Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (22 page)

My father's hands collapsed in his lap. His face was nervous, begging. Now he was at the disadvantage, a condition he'd rarely been in in my presence, and it was distressing to witness.

“As I said, there are many things to consider…would
she
consider the idea? I'm not certain she would.”

I breathed carefully and didn't talk.

“Haw!” Ben said, reminding me of a Wally Noonan I'd once known.

Instantly, my father's helplessness vanished. Popping upright, he glared angrily at Ben. “And just what do you mean by
that
?”

Ben retreated. “Nothing. Not anything.”

How cowardly,
I thought. But no worse than I would have done, considering my father's reaction.

Ben recovered, making me retract my mental accusation. “I only meant that I'd bet she
would
marry you.”

“You think she cares for me that much?” my father said.

Ben took a deep breath, the kind of breath he'd been practicing with his speech teacher so that his voice could hit the back of a theater, and I knew he was going to speak at this second, as my father would in the same circumstances, no matter what the consequences.

“I don't know how much she cares for you. I just think she wants to marry you. She wants to get back her father's house.”

There was a resounding silence. Then my father slowly stood up. “What you said is despicable.”

“Unless it's true.” Ben held his ground.

“If it's true, then
she's
despicable, and I can't judge anyone.”

“We'll see,” Ben said. “We'll see.”

I didn't know how he meant we would see, but I did know two other things: my father was as angry as I'd ever seen him, and my original theme story—the fairy tale about the lady and the king—still had no ending.

Simultaneously, Ben and I found reasons to attend to other matters. On the upstairs landing, we spoke in whispers. “Ben,” I said, “suppose Louise is wrong?”

“Even if she was wrong, she was right. If she wanted to say that about her mother—your ‘Ginny'—then her mother probably deserves it.”

“I only called her that once or twice.”

“I only know one thing. She's not the right one to ‘count on' for me, or Dad. I don't know about you.”

“Most of the time I don't like her, even though she's nice.”

“She's
not
nice,” said Ben. “That's what we have to show
him
. It's like Iago and Othello.”

Why did he always have to make everything about some play?
“It's
like Daddy, and her, and us,” I corrected. “But you know, sometimes I feel sorry for her. She doesn't know how Louise feels about her.”

“That's because Louise is afraid of her right now. But someday…”

“Ben, what'll happen if Daddy marries her?”

“He can't. She doesn't want
him
.”

“But he won't be convinced. She wouldn't admit that for anything. She wouldn't admit the truth—she's so
pleasant
.”

“Don't worry,” said Ben. “I'll get an idea.”

A little later, he telephoned Louise and asked her to have a picnic lunch with him the next day, a Saturday. I nudged his elbow, wanting him to say I'd be along, but he brushed me away. Louise asked her mother, who sang out loud enough for me to overhear, “That would be
lovely
.” She even offered to supply the lunch. Ben thanked her and told Louise he'd bring a few odds and ends.

The next morning, with Hubert's silent assistance, Ben took a quarter of a baked ham and made four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He wrapped them in waxed paper and put them in a paper bag, and, commenting as an afterthought, “Louise might be hungry,” he added a bottle of milk and a pint of ice cream.

I didn't see him again until five o'clock. Before he came home, Mrs. Loder called to make sure my father was resting and to say that Louise had had a “lovely time.” Ben's cheeks were flushed when he came in and his greeting to my father was perfunctory. Then he called me into his room and closed the door.

Back and forth, back and forth he paced. “We don't have much time,” he said intensely. “I saw
her
twice—when I called for Louise and when I took her home. And I'd swear she has ideas now about Louise and
me
. But that doesn't matter. I talked to Louise for two hours. The ice cream helped. She's a nice kid. She's on our side.”

“Did she have any ideas?”

“I
got the ideas—from what she told me.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Her mother has it all planned—down to the school she's picked for you and Louise, after she's busy running this house. That'll take all her time, with the repairs she wants to do. So you and Louise are going to boarding school. She hasn't figured out what to do with me yet.”

“What!?”

“You heard me. What's more, she's in a hurry. She's already on the lookout for somebody to sublease the Hunter house from her in January. But we'll see about that.”

“How, Ben?”

“The less you know about it, the better. You're no good at this sort of thing. I only hope Louise doesn't get scared again.”

I asked “about what” several times, but all he would say was, “When the time comes, just don't interfere.”

I began to realize “the time” had come the next afternoon when Mrs. Loder arrived for tea. Ben was more than friendly; he was excited by her presence.

She responded in kind, exuding interest in him and his interests. After he had run in and out of the room, bringing his barbells for her to see, she chirped, “Goodness! I never saw a boy with so much energy!”

“He's getting more every year,” my father said.

Ben hoisted the barbells to his chest and shouted, “Ginny, you inspire me!” Then, letting the weights drop to the floor with a wall-shaking thump, he sprang over to her and crouched at her feet. “Tell me, Ginny,
why
do you inspire me?”

Her laugh filled the room.

A little satiric, a little self-consciously boyish, Ben said, “Tell me all about yourself, Ginny—what you like, what you
want
. Can't you see, you fascinate me?” He could have been half-joking or all-joking; he was such a good actor you really couldn't tell.

She trilled another laugh, winked at my father, and tousled Ben's hair. “The girls better watch out for you, Ben, you say such pretty things.”

“I'm serious, Ginny,” Ben continued, his voice almost choking with emotion. “Please, let's talk of serious things.”

“All of us?” I said, unable to contain myself.

“We never have—all of us, like this together,” Ben reasoned. “Why not?”

“I'll have a scotch and soda,” my father said.

“It's time for your nap,” said Mrs. Loder.

