by Belva Plain
“I just gave you my thoughts, Dad.”
Again, Bill gave her his proud-father smile, a mixture this time of amusement and affection.
“Come away,” he said. “Let’s go home. This place haunts me.”
* * *
Whether the visit home had done Charlotte any good was a moot question. Maybe everything one does is moot, she reflected. At home, it was true, the virtually rural quiet without responsibilities or schedules had been temporarily soothing, but then the parlous state of affairs there, the sight of Bill so beaten, had caused a deep anxiety. It was with her even while she was at her work, the work she so loved. It was with her now, a vague, dim presence as she sat on the Common having her late sandwich lunch.
Most of the benches were being vacated as, reluctantly on so perfect a June day as this one, people returned to their offices. Charlotte, having almost three quarters of her free hour remaining, sat back and made an effort to absorb, to feel, the perfect day. Uninhibited couples lay on the warm grass. Important-looking men in dark suits, carrying their attaché cases, took a hurried shortcut across the Common. Around the old folk who daily came to feed them, pigeons collected, cooing mournfully even as they were being fed. All was color: the comical strut of pigeons on their shocking-pink feet, the extraordinary charm of a tiny boy in red shorts pulling a toy car on a string, the creamy clouds that swam over the city—all moved, all were vibrant with life. It was impossible to close one’s eyes on so much life.
So her eyes, moving everywhere, came suddenly to rest upon a row of red brick houses. At this distance they formed a wall.… And something clicked into her vision. Of course! A wall! A broad, river wall with a walk on top, and below, paved in red brick, the square that she had almost carelessly suggested to her father and he had called a “pipe dream.” She had put it out of her mind because he had called it that. But it need not be! He was wrong! Surely something might be worked out.
The whole picture rose and glowed in the air before her. Excited now, she reached into her tote bag, unfolded a large square of tissue paper in which the repairman had wrapped her old shoes, spread it out, flimsy as it was, upon the bench, and began to sketch.
The four acres where the building now stood would be the center, a huge square with shops, and at the rear an open-air market to be glassed in during the winter. Wings would be attached to the square, two stories of condominiums, housing for the retired or for the young, with a view of the river; an inn might go there, too, for businesspeople coming to the region and for tourists who loved New England. Then a fine restaurant, and a skating rink in winter.… Imagination, with all its delicate, small gears, clicked into place. A rapid, fluid sketch took form.
Then she was conscious of someone standing behind her. Startled, she turned and saw a young man, one of those who used the Common as a shortcut, a young man in the typical dark suit with the typical briefcase in hand.
“I was going to go past you,” he said, “when I saw the braid. I thought at once it must be you.” He smiled, showing fine teeth. “The Lauriers’ party. You don’t remember me. Why should you?”
Indeed she remembered him, if only because that silly woman had urged her to pursue him.
“I’m Roger Heywood.”
“Charlotte Dawes.”
“That looks interesting. What is it?”
“A development, a town improvement,” she answered, wishing he would go away.
“Then you’re an architect?”
“Yes. I work for the Lauriers.”
“What’s that curve? A river, or a road?”
“A river, with a road beside it.”
“The road to go between the river and the project, I assume.”
“That’s right.”
“But then, where you’ve written ‘walks,’ do you mean two walks?”
He puzzled her. Why was he so interested? If he was merely flirting, this was an odd way of doing it.
“There will be a second walk on top of a wide, thick wall,” she explained.
“Ouch!” he said. “That’ll cost a fortune.”
“I daresay it will. But like most plans it will probably have to be modified. To my sorrow, naturally,” she added.
“Yes, it always costs more than you expect, doesn’t it? I’m a builder, you see. Or I should say, I work for a builder, so I know.”
Now she was curious. “What sort of things do you build?”
“Commercial buildings. Nothing that would fascinate anybody. I studied city planning, all very idealistic, but I found that the ideals seldom came to fruition.” He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I’m late.”
Charlotte, looking at hers, shoved the sketch quickly back into her bag. “I am too. I’ve got to run.”
“Before you run, will you give me your phone number? You can ask the Lauriers about me. They know me, or I should say, they know my family.”
That’s rather nice of him, she thought as she scribbled the number. Nice. And somehow old fashioned. These days people didn’t bother to consider whether you might like to know more about the man than his name. Besides, he had such an appealing smile.
“If you build it, they will come,” Charlotte said. “I always forget who said that first, but I do believe it.”
Pauline frowned. “I don’t know how you can believe it when you look around at all the half-empty buildings, the for-sale and for-rent signs.”
“That’s because they weren’t much good in the first place.”
It was late afternoon, and everyone except the two had gone home. Charlotte had stayed to discuss a draft on which Rudy had asked for changes. When that problem had been solved, she had ventured, a little shyly, to show her personal project to Pauline.
“It’s only a preliminary sketch,” she had explained, that being patently untrue. Far from being a sketch it was already in its second stage, a preliminary drawing, done to scale and fine enough to be framed, the standard drawing for which clients paid handsomely.
