Homecoming (2 page)

“You startled me,” he told her on that first evening. “I didn’t want to go to another boring cocktail party, but it was an obligation. And there you were, the first person I saw when I entered the room. I just stopped and stared. You were standing there in the middle of that jostling, chattering, overdressed crowd, tall and calm in your dark-blue dress. Do you remember?”

She remembered everything. Everything. As usual she had been wearing dark blue. It was her signature. Sophisticates in New York wore black, so she would wear dark blue, different, but not too different.

“You were twinkling,” he always said, liking to repeat the story, “with that look you have when you are amused and too polite to let it show. It
wasn’t a superior look—it isn’t like you to be superior—just faintly curious, as if you were wondering what the competition and all the nervous tension were about.”

Curious. Grandpa Byrne had had that look.

“I love your poise,” Andrew said, “the way you don’t shriek out greetings with all that fake enthusiasm people have. I love the way you can sit with your hand in mine and keep silent until the very last note of the music dies.”

He had the most wonderful face, a strong nose, a soft, olive complexion, and, in contrast, light eyes, green, dark lashed and pensive. Remembering was unbearable now. A metamorphosis had taken place. What had been sweet, was gall, bitter and angry.…

She stood up and went to the window. New York with all its splendor was merely a jumble of towers and steeples this afternoon, a forbidding stone wilderness under the gloomy rain-soaked sky. If the rain had not been torrential, she would have gone outdoors and walked in it for miles, walked to exhaustion.

*   *   *

“What shall I do?” she asked aloud. “I am becoming a nuisance to myself and must not become a nuisance to other people. Must not.”

Turning, she looked around the room, searching there as if, among the remnants of a life destroyed, she might somehow find a signpost, an explanation, or a direction. But the fruitwood chests, Persian rugs, and paintings of the Hudson River School with their round hills and snowfields, these tasteful possessions that befit the home of a rising young banker, all these had no explanation for the wreckage. None.

She walked down the hall. It was long, thirty-one steps to the end. Or more, if you counted from the far wall of the living room. Starting at two o’clock in the morning you could easily measure off a mile before dawn, and if you were lucky, the urge to sleep might come.

Past the bedroom where now, in a sumptuous moss-green bed, she slept alone, were the two closed doors; the people who came to clean this pair of rooms were instructed to close the doors when they were finished and to keep them so. Suddenly, she needed to open them and look in. The rooms, except for color, pink in one and blue
in the other, were mirror images; each had a crib, an adult-sized rocking chair, a toy chest, and a row of stuffed animals on a shelf. Now the window shades were down, so that the light was dim, restful, and mournful, as in rooms where the dead lie. It was fitting.…

Remember? Yes, remember it all from beginning to end.

“Twins,” the doctor said with a happy grin. People always seemed to smile at the subject of twins, as if having them were somehow, in a nice way, comical, one of nature’s jokes. Well, maybe they were, she had thought, going home. And thinking so, began to chuckle.

It was an energetic fall day, and she walked briskly. In the bright air she imagined a smoky scent, although goodness only knew where it could come from, for surely here on the east side of Manhattan there were no leaves being burned in anyone’s backyard. But there were chrysanthemums in the florists’ windows. And she bought a bunch of miniature whites. Then, at the bakery, she bought a box of chocolate chip cookies, which would be her last such indulgence until the twins should be born. At home, having arranged
the flowers on the table, she laid out their wedding silver, lighted candles, poured wine, and waited for Andrew. Working late at the magazine as she often did, she was not usually able to greet him at dinner with such a formal display.

Andrew cheered. “Great! Great! And so that’s why you’ve begun to look like a baby elephant. To think when I married you my fingers were almost able to meet around your waist.”

Kissing her lips, her neck, and her hands, telling her how happy he was and how blessed they were, he almost at once began to take charge of things.

“You are to go by taxi to and from work every day. I insist. Winter will be coming on, and the streets may be slippery, even with the slightest dusting of snow.”

“You’re bossing me,” she protested, not meaning it.

But he was serious. “Yes, and I shall keep doing it. You take too many chances. Next thing, I swear you’ll want to go skiing.”

