Homecoming

by Belva Plain

  “My God,” Andrew said, “you do mean it.” And his temper rose too. “Then sit here and stew. Cry your eyes out instead of pulling yourself together. I’ve lost patience. I can’t do any more.”

  So it ended. Now she was trying to make a new life for herself at work in a settlement house for homeless mothers and children. It was a joyless life, but a useful one at least. Often she thought when she saw a young woman holding her baby that she would be willing to change with her. Poverty was cruel and dreadful, but with compassionate help it could be overcome; it was not final.

  Again she went to the window as if out there might lie some answer to her questions. The sky was a dirty pink, the nighttime sky that hides the stars above great cities. It was time to leave this costly view and things that filled these rooms, the shining, pretty gadgets that once had been so joyfully assembled for a lifetime home. Gran’s letter lay open on the desk. Come and spend the day. Spend the night. Stay as long as you want to. I love you.

  Once more she read the loving words and imagined Gran at her desk writing them.

  How could anyone refuse?

  Chapter 3

  In Washington, Lewis Byrne put down the receiver and sat quite still, thinking about his daughter.

  He had always, in the privacy of his thoughts, called her his gift of joy. Tall and calm as Cynthia was, he could see himself and his kin in her; piquant and graceful, she was also like her mother, having Daisy’s quick wit and strong, athletic body. Repeated in Cynthia these qualities seemed to have been intensified; as you watched her, you could imagine a bird in flight. A wounded bird now, he thought, and was heavy with that thought, when the door opened and Daisy came home.

  “How was it?” he inquired.

  “Nice. I surprised myself by finding how many women I already know in Washington.”

  “Looking at you, nobody would ever guess your worries.”

  She had brought a brisk air into the room, as if she had just returned from a swim or a horseback ride or tennis. There was energy in her stride and her direct blue gaze.

  Ruefully, she replied, “What’s the use of showing them?”

  “None, I suppose. I talked to Cynthia.”

  “Anything new?”

  “Nothing, except she’s going with us to Mother’s.”

  “Oh, that’s good. I was afraid she wouldn’t.”

  “She loves my mother.”

  “Well, of course. What I meant was, having to go through the town, seeing the church where they were married, and then the cemetery.”

  “How Andrew can have done this to her! Men have their moments, God knows, but this! It’s unforgivable. After all they had been through, and just when we really thought she was beginning to recover.” Lewis shook his head, sighing. “No matter how old your children are, it’s never over, is it? Remember the shock we had when she broke her arm in three places? And when she was seven, and got lost at the Brownie picnic—or we thought she was lost, anyway?”

  “Remember when she was fifteen and madly in love with that awful boy?”

  For a few minutes they were silent, until Daisy said gently, “Get up. Let’s have dinner and go to a movie, a comedy, if there is one. This sort of thing doesn’t help either us or Cynthia.”

  “You’re right. But I hate December,” he said as he rose.

  On a short, gloomy afternoon that call had come, rushing them to their daughter, to their dead grandchildren and the anguish.

  “I know it’s a bad month altogether. But come on, dear, get your coat.”

  For Daisy’s sake he must try. They had dinner and it was good, but he was not hungry. The movie flickered before his eyes without registering. Back at home when she went to bed, he pleaded work.

  “I’ll come in a little while. I’ve got to read some material on public housing.”

  In the chair by the window he settled down again. The apartment must certainly be warm, he thought, since it always was, yet tonight it felt as if a chill were seeping through the walls. The Jefferson Memorial looked like a carving in ice, and the world froze. He got up, shivering, to pour a glass of wine. Perhaps it would not only warm him, but put him to sleep. These days he always felt short of sleep.

  Yes, December. I shall always hate the month. As if Cynthia’s catastrophe were not enough, this week is the sixth anniversary of another death: on a Saturday night the firm of Byrne and Sons died. One of the finest architectural engineering firms in the country came to an end. Smashed. Wiped out.

