by Belva Plain
“About a year, or a year and a half. The business end, the syndicate, won’t be ready much before then anyway, Amos says. Hey, aren’t your three musketeers coming to lunch today?”
“Not until one o’clock. Amanda works half a day.”
“Well, I’ll be leaving soon after I put all this stuff away. I’m meeting some people who want to remodel an 1890’s barn out in Jefferson. I’ll be back about five, I guess, time to take my girl out to dinner. Hey, give me a kiss, not on the ear this time.”
Amanda took her coat off in the vestibule. “These miserable fall rains,” she said. “Aren’t you lucky to have a place for wet coats? In my house you step right into the living room with your wet coats and boots.”
“Don’t complain,” Norma said. “Your house is half again as big as our bungalow.”
“But you wanted a bungalow,” Amanda retorted.
“Come in. Lunch is waiting, a hot one to make up for the weather.”
Cecile soothed. It seemed to her that there was always a vague animosity between these two, a carping tendency to snap at innocent remarks. She wondered whether it harked back to that old business of Amanda’s extravagance and Norma’s protectiveness toward her brother.
“I always say this place should be photographed for a decorator’s magazine,” Amanda remarked.
In a way, the remark was discomfiting to Cecile; it almost sounded as if she, Cecile, was in the habit of making a special display of her possessions.
“Through no effort of mine,” she said, which was of course not quite true. Everything in the dining room, except for the asters in the centerpiece, was inherited; everyone knew that the way you combine things is what matters. The handsome chairs, which had been covered in a fusty brocade, were now covered in a soft green bird print, and the matching brocade draperies had been replaced by white curtains with tiebacks of the bird print. “Everything here is ancient,” she repeated, “from some dead relative’s house.”
“No one-upmanship from you, Cele,” said Norma. “I, too, have been offered my choice of anything I want at home. Any old treasure that I want, because my father wants to move to someplace smaller now that I’m gone.”
At the thought of the dark, elephantine bulk of the Balsan furnishings, she laughed, and the others could not help but laugh with her. Norma was cultivating a humorous streak that no one had known she possessed.
“I love your new place,” Cecile said then. “You might not expect me to like your modern furniture because I’m not a fan of the modern, but the truth is that I like yours very much. Even though it’s not for Peter and me, it’s right for Lester and you and I admire it, especially with all your wonderful books and prints to warm it up. It looks as if you’ve lived there for years.”
“I’m surprised you bought a house with only two bedrooms,” said Amanda. “What will you do when you have a family?”
Norma answered promptly, “We’re not going to have a family.”
Cecile was astonished. “What do you mean?”
“What I said. We don’t want any children. We don’t believe people should have them unless they really, really want them. We don’t. And if you don’t want any, it’s wrong to bring them into the world.” An odd, unpleasant thought, an old thought, ran through her head: Especially if you have a girl with legs like mine. “At Country Day we’re surrounded by children, or at least Lester is now, and he loves it. They’re family enough. And in between working on my book and my translations, I tutor, as you know.”
“Still, it’s hard for me to understand,” Cecile said wistfully.
“Not for me,” Amanda asserted. “I’d just as soon not have any. I like my work, like being out in the world every day. Believe me, I can see and hear remarkable things every day instead of being shut up in a house.”
Norma said sharply, “That may be for you, but I hardly think Larry sees it that way.”
Amanda shrugged, and there was an abrupt though subtle change of atmosphere at the table. It seemed that what was all right for Norma was not all right for Amanda.
We never used to have this swiping, thought Cecile for the second time that day.
“Shall I heat some more rolls?” she asked.
Amanda said quickly, “I hope you’re having a bit of encouragement, Cele.”
That was one thing about Amanda; she was sensitive to other people’s feelings; it was as if she had seen inside Cecile’s head. And Cecile told her so.
“You do understand. Without having my wants, you feel them. No, there’s no change. There are all kinds of things, pills and whatnot. You know. You read the papers.”
“Be careful what you do, and don’t have sextuplets,” Amanda teased.
“Believe it or not, I wouldn’t mind.”
The sorry little remark seemed to echo in the room. And Cecile, aware of it, said brightly, “I see you have a sale sign in your shop window, Amanda.”
“It’s nothing. It’s silly. We’ve only a few summer pieces left over—after all, this is fall, and winter things are coming in. Mrs. Lyons wanted the sign and she’s the boss until she retires. Then we’ll see … Oh, let me tell you something really wild. The things I hear—or rather that Dolly hears. People seem to confide the craziest things in her, not me! You want to hear the latest? It’s about this woman—she lives in Cagney Falls, so I won’t spread her name—but she has had five husbands, and the last one, you won’t believe—”
Amanda related the absurd story until they were all choking with laughter.
Like magic, the atmosphere changes when she’s in a room, thought Cecile, and was sorry when, soon after lunch, Amanda left, pleading a doctor’s appointment.
“It’s only for my annual checkup, but I forgot all about the lunch when I made it, and it’s too late to change it. So thanks, Cele dear, and kiss Peter for me. See you soon.”
