by Belva Plain
“I kept thinking of your father and how pleased he would have been with the Orthodox ceremony.”
“I don’t believe he was ever really comfortable with Reform. He only went for our sakes,” Iris answered automatically.
Her mind was racing: I am probably the only woman who ever rejected him. There’s a lot of power in him, after all, in his worldly manners and in the treasures of his white-and-emerald eagle’s nest. And to flee as I did from all that, and from the naked, eager man himself, is an insult he would not forget. Oh, I hope never to be alone if we should meet again! Not, perhaps, that he would hurt me, but what he would say would be too terrible for me to hear.
Anna had a small, rueful smile. “But he surely would have been shocked to know that the bride was pregnant.… You seem so far away, Iris. I don’t believe you’re hearing a word I say.”
“You said Papa would have been shocked.” Think. Concentrate. Look straight at Mama. “Yes, he could be so soft about almost everything, and yet he would be absolutely unforgiving of that.” And of me in the Waldorf Towers with Jordaine.
“True,” Anna said. “He had no sympathy for transgression. Because he himself would never transgress, you see.”
She must keep paying direct attention to Anna. She must seem to be deep in earnest conversation, as if she had not even seen Jordaine.
“Papa really kept the commandments,” she said, and became aware that Jordaine knew what she was doing. Now he was laughing at her. His lips were drawn into a jeering laugh.
“Do you feel all right?” Anna asked.
“I’m fine. Why do you—”
“That man over there has been looking at you. Does he know you?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so.”
“How odd! He certainly seems to. And he’s with a girl, so I hardly think he’s trying to pick you up.”
I’m staying at the Waldorf. Why don’t you come in and have a drink?
Oh, Mama, she cried silently, will you just stop talking and let’s get out of here?
“Iris, you’re bright red. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just—it’s hot in here.”
Say yes, and we’ll leave … but we’d have to pass his table to reach the door … and besides, I’d be such a wimp to run away.
Iris clenched her fists on her lap. “I’m all right. I’m fine. Don’t look so alarmed.”
But Anna was frightened, very frightened. Although her voice was low and calm she said, “If you’ll just let me help you—”
A sarcastic laugh sounded, then, over the hum of many voices from surrounding tables, so that people looked over in its direction. It was Jordaine’s laugh, and it was shocking that Iris should be able to recognize it; after all, she hardly knew him. The shock must have been evident, because Anna lost her calmness.
“Iris! It’s that man, it is! You know him. Who is he? You’ve got to tell me!”
This was unbearable. This horrible lunch. How long could it go on? Another hour, or more?
“I can’t talk now,” she whispered. “Not while he’s here.”
“Well, he’s leaving now. Don’t look that way. He wants to get your attention. Pick up the knife and cut the chicken, even if you don’t want to eat it.”
Mama was talking to her as if she were a child. No, not a child. Rather someone hurt in an accident, someone needing rescue. Obediently, she bent over the food, while out of the corner of her eye she watched Jordaine’s dark tailored shoulders, along with the rear of the rhinestone sweater, disappear into the street. Then she laid down the fork and put her hands to her burning cheeks.
For a minute or two Anna did not speak. At last she said quietly, “I take it back. It’s no business of mine, whatever it is, and you certainly don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
This familiar tact and kindness of her mother’s had a curiously opposite effect; it produced a rush to reveal.
And she began, almost shyly, “I met him one day at Chez Léa. I was buying an evening dress for Theo’s dinner party, when they were going to announce—” She had to stop. “I was angry at Theo. It was after the argument over Steve, and before I slammed the car door.” She stopped again, and for a moment had to close her eyes, where tears had begun to sting.
“This is too hard for you,” Anna said gently. “Don’t.”
“No, I want to.” And she might have added, I need to. Meeting Anna’s attentive gaze, she steadied herself and continued. “We walked out of the shop at the same time, going in the same direction. He asked me to have a drink. He lives in the Waldorf Towers.”
“You went to his apartment?” asked Anna, with no expression, no inflection.
“Not that time. He was very intelligent, traveled, interesting, polite.… Then a few days later I did go upstairs with him. I don’t know whether I knew what I was doing, really.… I guess I must have.… Of course I must have.”
Remembering, Iris shuddered now. For those few minutes she had felt real desire for that man.
“But nothing happened, because I couldn’t do it, and he was furious, and I ran out. It was awful. That’s why he wanted to taunt me just now.”
“Who is he?” Anna asked.
“His name doesn’t matter. He’s very rich. An important man, that much I’m sure of.”
“He looks important, somehow,” Anna reflected. “Handsome too, in a cold sort of way.”
“I thought he was handsome. But then suddenly he was revolting to me, and I was terrified.”
“You weren’t terrified of him, but of what you were about to do.”
“I guess that was it.”
Elegant, polished lady in her gray woolen dress with its fine lace collar, lady out of another generation, another world, how did she know? She could never have been “about to do”—
A long sigh rose in Iris’s chest; it brought relief and unloaded a burden.
“There’s so much about oneself that one doesn’t understand,” she told Anna, “and probably never will.”
