Summer House (31 page)

Worth glared at Helen, grinding his teeth, breathing like a bull faced with a red flag. “Helen. Are you going to protect this boy forever? You need to face the facts. Teddy is a drunk, and he hasn’t changed, he is not changing, he’s not capable of changing. The woman he brought with him may or not be his legal wife, and that baby you’re so excited about is probably not even Teddy’s child. You and I have spent years forgiving Teddy and giving him more chances, and every single time he disappoints us. We have talked to counselors. We have gone to meetings. You know their advice. Teddy has to take responsibility.” He leaned on the end of the long table: imperious,
a corporate director giving orders. Seeing Helen’s tears, he softened. “Look. I’ll give Teddy some money. He can go somewhere and start over. But he is leaving this house tonight and taking that woman with him.” He crossed his arms over his chest, adamant. “I am not changing my mind this time.”

Helen hadn’t planned her next words. She was even surprised at herself when she spoke. She was surprised at how calm she sounded, too. “Well, Worth, I think you should consider this decision carefully I think you should try to be a bit more compassionate. Your son has a weakness for alcohol, that’s true. But many people are weak, and many people make mistakes. Some people, for example, have a weakness for
sweet cakes.
Some people indulge in too many
sweet cakes—and find they’ve lost everything.
”

Worth blinked; then he went very still, as if his anger were now an icy emanation that froze him. Teddy gawked at Helen as if she had gone mad.

“Teddy is improving,” Helen continued, her voice softening. “Suzette is a good influence on him. He’s holding down a job, he’s worked reliably for weeks now, but I agree something has to be done about this latest incident. Drunk driving is a serious matter. But he and Suzette shouldn’t be forced to leave Nona’s house. And it is Nona’s house, Worth. It’s not yours.”

Worth took a deep breath. “Helen—”

“Worth.” She cut in before he could say another word. “Really, Worth, think about it. If you, for example, got really fat, and ill, maybe with diabetes, which is a result of enjoying too many
sweet cakes
, wouldn’t you expect me to forgive you? Wouldn’t you expect your children—Oliver and Charlotte and Teddy—to forgive you?”

For a few moments, the only sounds in the room came from the television set. Teddy’s eyes went back and forth between his parents; he looked bewildered.

Worth looked confused and caged, as if anything he said would cause a trapdoor to open beneath him, and drop him into a void.

Kellogg wandered into the room, freshly showered, carrying an icy gin and tonic. “What are you all doing in here?”

“Family conference,” Helen said.

“It’s over,” Worth decreed. “I’m going up to shower.” He strode from the room without another word.

Teddy asked, “What was
that
all about, Mom?”

It wasn’t so very often that Helen got the upper hand in an argument with her husband, and she was stunned and also kind of high on the experience. Her headache was completely gone and her vision seemed crystal clear.

Calmly, she said to her son, “It was about giving you another chance, Teddy. Now listen. I’m going to drive you in to work and pick you up every evening, just as if you were a child. It’s humiliating and it will be a drag for me, but I am just as horrified as your father is that you drove drunk. I’m going upstairs now, and I want you to drink more coffee, and call a tow service, and arrange to have the Jeep repaired, and I want you to pay for it out of your own earnings. Do you understand?”

Teddy nodded. He looked properly chastened, but Teddy was always a good actor.

Kellogg said, “Teddy wrecked the Jeep?”

“Ask Teddy,” Helen said to her brother-in-law, and swept from the room.

Worth wasn’t in his bedroom, but she heard the shower water running, so she waited, pacing the floor, feeling like a small boiling human volcano on the verge of erupting. When Worth came back into the room, he was naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist. His hair was wet, his chest hair was damp and curling, and he looked intensely physical and male. She felt the charge of sexual attraction she often felt for her husband, and this infuriated and oddly embarrassed her.

“We need to talk,” she said, keeping her voice low.

“Let me put some clothes on first.” Worth dropped the towel and moved around the room, uninhibited by his nakedness.

