by Belva Plain
“Why not? She might as well know the truth.”
“At six?”
“She can start getting used to the idea. When she’s older, she’ll have been prepared for it.”
“Never! Never, do you hear? It’s my business, my trouble! Mine to decide how much of it I want to have known and talked about whether all of it, or some of it, or none of it And don’t let me ever, ever hear you say one word to that child again, Father. I mean it, I mean it!”
Old Bridget who had been listening from the kitchen, said to Claire—(but she was half talking to herself, Claire knew; she used to mumble in the kitchen: “The bread knife now, where did I put it? Oh, I am so sick of these rheumatics, my poor legs!”)—old Bridget said, “Yes, that’s what happens when you get old and sick. She would never have got away talking to her father like that before.”
Mostly, though, Mother was nice to Grandpa even when he was cross. She always said she was sorry for him because he was old and sick. Maybe she could be very sorry for sick people because she wasn’t made right and knew how it felt.
When you walked behind her you could see how one shoulder stuck up so much higher than the other and how the crooked edges of her bones stuck out from under the collars and scarves and all the clothes she wore.
Why didn’t she look like other mothers? Why did a person have to have a mother like her?
Yet she could do things the other mothers couldn’t do. She could make anything with her hands. She made a patchwork quilt for Claire’s bed and silk flowers for the bowl on the hall table. She sewed a Tinkerbell costume for Claire to wear in Peter Pan. It was all feathery white, with hidden, tinkling bells that had come from a theatrical costumer’s in New York. The teacher kept talking about Claire’s costume. She didn’t say so, of course, but it was the best costume in the class. Some of the other mothers had used nothing better than crepe paper. The pirate hats didn’t fit and kept sliding off.
Today was the final dress rehearsal. Everybody was standing in the schoolyard after lunch waiting for the bell to ring. The teacher was on the steps watching her first-graders. She wore a dress with little flowers all over it. She had pink nails and a new ring like a pearl button, only it was a diamond engagement ring. She was going to be married next month as soon as school was out. Claire wished Miss Donohue was her mother.
They went inside and ran through the rehearsal. The teacher said it was practically perfect. Claire felt so beautiful and so clever, tinkling her bells. And suddenly, when they were just about to take the costumes off, something came into her head, something from that time long, long ago.
“I really saw Peter Pan once,” she said. “There’s a statue of him in the park in London and I was there with my father.”
Jimmy Crater scoffed. “You did not! There isn’t any such statue!”
“There is so and I saw it.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I am not. Go ask Miss Donohue.”
“Why yes,” Miss Donohue said. “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. It’s famous. Now, who’ll help me stack this scenery in a safe corner till tomorrow?”
“There,” Claire said, “I told you so.”
“Ah, you’re full of baloney.”
“Am not.”
“You never even were in London.”
Now a little circle of allies and enemies gathered around Claire and Jimmy Crater.
“I was born in London!” Claire cried triumphantly. “I lived there with my father and mother. I ought to know where I lived!”
“You haven’t even got a father,” Andy Chapman said.
“I have so. Everybody has a father.”
“Oh yeah? Where is he, then?”
“None of your business.”
Under the Tinkerbell ruff and fluff, Claire felt the rising heat.
“Hasn’t got a father, hasn’t got a father!”
Claire stuck out her tongue. “You’re mad, Jimmy Crater, because I can knock you down. I’m bigger and stronger and I’m a girl, but I can knock you down!”
Jimmy’s fists went up, prizefighter fashion, churning under his chin. Andy, the ally, thrust his up toward Claire.
“Come on! Fight then!” they taunted.
“I don’t want to fight, but I can if I have to!”
“Ah, you’re scared! You haven’t got a father, and your mother’s funny-looking, and you’re scared!”
Claire’s fist struck Jimmy’s nose. When he fell, chairs clattered. Andy shoved Claire. They all fell, ripping the Tinkerbell dress down the back. It made a sound as if the cloth were screaming.
