by Belva Plain
“Honey, you’ll ruin your eyes. They’re all swollen. I’ll get a towel and some ice cubes.”
The kindness only made worse the awful, incredible reality. An hour ago, a year ago, a second ago—how long was it that he had stood there? Yes, right in that spot, wearing a red-striped muffler around his neck, stumbling over his words, he had stood, not looking at her but at some vague place in midair, and spoken.
“Yes, it’s true but I never meant—”
It’s true.… Never meant. It’s true. Never meant.
She sprang up and ran to the closet in the hall where the Christmas boxes were stowed, and she hauled them, thumping, onto the floor.
“Lily! What can you be doing? For heaven’s sake, what are you doing with the scissors!”
“I’m not killing myself with them. Although I might as well. I’m only ripping this stuff apart.”
And with savage jabs the sweater, so carefully chosen, was destroyed, along with four volumes of Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking People. Innocent victims of the catastrophe, these treasures lay now in a heap. She stood there looking at them. They broke her heart. One would have thought it was already broken, but no, there were still some fragments of it waiting to be crushed.
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Webster, shaking her head.
You could read her mind. She was thinking, in her frugal way, that the sweater should be returned to the shop and that the books should be kept to read. In spite of it all, this little quirk of her personship asserted itself.
“Lily dear, you’ve had nothing to eat and you need your strength.”
“For what? For what do I need my strength? Tell me that. I’m worthless, I’m useless, you don’t understand. Look at me, I’m ugly, uninteresting, drab—”
“You’re not! You’re not! Don’t talk like that.” Mrs. Webster began to cry. “Just because he—he’s not worth—not good enough to polish your shoes—”
As if her throat would split, Lily screamed, “You don’t know him! You don’t know anything! Oh God, what’s wrong with me? What did I do?”
And returning to the mirror that hung between the windows, she stared at it, imploring, “Tell me, am I so ugly? What does she have that I don’t have? Tell me what I’ve done. Was I ever bad-tempered, nasty, mean? I know I wasn’t. What, then? We never had real fights over anything important. Oh, I hate myself! Why? Why? He used to tell me I’m beautiful, but look at me. Yes, I hate myself. Look at my stupid face—”
Mrs. Webster put her arms around Lily and wept with her. “My poor little girl, poor Lily. Don’t hate yourself. Hate him! Your face is lovely, it’s just that you’ve been crying, your face will be lovely in the morning, oh my Lily—”
Then suddenly Lily grasped the mirror. With all her strength, she pulled it from the wall and smashed it to the floor. There it, too, lay, its pointed silvery shards on top of the ruined books in a jumble of fancy gift-wraps.
Mrs. Webster gasped. “I’m going to get the doctor. This shock’s too much for anybody to take without a little help. I’m going to call him.”
“I don’t need any pills, Mother! I don’t need people running around Marchfield, taking about my business!”
“This is Doctor Sam, Sam Smithers! He brought you into the world, set your broken arm, cured your colds—I’m calling him. Lie down there. Listen to me.”
“Answer me first. Please, please. Have I misunderstood? Is Robb really—”
The answer came grimly. “You haven’t misunderstood. Not at all.”
She lay down and closed her eyes. Perhaps, if sleep should come, then reality might fade to darkness, to soft black night.…
When she opened her eyes Doctor Sam was speaking to her.
“Young lady.” He had been calling her that since she was three. “Young lady. Take this. It’ll make you feel better. You’ve had a hard day.”
“And you really think a pill will help? After what’s happened to me? You really think so, Doctor Sam?”
Mrs. Webster urged, “Do what he says. He came rushing from the hospital for you.”
She saw that they were truly feeling her grief, and was touched. So she swallowed the pill, saying only, “You won’t tell anybody about me? I broke the mirror. I went wild.”
“Not a word,” said the doctor. “Nor will Doctor Blair. He’s our newest intern and I’ve been showing him the ropes. You can depend on his discretion, too,” he added with a smile.
