Her Father's House

  One other picture in the room was a large framed snapshot of Laura and Gilbert Maples taken on the day a few months ago when they had, albeit quite informally, acknowledged to each other their engagement. They both looked as if they had been laughing. While his light hair was windblown, hers hung long and smooth in a ponytail. His brown eyes smiled. She always thought of them as twinkling, as if he had a big secret that nobody could ever guess.

  Next year they would be graduating, he from the law school, and she from the college, with medical school yet to come. It was all like a dream, she thought as she studied the photograph. This was one of those days when everything from the bright weather to the A on the biochemistry exam was perfect. And having a sudden urge to write in the diary, she began.

  When I read back what I wrote three years ago, I can see a tremendous change in myself. Is it merely the natural difference between the teens and twenty plus, or is it the fact that I am so far from home, forced to grow up because I have no dad and no mom to shelter me? But to be fair, they did much more than shelter me; they pushed me gently ahead on the way they knew I wanted to take. When I think back over those days, I clearly see how I was helped.

  Dad got me the summer job in Dr. Barrett's office. I didn't do much there, but I looked and listened. So many people have helped me. The surgeon who pulled out my wisdom teeth gave me some articles about oral surgery because I was curious. Dr. Scofield wrote that wonderful recommendation for college. Mrs. Bondi, the chemistry teacher, and so many more, did the same. People are still helping me. When I volunteered to work in the university hospital talking to cancer patients, Dr. O'Rourke let me watch an operation; I thought I would be horrified, but I wasn't. I was fascinated. Then there was Professor Reich, who praised my paper on bioethics. He's promised to have it quoted in his article—quoted with my name on it!

  I am so lucky. When I'm feeling superstitious, which I don't feel very often, I wonder whether all these things are too good to last. Gil says that's absolute nonsense. He has so much practical common sense. You have a legal mind, I tell him. I feel his strength. I felt it the first day we met. I didn't realize then how unheard-of it is for a student in law school even to notice an undergraduate. But as they say, something happened between us. And it's still happening wherever we are, in the cafeteria, on a hike, at the movies, or in bed—especially in bed.

  I remember when I was in love with Richard. Now and then I feel a touch of guilt about him. It's not that any definite words were ever spoken, but hadn't our feelings been strong enough, it seems, to warrant some sort of mention now? On the other hand, maybe not. I still love him, but not in any way compared with the way I feel about Gil, or in any way I can easily describe. Maybe an English major could do it, but language is definitely not my field.

  One thing I can say, though: Different as those two men are from each other, each of them reminds me of Dad. Of course it's true that women generally, without even realizing it, choose men who remind them of their fathers. Not one of these three, Dad, Gil, or Richard, is really like the others, but each is sensitive, determined, wise, and kind.

  When Laura closed the red book, she locked it and put it away. Someday, no doubt, she would read what she had written and see herself through the glass of distance much as she now could see her ten-year-old self. Oh, if you could witness the future . . .

  She smiled, yawned, and having moved to the armchair, laid her head back. The day had been long, and the air was heavy with the scent of oncoming spring, not to mention the scent of Mom's gardenia plant. Mom had provided this chair and had dressed the bed with a flowered chintz comforter and pillows; lovingly, she had adorned the stark little room for her daughter.

  “Dr. Fuller, I presume?” The door was ajar, but Gil always knocked before opening. “Loafing again, while I've been in the library since two o'clock?”

  “And I've been in the biology lab.”

  “Hey, what smells so good in here?”

  “The gardenia. It arrived today. Mom raises them. That's her department, fancy shrubs and stuff.”

  “I liked her that time she came here. She's an interesting lady. And her son sounds interesting, too. I've never known anybody who has a degree in forestry.”

  “You'll like Richard. I guarantee.”

  “Was there ever anything between you?”

  “Not really. What makes you ask?”

  “Oh, a guy that good-looking, at least in the picture, and not related, growing up with a stunning girl. It's very possible, isn't it?”

