Heartwood

by Belva Plain

  “Will she ever stop?” Robby demanded after a siege that seemed to have gone on for hours.

  “She’s angry,” Laura said. “She was sleeping and minding her own business, and those idiots woke her up with their noise and now she’s going to make sure we know how she feels about it.” And she added quietly in her daughter’s ear, “It’s okay, Katie. Don’t you pretend to be happy when you’re not. Not my little girl.”

  But Laura and Robby weren’t getting much sleep, and Robby, particularly, was exhausted. To fill in their ever-widening financial gap, he’d begun tutoring a few private students in math and science. Now, in addition to the hours he spent doing research for Hawkins, he was preparing lessons and grading papers. On the weekends he’d taken a part-time job at a shoe store in the local mall. Naturally all of this cut into the time he had for his own studies, and being sleep-deprived wasn’t helping him either. In the early mornings Laura watched him stagger through their apartment, which was now crammed with the baby’s furnishings, to sit at the kitchen table, and fall asleep over his books, and she knew he was falling behind. At the same time he was becoming fixated on the idea that he needed to get his doctorate as quickly as possible.

  “Then I can start making a decent salary and we can get ourselves out of this miserable little apartment. You have to go back to school and get your degree too. We don’t talk about that anymore but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it,” he said. “And the baby is growing out of her clothes every few months. We have to have more money.”

  Poor Robby. He wanted to take care of his own so badly. He wanted to prove his father wrong and he wanted to show Theo and Iris that Laura hadn’t made a mistake when she married so young and had a child so soon. But Laura knew he was pushing himself too hard. Throughout that first year, she tried to convince him not to rush. He needed to study at his own pace, she said. To ease the financial pressure on him, she went out job-hunting again and finally landed work as a waitress. But she quit after a few weeks because it was costing more to pay for a babysitter than she was earning in tips.

  At the end of their first winter, Robby summed up their situation. “We’re living in an apartment that would have been small for one person, let alone two people and a baby. We don’t have even a small backyard for Katie and Molly to play in. And you still aren’t going back to college, Laura. Some success I am!”

  And nothing she could say would change his mind. So when summer came around, and he said he wouldn’t go back to Professor Hawkins’s dig because he could make more money at the shoe store, she didn’t argue with him, even though she knew he’d be losing a valuable credit on his résumé.

  It was so frustrating, it seemed as if every time they turned around, the lack of money was stopping them from doing something. And in Robby’s mind the only solution was for him to get his doctorate. Laura watched this obsession grow and she was afraid for him. But again, he wasn’t listening to her. When he began his third semester at the university, he announced that he would be taking his oral exams that year. The orals, as they were called, were the all-important first step to his coveted PhD, and he felt he couldn’t wait another minute.

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he failed. The exam was essentially a verbal grilling of a doctoral candidate by a team of professors from his department, and under the best of circumstances it was a grueling ordeal. For Robby, who had made the stakes way too high for himself, the pressure was too great. And the truth was, as Laura had feared, he wasn’t as well prepared as he should have been. When the first question came at him, he froze and he never recovered.

  Robby was shell-shocked. He was used to being the brightest boy in his class. Now he felt he was the class’s biggest failure. For days he refused to go out of the apartment for fear of running into one of his fellow grad students.

  Laura tried to reassure him. “You’ll have a second chance at the exam, everyone gets two tries.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But next time will be different. You’ll see …”

  “Really? And exactly how is that going to happen?”

  “You’ll study until you feel completely confident …”

  “How? I’m asking you, Laura. How am I going to do that when I have to have three jobs?”

  “I’ll get a job instead.”

  “We tried that, remember?”

  “We’ll find a way. We’ll make sure that next time you take the exam you’re rested and you’re not pressured, and—”

  “Will you stop it?” He was yelling now. He sounded exactly like his father. “Will you stop being such a stupid little girl? Nothing is going to change—do you get that? I’m trapped here in this hellhole of an apartment and I’ll never get out from under as long as I have to carry two—” He stopped himself. She knew he’d been about to say that she and the baby were like rocks weighing him down, and if he had finished the sentence she wasn’t sure what she would have done. But he had caught himself in time. “I’ll never get out!” he said.

  Years later she would realize that she should have fought him then. She’d wanted to say that having a baby had been his idea so he could save his precious skin. “Don’t you dare blame me!” she’d wanted to scream. And perhaps if she had, he would have learned to take responsibility for his own mistakes. Or maybe he never could have learned that. In any case, she hadn’t screamed at him because then she would have been saying that having Katie had been a mistake, and there was no way she would ever say or feel that. And besides, in those days she still wanted to be the perfect wife. So she had choked down her anger, and she’d gone to the one small window in the room, and raised the blinds he’d pulled down. A narrow shaft of sunshine pierced the gloom he’d created.

  “It’s a beautiful day outside, Robby,” she said as calmly as she could. “Go out. You can’t hide in the house forever.”