Lily had a vague impression of a presence standing near the door. Then the tremendous tiredness swept back and she dropped her head upon the pillow.
Later she remembered her last words to her mother that night.
“I think I’m going to lose my mind.”
“You won’t.”
“I know I’ll never trust anyone again.”
“You will. Now sleep.”
* * *
“You need a stiff drink instead of that stuff,” Eddy said, glancing at the doughnut that was balanced on the saucer under Robb’s coffee cup.
“I guess I do. Never thought of it.”
“So you phoned Lily when you got back here? You shouldn’t have. It didn’t help, did it? It made you feel worse. No sense in that.”
“Nothing could have made me feel worse than I was feeling yesterday, or than I feel now.”
“What did she say to you?”
“I didn’t talk to her. Her mother took the phone away. She told me I’d killed Lily and now I had only called to find out about the funeral arrangements. Then she hung up.”
Afternoon light fell on Robb’s unopened books. He had read nothing, had skipped morning classes, and had not even taken his morning shower.
“Knocked the wind out of you, hasn’t it?”
“Just about. You can’t imagine what it was like there.”
Eddy’s voice was unusually gentle as he regarded Robb. “She isn’t going to kill herself, you know. If that’s what you’re thinking, I mean.”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Listen to me. What are the odds? One in millions. People change their minds about these love affairs all the time, and nobody dies.”
“But what if she’s the one in the millions?”
“Well then, if you’re really afraid of that,” Eddy said wisely, “there’s only one thing to do. Go back down to Marchfield, tell her you didn’t mean a word you said, and set the date she wants. Can you do that?”
“No.” The single syllable reverberated as if a gong had been struck and struck again, leaving a hollow ring in the air. “No.”
Eddy stood up. “It seems to me, the next thing is for you to face the facts, my friend. Straighten up and go see Ellen today. Right now.”
CHAPTER FIVE
1973–1974
“Yes,” said Wilson Grant, “I take a little pride in my ability to judge people, and I like you, Robb. It’s true that I haven’t known you for very long, but somehow I don’t feel I need to. And since Ellen loves you—” He smiled, turning toward where she sat with the red setter, Billy, at her feet.
Robb also turned. He was feeling displaced in time. Had it been yesterday or years ago when he had first sat in this room, disturbed and half-angry because he was being forced to go to the jazz concert, and when he had chosen deliberately not to sit next to her? She had been wearing sheer blue silk, she had been stroking the dog, and somebody had said to him, “That’s her great-grandfather in the portrait.”
The portrait now hung above and slightly to the side of Mr. Grant. Allowing for the difference of beard, uniform, and sword, you could find a resemblance between the two long-headed, austere faces; these were stern men, too proud, probably too prim, and fierce in anger, but just as trustworthy to the last.
“You don’t need to be told how fortunate you are to clerk for Judge Salmon,” Grant said. “You’ll learn something every day. I’ve come before him more times than I can count, and each time I’ve gone away with some new thought. Besides that, we’re old friends. Se
rved in the Judge Advocate’s office together during the war. Yes, you’ll have a productive year with him. But you’ve earned it. He had his pick of the crop, and he picked you.”
It might have helped a bit that Grant had probably spoken about him to the judge. Of course he had spoken a few words on behalf of the man who was about to marry his daughter! Of course he had. And for an instant, Robb wished he hadn’t. Your future handed to you on a platter, Mrs. Webster said.
It was not true! He had indeed earned the clerkship, and he would continue to earn whatever else he might acquire. He wanted nothing from anyone.
“Paris is an idyllic place for a honeymoon,” Grant said, switching the conversation. “You ought to go by ship. Let that be my wedding present. Pretty soon there won’t be many ships, or any even, sailing the Atlantic. Everyone’s in a hurry these days.”
