by Belva Plain
“Mr. Fordyce has connections,” Laura said.
“That’s good. I don’t think it would help Tom to have this affair spread all over the news.”
“It’s what I most dread. Tom’s very, very troubled, too, Mr. Mackenzie. He’s built a wall between himself and the subject. I can’t even talk to him about it.”
“Do you think I might?”
“It’s not just Tom. It’s more complicated than just Tom, not something I can put into one sentence, very complicated.” She broke off.
“Suppose we take some time to talk about it, then. I’m in town for the day, and I could come to your house for an hour this afternoon, if you’d like.”
“I don’t think so. Tom works with Bud, but sometimes he comes home early.”
Mackenzie interrupted. “I understand. Not a good idea. Perhaps at my campaign headquarters? Or, around the corner at the Hotel Phoenix? We might have a cup of coffee and see whether we can iron something out.”
His very voice was reasonable, an assurance that here was a human being who would not lose his temper or shut his ears to whatever she had to say. There was comfort in that voice.
So, at four o’clock that afternoon, dressed in pale green linen with a white ribbon bow on the back of her head and feeling an unfamiliar lift of the spirit, she met Ralph Mackenzie at the Hotel Phoenix.
He greeted her. “You look as cool as mint. How do you manage in weather like this? I think I ought to tell you,” he said immediately as they sat down in the coffee shop, “that all the Crawfields think you’re wonderful. All of them, even Holly and the grandparents.”
“I liked them, too, Mr. Mackenzie. Please tell them for me.”
“I’m Ralph, please. And I will tell them. They’re really remarkable people, Laura, very sensitive, very kind. I’d like somehow to ease their pain a little, if I can, and yours, too, and Tom’s.”
“Ah, Tom’s! He has gotten himself all twisted up.”
“Tell me about him.”
She needed so much to relieve herself, and yet the story came reluctantly from her lips, for there had been no one, no friend or relative—even if the aunts had been home—to whom she would have exposed her disappointments. To Bud she owed a wife’s loyalty, and to Tom’s reputation she owed a mother’s protection; surely he would grow away from his aberrations and be again the person she had so carefully reared? Even now, in speaking to this stranger, this man whom she felt to be honorable and decent, she was self-conscious. These, after all, were her people’s own secrets that she was revealing: Bud’s prejudices and Tom’s fall from grace.
“I wonder sometimes whether Tom’s neatness has something to do with his affiliations. I mean the kind of mind that craves perfect regimented order, like the Hitler Youth. You go back and back in your mind, trying to find out why and how. I am what I suppose you’ve been told and Bud is—well, Bud like many people has his prejudices. But Tom I don’t understand,” she finished.
“The Nazi youth leader, Baldur von Schirach, had an American mother whose great-grandfather had fought for the North in the Civil War. It was a book by Henry Ford that turned him into an anti-Semite when he was still in high school. He ate poison, you might say.”
Laura was cold. Unconsciously, she warmed her hands around the coffee cup.
“The coffee’s cold, too. You need a refill,” Ralph said kindly.
He had been watching and listening without an interruption during her recital, nodding when she spoke of The Independent Voice and the night of the attack on the Edgewoods’ house.
“I don’t suppose you followed the news very carefully this past week,” he said now, “or you’d know that the hoodlums who attacked that house were connected with the Johnson rally on the Andersons’ lawn across the street. They got their timing wrong, that’s all. The attack was supposed to be on the following night, the bungling fools. That kid, Greg Anderson, is a dangerous article. Somebody talked, so the police went on a search and found shotguns, pistols, and ammunition hidden in his room. They don’t think his parents had any idea what he was really doing, nor even know now where he is. He skipped town the next day.”
“Maybe I’m as blind as they were, maybe a complete fool for saying what I’m going to say, but I don’t believe Tom ever was or could be involved in anything like that. Tom’s all talk.”
