by Belva Plain
Presently Jessie spoke. “I’m told you’ve made a great success with your paintings.”
“Yes,” Fern replied simply.
“So Father was wrong! A pity he didn’t live to see himself proven wrong for once.” She looked up at Fern. “You think I’m vindictive? Maybe so, but the truth is the truth, all the same.”
“He would have been proven wrong about you, too,” Fern said gently. “Ned’s told me about you.”
“Has he?”
“Yes. And this house is lovely. Mellow, like Lamb House.”
“Hardly like Lamb House! So you’re still living there?”
“Still there. For me, after all, it’s home. And Simon loves it too.”
“You’re happy with Simon?”
“He’s very good to me. He’s strong and kind.”
“That’s not answering my question, is it?”
Fern threw her hands out. “Oh Jessie,” she said.
Jessie thrust the needlework away. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m upset. You’ve upset me.”
Fern started to rise. “I know. It wasn’t a good idea. I’d better go.”
“No! Stay there! I wouldn’t forgive myself if you were to leave like this. Now that you’ve come we must finish what you’ve started.”
“Finish? How?”
“Clear it up. Freshen the air. Whatever you want to call it. What I want to say is, I’m not angry anymore. I don’t hate you, Fern. And I haven’t for a long, long time.”
Fern got up and walked to the end of the room. On a round table in a corner stood a group of photographs, mostly of Claire from babyhood to the present; among them was one of Fern’s and Jessie’s mother, her pensive face surmounted by a World War One feathered hat. For a long time Fern stayed looking at the remembered face. At last she turned back to her sister. Her voice quivered.
“I don’t know whether you’ll understand—but you’ve relieved a pain that has been so sharp—so sharp, Jessie, You can’t know.”
“Maybe I can.” Jessie stood and put her hand on Fern’s arm. “Maybe I can.”
Fern’s arms went out and Jessie’s head, which reached no higher than Fern’s shoulder, came to rest on it. Fern’s hand moved over the curly head; her other hand lay on the misshapen little back. So they stood, holding one another, while something miraculously, slowly, eased in the heart of each.
“It’s so simple after all, isn’t it?” Fern murmured. “Why didn’t we do it before?”
“I don’t know. Damn fools both, I suppose.” Jessie wiped her eyes. “Sit down and talk to me. I want to hear about your daughters. I want to know more about the man who’s going to marry my daughter. In one hour give me the story of the last twenty-five years. Can you do it?”
She can still charm, Fern thought as they talked. The wit was there as it had been years ago in Cyprus; the eagerness was there along with the laughter.
“Remember when Aunt Milly came to visit and we put the kittens in her bed?” Jessie cried.
“I wonder what Cyprus is like today?”
“I passed near it last summer on my way to a client in Buffalo but I didn’t drive through. I want to remember it as it was for us, with the tower and the iron deer and lemonade on the lawn.”
So they talked, while the hour passed. They spoke of everything and everyone except the man whose name would best remain unspoken.
Then Jessie said, “You’ll need to go back and dress for the wedding. You and Simon be here at seven, will you?”
“It’s been—it’s been beautiful, Jessie.”
“Beautiful. Bitter and sweet.”
Yes, sweet to be together after so long, and bitter that it had taken so long to happen. Old wrongs and ancient grievances! Like climbing weeds they cling, twisting, twining and thickening until the day that somebody gathers the strength to pull out all the roots—or almost all of them.
Chapter 35
Their plane was leaving for India tonight Martin had already bid good-bye to Ned and Claire, but it came to his mind that he would like to see them just once more. They were, after all, going to the other side of the world.
