Harvest

by Belva Plain

  There were three small bedrooms and a fourth much smaller one, intended to be a sewing room in a time when people still had dresses made at home. This was to be Philip’s. Jimmy and Steve were away and could share a room whenever they might be here. Neither would be likely ever to live at home again. God alone knew where Steve was heading! As for Jimmy, at the rate he was going with his girl, Janet, and far, far too young as he was, he would probably be married before long. Well, she was a fine girl and one had to be grateful for that.

  Laura would have her own room, of course. The furniture had already been placed there. Between the bed, the desk, the bookcases, and the armoire, which, they both saw at once, had been gashed in its passage up the narrow staircase, there was barely room enough to walk. Dark shades at half rise threw greater gloom over the walls and the brown floor. Laura took one long look and sat down on the bare mattress.

  “Oh, Mom! It’s horrible,” she wailed, forlorn and in tears.

  “It isn’t the greatest,” admitted Iris. And she had a flash of self-revelation, rather humbling: Oh, wasn’t I proud and pleased with my superior self for not caring about “things”! Well, but I had always had them, hadn’t I? Yes, I could well afford the luxury of not caring.

  “And all because you slammed the door on Dad’s hand,” Laura cried.

  Iris felt as if she had been stabbed, but she answered only, “Don’t ever let him see you crying, do you hear? Now, hang up your clothes, straighten the room, and do the best you can,” she said as she went out.

  She stood at the window in the upstairs hall looking down at the street. The moving van had driven off and here, finally, they were. All, all was changed. The change had already sobered her children, so swiftly had it overturned what had seemed to be an unchangeable, established order. Iris wondered with irony whether “we are simple enough for Steve at last?” There was no more country club with its pool and no more backyard pool of their own; they’d have to go to the Y to swim, where Theo now took his exercise, since his tennis days were over. But these were trivialities, not to be compared with the enormity of their father’s personal tragedy. Among the four it was Steve who had seemed to be most shaken. He had come home when he heard the news, not out of love, Iris knew; there had been too much bad blood between Theo and him for that; he had come home merely out of a basic, ordinary sense of decency, much as one attends a funeral even when one hasn’t liked the deceased. He had had the least to say, and yet his had been the most visible recoil from the sight of Theo’s mutilation.

  I think … I feel … I don’t know what I feel, she said to herself. It’s as if somebody has thrown a cloak over my head. Her eyes were still on the street below, not seeing.

  After a while she roused herself and went downstairs.

  Here the furniture had all been crowded in. The blond Danish woods made a hopeless contrast to the mud-colored walls. Musty, Iris thought. The place is dingy and musty.

  Pearl had supper on the dining-room table, fried chicken, a salad, and an apple pie. I shall have to do all the cooking, Iris told herself, and I’m not a very good cook, either. Laura is, she loves to, so she’ll help. They all ate their meal in silence. Even Philip, who was normally lively, was subdued.

  After dinner some neighbors came to introduce themselves. They were welcoming and friendly, free with advice about the best market and the dry cleaner who delivered. It was the kind of happening that would never be encountered in the old neighborhood, Iris knew, and felt the warmth of it. Yet after they had left the kitchen counters loaded with their gifts, cakes, a basket of strawberries, even homemade bread, she felt for a second a sharp stab of distaste. It felt like charity! Then she was terribly ashamed.

  In the days that followed, it was Philip who accepted the change most easily. Twelve now, he had much of Jimmy’s friendly nature and much of Steve’s brilliance although, thank heaven, none of the restlessness that had been so apparent in Steve at the same age. He was satisfied with his little room and took a certain pride in having his mother teach at his school. In the evenings he sat down at the piano and played for his parents as willingly as he always had, and as though nothing were different.

