by Belva Plain
He did not know what he felt, although embarrassment was certainly part of it. Damn! If he could only get out of this line! But he was hemmed in all around. If only he had something to read, he could pretend not to see her. The windows in both cars were open. He wondered whether she would say anything to him, and what she could possibly say after all these years, and after everything. He must simply stare straight ahead and not see her.
Yet he could not resist another cautious, quick look. And she saw him. There they were, eyes to eyes … Her face had no expression that could mean anything. Or perhaps this total absence of any expression had some deep sense of its own. Perhaps she was seeing some deep meaning in his own expression, although he did not know what his face might be revealing. He felt only that it was all horrible.
Then the instant was over. The cars, thank heaven, began to move. By any statistical measure, the instant would never be repeated in their lifetimes. As his car rode ahead, he was sweating. Surprised that the encounter should have had such a strong effect upon him, he stopped at the side of the road to drink from his water bottle. Then curiosity, as he gradually quieted, began to replace his agitation, and he wondered about her. Had life made any real change in her? Was she still as soft and malleable as he remembered?
“Malleable.” The word repeated itself in his mind as the car went rolling again. It meant something that you could shape. The opposite word was “resistant,” something you could not shape. That was Ellen. She resists, he thought. I have to argue my way to get what I want. She’s a schoolteacher reprimanding an active boy. It’s a humiliation. Would Lily have been different? Yes, probably she would. Lily was humble, or was when I knew her. But is this being fair to Ellen? No, it isn’t. After all, what appealed to me? She gets what she wants, I said at my very first sight of her. And I got what I wanted when I left her father, didn’t I, and when I bought the house, didn’t I? Still, I was right. Both times, I was right. Now she is fighting me again.…
He was still thinking and his anger was still smoldering, when, two hours later, he stopped the car. Eddy was standing with a group of men, architects and construction engineers, at the entrance to the partially completed mall.
“I thought you might not be coming on account of the weather,” Eddy said. “We’ve been down here since yesterday checking on things, but I’m feeling nervous. The latest weather bulletin is bad. All hell is going to break loose in a couple of hours.”
The trees were shaking violently. Through thick clouds the invisible sun shed a sickly light.
“I’d like a tour all the same,” Robb said.
“Of course. We’ll take a quick one.”
The mall was a huge, U-shaped structure on two levels. Great empty spaces, partitioned from each other, lay on either side of the walkway. With pride of possession, Eddy marched Robb through.
“Where the land dips, there’ll be a third level area below. We’re thinking of a small movie theater. Art movies, maybe.” His enthusiasm leaped ahead. “The ice-skating rink—how’s that for a big draw in a climate like this?—will be over there. It’s to have mirrored walls. Pretty neat, hey? The latest from the rental office is that we’re signing up one national chain after the other. A top-notch restaurant is interested. Come on before the storm hits. You’ll want to have a bird’s-eye view of the rest. I’ll get my car.”
Winding gravel roads cut through oak and pine woods and outlined, as if on a blueprint, the pattern of the new community. Once on a knoll, Eddy commanded Robb to get out of the car and see where the Gulf lay some ten miles in the distance.
“It beats me how much some people will pay for a view of water. Amazing. So what do you think? A bonanza, isn’t it? We’ve struck gold this time, Robb, pure gold. Devlin has the Midas touch. Well, come on back. I think you’ve met everybody here.”
“I’ll say a quick hello and get started. As it is, I won’t get home till long after midnight.”
“You’re not going to drive back home tonight. In the middle of a tropical storm? You’re out of your mind.”
The little cluster of men stood searching the sky, where the weak yellow light had, in the last few minutes, gone dim. How small, how fragile they looked, Robb thought, against the enormity of blue-black sky and boiling clouds!
Somebody said as the first rain spattered, “It looks bad here. But we’ll be riding ahead of it, and it’s only fifty miles to the hotel.”
