Her Father's House

  “Aren't you going to say anything, Donald?”

  For once he was unable to speak. He could only put his arms around her, and blink away a few tender tears.

  Chapter 5

  Suddenly, as when fresh air sweeps through an overheated space, there was a change in the atmosphere. There was a change in the tone, as if no voice had ever been harsh and no mean words ever spoken. Donald was determined that it should be so, for did not marriage, like the start of a new career or a move to another continent—yet a far more drastic change than either of these—require a time for settling in, or getting used to the newness?

  He still winced at the scorn she had flung at him, although he felt this was immature and served no end.

  In her own way, she apologized. “You're physically so powerful, so strong, Donald, that to look at you nobody would guess you are so soft inside. I really should try to remember it, shouldn't I?”

  “You're quite all right as you are. Let's just be glad about this news. You are glad, aren't you?”

  “Well, it is a bit early and certainly unplanned, but I am. Yes. Of course I am.”

  At the office he heard himself being as ridiculously pleased with himself as all his friends had been when they made their big announcement. With some amusement, he saw his own future, carrying photographs in his wallet and trading the usual anecdotes about babies.

  “You and Lillian really ought to go someplace,” one of his friends advised. “You're going to be tied down for a good long time. People don't hop over to Europe or California with a new baby, you know.”

  So the idea was born. In spite of all Donald's travels from Bangkok to Helsinki and in between, he had somehow skipped Italy; Lillian had often said she would love to see Italy again; therefore, they would go to Italy.

  He was glad to let her make all the arrangements for the trip, the clothes, the hotels, the itinerary, and the new luggage. Really delighted, she glowed with excitement as if, he thought, there were lighted candles behind her face. And with the thought there came an instant's recall of that day in the pocket park, of her blue eyes, and her voice, and her delicate fingers peeling an orange.

  The weather was lovely, cool and sunny. In Rome they walked on cobblestones through narrow streets, past massive medieval palaces. They saw cathedrals, fountains, majestic statues, and some of the greatest art in the world. In a rented car they drove on shady roads between umbrella pines in stately rows; they wandered through Hadrian's villa one day and returned to the city for dinner at a restaurant in a garden walled by cypress trees.

  “I didn't need a guidebook or a guide,” he told her. “You must have been born here in another life, you know it so well.”

  “Wait till you see Venice,” she said.

  “Are you sure you haven't been walking too much?” he said, worrying. “All these hills and steps? Everywhere we go there seem to be a million steps to climb.”

  “I'm fine. They don't bother me. There's nothing fragile about being pregnant, you know.”

  Actually, he did not know anything about the condition. Of course, one sometimes did still hear those old wives' tales about women waking up in the middle of the night with a terrible craving for strawberries or whatnot. There were no signs of anything like that in Lillian. As she said, she did not feel in any way different.

  Yet there did seem to be a difference. At night she had no energy left. As soon as she lay down, she fell immediately asleep. Wondering about that, he tried a few times to arouse her, but since he seemed only to be disturbing her, he concluded that this must be an effect of her condition and that he ought not bother her. Once they were home, he would ask her to speak to her doctor about it. He had never heard that a man must make exceptions for a pregnant woman, but then he had never had any reason to discuss the matter.

  Venice was the next trove of treasure. Arriving by train from Rome, they took a few steps up to the Grand Canal, where they boarded a boat. Within a minute or two it passed beneath the Rialto Bridge, which brought at once to Donald's mind the ninth-grade classroom and his Merchant of Venice in its dark green paper jacket.

  “Look, look!” cried Lillian, pointing left and right. “There's a marvelous Tintoretto in that church. We'll have to see that. And over there, the Ca' Rezzonico, it's a palace with everything you can think of—Tiepolo, frescoes, tapestries—oh, look now. People, terribly rich people, actually live all along here in these marvelous mansions.” She was almost breathless. “We need a month in Venice, and probably that wouldn't be enough. Now we're passing the Accademia, such paintings, such precious things, Donald! We're almost at the hotel, we'll have dinner and rush out first thing in the morning.”

  “You seem to have traveled all over Italy,” he remarked that evening. “Just you alone? Or with your friend Betty?”

  “Oh, I made many friends, American students and Italians, too.”

  “You've picked up the language very quickly.”

  “Yes, it's a beautiful language, isn't it? By the way, when you meet Betty in Florence, you must call her ‘Bettina.' She's become very Italian.”

  Donald watched her. She was loving it all, the elegant dinner table on the water's edge, the church across the canal that she had lost no time in telling him was called the Santa Maria della Salute; she was loving the way she was able to translate for him; she must surely love the woman in flowered silk whom she had seen in the mirror upstairs.

  “I'm beginning to show,” she said.

  “Not yet, but soon you will, I guess.” And then, because he thought that perhaps she had sounded a trifle petulant, he asked, “Do you mind?”

  “Not if it's only temporary. I should hate to get droopy, though, or ever have stretch marks.”

  “If you ever have stretch marks, no one will see them except me, and I won't mind,” he said gently.

  “Well, let's not talk about them, anyway. Tomorrow we're going to explore. I know all the little campi where the people live. I'll show you the real life, not only the great sights.”

