Whispers

  Now words came, choking in Lynn’s throat. “You don’t know anything about me!”

  “But I do. I know that lovely girl of yours wouldn’t have sought me out unless she had a great trouble on her mind. She knows plenty, but she wants to know more. I saw. Pull yourself together, my dear; take care of yourself and your children. I know you think I’m queer and maybe I am, but I mean well.”

  The door slammed and cold air struck Lynn’s face. A blast of wind from Canada rounded the stone corner and almost knocked her over as she ran toward Grand Central. Her legs barely held her.

  The soft ones—the sweet apology …

  A strange woman, with those wild eyes. How they must have hated each other! Not like Robert and me because we—in spite of all, we—

  But he lied to me. All those lies. And yet she—is everything she said true?

  Faintly dizzy, she struggled through the wind and the crowds. Within the vast cavern of the terminal “Good King Wenceslaus” reverberated heartily. People returning to their suburban homes were normal; there was reassurance in the cheerful sound of greetings; a fat man clapped another on the back and two matrons squealed with delight at seeing one another. These were common, everyday noises. These were ordinary, everyday people.

  The train clicked over the tracks. It’s true, it’s not, it’s true, it’s not, said the wheels. This had been the worst day.… Lynn laid her head back against the seat. And the woman next to her, young and fashionable with no troubles on her face, asked anxiously, “Are you not feeling well?”

  “It’s only a headache, thank you. I’m all right.” Embarrassed, Lynn smiled.

  The car was parked at the station. When she got in and drove through the town, which looked the same as it had that morning, it seemed astonishing that everything should be the same. Station wagons were parked in the supermarket lot, the yellow school buses were returning to the garage, and the windows were prepared here, too, for the holiday as if nothing of any importance had happened since the morning.

  It seemed too early to go home. Actually, it was early, for she had wanted to make another stop in the city on the way to the train. But after what had happened, she had needed only to rush away. So she stopped the car at a dingy luncheonette on the fringe of the center and sat down to order a pot of tea with a bun. Tea was soothing.

  He kicked me while I lay on the ice with my hip broken. Now, that, that’s hard to believe. Yes, he had bursts of rotten temper—how well I know! But sadism like that, never. No, that’s hard to accept. Out of a kernel of truth, a large kernel, she has developed this sickly growth, this enormous exaggeration.

  She’s odd, filled with rage and, in some way that I can’t diagnose, disturbed. But if she were more, let’s say for want of more accurate words, more reasonable, temperate, sweeter, acceptable, then would I be more apt to believe her?

  Yet even if only some of it is true, how terrible and sad it is that he has needed to conceal it all these years! Why, when I would have tried to help him? Didn’t he know that I would have tried?

  But weigh the sin of his concealment against all our years together, all the good, all the good.…

  The warm cup, held between Lynn’s hands, brought remembrance of her parents, sitting at the kitchen table on other winter afternoons. They had used to hold their cups just so, and the cups had had daisies around the rims. It had been a simple time.… Her eyes flooded, and she thrust the tea away.

  Someone put money in a jukebox left over, probably, from the fifties, and canned voices, moaning over love lost or remembered or found, swelled out into the gray, depressing room. Lynn got up and paid her bill. It was time to pull herself together and go home. It was time, Josie would say, to face reality. Go home and, making no fuss, ask him what you want to know, and tell him what you have found out.

  Robert had put a candle bulb in each window, so that the house appeared to float through the early darkness like a ship with lighted portholes. Through the bow window, where the curtains were still open, she could see him sitting in his big leather chair with Bobby on one knee; they were looking at a book spread on the other knee.

  The little boy adored the man: His dark blue eyes were rounder than Emily’s and Robert’s; they were round like his dear head and his little fat hands. She felt a twinge of pain, like a tender wound, a soft something that was both merciful and sorrowful. For a moment she was almost within their skins, that of the vulnerable baby, and that of the man who perhaps had once known such grievous hurt that he was unable to admit its existence.

