Whispers

  “Yesterday I said something I perhaps should not have said,” she told Lynn one afternoon. “I remember it now quite clearly, isn’t that odd?”

  “I don’t remember anything,” Lynn assured her, although she did remember and quite clearly too.

  “It was when I showed you the roses that Tom Lawrence brought. I was so surprised. I didn’t expect a visit from him. We don’t know him all that well.”

  “He likes Bruce, that’s no mystery.”

  “That’s what you answered me yesterday. I said, ‘No, he likes you, Lynn.’ We are his contact with you, since he can’t very well see you when Robert’s not there, and he doesn’t want to see you when he is there. That’s what I said, and it upset you.”

  “Not at all. Why should it upset me, since it’s so silly?”

  “It’s you who know the answer to that. But you would never tell me what you think about Tom. You would never tell me anything that really touches you in the deepest part of your heart. You’re too secretive, Lynn.”

  “Secrets, Josie?” Lynn queried gently. “What about you? You’ve been sick for six months and never said a word.”

  “There was nothing you could do!” And as Lynn began to protest, she cried, “Now, don’t scold me again about that!”

  The plaintive tone, so unlike Josie’s clear, brisk way of speaking, was hopeless and, like the wasted hands on the coverlet, helpless.

  And Lynn burst out, “Was I so wrapped up in myself, my new baby, my own life, that I didn’t see what was happening to you? How can I have been so blind to your need?”

  “Lynn dear, no. I had good days and bad ones. I just didn’t let you or anyone see the bad ones. And you are the last person to be accused of self-absorption. It would be better for you if you did think more about yourself.”

  “But I do,” Lynn protested.

  “No, you don’t. You’ve built a wall around yourself. Even your sister knows that. No one can really get through to you. But a person can’t do what you’re doing forever.” Josie turned in the bed, seemed to find a more bearable position, and resumed, “That’s why I wish—I wish you had a man like Tom. I could die knowing that you were being treated well. That you were safe.…”

  “Josie, Josie, I’m fine. I’m safe, dear. And don’t talk about dying!” And don’t talk about Robert.…

  “Yes, now I must. There’s a right time to speak out. Six months ago it wasn’t necessary. Now it is.”

  Lynn looked at the walls, the depressing hospital-green walls that, if they could talk, would tell of a thousand griefs and partings. Now here was another. It was too hard to imagine a day on which she would pick up the telephone to call Josie and have to tell herself that Josie was no longer here.

  “You’ve been my support,” she said, ready to weep. “Whenever I’m worried about Annie, and I worry so about her, you’re my support. You’ve borne all my troubles.”

  Josie’s wan smile was faintly bitter. “No, not all. You skirt around the truth about Robert.”

  “About Robert?” Lynn admonished gently. “But we are very happy, Josie.… Everything’s fine now.”

  “No, no.” Josie’s head rolled back on the pillow. “I’m a social worker, you forget. I see things you could never imagine. I see things as they really are.” Suddenly her fingers clawed at the sheet, and her body writhed. “Oh, why can’t you be honest with me when I’m in such pain, when I have to die and leave Bruce? Oh, God, this pain!”

  Lynn’s heart was bursting. “I’ll get the nurse,” she said, and ran, and ran.

  Even now, half raving, Josie probes, she thought on the way home.

  Josie and Helen.

  It was all too much to contend with. Her deep thoughts ran like an underground river.

  The summer plodded on, creating its own routine. At Robert’s insistence Bruce came almost every evening for dinner before going to the hospital.

  “He must have lost fifteen pounds,” Robert had observed. “We can’t let him go on like that. It’s a question of decent responsibility. He’s part of the firm of GAA, after all.”

  Annie left for scout camp, and Lynn said, “I’m glad she’s gone. It would be too hard for her when—” and glancing at Bruce, she stopped.

  He finished for her. “When the end comes? Annie and I have had some very truthful talks about that, and I don’t think you need to worry about her. She’s quite prepared,” he said firmly, “as I must be.” He smiled. “And am not.”

