by Belva Plain
Presently Richard, clearing his throat, began with difficulty to speak.
“Whatever you do, whatever, just please … If there were some way my father could be kept from knowing your reason. I don’t think I could face that.”
“Do you mean that in this day and age he wouldn’t accept what you are?”
“Not everybody’s out of the closet, Connie.”
“And your mother?”
“If they had always known, maybe they’d be used to it by now. I don’t know.” He gave a weak, apologetic laugh. “But this would be quite a surprise, to say the least.”
The Grant Wood couple in front of their imposing house, faces without smiles, cold courtesy.
“Yes,” she said, “I can see. They’d take it out on you. They would.”
“I don’t know about ‘taking it out.’ Their silence can be rather awesome too.”
“Have you ever thought maybe that’s got something to do with the way you are?”
He became suddenly, ruefully defensive. “I’m happy. And I would have continued to be happy if you hadn’t seen me today. I’ve accepted the way I am, and I won’t fight it anymore.”
“You would have gone on doing this to me?”
“I said I was sorry, Connie.”
“All right, I won’t say anything to your parents, or to anyone except my brother. You can depend on my word.”
“I know I can.”
“Blame the divorce on me. They never liked me anyway, so they’ll no doubt be pleased.”
He did not deny it, but said only, “You can keep this apartment. It’s paid for, free and clear. It cleaned out almost all my cash. What’s left is invested with Eddy.”
This unexpected offer made Connie feel cheap, and guilty, too, as if he had read her mind and seen there how painful it could be to give up this home.
“I don’t want blood money,” she said stiffly.
“You won’t have to fight me for anything.”
“I don’t want to fight you at all, Richard. I just want to talk to Eddy. He’ll know what to do. Now I can’t talk anymore. I’m exhausted. Wrung out.”
• • •
“I’m in no mood for explanations or for commiserations from friends like Bitsy Maxwell,” Connie said. “They’ll all just have to wait. I’ll tell Lara myself, so don’t you tell her, Eddy. She’ll be heartbroken for me, but other people will ask only out of curiosity, you know that.”
They were in Eddy’s office, waiting for Richard to arrive. Laid in readiness on the otherwise immaculate desk was a tidy stack of papers like a white island on a mahogany sea; this was Richard’s portfolio of securities.
Now Richard entered. He had been sleeping for the last week at a hotel, or very likely had been lying awake there; gray pouches made semicircles beneath his eyes.
Eddy rose, offered his hand, and smiled. “Come in, Richard. I’m glad to see you, but awfully sorry about the reason.”
Connie twirled a ring around her little finger and did not look up. Richard, stifling a quiver in his throat, rushed to begin.
“I suppose Connie’s told you everything. I don’t know how you will regard me now, Eddy. This is hardly what you expected for your sister. I feel—”
“She’s told me. As to how I regard you—well, I’m not here to judge anything or anybody. All I can say is, people make mistakes. What can you do? You’re both decent and honorable, so there’s no reason why this business shouldn’t be agreeably settled. Those are my sentiments.”
He was in a hurry to finish this business as fast as possible. It was certainly not that he was wanting in sympathy; it was precisely because he had so much of it that he shrank from contact with sadness; he must strike at the cause of sadness and eradicate it, accept the fact as accomplished and get down to practicalities.
“I never meant to cheat Connie. I realize now that I should have told her. It wasn’t honest.”
“Well, that’s water over the dam. The thing is now to look ahead. I’ve already put Connie in touch with a lawyer. I assume you have one too?”
“I don’t need one. I’ve told Connie I’ve no plan to fight her. She can have the apartment. She can have everything.”
It was painful to hear Richard sound so beaten. And Eddy saw by his sister’s woebegone expression that she was feeling the same pain. Then she spoke.
“I told you, Richard, that I don’t want to rob you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“But you’ll take the apartment,” Eddy said quickly.
“What will I do with a lot of big, empty rooms?” Connie’s voice was bleak.
“They won’t be empty,” Richard said. “I’ll pay for everything we ordered.”
Eddy had a strange impulse. He wanted to cry out to Richard: Why are you so damned good? The world is contemptuous of such goodness! It’s weak, this goodness of yours. It would be easier for us if you’d put up a little fight for yourself. He looked at the man sitting uncomfortably and looking small—however could Richard manage to look small?—in the oxblood leather wing chair. Richard looked back with a faint, tentative smile, to which Eddy responded with compassion, until abruptly there flashed into his mind a picture of two men in a bed, and he felt anger. He’d had no right to marry her, no right!
That this marrying business can end in such a mess was appalling. Connie, poor girl, had been in such a rush to get married too. Pam, now, was just the opposite, he reflected thankfully. A modern woman, she was happy enough to be on her own, earning her own few dollars, taking each day as she found it without anxiety. She was a perfect complement to himself—and not just sexually—because that was exactly his own style of living. He saw hardly any other women but her; rarely he found himself roped into a “date” by some business connection whom he did not want to offend by refusal, and he never liked the “dates” because, as he always put it, they usually had “marriage” beaming from their eyes.
