Promises

by Belva Plain

  “My daughter’s here. Megan. The girl in the yellow suit down there.”

  “Don’t panic. What are you going to do?”

  “Drop dead, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Who’s the woman?”

  “The famous Cousin Louise. This must be her surprise treat for Megan.”

  “Look, you’d better get hold of yourself before you do drop dead. Events are unfolding, my friend. You’ll just have to accept them as they come.”

  “If there were some other way of getting out of here, I could pay now and leave before we’re seen. But I don’t see any way.” In desperation Adam was searching for an exit.

  “You could make a dashing escape through the kitchen, I suppose.”

  “Randi, don’t be sarcastic. Oh, my God, Megan’s getting up to go to the ladies’ room. How am I going to explain—”

  “You’ve made your plan, I’m a customer, consultant, whatever you want.”

  “Yes, yes, of course—why, Megan, what are you doing here? I didn’t know you were going here.”

  “Neither did I. Cousin Louise took me shopping at home, and then we went here.”

  “Oh, that’s great.” He had risen to kiss his daughter and now sat down again. “Don’t let me keep you. You’re with Cousin Louise,” he said, wishing that Megan would go quickly.

  But well brought up as she was, Megan was waiting for an introduction. Or perhaps, more probably, she was curious.…

  “My daughter, Megan,” he said. “Miss—”

  “Bunting, Randi Bunting,” said Randi, very clearly.

  Why the hell had she done that? And Adam, bringing his shoe sharply down upon her thin sandal, explained. “We’re having a business talk here. Computer companies, you know. We have to keep on the ball. New ideas all the time.” He was making an ass of himself.

  “You look like your father,” said Randi. “You and your sister look like him.”

  “So they tell me,” replied Megan, who was examining Adam’s hot face.

  “She’s prettier than I am,” said Adam, being jovial.

  Megan did not smile back. And in her very adult expression of thoughtful appraisal, Adam, recognizing himself, went from hot to cold.

  “Well,” she said, “it was nice meeting you. Enjoy your lunch.” And she disappeared into the ladies’ room.

  “You hurt my foot,” said Randi.

  “I meant to. God damn it, why did you give your name?”

  “Because the truth is the best policy.”

  “Go to hell. Look what you’ve done. I could wring your neck.”

  “Listen to me, Adam. It was bound to come out, so better sooner than later.”

  “What’s better about it? It’s easy for you to talk. You saw my daughter. And two more at home.” There was a lump in his throat as big as an apple. Adam’s apple, he thought with a laugh that came out like a sob.

  “Yes, I saw your daughter. You think she’ll be destroyed because of me? No, Adam. That’s one strong, smart girl. She’s a whole lot closer to twenty-seven, or maybe thirty-seven, than seventeen. That’s my opinion. It’ll take a lot more than this to destroy her.”

  “Thanks for your analysis.” He pushed the plate away. “I want to get out of here. Can you hurry?”

  “Yes, I’ll hurry. My birthday lunch. Happy day.”

  “You’re the one who ruined the day. If you’d kept your mouth shut, I would have gotten through it all right.”

  “Until the next time. I’ll tell you what, Adam. You’ve got to give me a date. No more pussyfooting. Give me a date on which you will leave her, an early date. You’ve got to.”

  “What is this, an ultimatum?”

  “You can call it that. I’m tired of this kind of thing, that’s all. It’s humiliating. And don’t you dare scold me for giving my name. It’ll bring things to a head and you’ll be glad I did it. Now let’s get out of here.”

  Crisscrossing through the tables, they managed to leave without having to meet Louise. Once in the car, Randi laid her head back and announced that she wanted to sleep. Adam drove in a silence so deep that it only accentuated the drumming in his ears, the sound of racing blood. Pressure must be at the top of the scale, he thought. A stroke might not be so bad, as long as it killed you outright. A quick way to go. Solves everything.

