by Belva Plain
They had their own anxious, fussy way of loving Laura, not sparing a moment’s energy on her behalf. From the pediatrician to the dentist to the French lesson they drove, and as soon as her talent for music was discovered, to the music lesson, too.
“They gave me everything. They gave me their whole lives,” she said to Bud years later. “I was completely spoiled.”
And he refuted her. “If they tried to spoil you, they didn’t succeed. You’re the least spoiled person I ever knew.”
“We must be careful not to let her get too bookish,” Cecile reflected when Laura was ten. “I think I’ll arrange for tennis lessons on Saturday mornings. What do you think?”
“Yes, it’s a healthy sport, and very useful socially, too. You can play it all your life,” agreed Lillian, whose only exercise was a walk from the house to the car, then from the car to the office desk.
And Cecile: “Perhaps we should put in a tennis court. There’s a good level place back of the garage.”
“Yes, and while we’re at it, we might enclose the vegetable garden, the way they do in England. A trellis, perhaps?”
They were always doing things with the house. It was a house for the generations. They liked to dwell on some idyllic future for Laura in this dear place.
“Someday you will marry a man who will take over the business and will live here with you,” they would often tell her.
Touched by their goodness, amused by their blindness, she gave them in reply her secret smile.
I am going to marry Francis Alcott. You don’t know that yet, but you will.
Lying here now so long afterward, she felt the gathering of another smile, this in nostalgic recollection of that peace and innocence.
But are children, was I, ever innocent? No, Laura, you know better.…
A thick privet hedge grown taller than a man divides the properties. Toward one end some damage, either by disease or storm, has made a gap in it through which a child can peek, or, if permitted, slide. But Laura is not permitted.
“Dr. Alcott really should fix that,” Aunt Lillian complains. “It’s unsightly. They’ve not been keeping up the place as well since Francis went away.”
“Poor folks,” says Cecile. “It’s a pity they haven’t got a daughter. Francis is never home anymore.”
“He’s on his way home now, didn’t you know? I heard this morning. He broke both legs skiing in Colorado during spring break. Or maybe it was both ankles. Anyway, we should go over there this evening.”
Laura asks how a leg can be broken. In her mind there’s a picture of a broken cup lying in small pieces on the floor.
“No, no, it’s not like that,” says Lillian.
“Well, I’d like to see one, anyway.”
Cecile promises, “When Francis has had a chance to rest awhile, you may go over with us one afternoon. We’ll bake some cookies for him. He’s such a nice boy.”
Laura is in the yard the morning after. She is sitting on the rim of her sandbox when a screen door slams and voices sound far off at the end of the Alcotts’ lawn. It might be the boy with the broken legs, she thinks, so she goes to investigate. What she sees is a man with fat white legs stretched out on a long chair. There is a little table beside the chair on which she can see a pitcher and a glass. Lemonade? she wonders. And she watches closely, spying from the gap in the hedge as the man takes up his book, puts it down, drinks from the glass, runs his hand through his hair, which is dark and wavy, and picks up the book again. She would like to know whether those white things really are his broken legs; probably, though, they aren’t because they don’t look like legs, and anyway, the aunts said Francis was a nice boy, and this is not a boy. He’s a man, so he can’t be Francis. She’s pondering all this when the man sees her and calls.
“Hello. How are you? Come on over.”
“I’m not allowed to.”
“Not allowed? Why not? We’re neighbors.”
“I’m not supposed to annoy Dr. Alcott. He’s busy.”
The man laughs. “You’d never annoy Dr. Alcott. Anyway, he’s at the office now. And I’m his son. I’m Francis.”
“Are those your broken legs?” asks Laura, already on the other side of the hedge and halfway toward the chair.
“Yes, and they’re an awful nuisance. I’m missing half a term at college on account of them.”
She draws nearer and suddenly solves the puzzle. “The broken part is under those white things, isn’t it?”
“That’s right. The white things are casts. Like bandages.”
“Oh. Do they hurt?”
“Not anymore.” He has put the book away and is smiling at her. “I’ll guess your name, shall I?”
She nods. “But I’ll bet you can’t.”
“Let’s see. Is it Caroline?”
She shakes her head. “Nope.”
“Susan?”
“Nope.”
“Fuzzy Wuzzy?”
This seems very funny, and it delights her. “I said you couldn’t guess!”
“Oh, but I can. You’re Laura, and I knew it all the time. My father told me about you when you came to live next door, only I haven’t seen you before this because I’ve been away at college in California.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s far away.”
“Oh. Like Korea?”
“Not quite.”
“My father went to Heaven from Korea.”
Francis says gravely, “I know. He was nice, your father.”
“Did you know him?”
“Very well. He lived here where you live now.”
“Oh.”
“You look like him except that your hair’s blond.”
She considers that for a moment. Then Francis touches her hand, saying still gravely, “He bought me my first ball and bat when I was a little boy.”
“I thought,” she says, “you were still a boy.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Aunt Cecile said, ‘Francis is a nice boy.’ ”
“I see. Well, she’s very nice herself.”
