After the Fire (20 page)

In her kindly way, she was making easy conversation, as if the two of them were seeing each other almost daily as they had done before Hyacinth's life changed.

“So you've been seeing Emma and Jerry. How are they doing under the palm trees?”

“Oh fine, Moira. They're in a very good school, didn't mind the change. We had a good time, my mother went with me, the weather was fine, just balmy—”

Lie. Why not lie? It doesn't hurt her, and it's easier for me.

“You're not sunburned, I see.”

“No, not in those few days. I never like to anyway. I'm not a sun lover.”

“Do you want a lift home?”

“Thanks, no. I need the exercise. It'll keep me from spreading.”

She stopped, ashamed of herself. What a stupid thing to say to Moira, who, still only twenty-eight, already had at least twenty extra pounds of spread on her bones! The matter with me is that I'm not thinking. I'm befuddled. And the jaunty act that I put on doesn't fool her for one minute. Go on and make amends. Make some amends, at least.

“The reason I haven't seen you, Moira, is that I've been in bad shape, not very good company. That's why I let him take the children when he moved. It's better for them until I straighten myself—until things are straightened out. It's temporary, only temporary, you understand. I should have called you to explain. You've been such a friend.”

“Don't give it another thought, Hy. Just take care of yourself. You've had a lot of trouble, but I have to tell you that nobody'd ever know it. You look wonderful.”

“Thank you. I try. I have to get ready for Christmas, and it'll be here before you know it. They'll be flying up from Florida.”

That at least was the truth, for Arnie had made the Christmas arrangements.

“Gerald asked me to telephone you after you hung up on him. He's been really upset. He never intended to have it turn out that way. When he left the message on your answering machine that morning, he had no idea you had already left so early. I am telling you the truth, Hy. I suggested that he make up for the mistake at
Christmas. So the kids will be flying in on the twenty-third, and I'll be with them. Gerald knows, of course, that you don't want him. So just put some extra water in the soup for me.”

“That's great.” Moira was enthusiastic. “We'll have to get together with all the kids. Do something nice and have a good time.”

With a repetition of “Take care,” she drove away. Not everyone, perhaps not anyone, would have let me go so easily, thought Hyacinth. She, loyal as she is, will be the one who checks the gossip the next time she finds herself in a group, whether at a PTA meeting or a Little League game. Wherever women gather and talk about what is happening in the neighborhood, they will speculate about the strange affair of Hyacinth and Gerald. Moira will do her best to stop it, but it won't work.

Well, that's only human nature, she was thinking, when on entering the house, she heard the telephone ring. That was a rare sound so early in the day; usually at that time it was Francine, who never missed a morning.

This time, though, it was not Francine. It was Will Miller.

“I phoned you the day before Thanksgiving. I didn't leave a message because I thought you might have forgotten me. Anyway, I'm in town for the day, and if you'd like to have an early dinner with me, I would like to have an early dinner with you. Will you?”

There followed a thousandth particle of time in which electrons and neutrons whirled through Hyacinth's head, and there was no solid thought, but only fragments of it such as: He knows nothing about me. What if I'm seen?
I have nothing to say. I don't know anymore how one talks to a man. I'm too tired to bother. I'm burned out. This is all fraudulent. I don't want to go.

“Why yes, how nice of you,” she said.

“Great. Since I have to get back early to Oxfield, would you mind six-thirty?”

“That happens to be my favorite time. I always like early dinner.”

“I'll come by for you at a quarter past.”

The moment after the phone clicked off, and if she had known where to reach him, she would have called back and made an excuse. At any rate, it was too late now, and she was annoyed with herself.

On the other hand, it might be enjoyable simply to avoid the long evenings in which, after getting tired of reading or listening to music or watching television, tired and determined not to succumb again to fright and tears, she had no choice left but bed and the hope that she would not lie awake listening for the creak of settling wood.

