Belva Plain - Evergreen.txt

by Evergreen

  Once her father had risen and put his arm around Theo. He had been deeply affected, and Theo had been too. For that instant, standing there, they had seemed to the others in the room like a father and, a son. As if, Iris thought, as if my brother Maury had come home.

  She moved quickly, choosing her dress and shoes, then ran the water in the bathtub. She had never gotten over the need to ease herself in hot water and her mother had never ceased to warn her that she might one day fall asleep in it and drown.

  She sank into the burning heat and lay her head back. She would have liked to stay in this deep comfort, then get into bed and read the evening away.

  Papa was making a—a project out of Theo! He'd talked him into opening an office here in the suburbs rather than New York, had even helped him find office space.

  "If you really want the Grosvenor Avenue building I can help you, I know the owner. I might be able to get a good deal for you on the rent," he'd suggested.

  And if Theo was short of money for equipment, which came high, why, Joseph would be glad to advance him some. No, Theo wasn't short. Money was no problem. But he would never forget the offer; they were being as good to him as family. Well, they were family! He felt that way toward them. They were all he had. Iris' flesh prickled with embarrassment. Papa came on so strong! Yet, if Theo minded, he didn't show it.

  He was a good-looking man, too thin now and older looking than his age. His features were what is called 'strong.' He had attentive eyes that searched you when you spoke to him: Iris had had to turn her own away sometimes. Women would be attracted to him. Probably he would get anyone he wanted badly enough. He would want, she guessed, someone like the one he'd had before. "A beauty," her mother said. "She had a brightness like my brother Eli." And like Maury, because Maury was like Eli.

  Men. What do men want? Beauty like that, naturally, if they can get it. But not only that, and not always. The mothers of the children she taught came in all shapes and sorts, with every kind and degree of tenderness, intelligence and manner. Yet must they

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  not all have had something in common to have been chosen? What? What?

  If you talk too much, that's not good. If you're too quiet, that's not good. You lie in bed at night thinking about it and trying not to. You are surrounded by sex, the man-woman thing. The movies, the embraces that will end in bed, even though they don't show it. But you know that's what it's all about. Always. Even the women's magazines with their preachy articles and stories. Educated women should have more children, they tell you. Motherhood and wifehood are the most rewarding careers. Decorate the house, drive the station wagon, work on the school board, campaign in community politics and make your town a better place for your children to live in. Charities are obligatory (making the world a better place for other people's children to live in). But it all starts with the bed. Man-woman. Sex.

  I feel sometimes—I feel so cheap. As if, when people look at me, they must know what I want and can't have, will probably never have. My mother tries to be so tactful. She talks to her friends and sometimes even to me, so seriously, so respectfully, about my 'career,' as if she wasn't at the same time putting out her feelers for every stray man who passes. Papa brings a widower to dinner, thinking he must be needing a mother for his children. Not me, Iris, for what I am. No, a mother for his children.

  Why don't I give up? Give up in my mind, I mean. One more birthday after the next, and I'll be thirty. It's time to settle for what I have. A job with tenure in another year, so if I want to I can plan to go on teaching for the next forty years in the pleasant brick school with the old trees and the nice lady teachers. Papa says I'll never have to worry about money. I'll have a nice home full of good books. I'll listen to good music in the evenings and maybe take a trip to Europe now and then with a group of teachers.

  That's living?

  "What's that plant I smell?" Theo asked. "It's a little like perfume and a little like burnt sugar."

  "It's phlox. My mother planted a bed of it under this window." She turned on the outdoor light, picking the phlox out of darkness. The cream and lavender domes were bent with the weight of the rain. The trees dripped in a forest stillness.

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  "My mother's become a country woman. Those are raspberries by the hedge. We had them for breakfast."

  Theo said quietly, "It seems centuries since I knew people who were able to plant something and wait peacefully for it to grow."

  No answer seemed to be called for. He went on, "Do you really know how wonderful this home of yours is?"

  "Oh, yes. Most of the years of my growing up were depression years. We've only been living like this a very short time."

  "I didn't mean the house. I meant the family. You have wonderful parents. Warm people. Gentle people. I have a feeling they seldom argue with each other. Am I right?"

  "I think because my mother anticipates whatever my father wants. Not only that, of course. But that's part of it."

  "A European woman!"

  "She was born in Europe. I don't know how European she still is."

  "But American women are different, aren't they?"

  "It's a land of variety here . . . who can say what 'American' is?"

  "Tell me, are you like your mother or your father?"

  Those attentive eyes! As if her answer were really important. As if it were even possible.

