Earth and High Heaven

by Gwethalyn Graham

  “Yes, hello,” said Erica, taking a firmer grip on the phone.

  “I’m in my office.”

  He did not seem to know where to go from there so she said, “What are you doing in your office at this hour?”

  “I don’t seem to be doing anything much but sit here wondering why in hell I asked you out to dinner next Wednesday when it’s still ...” He paused, evidently counting, and went on, “... almost five days off. Look,” he said hurriedly, “I know it’s awfully late notice but ... Oh, Good Lord!”

  “Now what?” Erica wanted to know.

  “I forgot about your sister.”

  “My sister has already forgotten about me,” said Erica, “so that makes us even.”

  “Do you mean you can have dinner with me tonight?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “There’s some kind of ghastly affair at the mess and I’m supposed to put in an appearance — do you mind if we drop in for a while later on?”

  “I don’t mind a bit.”

  “We don’t have to stay long. Is it all right if I pick you up about seven-thirty?”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” said Erica in a tone which was admirably matter-of-fact, she thought, under the circumstances.

  “Goodbye, Eric.”

  “Goodbye.”

  She put down the phone and went on sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed for a while, looking up at a watercolour of some calla lilies on the opposite wall. Instead of next Wednesday, she would be seeing Marc again in less than an hour.

  Downstairs Miriam called out something which she did not hear, then a door slammed, and some minutes later Erica became slowly aware of a clock ticking somewhere in the house. She listened to it for a while, still half dreaming, and wondering idly where it came from, and then finally she recognized the sound. It was the clock in her father’s study.

  IV

  At breakfast the following Wednesday morning Erica remarked to her mother, “By the way, I’m going to be out to dinner tonight.”

  Her father put down his cup with an abrupt movement which spilled some of his coffee over the edge of the saucer onto the cloth, and looking directly at Erica around the corner of the table on his right he asked, “Are you going out with René?”

  It was obvious from his expression that he already knew who it was without asking, but she said matter-of-factly, “No, with Marc Reiser.”

  His eyes left her face and returned to his newspaper. He said nothing.

  “More coffee, Eric?” asked her mother.

  “Yes, please.”

  Miriam was not down yet. Erica held out her cup, returned it quickly to her place as she noticed that her hand was shaking slightly, put in some cream and sugar, and then said into the silence, “I ran into Marc at the station when I was meeting Miriam and had dinner with him on Saturday night ...”

  “Do you mean to say that you left Miriam to have dinner here alone on her first night home?” interrupted her mother.

  “No, she’d already arranged to go out with a friend of hers from England — some American on the Purchasing Commission.”

  Her father was still reading his newspaper but he could not avoid hearing her. In order to get it over with, once and for all, Erica went on as casually as she could, “I saw Marc again on Sunday. We went swimming at Oka.”

  “You could hardly wait for your mother and me to get out of town, could you?” said her father without glancing up from his paper.

  “After twenty-eight years I’m not likely to start doing things behind your back, Charles,” said Erica calmly. She had no intention of allowing herself to be sidetracked by losing her temper if she could help it; she had seen Anthony and Miriam make that mistake too often.

  “You must have known that we wouldn’t like it, Erica,” said her mother.

  “How was I supposed to know? You’ve never objected to any of my friends before.”

  There was another silence and finally Erica said, “I think we’d better get this thing settled now. So far as I’m concerned, I like Marc and I respect him, and I intend to go on seeing him ...”

  “Regardless of our opinions on the subject?” asked her mother.

  “You can’t have ‘opinions’ on the subject of someone you’ve scarcely met and Charles has never met at all ...”

  Her father put down his paper and said, interrupting, “We’ve already been over all this, Eric. If some Jewish lawyer nobody’s ever heard of is more important to you than we are, and as you say, you intend to go on seeing him in spite of knowing perfectly well the way we feel about him, then I’m afraid you’ll have to do your seeing somewhere else.”

  “Do you mean that I can’t even bring him to the house?” Her father did not answer and turning to her mother, she said incredulously, “You’re not going to be as unfair as Charles, are you?”

  “It’s not a question of being fair or unfair, Eric. It’s simply a question of facing facts. There’s no sense in going out of your way to create a situation which might turn out to be very awkward for everyone, when you can so easily avoid it. You scarcely know the man yourself, and he can’t possibly mean anything to you.”

  “And you, Brutus,” said Erica.

  Her father said angrily, “You have no reason to feel so sorry for yourself, Erica.”

  “The persecution complex seems to be catching,” observed Margaret Drake. With a gesture which had become almost automatic, she straightened the skirt of her pale blue linen dress to keep it from crushing, and then shoved her chair away from the table in order to change her sitting position. Although it was so early in the day, her back had already begun to ache again. She said, “I’ve never known you to behave like this before. You’re usually so reasonable. And apart from everything else, since he is the only person we’ve ever objected to, why can’t you just ...”

  “You wouldn’t expect me to sacrifice someone I like for a set of objections I don’t agree with, would you?”

