Whispers

by Belva Plain

  The full wealth of his love went to Emily, so like himself, tenacious, confident, competent in everything from mathematics to tennis. Beside all that, at fifteen she was already charming the boys. Life would be easy for Emily.

  My children … Oh, God, if it weren’t for them, Lynn cried to herself, I wouldn’t go home at all. I’d get on a plane and fly and fly—anywhere, to Australia and beyond. But that was stupid. Stupid to dwell on the impossible. And if she had packed the suit none of this would have happened. It was her own fault.…

  It was growing colder. A sharper wind blew in suddenly from the lake. Rushing through the trees, it brought the piercing scent of northern spring. Thrusting her hands more deeply into her pockets, Lynn drew the coat tighter against the chill. Her cheek throbbed.

  She was a fool to sit here shivering, waiting to be mugged. But she was too sunken in spirit to move or to care. If only there were another woman to hear her woe tonight! Helen, or Josie, wise, kind Josie, the best friend either Helen or she had ever had. They called themselves the three musketeers.

  “We’ve transferred a new man to be my assistant for marketing,” Robert had announced one day more than seven years ago. “Bruce Lehman from Milwaukee. Jewish and very pleasant, but I’m not wildly enthusiastic. He strikes me as kind of a lightweight. No force. It’s hard to describe, but I recognize it when I see it in a man. You’d like him, though. He’s well read and collects antiques. His wife’s a social worker. No children. You’ll have to call and ask them over to the house. It’s only right.”

  That was the start of their friendship. If I could only talk to her now, thought Lynn. Yet when the moment came, I probably wouldn’t tell the truth. Josie would analyze, and I would shrivel under her clinical analysis.

  As for confiding this to Helen, that’s impossible. She warned me against Robert once long, long ago, and I will not go whimpering to her or anyone. I will handle this myself, although God knows how.

  She stiffened. Her heart pounded. Out of the violet shadows beyond the lamplight a slatternly woman, drunken or drugged, came shuffling toward her and stopped.

  “Sitting alone in the dark? And you’ve got a black eye,” she said, peering closer. When she touched Lynn’s arm, Lynn, shrinking, looked into an old, sad, brutal face.

  “I suppose you ran into a door. A door with fists.” The woman laughed and sat down on the bench. “You’ll have to think of a better one than that, my dear.”

  Lynn got up and ran to the avenue, where traffic still streamed. The woman had given her such a fright that, in spite of the cold, she was sweating. There was no choice but to go back to the hotel. When the elevator stopped at her floor, she felt an impulse to turn about and go down again. Yet she could not very well sleep on the street. And maybe Robert was so angry that he would not even be in the room. She put the key in the lock and opened the door.

  Fully dressed, he was sitting on the bed with his face in his hands. When he saw her he jumped up, and she saw that he was frantic.

  “I looked for you everywhere. It’s midnight,” he cried. “Long past midnight. In God’s name, where were you? I looked for you all through the hotel, up and down the streets, everywhere. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.” His face was haggard, and his hoarse voice shook.

  “What’s the difference where I was?”

  “I didn’t know what you might have done. I was terrified.”

  “There’s no need to be. I’m all right.” In one piece, anyway, she thought.

  When she took the scarf off and moved into the full glare of lamplight, Robert looked away. He got up and stood at the window, staring out into the darkness. She watched his stooped shoulders and felt shame for him, for herself, and for the entity known as Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ferguson, respectable and respected parents and citizens.

  Presently, still with his back turned to her, he spoke. “I have a quick temper. Sometimes I overreact. But I’ve never really hurt you, have I? Other than a slap now and then? And how often have I done that?”

  Often enough. Yet not all that often. But the sting of humiliation far outlasted the momentary physical sting. The bruise of humiliation far outlasted the bruise on the upper arms where fingers had gripped and shaken. And a deep sigh came out of her very heart.