Miss Donohue came running. “Boys! Boys! Oh, how awful! What’s happening here?”
Claire got up. “Look,” she said. “Look what they did.”
Miss Donohue turned her around. Her cool fingers fiddled with the cloth at Claire’s back, pulling and smoothing.
“I’m sorry, Claire. I’m so sorry. I’ll sew it for you, dear, it won’t show on stage, I promise. Claire, where’re you going? You can’t go, school’s not out yet!”
But Claire had already gone. Out of the room, out of the building, around the corner she fled.
The streets were empty. Mothers were inside the houses, getting dinner ready. Fathers were away at work. No one would have seen her even if she had been weeping. But she was not weeping. She would not cry. Rage clenched her fists. If Miss Donohue hadn’t pulled them apart, she would have beaten those dirty boys!
She took the long way, but she often did that, to pass the houses of her friends and those she had peopled with imaginary relatives. The yellow house with the privet hedge belonged to her best friend, Charlotte, who was home with a cold. If she had been there today, she would have helped Claire fight. Charlotte’s house was nice to be in, much nicer than home. Sometimes Claire was invited there for Sunday dinner. They had scatter rugs in their parlor and hall, and after dinner Charlotte’s father and mother would roll them up and dance to the victrola. They called it doing the tango. Charlotte’s father said he would teach it to them when they were older.
The brick house with the rose garden belonged to an old lady who was always doing things to the flowers. She carried a straw basket and wore straw hats. She always smiled and said hello to Claire, and even though she was old, she was pretty. Claire liked to imagine that this woman was her grandmother. She liked to imagine going to that house on Thanksgiving. There would be aunts and uncles and cousins at the table.
The Hendersons lived across the street from Claire’s house. Every Thanksgiving, Claire’s mother would look out the window at all the cars driving up to the Hendersons and say, “My, they’re having a crowd this year!” Then she would turn and go sit at the table with Grandpa and Claire.
Sometimes Claire would go to the kitchen after dinner and have a second dessert with Bridget, who could be very jolly when she wanted to be, but often wasn’t. Mother said Bridget was cranky because all the other help had been let go, so she had everything to do herself. Anyway, she was getting old and would soon be going to Florida to live with her niece in a warm climate. And then they would have to find another maid because, afford it or not, Mother certainly couldn’t be expected to take care of a big house like this herself. That’s what Aunt Milly said, anyway. Mother said she could if she had to. She said you could do anything if you set your mind to it. Aunt Milly said Mother was a wonder, but she was too hard on herself.
Claire liked it when Aunt Milly came to stay a few days. She had a nice, chuckling laugh and always brought good presents, besides. She was visiting them now, sitting with Mother on the front porch. There was no way to get into the house without their seeing her. So she slid through the shrubbery, under the mulberry bush. If they saw her, there would be fuss and questions: Why had she left school early? Why was the costume torn? Her mother would scold and scold, as if it wasn’t all her fault in the first place. I hate my mother, Claire thought.
The mulberry bush was like a little private house with soft, green walls. You could sit there by yours
elf and think, could swallow the lump in your throat until you didn’t feel like crying anymore. You could listen to interesting conversations on the porch or watch ants building a nest They were building one now, marching in a long procession through the tunnel they had made. Each one was carrying something, a seed or a dead bug. One of them had a piece of leaf bigger than itself! Uncle Drew said there were rooms underground at the end of the tunnel where they stored their food and kept their babies. He said it took them days to build all that You could wreck it all, squash it with your foot, in a second if you wanted. But that would be mean. Poor things.
“Claire, is that you? What are you doing?” her mother cried.
“Sitting under the mulberry bush.”
“I can see you are. But what are you doing there?”
“I’m watching ants.”
“Ants! For Heaven’s sake!”
“Why not? They’re a whole lot better than dolls!”
“Well, come on out, will you? Goodness, your Tinkerbell costume! It’s all torn! And your face is scratched! What happened?”
