by Belva Plain
“All right,” Adam said, “all right, Randi, take it easy. I’ll be back soon.”
The two were sitting together on the sofa with the television turned off. It was plain to him that they had heard everything, and he felt sick.
“Come,” he said, “it’s time.”
They rode for a way before anyone spoke. He was trying to think how to begin when Danny said, “We heard everything.”
“I thought you did.”
“She stinks,” Danny said, “I hate her.”
It was all so ugly, so degrading. In his misery Adam could only say, aware of the inadequacy of the excuse, “She was sick today. I’m sure she’s sorry already. People say things they don’t mean.”
“She meant it, Dad. Being sick is no excuse. And I do hate her.”
“Please try not to, Danny. I know it’s hard, but try.”
“Why did you do it, Daddy?” Julie asked. “Weren’t you happy with Mom and us?”
He felt a shock of surprise, a realization that no one had put that direct question to him until now. And how was he to reply? How to say, yes, I was happy, or thought I was, until I found out that I had to have this woman, wasn’t able to stay away from her, and your mother, once she knew, was the impediment?
A man could hardly tell that to his children.
“There are things between people that anyone who hasn’t experienced them can’t easily understand,” he began, and then as this pompous evasion, which he knew to be useless, even stupid, was met with total silence, he suddenly gave way to emotion, crying, “It’s been terrible for you.… It always is for the children, isn’t it? That’s what you read. But you don’t quite accept it until you see it for yourself.” And he turned toward Danny, who was in the front seat beside him. “If I’ve hurt you too much, will you at least understand that it was nothing I wanted to do—or could help?”
“She—Randi—wants to pretend we don’t exist,” Julie said. “Don’t you see that? She’s a horrible person. The way she talked about Mom … And you let her.”
He struggled for a place between his children and Randi from which, equidistant from either side, he might pull them together again. “What happened today is nothing permanent. You’ve gotten along so well together until now, and you will again.”
“No. It’s been an act to please you,” Julie said. Her tone was sad. “I didn’t see that at the beginning, but I see it now.”
Suddenly, with these words, he remembered that she was sixteen. He had for some reason been thinking of her all along as the fourteen-year-old, young for her age, that she was when he left home. And he saw that, as one might expect, she had changed a lot in those two years. Also, she was seeing a psychologist, who had no doubt helped her toward some adult insight.
The sadness that had been in her voice now seemed to permeate the car. He asked himself: What will this lovely daughter, for whom I am supposed to be the measure of manhood, of a future husband, remember of me? And my son, my son whose body as he sits here seems to be shrinking away from me? And my Megan …
They came to the development, the monotonous red brick apartments marching up the hill.
“It’s pretty here,” he said. “They’ve left the trees. That’s nice.”
“You live in a better place. You have a beautiful house,” Danny objected, with unmistakable emphasis on you.
As if he had not heard—for what could his response have been?—Adam said only, “Well, here we are. The usual time next Sunday?”
“One of the guys is having a birthday party,” Danny said.
“Well, how about Saturday, then?”
“I might have to go to the dentist,” Julie said. “You’d better call up.”
“No cavities in your good teeth, I hope?” he questioned, being cheerful, being natural, being, as he well knew, given the circumstances, an idiot.
“Not that I know of.”
“Shall we go get some ice cream for your dessert tonight? We just passed a place only a stone’s throw from here.”
Danny declined. “Mom always keeps ice cream in the freezer,” he added, as if to say, which you ought to know.
When they alighted from the car, Julie looked at Adam. Her eyes were wet. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she said softly.
For a moment he watched the two walk to the door and go in. Neither of them looked around to wave. Then he turned his car and started back to The Grove, where a jolly party would just be getting under way.
“Well, how was it?” Megan asked.
Danny said, “It stank.”
“Why, what happened, Julie?”
“I’ll tell you later. I don’t feel like talking about it now.”
“Stink, stank, stunk,” Danny said. “Where’s Mom?”
“Went to dinner with Uncle Fred. She left a note. I drove to Betsy’s on our old street. She had a crowd over, and I just got back.”
“How’s the old street?” asked Danny. “And what’s for dinner?”
“Number one, the street looks the same, except for our house, which looks awful. Number two, Mom left chicken pot pies and she made rice pudding. Your favorite, Julie, without raisins.”
“I’m not hungry. I think I’ll take a walk.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. Just around.”
“It’s six o’clock,” Megan protested.
“What’s the difference? I need to walk.”
At half past eight, when Fred’s car stopped before the door, Danny and Megan were standing on the step looking up and down the street.
“I don’t know what’s become of Julie,” Megan cried. “She went for a walk at six o’clock.”
An instant ripple of cold alarm ran through Margaret. “Did she give you any idea where she was going?”
Megan said anxiously, “She only said she needed to walk.”
“Needed to? Why! Did anything happen today?”
“We had a lousy time,” Danny reported, “and I think it got to her. You know how Julie is.”
