by Belva Plain
Eddy used to come home starry-eyed over some house he had seen or some car he had ridden in. Like Pop before him he aspired; like Pop, too, he’d been quick to imitate the ways of the upper class, its dress, its speech, everything about it. But unlike Pop he was smart. He might do very well. Yes, it was possible. Oh, this was a blow all the same! To lose Eddy, for no matter what reason! To lose his native, almost invaluable good humor, the very sparkle that he brought into the room when he walked in! All this family, this family that was far too small in the first place, would miss him so. The empty space that he would leave would gape at them.
Now Connie, in her practical way, asked how soon he planned to go.
“I thought in about two weeks. First I want to help you get out of that apartment, find something nicer for you. In the first place it’s too large for you alone, without Mom, and too glum besides. Do you feel up to going out with me tomorrow to look?”
“Well,” she answered. “Well.” Her eyes moved about the room, as if searching, then to Davey and Lara, and finally, looking down at the tear in the carpet, she said, “It looks as if we’ve both picked the same time to surprise each other. But maybe it’s better to get it over with all at once.”
Alarmed again, Lara cried, “What are you talking about?”
“Well, you see—you see—oh, you know, Lara, how I’ve been wanting to just—just go somewhere! I’ve never really been anywhere.”
“Will you get to the point, Connie, please?”
Now Davey took over. “You don’t need to apologize, Connie. Just tell us what’s on your mind.”
“Texas. I’ve been hearing so much about it. It’s booming. You can always get a job.” Emboldened, she continued, “There’s something exciting just in the sound of it. Texas. Houston. I want to see it.”
Lara’s mouth went dry, and the palms of her hands were wet. “You don’t know a soul there, Connie. To go alone, leaving the only family you’ve got—it doesn’t make any sense. None at all.”
“But I think it does. And that’s what matters, isn’t it?”
“You’re only twenty, Connie!”
“Yes. Twenty. Not sixteen, not twelve, or eight.”
Lara tried another tack. “What kind of a job do you think you’ll get without a single contact? How will you even know where to begin to find a place to live?”
“Darling, don’t be a mother hen. I’ll buy a newspaper and read the ads, what do you think?”
Lara’s thoughts were sad and bitter. Yes, I was a mother hen. I had to be, hadn’t I? All the years while Mom was too sick from chemotherapy to take real charge of things, and I with a teenage sister eight years younger than I and a lively brother five years younger than I.
“It’s not so easy to find a job, Connie. You have no training. At least you do have a job here that you can depend on.”
“What, selling slacks and skirts in a tenth-rate department store, when there’s so much in the world to do and see?”
“You might take some courses and learn to do something better.”
“I haven’t the will just now, or the patience.” Connie stood up and laid her hand on Lara’s shoulder. “Don’t look so hurt,” she said. “I’m not staying away forever. Can’t you make believe we’re very rich, and I’m taking a year off to travel around the world?”
“She’s right,” Eddy said. “A young woman wants a change, a touch of adventure in her life. It’s natural. Okay, you didn’t want it, Lara. But if you hadn’t fallen in love with Davey, probably you would have felt the same way.”
Lara, knowing she was expected to smile, did so, faintly. “We’ll talk some more,” she replied.
Davey agreed. “Good idea. Today was a hard one, but tomorrow’s another day, so let’s try to lighten up a little. As Eddy says, nobody’s going to the ends of the world.”
Lara got the message. “Stay here for the night, Connie. It’s no good going back alone to the apartment.” It was a bleak place at best, sunless all day and noisy half the night because of the bar and grill beneath it. Now Mom’s clothes were still hanging in the closet. “I’ll go get some blankets from the spare room.”
The spare room, she thought as she straightened the bed, was meant to be the nursery. It was to have had lemon-yellow walls, a frieze of Mother Goose figures, or maybe Winnie-the-Pooh, going all around. The furniture would be white, and for a girl the crib would have a canopy of dotted Swiss, or perhaps organdy.…
She hated the room. She kept the door closed, dusted it every week or two, then shut the door again. Seven years married, and nothing. Doctors, thermometers, hormones, sperm analyses, watching for the fertile period in the month—and nothing.
