Daybreak

by Belva Plain

  Really alarmed now, she cried, “Wicked! It was only a teasing little compliment. I knew you didn’t mean a word of it and never would.”

  “You knew nothing, and neither did I.”

  She did not understand this, and said so; he did not answer but got up instead, walked to the rocky barrier at the end of the beach, and returned.

  “We should start back,” he said sternly. “Let’s go up and dress.”

  Her heart was hurt. Something terribly ugly had happened, a senseless contrast to the previous night when at the piano he had stood watching her with that soft, thoughtful look. And now there was this queer, harsh voice, this determined stomping up the steps ahead of her, past the pungent odor of wilting hot chrysanthemums, past a tiny brown toad blinking in the dust, and up to the screen door.

  It was when he stood aside to let her through that he noticed her tears.

  “My God,” he said, “my God, don’t cry. Oh Laura, don’t. The last thing I want to do is to hurt you.”

  At this her tears did flow. He put an arm around her shoulder and she hid her face on his shoulder, wetting his warm skin with those embarrassing tears. They stood quite still, his hands patting, comforting her back until her tears stopped.

  And still they stood. Silence tingled in the room. Never in their lives except for the longing in her dreams had they been so close, their bodies fitting one to the other, then straining and swelling, she feeling the run and race of a heat she had scarcely been able to imagine.

  Closer, tighter they pressed, until abruptly Francis broke away, putting from him the arms that wound around his neck.

  “No, no,” he cried.

  Then, frustrated, she would have broken into a fury of humiliation if he had not cried also, “Darling Laura! Oh, darling Laura!”

  Before his fearful face she drew back, whispering, “What is it?”

  He shook his head. “No. Let’s get dressed. Leave here.”

  “You’re not telling me something.” She sank down on the couch. “You have to tell me.”

  He shook his head again. “It’s nothing. Things run away with themselves sometimes, that’s all. A moment ago—”

  “You called me ‘darling.’ ”

  “Yes. And so you are, so you always were. A wise, sweet child. I loved you then in the way one should love a very special child.” He stopped, seemed to struggle against a wish to say no more, or perhaps to say much more, and sat down beside her. “All those dear letters while I was away. In my mind I saw you at fifteen wearing your grown-up dress and going to a dance. Little Laura. And yesterday when you came across the grass toward me, I could not believe what I saw.” His voice ended in a murmur, and he looked away.

  A great joy, streaked with a subtle sadness, filled Laura’s body so that the blood ran faster and drummed in her ears, choking her words in her throat.

  “You love me.”

  “I mustn’t. Laura, let’s leave.”

  “Why mustn’t you? I don’t understand.”

  And she grasped his hands in both of hers, bent over him and kissed his mouth. She felt him tremble. When he tried to move, she released his hands and held his head while she clung to his mouth. She felt his arms around her, felt him straining toward her and knew that he was overwhelmed.

  He wore one piece of clothing, and she wore two thin wisps that fell to the floor when they lay back. Through the pounding in her ears, she heard his voice muffled in her neck: “I love you, I didn’t know how much.” She heard her own voice answering: “I’ve loved you so long. All my life.”

  And then the voices faded into wordless cries.

  In the aftermath she lay resting, drowned in a thoughtless bliss. A long trail of sunlight dazzled, and she closed her eyes against it. When the glare passed, she saw that Francis had moved to a chair and was sitting with his head in his hands. Hearing her move, he raised a face filled with pain.

  “What I have done,” he said. “What I have done.”

  “Why? Because it was my first time?”

  “Much more than that.”

  “I don’t care what it is. I only care that you love me. It’s what I’ve wanted.”

  He groaned. “Someone should take me out and beat me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ll never forgive me.”

  Surely he was playing some game, some mockery of a nineteenth-century lover who has deflowered a maiden, and she smiled.

  “You’re right. I will still be scolding you about this when I’m seventy years old.”

