by Belva Plain
What am I doing to do? she thought.
The door opened. Past the window the black had turned to gray. She could see him as he approached the bed, and she stiffened. He was still dressed except for his boots and the coat of his riding habit. Like her, he had been awake all that long night.
“Fern, can’t we even try to be reasonable about this?”
“Reasonable!” she cried scornfully. “You really like that word, don’t you?”
“It’s a good word, one of the best.”
She didn’t answer. She felt hopeless, burnt out.
“I’ll fix a room across the hall. I’ll spend more time in town. I should anyway. The business needs it.”
Fern got out of bed and walked into the bathroom while his voice followed her.
“Plenty of couples live this way. They rear their children, they’re good to one another. Share things—everything but sex. It’s not ideal—but it happens. I could give you names that would surprise you. Some of the artists you most admire. M.P.’s. You’ve even been in their homes. Why, I could tell you—”
“I don’t want to hear!”
And on the icy tiles she knelt down, something she had not done in years, not since passing through the religiosity of early adolescence. Yes, once since then, on the night her mother died, she had knelt and prayed: God help me, please. So now on her knees she murmured again: God help me, please. But she had been reared in a household of skeptics, and nothing moved inside.
When she realized that Alex was standing there watching, she struggled to her feet.
“You find this theatrical, I suppose?”
“No, I’ve done it myself on occasion.”
“And did it help?”
“No.”
She picked up the bathroom glass and threw it at him. Falling short, it smashed on the floor, scattering its pointed shards with a tinkle.
“Damn you,” she cried, “get out! Get out of my sight!”
When he had gone, she got down again on her knees in the splintered glass and cried and longed to be dead.
Alex’s mother, accepting a second portion of pudding, remarked, “I’m so sorry to have missed Alex. If I had known he was going to be busy in town all week, I’d have postponed my visit.”
The women sat together at one end of the long table. The three days’ visit had been intenninable for Fern. Ordinarily it would not have been hard to endure, for by now she was used to Rosamund. (Such an odd name for this woman! “Rosamund” should be young and careless; these Alex’s mother could never have been, even in youth.) But she was far too desperate to cope with small talk, although she made the effort.
“You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you? We’ll have it early. You’ll have plenty of time to catch the evening train.”
“No, I’ll take the five o’clock. Thanks anyway. I’ll be back next month for Neddie’s birthday, though.”
By next month, Fern thought, it may all have been too much. Perhaps I shall have fallen apart by then. Can’t you see what’s happening?
Rosamund whispered, “Tern, you’re not expecting again? You don’t mind my asking? But you do look a little peaked.”
“Oh no, no I’m not.”
Rosamund laid her hand on Fern’s arm. The heat of her hand came through the woolen sleeve. Her warm breath smelled of minted mouthwash.
“I used to envy my friends who had daughters. I used to say, A woman needs at least one daughter.’ But you know, I don’t say it anymore, not since I’ve had my daughter-in-law. In this slipshod, devil-take-the-hindmost world, I can rely on you. You’re so good to me! I tell everyone.”
This undeserved, pathetic praise caused disquiet in Fern. What had she ever given, after all, to this poor woman, so hungry for affection? Visits and presents, perfunctory, expensive knickknacks that one picked up without effort or thought.
“Fern, will you come up while I pack my suitcase? There are some things I want to show you.”
In the few days of her occupancy Rosamund had made the room her own. There was a clutter of magazines on the bedside table next to a photograph of Alex’s father. On the round table in the bay window lay an elaborate, interrupted game of double solitaire, and this last spoke to Fern. As Rosamund gathered up the cards, it spoke of Jessie, of long evenings and long silences.
“In my spare time,” Rosamund said now, “I’ve been making a surprise for you. I thought you might like this.”
And she placed on Fern’s lap a heavy picture album covered in dark blue velvet, embroidered in silver thread: Alexander Lamb V.
“I’d intended to keep it for your Christmas present, but I’m too impatient to wait that long.”
Fern turned the pages. There was Alex at three months, lying naked on a fur rug. Here he sat in a high chair, there in a rowboat Wearing an Eton jacket, he stood between his parents. “Smile!” the photographer had commanded and Alex had smiled. The label read, “First Day at School.” Here, some years later, he was on the soccer team.
“Can you tell which one was Alex?” and as Fern pointed to the wrong one, “I thought you wouldn’t be able to tell! Wasn’t he chubby? But he has such a large frame! I wonder that he stays so thin now, with the meals you serve.”
“We don’t eat this way all the time. And of course, with all the exercise, especially riding, you know—” She stopped.
“Well. I wanted you to have it.”
“It’s beautiful,” Fern said. “Thank you so very, very much.”
“Wait I have something else.” From her bulging handbag Rosamund withdrew a silk purse on a drawstring. “I’ve been meaning to give you these, and now is as good a time as any. That’s my mother’s garnet bracelet It’s eighteen carat. Not that I’m boasting, but so much Victorian jewelry isn’t real gold, so I thought you ought to know. And my ruby ring. Try it on. It’ll fit your little finger.”
