by Belva Plain
She answered very low. “It’s because I can’t bear to see your hand.”
He said nothing. She’s overcome with double guilt, he thought. But it wasn’t his fault; he’d told her ten times that he didn’t blame her for the accident.
“No, I can’t bear it,” she repeated.
“Then don’t look at it,” he said with exasperation.
“How you hate me!” she cried.
“Iris, I’ve told you—”
“But I know. No matter what you say, I know.”
“Damn it, Iris! What do you want of me?”
She didn’t answer, and he sighed, deeply and audibly. They finished their coffee and got up from the table.
Theo despaired. He would be better off at his office, morbid as it was there, helping the secretaries close down. It was early yet, and he went out to the yard where the monthly crew had come to clean the swimming pool. Locusts were already drilling in the heat, but the baby-blue water shimmered like ice. He stood for a moment watching the men, and it crossed his mind that they were thinking, and would probably say when he left, what a lucky bastard he was to live the easy life in a place like this. Then, remembering that he hadn’t paid the company for last month’s service, he walked back to the house. The mail had been put through the slot and lay on the hall floor. He bent to pick it up, but now, one-handed, could not manage the slippery catalogs, struggled, and swore softly.
“That’s all right, Doctor, I’ll get it,” Pearl said from the kitchen door.
What must she be thinking of us? he asked himself. Iris upstairs like a recluse and I like this. The blind leading the blind.
In the living room with the mail spread out on the coffee table, he began to sort through ads, appeals, and bills. As always, there was a plenitude of bills: Philip’s orthodontist, a fat insurance premium, and college tuitions soon due. The nine or ten major operations that would have tided him nicely over the next month or two were now not to be. In the pit of his stomach fear gathered and made a knot.
Last in the pile was a bill under the heading of Léa. He ran his eye down a vertical line that filled one page and part of a second. Lace evening gown … cashmere suit … satin blouse … He reached the bottom line and gasped. More than ten thousand dollars worth of clothes! It had to be a mistake.
He ran upstairs with the bill in hand and burst into the bedroom where Iris was sitting at the window, not reading, just sitting with limp hands in her lap.
“What the hell can this be?” he demanded, waving the bill. “Is it a mistake? Somebody else’s statement?”
Iris shook her head. “You wanted me to get an evening dress,” she said, faltering.
“For a coronation in Westminster Abbey, for God sake? And all the other stuff—what is this?”
“I’m terribly sorry, Theo. I realize I shouldn’t have done it.”
“ ‘Shouldn’t have done it’! That’s all you have to say? ‘Shouldn’t have done it,’ ” he mocked. “You haven’t by any chance gone entirely crazy, have you?”
“Perhaps I have, Theo.”
He groaned. “Jesus! Where is it all going to end! One thing after the other—”
“It’s not so bad, Theo. The things haven’t been worn. I’ll sell them. They’re all in my closet.”
“What, run a tag sale in this house? Put an ad in the paper?”
Her eyes filled. Tears again, the ultimate defense and the ultimate weapon too. He was furious.
“What I want is an explanation, Iris,” he yelled. “Where’s this thousand-dollar evening dress? I’d like to have a look at it.”
He opened up the closet door, rattling hangers over the clothes pole.
“You can’t. Everything else is there, but I gave that one to Pearl.”
He was stunned. “You—what? You gave it to Pearl?”
The tears spilled over and rolled down her cheeks, yet she spoke very quietly.
“I can’t explain. If you can only accept how terribly sorry I am—”
Theo had suddenly no words. He just looked at her, at the tears and the sturdy body gone frail. It might even be possible, as absurd as it seemed, that a smooth saleswoman could have talked her into buying all those things, that she simply hadn’t known how to say no, any more than she had ever known how to say it to her son Steve. And an enormous weariness drained him.
Her small voice queried, “What are we going to do, Theo?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean your work, your life. I keep asking what’s to happen now.”
