Whispers Read online

  “You bid more than it’s worth,” Lynn said. “I hope you won’t be disappointed.”

  “I’m sure I won’t be.” Now Lawrence turned to Robert. “And you’re the man, I noticed, who got my Dickens. A fair exchange.”

  “Not really. They’re handsome books. I wonder that you parted with them.”

  “For the same reason that Bruce here parted with his candle holder—menorah, I mean. Both my grandfathers were book collectors, and since I’m not a collector of anything, it seemed to me that I didn’t need duplicates. Also,” he said somewhat carelessly, “one of my grandfathers helped found this club and the hospital, too, so the cause has extra-special meaning for me.”

  “Ah, yes. Lawrence Lawrence. The plaque in St. Wilfred’s lobby.”

  Lynn, watching, knew that Robert was taking the man’s measure. He would recognize assurance and alacrity. Now Robert was asking how Bruce and he had become acquainted.

  “We met while jogging on the high school track,” Lawrence responded. “We seem to keep pretty much the same schedule.”

  “You must live near the school, then.”

  “I do now. I gave up a bigger house after my divorce. I used to live out on Halsey Road,” he said in the same careless way.

  “That’s where we are!” Lynn exclaimed. “We bought the Albright house.”

  “Did you? Beautiful place. I’ve been at many a great party there.”

  “You should see it now. We’ve done so much with it that you might not recognize it,” Robert said. “It needed a lot of work.”

  “Really,” said Lawrence. “I never noticed.”

  He doesn’t like Robert, Lynn thought. No, that’s absurd. Why shouldn’t he? I’m always imagining things.

  Suddenly Josie laughed. “Do you know something funny? Look at Lynn and look at Tom. Does anybody see what I see?”

  “No, what?” asked Robert.

  “Why, look again. They could be brother and sister. The same smooth sandy hair, the short nose, the cleft chin—it’s uncanny.”

  “If so, I’m honored.” And Lawrence made a little bow toward Lynn.

  “I don’t see it at all,” Robert said.

  The instant’s silence contained embarrassment, as if a social blunder had been made. Yet Josie’s remark had been quite harmless.

  And Lynn said pleasantly, “You must tell me when you want your dinner for eight, Mr. Lawrence.”

  “Tom’s the name. I’ll get my list together and call you. Will the week after next be all right?”

  “Don’t forget we are taking Emily to visit Yale,” Robert cautioned.

  “I won’t forget. The week after next will be fine.”

  Presently, the room began to empty itself. People looked at their watches and made the usual excuses to depart. The evening had played itself out.

  “Who is this fellow Lawrence, anyway?” Robert inquired on the way home.

  Bruce explained. “He’s a bright guy, and partner in a big New York law firm.”

  “That doesn’t tell me much. There are a lot of bright guys in big New York firms.”

  “I don’t know much more than that, except that he’s been divorced a couple of times, he’s close to fifty, and looks a lot younger. And I know he comes from what you’d call an important family,” Bruce added with what Lynn took to be a touch of humor.

  “I’m not happy about having Lynn go over to a strange man’s house.”

  “Oh,” Lynn said, “don’t be silly. Does he look like a rapist?”

  “I don’t know. What does a rapist look like?” Robert gave a loud, purposeful sigh. “My wife is still an innocent.”

  “It’s a dinner party for eight. And I’m planning to take Eudora to help. So that should make you feel better. Really, Robert.”

  “All right, all right, I’ll feel better if you want me to.”

  “People were saying some nice things about you tonight, Robert,” Bruce said. “About the hospital, of course, and also the big pledge you got GAA to make to the Juvenile Blindness campaign.”

  “Yes, yes. You see, you people used to think all that had nothing to do with marketing electronic appliances, but I hope you see now that it does. Anything that connects the name of GAA to a good cause counts. And the contacts one makes in the country club all connect to these causes and their boards. You really ought to join a club, Bruce.”

  “You know I can’t join this one.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Lynn said. “It makes me want to stand up and fight.”

