Fortune's Hand

by Belva Plain

  “Enough,” he said crossly, “I’m going to ask him. It’ll be good for Penn.”

  She had not mentioned Philip’s presence at the house that night, and once in the car, in the backseat with Penn, she waited to hear whether Philip would. But he did not. They had merely glanced at each other. She imagined that he must be feeling the same unsteadiness here in the car with Robb, and was thankful that her view of him was limited to the back of his head.

  The two men had talked to each other all the way. About what, she did not know; she was in a fog.

  A pair of policemen had brought Penn home. The kind woman had obviously pressed his clothes, which must have been soaked. He must also have had a solid breakfast because he was not hungry, although Mrs. Vernon had fussed over blueberry pancakes and everything else that he liked.

  “I had a ride in his blue car,” Penn had said, pointing at the police car. “The radio was on all the time. It was nice.”

  A few remarks of this sort were all he had to make about his adventure, so it was likely that this drastic removal from home would not matter much, either.

  They had sat him down in the sunroom where he always enjoyed the swinging sofa and told him about the wonderful place called Wheatley.

  “There’s a swimming pool,” Robb said, “and you can go in it every day.”

  “With my ball?”

  Robb looked blank, but Ellen knew that the ball was a striped beach ball. Eddy had brought it long ago and it had never been used. It had lain in the corner of Penn’s room. He simply liked to look at it.

  “With your ball,” she said quietly. “And Fatty Bear and everything you want.”

  “And TV?”

  “They have TV, of course they do.”

  “Will Rusty come, too?”

  “Rusty can come with us when we visit you.”

  Penn seemed to consider that. “No, not Rusty,” he decided. “Julie.”

  “Yes, yes, Julie.”

  I must not cry, Ellen said silently. Must not.

  And she saw that Robb’s lips were compressed. He was gazing over Penn’s head toward the far window.

  Did ever parents have to endure, anywhere else, at any other time, such pain? Ah yes, they did, they do, and somehow they find the strength to do it. At least Penn was not protesting. The so-difficult child who could not bear the slightest change in routine had grown into an affable, slow youth who took life fairly easily. And for that, they had to be very, very thankful. Yet this was the day that would go down in memory as the day of Penn’s departure from home; not quite as hard to bear as the day of a funeral, it was close to it.

  Arrived at Wheatley, he had seemed to be pleasantly indifferent. He shook all the extended hands, gave his name, and spoke his short sentences with good cheer. It was lunchtime, and he sat down willingly to enjoy it with his usual healthy appetite. Afterward there were to be games, and it would be best, Philip said, to leave him then.

  A teacher accompanied him to the place of farewell on the front lawn. Neat and clean, for he liked to be so, Penn smiled at the three who comprised most of his little world. Only Mrs. Vernon and Julie were missing. It helped Ellen to recall that, much as he loved and followed Julie about, her absence really meant nothing much to him. Yet he had asked for her—

  Most likely she had thought, he would not miss any of them too badly. These people here were kind. You could see that they were. Philip, moreover, had vouched for them.

  Standing there before her son, she remembered what a beautiful infant he had been, more beautiful than Julie. Even now there was the charm of feature and of innocence on his face. She had wanted to put her arms around him, but that always annoyed him, and so with a lump in her throat so painful that she could barely swallow, she had merely patted him on the shoulder and said a few unemotional words.

  “Good-bye, Penn. Be a good fellow. We’ll be back soon.”

  Robb had given him a chocolate bar. “Save it for dinner,” he had said roughly, and turned away to hide his eyes.

  “Good-bye, Philip,” Penn had called as they went toward the car. It was over. And here they were.

  We would be helping each other this evening, Ellen thought, if there were not so much unfinished business between the two of us. At supper they had been sitting in silence until Mrs. Vernon, obviously with the intent of enlivening their mood, had tried to find the bright side.

  “Sure we’ll miss him terrible. Yes we will. Still, it’ll be better for him, and to tell you the truth, for the rest of us, too.”