“I felt for a while recently,” Cecile remarked when Amanda had left, “that she was a trifle melancholy. But today she seemed to be her own lively self again.”
“Yes, I have seen some changes back and forth.”
“I see one in you, too, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“What do you see?”
“Oh, nothing fundamental. You’re still a walking encyclopedia, but—well, but you never talk about your legs anymore. Is that Lester’s work, by any chance?”
“Smart girl. Yes, it’s all his work, that and more.”
“I’m so happy for you, Norma. For you, and for Amanda, too. Everything has turned out so well for you both. When we were in those rooms above the quadrangle, could we ever have imagined being where we all are today?”
Across the street from the post office was a pocket park with benches set among evergreens. The rain had stopped, but the benches were still damp; nevertheless, Amanda, drawing her raincoat tight around herself, sat down.
Alongside the post office was a short row of stores, a stationery, a pharmacy, a convenience store, and a filling station. For a while she sat and watched the activity, although there was not much. Cars entered the filling station, were serviced, and departed. A woman took her small, hairy dog, wearing a pink leash and collar, into the stationery store. Three small boys came out of the convenience store, each one holding a double-dip ice-cream cone. And all of these received Amanda’s undivided attention, as though she were about to write about them or to paint them.
Eventually, she would have to get up and leave, or somebody would assume that there was something wrong and that she needed help. It happened that she did need it. If she could have called or run to her mother, she would have done so. Young soldiers, fighting men and brave, when they are wounded or terrified, are often known to cry out for their mothers: Mother, Mother, help me.
So she sat, afraid to move and not quite sure anyway where to go. The doctor’s friendly, fatherly chuckle was still sounding in her ears. Imagine that! He had chuckled! Halfway through a sentence, he had actually chuckled.
“You’ll have something ni
ce to tell your husband this evening, Mrs. Balsan. By next April, there’ll be three of you. An April Fools’ baby. Not as good as a New Year’s baby because they get their names in the paper. But good all the same.”
He had probably thought he was being humorous. Obviously he hadn’t been noticing or understanding what was happening to her.
“I thought,” she had said, “that those tests people do at home aren’t always accurate. That’s why I came to you.”
“Well, relax. There’s no doubt about it. You’re well into the second month.” Suddenly he was in a hurry, there being at least six women with enormous bellies in the waiting room. “Outside at the desk they’ll give you a list of instructions and an appointment for next month. Congratulations, Mrs. Balsan.”
In her handbag there was a small notebook with an attached pen. She took it out, held the pen poised and struggled with words. So much depended, as it often does, on the words one uses, whether they are heavy and ominous, striking fear into the listener, or whether they are spoken by a person who renounces doom, sees the glass half full, and is in charge of a situation. But how in the name of Heaven could anyone call this glass half full, when it was empty?
Also in the handbag there was a cell phone. With a shaking hand, she pressed L.B.’s number, praying to reach him in his car. There was no answer.
Half an hour, she thought. I’ll try him again in half an hour. In the meantime I must stabilize myself, watch the life in the little street, speculate about the passersby, and keep my sanity. Remember the people whom Cecile describes, how dreadful are their troubles and how brave they often are. Take that old woman going into the dry cleaner’s; all crippled with osteoporosis, she must look at herself in the mirror and wonder how she had ever come to deserve this. Or take that battered car driving out of the gas station. You’d be afraid to take it on the highway for fear it might break down. You had to be in desperate straits to risk your life in a wreck like that.
Again she tried L.B.’s number, and reaching him this time, heard her voice crack. Make it short, then.
“I need to see you today. Can you get there by four?”
“Today? It’s impossible. I’m up to my ears. No, I can’t.”
“You have to,” she said.
“What? Talk louder, I can hardly hear you.”
“I said, ‘You have to.’ It’s very important, very serious.’”
“Amanda, I can’t. It’s only three days till Saturday—” “Oh, please. Oh, please.” With that she began to cry, and hung up.
He was there ahead of her. When he helped remove her raincoat, he felt her trembling and was angry.
“What is it? Talk. Anyone sick? Have you been in an accident? What is it? What’s the mystery? Hanging up like that, crying. You frightened the life out of me! What was I to think?”
She sank into a chair, holding her head in her hands. “Don’t be angry at me, L.B.”
“I’m not, really, I’m just reacting to my terror. Your tears—what’s wrong?”
“I’m pregnant,” she said softly.
“You are? Oh, for God’s sake.” He sighed. “Oh, for God’s sake. But don’t cry like that,” he whispered, stroking her bent head. “Ah, don’t, don’t. Ah, poor sweet Amanda! It’s not the absolutely worst thing in the world. I know you don’t want it, but really it’s not the worst thing.”
Large tears broke loose and rolled down her cheeks. “You don’t understand,” she wept. “It’s yours.” She raised her head and looked into his eyes.
He stared at her. “How the hell can you be sure of that?” he demanded, he who almost never swore.
“Don’t you think I know how to count?”
L.B. was too stunned to reply. He simply stood in front of her and waited, still staring.
