Promises (47 page)

“Adam despised him,” Margaret said.

The waiter came and the menu was discussed. When he left, Stephen was looking out of the window at the starting drizzle. Their dialogue had suddenly gone flat, and she wondered why.

Then he said, “I wanted you to be the first to know I’m going away. I’m quitting, closing the office.”

“Fred told me you hadn’t renewed your lease.” And she remembered her little shock and mental denial at being told. Her surge of happy expectation died away, and she knew that she had become too accustomed to his presence in the red brick building on the corner of Elm and Main.

“I’ve had enough and more than enough of divorce law. It’s all about disrupting and tearing down. I’ve been thinking about environmental work, of saving what we have. Here in the heartland there’s so much to save, land overplanted and ruined, rivers dammed and flooding. So much.”

As he spoke, he moved his hands. They were quick and graceful; all his motions, whether he was running or simply turning pages, were quick and easy.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To the State U. The law school has a graduate course. After that I can either work in government or in some conservation movement. It’ll be a fresh start for me, doing something useful. I can’t wait.”

“Still,” she said, “you can’t think your work has been useless. I know you’ve helped me build myself up again, and there must be many more like me.”

“No, Margaret. You’ve been building yourself up. It’s women like you who make me feel that the world can be a hopeful place.”

The intimacy of this comment, this serious compliment, confused her, and she made no reply.

“There’s so much strength in you,” he continued. “Even after what’s been done to you, you’re still not cynical. I believe you even have trust in faithful love.”

“Oh, I do,” she said. “Because what will we be if no one tries anymore to make marriage work?”

“I’ll tell you what we’ll be. Look around you. We’re halfway there already.”

There was something she had for a long time wanted to ask him and had hesitated to do.

“Excuse me for being inquisitive, Stephen. I know it’s none of my business,” she said, “but were you ever married?”

He smiled. “I notice you don’t ask whether I am now married.”

Margaret shook her head. “I don’t because I know this much about you. You wouldn’t be here with me if you were.”

“That’s true. No, I’m not, and I never was. I’ve had my share of women, but I long ago promised myself that I’d never make a commitment, a promise, that I wasn’t certain I could keep.”

As he spoke, he looked with such intensity into her eyes, that she had to turn from him. And she sat there looking instead at her fingernails. A sensation as acute as pain or some celestial, imcomparable joy was shooting through her flesh.

There was silence.

“I want to know you better,” Stephen said.

She looked up, seeing in a wavering blur dark shoulders, white collar, dark hair … She was in love with him.

“But you’re going away,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter. I’m not going far.”

The cheerful boom of Fred Davis’s voice crossed the table. “Hey! This is a surprise. What are you doing, moving your office to the Hotel Bradley?” He bent to kiss Margaret’s cheek.

“Stephen is telling me about his move,” she said, feeling embarrassment, feeling resentment, and wishing Fred would move on.

But Fred was interested. “Buying a house?” he inquired.

“No, leaving Elmsford.”

“Really? Tell me about it. Mind if I draw up a chair?”

“Go ahead,” Stephen said politely.

“I’ve had my dinner. A couple of investors from downstate are staying in the hotel here. The food’s not bad. So where are you going?”

Frustration, like a fire, was hot in Margaret. She sat there watching the rain on the windowpane, going
through the motions of eating while listening first to Stephen’s responses to Fred’s questions, and then gradually just to men’s talk, which was mostly about Fred’s business and the economy of Elmsford. After a while the fire cooled, leaving her with the dull, defeated feeling people have when they have lost something valuable or missed a flight.

“And so you’re going,” Fred said at last. “When’s the move?”

“Friday. I start my first class Monday.”

“Well, you leave a fine reputation behind you, Stephen. I can certainly vouch for you, and this lady of mine can do the same.” He laid his hand over Margaret’s, continuing with emphasis, “She’s told me many times how helpful you’ve been, and that’s made me feel pretty pleased with myself, because I’m the man who got you together. Right, Margaret?”

