Looking Back

by Belva Plain

  Lester had urged her to go along with all the plans. “They’re happy. Aren’t you glad they are? Your father’s a self-made man, and this is an opportunity to show what he’s able to do for his daughter,” he said, showing his usual discerning wisdom. “And the same goes for my father.”

  He took Norma’s hand and held it to the light, in which the five-carat emerald-cut diamond on her finger flashed its magnificence.

  They both laughed, for they were thinking of the same thing: her astonishment and his almost sheepish explanation on the day he had given it to her.

  “For Heaven’s sake,” she had exclaimed, “you can’t afford this on your salary!”

  “Not on my salary, but on a lifetime of savings. Birthday and graduation presents, and a small inheritance from my grandparents that I have never touched, not a penny of it. And now it all sparkles on your finger.”

  Norma had really been shocked. And for some reason, she had thought of Amanda, whose ring was half the size of this one and who would have appreciated the glory of this one far more than she did.

  “I hope,” she said, “you don’t mean to say you’ve spent it all.”

  “Indeed I have. I hadn’t intended to, but my father shamed me into doing it.” He gave her an amused, mock rueful smile. “‘Live while you can,’ he told me. ‘You and Norma will enjoy seeing this every day. You’ve got a good job and you won’t be in need of the cash, so why let it molder in a bank where you can’t look at it?’ I’m a very prudent man and my father is, too, but this time, he was right.”

  Having said all that, Lester had given her a memorable kiss.

  Once we got started, she thought now, everything has come in a rush. After four years of covertly observing each other, then one year of what one might now call “feeling out” the situation, after the usual quiet dinner, with no prior hint at all, had come the proposal given to her as though it were simply a matter of fact which they should both have known all along.

  Wasn’t it odd that Alfred Cole, the man who had made that hideous mistake five years ago at Cecile’s wedding, should now turn out to be her husband’s father? Norma really liked the man, too, not only because he liked her, but also because he was so obviously proud of his son. Good reason enough!

  So here now was the ring and there in the closet hung the wedding dress, white taffeta studded at random with rosettes of ribbon. In this case it was Cecile and Amanda who had done the choosing. She herself would have worn a white day dress, a short one now that she had at last triumphed over what Lester frankly termed her “neurosis,” and certainly no veil.

  What really was all this about? Two people liked each other’s company so much that it seemed very sensible for them to continue the relationship. And pledging to do so, they announced it to the world. That was the sum total of it. Religion for most people was an essential element, although for many these days it was not; they simply moved in together. No, that would not be Norma’s way. But all this expensive, elaborate folderol? Photographs, announcements, gifts, and bridesmaids—whom she refused to have—what had all these to do with the essence of it?

  Lester and Norma, however, were in the midst of it all, and oddly enough, it was he who made no objections, when so often it was the man who made them, or would have liked to make them.

  But he had only to think about putting on a suit and making sure not to forget the travel tickets, while she was now waiting for the hairdresser, and for the florist to deliver the bouquet on time while hoping that, tent or not, it would not rain.

  It was eleven-fifteen by the bedside clock. There were five hours and fifteen minutes to wait before “half after four.” Why didn’t the invitations read four-thirty, which is the way people talk? Why? Well, because it just isn’t done, that’s why.

  And why am I smiling to myself? Because I am just so happy, that’s why, just so happy.

  “How pretty Norma has turned out to be,” remarked Cecile’s mother to Cecile. “You have to admit,” and Harriet Newman lowered her voice, “that she never was a pretty child. It’s as if she’s been transformed.”

  The ceremony, complete to the final notes of the Mendelssohn wedding march, was over, and the crowd, a very large one, was moving about the yard with drinks and hors d’oeuvres in hand. Receiving kisses and congratulations were Norma and Lester, a couple so well matched that one could almost swear that these among all people would endure together.

