She turned away, looking for the other chair, and sat down, doing so partly because nervousness was making her weak but also because she needed a distraction, an excuse not to meet his eye.
Bradford was saying, “I didn’t expect this, Evelyn. I was resigned to going alone.”
“I couldn’t have you leave by yourself,” she said, and though what she was saying was a part of a larger lie, there was emotional truth behind it. She did care for him very much, she couldn’t let him journey out into the darkness without her. With that kernel of truth within the lie, it became possible to look at him again, to look at his face and show her own.
He said, of course, “What about Robert?”
She had rehearsed for hours a long explanation about a fight, Robert having said bad things about Bradford and so on, showing himself to be not really interested in her in any long-range way, but now that the moment had come she just couldn’t say it. It was embarrassing to tell such a story, but that wasn’t the only reason, or even the main one. With some sort of instinctive mystic fear, she recoiled from putting it into words because it might then come true, and she would have lost Robert because of words out of her own mouth.
But she had to say something. She hesitated, feeling the silence, feeling Bradford’s eyes on her, knowing that Bradford’s mind — however altered — was still keen, and she moved her hands vaguely, trying to find a way to say what she was unable to say, and growing more and more frightened that her silence would reveal to him the truth.
But he misinterpreted her hesitation, saying, “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. There was trouble between you, eh?”
“Yes,” she said. She almost smiled with her sense of relief; he had absorbed the story without her having to say the words.
“Nothing that can be fixed up?” His concern for her was obvious, and real, and touching.
“It can’t be fixed up,” she said. She didn’t know what expression her face should carry, but the strain of indecision must itself have given her a look that matched Bradford’s idea of what had happened, so that he remained deceived.
He said, “Are you sure? This isn’t just a lover’s quarrel.”
“No. It’s over for good, I’m sure of it.” Now that the lie had been communicated to him, it became easier for her to speak of it, it became only play-acting and didn’t count.
“If that’s true,” he said, “I have mixed emotions. I know you cared for Robert, I know he could have been important to you, and I’m sorry it had to come to an end.”
“Well, it was better to end now, I guess,” she said. Should she act more depressed about it? Or perhaps angry. Or maybe merely cold and impersonal would be best. She didn’t really have an attitude planned, she was improvising from step to step and was constantly afraid she was about to say something or do something that would strike a wrong note and ignite his suspicions.
But it hadn’t happened yet, because he said, “On the other hand, you know how much I was hoping you’d come with me, so I can’t help being glad that it has ended and you will come.”
“I’m glad, too, in a way,” she said. “I mean, I’m glad the split happened now, and not after you left without me.”
“So that leaves only the one last question,” he said.
“When we leave.”
“Oh, no. I know when we’ll be leaving, approximately. The question is, what about Dinah?”
“Dinah?” For just a second, Evelyn was so disoriented that she thought Bradford meant his dead wife, but then she realized he had to mean the living Dinah, his four-year-old great-granddaughter. But what about her? “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“There’s no question in your mind?”
“Question? No. Question about what?”
“Do you intend to bring her with us, is that it?”
“Bring—” Astonishment blanked Evelyn’s mind completely.
“Because if you do,” Bradford went on, quiet and earnest, “are you sure that’s the best for her? I’m not sure you’ve given this enough thought. You and I are at an age where we can decide our own lives, but Dinah’s a child. If she comes with us, she’ll be raised in an alien culture, she may never feel that she truly belongs anywhere. She may grow up to hate us both.”
“I see,” Evelyn said slowly, trying to think about this new development. Because this was all make-believe, it was only play-acting, she had never even considered Dinah. But of course Bradford thought it was all real, so he would consider all these other elements.
Bradford was saying, “But could you bear to leave her behind? I suspect you haven’t thought about this. You’ll have to, you know. And you may decide to change your mind again, you may decide it would be best after all if you stayed here. For Dinah’s sake.”
“No,” she said firmly. “I want to go with you, that’s definite.”
“Then what about Dinah? Do you want her to come with us, or to stay here? I’m sure Howard and Grace would be happy to take her.”
Evelyn had no idea what to answer. Suddenly the conversation had become a trap, a trick question to expose the fact that she was lying. Which answer would be suspicious, and which would not? She tried to imagine herself truly in the situation he thought she was in, tried to imagine she really was leaving this country forever to go live behind the Bamboo Curtain with Bradford. Would she want to bring little Dinah into that exile? Could she bear to leave the child behind?
It was no good. The situation wasn’t possible, she couldn’t visualize herself in it, she couldn’t begin to guess what her response would be. She finally had to shake her head and say, “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I just don’t know.”
“There’s still a few days,” he said. “If you want her to come along, she can travel on your passport. If you want her to stay, it just so happens that Howard is going to be here.”
She wasn’t supposed to know anything about that. She said, “He is?”
“He phoned this afternoon while you were out. He insists on coming here for a week or two, he wants me to work on The Coming of Winter. As though I had time to think about the past now. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know how Howard is.”
“Yes,” she said, allowing herself a small smile because Bradford would think it referred to Howard.
“I didn’t want him to get suspicious,” Bradford went on, “so finally I said yes, he could come, and he’s driving out tomorrow.”
“With Grace and the children?”
“No, just by himself. What we can do, if you decide to leave Dinah, is leave Howard a letter explaining the situation and asking him to take over the child’s guardianship. You know Grace would be happy to do it.”
“Yes, she would,” Evelyn agreed.
“So you think about it. Either way is all right with me.”
“But you think I should leave her here.”
“It would probably be best for the child. But how would you feel, in exile, never able to see her again for the rest of your life?”
“Miserable,” Evelyn said honestly.
“Of course, it might not be that bad. I don’t expect a miracle, you know, I don’t expect to arrive in China and have the heavens at once open and rain peace down on all the world. But I do think I can start a gradual thaw, and it might be that within a very few years you could come back here after all. It might even happen soon enough for me to come back, though I’m not counting on it.”
“I’ll think about it,” Evelyn said, and got to her feet. Then, remembering another matter, she said, “About Uncle Joe.”
Bradford grinned. “I thought you’d never ask. I phoned him today, I told him we were thinking of taking a Thanksgiving trip to California, and I wanted a check-up before I left.”