“I love your frown. It’s so stern.” She stroked the two vertical lines between his eyes. “I love your nice, level eyebrows and the way your hair
keeps falling over the left side of your forehead. Why always the left side? And I love—”

“You silly woman. You could have found a really handsome guy if you had looked a little longer.”

Plans were taking shape in his head. If we’re smart, we’ll start looking right now for a larger apartment. Two cribs will never fit into that little room.

Two cribs, blankets, a double carriage, and another entire layette, eventually another high chair and a double stroller, all these and more became the various grandparents’ excuse to go back again to the infants’ department.

Cynthia had always been gratefully aware of her good fortune. Never having been surrounded by anything else, she was nevertheless able to imagine very vividly what it was like not to have it. Going away to an Ivy League school, she felt in the first place lucky for being able to pass the entrance examinations, and after that, for being able to go without the financial pressures that bore so heavily on so many other students. Coming home at vacation time, she saw keenly how comfortable and beautiful that home was.

And there were no impediments when she and Andrew came together. Their two families, being similar, blended easily; each was pleased with its child’s choice. The marriage took place promptly; since they were sure, there seemed to be little need to try each other out by first living together. So, in traditional ceremony, with Cynthia wearing her mother’s lace and carrying white roses, in a grand old Gothic church, to the measures of a trumpet voluntary, they were married.

Now, with equal ease, they were planning for the arrival of their twins.

One day as spring approached, the doctor had more news. “You know what, Cynthia? You have a boy and a girl in there.” He was an old man with an old man’s forgivable twinkle. “You’ve planned it well, haven’t you? That’s the way to do it.”

She was ecstatic. “I can’t believe it. Are you sure?”

“Sure as can be.”

Now there would have to be two extra bedrooms, since you wouldn’t keep a boy and girl together forever. Her mind’s eye, as she walked home through that warming afternoon, saw how
the rooms might be decorated: cowboys in one, perhaps, and ballerinas in the other? No, too banal. As to names: both to begin with the same letter, as for instance in
Janice
and
Jim
? No, that was corny. How about Margaret, or just Daisy, which was what her mother was called, or perhaps Annette after Gran? Let Andrew choose the boy’s name. There were so many lovely problems to be worked out.

This time she had a bunch of crimson tulips next to the wine cooler when Andrew came home.

“We’ll need a pretty big place,” he said. “Don’t forget the nanny’s room.”

Certainly, because she would be returning to work, there would have to be a nanny, though both parents were decided that weekends were to be spent entirely with their children.

The remaining months were devoted to the new apartment. High on an upper floor from which you could see the park, this new home was one of the city’s most coveted luxuries, and maybe, thought Cynthia, a greater luxury than they should have undertaken. But Andrew thought otherwise.

“It’s not out of line,” he assured her. “Both of us are working and doing well. And even if you didn’t work, we could manage. We’d just cut way down on something else. This is an investment, a permanent home for the four of us, or maybe more?”

The birth, as predicted, went smoothly. Timothy and Laura, weighing together a total of nine and a half pounds, arrived on a breezy June day, conveniently, as Cynthia said, between four-thirty and five, allowing their father and their already doting grandparents to celebrate at dinner. Obviously, they were not identical twins, but they looked it, having Andrew’s eyes, Cynthia’s dimpled chin, and an unusual amount of her dark, lavish hair.

On the second morning they were brought to their pretty rooms and to the care of a good-natured nanny, Maria Luz, who had reared three babies of her own in Mexico. For the first few days there was a kind of pleasant confusion in the house, as friends arrived to coo and marvel, leaving behind them a mountain of tissue paper and shiny boxes out of which came enough tiny
sweaters, embroidered suits, and dresses to outfit six babies. But eventually the house grew quiet, order was established, and a routine emerged so smoothly that you might almost think Timothy and Laura had always lived there.

They were easy babies, according to Maria Luz and the books on Cynthia’s night table. They did a minimal amount of crying, soon slept through the night, gained weight on schedule, and sat up when they were supposed to.

