by Evergreen
All chance. Where you were born, when, and to whom. Whom you met and married. All chance.
"What are you doing, standing out there?" Joseph called. "You'll catch a cold!"
"Just looking at the sky," Anna said, coming indoors.
"You and your stars! You should have been an astronomer. Come up to bed."
"So," he said, sitting on the edge of the bed while he took off his shoes, "so I met the great financier."
She ought really to show a normal interest. "Is he truly a great financier?"
"Well, it's a small private banking house, no Morgan, but a power, all the same. Very well run. And what do you think? He told Malone they'd be glad to consider an application from us to underwrite our Florida project. Eight million dollars' worth!"
"That much?"
"Of course! What did you think? It's one of the biggest projects on the East Coast!"
Anna looked up. His eyes were shining. "You know, Anna, I couldn't help thinking of that first loan, with us coming, hat in hand, for two thousand dollars. And today that same man is eager to do business with me in the millions! It's kind of unbelievable, isn't it?"
"Yes. Yes, it is."
"Werner must have been thinking of it, too. But of course he wouldn't mention it. He's a gentleman, no question."
"And are you going to deal with Werner's bank?"
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"No, Malone told him we're practically signed up elsewhere. But I got kind of a kick out of it, all the same."
The shoes dropped to the floor with a bang. "Imagine, three, maybe four generations in the business! Boy, that's the way to do it! Pick the right grandfather, that's all you need, hey? We didn't do it right, did we, Anna? Still," Joseph went on gaily, "I'm steaming ahead under my own power! Yes, I believe our grandchildren will be able to say they picked the right grandfather."
In sudden panic, Anna ran to him. She put her arms out, held to him tightly. Ah, love me! Don't let me do anything crazy that will rain us all! Even if I should ever want to, don't let me!
He kissed her. "You looked beautiful tonight, Anna. I was so proud of you, you can't know how proud! Why, what's the matter? You're not crying?"
"Not really. Only a few tears. Because everything is just the way I want it to be, with Eric here and Iris' babies only ten minutes away. And I'm so afraid it won't stay like this."
"But you've always been an optimist! What's got into you?" And Joseph laughed. He shrugged and spread his hands out to the universe, in a gesture left over from childhood. "Everything is so good, and she worries, she cries! No wonder a man can never understand a woman!"
Anna went to the lobby during the last intermission. The opera house was filled with women, for the ladies' hospital guild had taken a huge block of seats and sold them all. Pleased with success, she walked down the corridor to the water fountain.
"Anna," someone said.
Even before she looked around, she knew who it was. He was standing against the wall as if he had been afraid to startle her by coming forward. "Don't be angry with me, will you?"
"I'm not angry! But I am scared. Paul, you shouldn't have."
"It's the only possible way I could think of to see you. We couldn't really talk at that dinner."
"We can't really talk here."
"Afterward, then. Let's go somewhere afterward."
"I can't. I have to go home, Paul."
"Well, when?"
"I'm afraid," Anna said. "If I see you again, something will happen."
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"Maybe. I don't think so."
She stared at him. His gravity reminded her of Iris in that lonely time before Theo came. She put her hand on his arm and they stood there, barely touching, just looking, looking-
"If I believed in reincarnation, Anna, I would say that in some past century I had had you and lost you, and that I've been searching for you ever since."
A woman, coming from the fountain, gave them a frank stare, having perhaps caught their last words or sensed, as it is possible to do, the dense emotion that lay between them.
If I had had to see him every day all this time, Anna was thinking, who knows what might have happened? For all my strong belief in permanence and stable trust? Twenty times one would refuse to go away with a man, yet perhaps the twenty-first time, one wouldn't refuse. And in sudden terror she thought: Can any human being be that sure of his will? Chemistry! Only a modern term for the enchantment, the pull between the sexes, the lure against all prudence, all-Chemistry!
Paul's expression was very tender. "You still glow. That brightness you had when you were a young girl-it's never been put out, has it? In spite of everything."
She felt a small, cutting pain. "I've been so torn, for so long. I wish I could feel whole!"
The bell sounded for the last act. People began moving back inside, brushing against them as they stood by the wall.
Paul grasped her arm. "I understand what you mean. I won't tear your family's life apart. Nor hurt Joseph. Or my daughter. Do you think I would hurt Iris? Trust me. But we must see each other again."
"I'll have lunch with you."
"Tell me what time and-"
Two large ladies in 'afternoon' dresses and droopy furs bore down on Anna, one of them shrilling gaily, "We've been hunting for you everywhere! Hurry, the curtain's going up in a minute!" And she was led back between them into a chattering group of friends, without a chance for another word.