Helen sank onto the bed and thought of how many times over the years this very scene had played out—her waiting on the bed while Worth ranged around the room naked. Often they’d be changing for a party, but sometimes she would be waiting for him to make love to her. She would be naked herself, although she tried not to walk
naked in front of him. She was too self-conscious, aware of cellulite and sags.

Worth pulled on a clean, ironed pair of boxer shorts, a fresh rugby shirt, and his chinos. He zipped them up, and again the act seemed sexual.

“All right,” he said. He didn’t come over to the bed but lifted his briefcase out of the chair, set it on the floor, and sat down by the window. “What’s going on?”

“How long have you been having an affair?” Helen asked.

Her husband stared at her. She did not look away. She was still riding the energy of her anger.

“It’s nothing,” he said at last. And his face changed, sinking in on itself slightly, so that in only a second or two he suddenly looked older.

“It’s something to me,” Helen assured him.

“I don’t know what to say.” He looked crushed, as if Helen had betrayed
him.

“Tell me her name,” Helen said.

“Oh, Helen, come on. Look, it’s just a—a fling. A stupid mistake on my part. An old man’s folly.”

“Tell me her name,” Helen repeated, with iron in her voice.

“You don’t know her,” Worth insisted. “You’ve never met her. She works at the bank. She’s a teller. She’s—she’s just nice, and fun, and pretty.”

Each word out of Worth’s mouth had suddenly become an arrow, an ax, chopping against the wall of icy anger surrounding Helen, and the word
pretty
sliced right through everything, so that her protective layer shattered and she was vulnerable and wounded. She did not want to cry in front of Worth, but tears pressed insistently.

She felt Worth’s gaze on her face, her old, lined, sagging face, and she wanted to fling her hands up to cover it, she wanted to run from the room, lumbering along in her overweight unpretty body. Why had she started this? Why had she forced this scene upon them? Why hadn’t she kept quiet, let Worth’s affair run its course, and allowed the united front of their marriage to exist—or at least
appear
to exist?

Worth sighed. He pressed his fingers on either side of his nose, a sign of his emotional state. He said, “Cindy. Her name is Cindy.”

Such a sweet name, Helen thought. A terrible thought possessed her, and her terror froze her tears. “Do you want to marry her?”

“God, no!” Worth looked appalled. “Helen—”

A sharp rap came at the door, and Grace stuck her head in. “Hey, you guys, dinner’s ready. We’re all starving. Come on.”

“We’ll be right there,” Worth told his sister.

Grace looked at him, then at Helen, and quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.

“For God’s sake, Grace, give us some privacy,” Worth told his sister. “We’ll be right down.”

With a sniff, Grace pulled the door shut.

“Look,” Worth said, keeping his voice low, “I’ll end it. It’s nothing, Helen, and I’ll stop seeing her. Okay?” When she didn’t answer right away, he said urgently, “You know we can’t settle everything right here and now. We can’t really talk with everything going on in this house. Let’s just go down to dinner, okay? We’ve got enough to deal with right now with Teddy and the Jeep.”

Helen stood up. She felt as if she’d aged a hundred years, she felt as if she had just been struck with the plague.
Cindy.

“How old is she?” she asked.

“Oh, Helen, stop this!” Worth rose, too, and paced the room angrily. With his back turned to Helen, he admitted, “She’s thirty-nine.” When Helen didn’t respond, he turned to look at her, and then he came toward her, as if he wanted to take her in his arms. “Helen, I love you. You know that.”

She cringed and backed away, averting her head, making it clear she didn’t want him to touch her.

Worth held out his hands beseechingly. “Helen. Please. Let’s talk about this later, okay?”

Helen said, “Okay. You go on down, Worth. I don’t feel hungry. You can tell them I’m not feeling well.” She looked at her husband. “That’s the simple truth, after all.”

Twenty

H
elen is changing
, Nona thought.

Nona had sensed a deep, active silence in Helen this summer, a kind of waiting. Helen was an attractive woman, and she had an artistic spirit that was not one of the gifts of the Wheelwright genetic legacy. Worth was handsome enough, and he could be charming, but, as in most marriages, with the passing of years Worth directed the energy of his charm to the outer world and expected his wife to make do with whatever was left over. And Worth was becoming dictatorial. Both Grace and Worth had always been bossy; perhaps that was their mother’s example, Nona thought, for she was never much of a follower.