Robb wanted to get home. Too much was wrong in a subtle, elusive way between Ellen and himself. It needed to be unearthed, discussed in the open, and settled. He needed to find out what it was.
“I can make it,” he told Eddy.
“Okay, if you insist. Follow us in the van. When we get to the hotel, if you still think it’s safe to drive, keep going. Otherwise, come in, have a good feed, and keep dry.”
In the end, the hotel proved to be a welcome sight. Not only was it unsafe to drive, it was almost impossible. Wind rocked the car, and the windshield wipers could not keep up with the rush of the rain. In effect, you were driving blind with only the very occasional dazzle of headlights to show that some other poor soul was out on the road. And leaving the car at the hotel’s entrance, Robb entered the safety of the lobby.
Up in his room, he telephoned home. When Mrs. Vernon told him to hold on while she got Ellen, he replied that it was not necessary.
“Just take this number in case I’m needed for anything,” he said, and went downstairs to dinner.
He had eaten very little all day, yet the dinner, which was more than palatable, scarcely tempted him. He ate sparsely and only for sociability’s sake. The conversation, friendly and earnest, was chiefly about the current project. Naturally, he was concerned with it; had he not even borrowed a second mortgage on the house to invest in it? But his mind still floundered.
“Well, what do we do now?” they were asking after pie and coffee. “Eight-thirty. The night’s young.”
“Nothing to do in this burg. And if there was, who’d want to go out and find it in this weather?”
“I knew somebody from here once. Angelica, her name was.” The speaker was the youngest in the party. “Met her at a beach in Florida.”
“When was that?”
“A couple of years ago.”
“She’s probably fat with a kid and another on the way.”
“Never. Not Angelica.”
“Well, go call her up. Got her number?”
“Matter of fact, I have. I take my book with me. You never know.”
“Well, call her. See if she has any friends. We’ll send taxis for them if she has.”
Robb said to himself: I said I would quit. I swore to Ellen that I would, but I haven’t quit. Most of these men here are married. Some even wear a wedding band on their left hand. Maybe they have wives who are dissatisfied with them. Maybe, although they sit across from each other at table and lie together in the same bed, there has been a secret, hidden parting of the ways.
So it goes.
“I don’t know what’s eating you,” Eddy said, “but something is. Maybe you just need a little fun. Let’s see what comes.”
What came, in less than an hour, was a group of unusually pretty girls. They all went to the bar. There were only seven of them, but their perfume, chatter, and gaudy dresses filled the big room and brought it to life. For the first few minutes, everyone milled about in the process of pairing off, a process that must seem casual to the viewer but is not. For Robb there turned out to be a choice of two, both of whom had obviously chosen him. I suppose I ought to feel flattered, he thought wryly, almost but not quite wishing he could quit the whole business and go off to bed by himself. But that was of course impossible at this point.
Then something happened. The freckled girl, the less pretty of his two choices, said something funny. In all the clamor of voices, he had not heard what it was, but he heard her laugh, and he saw it on her good-natured face. It flushed her forehead up to her careless hair and crinkled around her bl
ack eyes. She was full of happy life.
And he took her arm. For whatever was ailing him, she would be the antidote tonight.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1994
On Lily Blair, that afternoon, the encounter had also had a strong effect; so strong that once the traffic moved forward she drove off the highway and stopped on a quiet side road. It astonished her to find that her hands were trembling as she sat there, still gripping the wheel.
Naturally this had been a shock. To see again a person whom one has not seen in years, and that in the most horrible situation, to see this person materializing in thin air—well, how would you feel? Unnerved. Simply unnerved.
There he sat in his fancy car, obviously on top of the world, else how could he afford such a car? But it was not the car itself—neither she nor Walter would have wanted anything that showy even if they could afford it—no, it was the whole look of him, sitting tall, nonchalant, and so important as to be indifferent to anyone but Robb MacDaniel. He had, in that instant even, given her such a cool, indifferent stare that she still felt the chill of it.
