After the Fire (16 page)

There on the mantelpiece was Gerald's photograph, taken on the day he received his diploma from medical college. He had that faint smile with the dimple in his cheek. I don't believe I'm sitting here having this conversation, Hy thought.

“He'll pay!” Francine cried. “You'll get the best lawyer in the state. He'll pay in every way, monetarily and in shame, for what he's done.”

“I don't want to go to court, Mom. I don't want his money.”

“Not take his money? That's ridiculous, Hyacinth. He
owes
you. Why, he never even repaid your father for what he insisted—I remember it well—was to be only a loan.”

“Dad wouldn't accept it. You know that. Be fair.”

“Fine, let that go. It has nothing to do with this issue, anyway. And as for not going to court—that's unheard of.”

“I don't want to go. I simply don't. We'll settle it out of court.”

“Oh, what a stubborn fool you are! You've always been stubborn, but this is the limit. It's absurd. There's no other word for it.”

Hy was reading Francine's mind. Yes, based only on what she knew, it was absurd.

“All right, Hyacinth. Let's keep nothing back. Did he say anything else when you spoke this morning? Anything you might not want to tell me?”

A huge wall faced Hyacinth. Up and down its length
she ran, feeling its immovable stones with the palms of her hands, reaching into it for a hidden way through.

Your mother thinks she can control anything. She'll get lawyers. You can't afford publicity. These cases are never closed. Twenty years for arson. And a man died, a felony-murder in the second degree. A man was killed.

“I asked you, Hyacinth, is there anything?”

Her mind had strayed so that it took another few seconds before she could meet Francine's stern eyes and reply.

“Only that he wants to take the children to Florida for a while.”

“For a while? What on earth are you saying?”

Francine's cry rang through the room and would have been heard upstairs if there had been anyone up there to hear it. “You are letting him take your children away? I don't believe it!”

It was too much. Once victimized and now to be attacked again from the other side was too much. “Please, please,” Hyacinth implored. “ ‘For a while,’ I said. Fran-cine, I can't talk anymore. There's nothing I can do right now. Nothing. Believe me.”

“I believe you've lost your mind. What is it that you're not telling me?”

“Nothing, nothing. I'm telling you all I can. Oh please, let me alone. I need to be by myself.”

“What is this hold that he has over you? Why, this is blackmail! Don't I have any rights as your mother? Why won't you talk to me? I'm the best friend you have in the world, and you don't trust me.” Francine bent down and tilted Hyacinth's chin. “Look at me. You can say anything
to me, anything. Have you had an affair? That's how it looks. It's all I can think of. Yes, you had another man, and this is his revenge.”

Now Hyacinth rose so that the two stood face to face. “You're tormenting me!” she screamed. “No, I have not had an affair. No, and no, and no. Please. Go home and let me be. I can't stand any more, I can't—”

“You're going to see a psychiatrist, Hyacinth. We have to get to the bottom of this.”

“I'm not going to see anybody. Let me alone, I said.”

“If you don't go, I'll bring one here. I'm going to find somebody before this day is out.”

“If you bring anybody here, Francine, I'll run out of the house. I wish you'd go home and leave me. Go home! Go home!”

When Francine left and the front door closed, Hy went to the window, saw her mother get into her car at the curb, get out of it again, and come back up the walk to the door, where she rang the bell. The bell was a chime, and it pealed through the house.

Hy stood with her forehead pressed against the wall. I can't stand any more, she thought. But I have to live. I have my children, and I have to live. Oh, leave me. Everybody go away, you and everybody. I can't stand any more.

The chimes pealed and pealed, reverberating through the house. After a while, they stopped.

It is all habit, she thought later, as when this morning she had sat down at the table with Gerald only because she was accustomed to sitting there. So now according to
custom, she began the day's chores, the tidying, the fetching of the children at school and the preparation of the evening meal. She was divided, one part of her peeling a potato, while the other part watched her, a tall, slender woman in a plaid cotton skirt standing in a puddle of sunshine on a green linoleum floor.

The supper was over by the time Gerald came in. He had already eaten in town. He inquired about her mother, and upon learning that Francine had gone home, expressed his hope that she might be feeling better.