Fern was frightened. “You mustn’t do this!” she cried. Wasn’t it odd that these things should frighten her? “I can’t possibly take all this away from you.”
“You’re not taking; I’m giving. Who else will I leave my things to when I die but to you?”
“Yes, but leaving them is different. You’ve plenty of time yet to wear them and enjoy them.”
For the second time that day Rosamund laid her hand on Fern’s arm. Fern looked down at the blunt arthritic fingers.
“Child, the ring won’t even fit me anymore. I want you to wear it. The ruby’s small, but it happens to be flawless, I was always so proud of it.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Fern began.
People who trusted you, who were good to you, controlled you. You were helpless before them. This woman expected to be loved. She assumed that her son was deeply loved. She weighed you down. The air in the room became as it was in her own home—heavy with habit and obligation. In Rosamund’s parlor the mantel was cluttered with snapshots from old holidays, with Christmas cards and theater programs. It was like living in a museum or an ossuary.
“I don’t know what to say,” Fern repeated.
“Don’t say anything! I’ll have more for you the next time I see you. My husband was so generous toward me! They’re good men, the Lambs. We’re lucky, you and I. Alex is a one-woman man like his father. You’ll never have to worry the way so many do these days. And did even in my time, too; oh yes, they did! What some of my friends put up with! Because of pride, of course, and also for the children’s sake. What’s a woman to do? I often think of Lucy Hemming. She’s dead now, so I can talk. Walter Hemming kept a singer, pretty enough in a common way, took her to the best places where all Lucy’s friends could see them. Disgraceful! But you’re crying, Fern! Have I said anything? What is it?”
Fern stood up. She had to get out of that room.
“Nothing. It’s foolish of me. I was just touched at your giving me so much.”
“Why, my dear, you are softhearted, aren’t you?” Rosamund was pleased. “Just enjoy them. I’m so sorry I missed Alex. Kiss him for
me.”
She thought, rushing down the hall, that she wouldn’t be able to stand much more. There had to be someone she could talk to. Someone.
She longed for her mother. It was humiliating that, at this age and herself a mother, she should feel such need. If only her father were a man one could go to! But you could never talk to him of interior things. He had always been concerned with externals: proper appearances and material goods. He would never understand this. She could even imagine his fury, an outrage almost childish. There would be no rational analysis from him, no comfort. Her mother would have given comfort even though she might not have known what was actually to be done.
As for talking to Jessie, the roots of alienation were too deep. Perhaps alienation wasn’t the right word; indifference might be a better definition. Or unease? Whatever the term, things were as they were.
Since the birth of her child, Jessie had drawn farther away. Within the real world she had made another world into which few were admitted and these mostly old people, or women who, because they were dowdy or scholarly or both, were no threat to Jessie. Fern saw this clearly, pityingly. And she wondered what place Martin had in that little world. Her mind, opening the door of his and Jessie’s bedroom, retreated in shame and closed the door at once.
So she couldn’t go to her sister. They hadn’t even seen each other since they’d had an American Thanksgiving together and now it was almost February. No, not Jessie.
Who, then?
And she knew even as she put the question and denied the answer—because the meeting would be awkward at best and probably futile as well. She knew nevertheless that the answer was Martin.
Why? There was a subtle coolness between them. She still felt discomfort in his presence, although not what she had felt when he first arrived in England. Certainly she wasn’t angry anymore. She had made herself behave like a mature, accepting woman. Perhaps, she reasoned, Alex had been right. People looked for different things in marriage and, after all, theirs was not the first such marriage. Martin was most tender with Jessie. And quite mad about the little girl! A lovely child, she was. A firebird. Quicksilver. Curiously, she reminded one of Neddie. Emmy and Isabel would be large, placid women, easy to live with. Martin had been so wonderful with poor Emmy that time they happened to be visiting and she broke her arm. A gentle doctor. Alex called him a born physician. Rare. Strange, but the doctor and the man seemed separate.
The man didn’t reveal himself except when he talked about Claire. When one overheard him from the far end of a table or a room, he was usually talking about her. But more of the time he didn’t talk at all. She didn’t remember him as such a silent, private person. At home in Cyprus she had thought him spirited and eager. How things changed! But she herself had changed since then! One could call it learning or aging. No matter. But Martin was kind; that hadn’t altered. He would surely listen to her. He could be trusted. Maybe he would even know some way to help her. Was there any help?
A coal fire burned in the grate. The walls were covered with black and brown books bound in frayed and powdering leather. Everything in the room was very old; it looked like Sherlock Holmes’s office on Baker Street. Actually, it belonged to Mr. Braidburn. Martin had explained that he sometimes saw patients here for Mr. Braidburn when he was away.
Fern kept looking around the room, aware that Martin also was considerately looking elsewhere, giving her time to calm herself. There was a Turkish carpet. There were heavy curtains, printed in dark red and tan. The room was warm. One could forget that it was on the ground floor of a hospital, that on the floors above people with hideous things growing in their heads lay dying. On the desk there was an open folder with a pen beside it. But Martin had written nothing and said nothing, only listened.