  And at this recollection Lewis’s hands shook, spilling the last few drops of wine on the unread public-housing report. A disaster like that must live forever in one’s mind, he thought. He could still see the headlines in the newspapers, black letters dancing a crazy, evil dance.

  “Three concrete balconies in the new Arrow Hotel International collapse. Eighty-three killed and more than six hundred injured. Rescue workers fear many more trapped inside. Toll may go much higher.”

  The horror. And Gene, my brother, my partner, still blames me. No forgiveness, no understanding, just blame.

  That structure—and it, too, he saw as clearly as if he were now standing in front of it—that elegant, milk-white luminescence between the palm groves and the Atlantic, was to have been, if not the firm’s crowning work, then at least another triumph in its list of successes from coast to coast. Arrow Hotels International had, for the past twenty years, engaged no other firm but Byrne to design their projects. And now the glory days were over.

  It had all begun with that scruffy-looking kid, Lewis thought, having an exact recollection of the morning when his secretary had announced that “some young fellow” was insisting upon seeing Mr. Byrne.

  “Some kind of a nut, is he?”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Byrne, although you can’t always tell, can you?”

  Jerry Victor was his name. The matter was very important, of great concern to the firm, and a matter of conscience.

  “All right, I’ll see him and get it over with.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. He looks like the type who’ll keep coming until you do see him.”

  He was some sort of high-level clerk in the office of Harold Sprague and Company, the contractors. Deliberately untidy, with typically uncombed hair in a ponytail, he was well spoken, very earnest, and obviously educated. You could tell almost from his first few words that he was also a crusader. Some people, and Lewis was one of them, would say at once that he was an agitator. Admittedly, Lewis was a conservative whose tolerance for what he called “cranks” was low. Nevertheless, he listened politely to what Victor had to tell.

  He worked in a small space at the end of a narrow corridor between two offices. On a recent day sometime after working hours, he had gone back to his desk to get some important keys that he had mislaid. Except for a cleaning crew the offices were vacant, so it surprised him to overhear two men in conversation across the passage. He was certain that one of them was Mr. Sprague. The voices were low, but the walls were thin. While he was searching and unfortunately not finding his keys, he could not help but overhear. He was, he said, not accustomed to eavesdropping, but he had been so shocked by the first few words, that he had then concealed himself to hear the rest.

  “Then eight percent, is it?” asked one man.

  “Yes, isn’t that satisfactory?”

  “We had talked of ten.”

  “That’s a bit steep.”

  “You have to consider volume. We have two more jobs for you after this with Byrne. You’ll find it worth your while.”

  “How about nine percent back? How does that sound?”

  “Okay, okay. We’ll compromise. You won’t lose anything. There are more ways than one to mix concrete, right?” And someone laughed.

  That, then, was the incredible story. Good God! Harold Sprague had been a friend at Yale, and before that, a friend at prep school. They had traveled in Europe together, and their families had been summertime neighbors in Maine. It was impossible to associate hi
m with a dirty kickback scheme. This kid, this Jerry Victor, had most certainly not understood correctly and had probably not even heard correctly. Most likely he had some agenda of his own; he had perhaps been reprimanded and was seeking revenge; or he was simply a radical who lied because he wanted, on principle, to undermine a company, that being the true motive of many a whistleblower these days. So Lewis reasoned.

  Or so he had reasoned then. Time and events had tempered that first certainty. Reflecting, he gazed out now upon the lights that dotted darkened Washington. No doubt, he could admit, he had been somewhat dazzled by the name of Sprague and should not have been. He winced as he recalled that day.

  “This is a preposterous accusation!” he had said. “You didn’t even see the men.”

  “I know Mr. Sprague’s voice.”

  “ ‘Know his voice’! No, young man, that’s pretty flimsy evidence. I suggest you forget about it, do your job, and take care of yourself.”

  After admonishing and then dismissing the fellow with proper dignity, he had mentioned, as if it were a joke, the absurd affair to Gene.

  “All the same, it should be looked into,” Gene said.

  “What? You can’t be serious. Do you actually want me to insult Harold Sprague with rot like that?”

