Her Father's House (30 page)

It seemed as if every nerve in her body was quivering. She needed air. And going outside, she walked up the slope and farther up the hill to the cottage where once she had lived. A sense of panic overcame her, a claustrophobic feeling such as one can have in a locked space where nobody hears one's call for help, or conversely, a panic that one can feel at the junction of roads where the signs are in a language one cannot read.

What happened? What happened? Why did he take me away from my mother? Why did he ruin our lives? I look down at the window of my room; I think of all the books he bought for me, the blue ceiling with the stars on it, and the dog bed he got for Clancy because he likes to sleep in my room. I look at all these things and I am so angry at my father, at everything, at life.

   

Kate left them alone. She had set before Jim a cup of coffee and a sandwich, neither of which he had touched. All of a sudden he looks older than Dr. Scofield, Laura thought.

She had been prepared to rage at him when they brought him home, to fling at him all the pain and despair that were choking her throat, but instead there seemed to be only this icy scorn that one feels toward some white-collar embezzler who has robbed the poor and now stands alone without defense, beneath contempt.

“I wanted to talk to you first,” he said, “but they came for me unexpectedly. You were in New York, and this was nothing I could tell you over the telephone. Even now the right words don't seem to be coming to me. It's a long, sad, complicated story, Laura. I've told you what I could. I don't seem to have the energy for any more right now.”

“You keep forgetting that the name is Bettina. And yes, it's a sad story, but it doesn't have to be such a long one. Actually it seems rather simple to me. You robbed me of my mother. You're not the first man who's done that, nor will you be the last.”

Jim shook his head. “It's never that simple.”

“How did they find out?” she demanded.

“It isn't a pretty story.”

“I didn't think it would be. But I want to hear it.”

“Well . . . well, it was Gil. He recalled that man at your commencement, as I thought he would. I said so to Rick. Of course, it seems like an awful thing that he would report his girl's father, and I can't feel very loving toward him. And yet I can't blame him too much, either. A lawyer has to obey the law or lose the right to practice it. And I am guilty of the charge. It's as simple as that.”

“A minute ago I heard you say things are never that simple.”

“I wasn't talking about the same thing, was I?”

“Lillian's on her way back, Gil told me. I'm going to New York to see her, you know.”

“Of course. You should.”

Now Kate came into the room looking as though she had not slept; her eyes were weary, and her hair was untidy. Gently, she scolded Jim.

“Can't you even manage a small sandwich? You have to eat something! Tell me what else I can get you. And you have to go upstairs to take a nap right afterward. Please. Please, Jim. And Gil phoned for the third time, Laura. I told him you were talking to your father and I wasn't going to disturb you. You'd better call him back. He says he has something important to tell you.” And taking the tray with the plate and cup, Kate added sharply, “I can't for the life of me imagine what else he could possibly add to the damage he's already done.”

Upstairs in her room, Laura gripped the telephone. “So you really knew more about all this than you admitted to me,” she said.

“That's true. I haven't told you everything.” His voice wavered. “I've put off telling, because I hadn't the courage.”

“My father said you remembered that awful man at the commencement. So obviously it's you who notified the proper people?”

“Laura, I was just about knocked for a loop. I wasn't able to keep it all to myself, so I told my parents, and my father hit the ceiling. ‘When the friend of yours who works for that woman's lawyers reveals that you knew—and you can be sure he will reveal it, since it's too good a story to keep to oneself,' he said, ‘you'll be in a pickle. Don't you know you'll be questioned? My God, you've been going around with Laura for how many years now?' I couldn't answer, didn't have the wits or the strength. And then he pointed out the publicity that I'd have unless I were one of the first people to go to the authorities with the facts. And I told him that it would break my heart to do that. And he said, ‘Okay, do as you please. What do you think the senior partners in your firm will say about it?' So I knew I had to do it, and I did it. I went to the district attorney.”

They knew it by then, anyway, Laura thought, so I suppose it really doesn't matter. And yet it breaks my heart, too.

“Please don't hate me, Laura. I'm trying so hard not to hate myself.”

   

From the tabloid newspapers spread out on the kitchen table, a picture of Lillian, standing before a grand Fifth Avenue hotel, smiled up at Jim.

“I'm surprised she's given up the impressive name of ‘Storm,' ” he said. “Well, she's had a lot of names: born Morris, married and divorced Wolfe, then Buzley, then Storm, and now back to Morris.”

Kate spoke bitterly. “It must be quite a nuisance to keep replacing monograms on all your things. Didn't you say that everything had to be monogrammed? Oh, Jim, we really should stop reading this stuff.”

“It will die out soon. And it won't be born again until the case comes to court.”

But he was not sure about the dying out. He had never known—how could he have known?—the extent of human meanness. A woman had actually written a letter to the editor of the local paper saying Jim Fuller was not only a kidnapper, but a sponger who had married to get hold of a tremendous business and an easy life. In another letter someone predicted that a little more investigation would reveal that he had a criminal record in New York. Worst of all now, most devastating of all, were the words of Lillian herself:
People as cruel as he is don't deserve to live.