  “Leave me the hell alone.”

  After that he refused to talk to her. He did finally leave the apartment; he had two jobs after all. But when he was home he sat in a chair reading magazines and watching bad television shows in silence until it was time to go back to work.

  One day Laura realized that the war in Vietnam had been over for months, and she’d been so preoccupied she’d only noticed it in passing.

  Chapter Seven

  Rescue came in the form of a meeting with Robby’s mentor. Professor Hawkins had been aware of Robby’s struggles, and he summoned him to lunch at the faculty dining room. Even in his state of despair Robby didn’t dare refuse.

  “I know you have great potential, Robby,” Professor Hawkins said after the steak sandwiches had been ordered. “I still believe in you. But your attention is too scattered. I believe I have a solution for that.”

  What he was proposing was a position for Robby on the university faculty. There were two freshman courses in archaeology that Hawkins taught every year, or at least, that was the claim in the university’s catalog. In reality, the professor turned this drudgery over to one of his graduate students. The young man who had been teaching the courses was leaving, and Hawkins had chosen Robby to be his replacement. The workload would be light, certainly lighter than the one Robby was now carrying, and when he took over the classes there would be an increase in the paycheck he was already receiving as Hawkins’s assistant. Best of all, Robby would be eligible for faculty housing. For less than he was now paying, he would be able to rent an entire house.

  Robby’s gratitude to his mentor bordered on worship. Laura was wary. From what she’d seen, Professor Hawkins enjoyed having eager acolytes surrounding him, but he never seemed to do much to advance the careers of the young people who worked for him. And a surprisingly high number of them never seemed to finish their degree. Still, Robby was talking to her again.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk,” he said. “I’d never regret getting married, or having Katie.”

  “I know,” she’d said. And she told herself that whatever her reserv
ations were about the professor, this was the fresh start they needed.

  –—

  In the beginning it seemed as if that was the case. Robby enjoyed teaching and he was popular with the kids. Most of them were taking the course to fulfill the school’s science requirement and couldn’t have cared less about the subject, so the fact that Robby managed to engage their interest was a boost to his battered ego. Also, the job was not as big a drain on Robby’s time and energy as tutoring individual students and selling shoes. He could study more.

  And the new house was sheer heaven. It was on a quiet street overlooking a park where Molly and Katie could play. There was a spare bedroom, which Robby could use as an office. There was a backyard; it was minuscule, but it was theirs. Of course the house was small, and there had been a time in her life when Laura would have said it was stuffy. But not now. Now she thanked God that she didn’t have upstairs neighbors who played their music at midnight. She set about making it their home.

  She planted a small flower bed and soon had vases full of her homegrown roses scattered through the place. Gardening came easily to Laura; she and her grandmother had spent hours every summer pruning Nana’s espaliered pear trees and weeding her beds of mauve-and-cream-colored phlox. Laura had learned about soil and sun and water during those hours, and these days as she looked at her tiny garden bursting with blooms she wished she could bring Nana back just for two minutes to show her how well she’d learned her lessons.

  –—

  The inside of her home presented other challenges. When she and Robby had rented it, they were told it was partially furnished, but they quickly discovered that “partially” was the operative word. Laura began haunting thrift shops to supplement the few meager pieces that had come with the house. Soon she had a collection of treasures; battered tables and chairs and chests of drawers, which she began to restore with sandpaper and paint. She picked up an ancient sewing machine and made curtains out of fabric remnants; she borrowed books from the library and taught herself how to reupholster a sofa. Several faculty wives told her she should put out her shingle and set herself up as an interior decorator for those on a shoestring budget.

  Laura actually thought about doing it. She’d been trying to figure out how to bring in some extra money; even though their financial situation had improved with their cheap housing and Robby’s bigger paycheck, she and Robby could always use more. But in the end she’d had a better idea than going into home decorating; there was one caterer in town who seemed to provide the food for all the parties and charitable events that were held at the university. Laura had attended several of them and while the entrées were fine, she thought the sweets were awful. They came from a bakery in Los Angeles, she’d learned, and the owner of the catering business was aware that desserts were her company’s weakness. Laura spent two days baking, then she went to see the woman in her cheerful office, which was located in a shopping center.

  “I hope this doesn’t offend you, but when I was twelve I could bake a better chocolate cake than the one you served at the Faculty Wives Lunch last week,” she said. “If you don’t believe me, taste this.” She’d opened the basket she’d brought with her and served the caterer a slice of Black Forest cake made from Nana’s recipe—with a twist of her own. “I use raspberries instead of cherries,” she told the woman, who had just loaded up her fork. Laura walked out of the caterer’s office that day with two orders for Black Forest cake—made with raspberries. She bought a pair of pink sneakers for Katie with her first check.