  “When you come down to it, what do we know about him or his suppliers? This is the first contracting job we’ve ever given him.”

  “We know his reputation up and down the West Coast.”

  “We shouldn’t have changed. We’ve had the same reliable contractors for the last twenty years.”

  “I wanted to give him a chance, now that he’s expanding in the East. His price was competitive, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t agree. We definitely ought to speak about this. I’ll go if you feel uncomfortable about it.”

  “Gene, I forbid you from doing it.”

  Nevertheless, Gene did it.

  “I was tactful,” he reported a week or two later. “I said that I thought he should know there was a rumor, not that I believed it, just that he should know it. Of course he was indignant, furious—oh, not at me, don’t worry—”

  “I think you’ve made a big mistake because of a disgruntled crank.”

  “I don’t know about that. The kid came to see me a few days ago. He’s been having a tough time, and he’s leaving his job.”

  “Good riddance. He’s an arrogant troublemaker. I’ve asked around and found that nobody likes him. He even stirred things up in the union.”

  “As to that, I don’t know. But I do know that I can look at a man and most of the time I can tell whether he’s an honorable, truthful human being or not. I believe that boy is.”

  “That’s a doubtful statement, Gene. Think about it.”

  “No more doubtful than your belief in a man because you went to Yale together.”

  And so, a slight distance grew between the brothers. It was nothing overt, rather a subtle coolness, as when a draft stirs the air in the corner of a room that is otherwise tight and warm. It was still remembered when, two years later, the grand hotel was finished.…

  And what a jewel it was! Here was grandeur without ostentation, which he despised. When the lines were right, there was no need for fussy ornament.

  Standing at the place where a blooming low hedge divided the lawn from the sand, he looked beyond the great arch, all the way through the depth of the structure, to the opposite arch and the alley of royal palms that stretched from the front entrance to the road. If you were standing at the front entrance, you would see only blue water and, at this moment, the black nighttime sky, in which mountainous clouds hid a few blinking stars.

  It will rain soon, he had thought, probably all day tomorrow, too, and was glad for her sake that Daisy had not been able to come along this time. She had been at so many engineers’ meetings, anyway. As for him, this one was rather special, since most of the members were having their first look at Byrne and Sons’ achievement. He moved to go inside to the music, the champagne, and, frankly, to the congratulations.

  A thunderous clap shook the air. Like lightning as it splits and fells a tree, striking unholy terror in animal or man, it crashed again. And instinctively, Lewis ran for shelter. Then in an awesome fraction of a second as he reached the door, he saw, not shelter, but chaos—and it was inside.

  It struck his heart. He thought he was having a stroke. He thought he was dying.

  Chaos was concrete boulders, contorted steel, and shattered glass, lying at the bottom of the five-storied atrium. The balconies had fallen. Even now, the last one on the second floor, struck by the one above, was giving way, and shrieking, flailing, tumbling human bodies were falling with it.

  Now he knew he was dying, and wanted to die.

  There was, among all who saw this, one long, audible intake of breath; then universal screams, sobs, and curses, and after that an instant, violent, impulsive rush to aid. Lewis pulled a girl from under a girder; she had lost an arm. A man lay with blood pouring from his mouth; his eyes were open, and he was dead. Human beings, their heads barely visible beneath the rubble, cried and pleaded in terror, while groups in twos and threes strained to move the debris that covered them. Lewis thought of his brother, but there was no time or way to look for him. There was scarcely any space in which to walk through the mass of ruins.

  Water came gushing from broken pipes onto the slippery floor. An enormous chunk of concrete too heavy for human arms to shove lay over a pair of legs, and yet he tried; the man was screaming in his agony and begging; then suddenly his cries ceased, and Lewis walked away to steady an old woman who, though bloody, was able to stand. A child’s face was torn; he had fallen onto the sharp end of something, most likely onto a piece of the delicate iron filigree that had adorned the balconies. A gush of vomit came from out of Lewis’s mouth.