  “Anything's possible, darling. But I happen to be your girl, not anyone else's.”

  “Move over, the chair's big enough for two. My God, you've got the bluest eyes I've ever seen.”

  “They're my mother's, I'm told.”

  Gil turned toward the wall where Rebecca smiled, and then, looking back at Laura, shook his head, declaring that Laura did not resemble her at all.

  “You must be your father's daughter.”

  “Well, you'll meet him when you come down to visit during spring break. Then you can decide for yourself.”

  “Has he never visited since you came here?”

  “No, he doesn't like to travel. Doesn't like leaving the farm.”

  “A typical farmer. A man of few words? I always picture them like that.”

  “What on earth can a New Yorker like you know about farmers? No, he's quite the opposite. He's a historian, a scholar, even an orator. I've heard him at town meetings, and I hear him at home.”

  “How did he happen to end up on a farm?”

  “I guess he just liked it. He grew up on a farm, in Maine.”

  “Well, I'm looking forward to the visit. He needs to know that I'm a responsible man. In the meantime, tomorrow's Sunday, so what about a five-mile hike, a few laps in the pool, and then a fancy dinner at Romeo's?”

  “Romeo's? Hey, listen. It's not my father who's on Wall Street. I've got to watch my money.”

  “What? The daughter of Foothills Farm?”

  “Dad's not the owner. Mom is, and he gets a salary.”

  “I was going to treat you, anyway. I'm old-fashioned, behind the times. Haven't you noticed that I don't let women pay?”

  “I've noticed that you're the sweetest man in the world.”

  “I am? Fine. Show me how sweet I am. Get up from this chair and lock the door.”

  Chapter 21

  That oak you see over there by the fence,” Jim said, “is a hundred years old at least, Gilbert. We're mostly oak and pine in this part of the country. Next time you visit, we ought to take you up for a day's outing through the Great Smokies. You'll see pristine forests, over half a million acres of them. You'll see boulders big as a small house, left over from the Ice Age, things you don't see where you come from.”

  “I hear you don't get up to where I come from very often, Mr. Fuller.”

  “I'm afraid not. I never cared much for traveling, and there's too much work to do here, anyway.”

  “But you have been in New York, haven't you? You must have visited when you lived in Philadelphia. It's only a stone's throw away.”

  “Well, I have, but mostly just passing through.”

  They were all sitting on the porch after supper, Laura feeling at ease with the quiet conversation and happy to be proud of her home. It was almost amusing to contrast this weekend visit to her visit with Gilbert's family in their apartment fourteen floors above an avenue crammed with cars. His were likable people, very bright, and most cordial, but so quick in their ways, and hence so different from the unhurried manner of her life at home.

  “It's too bad Richard isn't here. He could tell you some interesting things about this part of the country. He's taking a short seminar in forestry and couldn't come home this week.”

  “I'd like to meet him.”

  “Why don't you take a walk to the overlook while it's still light?” Kate suggested. “That's really a spectacle, especially just before sunset. It's a bit more than two miles round t
rip, but worth it.”

  Gilbert, always eager to see something new, got up from the rocking chair. “Good idea. Let's do it.”

  “They're great people, your family,” he said as they climbed the hill. “I admire their enthusiasm. I like them, and I hope they like me.”

  “Of course they do. Why shouldn't they?”

  “I don't know. Your dad has mentioned Richard so often that I was wondering whether there was anything . . . well, whether he had any reason to think that you and he . . . that he was in love with you, or you with him.”

  “I was when I was fifteen, but there's nothing left of that now. In fact, I was hoping you and he would meet this week,” Laura said, although that was not quite the truth. She would have been uncomfortable sitting at table with these two men at the same time. Richard had known her most intimate thoughts. . . .

  She laughed. “Richard is a wonderful person, but sometimes it seems that all he thinks about are the environment, conservation, trees, and animal rights.”

