Fortune's Hand (23 page)

When lunch was over, Julie went to her best friend's house and Penn returned to the television set.

“I can't keep him away,” Ellen lamented again. “I know you always tell us, Philip, that he needs to be stimulated. We did have that nice young man here for a few hours every day this summer, and he seemed able to do something to keep Penn occupied. But now he's back at college and I haven't been able to find a replacement.”

“Leave Penn alone, Ellen. I know what I advise, but you don't always have to dot every ‘i' and cross every ‘t' because I say so.”

“We hang on to your every word, don't you know that? And every day we pray for some miracle to happen.”

“Ellen, there isn't going to be any miracle. The older Penn gets the closer we get to reality.”

“So you still say he'll eventually have to be sent away?”

“For his own good as well as for yours. Come, Ellen, why spoil a fine sunny day going over something you already know?”

Because, she wanted to say, I carry around with me the picture of Penn grown into manhood, an unnatural, frightening stranger, and I want you to tell me that I'm wrong, that it isn't going to be like that. But since you can't say it, I will not ask the question again.

And as if Penn were not enough to think about, there was more …

Philip was watching her. “I wish you didn't look so troubled. I wish I could help you.”

“I'm only being quiet, feeling this fine sunny day that you mentioned,” she answered lightly.

“You have a very expressive face. You'll never keep secrets very well.”

She had not even begun to measure the force of the tension within her. She was not willing to humor herself by dwelling upon it, like some self-pitying hypochondriac looking for sympathy. Nor would she seek to ease it by confiding to anyone. Family affairs must be kept at home.

Philip interrupted her thoughts. “Isn't this what you'd call a ‘halcyon' day? And this a perfect place for it? On this cool porch, with your cherished garden, your English perennial border—what are those blue things? I remember seeing them in England.”

“Echinops. They're a kind of thistle.”

“This is a house you want to stay in and hand down to your children. There are wonderful houses like it in Montreal, I remember. I used to go out of my way sometimes to pass them coming back from work, just to take a look.”

He was making conversation. He had not fooled her.

“Robb isn't satisfied with this house,” she blurted.

“Why? What's wrong?”

“He didn't buy it himself, that's what's wrong. Sounds bitter, doesn't it?”

“Bitter on his part, or on yours?”

“On both, I suppose.” And she fell still, watching a fat bee crawl up a stem. She wanted to talk, and she also wanted to keep her need for privacy.

“I'm bottled up,” she said, still watching the bee.

Philip struck a match, relit his pipe, and studied the puff of smoke.

“I guess I need to talk, Philip. Don't you always say it's better to speak out?”

“But don't you and Robb always do that? It's been my impression that you do.”

“Yes, but on this subject we always reach an impasse. You see, I don't like the whole pattern he's made out of his life. It's done something to us, as if he had taken up gambling. He seems to be driven toward making money, more money, and more, and spending it. These cars, for instance, don't fit our life. And now the house … We don't need anything larger. It's absurd, and I don't want to leave this house. I won't do it.”

“Making money is the pattern? Most people like to do that,” Philip said mildly.

“Yes, but I don't care about the people he's with. I told him so at the beginning. All those politicians who invest with Devlin at that club—I sense that they're false, a slippery lot.” Now that she had gotten started, her words came rushing.

“I like Robb,” Philip said abruptly.

Ellen's voice broke. “You're thinking I'm disloyal to my husband to talk like this.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I'm hearing that you love him and you're frightened by what you see.”

“ ‘Why do you want so much?' I asked him. And he
answered with something like, ‘Well, I guess I just can't get enough of feeling that I'm my own man.' He made a joke of it, but I know that in his heart it's no joke, and I wish I could help him.”

“When was he not ‘his own man'?”

Having told this much, she might just as well tell it all. “It was because of my father. He treated Robb really badly. Sometimes it hurts to remember it and to think that I didn't stop it, although I don't know how I could have.”

