by Belva Plain
He was truly not feeling sociable, so taking advantage of the remark, he turned to the window and the flatlands of New Jersey. His thoughts were tossed between the morning's nastiness and the negotiations forthcoming in Washington.
After a while he heard and felt a stir in the adjacent seat. The young woman, rummaging in the tote bag, withdrew what looked like a tin of cookies.
“Want some?” she asked. “They're delicious, left over from my girlfriend's wedding. She made me take them home, and I'm glad she did because I'm starved. I didn't have time to eat or I would have missed the train in Boston. Oh, do,” she went on when he hesitated, “otherwise I might eat them all myself and I can't afford to do that.”
The cookies, as might be expected, led to further conversation, Donald remarking that he hoped all the food at the wedding was as good as this.
“Oh, it was! It was a country wedding at home. The bride and her mother did all the baking. Have another.”
He would have liked to accept another, but since it would not have been appropriate, he declined and remarked instead that weddings were always fun—which was not necessarily true.
“Yes, aren't they? This wedding was in New Hampshire in a beautiful little town, something like one of ours at home except for the climate. I'd never seen that much snow in my life. Amy and I met at college in Georgia, you see, and we've been friends ever since, but I never visited her at home. We hadn't seen each other in ages, and I simply couldn't see myself missing her wedding.”
Donald was thinking that once a conversation gets rolling, it is almost impossible to stop it.
“So it was a real event for you, a reunion, a great time,” he said.
“Yes, it was, except that I had to come without my husband. We have six hundred acres, twenty-two head of milkers, and a farm manager who's petering out, so Clarence didn't feel secure about going away. People don't have any idea of the work there is on a farm.”
He could have said that, having hired out during many a summer vacation, he had a very good idea about the work. But not wanting to prolong the talk, he did not say so.
“You're a city man, I see by your briefcase. Would you like to see a picture of our place, or would it bore you?”
Now, how on earth could a person admit that it would bore him?
“Not at all. I'd like to see it.”
So, out of the tote bag came a small cardboard album; undoubtedly it had been brought along for exhibition to the wedding guests. The photographs on the cover showed a tidy frame house with a porch across the front. Two handsome collies lay on the steps.
“These are Mutt and Jeff. ‘Mutt' is kind of an insult, isn't it, because he's a border collie with a royal pedigree. A real extravagance, Clarence said. He bought him at a show—he couldn't resist. Now here's Clarence.”
A tall man in a neat shirt and jeans stood against a board fence. The corner of a barn roof and part of a cow were visible in the background.
“Now here's Ricky. He's six, but this was taken two years ago.”
Between his parents on the same front steps where the dogs had lain now sat a little boy with curly hair and a serious face. Below the picture was a penciled caption: Clarence, Ricky, and Kate, with the date, Fourth of July, and the year.
There would be a band in the morning when the veterans marched down the Main Street. There would be little flags in the cemeteries and big ones sagging in the hot, still air over the front door, or sometimes on a pole in the front yard. There would be picnics, fried chicken maybe, and ice cream and blueberry pie.
Suddenly something touched Donald's heart, and he turned, not too obviously, sliding his eyes toward the woman beside him, a person naive in her certainty that he would care about these pictures. His quick glance encompassed her and registered itself in his head: slender figure, hair curly like her son's, facial features undistinguished except for the tender smile, and hands strong with nails unvarnished, clasping the book.
“He's a beautiful little boy,” Donald said.
She sighed. “Yes, he's precious. We would love to have more, but nothing happens. Do you have any children?”
“Just one. A girl. She's two.”
“Ah, well, you'll have more. Most people do. Clarence and I made up our minds almost from the time we met that we'd have a big family. That's the way we were, right from the beginning.” She laughed.
“You were in a big hurry, weren't you?” Donald responded, taking the lighthearted cue from the laugh.
“But anyway, we've been happy together from the day we met.”
He could not have explained why he was curious enough to ask this talkative stranger how they had met, but he asked.
“It was at the university in Atlanta. He was in agriculture, and I was in history, and we hadn't even noticed each other until one day when it was raining cats and dogs and he let me walk with him under his umbrella.”
So that's how it happens. A woman rescues some papers from falling off a man's lap, or a man lends his umbrella.
“I never thought I'd live on a farm. Of course, it isn't just any old farm, it's what you might call an ‘establishment.' It's been in the family for maybe six generations, maybe more. From right after the Revolution, anyway. That's two hundred years ago, at least. I think he loves every tree on the land. And do you know, I admit it did take quite a while, but now I've come to love them all, too.”
Lucky Clarence, Donald thought. You'll take care of Kate if you're wise. She's honest, she's good, and she spreads cheer. In an entirely different way, she reminds me of Maria, except that Maria, even though she was born in a village, is naturally streetwise. This young woman is too trusting to be let out in the world without having somebody take care of her. Of course I might be all wrong, I've been fooled before, but I don't think I am all wrong.
“Well, I believe I'll get back to my book,” she said.