Laura considers that, too. “But I miss my mommy.”
“Of course you do,” says Francis.
She likes the feel of his warm hand on hers. When she peers up into his face, his eyes look into hers with the same smile that Aunt Cecile has when she says “I love you.”
“How old are you?” he asks now.
“I’m four. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“That’s old, isn’t it?”
“Kind of, but not awfully.”
“Laura! Laura! Where are you?” It is Aunt Lillian standing at the hedge.
“Oh dear, you shouldn’t—Francis, I’m sorry, is she bothering you?”
“Bothering, Miss Lillian? She’s adorable.”
“But you have to study, you said, and—”
“I’ve got another six weeks to be laid up with the books. Please, let her come over whenever she wants. I mean it.”
So it begins.
It was Francis who taught her to read even before she entered kindergarten. All that spring while the casts were on his legs and even afterward when he began to walk again, he made a game of the alphabet and the words in his big books.
“Show me a word with three letters,” he would command. “ ‘Sun,’ that’s right. Tell me, is the sun cold?”
“No, silly, it’s hot.”
“Okay, can you find ‘hot’ on this page?”
And Laura’s plump finger would slide along the lines until, triumphantly, she would find it.
“ ‘Hot’ There it is!”
“What a fine young man,” the aunt remarked. “So patient, so very gentle. He’ll make a marvelous doctor, you can just see it in him.”
For the Christmas when Laura was six, somebody gave her a copy of Alice in Wonderland.
“But I can’t read it,” she complained to Francis when he and his parents came to dinner during the vacation. “The words are to
o long.”
“Come here, and I’ll read it to you,” he offered.
“That child takes such advantage of his good nature,” said Aunt Lillian, who was serving after-dinner coffee on the other side of the room.
To this remark Dr. Alcott replied that Francis never offered anything unless he wanted to give it.
“He likes children, and besides, there is something especially appealing about Laura. You must know that.”
Well, yes, she had to admit that she did. Her sigh was contented. “Cecile and I consider ourselves blessed. So many people seem to have such problems with their children through no fault of their own.”
Always, Laura would remember Alice in Wonderland, its gray binding, the illustrations of Alice with her flowing hair, and Francis’s long fingers resting on the page.
“You remind me of Alice,” he said.
And she would remember, as the years passed, every detail of every book that was in some way connected to Francis. The Secret Garden because he gave it to her for her birthday when she was eight, and Treasure Island because he had visited the real island on a sailing trip.
When he returned, he showed photographs of the boat and his friends and the island that lay like a great green whale asleep on blue water.
“Someday you’ll see these places,” he told her. “You must see as much of the world as you can while you’re young. The world is so beautiful, Laura. You can’t believe how beautiful it is.”
Whenever he was home, he gave her books and listened to her opinions about them. They agreed and they argued. He taught her to play chess. He gave her a camera and taught her the art of using it so well that she won a contest for her still life of rain on magnolia leaves. Sometimes in the evening when he and his father came visiting, she played the piano and was pleased when everyone praised her.
Yet at the same time she knew that all of them except Francis were overpraising. “My aunts think I’m going to go around the world giving concerts,” she complained to Francis. “It’s embarrassing. If I were going to be famous like that, I would be now. I’m twelve, and that’s already late.”
“You have a talent, and that’s more than enough to bring you happiness. There’s no need to be famous,” he said gently.
She loved his voice when he was serious like this. It had tones in it, deep, soft notes like the lowest piano key when the left hand barely touches them.
“You’re wise, Laura. It’s wise to see yourself so clearly.”
Curiously, she asked, “What do you see when you look at yourself?”
“I? A pretty good student who always wanted to be a doctor like my father. That’s all.”
Laura shook her head. “No, you’re not seeing everything. You’re going to be great.”
He laughed. “Good God, no. Never.”
“Oh, yes. Everybody says so.”
“Who’s everybody?”
“My aunts say that everybody says so.”
And Francis laughed again. “Well, tell them I’ll try my best.”
Sometimes while Laura did homework in her bedroom, the aunts would be talking in the upstairs sitting room. They knew everything that was happening in the neighborhood. “Internal medicine,” one said. “Rare diseases, I think. Or tropical, maybe? I’m not sure.”
“He’s going on to a fellowship after a three-year residency, Mrs. Alcott told me.”
“He won’t be coming back here to settle, mark my words. It’ll be New York or Boston, more likely.”
“Well, probably. He won’t be home at all this summer. No time off, Mrs. Alcott says.”
“The Baker girl will be disappointed, that’s for sure. He’s been seeing her for the last three years whenever he’s been home.”
“They make a good-looking pair. She’s a stunning girl, don’t you think so?”
“But he’s not ready to be serious, his father says. He won’t even consider marriage until he’s finished his training.”
“She won’t wait for him. She’s twenty-six, and thirty is looming up.”
“That remains to be seen. You never know.”
She had better not wait for him, thought Laura, and scoffed: a stunning girl. The Baker girl with that foolish constant smile that made your cheeks ache to look at? Why ever would Francis want her?
