Her Father's House

by Belva Plain

  Lillian's two-week vacation came in August. Cindy and she were going to a spa in New England. She teased Donald: “You'll be pleased to know it's for ladies only. No gentlemen allowed in.”

  Puzzled, he asked how she could afford it. “And I suppose you're treating Cindy, too?”

  “Yes, but it's not as painful as it sounds. In fact, it's not painful at all. Mr. Buzley gave me a bonus for extra work, combined with my Christmas present that I had asked him to keep until next summer so I wouldn't spend it.”

  “Save it. Put it away. Let me pay for the treat.”

  “No, no, you already do so much for me, living here where I do. But thank you, anyway.”

  He had not seen Cindy since the one visit she had made to the new apartment. It had bothered him to think that he was perhaps the cause of separating Lillian from her friend. What kind of a snob was he? Yet he knew very well that he was almost as far from being a snob as anyone could be. At the same time, whenever he broached the subject of inviting Cindy, Lillian made it clear that she did not want the visit.

  “Listen, Donald. You two are poles apart, so why try to force you together? Forget about it.”

  Well, let them enjoy their two weeks of luxury, the massages and swims, the dinners and mountain hikes, the girl-talk, although what those two young women had in common to talk about, he could not imagine.

  August had never lasted as long. He met new clients, went out to eat with some of the men at the office, and returned to an apartment grown deadly silent and suddenly too large. Never in his life had he felt so strong a need for another human being.

  Then while she was still away, two things happened. The first was his advancement to a partnership in the firm; it meant a name at the bottom of the letterhead and a considerable increase in earnings; it meant, more than anything, enormous respect. The second thing was an unexpected conference in London—and the decision that, he realized when at later times he thought about it, was hastened because of his going to London.

  Waiting for him there was the same young woman whom Augustus Pratt had once admired. Well, Donald admired her, too; he was indeed very fond of her, as he had from time to time been fond of another young woman in Paris, and also of more than one back home. But never had he misled any one of them to think in terms of marriage.

  Therefore, he was unprepared for the reproof that was given to him over drinks at the end of a day in the London office.

  “I am getting married next month and moving to Edinburgh,” she told him, “so we are not likely ever to meet again, Donald. And since that's the case, I feel free to speak my mind. I really loved you, Donald. I would have married you if you had asked me. Each time we were together, I was hoping you would before you left again for home. When you didn't, I swore to myself that I'd ask you the next time you were here. I guess I had too much pride, false pride, to do it. After a while I got tired of waiting and found another man. We love each other, and I am very, very happy.”

  For a minute or two, Donald was unable to find a response. She was looking straight at him and surely was aware of the burning heat in his cheeks. She was, in her poise and dignity, quite lovely; she had always been lovely. Yet seeing her at that moment, all he could feel were a deep regret and guilt for having so clumsily hurt her.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't know. I never thought. Please forgive me if you can.”

  Back at the hotel, he fell into a panic. Had he been taking Lillian for granted? Taking his leisurely time on the grounds of their short acquaintance? The way other men, even his own friends, glanced at her—how long would she wait for him? He looked at the clock and at the telephone. It was early afternoon at home, so she would be at the office.

  “You frightened me!” she cried. “Are you all right?”

  At the sound of her voice, a feeling somewhere between relief and laughter choked his own voice. “Listen to me. It's important. You've been away, now I'm away and it doesn't make any sense.”

  “What doesn't make any sense? What are you talking about?”

  “That we aren't together, don't you see? We need to be together, we're perfectly matched. Dammit! I'm not coming up with the right words. Oh, Lillian, I miss you! Make believe I'm on my knees before you right now and I'm handing you a box with a ring in it and I'm asking you to set the date. And make it soon. I mean soon, thirty days and not a minute longer. Will you?”

  “Oh, darling, I'm crying. I'm sitting here in the office crying. I can hardly talk. But I don't need thirty days.”