  Mrs. Vernon, however, knew nothing about the unfinished business.… Nor did Robb know all of it. No doubt he was waiting for her to attack him about the “Mrs. MacDaniel” who had answered the telephone.

  As if he had expected her, he looked up from his desk when she came into his home office.

  “Let’s make it short,” he said. “Let’s save what little is left of our energy. I broke my promise. This was not like that other business, though. Not at all. You ought to know that. I don’t even know her name and I don’t want to. It was a crazy impulse. I’m not sure that makes any difference to you.… But I hope so and I’m terribly sorry. I apologize. It happened. What else can I say?”

  “I suppose that says it all. It’s strange, though, to hear you talk this way. You are not ordinarily a man of so few words.”

  “Ellen … I’m just terribly tired.”

  Indeed, he looked miserable. The dark semicircles below his eyes made him suddenly old, as he might be thirty years from now, or perhaps not even then. Suddenly she was sorry for him, and sorry, too, about her little dig.

  “All right. As you say, it happened.”

  She had confused him. He had expected a terrible protest, or more than that, a tirade such as she had given him once before.

  “You act as though it means nothing to you,” he said as if he were the injured one.

  “What do you want of me? I can’t stop you. Shall I weep and implore you? I’m long past that.”

  “The strange part of it is that men do it all the time. Not that it’s right, but they do.” Robb spoke as if he were musing to himself. “And since their wives don’t know about it, life goes on uninterrupted, and everybody is happy.”

  “You don’t know who’s happy and who isn’t. You and I look happy, I’m sure. Yet how far apart we are! But politely, so politely that maybe you haven’t even noticed how far.”

  “Not noticed! Why, you’ve been fighting me for years. Everything I’ve wanted to do, you’ve fought. Every step of the way. You disapproved of people I liked. You made an issue of this house. You—”

  At this Ellen had to interrupt. “I haven’t said one word about this house from the day we moved in, until we argued three days ago.”

  “You didn’t have to say anything. Oh, you’ve smiled, you’ve gone about your work, and that’s a very fine thing. But I’ve sensed your mood.” His voice rose. He had not realized before how much resentment he had hidden from himself. “I left the airport in such a state that it’s a wonder I didn’t drive the car off the road. And it wasn’t all because we were saying good-bye to Julie.”

  “No, it was because of that land out there.” And she waved toward the window, beyond which a gentle twilight was falling.

  “You needn’t worry anymore about that land. I’m not buying it.”

  “A wise decision,” Ellen said quietly.

  “No, I’m not the one who made it. Events did it for me. The hurricane. There was a mudslide at the new building site down near the Gulf. The whole damn hill came down over us.” Robb stood up, and in great agitation, paced the small room. “We’ll never be ready in time. We’re bound to lose some of our leases, maybe most of them.”

  His arm swept the desk, knocking a jar of pencils to the floor. There was something pathetic about the sight of him on his knees, picking them up.

  “You’ve had too many troubles at one time,” she said. “Penn, and your lady at the hotel, and now this. Why don’t you go fo
r a walk? You always feel better afterward. We can talk about things later.”

  When he was gone, she sat for a little while, feeling a chill of loneliness. Penn’s loud voice was no more. Mrs. Vernon’s television was at the other end of the house. She stood up and went downstairs where books warmed the library. For an instant, she thought of calling Philip; and then, deciding that this was certainly not the time, instead she called Julie, who would want to know how everything had gone today.

  “I couldn’t help crying a little this morning,” Julie said. “Poor Penn! But now that I think it over, I see it will be better for him, and for the rest of us, too.”

  “You sound like Mrs. Vernon, darling.”

  “There’s nothing bad about that. Still, I know how hard it must be now, at the start, for you and Dad. And I am so thankful you have each other. I think of you so often, especially since what happened to my roommate’s parents.”

