Her Father's House

by Belva Plain

  So did the past close over Laura as if to drown her.

  In her room again, she sat down, huddled in the corner by her desk. And then, for no other reason than that a partly open drawer revealed a battered old diary, she drew it out and read.

  Dad says I can have tennis lessons. I asked him whether my mother played tennis, and he said she did. That's funny because I know I asked him once before, and he had said she didn't. Sometimes he forgets things like that, and I wish he wouldn't.

  When I volunteer in the children's part of the hospital, I see Dr. Scofield. He tells me I was a “fresh kid” when I was two. He teases me, but I like him. He likes Dad a lot. He says people all like Dad, and I am very lucky. I know I am because my dad never yells at me the way some fathers do.

  Sometimes when I am feeling sorry because my mother is dead, Dad tells me I am lucky to have another mother like Mom. She is a little more strict than he is. She makes Rick and me watch our table manners. But we love her anyway.

  Yesterday we all rode up into the hills and had a picnic. Dad roasted marshmallows. When we went home, he helped me with fractions because I am not that good at math.

  She began to cry. When, many minutes later, the tears stopped flowing, she wiped her eyes and wrote a few words on a large piece of paper: I LOVE YOU, DAD. She would put it on the table in the kitchen where he would see it.

  She went upstairs again and waited. After a long while, she heard voices below. Then came the well-known tread on the stairs. And afraid to look at his weary face, she did not turn.

  Twenty or thirty years.

  Then she heard her name and felt the gentle touch of his hand on her bowed head.

  Chapter 28

  Jim,” Kate said, “Mr. McLaughlin just called. He has a lawyer for you, a very competent person.”

  “I know, I know. He thinks I should consult somebody who once knew me well. He probably got in touch with somebody at Orton and Pratt.”

  Shame, in a wave of heat, flowed through him. To ask Ed Wills or to stand before Pratt, exposed, condemned, and forlorn—oh, it was hard, too hard! Nevertheless, it might have to be endured.

  He got up and went to the mirror that hung between the windows. Eighteenth century, the woman had said when Kate and he had bought it at the secondhand shop in town. The glass was wavy, turning his tense cheeks to a geographical map with hollows, plains, and rivers.

  “You're wrong, Jim. McLaughlin's been inquiring everywhere for you. Yesterday he heard from three different sources that there's a woman in New York who's been steadily making a name for herself. She sounded interesting, so he checked some more. He even telephoned Gil at his law firm. And Gil made inquiries—”

  Jim interrupted. “At this point, it might be a very good idea for Gil Maples to stay out of my affairs.”

  “Who can blame you? I feel the same way. But McLaughlin did say that Gil was very frank about his part in what happened to you; he's sick with guilt, and—”

  “He needn't be. He did what was legally correct and saved himself. I just don't want to hear any more about him, that's all.”

  “Well, all right. But McLaughlin thinks you should see this woman. Her name is Ethel Rice,” Kate said.

  Jim sighed. “I'll think about it.”

  “Jim, you're saying that because you want to get rid of me. It's been ten days already, almost two weeks. She—the other side—has probably been working on the case all last winter.”

  “Maybe it's because I'm dreading to be told what I already know.”

  “You don't know anything. It's not like you to be defeated before you've even begun.”

  She meant well. She was doing her best. You entered a sickroom with a cheerful face. You grasped at straws, so goes the old saying, to save a drowning man, even though the dying or the drowning man knows that you know how weak are your straws and your cheer. When they talked about his “situation,” it hurt; and if they didn't talk about it, that hurt, too.

  Kate folded the newspaper and put it into the bag to be recycled. When her posture was rigid like this, he did not need to see her face to know that she was holding back tears. He wondered how long she would be able to keep up the effort. He wondered how long it would be before, one night as they lay together in their bed, he would blurt the question: What will become of you when I am locked away?