  “When did it happen last?” he asked, as if he were pleading. “I don’t think you can even remember, it was so long ago.”

  “Yes, yes I can. It was last Thanksgiving week, when Emily didn’t get home till two A.M. and you were in a rage. And I thought, after we talked it over and you were so sorry, that it was to be really the last time, that we were finished with all that.”

  “I meant it to be. I did,” he replied, still in the pleading tone. “But we don’t live in a perfect world. Things happen that shouldn’t happen.”

  “But why, Robert? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I hate myself afterward, every time.”

  “Won’t you go and talk to someone? Get some help. Find out why.”

  “I don’t need it. I’ll pull myself up by my own bootstraps.” When she was silent before this familiar reply, he continued, “Tell the truth, Lynn. You know I’m a loving, good husband to you all the rest of the time, and a good father too. You know I am.” He turned to her then, pleading, “Don’t you?”

  She was silent.

  “I did wrong tonight, even though some of it was an accident. But I told you how awfully important it was. I could only think of what it could mean to us. New York with a fifty-percent raise, maybe. And after that, who knows?” His hands were clenched around the wooden rail of the chair’s back as though he would break it. The pleading continued. “It’s hard, Lynn, a struggle every day. I don’t always tell you, I don’t want to burden you, but it’s a dog-eat-dog world. That’s why that woman steered you wrong about the suit. People do things like that. You can’t imagine it because you’re so honest, so decent, but believe me, it’s true. You have to be alert every minute of your life. There’s never a minute that I’m not thinking of us, you and me and the girls. We’re one, a tight little unit in an indifferent world. In the last analysis we’re the only ones who really care about each other.”

  At his urging she was slipping inch by inch back into reality, and she knew it. Children, family, house. And the man standing here to whom all these ties connected her. Impulsive thoughts of airplanes flying to the ends of the earth, of floating free and new, were not reality.… Home, children, friends, job, school, home, children—A sudden thought interrupted this litany. “What did you tell Bruce?”

  “What I told everybody, that the bag with my dinner jacket was lost.”

  She heard him making an easy joke of it. My suit may be on a plane to the Fiji Islands, or more likely, it’s still in St. Louis. He was laughing, making everyone else laugh with him.

  “That’s not what I meant. What did you say about me?”

  “Just said you weren’t feeling well. I was vague about it.”

  “Yes, I daresay you would have to be,” she said bitterly.

  “Lynn, Lynn, can’t we wipe the slate clean? I promise, promise, that I will guard my temper and never, never, so help me, God—” His voice broke.

  Exhausted, she sat down on the bed. Let the night be over fast, she prayed. Let morning come, let’s get out of this hateful room.

  He sat down next to her. “I stopped at a drugstore and got some stuff,” he said with a bottle of medicine in hand.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Please let me.”

  She was too tired to struggle. He had taken a first-aid course and knew how to touch her cheek with care. Softly, softly, his fingers bathed her temples with coolness.

  “Doesn’t that feel better?”

  Unwilling to give him satisfaction, she conceded only, “It’s all right.”

  Relaxed against the pillows, she saw through half-closed eyes that he had unpacked her overnight bag and, meticulous as always, had hung up her robe and nightgown in the closet.


  “Your poor, darling, lovely face. I wish you would hit me. Make a fist and let me have it.”

  “What good would that do?”

  “Maybe you’d feel better.”

  “I don’t need to get even. That’s not me, Robert.”

  “I know. I know it isn’t.” He closed the bottle. “There, that’s enough. There won’t be any mark, I can tell. That damn door had a mighty sharp edge, though. The management ought to be told. It’s so easy to trip there.”

  It was true. She had tripped. But would she have if his hand had not threatened? It was hard to be accurate in describing an accident. The event flashes past in seconds and the recollection is confused.

  She sighed and mourned, “I’m so tired. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired.”

  “Turn over and let me undo your dress. I’ll rub your back.”