  No one at the table spoke until Emily said gravely, “This makes everything else in the world seem small, doesn’t it?”

  A heat wave, striking the countryside, struck the human body with intent to draw its breath out. Petunias went limp in the border, and birds were still. Even the dog, after a minute or two outside, panted to get back into the house. And in the air-conditioned house the air was stale. It was as if the very weather had conjoined with events to stifle them all.

  “It takes too long to die,” said Emily.

  And then one morning at breakfast Emily had something else to say, something very serious.

  “You’ll be shocked. I’m scared to tell you,” she began.

  Two startled faces looked up from their plates.

  “I don’t know how to begin.”

  “At the beginning,” Robert said impatiently.

  The girl’s hands clung to the table’s edge as if she needed support. Her eyes were darkly circled, as if she had not slept. She gulped and spoke.

  “I’m not going to go to Yale.”

  Robert stood up, his chair screeching on the floor, and threw his balled napkin onto his plate.

  “What? What? Not going to Yale?”

  “I wrote to them. I want to go to Tulane.”

  My God, Robert’s going to have a stroke, Lynn thought, while into her own neck, the blood came rushing. She could see the beat of the pulses at his temples and put her hand on his arm to warn him.

  “Tulane? Why,” he said, “of course, it’s the southern climate, isn’t it? You like that better. Oh, of course, that must be it.” And he made an elaborate sweep of his arm in mocking courtesy.

  Emily said quietly, “No, Dad. It’s because Harris got a scholarship there.” And she looked without flinching at her father.

  Robert stared back. Two pairs of steady eyes confronted one another, and Lynn glanced toward the girl, so frightened yet firm, and back to the furious man and back to the girl. How could she be doing this to them? She had given her word. How could she be doing this to herself? After all that had been said, all the reasoned explanations, the kind, sensible advice; had it all passed into deaf ears and out again?

  As if she were reading Lynn’s thoughts, Emily said, “I have not lied to you, since that’s what you must be thinking. I have not seen him even once since—since what happened. We do talk on the phone. You know that, Mom.”

  “What?” cried Robert. “You knew they had telephone communication and you allowed it!”

  His anger, like a diverted stream, now rushed torrentially toward Lynn. She braced herself. “Why, yes. I saw no harm in it.” His eyes were hot and were cold; the cold burned like dry ice. “I thought, I mean—”

  “You didn’t think and you don’t know what you meant. It’s just another example of your ineptitude. This whole affair was mismanaged from the start. I should have done what I wanted to do, sent her away to a private school.”

  “A school without telephones?”

  “That could have been managed,” Robert said grimly. He picked up the ball of napkin and hurled it back onto the plate. If it had been hard, it would have shattered the plate. “Dammit, I don’t know how I manage to keep my head. A thousand things on my mind, and now this! If I should have a stroke, you’ll have a lot of questions to ask yourselves, both of you. That’s all—”

  “No. Don’t blame Mom,” Emily said, interrupting. “That’s not fair. The fault is mine. The decision is mine. Dad, I’m nineteen. Please let me have some say in my own life. I’m n
ot trying to defy you, I only want to be happy. We don’t want to be away from each other for four years. No, please listen to me,” she said hurriedly. “There won’t be a repeat of what happened last year. I understand that’s what you’re afraid of. We’ll be very careful, we’ll be so busy keeping our grades up, that we’ll keep all that to an absolute minimum, anyway—”

  Robert roared. “I don’t want to hear about your sex life.”

  “We haven’t had any for a year. I only meant—”

  “I’m not interested, I said!”

  “This is disgusting!” Lynn cried.

  She closed her eyes. How ugly, the three of them on a summer morning filling the blue light with their dark red rage! Her eyelids pressed against her eyeballs, wanting to shut the rage out.

  The dining-room clock struck the half hour.

  “Good Christ,” Robert said. “I’ve got fifteen minutes to get to the station. With luck maybe a truck will hit me on the way, and you’ll all be free to take the road to hell without my interference.” He picked up his attaché case and, at the door, turned around. “You did say you wrote to Yale, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I gave up my place.”