Paul stood an instant looking wildly after her, as if he would pursue her. Then, with a small despairing shrug, he gave up and walked rapidly away.
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The departing crowd pushed Anna outward through the main door. As had been arranged, Joseph was waiting.
"Come. The car's around the corner. How was it?"
"Marvelous. I always love A'ida, anyway."
The car turned northward, heading out of the city. In the west the somber winter sky had been torn open, and in the empty space between the clouds lay a lake of lavender, pearl and green.
"A beautiful sunset," Anna said. "The days are getting longer."
"So they are."
Joseph was very quiet. This must have been one of his difficult days. It was just as well; she wouldn't have to make conversation. If only sleeping dogs were allowed to lie! She had been feeling, for the last year or two, a welcome lightening of care—the natural result of Iris' good fortune—and in consequence she had been able to go for more than a week sometimes without even thinking of certain things. And now the sleeping dogs had been awakened.
Her body was drawn into a tangle of hot, trembling nerves. She pushed her coat back over her shoulders.
"What's the matter? Heat wave in February?"
"It's this dress. It's meant for a winter in Lapland, not New York," Anna complained.
He said no more, except to ask, a short while later when she lay her head back on the seat, whether she was not feeling well.
"I have a headache," she answered. "I think I'll just close my eyes."
They were almost home when Joseph spoke again. "You had a big crowd, did you? All women, I suppose?"
"Almost all. Just a couple of older men, like Hazel Berber's husband. But then, he's practically retired."
"I suppose you saw a lot of people you hadn't seen in a long time."
"Well, naturally, at an event like this." Something in Joseph's voice alarmed her. She sat up, pretending to fuss with her coat, and glanced at him. But he was looking straight ahead with a quite ordinary expression.
In their room she began to change into a cooler dress. The heat was still overwhelming. Then she heard Joseph coming up the stairs, striking each step with force, warning her of confrontation. He entered the room and firmly shut the door.
"Well, Anna! I waited all the way home. I gave you every chance to tell me and you didn't."
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Best face it armed with innocence. "What can you be talking about?"
"You're a very good actress, but it won't work.
Because, you see, I was there. I got there early, before the final act, and I saw the whole thing!"
"Would you mind telling me what you're talking about? What whole thing?"
"Come on, Anna, come on! I wasn't born yesterday. You were talking to that man for fifteen minutes."
"Oh!" she cried in a high, clear voice. "You mean Paul Werner! Yes, I ran into him at the water fountain. What's wrong with that?"
"You didn't just 'run into' him, you had fifteen minutes of very serious conversation, so don't try to tell me—"
Go over now, go over to the attack. It's the best defense. "What did you do? Carry a stop watch? And why didn't you come up and talk, the way any husband would instead of standing there spying?"
"Any husband in my place would be damned curious to know what his wife was doing! He came on purpose to see you, Anna! He knew you were going to be there because—I recall it now—I said you would be."
"Did you mention it on purpose to trap me?"
"Damn you, Anna, for a dirty thought like that!"
"And what about your dirty thoughts?"
"Don't try to put me on the defensive, because you can't do it. He came to see you and you lied to me. Those are the bare facts. You can't make anything else out of them."
"I did not lie to you! I just didn't think of mentioning it."
"Why didn't you?"
"Because I—" She heard herself stammering and began again. "Because it was of no importance to me. It was trivial. Do I give you a list every night of the people I happened to run into during the day?"
"Happened to run into!" Joseph mocked. "It's so usual for you to run into Paul Werner, isn't it? Like the milkman or the mailman! Do you think I'm an ass? But on second thought," he said slowly, "on second thought, maybe you do see him. Maybe it isn't so unusual."
"What a monstrous thing to say! Have you gone completely out of your mind?"
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"No, I'm not out of my mind. I'm thinking very clearly. And I want to know why he came and what you were talking about. I'm waiting," Joseph said.
She had seen tempers often enough, explosions over the children when they were little or over household trivia, but never a cold fury like this. She drew her thoughts together. Everything was at stake, everything. "We talked about—let's see, the opera, of course, and the new tenor. Then he asked the usual polite questions about the family, things like that. Nothing, really, when you come down to it."
Joseph whipped the evening paper through the air and snapped it against the back of a chair. "No, that won't do! He grasped your arm. You pulled away. I saw your face when you went inside and I saw his. You can't tell me you were talking about the new tenor! What did he want, Anna? You will have to tell: what did he want?"
