The Road Taken (4 page)

On these days, during these car trips, Celia allowed herself a rare burst of optimism, unusual for such a pragmatist as she was; she counted the pluses and minuses of her life and decided it was a success in every way; and best of all she knew she had been a part of making it that way. She didn’t feel middle-aged anymore, she felt young. She saw herself entering gracefully into middle age, with Alfred at Harvard or Yale and then becoming a professional man—the son of the butcher and the baker becoming a doctor or a lawyer, or, if he preferred, Celia imagined in these daydreams, the president of the local bank.

Their garden bloomed beautifully that summer, bees drifting through the rose bushes, cut flowers brightening the house. And when Alfred came back from playing in that garden and ignored a scratch he had gotten on his face from a thorn, Celia didn’t think anything of it. Boys played roughly, and they were always getting cut and bruised. At dinner he felt feverish. When she told him to go to bed early and to be sure to wash his face, he didn’t try to make excuses to stay up later.

In the morning when Alfred came downstairs to breakfast she didn’t recognize him.

His face was hugely swollen and red, with ruby blotches on it. She touched his forehead and felt fever. His cheek, where he had been scratched, was hot, the skin tight. She felt a wave of panic, and sent Hugh to get the doctor.

“Blood poisoning,” the doctor said, and sent Alfred back to bed.

How quick, how frightening, to become so sick from such a little thing! Although there were methods to try, everyone knew there was no cure for septicemia; it either cured itself or it didn’t. The doctor had given Alfred aspirin for the pain and fever and gone away. Celia tried to put cold, wet compresses on his painful face, but he moaned and turned away from her. She was shaking with fear, holding back the tears. By that evening his eyes were swollen almost shut.

The family prayed, and waited, and slept at last, but Celia couldn’t leave her son’s bedside. She had told Hugh to sleep in Rose’s room, in Maude’s old bed, but a moment after she had sent him away he came back.

“I want to be with him,” Hugh said. His eyes were full of concern and fear. He sat next to Alfred’s bed and took his hand. “I’ll stay with my brother,” he said.

He had always referred to Alfred as his brother, and she had always encouraged it, but suddenly a voice deep inside Celia screamed silently:
He’s not your brother. He’s nothing to you, he’s mine.
Then she as quickly realized the thought had been unkind . . . although she had meant it, and felt it still. Alfred was the joy of her life. No one but a mother could know how strong their bond was.

“You may stay, but don’t disturb him,” she said.

Early in the morning Rose and William came in to Alfred’s sickroom. When she saw him, Rose gasped.

“I’ll take care of the little girls,” William said. “Should I get the doctor again, should we take him to the hospital?”

The doctor came, and said again, gravely, that nothing could be done for blood poisoning. “If the aspirin doesn’t help, I can give him something stronger for the pain.”

“Cure him,” Celia said. “I don’t care what you do, but do something.”

“Ah, yes, something,” the doctor said. “There are things we know now in medicine and much we don’t. You know, when people are shot or stabbed it’s often the septicemia that kills them, not the wound itself. I can try strychnine, eggs, and coffee enemas to strengthen him . . .”

“You must bleed the boy to get rid of the poisons,” Celia said.

The doctor looked grave. “I think bleeding is old-fashioned and barbaric myself, and I’ve never seen it work. People think it works, but it’s God who does the healing. I will try the other things, and above all, let us pray.”

“We
did
pray!” Celia cried.

She kept a vigil for four days, nursing him. Sometimes she slept a bit from exhaustion. The girl who cleaned their house brought her food, which she couldn’t eat, and water. Alfred, refusing the eggs, drank a little water, but by the second day he was delirious, his distorted face oozing pus. He thrashed in his bed and moaned from pain. When he became unconscious it seemed a respite. Perhaps now he could get some peaceful rest, and that would strengthen him.

Oh, my brave, beautiful boy, Celia thought. All the times you played and hurt yourself and I thought nothing of it. What terrible thing was in the garden, on that thorn, to make you so sick? What germs were there that weren’t there before when you fell, when you tore your skin? Was it something on your hands? A little boy’s dirty hands, carrying fatal disease? You were
just playing.
You were only having a happy childhood! What weakness of your system made this the time when you were cursed?

Just before dawn Alfred died.

Celia screamed like an animal and would not be consoled. She didn’t want to let go of her son so he could go to the funeral home. At his graveside, William and her son-in-law, Walter, had to hold her up so she wouldn’t faint or throw herself into Alfred’s grave to join him. She had never been so emotional, and the family was alarmed.