“Never mind. It’s not likely that you’ll ever see the man again. And if you do, why …” Anna shrugged, making light of the possibility.
“I know. I’m over it now. It’s done me a lot of good to tell you.” Iris picked at the food, for suddenly the food looked appetizing. “And I am so thankful that it turned out the way it did. Imagine having to keep a secret like that for the rest of your life! It would be like lead, like poison inside you.”
“Yes, yes, I imagine it would.” For an instant Anna’s face looked thoughtful, almost sad. Then, deliberately, she brightened it. “Come, champagne!” And, touching Iris’s goblet with her own, cried, “All’s well that ends well. Happy birthday, darling!”
Iris finished her notes for Back to School night and leaned back on the English bench. The light of late afternoon lay warmly on the small square lawn and on the asters that Anna had planted and still often came to tend. The little yard was a friendly place now, vastly different from the way it had appeared on that dreary day, two years before, when they had moved here.
The whole neighborhood had a way of enfolding people, she reflected, that the old one surely had not had. It was not that anyone ever interfered; they were all too busy for that. But people did seem to be there for you when you needed them, as when she had the flu and the neighbors took turns inviting Theo and Philip to dinner all that week. Then there were events like the Halloween parade and the block party on the Fourth of July—
The back door opened and Theo came out.
“Well, you look comfortable,” he said.
“I am. This is a nice spot to work in.”
He picked a blue aster and put it in his buttonhole. “Look like an usher, don’t I?” He laughed. “You know, I would never have believed that I could grow to like this little house. It’s come to feel like home, not just a stopping place on the way back up.”
The way back up, Iris thought. In another year the big test has to be met, opening an office and start
ing anew. I hope he won’t be disappointed. He’s very tired. There are new lines around his eyes.
“We’ve done rather well, haven’t we, all considered?” Theo remarked now.
“Yes, I’d say so,” she replied, and was pleased that he had said “we.” She remembered the time when, if she ever asked him about finances or something equally important, he would tell her nicely that it was his responsibility, not hers. Yes, they had come a long way.
Her reflective mood lingered through dinner. Philip and Theo had decided to spend one evening a week speaking only French to each other. Theo was fluent in the language, while Iris had only a vague smattering of it, left over from high school.
“Last year I was able to keep up with you two,” she said, “but Philip’s way ahead of me now.”
It was a cheerful scene, the father and son enjoying the dinner she had cooked—and cooked quite well too!—in the pretty little dining room. Paint and paper had done wonders. Besides, Anna had been gradually bringing over a lot of things that Iris had stored in her attic, expecting never to use them. She had definitely not been in the mood for beautification when they moved here. But Anna was right; the copper pots in the kitchen, the silver candlesticks and tea service in the dining room, and the crystal lamps in the living room all added a lively, happy glitter.
“Well, men, take your time over dessert,” she told them when she brought in the apple pudding. “I’ve got to get dressed to make a good impression on the parents.”
She was standing indecisively at the clothes closet when Theo came upstairs.
“I’m still wondering what to wear,” she said.
He reached into the closet and took out a garment that had been hanging far in the rear. It was Chez Léa’s rose-beige cashmere suit, never worn.
“How about this?” he asked.
She did not answer. Only their eyes met. There was a small twitch of amusement at Theo’s mouth while he waited.
And she said, faltering a little, “It’s too expensive looking.”
“Nonsense. You’re not going to display the price tag. It’s a tailored jacket and skirt, perfectly suitable.” And as, with the memory of that day in Léa’s shop still vivid, she hesitated, he admonished, “Iris … Iris … we need sometimes to see some humor in things. There’s no survival otherwise. Put it on and walk in it happily.”
He thrust the hanger toward her and she, reaching out, grasped his maimed hand instead. It was the first time since the accident that she had ever touched it and she was horrified.
“Oh, did I hurt you?” she cried.
“No. It never hurts anymore.”
She had never thought she would be able to mention “it” like that, or to say “hurt.” She would have expected the word to stick in her throat. And to touch that hand! The feeling it gave her was indescribable.
All evening the feeling remained, strange and also strangely intimate. Yet they—Theo and Iris—were not intimate! No, not at all.… And driving home through the mild night, she talked to herself.
Perhaps what I want is high poetry and not real life. I know that we loved each other once. We could not have sunk so low and come this far up again if we had not. Yet there is little desire for each other anymore; the fires are banked. Is it because we are both tired by the time the long day is over, so that we’re satisfied with a murmured good night and a comfortable blanket in the comfortable bed? No, that’s only an excuse. All around the globe people work harder than we do, and still they have the will toward passionate love.
The house was dark when she put the car back in the garage. Theo was already asleep.
We must have done more damage to ourselves than we realize, Iris thought. She felt deep loneliness. If being in love was only a kind of madness, as it was often said to be, then she could only hope to be a little bit mad again.
17
Steve was restless. He could not have pointed to any one moment when restlessness became resolve and propelled him into motion. As in any conversion or reconversion, insights flashed at odd times, were fought down, were reasoned away or absorbed by other business, until suddenly they returned a trifle stronger than before. And this was often repeated.
