by Belva Plain
Anna lay in the center of the bed under a white summer blanket. Her hair was softly spread on the pillow and the one arm that was exposed was covered with a lace sleeve. Theo, bending down, passed a hand lightly across her eyelids.
“Is it—is it a stroke, Theo?”
“No, dear. No stroke. Just quick and without pain. Just quietly slipped away.” And putting his arm around Iris’s shoulders, he led her to a chair.
It was so queer and sudden. A few minutes ago they had been reading the paper and eating French toast. Now they were here and Theo was saying—what was he saying? Her question came out in a high, harsh voice.
“Is she dead, Theo? Is that what you meant?”
He nodded. His eyes were filled with tears. In the background Lula was sobbing. Morning light came through the fine curtains. A strong fragrance came from the bowl of phlox, rose and cream, Mama’s beloved flowers. Or was the fragrance from her powder, her perfume? She was always fragrant.
“I talked to her yesterday,” Iris said. “She had a postcard from Laura. She was thinking about trading her car in. She had made arrangements for the concerts at Tanglewood. Yesterday.”
“It was painless,” Theo repeated. He wiped his tears. “It’s the way anyone would want to die.”
“Yes.” Anna would want, too, to die without disruption or ugliness. Even in death she was elegant. The blanket was smooth and straight.
“We had no warning,” Iris said, uncomprehendingly.
“It happens.”
She stood up on shaky legs and, with Theo’s arm around her again, went over to the bed.
“I need to look at her,” she said.
Anna, my mother, lying in the bed where she had lain for so many years with the only man she ever loved. They were lucky, my parents. God rest them both.…
For a while they stood there together, until Theo led Iris from the room.
“There are things to be done,” he said gently. “You go downstairs with Lula while I use the phone.”
It was a few days after the funeral—murmuring voices, flowers, tears—before they had to deal with the painful, practical aftermath of death, a paper aftermath, addresses and documents wanted by the tax authorities, the accountants, and the lawyers.
“There are fifty years of life in this desk, maybe more,” Iris said.
“This is the room where I proposed to you. Now it’s filled with pictures of our children.”
They were in Anna’s downstairs sitting room. As far back as Iris could recall it had been painted and upholstered in white and yellow. Here Anna paid bills, knitted, and read. A book of poems lay on a table now, along with a pair of reading glasses. Directly across from the desk, on the opposite wall where she would have had to see it whenever she looked up, hung a photograph of Papa.
“That photo must have been a comfort to her after he died,” Iris said. “It’s so real, as if he were about to speak.”
“Is this too hard for you? I wish I could do it for you, this whole business of dismantling the house.”
“It’s all right. But thank you, Theo. I’ll get through it.”
“You’ve been very brave.”
There were cabinets and shelves, albums and boxes of old letters. It would take weeks to go through them all. This wasn’t dismantling a house, Iris thought, it was the uncovering of a life, of many lives.
And she asked herself as she worked: Why am I not weeping in utter desolation as I did when Papa died? I don’t know. Perhaps Theo is surprised that I am not. Oh, I loved them both, my parents, but I loved Papa more, that’s all. Maybe that was because he really was a special person to me, or can it be because I do not feel abandoned by her death as I did by his, because at last and very late, I have grown up? If that is true, I owe so much of it to her.
Anna, my mother.
* * *
One evening Theo went out for a walk with Laura’s collie and the old, waddling poodle. It was the supper hour, and now in early fall, lights were being turned on. He could see families in their dining rooms and others cooking on barbecue grills in the backyards, having the last outdoor meals of the season. He himself had eaten alone, for this was Iris’s late night at classes in the city. And as he strolled, he thought about her drive and determination. Years ago he would not have believed she had them in her. Well, he had been wrong.