  He flew home with a ring from one of London's best jewelers in his pocket. Every so often when he touched the small velvet box, he felt a surge of pride, and more than that, of gratitude, as he saw himself again departing from his hometown, boarding the plane to New York, and buying the leather-bound Jefferson on Fifth Avenue. Now he was climbing up in the world, traveling all over it, and soon would be coming back every night to the most marvelous wife in the prettiest little home anybody could desire. And he thought humbly, I hope I deserve it all.

  Lillian's plans were short and simple. She suggested that they be married in a clergyman's study and leave at once for a honeymoon in any place that Donald should choose.

  He, on the other hand, while agreeing about the ceremony, did suggest that they make more of a celebration out of their wedding day by giving a gala dinner to their friends in some gala place.

  “But I don't know any of your friends except Cindy and a couple of people from your office,” he added.

  “That's because I don't have many friends. You know I live quietly. I'm as much of a stranger in this city as you were when you first arrived here.”

  “But you have relatives on Long Island. You said you had a lot of them.”

  “Did I? Then I was exaggerating. Anyway, I never see any of them.”

  He was curious. “You never said why you don't.”

  “They're not my kind.” Lillian shrugged. “We're entirely different. We have nothing in common.”

  “But you do have one thing in common. You have some of the same ancestors, blood ties.”

  They were both reading in the room that Donald liked to call “the library.” From where he sat he caught in the lamplight a small, ironical twist on Lillian's lips, and it made him feel stubborn.

  “Blood's thicker than water? Cliché,” she said.

  “A cliché is a cliché because there's truth in it. After my mother died and I was truly, totally alone, I can't tell you how much I wished I had somebody who belonged to me. He could have been almost anyone but an ax murderer and I would have welcomed him.”

  “Well, you do have those third cousins out in—where is it?—Nebraska?”

  “Wyoming. And I've seen them one time in my entire life. But your relatives live on Long Island and you grew up practically next door, you said.”

  “Nevertheless, I don't want them.”

  The firm tone was irritating. “Who are these people? What's this all about? Why the secrecy?”

  “They're just people, for heaven's sake! What are you hinting at, that they're all convicts or something? They're just plain, ordinary people.”

  “Of course they are. But can't you say something about them? What do they do, for instance?”

  “I don't know what they do. I'll find the address and phone, since you're so persistent, and you can find out all about them yourself. Just please stop foisting them on me.”

  “I'm not ‘foisting' anything at all on you, Lillian. But I must say, you're a little bit touchy today.”

  “I'm not touchy! You're pestering me. It's not like you.”

  He was nonplussed. Here we are, we who love each other beyond words—yes, beyond words, he thought—and we're quarreling over nonsense like this. Perhaps after all he really was making a fuss about nothing. Don't be a pompous jackass, Donald. If for some reason she wants to be rid of these relatives, what difference need it make to you? What business is it of yours?

  Yet he could not resist one more re
mark. “You never even talk about your parents.”

  “They're dead.”

  “Is that a reason never to talk about them?” he asked very gently.

  “What is there to say? She was a housewife, he was a salesman, and they lived, just lived, the way millions of people do.”

  All of a sudden, he saw a flashback of himself at ten or twelve, on the day when, rummaging perhaps where he was not supposed to rummage, he came upon the telegram from the War Department: We regret to inform you . . . He had just stood there staring at the piece of paper in his hand with the world gone strangely still and gray around him. Of course she did not want to talk. Why open the wound to bleed again?

  He went over and put his arms around her. “Forget it, darling. What a stupid quarrel! We're both nervous and overexcited, that's all it is. So let's have our little party right here. I'll have my group—they're all crazy about you. And you'll have anybody you want, or nobody.”

  “Just a few favorites from my office, and Cindy with her boyfriend. Unless you mind having them?”

  “Of course I don't.”

  “Well, you're not very fond of her, so I thought—”

  “No, I'm not fond of her. But I haven't a thing against her, which is altogether different. She's your friend, and that's enough. You know what? I just thought of something. I have to introduce you to Mr. Pratt. Get off from work a few minutes early one day, tomorrow if you can, and stop in for a minute. I want to show you off.”

