Legacy of Silence (25 page)

“Marry a man like your father,” she told Eve abruptly.

“Like—Daddy?”

“Of course. Who else but Daddy? A good man whom you can trust. But first go to college. If you want to go to California, do it.”

“I don’t know why, but California’s been on my
mind forever. There’s a magic about the Pacific Ocean.”

“I understand. I always planned to go out west to the mountains. Eve, you’ll be all right. You will.”

“Mom, darling, I know. I’ll have to be.”

A
LWAYS
the seasons moved across the lake. Now, in summer, the surface looked hot; the sun blazed upon it so that it glistened like a sheet of metal that would scorch one’s hand. August was a dreary month. The tired leaves hung listlessly, and the grass was as dry as straw.

Caroline lay on a wicker chair under the shade, watching Jane in the sandbox. Soon she would be two years old, and she hardly knew her mother. Other women, Eve and Lore, had to care for her.

Now they had all ceased to pretend. It was not what was said, but rather what was not said, that told how Lore and Joel had finally come to acknowledge the nearness of death. No longer did either of them put Jane, so strong and vigorous, upon Caroline’s lap to twist and bounce and pull her hair. There was no more mention of the western trip. Talk was cheerful, but neutral.

Lore was sewing, taking in one of the dresses that now hung loose on Caroline. She had so many visitors, and Lore understood that she wanted still to be “presentable.” That had been Mama’s word, her proper mama’s “presentable.”

And suddenly, without having planned to speak, Caroline said, “Will you take care of my children, Lore?”

She had asked her the question before. Always the answer had come: “Don’t talk like that. You’re not going to die.” But this time, Lore said only, “Yes,” put down the sewing, and looked away.

After a long moment, Lore spoke again. “Your hair’s all sweaty on your neck. Eve’s bringing cologne. Let’s go in. It’s a little cooler in the house.”

Joel wanted to get an air conditioner for the bedroom, but it wasn’t necessary. A fan would do.

“One day every house will be entirely air-conditioned,” he said. “In the meantime, we can do one room, can’t we?”

But she did not want to block the window. She wanted to see the lake. “I need to,” she said. “I see people walking there. I see the clouds move.”

He said nothing, and bought a powerful fan that whirred and soothed them as they lay together.

The nights passed slowly. Their sleep was uneven. One or the other drowsed, and waking, spoke whatever had come to mind.

“I wish my parents could have known you,” she said once. “They would have been so happy for me.”

And he: “You have been everything to me. Everything, my kind and loving wife.”

Her dreams, flickering, shattered into vivid, colored fragments and were gone: Mama’s gleaming black piano, orange awnings, Dr. Schmidt’s gray
mustache—“You’re strong, you’ll be all right,” he had said—and the pink linen dress of a summer long ago.…

“What is it?” asked Joel.

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“I thought you cried out.”

“Did I? I don’t know why.”

By the end of the summer, she stopped going downstairs. It was too hard to climb back up. And she felt her own fragility in her tired arms and legs. After a while, she left the chair at the window and stayed in bed all day. They moved the bed so that she could see the blaze of autumn light outside. She heard crows call, going south. She heard a bee buzz against the window, and drowsed again. She gazed and drowsed.

One day she heard Joel’s voice talking to Eve, or Lore, or both. She thought he was weeping.

“Dear God, let the time of her suffering go quickly. Or else let time stop so I may keep her.”

There were other voices, too, a whispered hum, as if there were many people there. She did not know, and it did not matter. The voices faded, as if they were very far away.

Death seems so wasteful, she thought, when I have so much left to do.…

“Y
our mother wanted you to,” Joel said, “and you’ve been talking for years about going to college in California.”

They were walking on the lakeshore drive, with Jane in the stroller and Peter, who was clearly Jane’s favorite in the household, trotting, as usual, alongside. Eve looked back at the house and its landmark blue spruce. Her feelings during these last months had been painfully ambivalent; on the one hand, the house was home and shelter, with known faces and all Mom’s familiar possessions in place; on the other hand, it echoed with the silence of Mom’s stilled voice. The cheer in the house was forced and false.