“I had a fight with two boys.”
“Oh my,” Aunt Milly said. “Oh my, I’m surprised! A dear little girl like you!”
“No, no, Aunt Milly,” Mother said. “Claire, do you want to tell me what it was about?”
“No,” Claire said. It was about you, stupid. All your fault.
“Well, but you know you mustn’t get into punching fights. Girls don’t do that.”
“Why can’t they? Why can boys do everything. It isn’t fair.”
“But you don’t want to be a boy, do you?”
“No. I want to be a girl who can do the things boys do.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just the way things are.”
“Then I don’t like the way things are.”
“You will, though. You’ll grow up and be very, very pretty. And a wonderful man will come along and want to take care of you.” Mother stroked Claire’s hair back from her forehead. “Come and we’ll put peroxide on that scratch.”
She followed the lopsided back upstairs. The little bells tinkled sadly. No man was taking care of Mother except Grandpa, and he didn’t count. No man like Charlotte’s father danced with her. Because she was funny-looking, that was why, just as Jimmy Crater said. Claire’s eyes filled with tears, and this time they leaked over.
“Ouch! You’re making my eyes sting with that peroxide!”
“It’s not this little bit of peroxide. You’re crying.”
“I am not crying!”
“Yes, you are. Is it because the costume’s torn? It’s too bad, but I can fix it I’ll have it ready for you in the morning.”
“I’m not going to school in the morning.”
“Not going to be in the play.”
“I don’t want to be in the play.” Mother shook her head. “I don’t believe that” she said gently.
If her mother had been angry, Claire would have been angry right back. She had no fear. But sympathy brings more tears; already she had learned that much about her own emotions. So she stood there with her small chest heaving, an ache in her throat and a stinging behind her eyes.
Mother looked away. She seemed to be looking all around the room: at the floor, where bright spots flickered as the wind moved in the new-leaved maple at the window; at the walls and the ceiling; everywhere except at Claire. Then, in that same quiet voice, she spoke.
“I won’t be coming to the play tomorrow, either, or to the picnic afterward. I’ve too many things to do at home.”
But that’s not true, Claire thought. She wanted to come! She’s been talking and talking about it Then why?
Her mother seemed to be thinking of something, making up her mind, the way she did when she was deciding on turkey or lamb or on whether Claire might go to Charlotte’s house or not. She was so quiet for such a long time that Claire was suddenly afraid. Maybe her mother was going to cry? Mothers weren’t supposed to cry; if mothers cried it meant that something must be terribly wrong and bad, something that would make you feel lost—
At last her mother spoke. Her voice was strange, not like any of her ordinary voices, scolding or in a hurry or simply telling something.
“Oh, you’ve had a bad time, a terrible day, haven’t you? I know, I know! It’s awful for you because I look so queer next to the other mothers. And you have no father. You can’t even say he’s dead, can you? like the McMath children, whose father died and everybody went to the funeral, so they knew.” Now she looked at Claire. She grasped Claire’s shoulders and held them hard. “But I’ll make it up to you. I owe it to you and I will. I don’t know how, but I swear I will.”
The words were almost angry, but Claire knew her mother wasn’t angry. It was scary in a way. Yet in another way it was like the times her mother put bandages on cuts and made things all right and was so strong.
“Come to the play tomorrow,” she whispered. “I want you to come, Mama.”
“Do you truly? You don’t have to say so if you don’t mean it.”
“I mean it,” Claire said. “I want you to.”
Chapter 16
Sky-glow come through the slatted blinds, marking the walls in zebra stripes. The city sky was never truly dark; the city never truly slept. A truck ground gears; a tugboat hooted on the river; pigeons clattered on the windowsill. Martin looked at the clock. It was five in the morning and he had set the alarm for six. This had been happening to him of late, this early waking, with troubled mind alert and turning. Softly, he slid out of bed into chill air, drawing the blanket back around Hazel’s shoulders.
