Promises

  Good Lord, where were the samples? She had had them home overnight, had had them this morning. Good Lord, she had handed them to Keith! The book and the lunch were here on the seat beside her. She wanted to scream, to cry, to be alone, to lie down. But there was no place to go.…

  “You look as if you’d lost your best friend,” Willie said when she entered the shop.

  “I think I’m coming down with something. I don’t feel well.”

  “Don’t give it to me,” said Ernie. “You know what a cold does to me. It flattens me. Maybe you should go home.”

  “I can’t. Mrs. What’s-her-name is coming,” she wailed. “And I’ve lost her samples. I spent all afternoon looking at wallpaper for her, and now I’ve lost the samples!”

  Willie said gently, “You really are in a condition, poor girl. Go on home. I’ll take care of Mrs. What’s-her-name. Go on. Take a couple of aspirins.”

  The rain had stopped, leaving a dull, sultry day, as if the world were dying. Let it die, she thought, prone on her bed. Let it. She cried and trembled. Her teeth chattered. Awful sobs shook her, subsided, and shook again. Even here in her own place, she dared not scream. Somebody would hear and call the police or an ambulance. Once, as she raised her head and met Keith’s gaze framed in antique bronze on a table, she got up and smashed it to the floor, where it broke with a scattering of glass.

  After a long time her thoughts began to take shape. Ah, she ought to have known! And the signs had been present, but she had simply not understood how to read them. This man, son of that meticulous mother, with his love of order, his educated tastes—all that history and art in Prague—and his discreet manners, would be the last to make an impetuous, ill-considered mistake in marriage and the last to tear his life apart. Any idiot would realize that such a man would hold on to his lovely wife, his lovely house, and lovely children.

  And do you really think, Nina, you poor fool, that he would give up all this pride and pleasantness for you? You were the toy, the champagne cocktail, the icing on his cake.

  He lied to me, Nina raged. He promised and he lied. He made a fool of me. And he was getting tired of me. Yes. The signs were there, only I didn’t want to read them. I hope he dies out there in Phoenix. I hope he dies.

  Late on the next afternoon the doorbell rang. Swollen from crying, full of aspirin and headache, still in her bathrobe, she refused to answer it.

  “We know you’re in there,” Willie called. “Ernie’s with me. Let us in.”

  “I’m sick. I told you when I phoned that I wasn’t able to go to work.”

  “You’re not sick. Something’s happened. I could hear the tears in your voice.”

  “No, I’m really sick,” she protested.

  “If you don’t let us in, we’ll stand here all night and make a scene.”

  So she had to let them in and had to tell the whole story. When she finished, Ernie sighed.

  “Well, I don’t mean to be unkind, Nina, but it was predictable.”

  “Why?”

  “Shall we tell her, Willie?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, we saw him a few months ago at an antique show. He was with his wife, looking at English furniture in a booth next to ours. He recognized me, but very carefully pretended not to. Afterward we learned from the dealer that they were building a wing on their house, enlarging the library and adding a computer room. Providing for the future, in other words.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Nina wiped her eyes, which had begun to tear again. “Excuse me for blubbering.”

  “Blubber away. You need to get it out and over with.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “For the same reason people don’t tell a wife. Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. You don’t want to make trouble, so you mind your own business. Besides, you wouldn’t have believed us. You wouldn’t have listened.”

  “You’re right.”

  The three sat still in a bleak silence.

  “Why did he do this to me?” Nina implored, shaking her head as if to question the very possibility of such perfidy. “Why did he lead me on?”

  “You’re an unusually attractive woman, Nina. You’re different from the run of the mill.”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” she said bitterly. “That’s what he told me too. Different!”

  “But you are,” Willie said. “There’s a freshness about you, an old-time charm you seldom see anymore. And yet, you are also a new, independent woman. In short, you’re a find, a discovery.”

  “In short, a thing that he used as long as it was convenient.” And as people do when their thoughts stray, she studied her fingers, recalling here and there an endearing word, a walk in the snow, a passionate night, three years’ worth of jumbled recollections. “I shall have to start fresh and make myself over,” she said.

  Both men’s faces were very kind, so kind that she was able, with no sense of humbling herself, to make an admission.

  “I have been feeling for a while that he might be tiring of me. And yet, whenever I felt that way, I told myself it was ridiculous.” She paused, and then jumping up, exclaimed, “Still, if he really was ready to end it, why would he have given me this? Let me show you.”

  “A very, very pretty piece,” Ernie said. “Twenty-five or thirty thousand, I would guess.”

  “Twenty-seven. I’m returning it, of course.”

  Willie admonished her. “Absolutely not! Don’t be a fool.”

  “I never wanted it in the first place, Willie. He insisted that I take it. That’s why I think he must still love me.”

  Ernie shook his head, saying, “That’s your innocence speaking. Let me be blunt, may I?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “This was the farewell gift, the tidy finish, darling, the phaseout, so you wouldn’t make too big a fuss at the end. It was cheap at that. He could at least have given you earrings to match, or better still, a necklace.”

  A world I never knew, thought Nina. It was false from the start, wasn’t it? And Margaret was right.

