The Golden Cup

by Belva Plain

  Yet someone wanted her enough to spend the rest of his life with her, and now there would be a child.… A dreamy smile touched the young woman’s mouth. She was thinking of the child. No, she was thinking of the man who had given her the child.…

  A life made out of two. Of Dan and me. Hennie was shaken. Longing and terror that it might never be—these shook her. And in her mind’s eye, closing her seeing eyes, she saw Dan’s dark head; saw, too, a baby’s head, damp and fuzzy; she felt the baby, warm, curved, curling on her shoulder …

  “I’m back, Aunt Hennie!”

  She opened her eyes. Paul sat on his little bicycle with the pride of a conqueror.

  “Well, you had a long ride, didn’t you? It’s time to go home, you know. Time for your piano lesson.”

  “I don’t want to play piano,” Paul protested.

  “Ah, but it will be fun to know how when you grow up,” she said. “I have a friend who plays just beautifully.”

  “I know! It’s Dan!”

  “Dan? You must call him Mr. Roth.”

  “He said I could call him Dan.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “The time we met him here in the park, near the lake, and he took me rowing.”

  That had been one Sunday afternoon last year. Now the second year was well along.

  “Where does Dan live?”

  “Oh, far from here. Downtown.”

  “Let’s go to his house.”

  “But I told you we have to go home.”

  “Then take me to his house next time.”

  “Well … we can’t. He hasn’t got a house.”

  “Everybody has a house!” Paul cried scornfully.

  “No, everybody hasn’t. Not big enough for company, I mean.”

  “Oh, you mean like Grandma’s house, where you live? All flat, with no stairs?”

  “Much smaller than that.”

  “I like Grandma’s elevator, except the ride’s not long enough. I’d like to be an elevator man when I grow up; then I could ride up and down as much as I wanted.”

  “Oh, yes, that would be lovely!”

  At the corner of the street they could see halfway down the block; trunks were being carried up from the areaway of the Werners’ house and loaded onto a wagon.

  “Look, Paul, there go your things on the way to the mountains! Aren’t you excited?”

  “Yes, and we’re taking the canary and the cook’s cat, too, this year, Mother promised. They can ride all the way in the train, just the way we do.”

  Florence was at the front door as the wagon departed.

  “What a mess it is going away,” she sighed. “Such a rush! All this furniture to be covered and the windows boarded up for the summer. And the seamstress is still upstairs working on my summer dresses, with only two more weeks to go. I don’t know what I’ll do if she doesn’t finish them. Well, come in, sit down, you must be exhausted.”

  “No, we had a nice time, Paul and I. It’s a lovely day.”

  The hall was somber. The stained-glass window next to the door turned the outdoor light to a dreary mauve, spilling it over the golden oak woodwork and the fleur-de-lis wallpaper.

  In the parlor, more stained glass in an enormous chandelier laid another gloom, wine-colored this time, over the sepia photographs of Michelangelo’s Moses and Rembrandt’s Night Watch. In front of the sofa, the tea wagon stood ready.

  “I want cake,” Paul said immediately.

  “It’s time for your piano lesson in fifteen minutes,” Florence objected. “Go up and wash your hands, dear. You may have cake after supper.”

  “I’m afraid I promised him some on the way home,” Hennie said meekly.

  “Oh dear, you’ll spoil the child. Well, all right, then, take a chocolate cookie, it won’t make so many crumbs, and go upstairs and ask Mary or Sheila to wash your hands. That’s a good boy.

  “Yes, you will spoil him,” Florence repeated when he had left the room.

  “I don’t mean to. It would be hard to ‘spoil’ Paul anyway. He’s far too intelligent for that.”

  Florence looked at her. “You should have a dozen children, you’re the type.”

  Hennie gave the expected modest smile. A sudden physical weakness hit her, so that her hand, accepting the teacup, trembled. The airless room, with its potted palm and its “Oriental nook” under the striped canopy, was stifling. She felt like crying and fought the first gathering of tears by straining her eyes toward the hall, toward the stuffed peacock on the newel post.