  He looked over at Randi. Her eyelids were quivering. She was only pretending to be asleep. Then he saw, sliding down her cheek, a small, round, iridescent tear, and his anger at her began to dwindle. Possibly she was right when she said that the truth was always best. And yet it was so hard.… He thought of Nina. She had cried once over the telephone, and he had felt so sad that he was unable to help her. Was he also to be unable to help Randi? Her hands were held loosely in her lap, the curled fingers so delicate, so fragile.

  “Watch the road,” she said. “Don’t keep looking at me.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I thought you were angry.”

  “I was. I am. I don’t want to be.”

  “You’ll have to decide. Now I really want to sleep.”

  She woke when the car stopped at her house. “Are you coming in?” she asked.

  “No. I’d better go home and face whatever I have to.”

  For a moment they stood before the door. Around in a wide arc rose a somber wall of spruce, dark except for the new growth at their tips, little round caps of yellow-green, chartreuse-bright. And he thought, as he stared upward, how many reasons there were to rejoice in this world. If only—

  “I don’t want you to come back until you can give me that date,” Randi said softly. “I meant what I said.”

  She was crying again, and he could not bear to look at her.

  “I’ll try,” he murmured. “Wait for me, Randi. I’ll try.” And he left.

  Megan, still wearing her fashionable suit, was reading alone in the den when Adam came home. When she looked up from the book, not greeting, he again had the feeling that she was appraising him.

  “Mom home?” he inquired.

  “Upstairs. The Armstrongs aren’t coming. She has a cold. Mom’s changing her clothes.”

  “We’ll have a company dinner all to ourselves.” He paused to choose words, nice, normal, casual words. “That makes two rich meals today for you and me.”

  “So it does.”

  She talked like an old woman sometimes when she wanted to, while at other times she was just seventeen.

  “Did you enjoy it? Cousin Louise really went all out for you, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said you’d been shopping with her.”

  “Yes.”

  Adam struggled on. “What did you get?”

  “A sweater and some perfume. The perfume was from Uncle Fred. He gave me money so I could select what I want.”

  “Well, well. I’m proud of you, Megan. Your mother and I are proud of you.”

  “Thank you.”

  He cleared his throat, forced a cough, and said finally, “Megan, there’s something I want to ask of you.” It was wrong, all wrong, to conspire with one’s child against the other parent. He had never done it, yet he felt now that, to avert a crisis, he must do it. “Please don’t mention anything about today. There was nothing to it, an innocent business lunch, that was all. But I’m afraid your mother would misunderstand it, and I don’t want to upset her.”

  Megan raised her eyes to give him a long, cool look. “Why should it upset her? Mom is never easily upset.”

  “It’s hard to explain. The appearance of things can be very misleading, and—”

  “Not telling Mom is like telling a lie to her,” Megan began, “so—”

  “Dad! I hit a home run!” When Danny entered a room, he plunged in, with Rufus plunging behind him, so that all other conversations were abruptly halted.

  “A home run,” Adam said, glad of the interruption. “That’s great. Tell us about it.”

  Danny was still telling about it at the dinner table wh
ile Adam, pretending enthusiasm, glanced now and then toward Megan. Tonight she was in an adult mood. It had been stupid of him to make that proposition to her, not only wrong, but stupid. Danny and Julie would think it fun to have a little secret, and would probably keep it, but Megan is too wise and clever, he thought, not to be suspicious. Besides, Randi had not looked like a woman at a business lunch; Randi had looked frivolous and radiant. Still, he was probably making a mountain out of a molehill.

  Julie said, “Mom, I heard somebody say Megan’s lucky not to be in your bio class. Why isn’t she?”

  “They try never to put teachers’ children in their parents’ classes. But why do you think she’s lucky?”

  “Because you mark harder than Mrs. Duncan’s section.”

  Margaret was amused. She had that funny little crooked smile that made her look winsome. There was also something vulnerable about that smile.

  Oh, God, Adam thought.

  “You’re so silent, Megan,” Margaret said. “You haven’t told us anything about your fancy lunch.”