Right here in this house, we are all detached from one another, he thought. We hardly speak anymore. Each one of us is sunk in his own wretchedness: Richard keeping busy at unnecessary labor outdoors, Kate keeping up her spells of false optimism, and Laura sunk into depression. Like delicate shrubbery, we are wrapped in burlap against the winter storms, waiting for spring. The difference is that for us, there is no spring in sight.

As well as Jim could without revealing things that would be best for Laura not to hear, he had tried to explain to her what had gone wrong between her parents. But always he had been stopped on the threshold of the unspeakable; as vividly as if it had been yesterday, he found himself back on that rainy Sunday morning at the hotel in Italy. Long ago that had been, and long the trail afterward from there to here, with—had McLaughlin not told him?—as many as twenty years ahead.

What have I done? he asked himself, and chided: You could have done nothing else.

   

“I thought you should read this,” Richard told Laura. “I found it on the kitchen table. It's one of those tabloids they have in the supermarket. Hot off the press overnight.”

There she stood, this time above the heading:

JUST ARRIVED, LILLIAN MORRIS,
OVERJOYED AND FURIOUS,
IS IMPATIENT TO MEET WITH
HER LONG-LOST DAUGHTER

The long-suffering mother, accompanied by friends from France and Italy, has arrived in America with some words about that daughter's father, Donald Wolfe.

“I have turned heaven and earth to find my child. They talk about twenty or thirty years in prison for him, but they could put him to death as far as I'm concerned. There is no punishment severe enough to compensate me for my lost years with my child. The man hasn't a decent bone in his body. He is a criminal and should suffer for the rest of his life.”

Before Laura's dizzy vision there appeared a striking face, curiously not unlike the fake photograph with which she had grown up. She had a strange awareness of herself looking at this face, and a feeling that this was perhaps the most dramatic moment of her life so far. And then suddenly, unbidden, there appeared another picture: iron bars, bars on doors, on windows, and on gates, while between them peered great pleading eyes in pleading faces.

He is a criminal and should suffer for the rest of his life.

Anger, yes. Oh, yes, she thought. But so much hatred?

People as cruel as he is don't deserve to live.

   

“I don't understand you,” Gil said over the telephone for what was possibly the fifth time in the last two days. “Ever since I've known you, whenever you mentioned her, I could feel your longing. And now when you could actually meet her, you're not doing it.”

He was waiting for an explanation that she was unable to give him. There were no words to describe, possibly no words existed, that could describe the tumult within her.

“Gil, my mind is barely functioning.”

“They say she wrote you a letter. Is that true?”

“Yes. I returned it unopened.”

“I can hardly believe what you're saying. Are you afraid of something?”

“I don't know how to describe how I'm feeling. But something has changed.”

“Well, one thing hasn't,” he said gently. “You've already missed a week of classes. It's time you came back here. You need to go on with your life, Laura.”

“I'm not going back.”

“What? You're quitting? Giving up medical school?”

“I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. Can't you feel what's happening to me? I'm tired of trying to think. And now, I'm sorry, but I have to hang up. Let's talk again tomorrow.”

Still her thoughts whirled. If only she didn't want to put Dad in prison! I keep having that vision of iron gratings, and the faces. Neglect, they say. Neglect of a child. I wish I knew the whole story because that can't be all of it. But nobody wants to talk about it. Rick says I should not bother Dad with so many questions. Now I see why he always seemed to take Dad's part when he refused to go with us on a trip. I remember, too, the time we were all trail riding and I was asking Dad a lot of questions about my mother; Rick told me to “shut up and leave your father alone.” I was furious with him, which was in itself very strange, because in a certain way I loved him.

Perhaps if he had not known the secret, he would have loved me, too, and would have been less reserved and solemn. But since he never said anything, I could hardly say anything, either. And then came Gil, with all that fun and laughter.

There is such confusion in my head. Everything is haphazard. Yesterday when I approached our front door, I had a horrible, weird sensation of fright. I seemed to see myself running through the rain, needing to get inside. I don't know why. There is a cat sitting on the step, and it wants to get in, too.

There is so much that we do not know about ourselves or, I suppose, about anybody else, either.

On sudden impulse, Laura got up and went outdoors. The day was fair and warm; it seemed impossible that everything, sky, grass, and a pair of doves at the feeder, could be as they had always been. It seemed impossible that terror could exist in such a world.

Yet how terrified Dad must be today, and every day! All these years, he has walked around with an awful fear inside.

Twenty or thirty years. He doesn't even deserve to live.

Uncertain, quite alone, her glance fell on a pair of magnolias just coming into blossom. Rick and she had planted them years ago.
If you take care of them, water and feed them, they'll be three times your height ten years from now,
Dad had told them that day. And so they were. Two chipmunks emerged from their homes in a stone wall and chased each other up to the top of these trees. Once a car had run over a chipmunk and killed it on their driveway. Dad had shown her its tiny feet with their five toes like her own. He had hoped that it hadn't suffered before it died. She remembered that she had wanted to bury it in a flowered candy box, and that he had helped her give it a funeral.

