by Belva Plain
If only Jessie would accept with generosity! “I don’t want to be reminded of home,” she complained. Strange that she should still think of Cyprus as home, even at this remove. And Claire remembered the weedy canals, thick with the green murk of algae, the bleak snow banked head-high along the streets.
“I’ve become a new person with another identity. This marriage will draw me back into the old.” Jessie had spoken like a petulant child or a wheedling woman, neither of which roles befitted her or was at all familiar to her daughter. “When you marry him it will all come back,” she cried. The incredible selfishness of such words, as if you could ask someone not to marry because it would bring unpleasant memories to someone else!
“He’s not even her son,” Claire had protested.
“He grew up in her house, so he is her son. He has her touch all over him. He has her ways.”
Ways. What ways? It was all ephemeral, like trying to grasp a cloud.
“It’ll pass over,” Jessie said, reassuring herself. “You hardly know him.”
But it will not pass over, Claire thought now, angrily.
“How was I to know that every word was a lie?”
Hazel’s voice pierced through the wall. She was crying, and Claire sat up. Martin’s voice came now, an angry rumble. The voices rose, becoming more distinct.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I should never have married you!”
Embarrassed and alarmed, Claire got out of bed and moved noisily around the room. She ran the water in the shower. This was not her affair and she had no right to hear it. A door slammed. It made a vicious noise. She thought of a finger being caught and winced as sympathetic pain shot through her own finger. Then she heard her father thudding heavily down the stairs, heard the front door close sharply and a few moments later the car backing down the drive with an impatient spurt of gravel.
She went down to the dining room. Esther opened the swinging door from the kitchen.
“Will you have eggs or cereal, Miss Claire?”
“Cereal, please. Has Mrs. Farrell had breakfast yet?”
“No, ma’am.”
Oh, why this artificial, stupid, servant-employer relationship? Claire spoke forthrightly.
“That was pretty awful this morning. Does it happen often?” And as the girl hesitated, “It’s all right, Esther. They’re my family, after all, and I love them. I’ve just never heard anything like that before. I thought maybe you could tell me something that might help.”
“No, ma’am, I only been here three weeks and they seem like real nice quiet people. I never heard nothing.”
“Well,” Claire remarked tritely, since some answer was required, “these things happen, as they say, in the best of families.”
“Oh yes, married folks is bound to have their troubles. I was married once and it ain’t easy. These muffins are nice and hot.”
Hazel came in from the porch. “I thought I heard you. I’m sorry I wasn’t up to greet you last night. I wasn’t feeling very well.”
“All right now?”
“Oh yes. It was nothing, after all.” Her eyelids were red and her lipstick hastily smudged. She wore a terry robe. “I’ve got a suit on under this. I thought I’d go for an early swim,” she explained. She sat down decorously, clearing her throat like a nervous old lady making an afternoon visit.
Claire thought: Good heavens, Hazel, you needn’t put on an act for me! Why don’t you just cry or swear or get up and leave the room if you feel like it?
Hazel asked, “Have you got everything you want?”
“More than I should have, thanks. These muffins! I’d be fat as a house if I lived with you!”
Hazel contradicted her. “You’ll never be fat. You’ll be like your Aunt Mary.” And as Claire looked astonished, she added, “Of course, I’ve never seen her. Of course, I’ve never seen your mother either.”
“No,” Claire said.
“Do you think you look like your mother?” Hazel persisted.
“I don’t really know whom I look like.” Very odd, these remarks! And what could be their purpose?
“Life’s been hard for your mother, I imagine.”
In all the years they had known each other, Hazel had observed the strictest tact concerning Jessie. The nearest she had ever come to acknowledging that Claire had a mother was to inquire, “Everybody well at home?”
“She’s managed quite comfortably,” Claire said, sounding cool without having intended to.
“I saw one of her model rooms at the Antique Show last winter. I went with a friend of mine one afternoon. I don’t know much about those things, but I thought it was the best room there. A red-and-white library, it was. She’s very talented.”
“Yes. Are Marjorie and the boys gone for the day? The house is so quiet.”
“They’ll all gone off. Their last freedom before school starts next week.”
“You’ve got marvelous children, Hazel. I hope I’ll be as lucky as you.”
“You’ve got time for children, haven’t you? I suppose you’ll want to wait until you finish your residency with your father.”
“Your father” came out with an edge of sharpness. But why not, after the morning’s events?
“Well, Ned and I will have to work that out,” Claire replied cheerfully, the words “Ned and I” making a fine warmth in her chest. “You know, sometimes I feel so young, I think I have all the time in the world. Then some days it seems as if I ought to hurry up and do right away whatever I’m going to do, like having children, for instance.”
“You’re twenty-six, and I’m forty-six,” Hazel said.
“You don’t look it.” That was mostly true, although not this morning.
“I feel seventy-seven,” Hazel said.
She got up and went to the sideboard, picked up a saucer, examined and replaced it, then walked to the porch door and stood looking out.
