Promises

by Belva Plain

  Adam smarted. And he worried. The rumors about a possible takeover had now become too loud and frequent to be ignored any longer. The company was no IBM, to be sure, but it was attractive enough to arouse the interest of any of the country’s largest software producers. This possibility had even been mentioned by a couple of stock analysts in their last month’s reports. If the stories were accurate, who could tell what the future might hold for him? Possibly something wonderful. Or not.

  Expenses were swamping him. Living with Randi, it certainly behooved him to pay half of them, and they were higher than he was used to. Naturally, he had known that she had a big mortgage, but he had not realized how big. She had bought the house on the proverbial shoestring. And the monthly payments rolled around. Still, she never demanded anything much.

  But he was always aware of what she wanted. One thing she wanted was to have a baby. And he had promised that they would have one as soon as he was divorced. My God, but lawyers took so long! For them to file a paper was to move a mountain.

  Perhaps because she was not yet bound to him, he felt—or he thought he felt and did not want to feel—that he must make sure of her, must satisfy her and keep her happy. She made him so happy! She made him feel like a man who was lord of the earth.

  “You worry too much,” she would tell him when they were in bed together. “You always did. Years ago, it was your marks and your career. Now it’s the office and your kids, when the only thing that’s really important is the two of us.”

  When you come down to it, she’s right, he thought. The thought was like an arc light flooding his brain. The only thing that’s really important is the two of us. Yes, yes, he said to himself. In spite of everything, I have never been as happy as I am now. And that’s fundamental.

  When he reached the house, he saw her waiting for him at the door. Hearing the sound of tires on gravel, she had come, as she always did, to greet him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  “This makes more sense than having you come back another day to finish all this stuff. We only have twelve more pages to go through,” said Larkin.

  He collected the residue of the sandwich-and-coffee lunch and put it neatly in the wastebasket. All his motions were economical, as were his balanced sentences. If the subject weren’t so nasty, Margaret thought, it would be a pleasure to hear him speak. The thought amused her.

  “Mr. Larkin,” she said then, “can you tell me what sense it makes that I must answer these ludicrous questions? ‘How many rooms are there in the house and to what use is each of them put’? As if, after all these years of living there, he doesn’t know.”

  “As I’ve told you, don’t look for sense. It’s the law. Your house is part of your assets, and so it figures in the settlement.”

  “My assets,” she mocked. And aware that she was probably being a nuisance, she apologized. “I’m sorry, Mr. Larkin. I realize that this kind of emotionalism is wasting your time.”

  “You’re entitled to some emotionalism. Don’t worry about it, Margaret. And by the way, if you’re to be Margaret, then I must be Stephen. Now, page fifty-four. Take your copy and let’s get to it.”

  When they were finished, he slapped his files shut. With the cessation of speech came an awareness of the surroundings, of wind shaking the windows and a torrential rain sluicing the glass. Stephen got up and looked out.

  “The streets look like a river. You’d better stay here until this dies down. These downpours don’t usually last long.”

  “I’ll sit in the waiting room and read,” she said, rising.

  “No, stay here and tell me how you’re getting along.”

  Making a small gesture, as if to convey that a clear reply was impossible, Margaret began, “I’m going through all the correct motions, I know I am. I’m holding things together for the children, I know I am. But inside—inside I see my life cut in two: before Adam, and after Adam. It’s like a map of Europe before the end of Communism and after, with all the countries having different names and shapes. Now I’m a different shape, and I’ll soon have a different name too. One of the things that troubles me is the thought of the other woman’s bearing the name that has belonged to me for nineteen years. Silly, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so. To you the name is a symbol of everything she’s stolen.”

  “Tell me, I’ve wondered, with all you’ve seen, have you had many cases in which the husband sues the wife for adultery?”

  “Only a few. Women know that adultery shatters the intimacy and the trust of marriage, that a marriage afterward can never be the same. That’s why adultery usually ends in divorce, and that’s why women, as compared with men, usually don’t try it.”

  “Do you mean, then, that men don’t know all that beforehand?”

  “Most of them don’t. I should imagine that Adam Crane, when he started this affair, had no intention of ending up in the divorce court.”

  “You’re saying that the affair took on a life of its own.”

  “A sad life, and saddest of all for the children.”

  Margaret’s next words escaped her. “Your daily work must be sad for you too.”

  “Very.”

  She was curiously conscious of the man, of his hand with its immaculate nails, the wristwatch, the dark suit, the dark, glossy hair.… But this was absurd.

  “I often think,” Stephen said, “that I must give it up, that I want to do something that will build instead of tear down.”

  “Are you really tearing down?” she asked gently. “I’ve been thinking how much you help me.”

  “That is another way of looking at it, I suppose.”

  “I hope you won’t give up before you’ve seen me through.”

  He smiled. “I promise I’ll see you through. Maybe I’m just talking, anyway.”

