by Belva Plain
“I don’t mind it, Mama. You know that. Maybe later in the week.”
Angelique was prepared for a chat. “I’m invited to Alfie’s next week, did I tell you? It’s Meg’s school vacation and they’re spending it in the country. You know, she’s growing up to be such a sweet girl, but I worry about her, she’s so awfully confused. All that business about religion and the family—”
“Mama,” Hennie cried, “I have to go, there’s a delivery man—”
“Are you all right, Hennie? You don’t sound right.”
“I’m fine, I’m coming down with a cold, the doorbell’s ringing.”
She hung up. She needed to scream. But the neighbors would hear and call the police. If only she could go somewhere and scream! She could feel the screams tearing her throat until it hurt. Clenching her fists, she beat her head; then she pounded her tight shut mouth with a fist.
Oh, God, oh, God, what have You done to me?
She thought of going to Uncle David. So, you were right, Uncle David. I used to think, when Dan flirted, that that was all, only a trivial embarrassment that I could endure, and I thought you had been wrong, but no, you were right. You said there are men who can’t be satisfied with one woman. Oh, I heard you, but I didn’t want to hear you, and now I have to.…
Uncle David is senile. You can’t go to him. You can’t go to anyone.
She went numb. An organ-grinder on the street below began to play a tarantella: a wedding dance, merry peasants with whirling skirts. When she went to the window to slam it down, the man was bowing and holding his cap out, while his sad little monkey, in a red suit and cap, did the same. Oh, poor creature! But she had no room for anybody else’s pain.
Suddenly she was calm and worn out. Her mind clicked: Pull your thoughts together.
Would it have been better if, back then, she had told him to go, setting him free with the letter she had written and not mailed? A gallant gesture, she thought, mocking herself now; it was only half meant and she had known it when she wrote it.
What would I have done if he had abandoned me?
Her mind stopped clicking; she put her face in her hands, rolled in the sofa pillows, and cried and cried.
The key turned in the front door.
“We had a fine walk,” Dan said cheerfully. “This fellow attracts attention wherever he goes. Have you ever noticed that the parents of a boy show him off more than people do with girls? Really stupid of them—why, what’s the matter, for God’s sake, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing to do with Freddy,” she said coldly, while her heart resumed its pounding. “I have something to talk to you about.”
Dan stared at her.
“Take the child in for his nap,” she commanded him. “And close his door.”
In utmost alarm, Dan obeyed. When he came out, she was standing in the center of the room with the pink letter in her hand.
“Take it. It’s yours.”
He glanced at it. His face blanched; he sat down on the sofa. “Oh, my God,” he said.
“Yes. Oh, my God. I was cleaning the closet, not snooping. I never snoop. I had no reason to, or so I thought.”
She couldn’t read his face. His color went faintly green. Green-white, like death.
“Do you want a divorce?” she asked in that same cold, thin voice, holding her head high.
“Are you crazy?” he implored.
“Well, you apparently told this—this person that you did.”
He clasped his hands before him. “Oh, Hennie, Hennie, how can I ever explain this, or make any sense out of it for you? I’ll tell you. Yes, I had an affair with her. I was stupid.… You must understand, a man lies to women like her. I never meant one word of anything she claims I said … or I did say. Not one word.”
“You tell me you lied to her, but what you are telling me now is the truth. How can I know it wasn’t the other way? Do you lie to all your women, or only to me? Which is it? How am I to know?”
Dan flung out his hands, palms up. “Believe me!”
“I always believed you, fool that I was.”
“Believe me now. I never loved anyone but you. Yes, you. Why do you think I married you if I didn’t love you?”
“Because in the circumstances you had to, that’s why. It was a matter of conscience. You might well have married Lucy Marston otherwise. How well I remember her!”