“What do you want? Shall I sell shoes? Be a waiter? No, a waiter has to have two strong hands so he won’t drop soup down the customers’ backs.”
“Then we have nothing to talk about.”
He was filled with rage, an aimless rage at the evil, wretched fate that had rained down on them, but he was suddenly too exhausted to give it vent.
“I think I’d better go to my office,” he said, adding, “I’m not meeting a woman there either.”
“I didn’t say you were. I didn’t think you were.”
“Maybe it would be easier for us both if I were to sleep at the office too. You can reach me there if necessary. The phones are still connected.”
At the same time an inner voice admonished him that this was cruelty. But immediately a second voice responded, saying, “Cruelty! Look at yourself! It’s you who are the first victim. Feel sorry for yourself!”
“It’s better for us both,” he said again.
“I understand. You don’t want to stay in this house with me.” She lifted her head in a conscious gesture of bravery. “Well, that’s all right. I don’t want to stay in it with you either. You expect me to pay for your hand with my heart’s blood for the rest of my life, don’t you? And I can’t do it. There’d be nothing left of me. There’s nothing much left of me as it is.”
“Ah, go to hell,” he said softly. “I’m fed up with this drama.”
“I’m in hell already,” she answered.
He stood a moment on the threshold looking at her. She had returned to her first position, drooping at the window. Even her hair drooped, rumpling her collar. Then he felt a twinge in his fingers like the slice of a knife running up past his elbow. And all of this because she had caught him that night! To hell with her, to hell with everything. Everything!
Feeling this huge disgust, this hopeless doom, he spun around and without another word left the room. A short while later, carrying a suitcase, he left the house.
Here in the office these last few days he had been able to huddle undisturbed. Yet when he tried to read or tried to think, he had no success at either. When he thought about his children and how he was to provide for them, he was beside himself. As for his marriage, it would come to no good; he saw that clearly, impossible as that would have seemed only days ago.
Hours passed. A fearful heat wave burned the afternoon outside, but in the room it was cool and dim. He turned on the little radio for some music and lay back in the swivel chair. “It will all come to no good,” he said aloud, aching, and closing his eyes, let the music sweep over him.
10
The heat wave had engulfed the city, but in the restaurant the air was chilled, and Leah drew her flowered jacket closer. All during the lunch Paul had had the feeling that she was vaguely abstracted, which was quite unlike her. Twice he had even had to repeat himself. But as if he had noticed nothing, he continued to scan Ilse’s letter.
“It came just this morning, and I knew you’d want to hear it. Listen to this. ‘We’ve all seen your students in Chicago. What a year this is! We’ve seen it all, the Sorbonne riots in May and the students in Italy going wild. It’s amazing to think that these kids could actually boot Johnson and de Gaulle out of their jobs. Here in Israel we’ve escaped all that. Our students know their government is fighting for its life, for their lives, and they’re not about to tear their government down.’ ”
When he ran his eyes ahead to the next parag
raph, Paul read silently, skipping through it.
“Dearest Paul,” it said, “I’m still in love with this place and still in love with you. I can’t believe it’s already been four years.… Quite unselfishly, I wish you were here because we need men like you.… But sometimes, too, I confess, I need your strength for myself. There’s so much evil abroad again. I think we’re seeing only the beginning.…”
“She says,” he resumed, “that we’re seeing only the beginning of a bad time. Oh, this is interesting, where she writes, ‘I have acquaintances who are in a position to know about things that don’t reach the newspapers. People don’t want to believe that a growing, worldwide terrorist network exists, really worldwide from Japan to Cuba to everyplace. It’s financed, that’s known, by some of the richest men in Europe, but they’re hard to identify. The people who went to Paris, for instance, to incite students to riot are the same ones who sent that shipful of weapons to Beirut, that ship that we Israelis caught before it could land. They’ve sent thousands of students to Cuba from all over Europe, along with Palestinians who go for guerrilla training. The pity of it is that a lot of these kids are idealists like the ones who’re protesting your Vietnam war. They don’t know they’re being used, misled at the top. They should come here, or somewhere, and work, make themselves useful. Excuse me, I get indignant. I think I’m back in the apartment at the end of the day telling you everything on my mind, while you so patiently listen—’ ”
He did not read aloud the rest of the sentence—“ ‘with that wonderful wise, loving smile of yours—oh, when, oh, when will you come to me?’ ”
“Sounds like Ilse, doesn’t it?” he finished.