Pauline, having scrutinized it for several silent minutes, expressed some astonishment.
“For heaven’s sake! What is this meant to be? When did you do this?”
Charlotte smiled. “When? Not on the firm’s time.”
“I know you didn’t,” Pauline said impatiently. “I mean that it’s beautiful. Really beautiful. The drawing is a gem.”
“The drawing workshop was one of my favorite classes. Wait till I do the final watercolor. You’ll see.”
Pauline, tilting her chair back and propping her feet on the desk, regarded Charlotte with a serious, puzzled expression.
“Tell me what this is all about,” she said.
So Charlotte gave a brief account of how the Daweses’ business had fallen away and of her own inspiration.
“I suppose you could call it an inspiration,” she concluded, “because it really did come to me in one breath. And I have been breathing it in ever since. Every day. Oh,” she said earnestly, “I want so much to see it built, Pauline.”
During the telling Pauline had put her feet down and had leaned forward over the desk with her chin in her hands, attending, as the story progressed, to every word. At the end she went back to studying the design, turning it this way and that.
“Of course, there’s nothing original anymore about the idea of the festival marketplace,” she said slowly. “Goodness, when you think of Quincy Market—now, that was original! And those first riverfront developments—I was in Minneapolis when they began theirs along the Mississippi.” Raising the paper, she examined the work from another angle. “Still, this does have a new feel, curiously new. It’s a housing development with a difference, a recreation center that doesn’t advertise itself. It’s a wall without being a wall.”
Charlotte interrupted. “No chain stores allowed. People can go out on the highway for those. No, this is to be a village, a place for independence, for individuals who can display their wares and their work, from handwoven cloth to naturally grown vegetables to—
”
“Yes, yes, I understand. What you’ve made here is a complete neighborhood.” Pauline mused. “You might live in it without ever needing to leave it for anything, couldn’t you? And all of this not in a major city, but in an ordinary town like thousands of others. You must have studied your town very thoughtfully.”
“I grew up there. Also,” and Charlotte gave a laugh that was both a little proud and a little shy, “also, I had a good course, called ‘Economics and Society.’ That helped, I’m sure.”
Pauline, still engrossed with the design, had further comments. “I suppose what you’ve done here could be labeled ‘neomodern’ or ‘neoclassical,’ but not, thank goodness, ‘neomishmash,’ like those sixty-story glass towers topped with some reminiscences of Chinese Chippendale.” She nodded. “Yes, yes, it’s correct and yet relaxed, and seems to fit the landscape like a traditional New England village. I can’t wait to show it to Rudy. Congratulations, Charlotte, and my deep respect.”
The eager thrill that ran through Charlotte at this serious approval reached her eyes, which glistened, and her mouth, which trembled.
“However, I really do advise you to put it mentally on hold. Put it neatly away until the right time comes.”
“The right time is now, Pauline.”
Pauline shook her head. “A lovely idea is one thing, but you don’t know anything about financing, do you? I hate to throw cold water, but it sounds as if your father is in deep trouble. That’s why I’m telling you not to waste too much hope and energy on this project right now.”
For a few moments Charlotte did not reply. There was nothing in Pauline’s words that she could gainsay. And as a light is blacked out, her high mood died. Gathering her papers, she prepared to go home.
Pauline said kindly, “Don’t be too downcast. Good heavens, look out there at that landmark. Do you know how many years the Heywood people had to wait before they could get it started? The land belonged to an estate, the brothers were warring, and the litigation went through three courts before it could be sold.”
Charlotte followed Pauline’s waving hand to the spiring steel giant, the looming “landmark” that pointed to the sky above the neighborhood. Then something echoed in her ears.
“Heywood? Is there anyone named Roger in the family?”
“Oh, yes. He was at our party in April. Didn’t you see him?”
“I saw him, but I didn’t talk to him. Then I saw him again on the Common a few days ago.”
“And?”
“Nothing much. He just recognized me and said hello.”
“That’s all?”
Curiosity almost bubbled out of Pauline’s upturned voice. Charlotte had heard it so many times whenever a man was mentioned, a man who might be a match for the widow Rosalyn, or for one of the young typists, or certainly for Charlotte herself, that she actually expected it and would have been surprised if it had not happened.
Amused now, she bantered with Pauline, adding, “He wanted my telephone number.”
“I hope you gave it to him.”
Charlotte laughed. “It would have been pretty rude to refuse, especially after he gave you as a reference.”
“You don’t look a bit pleased. I don’t understand you. You look bored, as if it was nothing.”
Charlotte shrugged lightly. “It’s simply that I haven’t been very lucky with men, that’s all.”
“Ridiculous. With the qualities you have, it’s ridiculous.”
Charlotte knew this refrain word for word. She knew, too, that Pauline, for no reason other than her usual frustrated or misplaced motherliness, would have liked to know more about her, more about the “lost” mother in Italy, for instance, and surely more about Charlotte’s own supposed bad luck with men. But having no intention of satisfying anybody’s curiosity or maternal instincts, she stood up and moved toward the door.