It was a fine spring Sunday with a flush of pink in the light He walked south toward the Waldorf where Ned and Claire were staying. Strollers pushed British perambulators and led dogs of exotic breeds like puli and briard. Expensive children and expensive animals, he reflected. A group of hearty boys, not expensive, zoomed past on roller skates: iron ground on stone. A Hindu couple passed, she with a gold-edged sari and red caste mark. The variety and vigor of this most marvelous of cities! He passed the Institute for Neurological Research. On the shady side of the street it stood in modest elegance, like some quiet scholar in resplendent cap and gown. Unnamable sensations flowed through Martin.
“A lot of water under the dam,” he said aloud, surprising himself.
Yes, a lot of water. And he thought there ought to be a better way than that tired cliché to express what he felt about the changes and crises of a single life, not just his own, but any life, every life.
With Claire gone it would all be very different for him now. At least he had tried not to let her know. He was sure he had kept things festive for her.
The little dinner he’d given had been gay. Enoch had come in from Brown; the Honraths and a few friends of Ned’s and Claire’s had been invited. He had even brought his sister and her family to New York. (Dear Alice! His gift of an annual trip to the city was the high point on her calendar.) Esther had prepared a fine meal and Marjorie had arranged the table. Already she had developed her mother’s domestic gifts, and Martin actually had been able to smile a little at the sight of Hazel’s fine ruby glass, so long unused. But the lace cloth, bought that day in San Francisco, had brought a twinge of sadness.
He’d been alone with Ned for a few minutes during the evening, and Ned had offered assurance. “I want you to know, sir”—his English courtesy—“I want you to know that everything will be all right this time. You can depend upon it.”
And Martin had replied cheerfully, “I know I can. I’d be raising hell otherwise.”
Her boy! Out of all the young men on the planet, it had had to be her son who, having grown up in her house, with her touch on him and the sound of her voice in his ears, would bring so much of herself into Claire’s life, and so inevitably, into Martin’s own. But he was a decent young man. And Martin remembered that long ride through the winter afternoon after the boy’s father had died. A decent young man: he had compassion, that was one good thing.
Yet only time would really tell how it would work out. Perhaps even a couple of generations before one would really know. The modern woman! Mary and I, Hazel and I, we came from the old times. You made a compact, you gave your word, and you stayed with it at whatever cost This was all new, this uncertainty, this flux. Jobs, marriages—you tried them on for size; if they didn’t fit perfectly, you simply changed them.
“Take care of her. Love her,” he had told Ned, hoping he wasn’t sounding too old-fashioned, too protective. Well, the devil if he did!
Love. From all he read and saw on the screen and heard people say, it didn’t seem to have the passion and intensity it had had when sex was hedged about with rules and mysteries. The concern then was for the other, the object. It was a kind of—yes, it was—adoration. Today the concern seemed to be with self, with the act of sex as if it were a game. Is my partner giving a full, fair share? Am I performing well? Obtaining the satisfaction that the experts say I should? Pleasure-measure, that’s what.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
And yet, in his living room, he’d seen his daughter and the man she loved holding each other’s hands with such a look in their eyes—They’ve been through the fire, Martin thought, and come out safely on the other side. God bless.
In the hotel lobby there was the usual genteel flurry of arrival and departure. Luggage and messages and
florists’ boxes moved back and forth. A little man at a counter was raising a storm about theater tickets. The seats were way over on the side, he said, and he’d be damned if he was going to pay those prices.
“Well, but—” replied the harassed young fellow on the other side of the counter, “you wanted them for the same night, and those were the only ones left.”
Why did people contend so savagely over trivia? Maybe one needed to have gone through fire, as he had been thinking a moment ago of Ned and Claire, to weigh the true worth of things.
Dr. Farrell and Mr. Lamb were still upstairs. Their bags were to be taken down at half-past five, the clerk said. In the elevator Martin shook his head with rueful amusement. “Mr. Lamb and Dr. Farrell,” indeed!
At the fourth floor, he got out and stood wondering in which of three directions to find the room. Across the corridor a man and woman were also hesitating, with their backs to Martin. The woman was tall, almost as tall as the man. She wore a suit of thin wool the color of wheat. Her hand, in a light glove, rested in the curve of the man’s elbow. Her hair, worn in a curly cap, was lightly touched with gray. And he knew her at once, even before he heard the unmistakable voice which he would have recognized anywhere on earth.