  She could have been a teacher, he thought, as he walked with Lillian and listened to her. Then he corrected himself: No, not a teacher, but one of those entertaining and intellectual beauties that you read about in biographies of emperors and kings.

  “I've saved the best for the last,” Lillian said on the final morning in Venice. “For me, at least, Florence is the best. And there's a lot to see on the way there, too, so that's why I thought we'd get a car and drive.” She wanted to do the driving. “I know the roads, you see. I can't believe how much I remember. So you just look and take it all in.”

  It was Donald's intention to take it all in. He had a habit after seeing things memorable of testing himself to find out how much of the color, the shape, and the history would remain in his head. And on this day, by late afternoon when they reached Florence, he already knew what would remain vividly and always in his head.

  They had passed a cemetery where soldiers of the Second World War lay among flags and cypress trees. His mind had leapt then to another cemetery on the coast of France where, under American flags whipping on the wind from the Atlantic, he had stood looking at his father's grave. By what curious connection his mind should take still another leap, he could not have said; he only knew that an acute sensation gripped his throat, and words burst from it. “I hope it's a boy. I really want a son.”

  “Do you think about this all the time, Donald? Are you going to keep it up for the next six months, for heaven's sake?”

  “I don't know. Why? Are you telling me that you don't think about the baby?”

  “Not if I can help it. I live for today.”

  He looked at her. Even though the afternoon sun was falling full upon him, he felt a wave of chill. We don't know each other. I don't know her, he thought. And it was as if these last few lovely weeks had never happened.

  “We're almost there,” she said. “There's just enough of the afternoon left for us to see the Duomo. It's the next-largest cathedral in Italy,
you know, after the Vatican. Tomorrow morning we'll walk around the central city. It's not more than a mile wide. After that, we'll start the museums. And after that, we'll meet Bettina for dinner. I can't wait.”

  Like a child obediently walking with an adult, Donald examined the inside and the outside of the cathedral. He saw and listened, yet all the time his own words were beating a rhythm in his head: I don't know her. We don't know each other.

  And then a kind of fear began to creep through him, a fear of himself. Was he to go on like this, darkening the light because she had spoken with what had seemed a flip indifference to the coming child? True, she very often said things that he, and many other people, too, would probably not say. The word “boring” had been a very hurtful thing to him, and he had still not quite forgotten it. Yet there must be many who would simply have replied in kind and then forgotten the whole business.

  Yes, he was touchy. Quite tough when he was out in the world and toughness was required, he was touchy at home with Lillian. She had such great power to hurt him! Perhaps that was normal in such a close relationship. He didn't know. After all, he had never had such a close relationship before.

  They walked back along the Arno to their hotel. Coming and going, a stream of walkers flowed. For six hundred years they had been crossing this river on the old bridge; plagues and wars, that terrible last one, had wrought their terror here and still, new generations kept coming to live and love and walk. He began to feel somewhat small and foolish. A foolish worrier over small things. Stop it, Donald Wolfe, stop it, he said to himself.

  “That's the Pitti on the other side, Donald. I think we'll start there tomorrow. It has the most marvelous gardens on the hill behind it. You'll love it.”

  And so it happened. By the next day it seemed as if all his heavy spirits had completely vanished, and his normally high spirits had taken their place. Fine weather, peace, and the prospect of a good dinner at the end of the day—what else could anyone ask for?

  Lillian's friend Bettina was a vivacious woman, very bright, and very much like Lillian without possessing her beauty. The young man Giorgio who was with her gave Donald a cordial handshake and cordial smile, but since he spoke only a few stumbling words of English, Donald could have no opinion of him other than that he appeared to be prosperous and that he wore a wedding band on his left hand.

  Two sets of conversation, each of them three-cornered, crossed the table, one in Italian and the other in English. The Italian one was often interrupted by hilarity, so that Donald had to guess whether they were telling jokes or else recalling some shared past experiences. He thought it must be the latter because Lillian seldom told jokes and she was taking a large part in this conversation. She was, in fact, the center of it.

  Since Donald had nothing else to look at unless he were to stare rudely at strangers, he began to study the little scene at his own table. He thought about the unusual contrast between Lillian as she calmly fitted herself into an evening with his friends from the law office and the Lillian who was now in motion, her eyes flashing, the diamond flashing on her gesturing hand, her head thrown back as her uninhibited loud laughter rang.

  She was at home with these people. He had never seen her quite like this, and he was beginning to wonder how long it would be before her energy would be exhausted, when Bettina suddenly interrupted everything.

  “We are being very impolite to your husband, letting him sit here in silence without understanding a word. I have to tell you, Donald, all of Lillian's friends, all of us here, were dying to meet you. The last thing we ever expected was to see her settled. Lillian settled! You know what I mean? And pregnant, too!”

  It seemed to Donald that the remark, the question, and the facial expression that went with it were all intended as a challenge. And having no intention of meeting it, he answered calmly with a question of his own.

  “Why? Is that so unusual?”

  “Oh yes, for Lillian it is. But we love her all the same. Everybody loves Lillian.”

