Whispers

by Belva Plain

  “I tried to, but he wouldn’t answer me, wouldn’t even look at me. I don’t like to leave home this way, Mom,” Emily said, now crying hard.

  Lynn stood up to put her arms around her daughter. “Darling, this isn’t the way I planned it either. Things will work out. They always do. Just have patience. Believe me.”

  How often, not knowing what else to say, you had to rely on platitudes!

  “Patience isn’t going to help you, Mom.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lynn said.

  “I know he hit you this morning. Eudora told me.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  A shiver passed along Lynn’s spine and ran like cold fingers through her nerves. Her arms dropped; like bewildered rabbits or deer caught on the road at night by the sudden glare of headlights, unsure whether to stand or run, the two women paused.

  “She said I mustn’t let you know she told me.”

  “So why did she do it?” Lynn wailed.

  “Well, somebody ought to know, and I’m your oldest child.”

  “How could she have done this? She had no right.”

  “Don’t be angry at her, Mom. She feels so bad for you. She told me you’re the nicest, kindest person she ever worked for.”

  Lynn was not mollified. What a terrible thing for Emily to be leaving home for the first time with this fresh information in her poor young head! This unnecessary information! It was mine to give when I was ready to give it, and not before, she thought.

  “Promise you won’t be angry at Eudora?”

  Emily knelt at the chair onto which Lynn now fell and laid her head on her mother’s knee, her wet cheeks dampening the thin silk skirt. Over and over, Lynn smoothed her daughter’s hair, from the beating temples to the nape where the ribbon held the ponytail. A scent of perfume came from the hair, and she had to smile through her tears; Emily had been at her bottle of Joy again.

  She stroked and stroked, thinking that this was to be another home broken in America. A statistic. This girl was a statistic, as were Annie and the baby in the crib across the hall. And her mind, as it went back to the beginning, asked almost reproachfully: Who would have believed it could end like this?

  Her mind turned pages in an album, the pages rustling as they flashed disjointed pictures. Their first dinner, his wonderful face in candlelight, and she herself bewitched. People praising him, and she in a kind of awe that he belonged to her. The wedding music, the double ring, and the blaze of sunshine on the church steps when they came out together. The hotel room in Mexico and his dark rage. The death of Caroline and his arms around her. Slaps and shoves, falls and tears. The snowman on the lawn, hot chocolate afterward, and Robert at the piano with the girls. The bench in Chicago and the half-crazed beggar woman laughing at her. The rapture of the night when Bobby was conceived. This morning. Now.

  Again Emily asked, “You won’t be angry at Eudora?”

  “No, I won’t be.”

  What difference did it make, after all? When the end came, Emily would find out a whole lot more. And a great sigh came out of Lynn’s heavy chest.

  The unthinkable was happening, or was about to. Leaving Robert! Just yesterday she would have said, would have said in spite of everything, that there is always a way; there is so much good here too; there is always hope that the last time really was the last. But today was different. A great, unheralded, unexpected change had taken place within her. She was a good woman, deserving of a better life, and she was going to have it from now on.

  Ah, yes! But how to do it? Ways and means. She calculated: In a short while, a few months, Robert would be sent abroad. It would be quite logical then for him to go ahead to prepare for their housing while she stayed behind to settle last-minute business here at home. Then, from a safe distance, she would let him know they were not going to follow him, and that she was through. Finished.

  But where to go, with a baby still in arms and without a penny of her own? How to prepare? Bruce had said: Talk to Tom Lawrence. Well, perhaps she would. But she could see his bright, ironic face. He would be remembering, although surely he would never say, I told you so. Bruce had said: He admires you. Tom had said that brutal morning when Annie ran away: When you need help, I will be here for you. In a queer and subtle way, and in spite of the anguish of this day, she felt now a faint touch of self-esteem.

  Emily got up, wiped her face, and began to fold sweaters.

  “Let me help you,” Lynn said. This movement, the physical action of emptying drawers and packing a suitcase, was a physical pain. It was too final for them both.

