Her Father's House (5 page)

Now the bands changed places. This one pounded. The accompanying singer bellowed. The dancers went wild. They spun, they collided, their knees and elbows worked like pistons, and they sweated.

Donald looked for Lillian, and not seeing her pass, got up to search. Still unable to find her in the jostling mob now grown to double its original size, he sat down again. Oh, let her enjoy herself! As soon as she came back in sight, he would get up and join her, although the truth was that he could do without this kind of dancing; he had been rather good at it when he was eighteen, but by twenty-five or so, he had outgrown it. And laughing a little at himself, he watched and waited for her.

As newcomers poured through the entrance, the tent was constantly losing its cooled air. The young lawyer Rick looked at his watch, and his wife covered her mouth to yawn. Half an hour had gone by since Donald's last sight of Lillian.

Puzzled, a little worried, and a little angry, too, he got up and walked away from the tent. The night air and the sudden quiet once the band was out of hearing were soft. A few stars rose above the glow of the lanterns that had been hung among the trees. Little groups were scattered upon the lawn, strolling or standing. If he had not had something else on his mind, he would have absorbed the rare beauty of the scene.

Well, she can't be far, he thought, and began to walk. Somebody must have seen her.

Two men, passing him, mentioned a name that was all too familiar. “Son of a gun, they'll never catch him. He's smarter than ten Interpols. Or top-notch law firms, or the IRS, either.”

The other man chuckled. “I'm on his side. Feather your nest, is what I say.”

Chuckled!
A lump of disgust formed in Donald's throat. Enough of this. Where the devil was she? Find her, and go home.

“Looking for your wife? We saw her going down to the pond, I think.” Turning, Donald saw Rick with his wife hurrying away toward the road.

The wife said, “We're leaving early. The baby-sitter, you know. But it was a lovely party.”

Innocent, he thought, watching them go. She wanted to be polite about the party, which obviously they had not enjoyed. And he walked on toward the pond.

Frank Sanders and a woman whom Donald did not know were standing there. “Looking for Lillian?”

“Yes. She seems to have disappeared. I can't imagine—”

“Have you looked at the beds?”

“Beds?”

“There are three or four of them on the other side of the tent.” Frank laughed. “You haven't heard about them?”

For an instant, Donald went blank. In the second instant, when recall came, he was sure his blood pressure was rising.

“Yes,” he said, “I'd read something, heard something, about parties like those, but I didn't expect it here.”

“Why not? Anyhow, they're over that way if you want to look.”

Donald's blood pounded; he even felt its swelling pressure under the wedding band on his finger. Walking rapidly back toward the tent, passing it almost at a run, he rounded a corner of high shrubbery and came upon Lillian walking ahead, accompanied by a man.

Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned, and seeing Donald, cried out, “Where've you been? I've been looking all over for you. Hugh—it is Hugh, isn't it?—this is my husband, Donald Wolfe.”

Both men nodded. Then the other one said, “Well, now that you've found each other, I'll look for my own party, be on my way.”

“Lillian, what was that about?” demanded Donald when the other man was out of hearing.

“About? I was looking for you. I met this man, and he was helping me look, that's all.”

Light touched her flushed face; slanting across a bay enclosed by young spruce, it revealed a bed in the background, a proper bed with a couple lying on it.

“Don't fool with me, Lillian,” he said, still very quietly.

“What are you doing to me? I didn't even know about this, did you?”

“Not till a few minutes ago.”

“Then why are you accusing me? You always pick on me, Donald.”

“That's not true. You know very well I don't.”

Now as they walked away and drew closer to a lantern, he saw that her face was burning. She stumbled, and caught herself. There was a large, wet stain on her dress.

“What have you been drinking?” he demanded.

“Do I have to explain every breath I take? Do I?” she whimpered.

Suddenly he thought he understood. No, she would not have been going voluntarily to one of those beds. The man had been about to take advantage of her condition. It was an old, old story.

“Come this way, Lil. We're going home. We've had enough of this place.”

“Maybe you have, but I haven't. The party's just begun, and I'm having a good time.”

“What have you been drinking, anyway? Whatever it was, you've had far too much of it.”

“I don't know what it was. What difference does it make? Somebody offered me a few drinks, they tasted good, and I drank them.”

“These people are foul. Foul.”

When she stumbled again, he picked her up and carried her, now almost limp, to the flashy little car, and they rolled out onto the highway. From time to time he looked over at her; she had fallen asleep, and there was something vaguely sad about a human being asleep and vulnerable, or so he always thought. Only a few hours ago they had driven to the party in such high spirits. She had been especially gaily beautiful in her dress—periwinkle, was it? Now, huddled in the seat with that big stain below the incongruous diamond necklace, she filled him with anger.

It isn't only because she drank too much—that can happen, he thought. Or because of what that man might have done with her if I hadn't come along just then. It's the whole bad atmosphere of the place. That guy Rick felt it, too. They didn't belong there. That's why they left so early. And Lillian doesn't belong there, either.

They were almost home when she woke up, tidied her hair, and checked her lipstick. Before they entered the building, she wrapped a shawl into a graceful curve that hid the soiled dress.

“All right? Will I do?” She spoke brightly, as though nothing at all had happened.

She “did” very well, indeed. Two men riding up in the elevator cast meaningful glances in her direction, and then toward each other, glances that possibly Lillian missed, but that Donald did not.

“Shall I make some coffee?” he asked when they opened their door.

“Not unless you want any. I don't need it, thanks. Did I disgrace you too badly?”

“No, nor yourself, either. I got you away before you could.”

