Her Father's House

by Belva Plain

  “You haven't read it yet, so how do you know what's in it?”

  “I can tell by looking at you, so I don't want to read it.” For a moment Kate frowned. “Well, maybe I do. Maybe I should. Spread it out.”

  This week in Paris, a private jet arrived delivering their socialite friends to Arthur Storm and the former Lillian Buzley. After a hard-fought divorce and an idyllic honeymoon on a yacht cruise among the Greek islands, there was a celebration, a housewarming party at their magnificent new house near the Bois de Boulogne.

  The new Mrs. Storm was radiantly beautiful in the blue that she so often wears, her friends say, because it matches her remarkable eyes.

  “Lillian is one of a kind,” said Chloe Sanders. “I've known her forever, and I can swear she never changes. Her energy can positively lift a roomful of people. It's like oxygen. People adore her. She's smart, and lovable, and funny. It's amazing how she can still be funny after all she's gone through, and is still going through.”

  Lillian Storm, as everyone remembers, is the woman whose former husband, four years ago, absconded with their two-year-old daughter, Bettina.

  In response to compliments about the new house, a gift to his bride, Mr. Storm explained that his real gift to her would be the return of her child. In praising what he called her “inimitable courage,” he promised to use all his resources—of which there are many—to find Bettina and bring her back.

  In the meanwhile, the new Mrs. Storm plans to go on with life in as normal a way as possible. “At least,” she says, “I know Bettina is not with some stranger who might harm her.”

  Very complimentary, Jim thought. Fine words. And “normal,” also a very fine word. Let's see what Storm finds out about his new wife. Still, with a mansion and a few million dollars' worth of museum-quality art—how she loved to sound those words—she may be satisfied to leave well enough alone. Or she may not be.

  “She's very, very pretty, Jim. Does she really look like the photograph?”

  “I guess so.”

  Buzley, the poor old man who had been so good to her and her pathetic sister, had thought she did.

  “She's holding flowers, a sheaf of lilies. This must be a wedding picture.”

  “Kate, I couldn't care less. Better bring the dogs and the cat in. It's starting to rain.”

  The sky had opened. A cloudburst poured water as if from a spigot. Restlessly, Jim got up to stand by the window and watch the drenching, furious rain.

  Would he ever forget that room in Florence? The sodden woman sprawled on the sofa? You're such a puritan, Donald. People need to have some fun. And that is the woman who wants to take my Laura away.

  Kate broke the silence. “You need to stop worrying, Jim. You really do.”

  “You're not making sense. How can I stop when I read something like this?”

  “I keep telling you not to search through all these papers and magazines. It's been four years, and in spite of all this stuff, nothing's happened. And nothing will happen if it hasn't by now.”

  Just then came a pounding at the front door, so that both of them ran to it. There stood Laura in a state of high excitement, and soaking wet.

  “Mom! Mom! I told Jessica you're not dead. She keeps saying, ‘Your mother's dead,' and I hit her because you're not dead, and I said I have a mom. And she said, ‘You don't even live with that mom. You have a different house.' I hate Jessica.”

  When Kate had suggested that they should honestly explain some facts to Laura, Jim had argued that she was still too young to understand anything. Now he looked in helplessness to Kate, who spoke boldly.

  “You call me ‘Mom,' Laura, and that's fine because I love you. But a long time ago, you had another mom, who went away like Rick's daddy. You remember Rick's daddy. I tried to tell you this once, but you forgot.”

  “Dead is living where all those stones are, where people put flowers?”

  Kate, as she stroked Laura's hair, was cheerful. “Yes, that's what it is.”

  “Rick says his daddy is never going to come back.”

  “That's true.”

  “Is that other mom coming back?”

  “No. Listen, honey, I'm going to take you upstairs, and I'm going to wrap you in a big towel while I put your clothes in the dryer. Then how about a nice cup of cocoa and a cookie while they're drying. Okay?”

  So easily had Kate met the crisis, Jim thought, while I almost had cardiac arrest. She was right, and it is time to think about how I'm going to answer when more questions are asked, as they will be.