  “It was good. We had—”

  “Mom, can I have more shrimp? Gee, we never have shrimp unless there’s company.”

  “Yes, Danny, it’s in the refrigerator. But you really must stop interrupting. Megan was speaking.”

  “It wasn’t important,” Megan said. “Only—” She opened her mouth and closed it.

  “Only what?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Megan, that’s so tantalizing. What is it? Say it.”

  “Only that we saw Dad in the restaurant. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “I just got home,” Adam said. “I haven’t had a chance. Yes, I was having lunch with a prospective customer. Incidentally, Mrs. Browning said you’re very pretty, Megan. She’s a nice person.”

  Megan regarded her father steadily. “Her name wasn’t Browning. It was Bunting. Randi Bunting.”

  “Bunting?” Margaret exclaimed. “That’s the woman we met in New York, the one you used to know at State U.”

  “Yes, Bunting. Did I say something else? I meant Bunting.”

  “I thought she lived in California,” Margaret said.

  “She did, but she moved back here a while ago, and I met her accidentally on business.”

  “You never told me.”

  Adam took a gamble. “I told you, Margaret. I told you what a coincidence it was when I ran into her.”

  “No, Adam, you didn’t.”

  “Funny, I was sure I mentioned it. Well, no matter. It’s not important.”

  Margaret straightened herself in the chair. When she looked over at him, her face had no particular expression. And it was this very absence of expression, this flatness, that told him more clearly than the most explicit words could do that she knew everything. She knew.

  Megan was looking down at her plate. She knew too. Oh, Megan, he asked silently, why did you do this?

  Danny and Julie, unaware that something was happening, were having another of their usual mild arguments. No one else spoke until Megan said, “I’ll clear the table.”

  “Mom made ice cream,” Danny shouted. “Strawberry.”

  The ice cream, served in individual dishes, was brought in. Adam was burning, and its frost was welcome. This dinner was taking too long. He needed to hasten it, for the suspense was unbearable. And he had no idea what he would say once he was alone with Margaret. Most probably it would depend upon what she would say first, and she would say plenty. There was a fluttering in his chest, a terrible foreboding. And he sat there silently, swallowing ice cream.

  After Julie had practiced, Danny had gone upstairs to do his homework, and Megan had gone down the street to her best friend’s house, Adam was left alone in the room that Margaret’s mother had called the “back parlor.” And it occurred to him as he sat there that these Victorian walls had never before heard what they would probably have to hear tonight.

  It also occurred to him that he should be the one to go where Margaret was, instead of the one who waited for her. But his will had frozen. Whatever words might pass between them, whatever accusations, evasions, lies, or truths, still the ultimate question would have to be answered: What is to be done about all these? And he thought of the dialogues between himself and Randi that had ended—in his mind, never in hers, for she had her answer ready—with that same question: What is to be done?

  Margaret was wearing a long white robe when she came in. It surprised him that she had gone up to change, as if she had intended to go to bed without speaking to him and had then changed her mind.

  “Do you want to begin?” she asked. “Or shall I?”

  “Perhaps you should.”

  “I have a very simple question. Why have you been lying to me?”

  The plan that had been gradually, tentatively, taking shape in his mind was entirely different from this one. In his plan he would have been the person to orchestrate the discussion, choosing the right time, probably after an argument, to approach the subject of divorce. He would not even have needed to mention the existence of another woman. Now, abruptly, he had become a defendant.

  He said cautiously, “I wouldn’t say that I have lied to you. I did omit, for instance, to tell you I was going to lunch with this woman, but it didn’t seem so—”

  Margaret interrupted him. “Please don’t treat me like a child. Can you possibly have thought I was so insecure that I would object to your having lunch with a businesswoman? No, Adam. Let’s get right to the heart of all those things that fit so neatly into the jigsaw puzzle. Let’s get to ADS’s late-night meetings that never were, to the Saturday pileups of office work that didn’t exist, to the fact that you aren’t even able to put your hand on me.”