In the other room he went to the window and looked down onto the street. A couple in evening clothes got out of a taxi; the woman wore long, rich furs. For a moment or two, as they crossed the sidewalk, he could hear their bright voices. From a private house in the formal, nineteenth-century row on the other side of the street, a man emerged and got into a car. He was carrying a suitcase. A woman stood in the doorway, waving good-bye to him. Was he leaving early to attend the funeral of a relative in Boston, or embarking for adventure in Calcutta? The mystery of other lives, the barriers between them and his own life, the uncertainties of all lives, saddened Martin always, but more so in this dimmest hour of the night.
Kahn, the cat, climbed out of his basket, stretched, and coming to Martin, rubbed between his ankles in an S-curve, then sat back to regard him with a calculating stare. It was as if the creature felt his tensions. Its eyes glittered, two green light bulbs implanted in smoky fur. A child had placed the kitten on his desk one day when it was small enough to fit in a man’s hand. He bent to stroke it, and the animal purred its pleasure. Then, having had enough, it walked off into the bedroom and leapt to the bed at Hazel’s feet.
Light turned mother-of-pearl now at the edge of dark ness. From where he stood, Martin could just discern the curve of Hazel’s arm and the long spread of her hair on the pillow. Mild September brown, he thought: she was so warm, so absolutely warm! Most women had cold hands and feet; not she. Her body had deep curves, tempered a little to modern taste: powerful, rosy thighs, great firm breasts, strong shoulders. What dogged generations of survival it took to produce that vigor!
And yet the rest of her—spirit, psyche, whatever you wanted to call it—was total contradiction. You had only to catch her unaware to know that Innocence, he thought, as intrinsic as the whorls on the fingertips. She did not even know that her flesh was voluptuous! How would you describe her? A simple person? She had such pleasure in small things—a row on the lake in Central Park, a movie and ice cream afterward. She took the complications out of living. She was restful. In her presence you could feel that people were good and the world a hopeful place.
And yet—and yet she was not happy. Her tears, or rather the traces of her tears which she always tried to hide, disturbed him, and he would feel obliged to question her, although he knew the reason
quite well.
“It’s nothing,” she would say, denying because she was afraid of driving him away. She wanted him to marry her. She loved him: her twining arms when they lay together, her beating heart against his chest—she loved him.
She had scruples. It cost her much to do what she did not believe in doing, and to hide it from her family, besides. He had met the family twice. Grimly, he recalled the noisy immigrant home in Hushing: the parents; the sister; Rudy and Ernest, the huge brothers; all the other brothers and sisters-in-law. Hospitable, honest people, they were frankly impressed with the American doctor. They liked him. But they were straitlaced, too, and wouldn’t take kindly to this at all if they knew. No, not at all.
Why hadn’t he married her? Why was he holding back? Waiting for that old first longing, the sweet obsession? But perhaps the obsession was something one did better without. Four years since … He went into the kitchenette to heat water for tea, having acquired the English morning habit. Tea worked against the seeping cold on days like this. In the refrigerator stood a covered bowl of goulash, left from the previous night’s supper, and a dish of cucumbers in dill sauce. Hazel was a homemaker, maker of a home. Such strange, delicious foods she provided! Such warmth in her kitchen, such fragrance of rich cabbage soup and cinnamon-scent of pudding!
Once, in some context or other, he had said to her, “Food is a way of giving love, you know.”
And she had answered, “What difference does it make? Psychologists only put names to what everybody’s known all along.”
She had a way of coming to the heart of things. It had occurred to him momentarily that that was a trait of Jessie’s, too, but then he had realized that in Hazel it was just naivete, which was certainly not like Jessie at all!
“It’s so beautiful!” Hazel had remarked the first time he’d brought her to his home. And she had walked around the two plain rooms, looking and touching. She had been impressed by his books and his father’s medical diploma from Edinburgh, written in Latin and festooned with ribbons and seals. She had admired the etching of the Parthenon, to which, in a rare moment of semiextravagance, he had treated himself.