“Lucy! She wasn’t worth your little finger, Hennie, not one of them ever was. Not your finger,” Dan repeated. His voice was full of tears. “It’s true that I’ve been driven a little out of my mind for a couple of months now and then. But it was always sex, and nothing else. It never lasts. I know all the time that it won’t.” He paused and frowned. “I never intend it to.”
He was in pain and she stood there tall above him, inflicting more.
“You tricked them, too, as well as me, then. You promise love and haven’t any intention of keeping your promise. You’re an honorable man, you are.”
“I’m ashamed, Hennie. I’ve done things I’m ashamed of. But I never tricked anyone. I told the truth, that I had a wife and would never leave her.”
“Only that you were unhappy with her.”
He groaned. “It was a way of talking, that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. Tell me, what made you finally get rid of this one?”
Dan answered, very low. “I realized that I had to put a stop to that sort of thing, that I had to grow up—too late—that I might hurt you terribly, the last thing in the world that I wanted to do.”
“To think,” she said, “if you weren’t so sloppy and had thrown this away, as most normal people would have done, I wouldn’t ever have known, would I?”
“Hennie, please come here, take my hand. I swear to you, it was nothing. Nothing that meant anything. I would give ten years of my life to undo it.”
“Don’t touch me. Uncle David warned me from the first. Oh, God, he warned me! Why didn’t I listen to him?”
“Uncle David said—”
“Yes, he told me you couldn’t be faithful, that some men can’t be, and you were one of them.”
And, her glance falling upon the ivy that erupted and flowed in gleaming, moist cascades from the bowl on the windowsill, she thought: That was my trust, as healthy and strong as that ivy, and it’s gone, ripped out by the roots and thrown away.
“Oh, the bitch!” she cried. “If there weren’t laws against murder, I’d kill her! I’d find where she lives and I’d wait for her one night, I’d get my hands on her and, oh, God, how I would love to kill her!” She fell onto a chair and laid her head back: “Why don’t I want to kill you? Because I love you? Oh, no! It’s only because I feel … I feel you’re not worth killing, any of you men. You’re like dogs, running after every bitch in heat. Last year at Alfie’s place, how those dogs drove us crazy trying to get in at the setter, snarling and fighting; they almost broke the screen door down. That’s how men are.”
“You flatter us,” Dan said gently and ruefully.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Not quite. Maybe a little.”
“Tell me, how many have you really had all these years? Can you count how many?”
“I never loved anyone but you, Hennie.”
“Don’t quibble and dodge. I asked how many you had, not loved, since you married me. How many times you’ve been unfaithful.”
“Unfaithful? What is unfaithful?”
“Quibbling again?”
“No. Have I in any way failed you? In our daily life, in all the years, have I ever been anything but good to you?”
This evasion enraged her.
“Answer me!” she demanded fiercely. “I want an answer!”
There was a dreadful stillness in the room. It tingled, waiting to be broken, while they stared at one another.
I’m looking at you and I don’t recognize you, she thought.
Then, somewhere below, a whistle sounded, the short summons a boy makes when he puts
two fingers in his mouth. She started, and spoke again.
“So I was not a suspicious fool, after all. I berated myself and was ashamed of myself, while all the time I was right. What an actor you are! Without heart or decency, to come home and make love to me, to keep telling me you loved me, when all the time you were saying the same things to God knows who else and how many—”
“Oh, not how many, Hennie, and it wasn’t the same, ever!” Dan beat his head, and put a hand over his eyes.
“I’ve been a second-rate woman, an unwanted woman. How you have shamed me! You and your women, lying in bed together, laughing at me and pitying me.”
“No, no! I never talked about you. I—”
The key turned in the lock.
“They let me off early,” Leah announced. And glancing from one to the other, she opened her mouth again as if beginning to ask: What’s the matter?
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing about Freddy,” Hennie told her at once.
“Hank’s still having a nap,” Dan said.
“I’ll cook dinner,” Leah said quickly, rising to what she saw was a situation. “I never get a chance to.”
