She stopped and for a few seconds the only sound in the arbor was the buzz of a bee dipping erratically over a basket of plums on the table. She licked her lips and picked up her wine glass and drained it. “Well,” she said, “there’s your mother, who got off free. I’ve had a long time to think about all this and I never said it to anyone and you might as well be the first to hear it. And if you’re interested, I’ve never touched another man from that morning to this. It wasn’t hard and I don’t claim much credit for it, because I was only tempted once, and then not really seriously.”
She flicked with her napkin at the bee and it left the plums and darted up a beam of sunlight toward the leaves above their heads. “When I got the news that your father was dead and you wired that you wouldn’t come to the funeral services, I went through it myself. And after it, I sat alone in that damned house in New Jersey where your father and I had ground ourselves down into hatred and despair, and I decided that I had to rehabilitate myself. I had to be able, finally, to forgive myself. And I felt that the only way was through being useful and loving. And I was sure that I wasn’t going to be able to love another man, because I’d tried all that, and I fixed on children. Maybe you came into that, too. I’d botched you so badly, maybe I wanted to prove to myself that if I had another chance, I could do better. I applied to adopt two children, a boy and a girl, and while I was waiting I roamed the streets and the parks, staring at children, playing with them when their mothers and nurses would let me, making great plans about how for the next twenty years I would devote myself completely to turning out glorious, sunny young people, who would behave faultlessly, with gentleness and courage and intelligence, in every situation of their adult lives. Only the people who had charge of putting children out for adoption had other ideas. They weren’t so pleased with the notion of a single lady well over forty taking on two babies, and they investigated me quietly and they heard a few things. Not all. But enough. And they turned me down. The day they said no, I went walking in the meadows at Central Park, staring at little boys running across the grass and little girls playing with balloons and I knew what those poor women must feel who steal babies out of carriages. I wasn’t bitter at the people from the society. The actions of ten years must have their consequences. You can’t expect people to believe you if you go to them and say, ‘I’m changed. I’m a different woman. From today on I plan to become a saint.’ They have other things on their minds besides making it easy for a widow with a bad reputation to forgive herself.”
She reached over and took the bottle of wine and poured what was left into her glass. There wasn’t much and she didn’t drink it immediately, but sat looking at the glass between her fingers on the checkered tablecloth, not wanting or expecting any word from Tony, using him merely for the bitter and salutary pleasure of having a listener to involve in her self-denunciation.
“Still,” she said reflectively, turning the stem of the glass, “that was when I began to have some hope for myself. Do you remember Sam Patterson?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes,” Tony said. “Of course.”
“I hadn’t seen him for years, but he’d come to the funeral, and after that, from time to time, he’d visit me or ask me to meet him for dinner when he came to New York. His wife had divorced him just before the war, fifteen years too late for both of them, and he was easy to be with because he knew all about me and I didn’t have to pretend about anything with him. Once, long ago, when he was drunk at a dance, he’d put his arms around me and almost said he loved me.” She chuckled sadly. “Saturday night at a country club. Only it turned out he meant it, and when I went to him and told him that I couldn’t have the children, he asked me to marry him. That way, he said, married, we’d be sure to be able to adopt all the children we wanted. And he said he’d loved me from the beginning, even though it had only slipped out that one drunken time … And I nearly said yes. He was a good friend, maybe the only friend I had, and I’d liked him and admired him from the first time I met him. And it wasn’t only the children. It was a promise of pardon from loneliness. You have no idea what the loneliness of an aging woman, husbandless and without a family, can be like in a city like New York. Maybe it’s the real loneliness, the ultimate, naked meaning of the word in the twentieth century. But I said no. And I said no because he loved me and wanted me and all I felt I could love was a child and all I wanted was not to be alone, and I’d disappointed enough men in my life. When I’d said it and he’d gone away, I began to feel that, finally, I was going to be able to forgive myself. Don’t think I didn’t regret it later, and don’t think that I didn’t nearly call him up ten times in the next few months to tell him I’d changed my mind—but I didn’t. For once, I calculated correctly, and I stuck to my calculation. And even so, it was Sam Patterson in the long run who saved me. He’d heard about this committee that was being formed in connection with the United Nations, to do what they could for all the children who were left starving and homeless by the war, and he got me an interview and he got me hired and he made me stay with it when it all seemed pointless to me. Because, it isn’t the same thing, you know, caring for a million children you’ll never see, and worrying about tons of wheat and cases of penicillin and powdered milk. It’s not like watching a child grow in your own hands, and whatever victories you may win are terribly cold and abstract. And I’m not an abstract woman. But I worked twelve hours a day and I put as much money of my own into it as I could, and if I wasn’t satisfied and if I’m still hungry and lonely, well, what could I expect? And there’re other rewards. I’m not satisfied—but I’m necessary. That will have to be enough for this year. I’m thankful to those million unknown children whom I don’t love and who will never love me.”
She picked the wine bottle up and looked at it critically. “I suppose it’s too late to order another,” she said.
Tony looked at his watch. “Yes,” he said. He felt stunned and suddenly incapable of judging the woman who had exposed herself so painfully to him for the last hour. Later on, he knew, he would have to judge her, because now all the facts were in. But for the moment it was impossible. All he could do was look at his watch and say, “We’ll never get back to Paris tonight if we don’t leave here now.”
She nodded and tied the scarf around her head, to hold her hair in place against the wind, and in the soft warm shade of the arbor, the lines of her face were soft and calm, and she reminded Tony of girls he had seen driving in the summertime in open cars on the way to the beach. He took out his wallet and reached for the check, which was lying on a plate next to him, but Lucy bent over and picked up the slip of paper and squinting, a little nearsightedly, to see how much it was, said, “This lunch is on me. The pleasure’s been mine.”