  I don't really know, she thought, what my parents are 'like,' let alone myself. No, that's wrong. Papa is relatively simple. But my mother has hidden places. I think Papa knows she has, too, and can't puzzle them out. He teases her about being mysterious, yet he means it, it's more than teasing. It's true that they love one another; one feels their devotion; also, though, one feels a tension. Sometimes I have odd thoughts: Could Mama really be keeping some great secret from us both? I remember that man, Paul Werner, as if in some way, I don't know how, he were involved with us. With her. Then I'm so ashamed of my thought. Mama, so moral and honorable and—how can I think such things? Yet I do think them.

  She blinked herself back into the present. Theo was waiting for a reply, and so she said lightly, "It's hard to see yourself, isn't it? But—well, I like books; that's the main way I'm like my mother. And I'm sort of, more than sort of, religious. Like my father."

  "Religious! You must know, that's something quite new to me. We never thought about it at home. Nor in the house of my father-

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  in-law, Eduard. Oh, you called him Eli, didn't you? I forgot for the moment. Your Uncle Eli."

  "You think it's ridiculous?"

  "No, no, of course not!"

  "Tell the truth. I won't mind."

  "All right then, I'll tell you. I find it rather charming, rather picturesque. Perhaps I'm even a little sorry that I have no feeling for it myself."

  "But you must have. Not the form, perhaps. And forms change, anyway. Like Papa being Orthodox and now he goes to Reform; at first he was shocked by the thought, but now he likes it tremendously. So what I mean is," she said earnestly, "it's not the form but what you feel that counts. And I'm sure you must feel the truth of all the things we believe in!"

  "Such as?"

  "Well, you've seen better than I have what a nation without religion, that's to say without morals, can do."

  "Yes, I suppose that's true. I just never thought to connect religion with those events."

  "I guess when you're in the midst of—what you were in, you can't do much thinking. You just want to live through it," she said gently.

  "You don't even care much about living through it. One of the feelings I had, as a matter of fact, was guilt that I was alive."

  "I understand."

  "And then when it's over and the world begins moving again, you start to feel angry. All that ugliness and waste of years! When you might have been—growing raspberries!"

  "I hope you don't still feel it was a waste . . . what you did, I mean."

  "No, I have a better perspective on it since I'v
e been in America. All war is criminal waste, but in a purely personal sense I didn't waste the years. I spent myself with profit. I fought back."

  He got up and walked to the end of the room, pulled a book from a shelf and replaced it. "So now, so now I just want to live. I want to work and listen to music, and to the devil with politics and getting ahead! I just want real things. Like looking at a woman with marvelous eyes and a lovely blue dress. That is a lovely dress, Iris. It's the color of your name."

  "The New Look," she said shyly. "My mother bought it."

  "Your mother buys your clothes?"

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  "Oh, no! This was a present. She knew I wouldn't buy it, I only shop when I have to. I'm not that interested in clothes."

  "So? What are you interested in?"

  What she had to say was so stilted, formal and dreary. Yet she knew nothing else to say. "I always thought I'd like to write. I tried short stories, but I got too many rejections and I've given up. I play piano too, but not well enough to do anything much with it. So I'll say" I'm interested in teaching, because it's what I do best."

  "And you're happy."

  "Oh, I like it. They tell me I'm good at it and I feel that I am. Except that these children don't really need me. They're so well cared for already; they have everything, and what I do for them is—" She was talking too much, and she finished abruptly, "I guess I really want to do something more important, only I don't know what."

  "I am imagining you as a child," Theo said irrelevantly, "a very

  solemn little girl."

  "I'm sure I was." Still am. Solemn.

  "Tell me about your childhood."

  "There's nothing much to tell. It was very quiet. I read a lot. It was almost a Victorian life in the twentieth century."

  Why was she talking so much? This man drew the words from her.

  "I sometimes think I should have been a Victorian. In the early part of the century, before the factories and billboards, when the world was still green and lovely."

  "It's the factories that have made this beautiful house possible, you know. A hundred and twenty-five years ago you would have been living in a hovel, or a Polish ghetto more than likely."

  "That's what my father says. And of course you're right. I'm just given to silly talk, sometimes."

  "It's not silly to reveal yourself. Goodness knows I've just been doing it."

  Theo lay his head against the back of the chair. She shouldn't have reminded him of Europe and the war. The rain began again, splashing on the heavy leafage at the window, and the room was quiet.

  Presently he stood up and went to the piano. "I'll play something jolly. Have you ever heard this?"

  He played a teasing little waltz, played it with a sparkle, and

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  swung around on the bench. "I'll bet you can't guess the title of that."

  "I'll bet I can. It's Satie. He wrote three of them, called 'His Waist,' 'His Pince Nez,' 'His Legs.'"

  They burst out laughing, and then Theo's laugh broke off. He stared at her.