“Yes,” she said flatly.

He was making a statement, being proprietary, with his hand still resting warmly on hers. Lest there be some misunderstanding, she thought miserably, unable to retrieve her hand.

And she tried in some way to catch Stephen’s attention so as to convey a message, but he was busy paying the check, and besides, what message did she want to convey?

In the underground garage both men’s cars were in the same row.

“If you’ve finished with your legal business and if you don’t mind, I’ll drive Margaret home,” Fred said.

“Of course,” replied Stephen, and they parted.

In Fred’s car Margaret sat silently staring out at the rain. She thought that her face must look like stone.
Fred had disposed of her as if she were a bundle to be delivered, a bundle that could have no preferences about who was to do the delivering. And who had ever given him permission to speak of “this lady of mine”? Yet, since he was Fred Davis, she could hardly turn upon him with her anger.

The lights were on in the apartment, for which she was thankful because it meant that the children were home. Otherwise, Fred would want to come in.

“I hope I didn’t interrupt any business tonight,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s all right. My business with lawyers is finished.”

“When shall I see you again?”

“It will be a busy week, Fred. School starts, Megan leaves, and we’ve hardly begun to pack.”

“I understand. But I have important things to say to you.”

Yes, she knew. Only last week Louise, with the best intentions in the world, had given her another motherly piece of counsel.

“You really ought to settle things with Fred. He told Gil that he’s ready anytime you are. You’ve been through so much, Margaret. You should think of yourself, now. You’d have a peaceful home with a trustworthy man, and your children would have a father.”

“A woman doesn’t have to be married to have a peaceful home.”

“True. But you need more than peace, Margaret. You’re too young to have no one to love you.”

He had shut off the engine. They were enclosed in a sudden stillness, the dark, and the pattering rain. He would reach over, draw her to him, and kiss her. She had never minded his gentle, swift kiss, but the thought
of anything more dismayed her. Now he was about to pin her down, and somehow—somehow—she would have to say no to him, to kind, good Fred, who had made her so angry.

“Important things,” he repeated. There was a pause. “You don’t want me,” he blurted.

“You don’t under—”

“Understand? I never really tried to, and that’s been my whole trouble. I should have seen. It was perfectly clear.”

“Fred, no!” Her dread for herself turned quickly to pity for his humiliation. “I would never hurt you! Not you! How could I, ever?”

He said quietly, “Surely I know that. But without admitting it to myself I’ve felt your unwillingness. And I know you were angry tonight. I can’t blame you. I made a fool of myself.”

“No, no, you didn’t. Forget it. It wasn’t important.”

“Yes, it was. We need to see everything very plainly, Margaret. Neither one of us needs to make any more mistakes. To have you take me out of old friendship or, God forbid, a sense of gratitude—no, no!”

“You deserve better,” she said, very low.

“Don’t cry, Margaret.”

“I’m not.”

“But you’re about to. And I don’t want you to. I don’t want to see you cry. Things happen, or they don’t. That’s all there is to it.” He started the engine. “The rain’s let up. Go in before it comes back hard.”

“Fred, I don’t know what to say. I can usually find something.” She gave a small, sad laugh. “But right now, I just don’t know what to say.”

“Say nothing. I’m flying to see the folks in Canada
next week. You’ll be going back to work. And that’s it.”

Emotional storms besieged her every night. All that week they raged.

There was the ache of saying good-bye to her first baby, a Megan grown now, going away, and never—if you looked squarely into the blunt eye of truth—never really coming back.

There had been no word from Stephen since their parting in the hotel’s garage, where apparently he had made his final farewell. What more had he been about to say when Fred interrupted? Well, whatever it might have been, Fred’s message had been clear enough: Keep away.