  She could not help but wonder about him as she drove home through the slackening storm. It was foolish that you tended to identify a person only through his work, seldom imagining, for instance, what the doctor was once he removed his white coat and professional manner; so she had not before today seen Stephen Larkin in any setting other than in that room with the desk and the brown books on the shelves. It was surprising to learn that he was not satisfied with his work, he was so understanding! She wondered whether he was married or whether perhaps he had had a bad marriage. It was, however, no business of hers.

  The first thing she saw when she entered the house was a kitchen in total disarray. The rack from which pots had hung was empty, and every cupboard door was open. In panic she ran into the hall, calling her children’s names.

  “Up here, Mom,” came the answer. “We’re up in the attic. There’s a flood.”

  It was disaster. Through two great holes where the roof had simply caved in, the rain was pouring as from a faucet. The buckets that they had brought up were about to overflow. And Margaret stood there stricken, ready to weep.

  “It’s come through my bedroom ceiling,” Megan said, “although not badly. Just some pretty big stains.” She tried to smile. “One of them’s the shape of South America.”

  Stains. New plaster. No, new ceiling. New roof. The cost of it? Astronomical. New arguments between the lawyers,

  Margaret clapped her hand to her head, where, at the temples, the pulses were almost beating, then she swallowed the stupid lump that always gathered in her throat and said only, “We’ll need something right away to cover these holes. We can’t leave them all night, or all the bedrooms will be ruined. I wonder—”

  “There’s that blue plastic stuff—I guess it’s plastic—sheets they pull on houses when they’re building,” Megan said. “Uncle Fred’s a builder. He must have some.”

  Of course. Leave it to Megan.

  “I’ll phone him. Meantime, I’ll take two buckets on my way downstairs and empty them. You come, too, Julie, and bring back the empties.”

  Later that evening Fred sat in the den with Margaret, going over the situation.

  “You’re okay for a few
days unless a tornado comes and whips those sheets off.”

  “Will it be awfully expensive to patch it?” she inquired hopefully.

  “You can’t patch it, Margaret. You need a new roof. You’ve been needing one for a couple of years. Didn’t you ever notice how many shingles were missing?”

  She sighed. “I did, but it was so expensive, and Adam thought maybe—” She stopped, trying to recall exactly what it was that Adam had thought.

  “Well, there can be no question about it now. He’ll have to do it.”

  “What if he won’t?” she asked faintly.

  “What do you mean ‘won’t’? I should think he has no choice.”

  “Fred, you may think so, but it doesn’t work that way. It has to be done through lawyers. Everything has to be. And if he didn’t want to spend the money last year—” Again she stopped. Naturally he hadn’t wanted to; he had had his plans with her. “Why would he want to do it now?” she resumed. “Of course, we can take him to court, but the roof can’t very well wait for that, can it?”

  “No. And I hate to pour salt on your wounds, but the truth is that the whole house needs work. I’ve gone over it pretty thoroughly. The furnace—didn’t you have a problem with it last winter?” When Margaret nodded, he continued, “I’d say you’d be lucky to get through another winter with it. The cellar stairs need fixing, too, before someone trips and breaks his neck. The windows leak on the whole north side of the house whenever the rain drives from the north. I’ve seen you put towels on the sills—”

  Margaret clapped her hands to her ears, crying. “Stop! Don’t you think I know I have no right to stay here?”

  “Why, what do you mean ‘no right’? You have every right. It’s your home, your family home, and it’s a solid old house. It’s simply in need of some repairs. It’s not a question of a million dollars, for Pete’s sake.”

  “It might as well be,” she said.

  They sat still. She thought: It is his expenses with that woman that are ruining me and my children.

  Presently Fred spoke. “If you will let me help you. I know you wouldn’t let me help with the car, but this is more serious. Please let me. You know I can afford it.”

  “I will let you send your men to patch the roof temporarily because it’s an emergency. I will be so grateful for that, but I can’t accept anything more. You are the best man in the world, but don’t you see, Fred, that I have to get used to a different way of life? That’s simply the way it is. Husband leaves wife, his income goes up and hers goes down. The way it is.”

  “You’re being stubborn,” he said gently.

  “No, I’m being realistic. The fact is that even if it were in perfect condition, we wouldn’t belong here. It’s just too big, too hard to maintain by ourselves, and I can’t afford help to take Adam’s place. The snowstorm last month was a killer. The children are all overburdened. They’re good kids and they haven’t complained, but they’re overburdened.”

  There. She had finally spoken the dreaded words. And she looked around the room, out to the hall where the clothes rack and the tall clock still stood where they had always been, in the dear house where she had been born.

  Fred, following her look, said, gently still, “This hurts you too much, Margaret. Are you sure?”

  She nodded, biting her lip. “Yes. It’s an old-fashioned concept, anyway, isn’t it? How many people in this country still live where they were born?”

  “Not many, I suppose. But if a person wants to, why—”

  “If a person can. I could have once, but now I can’t.”

  Adam, and Mrs. Randi Bunting, had made the decision.

  “So,” she said, “I shall call a broker tomorrow. I should get a good price for it, in spite of its needing repairs. You don’t find woodwork like this nowadays. And the yard is beautiful.”