  It was fortunate that the room was so dark.

  “You really should come to the Adirondack place with us, Hennie. With Alfie going, it will be so nice. Why don’t you?” Florence’s hand fondled the arm of a new chair; it had mother-of-pearl inlay; it must feel slick and expensive.

  “It’s awfully far” was all Hennie could think to answer.

  “Nonsense! What difference does that make? You’ll sleep on the train and in the morning, there you’ll be at the lake. You can’t believe how beautiful it is, wild and beautiful. At night the loons call, and everything smells of pine, even your blankets. You’d love all that.”

  Why is she so insistent? Why should it matter whether I go or not? But I do know why. And she knows I know.

  “Walter’s parents are so hospitable, they’ll make you at home right away. But you’ve been at their place in Elberon, so you know how they are. Except this is so much nicer, even though I admit Elberon is convenient, with Walter commuting to work by ferry; only, this summer they want us to spend a month with them in the mountains. They’re really so good to us. I’m lucky to have in-laws like them. I pray you’ll be as lucky, Hennie.”

  Yes, Hennie thought, I believe she does pray for me.

  Security and satisfaction had softened Florence. The nervous impatience that Hennie remembered had come, very likely, from anxiety about her future; it had vanished entirely in the years of her marriage.

  “Do come, Hennie!” Florence looked kindly at her sister. “If you don’t, you’ll only have to argue your way out of two weeks at some boring mountain hotel with Pa and Mama. Two weeks in a rocking chair on a veranda. How I always hated it! Those huge, shingled piles with turrets and miles of corridors and old people doing nothing all day but sitting and eating and then sitting some more.”

  Hennie collected herself. “I’m so busy at the settlement right now, you see. I’ve started a cooking class, did I tell you? And I hate to just abandon it in the middle.”

  Florence jumped up and went to the little desk between the front windows.

  “That reminds me, I almost forgot! Walter left a check for the settlement, for you to give in your name.”

  “Oh, thank him for me. No, I will write to him myself!” Hennie cried, and felt ashamed of her mental image of Walter, that stick, with his bowler hat and spats. “It’s so generous of him! Five hundred dollars!”

  “Walter is generous,” Florence said primly. “The Germans are, you know, even though Mama still likes to look down on them. But the Germans have a conscience, they know what anti-Semitism is. People like the De Riveras have been in America so long—Sons of the American Revolution, the Knickerbocker Club and all—that they’ve forgotten. Of course,” she continued with high amusement, “now that the Germans have gotten rich, they are socially acceptable.”

  Hennie folded the check into a neat square and put it in her purse, repeating, “It’s so good of Walter.”

  “Well, he admires your work. Bringing these people into American life, making them Americans of Jewish faith. The sooner they lose their foreign ways, the better for them and for us all, Walter believes.” Florence was complacent.

  What are we doing? Two sisters talking generalities, concealing what is really on our minds.

  Florence poured another cup of tea and stirred it. Round and round went the pretty spoon. After a minute she said lightly, “I read in the paper that Lucille Marks is being married. Isn’t she the Marks girl you went to schoo
l with?”

  “No. Her sister, Annie.”

  “Somebody named Dreyfuss. A graduate of Harvard Law. I wonder if that’s the Boston Dreyfuss my friend Hilda knows? I must ask.”

  Florence had almost total recall of the social columns. Now she paused, studied the teaspoon, and finally, having made a decision, looked up frankly at her sister.

  “You won’t go away because of Daniel.”

  Hennie, forcing herself to meet Florence’s gaze, was surprised to see, not the challenge she had expected, but a rather soft concern.

  “I guess so,” she said, beguiled into admission.

  “What’s happening, Hennie? I don’t want to pry, honestly I don’t. But I’ve had a hard time keeping Mama from exploding. She doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

  “ ‘Going on!’ Good heavens, I’ve known him a little more than a year—”

  “Almost two, dear.”

