Authors: Belva Plain
“Still, it’s nice for you to be together.”
This ordinary, even trite, remark lingered in the
air, heavy with sad connotations, like a final note in a minor key.
“I had a birthday card from her with a nice message. She was always punctilious about birthdays and Christmas.”
Bill’s vocabulary had never been imaginative.
Nice
was usually his most descriptive adjective. Charlotte wondered about the “nice message” and wondered what it could possibly mean to him, if anything. She wondered about things she would never know.
So much had changed in this place that had been her home!
“It hurts me to see what’s happened to the Dawses,” Emmabrown had told her. “Years ago if anybody had predicted things like this, I couldn’t have believed it. Your father’s so depressed, so run down, I don’t know what to make of him. Even this house going to rack and ruin.”
The house was hardly “going to rack and ruin,” but it was unmistakably shabby. The dining-room curtains were brittle and yellow. Paint on the ceiling was peeling. Elena would be appalled if she could see it now.
And Emmabrown had continued, “No, no. He’s not himself. I only come once a week to clean the house and cook enough for a few meals. I guess he does for himself the rest of the time, eats out and goes to his brother’s. I could come more often, but he says he can’t afford it, not that I mind. I can always get jobs if I want them. But it hurts me, Charlotte. He’s not himself, your father isn’t.”
If to “be himself meant to be without burdens, or
at the very least to carry them totally concealed, then it had been a long time since Bill had “been himself.” Still, there had been nothing she could do about it, and there was nothing now.
Her impulse was to touch his hand, to show him that she was aware and cared so much. But she knew that neither male pride nor parental pride would accept that from her. He would hate it.
Briskly, as if with a sharp instrument, Bill’s voice cut through the thick atmosphere.
“Tell me about your job, about your life. I never hear enough.”
“It’s wonderful,” she said, responding in kind. “I love the work and I’m lucky to be working. Jobs are scarce, what with the end of the eighties real-estate boom.”
“So I read. There’ve been articles about big firms laying off half their staffs, and articles about architects leaving for jobs in the Far East. That’s where things really are booming, as I should know.”
There could be no denial of that, so she said only, “I’m glad I’m in a small firm. We do things that don’t involve big millions, so somehow we keep busy. We do a lot of historical preservation on country houses. Of course, Rudy likes to play around with modern design whenever he can find a client who can afford some brand-new dazzle.”
Charlotte smiled. There was an artificial quality about this conversation, an avoidance of reality.
“What do you like?”
“Either, or a combination when one can properly be made. I’m eclectic.”
“I’m proud of you. I still can see you lugging those big coffee-table books on architecture. You were—how old? Fourteen, maybe?”
As if abruptly aware that “fourteen” was an unfortunate choice of year, he stopped and, quickly recovering, went on, “How about your private life? Still no serious love, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“You may ask. The answer is no.”
“Just as well. You’re young yet. Don’t make any sorry mistakes.”
Now his voice, which, unlike his vocabulary, was always expressive, told her that his own mistake still pained him. And in Charlotte’s mind the contrast between him and Elena, who seldom expressed regret about anything, was a keen one.
Bill poured a second cup of coffee. She saw that he wanted to prolong this last evening. “I miss you,” he said abruptly. “We all do. Cliff and Claudia too. They’ve been having a hard time this past year on account of that fellow. That’s why Cliff took her away. Has she told you?”
“No. Our phone conversations are short.” And we never mention “that fellow,” Charlotte thought, discomfited that he was being mentioned now.
“Well, it’s all come back to life after lying dormant for the last few years. All of a sudden two different families, perfectly well-meaning people, one family in Tennessee and another in Connecticut, sent letters claiming that they’re sure they’ve seen him. Then come the newspapers, naturally, one of them with a TV crew, at the front door. It was all a false alarm, as you might expect.”
“Why ‘as you might expect’? Somebody’s going to find him somewhere. I’ve thought … God knows, I’ve thought … of coming face to face with him on a street, and how it would be.…”
“The chances of that happening are one in a billion. I wouldn’t give it another thought if I were you. Don’t make yourself sick over this thing, dear. Poor Claudia was almost turning inside out. Some people in town are saying that the Dawses really know where Ted’s hiding and are protecting him. Can you imagine anything so cruel?”