  “I found her,” Donald announced to Mr. Pratt the next morning. “You've been urging me, and now I'm doing it. We're being married at the end of the month.”

  On the shelf behind the other man's smile and handshake stood the photograph of his family. Even more than his achievements in this office, the picture seemed to define the man, as if to say: This is what it's all about. Love, loyalty, family. And now, I, too, thought Donald. Lillian and I, a family.

  “She's going to call for me here this afternoon. If it's convenient, I'd like you to meet her.”

  “Convenient? Donald, I'd be really hurt if you didn't introduce me.”

  So she came, and the introduction was made. In her plain, dark blue dress, with pearls in her ears and gloves on her hands—for as she later explained, she had assumed that so proper a man as Augustus Pratt would approve of gloves—she was perfect. Everything, from her well-modulated voice to her well-chosen words, was perfect.

  It bothered Donald the next morning that Augustus Pratt, such a master of language, had so little to say.

  “A beautiful young woman. How long have you known her?”

  “We met in April. Sort of love at first sight.”

  Pratt nodded. “I wish you everything I could wish for my own son, Donald.”

  He could have said more, couldn't he? He could have been warmer. Donald was slightly annoyed. But then, sometimes when he was preoccupied, Pratt did have a way of turning down the thermostat.

  Events moved happily along. They were married on a golden day in a mahogany-paneled study just off Fifth Avenue, each with one friend from their respective offices as witness. Then through the mild afternoon, they walked back hand in hand, up the avenue toward the park, and turning eastward, arrived at their home where a welcoming crowd was waiting.

  The apartment overflowed with splendid autumn flowers. The caterers, who had been recommended by Mr. Buzley, had supplied them, along with superb food and the best champagne.

  “I can't believe you didn't invite him,” Donald whispered to the bride.

  “He wouldn't enjoy the company. He's twice our age. Anyway, his wife is terribly sick at home.”

  Nevertheless, he had sent his wedding gift, a silver service for twelve that Lillian described as “Danish silver, about the best there is.”

  “I wouldn't know,” Donald said.

  “It costs a fortune, I can tell you, but he thinks nothing of it. He's always doing things like that for people. All the time.”

  The party was lively. First the women all wanted to look at the gifts that Lillian had tactfully stored away. Then someone found the record player and added music to the pleasant hubbub of talk, toasts, clattering china, and popping corks. People were all feeling very, very good.

  Toward the end of the evening, Cindy got drunk and had to lie down in the bedroom, where she managed to smear a faceful of garish makeup on the silk pillow shams. Her current boyfriend, in T-shirt and jeans with hair rippling and beard rumpling to his shoulders, stood out among this gathering of ties and jackets. Nevertheless, everybody enjoyed him, and Donald observed that he “added an exotic note” to the scene.

  “Come to think of it, he may be smarter than any two of us here put together. On the other hand, he may not be. God bless him, anyway.”

  So, full of champagne and good humor, he closed the door on the departing guests, set the alarm clock in time for an early departure to Vermont, and took his wife to bed.

  Chapter 4

  They decided that because the semester had already begun, Lillian would wait until the following fall before starting to work on a master's degree in art.

  “It's what you really want,” Donald said. “So what if you can't be Mrs. Renoir or Mrs. Picasso? You'd do wonderfully in an auction gallery or a museum. With all you already know, you're halfway there. All you need is the degree. And in the meantime, I think it's fine that your boss will let you work three days a week to keep yourself busy.”

  “Howard Buzley is absolutely the best.”

  “I really should meet him sometime, don't you think?”

  “You wouldn't like him.”

  “Why do you always say that?”

  “I don't always say it.”

  “Well, you sometimes do. Anyway, why wouldn't I like Buzley when he's been so good to my girl?”

  “He's just not your type.”

  “What on earth do you think my life is like, that I just go around selecting clients who are ‘my type,' whatever that is?”