Ralph said gravely, “As Johnson is. All talk. Except that the talk and the words have a way of erupting in unexpected places, as Henry Ford’s book led to Hitler’s youth leader. The power of the word. That’s why I entered this race for the state senate.”
They were sitting by a window, and now as the sun came back through the sultry clouds, a stream of light fell on his head, turning from copper to red the wavy hair that he had tried without success to flatten down. Rufus, Laura thought. He is properly named: Ralph Rufus Mackenzie. His face was long and angular, like those westward-leaning faces on statues of trekking pioneers. And something touched her inside as, when a knife grazes a finger without penetrating, a tiny shock startles the whole body. Just weeks ago, the aunts had told of seeing him in Florida and of the way he reminded them of Francis Alcott.…
She said suddenly, “My aunts saw you in Florida last winter. They mentioned you at my house before I had met you. They said you reminded them of someone whom we all knew very well, and it’s funny, but I had the same reaction myself just this minute.”
He smiled. “Who was he? An old love of yours?”
“A childish crush. How did you ever guess?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I have a sixth sense. And besides, you have a very expressive face.”
She had no idea why she said the next thing that came into her head; maybe it was merely because she wanted to prolong the time.
“My aunts admired you, though they’d vote for Johnson if they could,” she told him, laughing. “I don’t think they understand Johnson, but they would vote for him just the same.”
“Plenty of good people will. They’re not alone.”
“I want to see you get elected,” she said.
“I want to get elected. I never especially wanted a political career. Yes, the prestige is pleasant, as well as the chance to do something important, but I don’t crave either. I enjoy the law. I simply want to defeat Johnson. I must. Somebody has to stop such people.”
He looked at her, she looked back, and for an instant something passed between them, some sense of trust, of curiosity, of—of what? She lowered her eyes to twist her bracelet, which had become caught in her sleeve.
“Well,” Ralph said, “what are we going to do about the Crawfields and your Tom? They do so much want to see him again, Laura.”
“Of course. If Peter were alive, I would race to the other end of the state this minute to see him.”
“They hope that the second time will be better, and maybe it will.”
“He won’t go again, Ralph. And Bud abets him.”
“Will you let me talk to him? Often an outsider can do more than a family member can.”
“That’s so.” But truly, she had no hope.
“I have to be back here early next week. I’ll phone, you’ll tell me when to come to your house, and I’ll do my best to enlighten Tom. If I’m successful, I’ll get him to come with me to the Crawfields’. How does that sound?”
His smile appealed, and it was impossible for her to say No, it’s useless, forget about it.
Instead, “It’s worth a try,” she said.
“What all this nice talk boils down to is another visit,” Tom argued, “and then I suppose another and another.” He turned to sarcasm. “Joint custody, I suppose. Well, I’m not three years old, and if I were, I wouldn’t belong to those people, anyway.”
Ralph’s patience was to be admired. In his place, I would have given up by now, Laura thought. Yet he answered again, “All they want, Tom, is a visit every now and then in the hope that you will acknowledge them and care about them. That’s all they want.”
And Tom answered yet again, “I’m not interested in what they want. I’m telling you now, and I’ve told Mom, my father is the only one who’s sticking with me. Yes, and Timmy, too. It’s a pretty sad thing when your kid brother understands you better than your mother does.”
Laura looked furtively at her wristwatch. It had taken some maneuvering to get Timmy out of the house, as well as to get Tom home in time for Ralph to catch him, all this before Bud should arrive. They had been talking for almost an hour; soon Bud would be here.
“Tom,” she cried, “please. Just go once more. Mr. Mackenzie will go with you. You can see that he understands you, he’ll be your friend there, you won’t feel so alone. Just once more.”
“Have a heart,” said Ralph. “You can see that this means something to your mother.”
“Why should she care so much? Why do you, Mom?”
It would have taken more self-analysis than she had already undergone during these past weeks, more eloquence than she was capable of, and more energy than was left her to explain adequately why she cared.