I wanted to join in.
“What
serious things are you thinking about, Ben? What serious things should we all discuss?”

Giving me a warning look, Ben stood. “I'll get Dad the scotch first,” he murmured and hurried to the pantry.

“A dutiful son,” my father said.

“And a charmer,” Mrs. Loder added while Ben was gone.

Ben returned, handed the drink to my father, then resumed his crouch at Mrs. Loder's feet. “Are you happy…
truly
happy?” he crooned up at her.

“Yes, my dear. I'm happy. Truly,” she said softly, perhaps a bit embarrassed.

“
I'm
not,” I said suddenly, determined to be included in this play.

“No one asked
you
,” Ben said, and then to Mrs. Loder, “But you
could
be
happier
, right?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“There must be something you want,” persisted Ben, still in that same crooning tone of great concern. “Everybody wants
something
.”

“I
want you and everybody else to stop telling me when I'm allowed to talk,” I volunteered.

“I
want your father to take his nap,” Mrs. Loder said lightly.

“I
want to know what Ben's point is,” my father said between sips of his highball.

“All
I
want is for Ginny to be as happy as
possible
,” Ben began, but the doorbell interrupted him. He smiled at Ginny with enormous compassion, then sprinted to answer it. When he returned, it was with Louise and he was talking to her animatedly, bringing her up to date on the “discussion” at hand. Louise smiled nervously and replied to Ben's explanation, “But I don't know anything about my mother's happiness,” and she plopped the great weight she no longer carried into a chair.

“Your mother won't answer. Please,
you
tell us, Louise. What would she like above all else?” said Ben.

Louise held her breath for an instant, then she managed, “Oh, a lot of things, I guess.”

“Really?” Mrs. Loder was somewhat taken aback.

“Yes,” said Louise with conviction. “Really.”

“We
could
talk about something else,” suggested Mrs. Loder, not nastily.

“I
must
know,” insisted Ben of Louise. “What would she like?”

The girl exchanged a glance with her mother that was no less frightening because it was fleeting. Then Louise smiled, her twitches gone.

“I suppose one
must
listen to a child's opinion, now and then,” Mrs. Loder said to my father.

I could tell that this remark rubbed him the wrong way. He didn't look at her, and instead addressed Louise. “What
is
your opinion, Louise?”

“I think,” began Louise, “well…I think she'd like everything to be the way it was for her before she got messed up with my father and me.”

My father rubbed his eyes as though he had difficulty focusing them.

Mrs. Loder nearly shrieked, “Louise! What a thing to say! I've never been ‘messed up.' ”

“
You
know what I mean,” Louise said calmly.

“I
certainly do not!
” rat-a-tat-tatted Mrs. Loder. Then, decrescendoing, “I was married to your father for seventeen years, and I never complained.”

“No,” Louise said. “You hardly ever talked.”

My father started to say something that began, “Virginia, I'm sorry,” but she interrupted with an explanation…or defense…“George Loder was not a very talkative man!”

“He talked to
me
,” said Louise.

“Louise—my sweet—the way you put it makes what you're saying open to misinterpretation,” Mrs. Loder said carefully. “You
know
I didn't spend seventeen years in silence. Didn't I talk to you too? You
know
I did.”

“Mostly about how great life used to be when you weren't his wife or my mother—back in Winding Hill, in this house,” Louise said in a breathless monotone.

“I don't know what's gotten into you!” Mrs. Loder exploded.

“I don't either.” Louise was suddenly puzzled by her own behavior.

“Courage,” Ben offered.

“The devil,” Mrs. Loder said. “Actually, none of this makes sense. I'm as confused as all of you must be.”

We all let that last sentence linger in the air, unanswered, but Mrs. Loder, reddening, couldn't let it die unacknowledged.

“I'm sure you, Ben—and you, Lucresse—would never have maligned your mother like this,” she said.

I found my voice. “That was different. She didn't have a chance to tell us how unhappy she was.”

“Lucresse, that wasn't necessary,” my father said.

“Once and for all, I
wasn't
unhappy. I'm
not
unhappy,” Mrs. Loder said.

Louise poked her face forward, self-doubt gone. “And I suppose you don't want this house back more than anything,
oh no.”
She spoke with outsized adolescent sarcasm.

Mrs. Loder turned into a tigress. “What are you trying to
do
to me?”
she roared. “I've tried to make
you
happy, Louise. I've even tried to make you
attractive!
”

Ben and I held our breath, controlled witnesses to the mother and daughter finally confronting each other with no control. To tell you the truth, it was exhilarating and we were content—in fact, anxious—to let the scene develop to whatever heights it could reach. But my father's most pressing wish was obviously directly opposed to ours.

“One person's salvation is not necessarily another's,” he said gently.

Mrs. Loder's anger shifted to him. “What do you mean, salvation?”

“There's no reward in being attractive to people who aren't attractive to you,” he said kindly.

Mrs. Loder shook her shoulders as if to throw off some great burden. “All this nonsense! Happiness and salvation! All anyone can do is get as much as possible out of life, and there are no further rewards.” She shot a bitter glance at Louise. “Sometimes I think there are
no
rewards.”

Ben's tone was hard and incredulous. “You didn't say a word about making someone else happy, Mrs. Loder.”

She turned on him with wrath. “Ben, you are a rotten, nasty boy!”

“ ‘Ruthless' is a better word,” my father said quietly.

“Walter, you ought to do something about that boy.” Without looking at any of us, Mrs. Loder gathered her purse and gloves.

“Come, Louise,” she muttered at the door, and Louise, with an untypical spring in her step, followed her out.

As the house reverberated with the door sounds, my father stared at Ben with a docile, wondering expression.