Ever since Paul Werner’s astonishing disclosure, he had been seeing his wife through more curious eyes. And Anna, too, he had observed with renewed curiosity. To think of that Old World lady, for he still saw her as such despite her having been in America since she was sixteen, so devoted to and careful of her husband’s wishes, to think of her so, when all the time she had had another hidden life! And he could only respect her for having had the courage to carry such a heavy, hidden burden.
He hadn’t had the heart to let Paul know she was dead. Those letters to Paul were growing more difficult to write, as it was. Knowing that the man was hungry for details of the family, he tried to supply them, but it was hard to avoid repetition, and now that everyone except Philip was away from home, two married and Steve doing heaven knew what, he hadn’t very much to tell, nor had he very much to tell about Iris, either, except that she was busy and well.
After a long mile he turned about toward home. As he entered his street, he could see ahead to the living-room window, from which a gold light now flared. Iris had come home, then. He began to walk faster. Without her, even when Philip was upstairs doing homework, the house, small as it was, seemed to hold empty spaces in which his footsteps were too loud.
And yet … and yet much was still missing. The truth of it was that they were friends, yes, friends, absolutely loyal, absolutely dependable, with some occasional, perfunctory “lovemaking” thrown in, if you could call it lovemaking; it was little more than an appetite quickly satisfied. He sighed as he walked and now, no longer in a hurry, reined in the dogs to slow his pace. It had surely not used to be this way! Where had the joy and the longing gone?
Oh, he—he was surely ready to resume them. It was Iris in whom they had been quenched. Yet it was no fault of hers, he understood that. One couldn’t simply command the return of passionate joy. It existed or it did not.
He walked through the house, hung up the dogs’ leashes, and saw that the outside light was on in the yard. The little space enclosed by the arborvitae hedge that Anna had given them was warm and still in the mild evening, and Iris was sitting on the English bench under a light.
“May I?” he asked.
She looked up. “May you? So formal, Theo?”
He sat down next to her. “Sometimes I feel as if I have to be formal with you.”
“That’s not true,” she said quickly, defensively.
“If I feel it, then it’s true for me.”
“Then I’m sorry, Theo.”
“Well. That’s a lovely dress. Have I seen it before?”
“No. My mother gave it to me the week before she died. I haven’t been able to wear it until today.”
The angle at which her head was bent and the graceful curve of her long neck reminded him for a moment of Anna and when, abruptly, she raised her head, he saw Paul’s strong profile. And this living combination of the two shocked him into pity.
“Don’t be sad,” he said gently. “She would want you to wear it, you know.”
“It’s not that.” The comers of her mouth were trembling.
“What is it, then?”
For answer she handed him a letter. “I found it yesterday among her things. She knew I would find it when the time came.”
Nothing extraordinary, he said to himself as he read through the first page, only some tender expressions of care for a daughter and grandchildren. But his attention was arrested at the end.
“Loving is all there is, Iris, when you look back and count up. Treasure it, for God’s sake, because it’s all there is. Everyone isn’t lucky enough to take it when it’s offered or to hold on to it when one has it. Things get i
n the way, circumstances that can’t be helped or sometimes our pride and resentments, our absorption in self or a mistaken sense of duty. Dear Iris, don’t let that happen. Remember how it was for you both when you began life together.”
Theo put the page down. “Circumstances that can’t be helped.” Yes, Anna, you knew all about that.
“She wanted me,” Iris said, “to have the life that she and Papa had, that’s what it means. And if she hadn’t brought you and me together that day, you would have gone away. I would have sent you away. Oh, God, Theo, do you hear? She’s right. What is it all about? We work and we worry about children and jobs and money and houses …” And she said more quietly, “I covered up through all the cheerfulness and hope, I kept that frozen place inside where everything was stored, the ways I’d hurt you, the ways you’d hurt me, everything that had ever angered me, all lying there written in stone. And I forgot the beginning. What have we done? What have we broken, Theo?”
He felt a smile. It rose from his chest and spread.
“Nothing that can’t be mended in our bed upstairs.”
“What is it, Theo? Do you have to see death before you can know what life is?”
