by Belva Plain
“Just beautiful. ‘Palm trees and a pool.’ Do you know you’re disgusting?” And he wondered how he could survive this horror.
“I know I must seem so. But it isn’t only the glamour, Adam, believe me. He happens to be a very nice, kind man. And no old sugar daddy either. He’s not even forty.” Randi wiped her cheeks with her sleeve. “You can’t imagine how many nights I couldn’t sleep and cried. Because I care about you so much, Adam. I understand why you can’t believe me, and I can’t blame you, but it’s true. I swear it’s true, that I’ve been torn into pieces.”
“I would like very much to tear you into pieces myself. Don’t you understand that any fool can see through the whole sham? We had wonderful times in bed, but that’s all it was to you, and nothing more. Somebody with money came along, so now you’re off and away. That’s the story. And you’re a bitch. That’s the rest of the story.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a practical person. Do you think my life has been a bed of roses?”
“Most people’s lives aren’t.”
“True, but this is my life. I need to get what I can out of it. I need to understand myself.”
“You’re not hard to understand. Glitter and gold, the fleshpots.”
“Well, some of that, I’m not denying it. Doesn’t everybody like money? I’ve often told you I want to get away and see things. I’ve never seen anything but this town. People come here to the university and talk about where they’ve come from and where they’re going. And I listen to them, thinking, When am I ever going to go anywhere? California, New York, anywhere?”
“And you just found it out now when this nice, kind man from California appeared.”
“I’ve never made a secret of my longing.”
Maybe—probably—she had mentioned something, some of her longings, but they had seemed trivial, nothing to which you would pay attention.
“Perhaps there’s a part of me that knows I wouldn’t be happy forever in a small midwestern city like yours. I imagine it’s not too different from here, only larger. And if I were to be discontented, I wouldn’t be doing justice to you.”
“How selfless, how noble!”
“I’m sorry, Adam. I’m so sorry to end this way. But I’ve had to make a quick decision.”
So soft she was! The black hair, the milky skin, the silk robe, the little velvet slippers—all soft. He wanted to seize hold of that softness and crush it, just stamp on it; he understood how, in one swift second, a dreadful crime can be committed.
“I beg you to understand,” she pleaded. “I beg you to try.”
All their nights and days—what had they meant?
“We made love last night.… What was it to you? Why did you do it?”
“I wanted us to finish with something beautiful to remember.”
She was sobbing. When she held out her hand to him, he pushed it roughly away and went to the bathroom to change into his clothes.
“In the long run you wouldn’t be happy with me, Adam,” she said when he came out.
His heart was thumping and his hands trembling as he buttoned his overcoat. She followed him to the outer door. The wine bottle was still on the table.
“Quite a celebration,” he said as he passed it.
“A farewell dinner, Adam. I hope I’ve done the right thing, and I believe I have. It will work out better for you this way. You’ll see. You’ll get over it faster than you think.”
“God damn you,” he said. “Drop dead.” And he slammed the door.
His heart, in its killing rage, still shuddered so dreadfully that for a moment he had to lean against the railing before he set off toward his room. He made a detour through the park. The thought of his room, the books and the Sunday silence, was unbearably depressing. The morning was overcast and gray, with wind sharp as a knife and the world gone insane, without logic, without reason.
It’s not, he thought, as if she were merely another tempting body without heart or brains. She had charm, refinement, feeling—why, her feel for music alone must show that! And yet she had played with his love so lightly and, aware of his enchantment as she must have been—had he not told her and shown her often enough?—had kept on playing with it until she was ready to toss it away. What did her tears mean? Leaving him, taking a part of himself with her, to be flushed down a sewer. And she said she loved him!
On the black, still water of the pond lay islands of white melting ice. Three ducks floated round and round among them, going nowhere. Like me, he thought, and halted to watch. Where now? Then it came to him that Margaret could have said the same if he had struck her down as Randi had just now struck him.… And for a long time he kept standing there in the cold, watching the ducks.
I wouldn’t be happy in a small city like yours. In the long run you wouldn’t be happy with me.
It was true that now, when he considered it, he could not see Randi raking leaves in an Elmsford yard. Margaret raked leaves.… But he had lost his first love for Margaret. More’s the pity, a great, sad pity.
How long he stood there, he did not know. His hands, thickly gloved and thrust into his pockets, were frozen, and there was no place to go but back to his room.
Long past midnight he was still awake, turning and turning his thoughts in a great circle.
“Do you have to have ‘love’?” he asked himself after a while. Cannot trust and friendship, respect and admiration, be enough? Or even more than enough? For look what “love” had brought him!
Of course, there was no reason why he should commit himself to anyone or anything. Surely there was no need for him, at twenty-five, to marry. Or to marry at all, ever. No reason, except that he already had committed himself. And he had a vision of a pathetic dress drooping unworn in a closet. He had a vision of Margaret, crushed and humiliated as he himself was now.
He was a rationalist who believed that for the most part, you were the determinant of your own fate, yet it seemed to him now that all this—this affair—with Randi had obviously not been meant to be. It had been a diversion from his ordained path.
