The Golden Cup

by Belva Plain

  Paul put his hand over Hennie’s. Quiet, he is saying, don’t let this tear you apart. I’m here. She drew her hand away.

  “And when,” she asked, pursuing Dan, “when did you make this discovery?”

  “Years ago, I realize that now. But I wouldn’t allow myself to think it through. I was impatient with him, instead. I loved him so much that I didn’t want to see— Perhaps, if we could have talked to each other, I could have helped him. Perhaps, even, he wouldn’t have gone to war when he did, with his false dreams of what it takes to ‘be a man.’ ” Dan gave a dry, forlorn laugh.

  There was a long, stark silence until Dan resumed.

  “So I went a little crazy over the house, buying things for him, giving him what he would like instead of foisting my ideas on him. Let him have something, anyway. The comfort of money … all this.” And he looked around at the sheltered room, the soft nest.

  Hennie reeled. She clutched at the table’s edge. She could not have stood up. Within her, denial raged. Yet at its core there lay something hard and lead-heavy; she was not ready to recognize what it was, but at the same time knew she would one day have to: the truth.

  The waiter, a courtly, gray-haired European, leaned toward them anxiously, for their plates, except for Paul’s dabbling, were untouched.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Paul frowned. “Yes, all right.”

  “Too much hidden,” Dan said. “Too righteous, both of us, afraid of a truth that wasn’t beautiful. Even our own affair, Hennie. If I could have dared to tell you the truth in the beginning— I’m willing to wager you’ve never told anyone why”—and as Hennie in spite of herself gave him an intimate warning look to remind him that Paul was present—“Paul can hear, as far as I’m concerned. He’d open his mind.”

  Dan looked steadily into her eyes. She looked back; let him be the first to look away.

  And he turned to Paul.

  “I once did a terrible thing to Hennie. She can tell you if she wants to.”

  Flushing, Paul shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “For a woman so practical in so many ways, my wife is a childish romantic. She thought I was a knight on a white horse and I was only a fallible man.”

  “Please,” Paul said. “I don’t know what this is all about.”

  “You know something,” Dan said, “sometimes I think I don’t know either. Anyway, I hope Leah marries Ben. Maybe they’ll be luckier than we, and last their lives out together. He’s a decent sort. He’s lending her money to open a business of her own, and he loves the boy; he’ll be good to them both.”

  “You hope she’ll marry Ben!” Hennie cried. “And Freddy not three months in his grave. She left him when he needed her, even if what you say about him is true.”

  “You left me when I needed you, Hennie.”

  “I left you! This is outrageous!”

  “Not here in this place,” Paul remonstrated. “You’ve got to postpone it.”

  Dan touched Paul’s arm. “You’re right. It’s not fair anyway, dragging you in.”

  “Paul, I must get out of here. I must,” Hennie insisted. “You shouldn’t have done this to me.”

  Dan stood up. “Never mind. I’m leaving. Just one more thing, Paul. That business between your father and me. I thought I was right at the time and I still think I was right. I’m sure your father still thinks he was. Yet it shouldn’t have been allowed to go on all those years. We could have agreed to disagree and made peace. So that’s that. I’m going.”

  “Finish your lunch.” Paul looked pitying. “Don’t go like this, Dan.”

  “No, here’s my share for the lunch.”

  Dan drew some bills from his wallet, the same old wallet he’d always carried, Hennie saw. He looked down at her; she felt huddled in the chair, felt that every eye in the room must be on them.

  “Wake up, Hennie.” He spoke very quietly now. “Be human, learn to forgive. I don’t give a damn about myself anymore, but Leah—she’s suffered, she’s got courage and guts, and she’s the boy’s mother. Will you shake hands, Hennie? Never mind, you don’t want to.” For Hennie’s hands were knotted together in her lap. “Paul, will you remind your parents—I’ve already asked them—to look out for Hennie? She needs them.”