Upstairs, she glanced at a mirror. Moira had said she looked wonderful, but there was no possible reason why she should. The effect of weight loss on an already slender face is not supposed to be flattering. Lingering now to study this effect, she found it on the contrary to be rather good. There were no hollows in her cheeks, yet the faint shadows underneath her eyes did seem to have made them grow larger. The long hair falling along her cheeks gave her a Renaissance look, not necessarily beautiful but interesting, perhaps even mysterious.

“Get real. You are one big, damn fool!” she
exclaimed, and was upbraiding herself for being one when the telephone rang again, surely Francine's ring this time.

They spoke briefly, as usual. A covert decision had jointly been made not to discuss the issue that lay like a burning coal between them. The reason for Francine's calls was motherly. She wanted to know about Hy's plans for the day.

“Believe it or not, I've been invited to dinner tonight,” Hy reported, and went on to explain Will Miller.

“But Hyacinth, you don't dare. That's all you need, to have Gerald find out that you're running around with men on top of whatever else it is that he's already got against you.”

Running around with men.
Hyacinth felt a chill. If that were really all Gerald had against her!

“You're right,” she agreed, “although this is totally innocent. I told you, it's only on account of that dress I made for Emma.”

“No matter. You can't be seen anywhere with another man until the divorce is final and the papers are in your hand. And if you ever want to get your—”

Children,
she meant. Hyacinth, letting that pass, promised that this would be the only time.

“I don't know where he is, so I can't call it off, you see.”

“Well, go someplace where you won't know anybody. Do be careful.”

As it happened, Hyacinth could hardly have been more careful. The chosen steakhouse was in a remodelled
barn half an hour's ride from town; popular in the warm seasons and on weekends, it was unfrequented now in midweek and in a drenching December rain. There were no more than three or four couples far apart in the large room. The fireplace glowed, and conversation was low.

“Very cozy,” remarked Hyacinth.

“I thought you would like it. I thought it was your kind of place.”

“But you don't know me,” she said.

“One gets a feeling about people.”

“Sometimes one is mistaken.”

“Very true.”

It was also true that, as she had feared, she did not remember how a woman starts a conversation with a new man. Once married, unless you were out in the world, you only met other women's husbands, and then your own husband was generally present. You didn't
address
a man. She certainly didn't
address
Arnie, or treat him any differently from the way you would treat a kind and conscientious cousin.

He took off his glasses. “I really need them only for reading, but when I'm at work, I keep them on so I won't lose them. I'm a great one for losing things—car keys, gloves, anything.”

She smiled acknowledgment. His eyes were deep set between prominent cheekbones and forehead. They were at once lively and earnest.

“So tell me,” he began, “about Stephen Spender. Have you gone through the complete collection?”

“Yes, I took it along on a plane trip to Florida and
back. I kept thinking all the time that he was a man I would like to know.”

“Yes, you do feel like that when you read or see anything really great. I would like to have met the sculptor who made the statue of Lincoln in the Memorial. So I know what you mean. Do you like Florida?”

“I don't know it well enough to like it or not. This was a very short visit.”

He was waiting for her to continue. And she knew that the pause was awkward. It was like one of those horrible moments at a party when a dozen people who have been talking crisscross around the dinner table all suddenly fall silent. He was probably thinking with regret that he had misread her; the first time in the coffee shop, she had been reasonably sociable, but not now. What could he know of the turmoil inside her, the sense of guilt because she was here under false pretenses?

“What is it?” he asked gently. “I see so many changes of expression on your face. But if it's none of my business, and I know it isn't, tell me right now.”

“I'm worried,” she said, making a quick decision. “I'm in the middle of a divorce, a nasty one, as I suppose most of them are.”

“I wondered. I didn't think anybody would live alone in a house that size.”

“Right now I am alone in it.”

If he were to ask whether she had any children, what would she say? When he did not ask, she was thankful for not having to repeat the faltering explanation of their absence that she had given to Moira.

