After the Fire (6 page)

Surely one would have expected her to be the party instigator. Still, she was promptly agreeable. She had been nothing but agreeable, if perhaps a trifle quiet—or was that Hyacinth's imagination?—since the snowy night on which Jim had opened his heart and his pock-etbook to Gerald.

“Well, you know how I love a party,” she replied. “Hyacinth, you must give me all your ideas about the decorations and the menu and the guests. I need to get busy right away.”

Often as the wedding day drew near, Hyacinth came to the brink of asking Francine what she really thought about Gerald, now that he had become such a familiar in the house. But each time she drew back; Francine never brought up the subject, almost surely because she had changed her mind about him—how could she not have changed it?—and was ashamed to remember her original mistake. It was far better to forget the bad beginning.

Hyacinth was feeling the sweetness of life.

T
hey had been dancing all afternoon, whirling to the music of a very good five-piece band. A floor had been laid on the lawn, and an awning prepared in case of rain, which, happy to say, was nowhere in sight. All around stood a scalloping border of small tables, each with its starched white petticoat and taffeta bows. At one of them now sat the family, momentarily at rest and watching the dancers.

Jim was “in his element,” to use one of his own frequent expressions. He used it now.

“Watch that Gerald swing. He's in his element. And watch Hy keeping right up with him. I never knew she was that fine a dancer.”

Francine was pensive.
I suppose there must be much more that we never knew about her,
she thought.

“Quiet little baby sister,” George said. “The first one in her class to get married! I would never have predicted it. He's quite a guy, too. Very impressive. And let me tell
you, I meet a lot of impressive guys in the global banking business.”

Granny agreed. “Yes, isn't he a charmer? I fell in love with him myself the first time I saw him. As I told Hyacinth once, marriage is a very, very serious business. But this one is going to be splendid. She's going to be so happy. I see it. I feel it in my bones. How about you, Francine?”

Of course Hyacinth has told her what I said about him that time, Francine thought, and now she wants to pin me down to a yes or a no. It will surprise her to hear that I am moving toward a yes. At the least, I haven't found anything to criticize in him during all these past months.

“Yes, I do think so,” she said.

She prayed and she hoped, hoping that she had not done too much damage in misjudging this man whom Hyacinth so adored. She prayed that the memory of her drastic words might fade completely away. There in the bright afternoon, Francine grew solemn. How easy it had been to rear those three young men now whirling on the floor! Never had she been baffled by any one of them. But Hyacinth? I suppose I annoyed her a good deal, she reflected. I know I did. She worried me, and we bickered far more than we should have done. But I only wanted her to be happier, and livelier. I only wanted her to be something she couldn't be!

“Look at her,” Jim said. “She's opened up like a rose.”

Francine's eyes were already following her daughter. Her head was flung back in laughter, her short veil was
floating, and her feet were flying. She was dancing with a fellow who worked at the museum. Friends there had sent an original and pleasing wedding gift, a set of photographs, most beautifully framed, of the Shackleton expedition to the South Pole. Hyacinth had her own kind of friends.

When Gerald cut in, Hyacinth stood up on her toes to reach him and kissed him on the mouth. And again her feet flew. Her veil floated, and she was radiant with love. She had indeed opened up like a rose, as Jim had just said.

He, too, was beaming with happiness. “A perfect party, darling, my efficient wife. Perfect as always. I'd love to catch you once forgetting some little thing. Just one thing, once.”

“Well, you've caught me now. The decanters are close to empty. I'll run in and make sure I've remembered to tell the waiters there's more wine in the garage.”

When Francine returned, she brought a message for Granny. “The cooks want to know where I bought the cookies and what they cost. They're interested.”

Granny laughed. “Oh Lord, those are my old spice cookies. They're an eighteenth-century recipe from a Williamsburg cookbook, or maybe it was New Orleans. I don't even remember.”

“Well, there are hardly any left, and you must have made two hundred at least. But Jim, didn't Gerald say they want to start by six o'clock? Then they should be changing now—where is Gerald? I don't see him.”

“He went inside a while ago,” Granny said. “Too much wine, maybe. Too much excitement.”