Martin’s not easy to live with. Claire thought suddenly. No, that’s not fair! I never lived with him, so how would I know? He’s compassionate, kind and perceptive; but he’s difficult, too. And he’s driven. That’s it, he’s driven. He’s obsessed with this institute business. He wants perfection and he’s tireless in seeking it. Yet he could shut his eyes for hours; all alone, listening to music. She’d seen him sitting there with that half-smile on his face, just letting the music pour over him, and she had wondered what he might be thinking. Complex.
Hazel’s drooping posture and bleak words made gloom in the room. Claire sought to enliven it, but found only hackneyed words.
“Everybody feels old sometimes. We all have our days.”
Hazel turned to her as though she had said something profound. “Oh, do you think so? Do you think people are fundamentally alike? I ask you because you’re a doctor, you must have had so much experience.”
“Well, the differences can be amazing sometimes. I’ve been on pediatrics up to this last week. I’ve seen mothers frantic over a minor cut, and then last week I saw a woman come with not one, but two mongoloid children. She was so courageous and accepting! I thought: I don’t know how you bear it.”
“If I could have had more education,” Hazel said, “I think I would have liked to be a doctor. As it is, nursing was as far as I got and I loved it. Except,” she reflected, “except sometimes I’m afraid I got too personal. Some patients just touch your heart. Cancer patients, especially. I never did know which was right: to tell them they’re going to die or let them think they’re going to get better. What do you think?”
“Most of the psychiatrists and the chaplains say to tell the truth. They guess it anyway. And you can always tell them that many people are cured, which happens to be so.”
“Sometimes I’d turn the light out after the night’s last medication and I’d think, as I left the room, how frightened they must be, lying there in the dark and wondering how much longer they had to live. But other times I’d think it may not be hard at all to die. After all, there’s me
rcy in nature, too, isn’t there? Maybe when people have to leave, they’re ready to leave. Don’t you think so?”
“So far in my experience I’ve actually seen just one person die. He’d had a heart attack and I can tell you he wasn’t ready. He was damn scared.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Hazel said vaguely, turning back to the door.
Over her shoulder and through the trees Claire saw the white sheen of water. A feathery wind moved the leaves. It was hard to think of a morning when you wouldn’t be here to feel all this or hear Beethoven or lie in bed with a man’s arms around you.
“Why think about things like that?” she cried impatiently, almost angrily. “Your time won’t be here for years! Do you often have thoughts like these?”
“No, no, of course not. I’m sorry. It is a stupid conversation, especially for a young woman in love.”
Claire stood up. “I think I’ll go put my suit on. I’ve a great book and I’m going down to the beach. You coming too?”
“I’ll meet you there,” Hazel answered.
They swam the length of the beach and back, Hazel slowing for Claire’s benefit.
“You could be a pro,” Claire told her as she spread a towel and propped herself against the seawall.
She had brought binoculars. It amused her to watch boats crossing the Sound. “There’s a yacht to end all yachts. Must belong to a Greek shipping tycoon. Here, look, Hazel.”
Hazel took the binoculars. “Could you cross the ocean in that?”
“I’m sure you could. Which reminds me, I’ve been thinking, Dad and you really ought to have a vacation from children. Why don’t you go to Europe this fall? All those old, old places! They do something to your heart.”
“I’m sure they do.”
“Of course, I know it’s hard to get the time.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s the problem. Certainly it isn’t for me. I don’t do anything.”
Something in her tone, something oblique, touched Claire. “What do you mean, you don’t do anything?”
“What do I do? I’m just Dr. Farrell’s wife. I go to meetings of the Wives’ Auxiliary. I’m on a committee to raise money for this or that and I’m treated with respect because I’m his wife. Otherwise I’m nobody.”
There was some truth in what she said. This was the status of women and had been so for centuries. Yet it was not altogether true. Hazel might see herself that way; yet there were plenty of women in her position who didn’t see themselves that way at all. Hazel had simply lost her persona.
“That’s not so,” Claire said emphatically. “You are a person in your own right. Your job is bringing up children, and they’re fine children, too. What’s more important? You’ve sunk into routine, Hazel, that’s what’s the matter with you. You have got to get away.”
Hazel stood up. Her hair streamed out in the wind. “I’ll get away. Feel how strong the wind is? I’m going in again.” She put on her cap, tucking the hair back. “Coming?”
“Not now. I feel like reading.”
Hazel walked into the water and turned over to float.
No life except through her husband, Claire thought. Poor thing. It’s all right if you’re satisfied. Apparently she isn’t. Thank goodness Ned will never expect that of me. We’re a different generation, she thought.
The beach was empty. Summer renters had returned to the city and year-round residents didn’t feel such eager need to use the beach, especially in September. Claire read a few pages before growing drowsy. The sun burned through the clouds and she turned over to let it bake her back. Last sun of the year until next summer.
Hazel’s dog was barking. “Oh do stop, you fool!” Claire cried crossly, having been jolted awake. Fritz, a black dachshund with a shattering voice, was standing at the water’s edge. Esther must have let him out of the house to follow Hazel.