He was with Susan B. in a supermarket, buying the commune’s weekly supply of staples. As they went out, two young men came in wearing the remnants of army fatigues. One of them had an empty sleeve, and the other had a healing wound that had destroyed one side of a handsome face.
At a filling station two middle-aged men pumping gas were talking to each other.
“Heard from your boy?” inquired one.
“Yeah. Got three months to go before his time’s up. No telling whether he’ll last the three months, though. We’re getting the hell beaten out of us over there.”
“You can’t think that way. He’ll make it. He’s got to.”
“Got to? My brother’s kid didn’t. Shot through the heart. Eighteen last winter, he was.”
The second man, having no answer to that, put on a mournful expression and walked away.
Standing with Susan B., Steve watched a coffin draped with the American flag being carried out of a funeral home. A couple, farm people by their looks, he in his shabby suit and she in a cotton dress, followed the coffin down the front steps. The woman, barely able to stay on her feet, was helped into the lead car with her husband on one side and another man on the other. Then the little procession followed the hearse down the dusty street, leaving a desolate silence behind.
Steve broke it harshly. “It’s a conspiracy. A conspiracy against youth. They’ll kill off all the young before they’re finished.”
His vehemence made the girl anxious. “It seems so far away,” she said. “I mean, so far away from our lives. I haven’t actually thought about the war in ages.”
Steve frowned. “Naturally. We never read the papers, do we?”
Now whenever he went to town, it seemed as if Vietnam had also come to town. Passing the newspaper office, he caught the headlines. In the market and on the main street he kept overhearing pieces of dialogue. Once a busload of men—boys—came down from an army camp on its way overseas, and Steve began to feel the rise of his long-buried anger.
“It won’t affect you,” said Susan B., “since you’ve got such a high draft number. And there’s nothing you can do about it, anyway.”
These words, for all their innocent intent, were stinging. And he answered shortly, “I used to do plenty. Have you forgotten everything I’ve told you about what I used to do? Think for a minute.”
“I am thinking,” she said, “and it scares me.”
During an evening meal he got into an argument, started by his remark that Vietnam was spilling over onto the town.
“Let it spill,” someone said. “Let the whole mess crash. Up in these hills we won’t even hear the crash unless we want to.”
“To begin with, that isn’t true,” Steve said. “You’ll hear it, all right, and feel it too. There are no hiding places.” And then, with the vision of the soldier in the supermarket, of the taut red grafted skin—there must have been blood; oh, terrible, bloodied face!—he felt a hot spurt of anger. “ ‘Let the whole mess crash’? As long as you’re comfortable living the noble, simpler life, you’d turn your back on a burning world?”
His opponent shrugged. “Man, you’re in a bad way. You need to meditate.”
“Take some grass,” he was advised. “Get loose.”
There was no response to his anger, no comprehension. And he complained that night to Susan B.
“How is it possible not to care? Can you believe that these people just don’t care?”
“You haven’t, either, for a long time, have you?” she responded.
She was, of course, quite right, and he was ashamed. Yet he could not bring himself to leave, not this place that had become his home, and surely not to leave Susan B. So, always with the sense that he would not continue this way very much longer, he still did nothing.
Then one
day a letter arrived from Tim, the first in many months.
“You’ve rested, hibernated, long enough. You’re needed, Steve. The revolution needs every soul it can muster, but you especially, with your intelligence, are needed. You’ve been temporarily derailed. Now get back on track.”
The letter ended with an address in San Francisco to which he should come. Susan B., who had been reading it over Steve’s shoulder, asked whether Powers was the writer.
“Of course. I told you he never signs his name.”
And suddenly he felt a wave of the familiar old excitement. He was in command or obeying commands, no matter which. Gone was the indolence of sunny days, the cheerful routine of plodding between fields and barns. He was on the move. That day when they had destroyed the draft records, through all the dry-mouthed fear and the sly escape, what a feeling of achievement that had been! They had maybe saved a few poor devils from coming home with half a face or coming home in a box. And more important, they’d beaten a part of the system.
Already he could feel the adrenaline pour. It was marvelous.
“Are you going?” asked Susan B.
“I am. And you’re going with me.”
“I? I don’t know anything about it except what you’ve told me.”
She was so young, so little, and so tender. He held her tightly and soothed.
“I’ve told you plenty that I know you’ve understood perfectly. And you’ll learn more from some wonderful people I know. It’s time you grew up, Susan B. Tim’s right. I’ve been hibernating. You have too.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said, “because you’re all I have in the world.”
“And I’ll take care of you always and wherever. Only trust me.”
A few days later they got up early, before dawn, and left before anyone had stirred.
We’re going away. Good luck We love you all, Steve wrote, and stuck the note in the front door of the big house.
“That’s a good idea. It’s too sad to have to say good-bye,” said Susan B.
“Not only that. We don’t want to answer any questions. People might come looking for us someday, and if these people here don’t know anything, they can’t say the wrong thing.”