  Opening the door, she heard Annie practicing her piano lesson at the other end of the hall, and she paused a moment to listen. Annie was really doing better, doing better at everything. It might be that the new quietness in Robert, the slowing of the house’s rhythm, had affected the child too. It was a strange irony that the father’s most cruel defeat should have brought about a subtle kind of peace that had not been there before, whose absence she had not even been aware of until it occurred.

  The dog jumped to announce her presence and Robert looked up in surprise.

  “Hello! We didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I’ve been watching you. You’re so cozy, you two.”

  “We’re halfway through Mother Goose, up to Little Jack Horner.” He got up, set the baby in the playpen, and kissed Lynn. “You’ve been shopping, I see. Did you buy anything nice?”

  “I hope you’ll think so. It’s your Christmas present.”

  “Didn’t we promise each other just books this year? And now you’ve gone and broken your promise,” he said with a rueful smile.

  “This wasn’t horribly expensive, honestly. It’s a picture. Open it.”

  “Why not wait till Christmas?”

  “Because I don’t want to wait.”

  Bobby, attracted by the crackle of paper as Robert cut the string, stretched out his arms as if he could reach the bright redness and the crackle. And something caught again in Lynn’s chest, in her heart and throat, at the sight of the merry child and the father’s dark head bent over the package.

  Surely this family’s path would straighten and all the past evil be forgotten! This was only a sharp turning in the path, a crooked obstacle to be got over, and she would get over it. There was so much else to be thankful for; no one had cancer, no one was blind.…

  “Wherever did you find this?” Robert cried. “It’s Juliet to the life. Fantastic!”

  “I thought you would love it.”

  “It’s wonderful. Dog portraits are always the same, spaniels or hounds or faithful collies. Thanks a million, Lynn.”

  “You’ll never believe where I found it. Quite by accident, I saw it in a window on the way to the train, in a tiny gallery called ‘Querida.’ ”

  Robert’s face changed. As if a hand had passed over it, the eyes’ lively shine, the smile crinkles at their corners, the smile pouches of the cheeks, and the happy lift of the lips were wiped away. And she saw that he was waiting for the words that would come next, saw that, quite understandably, she had stunned him.

  “The odd thing is that it really was she. I couldn’t believe it. It was when I showed the American Express card and she recognized the name.”

  Say nothing about Emily having been there. Be careful. Nothing.

  “Very interesting.” He clipped the words like a stage Englishman. “Interesting, too, that you didn’t turn right around and walk out.”

  “But I wanted the painting,” she protested, and was aware, even as she spoke them, that the words were too innocent. Then she added, “Besides, it would have been awkward just to turn on my heel and leave.”

  “Oh, awkward, of course. Much easier to stay and have a cozy chat with the lady.”

  Robert’s eyes narrowed, and he straightened his posture. As always, it seemed that he grew taller when he was angry. And in dismay she knew that he was very, very angry.

  This was not what she had expected; perhaps she’d been foolish to think he would defend him
self. Instead he was on the attack.

  “There was no chat. I was only there for the time it took to pay and have this wrapped. It was only a minute. A couple of minutes,” she said, stumbling over the defense.

  “So you didn’t open your mouths, either of you.” He nodded. “After that astonishing revelation there was total silence, I’m sure.”

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “I suppose you got quite an earful about me.”

  It was he who was to have been on the defensive, he who was to have been scared. How had the tables been turned like this? And she murmured, almost coaxing now, “Why no, Robert, not at all.”

  “I don’t believe it. Your curiosity would have kept you listening, with your ears open and your mouth hanging open, while your husband was smeared with filth. Don’t tell me not, Lynn, because I know better.” He was trembling. “Talk about loyalty! If you had any, you wouldn’t have entered there in the first place.”

  “How would I know? How could I have known?”

  “You knew damn well that that—creature—played around with art and worked in a gallery. You didn’t forget that, Lynn. And the name—you didn’t forget that either. You could have thought, when you saw that name—it wasn’t Susan, it wasn’t Mary; do you see it on every street corner? You could have thought, Well, maybe it’s possible, I won’t take a chance. But your curiosity got the better of you, didn’t it?”