  “Oh, Mom, I can’t bear to leave you like this. Why do you put up with it? Why?” Emily cried, her tone high and piercing.

  The tension had to be eased, the girl must get a night’s sleep and leave in relative calmness to take the plane. So Lynn said softly, “Honey, don’t worry about what Eudora told you. I’m sure she exaggerated.”

  “It isn’t only what happened this morning. Before Bobby was born, something happened. I know the truth about that too.”

  Startled, Lynn stopped folding. “What do you mean?”

  “The night you got into the thorn hedge and the people across the road, the Stevenses, called the police.”

  “Who told you that? Did Lieutenant Weber?” And a terrible anger rose in Lynn. Was the whole world conspiring to spread the news?

  “No, no, he wouldn’t do that, ever. Harris heard his father telling his mother. They didn’t know he was sitting on the porch and could hear them in their living room. And when they found out that he’d overheard, his father asked him not to let me know. He said I mustn’t be embarrassed or hurt in any way. But Harris did tell me. I suppose he shouldn’t have, but he was worried, and he thought I ought to know. Not that I didn’t already have my own ideas about it.”

  “I see,” Lynn said.

  She glanced at the wall where Emily’s camp photo hung. Eight girls sat on a cabin’s steps with Emily in the middle of the row, eight girls who perhaps knew more dreadful things than their naive expressions revealed. My girl, my Emily.

  “I was sick. I was so ashamed before him when he told me. I was so ashamed for all of us, for the family that’s supposed to be so respectable, with people all impressed by Dad’s awards and his charities and this house and everything. I was so ashamed, I was sick. How could my father do that to you? But I’d been right the morning after when I didn’t believe your explanation. Why didn’t I believe it? Why ever did I suspect that there was something more? When I love Dad so? Then you denied it so strongly and I thought I mustn’t think about my parents this way, it doesn’t make sense. And when you came back from your trip and seemed so happy together, I thought surely that I’d been all wrong. I was even ashamed of myself because of the thoughts I’d had.

  “You were already pregnant with Bobby when Harris told me. We were walking in the woods up at the lake. I guess I fell apart, and he took me in his arms to comfort me. He was so strong and kind! That’s when it happened, when we made love. We’d planned not to do it until we were older, honestly we had. A lot of the kids start sex even in junior high, everybody knows that. But you never see things in the papers or on TV about all the kids who don’t, even in high school.” And Emily, giving a little sob, continued, “It’s funny, Mom, when I go over it in my mind, how making love just seemed to grow out of the comfort and the kindness. It just seemed to be all one thing, do you know? And it happened just like that. I guess I’m not explaining it very well. I guess maybe you can’t understand how it was.”

  Lynn was still looking at the photograph; that was the year Emily got braces on her teeth; there were elastic bands on the wires, and she’d gone around to show them off to her friends. She could not look at Emily when she answered.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “It took so long for your hands and your arms to heal last summer, and every time I saw the scabs, I wanted to tell you that I knew. But I’d made so much trouble for you already, that I felt
I had no right to make more. And that time Annie ran away, you remember that Uncle Bruce told us both to keep things peaceful for the baby’s sake, for all our sakes?”

  “You told me.”

  “And then,” Emily said, “when Bobby came, he was so darling. You looked so beautiful holding him. And Dad was so nice, too, really himself. I thought, well, just forget what happened and keep your secret. It’s the best you can do. Keep the peace, as Uncle Bruce said you should.”

  “And how well you have done it.”

  “I tried. But now that I’m going away, there’s something I want to tell you. You were looking at that camp picture a minute ago. Now I have a picture I want to show you.”

  From a folder in her desk drawer she drew a photograph, evidently an enlarged snapshot, of a little boy not more than a year old. He was sitting on the floor, holding a striped ball three times the size of the tiny face under its full head of straight black hair.

  “He looks like an Indian,” Lynn said. “He’s cute.”