“Maybe so, my darling.”
She was standing now, clasping him. And he kissed her, the cool, sweet forehead first, the eyelids and the still trembling, warm, urgent mouth. So long it had been, so long. He could have wept through his joy.
Then in a sudden recall he felt a chili and cried, “To think that once I almost went away! And meant never to come back! And I need you so, need you more than—” he was about to say “my right hand.”
And now she was picking up his hand, the right one, kissing each finger.… So he turned off the light, and in the blue darkness they went back to the house. They climbed the stairs, went into their room, and locked the door.
19
The car moved out of the Milan airport, wound through noontime traffic, and turned north toward the lakes. Paul, in the driver’s seat, looked over at Ilse beside him and shook his head in wonder. He had been staring at her like that ever since she had gotten off the plane, gone through customs, and claimed her luggage.
“When your letter arrived last week, I couldn’t believe it. I had to read it through three times to get the simple idea that you were finally coming.” He reached down and seized her thin, sun-darkened hand. “Why on earth did you take so long?” he demanded.
She turned a smiling face to him. “Ah, don’t scold me. Here I am, and we have so much time to make up for!”
Despite the smile her eyebrows drew together in an expression of faintly sorrowful reproach. He had been about to ask further how long she intended to stay, but then, thinking better of it, did not ask and said instead, “You can’t know how I’ve missed you.”
Her hair had now turned to pepper and salt like his own, more salt than pepper. But it made a comely contrast to her tanned cheeks and black, shining eyes. She was wearing a dark blue travel suit that was typical of her and with it a fine white blouse cut rather low, so that the gold pendant lying on her bare neck was prominent.
He pointed to it. “Ah, so you actually wear it! I always imagine it stuck in its velvet box in that upper right-hand drawer where you keep gloves and handkerchiefs.”
“I wear it all the time,” she answered seriously. “Even when it doesn’t show, it’s under my clothes.”
“God, how I’ve missed you,” he said again.
It might not be the most romantic concept, but it was enduring—and wasn’t endurance romantic when you came to think of it?—that the one person in the world to whom he could say anything was sitting next to him. She it was who would listen wholly, both with mind and heart, never agreeing just to please him, but giving to him her complete attention. Goodness knew, he had surely not always agreed with her either! But their minds had always listened to each other.
“I’ve made a reservation for lunch at the Villa d’Este,” he said now, “a long, leisurely Italian lunch. You haven’t had food like it since you went to Israel.”
“No, long, leisurely lunches aren’t the way we can afford to live these days.”
He wanted to keep the atmosphere light, and Israel was clearly not a subject to be taken lightly. One had only to pick up the newspaper almost any morning to be reminded that the little land was still being heavily besieged.
“This is a beautiful car. What kind?” asked Ilse, and he understood that she, too, wanted to be joyful.
“A Ferrari, worth a fortune, but not my fortune. It came with the house for a rental fee. It leaps like a lion on the autostrada, but we’re not leaping today. We’re just going to amble along so you can feast your eyes on the scenery.”
“I’m already feasting on this wonderful soft air.”
“Shall I put the top down?”
“Yes, do.”
“The wind won’t spoil your hair?”
She laughed. “Oh, you’ve forgotten me after all, haven’t you? My hair!”
He had not forgotten, but had asked the question only out of automatic courtesy, having gotten in the habit. He knew quite well that Ilse would let her hair just blow.
“We’re going to Lake Como. Do you know about the Villa d’Este? It was a cardinal’s residence during the Renaissance. Splendid. Wait till you see.”
“Oh, I’ve heard. The height of luxury.”
“Yes. You deserve some,” he answered simply.