  Lillian laughed. “All right, I'll arrange it sometime. But seriously, what am I going to do with the days I don't work? I'm already starting to feel pampered and lazy.”

  “It won't hurt you to take it easy for a change. Do some reading and get a head start on your course. Go out with some women, have lunch, make friends.”

  “You know what, Donald? You're a darling. You're too good to me.”

  Good to her? How else could he be but good to her?

  Every evening when he opened the door and stepped into the hall, he caught sight of the table. Always it was a picture for a luxurious magazine, set with a little pot of flowers, proper china, and Howard Buzley's Danish silver. Often the food was something unusual, culled from the shelf of cookbooks that she had begun to collect.

  “I've never done any serious cooking,” she told him, “but now that I've begun, I want to do it perfectly.”

  “You do everything perfectly.”

  One day when he came home, she was all excited. “You can't imagine where I was today. In the penthouse! Oh, you should see it, Donald! I had no idea. It's a regular ranch house, a spacious one with a garden so big that you'd think you were out in the suburbs. Oh, I knew what a penthouse was, of course, but actually seeing one is something else.”

  Definitely not interested in penthouses, he was interested in her enthusiasm, which was always delightful.

  “I'm all ears,” he said.

  “You know that tiny dog, the Yorkshire terrier we sometimes see in the lobby? Well, he belongs to the people in the penthouse. Sanders, their name is, and this morning, the boy who takes the dog for a walk lost him. I can't imagine how, oh yes, the hook that fastens the leash to the collar wasn't on right and the dog ran away. Well, I happened to be in the lobby just going out, when the boy came back practically out of his mind. Stupid! Instead of going after Spike—isn't that a name for a big, tough, six-pound dog?—he came running home. So I went out and raced down the street, turned the corner, and there were some fellows walking away
with Spike. Now they really were big and tough. I gave a shriek, ‘That's my dog!' which attracted a lot of attention, so they dropped Spike, I grabbed him, and ran home.

  “Well, Mrs. Sanders, Chloe, wouldn't let me go. I had to go upstairs with her, have a second breakfast, take a tour of the house which is incredibly beautiful, including Spike's nook, where his basket is upholstered to match the room.”

  Donald smiled. She was so charming, rosy, out of breath, and full of her story.

  “Remember that day when I said dogs and babies break the ice? If it hadn't been for Spike, we'd never have done more than nod to each other in the elevator, if that. She wants us to come up one evening soon. He's on Wall Street. Frank Sanders.”

  “Yes, one of the biggest new names in the city. Made a few hundred million before he was thirty. Too rich for us, Lil.”

  “Oh, do you think so? I hope not. Of course, when we have to invite them back—oh, I don't know—I did say that we're just married and will soon be looking for something larger.”

  “Not soon. It'll be a while before we do anything like that. You shouldn't have said it.”

  She answered quickly, “I didn't mean that I don't appreciate this apartment, because you know I do. You aren't annoyed, are you?”

  No, he was not annoyed, and he said so. Rather, he was surprised by this evidence of insecurity coming from so sophisticated a woman. And then he thought, there are bound to be many surprises, aren't there? Consider that starting a marriage must be something like opening a new book; as you turn the pages, unexpected scenes and situations will be revealed.

  “So you'll accept if they invite us?”

  “Of course I will.”

  The Sanders were leaders among the young group who, like themselves, had made enormous quick fortunes. They were friendly and never could thank Lillian enough for her rescue of Spike. Clearly, they were taken with her, Donald saw. But then, most people were. For how often did one meet a human being so filled with alert and joyous energy as Lillian was?

  So, on rare evenings when they were home, the Sanders—soon to be simply Chloe and Frank—invited Lillian and Donald to have some after-dinner coffee and dessert on their marble coffee table in their forty-foot-long living room. Once in a while they came downstairs to the Wolfes'. Therefore, it was not as astonishing as it might have been when invitations to gallery openings, teas, benefits, and gala charity dinners began to arrive in the mail. Chloe Sanders apparently had decided to sponsor the interesting newcomers.