Crossroads

  “How can you say that? Stan has his own business, for heaven’s sake! And he’s making a go of it too.”

  “And admirable as that is, I’m not talking about his ability to earn a living.”

  “If you think I’m the first girlfriend he’s ever had, think again.”

  There was a pause. Cassie was choosing her words carefully now. “Gwen, the fact that you could even say something like that shows me how naïve you are. I’d be stunned to hear that Stanley Girard hasn’t had many other ‘girlfriends’ in the course of his career.” There was another, even longer pause. “But I would be willing to venture a guess that you are the first one of your—as you put it—status.”

  “Which means ‘class.’ ”

  Cassie shook her head in disbelief. “All right, if you must, yes.

  It is a question of class, but not in the way that you mean. As I see him, Stanley Girard is a man who is either so smug or so lazy that he refused an opportunity to better himself, and—”

  “Because he didn’t want to go to college? Who says going to college automatically means you’re bettering yourself?”

  “Society does.”

  “We’re back to class again.”

  “We’re where we always are when it come to that man. He has nothing to offer you. He wants to install air conditioners and refrigerators for a living, Gwen. There’s nothing wrong in that, but you were raised for more. You live in a home of great refinement, you have been surrounded by people who believe in achievement. You are well read, you love the classics; great literature and music and art. You and Stan are not equals. And if there is one thing I’ve learned in this life it is that the man you choose must be your equal.”

  But now it was Gwen’s turn to shake her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. You’re supposed to be a good person. That doesn’t mean you just give a lot of money to charity, it means you keep an open mind about people. And you don’t write them off because they can’t quote some dead poet, or they aren’t in a profession you find admirable.”

  “I would never do that, and you know it. I have standards, and I’m proud of it. But they are based on character traits, like discipline, a strong work ethic, and yes, a healthy ambition.”

  “And you know Stan is lacking in all of that? How? You haven’t talked to him for more than twenty minutes.”

  “There are times when twenty minutes is more than enough.”

  “But you don’t know him!”

  “Then let’s say, I’m giving you my impression of him. And I’m not such a bad judge of people.”

  Now it was Gwen’s turn to get up and start for the door. But before she opened it she looked back. “I want you to know . . . I’m not going to stop seeing him.”

  “I haven’t asked you to.”

  “And you can’t drive him away. He’s much too strong to allow himself to be scared off—even though you can’t see that in him.”

  “I don’t intend to meddle, Gwen. It’s not my way, and you should know that.”

  But you don’t like him. And I want you to! I wish I didn’t but I do, Gwen thought. Frustrated with herself more than Cassie, she opened the door to leave the room.

  Cassandra’s voice stopped her. “Think about what I’ve said, for his sake as well as for yours, Gwen. He’s in over his head.” She closed her eyes as though what she was about to say was going to be difficult for her. “I’ve often wondered about your father . . . would he have done the things he did if he had married someone . . . at his own level? I had the money and the house and the business—it was all mine, and that was too much for him. Maybe if he hadn’t had to prove himself . . . maybe he would have been different.”

  “Stan would never feel he had to prove anything,” Gwen said strongly.

  Cassandra opened her eyes and looked directly into Gwen’s. “I thought that too—once.”

  There was no way to answer that, nothing more to be said. Gwen opened the door and walked out. But Cassie’s words—her sad, bitter words—followed Gwen into the hallway. I’ve often wondered about your father . . . would he have done the things he did if he had married someone . . . at his own level. . . .

  And Gwen was still so very young that she hadn’t learned that there was no answer for a thought like that.

  * * *

  After Gwen stormed out of the den, Cassie sat staring with unseeing eyes at the fireplace. Anyone watching her would have said her mind was a blank. They would have been wrong. There was a familiar picture in her mind of Gwen taking her place as the owner of the glassworks, and the mistress of this very house. Now, more than ever, that was Cassie’s dream, and to give up on her daughter would be unthinkable. Cassie had hoped they would find a new closeness in Paris, but thanks to Jewel Fairchild they had not. However, it could still come.

  If only Gwen hadn’t met Stanley Girard! The first thing Cassie had thought of when she met him was her own first marriage and the costly mistakes she had made. Not that Stan had anything in common with the late Bradford Greeley—except a lack of money or the means of ever earning much. But Stan with his earthiness and simplicity could be every bit as seductive as Bradford, especially to a dreamer like Gwen. She probably saw him as a working-class hero; a sort of glorified man of the people. Yes, that would appeal to her with her sense of justice and fair play. She would deliberately blind herself to the very real pitfalls in such a romance. And a romance was what she was embarked on—that much was clear. Cassie shuddered. All she wanted to do was protect Gwen from the same kind of unhappiness she had suffered. Was that so wrong?

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Wright Glass Museum is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary today and there’s going to be a big blowout,”Gwen told Stan during the phone call which had become a daily occurrence for them. It was now several days after her futile confrontation with Cassie. “The museum was built by Mother’s father to showcase the Wright Studio Glass line,” she went on. “That’s the handmade division; it’s considered one of the great producers of glass artwork—collectors buy a lot of their pieces and so do museums. . . .”