“Aren’t you going over to see her? You really should, you know.”
“I’m waiting for her to come here.”
“She won’t. Once Ilse gets an idea in her head, she keeps it.”
“I can’t go through it all again,” Paul said, as always, giving it a double meaning, that he wasn’t going to endure another parting with Ilse and also that he wasn’t going to talk about it again now.
He folded the letter, paid the luncheon bill, and put the American Express card back in his wallet.
“Well,” he said, starting to rise, “I’ll be on my way. Thank goodness for air-conditioned cars. I’m going up to Greenwich to see one of my favorite old clients. She’s over ninety and sharp as a tack, but it’s too much to ask her to come to the city in all this heat.”
As Leah made no move, Paul sat down again. He glanced keenly at her.
“Is there something you want to tell me? Maybe I’m imagining things, but I seem to sense that there is.”
“There is. I’ve been sitting here all through lunch debating whether I should say it or not.”
“Say it. You’re not ill or anything?”
“Nothing like that. Remember a man named Jordaine who was at Meg’s a couple of Christmases ago, good-looking in a swarthy way, obviously rich? You talked to him for a while.”
“Victor Jordaine,” Paul told her promptly. “We couldn’t figure out what Timothy, of all people, was doing with him.”
“Ah, yes, you never forget names, do you?”
Sometimes, naturally, he did. But Jordaine’s was a name that had stuck because of the incongruous connection with Tim Powers.
“So, what about him? I remember that he’s one of your best customers. You were telling about his women. It sounded like a harem.”
Leah, looking distressed, lowered her eyes. “He was a customer. I doubt he’ll be back. We had some words.”
“Really? What about?”
“About your—about Iris.”
“I don’t understand,” Paul said.
“It’s hard to explain, but …”
There was a hammering in his chest. “Explain,” he commanded impatiently.
“Well, here goes. He took a fancy to Iris. They met accidentally in my shop and she walked off with him. He came in the next day to buy a present for her and said things I didn’t like. Plainly speaking, I told him she’s an innocent and he should leave her alone. He laughed.”
The place where the hammer was at work now burned “I don’t understand,” he said again. “What would he want with Iris?” And he thought without saying, A quiet type, no beauty, lovely only to a certain discerning kind of man.
Leah shrugged. “A game. Something new, a change from his usual expensive tramps and tarts. A respectable suburban housewife, and Jewish besides, to make it different. Piquant, shall we say? A challenge. And she happened to look very pretty.”
“What do you make of it? You’re smart. Is the marriage on the rocks?”
“I shouldn’t think so. She was buying a dress to celebrate her husband’s being made chief of surgery or something.”
Paul straightened the grimace that must be contorting his face. “Are you sure of all this, Leah?”
“Of course I am.”
“All right. Stupid question.”
An innocent, Leah said. Perhaps she wasn’t such an innocent. He knew nothing about her, after all. Yet, the way her husband had spoken … Paul remembered every word: A good wife. Old fashioned. Quiet.
“I’m sorry I told you,” Leah said. “I’m going to kick myself all the way home.”
“It’s all right. It was natural to tell me.”
“Maybe. But cruel in a way, since there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He recovered himself. What was he doing worrying about a grown woman with whom he had no contact and never would have, simply because she happened to be his daughter? It was senseless. The whole business was. And he saw again, quite distinctly, that man’s lifted, cynical eyebrow and the easy boldness under surface courtesy. None of these went with what he remembered of Iris.