  “Laura, I don’t know how the hell this happened just now. I didn’t want it to happen, I’ve been partly crazy since I saw you yesterday. Everything flashed back and piled up, years and years of living. I didn’t want to come today, but I wasn’t able to get out of it. I didn’t want to see you again because I—”

  She saw him swallow what must have been a hard lump in his throat, and she knew in that shivering instant that he was going away.

  “You might as well tell me,” she said evenly.

  “Oh Christ, oh God, I’m going to be married on the fourteenth of next month.”

  I’m in shock, she thought. He’s breaking me. And suddenly conscious of her nakedness, she seized the sofa pillow, the only covering in reach, held it over herself, and sat quite still.

  “We didn’t—my parents thought we shouldn’t tell anyone here until it was over, because the relatives would want to be invited, and there’s not going to be any wedding because she’s British and her mother’s too ill to travel, so we’re going to have a simple ceremony in New York, so that’s why—Laura darling, don’t look like that, say something!”

  This was not happening. There was no sense in it.

  “I’ll say I am not your darling and I don’t give a damn about your ceremony.”

  “Oh God, do you know what I kept thinking all last night? It ought to be Laura. I kept asking myself how I could make that be. Yet I knew it was too late.”

  I kissed him first, said her inner voice. And she despised herself.

  He talked as if he could not stop, as if he were purging himself. “She’s a doctor. Isabel. We were in India together, before that for two years in the fellowship program. We have our office ready. Partners. And I care for her, I could never hurt her. And yet, you, you are—”

  “I don’t give a damn about your office or your Isabel.”

  “Hate me, Laura. You’ve every right to.”

  “Let me alone, I’m going to vomit,” she said, and holding the absurd pillow in front of her, walked to the bathroom and was sick.

  The tile, the porcelain, were cool on her cheeks. She put her head down on the windowsill. When she raised her eyes, she saw that the sky was still a pure, perfect blue. And that was queer; it seemed that the world ought to have changed. When she had gotten her breath and cleansed her mouth, she steadied herself and put on the white shirt and the raspberry skirt, the same clothes that had been put on that morning with such anticipation.

  Francis was waiting on the porch, just sitting and staring out toward the lake, where now three sailboats went skipping in a fresh, joyous wind.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Just fine, thank you. Never been better.”

  His eyes pleaded. His words pleaded. “I’ll never forgive myself for what happened here.”

  Quite probably she should be saying “It was my fault, mainly,” but regardless of who had stuck it there, the knife was in her heart, and she could not say those words. So they rode back home all the way without speaking.

  All night she lay awake. And now alone, she wept, stifling the wretched, racking sobs in the blanket. Through the trees, whenever she raised her head, far yellow lights shone like cats’ eyes in the dark; they came from the Alcott house, from his room most likely, for there was probably not much sleep in him either on this night. She imagined him trying to read with his cheek resting on his hand as was his habit. She remembered going hot with the memo
ry of his body lying on hers. From there her imagination painted a similar scene between him and his wife. She hated him.

  And then she pitied herself for the cold, enduring loss of the love that had grown up with her.

  In the morning her eyes were inflamed. She would have to hide in bed all day with the shades drawn so that no one would see this misery.

  “It’s my stomach. Something I ate, or else a virus,” she told Cecile, who had come in because they had missed her at breakfast.

  Cecile, a chronic worrier, wanted to call Dr. Alcott.

  “I don’t need a doctor. I’ve been up all night, and I only need sleep. Anyway, Dr. Alcott’s already gone to the office by now.”

  “Then Francis can run over. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

  “Don’t you dare! I’m not having him here in my bedroom.”

  Cecile laughed. “Heavens, don’t tell me you’re embarrassed in front of Francis! You sound like Queen Victoria. He is a doctor, after all.”

