Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

And sitting there with her, shining and new, recognized perhaps that Matthew Bridges was not a very special unique individual at all. Recognized the falseness of a man who shouted rebellion while slowly settling into a comfortable rut where there was really nothing against which to rebel. Who theorized and observed and complained about the culture, but who had nonetheless succumbed to it over the years, and was totally at ease within its confines, recognized this, and was shocked by the recognition. Matthew Bridges was a man who got up to catch the 8:04 each morning, and who read the Times and who voted without much interest and who went to the parties and the picnics and the dances and who devoted time to his wife in the evening and time to his children on Saturday and Sunday, and yet was losing his daughter this very minute, not to another person, but only because he could not talk to her. Or maybe had lost himself a long time ago in the morass of just doing the things that had to be done every single day of the week, like brushing his teeth, or taking Beverly for a walk, losing his own identity in a superficial uniform mass-identity where people spoke in shorthand and where it was important to be liked, but not at all important to be loved.

“It’s important,” he said flatly and harshly.

He wanted to run. In the stillness of the sunny kitchen with the March cold outside and the echo of his words, he wanted to run because the image of himself was suddenly frightening, an image indistinguishable from the countless others who caught their trains and mowed their lawns and lighted their cigarettes and held their cocktails and made love to their wives and had hopeless conversations with their daughters without being able to speak to them. He wanted to run anywhere out into the countryside because he knew he had once been Matthew Anson Bridges, a person in his own right, a very important individual, and that now he was not that person, but someone else — not even someone else, he was everyone else, he was faceless.

“Oh, Christ, Kate,” he said, “keep it!”

She stared at him in puzzlement, there was no communication. She thought he meant something quite different.

“I’d like to get on a train for Boston sometime,” he said.

She stared at her father because he no longer was making the slightest sense. She had already decided how she would handle Paul Marris — honestly and simply; no, she would not be his girl — but this was something else. She looked up at him in confusion and said, “What did you say, Daddy?”

“You know what love is?”

“I think I do.”

“Do you know what it is?” he said fiercely. “It’s accepting things you don’t really want, and giving away the things that mean the most to you.”

She did not answer him.

He thought, She doesn’t understand.

He thought, For Christ’s sake, Kate, your father is a shadow. I loved girls once, do you know that? I killed men once, do you know that? I raced across Connecticut with Amanda once, do you know that? Do you know what I did once, Kate, oh do you know the things I did once?

“Well,” he said, “you can take care of it. You’re a sensible girl, Kate.”

He wanted to run.

“You can handle Paul without hurting him.”

He wanted to be Matthew Anson Bridges.

“I’ve always been able to depend on you.”

He wanted suddenly to see Julia. He wanted someone to look at his face, to take his face between her hands and look at it very hard and then say, “Why, yes. It’s you.” He closed his eyes tight.

Why, yes, of course, it’s you.

April came in alive with plans. April always did. You had to do something in April, you had to burst outdoors in a sweater and suck air into your lungs, you had to leave the house and the winter behind, the season demanded it of you. And because life was suddenly sprouting everywhere around you, because there was visible evidence in everything you touched that the world was turning green again, because April had that magic sound in it, April, you could taste the word, you could sniff it, you could hold it in your arms and love it, because April brought with it the promise of sunshine and languid breezes and romance, it was a time for planning, a time for renewed hopefulness.

Julia Regan was going back to Italy.

There were clothes to buy, and she shopped the stores and studied the designers’ offerings with all the excitement of a young girl going to her first prom. She bought a Brigance walking skirt in taupe with a geometrically patterned matching top. She bought a Jane Derby afternoon dress in black silk surah. From Grès, for the evening, she bought a brown chiffon, and from Galanos a dark-blue print in Italian silk. At Lord & Taylor’s, she found a colorful Pucci silk-jersey print, which she purchased, amused because she was going to Italy where the dress originated, but not at all sure she could get it there. At Ohrbach’s she found two drip-dry cotton shirtwaists, one in madras and one in khaki. She bought impetuously, but with a practiced eye, two Acrilon knits, one in white and the other in black, two pairs of Belgian walking shoes from Henri Bendel, a woolen mohair stole in a burnished mustard, a coral-colored jersey raincoat that could double as a topper, a dark-green cotton suit from Jax with a matching scoop-necked dressy blouse and a striped tailored blouse, a pair of brown satin shoes and another pair dyed to match the blue Italian silk. She bought a simple black bathing suit, and a dozen nylons, and a pair of beige walking pumps with a stacked heel, and a traveling clock, and a cardigan sweater, and a large bottle of aspirin, and cleansing tissues, and paperback books for the plane trip. She bought no new jewelry, but she laid out her pearls and her scatter pins and bracelets, and a ruby pendant Arthur had given her when David was born, and a cameo she’d inherited from her mother, and tried to decide which she should take with her, if not all.

There were arrangements to be made, too. She longed to duplicate the trip she’d taken in 1938. She wanted to begin in Paris as she had with Millie — only this time, Kate would be her companion, Kate would accompany her to the Meurice, and then out of Paris by rented car to Fontainebleau and Sens and Dijon where they would stay overnight at the Hôtel de la Cloche, and then on to Lausanne and the Beau-Rivage, and finally to Interlaken. Kate would be with her when they drove through the Grimsel Pass, and down that magnificent valley to Brig. Kate would be with her when the train pulled into Domodossola, white and shining in the sun. There were hotel reservations to be made, and maps to be marked, the entire route from Paris to Rome, and airline tickets to be purchased, and passports to be applied for and acquired, and vaccinations and shots, and traveler’s checks, and a letter of credit from the Talmadge bank, a hundred things to do before they left from Idlewild on the first of July.

She barely had time to think about Milt Anderson’s warnings in those hurried days of buying and preparing for the trip. Somewhere in a buried corner of her mind, there was the memory of a car stalled on a mountain curve, a bus rushing past, the frightening lurch of her heart as the horn’s sound filled the air, she did not want this to happen again. But she nonetheless planned her trip to duplicate that earlier one, telling herself nothing could possibly happen, she would avoid the physical and emotional stress Milt had talked about. Kate would make it easier for her.

And then, remembering the true intent of her trip, she wondered whether it was advisable to take Kate with her. But yes, there would be no harm, Kate would make it easier all around, easier to accept whatever physical hardships presented themselves, easier to reconstruct the past — and perhaps easier to adjust to the present. So she stopped questioning her judgment. April was a time for planning, and she planned happily and with joyous expectation.