  “You may want to but you’d better not. I keep reminding you,” Robert told her, “that reality has to be faced. Bruce is smart enough to accept it. Join a Jewish club, Bruce. There are a couple just over the Westchester line. And the company’ll pay. They’ll be glad to.”

  Lynn, looking back from the front seat, could see Bruce’s shrug.

  “Josie and I never did go for club life, Jewish or not.”

  “It’s time you began, then.” Robert spoke vigorously. “You need to get on some of these boards, go to the dinners and have your wife go to the luncheons. You owe it to the firm and to yourself.”

  “I do what I can,” Bruce answered.

  “Well, think about what I’m telling you. And you, too, Josie.”

  Lynn interjected, “Josie works. And anyway, I can’t imagine her exchanging gossip with company wives. You have to be careful of what you say. They judge everything, your opinions, your clothes, everything. Some of those afternoons can wear one out.”

  “It’s the price you pay for being who you are and where you are. You’ll think it a small enough price, too, if it leads to a big job in Europe,” Robert declared.

  A small chilly dread sank in Lynn’s chest. She knew the pattern of promotion: two or three years in each of several European countries, then possibly the home office in New York again. Or else a spell in the Far East with another return. And no permanence, no roots, no place to plant a maple sapling and see it grow. There were myriads of people who would forgo a thousand maples for such opportunities, and that was fine for them, but she was not one of those people.

  Yet Robert was. And he would well deserve his rewards when they came. Never, never, she thought as always, must she by the slightest deed or word hold him back.

  As if he were reading her mind, at that very moment Bruce remarked, “When there’s another big job in Europe, and with all that’s happening abroad, there’s bound to be one soon, you’re the man to get it, Robert. Everybody knows that.”

  Later when they were reading in bed, Robert asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

  “I’m taking Josie and a few friends to lunch, remember? It’s her birthday.”

  “Missing the women’s tennis tournament?”

  “I have to. Josie works all week, so Saturday is the only day we can make it.”

  After a moment Robert, laying his book aside, said decidedly, “Josie’s too opinionated. I’ve always said so. It’s a wonder to me why he isn’t sick of her, except that he’s too much of a weakling, a yes-man, to do anything about it.”

  “Sick of her! Good Lord, he’s no yes-man, he adores her! And as to being opinionated, she’s not. She’s merely honest, that’s all. She’s outspoken.”

  “Well, well, if you say so. I guess I’m just a male chauvinist who’s uncomfortable with outspoken women.”

  Lynn laughed. “Our Emily’s a pretty outspoken woman, I’d say.”

  “Ah, that’s different.” And Robert laughed too. “She’s my daughter. She can do anything she wants.”

  “Except choose her own boyfriends?”

  “Lynn, I only want what’s best for her. Wouldn’t I give my life for her? For all of you?”

  “Dear Robert, I know that.”

  He picked up his book and she went back to hers. Presently Robert laid his down again.

  “By the way, did you have the fender fixed where you scraped it?”

  “Yes, this morning.”

  “Did they do a good
job?”

  “You’d never know there’d been a mark.”

  “Good. There’s no sense riding around in a marked-up car.” Then he thought of something else; it was as if he kept a memo book in his head, Lynn often told him.

  “Did you send a birthday present to my aunt?”

  “Of course I did. A beautiful summer bag.”

  “That’s right, considering all those sweaters she knits for the girls.”

  There was a hurtful, grudging quality in this comment that Lynn was unable to ignore.

  “Robert, I think you treat her very badly.”

  “Nonsense. I was perfectly nice to her last year at Christmas.”

  “You were polite, that’s all, and it wasn’t last year, it was the year before. The reason she didn’t come last year was that she felt you didn’t want her. You, not I. I actually like her. She’s a kind, gentle lady.”

  “She may be kind and gentle, but she’s a garrulous old fool and she gets on my nerves.”

  “Garrulous! She hardly opens her mouth when you’re around.”

  He did not answer. And Lynn persisted.