  He walked out of the kitchen and sat on a chair, bent, dangling his arms between his knees. Clancy came over and laid his head on one of his knees. Was it possible that the dog, even the dog, felt the oppression in the beloved house?

  He was still sitting there when Laura came into the kitchen. “I know this is unbearably hard for you, Dad,” she began. “You, a lawyer, now under the thumbs of lawyers! All the questions and all the probing—”

  She read his mind. And suddenly he realized that she always had done so. Even as a tiny child she had seemed to know when he could be coaxed and when he meant what he said. This recollection brought a very faint smile to his lips as he replied.

  “Who is she, this interesting, promising person?”

  “She is a feminist. Very clever. She likes to represent women whom men have mistreated,” Laura said.

  “Then why on earth would she want to represent me?”

  “For the novelty, for the challenge. Are you upset because Gil approved of her, too? If you are, I'll understand because I feel the same. But we both know why he did it. And of course we'll never forget it. But he does want to help you now. And anyway, it was Mr. McLaughlin who asked him. Will you see her, Dad? Will you?”

  “I'll go. I don't believe she or anyone can do much. It's a clear-cut case.” A long sigh struggled out of Jim's chest. “But I'll go,” he repeated.

  Chapter 29

  You really didn't expect to hear anything very different, did you, Mr. Wolfe?” When he raised his eyes Jim saw, past Ethel Rice's shoulders, a room where a younger woman sat at a word processor. A long time ago, back in the 1890s, that room had been a family kitchen and this spacious office had been divided into a dining room and a parlor. The people who had occupied this house had known another world from the present one. The people who would occupy this ground when the house was torn down to make way for an office tower would know yet another world. So his mind roved.

  “You really didn't, did you, Mr. Wolfe?”

  Mr. Wolfe. It rang so strangely in his ears.

  “I guess—I guess I only hoped,” he said. “After all I've told you—yes, I hoped. Then there were other times when I knew better.”

  “Of course you did, you of all people. Twenty years ago I was only starting out, so I didn't mingle with people like you. But I've heard a great deal about you since, and naturally . . .”

  The voice, softer now, faded away. The eyes that had been alert and searching turned toward some chirping sparrows on the windowsill. He understood that she did not want to embarrass him by witnessing his pain.

  “I thought that after all I've told you just now you might be able to find some mitigating circumstances. I never practiced family law or divorce law.”

  “Think. You have no corroboration for anything you've told me, no proof of her morals or lack of them. There are no witnesses to conversations held in bedrooms.”

  “The neglect? Being out of the city when the child was so sick?”

  “The pediatrician was five minutes away. The child was left with a competent, highly paid nurse. In Lillian Morris's circles, there is nothing so unusual about that.”

  Her “circles,” he thought, recalling the drab flat in which she had lived with Cindy.

  “Prominent people, active with her in every charity you could think of, have spoken to everybody from journalists, TV reporters, and last but hardly least, to the prosecutor on her behalf.”

  He was about to answer when she read his mind. “Your friends in Georgia have known you only since you arrived there with your baby. They know nothing about what happened before you committed the crime.”

  “It must seem
absurd to you that the word ‘crime' can still startle me,” he confessed. “When I look at my daughter and see what she has become under the care of my wonderful wife and myself, there seems to be no sense in all this. Three divorces, God knows how many lovers during and in between, each marriage a climb up the financial ladder—”

  “Not enough. There are no laws forbidding that sort of thing. You have only to look at Hollywood.”

  Outside, a fire engine or an ambulance or police car shrieked, rending his eardrums. The cacophony of the city had never disturbed him; he had indeed seldom noticed it. My nerves are failing, he thought, and steeled himself to ask a concluding question.

  “So, what is it? Thirty years, or twenty?”

  “I shall fight for less. I suppose I don't need to tell you that the best thing we can do is to avoid a trial. We'll plead guilty and go for a plea bargain. Do you agree?”

  “You say less. What's less?”

  “I'll fight for ten. I'm rather good at fighting, too.”