“Well, I'll go ask him what he wants. The band is flexible. They'll stay or quit, whatever we like.”

The house, except for the busy kitchen, was otherwise silent as Francine walked through it. Then she thought she heard voices above, coming from Hyacinth's little studio at the top of the stairs. And she went up, calling, “Is that you, Gerald?”

“Yes, here I am. I've been showing Hy's—Hyacinth's work to her friend, Martha.”

A dart of anger struck right to Francine's heart. What was the meaning of this? As Francine entered the studio, Martha had a vivid white smile for her, and Francine had to look twice to recognize her. She had been working and living in New York; her light hair was now blond, expensively so, with gleam and without roots.

Martha exclaimed, “All these years we've known each other, and I never had any idea that Hy was so talented! This one of her father—it's absolutely superb! And the still life, the fruit, is perfect.”

“It's sold,” Gerald said. “One of her friends at the museum is buying it. And her grandmother is buying the watercolor of this house to give George on his birthday.”

“I never, never knew! But Hy is so modest. She always was, all through school and college, so modest.”

“That she is,” Gerald said.

“Well, she's an artist. They're not like other people, are they?”

Francine was scolding herself: Don't be an idiot. What on earth do you think they were doing up here, arranging a rendezvous? Still, it doesn't look right, walking
away from the party together. They both should know better.

That girl does know better. She feels her power over men and loves to use it, even as casually as this. Oh, didn't I know? But once I had Jim, I never used it, and there's the difference.

“I adore this snow scene,” said Martha. She was taking her time to comment on the pictures, thus to emphasize the earnest purpose of this visit to the studio. “You can really feel the cold, can't you?”

Thoughts that Francine had long stifled now rose like an emergent weed that has, despite much effort, not been eradicated after all. Wasn't it a French philosopher who had written, or was it simply a folk saying, about “the one who loves and the other who is loved”? Hyacinth loves. Hyacinth gives her heart and soul, without guile, because she has no guile. Blunt-spoken and honest, she is one of nature's innocents. Of “street smarts” she has none.

And standing there at the window, Francine gazed down at the happy, noisy party below. All of a sudden it was a throng of agitated bees buzzing around one another.
Morbid thought! Is that what it's all about, struggling to get on top?… Of course he knew Jim would come up with the money…. He played it well.

Gerald spoke to her. “You were calling me?”

“Yes. I remembered that you and Hyacinth plan to start at six, and I wanted to remind you.”

“Thanks. I was coming right down.” He turned to Martha. “Look at Francine. Isn't she beautiful?”

“Absolutely beautiful. And she doesn't grow older, either.”

Putting his arms around Francine, Gerald kissed her cheek. She had always observed his expressive eyes. At this moment they were gentle and deep with empathy.

“You're worried. Your last baby's leaving, and of course you're feeling sad. But please try not to be too sad. I promise to make her very, very happy.”

How do I know he will not? I have no right to revive my morbid thoughts. I am looking for trouble. I must be careful to guide and guard the way I think.

“I'm sure you will,” she said.

The red car, its trunk filled with new luggage, stood ready in the driveway while the farewell crowd waited for the bride and groom to appear. Francine and Jim, in the forefront, were feeling the moment of departure, the departure of the last child, just as Gerald had said. From behind came voices.

“Didn't Hyacinth look lovely? And so happy that she sparkled.”

“What about him? Isn't he something to look at, too?”

“Are they going straight through to Texas?”

“No, they're going to tour for a couple of weeks before he starts work, the Grand Canyon, the Tetons, the big sights. He's never been west, but she has.”

“She's been everywhere, or almost.”

Yes, we did what we could to feed that curious bright mind, thought Francine. And not a scrap of all we
gave was ever wasted on her, stubborn little creature that she was—

“Mom,” said Hyacinth.

She was dressed for travel in jeans and a thick sweater; a chill wind had risen. No proper going-away suit for Hyacinth!

