Whispers

by Belva Plain

  THE CRITICS LOVE

  BELVA PLAIN

  and WHISPERS

  “By getting under the skin of her diverse characters, Plain delivers a story of considerable impact.… Giving a contemporary twist to this bittersweet tale, accomplished storyteller Plain revisits familiar terrain: the intricate landscape of the extended family.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[PLAIN] OFFERS … COMPELLING STORIES ABOUT WOMEN COPING WITH LIFE’S CRISES.”

  —People

  “IMPECCABLY DONE … The kind of book that reminds us that, since its inception, the novel has been used for instruction and consolation … [Plain] succeeds admirably and affectingly, and her heroine’s trials and eventual triumphs will instruct and console a huge audience.”

  —Booklist

  “Belva Plain doesn’t know how not to write a bestseller.”

  —Newsday

  “A SUPERB STORYTELLER … a talent worth remembering.… Mrs. Plain’s novels are good stories well told.”

  —The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.)

  “Belva Plain has the ability to bring characters as real as your neighbors into your heart.”

  —St. Clair County Courier (Mo.)

  “BELVA PLAIN IS IN A CLASS BY HERSELF.”

  —The New York Times

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Random House, Inc.

  The poem appearing on this page, “Aphrodite, 1906,” is reprinted with permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company, from This Blessed Earth by John Hall Wheelock.

  Copyright © 1974, 1978 by John Hall Wheelock.

  Copyright © 1993 by Bar-Nan Creations, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and

  Trademark Office.

  ISBN: 0-440-21674-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8041-5257-0

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One: Spring 1985 Chapter 1

  Part Two: Spring 1988 Chapter 2

  Part Three: Summer 1988–Spring 1989 Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Four: Spring 1989–Fall 1990 Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Five: Winter 1992–1993 Chapter 8

  Other Books by this Author

  PART ONE

  Spring 1985

  In dodging Robert’s hand, the furious hand aimed at her face, she fell and struck the edge of the closet’s open door instead. Now on the floor, stunned by a rush of pain, she leaned against the wall, touched her cheek, and, in a kind of astonishment, stared at the blood on her hand.

  Robert’s eyes and his mouth had become three dark, round holes in his face.

  “Oh, good God!” He knelt beside her. “Let me look. No, let me, Lynn! Thank goodness it’s nothing. Just a break in the skin. An accident … I’ll get a washcloth and ice cubes. Here, let me pull you up.”

  “Don’t touch me, damn you!” Thrusting his hand away, she pulled herself up and sat down on the bed between the suitcases. Her face burned, while her cold fingers felt for the rising lump on her cheekbone. Another lump, thick with outrage and tears, rose in her throat.

  Robert bustled between the bedroom and the bathroom. “Damn, where’s the ice bucket? In a first-class hotel like this you’d think they’d put—oh, here it is. Now just lie back. I’ll fix the pillows. Hold this to your face. Does it hurt much?”

  His expressions of anxiety were sickening. She closed her eyes. If she could have closed her ears, she would have done so. His voice, so rich, so beautifully modulated, was trying to soothe her.

  “You tripped. I know I raised my hand but you tripped. I’m sorry, but you were so angry, you were almost hysterical, Lynn, and I had to stop you somehow.”

  She opened her eyes. “I? I was so angry? I was almost hysterical? Think again and tell the truth if you can.”

  “Well, I did lose my temper a little. I’ll admit that. But can you blame me? Can you? When I depended on you to do the packing and you know how important this convention is, you know this could be my chance for promotion to the New York headquarters, the main chance of a lifetime maybe, and here I am without a dinner jacket.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose. Now I’ll tell you for the third time that Kitty Lombard told me the men won’t be wearing tuxedos. I specifically asked about it.”

  “Kitty Lombard! She steered you wrong on purpose and you’re too stupid to know it. How often have I told you that people like nothing better than to see somebody else look like a fool? Especially in the business world. They all want to sabotage you. When will you learn to stop trusting every Tom, Dick, and Harry you come across? Never, I suppose.” Striding across the room, in his powerful indignation, Robert looked about ten feet tall. “And by the way, may I remind you again that it’s not called a ‘tuxedo’? It’s a ‘dinner jacket.’ ”

  “All right, all right. I’m a hick, a small-town hick, remember? My dad ran a hardware store. I never saw a dinner jacket except in pictures until I met you. But I never saw a man raise his hand to a woman either.”

  “Oh, let’s stop this, Lynn! There’s no sense going over it all night. It’s almost six, and the dinner’s at seven. Your ice is melting. Let me have a look again.”

  “I’ll take care of myself, thanks. Let me alone.”

  In the bathroom she closed the door. The full-length mirror reflected a small, freckled woman, still girlish at thirty-six, with bangs and a curving cap of smooth sandy hair worn as she had in high school. The face, pleasing yet unremarkable except for a pair of rather lovely light eyes, was disfigured now by the bruise, much larger than she had imagined and already more hideously, brightly blue and green than one would have thought possible. She was horrified.