So Donald opened his book, too. But his mind was too full to absorb it, and the reading didn't go very well. The incessant snow fled past the windows, turning white the fields, the housing developments, the factories, the city of Philadelphia, and more. If Cookie could have a mother like this, he was thinking, and closing his eyes, he saw his little girl standing in front of him glowing with joy over the fluffy bear in her arms. If only she had a mother . . . Then suddenly Washington was announced.
He stood up to take his suitcase from the rack and said good-bye to his neighbor. “It was nice talking to you.”
“Yes, it was. Let me scribble our address for you. I always do this when I meet somebody I like. If you and your wife ever travel south, come see us.”
Two days later Donald left Washington by train. It would take a bit longer than the shuttle flight, but at least he would arrive in the heart of the city, near enough to reach his home after a brisk walk that would be welcome after two days of sitting in chairs.
As it happened, his seat on this return trip was in the middle of the car, most likely the same one he had occupied on the way down. No doubt it was this fact that brought to mind the talkative young woman who had sat next to him. My Lord, he thought, she gave me her address, me, a total stranger, and invited me—and my wife—to visit her and her husband if we should ever “come south”! Poor innocent, she had no guile, not at all. Why, he hadn't even given her his name, much less any means of identification!
They had looked so sweet, the three of them, seated there on the porch steps; they reminded him of one of those old illustrations by Norman Rockwell. And reflecting then on the incredible variety of human types, his mind made a natural jump back to the events of this rotten week.
He must, he absolutely must, learn something about child care, so as to be better prepared for the next time, heaven forbid, when Cookie should need more attention while Lillian was away on a safari or someplace. A simple medical guidebook for parents, as well as a couple of books on child psychology and general development, were essential. With these in mind, he already began to feel less helpless.
Identification was not difficult; he had no friends or even an acquaintance whose matted beard reached up to the eyes and down to the waist.
“Hey, Donald, long time, no see.”
No, not since the wedding party. “That's right. How've you been? How's Cindy?”
“Cindy? You didn't know? Lillian didn't tell you?”
“I don't see Lillian. Hasn't Cindy told you that?”
“Yeah, I heard something. Anyway, Cindy's dead.”
“Oh, I'm sorry. What happened?”
“She got sick. Too much booze, or other stuff. I don't know exactly. She died in the hospital.”
An instant's recollection of a young woman with a raucous voice and gaudy makeup came to Donald; then, even though he hadn't liked her, there came a rush of pity because there was no sense at all in dying so young. She couldn't have been much older than twenty-five.
“I'm sorry,” he said again, meaning it. “I used to wonder about her, even though it wasn't any of my business. Frankly, I used to wonder about Lillian and Cindy being friends. They were so different. But Lillian was really very good to her. She practically supported her, I think.”
“Friends?” The tone was almost mocking. “They were sisters, man. Cindy was her sister.”
As if a stone had struck him, Donald went into shock. “A foster child? Adopted?”
“No, no. Same father, same mother.”
“I don't understand it. It doesn't seem to make sense. Who were the parents? What were they? I mean . . . what were they like?”
“Like? Like nothing. Just people.”
Donald shook his head. “I tried . . . I never could get her to talk about anything.”
“What's talk? Chewing the fat. Gets you nowhere.”
“But do you know anything at all? Did you know the family very well?”
“Sure. Lived across the street. I'm sort of a third cousin or something. That's why I stuck around.”
“I don't understand,” Donald repeated, and stared at the man as if some answer might lie hidden behind the outlandish face.
“What's to understand? I told you. Just people, you know? People like you. Like me. Anyway, I'll be going. Take care. Keep the faith.”
Donald stood watching Cindy's boyfriend saunter away out of sight. What was the secret? he asked himself. But no answer came. Then he went upstairs into his apartment, and foraging in the refrigerator, made up a plate with a sandwich and a pear, after which he sat down with one of his new books on child care.
But the astonishing facts he had just learned went whirling through his mind instead. So many conjectures had come to that mind during his brief marriage: that there was something dishonorable in her family's past that she was ashamed to reveal, or that they had been cruel to her, so that she was unable to forgive them. All of that could be true, or none of it could be. Perhaps there wasn't any secret at all other than a desire, grown out of all proportion, to escape into another personality, into another environment and another world. It was not uncommon.
More than once, when he had been living with Lillian, he had thought about making a quiet investigation with the ultimate purpose of helping her to understand whatever it was that she was hiding. But he had hesitated, and in the end had come to realize that it would have been useless. For whatever damage, real or imagined, had been done to her, or not been done—unless you wanted to count one of nature's devilish jokes that had caused her to be born the way she was—it was too late to change anything. He had lived with her long enough and had experienced enough with her to be certain of that. It was too late.
Chapter 9
Donald began to have a strange sensation of speed, as if everything were moving too fast for him. Things piled up: conferences, depositions, telephone calls to be returned at once, letters to be answered at once, invitations that were half social and half business, the funeral of a senior partner's brother, and never, never enough time. At the end of each day he felt a weariness that he had never felt before. A vigorous young man, not supposed to tire like this, he knew very well that the tiredness was not only of the body, but of the troubled spirit.