“It’s because I cannot let you be so cruel,” she said softly.
That woman, that poor couple, seeing their son for the first time since his birth, seeing his sullen face, hearing the dreadful things that he had said … Those poor people.
And then there was the hurt in her own heart, so raw when it was touched that, without willing to at all, she blurted, “I am thinking of Peter, too, how he lived there all his life, and I never knew. Why, he might even have gone into that store one of the times I went there. When I bought my green suit, I might have passed him, not knowing—” She had to cover her face with her hands.
Ralph coughed and shifted in the chair. Tom was silent.
Then Ralph said, “I can’t stay much longer. It’s up to you now, Tom.”
Laura took her hands down and apologized. “I’m sorry. There’s so much mixed up in this, a sense of justice and sorrow and maybe just being too tired to think straight. I don’t know.”
“It’s up to you, Tom,” repeated Ralph.
Tom stood. His cheeks were hot, and he had in his agitation rumpled his hair.
“All right. All right, I’ll go. Say when.” He did not look at Mackenzie as he spoke.
“Friday?”
“Friday.” And Tom left the room.
Laura saw Ralph to the front door and beyond to the drive where his car was parked in the shade of an oak.
“Wonderful old trees,” he said, pausing beside the car.
“My great-grandfather planted them. We have seven.”
“And all healthy.”
“They’ve been well cared for. Last year the tree surgeons filled two cavities pretty much the way a dentist fills a tooth.”
Again, as he listened, paying attention, really listening, she had that sense of recognition. He was leaning against the car as if he wanted to linger, waiting for her to say more.
“It’s funny how you get to love them,” she said, meaning the trees. “You’d think they were alive.”
“But they are alive.”
“Of course. I meant—”
He smiled. “I know what you meant.” He hesitated for a moment, saying next, “Your boy is torn in too many ways. I can’t tell you how sorry I felt for him in there just now.”
“I know. Between Bud who means well, and Johnson who—”
“Also thinks he means well. One of my father’s favorite sayings is, The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ It’s trite, but true.”
“But how can the terrible things that Tom said at the Crawfields’ house be good intentions?”
“A philosophical question. We’ll have to talk about it some other time.” Ralph laughed. “Do you see it as a debate between Johnson and me?”
“Hardly.”
Still he lingered, and she said spontaneously, “You were so wonderfully patient with him. I don’t know how to thank you. And the Crawfields must be grateful to you, too.”
“A situation like this is a challenge,” he replied simply.
“You have plenty of challenges right now, so you must like them.”
“I’ll let you know better in November how much I like them.”
“I wish I could help you get elected,” she said.
“You can if you really want to. After things settle down for Tom and everybody, you might want to help at campaign headquarters in town. They’re always in need of help.”
“I would like that,” Laura said. Suddenly remembering the time, she put out her hand. “It’s late, and I’ve been keeping you.”
“Not at all.” He got into the car. “I’ll fetch Tom on Friday.”
For a long minute she stood at the front door, watching the car. It had almost reached the end of the road when, from the other direction, Bud’s car appeared.
“Who was that?” he demanded.
“Ralph Mackenzie. He came to see Tom.”
“To see Tom! What the hell did he want with Tom?”
“He asked him, and I asked him, to make one more visit to the Crawfields.”
Bud threw up his hands. “Ah, Laura, I’ve asked you for God’s sake to leave the boy alone. He’s sick over this.”
“I know he is. Who wouldn’t be? His whole identity recast in another mold: Who am I? It’s a nightmare in itself. But on top of that,” she said, “on top of that, you deny the facts, you won’t let him face the reality that he will sooner or later have to face. And then on top of that the Johnson business. Don’t you see that Tom is poisoned? Johnson is spreading poisoned food through the whole community, and Tom has eaten it.”
Bud brushed past her into the house. “Ah … you’re mixing up our grief with politics. It makes no sense.”
“I’m not doing it. They are mixed, and they make a vicious brew.”