  Robert opened the door. “Jesus! How can you possibly go downstairs looking like that! Unless—” He frowned over his thoughts.

  “Unless what, if you please?”

  “Well—I don’t know. I could say the airline lost the bag with my clothes, and that you have a stomach virus, one of those twenty-four-hour things. Make yourself comfortable, take a hot bath, keep the ice on your face, get in bed, and read. Call room service and have a good dinner. Relax. It’ll do you good. A nice quiet dinner without kids.”

  Lynn stared at him. “Mr. Efficiency. You have it figured out, as always.”

  Everything was ruined, this happily anticipated weekend away, the new dress, spring-green silk with crystal buttons, the new bottle of perfume, the manicure, all the joy gone. Sordid ruination. And he could stand there, confident, handsome, and secure, ready to cope, to go forward again.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “Oh, Lynn, cut it out. I am not, I repeat, not going to go over this business ad infinitum. Just pull yourself together. I have to pull myself together for both our sakes, make an appearance and make the best of this opportunity. All the top brass will be here, and I can’t afford to be rattled. I have to think clearly. Now I’m going to get dressed. Thank God my other suit is pressed.”

  “I know. I pressed it.”

  “Well, you got one thing straight, at least.”

  “I keep your whole life straight every day of my life.”

  “Will you lower your voice? People can hear you in the hall.
Do you want to disgrace us both?”

  Suddenly, as water is sucked down a drain, her strength rushed out. Her arms, her legs, even her voice refused to work and she dropped facedown onto the wide bed between the open suitcases. Her lips moved silently.

  “Peace, peace,” they said.

  Robert moved about, jingling keys as he dressed. When he was ready to go he came to the bed.

  “Well, Lynn? Are you going to stay there like that all rumpled up in your street clothes?”

  Her lips moved, but silently, again. “Go away. Just go away,” they said.

  The door clicked shut. And at that moment the tension broke. All the outrage at injustice, the humiliation of helpless defeat, flowed out in torrential tears, tears that she could never have shed while anyone was watching.

  “You were always a proud, spunky little thing,” Dad used to say. Oh, such a proud, spunky little thing! she thought as she collapsed into long, heaving, retching sobs.

  Much later, as abruptly as the torrent had started, it ceased. She was emptied, calmed, relieved. Cold and stiff from having lain so long uncovered, she got up and, for lack of any other purpose, went to the window. Forty floors below lights moved through the streets; lights dotted the silhouettes of Chicago’s towers; light from the silver evening sky sprayed across Lake Michigan. Small, dark, fragmented clouds ran through the silver light and dissolved themselves within it. The whole scene was in motion, while the invisible wind rattled at the window glass.

  Behind her the room was too still. Hotel rooms, when you were alone, were as desolate as a house emptied out after death. And Lynn, shuddering, ran to her carry-on bag, took out the photo of her children, and put it on the dresser, saying aloud, “There!” They had created an instant’s presence.

  And she stood looking, wanting most terribly these two girls whom she had left home in St. Louis only that morning and whom, like any other mother, she had been glad to leave behind for a while. Now, if she possibly could, she would repack her bag and fly back to them. Her beautiful Emily, the replica of Robert, would be at the sophomore dance tonight. Annie would just about now be going back to Aunt Helen’s house from a third-grade birthday party. Smart Annie, funny, secretive, sensitive, difficult Annie. Yes, she would fly home to them right now if she could. But Robert had the tickets and the money. She never did have any cash beyond the weekly allowance for the household. And anyway, she thought, remembering, how could I just walk in with this face and without their father?

  The silence began to buzz in Lynn’s ears. A sensation of fear as of some desperate, unexplainable menace came flooding. The walls closed in.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said aloud.

  Putting on her travel coat, she drew the collar up and wrapped a scarf around her head, drawing it like a peasant’s babushka over her cheeks as far as it would go, which was not far enough. Luckily there were only two other people in the elevator during its long descent, a very young couple dressed for some gala event, and so tenderly engrossed with each other that they truly did not give a glance to Lynn’s face. In the marble lobby people were either hurrying from cocktails to dinner or else lingering at the vitrines with their displays of glittering splendors, their jewels, leathers, satins, and furs.

  Outdoors, cold spring air stung the burning bruise. At a drugstore she stopped to get something for it, a gauze bandage or some ointment, anything.

  “I bumped into a door. Isn’t that stupid?” she said. Then, shocked at the sight of her swollen eye in the mirror behind the man’s head, she added clumsily, “And on top of that, I have this miserable allergy. My eyes—”

  The man’s own eyes, when he handed her a little package of allergy pills and a soothing ointment, reflected his disbelief and his pity. Overcome with shame at her own naïveté, she rushed away into the anonymity of the street.