“Mom, I want to whisper something, please. Listen. I'm so thankful that you and Gerald… no daughter could ask for a better mother than you've been. Forget any stupid thing I ever said to you or about you. Please. This is the most perfect wedding anybody could dream of. Oh, you know what I want to say. I'm feeling teary, so I have to stop.”

“Darling, I'm feeling teary, too. Be well, both of you. What is that old Irish saying? May the road—”

“May the road rise up to meet you,” said Jim, “and may the wind be always at your back.”

“Here we go!” cried Gerald, holding the door for Hyacinth. “Climb in.”

“Into my lucky car. Only, today it's not raining.”

He took the wheel, they both waved, and a few seconds later the lucky red car was gone.

C
oming home sometimes in the late afternoon, Gerald would pause in the doorway, shake his head, and speak in wonder. “I never thought my life could turn out like this.”

“Neither did I,” said Hyacinth.

She was feeling like a queen in her domain. The apartment had been fitted out with every possible comfort and convenience. The furniture, solid and simple, was made to last through a lifetime and beyond, for Francine and Jim, who had provided the wherewithal for it, believed that quality in the long run was economy, not to mention the fact that it gave great pleasure.

The shelves were already crammed with books and music; the rooms were decorated with flowery fabrics and a lacquered screen that George had sent from Singapore; and the ice-blue kitchen, freshly painted, was tidy with its rack of copper-bottomed pots. Then came the most precious bedroom, yellow as a daffodil and soft
underfoot, where one of Granny's largest, best, and oldest hooked rugs had followed them to Texas.

From every window they looked out at another view. From the little kitchen, the end window faced the wide, flat earth of Texas, an empty vista on which in the far distance there rose an unexpected cluster of skyscrapers, some of them completed and some still but a framework of steel beams. The side window, when open, brought in a breeze from the grove of cottonwood trees across the street. The bedroom windows lay above some young persimmons that, so Hyacinth had been told, would in the fall turn from glossy green to yellow; at the moment they were merely dusty and drooping in the hundred-degree heat. The front room looked out upon the teeming highway that every morning took them past gated communities of lavish houses behind lavish stone walls, past lavish malls into the heart of the city, where Gerald worked at a hospital and Hyacinth worked at a small art gallery nearby.

There had been no opportunities at the area's museum. With rueful amusement, she had reported to Gerald that its tiny amount of restoration work was always sent to the museum at home! So the next best choice for her was the gallery. It was interesting enough, and the hours left time for her to do some watercolors and sketches on the kitchen table, where she was usually at work when Gerald came home.

Never had she known him to be as exuberant, in such high glad spirits, as he now was. Absorbed in the life of the hospital, he was in awe of a surgeon who could rebuild the face of a child born with half a nose, or restore
an arm that had been mangled in a machine. Half laughing at himself, he was in awe of his own certainty that he, too, would learn to perform these miracles.

For such a man, after a day of tense concentration, the quietness of home must be precious. Hyacinth was touched by his appreciation of small things, the good supper as well as the pretty table at which they ate it. He remarked the flavor of freshly brewed coffee and the pattern on the cup, too. He praised her for every attention she gave him.

One night he looked up from the text he was studying and said abruptly, “I'm feeling the permanence.”

“What did you say you're feeling?” she asked.

“The permanence. I've never lived more than two years in any one place, and not often as long as that.”

Hyacinth had also been reading, but his words and his soft expression moved her to rise and put her arms around him. “We're permanent,” she said.

“I was thinking about your mother today, about how far she's come from her first impression of me. Now I feel that I have a friend in her. And you should be having very tender thoughts about her, too.”

“I have tender thoughts about everyone.” Hyacinth spoke solemnly. “I wish that everybody could have what we have. Maybe it sounds naïve, but honestly, I sometimes feel as if I loved the whole world.”

She was hardly so naïve as to believe that “loving the whole world” was anything other than an epiphany that would appear, rarely, and disappear, as moods do. She
was also not naïve enough to believe that the first glory of the honeymoon could remain unmarred.

You were bound to discover that you had not, after all, known everything there was to know about each other. Considering the dozens and dozens of habits, memories, and tastes that constitute a personality, how on earth could any human being expect to find his duplicate in another one?