by Belva Plain
For a moment she stood at the top of the steps and observed the street. Trucks grumbled past her loaded with good things, shoes, newspapers, bananas, and television sets. A boy whistled with two fingers in his mouth, a dog lifted his leg at the lamppost, and a fat man paused to light a cigar. It was life. Life! And for the first time in many days, she felt the surge of it.
Into her handbag she had thrust an envelope with an address on it. Very likely he would be home by now, or on the way. Never having known exactly where he lived, she had still been imagining an apartment, those three small rooms that she had furnished in her mind with books and a pair of cats asleep in a basket. It surprised her, therefore, to stop at a cottage with a yard, a small plot of roses, and a large dog. He was a Newfoundland, and friendly. But as she went up the walk, he barked as he should do, until Philip opened the door.
“It’s over,” she said. “I can come and go as I want, and nobody will be hurt. You told me you would be here.”
“My God, my God.” He held out his arms. “Come in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
1996
From where Julie stood, it was possible to see her two little rooms and closet-sized kitchen all at once.
“Not bad,” Ellen said.
“Well, it does have variety, to say the least. Thrift-shop rugs and sofa, Great-grandpa’s gorgeous rolltop desk—did I tell you they had to take off the door to get it in here?—the modern recliner that I bought with my birthday money, and your beautiful tea set, which I shall now use for your tea. You shouldn’t have given it to me. It’s so upper-crust for the neighborhood.” She laughed. “Me, serving afternoon tea.”
“I think it’s lovely, even though I don’t have time to do it, either. Don’t forget, I’m a working woman, too, now.”
“Don’t I know that? With that good early review and the book not even out yet? I’m terribly proud of you, Mom, and always have been.”
“Mutual admiration society, aren’t we? Because I’m terribly proud of you, too. I tell everybody that my daughter is a reporter.”
Julie grimaced. “Social news. Mrs. So-and-So’s dinner for the benefit of the So-and-So Society. But I’m promised a chance at book reviews, and that’s a big step up. When I finish my graduate degree, you’ll see something, I hope. But that’s enough about work. Here, let’s put the card table by the window. There’s a great bakery across from the office, and I bought scones.”
“Very British.”
“Andrew likes them. Have I told you that he lived in England?”
“He came from here, you said, some little town down near the Gulf.”
“Yes, but later, after his father died, his mother married an Englishman. He was fifteen when they moved to England. But he always wanted to come back. Then he was lucky enough to get this job on the paper right here. Were you impressed when you met him, Mom?”
“Tell me more about him.”
When someone asks you to describe a person who is very dear to you, you’d think that you would have a million things to say, Julie thought. But as it happens, and simply because there is so much to say, you suddenly don’t know how to begin. Out of the myriad of facts and features that comprise a human being, how shall I select? Shall I say that he plays a marvelous game of tennis, loves good music, animals, and good food? That he is a wonderfully gentle and considerate lover? Certainly he’s intelligent, or he wouldn’t be the assistant to the paper’s star reporter.
“He has a great sense of humor,” she said. “We like old slapstick comedies on television, the kind where people slip on banana peels or throw pies at each other. We go to amusement parks and act half our age.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“It does now. I grew up in a very serious household, Mom.”
“Yes,” said her mother, stirring her tea.
She looked thoughtful, even vaguely troubled, and Julie said quickly, “Don’t misunderstand. I wasn’t an unhappy child. Not at all! I just took life very seriously because that’s the way you and Dad were. You still are, really.”
“Yes,” said her mother again, and paused. “I was married very young, right after college. I never had a fun apartment of my own like this one. Never had a job. Never went to graduate school.”
“Do I hear regrets, Mom?”
“No, no. I was merely explaining the difference.”
It had been very different indeed. Only a few months older than her daughter was now, she had worn the bridal dress and lace veil in the photograph on the piano at home. A year after that, she had become a mother. Then Penn had arrived.… And she still looked as glowing as she had in the bridal dress.