  “The first thing we have to do is give her a picture of her mother,” Kate began one day not long after this event. “I understand that the subject is horrible for you, but, Jim, you have to face facts. It's too queer, too unnatural, for anybody to accept that you have no photograph, no mementos at all of your dead wife, nothing. Prepare yourself as Laura gets older for all sorts of questions: Rebecca's maiden name, her family, where they came from and where they lived, and where Rebecca went to school. Had she any brothers or sisters? Does Laura have any cousins? And what did Rebecca like to eat, did she like music, did she have a job, or did she play tennis—a hundred details. How did you meet her, did you have a big wedding?”

  Jim groaned. “In short, write a biography.”

  “Yes. And memorize it, and never make a slip. Anybody in Laura's position would want descriptions. Laura's already sharp, and she'll grow sharper.”

  Jim groaned again. “I don't know how to start inventing this life.”

  “I'll help you. When I go to Atlanta next month, I'll get a photograph from some framing shop. I'll find a young woman with dark hair like Laura's.”

  “And where did we live? And are there any pictures of a house, or of Rebecca and me together? Or pictures of anything? There's no end to it. Don't you see how impossible it is?”

  “All right. When you were practicing law, you must have tried some cases that seemed impossible. Lawyers have to twist plenty of stuff out of shape, I'm sure.”

  “They have holes to patch up, that's true, but they don't invent things out of whole cloth.”

  “In this situation, you'll just have to invent.”

  “I feel horrible. I can't describe it. How can I look Laura in the face while I'm spewing out these lies?”

  “What choice is there? Listen, I just remembered something that really did happen. I knew some people who put everything they owned in a storage warehouse while they served in the Vietnam War. The warehouse had a fire, and all their things were destroyed. So that's your story.”

  Jim considered. “All right. It's far-fetched, but it happened once, so I suppose it could happen twice.”

  “Let me handle it. I'm already constructing the whole thing in my head. The reason you know nothing about her parents is that Rebecca was an immigrant from Russia, or anyplace. Her family got caught up in the troubles. For all you know, they died before she did.”

  When Kate had an idea, she pursued it just as she was pursuing her work in the greenhouse. There was no stopping her.

  “They were educated people, so that's how she came to study English. But she wanted to perfect the language, and that's why she came here. She hoped to go home eventually and teach English there, but then she met you.”

  In a pocket park, where she was eating an orange and I almost dropped my papers, he thought, and blurted, “I don't want to talk it over. I don't want to think about it.”

  “Laura is already asking questions,” Kate said quietly. “She wanted to know, for instance, why we live in separate houses. Other daddies and moms live in the same house.”

  He knew very well what Kate wanted. But for her inherent pride, the subject would have come up again now. However, she had made her point once and was not about to repeat it. She wanted marriage, and he owed it to her. The pattern of their lives, afternoon meetings in his cottage or a rare night in her house when Rick and Laura had both been invited to the Scofield grandchildren's for the night, were highly unsati
sfactory to them both. It was well over a year since she had been widowed, and marriage now would be seemly enough. But he was afraid for her.

  When he glanced at the newspaper, still spread out before them, she followed his glance. There stood Mrs. Arthur Storm in full, smiling glory. And here next to him stood Kate Benson in her own true glory, worth ten thousand Lillians.

  His thoughts came and went. The debts were already half paid off. The farm belonged safely to Kate and Rick, and he would keep it so, for it was their inheritance, not his. He himself could live well enough on his salary. Then if there ever should be any penalty to be paid in his future, it would be his penalty alone. It was feasible, and yet—

  “If I could only be sure that you would never suffer because of me,” he murmured, thinking aloud. Yet in being so protective of her, was he not also hurting her?

  The crinkle at the corners of her eyes told him that she was smiling inside her head. “So? If you could, what would you do?”

  “I'd have a little wedding next month on the lawn, right out there.”

  “Then let's do it, Jim. You can't go on living in fear like this. I'm not afraid, and you shouldn't be. We'll make a proper home for the four of us. You owe it to Laura, and to hell with Mrs. Arthur Storm.”