“We’ve decided, Dad, that it’s too expensive. But thank you, anyway,” Ellen said. With remarkable sentience, she understood that Paris was too much, too lavish, for Robb to accept. “New York will be wonderful enough. Robb has never been there, and I’ve been wanting to go again.”
“Perhaps you’re right. You will need some time, anyway, to fix up the apartment before Robb starts to work.”
The apartment was in a new building just across the river from the state capitol. It had two splendid views: from the front rooms, you could see the dome of the State House, and from the rear, the leafy spread of the suburbs, where this very house was standing.
In the attic of this house were fine possessions, inherited from a grandmother, that would ornament that apartment. Ellen had taken him upstairs to see the tall clock, the wing chairs, and the four-poster bed.
“Those are pineapple posts,” she had explained.
“Never mind its pineapple posts. I’d like to take you in it right now.”
But that, with the stern father never far off, he had not dared to do. Her very surroundings did not allow him to go further. It was the year 1973, and he had not yet “touched” her! She would come virginal to the wedding night.
In the warm, musty air of the attic, they had stood embraced. And Ellen had asked whether he was “really finished with her.”
“Yes. You know I am.”
“Tell me again. Was it awful?”
He had written a letter, tender and honest, beseeching Lily’s understanding and, in time, some small possible forgiveness. It had been returned unopened.
“Was it awful?” Ellen repeated.
The blood in Lily’s cheeks, the color of a wound—would he ever forget that distorted face, gone ugly in its agony? And he recalled how doctors sometimes speak of a wound as an “insult” to the body. So in half a minute, he had insulted Lily and made her ugly.
“It’s over.… Darling, talk about something else.”
“All right. Let me show you Gran’s flag quilt. It’s so precious that I’ll have to put it someplace, only I can’t think where.”
Tell me, Robbie, the blue background or the red?
“We’ll have a small wedding,” Mr. Grant was saying now.
They must have brought up the subject while his mind had gone wandering. He wasn’t interested in the wedding. He only wanted to get it over with so he could have Ellen to himself.
“Ellen’s mother’s gone, you have no family, and anyway, we never go in for any great displays. A handful of relatives and another handful of friends will do. We’ll have it in our garden, and if it should rain, we’ll manage indoors. By the way, you’ll need to choose your best man. Your friends will disperse all over the country right after commencement.”
“I’ll take care of it tonight,” Robb said.
“You’ll do it, Eddy?”
“Of course I will. What’s the date?”
“Right after commencement, early in June.”
Eddy gave him a curious look. “I’m remembering the day you arrived here. Could you have imagined yourself as you are now?”
“A person expects to see a few changes after three years.”
“Not this much. A top clerkship and marriage into a top family.”
Eddy stopped. He knows that was the wrong thing to say, Robb thought. He knows what’s hanging unspoken in the air of my room right now. And he could not help but speak it himself.
“Have you found anything out?” For Eddy had promised to “dig up” somebody who had a connection in Marchfield.
“Yeah, a guy at the gas station comes from downstate someplace, and I gave him a couple of bucks to scout around. The news is she didn’t kill herself.”
“Thank God. But is that all?”
“She and her mother went over Christmas and New Year’s to visit some relatives in Texas. Now she’s back at the library. Okay?”
“Yes, yes. Thanks, Eddy.”
“Can’t get it out of your mind? Robb, you’ve got everything going for you now. Ellen, your degree, the clerkship—everything you wanted.”
I’ll be so proud of you, Robbie, in your black robe, Doctor of Law. So proud.
But she is back at work. At least she isn’t totally crushed. After a while, he argued, it will all pass. It’ll be like the accident, something you can never forget, but that will grow dimmer, and fade.
“Never thought I’d stay on in this burg,” Eddy said. “Guess I got used to grits.” He grinned. “But this guy Devlin’s offer looks better and better the more I look at it.”
“It’s what you expected all along.”