She felt almost as if she were confessing a personal sin by exposing her dead father to blame. And yet he deserved the blame.

“I keep thinking if Dad hadn't died,” she said sadly, “they would have come together again. I sometimes think Dad was sorry but didn't know how to, or else simply wouldn't, take the first step. Robb either wouldn't or couldn't take it, either. And it all stems from Penn, the poor innocent.”

“Give me a cookie,” Penn demanded from the doorway.

“He eats too many sweets,” Ellen said. “But he usually has a tantrum if I refuse him.”

“Distraction. Always distract if you can. Want to play ball with me, Penn?”

Finding that Penn was still unable to catch a thrown ball, Philip rolled it to and fro across the grass. From where she sat, Ellen could not hear what Penn was saying, but whatever it was, he was laughing. She could see his fine teeth. And she sat there with a lump in her throat, watching them play.

“I wouldn't have said some of the things I said today,” she murmured when later Philip resumed his walk, “but you know us so well, that somehow it seemed natural. Anyway, thank you for listening. And thank you for making Penn happy.”

He was standing below her with one foot braced against the step and one hand on the railing. Sunlight touched yesterday's beard along his jaw. He must not have shaved this morning. His shirt was open low enough at the throat to show the divide between whiteness and tan. She had never stood so close to him before. And a vivid sensation, a vivid picture, flashed: her inner eye undressed him in graphic detail; she was horrified at herself.

He was looking at her as if he had read her mind. Then he raised his arm in good-bye and walked rapidly down the street.

“He likes you,” Julie said.

“He likes us all. He's our friend.”

“I didn't mean that, Mom.”

“What did you mean?” asked Ellen.

“Oh Mom, you know. I see the way he looks at you.”

“That's silly. He looks at you, too.”

“Not in the same way, Mom.”

“That's utterly ridiculous!”

“I don't think so.”

Just drop the subject and do it now, Ellen
.

“You've been seeing too many stupid movies,” she said.

“I
haven't come to waste your time,” Eddy protested. “I know you're busy.”

Robb was. He had an appointment in fifteen minutes, and he was irritated by the intrusion, so he said somewhat testily, “I have no time to talk about investments now, and here.”

“This isn't an investment. I'm telling you about a house to live in, and all I need is a minute. You know that land out past Lambert that I told you about? Well, it's going to foreclosure, and Dick can pick it up for less than you would believe. It's a hundred acres on a hill, with a view of the river. It's fantastic.” Eddy's arm made a wide sweep across the desk. “It would be a great place for you. You get that look in your eyes whenever you mention the old farm.”

“It hardly sounds like the old farm.”

“Well, of course not. But you'd fall in love with all that space. I was out there yesterday. Take my word.”

“Not now. Ellen doesn't want to move.”

“She would if you wanted to badly enough.”

“I really don't know how badly I want to.”

“So why do you drop hints all the time? You've been doing it ever since you left Grant's firm.”

“Eddy, I've got people coming in ten minutes.”

“Okay! Just thought I'd let you know. Take a ride out there one day and see for yourself. Here. Give me a piece of paper. I'll write the directions.”

One afternoon when he had an hour or two to spare, by rummaging in the desk Robb found the slip of paper with Eddy's directions. He went downstairs and got into his car.

Why he had chosen this particular day for the undertaking, he could not have explained, except that the choice might have had something to do with the Confederate soldier's portrait. Ellen had retrieved it from the apartment after Wilson Grant's death and hung it back next to the ancestors' pictures, where it had always been. Sitting at church in front of Grant's coffin, the awful solemnity of death had moved Robb to compassion, but the sight of that stern jaw and level, unfriendly gaze framed in heavy gilt aroused other feelings, so much so that he often moved to another chair. At any rate, the thought of that “fantastic” property had popped into his head, and now here he was.