  Robby was still their main breadwinner of course, but the money Laura earned provided for some welcome extras. They were even able to start a small savings account, which really felt good to Laura. They had started making friends and that felt good to her too. So if she was still homesick for the Northeast and New York from time to time, she told herself not to be self-indulgent, she was building a new life for her family. Robby needed to be in Southern California. This was where he was going to pass his orals and earn his doctorate and start the career that had been his dream since he was a boy. That dream was far more important than her silly homesickness.

  Only it hadn’t quite turned out that way: Robby had indeed passed his orals on his second try. But there hadn’t been any celebrating or popping of champagne corks as Laura had expected. Something seemed to have happened to Robby, he hadn’t regained his bright-eyed self-confidence. Instead, with a hangdog look that Laura found a little frightening, he told her that his showing at the exam had been poor, and in fact he might have failed a second time if Hawkins hadn’t intervened with the other professors on his behalf. This information had come from the great man himself, which made Laura wish she could tell him what an insensitive dolt—and egomaniac—he was. But her husband believed what his mentor had told him, so it was a scared and diminished Robby who began writing the thesis that was the final step on his way to his doctorate.

  –—

  In her kitchen Laura sighed and ran her fingers through Molly’s tangled fur. Robby had begun his thesis seven years ago. He was still trying to write it. He had started and stopped more times than she could remember. He had rewritten chapters, and thrown them away and then gone back to his original draft and then discarded everything and started over once again.

  It’s because you’ve forgotten who you are, Laura had wanted to cry so often during those seven long years. Remember how intelligent you are. Remember who you used to be, Robby. But Robby was past hearing her.

  Gradually Professor Hawkins stopped talking to Robby about his bright future. He thought nothing of loading Robby down with work on a weekend or a holiday. And Robby always said yes. Because, he told Laura, where else was he going to go? Until he finished his thesis and had his degree, the world of archaeology wasn’t exactly going to be banging down his door with work. But Laura knew Robby was still trying to prove himself to Hawkins, who had been the supportive father figure he’d always wanted. What he couldn’t see was, Hawkins wasn’t supporting him anymore.

  “He’s exploiting you,” Laura finally said.

  “You don’t understand the pecking order in a university. I’m not baking cakes for ladies’ lunches, Laura. My life is a hell of a lot more complicated than that.”

  The jab about her baking wasn’t totally unexpected; she’d been building a bit of a reputation—and earning quite a bit of money—for her new undertaking, and she’d had a feeling he was resenting it. Now she knew he was. He also resented her for being “unrelentingly perky,” as he put it. He never seemed to realize that sometimes being cheerful took a lot of willpower.

  –—

  Robby’s only solace was his popularity with the students he taught. And as his confidence continued to plummet, he seemed to forget that it was his knowledge and love of his subject that had originally won them over. Now he wanted to be their friend.

  “I’m effective because the kids feel that I’m like them,” he told Laura. “They know I’m not some dried-up academic type.”

  But he wasn’t supposed to be like the kids. He was supposed to be the adult. It was part of his job to maintain a line between himself and his students, but he’d been blurring that line out of his own neediness. So finally, predictably, there had been a disaster.

  A female student—a sad-eyed girl who had serious emotional problems—later everyone would agree on that—mistook Robby’s friendliness for something more passionate and developed a desperate crush on him. When she finally realized her feelings were not reciprocated, she made a halfhearted attempt at suicide.

  No one believed that Robby had actually had an affair with the girl, but her father accused him of encouraging her. Since the man was an alumnus of the school and a major fund-raiser, Professor Hawkins had been forced to defend Robby and endure some very unpleasant moments on his behalf. To his credit, he had never considered abandoning Robby, but after the girl was safely off campus, he had given him a blistering lecture on inappropriate behavior and lack of judgment. Instead
of taking any of this to heart, Robby announced angrily that Laura had been right all along about Hawkins.

  “He is a total egomaniac, just like you said,” he fumed. “He was furious, just because he had to defend me to the dean! And now instead of being on my side, he told me to stop socializing with my students. Do you believe that? That girl was disturbed, and I’m being blamed for it. Why, there isn’t a professor or an instructor on this campus who hasn’t gone out with the kids for an occasional beer or pizza. That’s all I ever did. You know that, Laura.”

  Yes, but I also know that you blurred the line.

  –—

  After a few weeks, as always happens in such cases, the incident and the sad-eyed girl with the emotional problems had faded from most people’s memories. But there was still a black mark against Robby’s name. And Professor Hawkins had seen for the first time that the young man he counted on to do his dirty work and make his life easier could be a liability. So from that point on, it was essential that Robby be on his best behavior. And he had been very careful. He skipped his usual Friday night beer with the kids at their favorite bar, and he never dropped in on the pizza parlor or any of their other favorite haunts anymore. But Laura knew he was feeling abused, and she was worried. When Robby was in that mood, there was no telling what he’d do.

  –—

  Laura must have pulled too hard on Molly’s tangles because the dog gave a little cry and moved away. Laura stood up and got a biscuit for her as an apology.