In the days after the funeral she held her two little girls so constantly and so tightly that she frightened them so much they cried and tried to pull away. No one knew what to do with her. She didn’t care; she just wanted everyone to leave her alone.

After ten days Celia slowly began to pull herself together. She looked into the mirror, and was upset at the sight of her drawn and grieving face. She forced herself to go into Alfred’s bedroom for the first time since he had died, and realized with a kind of sick shock that without any instructions to the contrary Hugh would have been sleeping there—since it was his room, too—ever since they had taken her son away. But Hugh’s bed was untouched.

And Alfred’s bed had been slept in—the sheets wrinkled, defiled by someone who had tried to take his place, for what selfish and morbid purpose she had no idea.

Hugh had been sleeping in his dead stepbrother’s bed. Was he crazy?

“You must stay in Rose’s room—just for now,” Celia told him. “I’m closing off this room for a while. Until I feel better.”

“I loved him,” Hugh said softly.

“We all did,” Celia said, with no kindness in her tone.

William watched helplessly, quite concerned, when she turned Alfred’s room into an untouchable shrine. Her implacable mourning went on and on. He didn’t know how to deal with Celia’s seemingly endless grief.

“But it was you who always said that the past is the past and life must go on,” William said.

“When did I say that?” Celia snapped.

“A boy of eleven should not sleep in a bedroom with his sister,” William said. “Hugh is too much with women as it is.”

“All right, he can stay in my sewing room.”

“Celia . . .”

“Then let him go away to military school,” Celia said. “It will be good for him. He
is
too much with women.” She simply wanted Hugh out of her sight, but she wasn’t sure why.

“No military school,” William said, appalled. “He’s just a child.”

“You said he wasn’t.”

“I won’t discuss it,” William said. “He’s my son.”

Celia burst into tears.

It had been her hubris, she knew, that had killed her own son. She had taken too much pride in him, and loved him too much, and had been too confident that she had made her life a success. And while she tormented herself for her flaws, Celia began to realize something else. She realized that she resented Hugh because he was alive, when Alfred was dead, and because Alfred had been perfect while Hugh was so lacking in all the masculine qualities she had admired in her son. Yes, she resented him, even though he was a little boy.

And after a while she almost began to hate him. Everything he did annoyed her. She had to hide this feeling from her husband, and from the others in the family. When the girls fussed over Hugh, too much she thought, Celia had to bite her tongue. It had never bothered her that she didn’t love her stepson. No one knew or cared, and she had always been scrupulous in treating the two brothers alike. But she now realized something flawed but unavoidable about her own character, and the future of the household’s only surviving boy.

Even if she never did anything about it, she realized she had become his enemy.

Chapter Four

Rose was sixteen now, and the boys she had known in the neighborhood as simply friends, or sometimes just as pests, were starting to look at her differently. The older ones, who had thought
she
was a pest, were coming to call on her. She liked the attention, but she didn’t like any of them, because she couldn’t help comparing each one to her longtime secret love, Tom Sainsbury, and it was perfectly obvious that none of those boys was as good-looking, or as charming, or as nice as he was. When she was with them she felt nothing at all. She was sure that in some way her soul and Tom’s were joined, and that was why she wanted him and nobody else.

He had asked her to dance at Maude’s wedding reception, and when she was in his arms for the first time, unbelieving, nervous, and somehow safe, he had looked down at her with his wonderful smile and told her she had grown up to be “a beauty.” A beauty! Tom thought that! Suddenly she, who had always thought of herself as nothing special, began to think of herself as more, as a young woman with promise.

But he didn’t come to call on her. She watched him occasionally walking with other, older girls, and felt an actual pang of pain. What did he see in those girls that she didn’t have? Could she ever have it?

She missed Maude, who was living away from the family in her own home, a busy married woman starting on a life of her own. Rose went over there more often than Maude came to see her. Maude seemed so adult, so finished now, knowing the mysteries of sex (although Rose was too shy to ask her about anything so personal), owning her own household things—sheets, dishes, silverware, pots—and with a husband to please and share things with. Rose wondered if she would ever have a home of her own. What if she couldn’t fall in love with anyone? She knew she would never marry without love. She was adamant about that. She would be a spinster if she couldn’t have Tom, so it looked as if she were doomed to be alone, living with her father and Celia forever, a pathetic figure.

When Rose told this to Maude, her sister just laughed. “You’re too stubborn,” Maude said. “You need to open your eyes and look around you. There is never only one man.”

“For you, maybe,” Rose said. “You couldn’t make up your mind for ages. I’m not like you. You liked them all.”