“It’s number eleven, I think,” she said.
Turning just then, she caught Martin’s look. Her own glance swept down the corridor beyond him, swept lightly back and paused. Eyes recognized each other in that fraction of an instant and spoke: spoke what? Such messages as may circle through space and touch and vanish. He thought her lips moved, but perhaps it was only the quivering of his own vision.
“It’s this way, Mary,” her husband said, “left.”
The elevator came again, and Martin got in. There was a roaring in his head. He needed to sit for a moment in the lobby, but there were no vacant chairs. Then he thought he needed to get away, but there was a scramble for taxi es at the hotel entrance; he hadn’t the patience or the nerve to wait. He began to walk, almost to run. He felt as if he had been struck.
“If we ever see each other again,” she had said, “walk away, do you promise?”
“Yes, I promise,” he’d told her.
And he thought that possibly the best proof he loved her was his wish that she might be happy now. He was not noble, he knew he was far from that; yet he could wish it for her. A good man and kind, was Simon. He’d seen that at once: a manly man who would know how to make a woman happy.
Mary Fern. Mary Fern. A distant glimmer, fading and brightening, fading and brightening. For how long? For always? Until the end of his days?
He had walked two blocks when a car drew up just ahead of him. It was a foreign limousine, driven by a chauffeur in a maroon uniform. A little woman, wearing a loose cream-colored coat, got out and dismissed the car.
“Jessie!” he cried.
“Martin?” She hesitated, then put out her hand. “How are you, Martin?”
“I’m fine, thanks. You’re going in here?” he asked, indicating the apartment house before which they stood.
“No, walking home. I need the exercise, so I sent the car back to the garage.”
It seemed necessary to say something further, so he remarked politely that the car was handsome.
Jessie smiled. “What you really think is that it’s too lavish. I know your spartan tastes.”
“No, no.”
“You don’t fool me, Martin. But I love that car. It means a lot to me.”
“Well, it’s certainly handsome. And I like your coat, Jessie.”
“Rats! It’s the same outfit I wear year after year. The same cape to cover the hump. The only things that change are the color and the fabric.”
Little Jessie! Tart, plucky little Jessie! And something touched Martin sharply near the heart, some old memory and a sense of déjà vu. Oh, but his heart was vulnerable today!
“Do you mind if I keep you company?” he asked her. “We seem to be walking in the same direction.”
“Come along, of course.”
They had gone a block before either of them spoke. Jessie said, “You’ve been to see Claire, haven’t you?”
“I went to the Waldorf, but then I didn’t go upstairs.”
“Because you saw Fern instead.”
“Now, how did you know that?”
“You have a faraway look. Didn’t I always know when something was on your mind?”
“That’s true. You always did.”
“No, you never fooled me, Martin.”
He didn’t answer. He was remembering something he’d seen only a few weeks ago, a painting in a Chicago museum: Albright’s That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do. It was a simple picture of a funeral wreath hung on a wooden door, and it had touched him profoundly, reaching into dark places far within.
“I did you a very great injustice,” he said now. “Not that it helps you any for me to tell you so. But I’ve carried the guilt of it with me every day of my life.”
“I’m sorry to hear that! Very sorry, Martin. In the last analysis you did me an enormous favor, you know. I’ve got Claire because of you, haven’t I? And you know as well as I there was no Prince Charming waiting in the wings to carry me off and ‘get me with child’ as they say in the fairy tales.”
He looked down at her. Her hair was smartly cut Her face, which had sometimes seemed older than her age when she was young, now seemed younger than her age. It was alert and keen as ever.
“Did you know Fern was in New York?” she asked.
“No,” he replied and couldn’t resist asking. “Did you?”
