by Belva Plain
On the sidewalk opposite the bank, she thought of something. “We’re having a barbecue next Saturday at my house. Joan Evans and I are giving it and we’re inviting the same crowd that was at the jazz club that time when you were there. I hope you’ll come.”
He looked startled, and answering, almost stammered. “Well, thank you, but I’m not sure where I’ll be next weekend. I’ll—I’ll let you know. Or I’ll tell Eddy or something, I mean.”
“Whatever,” she said at once.
His reply irked her. It was a rejection. She was annoyed with herself, too, for having coaxed him into the coffee shop in the first place. She wasn’t accustomed to coaxing men. He had confused her by first showing so much emotion about that case in court, and then being so stiff and frozen. Yet he had a quality that drew her.
For a moment as she watched him cross the street, she had a curious sense of loss. Absurd! Then she started the car and drove away.
It was a long trudge back from the bank, and Robb took his time. He was thinking, as he had thought on that other day, she is not afraid of anything. She was obviously very intelligent, but far too forward for his taste. He hadn’t wanted a drink, and didn’t want to go to the barbecue. That’s not to say he wouldn’t enjoy a Saturday outing with the rest of the crowd, only not at Ellen’s house. Yes, “forward” was the word, he told himself, aware at the same moment that he was very much behind the times. Lily would never have pressured a man like that. But then Lily, too, was behind the times in many ways—though definitely not as a lover!
Ellen was different, and he didn’t mean different only from Lily. He had been around enough women, other men’s women, during these latest years, and had never met anyone like her. It was odd that he had not noticed before how remarkably beautiful she really was. Of course, if you wanted to pick her features apart, you could say that it was only her wide, alert eyes, so intensely green, that made her seem beautiful. Those eyes made no modest attempt to hide what she thinks of me, he thought, which surely is flattering. And then he wondered—naturally, any man would wonder—what she would be like … Anyway, it was unimportant, not worth thinking about.
He had not planned to go home over the next weekend, not only because he had a ton of work, but also because the three-hour bus ride in this fierce late September heat was a misery. But now on the spur of the moment, he had a sudden painful longing for Lily, and he decided to go after all. He was vaguely troubled. He needed her.
CHAPTER THREE
1972–1973
They had made all his favorite dishes for dinner: pea soup, roast duck, yams and greens, hot bread, and custard pie.
“You haven’t lost your appetite, I see,” remarked Mrs. Webster, waiting for the praise that was her due.
“Certainly not for your cooking,” Robb said.
“Stay around here, and you can have a Sunday dinner like this every week of your life.”
He smiled in reply. She was waiting for definite information, which he was not ready to give. Most certainly he was not going to practice solo law in this little place; he had seen other ways and had, as was said, “expanded his horizons.” He wasn’t going to settle minor disputes in a rural town for the rest of his days, worthy as such a career was. But it was not for him.
“I suppose you’ll be making your plans pretty soon. It’s not far from September to May. It is May, isn’t it, your graduation?”
“Yes, May twenty-seventh.”
Her voice nagged at him. She was a good woman, but the timbre of her nasal voice, let alone the things she said, could sometimes set his teeth on edge. He was tense to begin with these days.
He had, fortunately, several choices to make from a rather gratifying list of offers. Good firms in various parts of the country had expressed an interest in him, but the problem was that he had never really traveled before and a single trip, an hour or two at an office in the middle of some urban wilderness, could tell almost nothing about what it would mean to work and live there.
“May twenty-seventh. It will be here before you know it.”
Quietly, Lily said, “We know that, Mother.”
He wondered whether Mrs. Webster had been pressuring Lily. It would not be unthinkable if she had. Parents wanted to see their children “settled,” not merely standing on the verge of something. Lily had been waiting a long time for real life to begin. What kind of existence was it, after all, for a bright young woman to work all day in a library among women and children, then come home to spend the evening with her mother? Hanging around, that’s what it was. A long, patient hanging around. Hanging out. Hanging in there. The silly word kept shaping and reshaping itself on his tongue.
“I’d like to know, I think you should tell me—oh, not this minute, but before too long—what your plans are. About your wedding, I mean, whether you want something here in town, or maybe up where you are, Robb? You must have made a great many friends up there.”
“That’s Lily’s decision,” he replied, turning to Lily. “Weddings are women’s business. I don’t care how we do it, as long as we do it.”
And they looked across the table into each other’s eyes. They were both frustrated today. It had been a stupid mistake on his part to come here where they had no privacy except the privacy of a walk outdoors, which hardly served their need. They should have met halfway, at the motel. He was exasperated with himself.
Lily’s cheeks were pale. He thought she looked tired. Perhaps it was not so much physical tiredness as mental dullness. And a totally unrelated picture sprang to his mind: right about now, at four o’clock, they were having the barbecue. Eddy would be telling one of his ridiculous tall tales; the new bride with the diamond ring would be next to her husband; three or four men would be standing around Ellen Grant. For no good reason, the picture was as clear as though he were in the midst of it.
