by Belva Plain
“Talk to me,” Roger said when they were in the car.
“Where shall I begin?”
“At the beginning. Or, no, where you want. Just as things come to you.”
She smiled wanly. “You sound like an analyst or a detective.”
“Pretend that I am one or the other. I want to hear it all.”
And so she told him. With eyes half shut as the car sped over the Cape Cod Canal and onto the highway, she talked. In no particular order came shreds and pieces, tumbling as if out of a box that overturns and scatters its contents on the floor. Groping among them, she picked up, one by one, the contents of her life.
“I grew up overhearing, as children do, all the things they’re not supposed to know. After it happened to me, I understood that Bill thought it wouldn’t have happened if Elena had been different. Maybe that’s true. I hated the things she did, and yet I loved her. I was so afraid she would go away and never come back, which is exactly what she did do.
“He was a savage. I still have nightmares. It’s incredible that he was thought to be handsome. His eyes sneered. No, eyes can’t sneer, can they? But I see them that way. Or sometimes they are just cold and flat, like a lizard’s.
“In the hospital I was sure I would die. It wasn’t the pain. They took care of that. But I was just so disgusted, so ashamed. I wanted to die. I was also afraid I would die and would be in a box as my grandmother had been.
“When it comes back to me, as it sometimes does, I am still ashamed and disgusted. And so angry that anyone dared to do that to me, as if he owned me, as if I were a thing. Not me, but a thing to be used.
“I owe everything to Dad and Claudia. That’s why it breaks my heart to see him now, and why I have to help him. I have to. And Claudia. She taught me so much, from cooking to working hard at becoming an architect. We used to talk about bravery and pride, about everything together.”
“How strange,” Roger said, “that it should be his mother to whom you turned. How strange and wonderful. But is this helping you?” he asked. “I know I wanted you to tell me everything, but not if it’s too hard.”
“I’ve begun, and I might as well finish with it. That is, if it’s possible ever to be finished with it.”
“It’s possible, and you will be. But you can’t hide anything. Keep nothing back. Free yourself.”
And so she talked on. Once having begun, there was no way she could have stopped. Having told some, she told all, even to the fiasco of her affair with Peter.
“Was it my fault?” she cried. “Was it my terrible fault? Is that who I really am?”
“No, and he should have known it was not who you really are. I would have gone after you the very next day when you were most in need.”
It seemed to Charlotte that Roger saw her far more clearly than she had been seeing herself.
“You’ve been depressed all these years. You’re very proud on the outside, but inside you feel soiled, as if the thing that was done to you had left a permanent mark.”
“Yes, it’s in all the articles and all the magazines. I know. The nightmares and bad feelings, they’re the same for everyone.”
“Eventually they will go too.”
“How do you know all these things?”
He laughed. “I’m a very amateur psychologist, and my opinion is probably worthless. But I’ll give it to you anyway. I do believe that the cure is love. Loving and being unconditionally loved, without any secrets. Tell me, what were you thinking while we were standing on the beach?”
“Oh, many things.”
“I think you were hoping I would put my arms around you.”
“But you had never done it, so how could I—”
“I had never done it because you didn’t want to be touched. You weren’t ready. But today, suddenly you were. Three months! No, three months and a half, it’s been.”
They stopped before Charlotte’s apartment house, went running up the steps, and came together. The room was filled with evening light. On the table were roses, her occasional extravagance; still freshly scented, they were a celebration. This was only their second embrace, and yet to her it felt like coming home.
But then she thought, What if at the very last moment it should go badly? If, after all, I am not what a woman ought to be? How will we survive? And a cold thrill of fear ran through her.
“We’ll go inside and lie down,” he said.
She followed him into the bedroom. He pulled the shades and darkened the corner where the bed stood. He took her clothes off. All his movements were unhurried, gentle, and yet commanding.
“That other time, when you slept while I drove,” he told her, “I kept turning to look at you. I wanted to run my fingers through your hair. Let me undo your braid now.”
His fingers moving on the braid, and even his voice, were casual. “How do you ever do this thing up in the morning?” He laughed. “It’s too complicated.”
“It’s a French braid, three strands, and then some extra you pull in at the sides.”
“It’s warm,” he said, smoothing it. “Warm, honey-colored hair.”
Then he tilted her head back to examine it as if it were a portrait. “Fine arched eyebrows, heavy eyelids, very fourteenth century. Did you know you have a sensual mouth?”
He was teasing her very lightly because she was afraid of herself. When he switched the lamp off, the room was quite dark. He lay down beside her and took her hand. Neither moved.
“Go to sleep, if you want to,” he said after a minute. “We will just go to sleep together, my love.”
A radiant peace filled the evening there in the warmth where they lay. And she began to tremble as she had done on the beach when, with caring hands, he had wrapped and shielded her from the wind.…
Suddenly, in the very core of Charlotte, things broke apart. Everything that had been wound up tight, all stiff, dry, fearful, and withheld, now burst into a flood of the most marvelous joy. She cried out, calling his name, and he came to her.