  Then, walking in the direction of the lake, she remembered vaguely from a previous visit to the city that there would be a green space there with walks and benches. It was really too cold to sit still, but nevertheless she sat down, tightened the coat around her, and gazed out to where the water met the sky. Couples strolled, walking their dogs and talking peaceably. It hurt so much to watch them that she could have wept, if she had not already been wept out.

  The day had begun so well. The flight from home was a short” one, so there had been time enough for a walk on Michigan Avenue before going back to the room to dress. Robert was a window-shopper. He loved dark, burnished wood in fine libraries, eighteenth-century English paintings of fields and farms, classic sculpture, and antique rugs, all quiet, dignified, expensive things. Often he stopped to admire a beautiful dress, too, like the one they had seen this afternoon, a peach silk ballgown scattered with seed-pearl buds.

  “That would be perfect on you,” he had observed.

  “Shall I wear it to the movies on Saturday night?” she had teased back.

  “When I am a chief executive officer, there will be occasions for a dress like that,” he had replied, and added then, “It suits you. Airy and delicate and soft, like you.”

  It had begun so well.… Their life together had begun so well.…

  “Why do they call you ‘Midge’?” he had asked her. He had never noticed her before that day. But then, he was the head of the department, while she only sat at a typist’s desk. “Why? On the list it says your name is Lynn Riemer.”

  “I was always called that. Even at home. It’s short for ‘midget.’ I guess it was because my sister’s tall.”

  “You’re nowhere near being a midget.” He looked her up and down quite seriously. “Five foot two, I’d estimate.”

  It was his eyes that held her, the brilliant blue, darkening or lightening according to mood, that held every woman in the office, for that matter, and possibly, in a different way, the men too. The men had to have serious respect for authority; authority could praise and promote; authority could also discharge a man to creep home in defeat to his family. But the women’s fear of Robert Ferguson was diluted with a tremulous, daring, sexual fervor. This fervor had to be secret. Each would have been embarrassed to admit to another, for fear of seeming ridiculous: Robert Ferguson was totally beyond their reach, and they all knew it, worlds apart from the men with whom they had grown up and whom they dated.

  It was not only that with those vivacious eyes and his long, patrician bones he was extraordinarily handsome. It was an aura about him. He was absolutely confident. His diction was perfect, his clothes were perfect, and he demanded perfection of everyone around him. Lateness was not tolerated. Papers put on his desk for his signature had to be flawless. His initials had to be accurate: V.W. Robert Victor William Ferguson. His car must be kept in a quickly accessible place in a parking lot. Yet, for all of this, he was considerate and kind. When he was pleased, he was generous with a compliment. He remembered birthdays, making happy occasions in the office. When anyone was sick, he became earnestly involved. It was known that he volunteered at the men’s ward at the hospital.

  “He’s an enigma,” Lynn had once remarked when Robert was being discussed, and he often was discussed.

  “I’m going to call you ‘Lynn’ from now on,” he said that day, “and tell everyone here to do the same.”

  She had no idea why he should have paid enough attention to her to remark upon her name. It was silly. Yet she was sufficiently flustered by the happening to tell her sister Helen that she would not answer to “Midge” anymore.

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  “I have a perfectly good name, and I’m not a midget. Even my boss says it’s ridiculous.”

  Helen had given her a look of amusement that she remembered clearly long afterward. Ever since her marriage and the birth of two babies, Helen had assumed a superior air of motherly protectiveness.

  “Your boss? It seems to me you talk about him a good deal.”

  “I do not.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. You may not realize it, but you do. ‘My boss has a ste
reo in his office. My boss treated us all to pizza for lunch. My boss got a big raise from the main office—’ ”

  It was true that he was more and more in Lynn’s thoughts, that she watched without seeming to do so for his every arrival and departure. She had begun to have passionate fantasies. So Helen was probably right.…

  Then one day Robert asked her to go to dinner with him.

  “You look as if you were floating on air,” Helen said.

  “Well, I am. I thought, I still am thinking, Why me?”

  “Why not you? You have more life and more energy than any six people put together. Why do you think boys all—”

  “You don’t understand. This man is different. He’s distinguished. His face looks like the ones you see on statues or on those old coins in Dad’s collection.”

  “By the way, how old is he?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “And you’re twenty. Twenty, going on fourteen. Filled with dreams.”

  Lynn still kept the dress she had worn that night. Sentimental almost to a fault, she held on to everything, from her wedding dress and her children’s christening gowns to the pressed flowers from the bouquet that Robert had sent after that first dinner, a splendid sheaf of white roses tied with pink ribbon.

  “Tell me about yourself,” he had begun when they sat down with the candlelight between them.

  She had responded lightly, “There isn’t much to tell.”

  “There always is, in every life. Start from the beginning. Were you born here in the city?”

  “No, in Iowa. In a farming town south of Des Moines. My mother died, and my father still lives there. My sister moved here when she was married, and I guess that’s why, after graduation from high school, I came here too. There were no jobs at home anyway. This is my first one, and I hope I’m doing well.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “I wanted to see the city, to see things, and it’s been fun. Having the apartment, going to the concerts—”