  “A tidy finish,” she said. “And what happens now? Is there someone waiting to step into my place?”

  “Possibly. Or it could be that he’s tired of the chase, temporarily, at least. Or maybe he’s really had enough and has decided to be a loving husband, a family man. It happens.”

  “I feel numb,” Nina said, “all cried out, for the time being, anyway.”

  “You’ll cry some more,” Willie assured her. “And then you’ll get over it.”

  She gave a short, ironic laugh. “How can you know so much, Willie?”

  “Just by keeping my eyes and ears open. Say, when’s the last time you ate anything decent?”

  “I don’t know. Breakfast yesterday morning, I guess.”

  “You need a good meal. You go take a shower and fix yourself up while we run out and get some dinner for you.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You will be. Go fix yourself. You look like hell.”

  What a nice, funny pair they were with their “tough love”! She did not want to, but she had to obey them. And so an hour later, while the three were having an excellent dinner, she listened to this advice.

  “What you need now is to unwind in a quiet place and settle your nerves. Go home to your family. You haven’t been there in a year. Oh, we know why, but Mr. Keith’s no longer an issue. Just swallow your pride and go. Don’t call ahead. It’s hard to say all this over the phone. Just walk in and surprise them.”

  She got off the commuter plane, rented a car, and drove toward Elmsford. At first sight of it across the river, the bridge, the high school, Danforth’s Department Store, the whole busy, dowdy, growing, familiar home-place, she felt a lump in her throat. In ten minutes she would be welcomed into the heart of it, on the old street in the old house, free of lies or deception. There they waited: her own people, a simple family, safe and solid.

  I hope I won’t cry, she thought, laughing a little at
herself. But if I do, I do.

  Fred Davis’s dusty van and Louise’s BMW were parked in the driveway, which seemed strange on a weekday afternoon. Otherwise, everything was unchanged. Rufus, lying in the shade, rose to greet her as if she had never been away. She stroked his head, went up the walk, and rang the bell. Louise opened the door.

  “Well,” she exclaimed, glancing at the suitcase, “I didn’t know anyone had gotten in touch with you.”

  “What’s wrong?” Nina cried. “Has there been an accident?”

  “You might call it that,” Louise said grimly. “Adam has left, that’s what.”

  “Left?”

  “Yes. Found himself another woman, and walked out Monday morning. Come on in. Margaret’s here.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Except for Margaret, who, at Louise’s insistence, had been ordered upstairs for a rest, they were all in the front parlor—how strange that such an outdated term should still come naturally—sitting in stiff, formal postures like people waiting in a hospital for the doctor to emerge from surgery with news. Nina had the impression that they must have been there like that since Monday, speaking out as sudden, disconnected thoughts occurred, and as suddenly falling silent.

  “I never did see her with him, anyway,” Gil said. “He always was an oddball. You can ask Louise how many times I said so. Thought he was so great! Standing around with that sarcastic little smile on his face because he had a Phi Beta Kappa key and the other people didn’t.”

  To Nina the scene was surreal. That they were talking about Adam—Adam!—was incomprehensible. All she had expected was to go home, to fall into Margaret’s arms, blurt out her story, apologize for her own mistake, and be kissed and comforted. All of that had indeed happened within the first few minutes, but then had come this other story, this hammer blow. She sat now, speechless, with her suitcase still on the floor beside her feet.

  Louise’s full torso was tense with indignation. “He never liked anybody. Anyone could see that. We knew he certainly didn’t like us. He was always polite enough, but he hardly spoke to us. I guess he thought we weren’t worth his time.”

  “He was always quiet,” Nina said.

  “Quiet! He had the personality of a clam.”

  They were talking of Adam in the past tense. They were talking about a man she did not recognize. And yet, what they were saying had to be true. Adam had left Margaret. He was gone. She felt sick, chilled, even in this stuffy room in midsummer.

  Gil inquired, “Fred, have you told Margaret you saw him with the woman?”

  “No. Maybe I should have and probably I shouldn’t have. Anyway, people don’t tell wives. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news.”

  Nina went from cold to hot. And because there were too many eyes across the room, eyes that she was not ready to meet, she looked down at her shoes.

  “Margaret! Three children!” Louise exclaimed, as though she were still trying to comprehend the enormity of what Adam had done. “And when I think of her—why, think of all the years she had his mother here, suffering from Alzheimer’s! Most daughters-in-law would have put her in a nursing home long before.”

  Gil said, addressing Nina, “It’s been pitiful to hear her. She keeps asking what she could have done differently, how she failed.”

  Louise protested, “I’ve told her a dozen times that she has no cause to blame herself. Blame him and that common slut. That’s all right, Gil. It’s a dictionary word for a woman with no morals.”

  “This sort of thing doesn’t help,” Fred objected quietly. “We have to help Margaret think. The first thing she needs to do now is get a good lawyer.”

  “Lawyer,” Margaret said, coming into the room. “I suppose I’ll have to. Mom always advised, ‘Stay away from lawyers.’ ”

  “If you can,” Fred agreed.