Kellogg had the temperament of a cow—not a bull, a cow, a contented animal plodding in a field full of fresh green grass, and the lashes of his wife’s commands touched but never stung his thick hide. Nona was very fond of Kellogg. And she guessed that, whatever transpired between her daughter and her husband in front of others,
a real tenderness and even a kind of passion existed between them in private. With Helen and Worth, she was not so sure.

Here was Kellogg now, bending down, taking her hand. “Nona? Dinner’s ready. May I help you into the dining room?”

More and more it seemed to cost Nona physical effort simply to get from where she existed, cradled among her thoughts, out to the interaction considered normal by others. She took a deep breath. “Kellogg. Thank you. But I wonder if Glorious could bring me something on a tray.”

She wanted to tell him the truth, that she was simply too tired to make the journey from this chair into the dining room, too weary to sit at the table smiling at her family and hoping she wasn’t dropping food on her bodice. But if she admitted that, Kellogg would tell Grace, who would rush in, alarmed, and try to energize Nona, for her own good. So Nona explained.

“There’s a television show I want to watch.”

Kellogg turned to look at the TV set, and to Nona’s immense relief an old
Murder She Wrote
was just beginning. “Of course, Nona.”

Kellogg went off.

Pretty soon Glorious arrived with a tray, to set up a folding table next to Nona. “We’re having fish tonight,” she informed Nona.

Nona said, “How nice.”

“And I brought you this, also.” Next to the plate piled with healthy fish and vegetables was a small glass of Scotch.

Nona smiled. “Thank you, Glorious.”

Glorious left the room. Nona roused herself enough to sip some of the Scotch, which flowed into her system like liquid sun, warming her old bones, relaxing her. She lay back against her chair. From the rest of the house came the laughter and calls of her children and grandchildren. On the TV set in front of her, Angela Lansbury entered a beauty salon to chat with Ruth Roman. Ruth Roman. No one knew who she was these days. Was the actress even alive? The past rolled around Nona like a beautiful sea.

1945–1946

November 1945

Dear Anne
,

Here I am, seated behind a desk in an office at our temporary military headquarters in Bremerhaven, Germany. You have no idea what a luxury it is to be able to type this letter without wondering whether the ceilings going to come crashing down on my head. I even have the use of electric lights.

So things are better. Still, everyone wants to go home as soon as possible, and who can blame them? The vast majority of our troops have already been redeployed to the Pacific or sent home for discharge.

But we need a good solid U.S. presence here in Europe, and the Army of Occupation has been charged with many significant tasks. We have to protect potential sabotage targets and be prepared for any possible rogue-German military resistance. We have to guard all the stores in military government custody, which include artwork, literally tons of records, and tank cars loaded with mercury. Our men have to lay out billeting areas, establish lines of communication, and set up checkpoints at bridges, ports, railroads, and other facilities.

In addition, there’s the gargantuan task of redeploying troops. I’m sure you know about the Adjusted Service Rating: eighty-five points and you can go home! As you can imagine, all this takes a heck of a lot of paperwork and causes no end of grumbling. I have seventy-five points, but right now I’m glad to be here, doing what I can.

Morale is low for those who remain behind, waiting and waiting for months on end. The army has done its bumbling best to deal with morale problems by establishing training education, and recreation programs throughout the theater. Of course, that means even more paperwork and more guard stations to check passes!

I want to go home just as much as the next man does, and I know I could talk to some people and pull some strings, but I have been lucky and feel a responsibility to continue on just a little longer to do whatever I can to help.

While we’re waiting to get out of here, we’ve got DPs—displaced persons—and prisoners of war being shipped in from Russia and Poland. If you could see the hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and prisoners of war, with all they have left in the world on the back of a cart pulled by a starving horse, wearing rags, sleeping on the ground, grateful for the slightest bit of bread, you would understand how useful our Army of Occupation is. From my point of view, this work is more important than fighting battles. Not everyone feels that way, however, and I can understand the men who are struggling to return home to their loved ones and their lives.