Between a mild slope and the lake stood the great stone edifice in all its grandeur. Behind it and spread up the slope, among clipped formal hedges, white statuary, and urns of overflowing petunias, the gardens were in the full bloom of spring as it moved toward summer. Paul had reserved a table at the edge of the overhanging roof, where the windows had been rolled back to suit the season and a fresh breeze from the lake stirred the shrubbery. The lovely room was already filled by tourists and by Milanese businessmen with their fashionable women in white linens and pastel silks. And again Paul remarked to himself, as he had so often done through their years together, that it never occurred to Ilse to worry whether she was dressed well enough because, in the elegance of her simplicity, she always was.
A woman at the next table flicked her eyes for a bare second over the pendant on Ilse’s chest. They were expert eyes, Paul thought with amusement; that woman knew what she was looking at.
Ilse asked him why he was smiling.
“Just feeling very, very good. Look down there.” He pointed. “Right at the lake edge there’s a spot where you can dance at night. It’s a spectacle with the lights reflected in the lake and all the young people dancing. Such beautiful young people. We’ll come over one night. You haven’t forgotten how to dance, have you?”
“Of course I haven’t.”
“Well, then. I haven’t, either, and the music’s great.”
“I take it you’ve been dancing here.”
“A few times. I’ve made friends here, Ilse. This has been a good change for me. I’m glad I finally made it. Hey, what about food? You’ve got to have pasta. They have a wonderful carbonara. And wine. They have a white wine that I swear is like bottled sunshine. I sound like an ad, don’t I?”
Silly with happiness, he heard himself prattling, couldn’t stop, and didn’t even want to stop.
Almost two hours later as they were finishing their espresso, Ilse leaned back in her chair and said, “Well, now, tell me all the news about everybody.”
“I’ve kept you pretty much abreast of things in my letters. I did tell you, didn’t I, that Theo’s opened an office? He’s making a good start, he says, and even sent me a check to begin repaying the loan. You know, I don’t want it, but I have to accept it. Meg and Larry are confining their practice to small animals. Larry’s getting too old to handle horses. Meg’s fine, but awfully worried, naturally, with Tom in Vietnam. And then Tim—” He threw up his hands. “What’s there to say about him?”
“Is he still so involved with that odd man?”
&nb
sp; “Jordaine? As far as I know, he is. And odd it is, a real puzzle.”
He had let Ilse know everything about Jordaine except for the business about Iris. That was something he preferred to forget and would therefore never mention, even to Ilse, just as he would never mention Iris’s attempt at suicide, if indeed it had been one.
Ilse asked now, “Is Iris’s son still joined up with him?”
“I don’t know. Theo hasn’t written anything lately. Queer, isn’t it? The whole business is queer. ‘Don’t trust anyone over thirty.’ Toss us and our experience onto the junk heap. For God’s sake, Tim’s way over thirty himself. Theo did write one thing that sticks in my head, though. He said that this young generation seems to have some of the best people in it and also some of the worst.”
“Not necessarily the worst. Often just the most troubled,” Ilse said soberly.
“Take his other son, Jimmy, for instance. He and his wife are both in medical school, and they’ve just had a baby girl besides. Young people like them are building. And then you get these others who are tearing down. I know it’s a terrible war in Vietnam. I myself think it’s useless. And yet, what good does it do to bomb the hell out of our cities? A strange form for idealism to take.”
“It’s not just idealism. Yes, for many it is. But the big question is, who’s behind the terror? Idealists? I don’t think so. I think they’re the people who’re using these kids. It’s like the sixteen-year-old boys in Al Fatah, who are trained in Lebanon to think they’re following a noble cause when they blow up a bus full of Israeli schoolchildren or old ladies going to market. Do you remember?”
“Remember? Ilse, I still wake up sometimes with my heart pounding after I’ve dreamed about it, the same as I sometimes still dream about the war in France. After all these years.”
Ilse was following her own train of thought. Suddenly here in this sparkling room—sparkle of blue water, sparkle of fashion, flowers, and crystal glasses—she was back in Israel.
“Think of it. Golda was over seventy when they made her prime minister. She didn’t want it, but everyone wanted her because she was the one who knew best that we would never give up. Terror will not win over us.”