Now he said, “You were beginning to smile a moment ago. Why?”
“For some reason or other, I was remembering the day you told me my eyes don’t belong in my face.”
He didn’t answer.
“I think of myself as having been very childish for a girl of twenty.”
“Not childish. Inexperienced, which is quite a different thing.”
He lit a cigarette and leaned back in the chair. She was conscious of every sound, of the little scrape of the match and the creak of the chair. A small pain flashed through her temples.
She said abruptly, “People don’t know anything about each other when they marry. It’s absurd. It’s all artificial. We go to the hairdresser. He brings flowers …”
“Yet you must have loved him.”
“I didn’t know anything about him, as you see.”
“The part you knew, you loved. Didn’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“I think—you wouldn’t have married him otherwise. Would you have?”
She felt as though she were undergoing an inquisition. He was pressing her. Why? And she passed her hand wearily across her forehead.
“I don’t know. It’s just the time, the place. Feelings rush over us. It’s just—tricks. Yes, tricks.”
“You shouldn’t be bitter. Shouldn’t deny the feelings you had. That is, if they were true ones.”
He laid the cigarette in the ashtray from which smoke rose in a straight column toward the ceiling. Raising her eyes with the smoke, she saw that he was looking at her for the first time since she had come into the room.
“Were they?” Martin asked.
“I’m sorry. Were they what?”
“Your feelings. Were they true?”
“Yes, yes. I don’t know.” These last weeks she had grown thinner, and her rings were loose. She twisted them. She faltered: “If you had asked me before all this, I would have said, ‘Yes, I loved him.’ Now I think it’s possible I thought so because I didn’t know what I was missing.”
Martin got up and went to the carafe that stood on a table.
“Would you like some water?”
When she declined, he poured a glass for himself and stood with his back to her drinking it slowly. His back, his shoulders, even the way he stood, were subtly different from what they had been three years before. They had the look of authority. She was thinking that when he went back to is chair and spoke again.
“Are you saying that you were comfortable with Alex because he made no approach to your sexuality? Is that what you’re saying? Is that one of the reasons you married him?”
“You’ve no right to say that!” she cried, in immediate anger.
“Why haven’t I? I’m a doctor. You asked for my opinion.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to humiliate people.”
“If you feel humiliated, I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intent.” He spoke quietly. “But you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to hear me.”
“All right. Go on.”
“You’ve said yourself, often enough, that you were very young for your age. That means you had no knowledge of sex and as yet apparently no real need of it. Also, what little you knew about it you feared. And I think you still do.”
“Do you mind telling me what you’re driving at?”
“What I’m driving at is that you’re not hurt because you’ve been deprived of sex and love. You’re hurt because your life’s been turned inside out.”
She wanted to slap him. In her need she had come to him for aid and comfort; he was giving her a scolding and scorn. Tears started. Biting her lip, she controlled them.
He stood up again and went to rearrange some books on a table. He was strangely agitated. Then he came back and sat down.
“I’m sorry. I’m not being fair to you. I sounded angry, I know.”
“Yes, you did. Why?”
“I don’t know why. One doesn’t always understand oneself.”
“ ‘Physician, heal thyself,’ ” she said with bitterness. And quite suddenly she saw before her, not the man of authority who had risen when she had entered the room awhile ago, but the young man in the shabby suit at the dinner table in Cyprus, a youth
with something burning and bright in his face, and with a certain pathos. She spoke gently now.
“We’re quarreling—”
He collected himself. “Mary, I don’t want to. I want to help you.”
“You still call me Mary,” she said irrelevantly.
He lit another cigarette and leaned down to replace the pack in a desk drawer. When he raised his head he had resumed the professional manner: kindly, reasoned and firm.
“I want to help you,” he repeated. “You’re scared to death.”
She twisted her rings. “I don’t know where I’m going, don’t understand anything. I have no patience with the children, can’t work, can’t paint, can’t bear to look at Alex—he disgusts me.”
“Tell me, Mary, What do you know about homosexuality?”
“Not very much.”
“There have been times and places in which it was an honored form of love. Did you know that?”
“They didn’t teach us that in history class! But I suppose I knew.”
“Some of the world’s best minds—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Even Shakespeare, they say—‘How like a winter hath my absence been from thee?’ That sonnet was probably addressed to a boy. Does that shock you?”
“Maybe, a little.”
“Well, the Church says it’s wrong, of course, but—”
She interrupted, “I wasn’t brought up with much religion.”
“I was, though. I’ve had to discard a lot of it and yet the core—” He stopped. “What I wanted to say was, the Bible also tells us not to judge. And that I believe is right Not to judge.”
She was silent.
“People hate anything different from themselves. There are people who hate Jews without ever having known one, or else having known one bad one.”
“This is different.”
“Not really. All the goodness that was in Alex—isn’t it there still?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do know.”
She sighed.
“He’s not wicked, Mary! And let me tell you, he suffers. It’s obvious he can neither change himself nor accept himself. If he could accept himself it would be easy for him. But this way, it’s very hard. Can’t you see how hard?”