As soon as he could, he would buy something beautiful for Lily. There was a sorry ache in his heart. Why? Because she did not own a diamond and live in an elegant old house? What nonsense was this? But she was so soft, his Lily. Under her brisk, efficient little ways, she was so vulnerable. God, never let anything hurt her.
“You look sad,” she observed.
“Not sad. Loving.”
When she smiled, the pink came back to her face. “We’ll be together next May,” she said. “It’s not so far off. That’s what I tell myself every night before I fall asleep.”
“We had a great time,” Walt reported. “Somebody down the street has a pool, and we all went over there. Nobody was thrown in with all his clothes on, either. Ellen was surprised that you hadn’t come.”
“I never said I was going to.”
“You were supposed to let her know.”
Yes, he had told her he would. But it was not the worst offense to have forgotten. It was much ado about nothing. And he said so rather crossly.
“She likes you,” Walt said. “She talked about you.”
“She doesn’t know anything about me.”
Eddy protested, “For God’s sake, Walt, you’ve met Lily. Stop pestering him.”
“Okay, no harm meant. I only thought he’d like to know. Practically anybody would have Ellen if he could.” Walt laughed. “I would. Trouble is, she doesn’t want me.”
In spite of himself, Robb was curious to know what Ellen could have said about him. He should have allowed Walt to continue. But still, what childish vanity!
On his way downtown a few days later, he could have walked on Assembly Street. It would be a shadier walk and only a trifle longer than the way past the hospital, but he took the hospital route, starting out as he had done before at two o’clock. As he approached the front steps, he hoped that he would not see her; yet he slowed his walk. Perhaps she would not see him, and he would safely get past. I’m of two minds, he thought.
“I was sorry you didn’t come last week,” said Ellen.
He stopped abruptly, as if it were a surprising coincidence that they should encounter each oth
er here again.
“Well, I—” he began.
“Your friend Eddy told me you weren’t feeling well.”
Loyal Eddy, to make a polite excuse for him! “I should have let you know. I apologize.”
“Apology accepted.”
“I should tell you that I’m usually not that rude.”
Why was he talking this way? He hadn’t really been rude. He was sounding more like a little boy who had been naughty.
“I wanted to see you,” she said. “That’s why I planned the party in the first place. I like you.”
Lily would never admit a thing like that.…
“I like you, too,” he answered, as expected.
“Then let’s have another iced coffee. All right with you?”
“Of course.”
They got into her car. “I thought last time that you didn’t like me, and I admit it bothered me,” she said. “I was a little angry and a little hurt. But eventually I decided to get over it and try again.”
“I’m glad you did.”
In the coffee shop, they took the same table they had had the first time. It was quiet, as it had been then, with the same lazy traffic moving past the window.
“I burn so easily,” she explained, removing her hat. “That’s why I wear it in this weather.”
He who was so fluent, so quick with apt words, thought of nothing better to say than that it would soon be fall and then the weather would change.
She was regarding him as though he were transparent, as though all his thoughts were visible. Her bright mouth bore a flicker of a smile, which traveled to those large green eyes, sea green, leaf green, and rare. Feeling a strange tension, he lowered his gaze to the table where her arm lay. She wore a bright gold bracelet with a lion’s head that reminded him of illustrations he had seen in a textbook of ancient history.
“Yes, I bought it in Greece. On my junior year abroad I studied in England, but we had vacations and got to see other places. It was wonderful.”
How Lily would savor all those foreign marvels! On her behalf he felt a sting of resentment.
“I know I’ve been very lucky,” Ellen said. “Sometimes I wonder whether I deserve everything I have had.”
“You’ve lived in a different world from mine,” he remarked abruptly.
“In what way?”
“For instance, I’ve seldom been outside the state.”
“It doesn’t matter. Your mind has.”
Then, ashamed to have said something that sounded like a complaint, he amended it. “I’m not complaining.”
“Tell me about yourself, about the farm. You do come from a farm, don’t you?”
“Yes. How did you guess?”
She was amused. “Not from any hayseeds on you. I just felt it.”
“That’s funny. The first time I saw you, I felt that you were an artist.”
“Feelings. We try to govern our lives by our intellect, and we think we do, but the truth is that we always act on our feelings.”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly.
“Tell me about the farm.”
There wasn’t much to tell but scraps of memory: the daily routine, the animals, the passing seasons, the affection for the small piece of land on which he had been born.
“You tell about it as a poet would,” she said. “You make me think of Robert Frost, the woods and the little horse. Remember?”
He did. Frost was one of Lily’s favorites, too.
They got up and went outside. The sun had gone behind the clouds, and it was cooler.
“Shall we take a walk?” she asked. “To the park and back? Shall we?”
They walked slowly, stopping at windows on the way to look at Persian kittens in a pet shop, and travel posters, and books. They stopped on the sidewalk in front of a church to watch a bridal couple, cameras and a scatter of rice.
“It’s funny about men,” Ellen said. “Look at you. Not a tear.”
Not a tear, he thought, but a pang that bewildered him, thinking of Lily and all her plans. Why should I be feeling a pang? he asked himself, and promptly answered: Because you want everything to go right for her—which it will, Robb, you fool, which it will, for her and for you.