  “Emily’s very fond of her. She had a lovely afternoon tea when Jean was visiting in New York last month.”

  “All right. Leave me alone about Aunt Jean, will you? It’s unimportant.”

  He turned and, in pulling the blanket with him, dropped the book with a loud thump onto the floor.

  “Sorry. Damn! I’m restless.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “Tell me what’s really bothering you.”

  “Well, you may think it’s foolish of me, you probably will think so. But I told you, I don’t like the idea of your going to cook dinner in another man’s house where there’s no wife. I wish to hell you had thought of something else to contribute to the auction.”

  “But cooking is what I do best. It’ll be fun. Didn’t you watch the bidding? He paid a thousand dollars for my services, I want you to know.”

  “Bruce shoved him onto you. That’s what happened.”

  “You’re surely not going to be annoyed with Bruce. Robert, how silly can you be?”

  “I don’t like the man’s looks. Divorced, and divorced again, and—”

  Trying to tease him out of his mood, she said, “Apparently he looks like me, so you should—”

  “So yes, he is something like you, and you—”

  He turned again, this time toward Lynn, to meet her eyes, so that she could see close up his darkening blue irises, black lashes, white lids, and her own reflection in his pupils. “You grow more lovely with each year. Some women do.”

  She was pleased. “I do believe you’re jealous.”

  “Of course I am. Isn’t it only natural? Especially when I have never once in all our life together—I swear it—I have never been unfaithful to you.”

  The white lids, like shell halves, closed over the blue. And with a violent motion he buried his head in her shoulder.

  “Ah, Lynn, you don’t know. You don’t know.”

  That he could want her still with such fierce, sudden spasms of desire, and that she could respond as she had first done when they began together, was a marvel that flashed upon her each and every time, as now.…

  The wind fluttered the curtains, the bedside clock ticked, and a car door cracked lightly, quickly shut. Robert roused from his doze.

  “Emily?”

  “She’s home. I kept awake to be sure.”

  “She stays out too late.”

  “Hush. Go to sleep. Everything’s all right.”

  With all safe, Emily and Annie in their beds, now she could sleep too. Her thoughts trembled on the verge of consciousness, her body was warmed by the body beside which she had been sleeping for thousands of nights. Thousands.

  There went the mockingbird again. Trilling, trilling its heart out without a care in the world, she thought, and then abruptly thought no more.

  Tom Lawrence asked, “Are you sure I’m not in your way?”

  Perched on a barstool in his glossy black-and-white kitchen, he was watching Lynn’s preparations.

  “No, not at all.”

  “This is a new experience for me. Usually when I have guests, I have a barbecue outdoors. Steaks, and ice cream for dessert. Fast and easy.”

  Since this was quite a new experience for Lynn, too, she had to grope for something to say, however banal, to avoid a stiff silence. “It’s a pity not to use all these beautiful things more often,” she remarked as she filled the cups of a silver epergne with green grapes.

  “That’s a great idea, putting fruit in that thing. I forgot I had it. You know, when we split up and I moved, my former wife and I agreed to divide all the stuff we owned, stuff from her family and mine, plus things we’d bought together. I didn’t pay any attention, just let her do it all. The whole business was a mess. The move. The whole business.” Abruptly, he slid from the stool. “Here, let me carry that. Where does it go?”

  “It’s the centerpiece. Careful, the arms detach.”

  The dining table stood at the side of a great room with a fireplace at each end. One saw that there was no more to the house than the splendid kitchen and what must be two bedrooms leading off this great room. A quick glance encompassed paintings, bookshelves, a long glass wall with a terrace, and thick foliage, dense as a forest, beyond it.

  “What an elegant little house!” she exclaimed.

  “Do you think so? Yes, after almost three years I can say I finally feel at home here. When I first moved in, my furniture looked alien. I hardly recognized it.”

  “I know what you mean. When the van comes and sets your things down in a strange place, they look forlorn, don’t they? As if they knew and missed their own home. Then when the empty van drives away—oh, there’s something final about it that leaves one just a trifle sad, I think.” And for an instant she was back in the little house in St. Louis—“little,” contrasted with the present one—with the friendly neighbors on the familiar, homelike street. Then she said briskly, “But of course one gets over it.”