  At these words her own hand, resting on the table beside which she stood, had clenched, and her voice shook.

  “Not able to touch me! As if I were a poisonous thing.… Now I understand. Your desire was elsewhere, so I repelled you. I see it perfectly.”

  “No,” he said. “You don’t see. You don’t repel me, Margaret, you—”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, for months, actually, not wanting to, stifling my thoughts, telling myself that you were going through a crisis and that it would pass. You would go for help. Maybe in secret you were already doing so. I thought all that, but I didn’t want to think you were, quite simply, having a cheap, underhanded affair. Stupid, stupid!” She struck her forehead with her palm. “It happens all the time, and yet I never thought of it. Even that night when I accused you and you denied it, I was so willing, I wanted to believe your denial. I wanted to, Adam!” She began to weep. “Maybe I did know the truth. Is that possible? That the knowledge was there, and I smothered it?”

  He thought: This is what I dreaded. Now here it is, and what do I do?

  He was not ready, he had no words with which to meet this torrent of emotion, so he could only evade, only parry and delay.

  “Then explain yourself! Convince me, if you can, that I’m wrong. No, of course you can’t. Look at your face in the mirror. The truth is written all over it. Oh, my God!” she cried, and sat down, huddled, clasping herself and rocking as if seized by some internal agony.

  He felt a dreadful pity and was helpless. He seemed to be confronted with a catastrophe of nature. His strength ebbed and he, too, sat down, struggling to endure and somehow get through the horror. Once he leaned over to touch Margaret’s shoulder and yet, as if paralyzed, did not do it.

  Minutes passed on the clock, five, seven, ten, before she raised her suffering red face, and begged, “Can’t you answer me? It’s my life, my whole life! Don’t you understand?”

  He gave a deep, long sigh and answered, very low, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just tell me why, why?”

  “I don’t know.… It happens. It happens all the time.”

  “But to us? Weren’t we happy, Adam?”

  He was cornered. Unable to look into her piteous eyes, he let his gaze
rest upon her white sash as he mumbled, “Infatuation. That’s the answer, I guess.”

  When she sprang up he was shocked by the sudden violence of her move. Her arm swept out, sending a little porcelain vase to smash on the floor.

  “No, leave it there. Let it smash. You’re smashing the roof in with your ‘infatuation,’ aren’t you? And for that awful woman we saw in New York telling me about her ‘crush’ on you—for her you will ruin everything. A long-lasting crush, isn’t it, for her to follow you, after all these years.”

  “She didn’t follow me. She just happened to move here. It just happened to work out that way.”

  Margaret swallowed hard and knocked her small fists together.

  “Well, Adam, things will have to unhappen, that’s all. Perhaps you’ve forgotten a few small facts, that we have three children. I’m not going to let this damn foolishness hurt them for one minute. You are not going to tear this family apart. You and I are going to go for some counseling and set things straight. But first, promise me that you’re finished with her.”

  When she moved aside, Adam had a full view of the photographs that Nina had once so skillfully arrayed on the old piecrust table. Now suddenly he saw something new: They all looked alike, Margaret and her people, all, even the bearded great-grandfather, having the same expression, responsible and candid, yet slightly reserved, with kindly eyes and proud chins. And Megan, he thought, although they say she looks like me, is the same.

  There was a quality in these faces that encouraged him to respond to them with their own pride and candor, or as much of these as in the circumstances he was able to muster.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “God knows, I’ve never wanted to hurt you, and I still don’t. But as people move through life, things change. Even when you don’t want them to, they do. And I don’t know what else to say.”

  Margaret walked to the window and stood there looking out just as the streetlamps came on. No one passed on the quiet, familiar street. And for a second Adam wondered what scenes were this moment being enacted in some other quiet, familiar houses on streets like this one.

  When she turned back toward him, her eyes were filled again with tears. “The humiliation,” she said softly. “The two of you tricking me, laughing together at my stupid ignorance, my foolish trust in you.”