With a shiver of revulsion he suddenly recalled the “beautiful house, the palm trees, and the pool.” Great wealth did not interest him. To make a decent living was enough. He would settle with his work, and for love of it he would do his best. It would not be the thrilling world he had pictured with Randi, but it would be worthy, and he would try to make it happy in a different way.
An enviable position, a fine girl, these had been given him, and he should be grateful.
PART TWO
1988 to 1994
THREE
In the long June evening on the longest day of the year, the sun drew swooping curves of lemon-colored light upon the grass. In the shadow of the elms, where the little group sat, the grass was darkly blue. The fire had died in the barbecue pit, and near the picnic table a pair of squirrels foraged for crumbs from the anniversary cake, while under the table the dogs lay sleeping off their dinner. From the farthest edge of the yard, past the garden where tomato plants throve and peas had climbed halfway up the poles, came the cheerful click of croquet balls. Nina, home for vacation, was having a game with Adam and the children.
Margaret, surveying this intimate little world, searching as usual for just the right word to describe it, could find nothing more apt than cozy.
“Adam looks well,” remarked Cousin Louise, “not a minute older than on your wedding day.”
It was true. His sandy hair was as thick as it had been, his slight stoop was no more pronounced than it had been fifteen years ago, and in Margaret’s mind the word for him was still elegant.
“How about Margaret?” asked Cousin Gilbert. “Margaret will never grow old.”
He and Louise bore out the rather silly saying that long-married couples begin to resemble each other; they were both comfortably padded, with florid cheeks and friendly temperaments, talkative, and kindly.
“Margaret will have her beauty when she is eighty,” observed Fred Davis, w
ith his pale blue eyes going grave and thoughtful.
“Oh, I shall be covered with freckles by then,” said Margaret, regarding the sprinkle on her white arms. “So far, thank goodness and thanks to big hats, my face has been spared.”
She was feeling a pure, light calmness. This was one of those blessed moments in which all the strands of life seem to come properly together, to fit and weave. Fifteen years! Now, looking up at the old roof that sheltered them all, herself and Adam with Megan, Julie, and Danny, she made the impossible wish: that life might always be as it was this minute.
“Do you by any chance want to part with this puppy?” asked Fred, who had taken the mongrel pup on his lap and was stroking its head.
“I think I have some people who’ll give it a home. Why? You don’t want a dog, do you?”
“You know, I think I do. The house has developed echoes since I lost Denise last year. At first I was glad that she hadn’t left children to grow up without a mother, but now I wish she had.” And as if to himself he repeated, “The house has echoes. My own footsteps are too loud.”
There were sounds of sympathy from Louise. And Margaret said, “I’ll find a dog for you. Ever since I made that contact with the pound the time I found the sick collie abandoned on the road, they’ve kept calling me, two or three times a month, to find homes. So far I’ve been lucky. I’m sure a nice, man-sized dog will be turning up.”
“No, this one suits me fine, if I may have it. He’s small enough to ride along wherever I go and to sit in the office with me.”
The little animal and the tall, powerful man were incongruous, although Fred’s hands and his mild eyes were very gentle. There was something touching about him since he had become a widower. He was only five years older than Adam, but he looked older than that. His firm, square face could take on a wistful look. He had always been something of a neighborhood older brother to the boy Adam, and was now one of the few people whose informal visits were at all welcome to Adam.
“He’s lonesome,” she had remarked more than once. “He really needs to be married again.”
And Adam in joking mood replied, “He’s waiting for you.” And she in joking mood answered, “Why? Are you planning to divorce me, or to kill yourself? Which is it?”
“He’s yours,” she said now. “His name is Jimmy, unless you want to change it.”
“Jimmy will do.” And again the pale eyes regarded Margaret with that thoughtful, grave expression.
“I must ask Adam how he marinates the meat,” Louise said briskly, changing the mood. “I was looking at your spice shelf before. You have things that I never heard of.”
Margaret smiled. “Whenever we travel, we go exploring markets. Last year, I think we saw every Chinese food store in San Francisco. Adam knows fruits and vegetables that I never knew existed either. His computer and his exotic recipes are his two loves.”
“What’s this about two loves? I have three,” asked Adam as the troop came carrying balls and mallets.
“Megan, Danny, and me. Mostly me!” cried Julie.
She was ten and, like her older sister, was almost a copy of Adam even to her thin, straight nose.
“But our team won the game,” Danny said. “Me and Nina. We beat them, didn’t we, Nina?”
“Yes, and we’ll do it again,” said Nina, ruffling the curly red hair that Danny naturally hated.
The children adored Nina, and not merely because she adored them; she possessed a charm that could not help but attract anyone. The headstrong child had become a confident young woman, filled with a vivid enthusiasm. And to some extent Margaret had to credit herself, because she was the one who had argued against Adam that Nina must be allowed to make her own choices, to go her own way.
“I hear,” said Louise, “that you’re a big success in New York.”
“ ‘A big success’? No, but with a little luck I hope to be. Anyway, I’m feeling better about myself than I would be feeling now if I hadn’t left college after the first year. I’d have graduated last month with a B.A., a smattering of history and English literature, and nowhere to go, nothing to do with myself.”