“So he works for Rufus Max,” Ellen said. “I never miss his column. Sometimes it seems to me that there’s not much difference between an investigative reporter and a detective.”
“Oh, the stuff he knows! I’d love to have Dad meet him. He’d be fascinated. They’re both bookworms. Andrew spends all his money on books. He must have two thousand piled up in his little rooms here—on the floor, the chairs, the bed, every place except the stove.”
“Why not invite Dad and him both to have some scones like these one afternoon?”
“What? Get hold of Dad or Andrew in the afternoon? I’d have to lasso them both. It was hard enough for me to get time off today for myself. I was thinking it would be so nice to have dinner at home one Saturday. Andrew still lives the way students live in this neighborhood, on spaghetti and canned soup. Or sometimes, when he feels richer, he gets a hamburger dinner at the corner. I don’t do much better myself. So I get nostalgic whenever I think of Mrs. Vernon’s cooking.”
Ellen laughed. “Not my cooking?”
And Julie returned the laugh. “No, Mom, not yours. It was nourishing, but that’s about all I can say for it.”
Ellen appeared to be thinking. “You know,” she said finally, “I do believe we really ought to have you and Andrew come to dinner. Mrs. Vernon would love to meet your boyfriend, I’m sure. Did I tell you she visited Penn again last week? They had a nice visit, as usual, and she went away feeling happy because he’s happy.”
“I’m going to go up there again with Andrew. When I first told him about Penn, he was really interested.”
He had played checkers with Penn. And watching them bent over the board, two young men not all that apart in age, she had been struck not so much by the difference between them, but by the basic human similarity, the gentle attention of Penn and the kindly patience of Andrew.
This kindly patience had then brought someone else to mind, and did so again now.
“How is it we never see Philip anymore? I can’t believe I haven’t seen him since we moved from our old house.”
“I talk to him now and then. He lets us know whenever he visits Penn.”
“He was so wonderful with Penn. We really ought to see him.”
“Time is the problem for all of us, I guess. And your father is always so busy.”
The words had an odd ring that Julie had never noticed before. “Mom, why do you always say ‘your father’? You used to say ‘Dad’ when you were talking to me.”
“Did I? Do I? I never thought about it.”
There was a difference in her mother’s manner, a difference so subtle that it was indefinable to Julie. Ellen MacDaniel was in command as she had always been, energetic, alert, and interested. Certainly she was now showing warm interest in her daughter. Yet Julie felt something remote; something was hiding beneath the bright facade.
A possibility occurred to her. “Is Dad worried about money?” she asked.
As if surprised, Ellen responded that she did not think so. “He’s never told me, if he is.”
“He seemed sad about selling the horses, but then I am, too. My Lady was mine, and I loved her.”
“Well, you’re not home now to ride her. Don’t worry,” Ellen added, “they’ve both gone to good homes.”
“It’s funny,” Julie said, “when I was a kid and we fir
st moved there, I think I took for granted that I’d always be there. It was so beautiful, so very glamorous, I thought.”
“That was only six years ago when you were still a teenager,” Ellen said fondly.
“A lot happens in six years. Now Dad wants to sell the place, and that seems so sad.”
“Not really. It’s much too large for us. The sad thing is that there are no buyers. It looks like a white elephant abandoned in the middle of nowhere.”
The words, neutral in themselves, brought a sudden chill to Julie, as when somebody coming indoors from the cold lays an icy hand upon your warm one. Those lovely, still childish days when, walking or riding with Dad, they had solved all the world’s problems together were gone. Change, and the passage of time.
“Well,” she said briskly, wanting to break through the mood. “What about dinner at the white elephant? Are we invited?”
“Of course you are. Just name the date.”
“It was a good day, a family day,” Andrew said on the way back.
“I’m glad you weren’t bored. Five hours with somebody else’s parents could be deadly.”