“No I did
not
like them all,” Maude said. “I picked the man who had the qualities I
wanted
to live with for the rest of my life. The others, some of them, had qualities I would have been
able
to live with. If Walter hadn’t come along I could have fallen in love with someone else eventually, but I’m glad he did come along. I know Celia never understood why it was Walter. She was always partial to looks and money.”

“Aren’t most people?” Rose said.

“Apparently not you. Tom has looks but he’ll never be rich.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I don’t care either. Walter will make a good living in the years to come, but what’s more important is that he’s my friend, he’s kind and honorable, and we have so much fun together. No matter what our future brings, I like him just the way he is.”

“How lucky you are,” Rose said, feeling a little sad. “And I’m lucky to have such a smart sister.” She knew that in the past six years Maude had been as much a mother to her as her own mother had been, and sometimes she wondered how she could possibly have grown up without her help. She liked Celia, who was fun-loving and modern and often generous, but there was a core of coldness in Celia, even when she was being kind, that made Rose wary. She didn’t know why she felt that way about her stepmother, but she did.

“If Tom doesn’t notice you then you need to get over him,” Maude said. “It’s just not fated to be. What does he have, anyway, that no one else has?”

How could she define it? She had heard people say, as a compliment about certain young men, that they represented the best part of America, and she had always felt it applied to Tom in particular. He seemed both solid and glamorous. He had a certain glow about him: that handsome, open face, his optimistic look, his health and strength and cheerfulness, his muscles from working in the shipyard. If they were to put someone on a patriotic poster symbolizing the brightness of their country, it would be Tom Sainsbury. People always referred to America as “the New World,” while Europe, where the war raged, was the old one. Half their town consisted of people who had come from other countries, from that old world, with different faces and different customs, all looking for a better life, and finding it, Rose was sure. Anyone would be proud of Tom—as she was, as she would be if he let her become a part of his life.

“I want him,” Rose said.

“Well, all right,” Maude said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. It’s about time I entertained at home, so why don’t I give a little dinner party? I’ll invite a few couples, and Tom, and you, and another fellow to make him jealous. . . . I know, Ben Carson is home from Yale, and his sister is a good friend of mine; I’ll ask the two of them. I’ll sit you between the two men.”

“Tom will like the sister,” Rose said.

“No, he won’t; she has a fiancé, and of course he’ll come too. You’ll be the only eligible young woman at my dinner party, and both Tom and Ben will have to pay attention to you.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Rose cried, jumping up and down with joy.

“Now, no shrieks and squeals or leaping,” Maude said, smiling. “You have to act like an adult.”

“Oh, I will.”

“Demure, but not too shy. Friendly but not forward. Mysterious but not too aloof.”

How could she ever be all of those things, Rose thought. “Of course,” she said, as if she knew just how to do it.

She wore her good white dress, and Celia helped her put her hair up and lent her violet toilet water, which Rose dabbed on her wrists, neck, and handkerchief. When she arrived at Maude’s apartment the others were already there: Maude’s four former bridesmaids and their fiancés (was everyone in the world over eighteen engaged?), the eligible Ben Carson with his sister Gloria and
her
fiancé, and her beloved Tom Sainsbury. They were fifteen in all, hardly a “small” dinner party, as Maude had described it, and Rose realized that if she got married she would have to learn how to entertain. But Maude and Celia would help and advise her, as Celia had Maude.

Ben Carson was twenty, a year older than Tom. During dinner he announced that he was going to go on to Yale Law School after he graduated from the university, and Maude cast Rose a significant look. Rose couldn’t have cared less about his future brilliant career. She glanced at him dispassionately. He was of slightly above-medium height, of medium build, with dark hair, and dark eyes that she supposed burned with intelligence, well dressed—by any standard a nice-looking young man, a good catch for someone else. When they finally sat at the table and Tom was next to her, she felt the heat. He smelled faintly of soap and tobacco. If Ben Carson smelled of anything she didn’t notice. But she was very careful to divide her time between the two of them. Demure but not too shy.

Maude served cold cream of cucumber soup, a standing roast of beef from Papa’s butcher shop, juicy and rare, with crisp roasted potatoes, and buttery beans and carrots, and then a wonderful moist cake in a large glass bowl with fruit and whipped cream between the layers. She said it was called a trifle, and was from a recipe in her new cookbook. Of course Rose could hardly eat a bite, but she pretended.

“And what sort of law will you specialize in, do you know yet, Ben?” she asked, not caring.

“Wills and estates,” he said.

How perfectly morbid, she thought, but smiled brightly. There was probably a lot of money in wills and estates. She had heard that certain old people who felt neglected by their children and grandchildren provided handsomely in their wills for their attentive lawyers.