A spread of fields and low, undulating hills plush as velvet pillows sloped toward the river. It was a slow southern river with little traffic except pleasure boats. A rowboat, or perhaps a canoe, was now creeping slowly
along the shoreline as he watched. When, at the river's curve, it disappeared from view, nothing moved anywhere except a flight of birds too high up to identify, and last summer's tall grass, dried tassels bending with the wind. The day was softly gray, so that no dazzle confused the eye. All was clearly defined, as if etched.

Robb's eye told him at once that this was costly land. His brain, trained by the sum of the last few years' experience, told him at once exactly how costly. Naturally, it would be divided into smaller plots, but each would still be large by ordinary standards. “Upscale” was the word for property like this.

“I wonder,” he said aloud.

There he stood with his hands in his pockets, as if detached from the moment and arrested by thought. He had taken giant steps throughout his life. He took no credit or blame for any of them. A fatalist would say that they had simply happened, as if a giant hand had moved the pieces on a gaming board. Had he ever
planned
to go to law school? Had he ever
planned
to leave Lily—yet here he winced—and fall in love with Ellen? And see how all these moves had been for the best, even for Lily, who had survived to marry another man.

Yet he wanted to be cautious, careful not to extend himself too far. And thinking so, he sat down in the grass, drew a pad and pencil out of his pocket, made some calculations, and tucked the paper away. Yes, he had allied himself with men of proven success. What was good enough for Dick Devlin must surely be good enough for him. A house here, a family home, would be
the safest investment a man could make. A house here in the middle of all this beauty, of all this peace! A home of his own, earned and built through his own endeavors, carrying no baggage of another family's inheritance, and he the master, beholden to no one!

Standing there with the wind playing about his face, he felt a warm rise of excitement. In it was a different kind of strength and competence from that to which he had now long been accustomed. Eddy, perhaps unable to express himself with any fluency, had yet understood with intuition what his friend would feel when he saw this place.

On the following Saturday, Robb suggested a ride into the country. “There's a piece of land I have to see,” he explained. “It's involved in a lawsuit.” Now why had he not told the truth?

Strip malls, gas stations, and fast food restaurants lined the highway. After a while they passed the last of these and were in the country. Now came fields, barns, orchards, and rocking chairs on front porches. A single file of geese came strutting across the road, forcing them to stop.

“Take your time,” Robb told them. “Look at them, Ellen. Don't they look important?”

She agreed. “Isn't this lovely? I'm glad we came.”

“Take a good look. This land is disappearing. It will all be eaten up before you know it.”

“Is that what we're seeing today? Another development?”

“Not exactly. It's to be an exclusive gated community.”

“Exclusive? Isolated? What's the sense in that? You're in the country, so why shut yourself away from the country? That would never be for me.”

“How can you say so without having seen it?”

“Because I know.”

He did not reply. He was not going to let himself feel discouraged. So he waited until the car stopped.

“Isn't this perfect?” he asked.

“Perfect the way nature made it,” Ellen said. “But it won't be after they cover it over with hideous, ostentatious houses.”

As if he had not heard her, he mused, “Feel the quiet. I wouldn't at all mind living here. Not at all.”

A sudden suspicious expression crossed Ellen's face. “You didn't take us here with any such idea, I hope?”

“I told you. I needed to see it.”

“I don't know why I don't believe you,” she said, staring at him. “I think you're up to something.”

“Mom!” Julie cried. “That's not a nice thing to say to Daddy.”

“Why? To say somebody's ‘up to something'? There's nothing wrong with those words.”

“It wasn't your words. It was the way you looked.”

“I don't know how I looked. But I'll tell you, Robb. You might not mind living here, but I would, very much.”

Julie was taking interest in events. “Mom, I love it. Look down at the river. It winks, like an eye.”

“A poetic observation,” Robb said, thinking that he
would probably have an ally in Julie. Still, considering the whole situation, it seemed best to postpone his project for today. This must be done very gradually, he saw, although if he were to wait too long, the opportunity would be lost.