“I didn’t know she was coming. Nobody did. She arrived in time for the wedding.”
“She was at the wedding?”
“Yes. She came to my house that afternoon. I’m glad she came. I would never have asked her to, not in a hundred years. But I’m so glad she did. We had a good, long talk.”
Martin was so astonished that he could think of nothing to say.
“The wonderful thing is that seeing her didn’t hurt me as much as I would have expected it to! I suppose it’s because I’ve made something out of my own life. I don’t have to feel like—like nothing anymore! Oh, it went back so far! To when I was still in a high chair, probably, and she was running around with a beautiful, straight back … You understand?”
“I think I always have, Jessie.”
“I don’t say it still doesn’t hurt. And always will, a little … Sometimes I think how queer and sad it is that I never loved anyone enough. Not even you, for if I had loved you enough I wouldn’t have had so much pride, would I? And if I had loved Fern enough I could have forgiven her for being herself.” And she reflected, “I don’t count Claire, because that’s just biological.”
Martin said painfully, “You’re a very loving woman, Jessie. Make no mistake.”
She ignored the little protest. “It’s natural to think it’s on account of the hump that I was inhibited from loving. But what if it had nothing to do with that? What if I was just put together without the capacity to love?”
“No, no. I can’t believe that. Can’t buy it, as they say.”
“Well, buy it or not, that’s how it is.”
Martin was silent. They walked on, their steps brisk on the pavement.
And suddenly Jessie said, “I’m sorry about what happened with your institute. Claire’s told me how they cheated you.”
“One gets used to things.”
Jessie smiled wryly. “Not to everything.”
No, one would never accept a hump on one’s back, never, he thought, relinquish the longing to be graceful and beloved.
“We shall miss Claire terribly, shan’t we?” she said.
“Yes.”
“You, at least, have three others.”
“True. But she—” He stopped. It sounded theatrical to say, although no doubt Jessie would believe it. “But she is my special child, my heart.”
“You have awfully nice children, Claire says.”
“Like you, too.”
Wishing to return the honest compliment with equal honesty, he said, “You did a fantastic job, bringing Claire up. I’ve always wanted to tell you.”
“You had something to do with that yourself, you know. You were her hero from the start. How I suffered when she went to claim you!” And Jessie raised her eyes to Martin with a look of pure and simple honesty. “I had so wanted to keep her all for myself!”
“You’ve kept her, Jessie. She loves you, and has such admiration for you! Believe me, I know.”
“Yes. But now this marriage! It seems like another loss. We won’t be seeing her much at all anymore.”
“It’s lucky we’re both busy.”
“I didn’t cling to her when she was with me, that’s one good thing. I hadn’t the time, and I wouldn’t have done that to her anyway.” Jessie signed. “Oh drat! I never could stand mournful people and that goes for myself. Here’s my place. I won’t ask you in because we really have nothing more to say to one another today, have we? But it’s been nice, all the same.” She held out her hand. “Luck, Martin.”
“And to you, Claire’s mother.”
Streetlamps flared on and the sky above the craggy rooftops turned dark green. He walked home more slowly now, through a clement, deepening dusk. His thoughts roved loosely. Strange day! A day in which the past had rushed forward to tie up with the future. In some ways, he thought, Jessie always understood me the best. Yes it’s true, she did from the very beginning. A sound like a chuckle of amusement rose in his throat. Barely five feet high, and the strength of her! But then, Mary is strong, too. And Claire. My Claire. Enormous strength in all these women! Poor Hazel didn’t have it. No blame to her: you’re made the way you’re made. For that matter, I don’t even know how much strength I have myself. Pity one can’t ever see oneself.
A light shone through the crack of Peter’s door long after supper. When Martin opened the door Peter was sitting at his desk.
“Math again?”
“Algebra. I hate the stuff.” The boy’s troubled mouth puckered like a child’s, yet on his upper lip there was the faint beginning of down.