  Margaret’s sigh was audible. Nina was shaken by the sound of that deep sigh as by the very sight of her. Taking a closer look now than her earlier one at the front door, she saw how striking had been the change since last year. She was older and thinner; her bright, youthful hair contradicted her darkly ringed eyes and sad mouth.

  Margaret asked Fred, “Have you any suggestion?”

  “Actually, I do. I spent part of this morning making inquiries and came up with the name of Stephen Larkin. His uncle, Bart Larkin, was one of the top divorce lawyers in the state. He died last year, but Stephen’s continued the practice. The funny thing is, he’s one of my tenants in Shady Hill. I recognized the name. Do you want to talk to him?”

  She sighed again. “I suppose I’ll have to.”

  “The next thing is, what about the kids? Julie upset me yesterday. It seems to have hit her especially hard.”

  “I know. She is—was—especially attached to her father. I’m going to send her for help.” Margaret stood up. “Speaking of the children, they’ll be back soon. My neighbor took them someplace for the afternoon, but I have to think about dinner.”

  Nina said quickly, “I’ll make something. You sit there.”

  “Nonsense,” Louise objected briskly. “Gil and I will run out and get pizza. They’ve been well fed all their lives. It won’t hurt them to go without a balanced dinner for once.”

  “You’ve all been so good to me,” Margaret said.

  “That’s what family and friends are for,” Fred told her.

  At supper around the kitchen table the talk was subdued and desultory. Yet it was plain to Nina that the girls and Danny were very, very glad to see her. It crossed her mind that she, who had come back to find comfort, would instead need to be giving it. There were four needy people here.

  After the short supper the house fell quickly still. Margaret, obviously trying to keep to routine, asked Julie to play, but Julie refused, and so they all dispersed to their rooms. Margaret brought sheets for Nina’s bed and hugged her.

  “I’m just so thankful that you’ve come. I’ve missed you terribly.”

  “It’s funny that I’ve come because I need you, and—”

  “And now I need you.”

  For some reason Nina laughed, although she was also crying, and although there was nothing to laugh about. “What a pair we are! And all because of a man.”

  “What else?”

  “Do you think we’ll get over it?”

  “We have no choice but to get over it, have we?”

  Brave words when your self-esteem has been shot away, Nina thought. Well, first things first.

  “I’m dead tired and you must be too. Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll talk.”

  It seemed to Nina that the very house was tired and so was the very night outside, in which no leaf was moving. When she had made up the bed, she sat for a while at the window looking out at the yard. The earth was moonlit, so that shapes were distinct, and her moving gaze was able to distinguish among the trees. When it reached the mountain ash, it came abruptly to a stop. This was the tree that Margaret had helped her plant on her seventh birthday.

  “It’s only a stick,” Margaret had said, “but someday it will be as tall as this house. It’s your job to make sure it has plenty of water. Take care of it.”

  Now Nina’s mind made an instant association. Keith’s wife, for whom she had felt such hatred, had also been helping a child or children to plant a tree. She had expected to stay in that place and see the tree grow. And suddenly Nina saw her again in all her vulnerability, with her tender face and pregnant belly; she imagined her turned abruptly old and frightened, like Margaret sitting in that room downstairs, or lying alone in her bed.

  Like Margaret she, too, had planned for the future, a future that Nina had tried to take away from her.

  This time when she wept, and she did so for a long, long time, there was shame in her tears.

  * * *

  Across the hall Megan lay staring at the moonlight on the ceiling and whispering to herself.

  “Oh, I knew that night when you were arguing and Mom said you had someone else. She believed you whe
n you denied it, but I didn’t believe you. Then I saw you in that restaurant. I hate that woman, and she knows I do. We looked right into each other’s eyes. I’d like to kill her. How can you do a thing like this to Mom? When I think of her in school, how the kids like her! When I think how my friends’ parents talk about her with such respect! How can you do this to her? And now she has to sit here and cry because of you. I think men stink. Boys tell you how pretty you are. They tell you they love you, but they really only want to feel you. Next week, they’ll have somebody else. You can’t trust them.”

  Her heart was going wild. She got up and sat on the edge of the bed, still whispering. “I loved you so. You were the best father in the world. How could you do this? That morning when you just walked out and drove away! How can I ever trust anybody again? No, you’re not my father anymore. And I loved you so. I never want to see you. I suppose you’re living with that nasty woman. I suppose you think I’m going to visit you and be nice to her. Well, think again, because I’m not going to.”

  Julie turned her pillow, which was damp, to the dry side. People said it was silly to think hearts would break, she thought, but since the morning Dad drove away, she had felt hers wearing out. And she put her hand under the little swell of her left breast to feel what her heart was doing; it seemed to her that it was thumping too hard, like an engine that is about to break down. She didn’t really care, though. Let it break! Dad would know what he had done, and he would be sorry.

  His face had been so cold and angry! He hadn’t even looked at them, had just walked away and gotten into his car. Mom must have done something awful to make him that angry.

  Still, Mom had been crying. So if she did do something, she was sorry for it, wasn’t she, or why would she be crying? Why would he run away with somebody else? Megan saw the person, and she said she’s lousy. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand it. I’m going to ask Dad when I see him. I’m going to tell him to come back. I want him to come back.