  Mr. and Mrs. James Fuller stood on the grass in the shade receiving the congratulations of their guests. In a lovely kind of fog, as if he had been drinking champagne—without having yet had a drop—everything blended before Jim's eyes: the day, clear green and gold, Kate in something creamy with her bright hair hanging loose to her waist, Rick important in his dark blue blazer, and Laura in a long pink dress that he had himself selected from a catalog. The guests, all obviously approving, were laughing and chattering. There was an astonishing number of them, too, mostly from the town, where as Kate said, he had made more good friends in his few years there than many people make in a lifetime.

  He looked over at the freshly painted house. Indoors a reasonable prosperity had prepared it for the new united family. The cramped desks in what had been the living room had been moved to the spacious cottage, where Kate and he had separate offices. The ceiling of Laura's room had been papered like the sky, blue with summery white clouds. He had not yet looked at the bedroom where he was to sleep with Kate tonight.

  She had asked him whether he wanted to have a look at it. “Soft colors,” she said, “pine green and peach. I hope you'll like it.” And she had had a worried little frown which, laughing, he had kissed away.

  “Oh, I'll like it,” he had said. “I'll like it very much.”

  Late in the evening after everyone had departed, the now-united family went up to sleep for the first time in the big house. For a few minutes, Jim stepped out and stood on the porch. The moonless night was silver, and utterly still. Not a leaf moved. And a perfect peace descended, a peace such as he had not felt since leaving New York, which seemed a century ago. Perhaps indeed he had never felt such a peace.

  “What a day,” Kate whispered, coming up behind him. “What are you feeling? What are you thinking?”

  “All day I've been feeling as though I had just won a long battle. I'm thinking of a quotation.”

  “You and your quotations! Tell me.”

  “It's from Stonewall Jackson, something like this. ‘Let us cross the river and rest in the shade.' Well, I've just crossed the river, and now we will rest.”

  Chapter 16

  There were times when Laura liked to be alone in her room. She liked to look around at the things she owned, the pink bathrobe hanging so that it would show on the inside of the open door, the jewelry box that played music when you opened it, and, most important, the diary that Dad gave her last year for her ninth birthday.

  Red leather, with a key, it lay right out on her desk. And if she locked it, nobody would be able to read her secret thoughts. She often liked to read what she had written, as if it were a story in a book.

  I love to read. There are all sorts of things in books that can make you forget your troubles, like the broken finger that hurt so awfully. And I remember I read the story about Eskimos and igloos that almost made the hurt go away. I read every day when I come home, except sometimes when I feel sleepy, I don't read. I stretch out on the floor and look at the beautiful ceiling with white clouds on it. Then I can think about the summer when you float on the lake and look up at the sky. You wonder what is really there, in the sky. Doesn't there have to be something? I wonder whether Felicia the cat, who lies beside me on the rug, ever thinks about things like that. Dad says that of course animals think, but we don't know what they think.

  People always ask why I named my cat Felicia, but it's a secret, and I don't tell them. Felicia is Rick's girlfriend's name, and one day I wanted to make him angry. Only he wasn't angry. It's funny how he's gotten to act like a grown-up since he's been in junior high school. When I say things, he sort of looks at me the way grown-ups do, as if they were thinking how cute you are, you little kid. But sometimes I get angry because I am not a little kid, I'm ten. But I don't really mind because Rick is really my friend, even more than some of my best friends like Megan and Julia in school.

  One day I saw him naked. I didn't know he was in his room, and I opened the door. I don't know exactly why I went in. I think I was looking for the candy that he hides. He's not supposed to eat it because it makes pimples when you're in junior high school. I hope I never get pimples. He jumped and grabbed a towel, but I saw. It looked funny. I guess he told Mom because she said I should remember to knock on doors before I go in. You know better, she said. But she said I shouldn't feel bad about seeing Rick. It wasn't bad, only impolite to look at people when they have no clothes on. So I don't think much about it anymore, only sometimes, because it did look funny.