  “Francis has gone,” said Lillian, overhearing. “He phoned early this morning to say good-bye. He went back to New York.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  One month after her twentieth birthday, Laura graduated from college and in the following week was married to Bud Rice. Why? She need not have married anybody at all. But her best friends were engaged, and Bud with his many graces, his kindness, intelligence, and strength was more desirable than any of their men. Besides, he had been asking her over and over all through that year. And because he had wanted her so much, he had made her proud again.

  But how you drift into marriage! Not knowing what is really there, inside the other, or what can develop as the years pass. A man could be loyal, fatherly to the children, and sympathetic to his wife—if he was not all of these things, it would be unbearably hard—and yet there could be no real communication between them. “Communication” sounds so electronic, Laura thought, disliking a word that somehow failed to describe the way Bud listened willingly enough and still seemed not to hear.

  “Well, since there is nothing to be done about it, why talk about it?” he would say.

  He had been a passionate lover from the beginning. Even though she had no basis for comparison aside from that one encounter with Francis, which was too unhealthy to dwell on, she knew he was. In fact, he was so vigorous that she used to hope during the year when the aunts were still living in the house that they weren’t able to hear him.

  For them, Bud could do no wrong. His enthusiasm pleased them.

  “It’s not every young man who gets a thriving business handed to him,” he told them. “Don’t think I don’t know it. I’ll work my head off for it, you’ll see.”

  He was excited about living in the city. “When I was a kid and we’d come in for something special, I used to wish I could live here in town. We hardly ever came, though. I think my folks used to see the doctor next door to you, Dr. Alcott, until a doctor opened up closer to home, and then they didn’t even come in for that.”

  The aunts had seemed to find cause for pride in Bud’s backwoods origins. It was, Laura thought, a kind of reverse snobbishness.

  “There’s nothing aristocratic about Bud Rice. No pretensions. Just good, conservative, decent stock. Old stock.”

  Bud loved living in a fine house so finely kept. He wanted to, and did, fit smoothly into its proper and rather formal ways. Chimes announced dinner, there were always flowers on the table, polished silver stood on the sideboard, potpourri cast fragrance into every room, and the tall clock on the staircase landing ran on time.

  Before the first year was half over, Laura was pregnant. Bud was pleased with his own virility and absolutely certain that she would produce a boy who would shoot baskets with him, play touch football, go fishing, and be his buddy.

  That was exactly what she had produced, and his name was Tom, Thomas, after her father. He was born on the day of Dr. Alcott’s funeral.

  “They all die young in that family. Bad hearts,” said Cecile. “None of them sees sixty. It must be kind of a worry to Francis.” She spoke to Laura on the telephone. “I know you don’t want to be swamped with visitors while you’re in the hospital, but I did tell Francis he could come this afternoon.”

  “You didn’t! For heaven’s sake, my baby’s one day old. I refuse to see anybody but family.”

  “Francis is as good as family. I told him he has to see your boy,” Cecile insisted. “He’ll only stay a minute. He’s got three days’ work ahead of him going over his father’s records, and then he has to rush back to New York. He’ll be gone by the time you come home.”

  Laura was furious. No doubt Francis must be equally so, for Cecile had certainly made him feel an obligation. She was still wondering how she would act toward him, when Francis appeared carrying a box of candy, holding it awkwardly before him as one might hold an object that was about to break or spill. He laid it on the tray-table at the foot of the bed.

  “I remembered that you’re a chocoholic,” he said, looking at the wall behind the bed.

  Immediately she understood that he had not wanted to come, that he was afraid. He should have had sense enough to make an excuse, she thought angrily.

  A terrible physical shame prickled all up and down her skin; she would have been glad to pull the covers over her head and hide; this was like one of those dreams in which you have forgotten your clothes and, out on the street in your underwear, you are looking in panic for cover. This man who stood uncertainly in the center of the room had brought with him so much more than a box of chocolates! He had brought recollections: There again was that idiotic sofa pillow with which she had run into the bathroom; there the shock, the disbelief and the sickness in the dingy bathroom with the summer afternoon outside.

