The Sight of the Stars

by Belva Plain

  “Do you remember the time you were the chauffeur, and I sat in front with you? Sabine was furious, but she controlled herself.”

  “I take it that you won’t ask me for a Pierce-Arrow? Not that we can afford one.”

  They were both laughing when they drove up to the little house that, incredibly, was their own. In the afternoon sunshine, its fresh paint glistened, the cottonwoods were bending to the mild fall wind, and a pair of rosebushes at the front door were still in bud. For a moment before he opened the door, Adam went to peer into the dining room window. Having spent his life eating his supper in a kitchen, he had always pictured a beautiful room and a beautiful table large enough for family and friends. Now he had one. He had dreamed of a really big front porch with beautiful chairs on it, and of a home with shelves for all the beautiful books he wanted to buy. Now he had them.

  The key turned easily in the lock. He put down a suitcase, while Rudy brought in the rest of the luggage, set it in the hall, and said good-bye.

  “Wasn’t he strange? Hardly a word to say,” remarked Emma. “Not like him at all. Oh, here’s a letter in the mail slot. Look, it’s got an odd postmark. It’s from your brother, Jonathan.”

  “Dear Adam,” he read aloud, “I cannot say where I am or what I’m doing, but I can say what anyone with a brain in his head already knows: War is hell. I find myself thinking so much about you. My brother! I have no friend in the world like you, except, of course, my Blanche. I think about that night at the shore and remember you told me how lovely and how beautiful she is. Please take care of her while I’m gone.”

  He did not recall having made any remark about Blanche’s beauty. But nevertheless, he was touched by reading Jon’s words. And having finished the short, precious letter, he put it away in a safe place to be brought out someday and shown around as a memento of the war.

  Emma was reading it when the telephone rang for the first time in the new house. “That you, Adam? This is Jeff. Jeff Horace.”

  “Hey, you’re the only Jeff I know. How’s everything?”

  “I called Mrs. Rothirsch. She told me you’d be home around now. Do you mind if I come over?”

  Adam glanced at the luggage that waited to be unpacked. “Why, no. We just got in, but—”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “That’s odd,” Emma said. “Oh, well.”

  “I don’t know why I feel uneasy, as if something’s going to happen.”

  “You’re a worrier. He’s got some surprise, a house gift, or—I know what! His article about the wedding!”

  When, a few minutes later, they opened the door, Jeff was there with Sabine. Then there followed a moment when four people stood looking at each other.

  In an instant, Adam knew, or thought he knew, something. “You have something to tell me. It’s about my father.”

  Jeff, turning away, looked toward the opposite wall, or simply into the air. He said, very quietly, “No, it’s about your brother.”

  “My brother?”

  “The news came to your father last Thursday. Somebody called Mrs. Rothirsch. I don’t know how to tell it . . . The telegram came to your father’s house from the army. You know what they always say: ‘We regret to inform you that your son . . .’ Oh, my heart breaks for you, Adam! My heart breaks.”

  “Jonathan? He’s been hurt?”

  “Killed in action, Adam.”

  “Jonathan,” Adam repeated.

  When he said “brother,” I thought he meant Leo.

  “Mrs. Rothirsch asked me to call your father,” Jeff went on gently. “They had a doctor, a heart specialist, who took care of him. Mrs. Rothirsch has been on the phone. She’ll tell you. The neighbors, the whole neighborhood, she says, has been so kind, so helpful to your father and your brother. Leo? Is that his name? It was the first war death in the area, they say, and people are stunned. Leo has gone to pieces and Blanche is falling apart. They’ve given her pills to calm her down.”

  Calm her? Calm Leo? What about Pa? Ah God, my poor old father . . .

  Adam knew that Sabine and Emma were looking at him, their eyes full of horror and pity. He was having a queer sensation, as if time had stopped, and there was nothing to do but stand there looking at each other.

  “I think you should speak to your father,” Emma said, gripping his arm. “Let me get the number for you.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ve got to leave here tomorrow, first train out.”