“Why don’t you fix this room? You could have a nice little den,” Connie remarked as she came in.
Connie doesn’t know how that hurts, Lara thought, not answering.
On the dresser stood the room’s sole ornament, a photograph of their parents, taken on their wedding day. The two sisters stood looking at it now. Their parents had been handsome people, Vernon dark with a sporty boutonniere and flashing teeth, Peg’s sweet face tiny in its frame of lavish hair.
Connie sighed. “How happy they were that day! And how it all turned out! A good thing Mom couldn’t have seen ahead.”
“She loved Pop no matter what. Remember how he used to call her ‘Peg o’ My Heart’?”
“I don’t see how she could have kept on loving him. I guess it was noble of her, but I’m not made that way. Life’s too short.”
“He was a good man except for the booze, and that wasn’t his fault. It ran in his family. Thank God none of us has inherited it.”
Pop had been a salesman, traveling back and forth through the Midwest, selling—depending upon the company for which he happened to be working at the time—anything from shoes to toaster ovens to used tires. As often as he lost his jobs, so often did the family move from one flat to another, always in the oldest part of a town, above a hardware store, or a Laundromat, and under a crumbling pediment bearing some inscription like FERRY BUILDING, 1894, or BUMSTEAD BUILDING, 1911. The longest period that they had ever stayed in one place was when his liver and then his heart had finally failed; then Peg had opened her little beauty parlor and eked out a living for her children.
And yet … “He was a good man,” she repeated.
Connie’s look was a mingling of pity and disbelief. “I guess you’ve forgotten the nights when he came staggering home.”
“No, but I remember the nights when he read poetry aloud to us.”
Then Peg, who knew nothing about books, had nevertheless smiled in pleasure because her children were being taught to love them. Lara sighed. The ache lay heavy within her. Through all this dreadful day the memories had been aching.…
Once, before Lara was born, so Peg had told them, she had glanced at one of Pop’s library books and seen the name Lara. “It was a Russian story he was reading, Doctor Zhivago, I think he said. Anyway, the name looked pretty, and so when you came along, I gave it to you.”
And Connie? Well, Connie was Consuelo after the Vanderbilt heiress who married the Duke of Marlborough.
“She was forced to marry him. Isn’t that awful?” Peg had been horrified. “I read it in a magazine. Went to her wedding with eyes red from crying. Isn’t that awful?”
Those, then, were the parents, Vernon and Peg, a pair of tangled lives, knotted and twisted like a length of twine rolled carelessly.
Connie had begun to strip off her clothes. In bra and panty hose she stood before the mirror and stretched.
“I’m so tired, I hardly have enough strength to take a shower.”
“Wait till the morning, then. You’re clean enough and you need your rest.”
Connie smiled. “You always used to say that. Oh, Lara darling, don’t look so miserable! Don’t worry about me. I’ll do fine, I promise.”
“I can’t help worrying, can I? Besides, I’ll miss you. I’ve never been without you.”
“Don’t you think I’ll miss you too?”
“Are you really sure you’re doing the right thing? It seems so drastic, so unnecessary.”
“Lara, I need a chance to meet people.” Connie spoke with unusual gravity. “In this town—you know what’s here, Lara. I don’t want a life like—”
Like mine, Lara said to herself. I know that. Walking home beneath the trees on a summer night, Davey asked me, “Are you willing to share almost nothing with me? I’ll do my best for you, Lara. Only, my best isn’t all that good.” Was I willing? To go to the ends of the earth with you, Davey, to live in a tent or under the open sky. It was true then, and it is true still.
“You have such a lovely expression right now,” Connie said. “What are you thinking?”
Lara shook her head. “I don’t know. Just—everything.”
“I love you, Lara.”
“Of course you do. We all love each other. Go to sleep, dear. I’ll go out and say good-night to Eddy.”
