Whispers

  “That’s not true. You heard him say you should go out with other boys.”

  “I don’t want to go out with other boys. I want to be with Harris. I want to be trusted.”

  Lynn raised an eyebrow. “Trusted? Well, really, Emily.”

  “It happened once, Mom. We’re hardly ever alone together in the first place. All summer we were at the lake with a crowd, you know that. You believe me, don’t you?”

  Her blue eyes, moist as petals, are so beautiful, that it’s a wonder he could resist her at all, Lynn thought.

  “You believe me?” the girl repeated.

  “Yes. But you see what happened from just that once.”

  “We want to get married.”

  “Oh, my God, Emily, you’re much too young.”

  “Eighteen! You were only twenty.”

  “That was different. Your father was older.”

  “My father? Yes, and look what you got.”

  Lynn, choosing to ignore the sarcasm, said only, “Harris, or you, or both of you, may change your minds, you know.”

  “Not any more than well change our minds about medical school. And it was horrible, what Dad said about Harris wanting to better himself because our family has more money,” Emily said bitterly. “It was a cheap and cruel and stupid thing to say. Harris phoned me at the hospital just before you got there to take me home, and he told me.”

  “Your father was beside himself with worry over you. I’ve never seen him so desperate. People say things when they’re desperate.”

  Lynn felt as if she were being driven toward a trap. But Harris had not been present, he had been sent to wait in the car when his father had talked about that night last spring. Her mind moved swiftly in recollection. Obviously, then, Weber hadn’t wanted Harris to hear that part. He was a decent human being who had done his best to conceal what had happened. “I buried it,” he had said. “Buried it.” No, he would not have told Harris. And Lynn’s fear subsided.

  “Harris said his parents have told him he mustn’t see me, that he must even avoid me in school.”

  “They’re right, Emily. It’s wiser that way.”

  “It’s all Dad’s fault. It goes back to him.”

  Lynn protested, “There’s no logic in that remark. I don’t understand it at all.”

  “Don’t you? I could tell you, but you wouldn’t want to hear it. There’s no use talking when you won’t be open with me, Mom.”

  Lynn, folding her hands on her lap, looked down on the backs that had been covered with puncture wounds. What Emily wanted was a confirmation, an admission about those wounds, now long healed. But she was not going to get it. A mother hides her private pain from her children. For their own good she does this.

  For my own good, too, she thought. Abruptly a tinge of anger colored her feeling for Lieutenant Weber. He should not have said those things! He should have known how they would hurt. But then, there were the things that Robert had said … Her head throbbed.

  “I’ll tell you, Emily,” she said somewhat crisply, “I can’t play verbal games with you. You say you’re a woman, so I’ll talk to you as one woman talks to another. I’ll tell you frankly that I’m not feeling my best right now, and I don’t want to argue about anything. I only want to help you, and I want you to help me too.”

  Emily got up and took her mother into her arms. “All right, Mom, we won’t talk about this anymore. Just have a wonderful, healthy baby and be well.” She smiled at Lynn. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll work hard the rest of the year and graduate with honors too. You’ll see. And I won’t make any trouble for anybody. I’ve made enough already.”

  “What’s the matter with Emily?” Annie asked again. “Why won’t anybody tell me?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. She’s just working terribly hard these days. She has to keep her grades up if she wants to get into Yale,” Lynn answered cheerfully.

  “She cries a lot. Her eyes were red last night.” Annie’s own small, worried eyes were suspicious. “Didn’t you see?”

  “She has a little cold, that’s all.”

  The weight of Emily’s sadness lay heavily on Lynn. Of course she cried, why wouldn’t she, poor child? The double shocks, to the body and to the spirit, had aged and changed her. Hardened her too? she wondered.

  She hesitated at the door of Emily’s room. Conscious of her own pregnancy’s pronounced visibility, she could not help but think of its effect on the wounded girl.

  But she opened the door, and in the cheerful, artificial tone that had by now become a habit, inquired, “Busy? Or may I come in?”

  Emily put the book down. “I’m busy, but come in.”