  But that was not to be. “No,” Simon insisted. “Stay right where you are. You’ve just been married! I can manage.”

  “What about your coming here to us?”

  “Soon, but not right now. Don’t worry about me, Adam. There’s nothing anybody can do except bear it. Jonathan would be the first to say so.”

  The voice wavered and the telephone clicked.

  Nothing to do but bear it.

  He put the receiver down. Then he walked to the window, for no reason except that something was bursting in his chest and he needed to move. He stood there looking out into the bright afternoon, where some boys on the way home from school were racing, swinging their school bags. Over there, an ocean away, a boy not much older than they lay dead in the mud.

  Why? Why of all people, Jonathan? Why?

  Something struck at him, choked in his throat, and tore at his gut. He fell onto a chair and sat there weeping, pounding his knees with his fists, until Emma put her arms around him, and led him away.

  Chapter 15

  As Shakespeare says, The rest is silence. For by comparison with the roar and wreckage of a tempest, such as an unexpected death in a family, the resumption of ordinary, daily life is almost like a silence and a relief.

  So, a little more than a year later, Adam and Emma met Simon and Blanche at the train. “Pa,” Adam said. “I thought Leo was coming. He told me he would when I visited you.”

  “He didn’t want to. Changed his mind at the last minute. You know him. But I hired a young fellow to help him out at the store. Already knows more than Leo does, so he can have plenty of time for his books and his friend Bobby.”

  Adam introduced them to Emma, and after hands were shaken and cheeks kissed, they all climbed into his new car, a Maxwell.

  Pa was looking around and craning his neck to peer down the cross streets. “Town’s bigger than I thought,” he remarked.

  “It’s growing every day. Would you like to have a quick ride around downtown before we go to Sabine’s? Sorry we can’t have you both sleep at our house, but the furniture for the extra bedroom hasn’t come yet. We’ve only got ours and the nursery. The crib and stuff arrived yesterday.”

  “You don’t show much,” Blanche observed, glancing at Emma.

  “I’m going into the ninth month, but I have this loose duster on. I must tell you my aunt Sabine is a wonderful hostess, and she loves having guests, so you really mustn’t feel uncomfortable about staying with a stranger.”

  “Except for Pa, you are both strangers, too.”

  A cool answer, Adam thought, almost rude. But he didn’t like to criticize her after what she had been through.

  Swinging the car around the corner, he stopped and pointed out the store. “Here, folks, is Cace Arnring, getting ready to open its doors.”

  Everything, the cool, dark shrubbery, the tall windows in their ornamental niches, the white stone, all gleamed in the noonday sun.

  Pa whistled. “I never imagined! It’s a whole lot bigger than the old store, isn’t it?”

  “Three times bigger. We’ve got menswear now, small items like shirts and ties. Gifts, too, and jewelry, stuff we didn’t have before. Oh, and fine linens, tablecloths, imported, handmade. It’s a luxury store.”

  Pa nodded. “Yeah, well, there must be a lot of money around here.”

  “There is. The wealthy folks used to buy a great deal when they traveled. Now they don’t have to, at least not as much,” Adam said modestly.

  Blanche nodded. “This does have elegance. It’s better looki
ng than Printemps in Paris.”

  “Oh, I thought you came from Vienna,” Emma said.

  “I did, but I passed through Paris when I emigrated. I stayed a week, in fact. It’s amazing how much you can see in a week.”

  “Emma lived there for a whole semester,” Adam said, “studying piano.”

  “Oh, that’s interesting.”

  “She has a teaching degree. She teaches a class at the university here, and gives lessons at home, too.”

  “Oh,” Blanche said.

  Again he felt that twinge of annoyance. He hadn’t meant to make her feel foolish in comparison with Emma.

  “Well, here we are,” he announced as they arrived before Sabine’s dark fieldstone pile. “I hope you’re hungry. Emma’s aunt sets a great table.”

