Fortune's Hand

by Belva Plain

  The name, not the fact, was what startled him. It had been so long since he had heard it spoken: Lily.

  “That’s nice,” he said, waiting but not asking for more.

  “That guy who still works at the gas station must have a memory like an elephant. He remembered Marchfield, and that I had used to ask about her. He heard accidentally that she got married, but that’s all he knows.”

  “That’s nice,” Robb repeated.

  “He doesn’t know who or where or anything.”

  Neither spoke until Eddy asked, “Do you ever think of her? Often, I mean?”

  Well no, and then again, yes. Sometimes he thought, when he was feeling Wilson Grant’s disapproval or when Ellen was feeling betrayed as he knew—although she never said so—she must, he thought of Lily. Would she have been more truly accepting? Would her mother have been less punitive than Ellen’s father was? And then he would say to himself: Absurd! Her mother, with that sharp tongue?

  And now Lily was finally married. So broken, so disillusioned she had been, to wait—how long now?—without husband or child! But then, if he had married her she might have had one like Penn …

  She might have gone pleading, as Ellen had just done, to that new little school downtown for “children with learning disabilities.” How hopeful that sounded! But Penn, after a three-day trial, didn’t “fit there.” To be sure, the rejection had been most tactfully, most kindly, phrased. No one had said “he’s too much trouble and we don’t need your money that badly.” That’s what they meant, all the same.

  Do you see what you missed, Lily?

  “Do you ever think of her?” Eddy repeated.

  “No. Not often,” Robb said.

  “Good. Water over the dam. ’Night, Robb.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  1984

  “It’s all right,” Lily said. “I really don’t mind, Walter. I’ll lie here in the hammock and read.”

  “I might get back early enough to have our picnic for supper instead of lunch. It depends. If it turns out to be appendicitis, and it sounds like it to me, I’ll have to stay with the family and talk to the surgeon with them.”

  “Go ahead, I’m fine.”

  He was upset because today was the start of her two-week vacation. He would have wrapped her up in cotton wool to protect her, if he could. And she smiled to herself as she watched him walk to his six-year-old car and chug away to the hospital.

  Under the oaks where the hammock was slung, the shade and the filtering sun made a pattern of filigree on the grass. The time was noon. Very still, very cool and fresh. Half sitting, half lying, she let a sense of well-being run through her veins. It seemed, as she looked around her home, that everything in it was exactly right.

  “You will like Canterbury,” Walter had assured her. “It’s as convenient to live in as any other town you could name, but it has a special feel, a country feel. You’ll see.”

  She had seen, and she had told him so, although she had not told him that the best thing about Canterbury was its distance from Marchfield, or even from Meredith, those places to which her past still clung. Here everything was new. The streets, winding alongside a sluggish little river, were old, the outlying farms were old, and so was this house, but to her, Lily Webster—and now for the last four years Lily Blair—they were still all new.

  Walter had let her do what she wanted with the house. He couldn’t have cared less about its decorations; he was all doctor, and his only requirement of the home was a comfortable chair in which, during his too-few leisure hours, he might listen undisturbed to his collection of symphonics and operas. It amused her to buy some highly visible article, such as a pair of brass lamps or an etching to hang at the top of the staircase, and find that he had never even noticed it until she called it to his attention.

  She looked lovingly toward the house. It was painted a soft gray with lemon yellow shutters. Uniform white curtains hung at the windows, every pair handmade by her mother. Every time Mother came to visit them, her hands were full. “Never come empty-handed” was one of her sayings. “Never wear out your welcome” was another, so her visits were tactfully far apart. Mother was nothing if not tactful when important interests were at stake, Lily thought now, a trifle ruefully. It had, after all, taken this daughter of hers six years to find a good man and straighten out her life, as, according to Emma Webster, a life should be straightened out.

  Last year they had bought a piece of land next door and built a small hen yard. There were only six Leghorn hens—and a rooster—in it, hardly producing enough eggs for a commercial venture, yet at the same time producing too many for just two people to eat. They were simply Walter’s pleasure. He liked to hear the hens’ peaceful cluck and the rooster’s raucous welcome to the dawn. No one in the neighborhood had yet complained about this daily awakening; perhaps they all loved Walter too much to say anything. Or perhaps, Lily thought, laughing to herself, they are pleased with all the eggs we give away.

  Yes, this new life of hers was a good one, a life that she would never have believed possible if anyone had predicted it for her. Of course it would be better yet if they had a child or two; indeed they had bought this four bedroom house with a family in mind. But nothing happened … “The best laid plans” et cetera. It was very unwise to plan too carefully. It took only one great failure to learn that lesson.

  She had brought a book to read in the comfort of the hammock. Her reading time was limited, which was strange, wasn’t it, for a librarian whose days were surrounded by books? And so she cherished such hours as she had, when, involved with events unfolding on a page, she sometimes failed to hear the telephone or the doorbell.