  An acquaintance had already remarked to Cecile that “they must be having great sex to have made Norma look so much softer. It does make a change in a woman, especially in one who always looked so deprived, if you know what I mean.” That surely was a thing Harriet Newman would never say!

  “It was darling of her to invite your father and me, we thought.”

  “Oh, she really wanted you. You’re old friends. She remembers so many things about you, how good you were after her mother died and how you took her shopping for her junior-high graduation dress. She hasn’t forgotten a thing.”

  “Well, she’s married into a fine family, I must say. Alfred Cole has an outstanding reputation.”

  Cecile was amused. She must have heard that at least six times today.

  “We’re going inside now. I’ve already peeked in—they’ve got long tables, twelve people at each, I think, the same as we had, or maybe more.”

  “It seems like yesterday,” said Harriet, “and then again it seems like a hundred years, although it was only five years last month.”

  When she sighed, Cecile understood it was because she was thinking again about the great blot on the history of those years, about the dozens of names that had been talked over and the double carriage that still stood in the basement covered with plastic wrap.

  This was not the time for such talk, if ever there was a right time for useless mourning. “Come on,” she said, “they’re already at the table.”

  At the head, side by side, sturdy and steady as any old couple, sat bride and groom, these two who had become a couple only half an hour ago. Now Peter and I, thought Cecile, were no doubt the most flustered couple in history. I was in a fog, while Peter’s face was so hot that he might have just returned from a ten-mile hike.

  There was, naturally, a sameness about these wedding parties, especially at this kind of table where you were bound to find yourself making conversation with total strangers so that they would not feel excluded by the others who knew one another. The strangers here at Cecile’s end were people from Country Day: new faculty members, very young, along with the recently retired Dr. Griffin, very old. Luckily, their conversations were all interesting.

  But then, and also luckily for her, Cecile found most people’s conversations, indeed their very lives, most interesting. If she had had the necessary talent, she often reflected, she would have attempted to write a novel. For in her daily experience, from the poor and sick at the hospital’s social service department to the suburban ladies who were her chief contacts around and in Cagney Falls, there was a rich variety of human character, enough for an endless series of novels.

  She was also a good listener, full of curiosity and quite content in certain moods to sit and contemplate the scene. The action here this afternoon was lively. People interrupted their eating and drinking to get up and dance. They visited other tables to give a greeting and were visited in turn. Above all, they talked. Occasionally she recognized Peter’s voice in the midst of the crisscross chatter at the other end of the table. Lester and he were being very earnest about something; they were evidently agreeing with each other, which was nice to know because so often among couples a pair of good friends would find that their husbands did not like each other. Peter and Larry, for example, were less compatible than she would have liked; it was not that there was any disapproval between them, but merely that they were too different from each other.

  Cecile’s glance moved across the table to where Larry and Amanda were seated next to Alfred Cole. Larry was intently listening to Alfred and to Amos,
across from him, who were discussing their experiences in World War II. Amanda was especially quiet. But all she ever had to do was to sit still and wait for everyone’s eyes to turn to her, for eventually everyone’s did; even those of the old retired headmaster were drawn to that pale crown of hair and that piquant face.

  “True,” Alfred was saying, “nobody who wasn’t there can ever understand. I was in a tank in the first wave on D-Day, and no matter how excellent the movie or the book may be, it can’t begin to approach the reality.”

  “You were down there in the muck and blood,” Amos said, “and I was a couple of thousand feet up, but we had blood up there, too. On my eleventh mission over Germany—God, I’ll never forget that mission—I was standing next to the flight engineer, nice young guy from Pawtucket, Rhode Island—flak took his head off. I got some scratches, a few still bother me, but I still sometimes dream about that death.”

  Alfred nodded. “I know. On the fourth day in Normandy, we’d already reached a couple of miles inland. There was a village, deserted except for some dogs and cats, where we stopped in an empty barn. Somebody said, There ought to be some food around here, maybe in that shop down the street, some eggs or cheese or something.’ So I said I’d go see, and I went, and I was coming back with a bag of stuff, ripe peaches were in it I remember, and when I saw the barn, I saw it had taken a hit. It was gone, and all the guys with it.”