  “I don’t want to disturb you. I thought—you’ve been isolated lately with all this studying. Of course, it’s necessary, I know.” Floundering so, she came suddenly to the point. “Tell me. Do you need to talk about your feelings, about Harris? Because if you want to, I’m here. I’m always here for you.”

  “Thanks, but there’s nothing to talk about.”

  Emily’s shoulders appeared to straighten, and her chin rose a proud inch or two. This small display of pride seemed to shut Lynn out, and she repeated gently.

  “Nothing?”

  “No. We stay completely away from each other, so if that’s why you’re worried, don’t.”

  “I’m not worried about that. I know you’ll keep your word.”

  “He sent me a birthday card with a lace handkerchief in it. And we do talk on the phone.” Emily paused as if, Lynn thought, she expects me to protest about that. When no protest came, Emily said proudly, “He works every day. He even has a Sunday job. I suppose it’s part of his punishment.”

  “Oh! I shouldn’t think punishment was necessary. I mean … Our feeling is that you should have fun, you know that.” And when Emily was once more silent, Lynn continued, “I know boys call you.”

  “Because they know Harris and I are through.”

  “But you never accept.”

  Emily gave her a twist of a smile. “If I wanted to, and I don’t, there wouldn’t be time, would there? My days are filled up. Aren’t they?”

  Indeed. True to his word, Robert had provided an activity for every available hour; they had gone to the opera, to country fairs, and the local dog show, they had skated on the season’s first ice at Rockefeller Center and seen the exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum. Vigorously, tenaciously, he fulfilled his plan, and with equal tenacity and her new cool courtesy, Emily had complied.

  But how she must ache!

  So the autumn passed, a long, slow season this year, the ground covered with black leaves rotting under steady rain, a season sliding downhill toward a frozen winter, as if the chilly gloom wanted to reflect the cold that underlay the sham politeness in the house.

  By tacit agreement the trouble was covered over. At meals Robert led the talk to current events, the day’s headlines. Alone with Lynn the talk was chiefly about the firm. It was as if, for him, nothing else of any import had happened or was happening.

  “They’re thinking of sending me abroad,” he told her one night. “There’s a group from the West Coast going, from Monacco’s office, and they want me to go with them for a meeting in Berlin. After that I go alone to meet the people whom we’ve contacted in Budapest.” Excited, stimulated, he paced the bedroom floor and came to rest behind Lynn, who was brushing her hair at the mirror. “It’ll take two weeks probably, if I go. I’m pretty sure I will, though. It’ll be some time in December. I hate to leave you.” He studied her face. “You look tired.”

  “I’m fine. We’ll be fine.”

  “You’re pretty heavy this time, that’s what it is. By March you’ll be yourself again.”

  She agreed. “I’m sure.”

  Yet she felt a weakness that she had never felt before. It was hard to get out of bed in the morning, and so hard to keep running between activities, the train to New York, the car to the country fair, going, going all the time. With Robert away there w
ould at least be some rest.

  Josie said, “It’s not the pregnancy. You’re emotionally wrung out. Emily’s trouble was enough to do it, God knows.”

  But you don’t know the half of it, thought Lynn. Involuntarily, she sighed.

  Josie remarked the sigh. “You never went back to my friend—Dr. Miller, I mean.” The tone was accusatory.

  “No.” Go back to tell him about Lieutenant Weber and—and all the rest? Wake that up yet again? And for what? What could he do, that man, except make her feel like two cents, sitting there? And biting the thread with which she was mending Annie’s skirt, she remarked only, “That child tears everything. She’s always bumping into things.”

  “How do she and Robert get along these days?”

  “All right. No problems.”

  Not on the surface, anyway. He kept them all too busy, she thought. But perhaps that was healthy? Healthy and wholesome. You want to think so … but is it?

  “Robert’s leaving for Europe on Tuesday, you know,” she said, feeling slightly awkward because Bruce was not leaving. Yet to ignore the fact before Josie would be more awkward.

  “Yes, I know.”

