by Belva Plain
Dan struggled to swallow the thing, the lump in his throat that was simply stuck there, growing larger.
“I can’t work today,” he said. “I have to get back. I have to be with her.”
“Sure, sure. Go ahead.”
He put out his hand, which Ian took, pressing hard, and then he went home.
Chapter Nineteen
March 1991
In the silent house Sally went from room to room, with the heavy, patient Newfoundland padding behind her. She ought to have taken the children to the neighbor’s birthday party herself, but the energy just hadn’t been there, so Nanny had taken them instead. The energy was never there anymore.
At every mirror she stopped, in the unfounded hope that the next one would show a less devastating image. It was not a question of vanity; that sort of thing belonged now to another phase of her life, a phase to which she could never return. It was a question of terror.
This was how she would look in prison, or worse. She had already lost twenty pounds since that night in December, and would no doubt lose more. A study in gray and black, she thought now: gray skin and black hair, the hair that, standing out on either side of her cheeks like a pair of fans, had once reminded Dan of an ancient Egyptian portrait.
She remembered every detail of that day, from the first glancing encounter in the shop with the silver carousel, to the café where they had sat drinking cup after cup of coffee until it was almost dark. She remembered the slow walk together under the burgeoning trees, the famous view from the terrace outside the Jeu de Paume to the Arc de Triomphe, a tiny boy and a tiny dog sitting together in a stroller, and the old woman selling violets out of a wicker basket. She remembered everything.
Well wrapped in a thick tweed skirt and a twin set of sweaters, she was still shivering; the wind that swept the bare trees, so that they swayed to it as if begging mercy, had crept through every crack of wood and fissure of brick into the house itself. Or perhaps, she thought, it is only because I am so thin that I am so cold.
In the kitchen it seemed to be warmer. And putting the kettle on to boil, she sat down to wait for a tall mug of tea. Kitchens were homelike; their very walls drew themselves around you. It seemed as if no harm could reach a person, here in the heart of the house with the kettle singing, the bananas heaped in the old blue bowl, and the dog so comfortably asleep under the table.
At home, her parents’ home, they had kept cats. The white one, appropriately called Blanche, had owned her perch on the window ledge where she liked to groom herself in the sun, licking each pink paw in turn. Then there had been Cordelia, after Blanche, and Emma and Mathilda. Saturday mornings in that house meant pancakes and bacon; in a jug at the center of the round table there was always a handful of something green, in summer whatever was in bloom and in winter a sprig of holly or pine.
All these things are part of you; these they can never take away. They can lock you up for as long as they want in the gray fortress-prison, but these things will stay with you, these childhood houses and people, your first independent proud success, your love for Dan and the days when your children were born.
The hot tea warmed her hands, which clasped the mug, but the chill still ran in her veins. It was the chill of dread. And, she told herself in total honesty, it is not merely the dread of what will be done to me—although it is that, too—but mainly it is an awful grief because of the children and Dan, and because of my parents, who as yet have a pristine image of my happiness. If it were my suffering alone, it would be bearable, and even though I am not especially brave, I would bear it, just as Clive bears the cancer that sooner or later will kill him.
Hearing the sound of a car in the driveway, she knew it would be Dan; he had left work early to call for Nanny and the girls at the party. She was making a mess of his workdays; if it were possible, she knew, he would give up work altogether to stay at home and watch her. That morning he had absolutely forbidden her to go out today, and she wondered whether it was because she looked so ill or whether in some uncanny fashion, he had sensed the change in her, her final resolve to speak out.
When she glanced up at the clock she noted the date on the calendar hanging below it. It was a memorable date, the day on which Dr. Lisle had told her that Tina had been molested and also the birthday of the monster who had done it. Beyond the red silk curtains, there had been a strong March wind like the one that was howling now. And somebody had remarked upon the carousel, the duplicate of the one that had brought Dan and her together. It all came back to her.
But the day, thank God, was memorable now for a better reason: Tina had at last been making some real, positive improvements. There was still far to go, that was true, yet the direction was clear and unmistakable.
The family now burst into the kitchen. Right away Nanny gave the thumbs-up sign, meaning that Tina had done well at the party. The girls put their loot bags, filled with miniature Hershey bars, plastic dolls, rubber balls, and sundries, on the table, while Sally unbuttoned their Sunday coats.
Tina had an announcement. “I told Jennifer my sister is better than hers.”
“What makes you say that?” asked Sally.
“Because. My sister’s bigger and knows more words. Her sister’s dumb.”
“Dumb,” said Susannah. “Dumb, dumb, dumb.”
Tina laughed. “You see!”
Tina’s laugh! It was worth gold. Gold and diamonds and pearls. Tina’s long-lost gurgle of a laugh, with her cheeks puffed and her mischievous eyes gleaming.
And Sally gathered the two girls in her arms, hugging, rocking, and laughing with them.
Dan, watching, had a look on his face that broke her heart.
Almost every night it seemed, no matter how they tried to fill the space of time with something else, they returned to the same subject.
“It’s Amanda’s endurance that I can’t get over,” Sally said. “To live with that all these years! And no one had sense enough to see her suffering and try to find the cause.”