  His teacher had recently given him a book of Chopin’s waltzes. Twilight music, Iris had privately called it, lovers’ music to listen to or to dance to. But now it produced a shiver down her spine. The last time she had heard it, so beautifully played, had been that night at Carnegie Hall. The music stopped and Philip’s waiting face was turned toward his parents in expectation of praise.

  “Wonderful!” said Theo, looking up from the desk that he had managed to fit into one of the nooks, where he sat and studied.

  It was Iris’s turn to say something. “Your fingering is excellent. You have the right fingers for piano, anyway.” And, shocked at the very sound of the word fingers, she stopped. But no one noticed, or if anyone had, no one gave indication. She supposed the word would never cease to pierce her through, although they never spoke about the accident anymore. All that could be said had certainly been said.

  As it happened, they did not speak very much to each other about anything these days. Theo’s desk was piled with books. It had been years since he had needed to memorize, and she supposed it must be a stupendous effort to get back into the habit. As for herself, she had papers to mark in the evenings and lessons to prepare for the next day. Fortunately, she had plenty of physical energy and was able to do all the things that were required of her in the household besides, not too skillfully it was true, but nevertheless they were accomplished. She did them by rote, mechanically, because they had to be done. Within her at the same time lay a deep mental tiredness, an absence of anything more than a wish to get through each day; she wondered, but did not ask, whether that could be true for Theo, too.

  Sometimes it seemed that she saw him only in passing and said only things that had to be said, nothing abstract, no exchanges of ideas or emotion, merely talk of schedules and necessities. They were good to each other and considerate as they had always been, but—

  How shall I put it? she asked herself. There is a nothingness; yes, that’s the best word, not a very good one, but that’s it, a nothingness. Or maybe a little more than that, a sorrow over not feeling anymore the things I used to feel, even the jealousy and the torments that used to interrupt the sweetness.

  So the atmosphere in the little house was chastened, for although crisis had passed and peace reigned, there was still a heavy cloud over Iris, and she knew it, and knew that inevitably it had spread over the house as well.

  One day when she stopped at her mother’s house, she saw a man getting into an old foreign car and driving away. As her car moved slowly up toward the door, she had a clear look at him: a very tall man and slender, with pepper-and-salt hair. There was something about him that she thought she recognized, for she had always had a remarkable memory for people, so that Theo had used to joke that she would have made a good politician.

  Anna was in her little yellow study wearing a silk dress.

  “You look as if you’re about to go someplace,” Iris said. “Am I interrupting?”

  “You’re not, and I’m not going anywhere,” Anna replied.

  Did she seem to be perhaps a little bit agitated?

  “You had company, I see.”

  “Yes,” Anna said.

  “That was quite a fancy car.”

  “Was it? I didn’t notice.”

  And Iris kept on, aware as she spoke that it was nasty to pry this way, “I thought I recognized him.”

  “Your curiosity seems to be getting the better of you,” Anna observed rather sharply.

  At that Iris shrugged, affecting indifference. “Not really.”

  “All right, since you’re obviously dying to know. It was Paul Werner.”

  “Oh, he! The strangest man! He always seems to turn up at the oddest places.”

  “Odd? What’s odd about coming to visit an old friend?”

  The rebuke was so unlike he
r mother. “I guess I didn’t know he was such an old friend,” she said uncomfortably.

  “I knew him years ago, you know that. He’s leaving for a long stay in Europe, and so he’s been going about to say good-bye to people. He happened to be visiting in Westchester this afternoon, that’s all.”

  After the first strange one-syllable replies this detailed explanation seemed equally suspicious. And Anna’s cheeks were definitely heated. Then Iris embarrassed herself with her own ugly suspicion. It was absurd. A woman of Mama’s age! So soon after her husband’s death too, the husband to whom she had been so devoted. Absurd. Nevertheless, that evening she mentioned the occurrence to Theo.

  “It just seems strange. The man turns up in such unexpected ways, coming to you for surgery, for instance. When I was a child, as I’ve told you, we seemed to meet him always by accident, by coincidence. I remember two or three times quite distinctly, so something must have made an impression on me,” she mused vaguely.