“Deadly? With your father? Is it possible you don’t realize how many guys my age and in my business would pay a week’s wages to go where I was today?” When Julie admitted that she did realize it, he continued, “And your mother—she’s charming. She could be your sister.”
This was a very comfortable beginning to the Andrew-Julie relationship. It pleased her that Andrew had been so obviously at ease and Dad so jovial.
“From downstate like me?” he had said. “Another ‘old boy’ from the farm?”
It was not that Julie had any “expectations” of Andrew; truth to tell, she was not thinking at all of marriage, certainly not before she had made a real place for herself in the world. Still, you never knew what might happen once that place had been reached—and Andrew was the closest approach to a serious love that she had yet had. In the meantime, life together was good, very good.
This being Saturday, there was no question about whether it would be convenient to spend the night together. On Sunday mornings there was no need for rushing off on their various schedules, no need to do anything but luxuriate. The kitchen space was crowded with preparations for tomorrow’s huge late Sunday morning breakfast, after which they would probably return to bed.
Now the bed was freshly made; on the night table stood a fragrant small bouquet, exactly like the one that Ellen had always had at home.
“Pink sheets!” Andrew exclaimed. He threw up his hands in mock horror. “Never in my life have I slept on pink sheets.”
“A present from Mom. She’s a very romantic woman, not like me.”
“Oh, you do all right in the romance department, and in some others, too. Haven’t I ever told you?”
“Yes, but tell me again.”
“Better still, I’ll show you.”
“Shall I put on the black nightgown, the femme fatale?”
“Not worth the trouble when you’ll only have to take it right off.”
Andrew slept with a tiny turn of a smile on his lips, and although he never seemed to remember his dreams, she was sure that they must reflect the spirit that she saw in his eyes, eyes that were so often on the verge of laughter. He always fell asleep immediately, and often she did the same, but often not, and this was one of the times she did not. Her mind picked worries out of the day, happy as it had been. The worries lay like sharp, small pebbles on a smooth stretch of sand.
Mrs. Vernon, bless her, had made a marvelous dinner. Dad had taken from out of his fund of stories some hilarious incidents in the life of a lawyer. Mom, at Andrew’s request, had shown some of the sketches for her new book, a delightful tale of a puppy lost among woodland rabbits, woodchucks, and raccoons. She herself had revealed—in confidence, of course—a comical mess at the social event that she had covered for the paper. Andrew had related some happenings in England. It had all been as pleasant as one could wish. And yet there had been those jarring moments …
To begin with, there was the cat. Quite suddenly, she had missed Lulubelle.
“We don’t have her anymore,” Mom answered.
“Why? Has she died and you didn’t want to tell me?”
“No, we gave her away. We’re not home enough to take proper care of her. That is, we come and go. For instance, I had to see the publisher in New York about my book last week, and then, of course, you know what lawyers’ hours are. So it seemed best for Lulubelle to be with a family, children and all, you know, people with regular hours and—so that’s the reason. I do miss her. I do feel sorry about it. But that’s the reason.”
This explanation was unnecessarily long, tedious, detailed, and almost apologetic. It was also inaccurate. Where was Mom all day, anyway? And Dad’s hours had never been that erratic.
Then there was his odd remark about the statue in the park. Julie had been describing the first time she and Andrew had met; it had happened at the war monument, when they were each taking a noon break for lunch.
And she had said, “That was your spot, wasn’t it, Mom, when Dad was ‘courting’ you. Isn’t that the term?”
“Yes, in George Washington’s time,” Ellen had replied, rather tartly.
“Well, whatever. But it’s the same monument and the same bench, right, Dad?”
“I don’t remember,” he had answered.
Now that remark had been decidedly short. And hadn’t he always used to joke about the monument? Odd. Very odd.
Was there anything wrong? They had always been so frank with each other. Her parents had treated her like an adult long before she was one. They didn’t believe in concealment.
There was another thing about which she would like to ask Andrew, and would ask now, if he were not so sound asleep. They had been discussing his work with Rufus Max. Dad had seemed to be very interested in Rufus Max, and Andrew had said that he knew how lucky he was to have such a job.