  On one side of the lobby little tables were still set with cutlery, flowers, and pink cloths. On the other, in the cocktail lounge, the piano stood unscathed. Beyond it you could glimpse the Blue Room, where on sofas and carpet those victims who could be extricated from the destruction were already being laid.

  Chambermaids, chefs in white, and men in maroon uniforms came running in from all over the hotel. Someone said, “Come here, grab her legs,” and Lewis obeyed as they picked up a heavy woman who had fainted. People ran in from the street. It must be raining, he thought, for their clothes were streaming. Dazed, he moved from aid to aid, from place to place, through the turmoil of dust and splintered glass. In one vague moment he thought he was seeing the carnage of a battlefield, read of in countless books and watched through countless movies. Only here in this place there had been music a few minutes ago, and women in evening gowns.…

  The wail of an ambulance broke into his daze. Police, firemen, and paramedics began to take charge. More help came. In the mirrored ballroom a temporary morgue was set up for the many dead. There was a frenzy of newsmen carrying cameras.

  How many hours all this went on, Lewis was never able to recall. It seemed as if days must have passed until, pushed to the limit of shock and exhaustion, he went up to the suite that had been reserved for himself and Gene.

  The lobby had been cleared of the dead and injured. They had done all that they were able to do that day. What remained was the work of the hospitals. What he did recall perfectly, though, was the terrible quarrel with Gene.

  Gene had opened a bottle of brandy. “Because God knows we need it. That scene downstairs in the lobby—hell couldn’t possibly be worse.”

  Rain spattered on the balcony. A high wind had risen, clattering in the royal palms. It had blown the outer doors open.

  “Some idiot didn’t latch the doors,” Lewis said. He got up and locked them. “I feel angry at the world, Gene. Things like this shouldn’t happen. Music one minute and amputated legs the next. Listen to that wind. All we need is a hurricane.”

  Gene filled his glass and sat staring at the wall. Lewis still stood at the window, trembling, staring a
t nothing. After a while, hearing Gene’s mumble, he turned around.

  “What are you saying?”

  “Just mumbling. Trying to figure the count. How many do you think? Dead and injured altogether.”

  “I don’t know. Too many, that’s all I know. God almighty!” he cried. “How and why? Why?”

  “I’ll tell you. Because we should have taken action at the start when young Victor came with his story about Sprague. I suppose you see now that I was right two years ago. I hate having to say it, but it’s the truth.”

  “You’re jumping at conclusions. We don’t even know yet what went wrong, and you’ve already fixed the blame for it.”

  “We know very well what went wrong. The concrete was no good. All you have to do is feel it. Cheap stuff. Not enough aggregate. I searched as best I could in all the mess tonight, and I’ll swear there weren’t nearly enough iron bars for reinforcement either. We trusted. Or you’re the one who trusted. Not I! And now we’ll be blamed for the disaster. The fact is, we deserve the blame.”

  “Well, if the supplier gypped Sprague and you’re sure about the concrete, I don’t see—”

  “I’m sure. Go downstairs now and see for yourself. I never wanted Sprague, anyway,” Gene muttered. “You know I didn’t. And now we’re through, finished, washed up. Do you understand?”

  “You’re jumping at conclusions, as I’ve already said, and you’re drunk. That’s brandy you’re drinking, not water.”

  “I need to be drunk. Do you realize how many people died tonight? And how many may live who will never walk again on account of your stupidity?”

  “God damn it, how dare you!”

  “I dare. Your fancy friend, heaven help us. Let’s not offend him. Oh, no, never. No social conscience, that’s your trouble.”

  “You’re out of your head. I’m not going to let you get away with this when you sober up, brother or no brother.”

  Toward dawn the telephone rang, bringing down upon both their heads the raving rage of the hotel’s owners, Arrow Hotels International.

  “You were hired because you’re supposed to be the cream of your profession. What in hell have you done or not done with this job? You’ll hear from our lawyers at ten o’clock your time, and we’ll be at your door ourselves as soon as the Concorde lands tomorrow.”