Maria said: “They had a terrible fight after dinner yesterday. Cookie heard it, and it scared her, so I took her out of the room.” Another time she reported: “Mrs. Buzley went away for the weekend on somebody's big boat. Mr. didn't go.”
There was a cheapness, a shabbiness, in listening to what was after all gossip. And yet Donald had no other means of knowing anything about what he thought of as his child's home. Odd it was that he should be on the side of Howard Buzley, the man to whom Lillian had been mistress before she married him. Yet Buzley was apparently the steady force in that household and the one who gave the most attention to Donald's child.
One day at a quick lunch down the street from the office, Ed Wills set down his coffee cup and asked a question. “Will you object if I should ever mention Lillian? Please answer honestly. I hesitated even to say this much, but June said I should. She and I both know how you worry about your little girl, and so—”
“Please tell me anything and everything. I need to know.”
“Well, it isn't much this time. Or maybe it is, but we've been seeing Lillian at the beach near that cottage we rented for the summer. It's rather remote, not in a fashionable neighborhood, not Lillian's style at all. But we've seen her way down at the deserted end of the beach a few times, and not with Mr. Buzley. At least, we didn't think he was.”
“A man over sixty? Short and gray?”
“No, not at all. Far, far from it.”
Donald sighed. “I worry, Ed. If that marriage breaks up, where's she going to go with the baby? Yes, I could find a larger apartment, go to court and get alternate weeks or something, but is that a way to bring up a child, back and forth between parents who don't like each other?” And his thoughts returned to the book on child psychology. “So where are we going? Where's Lillian going?”
“According to my wife, she's flying up and up. June likes the society columns, out of sheer curiosity, I suppose, because as you well know, she's not like that. But she's been fascinated by Lillian's career, if you want to call it a career. Did you see the photo last week?”
“I only saw a couple that the nanny showed me, but that was more than a year ago.”
“Well, there've been plenty since then. The latest was in one of those fashion layouts, a group of women at a bazaar in somebody's garden. June says Lillian's a meteor, a bit too old to start out as a model, otherwise she'd be on every front cover.”
People. Just people like you and me.
But that was far too simple. She needs to know who she is, only God can tell why. No, that's not true either. She must know very well why she has that need to reinvent herself, to show she can reach the top or whatever she believes to be the top, where you can have everything you want and can do everything you want.
“We really liked her in the beginning,” Ed said. “June tried to be her friend after you were married, but suddenly she didn't seem to want June anymore.”
Donald remembered: That was when she met Chloe Sanders.
“I hope she's not going to break up with Buzley,” he said as he stood, paid the bill, and went back to work.
Now propelled by his worry and a small spice of curiosity, Donald began to follow the Sunday social pages and even, whenever June Wills, via Ed, sent news of an item in a magazine, read that, too. He made mental note of every detail: She was magnificently dressed; most often she was with Buzley, yet many times not; she started to be seen not as often with entertainers and others on Buzley's level, but even with European celebrities here on behalf of cultural monuments and events; she was recently photographed in a group standing next to a count and countess.
&n
bsp; She was leaving Buzley behind. Counts and countesses, no less! Oh, he said to himself, she will hold on to Buzley until she gets someone better. He saw it clearly, even though Buzley might not see it yet. But he would, poor man, and possibly sooner than later.
One Sunday morning the telephone rang.
“I hope I didn't wake you,” Ed Wills said, “but I wanted to reach you before you got to the newspaper.”
“Why? What's happened?”
“An accident. I'm going to tell you the end first: Your baby's fine. Not a scratch. It's a miracle. I'm telling you the one hundred percent truth, so stay calm. I wouldn't fool you, Donald.”
He breathed in and breathed out, that being the instruction for staying calm in an emergency. Stay calm. Calm.
“Go on,” he said.
“It happened last evening around ten o'clock, a collision on the highway. A car going fast, or maybe both cars, were changing lanes, swerved into each other, and sent one of them spinning into a tree. Lillian was in the front seat with the driver. He's in the hospital, in critical condition, it says. He didn't have a seat belt on, so he was thrown out. Lillian has a broken shoulder. Your little girl was untouched, thank God. It's incredible. You'll read it in the paper.”
Donald's right hand was shaking, and to steady it, he placed his left hand over it. “Where is she?” he asked. “Where did it happen?”
“Out on Long Island. Some friends took care of Lillian and the baby, took them home after the doctors had seen Lillian. They're people who live here all year round. I don't know them, but I'll find out. June and I would have taken them if we'd known in time. We're in the middle of packing, end of summer, start of school.”
Donald understood that Ed was talking to make the call seem ordinary, prolonging it so as not to end on a downbeat. “I'll call you back as soon as I make some calls in the village. I won't be long.”
The Sunday paper was maddening, page after page of politics, international news, business news, and the rest, when all he wanted was one small item. Frantically his hands raced through the pages. Finding it, his eyes raced through it.