by Belva Plain
Oh God, make everything more simple, so that I can know, finally, and for all time, what is right.
The smell of snow was in the air when she reached Madison Avenue. She began to walk a fast mile toward her mother’s house. They drifted into the habit of a weekly dinner together, on any day convenient for Claire. The sky was smudged in somber gray, but at street level was spread the glitter of approaching holiday: Santa Claus and wreaths, gilded angels, velvet robes and brocade evening bags. Wafts of perfumed air came through revolving doors along with segments of canned carols: “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”
With heads bent against the looming wind, people brushed into each other. Some were too tired and hurried to look up and apologize. Others, having just come from office parties, were too crocked to look up or care about any tidings of comfort and joy.
Claire had visions, sentimental visions, of people caroling around fireplaces or on doorsteps, in places where people all knew one another. In such places the carols would really mean something. This world was so hurried, so enormous and indifferent, that one could almost feel afraid in it “Lonely world,” she said aloud, and was surprised at the sound of the words and the feel of her own warm breath caught in her coat collar. “Lonely world.” (That baby will never see it, lonely or not)
And passing a flower shop, she stopped impulsively to buy a dozen dark-red roses. Mother had a greedy need for flowers and she, Claire, had sudden need to make a tender gesture. Waiting there while the roses were being wrapped in green tissue, she felt this tenderness at the vision of herself mounting the steps of her mother’s house with a gift in hand.
And then, above the exuberance of trailing fernery and roses—color of blood, color of life—among all that moist, triumphant burgeoning, she unexpectedly caught sight of her own mirrored face. For an instant, she did not recognize it. So white! So old! But that was absurd. She was only twenty-eight.
Outside again in the cold, the lonely mood came flooding back. She had been sleeping poorly, waking in the middle of the night with oppressive thoughts. Tonight, surely, she would wake up to think of a baby. But whose? That woman’s today or her own?
There are no answers to most things, Claire. You’re gradually learning that, aren’t you? Answers, that is, which are always right or always wrong.
How strange to think that she and Jessie, both at work in the same city, only a mile or two apart, could exist in such different worlds! Jessie’s ladies concerned themselves with silks and marble. But those poor women who came to the hospital, the ones who scrubbed the city’s floors while others slept, what of them? How did they bear the injustice of their lives? (Yet who is to keep the floors clean? Answer that!)
You belong with Dr. Milano’s women, Claire, not with the silk-and-marble ladies, decent and good though many of them may be. You were made to belong with those others.
In Jessie’s house the lights were lit. Grateful light, grateful warmth, she thought as she went in. Above the hall table where she laid her hat and gloves hung a portrait of somebody’s eighteenth-century ancestress, not Jessie’s, although it had hung there so long that possibly Jessie had by now convinced herself that she was. The woman had a handsome, critical face in which there was no sympathy for Claire’s modern malaise.
“Well,” Jessie said, holding out her cheek to be kissed, “how are you? You look worn out again.”
“I am, a little. You’re not, I see.”
“I don’t allow it. Nobody thanks you for it. Sherry?”
“Yes, please.”
“What are you looking at? The jewelry? It’s new, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“It’s magnificent.”
Jessie’s taste in jewels was exotic and conspicuous. Tonight she wore jade in ornate gold filigree. The chain glowed on her dark dress, and the earrings swung halfway to her shoulders.
“I know I attract attention. I will anyway, so I might as well make a bold job of it.” With a twist and jab, Jessie snuffed out a cigarette. “By my possessions, I can show I have accomplished something. Vulgar, I suppose,” she said, regarding Claire’s blouse and skirt and ringless hands.
“No, I understand it,” Claire answered quietly.