On Sunday afternoons in the park, people turned their heads as the double carriage passed. And Cynthia, healthy and vigorous with new clothes and a flat stomach, felt that she, that all of them, had been blessed.

“I never thought,” Andrew said, “I’d be so foolish about my children. I always thought that people who dragged snapshots out of their wallets without being asked were idiots. And now I do it myself.”

The months went by. The first birthday came with a party, presents, paper hats, and smeared icing, all joyously recorded by the video camera. Sooner than you would imagine, the carriage was
stored, and a double stroller took its place. Laura and Tim were halfway through their second year.

And now into Cynthia’s mind there came a faint, unspoken shred of thought: Perhaps two were not enough? Perhaps it would soon be time to think about another? Why not? She had just been given a nice raise. Life was so good.…

It felt marvelous to be going home on a rare half day off with the first whiff of winter in the air. Walking fast in her sneakers while swinging the bag that held, along with her purchases, her smart, high-heeled office shoes, she would get there in time to give the baths, or one bath, at least, while Maria did the other. Tim was so active now that you had to wear a rubber apron, or you’d be drenched.

When she reached the front entrance of her building, she was still smiling at the thought. Joseph, the doorman, did not smile back, which was unusual. He looked, actually, stern. Angry about something? she wondered, and, dismissing the matter, went into the lobby. At the elevator her neighbor from the apartment across the hall came quickly forward on seeing her, and she, too,
had a queer expression on her face, so queer that alarm ran down Cynthia’s back.

“Cindy,” the woman said.

Something had happened.…

“Let’s go up. They were looking for you, but—”

“What is it? What is it?”

“An accident. Cindy, oh, darling, you’ll need to be—”

The elevator stopped, the door slid open, and a low thrum of many voices surged toward them. Crowding there were her parents, Andrew’s parents and his brother, her best friend Louise, their doctor, Raymond Marx, and—

“Where’s Andrew?” she screamed and ran, pushing them all aside.

He was bowed on the sofa with his face in his hands. Hearing her, he looked up, weeping.

“Andy?” she whispered.

“Cindy. Darling. An accident. There’s been an accident. Oh, God.”

And so she knew. She thought she was tasting blood in her mouth.

“The babies?”

Somebody took her arm and sat her down beside
Andrew. Dr. Marx was murmuring while he clasped hands tightly on her shoulders.

“There was a car, a taxi. Going around the corner, it jumped the curb.”

“My babies?”

The soft murmur cut like a blade into her ears. “My babies?” she screamed again.

“It struck the stroller.”

“Not my babies?”

“Oh, Cindy, Cindy …”

Those were the last words she remembered.

When she awoke, she was in bed. Andrew, fully dressed, was lying across the foot of the bed, which was odd. When she stretched her arm out, the sleeve of her nightgown fell back, which was normal. Sunlight fell over the ceiling, and that was also normal.

Yet there was something different. Then it all flooded; great waves of anguish and disbelief broke over her. “No! It didn’t happen! It’s a crazy dream, isn’t it? It’s a lie, isn’t it? Where are they? I have to see my babies.”

Andrew, trying to take her into his arms, knelt beside the bed. But she was frantic; she pushed
him away and ran to the door. When it opened, a nurse in white came in with a bottle and tumbler in her hand.

“Take this,” she said gently. “It will quiet you.”

“I don’t want to be quiet. I want my babies. For God’s sake, can’t you hear me?” The cry was a howl. It shattered her own ears. I am going insane, she thought.

“You must take it, Mrs. Wills. And you, too, Mr. Wills. You need to sleep. You’ve been awake since yesterday morning.”

“Cynthia,” her mother said, “darling, take the medicine. Please. Please. Get back to bed. The doctor said—”

“I want to look at them. They need me.”

“Darling, you can’t see them.”

“Why? Why?”

“Oh, Cindy—”

“Then they’re dead. That’s it? Dead?”

“Oh, Cindy—”

“Who did it? Why? Oh, God, let me kill him too. Oh, God.”

“Please. Think of Andrew. He needs you. You need each other.”

Whether they gave her another pill or a hypodermic needle, she did not know. She knew only that the sunlight faded.