Freedom. Freedom was the ticket, and no binding ties, only loose ones that can be dropped when the time for dropping comes. One had only to look at this poor pair of mismatched—
“As to alimony,” Richard was saying, addressing Eddy now, “well, you know what I own. I’ll make no trouble over any amount you think is justified. Just give me the figures. And remember, Connie’s got expensive tastes.”
“You make me feel disgusting when you talk like that!” Connie gasped. “We have no children and I don’t need alimony. Just make some sort of fair settlement.”
Eddy put up a hand before Richard could answer. “Enough. Enough. Let me settle this by saying there’s plenty for you both. Richard, your shelters got you a four-to-one write-off this year, remember? And they’ll do the same next year. Connie, why don’t you read a magazine in the waiting room while we run over some figures? It won’t take all that long.”
Unable to concentrate on a page, Connie laid the magazine aside and allowed her mind to wander about among disconnected places and faces. The conclusion of the wandering was that you can depend on nothing. Why should Peg, still in her forties, have died of cancer? Why should Richard have turned out like this? The only thing you can depend on is money. That’s tangible. It doesn’t die young or disillusion you. Take care of it and it lasts. It’s there to keep you warm and safe and give you honor, besides. That girl at the reception desk thinks I don’t know that she’s looking me over, envying my mink and my alligator shoes. I used to do that, too, when I worked at Richard’s club; I used to see the rings on their hands when I gave out the menus. I know.… So I’m to have the apartment completed, warm and safe in spite of it all. Well, it could be worse, a lot worse. And it won’t ruin Richard.
The receptionist was speaking to her. “Mr. Osborne just buzzed. You can go back in.”
As she opened the door to the private office, Eddy’s cheerful voice rang out, too loud.
“I give her two years at the outside before she’ll be married again. And thank goodness you have no kids.”
Some six weeks later
Connie stood on the sidewalk in the cold, white winter sunshine with a slip of paper in her hand. It’s not possible, she thought. Given the way I lived with Richard and careful as I always was, especially after that awful night, how can this be? Yet there was no denying the fact. It must have been that weekend in the country.…
“You’re not happy about it,” the doctor had said, observing Connie’s face.
“My marriage just broke up. This is absurd. I can’t have a baby.”
The doctor, a quiet elderly woman, kept a neutral manner, saying calmly, “You mean you don’t want to.”
Although her mind was quite made up, Connie’s heart had begun to flutter in a small panic of its own.
“It’s nothing to look forward to, is it?” she said. “An abortion, I mean.”
“True enough,” the other woman said. “That’s why I told you to go home and think it over for a couple of days. No longer than that, though.”
“I don’t have to think it over. I’m not in a position to have a child. I don’t want it!” she cried, twisting her damp hands in the strap of her pocketbook. “I particularly don’t want this child. I wouldn’t welcome it, and would that be fair to it? Would it? I don’t even know where my own life is going, let alone somebody else’s life. No, no, I can’t.”
The doctor stood up. “Well, then, you can make your appointment at the desk. They’ll give you your instructions.”
So Connie folded the instruction sheet and started home. It was midafternoon, darkening, and children were being brought back from the park. Three baby carriages passed on her block alone. A few months from now she could be pushing one too. It was unthinkable.
Her heart was still fluttering when she opened her apartment door. For a minute or two she stood still in the foyer and just looked around as if to orient herself. Then, still wearing her coat, she picked up the patient little dog and walked around the rooms.
It was almost impossible to believe that a life was growing in her body. Surely birth was as common as death, and yet was death not incomprehensible too? She did not feel any different, but the life was there, a minute heart already throbbing. And she was about to let them rip it out! A violent shaking overcame her. And as she clasped Delphine, she felt the little dog’s heart beating, beating.…
What to do? What to do? No, I can’t. I’m not ready for a child, I didn’t want one before I knew about Richard, at least not yet, I didn’t, and I certainly don’t want one now. I wouldn’t welcome his child. I would have to pretend I did, and the child would feel it. We would both be so wounded and unhappy.… She sat down and cried. The dog in her lap looked up at her face and licked her hand.
Presently, cried out, she got up and looked around. Much progress had been made during these last few weeks. The living room was almost complete, an English oak stretcher table stood in the dining room and the cabinets that were to have held Richard’s books in the den were finished. She would simply have to fill them one by one with books of her own. A new bed stood in the bedroom now, which was a pity because the original bed had been a handsome piece. But she could never have slept in it, and this one, covered in yellow quilted chintz, was pretty enough. The sight of these accumulating possessions began to soothe her. They were curiously comforting, enfolding her and reassuring her that she was, after all, safe.
There was no reason for any panic. If you just kept your head, you could get through almost anything. By tomorrow at this time the simple operation would be over. And after that go forward, she told herself.
Thus Connie passed the evening, slept through the night, and in the morning, was calm.
On that same afternoon Lara, too, had been seeing a doctor. She said wanly, “I felt so sure this time. I can’t explain, but I was so sure when I missed that this was it.”
Through the window behind the doctor’s head she could see the parking lot, in which a young woman, carrying a baby and holding with the other hand a little boy in a yellow slicker, was hurrying through the rain.