Margaret looked at Fred. “It’s getting dark,” she said.
“Come.” He took Margaret by the elbow. “Get in the car. We’ll drive around and we’ll find her. She might have gone to the mall. It’s still open.”
“Julie’s not a mall person. She never goes unless she needs something.”
“Well, maybe she needed something. Come on,” he said heartily and added, “We’ll keep phoning you in case she should come back before we find her.”
In the car Margaret sat twisting her fingers in her lap. “There’s nothing here,” she said after a while, “but these empty suburban streets and that highway with God knows who out there scouting for young girls with long blond hair. Fred, I’m pretty frantic.”
They had been driving and searching without clue or aim for the last hour. Fred reached over and patted her shoulder, saying only, and this time not heartily, “I know.”
The party was swinging. It moved from the house to the flagstone terrace, which had been newly ringed by a circle of expensive, half-grown ilex and rhododendron shrubs. Large stone tubs overflowed with white petunias. A second bar had been set up on the redwood table, and a few people were already pleasantly drunk. Some danced to the music that came from the loudspeakers on the wall. Some had come equipped for swimming, and were fooling around in the pool.
Randi, watching this scene with great satisfaction, observed to Adam, “Some party, isn’t it? Last fling before the baby comes. For the next year, at least, we’ll be too busy.”
Incredibly, to him, she had recovered from the afternoon’s mood as if it had never existed. Wearing, along with shoulder-length rhinestone earrings, a white baby dress, tier upon ruffled tier, even in her seventh month, she sparkled. In one way, he reflected, you could admire her spirit, while in another way you could say that she looked absurd.
“Well, can’t you answer me? Can’t you take that glum face off?”
“Okay,” he agreed, wanting least of all to argue here be
fore these people, not that it would have disturbed Randi; public “scenes” did not faze her. “I’m not glum, only tired. I’m going to get something to eat.”
Instead he went to the telephone in the bedroom. For a few minutes he sat on the bed before lifting his hand to make the call. Over and over the same thought kept running as if on a track: If I could only explain! Yet it wouldn’t be seemly for a father to talk about his passion, his infatuation, his love, or whatever it was. For what, exactly, was it? And even if it were seemly, he wouldn’t know how to describe it.
Yet he had to speak to Julie. It seemed to him that he would never forget her face when she said good-bye today. For him it had been like looking at the end of innocence. He—they—had hurt her so! And hurt Danny, too, although in a different way, according to the person that he was. And Randi had known they would overhear. She had said so.
Danny answered the call. “I need to talk to you, Danny,” he said, “about today. And to Julie too. I don’t want you to think—”
“She isn’t here. We don’t know where she is. They’ve gone to look for her.”
“Not there? What happened?”
“I don’t know. She went out at six o’clock. I think she felt very bad. And I think it’s your fault. Yours and Randi’s.”
The phone clicked. With the dead phone in his hands he went blank. Then he looked at the time. It was half past nine, and she had been gone since six. Far out on the terrace there came loud whoops of laughter; somebody must have told a joke. But what might have happened to his Julie?
Randi was standing with a group when he came tearing outside, gasping, “I have to leave, I have to go back. Julie’s lost. Something’s happened.”
She whirled upon him. “Leave? In the middle of your party with all these people here?”
“I have to. They can’t find her.”
“Who is Julie?” someone asked.
“My daughter. You will excuse me. I have to go.”
Randi’s furious eyes reminded him that most of these people did not know that he had a family. She had wanted him to have no past, no other life but the one he had with her. Well, it was done, he couldn’t help it.
And repeating “Please excuse me,” he fled.
There were two cars at the curb when he arrived at the apartment, Fred’s and Margaret’s. He leapt out, ran to the door, and, having rung the bell, came face to face with Fred.
“I came—I heard—Dan told me Julie—”
“I know. Julie is here. She’s quite all right. A friend found her and brought her home.”
“Is she—”
“She’s fine.” Fred spoke not unkindly, but surely without welcome. “She went for a walk and foolishly stayed out too long. There’s nothing wrong with her. She made a mistake, that’s all.”
Behind Fred were lights and voices, a sense of people in a small space, a sense of warmth. For a second only, Adam had a glimpse of Margaret’s head; it was the first time in two years that he had seen her.
“May I, I should like to say something to Julie, only a minute—”
“Not here, not now, Adam. This is Margaret’s house.”
Fred’s tone, still not unkind, reproved him as if to say: You should know better, should have some conception of what is fitting and what is not.
He understood. Julie was neither hurt nor ill, so there could be no reason for his intrusion into “Margaret’s house.” And still he stood there, a supplicant, a beggar, unable to take no for an answer.
“If there is anything I can do—” he began.
“Nothing. We’re taking care of things here.” Fred moved slightly, the bulk of his shoulders barring the entrance should Adam have tried to go in. “You really needn’t have come. But thank you,” he added in his gentlemanly way.
The door closed.