Hennie responded, “Not for me. I don’t feel well. I’m going to bed.” And when Leah had gone into the kitchen, she said to Dan, “You can make up the bed on the sofa in here. It’s comfortable enough.”
Much later, when he came into the bedroom, she pretended to be asleep. When he whispered, she did not answer. When he reached for her hand, she slid it away beneath the quilt. Frozen, she lay and waited for him to tiptoe out. Then, alone in the silent room, she wept and shook, muffling her sobs in the blankets.
It seemed to Hennie now that a fog had wrapped her, stifling, clinging and damp. Her breath came hard; her legs and arms moved as if they were weighted.
Leah’s presence was a fortunate barrier to another long confrontation with Dan. To Leah’s enormous credit, she kept up a pretense that nothing was wrong in the house, going about her busy routine as always.
But on the first Sunday, after Leah had taken the boy and gone out, Dan came to where Hennie sat at the bedroom window. She had been looking over toward the avenue.
“You sit there,” Dan said not unkindly, “as if you were waiting to die. Your face is like stone. Or is it that you are waiting for me to die?” And he laid his hand on her head.
She jerked away, crying out, “Don’t do that! Don’t do that!”
He drew his hand back as though she had burned it. “I’m sorry.”
Even in pain, his face was handsome. The shadows beneath them only made his eyes more luminous.
“I’ve lost something,” he murmured. “Tell me, Hennie, shall I find it again?”
“You’ve lost,” she answered, “but not nearly what I have. How could I have been the way I was? How could I have believed in the truth of Romeo and Juliet? And yet it’s true, isn’t it sometimes true, that a man and woman can go through life and never lie to each other? I don’t know. I can’t think anymore.”
“Can’t you forgive? If a person goes temporarily crazy, can’t he be forgiven?” Dan’s voice was low and hoarse. “Will you? Can’t you, Hennie?”
“I told you I could forgive a love affair. It would be hard, but I believe I could. What I can’t forget is what you said about wanting to divorce me.”
“But I’ve told you how it was. And my God, I would cut off my foot to undo it.”
“I was ignorant,” she said, still staring out of the window at the people, all walking so fast on their way to church, or to an amusement park, or to visit the sick—all bustling along and full of life, as if it mattered.
“I was ignorant,” she repeated, “I knew nothing at all about real people.”
“And you still know nothing about them,” Dan corrected quietly.
She turned to him, blazing. “How can you dare to say that to me after this? How can you dare?”
“Because to you there’s only black or white. Good people, good ways to do things, and bad people, bad ways. You love or you condemn.”
“Have you actually got nerve enough to be scolding me?”
“I’m not scolding. I’m only asking you to allow me the mistakes that I regret and haven’t repeated for the last three years. And that I won’t repeat. I swear I won’t.”
“Mistakes! Telling a—a trollop that you’re unhappy with me, so that she can gloat over me while she sleeps with my husband—”
“We come back full circle. I don’t know how else to explain it to you. I was caught …” He shook his head. “Give it a chance, Hennie, please? Lie down and rest. Sleep. Maybe it will heal the pain,” he said as he went out and closed the door.
It did not get better. And one evening it became unbearable. She stood with her hat in her hand before the hall mirror and stared at herself.
Oh, she was awful! In these few days, two lines had formed from her nose to the corners of her grim, pinched lips. She put on her hat, clapping it any which way over her untidy hair. Why? Simply because one did not leave the house without wearing a hat.
“Where are you going?” Dan asked, putting the newspaper down.
“Out,” she replied.
The street sloped. Two blocks up, at the place where the slope became steep, the omnibus rounded the corner and took on speed downhill. The last one passed every evening at nine o’clock. Now she stood at the curb and waited for the whine and wheeze of its approach, and the blazing yellow eyes coming out of the darkness.