  “Do they want marriage on sight?”

  “Hennie—they don’t want you to marry him at all. That’s what they’re worried about. You must see that.”

  “Then what do they want? Him to propose and me to refuse him?”

  “They suspect you’re seeing more of him secretly than you admit to, but they can’t prove it, and that’s why they haven’t really raised the roof.”

  “I don’t see him all that much. I do run into him at the settlement. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? He’s been giving free piano lessons to a few of my children.”

  “Very commendable of him.” Florence added quietly, “You have also been meeting him in Central Park, haven’t you? Paul said something. And Walter saw you once on his way home from his parents’ house.”

  Hennie flushed. “Well? What if we did meet a couple of times in the park? One would think he had planned to—to attack me there.”

  “Hennie! What an awful thing to say! You shock me! But just listen to me and don’t be angry. I’m only trying to help you.”

  “You don’t like him, either. Don’t deny it. It won’t be any use, because I know you don’t.”

  “I’ve been as nice to him as anyone could be, the few times I’ve been with him, and so has Walter. You can’t say we haven’t been.”

  “Yes, but he’s not your style.”

  Florence did not reply at once. Then, laying her hand on her sister’s arm, she spoke with a married woman’s dignity and the authority of experience.

  “Hennie, I see you don’t want to talk about it, so I’ll say no more, except that you don’t fool me. Just remember, these are your best years. A girl hasn’t got all the time in the world, and that’s all I have to say … will you stay to dinner?”

  Hennie stood up. “I’m not dressed up enough for your house,” she said, hearing the petulance in her own voice. “Paul got chocolate on my skirt just now.”

  The sarcasm did not escape Florence. “We are not Buckingham Palace here, after all,” she said reproachfully. “And there is no one coming to dinner, except a young man from the office to go over some last-minute business with Walter. A rather nice young man, too, come to think of it. You might do well to stay. I’ll lend you a dress if you want to change.”

  But Hennie had to go. Something was jumping alive in her chest. Something had to be done. She couldn’t stay waiting this way any longer, waiting for something to happen. In the mirror over the hatrack her face was sallow. “It’s the light from the stained glass,” she said to herself. “No, it’s not, I look awful; I look weary, worried and furrowed.” She pinned her hat on.

  “Think about the mountains, anyway,” Florence said. Her face in the glass was younger than Hennie’s, smooth, troubled only because of Hennie and for no reason of her own. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

  Hennie rode the omnibus, clattering over the cobbles down Fifth Avenue. Past the Vanderbilt mansion and the imitation châteaux, the gray granite and white marble, and past the Croton Reservoir on 42nd Street, they rattled and swayed. Block after block of tidy brownstones stood behind their neat squares of lawn and iron fences. She glanced at her watch. In each neat parlor, no doubt, the tea service was now being cleared away. All was orderly.

  Oh, there was much to be said for order! For the solid roof beneath which everyone knew what was expected of him, for the place that is there today and will be there tomorrow. The table and the child. Yes, and upstairs the room with the door that can be shut and locked, and in the center of the room the bed in which one never has to lie alone.

  Why, why so long to wait? Meeting always in public places, in parks and restaurants, walking, walking until it became too dark, too cold, or too late to stay any longer. And a thought made her hand fly involuntarily to her lips: Was he perhaps, after all, the kind of man who wouldn’t marry? Things Uncle David had said … Not possible! And the thought terrified her, as would a robber confronted in an alley; like a robber, it robbed and fled.

  The horses pulled to a stop at Washington Square. Among the last remaining passengers, she stepped out into the fading afternoon. For a moment or two she stood beneath the gold-green shimmer of the trees, holding an idea as if in the palms of her hands. She looked east toward home. She ought to go home. But there was a need to know.…

  At last she made up her mind, and walked away with quick, decisive steps.