  Anger still boiled in her chest, a sorrowful, humiliated anger. Yet at the same time, a subtle, physical relief was beginning to wear it down. Robert’s persisting hands, slowly, ever so slowly and firmly, were easing the tension in her neck and between her shoulder blades. Her eyes closed. As if hypnotized, she floated.

  How intimately he knew her body! It was as if he knew it as well as she knew it, as if he knew it as well as he knew his own, as if they were one body. One …

  Minutes passed, whether a few or many or even half an hour, she could not have said. But as finally he turned her over, she felt no resistance. Half waking, half dreaming, her willing arms accepted.

  When she awoke, he was already dressed.

  “I’ve been up for an hour. It’s a bright, beautiful day. I’ve been watching boats far out on the lake. Would you like to take a walk down there? We can always get a later flight home.”

  She saw that he was testing her mood.

  “Whatever you want. I don’t mind either way.”

  It was not important. She was testing her own mood, which was important. Last night the darkness had been a horror down there near the lake. But those were morbid, useless thoughts now. And something she had read only a short time ago now crossed her mind: A majority of Americans, even in these days, still see nothing so terrible about a husband’s occasional blow. Surely this was a curious thing to be remembering now. Perhaps it was a lesson for her. What do you want of life, Lynn? She might as well ask. Perfection? And she admonished herself: Grow up. Be realistic. Look forward, not back.

  Besides, you love him.…

  He sat down on the bed. He smoothed her hair. “I know you must be thinking you look awful, but you don’t, take my word for it.”

  Gingerly, she felt her cheekbone. It did seem as though the swelling had diminished.

  “Go put on some makeup. I’ll order room service for breakfast. You must be starved.”

  “I had a sandwich yesterday at lunch.”

  “A big breakfast, then. Bacon, eggs, the works.”

  When she came out of the bathroom, he was moving the table on which the breakfast had been laid. “These waiters never do it just right. You’d think they’d know enough to put the table where one can enjoy the view. There, that’s better. As soon as we’re finished, I want you to go out with me. We’ve an errand on the avenue.”

  “What is it?”

  “A surprise. You’ll see.”

  In the elevator they met Bruce Lehman.

  “I thought you’d have gone home by now,” Robert said.

  “No, I’ve got to pick up something first. Remember? How are you feeling, Lynn? We missed you last night.” He was carefully not looking straight at her.

  Robert answered. “She fell and was too embarrassed to go to the dinner with a lump on her face.”

  “A bruise can’t spoil you, as pretty as you are,” Bruce said, now turning his full gaze to her.

  Josie liked to say that she had married him because his eyes had a friendly twinkle, and he liked cats. This twinkle was visible even behind his glasses. He reminded Lynn of a photograph in some advertisement of country life, a sturdy type in a windbreaker, tramping a field, accompanied by a pair of little boys or big dogs.

  “Mind if we go with you?” asked Robert. “You gave me a very good idea last night.”

  “Of course not. Come along. I bought a bracelet yesterday for Josie,” Bruce explained to Lynn. “I wanted them to engrave her initials on it and it will be ready this morning.”

  “I was going to surprise Lynn,” Robert chided lightly. “Well, no matter. We’ll be there in a minute, anyway.”

  She was disturbed. There was a right time for gifts, a right mood for receiving them. And she remonstrated, “Robert, I don’t need anything. Really.”

  “No one ever needs jewelry. But if Bruce can have the pleasure, why can’t I have it?”

  In the shop, which was itself a small jewel of burnished wood, velvet carpet, and crystal lights, Bruce displayed the narrow gold bangle he had ordered.

  “Like it, Lynn? Do you think Josie will?”

  “It’s lovely. She’ll be so happy with it.”

  “Well, it won’t make up for the mastectomy, God knows, but I thought—a little something, I thought—” His voice quavered and he stopped.

  Robert had gone to the other side of the shop and now summoned Lynn.

  “Come here, I want you to look at this.”

