by Belva Plain
They pored over magazines and cut out pictures of nurseries and boys’ rooms, and of a terrace with a movable roof to use when it rained. The kitchen must have one of those new refrigerators, and there must be a telephone closet in the front hall. Emma made sure that the piano room would be far removed from household noises—meaning, of course, the boys. Adam had some vague vision of a large white room until he realized that somewhere at the back of his mind, there must still linger a picture of Mr. Shipper’s white parlor.
So slowly and surely the house took shape. First in their heads, then on blue paper, and finally, on the very day when Emma gave birth to their third boy, the bulldozers dug the first hole in the ground.
On the morning after the housewarming party, Adam sat down at his new desk and wrote to his father.
Dear Pa,
We had our party yesterday. When I say that everything, even the weather, was perfect, you can believe me. Neither Emma nor I wanted such a big housewarming, but somehow it just happened. All kinds of people came: my bosses at the company, old-timers like Reilly, whom you met at the store, and a whole crowd of friends.
You were missed. I know I haven’t been east in two years, and I’m sorry, but honestly, the days are very short for all I have to do at work, and now with the new baby, the move, and the settling into the house, there hasn’t been a free minute.
I’m glad things are quiet between Leo and you and that he is busy, which is good for him. Emma joins me in begging you both to visit. You will love the house, and there are beautiful rooms waiting for you.
You always ask about Sabine and Blanche. Sabine is her generous self. She can’t do enough for us. I don’t think she is very well because her cranky moods have been coming on more often. Of course, she’s pretty old.
Blanche continues to be the great success that you already know about. Although we work for the same company, I rarely see her. She sent a very nice house gift, but didn’t come to the party. We don’t blame her because she probably had a date. She really should have a husband by now!
Now the best for the last. Our boys are wonderful. Right this minute Emma is going over fifth-grade math with Jon and James is playing a board game here on the floor beside me. Our Andy is having his nap. Did I tell you that he has Emma’s hair? What a waste on a boy! It’s barely grown yet, and Emma is already dreading the day it will have to be cut.
It doesn’t seem possible that we have been married more than eleven years. I suppose time flies faster when you are as happy as we are. Write soon. Love,
Adam
Chapter 18
Sabine, on days when she was feeling morose, often liked to quote the Bible, particularly the warning about the seven fat years and the seven lean.
“That doesn’t mean only harvests or prosperity, you know. It means life, all the things that can happen to people, their health, their spirits—everything.”
These words came to mind on that morning when Rea telephoned to say that Mrs. R. was “bad.”
“I heard her about three o’clock this morning. She fell in the hall outside her room, and I helped her back into bed. I wanted to call a doctor or an ambulance, but she wouldn’t let me. She screamed at me. She wouldn’t even let me call you, but Rudy said I must. So I’m downstairs, where she can’t hear me.”
“We’ll be right there,” Adam said.
Dressed in a satin bed jacket, Sabine was sitting up in bed when they arrived. She was having breakfast and was annoyed by their visit.
“Such a fuss over nothing! I slipped in the hall because I was coughing my head off and didn’t look where I was going. But Rea has always been a worrywart. Why, once when you were about six, Emma, I remember—”
Emma interrupted. “Have you got a fever?”
“How do I know? I never take my temperature.”
“Well, you should. Where’s the thermometer?”
“I don’t own one. Oh, do go home. Thanks for coming, but do go home.”
Nevertheless, they sent for a doctor, and from him learned that Sabine simply had a cold with the usual fever and sore throat.
After the usual treatment and improvement, she sent for them. Still in bed, she was as talkative as ever.
“I’ve asked you both to come over this evening because I want to settle things. It’s time. I don’t want any uncertainties after I’m gone.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Emma began, and was interrupted.
“Don’t be silly. I don’t mean right away. I’m strong as a horse, but at my age, it’s time to look ahead.
