by Belva Plain
“I don’t know anything about that. We haven’t talked about it.”
Forgiven her, he thought. So they had done, all of them in the family, if one could call a discreet silence on the subject of the “other man” a forgiveness. And he thought that they—meaning his parents, his grandmother, and his wife—if they had not been so impressed by Leah’s renunciation of the money, might not have done so. Ah, money! Voluntarily to give up what was legally yours, ah, that was impressive indeed! That could outweigh many another transgression, if you wanted to call a love affair a transgression.
“Leah has given up all her widow’s rights to the money,” he said now. “Everything has been put in Hank’s name, even the house.”
“I don’t believe it,” Hennie said again. “The way Leah loves money.”
Once, Paul recalled, she had praised the girl for her ambition and industry. We see only what we want to see.…
“But it’s true,” he said. “Hank is a rich little boy and will be a rich man.”
“Nothing makes any sense … rich! It will ruin him.”
“Wealth isn’t necessarily ruination, you know.” He added, “Leah wants to move, but Dan won’t allow it. He wants the house kept for the child.”
She was defeated. Her gaze returned to the gray wall, now turning black as the sun moved away.
“I should so like to see my little boy,” she murmured after a while, as if she were speaking to herself, ignoring Paul. “He must have forgotten me.”
The words fell away into the mournful room: forgotten me.
And quick pity rose in Paul, as a composite picture darted and flickered: Hennie marching; Hennie, twice his height, holding him by the hand; Hennie with Dan …
“Do you know what I’ll do? I’ll arrange a time when Leah won’t be home and you can see Hank. And I’ll meet you there,” he said.
* * *
He had Dan’s habit. Hennie watched the boy push back the glossy dark hair that fell like a bird’s wing over his forehead. He had Leah’s round, curious eyes and her snub nose; he had—she stopped, impatient with herself. A child is who he is; why must we always itemize and compare?
Right now Hank was on the floor with Paul, building a tower of blocks. Autumn sunshine fell over the corner in which they sprawled, warming the bright room, a child’s world. On the headboard of the painted bed sat Humpty-Dumpty; Mother Goose flew on the footboard. Everything was proportioned to a child’s dimensions, from the red chairs and table before the fireplace to the toy shelves and the closet rods on which hung rows of little pants and jackets, leather leggings and a velvet-collared overcoat.
I suppose he goes to parties: whose? Hennie wondered.
Yes, it was a child’s paradise. And she thought that every child born ought to have such a clean, quiet room.
“Let me show you how I can catch.” Hank scrambled up and took a large ball from a shelf. “You stand over here, Uncle Paul. No, you’re too near. That’s a baby throw.”
“Can you catch from this far away?”
“I can! You’ll see I can!”
Paul tossed the ball and Hank caught it neatly. “I told you I could!” He shone with glee.
“Who taught you how?” Paul asked him.
“Uncle Ben. He takes me to the park and we play ball.”
That stranger, taking his father’s place! But Freddy had hated games when he was little; when he was grown, he’d tried tennis for sociability’s sake, because Paul had urged him to, and he hadn’t liked it.…
Hank interrupted Hennie’s regrets and doubts.
“Uncle Ben’s going to buy me skates for my birthday. He promised.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Paul agreed. “Now, tell me, would you like me to buy you a boat? A sailboat? And let me take you to the pond?”
“For my birthday when I’m four?”
“Maybe we won’t wait that long,” Paul told him, tossing the ball back.
When the clock struck, Hank put the ball away.
“It’s time for my lunch. Want to know how I know? It’s because those two things, see, when they both stand straight up that means twelve, and lunch. I’m hungry, too.”
“You’re always hungry, you are, bless your soul.”
A neat woman of middle age, who wore a white uniform and moved briskly, had come in with a tray.
Paul made the introduction. “Mrs. Roth—Scotty. She’s really Miss Duncan, but she likes to be known as Scotty.”
