Promises (40 page)

Big shots.
The irony of it.

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “Nobody’s that big. Nobody’s immune.”

When she got up from the chair, he thought she was going to come to him and offer comfort. But she only stood there indecisively, with a frown and compressed lips.

“Not for long, you said? How can you be sure of that?”

“I can’t be sure, but I believe it because I’m going to do my darnedest.”

For a second or two it seemed to him that she looked
angry.
She hadn’t asked for any details, how the blow had been dealt, why it had been, or how he felt.

So he filled the gap. “It took five minutes, maybe even less. Oh, he was decent, all right, couldn’t have been more so. But after twenty years …” He could say no more. Bravado had fled.

She was elsewhere, in her own place, not his. “This is some fine mess. My God, I came home so happy over my news, and this is the news you give me. Do you know where I was just now? At the doctor’s. I’m pregnant.”

Perhaps it was because he was shaken from the first blow of the day that her words did not at once take effect.

“Well, can’t you say something, Adam?”

“You were on the pill,” he said and felt, abruptly, a dull thudding in his chest.

“Nothing’s a hundred percent. Everybody knows
that.” She stared at him. “Is that all you have to give me? No smile?”

The thudding went wild in his chest. He could not have said whether the reason for it was anger, despair, or fear. He only knew that all of these were whirling in him. The divorce, the job, his children, his pride, the bills, and the dwindling bank account all went whirling. And now this.

“I wasn’t counting on having a baby now,” he said inadequately.

“You may not have been, but I was. How long did you expect me to wait? Till I’m sixty? You promised me a baby. You promised!” And she stamped her foot.

Did I actually promise? he wondered. He wasn’t sure. Perhaps he had. It was all such a blur, like the fog on the road.

“I just plain got sick and tired of waiting,” she said.

With these words of hers all the turmoil and rage in Adam flared abruptly into fire, and he attacked her, shouting, “Then you did it on purpose! You weren’t using the pill! Knowing that this isn’t the time, that I didn’t want a baby yet, that we aren’t ready and can’t afford one, you tricked me anyway!”

“Why? Are you such a pauper that you can’t afford my child—our child?”

The word
pauper
enraged him further. “This pauper has done pretty well by you. He’s kept you afloat. Without him this house of yours would have drowned. Do you ever keep touch of the expenses? Do you even know what’s in the checking account this minute? Or, I should say, what isn’t in the checking account.”

“I know damn well. I know why. If it weren’t for that blood-sucking wife of yours, sticking her hands in your
pockets every week, it would be a different story. Damn bitch! She knows you don’t love her, and still she won’t let go.”

“Don’t be a fool. You know I have no choice. Am I to let them starve? They’re my children.”

“She works, doesn’t she? Let her do more for them. They’re her children, too, not only yours.”

“I wonder where your brains are when you talk like that.”

“And I wonder where yours are. You don’t even know how to handle your lawyer. Why don’t you ask him why this divorce is taking him so damn long?”

“The courts are jammed up with divorces all over America. Haven’t you heard?”

She began to cry. “You make me sick. Here I was looking forward to meeting you at the front door with my news, I was thinking how excited you’d be, and we’d start talking about names, and you’d get out the champagne, only I wouldn’t have any because I’m not supposed to drink now—and instead we’re standing here having a fight.”

“Randi, I don’t want to fight. I want the two of us to quiet down and see how we can work things out.”

“If you mean work things out by having an abortion, you can drop dead, because I want this baby. Hear? I want this baby.”

“Randi, I didn’t say anything about an abortion. I’m just awfully upset, I’m pretty frantic, and I need to—”

Loudly sobbing, “Oh my God,” she ran into the bedroom, slammed the door, and locked it.

Adam knocked. “Let me in. Let’s talk. Please, Randi.”

“No! Let me alone. I want to be alone with my baby.”

