Evergreen (59 page)

“Come. The car’s around the corner. How was it?”

“Marvelous. I always love
Aïda
, anyway.”

The car turned northward, heading out of the city. In the west the somber winter sky had been torn open, and in the
empty space between the clouds lay a lake of lavender, pearl and green.

“A beautiful sunset,” Anna said. “The days are getting longer.”

“So they are.”

Joseph was very quiet. This must have been one of his difficult days. It was just as well; she wouldn’t have to make conversation. If only sleeping dogs were allowed to lie! She had been feeling, for the last year or two, a welcome lightening of care—the natural result of Iris’ good fortune—and in consequence she had been able to go for more than a week sometimes without even thinking of certain things. And now the sleeping dogs had been awakened.

Her body was drawn into a tangle of hot, trembling nerves. She pushed her coat back over her shoulders.

“What’s the matter? Heat wave in February?”

“It’s this dress. It’s meant for a winter in Lapland, not New York,” Anna complained.

He said no more, except to ask, a short while later when she laid her head back on the seat, whether she was not feeling well.

“I have a headache,” she answered. “I think I’ll just close my eyes.”

They were almost home when Joseph spoke again. “You had a big crowd, did you? All women, I suppose?”

“Almost all. Just a couple of older men, like Hazel Berber’s husband. But then, he’s practically retired.”

“I suppose you saw a lot of people you hadn’t seen in a long time.”

“Well, naturally, at an event like this.” Something in Joseph’s voice alarmed her. She sat up, pretending to fuss with her coat, and glanced at him. But he was looking straight ahead with a quite ordinary expression.

In their room she began to change into a cooler dress. The heat was still overwhelming. Then she heard Joseph coming up the stairs, striking each step with force, warning her of confrontation. He entered the room and firmly shut the door.

“Well, Anna! I waited all the way home. I gave you every chance to tell me and you didn’t.”

Best face it armed with innocence. “What can you be talking about?”

“You’re a very good actress, but it won’t work. Because, you see, I was there. I got there early, before the final act, and I saw the whole thing!”

“Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about? What whole thing?”

“Come on, Anna, come on! I wasn’t born yesterday. You were talking to that man for fifteen minutes.”

“Oh!” she cried in a high, clear voice. “You mean Paul Werner! Yes, I ran into him at the water fountain. What’s wrong with that?”

“You didn’t just ‘run into’ him, you had fifteen minutes of very serious conversation, so don’t try to tell me—”

Go over now, go over to the attack. It’s the best defense. “What did you do? Carry a stop watch? And why didn’t you come up and talk, the way any husband would instead of standing there spying?”

“Any husband in my place would be damned curious to know what his wife was doing! He came on purpose to see you, Anna! He knew you were going to be there because—I recall it now—I said you would be.”

“Did you mention it on purpose to trap me?”

“Damn you, Anna, for a dirty thought like that!”

“And what about your dirty thoughts?”

“Don’t try to put me on the defensive, because you can’t do it. He came to see you and you lied to me. Those are the bare facts. You can’t make anything else out of them.”

“I did not lie to you! I just didn’t think of mentioning it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I—” She heard herself stammering and began again. “Because it was of no importance to me. It was trivial. Do I give you a list every night of the people I happened to run into during the day?”

“Happened to run into!” Joseph mocked. “It’s so usual
for you to run into Paul Werner, isn’t it? Like the milkman or the mailman! Do you think I’m an ass? But on second thought,” he said slowly, “on second thought, maybe you do see him. Maybe it isn’t so unusual.”

“What a monstrous thing to say! Have you gone completely out of your mind?”

“No, I’m not out of my mind. I’m thinking very clearly. And I want to know why he came and what you were talking about. I’m waiting,” Joseph said.

She had seen tempers often enough, explosions over the children when they were little or over household trivia, but never a cold fury like this. She drew her thoughts together. Everything was at stake, everything. “We talked about—let’s see, the opera, of course, and the new tenor. Then he asked the usual polite quetions about the family, things like that. Nothing, really, when you come down to it.”

Joseph whipped the evening paper through the air and snapped it against the back of a chair. “No, that won’t do! He grasped your arm. You pulled away. I saw your face when you went inside and I saw his. You can’t tell me you were talking about the new tenor! What did he want, Anna? You will have to tell: what did he want?”

She bent her head. It whirled, as though she were going to faint. “I feel ill,” she murmured.

“Then sit down. Lie down. But you can’t get out of it that way.”

She sat down, holding her head. Celeste had turned up the radio in the kitchen; a blare of revival music sounded up the stairs before it was cut off. A horn blew in the yard across the road. The stillness inside the room rang in her ears. He was still standing there waiting. She didn’t know whether one minute had passed or five. She raised her head.

“Well?” Joseph said.

She wanted to cry out: Mercy! Leave me alone, I can’t stand any more. But she was silent.

“Well?” he repeated.

And then she saw it was no use. She wet her lips, and sighed, and spoke.

“He asked me to have lunch with him. The reason I didn’t tell you was that I knew you would be very angry. And I knew you had business dealings with him. I thought it could end in dreadful unpleasantness, so I thought it better to handle it myself.” She stopped, trembling.

“And how did you handle it?”

“How do you suppose? I refused. I told him never to ask me again.”

She looked directly into Joseph’s eyes, and he into hers for a minute or more. Then he turned away.

“The bastard,” he said quietly. “The fine gentlemanly bastard. Goes behind a man’s back to make—arrangements—with his wife.”

He walked the length of the room. He raised the window shades to look out into darkness and, after a little while, turned back to Anna.

“He’s in love with you, isn’t he?”

“Why? Because he asked me to go to lunch?”

“You can’t be that stupid! Or shall I be tactful and call it naïveté? A woman of your age! What in the name of heaven do you think he wanted?”