  “Well. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m not going to pay your bill anywhere but at Yale. Is that clear, young lady? You just write to them again and phone or go there and straighten the mess out with them, or you won’t go anywhere. I’m not paying my good money so that you can go and shack up with that boy again.”

  “We won’t.… I told you.… I promise. I’ve kept my promise, haven’t I? If only you would listen …” Emily whimpered.

  “And I told you: no tuition. I hope that’s clear. Is it clear?”

  Wordlessly, Emily nodded.

  “Fine. So don’t waste your energy or mine asking me again. No tuition. Not a penny. That’s it. And it’s your own doing. Now let me get out of here.”

  They stood, each behind her chair, as if frozen there, while the front door sounded its solid thud, and the car’s engine raced, its tires spurted gravel on the drive and squealed around the curve.

  Lynn sat down again, and Emily followed. A conference, it seemed, was called for, although Lynn was too distraught, too confused, to begin one. Emily, with her head down, fiddled with the silverware at her place. Its tiny clash and clink were unbearable, and Lynn scolded.

  “Do stop that.” Then more quietly, she said, “Well, you’ve managed to set the house on fire once again, haven’t you?”

  It was rotten of Emily. Rotten.

  “It’s Dad. He’s unforgiving,” Emily replied.

  “No. He’s crushed, that’s what it is. And don’t dodge the issue. Giving up Yale! After all your effort and our hopes. Why weren’t you at least open about it? We could have talked it over. This is really—it’s really unspeakable. I trusted you. Now you’ve put me in the position of a fool. No, what am I saying? I don’t mean to talk about myself, about your father and me. Never mind us. What about you? What are you doing with your life, you foolish, foolish, capricious, thoughtless girl?”

  “I don’t think I’m foolish or thoughtless, Mom.” The tone was earnest and reasoned, belying the tears that, unwiped, rolled over reddening eyelids. “We want to be married. Oh, not yet. We know it’s much too soon. But we mean it, Mom. Why didn’t I talk about this before I canceled Yale? Because you know as well as I do that Dad would have talked me out of doing what I want to do. He’s so powerful, he gets his way. Oh, I wish our family was like Harris’s family!”

  How that hurt! What else had Lynn ever wanted but to build a life for her children that they would happily remember? And now this girl, across whose face and therefore in whose mind there passed the most delicate and subtle feelings, could wish that they were “like Harris’s family.”

  “Yes? What are they like?” she asked in a dull monotone.

  “Well, we told them how we feel. They aren’t exactly thrilled about our being at college together, but they think we’re old enough to make our own mistakes. His mother said we made one mistake, so probably that would be a warning not to make another. And she’s right. Oh, you think—”

  “You don’t know what I think,” Lynn said with bitterness. And it was a bitter thing to stand between this enmity, daughter against father.

  “Well, Dad thinks—”

  “Yes, try to imagine what he thinks. He works so hard for us all.”

  “He works for his own pleasure, Mom. The way you put it, anytime a person opposes Dad, you lay guilt on the person because Dad ‘works hard.’ Harris’s father works hard too. Do you think a policeman’s life is easy?” Emily’s words came tumbling. “And you needn’t think they’re eager to have Harris marry me. They think too much of their son to have him marry into a family that doesn’t want him. They’re pleased that we’re going to wait. But they do understand that we don’t want to be separated. Is that so bad? Is it?”

  Yes, it was pretty bad, a pretty bad trick this canny girl had played.

  “This is all academic,” Lynn said, “since without money you can’t get to Tulane or any other place.” At that her voice caught in a little sob. “So there go college and medical school. Both. Just like that.”

  “Won’t you give it to me, Mom?”

  “Money? I haven’t got any.”

  “He would really do that,” Emily said, asking a question and declaring a fact at the same time.

  “You know he would.”

  “Then will you give me the money, Mom? Even though you don’t approve?”

  “I just told you, I have none. I haven’t a cent of my own.”