She bent her head. It whirled, as though she were going to faint. "I feel ill," she murmured.
"Then sit down. Lie down. But you can't get out of it that way."
She sat down, holding her head. Celeste had turned up the radio in the kitchen; a blare of revival music sounded up the stairs before it was cut off. A horn blew in the yard across the road. The stillness inside the room rang in her ears. He was still standing there waiting. She didn't know whether one minute had passed or five. She raised her head.
"Well?" Joseph said.
She wanted to cry out: Mercy! Leave me alone, I can't stand any more. But she was silent.
"Well?" he repeated.
And then she saw it was no use. She wet her lips, and sighed, and spoke.
"He asked me to have lunch with him. The reason I didn't tell you was that I knew you would be very angry. And I knew you had business dealings with him. I thought it could end in dreadful unpleasantness, so I thought it better to handle it myself." She stopped, trembling.
"And how did you handle it?"
"How do you suppose? I refused. I told him never to ask me again."
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k
She looked directly into Joseph's eyes, and he into hers for a minute or more. Then he turned away.
"The bastard," he said quietly. "The fine gentlemanly bastard. Goes behind a man's back to make—arrangements—with his wife."
He walked the length of the room. He raised the window shades to look out into darkness and, after a little while, turned back to Anna. .«
"He's in love with you, isn't he?"
"Why? Because he asked me to go to lunch?"
"You can't be that stupid! Or shall I be tactful and call it naivete? A woman of your age! What in the name of heaven do you think he wanted?"
"The fact is he asked me to lunch and that's all."
"The city's full of women, a lot younger than you, for a man to take to lunch and for whatever comes afterward. There's got to be more to this story."
"Perhaps it's just—one of the things some men do. I mean, he saw me at that dinner and I suppose he—liked me. Don't men do things like that?"
"A cheap philanderer! Another man's wife! You haven't seen him since that time?"
"No."
Joseph passed his hand over his forehead; he was sweating. "It's funny, you know, I never mentioned it, but at that dinner, I thought I saw him looking at you. I thought I felt something. But then I told myself not to act the fool. I put it out of my mind. I told myself it was nothing."
"But you see," Anna said softly, "it really was nothing very much. Another man on the make. I suppose he found me—interesting. Because of having known me so long ago."
How ugly this cajolery, this deceit! Even the slander of Paul was so ugly. But there was no choice. She had to defend herself, and not herself alone. They were all bound up in what was being said and believed, here in this room.
Below, in the kitchen wing, a door slammed and there were voices. Eric would be coming in from basketball practice, too hungry to wait for dinner. What disaster for him if this couldn't be straightened out!
We are all so interwoven. There is no way ever to isolate the evil, the sickness. Everyone is touched by its cold coils: Joseph
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and I and Eric and Iris, with her children. And Paul. Yes, Paul. We cause each other so much suffering without wanting to.
"Anna, tell me. I have to know. I've asked you this before and you've always denied it, but I'm going to ask it again: Were you in love with each other, years ago?"
"Never. No, never."
"And there was never anything between .you?"
Her fists were clenched at her sides. She relaxed them and breathed deeply. "No, never."
"Will you swear it?"
"Joseph, isn't it enough that I've answered you?"
"Maybe it's foolish of me, but I would feel great relief if you would swear it. By the health of Eric, and Iris and her children. Then I would know it was true."
She was in a corner. She had actually retreated to the corner of the room and it seemed now that the corners were narrowing their angle, curving to trap her between the walls.
"No, I won't do that. I won't swear by their lives."
"Why won't you? If I ask you to?"
"It's insulting to ask me to do that, as if you didn't take my word."
"I don't mean to insult you. It's just that—"
"And for another, I feel superstitious about it."
"Why? Afraid that something would happen to them? It wouldn't as long as you were telling the truth."
"No, Joseph."
"Swear without that, then. Say, I swear I never had anything to do with Paul Werner that my husband couldn't know about."
Now, from some corner of Anna's soul, fierce strength emerged, born out of terror. She went over again to the attack.
"Now it's I who'll be angry, Joseph! Why do you want to humiliate me? What kind of a marriage is it in which people don't trust one another?"
"I want to believe you," Joseph said, retreating before her anger.
"Then believe me!"
There were tears in his eyes. "Anna, I couldn't bear it if— The world is a shifting place; you never know
where you stand in it. There has to be one person who never changes. If I lost that, I tell you—you know the things I've been through, and I've kept on go-
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ing—but if I thought that you—" He swallowed. "I wouldn't care to open my eyes on another day. So help me God."