  Ten years. He would be well over sixty. Worn down, never the same afterward.

  “I'm in your hands,” he said. And then, rising, he thanked her courteously and went out.

  Heat lay upon the city's concrete walls and sidewalks; from its source in the sky, it seemed to be returning to the sky where, like a muffling gray blanket, it spread itself.

  “She didn't take very long,” Richard said as they met at the door.

  “No. Short, and not so sweet.”

  “You didn't like her?”

  “I liked her very well. She respected me enough not to sugarcoat the facts, with which I am as well acquainted as she is.”

  One of Richard's many good qualities was his awareness of mood. Right now it was time to be silent, and so they continued down the long street in silence. Not two blocks distant, quite within view, was the building that housed the offices of Orton and Pratt, where Jim—no, Donald—had occupied a room that looked southward down the avenue. Yesterday, that had been, or else in another century, depending upon the way one happened to feel at any particular moment.

  My God! Could I ever, could the people there in that office, could anybody who ever had known me, have believed I would commit a crime? I, whose father died for his country? I, a felon, subject to imprisonment for no one could yet predict how long?

  No, it could certainly not go to a trial, to a jury filled perhaps with parents of young children. In his mind he had predicted that Ethel Rice would advocate a plea bargain. In that case, all would depend upon the prosecutor's state of mind. Twenty years, or ten . . . Shut away from the world, from life, from Laura and Kate. And from the young man walking beside him, this young man who had become a son to him.

  “Let's turn the corner here,” he said.

  Yes, turn before we pass the building where Augustus Pratt, or anyone else, might be going in or coming out. Hiding for twenty years out of fear, and now, here where it all began, hiding out of shame!

  “We ought to have some lunch, don't you think so, Jim?”

  Turn again, and walk past the pocket park where once a man had paused for a few minutes in the shade and there, without knowing it, had met his future. Now, out of rage and hatred, he looked away. “Only if you're hungry. I'm not. And we have to catch the plane home.”

  “I checked while you were with Ms. Rice. We've more time than we need, and Gil wants to meet us.”

  “I don't want to be seen in the kind of fancy place he'll choose.”

  “No, he thought of that. He said I should tell you it's a quiet little place uptown. We'll need a taxi.”

  “I'm sorry. I should have known Gil would consider my feelings. He's trying hard to be helpful. I'm cranky, Rick.”

  “You're not cranky, you're overwhelmed.”

  “I won't deny that.”

  In the “quiet little place,” Jim let the young men do the talking. He ordered a sandwich and coffee, but hardly touched either one.

  On the wall there hung an amateurish painting of some blue and white Mediterranean village, perhaps Amalfi, as he recalled it. No place could be more unlike the mountains above Foothills Farm, yet its effect upon him was the same. The beauty! The beauty in the world!

  People came and went. Two old men, probably retired and partly deaf, held loud, enthusiastic dialogue. A young woman coaxed her little girl to eat her vegetables. Before his eyes, a drama was unfolding, his last drama, with the curtain about to descend.

  After a while, he became aware that Richard and Gil were talking about the World Series. Out of consideration for him, they had neither questioned him nor discussed the day's events. Gil, no doubt, would be in touch with Ethel Rice before the afternoon was over. Then it occurred to Jim that he had not even thanked Gil. But it was hard to talk; it would be easier to express his thanks with pen on paper, so he would do that tonight.

  When Richard excused himself to telephone home with the time of their flight, Gil made a brief mention of what was on all their minds.

  “I wanted you to know one thing: I shall always be there for Laura. You have my word.”

  “I know,” Jim said, and looked toward Amalfi to hide the tears in his eyes.

  The airport, too, was a drama. “International Arrivals and International Departures,” he read. There they went, the honeymooners with new luggage and new clothes for the journey. There they rushed, the gray-haired and the young in their dark suits with their attaché cases in hand, bound for London, Moscow, and any other place you might think of. Well, he had done it all too, had loved it and given it away for something more important.