  Theo looked up from the notebook, holding the pen in the air. It was remarkable that he had learned to hold it quite nicely.

  “Why should it upset you?” he asked mildly.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t exactly upset me, it annoys me. I always remember feeling that he looked too hard at Mama and that she was aware of it.”

  “Imagination,” Theo said.

  “Well, all the same, I don’t like him. I simply don’t.”

  “Aren’t you making a mountain out of a molehill?”

  “I suppose so. But I simply don’t like him,” she repeated, and refrained from adding, since it would have seemed too exaggerated, He gives me queer thoughts.

  “Well, it’s unimportant,” Theo said, kindly enough. He returned to his notebook. “We have far more important things to think about, you and I.”

  13

  “So you are back to normal,” Paul remarked.

  “Whatever normal means,” Theo answered.

  The man is an enigma, Paul thought. There had been moments when he had been so completely forthcoming that Paul had retreated, almost embarrassed at being told too much, and then other moments when, after asking what he thought was an acceptable question, he felt a door being closed in his face. Nevertheless, Paul was glad to be with him. It had been almost a year since that extraordinary day in Theo’s moribund office, and now they were sitting among a noontime crowd having lunch in a midtown restaurant. The meeting had been arranged at Theo’s behest, for Paul, having effected his “rescue,” had felt it a matter of tact to stay away until asked for.

  “Are things going well for you in the money department?”

  “It’s working out, it’s a new regime. I sound sheepish, do I? Well, I am, a bit. It’s surprising how many things one learns one hasn’t really needed and can get along well without. Iris and Philip share the cooking, now that Laura’s gone off to college. Whoever gets home first from school sets the table. Philip and I help clean up afterward. Then we all three get to our various books.”

  “You must have a load of books in your new specialty.”

  “I’m working under a marvelous mentor, one of the best in the field. I haven’t learned so many new facts in years. It stretches the mental muscles. You rescued me, Paul, and not only financially. You restored my spirit.”

  Very much moved, Paul made no answer, but raised the coffee cup to his lips and hid behind it.

  “Iris plans to go for a master’s degree next semester. Night classes. It’ll be a heavy load with the house and all. But amazingly, her mother”—Theo hesitated over the name—“Anna, is encouraging her. It was she, you know, who really brought Iris around when she came back unexpectedly from the country that time. She said she had just had a feeling, something told her she was needed, and so she simply got in the car and came back.”

  Now it was Theo’s turn to raise the cup and linger over it; above the rim Paul saw a pair of thoughtful eyes cast downward.

  When he put the cup back, Theo said, “I understand you’ve seen her.”

  Paul started. “What?” Surely Anna hadn’t told—

  “Iris saw you leaving the house.”

  “Oh! Well, yes.” Paul felt the flush rise up his neck.

  A curving driveway; a car had entered the far end of the semicircle just as he had come out of the house.

  “I haven’t told you, have I? No, of course I haven’t. Well, I shall be going to Italy for a while. I’m renting a house on Lake Maggiore. I had an idea, a crazy one after all these years, that since she was free now—that maybe she might consider going with me.”

  “And she wouldn’t.”

  “Not a chance. I should damn well have known better.”

  Yes, he should. It had been a wild, aberrant idea. He wasn’t even sure, now that he thought about it, that he wouldn’t have been somewhat dismayed if it had worked out. Anna was right a thousand times over: the complications were too horrendous even to consider.

  And still Paul knew, as his eyes met those of the man sitting opposite, that this man would understand. They had an affinity, Theo and he. Who would have believed it?

  He said abruptly, “This is something I’ve always wanted to do. I always think the Italian lakes are the most beautiful places on earth.”

  “I know. I used to go there, a couple of thousand years ago.”

  Memories. Theo would live with his, as we all do. And Paul said, “I’ve been feeling rather tired lately. I need to get away. If not now, when?”

