ‘I have a little girl,’ you said. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was three.’ And then you went on and talked about how it had happened. You were so honest that my heart hurt for you. ‘I was overwhelmed,’ you said. Those were your words. ‘I was overwhelmed.’ But it was all over, you said. And I understood. Those things happen. An infatuation comes and it goes, like a storm that passes. How was I to know that every word was a lie?” Her voice went up an octave, harshly, resounding as if she were calling through a tunnel. He was certain it could be heard through the closed doors and the walls.
“The children,” he warned. “This is our business, not theirs.”
“No, we certainly don’t want the children to know, do we, that their heroic father spent the war years with the woman he loves while his wife was three thousand miles away, unable to defend herself? I wouldn’t have cared, I say again, if it had been some casual affair, I would have understood. I’ve told you.”
“Yes, you have, six dozen times.” And Martin thought: Strange, that’s exactly what Meig said to me. He asked heavily, “What do you want me to do?”
“What do you want to do? Claire says she isn’t married. Maybe you want to go back to her. Yes, maybe that’s just what you want to do, go back.” She had affected a taunting posture, hand on hip, with a sly expression. It drove him to sudden fury.
“Ah, you’re obsessed! There’s no talking sense to you, Goddamn it!”
“I should never have married you! My sister always says—I never told you—you think you’re too good for our family, anyway.”
Blab-mouthed pest with the bell-clapper tongue! After he’d been so decent, so generous, to them all! Surprising though, that the woman could have sensed, in spite of all his careful tact, what he thought of her. Coldly, he said, “You’re in pretty bad shape if you have to take your opinions from your sister.”
“I know what you think of her! Maybe I shouldn’t have married anyone at all, or just picked out a man from the phone book to have children with and to share the expenses. We’d have no pretense of loving each other. It’s a worthless trick of nature, the whole business, anyway.”
“You don’t believe a word you’re saying, Hazel.”
“I believe it now. Then, then I was so in love with you I wasn’t thinking clearly! Maybe I wasn’t even altogether sane.”
He thought for an instant: Then why can’t you understand how I—And in the next instant thought: But you do understand, that’s the whole trouble.
“I believed in you, Martin. How can I ever believe anyone, how can I ever trust anyone again?”
It was true. How could she? But he said, “You can believe in me. It’s just that you ask too much. I don’t say you had no right to ask it. You had every right. I simply wasn’t able to give it, that’s all. And I’ll be sorry till the day I die.”
She put her face in her hands for a moment, then flung her head back. She looked, he thought, like a woman coming out of shock after an accident “So where are we?” she asked.
He wet his lips. “We are—we are here, a family, together. We’ve a whole future,” he said, speaking deliberately, “years and years, I hope. Even though the past hasn’t been exactly what you wanted, can’t you put it behind, since it can’t be altered? I do love you, Hazel.”
“Fine words. I wonder. Nights when you stay in the city, do you bring your women to my bed in the apartment, or do you go to theirs?”
Outrageous accusation! He’d always felt a certain fastidious scorn for an habitual chaser. It had only been one he’d ever wanted, one other.
“You know
that’s crazy,” he said.
She sighed. “Yes, I suppose it is. I’m sorry.”
“All right then, we’re back where we started. What can I do to end this?” He caught her hand, but she pulled it away. “Tell me. I’m deadly serious, Hazel.”
“It’s all ruined. I’m a second choice. What can you expect me to feel for you?”
“You’re not a second choice. I came back to you.”
“We’ve gone over this again and again. You came because of your children.”
True. Yet if there had been no children, might he not have come back to her anyway? Son of his parents and child of his times that he was, would conscience have driven him? After all, Hazel hadn’t asked to marry him. There was no answer.
“I can’t work and come home to this, spend the rest of my life with someone who is so miserable, Hazel.”
“Then leave! Go on, leave!”
“Damn you, I’m not going to leave and you know damn well I’m not, so cut it out!”
“I don’t care,” she said very low, “whether I live or die.”
“Ah, you’ve gone crazy!”
“Damn you! Do you hear? I don’t care whether I live or die!”
He stood at the top of the stairs. “You’re crazy!” he shouted again. “And I’m sick of it!”
She slammed the bedroom door. The vibration shook the walls. Below in the hall, the chandelier swayed, the prisms tinkling.
“Hazel, open that door! I want to tell you something. I have to go to work. I can’t leave like this, and I have to catch the train.”
No answer.
He looked at his watch. Seven minutes to get to the station. The hell! He fled down the stairs and out the door.
Claire woke early. The curtains were swaying in the damp wind off the Sound. Once the first haze had burned off, the day would be bright That was her first thought. Her second was of Ned. She had always believed that sex was talked to death, everywhere from learned texts to movies. Now she was certain of it. How or why pull apart, dissect and analyze that loveliness, for which there could really be no words any more than you could describe music or—One thing, though, you could say: sex feeds on its own appetite. She had been dreaming of it every night she had left Ned behind. There was such an emptiness, such an ache! A sweetness now which she could not have imagined before that first day on the warm rocks there on the Devon hill! And it seemed to her that October was a measureless, unbearable age away.