  “We were lucky ones,” Amos said. “We went through it, got home, and kept on being lucky. We’ve had a good life, you and I, sitting here in good health with all this happiness around us.”

  Now he is going to get emotional, Cecile thought with affection, as he always does when the war is the subject. And sure enough, Amos was reaching across the table to shake Alfred’s hand.

  “We ought to see more of each other, Alfred. I know we say that every time we meet, but somehow time passes, we’re both busy, and we don’t do it. Do you still play tennis?”

  “Not as often as I’d like to, or as I should.”

  “Then come on out to us and play. I keep the court in shape, and it’s a pity it’s so little used. We’re only half an hour’s drive past the bridge at Lane Avenue.”

  Rarely, almost never, did Cecile hear any mention of Lane Avenue and the bridge, so it brought now a nasty little shock such as she always felt whenever the car passed there on the way to her old home. It was exasperating that nature should play such tricks, retaining in your memory against your will some ugly, senseless thing that you wanted to forget.

  Larry, who had been paying close attention to the two men, now remarked that Alfred Cole was the lawyer you wanted whenever you had a real problem.

  “I heard that from everybody when I started to work, especially from my father. He’s a great admirer of yours, Mr. Cole.”

  “Hey, Larry, now that your sister’s married to my son, you certainly don’t have to ‘Mister’ me anymore, do you?”

  Larry replied gallantly, “Okay, Alfred, it will be my pleasure.”

  “By the way, where is your father? Why isn’t he sitting with the bride and groom?”

  “He’s over there, with some relatives.”

  At two tables’ distance sat Lawrence Balsan, presiding over an array of gray and bald heads.

  “Six of those folks came from Vancouver,” Larry explained. “They’re my mother’s Canadian cousins, and we haven’t seen them in years. But they decided to come for Ella—that was our mother’s name—for Ella’s daughter’s wedding.”

  Turning to illustrate, he caught his father’s eye. When they waved to each other, Lawrence stood up at once and came over to Norma. At that moment the orchestra, which had been silent for a while, began again to play, and he seized the bride by the shoulders, kissed her, and whirled her away.

  “I’m taking your wife, Lester,” he said. “Go get yourself another girl to dance with.”

  And so the dancing began. It would last awhile, as it always did, to provide a welcome gap between the main course and the cutting of the wedding cake. On the day they had all shopped for her dress, Norma had mentioned to Amanda and Cecile that there would be real music and romantic dancing, with “no tom-tom beat or jigging around by yourself.” Cecile was just telling this to Peter as Amanda passed, dancing with Mr. Balsan. What a striking couple! she thought.

  “You shouldn’t have asked me,” Amanda wailed. “What are you thinking of?”

  “For God’s sake, people can hear you.”

  “I wasn’t loud. I only cried under my breath. Do let me go. I want to sit down.”

  “What, sit there alone at the table? Or better yet, should you and I sit there together? What are you thinking of? Now smile, will you? We’re having a jolly conversation, we’re dancing, having a good time. Smile!”

  “All right. I’m sorry. I’ll be okay. But it hurts so much.”

  “Yes. Try to think of something else.”

  “I’m not able to.”

  But she was. And every single thing that she did think of only increased the palpitation of her heart, the lump in her throat, and the sting of all the tears suppressed in back of her lids. There was the remembrance of Cecile’s wedding and the sight of her right now, dancing with Peter. Most probably they, too, were talking about it; she had tilted her face up toward his, and he was kissing her neck. Five years ago, it was, and he still did that, and she still wanted him to.

  “Think about Norma, your best friend, and how wonderful this is.”