  The iota of accuracy in what he said brought a flush of heat that ran up her neck and scorched her cheeks.

  “Well, didn’t it?”

  His voice rose and filled the room so that Bobby, hearing the unfamiliar tone, turned a puzzled face to his father.

  Now Lynn had to go over to the attack. “You’re impossible! How can you have so little understanding, when my only thought was to bring you something that might make you a little bit happy in these hard days? And I did cut her short. I didn’t want to hear anything, so I walked out when she—”

  “You cut her short? But you just told me nothing was said. You’d better get your story straight.”

  “You get me all mixed up. You tie my tongue. When you’re like this, I can’t even think straight. I get so muddled, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “You’re muddled, all right. Now, listen to me—I want to know exactly what was said, and you had better tell me exactly.”

  Like a whip he sprang and grasped her arms at the place where he had always grasped before, in the soft flesh above the elbow. His hard fingers pressed his thumbs against the very bone.

  In the playpen the baby now pulled himself up and stood swaying against the railing. His wide eyes stared at them.

  “Let go,” Lynn said, keeping her voice low for Bobby’s sake.

  “I want an answer, I said.”

  The pain was horrible, but she still spoke evenly. “Keep your voice down, Robert. The baby’s terrified. And do you want Annie to hear this too?”

  “I want to know what that crazy woman said, that’s what I want. Answer me!”

  He shook her. There was a fierceness in his expression that she had never seen there before, something desperate and grim, something fanatical. And, more frightened than she had ever been, she began to cry.

  “Ah, the tear machine. Don’t answer a simple question. Just turn on the tear machine.”

  He shook her so violently that her neck jerked.

  “Robert, let go! I’ll have to scream, and everybody will know. This is insane. Look at the baby!”

  Bobby’s wet pink mouth hung open and his round cheeks were puckering toward tears. “Look what you’re doing to the baby!”

  “Then talk.”

  “All you do is find fault with me! I can’t stand it!”

  In a nasal whine he mocked her. “All I do is find fault with you. You can’t stand it.”

  The baby rattled the playpen, fell on his back, and wailed. And Lynn, frantic now with fright and pain and concern over Bobby, screamed out, “Let go of me, Robert! Damn you—”

  “Talk, and I will.”

  There was a tumult within her, the desperation of a captive who has been wrongly accused, a victim of terror. And this desperation exploded.

  “All right, I’ll talk! Enough of lies! Let the truth blare! Why have you hidden yourself from me all these years? I had thought to talk to you in a civil way and ask you why you never trusted me enough to be open with me. Why did you hide what your father did to your mother? Oh, I see now why Aunt Jean was never welcome! It’s you! You didn’t want her around for fear she would say too much. And why? Did you think so little of me as to believe I wouldn’t understand about your family? Did you think so little of yourself that you had to invent a family? Why do you feel that you have to be without flaw, descended from saints or something?”

  She saw the pulses throbbing in his temples, where suddenly on each a crooked blue vein had swelled. And now that she had begun, now that the pressure of Robert’s hands was unbearable, she, too, screamed, not caring or able to care who heard.

  “Why did you tell me Querida was beautiful and rich? To make me jealous? Why didn’t you tell me about her broken hip? Why have you lived with all these lies, so that I’ve had to live with them too? Now I see, I see it all. My life, my whole life … What’s the matter with you? What have you done?”

  Her words tumbled and raced and would not cease.

  “A sham, a cover-up, all the excuses I made because I wanted not to admit anything. I needed to keep the dream. She told me everything you did to her, Robert, everything. She said—”

  He let her go. He picked up the painting, raised it high, and brought it down hard, splintering the frame and ripping the canvas from top to bottom over the back of a chair. The baby screamed; in a distant room the piano sounded a smashing discord and stopped. The vandalism was atrocious. He was panting like an animal.