  His reply was wholly unexpected. “I imagine that you make yourself ‘get over’ things pretty quickly, though. You make yourself do what’s right.”

  Astonished, she looked up to meet a scrutiny. Returning it, she saw that except for some superficial features, this man did not resemble her at all; he was keen and worldly wise, which she definitely was not; he would see right through a person if he chose to.

  “What makes you say that?” she asked curiously.

  He smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes I get a sudden insight, that’s all. Unimportant. And possibly wrong.”

  “Maybe you sense that I’m a little nervous about this evening. I’m hoping I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew.”

  He followed her back into the kitchen. “Please don’t be nervous. These are all real people tonight, a few old friends driving out from New York and not a phony among them. They’ll be stunned when they see this table. I’m sure they’re expecting Tom Lawrence’s usual paper plates.”

  Arrayed on the counters were bowls and platters of food that Lynn had already prepared at home: a dark red ham in a champagne sauce, stuffed mushroom caps, plump black olives and silver-pale artichokes tossed into a bed of greens, golden marinated carrots, rosy peaches spiced with cinnamon and cloves. Back and forth from the pantry to the refrigerator she moved. Then to the oven, into which she slid a pan of crisp potato balls, and to the mixer for the topping of whipped cream on a great flat almond tart.

  When all was finished and she was satisfied, full confidence returned. “This kitchen’s absolutely perfect,” she told Tom, who was still there quietly observing her work. “The restaurant-sized oven, the freezer—all of it. I’m really envious.”

  “Well, you deserve a perfect kitchen, you’re that expert. Have you ever thought of going professional?”

  “I’ve thought about it sometimes, I’ll admit. I’ve even thought of a name, ‘Delicious Dinners.
’ But what with a lot of volunteering and the PTA and our big house taking time out of every day, I don’t know how—” She paused and finished, “Robert is very fastidious about the house.” She paused again to add, “Anyway, I’m not in a hurry,” and was immediately conscious of having sounded defensive. “I need a last look at the table,” she said abruptly.

  “Excuse me.” Tom was apologetic. “But the silver—I mean, aren’t the forks and spoons upside down, inside out?”

  Lynn laughed. “When the silver’s embossed on the back, you’re supposed to let it show.”

  “Oh? Now I’ve learned something,” he said. His eyes smiled at her.

  They’re like Bruce’s eyes, she thought. There isn’t another thing about him that’s like Bruce, but that. Her hands moved, smoothing the fine cloth, rearranging the candlesticks. There aren’t that many people whose eyes can smile like that.

  “You’ve suddenly grown thoughtful, Lynn. May I call you that?”

  “Of course. Oh, thoughtful? I was remembering,” she said lightly, “when Robert bought the etiquette book so I’d learn how to give proper dinners when we moved here. I thought it was silly of him, but I find it’s come in handy, after all.”

  The doorbell rang. “Oh, that’s Eudora. She cleans and baby-sits for us. I’ve asked her to help. I’ll let her in.”

  When Lynn returned, Tom said, “I wish you’d set another place at table, one for yourself, now that you’ve got help in the kitchen.”

  “I’m here to work. I’m not a guest,” she reminded him. “Thank you, anyway.”

  “Why shouldn’t you be a guest? There’ll be all couples tonight except for me. And I really should have a female to escort me, shouldn’t I?”

  “That wasn’t the arrangement.”

  His smile subsided as again he gave her his quick scrutiny. “I understand. You mean, if you were to be a guest, then your husband would be here too.”

  She nodded. “Anyway, I couldn’t depend upon Eudora in the kitchen. She’ll be fine to bring in the plates after I fix them and to clean up with me afterward.”

  She hurried away into the kitchen. Why was she flustered? Actually, the man had said nothing so startling. And she turned to Eudora, who was waiting for instructions.