  And I’m babbling on about all of this because I want to ask Stan something and I’m nervous. Get on with it, Gwen.

  “Anyway, there’s a luncheon and about a hundred speeches and then an awards ceremony. Mother and Walter will be doing all the rounds, and they’ll be gone for hours, so I was wondering . . .” She drew a big breath. “I was wondering if you would like to come out here to the house to have lunch with me today.” She waited for his answer and realized she was now holding her breath. She wanted him to say yes so very much. Part of the reason was defiance; she knew that. Cassie was opposed to Stan and not willing to listen to reason so Gwen was determined to bring him into the house behind her back. But she had another reason too. She wanted Stan to see the land she loved so much. The house didn’t matter as far as she was concerned, and besides, he had already seen some of it—well, the foyer anyway. And he’d seen the gardens and the lawns bordered by the red maples. But he hadn’t seen her magical spot on the hillside; he hadn’t seen her forest. She wanted him to experience it. So she had asked him—boldly—to come to her house when her mother wasn’t home. And because he was a proud man who would never go where he wasn’t wanted, she was afraid he would say no.

  “What time would you like me to show up?” he asked. It was amazing the way he never ever failed her.

  * * *

  “Sometimes I almost don’t like Cassie at all,” Gwen told Stan. They had just finished lunch—sandwiches which Gwen, not the maid, had made and served. She’d brought them outside to him and they’d sat at one of the round tables with the big flowered umbrellas that Cassie had bought so Gwen could entertain her young friends. Her appropriate young friends. “I know it’s wrong of me to feel the way I do about Mother, because she’s such a good person. But sometimes, I want more . . . well, just more.” Gwen faltered. Missy and Hank were sitting at her feet, hoping for scraps, and she r
eached down to scratch two sets of ears. “As long as life moves smoothly, Mother’s satisfied. In my friends’ houses you hear people argue. Sometimes you can even hear a plate crashing onto the kitchen floor—you know what I mean. In this house that would be a catastrophe! No, it would be . . . I don’t know what it would be, because it’s so impossible that I can’t imagine it!” She giggled. “When I was in high school, mother decreed that for one evening a week we had to speak French during dinner. Poor Walter doesn’t understand a word of it.”

  “How did he know what was going on?”

  “He got very good at reading our body language. He said it was a help in his work—it gave him a new insight into his subjects when he was painting them.”

  “He sounds like a very . . . adaptable man.”

  “He has to be. He really loves Mother, and you have to be adaptable to live with her.”

  “I guess it just goes to show that there is someone for everyone,” Stan said. He turned to her and there was something in the way he gazed at her that made her look away. He seemed to realize it, because he looked away himself and said, “But what was the reason for French at the dinner table?”

  “Why, it was me, of course. So I could get into intermediate French right away when I went to college.” She divided the sandwich crusts on her plate, and fed equal shares to the waiting dogs. “And the thing is, I don’t want to go.”

  “Not even to the local college here? I thought Yale was the problem.”

  Gwen shook her head. “I just don’t want to put off my life for another four years.” Stan was looking at her intently now. “I’ll always learn what I want to learn, that’s the way I’m made. And I’ll always find out what I need to know. So what’s the point of going to classes I’ll never remember because someone says I have to, or reading books I’ll forget because someone says I can’t pass their class unless I do?”

  “There’s no point,” he said slowly. “But you need a degree to be a teacher. I thought that was what you wanted to do.”

  She shrugged. “I had to pick something and I love children; playing with them, listening to them, just watching them discover the world. But taking on the responsibility for teaching them—I’m afraid I won’t be much good at that.”

  “Then what will you do with your life?”

  “Sometimes I think I’d like to write something.”

  “Well, go ahead. Do it.”

  “The trouble is, I don’t know what I’d like to write.” She threw down her napkin. “The truth is, I don’t know what I want.”

  Stan laughed. “You can always marry me.”

  Then he stopped laughing. For a second his words hung in the air. Then one of the dogs, she couldn’t have said which, moved and Stan reached down to pet it. When he looked up again there was a funny little smile on his face.

  Did you mean that? She wanted to ask. No, she wanted to demand. Because as he sat there smiling in that strange way she couldn’t read him. And she always had been able to. With him, what you saw was what you got; that was what she loved so much about him. But now, when it was so important, more important than it had ever been before, she didn’t know what was going through his mind. She wanted to scream, What are you thinking?

  * * *

  What am I thinking? Stan thought. I just asked her to marry me. I heard myself do it. First I laughed like some kind of idiotic teenager, then I said You can always marry me. What kind of proposal is that? I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t throw me out.

  “But if you don’t want to marry me, and probably you don’t,”he heard himself say with that same stupid laugh—and what the hell was wrong with him for doing it again—“maybe we could see that favorite place of yours that you’ve been telling me about?”

  Her face flushed crimson, in the way that he loved and she hated. She gave him a quick, jerky little nod. “I have to put the dogs in the house,” she said tersely, and led the protesting canines off.

  When she returned, the hottest of the flames in her cheeks had died down, but she didn’t offer him her hand. They always held hands when they walked somewhere, but now her arms were crossed over her chest as if the perfectly warm day had suddenly turned cold. “This way.” She indicated what looked like a hill—or maybe it was a mountain—behind them, and started marching toward it at a brisk pace. He had to walk fast to catch up with her.