  She was appealing to that sense of justice which was one of her mother’s strongest characteristics and after considering it, her eyes raised toward the light flowing through the windows of the dining room, her mother said at last, “No, I wouldn’t, but I would expect you to give us a fair hearing.”

  “But the only thing you’ve got against Marc is the fact that he’s Jewish.”

  “No,” said her father. “What I’ve got against him is the fact that he’s obviously making use of my daughter.”

  “How? By taking me out to dinner on Saturday and swimming on Sunday?”

  “A man who makes three engagements in five days with a girl he hardly knows is obviously out for something, isn’t he? You’re not exactly high school age, either of you.”

  “Out for what?”

  “Well,” said Charles shrugging, “say he seems just a little too eager.”

  “And just why should you say a thing like that about a friend of mine? Or does the fact that you’re my father automatically give you the right to say anything you choose?”

  “I’m not going to quarrel with you, Erica,” he said, unmoved. He lit a cigarette, observing through the smoke, “I got your friend Reiser’s number the moment I heard he’d turned up here with René.”

  “That was remarkably psychic even for you, considering the fact that you were still upstairs and had to form your opinion of Marc’s character through a hardwood floor.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Erica?” demanded her mother who had been watching her with increasing anxiety and surprise. “I’ve never seen you like this before. You’re not yourself at all.”

  “I don’t think Charles is either.” Looking down at her empty coffee cup, Erica went on without raising her voice, “I told you that one of these days some guy was going to fall for me just for the sake of my beaux yeux. I’m not so bad, Charles — he doesn’t necessarily have to have ulterior motives.”

  “Why doesn’t he pick up a Jewish girl then?”

  “That’s not supposed to be nece
ssary in this country,” said Erica after a pause.

  “Erica, what is the matter with you?” said her mother desperately. “There’s no need to go on about it, is there?”

  “Why don’t you ask Charles?” Without taking her eyes from his face she said, “Charles knows everything. The only thing he doesn’t seem to know is that what with the war and various other developments, the Drake connection isn’t quite as important as it used to be, even to a Jewish lawyer. So far as Marc Reiser is concerned, you might just as well be a couple of people named Smith, except that if you were, you wouldn’t be quite so likely to assume that he was ‘out for something,’” she added with a slight change of tone. “He’s in the Army, he’s going overseas in a few months, maybe sooner, and he’s got something else to think about besides how to do himself a bit of good by getting to know the Drakes and running after the Drakes’ daughter in order to improve his social, and indirectly his professional standing.”

  She paused again and then asked, “That’s about it, isn’t it, Charles?”

  “No, that is not it!” her mother burst out before Charles, still as impassive as ever, had a chance to answer. She did not know what to make of Erica; she was not only badly hurt, but utterly at a loss to understand her daughter’s behaviour. As she had so often said to her friends in the past, in all her life Erica had never given either of her parents a moment of unhappiness or even a moment of worry.

  Grasping the arms of her chair and almost in tears, Margaret Drake said, “It doesn’t even seem to have occurred to you that all we’re trying to do is protect you against yourself. I thought your father was wrong to take this man so seriously. I told him I thought he was simply being melodramatic when he said he knew that something like this was going to happen. I couldn’t imagine you losing your head over anyone, particularly a man you hardly know, who obviously isn’t your kind of person at all, and who can’t possibly really matter to you.”

  She broke off, her eyes searching Erica’s face for some kind of change and then she said hopelessly, “I don’t understand you, Eric. It isn’t as though we’d ever tried to interfere with you before, and surely you can see why we don’t want you to get involved with him for your own sake.”

  “But Mother, I am involved with him,” said Erica steadily.

  At that moment Miriam entered the dining room. She was wearing her flowered housecoat and had a red ribbon in her dark hair. She glanced from her parents to Erica, then slipped into her chair murmuring, “Good morning, everybody.”

  Neither her mother nor father answered; they did not even appear to have noticed her.

  “Hello, darling,” said Erica mechanically.

  Her father asked her at last, “And what do you mean by that, exactly?”

  “I don’t know, except that I can’t just stop seeing him.” It was no use trying to explain to them how she felt about Marc; so far as her mother and father were concerned, you could not feel deeply about someone you had only met three times, and that was all there was to it. As her mother had already pointed out, Marc Reiser could not possibly really matter to her, and anything else she might say to the contrary would simply be taken as a further proof that she had “lost her head” and was “simply not herself.”

  Looking aimlessly at the breakfast table in front of her, Erica said, “I realize that it’s awkward for everyone, but at least it’s nothing like as awkward now as it will be if you go on refusing to have anything to do with him ...”

  “In other words, you’re not interested in our opinions. We’re just to shut up and do what we’re told.” He said, “Well, that’s clear enough. You’re not only deliberately walking into God knows what kind of mess, but you expect your mother and me to go along with you and back you up ...”

  “Not necessarily,” said Miriam, helping herself to a piece of toast. “Why not just give the guy an even break and reserve judgment? Who knows? He may not turn out to be so bad after all.”

