Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

It seemed to him he had walked into this same room long ago, in Glen City. He nodded dumbly. She came down off the ladder and said, “Come, I’ll make you some tea,” and embraced him and took him into the kitchen. He was very silent that day. He kept watching her silently, as if discovering her for the first time. They drank their tea in the living room. The grandfather clock ticked off time in a rigid solid voice. The clock, too, seemed familiar. He finished his tea, and got into his coat again. She was sitting in a large mohair chair, facing the clock. She seemed older that day. He suddenly realized how old she was. His eyes had misted over. He felt he wanted to cry, but he did not, he would not let the tears come.

“Merry Christmas, Julia,” he said.

“Merry Christmas, Matthew,” she answered.

He went out of the house quietly. Julia sat quite still in the living room and listened to the voice of the clock.

Time.

Past and present merged in the mind of Julia Regan. October, November, and now December, now January, a new year. They set off the air-raid siren on the roof of the firehouse to welcome 1953. She went to a party at the Bridges’ house, and she listened to Matthew tell her about his progress in the adoption proceedings, apparently the investigation had been made and adoption had been recommended, and now it was a question of making the requisite trip to Minnesota.

He was slightly drunk. He put his hand on her knee and said, “It takes such a damn long time, Julia. I love that kid. She’s my daughter, do you know what I mean? Really, Julia. She’s my daughter. But it takes such a goddamn long time.”

Time.

1939 in Rome. The long wait.

And the threat of war hovering everywhere, Renato gone more and more frequently, Millie on the edge of hysteria, “Julia, we’ve got to get out of here. I don’t care what—”

“You know that’s impossible.”

“I’m frightened. Julia, if war breaks out...”

“There’s nothing we can do, Millie.”

“Well then, I’ll go home. Alone.”

“You can’t do that, Millie.”

“Why did you get yourself into this? You’re a grown woman! I always thought—”

“There were a lot of things I always thought, too, Millie.”

“You make me want to cry. Seeing you like this, helpless, just helpless. You make me want to cry.”

“I’m not helpless.”

“If war comes...”

“Millie, please, please...”

April approaching. Spring in Rome. She had promised Arthur she’d be back in April. She sent him a cable stating that Millie was ill and unable to travel. She knew the war was coming, but her following letter said: “... Everyone here seems convinced that Hitler is bluffing. In any case, there does not seem to be a climate of preparation for war, no matter what you felt at Christmastime. I know this is foremost in your mind, Arthur, but believe me, darling, Millie and I are in no immediate danger. ” Lies. Lies all through May, the promise that she would be home soon, the dangling carrot, I will be home soon, I will be home soon, and knowing it was impossible for her to leave Italy.

Time.

Past and present flowing together, the memory of those months in Rome overshadowing the real spring of 1953 in Talmadge, the opening of buds everywhere around her, how quickly the winter had gone, how quickly it was spring again, how quickly the months went by, and the years, how long ago had it been, how long ago to July 26, 1939, to that day when Renato held her, trembling and sweating in the small room, “ Ti voglio bene ,” he said, “ tesorino, non dimenticarlo mai. ” The crying. She would not forget the crying. July 26. The end was near. It was odd how the beginning was the end. It was odd how time folded in upon itself, how Rome had been the beginning of a life and the end of a life, the pattern was endless, and present merged with past so that sometimes she could not tell which was now and which was then.

Surely she was in the here and now. The Julia Regan who opened the house at the lake again in the summer of 1953 was a flesh-and-blood person who cleaned out bathtubs and straightened cupboards and aired mattresses. I am growing old, she thought, where is 1939? Where is the girl who was born in 1939? Memory is too cruel, she thought. I would abolish years. I would trample time. I want to be in Rome again. I want to be alive again. I want to be loved.

Oh, all I want is to be loved.

The lake held no menace.

David sat on the back porch of the summer house, his hands folded on his naked chest, and looked out over the still water. August sunshine caught at his yellow swimming trunks, reflected from the signet ring on the pinkie of his right hand. A man in a rowboat was fishing in the middle of the lake. He watched the man sleepily, half dozing. The pines were almost motionless. A faint breeze stirred the midsummer air. He could hear his mother inside the house, preparing lunch.

Saturday, he thought. Lake Abundance.

All the Saturdays of his early life, all the summer Saturdays at Lake Abundance, and that Saturday in September — he felt no pain. He sat watching the calm surface of the killer lake, and he felt no real pain, only an inestimable sense of loss. Something more than his father had died on that day in 1939. Something more. I seem to lose people, he thought. I seem to have a knack for losing people.

He listened to his mother humming inside the house.

A screen door opened. He turned his head.

The people next door. He had met them last weekend. Cocktails in his mother’s living room. “This is my son, David.”

“How do you do, Mr. Bridges? Mrs. Bridges?”

“Matthew and Amanda,” the man corrected. Tall, grinning, mustached. David did not trust men with mustaches. The woman — how old? Thirty? Blond, sun-tanned, restless somehow, she tucked her skirts around her too efficiently, she smoked too much.

“This is their first summer at the lake,” his mother said. “I talked them into it.”

“You’ll like it here,” David said.

“We’ve been going up to the Vineyard,” Matthew told him.

“That’s a long haul, isn’t it?”

“Well, not so bad. There’s plane service, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yes. The trip’s not bad at all. I didn’t enjoy the people very much, though.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Well, it’s a strange crowd,” Matthew said. “Everyone performs.”

“Matthew doesn’t like people,” Amanda said. “That’s his trouble.” She smiled at David. She lighted another cigarette.

“I didn’t like those people, that’s for sure,” Matthew said. “I hate people who ask ‘What do you do?’ That annoys me. Everyone there did something. Everyone had a label and a profession. I’m a sculptor, I’m a photographer, I write children’s books, I composed the music for this-and-this Broadway hit, what do you do? I always felt I should recite a brief or something. Everyone performed. It was like an out-of-town tryout for autumn conversation.”

“Oh, Matthew, it wasn’t that bad,” Amanda said.

“It was, honey. You went to a party, and the party was divided into the entertainers and the appreciators. The entertainers played bongo drums badly, or Spanish guitar, or sang songs they wrote in 1920, or recited their newest poem for the Atlantic Monthly , or told dialect jokes, or exhibited the latest piece of sculpture with holes in it. And the appreciators were supposed to applaud and make noises of approval. I guess I’m not the appreciative type. I guess I just hate people who ask ‘What do you do?’”

“What do you do?” David asked, and Matthew burst out laughing.

“I’m a lawyer,” he said. “How about you?”