A dreadful thought shot through Charlotte’s mind: could it be possible that Claudia did know? Ted was her child, after all. Then, instantly, she was ashamed of the ugly, disloyal suspicion.
“Well,” Bill said, rising from the table, “enough of that. How about an evening walk? We haven’t had one since last fall.”
They stepped out onto the road, which now, at April’s end, was covered by an arch of maples so barely greening that the sun, which still had an hour’s worth of light to give, was able to flicker brightly through the arch. To the right lay the way to the lake, a familiar route still quaintly, peacefully countrified, while to the left lay the downhill way from the plateau to the river, the town, and unavoidably, to the mill. Or to what remains of it, thought Charlotte.
She hoped Bill would choose the direction of the lake, but he chose the opposite. So they walked, making inconsequential conversation about the houses they passed, so-and-so’s eighty-fifth birthday,
or so-and-so’s lavish display of crocuses. Bill’s mind, as Charlotte did not need to be told, was elsewhere, drawn toward the river’s edge, where, finally, they stopped.
There it lay, the proud old mill that she had used to compare with a huge, menacing prison. But now, in this state of decay, it looked more like a beetle whose innards bulged from its outer shell.
“Crammed,” Bill said. “There’s hardly room to set foot inside. It’s crammed with rubbish. They’ve even put up more sheds for more stuff! You know, don’t you, that the commission, over my signature, has given Premier two warnings this past year, and then got a court order for them to clean up. They’ve ignored the order, just submitted a worthless cleanup plan that fools nobody. Now the state is suing them, but it’ll probably take half a century to get through the courts. And in the meantime Cliff and I have to take the heat. Look there!” he cried impatiently when Charlotte failed to respond. “And the windows are all gone. The pressure’s done it.”
Charlotte asked gently, “Why do you come here to torture yourself?”
“How can you ask? Here, see these.” From his jacket pocket Bill pulled a packet of folded newspaper clippings. “Letters to the editor, even a couple of editorials by my friend Howard Haynes. My friend! Listen. ‘In spite of his eloquence at the recent city council meeting, Bill Dawes failed to convince anyone that he and his brother are doing enough to curb their tenant. They are the owners, and it is their responsibility to correct conditions at their property.
For too many years now the community has been subjected to an unbearable, windblown stench.’ Et cetera, et cetera. Now hear this letter by a science teacher at the high school. ‘What was supposed to be a recycling operation has become a dumping ground for hazardous trash. The acres behind the building have become a viscous, noisome swamp. Ducks and wildfowl that used to live there are long gone. Soon there will be no more fish in the river because the waste that’s been mixed in with the so-called construction-site waste is bound to leach into the river. Eventually it will enter the neighboring groundwater and the food chain. We are faced with disaster, and nobody is doing anything about it. Mr. Dawes should be ashamed to keep his job on the state environmental commission. He should know enough to resign.’ Well, there’s more,” Bill concluded, tucking the papers back into his pocket, “but I guess that’s enough. You get the idea.”
The sun was fading away into a pool of foggy pink clouds, against which the ruination below became all the more depressing. And involuntarily, Charlotte turned toward the greening landscape at her back.
“Our good name is mud in Kingsley,” Bill said bitterly. “Between this mess and that other business of Claudia’s—and Cliff’s—we’ve been marked as liars, or fools, or both.”
When she stared down again at the mill, it seemed to her that it had always been the pivot around which her life revolved. She remembered standing here and hearing her father’s prediction, remembered
it as clearly as if he were giving it right now:
We’re going to have trouble here yet
.
“If we had moved the whole thing away to Central America or someplace, we’d be rich and respected now. But we made a fine product in a thriving town, and we wanted to save them both, wanted to save the good jobs. No one gives us credit for that. We tried our damnedest to make a go of it here, but the cheap competition hurt us, and the town died with us. That’s the whole story.”