  Emily turned the picture over.

  “Read the name.”

  “Jeremy Ferguson, with love from Querida,” Lynn read, and paused. It was a long pause. Then, “Where did you get this?” she asked.

  “When Bobby was born and Aunt Jean came to visit, she brought me a box of pictures. There was Dad from birth to college, there were my grandparents and their grandparents, taken in the eighteen eighties, really interesting, and then I found this, which looks modern. When I asked who the boy was, she said very quickly, ‘Oh, some distant cousin in your father’s family, I’m not sure who. I cannot think how it ever came to me,’ and changed the subject. But she was flustered and of course there has to be more to it. Who is he, Mom?”

  Lynn was unnerved. There was too much happening all at once, too much to endure without adding a long, fruitless explanation and questions that she was in no mood to answer.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “Mom dear, look me in the eye and tell me that’s the truth.”

  Lynn closed her eyes, shook her head, and pleaded, “What difference does it make? Do we need any more trouble? Don’t complicate things. You have no need to know.”

  Emily persisted. “Well, you’re telling me in spite of yourself. You’re telling me Dad has another child.”

  Lynn sighed and gave up. “Yes, all right. There was a boy born to his first marriage. I’m surprised Jean kept the picture. She must have been very fond of him.”

  “And Querida? Is she his mother?”

  “Yes. Listen, Emily, if your father finds out that Jean gave this to you, he’ll be wild.”

  “She didn’t give it to me. I distracted her, and later when she looked for it, she couldn’t find it.”

  “Emily! Why on earth do you do these things?” Lynn lamented.

  “Because I want to understand. I have a half brother and I never even knew it. This secrecy makes no sense, unless there’s a whole lot behind it, in which case it may make sense.”

  “You’re looking for trouble. Your father’s angry enough without your making things worse. Besides, he has a right to privacy, regardless of anything else. So do put that thing away. Please.”

  “All right, Mom, since it upsets you.” With a swift tear Emily destroyed the photo. “There, that’s over. But I have one more thing to tell you. Querida is in New York.”

  “How on earth do you know that?”

  “I don’t know it for a fact, but I’m making connections, Sherlock Holmes stuff. That time in New York before Bobby was born, when I met Aunt Jean there, we were in a taxi on my way to Grand Central to go home, and she got out first a few blocks before. We stopped at the corner for a red light, so I was able to see where she went. It was a store with the name ‘Querida.’ Mom, it’s got to be the same person.”

  Lynn had a sudden picture of herself standing on the street with Tom on the day they had ridden home together on the train. In the window of the shop there had been a painting of sheep, and the name on the sign was QUERIDA. And she remembered the twinge of recognition, the stab of jealousy and curiosity, the wanting to know, the wanting not to know. But all that meant nothing, after this morning.

  She said so now. “It means nothing, Emily. I don’t care where she is or who she is. So please forget Sherlock Holmes, will you?”

  “Okay.”

  Emily was packing a small stuffed polar bear among the sweaters. Her profile was grave, and her face when she turned back to Lynn was suddenly older than her years, so she questioned.

  “May I ask you something, Mom?”

  This child with the stuffed animal, this little woman …

  “Anything, my darling. Ask.”

  “Why didn’t you ever call the police?”

  As if by an automatic reflex Lynn had to attempt a defense.

  “Your father’s not some drunkard who comes home and beats his wife every Saturday night,” she said quietly, realizing in the instant that these had been Robert’s very own words.

  “But that night? That one night? The neighbors heard, and they called, so it must have been pretty bad.”

  “I couldn’t, Emily. Don’t ask for an answer I can’t give. Please don’t.”

  In a flood came the terrible sensation of the night when Weber had confronted Robert. Her one thought then had been that her children must be spared this hideous shame. Beyond her understanding were the women who could let their children watch their father being taken away by the police, unless of course they had been beaten most awfully.… This was not Lynn’s case, and Emily knew it was not.