In all his distress he was still moved by these last words.
My baby.
It was, after all, normal and laudable for a woman to want a child. If the circumstances were different, he, too, would welcome a child of hers, a love child. But the circumstances were terrifying.

He had had no lunch, yet he was not hungry. He recognized that in his present state he could not possibly concentrate on a book, nor could he fall asleep. Not knowing what to do with himself, he took a disk from the shelf and put it on the player. Beethoven’s Ninth might either calm or uplift him toward acceptance and courage. In either case it would not fail. And lying back again on the sofa, he let the miraculous, the almost holy sounds sweep over him. He was still awake and dreaming, watching a ribbon of sunlight move across the ceiling, when Randi’s voice broke into the spell.

“Will you for heaven’s sake shut off that racket! How you can stand it, I’ll never know.”

He sat up and, mildly enough, refuted her. “The world has loved this music for almost two hundred years, and you call it a ‘racket’?”

“I do, and I hate it.”

Occasionally she did surprise him.…

“I only put up with it because you like it.”

“Well, that’s all right,” he said reasonably, “since I put up with things for your sake too.”

“Really? What do I do that bothers you?”

Actually, he was unable to think of anything much. Oh, perhaps a few small things: her grammar sometimes, although not often, was one. He was a stickler for proper grammar. Also, she could be a trifle flirtatious
on occasion. But then, he was jealous of her, too, so it was possible that he imagined that.

Indeed, he was jealous of her! Here she stood, still flashing with anger, her big eyes still wet with tears, breathing so fast that he could see the heaving of her breasts under the cream-colored silk of her blouse. She looked so soft inside the brittle shell of her anger! And she was carrying his child.

Then he, too, went soft. For this was her day of celebration and should be recognized, regardless of all else. So with outstretched arms he went to her, held her while she cried out on his shoulder, and kissed away her tears.

Behind them the music, still playing, had reached that great, climactic, hopeful chorus, the “Ode to Joy,” which he loved and knew by heart. But quite perversely, he was chilled by a shiver of sadness.

T
his was the second Christmas without Adam, and the first that in the life of each had not been spent in the familiar house where, year after year, the tree had stood in the living-room bay, and the dining-room mantel had been festooned with greenery and hung with stockings.

“I’d like you to have dinner at my house this year,” said Fred.

Margaret objected. “All your friends are at your club’s party, and you always go. I know you’re thinking of us and it’s just like you to invite us, but I don’t want you to do it.”

“And I know you think it’s a matter of compassion,” he answered firmly, “but you happen to be all wrong. This is for me. I want a family Christmas, and yours is the family closest to me. I’ve already invited your cousins Louise and Gil. They’re not going to their son’s in Florida till after the first. So that’s that.”

It was a kind of comfort to be ordered around in such
a nice way, and so she accepted, although with a condition.

“The girls and I will cook the dinner, at least.”

“You will not. The dinner’s being catered. I want you to get dressed up and be waited on for a change.”

All through the day before and through most of the night, it had snowed, and on Christmas morning a great white peace lay over the blizzard-beaten landscape.

“A postcard,” Margaret said. “All it needs is a horse-drawn sleigh with fur robes and harness bells. But come look at the drifts. There’s no way we can leave here today.”

The girls, who had already laid out the extravagant dark red velvet, lace-collared dresses that Nina had sent, were dismayed. Danny insisted that he could shovel the car out.

“You can’t, and even if you could, I wouldn’t dare venture on those roads with that car.”

Fred lived in what he jokingly referred to as “exurbia,” meaning a house not exactly in the country, but that, set within its two or three wooded acres, looked as if it were.

Just then the phone rang. “I’m coming for you around noon,” said Fred. “That Jeep of mine can go up Mount Everest.”

So, carrying gifts and pumpkin pies that Margaret, regardless of caterers, had baked, they climbed into the Jeep and started over the hill. In the dip beyond the crest they came upon Stephen Larkin trying to extricate his half-buried car.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Fred called. “Wait till tomorrow and get a tow.”