Lore, too, had been pressing her to leave. “Go on and get your education. Look at me. What have I ever done? All right, I’m a nurse, and that’s important work, but all the other things that I could also
have learned—the arts, and literature, and history—that I didn’t learn. Don’t be a fool, Eve. Go.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Joel said now. “We’ll take the station wagon and we’ll all drive to California. I’ll sell the car out there, since we’ve no more use for a second car, and the rest of us will fly home.”

He was quite right. Of course she must go. Hadn’t Mom always said “forward”?

“Do you want to take the northern route through the mountains, the one Mom told about when those two men—what were their names?”

“Lewis and Clark.”

Suddenly, Eve’s spirits brightened with a vivid image of Indians and Spaniards; she heard strange music and saw brown faces, striped cloth, turquoise and silver. “No, let’s go south, through Santa Fe.”

“That’s a good idea. Your mother would have liked that, too. She always wanted to know more about Indian life. We’ll see it through her eyes.”

He will always see everything through her eyes, thought Eve.

F
ROM
her window in the women’s dormitory, she watched the station wagon turn and follow the driveway between the umbrella palms. There was a last, quick glimpse of Lore in the backseat with Jane, whose curly head was barely visible at Lore’s shoulder. Peter would still be in his basket at their feet; having slept his way contentedly across the continent,
he was probably asleep again. Vicky was in the front seat next to Dad.

It had been Lore’s idea to take Vicky along.

“I don’t think she would enjoy it,” Eve had told her.

“She would be a help. She could stay with Jane while the rest of us go to the Santa Fe opera, for example. They’re having a marvelous season this summer.”

As Eve had made no answer, Lore had continued, “You never used to dislike her so much.”

“I didn’t say I disliked her.”

“But it’s obvious that you do.”

“You’re wrong, Lore.”

But Lore had not been wrong. Quite simply, Eve had feared to sound foolish if she were to reveal her reason for resenting Vicky: that she flirted with Dad. Dad, being Dad, was almost certainly not aware of it, but Eve, being a woman, recognized all the signs: the gaiety, the flouncing walk, the hovering concern.

On the westward journey, whenever Dad drove, Vicky sat in front. When Lore drove, then Eve sat in front, while Dad and Vicky sat in back with Jane and the dog. Thinking about it now, Eve’s anger rose. What did she think she was doing? And besides, she was coarse, from her foundation cream, thick as pink plaster, to her mascaraed owl eyes and her yawning boredom. At the splendid Sangre de Cristo Mountains, she had cast a cool, exasperated glance, as if to
say, “Well, they’ll do, but I don’t see what the fuss is all about.”

The station wagon disappeared around the curb. Eve was alone. All the daily concerns of home were beyond her now. Never before had she been in a place where she knew no one and no one knew her. And she sat there gazing out at the palms, alien, green, and foreign to eyes that expected red and yellow leaves in autumn.

She had the room to herself. Dad had wanted her to have the pleasure of privacy for study and sleep because she was an early riser who went early to bed. He had given her every luxury, far more than was necessary according to Lore, who in her Spartan way had strongly disapproved. She sat now surrounded by these luxuries, still unpacked. Her luggage was of the finest leather, ordered from a first-class shop in New York. There were skis—in case she might want to spend a winter weekend in New Mexico—and a surfboard—in case she might want to try surfing, which she was certain she did not want to try—and a tennis racket; there was a coffeemaker, a fan, a radio, a flowered silk quilt, a typewriter, a superb camera, and on her wrist a gold watch. The closet was not large enough to hold all her clothes without cramming. Mom would never have let Dad provide all this stuff.