  “Not a cent? None!” Emily repeated in astonishment.

  “I never have had. Your father gives me everything I need or want.”

  The girl considered that. And Lynn, who knew so well the nuances of her daughter’s expression, saw unmistakable distaste and was humiliated by it.

  “Aunt Helen, maybe? For the first semester, at least!”

  “Don’t be silly. Aunt Helen can’t afford it.”

  That was not true. Darwin had been doing well of late, well enough for them to buy a bigger house in a prettier suburb. But she wasn’t going to exhibit her dirty linen to Helen.

  “If I have enough for the first semester, I’m sure I could get a student loan. And I’d find work. I’d take any kind I could get.”

  “It’s not so easy to get a loan. When they find out your father’s position and income, you’ll never get one.”

  “Oh, Mom, what am I going to do?”

  “If I were you, I’d go back to Yale and be thankful.”

  “But you see—I can’t! It’s too late. They’ve already filled my place from the wait list.”

  Stupid, stupid girl … This crushing disappointment, this disaster, made Lynn hard.

  “Then you’ve burned your bridges, so I guess that’s the end of it.”

  Emily stood up. “Then there’s nothing you can tell me.”

  “What can I tell you? Except,” she added, knowing it was cruel to her, “that I’m on my way to visit a dying woman. You may come if you want to.”

  “No. I’m going upstairs.”

  Lynn sat with her face in her hands. She was furious with Emily, and yet felt her daughter’s pain as if it were scarring her own flesh. I suppose, she thought, eventually I will have to go crawling to Helen. I will have to endure her sardonic questions: What are you telling me? That Robert refuses? But it was also likely that Helen would refuse. They had their own children to educate; one son was going to graduate school. The new house was certainly mortgaged; Darwin couldn’t be doing all that well.… Her thoughts unraveled. Maybe as long as it wasn’t where that boy was going, Robert would pay for some other place. But no, he wouldn’t; he had had his heart set on Yale for this brilliant daughter. Robert never changed his mind.

  She got up from the table and went to the window. Outside in the yard Eudora was singing while she hung clothes on the line. Eudora believed that white goods should dry i
n sunlight. Bobby was sitting up in the playpen. Falling backward, he would struggle up again, as if proud of his newfound ability to look at the world from a different angle. Eudora bent to talk to him. The scene was cheerful. It was wholesome. Wholesome. A good word.

  The house inside was unwholesome. From the bottom of the stairs she could see the closed door to Emily’s room and could well imagine that behind the door, Emily was lying facedown on her bed in despair. A part of her wanted to go up and give comfort, to stroke the poor, trembling shoulders. Meager comfort that would be! cried the part of Lynn in which anger was still stone hard.

  She grabbed her car keys and started for the hospital. In the rearview mirror she practiced a noncommittal face, the only decent face to present to a sufferer, surely not tears, not even gravity.

  And yet her resolution failed her. Josie, this day and for a brief hour, was wide awake. Bruce was telling her something about the new cat when Lynn came in.

  “I’m so furious at myself,” she began. “It’s beastly hot, and I made a sherbet for you with fresh raspberries. It even looks cool, and I thought you’d love it, but then I went and forgot it. My mind—” And she clapped her hand to her forehead.

  Josie looked quizzical. “So? What’s your trouble? You never forget things, especially things for me. What is it?”

  “Oh, nothing much, really.”

  But she was bursting; the trouble could scarcely be confined.

  “Tell us,” said Josie.

  So Lynn did. When she had finished her account, Bruce and Josie were somber.

  “She’s tenacious, all right,” Josie said. “You have to admire that much, anyway.”

  Lynn sighed. “Yes, like Robert.”

  “No.” Josie corrected her. “Like herself.”

  It was clear that she didn’t want Emily to resemble Robert. Now in some way, Lynn had to defend him.

  “Emily tricked us into thinking she was finished with Harris. She lied to us.”

  “I don’t remember,” Bruce remarked calmly, “that she ever said she was ‘finished.’ She said she wouldn’t see him all year, and she hasn’t done so.”