  Indeed she had done so. There was enough food for a dozen people, and excellent food, too. At the head of the table Sabine presided in a gracious, kindly mood as she welcomed the poor grocery man and the poor immigrant to her grand house. For by this time Adam knew her well enough to read in her the emotions that she might not even know she was feeling.

  “That’s a beautiful dress you’re wearing,” Sabine told Blanche.

  The dress, like the wearer, was slender. Black cloth, narrowly striped in white, was belted at the curving waist. On her head she wore a turban with a band of fur.

  “Very striking, very unusual. And I love the hat,” Emma said.

  “Thank you. I made them both myself. The fur was left over from a coat Berman the tailor was altering.”

  “They’re beautiful, Blanche. Really beautiful.”

  “Well, the piano for you, the needle and thread for me.”

  “Right now I wish I knew how to use a needle and thread. They’re having a company party next month for the grand opening, and I have nothing to wear.”

  “You shouldn’t go there, anyway,” Sabine said firmly. “It isn’t seemly in your condition.”

  “Allow me to disagree, dear aunt,” Adam objected. “I don’t believe most people nowadays feel that way about it. And she can easily buy a wide skirt for concealment.”

  “Men!” Sabine exclaimed. “What do they know? Do you even know that people haven’t worn hoopskirts since the Civil War?”

  Pa laughed. He was enjoying this kind of talk. It was a long time since he had been present at any conversation that was so free of gloom.

  Blanche asked whether Emma had any dress that she would wear if she could fit in it.

  “Well, yes, I have several in bright colors, and I have a black and a gray-and-white.”

  “We could take the black,” Blanche said positively, “cut the whole front out, and cover it with small ruffles. Small, narrow ones, pleated. It would conceal, I think, and it would be quite handsome, maybe in pale blue.”

  Emma, considering this for a few minutes, replied that it seemed to be a wonderful idea. “Except,” she said, “that I can’t think of anybody who would be skillful enough to do it. It sounds too much like Paris.”

  “I could do it,” Blanche said.

  “But you won’t be here long enough.”

  “It would take a good week’s work. No, close to two weeks. But I’d be willing to stay and do it if you’d like me to.”

  “Blanche!” Simon warned. “I said five days, you remember? I have responsibilities at home.”

  “I could change my ticket, Pa. You go home without me, and I’ll be back a week later. How does that sound?”

  Simon frowned. “Are you serious about this?”

  “Of course I am. I haven’t been doing any real work for a couple of months. I’ve been moping around ever since . . . Now I feel like doing something that will take my mind off things.”

  “You’re absolutely amazing!” cried Emma.

  “Well, if that’s what you all want, go ahead. I’m happy,” Simon said.

  It was good to see a cheerful expression on his father’s face, Adam thought. This pleasant atmosphere, the women’s talk, and the sense of family—things that had for too long been missing in the old man’s life—must have brought about the cheer.

  Really, it was very generous of Blanche to make this offer, and Adam was sorry that he had almost misjudged her.

  The candle flames that flickered on the table flickered again upon the glass roof. On a small dais in one corner of the long space, a string quartet mingled its music with the hum of voices.

  “Like our wedding,” Adam said.

  Emma was radiant, flushed pink with the marvel of this night. He understood completely. For him the sensations were possibly even more intense. For he was at the launch of a substantial enterprise in which he, Adam Arnring, already held some small authority, and would probably hold a great deal more. And here he was, too, with the only woman he had ever loved, who loved him and who was to bear his child. He had had very little to drink, but he was already drunk with wonder.

  When the music stopped, it was time for another speech. When an elderly member of the new corporation’s board stepped forward to speak for Sabine, who had turned down the honor in utter terror, Adam with hidden humor was thinking that those board members must have been in terror that she might accept.

  A penny for your thoughts, Sabine, he said to himself as he glanced in her direction. You, too, have come a long way, a much harder way than mine. Seated between Emma and Blanche, she looked almost magisterial in a dark satin dress. For once, she was not bedecked with jewelry; he wondered whether it had been the advice of Blanche that had sent her out of her house with only one pearl choker, one pearl bracelet, and one diamond ring.