He was already in his overcoat. “I waited to see whether you were feeling any better. Davey’s gone down to his workbench.”
“I feel all right. I guess I have to. But why, tell me why you had to encourage her?”
“She has a right to live her own life, Lara. Besides, she’ll do what she wants with or without encouragement.”
“She’s rebellious. Yes, she’s strong and clever, but she thinks she can make anything turn out exactly as she wants it to. She hasn’t yet learned that that’s not possible.”
“Lara, you’re a rock. Do you think we—Connie and I both—don’t remember how you watched over us? I can still see you walking Connie to school and calling for her, I remember how you used to drive me to the barbershop and the dentist’s. But, honey, a time comes when one can’t cling to the rock anymore, and Connie’s time has come.”
“Whom have we got?” Lara blurted. “Two second cousins too old and poor even to make the trip for the funeral, and that’s all. We have no roots and I’m trying to establish some, that’s all.”
“Money will help,” Eddy said darkly. “And I’m trying to make some.”
“We’re not speaking the same language tonight, Eddy.”
“Maybe not. We’re both too tired to think.” He kissed her. “I’ll be going. Get some rest.”
Through the window that overlooked the yard, she saw a light burning in Davey’s shed behind the garage. The rain had slackened to a drizzle, and throwing an old coat over her shoulders, she ran out back.
Davey’s workroom was a cramped jumble of shelves before which stood a battered table covered with a variety of implements, both delicate and solid, that had no meaning at all for Lara: tubes, filaments, calipers, chisels, fuses, and rolled copper wire, along with notebooks, pencil stubs, and oil-stained rags. Bent over all these now was Davey’s dark, round head; he was apparently intent on writing in a notebook. At some time or other, when his current idea clarified itself, he would tell her what it was.
She was so proud of him! Even if nothing were ever to come of any of his inventions, she would always be proud of him. He was the first friend she had made on her first day in a strange high school in a new town. Walking home after school, she had been followed by a group of frightening toughs, but when Davey had appeared and walked next to her, they had dispersed. Later she found out why. The tall boy with the odd name, Davey Davis—Davey was his mother’s maiden name—just happened to be the basketball star of the school.
She went inside and put her arms around him. He stroked her hair.
“I know. It’s been a cruel day. Cruel months,” he murmured.
“I’ve been thinking over and over how true it is that as soon as the mother’s gone, the family scatters.”
“No, no. We’re too close for that. Anyway, plans change all the time. Nothing’s written in stone.”
“They’ll never come back again.”
“Lara! This doesn’t sound like you. You’re always the family optimist.”
“I know. But sometimes I get to thinking that one can be a fool of an optimist too.” She sighed. “You know what I mean, Davey. You know.”
“The baby,” he said gently.
“The baby we wait for every month and who never comes.” Her voice broke. “And never will.”
“Never is a long time, darling.”
“Words, Davey. Just words.”
He put his cheek on hers, holding her close. After a moment he said, “We could adopt.”
“So you’ve stopped hoping too?”
“I didn’t mean— Oh, Lara, it’s so hard to know what to say to you. How to cope with these monthly disappointments, the doctors, the tests? I just don’t know anymore. But we could adopt,” he repeated.
“That’s not easy either. One doesn’t just walk in and select a baby. One waits for years, and even then—”
“Perhaps not a baby, but an older child who needs a home? Sad to say, there are plenty of those.”
“I want a baby! I want to be the mother from the very start.”
“Darling,” Davey said, holding her tighter. “Then we should wait a little more. Won’t you try some of your optimism again?”
She felt that she was weighing him down with her obsession while he was striving to lift her up. It wasn’t fair of her.
“Okay, okay, no more. Let’s go upstairs,” she said.
In the familiar bed, under the quilts, they lay warmly and quietly.
“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Davey murmured. “In a gingham apron or, better, in nothing at all.”
And so, after a little time desire moved them. It fled across Lara’s mind as they turned into each other’s arms that this was the deepest joy and comfort of all, this total, trustful merging. This was the reality of life. All else faded away.