“The first thing is this house. You’ve been very considerate in keeping your thoughts to yourself, but you can’t believe, can you, that I haven’t known your opinion of this house? So what I want you to do is give it away as a temporary home for children who don’t have a good one, or perhaps not any home at all. You understand?” she asked without looking at Emma.
“I do,” Emma said quietly.
“Next comes Adam. If anything should happen to you, and I pray that it won’t because you have made my Emma so happy, I have asked Spencer Lawrence to watch out for her and the children.”
“Dear Aunt,” Emma protested, “God forbid that I should lose Adam, but I could take care of the children just as well as he could if he were to lose me. And Lawrence is such a—a stick, anyway.”
“A sturdy stick,” Adam said in defense. “If a person ever had to lean on it, it wouldn’t break.”
“Don’t argue about it.” Sabine spoke sharply. “No discussion about anything, Emma, because I’ve already made up my mind. Now, next. Most of what I own, naturally, is stock in the business. But I also have government bonds because I don’t believe in the stock market and never did, in spite of Theo Brown’s advice. Goddamned crook, that’s what he was.”
Sabine never swore, so this last was surprising.
“I have left a fair share, about a quarter of everything, to you, Adam, because I have total trust in you, and because life hasn’t been easy for you, with one brother dead and the other so sad and unfit. The rest is Emma’s, except for a good-sized amount to each of the children. They should have the best possible education, but they should also be charitable and thrifty, and appreciate the value of a dollar. Above all, they should not be spoiled.”
Visibly moved by these words and by the feel of finality in the room, as if the booming old voice were already speaking from the grave, Emma tried to lighten the mood.
“Spoil!” she cried. “That, from you? Who is the person who has loaded them with toys, books, and clothes enough for an army?”
“I’m not finished,” Sabine responded as if she had not heard Emma. “You need better help in that house with those three children and your teaching. So I have asked Rudy and Rea to go to you and be to you what they have been to me.”
“Oh, you haven’t!” cried Emma. “Why?”
“They may have other plans for themselves,” Adam pointed out gently.
“Well, they haven’t. They love you, and they love the house, too. Frankly, I don’t know what they see in the house. There’s nothing to it. Even Reilly said so the last time I was in the store. ‘There’s no decoration,’ he said. ‘Nothing pretty or fancy. It’s too plain.’ ”
The conversation was, happily, taking a turn away from death, and Adam readily joined in.
“He tells me so, too, whenever I see him. I get a kick out of him, and then out of Archer, who tells him, very seriously, that he doesn’t know the first thing about architecture. ‘The house is a Georgian country house,’ Archer says, and of course he’s right.”
Funny thing, Adam thought. If it hadn’t been for Reilly, plus Mr. Shipper and Spencer Lawrence, we wouldn’t be in that house. Well, maybe we would if I had gone elsewhere to earn a lucky living or won big at the races or something.
“I’ll make you both feel better,” Sabine said. “There’s another person who admires your taste. Blanche. She stopped in after work yesterday. I told her I didn’t think it
was very nice of her not to come to your housewarming that time.”
“You’ve got a long memory, Aunt. That was a year ago.”
“I don’t care. It was wrong. It was wrong after the opportunity she found here. She’s making a bundle for herself.”
“For all of us, too,” Adam reminded Sabine.
“That’s true, but I still don’t like her. Never did. I can’t say why, but I don’t.”
“Poor Blanche,” Emma said. “With all her success, it must be an empty life. No Adam, no Jon, no James or Andy—”
Mischievously, Adam asked, “Wouldn’t you rather be touring the world giving piano recitals?”
“Ah, you’re teasing me,” Sabine interjected. “Where’s Rea? I asked her to bring some coffee and chocolate cake. She baked this afternoon—ah, there you are, Rea.”
“Nobody ever leaves this house without first having something to eat,” Rea said. “I’ll put the tray on the table right next to you. Let me just fluff your pillows before you eat.”