“It's been a terrible year for her. She doesn't deserve so much trouble.”

Compassion, expressed as it was with such propriety, was intolerable coming from the mouth of Gerald. Yet his words in some way restored to Hy's ears the sound of the doorbell's chime that morning; she saw, too, Fran-cine's car driving away down the street and was suddenly filled with pity for her.

She went to the telephone. It rang and rang for a long time. Could anything have happened to her, agitated as she had been, on the way home? When finally Francine's voice came, Hy blurted, “I'm sorry about this morning. Are you all right?”

“The question is: Are you?”

“Well, I got through the day, and I'm here.”

“So that's today. But what about tomorrow and the rest of the tomorrows? I hope you're giving some thought to them and changing your mind.”

“Francine, I can't change it.”

“I have to tell you I'm very hurt. And yes, I'm angry, too, that you won't talk about this. Whatever you've
done in your private life is no business of mine. But it can't deserve what Gerald is doing to you.”

If only it were the affair she believes I had, Hyacinth thought, instead of what it is. My name in the news, and my children tainted, even though fair-minded people will say it isn't the children's fault.

“And what is he doing to Jerry and Emma? Is he merely a beast, or is he out of his mind? I think you both are. When is he bringing them back? And how are you going to explain divorce to the children?”

“Oh please, Francine, don't make it harder for me.”

“When I left you this morning, I went to ask for advice. So listen to me. If you do go ahead with this, you have to tell the children very carefully. Otherwise, they'll have all sorts of terrible thoughts, that one of you is going to die, or that it's their fault. They'll have nightmares, or start to misbehave. You need to learn how to tell them, what words to choose—oh, this is an outrage! Will you at least do that much?”

The widow in her poor black dress. Arson—felony. A prison sentence.

“I will. I will.”

“And fight him, Hyacinth. Show your stubborn side.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Where I went yesterday, the doctor said that if you refuse to tell me what this is about, I must stop asking you. So now I've stopped. I only want you to remember that I'm here for you. I'm angry and hurt, but I'm here.”

When she put the receiver down, Hyacinth went to the back door to look out at the yard, where Gerald was playing with the children. Jerry and he were having a
boxing match, complete with feints, fists, and jabs, while Emma, quite fascinated, watched from her ringside seat on the swing.

Fight, Francine said. Very fine, except that when you have no weapon, it's rather hard to do. Still, we do not have to use the word
divorce
just yet, no matter what Francine says. This trip to Florida can be a “vacation.” They will stay awhile and go to a new school, while Mommy stays here because—well, because she needs to help poor, sick Granny a little.

And the little while will be how little? Let me not think about that right now.

They did not see her in the doorway, where she stood drinking them in with her eyes. Jerry, showing his small fists, was jaunty and tough; above his shorts, the summer's tan was beginning to fade. Emma said yesterday, with a wise nod, that Mrs. Darty—last year's nursery-school teacher, about to retire at sixty-five—was having a baby.

“Yes, she is. She is! She told me!” When Emma was earnest, her braids bobbed.

And still Hy stood there. She was having such strange thoughts, scraps of thought really, questions without answers. Would Gerald be so fond of his children if, for instance, the boy were like Moira's obese little fellow, who already weighed half again what he should? Was it perhaps his children's often-admired beauty that endeared them to him? Would Gerald have trifled with other women if—

Let us not think about that, either.

* * *

Early one afternoon, Arnie came. There were cartons of clothing in the front hall and boxes of books, all Gerald's things that were waiting for shipment to Florida.

“Finality,” Hyacinth said as she saw him looking at them. “The house is already starting to look abandoned.”

“Abandoned? Does it have to be?” And at her startled expression, of which she was aware, he added, “I've surprised you. Maybe I should stay away and keep my big trap shut.”

He was dressed in boots and the informal riding clothes that he preferred, an open-necked, warm shirt and a wide hat that he described as “semicowboy.” It crossed her mind as always that he looked twenty years younger than he was.

“Come in,” she said.