She lay there wondering what she might do about it, tossing out one thought after the other because each was impossible. Each, whatever careful phrasing she might use, was only a way of offering herself, and he would see that. Very likely she had read into their brief encounter far more than he meant, anyway. So she would be making a humble fool of herself and embarrassing him.

Yet she knew that she was in love with him.

On the day before Megan was to fly east, a moving van came down the street and turned at the end toward where he lived. They were all at breakfast, but Margaret got up, saying that she would be right back, and walked down the slope to see where the van had stopped.

At the top of the rise from behind a thicket of evergreens, she could see the men going inside and the first possessions coming out: a bookcase and a desk. Something
in her wanted to run down there, but inhibition stopped her again, and so she stood watching with an ache of helplessness in a heavy heart. Then after a while she walked away, and, not yet ready to go back to the bustle of home, took the path to the park.

The pond was dozing in the morning’s heat, and the swans were making their endless, circular voyages. She sat down on her familiar bench as if there were some sort of healing to be had in this quiet place. I don’t understand it, she thought. I would never have believed that this could happen to me again. There was such a terrible sense of loss in her. Yet how could one feel the loss of something one had never had? He had simply left, as he had every right to do.

Back in New York after Thanksgiving at Gil and Louise’s, Nina was still trying to piece together some odds and ends of information.

After dinner Louise had taken her aside to lament the fact that Margaret had turned Fred Davis down.

“It would have been a wonderful match,” she mourned. “Everybody says so. The only reason can be that she has somebody else. But who?”

At breakfast Megan asked about Stephen. “I always thought he was the true Renaissance man,” she said in her new adult importance. “He was a scholar, a lawyer for Mom, and a baseball nut for Dan. Remember the night he told us about his father’s leaving? It’s funny that nobody ever hears from him. He seemed to like us all so much.”

“Oh, he was sweet on Mom,” Dan said.

“That’s a stupid remark, and I’ve asked you not to make it,” Margaret said sharply.

Naturally, everyone looked at her, who almost never talked that way. Her face had gone quite unmistakably bright red.

Later that day Nina and Margaret had gone for a walk. After a desultory conversation, chiefly about her own life, Nina had posed a bold question. “Why were you so upset this morning when Dan said that about Stephen Larkin?”

“I wasn’t upset. It’s just that Dan’s too old now to be so silly.”

“Oh. They really do seem to be missing Stephen, though.”

“Yes.”

They had walked on over crackling leaves.

“Of course, I only met him once, but he sounds to me like a very special person.”

“Yes.”

They had walked on into the wind. And suddenly Margaret stopped, saying, “Why not get to the point? You want to know whether there was anything between him and me.”

“Well, yes, frankly I do. Not that it’s any of my business, I admit. So, was there?”

“No, there wasn’t. I thought there might have been, but nothing happened. He went away, and that’s the whole story.”

Nina sat now in the apartment, reflecting over a cozy cup of tea.
That’s the whole story.
But there had to be something deeper, more complex, than that. There had been tears in Margaret’s eyes. The picture was vivid to Nina: Margaret in the November wind with her brilliant hair blowing, beautiful in her calm dignity, while one large, slippery tear slid down her cheek.

“Shall I be a meddlesome fool?” she asked herself. “Will I be doing any harm?”

After a while she decided that there would be no harm in a try, and as to being thought of as a meddlesome idiot, it didn’t really matter. So, after inquiring from long distance information, she telephoned Stephen Larkin and told him what she knew.

“I just thought you might be interested,” she concluded.

“Then she really didn’t—she isn’t with—Fred Davis anymore?”

“She never really was.”

“But I thought—it seemed—and so I—”

“I hope you don’t think I’m an idiot with a hell of a nerve besides, but I decided it was worth taking a chance to tell you. And if you ever let Margaret know I did this, I swear I’ll murder you.”

He began to laugh. “You won’t have to murder me, I promise. I’m going to love you forever. And now, will you please hang up so I can make my call?”