Twirling the sherry glass slowly between her hands, she stared into the fire. When you have been reclusive all through girlhood, tolerated, pitied and excluded, you were entitled to enjoy your release, especially when you had achieved that release by your own strength and efforts. She could imagine the sort of perverse thrill that must come to Jessie when a new client, one who had not been forewarned, crossed the carpet to face her at her desk. She could even imagine her mother’s silent amusement: Yes, this little person is the Jessie Meig you’ve heard about. Yet in spite of this bravado, Jessie never went out on social occasions unless a client was along. It was true that she was too busy to build a social circle of her own, but actually she wanted the company of important clients because at parties they gave her the shelter of their physical presence and prestige.
“You saw the article in the magazine section last week?” Jessie inquired now.
“Yes. I was going to mention it. Only there’ve been so many, that I’m quite used to seeing your name.”
“I had so much publicity on the Arizona place that they’ve asked me to do a small Bermuda inn for the same people. I shall enjoy that. I’ll get away from the tropical, I think, and do it in pure eighteenth-century English with a lot of color.” She mused. “I’m seeing it in my mind’s eye already.”
“It’s getting so I should think one almost needs an introduction from a friend to persuade you to do a house.”
“Not quite, but almost,” Jessie smiled. “Let’s go in to dinner. Tell me what you did today.”
“Very different things from what you did. I watched an abortion.”
Jessie raised an eyebrow.
“Sometimes I feel so sorry for women! Their poor bodies, all their conflicts! I saw a young woman who had a botched abortion. She’ll never have a baby, short of a miracle, that is.”
Jessie was silent.
“I don’t believe much in miracles,” Claire said somberly. Suddenly the food was hard to swallow and she put the fork down.
“You’re not hungry.”
“I was when I came in, but now I’m not.”
“Ah Claire, Claire, you have more in your heart than you’ll admit!”
Claire felt the threat of tears. Lowering her eyes from her mother’s gaze, she stared at the flowers on the center of the table: anemones, each as rare and languid as an Edwardian beauty. Their pale stems curved in the water, which trembled slightly in the shallow bowl. The stem was the beauty’s neck, and the spreading petals were her head, top-heavy with piled, glossy hair.
“Ned would have loved a child,” she said softly. “How he would love a proudly pregnant little woman waiting at home for him every evening after his exciting day!”
“Most men would, you know.”
“I know most men would. There’s nothing wrong with it … So, he’ll find somebody, if he hasn’t already, who’ll be glad to give it to him, I’m sure.”
“I hope you’re not too bitter, Claire?”
“You’ve been bitter often enough, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I want to see bitterness in you. Anyway, mine was different, it couldn’t have been helped. The circumstances, I mean.”
“And mine could. I made my own. You don’t have to tell me.”
“I won’t tell you anything. It wouldn’t do any good anyway. But I will say, come stretch out on the sofa. Take the pillows away and stretch out.”
The fire had settled down and purred softly now, like a cat. “Smells good, doesn’t it?” Jessie remarked. “Cedar logs.”
“I was rummaging today,” Claire began, after a minute, “and found my Brearley yearbook. God, how fresh-faced and hopeful everybody looked! With all the sentimental sayings under the pictures. And when you think of what’s actually happened�
�”
“What has?”
“Well, Lynn’s a model, living in Beverly Hills with a squat, rich old man. June’s already had two divorces. Paula broke her neck diving into a pool that had no water in it.”
Jessie shuddered. “Do tell me something cheerful, will you? You’re not yourself at all tonight.”
“You don’t think so?”
“As a matter of fact, though, maybe you are yourself. The self you’ve been for quite a while now. I don’t know exactly when you became what you are, but I suspect when.”
Claire didn’t answer. Her head ached with the held-back tears, with weariness and the weight of things. The room was weighty, heavy with the accretions of a way of life that was going, she suspected, if not gone. Jessie’s independence was no first choice, but had been forced to birth out of courage and desperate need. Jessie would have rejoiced to be cherished and guarded by a man.
“I want to go away,” she said suddenly. “To India or Brazil, some place. Any place.”
“What? Why? You don’t want to train with your father?”
She began to cry. “No! But I don’t dare let him see it” “I don’t understand! Such a fabulous opportunity, Claire!”