  “Then I'm glad. I don't want him to be thinking of you or you to be thinking about anybody but me. Those are my orders.”

  Gil makes light, she thought, when his heart's full. It seemed as if with every passing day she learned something new about him. And reaching upward, she stroked his cheek.

  “Your eyes, Laura. Your grave eyes that I love.”

  Hand in hand they walked, scarcely speaking. The air was fragrant with pine. A fox streaked across the path and scurried into the crackling underbrush. At the final resting point they stopped and gazed, she to whom the sight was one of her first memories, and he who had never seen it before, equally in awe. Five hundred dangerous feet below them in the chasm, the waterfall plunged into the stream. In the distance between the horizon and the mountains lay a far blue haze.

  “So those are the Great Smokies,” Gil whispered. “Aptly named. Beautiful. Beautiful.”

  “We're miles away from them, though you wouldn't think so. This is only hill country where we live.”

  “And you love your hill country.”

  “It gets in your blood, as Dad says.”

  “I can see how it might.”

  “Let's start back. It'll be dark in ten minutes. We should have brought a flashlight. Dad put one in my hand, and I forgot to take it.”

  “He's a remarkable man. Sometimes he talks like a farmer, and then when we were discussing that spy case in Washington, he sounded like a lawyer, like one of my professors.”

  “People often say that about him. People on all the boards he's on, at the hospital, and the Board of Ed, and goodness knows how many others.”

  “They go well together, he and your mom.”

  “Oh, they do. But how can you tell after only two days?”

  “I can't explain how. It's something I sense in people. I don't mean I'm some sort of nut who reads tea leaves, but I have been right a lot of times. Wrong, too, I suppose.” Gil frowned. “I think your dad is a worrier. Am I right?”

  “Oh, definitely. But with a huge responsibility here—we've just added nine hundred acres to the place—I guess it's only natural.”

  “He's probably worried about you, too, my lady.”

  “Me? Whyever should he worry about me?”

  “Because you're a treasure, and people watch over their treasures.”

  Laura could not have explained why, when packing for these two days at home, she had put the diary into her suitcase, but there it was on the table in her room. Nor could she have explained why, after getting ready for bed and about to turn off the light, she suddenly crossed the room, unlocked the red box, and began to write.

  So many times I start the page with the words, It is all a dream. Those are the times when everything in my life is going so well, that I feel as if I don't deserve it. I see so much suffering when I volunteer at the hospital. People are not only sick, but so often they have no love, no family, no one to care about them, which is, I think, worse than having to worry about next month's rent. But then, what can I know when I have so much love and no worries about rent or anything else?

  It is so good to see how Gil and Dad get along. They seem to have so much to say to each other, as if their minds run in the same groove. Although, it did bother me a little when Dad, very tactfully it's true, made that remark in private to me about love at first sight. When I told him how that happened to Gil and me at the very same moment, he said, “I don't believe in it. Maybe sometimes it happens, but I still don't believe in it.”

  Was he talking about himself? And if so, whom does he mean, Rebecca or Kate? But he is obviously so contented with Kate that he must have meant Rebecca, mustn't he?

  It has always puzzled me to sense that sadness when her name is spoken. Or perhaps it is not sadness, but something else, something mysterious and vague.

  Sometimes, now that medical school is only a year away, I think about my ultimate choice of a specialty and wonder about psychiatry. Often, I believe, I can tell when people are hiding their true feelings behind their ordinary, pleasant behavior, their earnestness, or their hilarity. In the library, I came across a fascinating book, The Anatomy of Melancholy, written by a man of the seventeenth century who says a lot of things that Freud wrote about in the twentieth century. Imagine that! Yet the whole thing comes down in a nutshell to the question: Why do we do the things we do?