“He’s had the flu off and on, and anyway, I try to avoid”—she sobbed, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and gulped out the rest—“to avoid—it makes him angry, but anyway, we go for weeks with no—so I know it isn’t possible,” she finished.
“Does anyone—I mean, will anyone else know that?”
“You mean, will he know? The answer is absolutely not. But I know. God help me, I do. There’s no doubt.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. No chance I’m wrong.”
“I’m trying to think—what happened? How? We did everything right—”
“Nothing’s a hundred percent sure, you know that.”
L.B. groaned. Now it was he who sat holding his head in his hands. The silence was smothering. She had a sudden vision of being in a tunnel sealed at the ends with no way out.
The alarm clock rattled and struck the hour. Thirty minutes had already passed when she raised her pleading eyes to L.B. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. What am I—what are we—going to do?”
More minutes passed before there was any answer. At last L.B. got up and knelt at her feet.
“Listen to me,” he said, almost whispering. “It’s a damned ugly thing, but it’s not the worst thing. I thought when I heard you crying over the telephone—I don’t know what I thought. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you. Forgive me for being impatient when you came in. I’m sorry. I apologize. Please understand and forgive me.”
“But what are we going to do?” she insisted.
“We’ll do nothing. Remember the case that was in the papers a while ago? You were the one who told me about it, that they had been in love for fifteen years.”
“She didn’t get pregnant, L.B. What am I going to do?” she repeated, imploring him.
“Nothing. You’ll get through this in the usual way, and nobody will ever know. That’s all we can do.”
Although he spoke calmly and logically, she was not fooled. When he rose from his knees, he went to the window and, in his usual contemplative pose, stood there with his hands in his pockets. He had not given way to any emotion, no recriminations, no lamentations; all were held back in control. “Head over heart,” as Norma so often liked to say. Yes, he would use his head now because he was strong and able to, but she knew that his heart was stricken. She knew that he was seeing his son’s face before him, and that he despised himself.
Rising, she touched his shoulders and murmured, “I’m sick, too.”
He touched her cheeks. “You’re all red from crying. I’ll get some cold water.”
Tenderly, he pressed a cold cloth to her eyes and, as tenderly, spoke. “We’ll manage, Amanda. Don’t I always say to you that as long as nobody knows, nobody will be hurt? That’s the important thing. Only keep remembering that. Now we need to drive home.”
“I’m not sure I can do it. I’m still shaking. Do you realize what I’ll have to do when I get there? How am I going to get the words out and pretend to be happy?”
“Give yourself a rest and wait till tomorrow. Now you’re going to follow me. I’ll drive very slowly and watch you in the rearview mirror. You’ll do all right, darling. You will. We’ll both do all right because we have to. Just keep remembering that. We have to.”
The night passed. Amanda slept, probably, she thought, because of exhaustion; she had been beaten down. The day at work passed until about three o’clock in the afternoon, when suddenly the cheerful voice, the upbeat manner, and the fortitude collapsed.
Dolly noticed it. “You look sick,” she said. “You’ve got no color in your face. I hope you’re not coming down with something.”
“I don’t know. I feel as if I might be.”
A totally bizarre thought came when she looked at Dolly. What if she were suddenly to blurt out, “Dolly, help me,” and then tell the whole story? Dolly would stand there with her eyes popped open and her mouth dropped open. Dolly, who made no secret of what so many people, although not all, would call her “raggedy” life—roaming from one man to the next—yes, even good-natured, easy-living Dolly would be shocked.
So she went home, although not to bed but to the kitchen, where in a frenzy of nerves she kept herself busy prep
aring a dinner fit for a holiday celebration. If she were not doing that she would need to keep running around the block, she thought. She thought too that perhaps, if she were to postpone telling Larry for a few more days, she might be better pulled together. Then she corrected herself: Postponement was nothing but cowardice.
“What’s the reason for the feast?” Larry inquired, wrinkling his nose at the scents of gravy in the roasting pan and pie in the oven.
“There was nothing much doing in the shop, so I left early, and when I walked into the kitchen, I suddenly became inspired.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not inspired like this every day, or I’d soon be a tub. But right now I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to eat.”
He enjoyed his food. If things were different, if she were different, if those ifs were not what they were, it would have been a pleasure to see his enjoyment. Between mouthfuls he talked, complimenting the biscuits and describing an encounter with an eccentric customer.
Part of Amanda listened to him and made appropriate responses. Part of her relived yesterday’s luncheon meeting of the three musketeers. How far they had come from the days of their innocence, when they had felt themselves already so old and wise! Now Cecile longed for a child that perhaps she was not destined to have; Norma had made a flat decision never to have one, while she, Amanda, had lived recklessly …
From where she sat, it was possible to glimpse in the living room a small, round table cluttered with photographs of those who were part of her years: the family on the front porch at home, herself as a child, Larry as a Little Leaguer, the three musketeers in cap and gown, and herself in the long white dress, standing with Larry next to their wedding cake in that frostbitten honeymoon lodge.
And she cried out inwardly, Ah, Amanda, act your age! Face the music, they say. Be a man, they say. In your case, Be a woman. Go ahead.