In the aftermath Davey fell immediately into sweet sleep. But for a long while she could only drowse, to dream and to be startled awake. In the confusion of one dream she had been sitting at the table that she always liked to picture in her head. It was a lavish table set with flowers, candles, and pink linen. Peg was well, with all her lovely hair. Pop in his best mood was reading aloud; she herself was a child, the privileged eldest, with the little brother and the baby sister next to her. But at the same time she was a young mother in a long rose skirt, sitting there with Davey and their children between them. “We couldn’t have any, so we adopted them,” Davey was explaining, when she opened her eyes.
But Davey hadn’t stirred. She curved herself now into his back, feeling unity, feeling the safety of his presence in the silent room. A piece of sky, visible over the bulk of his shoulder, covered half the window. It seemed to be in motion, racing like the ocean she had never seen, a dark green ocean shot through with gleams of light.
CHAPTER TWO
Houston was hot. Like a metal dome the bronze sky burned above the city. Dusty leaves hung through the long afternoon. Coming into the hotel from the street was like walking into a freezer room; the sweating body received a shuddering shock.
Connie’s hotel was a huge commercial establishment in the downtown business district, neither expensive nor cheap, but suited to the funds that Eddy had advanced, adequate for a month or considerably longer if she were careful.
She had moved a chair over to the window. The outlook here, some fifty feet to a bank of similar windows on the opposite side of the meager courtyard, was depressing, but even such dim daylight was less depressing than was the sullen yellow lamplight next to the dingy brown bed. On the floor at her feet a pile of newspapers lay open at the want-ad section.
Column after column of Help Wanted confirmed her judgment: Texas was truly booming. With a feeling of challenge and elation she ran her eyes to the top of a page and down, when suddenly they paused, and she read,
Young vendeuse for exclusive shop, experienced European fashions for demanding clientele, well spoken, attractive appearance. Salary and commissions.
Vendeuse. From
her slight experience with high-school French, Connie summoned up a verb: vendre, to sell. So what this verbiage boiled down to was being a saleswoman in a fancy dress shop. Experienced. Three years’ worth, although not doing exactly what they were looking for. Young. Well spoken. Attractive. She stood up and went to the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.
The mirror showed her nothing that was not entirely familiar. Nevertheless, the sight was reassuring. Her heavy hair hung at a becoming length almost to her shoulders. The beige linen suit with coral shirt, Lara’s going-away gift, was smartly slender; the gold earrings, Eddy’s extravagant birthday present, were eighteen karat; her long, slender feet were shod in Italian shoes, which were her own extravagance, for she was vain about her feet and her long, slender hands. One by one, for perhaps the thousandth time since she had reached adulthood, Connie examined each feature of her face: lips just a trifle too thin, nose a trifle too short, cheekbones a trifle too wide; the whole no match for Lara’s classic near-perfection. She knew that well and was not at all bothered by it, for she had the greater power to attract, and knew that well too.
The important thing was to know how to use this power to a practical end. So, before going to be interviewed, Miss Osborne, go buy a stack of magazines and make yourself familiar with European fashion. Then do your hair tomorrow morning, hail an air-conditioned taxi, and arrive coolly unruffled and speak up. There can’t be much difference between selling polyester pant-suits and Chanel, can there? Selling is selling, and people are people, after all.
The shop, situated in a grand mall, was spacious and serene, carpeted in silver-gray and ornamented with sprays of gladioli. Here and there a circular rack held a dozen garments on display, but obviously, most of the stock was out of sight behind a mirrored wall.
Slowly and keenly, for half an hour, Connie was examined.
“You say you’ve had experience with merchandise like this?”
“Yes. In Cleveland.”
“Have you a recommendation from them?”
“Unfortunately, no. The owner died of a heart attack, and everything fell apart the next day. As you can imagine,” Connie added with a small sigh. She touched a lavender suit that hung where she was standing. “What they’ve been doing with Chanel is delightful, isn’t it? Adding new touches without changing the traditional charm one bit.”