  “If you want to see something unbelievable,” Margaret said to Fred a few days later, “look at this broker’s appraisal.”

  When he read it, Fred put it aside, hesitated for a moment, and with obvious reluctance told her that it was indeed believable.

  “It’s a wonderful old house on a wonderful old street, but unfortunately, there’s not a big market for these places. Especially not for one that has no air-conditioning, an antiquated kitchen, and the original claw-foot bathtubs. Plus high urban taxes.”

  “But the neighborhood! The yard!”

  “The neighborhood is gradually changing. People with money are moving to the suburbs, out toward Beachcroft.”

  “You make it sound awful, Fred. Won’t anybody buy it?”

  “Yes, people who have a big family and a small amount of money. You’d better take what you can get. I’m sorry, Margaret, but that’s it.”

  That’s it. And for the thousandth time came the inward cry: How is it possible?

  Between shadow and lamplight the two sat silently. Random thoughts went flickering past the eye of Margaret’s mind, such as: Adam knows we’re on short rations here, so why doesn’t he come home and do what a man ought to do? Yet she knew that if he should return, begging on his knees, she would not—could not—take him. And she wondered, too, whether he ever reckoned up his past, and if he did, how. For he had started out with such enthusiasm, such hope, such pride in himself. And yet, after nineteen years, he had made but a small advance from his starting point. Three children, up to the time he left, had been living on very little more than their newlywed parents had possessed. Now, at this moment, they were living on less. Did he ever ask himself what was wrong? Did I ever ask myself, and if not, why not?

  Because I loved him so. Unconsciously, her lips had formed the words, and startled, she looked up to see Fred gazing at her with a look of deep compassion.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Margaret, you’ll be all right. Hold on.”

  She raised her head and smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m holding. I’ll give the listing to the broker in the morning.”

  Then the wait began. People came, trudging through the house, looked—looked askance—and left.

  Friends and family had varying advice. In the teachers’ lounge a friend said, “Much as it hurts, in the long run the change will be good for you, Margaret. You’ll be ridding yourself of a lot of baggage and starting fresh.”

  Another, much older than Margaret, reminisced. “I have a memory that goes back to the time I was four. My mother took me to visit at that house. Your great-grandparents were there. He had whiskers and she gave me gingerbread.”

  Stephen counseled, “It’s a wise decision. At best, when we go to court, you’ll have considerably less to live on. At best. So it’s prudent to prepare accordingly.”

  Nina, on the other hand, was indignant. “He gets himself another woman, he walks out, and now you’ll have to leave home. Is this modern justice?” She offered money. “I’m doing really well, I have some nice savings, and I want to help you keep the house. I know I’ve asked you to let me and you’ve always said no, but will you let me?” And when Margaret still declined the offer, she demanded, “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll have to find an apartment someplace.”

  “With what he gives you now, it will have to be pretty cramped for the four of you. Do you think that’s fair to the children?”

  “It won’t hurt them,” Margaret told her. “Millions of people have to live in cramped places.”

  Stalwart sentiments, these were, but even as she expressed them, she did not mean a word.

  Louise and Gilbert were shocked. And in a curious way their anger consoled her.

  “Poor sap,” Gil said. “Feels like a rooster with two hens to choose between.”

  Louise declared that all men were fools. “Remember that typist you had, Gil? She had her claws out for you, and you didn’t even know it. But I took one look at her and I warned you not to start any monkey business. Gil was a good-looking young man, Margaret. I wasn’t taking any chances.”

  Gil looked sheepish and pleased. Margaret thought tenderly
that it was hard to imagine him with a full head of hair and no paunch, hard also to imagine Louise, with her comfortable print dresses and tight gray permanent wave, in her twenties. But they were here for her in their fullness of heart.

  “I’d like to make you a loan,” Gil offered. “If we didn’t have four grandchildren, family responsibilities, by God, I’d give it to you outright, Margaret. But tell me what you need to borrow, and you’ll have it in the morning.”

  Margaret shook her head. “I would never be able to repay you,” she said quietly.

  And still she wondered what Adam felt about his children’s loss of their home—his children’s loss, not hers. For was she not the enemy, the impediment that had kept him so long away from the “love of his life”?

  On Sunday, Julie reported, “Daddy would like to talk to you about the house.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him, Julie. He can talk through his lawyer. He already has.” Then as curiosity overcame her, she asked, “Why? What does he have to say about the house?”

  “I think just that he’s sorry he can’t help out. Anyway, he says you’ll probably marry Uncle Fred, so you won’t be needing this house. Are you going to marry Uncle Fred, Mom?”

  “I’m not going to marry anybody. And you can tell him for me that nothing I do is any business of his.”

  She should not have said that. She had broken her own rule against involving the children. But how dare he! He had no right to discuss her private affairs with them. No right!

  It was true that Fred sometimes gave hints, the most delicate, vague hints.

  “Sometimes I think about selling my own house. It’s much too large for one man and a little dog. Still, I keep thinking that someday I might need it, so I hold on to it.”

  He was the finest kind of man. But men and marriage were the farthest thing from Margaret’s mind.