  Blanche herself could have stepped out of a fashion magazine. Emma had lent her a ruby velvet dress, too short for her, but Blanche, with what Emma called her “magic needle,” had added a matching silk flounce that reached the floor. A wave of pity went through him as he watched her smile and nod and listen politely to the droning from the podium. She should have been having Jonathan’s child. . . .

  The speaker was calling out names, giving recognition to the new staff in the new store. Smiling their thanks, men stood, and their wives stood with them. Gallantly, uninhibited by a round of respectful applause, Emma in all her charm stood up with Adam.

  Jonathan Arnring was born at home. In the sunny upstairs bedroom, Emma, propped up by pillows and surrounded by a room filled with flowers and boxes of extravagant baby clothes, was carefully examining his ears, eyelashes, and toenails. He was already one week old, and she was still exulting over this marvel.

  “Isn’t he beautiful, Adam? I know every mother must say that about her baby, but I really believe this one is unusual. Some babies look all squashed and red, if you know what I mean, but he doesn’t. You can really see his features.”

  “Just how many new babies have you seen in your lifetime?” Adam demanded through his laughter.

  “Well, to tell the truth, none,” she said, and now both, a little bit teary, were laughing at themselves.

  But how, how could a woman take this tiny, soft life, wrap it up, and leave it on a doorstep? What kind of human being could she have been, Emma cried to herself. How could it not have broken her heart to do a thing like that?

  But as Adam had said to her, who really knew whether it had broken her heart or not. And she had understood that he himself must have been recalling that night when, through his brother’s words, he had first learned that he was a bastard.

  She caught his hand that was resting on the blanket, his warm hand with the blue veins and the strong fingers that could be so gentle. And raising the hand to her lips, she kissed it.

  Oh, enough! Here is our wanted, welcomed child, our Jonathan. I suppose he will be called Jon. He has such lovely blue eyes! The doctor says that eye color often changes after birth. I hope you will look like Adam, or even like Adam’s brother, the one who died in the war . . . and she tried not to think of the other one.

  “I’d better go downstairs,” Adam said. “Blanche is coming with another gift from Sabine
, who is still not over her cold.”

  “Another gift! This baby has enough clothing to fill the infants’ wear department at Cace Arnring. Blanche is going home soon, right?”

  “The day after tomorrow. She was waiting for the baby’s birth so she could tell Pa about it. And I guess she likes being at Sabine’s, which must feel like a luxury hotel.”

  “I suppose so. Poor Blanche has had a hard life. I’m awfully sorry for her, and I wish Sabine wouldn’t keep saying she’s better off than thousands of young widows with children in the bombed-out villages over there.”

  “It sounds as if your aunt isn’t overly fond of Blanche.”

  “Well, you know Sabine and her tart opinions. She can be very nice to people—and she is very nice to Blanche—without liking them. She says Blanche flatters and caters to your father, poor old man, and he falls for it. He’s so grateful that he’d give her the shirt off his back, she says.”

  “Well, since he hasn’t got much more than a few shirts, the old store, and the old house, she’s wasting her time. But the truth is that I don’t believe Sabine. She’s just having one of her spells, being her cranky, old, bad-tempered self again. Shall I send Blanche up to you when she comes?”

  “No, I’m sleepy. Put the baby in the bassinet while I take a nap.”

  The green-and-white living room was filled with flowers not yet faded that had been sent by their many friends, from the Lawrences to the Reillys and the new neighbors across the street. In one corner was a pile of gifts, still to be sorted and acknowledged, gaily ribboned boxes of baby clothes and toys. The most recent one was in a box on the sofa next to Blanche.

  “It’s a nursery clock that Sabine couldn’t resist. My gift hasn’t been made yet. I’m going to start work on it as soon as I get back home. It’s going to be a patchwork quilt with characters from fairy tales.”

  “A big job, I should think.”

  “True. But it will fill my lonesome evenings. I often go down the block and keep your father company. He’s a good man, as my father was . . .”