“Have you set a date for your wedding yet, Gloria?” Maude asked.

“September,” Gloria said. “You’ll get an invitation, of course.”

“I didn’t realize that you had turned into a young lady overnight,” Tom said quietly to Rose, accepting her, young as she was, as a part of this more sophisticated group. Weddings, careers, first dinner parties, and she was still in high school.

“Hardly overnight,” Rose said flirtatiously, trying to appear mysterious but not aloof. “You just didn’t notice.” Was that friendly but not forward?

“I did notice,” he said.

“Oh?”

“You look very pretty tonight in that dress.”

“Thank you.” He hadn’t noticed; she always wore that dress to festive events, she had first worn it as Maude’s maid of honor, and afterward it was her good dress for this year.

Well, at least he had noticed now.

When the evening was over Ben Carson asked her if he could walk her home. “Oh, I was going to do that,” Tom said. Rose couldn’t look at Maude because she was afraid she would break into a triumphant smile.

On the way home Tom asked her what she wanted in life. “A happy home,” Rose said. “Lots of children, well, at least five; love, of course, and to laugh every day, and to spend my whole life right here in Bristol. I feel safe here.”

“That’s just what I want,” Tom said. “I come from a big family, as you know, and everyone helps each other. I want to keep working in the boat yards like my father did. It’s exciting to see a beautiful yacht rise up out of nothing and to know I was a part of that. Wherever it goes, it will take a piece of me with it. And, later, when I’m too old, maybe I’ll work in the office.”

“I’ll bring you your lunch,” Rose said lightly.

“Would you?”

“Yes, I would.”

“That’s very sweet.”

When they reached her house they stood together for a moment on her front porch. “Would you like to go to the beach with me tomorrow?” he asked. “We can dig up quahogs.”

“I’d love that.” He was asking her out, at last! She hoped she wasn’t blushing. Oh, thank you, Maude, Rose thought.

“I’ll pick you up at four o’clock, when it’s not so hot. Bring a big basket. I’ve found some really good ones this summer.”

“All right.”

“Maybe afterward you can come over for supper. My mother will steam them. You haven’t seen my family for a long time.”

“I know. I’d like to see them,” Rose said.

She felt his breath on her cheek, and then he kissed her. It was her first kiss. His closed lips were warm and firm, and when she looked into his smiling eyes she saw the children they would have together.

“We mustn’t go too fast,” he said. “You’re very young.”

“We’ve known one another all our lives,” she said.

“I know. So we don’t have to be chaperoned. No one will think anything of it.” They both laughed.

They went to the beach the next day, and after that day they saw each other regularly. He was cautious because she was only sixteen: He thought she might change her mind, or that someone might talk her out of her feelings about him. To protect their privacy they tried to pretend to everyone else that they were still just friends. Rose even went out with other boys occasionally, just to keep up appearances. She and Tom didn’t know if they were fooling their families, but everyone went along with the game. As for Rose, she was so in love, so afraid of losing the best thing she had ever had after all the losses in her life, that she wanted the two of them to stay on this private island of romance for as long as they could.

The only one she told was Maude, of course. She told Maude when Tom said he loved her, and when they decided they would become engaged in two years when she was eighteen, she told Maude that too.

“I haven’t told Papa and Celia,” Rose said. “They think I’m still a child. Well, maybe Celia wouldn’t think so; when she was eighteen she was already married; but still, you’re the only one who knows, and I want to keep it that way.”

“That’s probably wise,” Maude said. “You’ll find out that everyone has an opinion.”

Rose nodded. But why would anyone have the opinion that Tom Sainsbury was not the perfect man for her? She couldn’t imagine it.

She wished her mother could have been here to see how her life had turned out. It seemed such a short time ago that she had lost Adelaide, even though it had been six years. And then there had been Alfred’s death. Rose had been stunned by that. She had never really warmed up to Alfred, but he had been a part of their family, and after he was gone there was a great gap. Sometimes she wished she had been nicer to him. She had so many questions about what was fair and what was not, and why people had to suffer so much, and she had never been able to answer them. Here she was, so happy with Tom, but it seemed there was always a reminder that something bad could happen, as if life were a balance, a kind of scales.

And yet, it was curious how even in the face of such unpredictable and tragic events as they all had undergone, and probably would again, people clung to thoughts of future happiness with such obstinate optimism: love, marriage, children, careers. When she looked around she saw that they just kept going on. People buried their dead and made plans. No matter how helpless they were in the face of fate, they kept trying to make things better.

Rose began to think there was something about human nature that was admirable. Or perhaps stupid.Or perhaps, simply innocent. But what else could you do?