When he went into the bedroom a few minutes later, she had already removed all her clothes except the necklace.

“Unclasp this for me, will you please? I hate to take it off. It must be worth a year's rent on this place, or more, for all I know.”

He removed the necklace and laid it on the bedside table. As her hand went out to touch it, he seized the finger that bore his ring.

“I'm the man who gave you this diamond,” he said roughly. “Remember that.”

“You're jealous,” she said, smiling at him.

“Of whom? Of whom should I be jealous?”

“Of anybody. Men at the party. Men in the elevator just now.” There she stood with her head high, teasing him and smiling. Damn her! She was infuriating, she was irresistible, she made him angry, and she made him want her with every bone and every drop of his blood.

“Get into that bed,” he said, “and do it now.”

   

It is remarkable, he told himself the next day, how a night of intense love can soothe the nerves, eradicate uncertainties, and make the world seem to be a place where almost everything is manageable. He was also thinking that the less time she spent with Chloe Sanders and her restless ilk, the better.

“I was just thinking,” he said, “that with all the energy you have, it might be a good thing for you to work full time until your course begins. Why not ask Mr. Buzley? You always get along so well. He'd probably be glad.”

As it turned out, he was glad. And every day Lillian came home with some new anecdote or impression with which she entertained Donald over dinner. The most amazing people came to Buzley's office, surely not the kind who came into Orton and Pratt. In one week there had been a famous rap singer accused of assault, and a woman who had come off welfare and won the lottery.

“It's fascinating! And old man Buzley is remarkable. This is his wife's fourth year of fighting Lou Gehrig's disease, waiting to die, but you'd never guess when you're with him. You wouldn't believe his sense of humor unless you heard him cracking jokes. Poor old man, I'm really crazy about him.”

Yes, he had done the right thing in leading her away from the Sanders crowd. Roaming through the city as they had in their first days together, renting a rowboat in the park, picnicking with friends beneath the trees, they celebrated the lovely month of June.

Early in July there came an invitation. Roy Fox was giving a party.

“I'm really surprised they remembered us,” said Lillian. “Why, the Foxes only had us because of the Sanders.”

“This one copied his brother's list, that's all. I'm very sure no one there really remembered you or me.”

“Roy's estate is supposed to be even more fabulous than Tommy's. I'm really curious to see how that can be.”

Donald shook his head. “Lil, dear, we're not going.”

“Not going! Whyever not?”

“One person's ‘fabulous' is another person's disgust, Lil.”

“What's the matter? Those beds again? Just because some people go in for that sort of thing doesn't mean other people have to.”

Her voice and her posture told him that this was not going to be over with in five minutes. At the same time, something clicked in his memory: Of course! That man whom he had overheard applauding the very scoundrel who had fled the country with his stolen millions, that man was Roy and Tommy's father.

“Foul,” he said. “Those people are foul.”

“Why? Oh, because of those beds you consign them to hell?”

“No, it's larger and deeper than that.”

He was not about to start a discussion about morals, sexual, financial, or otherwise, so he answered simply.

“The whole affair was vulgar. Too much of everything. Sometimes less is more. I didn't like the atmosphere, and I don't want to go again.”

“You ought to get a soapbox, Donald. You sound like a preacher. You're a puritan.”

“I may have been called a lot of things behind my back, possibly I have been, but I doubt ‘puritan' was ever one of them.”

“Then you're some kind of radical who hates anybody richer than he is.”

“You really know you're talking nonsense now. Do I hate, as you put it, do I hate Mr. Pratt? No, because he's decent in every way. He enjoys what he earns, doesn't waste, doesn't show off, and is, above all, honorable.”

“All this heavy talk about a simple invitation. I can't believe it.” Lillian stared at him. “You can be so boring, Donald. Have you any idea how boring you can be? I had such a different impression of you that day we met, that you were vital, and humorous, and open-minded.”

Strange, he thought as he met her stare, that those are the very qualities for which I am sometimes praised. Still, he stood there looking at her blue eyes as he might have looked at the knives that had stabbed him.

“I'm curious, Donald. What did you think of me when we met?”

“I didn't think. I only felt,” he said.

   

In the wide bed they lay without touching. Lights and shadows moved across the ceiling. Can we have made a mistake? he asked himself. Pain cold as terror ran through him. All this anger, all these words, because of some stranger's worthless invitation! Should he perhaps give in and go? Something said yes, give in, it's not worth the fuss. And something else said no. This goes much deeper than whether we spend those few hours with those particular people or not.

But how deep, and why, and where does it end?

In the morning after a few cool, civil words, each of them rushed off to work. Donald's day was a typical one, filled with meetings, papers, telephone calls, and no time for personal affairs. But by early evening when the long day ended, those affairs came flooding back, and he was shocked to realize that he did not want to go right home. So he telephoned, made an excuse, and went out for a hamburger with one of the new lawyers in the firm.

This young man was lonesome because his wife was out of town visiting somebody in her family who was ill. She was pregnant, and he missed her terribly. But she would be coming back on Tuesday, and he was counting the hours, he said, unembarrassed to speak the words or to display the happiness on his face.

He seems so innocent and so young, Donald thought as he walked home, although he isn't that many years younger than I am. Why do I feel so heavy and sad? Am I seeing a mountain when it's really only a hill? Am I?

She had been waiting for him with something to tell him; this he saw on her face when he entered. He could not read whether the news was good or bad, only that it was important.

“I'm pregnant,” she said.

That night, he thought at once, the night of that party when we came home. In fact, he had even wondered about it later because he had taken no precautions; she had overwhelmed him.

“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

S
uddenly, 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.”