  Yes, it is wonderful, because a blind man would know that she has gotten the man who is exactly right for her, the kind of man she needed.

  “She’s got a man to suit your specifications, L.B. She’s married up, to the son of one of the most prominent real estate lawyers in the city.”

  “Don’t be bitter, Amanda. And do keep smiling. People notice things.”

  “How can I help being bitter? I’m in your arms, where I want to be and have no right to be.”

  Tonight Norma would be with Lester in a wide bed at a hotel. Tomorrow they would be in Greece, in sunshine together, climbing a hill or lying on the sand, talking about the future, perhaps about that house they’ve been considering. For her, Amanda, there had been only that mockery of a honeymoon, that total disappointment, and now an empty, drab unknown.

  “Is this music ever going to end? I need to sit down, L.B. You shouldn’t have asked—”

  “I asked you because Larry told me to. He thought it looked strange that I had danced with every woman at your table except you.”

  There was no answer to that.

  “I wish we could go someplace together and stay forever,” he murmured. “I wish I could have a clear conscience.”

  “Don’t, L.B. I’ll cry, I tell you, I can’t help it.”

  “Don’t cling. You’re too close to me. And smile, I tell you again, we’re at a wedding.”

  “As if I don’t know where we are.”

  When she raised her face to show him her proper, dutiful smile, she saw behind his equally proper expression a tender concern.

  “How do you feel about us?” he asked. “That we ought to stop?”

  “That we ought to stop? Of course.”

  “But can we do it? Can you?”

  Sorrowing, Amanda shook her head.

  “It’s wrong, it’s wicked, but it’s the way it is. I keep reminding myself that no one is being hurt, and you must do the same. We love each other and we can’t help it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Shortly before noon, Cecile came home. When she reached the door of Peter’s workroom, he looked up from the table.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “Nothing. What can he say? Oh, yes—to be patient.”

  It had been almost three years since the miscarriage. She stood there, all her muscles gone loose as if it were too much trouble to raise a leg and take a step, even too much trouble to move her lips and talk.

  “Well, that’s true,
” Peter said. “Being patient may be just the thing to bring it about, so I’ve very often heard. Or we could give up and adopt.”

  “I want our own, Peter,” she said brusquely.

  He looked down and drew a line on the drafting board.

  “Peter?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Are you as terribly upset about this as I am?”

  He sighed. “Not being a woman, I suppose my feelings may be different from yours. Yes, I’m disappointed, but I’m not going to devote the rest of our lives to the disappointment. We have each other. And if you ever finally decide you want to adopt—and you may want to—we’ll do it.”

  The gentle tone of his voice and the pity in his eyes distressed her. What was she doing to him, spreading the pall of her sadness over them both?

  “Every time I’m like this, I’m sorry,” she said, making a quick apology. “I hope I don’t do it too often. Do I? It’s really only when I go to the doctor and come away empty.”

  “You’ve no need to explain yourself. No, you’re never a complainer, and I understand.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Planting a kiss somewhere between his cheek and his ear, she leaned over his shoulder. “I swear I think you’ve come to love this project, and I’m sure you only took it originally to please my father.”

  “Well, there was more to it than that. But during these last few months I have to admit this work has actually filled my mind, here and at the office. I turned down two jobs this month so I could spend more time on this.”

  “I woke up after eleven last night when I missed you in bed. Then I looked down the stairs and saw the light still on in this room, so I didn’t disturb you.”

  “Genius at work, hey? Funny, I’m no landscape architect and I haven’t the least idea what one will do here, but still I have my own mental vision of trees on the inner side of the pedestrian paths, shading the walkers without affecting the drivers’ vision on the roads.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this design anywhere, the spokes of the wheel going out to the rim, to the river, the houses on Lane Avenue, and way out to the bird sanctuary. And you’ve got the circles inside the terminal building, those beautiful round murals over the doorways—no, I could swear that this whole work stands by itself. When do you think you’ll be finished?”