Could she say, “Baby, baby, life isn’t just a bowl of cherries?”
Could she say, “There’ll be ups and downs, Linda. Ride with them.”
Could she call upon all the old clichés, all the banalities, all the tommyrot that was passed from generation to generation, from mother to daughter, from elder sister to younger sister? How could she tell anyone else the proper way to enter the most private and personal arrangement ever devised by human beings for human beings?
Wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, Eve said only, “We’ll talk to Mama. You’ll be happy, darling.”
And she hoped Linda would.
33
He called Maggie as soon as he got out of the Harder apartment on Wednesday morning.
“My God, Larry, where have you been?” she asked.
He told her about Linda’s elopement, and she told him how frantic she’d been, waiting for him to call. She’d walked past his house yesterday only to find it locked tighter than a vault. She couldn’t imagine what had happened.
“Are we going tomorrow?” she asked. “I haven’t known what to say to Don.”
“Yes, we’re going,” he said.
“But how will you get away?”
“I’ll just leave. Settled or not. They don’t need me here to settle it.”
“What about this thing from Puerto Rico?” she asked.
For a stunned moment he was completely speechless. Then all he could say was “What?”
“Felicia.”
“Who? What are you talking about, Maggie?”
“The hurricane. Felicia. Haven’t you been listening to the radio?”
“No.”
“It’s supposed to be headed this way,” she said. “It passed a hundred miles north of Puerto Rico, and they think it’s coming toward the coast. The radio said it might hit us tomorrow.”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
“I thought you might not like to drive in—”
“I’ve driven in bad weather before. Where are we going to meet, Maggie? What time?”
“The post office?”
“No, not for this. It’s too risky.” He thought for a moment. “There’s a luncheonette on the edge of town. It’s called the Paradise or something. Right next to the bowling alley. Do you know it?”
“I’ll find it. What time?”
“Eight o’clock?”
“No,” she said, “it’ll have to be much later than that. Don’s mother isn’t coming out until ten. She’s having dinner with some friends and then they’re driving her here.”
“What time then?”
“Eleven?”
“Fine. Maggie, I’ve got to make this short. I’m on my way up to the Altar house.”
“Is it finished?”
“I hope so. This is a final inspection.”
“I wish I could go with you.”
“We’ll be together all weekend,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow night. Eleven at the luncheonette, right?”
“I’ll be there. Be careful, Larry.”
“I will. So long, Maggie.”
He hung up, and then remembered he hadn’t told her he loved her.
Summer was dying.
It was the end of August, and the leaves were beginning to turn already on some of the giant trees surrounding the house he had designed. There was a silence to the land. Regally, the house sat atop the slope, commanding the land and the sky. He inspected the exterior and then found six identical keys hanging on a nail in the garage. He took one from the bunch and opened the front door. The smell of fresh paint was still in the house, and another exciting familiar smell, the smell of newness. He closed the door behind him and stood silently in the entrance hall.
He was glad he was alone.
Here, surrounded by something he had created, something which had been born in his mind, something which had come from his hands to take visible form, like static electricity bursting in yellow spurts from the fingertips, here he was glad he was alone.
He walked through the house, into the enormous glass-enclosed living room, into the small, intimate room of stone and wood, upstairs to the study with the world at its feet, and then downstairs again to the kitchen and the dining room and back into the magnificent living room of glass where the wilderness stretched beyond to the edge of the sky.
And then he walked through the house again, a small black note-book in his hands this time, jotting down small corrections to be made. When he finished his formal inspection tour, he sat in the stone-and-wood room on the first floor, sat with his back to the stone wall, and there was a smile on his face and a peculiarly tender wistfulness in his eyes.
He sat alone for a long time.
Then he went out of the house and walked back to the car, and hesitated with his hand on the door handle, looking down the road to where the house reached for the sky, seemed ready to soar upward into the clouds if only it could break free of the foundation. He started the car and drove back to the city. He called Altar from a phone booth and told him he’d just inspected the house. It was a good house and a beautiful one, even though there were some minor changes and corrections Di Labbia would have to make. But as soon as the certificate of occupancy was issued, Altar could move in. He suggested that three hundred dollars be withheld from the final payment until Di Labbia had made the changes. He wasn’t at all sure that Altar heard a word he said.
This was August twenty-eighth and The Fall of a Stone would be published on the thirtieth.
When he returned to the apartment that afternoon, Mr. Harder opened the door for him.
“Welcome back,” he said. “We’ve landed!”
In the living room, Mrs. Harder was crying and hugging Linda close to her breast. “But why didn’t you tell me, darling?” she said. “A mother should know. Her own daughter’s wedding, her baby daughter.”
Larry took Eve aside and whispered, “What happened?”
“Daddy kept giving it to her,” Eve said. “She finally gave in.”
“What are you drinking, Larry?” Mr. Harder said, beaming. “I’ve got another son in the fold and that’s an occasion for real celebration. I’m a man who’s been surrounded by jabbering females all his life!”
They drank together, the three men. As Larry tilted his glass, he heard Lois whisper, “How was it, Lindy? Did he make you take off all your clothes?” and he almost choked on his whisky.
The family had a late dinner together. In the television room, where Chris and David sat watching the screen after their earlier meal, the forecasters said that the hurricane Felicia had hit the North Carolina coast, passing inland near Morehead City and Beaufort, leaving floods and great destruction everywhere behind her. Felicia was moving northward. If she kept on course, she would pass through Chesapeake Bay and then strike the New York area sometime the next day, Thursday.
David said to Chris, “Ain’t Disneyland on yet?”
Thursday came.
In the afternoon they left the children with Mrs. Harder and went out for a walk. The city was gray and silent. The people in the streets felt the coming storm. Unconsciously, they all looked skyward.
For Eve, the city had always been a magic place. The moment she arrived in New York, her step quickened, and her shoulders pulled back, and she held her head more erect. It was a city full of busy people rushing to get someplace. You could feel the quickened tempo the moment you stepped off the train. You could feel it surging along the pavements, echoing raucously in the beep of the taxicab horns, singing in the neon, rushing skyward with the buildings. The city was a treasure box of energy, and you wanted to laugh over your wealth, pick up the jewels of the city and let them trickle through your fingers while your laugh bellowed to the concrete and steel pulsing with life.