  “Your aunts tell me you have a beautiful boy.”

  She must retrieve her poise.… Let him know. Let him know that she was not destroyed. Torn apart, yes, but now recovered in full.

  “Yes,” she said, making her voice easy and light. “I can’t argue with that. He is. He is like his father.” And she raised her eyes for Francis to see that there was pride in them.

  But he was still gazing at the wall behind her. She thought he looked humble. And this humbleness, which was almost unmistakable, did restore her poise, so that she lifted herself against the pillows with her head high. He would see that she was established in the world, a cherished woman in a pink satin robe, in a room filled with flowers.

  Good manners required now that she ask him to sit down. Yet why should she care? And he probably didn’t want to stay.

  “Do sit down,” she heard herself say.

  “Thank you.”

  His glance wandered around the room, settling nowhere. Still he could not fail to see how her hair shone, how lavishly it spread about her shoulders. Even against his will, he must be aware of it. Perhaps he was making a comparison. He had a wife, Isabel, a woman he had not wanted to hurt. How did she look, talk, act? How much did he love her? It should have been you, Laura, he had told her that day. And now he slept with Isabel.

  Do they sleep entwined in one bed? Bud Rice, a man desired by women, lies close to me every night. His words are muffled into my neck: your warm, sweet-smelling hair, you are the loveliest. “Gentle Laura,” he calls me. “You know so much, you do everything so well, where did I find you?” And he laughs. “I remember. On the library steps.”

  “Your aunts told me I must be sure to look at your boy,” said Francis.

  “You don’t have to be so polite.” She was gracious, magnanimous. “I know you have plenty to do right now at home, things more important than looking at a baby.”

  “I’m not being polite. I want to.”

  Then she remembered, and was embarrassed because it had taken her so long to remember, what had brought Francis home.

  “We are all so sorry about your father. So many, many people loved him.”

  “Yes. He died too young.” He paused. “Will you still give
lessons now that you have a baby?”

  As if he cared one way or the other! This stilted dialogue was absurd. They were not saying what they were thinking, that was sure. If Francis could have read her mind, he would have read defiance: I suppose you thought I would never get over you. The conceit of men! Every night I am loved, passionately loved, or when he is tired, loved with tenderness. And this baby, this marvel of a boy, is the result.

  “I shall make time for both,” she replied, and added then, “Your parents have told us how well you’re doing.”

  Francis had written a textbook that had drawn praise. He was making a name for himself, and she was complimenting him as if he were a child who has brought home a nice report card. So, flushing with this realization, she added more. “But then, it was always expected of you.”

  “You try your best,” he said simply, and stood up. “I mustn’t tire you. New mothers need their rest.”

  Swift thoughts flashed. Was Isabel also a new mother? Probably not. It would be natural for him to say, if he had one, that he, too, had a child. And still, perhaps it would not be natural. This whole visit was unnatural, ridiculous, a passage of trivial words without substance. He should never have come here.

  He went on making conversation. “My mother plans to sell the house and move west. She has a lot of relatives there.”

  “So much upheaval for her and for you! Really, it’s so good of you to visit me at a hard time like this.”

  “I wanted to. I was thinking how my father would have enjoyed the sight of your boy. And he missed it by a couple of hours.”

  His departing footsteps made a lonely, hollow sound in the corridor. And suddenly Laura was aware of a tightening in her throat, a lump of pity or pain or loss, or maybe some of all. Yes, Francis, my baby could have been your father’s grandchild. And isn’t it curious, Francis, that I should be here in this bed while Bud Rice’s baby is in his crib down the hall because of you?

  Curious, too, all the little things, the trivial things, you remember, like the fried chicken and shortcake that Betty Lee made for dinner on the day they brought Tom home, or the giant stuffed panda that Bud had waiting for the baby in his room.