  They watched him walk away. A few heads turned to follow him, whether because he was still an impressive man, or because people were aware that something interesting, or maybe scandalous, had been going on at their table, one could not tell. Hennie quivered. It was like being in an accident, at the core of horror, while at the same time one was outside the event, observing it.

  “Well,” Paul said after a moment, looking at the untouched food, “I don’t suppose you care to finish lunch.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have insisted.”

  They walked out onto the prosperous avenue. All was calm. People were strolling, on their way to pleasant places, or coming back from pleasant places.

  “Would you like to come to my house?” Paul offered.

  “No, thank you. I’ve had enough for one day. I just want to go home.”

  She didn’t stir from the apartment all that week. She slept, got up to make some tea, and slept again. Sometimes she went to the window and looked out. Things wavered before her: the white arc of a ball in brilliant light, or the wet top of a truck sliding through the rain.

  It had taken the rest of that Sunday for wrath to spend itself, and now there was only a tiredness so profound that she had no will. Occasionally she talked to herself, even speaking the words aloud; that’s what happened to people who lived alone.

  It has to be admitted that some of the things he said were probably right. Yes. We had a strange child. I always felt he was, and I worried, not knowing what I was worried about. And I thought it was my fault, that he was like me. I should have talked about it. The boy might have been less isolated if we had. I don’t know. I wanted everything to be perfect and look perfect. Our marriage … I cringed to think that there were things hidden. Then came the day I found that letter and couldn’t hide from myself anymore.

  In front of Paul he’d said, “I did an awful thing to Hennie. She can tell you if she wants.” That was decent of him, because he cherishes Paul’s good opinion, and still he was willing. But he has never been afraid of the truth, as when he used to say of Leah, quite frankly, that he never liked her. He made no excuses for his feelings. And why not, when you come down to it? It made as much sense, I suppose, not to like her as my having been drawn so strongly to her when she was only a little child. Yet he was always kind to her, kind and fair, until it came to her marrying Freddy. Now he even defends her.… He asks me to remember what it was like to be young. I’m not that old now, am I? Why should he think that I can’t remember? Does he think I’m dried up, and feel nothing for anyone but myself?

  She said she would never have left Freddy. I didn’t believe her. Still, maybe she wouldn’t have. She was never a liar. I guess I know her as well as a mother can know a child, and whatever else she does, she doesn’t lie. So she would have stayed with my son and had her lover too. It’s done all the time, isn’t it?

  What a terrible thing, to live without loving or being loved!

  Why did you do that to me, Dan? I was so happy with you. Whatever else went on around us, still I was happy with you. That’s where the center was.… You looked so lonesome walking away from Paul and me. I hated you last Sunday, and still I could see how forlorn you were. Your eyes reproached me.

  I have that look in my eyes too. I see what I am and I’m afraid of what I see. I don’t like to look. I’m just forty-five, but I’m stern-faced and straight-lipped, a woman who sleeps alone and knows no desire, only the memory of it. Such women used to come to the settlement house sometimes to work; they were charitable and respectable, they were good women, I knew, but only half alive, I used to think. They were so righteous.…

  And yet I have it in
me still to bloom, to desire. That day at Alfie’s, that terrible day when we got the news about Freddy, there was that man Thayer, in the gazebo, in the rain. I refused him. But with part of myself I didn’t want to refuse. A second time I might well not have. I felt so young.… Because it was wonderful, yes it was, without loving the man, or even liking him. So it could have been that way for Dan and that girl, couldn’t it, just as he said it was? So long ago …

  And if, like Leah and her young man, you do love, how much harder to deny, to refuse.

  And why should you, after all?

  So she spoke to herself, frowning with the effort of thought as she paced the floor; on the bare wood between the rugs, her heels struck like a shock into the silence.

  A ball rolled out when she chanced to bump into a chair. Hank’s ball, left behind in the move. When she picked it up, she remembered how his hands looked, how the short fat fingers clutched.

  She walked into the room that had once been Freddy’s. Nothing had been changed in years. Dim in the lamplight, it looked like a tomb in which all the possessions of the dead had been stored to accompany him to the next world. She turned off the lamps and raised the shades to let in the daylight. It fell over the austere bed and over the table where the last books he had been reading before he left still lay: a text in Greek, a translation of Euripides, and the poems of Emily Dickinson.