She thought: In one instant, so fast as to be painless, it would be over. This heaviness in the chest was so grievous a weight that to speak of heartbreak was no longer an exaggeration or sentimental figure of speech, but an absolute reality. Something was giving way, something breaking within her, and she did not want to live.
Dan came up behind her.
“If you do anything to harm yourself,” he said very quietly, “I swear to you I will do it to myself too. And Freddy will come home to find both parents gone. And that little boy upstairs will have no grandparents.”
The bus was already grinding down the street when she followed him slowly back into the house. She thought wearily: I suppose I wouldn’t have done it anyway. At the last minute, I wouldn’t have been brave enough.
* * *
Something began to firm within her, something hard and sore. It was the knowledge that she could do without him.
During these past weeks he had begun to eat his meals out and come home late. In the evenings she would sometimes sit in the kitchen with Leah, drinking the good coffee that Leah had freshly ground. Mercifully, throughout the first dreadful week or more, Leah asked no questions, nor did she even glance into Hennie’s face. Only when Hennie was ready to give sign did she admit her fears.
“Of course you see that something terrible has happened,” Hennie began, in a voice filled with tears. She stirred the coffee and stared into the cup. “I owe it to you to say something about it, I know. But it’s hard, very hard—”
“Don’t, then, unless you want to.”
“It’s not fair to you, you’re part of this family.” Hennie struggled, repeating, “I owe it to you.”
Leah shook her head. “No, when it comes to owing, that’s all on my side. You’ve given me everything, you’ve been my mother, you’ve taught me.” Her light, cool fingertips touched Hennie’s hand. “I would do anything in the world for you, don’t you know that?”
The words and the tender gesture moved Hennie’s heart; this was the daughter she had wanted. And, unable to speak, she nodded.
“Has Dan—may I ask—has Dan hurt you so?”
The silence ticked; it is my own blood pulsing in my ears, Hennie thought. To speak, to pour out all the grief and anger, the injustice, cruelty, shame … to rid oneself of their weight … She trembled. No! That’s disgraceful, Hennie! Where’s your courage? And she raised her head, not ashamed that Leah could see her wet eyes.
“As you say, I’m your mother. Mothers don’t burden their
children, they strengthen them. So let it be.”
“You forget, I’m not a child anymore,” Leah rebuked her gently.
“You’re young! You have everything in the world to look forward to. When Freddy comes home …” Hennie swallowed hard on the name. “When he comes home you’ll have such joy together! And he’ll be kind to you, loyal to you. That’s why I want you to have only good thoughts now.”
“All the same, I might be able to help you if you’d let me.”
“Dear girl, thank you. But help must come from inside. You know that from your own life. I’ll get used to—to what’s happened. I lived with certain fears … I stifled them, and now they’ve come true, that’s all. So I’ll live with that too.”
Leah looked thoughtful. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and closed it.
“I’m sorry to be so mysterious,” Hennie said.
“That’s all right. But if you ever want to ask me anything, I’ll listen. I might understand more than you think.”
Long after Leah had gone to her room, Hennie remained at the table, comforting her hands on the hot cup and staring into the gray air. What might Leah understand? Did she possibly know something else about Dan? Well, there was nothing to be done about it if she did. I don’t really care, Hennie thought; she’s my own girl. The question is: What’s to be done about myself? Her mind drifted from weary blankness to sharp focus and back again to a blank.
Then she heard Dan come in. He stood in the doorway behind her waiting for acknowledgment, but she would not notice him. She felt him draw closer, his presence seeming to warm the circle of air in which she sat and he stood. Without looking up, she knew the way his tie must be loosened, how he complained because teachers had to wear ties! She knew the crisping of the hair at the back of his collar when he needed a haircut, knew the feel of it in her fingers, and knew the feel of his fingers on every part of her body.
Something struck at the pit of her stomach, giving a terrible blow.
“It’s in my gut,” she whispered.
Gut was Uncle David’s word, one she had never used.
“What? What did you say?”