In uniform, Angelique had reported, with a navy blue cape when she takes him out. Very kind, but correct too. He’s being well brought up. The Scots know how to do it.
It is all so odd, thought Hennie, acknowledging the introduction.
“Come now,” said Scotty, setting the tray on the table. “Here’s your nice lamb chop and Mrs. Roedling made ginger cookies just this morning; they’re still warm. Now go into the bathroom, like a good boy, and wash your hands.”
Curious, no doubt, about the grandmother who had up to now been hidden, Scotty smiled at Hennie. She had a good face, this woman who had taken Hennie’s place, who now did for the boy what she had always done. Yes, a good face.
Impulsively, Hennie said, “I’m glad he has you, Scotty. Especially since he has a mother who spends no time with him.”
“Oh, no,” Scotty said, surprised. “His mother is wonderful with him. And when you consider that she goes to business—why, I’ve been with families where the mothers don’t do anything all day but go to luncheons and tea parties, and don’t do half as much with their children as Hank’s mother does.”
Thus politely rebuked, Hennie flushed, and was about to sit down with Hank, disregarding the nurse, when voices came floating up the stairway.
Paul started. “Oh,” he said, “I don’t understand! What happened?” For unmistakably, the voices belonged to Leah and Dan.
Hennie was furious; this was his trick to get me here, she thought, following Paul as they skimmed down three flights of carpeted stairs.
“How could you have done this to me?” she whispered angrily to his back.
“I swear I had no idea! There’s been some misunderstanding over time. I swear it, Hennie.”
Leah and Dan looked up from the foot of the stairs, under the glittering chandelier. Hennie had a quick impression of Leah, sober and delicate in slender dark gray, a kind of half mourning. She had a quick impression of Dan, looming in an attitude of protection. For a moment, a frozen moment, in which the flesh shrank, no one spoke.
Then Paul said, “We were just leaving,” adding unnecessarily, “we came to see Hank.”
Hennie moved toward the front door. She was shaking; there was a bolt and a double lock that she didn’t know how to work.
“You’re not coming up to see Hank today?”
She heard Leah’s question and Dan’s reply.
“Tomorrow. I can’t now. I only wanted to deliver these for you to sign. They’re the final papers.… Hennie,” he said.
Almost automatically she turned about, thinking in the same instant, I don’t have to answer his summons; he doesn’t belong to me anymore.
“Hennie, I think you ought to know that, with these papers, Leah is signing away her rights to everything, including this house. It’s all to belong to Hank.”
“I know all about it. Paul, open this door for me, will you?” she demanded, for Paul was standing there ineffectually, looking from one to the other.
“I thought you should know what Leah has done,” Dan repeated.
“Yes, admirable of her. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?”
Leah said quietly, “I don’t care anymore about your good opinion, Hennie. I know I’ve lost it. And life’s too hard to struggle to be where you’re no longer wanted.”
She gave a little shrug, a gesture of regret, wistful and rather charming; then she turned about and went up the stairs.
Grand lady, Hennie thought.
The three walked eastward toward Madison Avenue; Paul went b
etween Hennie and Dan.
“I’ll never forgive you for this,” Hennie muttered, knowing that Paul must have heard, although he went on talking volubly to Dan.
It was Sunday. Women in furs and men in Chesterfields and tall silk hats strolled and greeted and swung their malacca canes. And here was Dan in the same old winter jacket, treading these streets on which he didn’t belong! All these things that he had scorned, while others coveted and gloried in them, all these he now wanted for the child!
“Any place around here to eat lunch?” Dan inquired.
Paul said, with some hesitation, “Not many in this neighborhood, but you can get a very nice lunch just a few blocks down. It’s in a hotel, but—”
Dan grinned. “A bit fancy for me, you’re saying, but we’ll try it anyway.”
“I’m not in the least hungry,” Hennie said.
Did he actually think she was going to sit at table with him? Bold and brash as ever, he might just think he could make her do it, and anyway, why? They had nothing to say.