  She stood there stiffly.

  What am I doing?

  Terror was at her back, lurking in the empty rooms. And she flung the window open as if to escape it. From the street below, life came sweeping up: harsh cries, the sound of quarreling, a child crying, an engine being cranked, and an ashcan clattering. And the peal of laughter. Even here in this ugly place, the sound of laughter and life.

  Oh, God, what have I done?

  She went to the telephone. Her voice quavered and cracked so badly that the operator had to ask her to repeat the number. And when the connection was made, she could scarcely whisper.

  “Dan. Please come back.”

  Afternoon sunlight, turning toward evening, lay over the bed where they lay. They had loved, they had slept, and now at last could let words flow as they wished, random and free.

  “And did you really intend to kill yourself that night?” he asked. “I haven’t been able to get that out of my mind.”

  Had she? Or had she been playing with the idea, beholding herself as the central figure in a tragedy? Would Freddy, too, have turned around if he could have?

  “I don’t know … I just felt as if the world had no place for me anymore.”

  “Your place—your place is here. You know that now, don’t you?”

  “Yes, yes, Dan.”

  It would not be exactly the same as it had been in the beginning. How could it be? But it would suffice, and would more than suffice.

  “I hope I didn’t make too much of a fuss for you and Paul that day.”

  “It’s all right. I guess if we hadn’t met there, I wouldn’t have started to think as much as I have, and we wouldn’t be here in this bed together.”

  “I’m so glad to be in this bed again, Hennie.”

  The hall clock rattled and struck the hour. The sound that had been so ominous that morning was merely friendly now.

  “I’m thinking, Hennie, that maybe it would be nice to move away from here. We could find a good small apartment uptown in Yorkville. They don’t cost much if you can do without an elevator. We’d be only a few blocks away from the boy. What do you think?”

  “I think I’d like it.”

  “We don’t need all the rooms we have here, so it would probably cost no more than this place does. And I’m due for a raise next semester anyway. I could give the little fellow piano lessons, when he turns four. That’s not too soon to start.”

  She got up on one elbow and looked at Dan. The grooves had been miraculously erased from his forehead; he looked boyish.

  “Hello!” he said, laughing.

  “You’re home again! Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

  “Then I’ll get up and make you something. There isn’t much in the house, just some eggs, but I’ll see.”

  * * *

  When they had eaten their supper in the kitchen, he in his old place and she in hers, he went to his usual chair and read the paper. She went to the desk and began to write.

  After a while Dan put the paper aside and got up.

  “What are you writing?” he asked.

  She covered the paper with her hand. “Nothing much. A couple of weeks ago I started to write a poem about Freddy. I wanted to tell about his gentleness … well, I tried, but nothing happened. I had the love and the intention, but not the gift. The words were dull in my mouth when I read what I had written.”

  “Let me see it anyway. May I?”

  “I tore it up. This thing is about myself, clarifying my thoughts. I thought it would be good for me.”

  “Will you let me see this, then?”

  “You may not like it.”

  But she removed her hand, and over her shoulder, he read:

  “He’s a lone man, for all his boisterous gaiety, a frustrated musician and a disappointed reformer. I suppose he feels powerful when women turn to look at him. I must keep reminding myself, because I really know, that it is truly without meaning for him.

  “And as for that other thing long ago, I believe it was pretty much the way he said it was, although maybe he would have married her instead of me if he could have … but also I must remember that I am the one he has loved all the years since.

  “Oh, yes, I can still be bitter when I think of it; I’m not all that magnanimous.

  “We own nothing and no one. Our children grow up and go away, and sometimes they die before we do. Yet we continue to live. For these few years are all we have. So let’s take what there is, since we can’t make more. I had a son. I had a wish for perfection. What was, was. I had a lover, too, a large man, brave and good, who has done good things in the world, and I have him still. I don’t want to be without him ever again. I …” The writing trailed away.