  “Very intelligent of them.”

  “Ah, but what is it about you that made her choose you? Besides your intelligence and good looks, of course.”

  The question, delivered with chin in hand and widened eyes, meant to be both innocent and coy, was extremely distasteful to him. What kind of a ridiculous answer did the woman expect?

  “You'll have to ask Lillian,” he replied.

  “Well, tomorrow I'll do that. I have a car, and I'm going to take you around in it. I'll show you the outskirts, places too far to walk to, and we'll have a great day.”

  “That's too much trouble for you,” Donald objected, since he did not want this woman's company. “We'll rent a car if we need one.”

  “Oh, no. Lily and I have it all arranged.”

  Sly, he thought. It may seem far-fetched, but in a certain way, she reminds me of Cindy. Back at the hotel when Lillian asked him what he thought of Bettina, he told her just that.

  “My God, but you can say the most absurd things, Donald. You are so judgmental. A judge, sitting in court and pronouncing sentence.”

  “It's you who are being absurd. That word ‘judgmental'—it's the ‘in' word, isn't it? Don't we make judgments every day, what to get for dinner, what shoes to buy? I'm not interfering with your friendship, am I? You asked for my opinion, and I gave it. That's all. By the way, who is Giorgio?”

  “Don't tell me you don't approve of him.”

  “I don't know a thing about him. How can I, when I wasn't able to understand a word he said? The only thing I did notice was his wedding ring. He and Bettina aren't married, are they?”

  “No, no, Giorgio has a wife and three children. But he doesn't intend to leave home. Divorce isn't the thing in Italy the way it is with us. Anyway, he doesn't want one. He seems to like things the way they are.”

  “So then Bettina is something like an extra wife, a spare.”

  Lillian laughed. “You should see your face! You really don't have to look so sarcastic. Sometimes you remind me of—”

  “Of what?”

  “Oh, I don't know. It's just that we do annoy each other sometimes, don't we?”

  As she stood at the window, her profile was in full view, so that for the first time he became aware of a very small bulge developing below her belt. The sight of it, this evidence of the new life, was suddenly confusing and very moving to him. So he replied very gently, “All of us annoy all of us sometimes. It's only natural. Listen. Let's rent a car for tomorrow and keep the day for ourselves, shall we? Call off your friend.”

  “How can I possibly do that? She's planned the whole thing. Oh, do be nice to her, Donald.”

  He was silent. When was he ever not nice to anybody? And yes, they did annoy each other. His mind, his mood, and his very heart kept switching back and forth between bleak disappointment and cheer. But he must try to make cheer triumph! He must make these last few days, this end of the vacation, as pleasing as the first days had been.

  In the front seat of the car the next morning, the women chatted. He understood that these two friends had a few years of separation to make up for, but at the same time, he felt keenly what was unmistakably Lillian's indifference. And he watched her as he might never have watched her before.

  In the churches and on the village streets near the city, he walked with the women, and yet he was not with them. He knew that men here in this country were more frank in their approach to women than they were at home; it was the custom. He also knew through observation that most women seemed not to pay attention. But these two, Lillian and Bettina, returned each frank stare with an inviting smile. They preened. They were two birds ruffling their feathers. They were a pair of pretty cats grooming themselves. And as they walked, he fell farther and farther behind them, thinking and trying not to think.

  At noon they drove downhill and stopped for lunch at a piazza on a hill above the city. Here Lillian resumed her role as Donald's guide.

  “You can see the whole of Florenc
e from here. There's the Arno, curving down from the hills. That soft green, those patches over there, are olive trees. I always think it's such a superb shade of green. There's nothing quite like it. Look there; you can see the old city wall, or what's left of it. Isn't it superb?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  But Donald was only half aware of it all. Fear was what he felt, as if some crisis were approaching, a thing enormous yet unknown, so that he could make no preparation for it. Like a living thing, its fingers went running all over him. Never in his life had he felt anything quite like it. And while he pretended to be overlooking the marvelous view, he tried to control and account for this fear: his feelings about his wife and hers for him? The coming child? The spurious calm?

  “Oh, I adore it.” That was Lillian's voice, a musical chime. “What I want is a villa here, to live among all this for six months every year.”

  She was talking nonsense. How could he have failed to notice before now how often she did, and how often in the midst of a present for which any sensible person would be grateful, she looked toward some unrealistic, grandiose future?

  He was breaking off a piece of bread, eating without appetite, when suddenly, with no warning, she jumped out of her chair and cried out.

  “Oh my God, Betty, look who's in that car—over there—is he coming in? Quick, I'll hide in the ladies' room, come get me when it's safe, oh my God, I'm shaking—”

  Donald stood up to look where she had pointed. “What's wrong? Who is that?”

  “Just a man she used to know. Don't worry,” Bettina said. “Sit down, she'll be all right. It's nothing.”

  “But what scared her? Who is he?”

  “Please, Donald, sit down, don't attract attention. He knows me, too.”

  “Look, Bettina. You're talking to Lillian's husband. I need to know what this is all about.”

  “Much ado about nothing. They went around together for quite a while, then they broke up and he was furious. It's an old story.”