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I just don’t know.”
“And I—I don’t know anything much either. Only that we’ve tried everything possible, Mrs. Davis.” The man had a kindly manner, he was genuinely sorry for her, but that did not help. And he said so. “Sometimes we doctors run up against problems that won’t let themselves be solved. That doesn’t help you, does it?”
Lara shook her head and wiped her eyes.
“Adoption?” queried the doctor. “It can work out beautifully, you know.”
“It takes years to get a baby, Doctor. There aren’t nearly enough for all the people who want them.”
“That’s true of infants. But if you would take an older child who needs parents, and there are many such, shunted from one foster home to another, and it tears your heart to think about them—you might be very happy, I think. You and your husband would make wonderful parents.”
I wanted Davey’s baby, our baby, she was saying to herself. Not a child who remembers her own mother. But she said nothing, except that Davey had said the same thing himself.
“Well, think about it,” the doctor said. “Go home and talk it over.”
So all that evening they talked it over, sitting together on the sofa. Davey had his arm around Lara when finally he said, “There comes a time, no matter what the problem, when one has to face the hard truth. And I think we’ve come to it. As a matter of fact, at the last stockholders’ meeting, Don Schultz happened to mention that a cousin of his adopted a boy from a home somewhere in Minnesota, I think it was. It’s a church-run place, and they give you the child’s history and the background and everything. I really believe we should try it, Lara. It’s time we stopped fooling around and made a decision.”
Of course, he was right. She knew that. And she said, “I’m ready. Yes, I’m ready. Will you get the name of the place tomorrow?”
“I will. And Lara darling, listen to me. Things aren’t all bad. We’ll find a child in need of love, and we have a lot of love to give, you and I. Think of poor Connie, married three years and finished. That’s a trouble we don’t have.”
“I know. She’s pretty shaken by it too.”
“Why don’t you go to her? You haven’t seen her since it happened, so why not get on a plane tomorrow and surprise her? Stay for a couple of days and cheer her up. See a few shows, go to a French restaurant, have fun together. Meanwhile, I’ll talk to the people in Minnesota or wherever it is, and we’ll drive out there first thing for our baby—our child.”
Well, I’m hardly alone, Connie thought, as she waited her turn, and passed the time in speculation about the others in the room. There were a dozen women and almost as many men. Two very young girls, unmistakably sisters, held hands; it was impossible to guess who of the two was to have the abortion, for they were both frightened and suppressing tears. A tired woman, nearing fifty, wore a wedding band and a shabby coat. One had the impression that she had already reared a houseful of children. A tough young woman wearing false eyelashes, false nails like bloody pins, and pants that revealed every smallest line of her body tried to encourage the sisters.
“Nothing to it, girls. Honest. This is my fourth go-around.”
In the white room with its rows of flashing instruments, the doctor and nurse in white and its cold, white light, Connie remembered that: nothing to it. Lie back. Be confident. Remember the infected and impacted wisdom tooth? It was just like this, the whiteness, the bareness, and the low commanding voices; the stab of pain, the quick stab; clench your fists and hold on. The room whirled. You’re not here. You’re far away on a beach, under a tree. You’re sweating under your arms, but you haven’t made a sound. Brace your feet. Almost finished, someone says. Now vast relief.… It’s over.
They led her to a cot and told her to rest. They gave her a long, cool drink, and she fell asleep. When she awoke, the short winter day was ending, and they came to tell her she might go home.
So there really was nothing to it.
/> The first person she saw in the lobby at home was Lara, sitting on a bench near the elevator.
“Oh,” Lara said, rushing to Connie, “I’ve been here for hours! They wouldn’t let me into your apartment.”
“Why didn’t you say you were coming? Is anything wrong?”
“No, not with us. But you—oh, Connie, I just couldn’t stay away. I’ve been thinking and thinking about you and Richard.” Lara’s voice rose, plaintive and troubled, so that a couple emerging from the elevator turned to stare.
Lara was like that sometimes, naive and artless. Of all times for her to come here! Connie said to herself. Any other day I would have been overjoyed to see her. Now there’ll be a long talk going on half the night, I suppose, with explanations and regrets.
“Come up,” she said, almost peremptorily.
She switched on the lights, bringing to life the living room and the den beyond, all thickly carpeted, the furniture waxed and gleaming, and the air scented with potpourri.
“Oh, how beautiful!” Lara cried, clasping her hands like a child beholding a Christmas tree.
The gesture irritated Connie, whose legs were suddenly going weak. There had perhaps been something to “it” after all, because she wanted only to lie down again. But then Lara put her arms around her.
“Darling, I would have come to you if I had known you and Richard were having problems. I might even have helped straighten things out between you. Who knows?”
Connie gave a brittle laugh. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It was not preventable. I never told you the whole story. I planned to do it soon, but I just haven’t felt like talking. Eddy is the only one who knows. Not another soul.” That was true. She had not even told Bitsy yet, although she spoke to her almost every day.
Lara looked stricken. “I’m so very sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. We were shocked, Davey and I. We liked Richard. We really liked him so much.”
“He’s likable.” Connie spoke dryly, without energy.