“You need to eat, Hennie,” Paul remonstrated, “and I’m hungry too. Mimi’s gone to her parents’ and they won’t be expecting me. So come on.”
He had a hand on her elbow, steering her down the street. She felt his fingers, pinching.
The hotel’s lobby shimmered with flowers and smelled like spring, oblivious to the rising chill outside. Hennie felt tired and dowdy; her black coat was four years old.
Paul propelled her into the dining room. More flowers and a white gleam of tablecloths. It was too intimidating. But she was almost pushed into a seat.
Immediately a waiter came, hovering with pad and pencil.
“I’m not hungry,” Hennie said again into the vacant air. “I don’t want anything, really.”
Dan ignored her.
“The lady will have a small steak, medium rare. A baked potato without butter. And French dressing on the salad.”
She was miserable and humiliated. Dan was trying to meet her eyes; she wouldn’t allow him to. Paul was considering the menu, hiding his face behind it. There were no windows in the room. There was no place for Hennie to direct her gaze except at the back of a feather-festooned hat nearby; it crossed her mind that young Meg would be outraged by the feathers.
Dan was not to be put off. “Well, Hennie, I hope you’re surviving.”
“I’m surviving.”
“We’re lucky to have Hank. He’s all that’s left.”
How am I supposed to answer that? Don’t I know what’s left and what isn’t? Paul’s so awkward, so unlike himself, not helping me at all. This whole morning is his fault. Of course he’s terribly sorry. He imagines he knows how I feel, but how can he know? He’s got a smooth life with Marian, with that other old business long blown over, long forgotten. How can he know how this is for me?
The waiter brought rolls and butter. No one touched them.
“Well, isn’t anyone going to say anything?” Dan asked.
Now she looked over at him. The vertical lines in his forehead were deep-cut grooves of anxiety and anger. And she was moved to speak.
“Yes, I’ll say something. I don’t understand this business between Leah and you. After what she did to Freddy, how is it possible that you can forget? You, who never cared for her anyway? All the times I felt you were too hard on her, you found fault with her for being frivolous, domineering—I can’t begin to remember all the things you said—that she was all wrong for Freddy— And now it turns out, much as I hate to admit that you were right, it turns out that you were. So I can’t understand you now.”
“I wasn’t right and I wasn’t all wrong, either. I wonder whether you can understand that? Because with you things are either black or white; nothing in between. Would you, would any one of us, have expected Leah to turn down her inheritance?”
The waiter came back. In silence, impatiently, they watched him serve the vegetables with skill and care, as though the task were of enormous importance. When he had gone, Dan continued.
“Yes, one of us, only one.” He raised a finger. “Alfie wasn’t surprised. She wants to be independent, he told me. Wants to thank no one for anything from now on. That’s what Alfie told me. And I know it’s because he recognized something of himself in her.”
“The part you despise.”
“I don’t think I can say that, exactly.” Dan’s body drooped as he held the fork, contemplating the food; he had abruptly gone tired. “I have to admire the drive such people have. I’m incapable of their success. Alfie had a goal and he’s reached it. I’ve spent my energies, shouted my lungs out for justice and peace and accomplished nothing—”
Paul interrupted. “Not so, Dan. Remember the tenement laws? Why, I can name—”
Dan interrupted him. “No, no. Not nearly what I hoped to do.”
His eyes were sad; the pang of pity that they aroused in Hennie made her exasperated with herself, so that she had to attack.
“She took away my son’s last reason to live, she broke his heart, and you make a saint of her simply because she doesn’t want your money!”
“I make a saint of Leah?” Dan grimaced. “Hardly! We see the world too differently. She was proud of Freddy’s going to war, and I’ll never forget that. She stood for things I didn’t stand for and still don’t. Never will, either. But hell, do you have to love a person and approve one hundred percent to give him a chance? Fair is fair, that’s all.”
“So now it’s you who’ve become a saint.”