“And so what do you do with your time while you wait for the worst to be over?”

“Well, I'm an artist, as I told you, although I am afraid I haven't been working at it lately as much as I should.”

“Understandable. Do you work at home?”

“Yes, I have a good room for it, northern light and all.”

“May I see it sometime?”

“Oh, surely. You may be disappointed, though.”

How coy that was, an arch reply that made her feel absurd, as if she had been fishing for a compliment. Words simply were not coming to her tongue.

Making no comment about that, he asked instead about the dress that she was making for Sally Dodd.

“I've scarcely begun it, to tell the truth. I wish I hadn't undertaken it.”

“But you did promise it,” he said gravely, “and she's waiting for it.”

“I know. I'll do it.”

“In time for her cruise, you remember.”

“Yes, yes.” And she repeated, “I'll do it.”

His eyes were so intense! Like opals, their lucid gray had flecks of green when the candlelight flickered past them. Nothing would escape those eyes; they would see through you, your pretensions, your evasions, and your falsehood. No, she would not see him again, not just because of Francine's reason, which was a sound one, but for some other reason that she could not name.

“Where did you learn to sew?” he asked.

Glad of a changed subject, she answered promptly, “My grandmother taught me. She's the last of her breed, I think, a totally domestic woman, born in 1910. She made an art of everything from cooking to hooking rugs. And cleaning floors, too, I shouldn't wonder.”

“I had a great-grandmother like that. I never knew her, of course, nor the other one, either. That one was different. She worked with her husband in the first R. J. Miller store. We have a dark brown photograph of that store in Oxfield, taken in 1879. The two of them are standing at the doorway, and there's a buggy parked on the street. The street is a wide dirt road in the heart of Oxfield. I wonder what they'd say if they could see it today.” Will chuckled. “They were a great pair, or so I'm told. I guess the higher you climb on the family tree, the more virtuous the ancestors become.”

He went on to explain how the business had grown, and she paid him the compliment of listening carefully. Actually though, his account was interesting. As the daughter of a salaried chemist and the wife of a doctor, she knew almost nothing about business, how risks are taken and money is made or lost.

Freed of tension for a while, Hyacinth began to relax. Will had some marvelous stories to tell, such as, for instance, the time a new salesman, not recognizing the head of the company, refused to show him a certain leather belt because “it wouldn't be right. This belt is too expensive for you.” She liked his sense of humor. There was nothing caustic or mean about it. He had as well an appealing modesty. She had made a comment about an Indian sari shown in Miller's window, and from there the
talk had drifted toward far places. He had seen Burma and Tibet. But unlike so many people who would leap to display and brag about what they had seen there, he made little of it.

He's different, Hyacinth thought. So many people are only poor, thin surface. But he has depth. And she thought again how sometimes when you open a new book and read the first page, you do not want to put it down until you have read it all.

They drove back through the town past Miller's windows, around the square, and into the street where Arnie's building had burned down.

Will remarked, “I happened to be here that day, driving in very early. It was a fearful sight, the gathering crowd, the ambulance, and the flames that you could see through the broken windows. There's talk, or so I've heard, that it was arson.”

“I didn't know.”

“It was a fairly new building, too. Now you take an old firetrap like ours over there on the square, and you really worry. If I were in charge, I'd take it down and put up something with every possible safeguard. But you'd be surprised at the objections you hear. There's something about the old and the familiar that a lot of people love to keep. They find it's quaint, I suppose. Others would call it dowdy. Difference of opinion.”

Now, for the rest of the short way home, she neither heard nor cared what else he would say. She had only an awful sense of the sword suspended above her head.

At her door, Will took her hand. “You know I want to see you again,” he told her, “but I won't press you this
minute. I hope you'll soon have your divorce behind you.”

“I hope so,” she said.

“I'll be away until after New Year's. I'll see you when I get back.”

Watching him go down the walk and get into his car, she thought as she had the first time: Some young woman is going to be lucky.