  I did not want to bring up the subject this week, and haven't done so in a long time, but eventually I shall tell him about the visit to Philadelphia. Actually, it was Gil's idea, on that weekend we flew to New York to visit his parents. It's only a short train ride, so we went, took a taxi to Spruce Street—or was it Pine? I thought I had the right street number, but not being sure, we tried both streets, and couldn't even find the number, so we gave up. I probably had it wrong. Someday, I'll try again. Although it isn't really that important, I want to see that house.

  Richard says it's morbid to bother my father like this. He was annoyed with me when I asked Dad where Rebecca was buried. She was cremated, he said, and I shouldn't ask Dad about it. Maybe he is right. It is morbid.

  The frogs are croaking in the pond behind the stables. It is a nostalgic sound for me, the sound of spring, of being three years old, which takes me as far back as I can remember. I probably don't even remember it then, or if I did hear the sound, I didn't know that frogs were making it. One wonders about the consciousness of a frog; obviously, it has some, but what is it?

  All a mystery. Love is a mystery. At the table where we have our meals this week, there are so many kinds of love. There is Dad's love for Kate, hers for him, hers for me, mine for her, mine for my father, mine for Gil, and his for me. In time, I do believe and hope that Gil will love, and be loved by, Dad and Mom. And then there is Richard also, dear Richard, now and always.

  Yes, it is a mystery and a dream. I don't know why I'm spilling this out on paper tonight. If I could go into Gil's room across the hall, I would spill it all out to him, and he would understand. But even though they certainly know that he and I sleep together, Dad and Mom wouldn't want us to do it in their house, so of course I won't go into his room.

  I am so full of emotion tonight, that I could laugh, or cry, or both. When I look around the room, I remember Felicia my cat, long dead, and how I gave her the name of Richard's junior high school girlfriend. Really, I ought to get a cat tomorrow and name it Felicia to tease him. Every household should have a cat. Yes, that's what I'll do.

  Now close the book and lock it. Good night.

  Chapter 22

  While Laura was writing in her diary, down the hall, Jim was taking a folded newspaper from a drawer and showing it to Kate.

  “Here, look. I clipped this yesterday. I wasn't going to bother you with it, and here I am doing it anyway.”

  “Don't tell me. Another big event with a name you recognize?”

  “Yes, in Venice this time. Well, Venice is a marvel in itself. I've been there twice. But when you add all these names, the money, the fa
shions of the transatlantic shoppers, and the jewelry, it's a dazzle. It's close to blinding. Look. Read.”

  For a few minutes, Kate scanned the page, a thick text with half a dozen photographs of partygoers in gondolas and people standing on flowery terraces.

  “So what do you think this means?” she asked.

  “It's obvious, they're separated. Storm's left her. He's finally had enough, I guess. ‘. . . has taken up residence again at his home on Long Island. Lillian Storm and her companion, the well-known Swiss sportsman Luigi Di Something, have bought a seventeenth-century country house in Tuscany.' Well, well. What else is new?”

  “He looks pretty old, doesn't he? Well, old for her. She looks about twenty-five.”

  “Not bad for a woman of forty-eight. But she knows how to get herself in front of the cameras, and how to take the right pose.”

  “Look at those bracelets. And the lace bodice. She knows how to dress.”

  Hearing the scorn in his own voice, he said, “All it takes is taste and a few million dollars. She's had her lip plumped up, I notice.”

  Kate gave him a look of mingled concern and curiosity. “Dear Jim, still bitter?”

  “I never was bitter, just furious until I got over it. Now I'm only afraid, still afraid.”

  “But think about it. Actually, you have less to fear than ever with Storm and his money and his detectives out of the picture. Not that they ever accomplished anything.” And Kate, coming close to him, laid her head against his chest. “Your heart. I can hear it pounding. Oh, damn her for coming into your life. How do you explain a woman like her? How does she explain herself?”

  “She doesn't, really. She doesn't even try except to say that she gets bored, restless. Nothing and nobody is ever enough for very long.”

  “I suppose one ought to feel sorry for her. In theory I do, if only because she must be suffering terribly, wanting her child.”