“God knows I’m not! You surely know I’m not. Only try to remember what it is to be young, Hennie. It’s not so long since you were young yourself. Now this fellow Ben comes along … can’t you feel for her? Flesh and blood, man and woman …”
Leaning across the table toward Hennie, he urged and appealed in a low, passionate voice.
“Don’t make a spectacle of yourself,” she warned.
“The flesh! You don’t understand it! But I do!”
“Yes, well you do. Every woman you see … all the years, wherever we were, you thought I didn’t notice. I’ve been so humiliated by your silly flirting—”
Dan threw up his hands. “What are you talking about? I was never aware of doing anything!”
“Not aware? It was even noticed by other people, I know it was.”
“Because I talk to women? Sure, I’m drawn to a beautiful woman! What do you think? But it was always harmless, I never meant anything by it.”
“But I hated the way you behaved … I hated it.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Why didn’t you kick me under the table or give me a dirty look?”
“I had too much respect for myself. I wouldn’t lower myself.”
“Ah, you see what I mean? You’re not like other people! The average woman—Leah, while we’re talking about her—would have spoken her peace, gotten mad, been honest about her feelings.”
“Leah again. The woman who killed our son.”
Tears came stinging. She pressed her lids shut; damned tears again, here in this public place! She strained her lids wide and looked around the room, everywhere and anywhere except at Dan or at Paul, who had been watching her with concern. Two good-looking couples were coming in from the cold, rubbing their gloved hands; they were having a festive Sunday. A pair of elderly ladies with wholesome pink cheeks were chuckling over a joke. At another table sat young parents with three little girls in flounced dresses. All of these were people who belonged in this place: They were happy.
“That’s not true,” she heard Dan say. “You don’t know. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Not? Whose was it, then?”
Dan sighed. “I shouldn’t tell you. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll understand.” His mouth was twisted. “I don’t think, knowing you, that you’ll even want to understand.”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted.” Hennie flung her resentment at him as though it were one of the plates or cups on the table. “I didn’t want to come in the first place.”
“Hennie, please,” whispered Paul, who was miserable.
And Dan said, “Yes, he lost his legs. Yes, she took a lover. It was all that, but at bottom it was because he despised himself.”
“What do you mean?”
Dan lowered his eyes. He cracked his fingers, a habit that, rarely used, and then only in extreme agitation, sent shudders down Hennie’s back. And she waited.
At last he spoke. “It was because … because he was less than a man. Before he lost his legs. He was not good with a woman. He found out … it wasn’t women that he wanted.”
She felt ill. The sight of juice, oozing out of the meat, turned her stomach. When she could manage to speak, she said, “If you mean what I think you mean, then I think it’s revolting.”
“The meaning couldn’t be clearer, could it? But it’s not revolting. It’s only a fact, a sad one, but a fact.”
“I don’t believe it!” she cried out, so loudly that a woman at the next table turned around in annoyance. She lowered her voice. “How do you come to know such a thing?”
“Leah told me. She had to let somebody in the family know the truth and I was the logical one, I guess. That’s what he meant in the note, you see, about Ben being the better man. They’d talked about it, Leah and Freddy. Talked about it a lot. It wasn’t the legs.…”
“She lied! She lies to excuse herself! Do you believe this, Paul? Can you imagine such a thing?”
Paul opened his lips to speak, closed them, and opened them.
“Yes,” he said. “I have to confess that, in one way or another, it did cross my mind, and then I was ashamed to be thinking it.”
With this acquiescence, she lost her ally. And she faced the two men.
“This is the vilest slander. To say that Freddy did anything like that! You disgust me.”
“I didn’t say he did anything. I think it was that he came to despise himself. He hated being the way he was. And I feel it was our fault. All right, maybe mine alone. Because I saw it years ago. We’re so secretive, so afraid of anything we think is ugly, and I’m as guilty as anyone,” Dan said. “We can’t even say the right words straight out. As if he could help it. As if it were a sin.”