“Yes, only I don’t want it.”
“Good Lord, whyever not?”
“ ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on.’ Our parents’ dreams for us.”
“Never mind the quotation. Tell me why you don’t want it.”
“Because I hate it. It’s awful. The whole atmosphere is awful.” Claire shuddered. “The shaved heads and the people who can’t talk afterward. All the physical therapy and phony—no, not phony—the contrived cheer because somebody can take one step. And you know he’ll go home and maybe take six steps after a while. To say nothing of the ones who die under surgery. It’s just too depressing, and I can’t see myself spending my life with it.”
“Well!” Jessie cried, throwing up her hand. “I just don’t know at all! When did you start to feel this way?”
“I don’t remember. It just grew. I don’t think I ever really thought about it at all until I began to get into it, don’t you see? And found out what it was like?”
“You wanted to please your father. You always have,” Jessie said, accusingly.
“No, I don’t think I even thought that much! Not consciously. It just seemed to be the thing I was naturally going to do. After all, if one is a doctor and one’s father happens to be Martin Farrell, one is sort of expected to—I mean, you expect yourself to—it’s not as if he were any ordinary man, just anybody—” And to her own dismay, Claire began to sob. Everything just surged up and burst “I hate Dad’s work! I’d be no good at it! Everybody says, ‘Oh, you’re so unbelievably lucky!’ And I know I am. I’m so proud of Dad and so guilty, and—I know you’re shocked.”
“Claire, I’m not shocked. Surprised, but not shocked.” “He’s been so wonderful to me. And I’ve been so depressed because apparently I don’t appreciate it enough.”
“All the same,” Jessie said quietly, “I think you ought to tell him.”
“I can’t! Oh my God, I can’t do that! Don’t you see? He’s counted on it for years! He’s already had so many failures! How can I give him one more?”
“How? You’re not obliged to compensate for his disappointments! Or for anyone’s.”
“You say that because you—”
“I say that because it’s the truth and not for any—any personal reason you’re thinking of.”
“I’m so ashamed!” Claire gasped. “I don’t know why I’m crying like this.”
“You’re entitled to cry! You don’t have to be so damned brave! Shall I leave the room? Would you feel better if I did?”
“No, no. Stay.”
Presently Jessie laid her hand on Claire’s forehead. “Move over. I’ll massage your neck. You’re all knots. Does that feel good?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you want to do in India.”
“Oh—go somewhere with one of those agencies that sends medical help to people who haven’t got any. I don’t want too be a medical great. I’m not cut out for it. I’d like to bring primary care, simple care and hope to people, especially to women, because they’re the most trod upon. They’re at the bottom of the heap. Wherever you go, women are at the bottom of the heap.” And to her own horror, she began to cry again. “But there’s no use talking about it, I can’t do it I’ll stay here and—and petrify.”
“You were speaking of Ned a while ago,” Jessie said softly.
“What about him?”
“You still think about him.”
“He treated me badly. Badly!”
“Why don’t you just forget him, then?”
“Oh!” Claire cried. “A good question! Why don’t I? I don’t know … I don’t sleep. I wake up every night and I’m scared. I don’t understand why I’m scared. Maybe of being so alone? But I do understand how it was for Dad when Hazel died …”
Jessie’s fingers soothed and soothed. “It’s not the same, darling. No one’s died.”
“Our baby died. I made it die.”
“That’s not the same.”
Claire sat up. “What else could I have done? Should I have gone after him?”
“Certainly not,” Jessie said stoutly, “not then and not now. One doesn’t run after a man!”
They both sat looking into the fire. At last Claire’s tears stopped, and the fire flickered out.
“I guess I’ll go home,” she said.
“No, stay here for the night. Take a sleeping pill and get a good night’s rest.”
“I never take pills, Mother.”
“Well, Doctor, take one tonight. Just one mild pill.”
