by Belva Plain
He felt suddenly in good spirits again, no doubt because he had just decided what he was going to do with his unexpectedly free evening. He usually did know what to do with one unless, of course, Leah had another engagement, which wasn’t often. They’d have supper together. A hearty one, for Leah, unlike Marian, loved to eat well; a little while later, they’d go up to her room, shut off the telephone and lock the door.
The room was a bower. He would have felt claustrophobic if he had had to live in it every night, but it was a perfect setting for the brief hours that he spent there. In the lamplight, against cream-colored walls, the furniture glowed like jewels. There were two Louis XVI chests of rosewood with satinwood marqueterie and marble tops; there was a chaise longue, upholstered to match the hazy blue carpet and covered with pillows of old lace. Between the windows hung a Degas ballet scene, which Paul had prodded Ben into buying for Leah’s birthday years before. The bed had a canopy and curtains; it was a room within a room, with walls and ceiling of millefleur silk. There they would stay until some plausible hour, usually eleven, had struck, at which he would get up, get dressed, and go home. A felicitous arrangement for them both, he thought now. Certainly it was for him and hoped it was for her. She had never said otherwise nor, since those few brief words on the ship, complained of loneliness.
Nor had there been any mention of Bill Sherman except in reference to his daughters, who, now coming into an age that entitled them to grown-up dresses, went shopping at Léa’s with their father.
“Really darling girls,” Leah would repeat. “Not spoiled at all, even though he’s so generous with them.”
Paul was curious. “No more roses for you?”
“The next time I sail, I’m sure there will be. It’s his way. He’s lavish and he can afford to be.”
Paul knew she was being vague on purpose, wanting to say enough to let him know that another man found her desirable, and wanting also to let him know that he came first. A woman’s privilege, he thought, and asked no more.
A maid admitted him and, familiarly, he went upstairs to the library where Leah liked to read before dinner, to surprise her. But the surprise this night was his: Hank was sitting there with his mother. On seeing Paul, he stood up; the prompt motion, straight posture, and extended hand gave Paul immediate recollection of the times he had taught the little boy how to behave like a gentleman.
Hank gave an honest handshake. “Nice to see you. Mother didn’t say you were coming.”
“I thought I’d let Paul surprise you,” Leah said.
“Where’s Cousin Marian?”
“She had a job to do, a thrift shop sale, and your mother very kindly offered me some dinner so I wouldn’t have to eat alone. And you—why aren’t you in Philadelphia probing a cadaver or whatever it is you fellows do?”
Hank said briefly, “I came in last night to see my own dentist.”
“He just got the first cavity he’s ever had and it’s made him mad. He wants to be a model of physical perfection,” Leah said fondly.
“I’d say he comes close to it,” Paul replied.
“I wish you’d have dinner with us at least,” Leah complained. “You run in and you run out.”
“Next time, Mother. I promised to meet a guy downtown near Penn Station, so we can catch the train back to Philly together.”
“All right, darling, go ahead. Call me during the week. Don’t forget.”
“I never do.”
“I know. You’re very good about it.”
“He really is good about it, too,” Leah said when Hank had gone. “I’m very lucky.” A bottle of sherry and a cluster of crystal goblets stood on a tray near her chair. She got up and poured drinks. “Lucky tonight, too. Unexpected pleasures are the best.”
Paul smiled. “Your health.”
“You know, Dan will be sixty-nine in November. I was thinking I’d like to give a party, a real party at my house. We’ll dress up and have music and make it a gala.”
“Do you think he’d enjoy that kind of thing?” Paul asked.
“I don’t see why not. He loves good food and wine, at any rate.”
“But the crowd, and having to dress. You know Dan.”
“He’s never had a bang-up celebration. I think it’s time he tried one after sixty-nine years.”
“Why not make it seventy, next year? A milestone.”
“Because,” Leah said, “he just might not be here then.”
“Oh, his heart’s been bad for the last fifteen years.”
“Even so, I feel I want to do it now. It’ll be the end of the month, around Thanksgiving. I’ll talk to Hennie.”
She was bright with enthusiasm. She liked to use the house, to display the silver, the Baccarat, and the embroidered linens that, through her own labor, she had acquired. The candelabra would be entwined with striped lilies; pinecones in every fireplace would put a tang in the air; violins would sing in the upstairs hall. Paul saw it all.
Alert as always to every change in his expression, she asked him, “What are you thinking now?”
“Nothing much. Just a phrase that came into my head. ‘A garden of many delights.’ Your house,” he said, and knew he pleased her.
But in truth, he was thinking of something. November was a long time away, yet he was already considering the prospect of sitting at table with Donal Powers. He hadn’t seen him since that furious encounter in Paris; since then Donal’s rage must have burgeoned, along with the growth of HW Elektrische Gesellschaft as it earned the millions that Paul’s stubbornness had denied to him.
He wondered how much Meg knew of what had happened. Undoubtedly Donal had had some tale to tell. Now and then he saw Meg at Hennie’s house on Sunday afternoons when she brought the children to visit; she was as affectionate as ever, but she never said anything about another meeting, which was just as well.