* * *
“Luckily for you,” Margaret said, “it was Mr. Larkin who was jogging around the lake. It might have been someone very different.”
“I know,” Julie said humbly. “It was stupid of me.”
“As it was, I think I scared you, jogging up out of the dark,” said Stephen.
“What were you planning to do, what would you have done if he hadn’t seen you there?”
“I was coming home.”
“We were beside ourselves. Whatever possessed you?”
Now that she’s safe, Margaret thought, I can afford to be angry—although not too angry. It’s plain that she has gone through some sort of an epiphany.
Julie opened her lips to reply and closed them again. Raising her head and looking into space beyond the circle in which they all sat, she reflected. Then she spoke.
“Well, I’ve told you, and Danny’s told you, what happened today there.”
Danny interrupted. “She said rotten things about you. You should hear—”
“I don’t want to hear, Dan.”
“She said you’re a blood—”
“Dan. I said I don’t want to hear it.”
He subsided. “Okay, but I’ll tell you one thing. She’s tough, but Nina could take care of her.”
On Fred’s face there appeared a touch of humor and muffled laughter, to which Margaret had to respond. How well they all knew Nina!
“I don’t ever want to go there again,” Julie cried. “I’ll meet Dad some other place, but never with her. I feel so sorry for him! I felt sorry for him just now when he came to the door. And I think he’s sorry for himself too.”
Softly, Margaret asked how she could know that.
“I can’t know it, of course, but I feel it. All the way home in his car, I kept thinking: Poor Mom. Poor Dad. I understand how terrible this has been for you, Mom. Megan and I, but especially Megan because she grew up faster than I did, have worried about you so much. But now I think you’re much better, while Dad is beginning to be miserable.”
Margaret caught the two men looking at each other. They were moved. The simple sincerity of this naive, or perhaps no longer so naive, young Julie had moved them.
“You don’t have to worry,” she continued, “that I will ever do anything eccentric, Mom. I’m not crazy or even especially neurotic anymore, if I ever was. Going to Audrey has taught me a lot. I wasn’t going to run away or do anything like that.”
“None of us ever thought so for a moment,” Margaret said. “You were very disturbed, and you wanted to be alone. You needed to think.”
“That’s right. I did need to think. I started back in the direction of our old house to look at it again. I didn’t realize how long it would take to walk there, so I turned around when I was halfway and came back through the park. Then I saw that all the swans weren’t gone to their nests. There were two still floating, so I sat down to watch them, the way you do, Mom. They were so peaceful. And while I sat there, I couldn’t help thinking how, if he were here, Dad would get a book and find out everything about swans. The way he always did, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I guess as long as I live I’ll remember things like that about him. And I suppose I’ll always remember, too, the morning he left us, and I’ll never understand how he could have done it.”
Suddenly, Stephen spoke. “No, you never will understand, so it’s best to give up trying. Put as much behind you as you can. You’ll never be able to put all of it behind you, but just try to do your best. Of course, I’m speaking to you, too, Megan and Dan.”
The room was very quiet. Now everyone watched Stephen. When he spoke again, he looked at no one. His eyes were downcast, and he seemed to be reciting the contents of a dream.
“My father was in the contingent that invaded France on D day in 1944. He fought through Normandy. And while he was there, he met a girl, a beautiful girl, my mother, and he married her. She had a good home with parents who cherished her. Understandably, they didn’t want to lose their daughter to America, so they fought against the marriage. But she was determined and insisted against all their arguments that she would be happy.
> “Well, she and he seemed to be happy as far as I, up to the age of twelve, was able to judge. At least, she always told me afterward that she had been. Then one day he informed her that he had fallen in love with a girl who worked in his office. I don’t have to relate the details; the plots are all alike. He left. There wasn’t enough money for two families. There seldom is. There were four children. I was the youngest. We all worked. Before I was old enough to get working papers, I shoveled snow for the neighbors, I ran errands for old people after school, I even did some baby-sitting. It didn’t hurt me. More likely it did me some good. What did hurt me was the knowledge of my mother’s pain. Thrown away in a foreign country after eighteen years and four children! She never informed her parents. She was too proud. Till the day she died, they thought she was having a wonderful life in America.” Abruptly, Stephen turned to Margaret. “So you see, I do know something about these things,” he said.
“Gee, you never told me all this stuff,” Danny said.
“No. I never told anybody until just now.”
“I guess that’s because it makes you feel too sick to talk about it.”
“Danny,” said Margaret.
“No, Margaret, let him be.”
“That’s why you know so much French,” Danny said.
Stephen smiled toward him. “That’s right. And that’s why you’re getting A’s. Funny, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “But not really funny.”
Now Fred asked Stephen how he had made his way into the law.
“My father had a relative, a responsible, religious man who was shocked at the whole affair. He lent me some money for law school, not all of it because I earned some myself. But he’s the reason I’m here.” Then, with a brief, cautionary gesture, Stephen raised his hand to address the three youngest, who were sitting in a row.