“Roger Heywood,” Pauline began, thus forcing Charlotte to stand and listen, “is a very worthy young man. And not because of these skyscrapers that they build all over the world, in Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, and—don’t you think he’s really good looking, I mean, really?”
Charlotte said, teasing again, “I’ve never been less than five thousand miles from Kuala Lumpur, so I wouldn’t know.”
“I’m talking about Roger. You’re joking, and I’m serious. You can surely imagine how many women run after him. Didn’t you notice at the party?”
“I only noticed the one who was with him.”
“Oh, that one! She’s some sort of third cousin. She manages now and then to hook him for a dinner or a benefit. They tell me he can’t stand her.”
“Well,” said Charlotte, “I always prefer red-haired men with freckles, anyway.”
“Don’t be a fool, Charlotte. Go home and hope the phone will ring. And don’t be too downhearted about your design,” Pauline called after her. “Some client may know of some project in Oklahoma or Idaho—you never know.”
Pauline, being Pauline, had meant well, Charlotte knew, as she walked home slowly, heavily, through the fine summer evening, but the likelihood of such a client’s appearing was no better than her chance of winning the lottery. Besides, the design had been intended for Kingsley, for Dad, and for nothing else.
No doubt it was foolish to fixate upon a wisp of an idea without any practical way of turning it into fact. No doubt it was. But now that the idea had lodged itself so firmly in her head, how was she to forget it?
FIVE
“At that party I wanted to talk to you,” said Roger Heywood over the telephone. “I even looked for you later in the evening, looked all over for a beautiful green dress with a tall girl in it, but you had gone.”
“I left early.”
“Well, I would have if I could have.” He laughed. “There was too much gabble at my table, all about what things cost and who had bought what.”
This, she knew, was an oblique way of telling her that he had no ties to the bejeweled person who had been making a fuss over him. It did not really matter to Charlotte whether he had any ties or not. Nevertheless, she was somewhat pleased that he had phoned, since the summer days and nights ahead looked very long.
“I have an idea you must love concerts,” he said surprisingly.
“As a matter of fact I do, but what makes you think so?”
“Because music goes with mathematics, and architects have to—oh well, you know what I mean. Let’s say you just looked as if you knew something about music. So I thought maybe you’d like to go with me tomorrow night. Will you?”
“I’d love it,” she said promptly.
So they came to be sitting together on a blanket in a crowd under a sultry sky and the distant threat of thunder, listening to Tales from the Vienna Woods.
This was not the kind of music that leads to deep feelings or thoughts, and Charlotte’s mind wandered. It was odd how clearly you remembered the first time you met somebody, and also the final time. Time in between, whether long or short, faded into a motley blur. There was that promising man who had, a few months ago, started out with a first concert and ended by being ordered out of her apartment, an event that still brought to her the hot sting of shame. There was Peter, quite another story. And now this one. She had a feeling that tonight was not going to be the last she would see of him, which, again, pleased her, although it would be no great disappointment if it should turn out otherwise.
“Good summer-night music,” Roger observed during the intermission. “Beethoven, for instance, belongs to winter nights, or maybe to a dark afternoon when you’re closed in with your thoughts. Not necessarily somber ones,” he added. “They can be full of energy, like Beethoven himself.”
Charlotte liked that.
They went out afterward for a hamburger. Walking beside him, she became aware of his height. She had wrongly remembered him as a small man, perhaps because he was narrow, but now she saw that although he was certainly no rugged outdoor man like Big Bill, her father—was it not generally agreed that
women unconsciously admire young men who resemble their fathers?—he was sturdy. His body moved firmly, with agility.
Once confined to the space of a booth, with music no longer the obvious easy subject, there came a sense of constraint. They began conversation with the usual background remarks, as if to identify themselves. She learned that he had grown up in Boston until his high school years, which he had spent in Chicago after his father’s job transfer. He had returned to Boston because he loved the city and because his uncle, who had no children, had offered him a position in his business. He had graduated with a degree in engineering. He learned that she had grown up in a New England town, that her parents were divorced and her mother lived in Italy. Yes, she had wanted ever since junior high to be an architect. Yes, she liked Boston very much and had been exploring it from one end to the other.
After all this the dialogue began to lose momentum, much as those ancient phonograph records in the family attic began to die down halfway to the end. They both felt this, and struggling to reenergize it only made things worse.
Then, when two men stopped to hail Roger, there came rescue. Introductions were made. The two were invited to sit down, but they were in a hurry, on their way out. One hesitated for a moment, asking Roger whether he “had heard anything from Larry?”
“A postcard,” Roger replied. “He’s on vacation in Maine with his family, improving his golf score.”
“What you did for that guy! If it hadn’t been for you—”
“Oh, well,” said Roger with a wave of dismissal.
“Oh, well, nothing,” said the other, turning toward Charlotte. “I don’t know how long you’ve known this man here, but you probably haven’t heard this because he never talks about it.”
“Cut it out,” said Roger.
“I absolutely won’t. Listen, Miss—”
“Charlotte,” said Charlotte, who was becoming interested.