She got up and unpacked Mom’s photograph in its beautiful frame. On the well-used dresser she placed it beside a family grouping of Mom, Dad,
Lore, and Jane, whose baby face smiled, showing her new, tiny teeth. The memories, crowding, came back: neighbors at the door, bringing flowers, food, and pity for the baby; letters of condolence spread out on the dining room table; Lore’s worn face and Dad just sitting there, staring at nothing.

Loneliness overwhelmed her. And yet she was surrounded by people here. Every room was occupied. Voices passed in the corridor. But who were they all? Where had they come from, and where were they going?

And she examined again the particular photograph that she already knew to the smallest detail: the curve of the eyebrow, the fold of the skirt—taffeta, she remembered, and silver-gray—the ruby on the finger. She remembered her rage at her mother, not all that many years ago.
Now I am the age that Caroline Hartzinger was when she fell in love with the monster who fathered me.…

Such moods do not last unless the possessor of them is prepared to wither away, and Eve was not about to let herself wither. After a while, she felt able to summon what she called “old-fashioned common sense,” to set her room in order, and go to see who was living next door and down the hall. It was time to become attached. Here she had been planted, and here she must take root.

A
T
Christmas, it pleased Eve to bring home a pride-ful account of her first semester, with grades as high as they had always been. Joel nodded with satisfaction.

“Your mother would be so happy, Eve, and I am, too. Tell me, are you having any fun?”

“Oh, yes, I’m taking a dance class, I’ve made good friends and went with a group of them to Mexico one weekend. It was wonderful, and I want to go back. What really fascinates me is archaeology. We went to see some Mayan ruins in the Yucatan and they were marvelous. So I’ve signed up for some courses.”

“What about your languages?”

“Well, I’m going on with both French and German advanced literature. Of course, they’re no effort at all for me, which may seem lazy and probably is, but it’s also practical, because in a pinch I can always teach either language. Or I could do translations, I think.”

“That’s practical planning.”

It also pleased Eve to find at home that the deepest gloom had been lifted. It is likely, she reflected, that Jane is the explanation. Little more than a toddler and slightly small for her age, she had become a personage, very bright, persistent, and eager to know absolutely everything.

“What’s in your book? Is that Humpty Dumpty?” she demanded while Eve was reading a biology assignment.

“Why has that man got a bombella?”

“Why can’t Daddy eat candy?”

“She’s not what you were, Eve,” Joel said more than once. “You were energetic, but nowhere nearly as determined. Lore says I spoil her. Well, maybe I do, but I don’t mind if I do. She’ll be all right. And in the meantime, she’s adorable.”

“You certainly spoil me, Dad. I can’t think of anybody who came to college as well supplied as I did.”

“As long as you appreciate it, and you do, you’re not spoiled.” Joel leaned back in the lounger, savoring his cigar. “Tell me, how’s the man situation?”

“Very good. Good for tennis and Saturday parties, but no lover, since that’s probably what you mean. Lightning hasn’t struck me yet.”

“I don’t mean. You’re much too young. For God’s sake, Eve, don’t make any mistakes.”

For an instant, the atmosphere was clouded; but only for an instant, as Joel changed the subject. “What do you really think of our Jane? Quite a change since you saw her last, isn’t there?”

“Frankly, I give her credit for lifting some of the despair in the house.” Eve had to laugh. “We went for a walk yesterday, she, I, and that big pull toy that keeps turning over. I wanted to walk by the lake, but she insisted on going the other way. I found out why—she led me straight to the candy store on Main Street.”

“And I suppose you bought her some.”

“I’m ashamed to say I did. Only two chocolate kisses, though.”

“I know, she’s not the easiest little kid to handle. I was a little worried about how we were going to manage after you left. But it’s all worked out quite well. Naturally, Lore is back at work, but I’ve been able to get more people in the office so that Vicky can pick up Jane from nursery school and stay here in the afternoons until either Lore or I get home. I feel safe having her with Vicky instead of with some total stranger. Don’t you agree?”