NINE
Last night I saw the full moon in the center of the window, wrote Charlotte in her new diary. She had never kept one, but when she saw the glossy green leather book in a shop, it seemed to her that since her life had now entered a new phase, she ought to make a record of it. And so, on the second day of November, she began.
November 2
Suddenly I felt as if I had never seen it before, this astonishing, white, silent globe, suspended in the sky so near to us that surely we must collide with it. But then, everything else is so astonishing to me these days. Everything is new! I never noticed until this morning that Rudy’s baritone voice is beautiful, that there is a pumpkin patch in the yard on the corner, or that the people across the hall have one blue-eyed and one brown-eyed twin.
Pauline laughs. She says this is only to be expected, that it simply happens to you when you are in love. Perhaps so, but I rather think that in my case, it is very much because of Roger’s example. He sees the world acutely, missing nothing. And he has so much pleasure in the smallest things. He likes shop windows, even a toy-store window with a huge stuffed gorilla in it. He loves food, New England food or Italian or Chinese. He likes comedies in the theater and organ concerts in churches, any church. Above all he likes people. They fascinate him with their differences and what is hidden in them. Didn’t I learn that the first time we went out together?
I am very, very happy.
November 12
It is official. The Heywood engineers have approved the site. They were up in Kingsley for almost a week, part of the time with Roger there, too, making surveys and talking to the zoning authorities in town. Dad can hardly believe this is happening. He’s been a skeptic for a long time now, and I can’t blame him, considering the downhill slide that he’s been on. He keeps telling me, though, that Roger is “a fine young man.” I know he’s fishing about us. But it’s all so new that I don’t feel quite ready to talk about us yet. Soon I will.
November 23
<
br /> Roger understands how I worry about Dad. He saw right away how soft “Big Bill” is under his sometimes forbidding silences. He understands everything. We lie in bed and talk. Last night there was the worst terrifying storm, with fiery lightning and thunder that sounded like what I imagine a bombardment to be. It felt so good, so secure, to be there together.
He was still asleep when I woke up this morning. He has such a handsome profile, an aristocrat’s profile. He thinks that’s funny. His great-grandfather was the most aristocratic hog farmer in the entire United States, he says.
November 29
It has been an exciting, exhausting week. R. has been meeting with bankers and making progress. He is the first to admit that it is the parent company that has opened these doors for him. Still, once the doors are opened for you, you have to produce some goods! I went along on one of these conferences, feeling very tense. Here were these strangers, all of them strict and cautious as if they were actually holding big canvas bags filled with gold pieces and must guard them against people who’ve come to seize them. But in a sense we did come exactly for that, because without the gold, you’re helpless. When we left, I had a sense that we had done very well.
Pauline says that if anybody had told her we could get so far with an idea that just jumped into my head that day last summer, she wouldn’t have believed it.
December 6
I saw a painting in a gallery window this afternoon, a watercolor of a woman sitting on a rock with a collie lying on the grass beside her. It almost took my breath away. It was Claudia’s death scene! It was also Claudia’s life. No one who has known her can ever forget her.
December 25
Christmas at home. Naturally, the snow was already deep here, and now it is snowing again. The house feels cheerful, and Dad and Roger get along so well. Emmabrown came to make a wonderful dinner. Friends dropped in. Amazing how people flock to success, or even to a rumor of it! The project is now being talked about all over town. It’s been a lovely day.
December 27
Cliff came over this morning before we left. He has more news about Ted. (I used to be unable to write that name.) The latest is that he’s definitely been identified among a group of young Americans in the drug network, I don’t know whether as a user or dealer or both. He’s been eluding the authorities for almost two years now, which is no wonder, given the size of the drug network. Still, there is no doubt in anybody’s mind, and certainly not in mine, that they’ll get him and bring him back.
When Cliff said that, I saw his worried glance toward me. I’m sure he was immediately sorry he had said it in front of me. So I told him I was fine and wasn’t at all afraid of looking straight into Ted’s face if I ever should have to.
Roger said quickly, “You won’t have to. I shall see to it.”
January 10
R. laughs. “Now I’ll tell you something,” he said. “The first time you mentioned this scheme you’d hatched, showed me your sketch and told me about the property, remember how I said of course I was interested and wanted to go see it? Well, the truth is I was no more interested in getting mixed up with legal squabbles in some godforsaken town than in becoming an astronaut. But it was a good way to keep you interested in me.”
February 5
Progress in the money department! One of R.’s former classmates who has inherited a pile, or maybe a few piles, will take shares in the company, and also may interest some more friends. So it grows.
February 27
I am wearing the ring that R. bought this afternoon. It is a plain gold band with a small round diamond on it all by itself. I will never take it off as long as I live. I called Dad with my news. He sounded sort of teary in his happiness. We are so alike, he and I. Then I called Elena, and she was happy, too, all delight and effervescence, with a hundred questions and demands: I must send a photograph of Roger, when and where is the wedding—we haven’t decided anything like that yet—have I got a gorgeous ring, we must come to Italy as soon as possible.…
“So, Miss Hard-to-Please! Somebody finally broke you down after all,” Pauline said.