“My, but you’ve come far, haven’t you?” she said aloud. “Treading on other people’s faces, too, I’ll bet, the way you trod on mine.”
Her mind skipped from word to word; “Free association” it was called. Her mind brought back “Flower Face.” … And his face, long, with the strong chin, the fine thoughtful eyes … “Too good-looking for his own good or anybody else’s,” her mother had said.
“I wonder how he treats her.” And she sat as if she would stay all day in this car on the vacant road under the bleak, darkening sky. “He won’t do to that beauty”—for she was indeed a beauty, this Mrs. MacDaniel, all flowers and lace and pearly smile—“no, he won’t do to her what he did to me.”
As if it had happened yesterday Lily felt the tidal wave, the earthquake under the ocean that sweeps in to engulf the land, the tidal wave of despair.
Yes, it’s true, but I never meant—
Never mind that you didn’t mean it. You did it. And you left me with an anger that I didn’t think I was capable of feeling.
A rising wind began to thrash among the trees. Warning spatters of rain struck the windshield, rousing her from her inner storm, and she moved back onto the highway. Her destination had been a store some miles down the road where she had intended to buy a coat, but the mood had left her, and turning about, she headed for home instead.
Walter had just come home, too, when she arrived. “It looks bad,” he said. “I’m glad you had good sense enough to get here early. You can always shop for a coat later.”
There was an elemental excitement in the threatening weather. It held their attention for an hour or more; Walter tended to the chickens, Lily set candles out and hastened the supper in case electricity, and hence the stove, should fail. During their quick meal they listened to the weather alarms on the radio.
It was just as well that they were thus occupied. Lily’s troubled mood was still upon her, and she did not want him to notice it. Nevertheless, as the night deepened and a loose shutter clattered in the attic above, he did notice it.
“You’re very quiet. Is anything wrong?”
“The storm. They predict a lot of damage. It’s scary.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. You never say you’re scared of anything.”
Not scared. Just bitter. Vengeful, and feeling the absurdity, the impossibility of such a thing as revenge. She did not want to talk about these useless, ugly feelings. And she never had talked about them to Walter, never actually described the true depth of that long relationship with Robb. What would have been the purpose?
Yet now words came. “It’s not the storm that’s on my mind, Walter. I saw Robb today.” And she told him what had happened, concluding, “How can you live with your conscience after treating another human being like that? Unless you have no conscience and no heart?”
Walter folded his newspaper, folded it neatly again into a size to fit the wastebasket, and deposited it there. The dreadful possibility that she had inadvertently hurt him, that he was trying by these actions to hide his hurt, dismayed her and she cried out, “This has nothing to do with you! Oh, I’m glad, really so glad that it happened like that, otherwise I would never have met you, and you are my life, my life, Walter. You are everything! This is only my anger talking, my anger that a man so dishonest, so worthless, is walking the earth and enjoying it.”
“Darling Lily, I know you love me. That’s not what’s caused this little frown on my forehead. I’ve had a story in my head that I haven’t told you because, whether you know it or not, I’m aware that you have an unhealed, nagging, hidden spot of pain and anger inside you. I thought it better not to rub the salt of Robb’s name on it.” And he gave her a rueful smile.
“It’s all right. Rub the salt on it.” And she wondered what connection Walter could ever have had to Robb.
“Do you remember the Huberts who moved away a couple of years ago? The red-haired boys who used to play in our backyard while their mother was in the office seeing me? Well, there’s a story about them. It happened before you and I were married.”
He lit a pipe and settled into his chair. She had a feeling that he was about to relish his story, that whatever it might be, it would have a satisfying end.
“Hubert was a farmer,” Walter began. “Raised dairy cows, chickens, a big corn crop—the usual. Also he raised pigs, and that’s the crux of the tale.