  Climbing up the hill, or mountain, whatever one called it, they were soon in the depths of a forest. Over Stanley’s head was a canopy of branches. And everything was very still—so still he could hear the sound of his shoes as he walked. The only other sounds were the rustling of small creatures scurrying to get out of their way and the calls of birds in the trees. Stanley wasn’t much of an outdoorsman—city apartments and small spaces were what he had known most of his life—but even he could appreciate the beauty of this place.

  Gwen, still silent, with her arms wrapped around her, led the way upward, going deeper into the woods until all of a sudden, they were in a small clearing. She stopped abruptly and Stan looked around. In spots where sunlight came through the heavy leafage, the grass lay green and soft as a couch. A stump, aged to silvery gray, sat in the middle of the space and Gwen started to move to it, but he reached out his hand and stopped her. Then—and later on he was never quite sure how it happened—they were lying down together on that soft sweet grass, with the ribbons of sunlight playing over them and the warm breezes ruffling Gwen’s hair. It was as if the place and the mellow season and the time were all perfectly prepared just for them.

  * * *

  Gwen had thought she was going to be afraid, but as she gave herself over to the ecstasy of her body and its wants, she knew that she would never again experience a closeness like this, a feeling of being joined so totally and blissfully. And after they had reached the moment of release, Stan folded his body into hers and held her, and she truly thought that there was nothing more she could ever want from life.

  Often afterward, she would ask herself how this event had changed her. It had made her feel whole, she decided, after struggling to find the right word. Stan had made her see what she was and what she was not. She was not what Cassie called a “hippie,” by which she meant some carefree person who lived a carefree life. Gwen knew that was not her. But she was not serious in the common sense of the word. She was an odd duck. And because of Stan she didn’t seem to worry about that the way she had. Because of Stan she was starting to be satisfied with herself.

  But all of those revelations were to come later. At that moment as she lay on her couch of grass with a tendril of Stan’s hair lying like dark silk on her chest, she knew one thing only.

  Stan loves me and I love him. I’ve never been as happy as I am now.

  * * *

  As if in a state of shock, Cassie lay back in her chair. She had read Gwen’s letter over and over; she had even examined the envelope, postmarked “Paris,” as if there could have been some hidden meaning there that she had failed to see. Foolish, foolish child! she thought. Nineteen years old and not having the faintest idea of what she needs or what is right for her, or how to fend for herself! Why couldn’t she just have had an affair? If it had been a matter of hormones—something that was probably long overdue in Gwen’s case—that resulted in a mad dash for Paris and a romantic interlude, I wouldn’t have blamed her. Not really. Heaven knows, I’ve seen enough of that in my family. I probably would have scolded enough for propriety’s sake and let it go. But why on earth did Gwen have to tie herself up with this nobody! Why marry him? Think of the trouble down the line; the lawyers, the court, the bitter anger—all that is now invisible, but it is inevitable and it will come to the surface when this marriage ends. And it will end.

  Cassie’s head throbbed. She didn’t want to guess how much her blood pressure had soared. From the library, where she was sitting, she looked out at the back lawn and the depressing rain that dripped out of the trees and from the pretty lanterns, which had been installed by the man who ha
d caused this headache. Stanley Girard wasn’t worthy of Gwen’s little finger; he was certainly not worthy of the sacrifices she was making for him:There would be no college for Gwen now, and no wedding where she would wear a beautiful lace veil. Cassie hadn’t realized until that very moment how much she had been looking forward to Gwen’s wedding day. She would have had all the bells and whistles for her daughter, she would have watched with such pride, such a sense of a job well done, as Walter walked Gwen down the aisle and gave her hand in marriage to . . . a man who was worthy. A man who would grace the Wright name. A man who was not Stanley Girard!

  “I thought I’d find you in here, after you disappeared on me,” Walter’s voice said behind her. She hadn’t heard him come in. But now he was holding out a cup of coffee and a plate of her favorite cookies. She shook her head at both and he put them down. “You’re going to wear a hole in that letter,” he said as he sat in the chair next to hers.

  “She’s doomed herself. She’ll have a dreary existence with a man who doesn’t know which side is up and she’ll have a house full of children—heaven only knows how many—whether they can afford them or not. And don’t try to tell me he won’t insist on that because he’s the type that will!”

  “Actually, I think Gwen will be the one who wants the house full of children whether they can afford them or not. Stanley strikes me as a very practical person.”

  “Well, they had better not turn to me for help.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  Cassie sighed. “Of course I don’t. I’d never let Gwen suffer—or her children.”

  “I think the point is a moot one. My sense of your new son-in-law is he’d rather be boiled in oil than take help from anyone.” He paused and took a cookie from the plate. “And you haven’t made a secret of your feelings about him.”

  “You think I’m being awful—don’t you? That I’m embarrassed because my daughter married a blue-collar worker.”

  “Of course not! No one works harder than you do, or values hard work more.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “I think your real problem with Stanley Girard is that he’s such a worthy opponent.”