  Dan pulled her from the chair and opened his arms. His eyes were wet.

  “Has it helped you to write it all out?”

  “I think it has.”

  “Then tear it up and throw it away. Oh, Hennie, Hennie, it’s a new start.”

  On the sidewalk outside of the restaurant, Paul had parted from Hennie in deep distress. Watching her walk off, he was tempted to go after her, and stood for a moment struggling between that temptation and an equal need to get away alone.

  Such bite and bitterness in her! So unlike the Hennie he had known all his life!

  And Dan so subdued … Paul had a quick flash at the front of his mind, an instant recall of Dan standing high up someplace and people crying out, people clapping; was it only that he had heard the story so many times that it had become vivid to him, or did he actually remember it?

  Courage Dan had. Courage to have said what he did just now about the awful thing that had come between the two of them. It must have been an awful thing for Hennie to be like this.

  Still, they were destroying each other. As if Freddy’s death were not enough to bring them together.

  And yet, how can I judge? Paul asked himself. Someone looking at me wouldn’t guess the first thing about what’s happening inside me.

  A little boy, walking between his parents, went past with a sailboat in his arms; they were going to the park. He must remember to buy one this week, rather than wait for Hank’s birthday; too much of life was spent in postponement.

  From the thought of Hank, his mind traveled farther: She had a boy the same age. Her boy wouldn’t be sailing a boat in Central Park, though. He didn’t think there was anyplace to sail a boat in the part of the city where she lived. Then his mind recorded the name of the street where she lived, and the address from which the husband’s I.O.U. had come. He hadn’t intended to memorize the a
ddress on Fort Washington Avenue, but it had obviously stuck in his memory.

  He walked on, going east toward his home. It was a brisk day with a wind that tossed the trees, the kind of vigorous weather that he liked, the kind that drove some people indoors and brought others outside to brave it. The lofty sky shone like blue glaze. It was a perfect day for a ride in the country, to get out on some side road perhaps, and hike a way, then drive to some old inn and have a drink. But not alone …

  He looked at his watch; it told him that the afternoon still had a long way to go. The garage in which he kept his car was just down the street from his house. He stood in front of it uncertainly. Of course, he could go to his in-laws’, where they were entertaining some visiting cousin who had recovered from a desperate illness. The thought of the overstuffed apartment and the family gossip oppressed him. The day had already been such a miserable one, between other people’s troubles and his own.…

  Suddenly the decision made itself and he went into the garage to ask for his car. It was important to use the motor, he argued. One so seldom needed an automobile in the city; the last time he’d taken it out was to drive to Alfie’s place, weeks ago.

  He got behind the wheel, put on his driving gloves, and swung westward. He opened the window and let the air blow in. It felt good. He came out onto Riverside Drive. On his left, the river sparkled where the wind chopped the water. Thin clouds appeared in the sky that had been without flaw; the wind pulled them, drawing them on like kites’ tails.

  Three great gray battleships were anchored in midstream. Let’s hope we’ve seen the last of those, he thought.

  He brought the car to a stop at the Claremont Inn, thinking he’d go in for a while and watch the river over a drink. Then he remembered the Volstead Act—stupid and unenforceable for very long, he’d wager; the only drink he’d get was coffee or tea. So he drove on, turning northward; he’d go through The Bronx and on up to Westchester a little way for a look at open fields. Maybe the sight of their peace would clear his head.

  He went up Broadway, keeping a careful eye out for Sunday strollers, who tended to amble across the avenue, and for children who darted across. Suddenly, Fort Washington Avenue slanted up on his left. If he hadn’t been going so slowly, he wouldn’t have noticed the street sign. He became aware of his leaping heartbeat. And he kept going. He went on for five more blocks, and ten. Then he thought how odd it was that, born in this city and living here all his life, he had never been on Fort Washington Avenue. It wasn’t more than thirty minutes away from his neighborhood, or forty at the most. Strange, when you thought about it! And without really intending to, he made a U-turn and went back.