So did the past close over Laura as if to drown her.

   

In her room again, she sat down, huddled in the corner by her desk. And then, for no other reason than that a partly open drawer revealed a battered old diary, she drew it out and read.

Dad says I can have tennis lessons. I asked him whether my mother played tennis, and he said she did. That's funny because I know I asked him once before, and he had said she didn't. Sometimes he forgets things like that, and I wish he wouldn't.

When I volunteer in the children's part of the hospital, I see Dr. Scofield. He tells me I was a “fresh kid” when I was two. He teases me, but I like him. He likes Dad a lot. He says people all like Dad, and I am very lucky. I know I am because my dad never yells at me the way some fathers do.

Sometimes when I am feeling sorry because my mother is dead, Dad tells me I am lucky to have another mother like Mom. She is a little more strict than he is. She makes Rick and me watch our table manners. But we love her anyway.

Yesterday we all rode up into the hills and had a picnic. Dad roasted marshmallows. When we went home, he helped me with fractions because I am not that good at math.

She began to cry. When, many minutes later, the tears stopped flowing, she wiped her eyes and wrote a few words on a large piece of paper: I LOVE YOU, DAD. She would put it on the table in the kitchen where he would see it.

She went upstairs again and waited. After a long while, she heard voices below. Then came the well-known tread on the stairs. And afraid to look at his weary face, she did not turn.

Twenty or thirty years.

Then she heard her name and felt the gentle touch of his hand on her bowed head.

Chapter 28

J
im,” Kate said, “Mr. McLaughlin just called. He has a lawyer for you, a very competent person.”

“I know, I know. He thinks I should consult somebody who once knew me well. He probably got in touch with somebody at Orton and Pratt.”

Shame, in a wave of heat, flowed through him. To ask Ed Wills or to stand before Pratt, exposed, condemned, and forlorn—oh, it was hard, too hard! Nevertheless, it might have to be endured.

He got up and went to the mirror that hung between the windows. Eighteenth century, the woman had said when Kate and he had bought it at the secondhand shop in town. The glass was wavy, turning his tense cheeks to a geographical map with hollows, plains, and rivers.

“You're wrong, Jim. McLaughlin's been inquiring everywhere for you. Yesterday he heard from three different sources that there's a woman in New York who's been steadily making a name for herself. She sounded interesting, so he checked some more. He even telephoned Gil at his law firm. And Gil made inquiries—”

Jim interrupted. “At this point, it might be a very good idea for Gil Maples to stay out of my affairs.”

“Who can blame you? I feel the same way. But McLaughlin did say that Gil was very frank about his part in what happened to you; he's sick with guilt, and—”

“He needn't be. He did what was legally correct and saved himself. I just don't want to hear any more about him, that's all.”

“Well, all right. But McLaughlin thinks you should see this woman. Her name is Ethel Rice,” Kate said.

Jim sighed. “I'll think about it.”

“Jim, you're saying that because you want to get rid of me. It's been ten days already, almost two weeks. She—the other side—has probably been working on the case all last winter.”

“Maybe it's because I'm dreading to be told what I already know.”

“You don't
know
anything. It's not like you to be defeated before you've even begun.”

She meant well. She was doing her best. You entered a sickroom with a cheerful face. You grasped at straws, so goes the old saying, to save a drowning man, even though the dying or the drowning man knows that you know how weak are your straws and your cheer. When they talked about his “situation,” it hurt; and if they didn't talk about it, that hurt, too.

Kate folded the newspaper and put it into the bag to be recycled. When her posture was rigid like this, he did not need to see her face to know that she was holding back tears. He wondered how long she would be able to keep up the effort. He wondered how long it would be before, one night as they lay together in their bed, he would blurt the question: What will become of you when I am locked away?

He walked out of the kitchen and sat on a chair, bent, dangling his arms between his knees. Clancy came over and laid his head on one of his knees. Was it possible that the dog, even the dog, felt the oppression in the beloved house?

He was still sitting there when Laura came into the kitchen. “I know this is unbearably hard for you, Dad,” she began. “You, a lawyer, now under the thumbs of lawyers! All the questions and all the probing—”

She read his mind. And suddenly he realized that she always had done so. Even as a tiny child she had seemed to know when he could be coaxed and when he meant what he said. This recollection brought a very faint smile to his lips as he replied.

“Who is she, this interesting, promising person?”

“She is a feminist. Very clever. She likes to represent women whom men have mistreated,” Laura said.

“Then why on earth would she want to represent me?”

“For the novelty, for the challenge. Are you upset because Gil approved of her, too? If you are, I'll understand because I feel the same. But we both know why he did it. And of course we'll never forget it. But he does want to help you now. And anyway, it was Mr. McLaughlin who asked him. Will you see her, Dad? Will you?”

“I'll go. I don't believe she or anyone can do much. It's a clear-cut case.” A long sigh struggled out of Jim's chest. “But I'll go,” he repeated.