Stephen tramped over to the Jeep. He was laughing.
“I can’t wait. You’re not going to believe it, but I’m all out of food. I was supposed to fly to my sister’s over the holiday, but of course there are no flights. So I’m trying to get to a restaurant.”

“Climb in here,” Fred told him. “I’ve got dinner enough for an army at my house. And if we get stuck on the way, which we won’t, Margaret’s got two big pies. Come on.”

“I’m not exactly dressed for dinner in these clothes.”

Actually, Margaret thought, in those clothes, the jeans, the rough jacket, and the cap pulled down above his reddened cheeks, he looked especially attractive.

Fred ordered, “Get in.”

She was unusually observant lately, especially sensitive to trivia, to atmosphere. And so she had been noticing, or had thought she was noticing, small alterations in Fred’s manner. Now hearing him, she was abruptly certain there really was a difference, as if in a benevolent way he were taking command. He had always seemed so mild, especially toward her. But she had had a husband then.…

No matter. She did not want to think about it. And she settled back to enjoy the ride. It felt good to be dressed up and going someplace. She felt loose, lightened, if only for this day, of all that weighed upon her. She was determined to separate this day both from before and the inevitable after.

Fred’s house was large and white with the rambling aspea of a farmhouse. Denise had been a lover of gardens, and even under snow their shape was evident in long, lovely curves and billows. Indoors, the comfortable, spacious rooms remained as she had left them, the soft chintzes, now sun faded, the Christmas roses in the
same white china bowl on top of the piano, and the piano with the lid down and probably, by this time, out of tune.

They had made a good home, a good life, together. Now these friendly rooms belonged to a man who, living alone, must scarcely use them; they had that look. Understandably, he wanted most to reestablish the life he had once lived here.

In the long dining room the table was set with Denise’s blue-and-white Wedgwood; the silver glowed; there were more crimson roses bedded among sprays of holly. The dinner, the wines, and the service were all perfect. Fundamentally a simple man not given to displays, however tasteful, Fred had nevertheless made a marked display. It embarrassed Margaret to think that it had been done for her. Gil and Louise, though not among Fred’s circle of friends nor of his generation, had been invited only for her. Even Nina had been asked; she had been busy in New York, and anyway, the storm would have prevented her from coming, but she, too, had been asked for Margaret’s sake.

These thoughts silenced her, and she was careful not to meet Fred’s eyes. He was discreet. His own thoughtful eyes told her often, without words, that he respected the uncertainty of her position and her concern for her children; for the present he would ask nothing of her.

Louise said, “You ought to think of marrying Fred when you’re free. It would seem so natural.”

“He hasn’t asked me,” Margaret would answer lightly.

“But you know he will. The children need a father, and you go so well together.”

Why did people always want to marry you off? She
was confused and did not want to feel any man’s intrusion on her privacy.

Yet she could not help but glance up at herself in the mirror that faced her above the sideboard. Tilted slightly over Stephen’s head, it showed her every motion, every angle: the scoop of vivid dark blue wool, below the white neck; the white smile, and each nervous glance as it met Stephen Larkin’s and turned nervously away.

It was enough to listen, holding apart from all the others’ conversation. I am like someone who has been starving, she thought, who must not be given too much food at once. And so she sat quietly, wearing a careful, cordial smile.

After the plum pudding and the pies the presents were given out next to the tree in the living room. Each of the young ones had a gift for Fred, paid for with their own earnings from the summer and Saturdays in the fall. Megan had worked at Danforth’s in the sweater department, Julie had baby-sat, and Danny had caddied at Fred’s club. Gil and Louise gave Margaret a beautifully bound album of old photos that Louise had saved, pictures of Margaret’s grandparents taken on their honeymoon before the First World War, of her father, in Marine uniform, dozens of pictures to be cherished. Fred gave her a handsome leather carryall.