Somewhere in the house, branches scraped against a window. The wind was sharpening . . . were the children warm enough? But Noreen had said just around the block; they’d be back at any minute. Elizabeth left the hearth and crossed the room to the round gilt mirror and looked deliberately at herself.
The glass distorted, and gave back a humblingly small image. Black cashmere, ringed at the throat with a strand of snowy buttons. Small creamy face above it, still a little too hollow in the cheeks, with hair the pale sunny color of Maire’s brushed shiningly close to her head. Indeterminate eyes—blue? green?—too wide in concentration under surprisingly dark brows.
Afraid? asked Elizabeth of the searching eyes. Afraid of what? Nothing she could face. Like the motion caught or imagined in the tail of the eye, the uneasiness hid when she looked for it. Or, rather, it took on the color of any circumstance, like a defensive animal finding protection, so that it might be concealed in almost anything.
It might be Oliver, with his new and disconcerting habit of watching her when he thought she didn’t notice. Watching almost clinically—and remembering?—so that when he would say casually. “Tired?” she marshalled her answer as carefully as though he were a visiting psychiatrist and not the man she had loved without guard for five years.
It might be Constance Ives, Elizabeth’s second cousin, taking over—soothingly, quietly—any household affair requiring more thought than, say, a five year-old child could give it. Constance, in Massachusetts on a chance visit to the cousin she hadn’t met more than twice in her thirty-plus years, had been a rock in those first dream-like days after the hospital. She was a wall now, steady, reliable—and completely unassailable. Was there someone else behind the wall, someone who resented a lifetime of aprons and grocery lists, someone Elizabeth wouldn’t recognize if the wall ever cracked?
Or the wrongness might be in Lucy Brent. Why, thought Elizabeth edgily, must I be carried off to Bonwit’s on shopping trips when there isn’t a thing I want? Or to fashion shows, which I loathe? Or on long drives, ending up with tea at some horribly quaint place, which must bore Lucy nearly as much as they do me? Is it occupational therapy, or what?
She was ashamed of that instantly because Lucy, bound by no ties at all beyond a friendship of two years’ standing, was merely doing her darting, dragonfly best to divert Elizabeth, and sacrificing, along the way, quite a few hours of her beloved high-stakes bridge. And Lucy had no children, and no recognition of children, so that she couldn’t know.
Oddly enough, of them all, it was Lucy’s husband whom Elizabeth had felt most at ease with in the past few weeks. Steven Brent was shy and thoughtful and often inarticulate; where her cousin Constance Ives was a rock, he was a cushion, but in the buoyant and deliberate way that a life-raft is a cushion. Of them all, it was Steven who had said openly, “I wish we could help. But you’ll deal with it your own way,” and had then gone on treating her as a normal, intelligent woman.
Normal.
Voices on the frosty air. Maire’s: “Mama! Where are you, Mama? I found a duck!” Jeep’s, tearful: “Mine, MINE,” and then an outburst of rage and sorrow. The wagon rattled, Noreen’s voice threaded serenely through the altercation. Jeep’s sobs quieted. Elizabeth went to the door, feeling as though she had come out of shadow into sunlight, and soberly admired a wooden duck faded from countless rains. Noreen, brisk with zippers and mittens in the lighted kitchen, nodded at the duck and said conversationally, “Expendable, I think, as soon as possible? We had to take it along to avoid a scene.”
She smiled at Maire as she said it. Countless other Delaneys had obviously followed Noreen into the world, Elizabeth thought gratefully. She said, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry, let them have it if they want it.”
Jeep gave the duck a look of love. Maire, losing interest, put up a hand to Elizabeth’s and began to pull her toward the door. Noreen said doubtfully, “They say they don’t want scrambled eggs, Mrs. March. . . .”
“Oh yes they do,” said Elizabeth with firmness, and caught Noreen’s eye. “This is the entering wedge, I warn you. About once a month they start fancying themselves as old Romans. Put your foot down fast.”
The worried look vanished from the young too-thin face. Not the twenty-two she said she was, thought Elizabeth with a momentary qualm; probably not a day over twenty. But you could need a job and a home just as much at twenty as at twenty-two, and the girl was competent and seemed content. The children had taken to her instantly, and that was ninety percent of the battle.
The grip of Maire’s hand grew more impatient, “I’ll tell you a secret, Mama—”
The secret, Elizabeth knew, allowing herself to be escorted into the living-room, would be long and completely inaudible, with Maire’s pink-silk cheek pressed earnestly against her own and her lips moving soundlessly.
In the instant before she sat down on the couch, Elizabeth caught a tiny sliding reflection of their two figures in the round mirror over the mantel. And the magic began to work again. How could she, how could any woman have the temerity to be afraid when her life had built itself up so beautifully around her? When she had a husband whom she loved, who loved her. Two healthy children who didn’t know the meaning of fear. If no staggering wealth, at least no financial worries. And her own health, snatched out of danger six weeks ago. If that was all she had salvaged on that dreadful morning, it was still a great deal.
Any notion that things were somehow not what they seemed, that something was nibbling softly at the base of the structure, was nonsense.
Solemnly, Elizabeth bent her cheek for Maire’s secret.
“I