“But as you said, she never wanted to reveal it.”
“Yes, the Greys’ pride, she told me.”
“Pride,” Dan said bitterly. “It turned her into an angry woman.”
“She had plenty to be angry about.… And you remember nothing?”
“Just phrases here and there, servants’ whispers, long after she had left. They called her a ‘difficult girl.’ I didn’t think much about it. I didn’t even have much more than a quick impression of the day she left. It was all so sudden. Nobody had ever said she wasn’t going to stay on at Hawthorne with me. I remember, I can still see her standing in the front hall with suitcases and a little poodle in a carrier. I was trying not to cry—Uncle Oliver said boys don’t cry—but of course I did cry awfully. It was hard. First the helicopter crash, Dad and Mom disappearing, not even any bodies left, and now Amanda going away. It was hard. Yes.” Dan nodded. “But then, as children do, I got over it. I got happy. I had a good life at Hawthorne.”
“Didn’t you think it was strange that she didn’t come home at all?”
“Well, there were those nice relatives in California, and I went there to visit every summer. Amanda didn’t want to come home and Uncle Oliver said that was okay, that she shouldn’t be forced to do anything against her will.”
For Sally, there was a kind of comfort in thinking about Amanda. She had somehow survived; at least she hadn’t foundered. Therefore, with the love and the care that Tina was being given, she ought to do very much better, ought to do more than merely survive.
“I wish I had known Amanda,” Sally said. “She’s a valiant woman, and a loving one too, I suspect. Think of how she withdrew her claim to the stock and apologized for having made it in the first place.”
Dan agreed. “Let’s invite her for a long stay as soon as spring warms up. I’d like that. In fact, let’s phone her now and ask her.”
Sally put up her arm. “No, wait. We don’t know what will be happening this next month or two.”
“If you’re back on that theme, Sally, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Dan, you have to hear it.” Her voice sank very low. “I can’t go on like this much longer. In fact, not any longer.”
They were in their bedroom. She was lying back on the little sofa at the foot of the bed, and now he came to sit at her feet.
“Listen to me,” he said earnestly, “and tell me the truth. You’re worried because Ian knows. Isn’t that it?”
“No, I trust Ian. He wouldn’t hurt the children or me. It’s not on account of him at all. It’s on account of me.”
“Sally! It was an accident!” he cried. And he reproached her. “You’re torturing yourself needlessly. Can’t you put it in a compartment and lock it away in your head?”
“You wouldn’t say that if you were a lawyer.”
“Then I’m glad I’m not.”
“But we all live under the law.”
“Please don’t lecture me.”
“I’m not. Maybe I sound pious or something, but there is such a thing as conscience and mine nags me day and night. Day and night, Dan.”
“He deserved to die.”
“I know, but not at my hands.”
“Your hands.” He bent down and kissed them, murmuring, “Sally, you’ll kill me and the little girls. I beg you, don’t do this terrible thing to us. And what good will it do anyway for you to go through a trial and be judged, and God forbid, be sent to prison? What will it prove?”
“Only that we can’t let the vigilantes run things.”
“For God’s sake, you weren’t a vigilante! It was an accident!”
“We’re going in circles, Dan, and I am so tired.”
He stood and looked down to where she lay. “Yes,” he said, “you look like hell. I’m going to take you and the girls with Nanny to some warm place where you can lie in the sun, rest, and put some weight on.”
“You’ve said that more than once, poor darling. But the sun can’t take this trouble away. I have to tell, Dan, just as Amanda eventually had to.”
“That was entirely different.”
“Not really. It’s just that things swell up inside you until there’s no room for them, and then they burst out.”
“We’ve had this talk so many times before and we never get anywhere. Will you let Ian talk to you? After all, it was—he was—Ian’s father. Maybe you’ll listen to him.”
“Please darling, as you said, we’ve had this talk so many times. It’s no use. I’m going to turn myself in on Monday.”
He clapped his hand to his forehead. “My God, I think I’m mad.” He walked away, turned about to look at her, walked away again, and came back. “Not Monday. You’ve got to see a lawyer first. That’s common sense and I demand it. I happen to know that Larson’s coming home from a vacation on Wednesday. We’ll see him then. Do you promise you’ll wait till then?”
She did not want to cry. Through sheer effort she kept the tears from starting. “Yes, but I’m not going there to have him try to talk me out of it.”
“Don’t I wish,” Dan said grimly.
Of course no lawyer of any repute would talk her out of it. She knew that. But he would guide her, and then the Fates, such as they were, would do the rest.
Since early morning Clive had been at the hospital and now the afternoon was coming to a close. In a little anteroom next to his doctor’s office, a private waiting room for privileged patients, he supposed, he sat flipping through magazines. The pain in his back was so severe that, in spite of all his shifting of positions, it was almost unbearable. So he stood up and that was just as bad. The pain had been spreading into his thighs, growing in small increments, day after day for—how many days? Ten? Eleven? He had lost count. The pain was blinding him.
Someone said, “Dr. Day will see you now.”