“You don't want me in the living room. I'll smell it up with horse.”

He would, but it did not matter anymore whether the living room smelled horsey or not.

“Come in,” she repeated, and then, proceeding to apologize for herself, “I'm a mess. I've been getting Jerry's and Emma's things ready. It's a bigger job than you'd think.”

“And a sadder one. I feel terrible about this business, Hy. I know I should stay out of it, only your mother phoned me when I got back from the stable just now, and that's why I rushed here. She's worried sick about you. Thought maybe I could do something. She doesn't know, and I don't know, why the kids are going and you're not going. It doesn't make sense.”

The familiar, friendly eyes made an appeal to her, as if the man, knowing that he had no smooth vocabulary, wanted to compensate with warmth for the lack.

“Arnie,” she said, “you're the kindest person. I know you would like to help, to do something if you could, but you can't.”

“Can't patch it up? Do a little reweaving, the way you do on an expensive suit? You don't throw it the hell out.”

Bereft of words, she threw up her hands.

“You can level with me, Hy. Gerald's told me it's about Sandy. I always had my suspicions anyway, you know. Geez, I'd have expected better taste from him. Why, he's finished with her already. Piece of junk, a tramp, a big you-know-what, that's all. Ten years from now, she'll be a tub of lard.”

“It's more complicated than that.”

She was wondering tiredly, and dreading, the number of times she would have to dodge these questions and fabricate explanations. First, of course, there would be Moira, who in spite of her decency and affection would have to be given the same evasions that everyone else would get. And after Moira would come a stream of others, unless of course the unspeakable truth should reveal itself….

“It was a stupid affair, not worth this, Hy. Frankly, I don't understand either one of you. Gerald loves his life, his work, the kids—”

Hyacinth interrupted, “But not me.”

“Oh yes, he does, Hy. He's tickled to death over your paintings, always talking about how you're going to be
famous, always talking about what a great mother you are to the kids.”

“You don't know the whole story, Arnie.”

“I know it's a mess. Your mother said Gerald called her, and she hung up. Everybody's angry at everybody. Everybody's worried. Gerald is worried about you—”

Again, she had to interrupt: “I assure you Gerald is not at all worried about me.”

He shrugged. “Well, I don't know. I want to be neutral. I liked you both, first time I met you, and I still do. Gerald's my partner, and a good one. I respect him. We're going to have a great thing in Florida. I only wish you'd go there, too. Why the devil can't you just buck up and go? Take a chance that it'll work out fine.”

Ignoring his question, she asked one. “Exactly when are you all leaving? We don't talk very much, Gerald and I.”

“Week after next. Hy, this is awful, the kids going without you. Seems like a dirty deal all around. I can't make head or tail of it.”

When she put her hands over her face, Arnie was silent until she had gained control. It occurred to her that, at least for the present, she must have cried herself out.

“Whatever the trouble is,” he said, “it can't last forever. You'll change your minds, both of you. In the meantime, I'll be in touch. I'll be going back and forth. Got to get rid of the land under the building here. It's worth a bundle. And I've got affairs in New York, so I'll be running up here and seeing you pretty often. Tell you about the kids. I'll take them to the stables down there,
teach them to ride. I always promised, and now I'm going to do it. They're great, cute kids.”

Suddenly there was nothing more to say. For a moment they looked at each other. Then Arnie spoke abruptly.

“You shouldn't go to the airport, Hy. Just kiss them good-bye at the front door and run inside before they see you cry.”

“I know. Are you on the same flight, Arnie?”

He nodded and stood up. “Well, I'll be going. I'll give you my numbers—you can call me whenever you want, every day if you want, and I'll tell you what's happening. But you don't have to worry. Gerald loves those kids. You know that.”

“I wish it was tomorrow. Do you understand?”

“Sure. I don't understand the whole business, but I know what you mean. You want to get it over with. Well, it won't be long. Only a few days. They'll go fast.”

And mercifully, they did go fast. On the final one, Hyacinth smiled and kissed her children, who were too thrilled with the thought of the airplane to care about anything else.

“See you soon,” she said as they followed the luggage to the van and climbed in.