He put his hand out and touched Leah’s. “You’re a good girl to care. You always were. Forget it, as I shall.”
“Oh, I hope you will. I’ll still feel like a heel, though.”
“Forget it, I said. Say hello to Bill for me. I’m off to Greenwich.”
Nevertheless, he drove the car with only half a mind. He wished that Leah hadn’t told him. He wished Ilse’s letter hadn’t been so filled with tension. He wished he could learn once and for all to mind his own business.
Yet he couldn’t help his thoughts. They went inevitably far back and made connections. How Anna had paid, and was in her most secret holy of holies probably still paying, for her mistake, or transgression, or whatever you wanted to call it! He hoped it wasn’t going to be repeated in a second generation. Of course, these days they had the pill.… But Anna and he had been in love, while this, Leah said, was a pickup. And at the ugly word he flinched. Flinched, too, at the memory of his own suspicions about Stern. Well, it would be just one more American family going down the drain, a family with four children.
This was usually a pleasant drive, with the traffic very light so early in the afternoon and the road curving nicely under a ceiling of trees. But today it was too bright, the brightness too piercing. It disturbed him; he wanted to draw a curtain over it, a curtain of gray mist or rain. Leah’s message had changed the day.
Long before the exit to Greenwich he left the parkway, having no idea where he was going, knowing only that he had lost patience to cope with the formal old lady, the tea table heavy with old silver, and the courteous repartee that went with them. He decided to stop at the first drugstore and telephone a proper excuse. Somewhere in Rye he parked the car in a shady spot, made the call, bought a can of cold Coke, and went back to the car to drink it.
I’m off my head, he thought. If Ilse were here, she’d certainly let him know he was. However, she wasn’t here, more was the pity, but Theo Stern was here.… His suburban office couldn’t be more than a short drive away. And through some queer power of suggestion he felt a twinge in his shoulder, which he knew was ridiculous of him because the shoulder never bothered him in the least. But, plausibly, it could, couldn’t it? And a look at it wouldn’t be amis
s, would it?
He straightened himself in the seat while he labored to straighten his thinking. Let the intellect rule the emotions. Ask himself what he hoped to gain. Answer that he only wanted to know, that was all. Once he knew whether that marriage had fallen apart or not, he would be able to put it out of his mind. He swore he would. But how would he find out? Very likely he wouldn’t. On the other hand, there might be a clue, a chance remark. It was worth trying. If he didn’t try, his speculations would torment him. He knew himself.
And he went back to the telephone booth to look up the address.
The office door was locked, but the sound of music was plainly audible. Paul rapped on the glass again, listened to the stately lament of the Verdi Requiem, waited, and rapped a third time. Abruptly then, the music stopped and Dr. Stern came to the door. The man looked dazed, as though he had been sleeping, and he had a heavily bandaged hand.
Startled, Paul said awkwardly, “Excuse me, I was in town, and I thought the office was open. I wanted to make an appointment to inquire about my shoulder. You operated on it.”
Stern’s face was so blank that Paul, disconcerted, lost his initiative and backed away from the door. “But you’ve had an accident. I don’t want to disturb you.”
“It’s all right. Come in. What seems to be the trouble?”
At this point Paul would have refused, if Stern had not asked him again what the trouble was.
“It’s nothing much, I’m sure. But I thought I should be cautious. You may not remember, I had two wounds there.…” His voice trailed off, and he felt foolish.
“I remember you very well, Mr. Werner. I’ll have to look at you here.” They went into a room with a magnificent carved desk, an Oriental rug, and full bookshelves. “The examining room is dismantled,” Stern said with a bitter twist of his mouth, so bitter a twist that Paul dared not ask a question.
When he removed his jacket and shirt, he felt light fingers moving over the scar.
“I see nothing,” Stern said, “unless perhaps a touch of sunburn.”
“Ah, yes, I’ve been on the beach.”