“Upriver there’s the furniture factory. Been there since the year one. Now and then, in a slack time when cash ran low, Hubert used to work a shift. I’ll make it short. One day he became aware that they were throwing a lot of unhealthful waste into the river, and he mentioned it to the supervisor. Well, the supervisor didn’t like that too much. So they had a few words, after which Hubert wrote to the authorities—in Washington, no less, since rivers come under federal jurisdiction. And now the affair gained real momentum. Hubert was removed from the company’s roster, of course. And that infuriated him. You’d have to know Hubert to see the picture: an absolutely upright, hot-tempered little man naively pursuing justice, a little man with a big mouth.
“The newspapers, naturally, inflated the affair. Hubert, having gone about accusing his employers, naming names, was sued for libel. Then he was accused of allowing waste from his pigs to pollute the river—which was, to a small extent, true. The whole business was as twisted as twine. And Hubert’s lawyer bills grew. I guess that by then he would willingly have dropped the whole matter, but it was too late. He was trapped in it.
“Okay, let me get to the end. He was called to the state capitol as a witness, or defendant or plaintiff—I don’t even remember anymore. The point is that this poor farmer was in a hopeless mess, his farm neglected, his meager money gone. God alone knows what would have happened if a distinguished lawyer hadn’t stepped in—pro bono—and fought for poor Hubert. And won. The farmer and the manufacturer. David and Goliath.”
Walter paused. “And who do you think was the lawyer?” And when Lily did not answer, “Yes, it was MacDaniel. I never mentioned it, but I will now. Hubert came back here in awe. Those lawyers up there make a couple of hundred dollars an hour,’ he’d say. ‘And that man did it for me for nothing! I’d go to hell and back for that man, yes, I would.’ ”
Outside the wind was roaring. A branch cracked and crashed in the front yard.
“I hope it wasn’t the old magnolia,” Walter said. “Good thing I put rocks on top of the hens’ shed so it won’t be blown away, I hope.”
This reference to the hens made an odd connection in Lily’s mind. Long ago, Robb had named the rooster “Napoleon” because his crowing was triumphant, while she had felt it was forlorn. Queer things you remember.…
“So, what do you think about it?” Walter asked, expecting some comment after the anecdote.
“Yes, there was that side of Robb,” she said.
How well she recalled “that side�
�! It was all too confusing. The country boy and the man “on top of the world.” Too confusing. Better not think about it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1994
By nighttime, too, far to the north, the storm had moved in, blowing. At seven o’clock Ellen began to worry. Rusty was dependable, never late. He had taken Penn out for the afternoon to watch the local baseball game. She doubted that Penn really understood the rules of the game, but plainly he liked to watch it. Sometimes afterward, Rusty took him home for supper, where he was always welcomed. His numerous family had borne an unusual number of plagues and reverses which, Ellen often thought, had perhaps helped make them the sympathetic and open-minded people they were. Most likely, they were lingering late over supper.
It had begun to rain, not with any tentative first sprinkles, but with an abrupt explosion out of the sky, as if a faucet open to full capacity had gushed into a bathtub. If this, as they said, was the tail end of the hurricane that was even now smashing houses, uprooting giant trees, and otherwise ravaging its way along the coast, Ellen hoped never to see the heart of one. The happening right here was alarming enough. Rain sluiced down the windowpanes and drummed on the roof of the porch. A branch cracked and smashed.
In the kitchen where she had heated a can of soup for her meal, she sat contemplating the chilly glitter of porcelain, chrome, and tile. When alone, she had no appetite, especially now after Julie’s departure and the argument with Robb. Mrs. Vernon had gone to spend the night, celebrating her niece’s anniversary. The silence was filled with gloom.
She got up and went to the front door. The outside light was on so that, opening the door, she had a view of the drive all the way to the road. There was no one in sight.
“The place is a mausoleum,” she muttered.
Rusty’s mother had said he was taking Penn to the ice cream store after supper. They had had none in the house, and “You know how Penn gets when he wants ice cream.” Yes, Penn’s mother certainly did know “how Penn gets”! Not often, but when he does—