  No more was said about that. Then Josie asked about Emily.

  “She never mentions Harris, and I don’t ask anymore. ‘It’s over,’ she told me. So maybe Robert was right when he said it would pass and the scars would fade. I guess so. I don’t know.” She reflected. “Anyway, she’s working long hours, half the night, for the science fair. It’s all voluntary. I think she’s doing too much, but Robert says I should leave her alone. Well, of course, he’s so proud of her achievement. And I am, too, but mostly I want her to be happy. I feel”—Here Lynn put the sewing down and clasped her hands—“I feel so terribly sorry for her, Josie, and for the boy too.”

  “Bruce has seen him a few times when he passes the soccer field on the way to the jogging track. He asks about Emily.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry for him,” Lynn repeated, and, with a little laugh, added, “You can imagine that Robert isn’t. His anger over this has gone too deep. There’s no forgiveness in it.”

  “Robert’s an angry man to begin with,” Josie said. “Listen, Lynn, I don’t want to come after you with a sledgehammer, but I wish you would listen to me. You need to talk to somebody. Keeping your secrets—and I know you do—will only harm you in the end. God only knows what may happen.” And she repeated, “Robert is an angry man.”

  Her comments only offended Lynn; Josie’s comments always had. They were exaggerated, and anyway it was unseemly to disparage a woman’s husband to her face, no matter what you thought.

  Yet this was the only flaw in the long friendship. She had always to consider that. And she had also to consider the nasty things Robert said about Josie. So she made her defense a calm one.

  “Robert has always worked under very high pressure. Right now he’s got his heart set on building a future for this baby, for the son he’s convinced it is.”

  “Oh, naturally he’d want a son.”

  “Well, we already do have two girls, Josie. Anyway, Robert’s a workaholic. I worry sometimes that he’ll work himself to death.”

  “If he does, it’ll be by his own choice.”

  “Oh, no, he plans to live and rear this boy. He’s got such plans, it’s really amazing to hear him; you’d think having a baby was the grandest thing that can happen. Well, I guess it is, after all.” Stricken with embarrassment before this barren woman, she stopped.

  Josie’s response was quick. “Don’t be sorry about me. I’ve long accepted that other women have babies and I don’t. You have to face the realities, one right after the other, all through life.”

  Lynn was immediately sober. “Well, you surely face them,” she amended. “I remember how you were when you had your operation. You were amazing.” She smiled. “Thank goodness, you’re fine now.”

  “Is that a statement or a question?”

  “Well, both, I guess.” Lynn was startled. “You are fine now, aren’t you?”

  “You can’t know that positively,” Josie answered quietly. “Can you ever know anything positively?”

  “I suppose not. But are you telling me something—something bad about yourself?”

  “No. I’m only telling you that facing reality isn’t the easiest thing for most of us to learn.”

  There was a silence until Josie rose to depart. She left a vague discomfort in the room, a hollow space, a chilled draft, an enigmatic message. Lynn felt as if she had been scolded.

  On Monday, the night before he was to leave, Robert came home early. He had bought new luggage and laid it on the bed ready to pack. His passport and traveler’s checks were on the dresser, the new raincoat hung on the closet door, and his list was at hand.

  They had dinner. He was euphoric, filled with a sense of novelty and adventure.

  “This is much more than a question of profits, you understand. The world’s peace, its future, hang on whether we can make the European Community work. We need to take all these eastern republics into some sort of attachment to NATO. That’s why it’s so important to lay an economic foundation.” He talked and talked. His eyes were brilliant.

  Upstairs again after dinner, he went on talking while folding and packing; he would not allow Lynn to do it for him, preferring his own method. As he called out, she checked off the list.

  “Notebook, camera, film, dictionary. There, that’s it.” He turned to her. “God, I’ll miss you.”

  “You’ll be too busy to miss anyone.”

  “Only you,” he said gravely. “Hey, I guess the girls have gone to bed. I’ll kiss them good-bye in the morning unless they’re still asleep.”

  “They’ll be up.”