The town died with us
. The dying was slow; one by one the good shops that had thrived on the grid of old streets that led to the river’s edge closed down. In the gray, dilapidated town there was no park, no recreation, no inviting place to sit with friends over a cup of coffee, no entertainment since the theater had been shut, except for the multiplex movie in a row of gimcrack chain stores and strip malls out on the highway. Life had moved out to the cheerless highway.
Of course it was not only the death of the mill that had caused this; it was happening all over America.
And suddenly Charlotte was seized by an idea. Afterward, she could not have told how it came to flash into her head any more, she supposed, than a musician might explain how a melody had been born to him. But as it flashed, she saw what ought to lie below in the broad curve of the river, under the lovely rise of the pine-covered bluff where she was standing now. What should be there was a beautiful public space.
“Yes,” she said aloud, “a public space.”
“A what?”
“Oh, you know. Something like a square, a place to attract people, with things for them to do. The sort of thing,” she said with a vague wave of her arm, “that they’ve done on the Baltimore waterfront, or at Faneuil Hall in Boston.”
“This isn’t Baltimore or Boston. There’s no comparison.”
“But why can’t there be, on a smaller scale? A town square like the ones in Europe, a lively marketplace with new businesses and new jobs—”
“I’m afraid that’s a pipe dream, daughter.” When Bill was jovial or, as now, was trying to humor her, he called her “daughter.”
“But you mean well.” He patted her shoulder. “Thanks for trying. Even if it were possible to carry out your idea, there’s that small matter of the tenants. They’re a tough crew, Charlotte. We can’t possibly outwit them. And if we could—if we even could manage to find lawyers who’d take a chance on suing them—the case would cost God knows what. Then, if we were to win in court and get rid of them, which I don’t think we have one chance in ten of doing, how would we manage without their lease money? Who else would want to lease this ruin? And who would buy a property in this town?”
“I just gave you my thoughts, Dad.”
Again, Bill gave her his proud-father smile, a mixture this time of amusement and affection.
“Come away,” he said. “Let’s go home. This place haunts me.”
* * *
Whether the visit home had done Charlotte any good was a moot question. Maybe everything one does is moot, she reflected. At home, it was true, the virtually rural quiet without responsibilities or schedules had been temporarily soothing, but then the parlous state of affairs there, the sight of Bill so beaten, had caused a deep anxiety. It was with her even while she was at her work, the work she so loved. It was with her now, a vague, dim presence as she sat on the Common having her late sandwich lunch.
Most of the benches were being vacated as, reluctantly on so perfect a June day as this one, people returned to their offices. Charlotte, having almost three quarters of her free hour remaining, sat back and made an effort to absorb, to
feel
, the perfect day. Uninhibited couples lay on the warm grass. Important-looking men in dark suits, carrying their attaché cases, took a hurried shortcut across the Common. Around the old folk who daily came to feed them, pigeons collected, cooing mournfully even as they were being fed. All was color: the comical strut of pigeons on their shocking-pink feet, the extraordinary charm of a tiny boy in red shorts pulling a toy car on a string, the creamy clouds that swam over the city—all moved, all were vibrant with life. It was impossible to close one’s eyes on so much life.
So her eyes, moving everywhere, came suddenly to rest upon a row of red brick houses. At this distance they formed a wall.… And something clicked into her vision. Of course! A wall! A broad, river wall with a walk on top, and below, paved in red brick, the square that she had almost carelessly suggested to
her father and he had called a “pipe dream.” She had put it out of her mind because he had called it that. But it need not be! He was wrong! Surely something might be worked out.
The whole picture rose and glowed in the air before her. Excited now, she reached into her tote bag, unfolded a large square of tissue paper in which the repairman had wrapped her old shoes, spread it out, flimsy as it was, upon the bench, and began to sketch.
The four acres where the building now stood would be the center, a huge square with shops, and at the rear an open-air market to be glassed in during the winter. Wings would be attached to the square, two stories of condominiums, housing for the retired or for the young, with a view of the river; an inn might go there, too, for businesspeople coming to the region and for tourists who loved New England. Then a fine restaurant, and a skating rink in winter.… Imagination, with all its delicate, small gears, clicked into place. A rapid, fluid sketch took form.