He put his glass down to stare for a moment across Leah’s familiar room where, now quite clearly, he could see young Meg standing at the curve of the piano. Her startled eyes are turned to Donal Powers’s skeptical handsome face. There is between them the unmistakable tidal pull of sexual allure, as palpable as a sudden gust of tropical air.
It was absurd that he should feel guilt—or if not guilt exactly, then a certain regret that he hadn’t done more to stop that marriage up in Boston that time, when Alfie had asked him to talk to her. He knew his own powers of persuasion. He could win his point for a million-dollar account, he could raise more millions for refugees and charities, he could talk Ilse’s son out of a concentration camp. Why hadn’t he been able to dissuade a young girl from a totally unsuitable marriage?
He had been a romantic, that was why: Meg had been euphoric, and he had gone all soft at the sight.
Yet the marriage seemed to be thriving. A pink-and-white mother surrounded by healthy children—why should he not rejoice for her? Except for what he knew about Donal … It was strange to think that Hank was the only other person who knew it, and he wondered whether the knowledge haunted Hank as it did him. By tacit agreement, they never brought up the subject. Of what use would it be to do so?
Leah struck a match, making a sound as smart as a slap. Her long nails clustered on the small white cylinder of the cigarette. Her eyes were half shut in sensuous pleasure as she inhaled. “By the way, would you mind if I invited Bill Sherman to the party? I know it’s to be a family affair, but Bill almost feels like family. He even had me at his daughter’s graduation party. You won’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
She pursued the subject. “The older girl’s specializing in child psychology, so she’ll probably talk to Meg’s kids. So it’s really all right to have the Shermans?” she repeated.
“Of course, of course,” he answered, feeling amused and touched by this rather unusual effort to make him jealous.
It had grown quite dark. Leah turned the lamps on. Well chosen and well placed, they comforted the darkness as warmly as firelight might have done, turning the old Or
iental rug into a field of gold. Paul felt at home in the fine room and said so.
“This is a wonderful room. A wonderful house.”
“All except the bedroom. My room. You don’t approve,” Leah said mischievously.
“It’s—it’s a very feminine room,” he fumbled.
Leah laughed. “You don’t have to be tactful. I know it’s overdone. It doesn’t go with the rest of the house.”
“Well, you are usually more restrained. I’ve generally admired your taste.”
“I know. I broke my own rules in the bedroom. It was an impulse. Throwing your cap over the windmill; isn’t there some saying like that?”
“Don’t remember.” He looked at her with pleasure. She wanted to be “literary,” chiefly to improve herself, which was laudable; she had done a remarkable job of self-education. Also, he knew, she was trying to please him and that was unnecessary, because she was highly satisfactory without any improvements. She sat now, settled back in the leather wing chair; a bright white pleated collar circled her neck, and the dark blue skirt of her soft dress flowed. He liked the clothes of recent years. The flat-chested, flapper mode of the twenties had never suited Leah anyway. It had been far more suited to Marian.…
“Come to dinner,” Leah said, “and then we’ll go up to my overdone bedroom.”
They lay together in the flowered silk room-within-a-room and he let himself relax into the contentment that comes when desire has been satisfied. He lit a cigarette and inhaled the fragrance. Leah never minded tobacco smells. Marian never objected vociferously, since that was not her way, but with pathetic appeal, making him feel guilty.
Leah, naked, slid out of bed, put on a blue satin nightgown to match the room’s blue, and slid back under the covers. Her pert fingers tapped Paul’s cheek, rousing him.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing much.”
“Come on, you were frowning.” Her fingers smoothed out the double lines between his eyebrows. “Come on, Paul!”
“All right. I was remembering that Marian never let me smoke.”
“She’s on your mind all the time—a lot of the time anyway—isn’t she?”
“Well, naturally.”
Leah was silent so long that he turned, raising himself on his elbow, to regard her. Her round dark eyes were troubled.
“Is it that you feel so terribly guilty about us?” she asked.
He needed time to examine himself. What answer could he give? Guilt was an overburdened, heavy word, depressing and somber. This marvelous conjunction of two bodies, this glow that pulsed through his blood like wine or sun’s heat—whom did it harm? No one. And yet …
“I don’t like lies,” he replied at last.
“Nor do I.”
He knew that was so. Leah was not one of those women who are stimulated by their own power or who triumph by luring away another woman’s man.
“I feel … sometimes, Paul, I feel awful when I’m with Marian. At your seder, or when she comes into the shop. She thinks I’m her friend.”
Yes. Marian was the archetypical friend. Yes, even to him she was still a steadfast friend, as loyal to him should he ever be in need, as he was to her.
“She seems so innocent and I feel nasty. Nasty, Paul. Yet I don’t stop what I’m doing and I don’t want to stop.”
He wished she would let the subject go. It was destroying the very mood that she herself had created for him.
“You know I’ve never mentioned it, but I was really afraid that Donal might say something about Paris.”
Paul shook his head. “I never gave it a thought. He’d have gained nothing by stirring up a hornet’s nest. There’d have been nothing in it for him. Donal’s got bigger things on his mind.”