Claire sat up. Hazel had been swimming parallel to the shore, up and down the length of the beach. Now, though, she was swimming away from it. What was she doing? Claire took up the binoculars. The red cap rose to the top of a swell, sank out of sight and rose again. She could clearly see the raised arm of Hazel’s strong, determined crawl. No doubt of it, she was swimming out! Swimming away! Claire looked up and down the beach. There was no one in sight. She stood up and ran to the shore.
“Hazel!” she called, cupping her hands. “Hazel! Come back!” and knew as she called that she couldn’t possibly be heard. Good God, what was the woman doing? Claire stood there. She looked down at the dog as if he might know. He had stopped barking. He looked back at her with pathetic, questioning eyes. She frowned, squinting through the binoculars. The cap and the arm were growing smaller, moving with astonishing, deliberate speed away and away. What could the woman be thinking of?
And suddenly Claire knew what she was thinking of.
She thought of plunging into the water and following. But she wasn’t a good enough swimmer, and wouldn’t have been able to catch up with her anyway. She began to run toward the house, her shocked heart thudding, but there was no one at home except Esther, and what could she do? She looked up and down the beach. The club was a quarter of a mile away. There was no time, no time! Then she remembered the Mayfields, two houses down. They had a speedboat, moored at a little dock.
Sinking into the sand with every step, she ran. A boy of fifteen or so was pumping a bicycle tire in the driveway.
“Please!” she cried. “You’ve got a boat! The lady! Mrs. Farrell! I think she’s drowning! Please get the boat!”
The boy dropped the pump and stared.
“Hurry! Please, for God’s sake, hurry!”
“Miss, I’m not sure I can run the boat. I only learned just now, amd my dad said never to take it out without him.”
“Is your dad home? Who’s home?”
“Nobody, just my grandmother. You can use the telephone.”
“There’s not time. Please! Try, please!”
The boy climbed into the boat and tried the engine. It sputtered and died. Claire got in. The boy bent over and tried again. It sputtered, coughed and died.
“I only learned,” he apologized.
Two minutes. Three. Claire scanned the open water. The sun had come out again and there was only a vast gray dazzle, a sheet of steel.
“There, I’ve got it!”
Triumph. The engine had set up a regular putt-putt-putt. Claire pointed the direction. Hazel’s dog marked the place, shrilly barking again at the water’s edge.
“There! Out there in a straight line from where I was sitting! Exactly straight. Hurry!”
Clouds rolled back over the sun. The air grew chill. The summer sweetness had gone out of it and the water had roughened. The prow pointed to the sky, then fell as the little boat rose and sank through great swelling hills and troughs. Claire shaded her eyes, straining and peering.
“Sure we’re going right?” the boy asked.
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.” Claire gripped the seat. “You look to the right, I’ll look to the left. She had a red bathing cap.”
“But what would she have been—” he began, and fell silent.
The water came alive as if some huge creature far below were rolling and turning. How could anything as frail as a human being contest its power? Claire hadn’t known the Sound could turn so evil so quickly. Nor had she ever known such terror, such absolute sheer terror.
The boy, holding fast to the tiller, looked around at her, asking doubtfully, “Could she have swum this far, do you think?”
Claire looked back at the shore, where a line of houses stood white and no larger now than scattered boulders.
“Or this fast?” the boy said. “Even though we started later we’d have passed her anyway.”
Claire’s teeth were clenched. Panic, as well as the rocking of the boat, had churned her stomach. But she commanded, “Let’s go a little farther.”
The boat pitched like a roller coaster. “We’ve gone a mile and a half,” the boy said.
“Yes.”
“We’d best turn back.”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other, the boy’s face scared and wondering. Claire began to cry.
“Was she—is she your mother?”
“My stepmother. Oh God!”
The boy became practical and manly. “We’ve got to call the police, I think. And the Coast Guard. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”
The boat tore back toward shore, slapping the water, Claire still scanning the surface from side to side. Nothing. Nothing. Far out, heading north, a cruiser took its leisurely way. People in vacation mood were sitting on the deck, very likely, eating and drinking, maybe even singing in their gaiety, while, only a mile or two from them, another soul had cared so little about life that she had thrown it away. How was that possible?
I didn’t see, Claire thought. All the time she was talking to me, this crazy, desperate resolve was inside her, and I didn’t see. Oh Hazel, poor foolish, suffering Hazel, why did you? What made you? Out here, beyond the surf and at the bottom, they say this turbulence grows quiet. Anything which falls to the bottom lies there quietly. Or do the currents carry it away? Claire closed her eyes. The nausea mounted. At some spot, perhaps here where they were now, the exhausted, driven body had made its last effort, the arms made their last curving stroke, the legs given their final flutter-kick. The heart and the lungs had strained. How had she gone down? Struggling and crying, perhaps, having changed her mind, screaming for help?
The water was dark green, opaque, like sculptured glass. She would have cleaved it narrowly going down, and then it would simply have closed over to resume its rhythm—moon rhythm, wind rhythm—as before. All this morning I was irritated with her. Yes, she bothered me with her queer remarks and her mournful, ghastly air. I wanted to get away from her. I got away from her, politely, with my book. Not that it would have made any difference if I hadn’t. Or would it have? Could it have?