  “I feel sorry for all of us,” said Emily. “And in a queer way, for Dad too.”

  In a queer way, yes.

  “Tell me, Mom, may I ask what you are going to do?”

  “I am going to leave him,” replied Lynn, and burst into tears.

  The polar bear’s black eyes looked astonished. The very stillness was astonished.

  “When did you decide?”

  “This morning. It came to me this morning. Why today and not the other times? I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  “It had to be sometime,” said Emily with pity.

  Lynn covered her face again, whispering as if to herself alone, “He was—he is—was—the love of my life.”

  The sentimental, melodramatic words were the purest truth.

  “Sometimes I think I’m dreaming what’s happened to us all,” Emily said.

  Lynn raised her head, pleading, “Don’t commit yourself and your free will to any man. Don’t.”

  “To no one? Ever? You can’t mean that, Mom.”

  “I suppose not. Certainly don’t do it yet. Don’t let Harris disappoint you. Don’t let him hurt you.”

  “He never will. Harris is steady. He’s level. There are no extremes in him.”

  Yes, one could see that. There was no sparkle in him, either, thought Lynn, recalling the young Robert, who had lighted up her sky.

  “If I tell you something, you won’t laugh?” And before Lynn could promise not to laugh, Emily continued, “We made a list, each of us did, of all the qualities we’d need in the person we marry and whether the other one had those qualities. Then we read the list aloud to see how they matched. And they did, almost exactly. Now wasn’t that very sensible of us? Harris said his parents did that, too, when they were young, so that’s how he got the idea. They’re really such good people, the Webers. You can feel the goodness in their house. I think a person’s family is so important, don’t you?”

  “It’s not everything.”

  “It helps, though,” said Emily, as wisely as if she had had a lifetime’s experience with humanity’s woes.

  The confident assertion was a childish one, and yet, perhaps … I knew really nothing about Robert, Lynn told herself. He came as a stranger. And comparing the wild, thoughtless passion she had felt for him with her daughter’s “sensible” list, she felt only bafflement.

  “I think Bobby’s crying,” said Emi
ly, tilting her head listening.

  “He’s probably wet.”

  “I’ll go, Mom. You’re too upset.”

  “No, I’ll go. You finish packing.”

  “I want to hold him. He might be asleep when I leave in the morning.”

  The night-light sent a pink glow into the corner where the crib stood. While Lynn watched, Emily soothed the baby, changed him, and cradled him in her arms.

  “Look at his hair! I should have been the blonde,” she complained with a make-believe pout.

  “You’ll do as you are.”

  So these were her children, this young woman in all her grace, and this treasure of a baby boy, the son of Robert, from whom she was about to part.

  Emily whispered, swaying lightly while Bobby fell back to sleep on her shoulder, “When are you going to do what you said?”

  “I have to think. I have to think of Annie and you and him.”

  “We’ll be fine. We’ll still be a family, Mom.”

  “Oh, my God!” Lynn exclaimed.

  “It must be awful for you, but you have to do it. Eudora said it was terrible—”

  Lynn raised her hand for silence. A sudden vision of the scene with Bruce that afternoon, a recurring shock, had produced the exclamation. If Emily knew that! If Robert knew it! And yet in a curious way, she wished he could be told and be wounded in the very heart of his pride, wounded and bloodied.

  She steadied herself. “I’ll drive you to Kennedy in the morning. Have you called Annie at camp to say good-bye?”

  “No, I’ll phone her when I get there. And I’ll write often. I’ll be so worried about you all, Mom.”

  “You mustn’t be. I want you to concentrate on what you have to do. I want you to see yourself as Dr. Ferguson in your white coat with a stethoscope around your neck.” And Lynn forced a smile. Then she thought of something else. “Will you talk to your father too? I’m sure his anger will fade if you give him a little time. And he is still your father, who loves you, no matter what else.”

  When they closed Bobby’s door, the hall light shone on Emily’s wet eyes.

  “Just give me a little time first too,” she said, “and then I will.”