  “Of course. How long will you be gone?”

  “I took a lease for a year. I might stay longer, I can’t be sure. But your check will arrive on the first of every month, and you will have my address.”

  The other responded quickly, “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know you didn’t. I meant, I should like to hear from you, to know what’s happening. About your son, for instance.”

  “Steve? He’s left college. There was a tragedy on the campus. You may have read about that professor who lost his legs when a bomb went off.”

  “I read it. A horror.”

  “Steve had nothing to do with it. But it shook him. Apparently he knew some people in the group that was probably responsible. So he left. Threw his education out of the window just before commencement and left. We never hear from him. His brother does now and then, just a card that says nothing except that he’s alive on a commune somewhere in California. Making moccasins or God knows what. Oh,” Theo cried with passion, “the waste! The waste. He was an A student. I blame it on the professors, Powers and his ilk, all of them roaming around the country dragging these young fools behind them.”

  Paul was thinking, He won’t have to do any dragging, Timothy won’t. Quite clearly he could recall Timothy’s bright face and his candid way. They would follow him gladly, these young who were only waiting for someone to follow. He thought with a quick thrust of pain that his grandson, the unknown whom he had never seen and almost surely never would see, was among them. And resentment of Timothy was bitter in his mouth.

  “Was Powers involved in that affair?” he asked.

  “No, Powers keeps his nose clean. He’s just an orator, Jimmy says. Steve’s still in touch with him, though. Powers approves of what Steve’s doing, taking a rest. Ah, God only knows what it will all come to.”

  Delicately, Paul broached a delicate subject. “And Iris? Have the two of you come to agreement about the boy?”

  “We don’t talk about him. To tell you the truth, we don’t talk much at all.” And as Paul said nothing, Theo continued, “There’s an aftermath to the truthfulness that you recommended—if you remember that you did.”

  “I remember.”

  “Things are said, things one never knew about each other, never suspected had happened or could happen. One sees the other through changed eyes, so that we’re not back exactly where we were before. I don’t know whether I make myself clear.”

  “Perfectly.”

  So Iris must have told him about that man.
And the unpleasant image of Jordaine, remarkably vivid when one considered that he had only seen the man once, rose up before Paul.

  “It’s all peaceful, but Iris is depressed. Although she denies it, I see it plainly. There’s a rift, a space between us, an abyss that wasn’t there before all this happened.” Theo paused, frowning and reflecting. “And yet it probably was there, covered over so that we didn’t recognize it.”

  “You’ll cross the abyss one day,” Paul said, glancing at Theo’s hand, in which a fork was held between a thumb and two stiff fingers. The man had guts. Not easy to lose everything, start over, and keep that dignity, the head high, striped tie, the pocket handkerchief in place.… And he continued, “It’s a funny thing about truths. Bad as they can be, I’ve always found that they clear things up in the end.”

  Theo raised his eyebrows. “Surely not every truth?”

  “My God no! Not every one.” Paul sighed. “Sometimes I feel absurd talking to you like this, as though I were an advice columnist. I’ve hardly done so well with truths in my own life.” And he amended quickly, not liking the pathetic sound of the latter phrase, “In one respect, I mean. Just that one.”

  “You’ve made generous amends, if that’s the right word, though I don’t think it is.”

  The restaurant was becoming noisier with the sounds of departure, chairs scraped back and voices raised in good-byes. Lunchtime was over, and Theo looked at his watch, explaining, “I’m due back.”

  “Of course. You will write to me, then? But I won’t answer. Letters have a way of falling into the wrong hands, no matter how careful one is.”

  “I’ll write to you, Paul.”

  “Yes, I should like to know how you are, now that I know you a little.”

  “Paul? I understand more than you think I do. And I will write to you often about everyone. Everyone.”

  And the two men stood, shook hands, and walked away in opposite directions.