  Dear Julie. Dear, unselfish, happy, ignorant Julie. How could a mother reply to her except with loving trivia about the college paper and a new winter jacket? That being done, and having said good-bye, Ellen sat still at the telephone, with her pounding head in her hands.

  Robb’s voice roused her some minutes later. He came into the room with a loud demand and a piece of paper in his hand.

  “What’s this doing on the floor in the coat closet?”

  It was an envelope addressed to Philip Lawson. Apparently it had held a telephone bill. On the back, in a hurried scrawl, was the MacDaniels’ address.

  She tried to think. Of course it had dropped out of his pocket when he had hung up the wet slicker. Robb was standing above her waiting. He had never before seemed so tall.

  “Why, I just don’t know,” she began.

  “Don’t know? You don’t know he was here in this house?”

  “I meant—he was here, of course I know that. I told you he was. I just don’t know about the envelope.”

  She was making a fool of herself. And why was she afraid? Sooner or later, it had to come out. It needed to come out.

  “You didn’t tell me, Ellen. When was he here? And why the secrecy?”

  She stood up. At least when she stood, he did not tower above her. “I called him for help when Penn was lost. You were away,” she said as her thoughts took shape. “You were having your good time when I called you, and that—that woman answered my call.”

  “Don’t rub that in, Ellen. It has nothing to do with this. I must have been in the shower, and no one told me you had phoned, or I would have called right back. At least I admit what I was doing, and I apologized. I advise you to tell me what you were doing.”

  “I told you—”

  “You gave me a detailed history about Rusty, and his mother, and the police, but you never mentioned Philip Lawson, and I want to know why. It’s also very strange that all the way to Wheatley and back, he never mentioned it, either.”

  “He never mentioned it because it was unimportant. Not that his help was unimportant—I don’t mean—” She was stumbling over her words again. “Don’t shout at me,” she said.

  “Fine. But don’t try to make a fool of me. You complained, and justifiably, I’ll admit, that I was humiliating you when I did what I did. But this is far worse. This is an insult to me here in my own house.”

  “Nothing happened!” she cried. “Nothing, I tell you!”

  “I don’t believe you. The secrecy, yours and his, betrays you. I’m no fool, Ellen. You spent the night here together with him.”

  How dare he! He, the smug male, admitting freely, albeit with an apology she was expected tolerantly to accept as one forgives a naughty boy—She was furious.

  “And if I had done so, which I didn’t, what’s the difference between you and me?”

  “A tremendous difference, and you know it.”

  “Why? Because you’re a man and I’m not?”

  “Because you wouldn’t do it without love.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You see, I know you.”

  Who could contradict that? To be sure he knew her, longer than Philip did.

  “Then you know I tell the truth.”

  “So tell me the truth. What did you do here that night?”

  “We waited for news of Penn. Sometimes we talked, and sometimes we just quietly sat.”

  Robb was studying her face. Now, avoiding his scrutiny, she played with the varicolored beads on her bracelet. We are nearing a crisis, she thought. What are we going to do? she asked herself, returning as if in a nightmare to that other long-ago afternoon in his sparse little student’s flat, to that other triangle with its anxious lies and the same question: What are we going to do?

  Her eyes filled with tears. He watched her wipe them away and tuck the tissue back in her pocket before he spoke again.

  “Perhaps you are in love with him. Otherwise, why the tears?”

  What do I tell him? This is the point at the crossroads where a person has to turn east or west. Choose.

  He was waiting, drumming his fingers on the back of the chair.

  I do not want to hurt him, she thought. I really do not, although he deserves it. How easy it would be just to continue in civility, I doing my work, he doing his, each of us in our own parallel life! How can I, in spite of all, how can I rip us apart? It is the death, the death of a love.

  “Every second in which you postpone your answer is an answer, Ellen.”

  She raised her eyes and said quite simply, “Yes. I am in love with Philip.”

  “I see. And when did you first discover this astounding fact?”