From a group snapshot that had been taken one Fourth of July, she cut out his head and put it into her gold locket where before her aunts had been. Then she had to wear the locket day and night so that they wouldn’t find it in her room. It was not that they would be angry or hurt; no, of course not; they would be merely amused, and she could not have borne that either.
They thought she had a crush on Francis. “And why not?” Aunt Lillian said to the cook. Her voice, unlike Cecile’s, was loud enough to carry up the backstairs from the kitchen. “With his looks—those eyes of his—he can turn any woman’s head if he wants to.”
“And even if he doesn’t want to.” The cook laughed. “Any woman from eight to eighty.”
They were cheapening her love. A crush, they called it, a feeling you might have for one boy in March, for another in April, and still another in May. And opening the locket in front of the mirror, Laura studied Francis’s face, which seemed to be looking back at her with love. But then, I am only twelve, she thought. If only she were older …
Unexpectedly, one weekend he flew home from Boston. When she saw him coming across the lawn from his house, she dashed out, banging the screen door behind her, and threw her arms around his neck. She had always done so, and when she was still small enough, he had always lifted and hugged her. She was hardly small enough now; so taking her arms down from his neck, he held both of her hands and kissed her forehead.
“Oh, it’s good to be back! How are you, Princess?”
“You’re too big now to hug Francis like that,” Aunt Lillian reproved her that night. “Laura darling, you’re not a child anymore.”
Hot with humiliation and knowing what was meant, she did not answer. What was meant was: You have breasts. He felt them when you pressed against him.
“She may be tall for her age, but she is still a child after all,” Cecile said.
Would they never learn that she always overheard them when they were having their coffee in the sitting room?
“I sometimes think you read too much into things, Lillian.”
“And I sometimes think you don’t read at all.”
That was Lillian. Cecile was the sweeter, the romantic one. But Lillian was the smarter of the two. And so Laura learned care and caution.
Then suddenly she was fifteen. Long ages seemed to have passed, not just three years, since she had been an impetuous girl of twelve. She had a quiet manner. The promise of height had been kept; she was slender, and her striking hair was still blond. Thanks to the aunts who, knowing how to dress, had taught her well, she had fine, subtle taste. Her clothes were simple. She wore a necklace of gold links, a small ruby ring that had belonged to her mother, and a man’s wristwatch that the army had sent home from Korea. And hidden under her collar, she wore also Francis’s picture in the locket, although it was two years since she had seen him last.
There were many parties that year, and she went to them all. People liked Laura, as people always had done. She was, in a sense, a leader, for which she was thankful, but also surprised because she could see nothing special about herself, nothing different from most other girls except that she was able to entertain people at the piano.
Dressed in red velvet for somebody’s formal dance at the country club, she was waiting to be called for one evening when Francis rang the doorbell.
“You always come home unexpectedly,” she said with her new calm smile.
“I covered for a fellow at the hospital last weekend, and this is my payback. I’m so darned glad to be here, Laura. But I’m holding you up. You’re on your way out, I see.”
Her heart was wild, and yet she was able to keep that practiced calm.
“Yes, to a da
nce, but not till half-past. Sit down and keep me company.”
He drew up a chair near hers so that their knees almost touched. “Do you realize it’s two years since I saw you last? You’re so changed that I almost don’t know you anymore.”
“I’m fifteen now.”
“If I were fifteen, I’d bar the door to the fellow who’s taking you, and I’d take you to the dance myself.”
“Your father says you’re working too hard.”
“Oh, I’ve had a few twenty-four-hour stretches between sleeps. But that goes with the job, and I love the job.”
“Is that why you don’t come home anymore?”
“Dad says he has more free time than I have, so he’d rather visit me. He’s going to enjoy California again when I go back there for my fellowship.” Francis smiled. “He loved the ocean.”
“How long will you be there?”
“It’s a two-year fellowship. Then maybe I’ll go abroad for research. I want to specialize in rare diseases, then come back and teach.”
“Elephantiasis and stuff like that?”
“Like that. How do you know about elephantiasis?”
“I pick things up when I read, and I read everything. Ever since you taught me.”
“I’m proud of you, Laura. Glad and proud.”
And with a touch of her own pride, she told him, “I skipped a year. I’ll be sixteen and a half when I graduate.”
The dialogue came to a stop, although there ought to have been so much to say after their long separation. Indeed, Laura’s head was crammed with questions, but she could not ask them.
After a moment, Francis asked one. “What’s been happening in the neighborhood? Anything interesting? All I’ve heard is that George Buckson’s bank has sent him to Hong Kong, and that Carol Baker’s engaged.”
“But not to you?”
His eyebrows rose. “Me? Whoever gave you that idea?”
“My aunts.”
“Of course, who else?” And they both laughed.
The laughter restored them to where they had been two years before. A light relief moved through Laura’s body, an involuntary smile touched her lips, and wanting to display her lace cuff and the pink shells of her newly manicured nails, she rested her hand on the arm of the chair. If only the doorbell would not ring, if only they might stay alone like this.