Leah giggled. “A hornet’s nest it would be, too!” Then she grew sober. “And Hennie would lose all her regard for me. She’d try to be open-minded, modern and all that, but I’d know what she was feeling inside no matter what she said.”
“True, Hennie’s a puritan.”
“People who grew up before the war see things very differently, don’t you agree?”
“Not always. How do you think Hank would take it?”
“I don’t know. He’s very straightlaced, yet sometimes I don’t think he’s shocked at all. He’s of the new generation, such insight, such compassion. Let me tell you what happened last night. I’d had a question about the furnace, and the man who takes care of all the furnaces on the block came by with his little boy. So after they’d been in the cellar they came upstairs, and we talked in the front hall. I didn’t notice anything, but Hank got really upset on account of the little boy—this was after they’d left, of course—and wanted to know why I hadn’t seen that the child was shivering in his thin coat, and what I paid the father. I told him I paid what the man asked for. I can’t take all the world’s troubles on my shoulders and Hank can’t either, I told him. And he said he knew that, but that something went through him when he saw them go out into the wet night with the box of tools, and he thought of the room upstairs in this house that he had had when he was that child’s age. You should have seen his face! He was truly deeply moved. He meant every word.”
“He comes by it rightly, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, yes. Hennie and Dan. And my own mother. Well, I’m not like them. Heaven knows I give, I give plenty, but I can’t agonize. I can’t wear myself out—good God, what’s that?”
The outer door, two floors below, had closed with a heavy thud. Now someone was whistling on the stairs.
“Oh, no! It’s Hank,” and Leah jumped out of the bed and pulled on her robe. “What on earth—why didn’t he go back to school? Oh, my God, quick, get dressed. Oh, what’ll I say?” She tossed Paul’s clothes to him.
“Mother?” Hank knocked on the door. “You awake? I saw your light.”
“Oh, I’m just getting out of the shower!”
“I’ll wait. I met my friend Mac and we talked so late that I figured I’d do better to come back, sleep here, and take the first train in the morning. Ill be leaving before you get up, so I want to tell you something funny Mac told me. His mother met you once and …”
The voice dwindled away. Leah had pulled Paul into the closet at the far end of the room.
“Stay in here while I talk to him,” she whispered.
“Leah, that’s ridiculous. I can’t skulk and hide in a closet.”
“Please. I can’t have him find you here.”
“I thought you said he wouldn’t think anything of it.”
“In general, in general, I meant. One’s mother is different.”
Paul felt a suffusion of shame. To be caught with one’s pants down! he thought, even as he was pulling them on, buttoning his shirt and knotting his tie. He stepped out of the closet to retrieve his jacket from the back of the chair.
Leah pulled at him. “Go back in there. It’ll be only a minute, then you can tiptoe downstairs and out. Just don’t let the door thump when you close it.”
In all his imaginings, he had never seen himself trapped in such a degrading, nasty situation. Yet suddenly, in a way, it seemed funny too.
“Are you all right, Mother?” Hank called.
“Yes, wait a minute—just stay in the closet, he won’t know. Where are you going?”
“Out into the hall, like a man.”
She had begun to cry; she, the worldly independent, the new woman, implored and clung. “Don’t do this to me. How can you do this to me?”
Gently he pulled free of her. “Come, Leah. He’ll have more respect for honesty. We are, after all, a pair of adults, and he’s an adult too.”
So saying, Paul unlocked the door in Hank’s astonished face. He mustered a brisk, friendly manner.
“I was just going, Hank. I’ll leave you two together.”
Hank looked over Paul’s shoulder to the chaise longue on which his mother had huddled into her blue silk wrap.
There were then a few seconds d
uring which no one spoke. Hank was the first.
“Am I supposed to say ‘I don’t understand’? Isn’t that how the dialogue goes?”
“I’m sorry this has happened, Hank,” Paul said; that, too, was the way the dialogue went.
“You should be.”
Paul drew in a long breath. You should be. So much for free thought! He exhaled a long sigh.
“Your mother’s awfully upset. I think you should go to her and talk.”
“I’d rather talk to you first.”
“As you like. Then come downstairs.”
They stood together under the chandelier in the front hall. Hank’s eyes, black with anger, lay in dark rings like an owl mask. He looked menacing, almost as though he intended to use his fists.
“How long have you been coming here like this?” he demanded of Paul.
Paul answered severely, “If your mother wants to tell you, she will. As to my life and habits—I don’t report to you.”
He heard the defensive anger in his reply. To be judged and interrogated by someone half his age!
“You’ve robbed me,” Hank said. “You’ve both robbed me of something you can’t ever give back.”
“Robbed you of what?” Paul’s heart was pounding.
“Of my respect, of my illusions.”
“I don’t know what kind of illusions you had.”
That was a lie, because he knew quite well. One didn’t have to be a psychologist to know that a mother was to be “untouched.” And as for the father image that he had so carefully cultivated, that, very likely, had been exploded into a thousand pieces. A thousand pieces in a single moment.
“You’re a married man!”
“Don’t be childish, Hank. Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”
“You think I’m childish?”
“Right now. But I think you’ll be more reasonable when you’ve given this a little more thought.”
“It’s fine for you to talk. She’s my mother.”