“No pill. But I will stay. That I’ll do.” It would be good to avoid the apartment tonight, and the bed where she had slept with Ned, and the sight of his Irish woolen hat, which he had left on the shelf.
Like a little girl, she followed Jessie up the stairs and into her old room, where a doll from her tenth year still stood next to a first-year Latin text and a souvenir birch-bark canoe, those innocent relics of easy years before real life had begun.
A great square desk covered with papers, medical periodicals and sundries stood between Jessie and Martin. How many of life’s salient encounters take place among three, two people and a desk?
He still looks like a doctor, she thought, and that’s odd, because what does a doctor look like? Yet he does.
For the last half hour and for two weeks before that she had been resisting a confusion of emotions: stubbornness and pride, worry and embarrassment and cowardice, along with anger at the circumstances that were forcing her into a supplicant’s position. Still, she reminded herself, she was doing this for Claire: for Claire she would take sword against monsters if need be. Happily, Martin was no monster, she thought with a certain grim humor; he was Claire’s father and as concerned this minute as she was herself.
“It’s cost you a good deal to come here, Jessie, and only serious need could have brought you. I want you to know I understand that.”
“Quite so.”
Once more the doctor had spoken: comprehending, kindly and firm. Through Jessie’s head went scraps of flitting thought: It seems a century (another age of man) since we walked in Kensington Gardens while Claire in her yellow coat rode the tricycle. It seems yesterday since Cyprus. A bit of poetry went flitting, something about “time in its flight.” That summer he bought painful new white shoes. The little car jounced over the back-country roads and the doctor’s bag lay on the seat between us. Fern wore blue linen and our mother’s pearls.
There was a queer turmoil in her chest. Weakened, she sat up, straightened and spoke decisively. “Claire mustn’t know I’ve been here, or ever know I’ve told you how she dreads your kind of work. This must come from you as if it were your own idea. That is, if you agree.”
“She really hates the work all that much?” Martin repeated with disbelief.
“Apparently so. It’s tearing her down.” And I’m tearing you down by telling you, but I can’t help it.
“When—when did she first know this about herself?”
“How can anyone say exactly ‘when’ anything happens inside one’s head?” Like falling in love or out of it: does anybody know exactly ‘when’? Answer that if you can, Martin. “It’s tied up somehow with Ned, that I know. Maybe that’s when it started. I don’t know. At any rate, it’s been growing more and more—the conviction that she doesn’t want your kind of work. She’s absolutely devastated at the thought of a lifetime of it.”
“Why hasn’t she ever told me? For God’s sake, why?”
“She knew it would be a terrible wound.”
Martin was looking at his hands, which gripped the edge of the desk. She understood that it was difficult for him to look at her. Her eyes, too, avoided him, as they circled the room. On a shelf near the desk stood the photograph of a woman with a quiet face, a trifle too round, and timid, pretty eyes. Claire’s description of Hazel had been remarkably accurate. Yes, Jessie, thought, he’s had trouble enough for one lifetime, whether of his own doing or not doesn’t matter.
“Such a waste of her skilled mind!” Martin cried abruptly. “She’d be doing the most rudimentary medicine. Does she know that?”
“Of course she knows it. It’s what she wants.”
“She’ll deliver babies, but if there should be complications, she’ll fail because of not knowing enough. She’ll set a broken bone, but if it’s a compound fracture of the shoulder, she’ll be unable to cope with it. She’ll do a lot of things passably, but nothing expertly.”
Jessie replied with patience, “She understands all that.”
“I had been counting on her more than I knew. Looking forward to something so special! Father and daughter. She, in a way, beginning where I, in not too many more years, will leave off.” He tapped a pencil. With a small shiver of recognition, Jessie remembered the habit. “There’s so much new. Every day it comes piling in. One would need five lifetimes to learn it all.” His face sank into a tired sadness.
Again she looked away and was silent. A typewriter clacked in the outer office. A fire engine screeched past the windows. The stillness when these sounds ceased was bleak and lonely.