“The fact is he asked me to lunch and that’s all.”

“The city’s full of women, a lot younger than you, for a man to take to lunch and for whatever comes afterward. There’s got to be more to this story.”

“Perhaps it’s just—one of the things some men do. I mean, he saw me at that dinner and I suppose he—liked me. Don’t men do things like that?”

“A cheap philanderer! Another man’s wife! You haven’t seen him since that time?”

“No.”

Joseph passed his hand over his forehead; he was sweating. “It’s funny, you know, I never mentioned it, but at that dinner, I thought I saw him looking at you. I thought I felt something. But then I told myself not to act the fool. I put it out of my mind. I told myself it was nothing.”

“But you see,” Anna said softly, “it really was nothing very much. Another man on the make. I suppose he found me—interesting. Because of having known me so long ago.”

How ugly this cajolery, this deceit! Even the slander of Paul was so ugly. But there was no choice. She had to defend herself, and not herself alone. They were all bound up in what was being said and believed, here in this room.

Below, in the kitchen wing, a door slammed and there were voices. Eric would be coming in from basketball practice, too hungry to wait for dinner. What disaster for him if this couldn’t be straightened out!

We are all so interwoven. There is no way ever to isolate the evil, the sickness. Everyone is touched by its cold coils: Joseph and I and Eric and Iris, with her children. And Paul. Yes, Paul. We cause each other so much suffering without wanting to.

“Anna, tell me. I have to know. I’ve asked you this before and you’ve always denied it, but I’m going to ask it again: Were you in love with each other, years ago?”

“Never. No, never.”

“And there was never anything between you?”

Her fists were clenched at her sides. She relaxed them and breathed deeply. “No, never.”

“Will you swear it?”

“Joseph, isn’t it enough that I’ve answered you?”

“Maybe it’s foolish of me, but I would feel great relief if you would swear it. By the health of Eric, and Iris and her children. Then I would know it was true.”

She was in a corner. She had actually retreated to the corner of the room and it seemed now that the corners were narrowing their angle, curving to trap her between the walls.

“No, I won’t do that. I won’t swear by their lives.”

“Why won’t you? If I ask you to?”

“It’s insulting to ask me to do that, as if you didn’t take my word.”

“I don’t mean to insult you. It’s just that—”

“And for another, I feel superstitious about it.”

“Why? Afraid that something would happen to them? It wouldn’t as long as you were telling the truth.”

“No, Joseph.”

“Swear without that, then. Say, I
swear
I never had anything to do with Paul Werner that my husband couldn’t know about.”

Now, from some corner of Anna’s soul, fierce strength emerged, born out of terror. She went over again to the attack.

“Now it’s I who’ll be angry, Joseph! Why do you want to humiliate me? What kind of a marriage is it in which people don’t trust one another?”

“I want to believe you,” Joseph said, retreating before her anger.

“Then believe me!”

There were tears in his eyes. “Anna, I couldn’t bear it if—The world is a shifting place; you never know where you stand in it. There has to be one person who never changes. If I lost that, I tell you—you know the things I’ve been through, and I’ve kept on going—but if I thought that you—” He swallowed. “I wouldn’t care to open my eyes on another day. So help me God.”

“You haven’t lost it. You won’t lose it,” she said, gently now.

“I know I’m lucky to have you. A woman like you could have had any man she wanted.”

Pity. Pity. The tension broke in her and she began to cry.

“Anna, don’t. It’s all right. I’m over it. I understand what happened now.”

He never could bear to see anyone cry. Iris had known that when she was a little girl.
Papa will give you anything if you just stop crying
.

“That damned bastard,” Joseph muttered. “To put you in a position like that! He’d better not come around here.”

“He won’t.”

Someone knocked at the door. “It’s me, Eric. Celeste says dinner’s ready.”

“We’ll be right down,” Joseph called back.

“I’m not hungry,” Anna said. “You go eat with Eric.”

“No, no! I don’t want the boy to think there’s been anything wrong. Wash your eyes. Nobody’ll notice.”

Faces are for concealment, Anna thought, powdering her pink eyelids. They speak of “frank” faces; who looks more candid than I do? She bent to the mirror; yes, an innocent face, still young. A lovely face: a fraction of an inch here, another there, and the combination could hold such power over men! Because Paul loved her, he pursued her. Because Joseph adored her, he believed her. And also because, she reflected with pity and tenderness, Joseph was a very simple man. He believed the best of almost everyone, in spite of his bluster. Paul would never have let her get away that easily if the situation had been reversed. That subtle mind would have seen behind and through her.

Tomorrow she would have to tell Paul how things were. And the long silence between them would have to begin again. It would have to be that way.

Then, if she could but speak to Joseph, loose the whole load of lies and be free of them forever! Yes, and she would be free of everything else besides, free in the ruins of all and everyone she loved! Never. No, never. Live and carry the load alone. So help me God, as Joseph had just said.

So help me God.

Iris runs among enormous, ancient trees. She turns, seeks, walks back and turns again. There is no end to these woods. No one has ever seen such trees before. The trunks rise like cathedral towers, yet their dark, soft tops sway like plumes against the rim of the sky. She knows where she is: these are the Muir Woods, north of San Francisco. She has never been there, but she knows; knows, too, that she is dreaming.

She runs faster. She mustn’t stop. Race, hurry, for Steve is lost. He is somewhere among these endless trees. How did it happen? How can it be that nobody had seen him? Can a child, can anyone just disappear like this? She tries to strangle her tears; when panic stuns one can’t think, and she must be calm, be sharp, to get back her little boy. Have you seen him? she implores, for these are not tree trunks, after all; these are people, tall, silent people who won’t answer. Surely somebody must have seen him? she pleads. A little boy like him?