Adam was moved. With all her foibles and flare-ups, there was something in this old woman that made people care about her. In a way, he thought as he watched, she reminds me of a light that flickers, flares, flickers again, and is about to go out. She will be missed, Adam thought.
And one week after that, under the fair April sky, after the last solemn words had been spoken at the cemetery, the same thought returned to him.
“She will be missed,” he said to Emma, who was wiping her tears. “Yet, in a way, we never knew her.”
To that, Spencer Lawrence, who had overheard, responded, “Do we ever know anyone?”
The summer seemed to be especially beautiful that year, having just the right amount of rain and the right amount of sun, enough of each to keep green things flourishing and humanity comfortable.
“I was thinking,” Emma said one Sunday afternoon in August, “that maybe next summer, we could load up the station wagon and take a trip to the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. Andy will be old enough then to get something out of a trip like that.”
Adam, engrossed in the newspaper, answered briefly. “Nice idea. Let’s talk about it when it’s next year.”
“You look as if something’s bothering you. What is it?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I think this country is on the edge of a huge disaster, and doesn’t know it. Look here,” and he tapped the paper, “stocks have reached the highest prices in history, and the highest volume of trade. This professor of economics says it will go on forever. The economy has never been as prosperous, he says.”
“It’s true, isn’t it? Look how people are buying things. Look at the car dealers in town. Look at your own store.”
“Stock pools. I hear men talk. The other night at that dinner party, a couple of brokers were getting a pool together. Pump the stock up, way up, and then sell to the poor suckers who go out and borrow to buy it. I am telling you that there’s going to be a day of reckoning. There has to be. What goes up eventually comes down.”
“Well, you don’t have any stocks except in your own business. So don’t worry.”
“But my father has. In every phone call he tells me where his stocks are. Rudy and Rea have stocks. They ought to sell. I’ve told them all, but they think I don’t know what I’m talking about. Listen, back even in 1926, Hoover, who was then the Secretary of Commerce, said there was too much speculation.”
“Oh, it’s too nice a day for such talk. Let’s sing.” And through laughter, Emma, as she aped an operatic soprano, began, “My God, how the money rolls in!”
She could be cute and funny, but right now Adam was not in the mood for humor. He got up and went inside to make a call to his father.
“How’s everything, Pa?”
“Good. Good. I was at the beach with my new neighbors. Nice people, very friendly, but I think it was too hot for me. I had to take a nitroglycerin and go home. The heat, I guess.”
“No, not the heat, but your heart. You’d better see the doctor in the morning.”
“He can’t do anything besides give me the medicine. I’ll see him anyway, though, just to make you happy.”
“There’s something else you can do to make me happy. Sell your stocks tomorrow.”
“Sell my stocks! Are you out of your head? AT & T and GE? They’ve doubled and tripled, even more than that, since I bought them.”
“There are too many crooked deals on Wall Street. I don’t like what I’m hearing. Take your profit and put it away.”
“Leo would really think I was crazy if I should tell him to do that.”
“The devil with Leo. What’s he ever done with his life?”
“Okay, okay, Adam. You mean well. I’ll think about it.”
He’ll not even think about it, much less do it, Adam told himself as he hung up.
October arrived. Pumpkins and Halloween skeletons appeared in store windows. At the table, Jon recited an autumn poem that he was supposed to memorize: “‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’—What’s that about mists, Mom?”
“It’s a British poem. England has much more rain than we do here, so— What’s the matter, Adam?”
“The stock market. It took a terrible drop just in the last hour yesterday.”
“Watch, it’ll go back up again. Want to bet five dollars?”
The next day, Tuesday the twenty-third, Adam handed Emma a five-dollar bill.
“You see? I was right. Jumped right back up again. I knew it. I shouldn’t even take your five. It was too easy.”
“Wait,” he said.
That night he went again to the telephone and called his father. “Sell,” he roared. “You’ve had your warning.”