  Rick and I do good things together. Now that I'm ten, I don't have to ride the pony anymore. Dad promised me a horse, and we're going soon to look at a small mare that will fit me, or I'll fit her. But we're going to keep my pony. He has lived here all his life, so now he should stay and just enjoy himself in the pasture. Dad says an animal isn't a piece of furniture that you can sell or give away without hurting its feelings.

  Dad says that the white rabbit who stays on our front lawn eating grass most of the time was probably an Easter present to somebody who didn't want it anymore and just dropped it off along the road. It doesn't play with all the brown rabbits that are wild here. Maybe they don't like him, but I do. I miss him when I don't see him for a few days, and I hope he hasn't been run over or eaten by a dog.

  When I get my horse, I'd like a pinto like Mom's. Then I'll go riding when everybody else takes the long trail up through the hills. I was there once when I rode with Dad on his horse. I was very small then, but I remember it. When you get to the top, you can see a big waterfall, far down. It makes you dizzy to look so far down. You can't get there to swim. It's too wild. But you can tie the horses and have a picnic on top of the hill.

  I like the things we do. A lot of my friends don't do the things we do. Rick says so too, about some of his friends. Last Saturday we planted two magnolia trees. One is Rick's, and one is mine. They look like little sticks now, but one day they'll be enormous and have pink flowers. Rick and I are responsible for them. We have to water them and put mulch, that's a silly word, around them. They haven't grown much yet, but Dad says we just planted them last Saturday.

  The only thing we don't do is, we never go anywhere far away. It's because Dad hates big cities. Julia's family are all going to go to Washington in spring vacation to see the monument and the cherry blossoms, and maybe the president. I wonder whether they'll talk to him or maybe just peek at him over the fence. Anyway, I want to go too, but Dad won't and I am really angry. Really angry. Mom says I shouldn't be. She says Dad is the kindest man in the world, and I guess that's true. Yes, it is true.

  Mom is very nice, too. She is hardly ever angry about anything. Dad isn't either. I mean really angry, like some people's parents who make them cry. Som
etimes Julia Scofield's father is mean. He yells at her. So then she goes to her grandpop and grandma's house, and they make her feel better. Her grandpop is a doctor and he likes me. He says he knew me when I was two years old. I don't remember. He says that was when Dad brought me from Philadelphia. Once I heard Dad say to Mom that Dr. Scofield talks too much. But I don't think so. He tells jokes, and I like him. I wish I had a grandpop.

  I wish all my family wasn't dead like my mother. I have her picture on my desk right next to this diary. I look at her picture a lot. I think she looks like somebody on TV. She has dark hair like mine. It's funny to think that she's the one who grew me inside her, and I don't even know her. Sometimes I wish I had red hair like Mom because I love Mom and I can't love Mother because I don't know her. But some days anyway I think about her, and I do wish I knew her.

  Chapter 17

  When in a warm wind the browning leaves rustle to the ground, dusk comes early. Crickets are singing and birds are silent. In another month at this hour, the leaves will have rained from the trees, and it will be too dark to be reading on the front porch.

  So Jim reflected as he sat with his tired legs stretched out and the book fallen open. This tiredness, though, was the healthy kind that comes after a long day well spent.

  In the far fields, since early morning, the men had been planting seedling firs, while on the near side of the creek, they had been shipping young firs. With a nice combination of thankfulness and pride, Jim had watched the products of the farm being loaded onto trucks and driven away.

  Now Rick was following them down the road. Jim had to smile. Ever since the boy had gotten his driver's license last month, he never missed an opportunity to use it.

  They were going to miss him. Seniors in high school, now almost in college, were really wishing time away. At least most of them were, and it was entirely true of Rick. At dinner last night he had been full of information about the Appalachians, how millions of years ago these round, green mountains had been as high, rugged, and icy as the Alps, a fact that Jim had not known. No doubt Rick was going to be some sort of naturalist, a lover of the land as his father had been. And wistfully, Jim recalled his afternoons as umpire at the baseball games, the football games he had watched on the high school playing field, and the chess he had played with Rick on winter evenings.