Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“No, what is it, George?”

“I think it still needs a little work. Now, take this middle section...”

David took the middle section and, as it turned out, also the end section and, for good measure, a paragraph in the beginning section and sat down in the gear locker opposite the radio shack to begin his new revisions. George Devereaux had no idea how much pain was involved in the rewrite, but he probably would not have discouraged David even if he had known. The pain for David was excruciating. Somehow, all the fluidity of his letter writing left him the moment he sat down at the typewriter. The radiomen’s machine had keys that were blank, and David stared down at their empty faces and despaired he would ever get a word on paper. He was a bad typist to begin with, and the unlettered keys made composition enormously more difficult for him. Silently, he struggled in the tiny compartment, telling himself he could do it, he would do it, and knowing somehow he would never finish this story, knowing he could never polish it enough to satisfy Mr. Devereaux.

The greatest pain was the pain of memory.

The more he struggled with the story, the sharper the memory became. And, paradoxically, the sharper the memory became, the more difficult it was to put on paper. For whereas the day of his father’s drowning, September 9, 1939, would always be clear in his mind, the memory seemed to extend beyond that into a murky distance, extend in fact to the summer of 1938, more than a year before the drowning, so that the edges of the memory were hazy and vague, but painful nonetheless. Nor did he understand why he should consider his mother’s trip to Europe an essential part of the drowning, a prelude to it, and yet the twin memories were irrevocably linked, the trip to Europe seeming to flow inexorably into the summer of 1939 and that fateful day in September at Lake Abundance, Connecticut.

The fringes of the memory were blurred, like double exposures of the mind. Picture overlapped picture until there was no sense of time, no proper sequence of events, until the mind reeled with the task of sorting and cataloguing, each picture leading inevitably to that final image in September, the thing he saw through the binoculars as he looked out over the lake, each picture a seemingly separate and unconnected event, and yet overlapping toward an overwhelming conclusion. He did not know where it began; he only knew where it ended.

There was something about Aunt Millie being sick, he remembered hearing talk about this as early as, yes, it must have been the spring of 1938, yes, his mother standing slender and tall in a green bathing suit at the kitchen phone, yes, they were at the lake, they had just opened the house, he could remember the scent of pines, yes, her brown hair pushed back over one ear as she held the receiver and nodded, “Yes, Millie, yes, I understand,” the sun limning the profile David had inherited, the scent of pines, the sounds of the lake outside, and then another image, the end of June, the lake house waiting for them, the Talmadge house about to be closed for the summer, the sheets covering all the furniture, the big mahogany dining-room table, the gentle clink of silverware, his father’s lean face bent over his soup bowl, “Arthur, it’s her lungs,” the clink-clink of silverware, the shine of the overhead chandelier on sparkling glasses, clink against white china, “She wants to go away for a while, Arthur, somewhere dry,” his father looking up from his soup suddenly, attentively, “She asked me to go with her.”

July, and the full onslaught of real summer, the trees hung with lush foliage, David hitting croquet balls on the lawn in front of the lake house, the sound of mallet against ball, and beneath that the sound of a whispered conversation, the red-and-blue awning, the lawn chairs painted red and blue, the lawn a thick summer green, and the trees dressed in a shining gaudiness. “There’s going to be a war,” Arthur Regan whispered. “Why does she want to go to Italy , of all places?”

His mother’s voice quietly persistent, her fingers moving in her lap, rolling a tall wet glass between the palms of her hands, the glass flashing in the sun, never raising her eyes or her voice, “The climate, Arthur.”

“She can go to Arizona.”

“That’s true. But she wants to go to Italy.”

“She can go alone then.”

“No, she can’t, Arthur.”

“Why in the name of God must you go with her?”

“She’s sick, Arthur.”

“She’s not that sick!”

“She has a chronic bronchial condition, Arthur.”

“Then let her hire a nurse. Or a traveling companion.”

“She’s my sister. I won’t have her going off to Europe alone.”

“Goddamn it, Julia—”

“The boy.”

“Never mind the boy. You listen to me. If a war breaks out, you’ll be right in the middle of it!”

“War is not going to break out.”

“No?”

“No. Hitler and Mussolini may be mad, but they’re not going to mount a winter offensive.”

“Now just what do you know about—?”

“I know that smart generals are afraid of winter offensives, that much I know. And Millie and I will be back before the spring.”

“You won’t be back before the spring, Julia, because you’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here in Talmadge.”

“We’re leaving on August first, Arthur. And we’ll be back in January. Now, stop behaving like a child.”

The airport in New York, the immense imposing bulk of the airplane, its giant wings casting deep shadows on the concrete strip, his mother and his aunt climbing the ramp and then turning back to wave, the door of the plane closing, the engines suddenly roaring into life, the propellers spinning, a flutter of newspaper scraps across the concrete, image upon image, frightening, crowding into the small compartment across the passageway from the Hanley’s radio room, images, sounds, the telephone call from London. “David? David, darling? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“How are you, darling?”

“Fine, Mom.”

“Are you all right? I can barely hear you.”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“David, I saw the changing of the guard today. David, I do wish you were with me.”

“How’s Aunt Millie, Mom? Will you be coming home soon?”

“She’s all right, darling. Let me talk to your father again.”

The cards from Paris, This is the Eiffel Tower. Millie and I had lunch here yesterday. You can see the whole city of Paris. Guess what, David? Even the children here speak French, ha-ha. Your loving mother, Julia , and the cards on the long road to Rome, This is Dijon. They say it is a little Paris. I am sending you some wonderfully tasty mustards , across into Switzerland, Bern is like a toy town. There are marvelous medieval statues and a clock that does everything but explode , over the Alps into Italy, Stresa reminds me of Lake Abundance. You step out of your hotel and go right into the water , across the Italian peninsula, Everything is sere and sunny, the fields are straight out of van Gogh, the sun is brilliant, tomorrow we will be in Milan , and then Rome! I can’t believe it! A fabulous city, all gold and white, a city within cities, a city beneath cities. Yesterday I walked along the very road Caesar took on his way to the Forum. I could feel the ghosts of dead assassins, and everywhere these wonderful Italians whose faces speak volumes. I shall go back to Rome often. We are only two hours away here in Aquila, and the drive is a beautiful one, and I feel time in that city, I feel time beneath the streets and in the air, I feel history. I shall go there often .