In the park they paused at the war memorial. Two soldiers stood, one with his arms around the wounded other. For a minute or more they were silent before it.
“In Canada once,” Ellen said, “there was a memorial with an inscription that I have never forgotten. ‘Is it nothing to you?’ it said. The words pierced me, ‘Is it nothing to you?’ ”
Robb nodded. “Moving words. Exactly right.”
“Simple language. It always goes farther.”
We have the same reactions, he thought, and was instantly angry. What if we do? A hundred thousand women in this state alone must have the same. What is the difference between this one and any of them? None. None.
A silence fell. They walked on through the quiet air, through the stillness that comes before rain, when the breeze dies and birds hide. The pond swarmed with ducks.
“Come down from the north,” Ellen said. “It must be getting cold up there.”
“Yes.”
He was looking not at the ducks but at her, the boyish head and hips, the long legs and female breasts under the silk shirt. It was only a body, a woman’s shape that any normal man would admire.
“Look at the black cloud,” he said. “We’d better go back. Run for the car.”
“Oh, but you never got to do your errand.”
“It’ll wait till tomorrow.”
Just as they reached Robb’s house, the sky opened up and the rain crashed. He ran inside. He had forgotten the errand anyway.
That night he dreamed he was on the farm. He was in his room, in his bed near the window, and Lily was lying with him. Somebody was coming up the stairs, only it was not the stairs, it was the ladder up to Ike’s barn, and Ike’s head appeared above the top of it, staring in, the impudent, pop-eyed kid, calling, “Who’s that?”
“Who’s that? Where?”
“The woman.”
“I’m here, he means me,” said Ellen Grant in her soft voice.
“Her breasts are so white,” Ike said.
“Get out. What do you think you’re doing?” Robb shouted, and woke up.
It seemed to him that he must actually have cried aloud, waking himself. He was trembling. He looked at the radium dial on the clock: it was a quarter to four, still night. He got up and washed his face in cold water.
Why am I so distressed? Dreams are only crazy jumbles. You were talking about the farm. You observed today how white her skin was. She said so herself: “I burn so easily.” And Lily was there in his bed as she had been a thousand times. It is all so natural, the usual jumble that has no meaning.
He was too wide awake to return to sleep, so the best thing to do was to put on the light and study. But the sentences passed his eyes and did not register. He should not be having dreams about Ellen Grant! Indeed, he should not be walking around the city with her. It was harmless, yet how would he feel if Lily were doing the same with another man?
No. He would have to break off decently with Ellen. But what was there to “break off”? Nothing. Nothing at all. Still, there must be no misunderstanding. It would be unfair to drift on with any more pleasant, pointless afternoons.
When she saw him, she looked at her wristwatch and smiled. “You’re five minutes late. I’ve been waiting.”
“How did you know I was coming?”
“The same way I knew yesterday. Do you think I didn’t see it was no coincidence?”
He laughed, and she went on. “It’s so cool and breezy for a change. Why don’t we put the top down and take a ride into the country?”
So now it would be impossible to make his little speech today. He would have to postpone it, which would give him time to design the right approach without embarrassment for either of them.
By the eighth day, he had given up trying to
find the right approach because there did not seem to be any. She had taken a place in his mind. Her voice kept echoing. He kept remembering odd scraps of her speech. That bird just sang like the end of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” She made him see things he would never have noticed, like the remarkable Einstein face of the old man reading in the park. Or the friendly woman who resembles her Pekingese. She opened his eyes and ears so that he laughed or was touched or curious because of her. No, there was no easy approach. It would have to be done the hard way.
Sometime in the third week when she left him at his door, she got out of the car and stood beside him on the walk. This was the moment for the kiss that was absurdly long past due. He had not given her as much as a relative’s dry peck on the cheek. Now was the moment to speak out and explain himself, to watch her go away and never see her again. The unthinkable had happened.
She looked up at him bluntly. “What is it that you’re not telling me, Robb?”
“I’m ashamed to say it,” he answered, very low. “I don’t know how to explain myself. I don’t even know myself.”
She kept looking at him, appraising him before she spoke again. “You’re shivering. Let’s go inside. Whatever it is, I want to hear it, unless you’ve killed somebody.”
“Not yet.”
The sofa was strewn with textbooks and papers. He cleared them away, and they sat down. Then he began.
“There is … there has for years been someone at home. Her name is Lily. A kind, wise, lovely woman. Trusting …” His voice broke.
Ellen was staring down at the floor. He would remember the sneakers lying there. He saw himself in some vast future, remembering them and the lamp burning in the dim corner, and her hands clasped with the gold lion on her wrist.
Then he resumed. Mercifully, words poured from him as earnestly as if he were pleading a capital case. So he told his story and arrived at the end.
“ ‘Unless you’ve killed someone,’ you said when we came in, and I answered, ‘Not yet.’ ”
They sat there inches apart. A stranger would know, Robb thought, what is happening here in this room, even if we were at opposite ends of it. He would feel the quiver in the atmosphere. When he took both her hands in his and pulled her to him, she began to cry.