  “Mind your own business, Miriam!”

  “Yes, please, darling,” said Erica, as her self-control suddenly began to give way. The worst her father had been able to say had somehow been far easier to take than that one casual remark from Miriam.

  “No,” said Margaret Drake from the head of the table. “That’s not the point.” She sipped some cold coffee and went on more matter-of-factly, still determined not to allow herself to break down although she was so tired and so upset, “You can’t pretend with people, Miriam. It isn’t a question of giving him an even break, it’s a question of being honest with him. It’s no use our having him here and pretending that he’s on the same basis as Erica’s other friends, as though we were actually encouraging him in fact. You can’t go just so far with people and then suddenly stop. It’s not fair.”

  “You sound as though I were already engaged to him,” said Erica under her breath.

  His face more set than ever, her father said, “You probably will be next week at this rate.”

  “Charles!” Gasped his wife.

  “We might as well face it, Margaret.” He paused and then remarked, “Mr. Reiser seems to have done pretty well up to now. Erica would hardly be making all this fuss if he hadn’t. Would you?” he asked, turning to Erica.

  “No.”

  “And you’re going to go on seeing him, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Erica.

  There was a complete silence and then Erica said suddenly, “Charles, I want to know why.”

  “Why?” he repeated, looking at her. “All right, I’ll tell you why. I don’t want my daughter to go through life neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, living in a kind of no man’s land where half the people you know will never accept him, and half the people he knows will never accept you. I don’t want a son-in-law who can’t be put up at my club and who can’t go with us to places where we’ve gone all our lives. I don’t want a son-in-law whom I’ll have to apologize for, and explain, and have to hear insulted indirectly unless I can remember to warn people off first.”

  “In fact,” said Miriam coolly, “you don’t want a son-in-law. Or not if it’s Erica who’s married to him at any rate.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said her mother. “Charles has never objected to anyone else.”

  “Erica has never showed any signs of wanting to marry anyone else.”

  Her father was paying no attention. Still looking at Erica, he observed, “If Reiser is anything like you say he is, he deserves something better than that ...”

  “We want you to marry someone — someone like us. Someone who’ll fit in and whom we can ...” Margaret Drake caught her breath, then managed to say, “... can all be proud of,” and suddenly shoving back her chair, she got up and left the room. With one final glance at Erica, Charles followed his wife out the door.

  “Mother was crying,” said Erica, and then began to cry herself, with her face in her hands and the tears running through her fingers.

  “Have you got a handkerchief?” inquired Miriam after a while.

  Erica shook her head.

  “Take mine, then.” She gave Erica the handkerchief across the table, bit into her piece of toast, put it down on her plate again and asked at last, “Do you remember what I said, Eric?”

  “No,” said Erica, blowing her nose. “What did you say?”

  “I said they wouldn’t have to lock you up in your room and feed you on bread and water.”

  Her father never asked Erica again who was taking her out or where she was going; sometime during the day following the scene at the breakfast table, he had apparently decided to show no further interest in Marc Reiser, nor for the time being at any rate, even in Erica herself. When she came home at ten-thirty that night, having cut short her evening with Marc in order to try once more to talk to her father and work out some compromise which would make it possible for them to go on living as they had before, she found that his attitude toward her had changed completely. Instead of the anger, which she had expected, she was fa
ced with a wall of indifference. He did not refuse to discuss the subject; he simply went on reading his paper and did not bother to listen.

  To his wife and Miriam he was the same as ever, but from then on into the first week of August, whenever Erica tried speaking to him directly, no matter what she said, his expression would begin to set at the first sound of her voice, and by the time he had swung round to look at her, he had walled himself up again. Erica did not know what to do; he was treating her rather like a guest who had overstayed her welcome, and it was so unlike him and such a startling reversal of their former relationship, that in the beginning she somehow managed to ignore it and to go on as though nothing had happened. At the end of a week, however, the most bewildering and miserable week she had had for years, her father remained as remote and as unapproachable as ever, and she gradually lost hope and stopped trying. She began to avoid him as much as she could, and hardly ever said anything to him without including either her mother or Miriam. On the evenings when both of them were out, Erica either stayed out herself or went to bed almost immediately after dinner, in order not to be left alone with him.

  The whole atmosphere of the house had changed with the change in the relationship between Charles and Erica, but Margaret Drake could do nothing. It had only taken her a few hours to regret her loss of self-control at the breakfast table; and early in the afternoon, just after the final edition had gone to press — nothing short of disaster could have induced her to disturb Erica before then; she had too much respect for her daughter and her daughter’s working hours — she had phoned from Red Cross Headquarters where she had been working full-time, eight hours a day, ever since September 1939, to apologize. She told Erica that her opinions remained unaltered, but that on thinking it over, she could not see that either her own or Charles’ behaviour had been in any way justified. If, on her side, Erica would make a genuine effort to see things from their point of view and to realize that their one desire was to protect her as far as possible, she herself would do her best to persuade Charles to adopt a more rational and less emotional viewpoint.