If being a house lawyer for an up-and-coming real estate developer was what a man wanted, then a job with Richard Devlin was probably just fine. At any rate, Robb felt, there was something comfortable in knowing that Eddy was to remain here. Different as they were in almost every way, they understood each other. Maybe it was like having a brother, upon whose blood loyalty you could always depend.
“It’s my contacts that did it,” Eddy said. “He knows I know tons of people in Washington. Washington’s the center of the spiderweb, and the web spreads out all over the country. Dick Devlin’s got big ambitions. Owns three shopping malls already. Inherited the seed money and knows how to make it grow.”
Robb was thinking that whatever legal work might be involved in these enterprises must be pretty hackneyed, pretty cut-and-dried, when Eddy said, “Say, did you give her an engagement ring?”
“No. How would I be able to afford a ring?”
“A girl’s got to have a ring.” And when Robb grimaced, he added, “A girl like her, anyway. It’ll look queer if she doesn’t have one. Doesn’t need to be a Star of India, just something.”
“I can’t even afford ‘just something.’ ”
“You’ll be getting paid.”
“That’s a couple of months away.”
“Tell you what. I bought a watch from a store down Assembly Street. I’ll take you there. You tell about your job with Judge Salmon. I’ll vouch for you, and he’ll wait till you have your first paycheck. Okay? You’ve got to do it, Robb.”
“Okay. Lead the way.”
Everything was moving so fast around him, forward and back in time. The world was spinning. One morning when he woke up in his cubicle, he even thought for a second that he heard the gate’s hinge creak and the hens clucking in the yard.
Where am I? Who am I?
The hotel faced the park, which was the heart of the city, a stretch of countryside scattered with silver ponds and lakes as far north as the reservoir. At the front door of the hotel, in contrast, lay the urban scene: tourists with foreign labels on their luggage, yellow taxicabs, and traffic streaming under the summer sun. From here you could walk to all the museums, the music, theaters, and shops in Manhattan, if you wanted to.
“It’s the Arabian nights, and the days, too,” Robb marveled. “It’s a giant bazaar.”
“You’re like a child opening birthday presents.”
Up and down the long avenues and across Manhattan Island to its enclosing rivers, they went hand in hand. Ellen was touched by his amazemen
t. Things that, during college and her travels, had become more or less familiar were for him a startling novelty. A window was filled with rare first editions; another displayed an empress’s necklace on a black velvet pillow. They visited museums filled with noble, marble Romans standing tall, and noble Romans lying in their carved sarcophagi. Galleries displayed Chinese apple jade, or Impressionists, or Expressionists, or Cubists. In flowery rooms under crystal chandeliers, they dined together. They “ate Italian,” to use Eddy Morse’s famous phrase. They also ate meats wrapped in Greek phylo dough, sauerbraten, sushi, and coq au vin.
One night they were dancing on a rooftop. Smiles flickered on the faces of old ladies with their old husbands beside them, watching the dancers. It seemed to Ellen that perhaps they were remembering the poignant passage of time. And there, before them all, she raised her face toward Robb and kissed him passionately upon the lips.
“Did you think because it was my first time, that I would be afraid or shy?” she asked him as they lay awake that night.
He laughed. “You? No. I knew you wouldn’t be.”
“I want you to know everything about me.”
“What I don’t already know, I’m going to learn. We have a lifetime, my darling.”
Sometimes, waking early after his long habit, Robb would walk to the window to watch the last electric bulbs going out all over the city. Behind him on the bed, the first daylight would be touching Ellen’s quiet sleep. He thought about the mystery of sleep. There as she lay unmoving, her mind was awake and alert inside her head. And meshed experiences of her past were being reborn to vivid life, most probably to be forgotten again as soon as her eyes opened. He wondered what her dreams might be and whether he might be a part of them. For the thousandth time, he tried to fathom the enormous power that had drawn him to Ellen and she to him. “It’s chemistry,” people said, which was as good as saying nothing. There was more meaning in the thought of a match applied to kindling wood, or of a seed’s sprout upward toward the rain.