“What makes you such a fortune-teller?”
“I can’t say. It’s a feeling. It’s common sense.”
There was an element of selfishness in these calls, he admitted to himself as he fell asleep that night. For who but me is to take care of Pa and Leo if the worst should happen?
The worst came in sections. Black Thursday, they called it on the twenty-fourth of the month. All the rest of the week, things dangled: up a bit and down a bit. Then on Tuesday, the twenty-ninth, they hit the bottom. Disaster came over the radio; one could listen to the panic in front of the Stock Exchange, the police in front of the banks, the crowds hysterical or stricken into a silent contemplation of their own ruin.
From back east, Pa sobbed over the telephone. “Why didn’t I listen to you? We had the best broker in town. I had confidence in him. Everything was bought on margin. The phone’s been ringing with the margin calls that we can’t pay. Leo has locked himself into his room. He says it’s his fault. He wants to kill himself.”
“He won’t,” Adam said. “Hold on, Pa. Use your nitroglycerin. I’m taking the train tomorrow. Hold on till I get there.”
“It’s not only about harvests,” Sabine had said. “It’s about other things that happen to people, their health and hopes and spirits. It’s about everything, lean or fat.”
There was no doubt about the nature of the year that ended with Simon and Leo’s arrival in Chattahoochee. During his two-week stay back east, Adam had straightened out as many affairs as he could. Since Simon was the owner of the stocks and his only other possession was his meager little home, it was, so the lawyer explained, a simple matter to turn the house over to the broker, which was repayment along the lines of one dollar on a five-hundred-dollar debt. The store had long ago been signed over to Leo, so he would have a small income from rent. That left him modestly cared for, but his father not cared for at all—except by Adam.
It was, in spite of all efforts to enliven the atmosphere, a disheartened group that assembled on that first afternoon in Adam’s house. Perhaps it was Simon’s appearance, shrunken, bowed, and pale as he was, that brought thoughts of death into their midst. Perhaps it was Leo’s scowl at having to accept his brother’s favors that depressed them.
And yet the old man’s eyes lit up at the sight
of his grandsons. He gave them each a hug.
“Three of them! Hey, Adam, you’re copying me. No girls in our family! Never mind, I love boys best—except for you, Emma, you beautiful lady, and you, Blanche, another beautiful lady and my old friend besides. You know I still take my warm milk, Blanche, just as you always told me to.”
He was delighted with his room. “My own bathroom! Flowered tiles—this is fit for a king.”
“Look at the view, Pa,” Emma said. “Of course, this is January. Wait until spring! And, Leo, we have an equally nice room for you, with two big closets and shelves for your books.”
“Thank you, but I won’t be staying here,” was the stiff response. “I thought I’d get a room for myself, go into town, where you must have a library. And isn’t there a university near the capital?”
Adam felt a spurt of anger. He could at least stay for a couple of nights and be sociable before moving on. But then, he had never been sociable.
Blanche, suggesting that Leo might like to find a nice two-room apartment in her neighborhood, offered to drive him there.
“You can spend the night in my place, and tomorrow I’ll show you around.”
“Thank you, Blanche. What a good idea.”
He would stay with Blanche, but not his brother? Ah, just as well. Why pretend?
“I have two big cases of books,” Leo continued, to no one in particular. “When they arrive here, I’d appreciate it if you would send them on to wherever I end up. Of course I will give you the address as soon as I have it. Do you want to leave now, Blanche? I’m ready if you are.”
“Well, of all the cool characters,” Adam protested when Leo and Blanche had left and the boys had gone upstairs with Simon. “I should think that he, even he, might be a little humble after what he’s done to his father. A lifetime of grueling labor, and I mean grueling, with nothing left. Nothing. Pa trusted this fool to deal with the broker, who didn’t give a damn about safety until he called up to collect and found he couldn’t collect because they had been wiped out. You’d think at least that Leo would be a little bit humble,” he repeated.