  The plane made a wide curve, crossing the Hudson, rising over the flat clusters of suburbia through which he had once hurried with Laura and her stuffed bear, and over the clouds. Beside him Richard was reading the newspaper. In an odd way, as if he were a child being led by a strong adult, he thought, I'm glad he offered to come with me today. I am not at my best.

  Suddenly Richard spoke. “Jim, I've been wanting to tell you something. No matter what Laura does, whether she goes back to medical school or not, whatever she does or wherever you may be, I want you to know I will watch over her.”

  “I know that, Rick. I never had any doubt.”

  Sometimes Jim had a feeling of haste, an awareness of speeding days with so much yet to be done before “things” should happen.

  Because Foothills Farm had been pledged to provide his bail, money was short for the first time in many years. Rick, who had spent his time in the field, had had very little business experience at a desk. Kate's realm was the greenhouse. Who, then, is to take my place, he asked himself, when finally “things” do happen? There was a great deal of teaching to be done before they would all be prepared to take over his responsibilities.

  Sometimes, on the other hand, he had a feeling that time was crawling. It seemed as though months had passed since the meeting with Ethel Rice, yet when he looked at a stand of pin oaks turning russet, as they do in the fall, he reasoned that the worst had already happened and was behind him.

  Then, then always, there was Laura. He worried; he lay awake with his worry. She must, she clearly must return to medical school. But her blue eyes were darkly ringed, and her silences were too long. He argued, tried logical reasoning, did everything short of commanding, and failed. Dr. Scofield alone had been able to pierce the fog of her depression. Pleading the need for some help in his office, he had asked her to take a job there, if only temporarily.

  “Because at least you can spell,” he had said, trying to be jovial. No doubt she had seen through his kindly ruse, but had nevertheless accepted the offer as a way to get out of the dreary house.

  God bless Scofield, and all the other people who had been so thoughtful with their visits, their small friendly gifts of flowers or pies, and most of all, their tact. Yet his own moods ebbed and flowed. Could it be possible, he asked himself, that if the delay were long enough, he might somehow be overlooked, lost in the mass of papers that collect in a city of eigh
t, or is it nine, million? And a moment later he knew how terrified he must be to have had an absurd, crazy thought like that one.

  But then again, there were other thoughts. These came at night when his book was put down—the book in which he tried to flee from reality—and the light was turned off in the room where he slept with Kate. What of their last night? For surely it would come, that last night when they would lie down together and part in the morning. Kate and he, before the long, dark, separated years would begin.

  And still, they were all trying to live normally now. She invited him to “come look at the Dutch bulbs that have just arrived.” The greenhouse reminded her of an Edwardian conservatory, where ferns hung out of baskets fastened on the ceiling, and the chair in the tiny office was made of white wicker. Look here, she would say, there aren't too many nurseries in this country where you'll find forget-me-nots, or Turk's-cap lilies. And these blue echinops—if you didn't know, would you ever guess they were simple thistles?

  Then he would tell her that she need not put forth such an effort in his presence, because he knew she was just as frightened as he was.

  “Oh, it's not fair!” she would cry. “You don't deserve it, as good as you are to everybody. It's not fair. It's rotten. There's no sense in it.”

  “Kate, oh Kate, I broke the law and I have to pay for it. It's as simple as that.”

  Once, filled with anger, she fought him. “Stop talking like a saint.”

  “I'm hardly a saint. I only know that you can't have a country, a civilization, any other way. This is just what it's all about.”

  And in spite of all, he meant it; at least until despair returned and struck him down again, he meant it.

  Laura's notes were short, only a fraction of a page. On most days, she wrote nothing.

  Why record and repeat? I already know that she was—is—a frivolous woman, which really means very little. I have no proof of that except for what Rick tells me, and that has to be second- or thirdhand information. And why, if it is true, why should I care? I don't. But that she is vengeful, that I do care. What benefit to her will it be when my father is locked away?