  His lips were so tightly drawn together as to make a thin, straight slash across his face. She wanted to run from the room, away from this collision. But she stood as tall as she could and replied.

  “Longer ago than I was aware of it, I think now. Then, when I became aware of it, I fought it down. But it grew, anyway. It grew for both of us.”

  “You’re a slut,” he said, he who was so careful of his language.

  “You don’t mean that, Robb. Sluts are the women you pick up on your trips away from home.”

  “You! Julie’s mother!”

  “Julie need never know unless you tell her, and I pray that you don’t.”

  “Are you so much ashamed of yourself, then?”

  “No, not at all. It is simply that I will do anything not to hurt her. A break between you and me will be terrible for her, and she doesn’t deserve it. No child does.”

  “How can she fail to find out when you ride off into the sunset with your hero?”

  “I have no intention of doing that, Robb.”

  “Do you actually expect me to stay in this house here with you?”

  “Why not? I have stayed with you even when you lied to me. Oh, I know, I know you said it’s different, but I don’t accept that.”

  His rage was subsiding. Perhaps it had been too forceful to last, an explosion that left him empty. He looked merely ill, drooping against the back of the chair, as if he needed support. If she had done nothing else to him, now she had crushed his pride, a pride so fragile that Wilson Grant’s frosty, unjust reproofs had been able to cripple it. She had not wanted to crush it. But as he himself had said, things happen.

  “Am I crazy?” he asked, speaking as if to himself. “Is it possible that we were wrong for each other? That I should have—”

  “Should have what? Stayed with Lily?”

  “Well.” There was a long pause until he spoke again. “Well, yes.”

  The vast room was almost dark. A vast sadness filled it. And she saw that their rage, which half an hour before might have brought them to blows—if they had not both been so “civilized”—was gone, faded into a mutual despair.

  “Poor Julie!” she cried.

  He roused. “No. No. That can’t be. We have lived this way, and we can go on doing it. You have your work, and I have mine. When Julie comes home, we’ll play our parts. And when she’s not home, I can be here less often
if I choose, and so can you.” With a small, twisted smile, he concluded, “That’s easy enough to arrange.”

  “I don’t want to drive you out of your home.”

  “You’re not driving me out. I don’t even have to look at you if I don’t want to, when I’m here. That’s one of the advantages of a large house.”

  “Oh Robb, let’s try not to hate each other if we can! Let’s not make it so ugly.”

  “Let’s not make it more ugly than it is, you mean. That’s a large order. But you have my word, Ellen.”

  He went upstairs. And stiff with shock, she sat upright, listening to the sound of his steps as he carried his belongings out of their bedroom.

  Ellen did no work for a week. The usual materials, paper, pen, and drawing pencils, lay on the desk, but no ideas came out of the turmoil in her head. She tried to reconstruct the happenings of the past few days, but the effort was exhausting and confusing. One thing telescoped into another, back and back, the process seeming to stop at the birth of Penn; before that she seemed to remember only sun and flowers, and that was far too simplistic to make any sense.

  Late one morning, she gave up and drove into town, there to do a few minor errands, browse in a bookshop, and keep walking. On a familiar corner, she passed a church. It seemed to her that they were always having a wedding, or a funeral, in that particular church; had Robb and she not stood there once and watched a couple emerge in a cloud of rice? Now, for no good reason other than impulse, she waited until the mourners had departed and then walked into the vacant building to sit down and feel the silence. Perhaps she would find refreshment in its peace.

  But light, pouring through lavender stained glass, was mournfully diluted. In its shafts a million dust motes streaked the air. Continuously renewed, they must settle on the floor, the pews, on hands and shoulders. An old woman in black knelt, praying. A forgotten bunch of funeral flowers lay bedraggled on the floor, below which lay the moldering bones of people long departed. The very air was heavy with a thousand sorrows.

  And another impulse, a different one this time, struck Ellen: What was she doing, mourning here, she, a woman possessed by love? She got up and walked out.