“Why? Because those frauds are Jews and Tom doesn’t like Jews? It’s not so unusual to dislike Jews.” Bud laughed. “Hell, I need a drink.” He poured a jigger of whiskey over ice. “Tom didn’t say he’d go again, did he?”
She answered honestly, “Yes, it took some persuasion, but he finally agreed. Please don’t talk him out of it, Bud.”
“Can we drop the subject, Laura? It’s been a long day. Long weeks.” He stared out of the window. “Sometimes I think maybe it’s true—oh damn, I don’t know what to think—about that other kid, and if he was ours we never knew him, and it’s all so damn sad. But then I think, no it’s not true. Tom’s the right one. He’s ours, and they’re driving him crazy. It’s not fair. We were—we are—good parents, and why should this happen to our family?” Turning back to regard Laura, Bud frowned sadly, his forehead puckered, his eyes deeply ringed. “You look beat. I don’t want you to lift a finger tonight. Let’s go out for lobster or steak, whatever you want. Come on, let’s cheer up if we can.”
CHAPTER
12
On the Friday, in spite of his father’s dissuasion, Tom left with Ralph Mackenzie. Resentment boiled in him; he knew himself well enough to understand that it was his mother’s sorrow that had moved him; she was so soft, so close to him, that he had been unable to refuse her plea.
And at least he was being accompanied by a gentleman, a person to whom he could relate, a Mackenzie, not a Krehfeld, not one of those awful people who now claimed him as their own. At this reminder, he winced. A foreboding chill passed through his blood. What if Dad was wrong? What if he really was—was a Krehfeld? And again something within him, a dread voice, spoke as it had when he had taken a deep look at Margaret Crawfield, You are and you’ll have to acknowledge it.
At that moment the car, on its way to the interstate, passed by the sign lettered RICE AND SON, all bold and glittering in the morning light. Then his heart swelled, and instinctively he sat up straighter in the seat. By God, he’d show them! He wasn’t going to be worn down. Rice and Son. And Son.
Mackenzie, who had until now been silent, reached toward the radio and the stereo, asking Tom what he would lik
e to hear.
“I assume you’d like music instead of a bunch of chitchat between you and me. Unless of course there’s something you want to say.”
Tom was grateful for that. “Music,” he said.
“What kind? Country, rock, or Mozart? You name it.”
“I don’t care. Whatever you want.”
“Since you don’t care, I choose Mozart.”
Mom played all of the sonatas. It pleased Tom that he was able to recognize so many of them, but he said nothing, allowing the music to flow through him, trying not to think.
When finally toward midday they turned into the street, his fear came surging back. There was the house, number 17. Would he ever forget that door with the tubbed evergreens on either side? Or the heart-pounding walk from the car to that door?
“Ten minutes past twelve,” Mackenzie said. “Good timing.”
“I don’t want lunch,” Tom told him. “I won’t eat here.”
“You needn’t. But Margaret’s a good cook. So I’m going to enjoy myself.”
Margaret opened the door. Behind her in the hall the family formed a phalanx: Arthur, Holly, the grandparents, and the white collie. Only Cousin Melvin was missing. In one quick glance, Tom saw all this.
And he took quick measure, too, of the atmosphere. Voices, faces, and body language were different from the last time. There was no outward anxiety; the greetings were cordial and unemotional, almost as if he were a casual guest, an afterthought whom Mackenzie had brought along with him. And he knew that this change must be the result of a careful strategy, the result of a conference between Mackenzie and the family. Clever indeed, he thought wryly.
Again there was a spread in the dining room. Did these people do nothing but eat?
“I had something on the road,” he lied.
“You can come in and sit down anyway,” Mackenzie said. “You can have a cup of coffee or not have one, as you like.”
The man had a calm way of letting you know what he wanted. To resist would be to make himself conspicuous, Tom knew. He sat down next to Mackenzie with a vacant chair, the eighth chair, on his other side. That empty space felt good.