  But there were times, not often (for which she was grateful) when very personal deep memory flooded, drowning out the open page so that the book might slide from her lap and she would sit wherever she was, gazing upon objects without seeing them. It did not take any specific event or subject to start this flow of memory. Perhaps now, as the hammock swayed, it was the thought of children that had started it. Or perhaps not. Although Robb and she had often talked about having children.…

  She wondered whether he had any. And immediately she was exasperated with herself for wondering. What difference did anything in his life make to hers? A muddled anger swelled within her. In heaven’s name, why could she not rid herself of it, once and for all?

  “Do you ever think about him?” Walter had asked her a few times, a very few.

  “Almost never,” she had replied, which was only fairly true.

  You can’t block out ten years of your life!

  Quite clearly she recalled that first day in Marchfield’s consolidated high school. The country kids had come in their yellow buses; the town kids naturally walked. And Robb MacDaniel had gotten off the bus and walked into Lily Webster’s homeroom. History had begun. That’s how it had been, as simple as that.

  Looking backward as through binoculars you saw two people stepping out of childhood into the adult world, innocently overwhelmed with its beauty, a little bit afraid of its enormity and their own ignorance, yet mostly filled with confidence and the dazzle of love.

  They played together. They studied together. Mrs. Webster approved of Robb.

  “A very well-mannered boy,” she said, “not like most of them these days. I knew his family from the time before your father died and we moved here and the MacDaniels moved to this farm in the Marchfield area. They’re a lot older than I am. They had Robb late in life.”

  This approval made for smoothness. So often a girl had trouble because her family didn’t like her boyfriend! Yes, everything had gone along without one cross word. Lily was even allowed to visit Robb at his home. They had had their first lovemaking there in the woodlot, had been in turn astonished by it, ecstatic, guilty, and lastly terrified—until Robb had learned somewhere how to ensure that she would not become pregnant.

  And after that in the due course of events had come college together, serious vows, total trust, a
clear course—and a crash.

  How to describe the pain, the anguish, the humiliation of being rejected and made conspicuous, a supplanted failure? And lying there this summer afternoon she felt them all over again.…

  But that was ridiculous! She was not going to be a masochist! Was not! Think, instead, of what she had managed to do afterward. Think of the first year in Meredith at the new job, of the two little rooms on the top floor of Mrs. Macy’s house, rooms that she had furnished with her own earnings. It had been a lonesome time in a strange town and more than once her pillow had been dampened by tears; yet in a way the days had been easier without her mother’s probing eyes and commiserating remarks: Too bad that murder is against the law, or I hope he never has a happy hour until the hour he dies.

  Think about the summer you and three other women saved up, took two months’ vacation, and motored out to Glacier National Park. It was your first time out of the state and you’ll never forget the splendor. The other women, like you, were without a man. Mrs. Macy’s daughter was waiting for her Tim to serve out his term in the army overseas; the librarian was an older, recent widow, and the third was a sweet, homely girl with terrible teeth, who had almost certainly never had a date. So there was no talk of men, and that was just what you needed, Lily.

  Think about the university tour when you visited the world’s most famous libraries in Europe. Think about the children’s room and the reading classes you started in the Meredith library.

  “Well,” said your mother, “you’ve certainly pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps! Nobody can deny that.”

  This was fine praise, although there was grudging in it: she still had no man. For Emma Webster, a woman without a man was only half a woman.

  We know better, Lily thought now. And yet there is some truth in what she said. Through all those busy “bootstrap” years, there was always a loneliness. There was a fear, too, that fought the loneliness and would not let a man get close.

  One day a man came into the library seeking a reference book. It was some abstruse volume by a biologist-philosopher and they did not have it.

  “I didn’t think you would,” he said pleasantly, “but there’s no harm in trying.”

  She agreed that there was not. “Perhaps somebody else has it. Why don’t you try Fairfax or Canterbury?”

  “I live in Canterbury and they suggested that I try you. So I drove here.”

  “Ah, too bad.”

  He was a neat man dressed very properly compared with most of the men whom one saw on small-town streets. He looks like a banker or a school principal, she thought, playing the sort of guessing game she often played, and then thought no more about him.

  So it was with some surprise that she recognized him the following week.

  “I was passing through town,” he explained, “and since I’m much too early for my next appointment I thought no one would mind if I used the library to sit in and read something.”

  “Help yourself,” she said. “The magazines and papers are over there.”

  This time she took more notice of him. He had an especially mellow voice, the kind that has sympathy in it, the voice of a person who listens. Otherwise, he was quite—well, medium. His height, face, light brown hair, all of these were medium.

  He sat quietly reading while she worked at the front desk. After a while, when she happened to raise her head she saw that he was looking at her. She had a feeling that he had been watching her for some time. And suddenly she was frightened. Who was he?

  When their eyes met he rose and went over to her, saying at once, “I’ve made you nervous. I’m sorry. Look, here’s my card.”

  “Walter Blair, M.D.” she read, along with an address in Canterbury.

  “You can check it,” he said.

  “Why should I want to?” she replied boldly.

  “Because,” he said, “I would like to see you again, away from this library.”