  “You disgust me!” she cried. “People should know this, should see what you can do! Yes, you disgust me.”

  He struck her. A violent blow landed on her neck, and she fell back, crashing into the playpen. When she picked herself up, he struck her again, grazing her eye as she turned, gasped, and tried to flee. With his left hand he seized her collar; his right fist smashed her nose so hard that the crack was audible, as bone met bone. Blood gushed; she reached for support, but there was only empty air. The room slowly circled and tilted around her as she fell, and was still.

  She had fallen or been laid upon the sofa. Vomit and blood had smeared her white silk shirt, and for some reason that later she was to find incredible, this damage to the shirt was the first thing she saw. It was a terrible humiliation. She heard herself wail, “Oh, look!” She sobbed. In a confusion of sound and sight she seemed to see Eudora clutching Robert’s coat and screaming at him, “What the hell have you done?” At the same time she seemed to see Eudora holding Bobby on one arm while Annie, somewhere at her side, was crying.

  Next came the pain in a wave of fire, so that, as if to cool it, she pressed her hands to her face, then drew them away in revulsion over her own sticky blood.

  The room was filled with a swelling crowd of many people, many voices making a vast, low roar. But after a while she knew that the roar was only in her head. When she opened her eyes again, she began to distinguish among the faces. Eudora was still holding Bobby. Annie was at the foot of the sofa. Somebody was wiping her face with a cold towel; the hands were gentle and very careful. She focused her eyes. The room had stopped circling, and things had righted themselves so that she began to see quite clearly. It was Bruce who stood over her holding the towel.

  “What are you doing here?” she whispered.

  “Annie called me.” He took his glasses off and wiped them. His eyes were moist, as though they might have held tears; yet at the same time they were fierce. His mouth, his full-lipped, easy mouth, was a hard line. “You fainted,” he said.

  Annie knelt and laid her face on Lynn’s shoulder, whimpering, “Mommy. Oh, Mommy.”

&nbsp
; “Careful, dear. Her face is sore,” said Bruce.

  Now came Robert’s voice. “I’ve got the ice bag. Move away a little, Annie.”

  “Don’t you touch her,” Bruce commanded. “The ice bag can wait a minute.”

  “I have a first-aid certificate,” protested Robert.

  “You know what you can do with your goddamn certificate! She’ll see a doctor after she’s pulled herself together. You keep away from her, hear?”

  Now Robert moved into view, his eyes and his voice making joint appeal.

  “Oh, God, Lynn, I don’t know how to say what I feel. I never intended … But things just got out of hand.… We were both angry.…”

  Bruce shouted, “Oh, why don’t you shut up!”

  “Yes, why don’t you?” Annie repeated. Her head was buried in her mother’s shoulder while her mother’s arm held her.

  “Annie dear,” Bruce said, “your mother will be happier, I think, if you go upstairs. I know this is awfully hard for you, but if you’ll just try to be a little patient, we’ll talk about it in the morning, I promise.”

  Robert coaxed. “Don’t worry about Mom. It looks worse than it is. I’ll see that she’s taken care of. Do go up, darling.”

  When he moved toward her, as if to take her away from the sofa, Annie scrambled up out of his reach and, with her hands on her chubby hips and her eyes streaming tears, defied him.

  “I’m not your darling. You’re an awful father, and Susan was right. You do hit Mom. I saw you just now, I saw you. And, and—I never told anybody, but sometimes I have a dream about you, and I hate it because it wakes me up and I feel so bad, and I tell myself it’s only a dream, but now, now,” she sputtered, “look what you did! It’s as horrible as the dream!”

  “What dream, Annie? Can you remember it?” asked Bruce.

  “Oh, yes. I see Mom in a long white dress, wearing a crown on her head and he—he is hitting her.”

  This blow, this other kind of blow, struck Lynn again between the eyes. And it had struck Robert hard, too, for, dazed as she was, she was able to see how clearly he was recalling that night of the New Year’s Eve costume party, so long ago. Annie had been no more than three.…