  “I’m leaving at the crack of dawn. Where’s Juliet?”

  “Right there on the other side of the bed. I’ll go put her out.”

  “No, no, I will. Come on, girl, let’s go,” he said as the dog, stretching and yawning, lumbered behind him.

  It was not half a minute later when Lynn heard the voices exploding in the kitchen, and she raced downstairs. Robert was standing over Annie, trembling in her nightgown, with a face all puckered in tears. In front of her on the kitchen table was a soup bowl piled high with ice cream, whipped cream, fudge sauce and salted almonds; the base of the tower was encircled by a ring of sliced bananas, and the peak was adorned with a maraschino cherry.

  “Look! Will you look at this!” Robert cried. “No wonder she can’t lose weight. You’re a pig, Annie. You’re worse than a pig because you’re supposed to have some intelligence. You’re disgusting, if you want to know.”

  Annie sobbed. “You—you’ve no right to say things like that. I haven’t murdered anybody. If I want to be fat, I’ll be fat, and it’s my business.”

  Lynn mourned, stroking the child’s head. “Oh, Annie. You had a good dinner. You were supposed to be in bed.”

  Robert interrupted. “Stop the coaxing and caressing. That’s been the whole trouble here anyway. No discipline. No guts. Anything they want to do, they do.”

  He snatched the soup bowl, Annie snatched, too, and the contents slopped over onto the table.

  Annie screamed. “Don’t touch it! I want it!”

  “Oh, this is awful,” Lynn lamented. “I can’t stand this! Robert, for heaven’s sake, let her have a spoonful, a taste. Then shell let you throw it away, I know she will.”

  “ ‘Let’ me? What do you mean? Nobody ‘lets’ me do anything in this house. I’m the father. Here,” he shouted with the bowl now firmly in his grasp, “this is going where it belongs, into the garbage pail.”

  The lid clanged shut, and Annie howled. “That was mean! You’re the worst father. Mean!”

  “I may be mean, but you’re a mess. A total, absolute mess. A disappointment. You’d better get hold of yourself.”

  Lynn protested, “Robert, that’s cruel. It’s true that Annie needs to watch her weight, but she is not a mess. She’s a lovely girl, an
d—”

  “Lynn, cut out the soft soap. It’s sickening. I gag on it.”

  “Don’t you yell at Mommy! Leave Mommy alone!”

  The two confronted each other, the trim, tall man opposed to the square little girl whose stomach bulged under her nightdress and whose homely, pallid face was mottled red with rage. Lynn summoned every ounce of control.

  “Come upstairs with me. Come to bed,” she repeated quietly. “There’s no sense in this.”

  When she had pacified Annie and seen her into bed, she went to her own bedroom, where Robert was reading.

  “Well,” she said, “a nice good-bye on your last night. Very nice to remember.”

  A stack of Christmas cards waiting to be addressed lay on a table beside his chair. He held up a photograph of the Ferguson family, standing in front of the holly garlands on the living room mantel; they were all smiling; even Juliet, with lolling tongue, looked happy. Then he snapped the card back onto the pile and mocked:

  “The perfect American family. There they are. Perfect.”

  “Losing your temper like that over a dish of ice cream,” she protested.

  “You know very well it was more than that. It was the principle of the thing, the disobedience, her defiance.”

  “You called her a ‘mess.’ That was unforgivable. Brutal.”

  “It’s the truth. I work with her, you see how much time I spend trying to lift her out of her slovenly habits, I try my darnedest, and still she comes home with C’s on her report card. I don’t know what to say anymore.”

  Robert stood up, walked to the dresser, where he arranged his combs and brushes in parallels, then walked to the window, where he brought the shade even with the sill.

  The baby made a strong turn or kick inside Lynn. Its weight pulled her so hard, she had to sit down.

  “I can’t stand this,” she said.

  “Well, what do you want me to do? Go around pussyfooting, pretending not to see what I see? Maybe if you kept better order here—”

  “Order? What’s disorderly? Do you mind giving me an example other than the ice cream tonight?”