  She has not meant it to happen this way. But then, neither had he. She has only meant to ask him what is to become of them and whether he really means to stay with her, because he has been so vague about it and this panic has taken hold of her. That’s all she has meant.

  But they come together. That which, in ignorance and desire, she has so long imagined, now happens.

  He opens the door and is astonished to see her. Suddenly she is appalled at her own boldness, but it is too late to turn back.

  He has been working; there is a light under some sort of burner in the room behind him.

  “I’m disturbing you,” she says.

  “No, no, I was just finishing. I was going upstairs.”

  He turns off the burner. They stand there looking at each other.

  Then, “Will you come up?” he asks.

  He opens the door at the top of the stairs and stands aside to let her go in. This is where he lives.… His bed is the first thing she sees there, his naked bed. She looks away. But the room is too small to avoid it. Between the bed and the bulk of an ugly upright piano, there is just enough space to pass. There is a pile of clothing on a chair. When he removes it, there is a pile of books beneath it. He stands there holding the clothes and the books, looking for a place to put them all down. Since there is no place, he puts them back on the chair. He apologizes for the mess, and they both sit down on the edge of the bed.

  They don’t say a word. The window is open, so that the life of the street rushes in: wagons rattle, a door is slammed, a child wails, two angry men threaten one another. And yet the street is remote. They are insulated from it behind the walls. The room is an island.

  He kisses her. The kiss is different from past kisses, softer, and also harder, because they are alone, no one is watching, and there is plenty of time. She does not want it to end.

  His hands quiver on the buttons that go all the way down her back. There is no question now about what is to happen. Often she has thought that she would be afraid, and has a flash of surprise at herself because she is not. Instead, it is all simple and clear, all decided. She will let him do whatever he will with her; she will wait for whatever happens.

  Piece by piece, he takes off her clothes. She is warm, warm and weak, but she is strong, too, in the way she clings to him.

  She can’t stop, she can’t wait.

  The last thing she hears is the sounds of the organ-grinder, the opening bars of some banal, familiar tune that fades as quickly as it began, along with all the noises and voices in the world; everything fades, even the afternoon light; the circle draws in, shrinks to a single point where they lie.

  He brought a woolen robe to cov
er her. It was almost dark, a blue dusk, with a great peace in the room. It was entirely natural to be there.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “Your perfect neck and shoulders. One would never guess. Your clothes hide you. You ought to wear lower necks and brighter colors. Why don’t you?”

  “My mother always says I don’t look well in bright colors.”

  “Your mother’s wrong. I wonder why she does that to you. Maybe she doesn’t even know why, herself.”

  “You don’t like my mother. Don’t try to hide it. I understand.”

  “I could like your father. But even he, I’m sure, thinks you could do better than me.”

  She had a vision of long years ahead that could be turbulent and should be tranquil. And she tried to explain.

  “It isn’t only snobbishness, although there’s too much of that. But they’ve been crushed down. The war did it to them.”

  “Tell me about it. You never have.”

  “They were ruined. My grandfather was killed, fallen from a balcony during a soldiers’ raid. My mother knelt on the grass all night beside him while he died. She was only a girl.”

  She felt a sudden wave of love and pity for her mother. And she went on, “Some day I’ll tell more. How the lovely house was sold. It didn’t bring nearly what it was worth, Papa says, but they had to sell it, they couldn’t afford to keep it up. But he’d been wanting to go North anyway.”

  “Dear Hennie, I’m so glad he did!”

  She thought of something. “Isn’t it amazing that you and Uncle David knew each other? If you hadn’t, I could never have gone up to speak to you.”

  “What a grand man he is! I hope he thinks half as much of me as I do of him.”

  “He told me wonderful things about you,” she answered.

  Someday, maybe, she’d tell him what else Uncle David said, and they’d laugh about it together. Old people, they’d say.…

  She went behind the door to get dressed. Strange that the removal of her clothes had been so natural, while their replacement was embarrassing!

  “Hennie, there’s something I want to tell you,” she heard him say.