  Lily, thinking that she had had enough fruitless evenings, shook her head. She was willing to admit that the fruitlessness was her own fault; nevertheless she was tired of trying.

  “Why not?” he persisted.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed.

  “Why not give me a chance? I’m a pretty nice fellow.”

  “You probably are, but I’m not looking for any more nice fellows. Just not in the mood.”

  “You’ve had bad experiences? Or a bad experience?”

  This was going too far, and she did not answer.

  “You’re a lovely girl, Lily. Don’t do this to yourself.”

  Astonished, she cried, “How did you know my name?”

  “I was in your house one day in Marchfield. I was an intern on Doctor Sam’s—didn’t you call him your friend, Doctor Sam?—service. And I was with him.”

  “You only saw me for a couple of minutes, and yet you remembered?”

  “It was a rather unusual occasion. And you are a rather unusual young woman, although you were certainly not at your best that day.”

  She was both stunned and embarrassed. How she must have appeared to him, thrashing and crying on the sofa!

  “I wasn’t sure the first time when I dropped in here. I thought you looked familiar but I couldn’t place you. So I came back and watched you, and suddenly just now I remembered where I had seen you before.”

  The reading room had emptied, for it was late in the afternoon, close to home-going, meals, and evening. Questions hung over the desk that separated Lily from the surprising presence of this stranger; his question being whether she would accept him and hers being whether she should. Quite possibly, or even very probably, he was merely curious about her. It was not every day that a doctor stumbled upon dramatic situations like hers.

  And then apparently he was having the same thought, because he said earnestly, “I have no interest in asking you anything about what happened to you that day. I just think you’re an extraordinarily pretty woman and I’d like to take you to dinner. It’s as simple as that.”

  Well, why not? A friendly evening, good conversation, for clearly he would be bright and interesting, did not necessarily mean hot emotions or “commitment”—such a popular word in the mouths of men who were often the least committed.

  “You look as though the answer is going to be yes,” he said.

  She was almost sure she had seen a twinkle in his eyes. And her smile was her answer.

  They sat long over dinner, rising only when they were the last customers and the restaurant was ready to close. After that they walked until the streets were so silent that their footsteps echoed. And while spoken words inevitably vanish into forgotten time, some words are the exception. Such was that night’s dialogue between Lily Webster and Dr. Walter Blair.

  She had some travel tales for him; she felt as she spoke that she was entertaining him. Recently she had, for no known reason, developed some latent talent for humor; it pleased her to recognize that his responding laughter was genuine.

  By the third hour he began to confide in her about his work, about how, although many of his friends had gone on into specialties, he loved being a family doctor in a small town, loved being a friend to his patients as Doctor Sam was and even, like Doctor Sam, would go now and then to the house of a patient in real need.

  When on Sunday a few days later he invited her for a swim at the lake, she accepted gladly. A few days after that he came to the library and they had dinner a second time. And still he had not made a “pass.” The remembrance of this prudence made her laugh now, as she lay in the hammock.

  “Of course,” he had explained some time toward the end of that first summer, “I knew the whole story, although I never let on. Doctor Sam told me the whole thing when we left your house. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what damage had been done. I remember how once when I gave you a compliment you were unable to believe me. You said your nose was ‘too snub’ and your hair was ‘dirty blond’—your lovely pale hair! You were a long time getting over it all.�
��

  It had been a long time, indeed. Even now there were moments of recall when bitter anger needed smothering.…

  The hens clucked, making a cheerful break in the quiet. It had been a summer afternoon just like this one when all of a sudden they had met each other’s eyes and known a truth: that everything for them was right. A thought in that single moment had flitted through her head, a scrap of something once learned about “morning” and “larks” and “all’s right with the world”—

  Then she was in his arms, so happy—so amazed that she could feel like this again, that this flame, this yearning, had not been lost to her—that it had not been lost!

  “Let me make a beautiful wedding,” said Emma Webster, the mother overjoyed. “I can afford something really nice to remember.”

  But neither Lily nor Walter had wanted that. Their few relatives and dearest friends had joined them at a simple ceremony, lavish only with flowers and happiness, on another summer afternoon like this one.

  She must have drowsed, for there was the car standing near the garage. He was home. In another second he would be coming around the corner of the house. She would hear his call, and see the light in his face.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  1984

  Robb had to call Eddy with the news. It was not because he was overjoyed that he had to call; to tell the truth, he was only flattered. And he admitted it.

  “Remember what you said a while back about Fowler’s making me an offer? Well, he’s made it.”

  “Now maybe you’ll listen to me.” There was triumph in Eddy’s voice. “I knew it! I knew it. So you had lunch, you said. And he began by telling you he’d heard you might be willing to make a move. Go on.”

  “That part was a ploy. He never heard anything of the kind because, to begin with, I’m not planning any move.”

  Eddy whistled into Robb’s ears. “You what? For God’s sake, is that what you told him?”

  “I said I appreciated the offer, I was honored, but I’d have to discuss it with my wife, which he understood.”