“There’s new stuff going on almost every day. It’s constant motion. Have you been seeing those reports, or hints of reports, about the Danforth Bank?”
“I believe I did see an item,” Dad said.
“Well, something big is brewing there, though I don’t know yet what it is. It’s like those hours, or maybe minutes, before a first-rate storm, a few drops, then some weak sun, a few more drops, and then the real thing.”
If a man could have moveable ears, Dad’s would have pricked up.
“Storm?” he asked. “What kind do you mean?”
“Maybe an octopus would be a better image, instead of a storm. With tentacles that reach into surprising places. Unless,” Andrew had finished, “unless I am very much mistaken, the next few months will tell the tale, one way or the other.”
“Let us hope you are,” Dad had replied. “The world has enough trouble as it is.” And with his usual grace, he had turned the conversation to the World Series.
It seemed to Julie that she recalled the name of the Danforth Bank and something about a man named Devlin, whom Mom didn’t like. And so now, in the middle of the night, foreboding thoughts had entered the little room. Vague and unspoken, possibly baseless, they were yet palpable, and behind her closed eyes had a fleeting color, probably mauve, she felt, being one of those people who often in imagination give colors to things.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1996–97
In a pose now characteristic, though unconscious, Robb stood at the window in his office gazing down at the city below. The building was emptying for the night, and still he made no move. His energy level, after a normal day’s work that had always left him with a healthy tiredness, had gone down to zero. For weeks now, a terrible malaise had weakened him.
Never in his life had he been so possessed by the subject of money. There had always, ever since his childhood in the farmhouse, been a roof over his head and plenty to eat. Even those very frugal days as a law student had been relatively free of worry; there had been no reason
to think of money as the central, shaping force of life.
His present trouble had begun with the hurricane, and had increased week after week at dizzying speed. That grandiose mall had been left looking like the photograph of an archaeological dig in the Middle East. Tons of mud had engulfed it. The hot, dry season that followed had baked the mud into the consistency of rock. Well, almost so, if not exactly, he thought. But sufficiently to cause half the prospective tenants to withdraw.
At the same time, the partners’ personal notes came due. The big men, Devlin and the rest, had enough or could easily lay their hands on enough to meet their payments. But Robb MacDaniel had no such available funds. Robb MacDaniel had taken a second mortgage on his house to invest in this glamorous mall that was to have crowned his pyramid.
Damn! He thrust his fist into the palm of the other hand. To be foiled by a trick of nature! Not that he was unaware of the thousands who, because of that same trick, had lost their little homes with all their possessions; he was well aware of them, and terribly sorry. But still, that did not help him.
Nor did another trick, not nature’s this time, but simply a stupid failure on the part of a supposedly invincible Dick Devlin. The condominiums, whose selling point was to have been an unmatched view of blue water, had now lost that selling point. Just below them, on the next ridge of the slope, construction had started on another condominium development, these to be two stories higher than Devlin’s, thus giving the latter not a view of blue water, but of rooftops.
Damn! And again Robb thrust his fist into his palm. It was nearly impossible some days to concentrate on his practice with all this going on. He had a tremendous case set for next week, and here he was worrying, hoping that a payment from the Texas office building would come in time to meet the next note due on the mall. Juggling. Miss one ball, and the rest of them tumble.
He walked up and down the room, talking aloud to himself. The cleaning crew would think he was crazy. And he scolded himself: this is no way to be thinking. Did you really expect life to pour itself out as smoothly as a pitcher of cream? You’ve got enough invested here and there to bring you into safe harbor eventually. You know you have. Then he laughed. Harbors and cream pitchers. Talk about mixing metaphors! Now think clearly. Devlin and his lot must have been in tighter places more than once. They’re not going to be squeezed to death. Nor am I. Nor is Eddy. As always, Eddy knows what’s happening a thousand percent better than I do, and he is not worried.