  "You're the most extraordinary girl!"

  "I'm not. I happen to have a crazy kind of memory, that's all."

  He stood up and came to where she was sitting. He took her hands and pulled her lightly to her feet. "Iris, I'm going to say it right out while I have the courage. Why shouldn't we be married? Can you think of a good reason why we shouldn't be?"

  She wasn't certain she had heard. She stared at him.

  "Because I think we go so well together. I don't know about you, but I haven't been happy like this for so long."

  Was it, could it be, some sort of cruel wit, some kind of mockery that passed for a game in sophisticated circles? Still she didn't answer.

  "I'm clumsy. I should have done something before this to prepare you. I'm sorry."

  He was looking into her face, forcing her eyes to his, which were troubled and soft. She saw it was not a game. It was true.

  She began to cry.

  He put her cheek to his and kissed her forehead. "I don't know what that means," he said. "Does it mean yes or no?"

  "I think—I think it means yes," she whispered and felt her tears wet on his cheek.

  "Iris, my dear, I want you to be sure. Tell me you are."

  "I am sure. Yes, yes, I am."

  He pulled out his handkerchief and dried her eyes. "We'll be very, very happy, I promise we will."

  She nodded, laughed, and her tears kept pouring.

  Theo, understand why I am crying: because I so hoped this might happen and knew it couldn't; because of being almost thirty years old; because of the narrow bed in which I sleep alone. And now you are here.

  Iris has done something wonderful. There is a murmur of flattering laughter all through the house. Celeste carries in the packages of gifts, the silver and the crystal in their tissue paper wraps. Her mother works at her desk and on the telephone over the

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  menus, the invitations, the bridal veil. (It is an embarrassment to be dressed like a teen-age bride at an age when other women are taking their children to kindergarten.) At least, her mother will keep things fairly simple, although not as simple as Iris wants. Papa would have her come riding in on a white elephant, its howdah embroidered in brilliants. He is so happy, engrossed with his plans for Theo's new office. The blueprints are spread on the big desk in the round room; Theo and Papa confer over them after dinner. Papa is ecstatic because she is marrying a doctor. A doctor from Vienna! And now there will be a son in the house again, vigorous and bright and full of hope, as Maury was once. Our Maury, so long ago. Poor Papa! Poor good Papa!

  It is almost as if Theo were a trophy she has won. She is ashamed of the joy in the house. She is ashamed of herself for begrudging them their joy. Her heart beats faster almost all the time now.

  Sometimes she thinks she is dreaming the whole thing.

  They lay on the sand. It was a perfect, silken Florida afternoon.

  She had thought, when they were alone in that first room together, that she would fail. She had read so much, had bought and hidden marriage manuals and Havelock Ellis. It seemed there was so much to know about what, after all, had been done long before books were written!

  Her mother had asked, while looking at the floor, "Is there anything you want to know?" And had been relieved when Iris had told her there wasn't.

  It had seemed from the reading that there were so many ways in which you could please or displease, succeed or not; and if she failed, if she did not satisfy, what then?

  But she had not failed. It was the marvelous delight, the most total merging of spirit and flesh that could have been imagined, and she had certainly imagined it enough! To have waited so long! That was the only pity, to have waited so long!

  Theo said lazily, "You look pleased."

  "I am. Pleased and proud. Smug and proud."

  "Proud?"

  "To be your wife."

  "You're a darling, Iris. And puzzling, in a very nice way."

  "What way?"

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  "I'd thought, you see, you gave the impression that you might be hesitant or timid in bed."

  "And I'm not?"

  He laughed. "You know very well you're not! I'm a very, very lucky man!"

  He took her hand and they turned over to burn their backs. "This day is too perfect to know what to do with it," Iris said. "It seems to me you know quite well what to do with it. And with the nights too," he answered. "When I was a little girl," she began.

  "You still are a little girl."

  "No, but really, listen, I want to tell you. I was about seven and there was a doll that I had been wanting. It had a pink velvet coat with white fur, and long, dark curls. I remember it exactly; it was the incarnation of doll. Do you know what I mean? And I had been wanting it so long. Then on the morning of my birthday, when I found it sitting on my chair, I had such a queer feeling, not disappointment, but a kind of ebbing away. ... It was so perfect! I didn't want a speck of di
rt to touch it, and still I knew that it would, that with each second some if its perfection was passing away."

  "Such sorrowful thoughts on a day like this!" Theo protested.

  But she persisted. She wanted him to understand. "I'm not sorrowful. It's so wonderful that I want to keep it, remember it always. Theo, someday years from now we'll look out on a soggy winter street and we'll talk about how we lay here in the sun predicting how we'll be looking out on a soggy winter street—"