He went in. The doctor was studying a little pile of papers. When he looked up, his expression was readable. Doctors’ expressions always were; there was the cheerful glint in the eye that said “Everything’s negative,” and then there was the expression, slightly puzzled, that said “I have bad news and I’m trying to figure out how best to break it.”
“Well,” Clive said, “it’s no good, is it?”
“There’s always—” the doctor began, but Clive interrupted.
“Forgive me for being impolite today. It’s a bad day and my father’s birthday and I know I’m dying, so please say it quickly. I’m ready for it.”
The doctor made the gesture with upturned palms and lifted shoulders that expresses inevitable failure.
“I’m so sorry, Clive. Damn, it’s the hardest thing.… Okay, here it is. The X ray, bone scans, MRI, all the stuff shows that it’s spread. It’s everywhere, bone, kidneys, liver, all over.”
“I see.”
“We tried. Damn, you seemed to be making such good progress after we took out your lung. Real progress all winter. Now this comes along.” Again, he made the gesture. “Like wildfire, a forest fire that you can’t put out.”
Clive held his head up. “How long?”
He hadn’t till now been conscious of a clock in the room. Suddenly, it was very loud. Tick. Tick.
“Anytime,” the doctor said.
Clive struggled out of the chair and found a few words. “Thank you for everything. You did everything that could be done.”
“Where’re you going, Clive?”
“Home. Where else? I want to be home.”
“I meant, how are you getting there?”
“My wife is driving. She’s been here all day waiting in the lobby.”
The other man seemed to be striving for something to say and do. He got up and held the door open, shook Clive’s hand, and shook his own head, saying, “Waiting all day, that’s a patient wife, do you want me to go down and talk to her, perhaps I can—”
“No, no. It isn’t necessary, but thank you all the same.”
Then Clive hurried into his overcoat, and in all his pain ran down the stairs.
After he had briefly told Roxanne what he had learned, after he had heard the customary indrawn breath and the expected response, Oh, but doctors have been wrong, my aunt was told nine years ago that she only had six months, he asked for quiet.
“You mean well, but that’s all nonsense and you know it is,” he said quietly.
“When—when did he say it would—”
“Anytime.”
He knew she was hoping it wouldn’t happen now in the car or some other place right in front of her. He could hardly find fault with her for that. He would feel the same natural dread if he were in her place.
All he wanted right now was to get home and take something for the pain. Yet, there was also a part of him that wanted to prolong the ride; it might very well be his last. Never. It was an extraordinary word when you had to apply it to yourself. And he looked avidly out at the sky, heavy with wintery clouds, at the wind, so fierce that you could imagine you actually saw it battering the trees, and at a dead deer lying on the side of the road; in a winter such as this one had been, there were many such deaths. But in May, in sixty days from now, would come the good time, new leaves and then myriad chirpings of returning birds; then the mare, scenting the spring, would break into a canter.
“I know you don’t feel like talking, but I thought if there’s anything you especially want to eat, I can stop at the store. It will only take a second.”
She reached over to press his hand, and held it. When he glanced at her in response, he saw the glint of her tears.
“Thank you, let’s just get home.” He was moved beyond words. She was so very, very kind to him; never in all his life had he felt so cared for, so guarded, so cherished. Noiselessly, she moved about the house, gave him food and drink, took books down from the shelves for him and replaced them, put music on the player and replaced the discs; when he needed nothing, she went quietly up to the room that she now occupied, and let him alone.
Once she had asked him whether he wa
nted to hear the full story about her and Ian, but he had not wanted to. He had no wish to make more vivid the mental images that were so graphic, too searing and too humiliating. They were no longer important anyway. Yes, he thought wistfully, one’s own imminent death does most “wonderfully concentrate the mind.”
When they reached home, the house was dark except for the kitchen light that had been left on for the benefit of Angel, who now came rushing to be picked up.
“Go sit on your chair in the den,” Roxanne directed. “It’ll be easier on your back than sitting at the table. I’ll bring dinner on a tray.”
She was taking charge, which was what people naturally seemed to do in the presence of imminent death. He found himself, as he obeyed, analyzing her probable emotions, and concluded that they were a mingling of natural fear and true compassion. And he could see her, on the night after his funeral, standing alone in this large house, probably holding the little pug to her chest, and remembering the day she moved in when it all belonged to her.
When she had set the tray down and turned to go back to the kitchen where she ate alone, he asked her to bring her food in and join him.
“It’s time we spoke,” he said.
She answered eagerly, “I’ve been wanting to ever since that night. I want to. I really need to tell you everything.”
“I don’t want to hear everything. I don’t want the details.”
“All right, no details. Let me just say it was rotten, what happened. But you should understand how when somebody falls for somebody it just—”
He stopped her. You should understand. She had put emphasis on the “you.” But to speak of “falling for” when it had been so—so glorious, a total transformation of self, a new life, a new personal! What did she know of that? She had never been inside his, Clive’s, skin. It wasn’t in her to know!
And yet perhaps it was. Perhaps it was a case of not having the vocabulary to express herself.
At any rate, there were practical things to be taken care of.