I told her it hadn’t been that hard to do. I was simply a prudent, old-fashioned woman who took my time.
“ ‘Old-fashioned woman’!” she said. “She conceives a multimillion-dollar plan, works on it all winter like a team of horses, and calls herself an old-fashioned woman!”
Naturally, I loved hearing that. God, I am so lucky!
March 16
I don’t believe it. Rudy wrote an article about the project, sent it, along with drawings, to Design Engineering magazine, and it’s going to be published. Of course it’s great publicity for the firm, I know that, but full credit is given to me, so I’m on cloud nine. R. and Dad were both practically speechless when I told them.
April 4
I have new business. It seems that Dad, who is beautifully reinstated in the Kingsley city hall’s good graces, has worked out a deal whereby we give the city a piece of the land for a new library in return for a nice tax abatement. So here I am feverishly studying libraries. They’re a whole lot different from what they used to be before computers were invented.
April 10
Roger was furious today—not at me, thank goodness. It seems that a supervisor on the current Heywood job, which is a school addition, failed to notify him that a supplier of brass fittings was going to be delivering two weeks late. And did R. dress him down! I was in his apartment and heard the phone call. R.’s face was so red that afterward I told him that his blood pressure must have been 300.
“I cannot stand concealment,” he said. “I cannot. The man knew it all along. If he had come right out, said there’d been a mistake and told the truth, I wouldn’t have minded. But he covered up, he hid, he concealed, and I find that unforgivable.”
He looked quite fierce. I never want to be the object of his anger, justified or not.
May 18
We have to make one change in the master plan. R. says it may drive up the cost a little, but not to worry, it’s not going to break the bank. The town doesn’t want the library, which naturally has to be on the main road, to have a marsh at its back. I really don’t agree; the marsh is not a manicured park, that’s true, but it’s natural and has a casual beauty with its tall grasses and clear, open space. Anyway, they want it to be drained, and, as R. says, it’s a reasonable request and in our best interest to do it.
We should be able to break ground and start construction of the central square by midsummer. Three cheers.
June 16
We had dinner at the Heywoods’. By now, of course, they know about Roger and me, so this was a quiet, personal celebration for us alone.
Aunt Flo admired my little ring and smiled when R. asked, “Isn’t Charlotte beautiful?” They had a decorated cake, toasted us in more champagne, and gave us an engagement present, a pair of antique candlesticks.
We came home feeling contented and very fortunate. The full moon was hanging in its usual place at the center of my window when we went to bed.
June 17
I’m scribbling this while I swallow some breakfast. We were just getting dressed to go to work, when the phone rang. Dad sounded really agitated. What’s this business with the library? He said he won’t sign it. What do they mean by draining the marsh? It’s a wildlife sanctuary, a wetland, to be protected, not ruined! Are we all out of our minds?
R. says I should take his car and go right up to talk to Dad. He has a million things to do today, and can’t leave town, so I’ll have to go alone and find out what’s in Dad’s head.
TEN
Weary now, Bill repeated, “I’ve told you my reasons. This thing was sprung on us at the last minute, and I don’t like it, that’s all.” Charlotte rested her eyes on the blue-green hills that had been the background of her deepest thoughts, even when, as a child, she had sat at her bedroom window gazing out at them. From behind the terrace where they were sitting came the roar of the vacuum cleane
r, this being Emmabrown’s day to clean the house. There were no answers in either of those directions.
At the very moment of arrival she had inquired of Emmabrown whether there was anything wrong with Dad and had learned only that, “Mr. Bill is awfully cranky, not like himself.”
“Are you feeling sick, Dad, and keeping it from us?” she asked gently, appealing at the same time with a look toward Cliff, whom, in her frustration, she had summoned to the house.
“No, I’m fine.”
“I’d feel better hearing that from a doctor. Cliff, will you take him to one?”
“Anytime. Tomorrow morning,” said Cliff, who as the session entered its third hour was beginning to look uncomfortable.
“Does a man have to be ill to have second thoughts about something?” demanded Bill. Large and towering, he stood up and walked to the edge of the terrace to face them. “I will go over my reasons again, and for the last time. I don’t mean to be impatient, but I’m tired and you both must be tired too. So listen. For almost twenty years I’ve worked on the Environmental Commission. It was and still is the most significant thing I’ve ever done with my life, except for being your father, Charlotte. I don’t need to remind you what hell I’ve gone through in this town—you have, too, Cliff—on account of that property, of those crooks with their filthy, decaying trash leaching mercury, arsenic, lead, and God knows what more, while I, the owner, go around the state talking out of the other side of my mouth. Now, thank God, and thanks to a miracle that we’ll never understand, the crooks have cleared out and we’re getting our good reputation back. I’m not going to destroy that reputation again by destroying that wetland. And I can’t understand why you can’t understand that.”