  Set in a web of woven gold threads was a row of cabochon stones—rubies, sapphires, and emeralds in succession.

  “This,” Robert said, “is what I call a bracelet.”

  “Byzantine,” the salesman explained. “Handwoven. The originals are in museums.”

  “Try it on, Lynn.”

  The price tag was too small to be legible, but she knew enough without asking, and so replied, “It’s much too expensive.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” Robert objected. “If I’m going to buy, I’m not going to buy junk. Either the best or nothing. Try it on.”

  Obeying, she went to the mirror. Unaccustomed to such magnificence, she felt an awkwardness; she had the air of a young girl.

  When Bruce came over, Robert commanded her, “Show Bruce what you’re getting.”

  “It’s Robert’s idea. I really don’t—” she began.

  Bruce laid his hand on her arm and quite oddly, she thought, corrected her. “It’s beautiful. Take it. You deserve it,” and to Robert added, “We have good wives. They deserve our best.”

  So the purchase was concluded.

  “Keep the bracelet in your pocketbook,” Robert said. “It’s not insured yet, and the suitcase might get lost.”

  “Like yours,” Bruce said.

  “You didn’t want the bracelet,” Robert said when they were flying home, “because you think I was trying to make up for what I did yesterday. But you’re wrong. And it’s nothing compared with what I’ll be giving you someday.” He chuckled. “On the other hand, compared with what that cipher bought for Josie—”

  “Why do you call Bruce a cipher? He’s one of the most intelligent people we know.”

  “You’re right, and I used the wrong word. What I meant was that hell never set the world on fire. That much I can tell you.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to,” she retorted with mild indignation.

  “He does his work at the office all right and makes a good impression, but in my opinion he lacks brilliance, the kind that keeps a man staying late and coming back on Saturday when everyone else is taking it easy.”

  “He’s had to be home a lot with Josie when she was so awfully sick, you know that. Now that she’s so much better, it’ll be different.”

  “Well, they’re an odd couple, anyway. She effervesces like a bottle of fizz, while he has the personality of a clam.”

  “That’s not true. He’s just not talkative. He listens.” And she said quietly, “You’ve never liked Bruce and Josie, have you?”

  “Now, that’s not true either.” Robert clasped her hand, which lay on the armrest. “Oh, the dickens with everybody except us, anyway. Lynn, I’ve got
a good hunch that there’s a big change in the air for us. Things were said last night both to me and about me that make it fairly sure I’ll be tapped for the New York post. What have you got to say about that?”

  “That I’m not surprised. If anyone deserves it, you do.”

  “I’ll be in charge of marketing the whole works from the Mississippi to the Atlantic.”

  She was having a private thought, vaguely lonesome: I shall miss Helen and Josie.

  “They may be sending one or two others from here, under me, of course. There’s a general switching going on all over the map.”

  “I hope Bruce goes.”

  “Because of Josie, naturally. You depend too much on her, Lynn.”

  “I don’t depend on her at all. I don’t know how you can say that.”

  “I can say it because I see it.” After a minute he mused. “New York. Then, who knows? The international division. Overseas. London. Paris. Up and up to the very top. Company president when I’m fifty. It’s possible, Lynn. Just have faith in me.”

  He was an exceptional man, not to be held back. Everyone knew it, and she, his wife, knew it most of all. Again he clasped her hand, turning upon her his infectious, brilliant smile.

  “Love me? With all my faults?”

  Love him. Joined to him, no matter what. From the very first day. No matter what. Explain it? As soon explain the force of the rising tide.

  “Love me?” he persisted.

  “Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes.”

  PART TWO

  Spring 1988

  The house lay comfortably on a circle of lawn and spread its wings against the dark rise of hills behind it. The architect, who had built it for himself, had brought beams from old New England barns and pine paneling from old houses to recreate the eighteenth century within commuting distance of Manhattan. The windows had twelve panes; and the fanlight at the front door was authentic.