“You make it sound awfully bleak,” Adam said. “A B.A. from a good college has no value in your estimation?”
“For most people I’m sure it has. I was never a student. You know that. You’re not comparing me with Margaret, I hope.” Nina turned suddenly to Margaret. “Sometimes I think I must have been a disappointment to you. All those nights when you pulled me through chemistry and math! Right up there,” she said, pointing to the window above, “at my desk next to that window. And you were never impatient, you never made me feel ashamed.”
“There was never any reason to be ashamed. Not then, and surely not now. You were you, and I’m glad you’re doing what you wanted to do.”
With a particular tenderness different from that which she felt for her children—who had a mother and father of their own—she met Nina’s clear gaze. Such a sprightly young thing she was in her short yellow dress!
“I just wish New York wasn’t so far away,” murmured Margaret. She had not meant to say it; the thought had simply escaped into speech.
“I know. But it’s wonderful! Every day you can choose from a hundred things to see or hear. I guess I’m just not a small-town person,” Nina said, adding quickly, “not that Elmsford is exactly a small town.”
Louise urged, “Tell us what’s been happening to you.”
“Well, after I finished that course in design, I had to look for a job, of course—”
“But tell what happened before that, at the school,” Margaret prompted.
“Yes, at the school we had a contest, to plan a room. I was assigned a boy’s room, a boy about eight, so of course I thought of you, Danny, and since I know what you like, I had a head start.” Nina concluded modestly, “And so, I won.”
“Don’t be modest,” said Gilbert. “We’re only family. Go on.”
“Well, somebody wrote an article about the winners, so when I went job hunting, I brought the clipping with me, and after the third try I got a job. That’s about it.”
“You started at the top,” Margaret reminded her. “Crozier and Dexter. Whenever I pick up a decoration and art magazine at the hairdresser’s, I see their name.”
“Oh, they’re the top, all right,” Nina admitted. “I guess I have to say it was a coup, a lucky coup for me. I’m learning so much from them! They even let me help a bit, green as I am, with the room they’re doing in the Farnsworth Settlement’s model house benefit. That’s the most important annual showhouse in the city. It was great fun, and I think I learned a lot.”
“Crozier and Dexter,” said Louise. “I must look for the name. Are they men or women?”
“Two guys, Willie and Ernie.”
“Aha,” cried Gilbert. “Which one has his eye on you?”
Nina laughed. “Neither, you can be sure. Willie and Ernie are—married, so to speak.”
“Oh, dear,” said Louise with a little sniff.
Adam laughed. “It’s safer for Nina that way, don’t you see?”
And Nina retorted, “Not at all. I can find plenty without Willie and Ernie.”
“I’m sure of that,” said Fred, who still had the puppy on his lap. He made a mock face of sorrow so that everyone laughed. “Oh, if I were younger, Miss Nina! I remember you sitting in your stroller.”
It was growing dark. A narrowing line of hazy pink wavered in the western sky. Then a slight wind stirred, and the birds went silent.
Adam stood up, saying, “Let’s go inside. Who wants popcorn?”
He always knows what the children want, thought Margaret. And Louise, expressing the same thought, remarked, “Do you realize that Adam’s been entertaining those children all afternoon? Between softball, croquet, Japanese origami, you name it, those are three lucky kids.”
“Yes, and I think they know it too,” Margaret said comfortably.
Indoors, after the popcorn had been made in
the kitchen, the men, followed by children, dogs, and a trail of popcorn on the floor, went to the computer room to see Adam’s latest miraculous acquisition. The three women went to the parlor. Before the evening ended, Julie would be asked to play something on the piano. This was a routine in the Crane house; family and close friends expected it and found it pleasant.
Nina looked around at the familiar room, the banjo clock, the old sepia photographs, and the rolltop desk heaped with chemistry and biology final exams to be graded. “It seems ages since I lived here,” she said. “Do you think you’ll ever move?”
Margaret shook her head. “Why should we? It’s home.”
“Don’t you get tired of it? It’s typical gingerbread.”
“My great-grandfather built it.”
“That’s sentimental.”
“Maybe so, but I don’t care,” Margaret said with a smile. Nina had always been blunt. But that was good. It was good to know what people were really thinking.
“Then let me fix it up. There’s plenty of space here, tall windows and high ceilings. I could do things with it.”
“So? What would you do?”
“Get rid of all this heavy furniture, to begin with.”
“Why? It’s good stuff, well kept and polished, nothing wrong with it. And it’s old.”
“But not the right kind of old. If it were eighteenth century or French Empire or something, that would be different.”
“ ‘Empire’? Which empire?” Margaret teased.
“Napoleon, of course.”
“The first or the third?”
“Oh, you know I don’t know any history. I only know there’s one with the eagle and the bee and a lot of ancient-Rome business. One handsome piece, a desk for instance, could change this whole room. That alone, and perhaps a touch of gilt here and there around the room, would do wonders for it.” Nina got up and walked around. “Also, a small fruitwood table next to this chair,” she mused. “A pair of lusters on the mantel, reupholster everything pale blue and dark red, a pair of plain modern pull-up chairs here—I love an eclectic room. I’m positively itching to try.”