He called for the bill and got her out of the village restaurant quickly. By the time they were in his car, she was all right once more. He drove over to the parkway and turned north. He took a side road and stopped when they came to a public picnic area beside a brook. They sat on a picnic table in the sunlight, their feet on the bench. She could see, in the deep shadow on the far side of the brook, a cluster of bright fallen leaves.
“Calendars are so darn merciless,” she said. “Do you mind my going on like this?”
“Talk about everything, Lollie.”
“We knew him best. Better than any other two people. Calendars are hell. I got through our anniversary somehow. There’s three more to claw my way by. His birthday, the day we met, the day he died. And if you ever hear me say ‘passed away,’ please wash my mouth out with soap. Died is a clean word. Birth, love, death. They’re the absolutes, the big clean words worth using. Once I get through the first time around, the second should be easier. Right now I can’t believe it will be. But why should I try to sound like an authority? You had some bad dates to get through, after Barbara.”
“But it wasn’t the same. It was such a smaller thing, Lollie. By the time she left, there wasn’t much to leave behind.”
“But you loved her.”
He shrugged. “The first year was rough. Then it got easier.”
“How about now?”
The suddenness of his grin charmed her. “She’s stashed with the flawed heroines of my childhood. Guinevere, Juliet, Becky Thatcher. Time has changed her into a fiction. It would scald her to know that, I imagine. She’d hate to think I was cured.”
“But it did take time. That’s the dreary part of it. Time is what your life is made of. So suddenly it becomes something you endure, and hope it goes by quickly. A horrible waste. Speaking of time, Cal dear, when do you have to leave?”
“Sunday. But I have to be back in New York in a couple of months. I’ll see you then.”
“They keep you so busy. You must be doing well.”
“Better than I ever thought I would, really. But don’t let them know that. I do wish I had more chance to use the engineering. But my best talent seems to be dickering. Vermont blood, I guess. We had to go international on the production end, or lose our world markets by being priced out. So I’m the one who gets us set up in foreign parts. Lots of dickering.”
“Do you like it?”
He looked faintly troubled. “They pay me well. They let me do things my way for the most part. I head up a wonderful team. Bright, loyal guys. And a lot of it is like a big poker game. Intrigue, bluff, espionage, bribes, barter — sensing the political climate and the commercial temperature. I’ve gotten pretty shifty.”
“Then what’s wrong with it?”
“You have a good ear, Lollie. I thought I was sounding a hundred-and-ten-per-cent enthusiastic.”
“That was the trouble.”
He looked startled, then laughed. “You win. Remember the times we talked all night?”
“Of course.”
“Definitions of honor. Moral paradoxes. Maybe I just have a hangover from all that talk. You see, I’ve learned how to manipulate human beings. I’ve learned to be good at it.”
“Is that so dreadful?”
“Only when I find myself enjoying it.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a cause for a certain amount of alarm.”
“No it isn’t, dear Cal. Because you are aware of it. That’s what makes the difference. And probably makes you better at what you do. I’m a human being. Manipulate my future. That’s a request.”
“I’ve given it a lot of thought.”
“And?”
“I know exactly what you should do, at least in the immediate future.”
“What?”
“Get a sitter for tomorrow evening, and I’ll buy you a dinner in town. After that, I have no ideas.”
“That’s what I call a real short-term manipulation, friend. But I’ll take it. Practically a genu-wine date, huh?”
“Practically.”
By five-o’clock on Saturday, the hour when Cal had said he would come by for her, Laura Barnes had tried on three different outfits and had settled for the fourth, but did not feel secure about it. She was aware, more through instinct than reason, of the emotional basis of her indecision. An evening in the city had been the traditional festivity with Mitch. And so there was nothing she could wear which did not have the aura of memory. Mitch had always had such specific opinions about what he liked her to wear that, over the years, her wardrobe had become an expression of his amiable prejudices, along with her perfumes, her costume jewelry, the styling of her shoes. To that extent she was still his creature, and the thought of indulging in this rite of festival with someone else made her feel like an imposter.
She made final inspection in her full-length mirror, tilted her head and looked with an almost hostile objectivity at the image of the urban woman, perfumed, orderly, speculative, in the severity of last year’s spring outfit, unaltered but not too obviously large for the woman now twelve pounds lighter, the small defiant hat, lizard shoes, the ranch-mink cape over the arm, tailored purse in the gloved hand.
Who am I, she thought, and wished she had not accepted. All she could do now was trust Cal to sense the fragility of this venture, to use all the empathy at his command to make it an endurable evening. Nothing could make it a joy.
“Lots of luck,” she whispered to the mirror image, and turned on her heel and went to the front door to let the sitter in. Before giving the sitter instructions, she called Kit and David in from the back yard so there would be no arguments about food or bedtime or television.
“You look like a lady, Motherrr,” Kit said with shining eyes, with seven-year-old feminine enthusiasm.
“Thank you, dear.” She turned to David. “Do I pass inspection?”
He shrugged, unsmiling. “Sure,” he said, and turned away. When he was solemn and troubled he seemed more like a miniature adult, a heart-twisting version of Mitch. As Kit chattered at the sitter, Laura followed David into the living room.
“Is anything wrong, dear?”
“Heck, no.”
“Look at me, David. Please stop wandering away. If something is wrong, please tell me.”
He turned and glowered at her. “Have a nifty time.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re having a real good time ever since Cal got here.”
She understood. She grabbed him and hugged him. “Darling, Cal is one of my oldest and dearest friends. He was your father’s best friend. And he’s going back to California tomorrow. He thinks it will be good for me to go out. I think so too, dear. But I don’t want to. It’s like when a pilot has an accident, they say he should fly again.”
“Are you going to marry that Cal?”
“David!”
“Well, are you?”
“What makes you think I’m going to marry anyone?”
“Joey said you would.”
“Joey is an authority?”
“His mother got married three times already.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and made him look directly at her. “David. I love you very much. I trust you. And you are supposed to trust me. Before anything happens in this family, before any big decisions of any kind are made, you and I are going to talk it all over. Okay?”
He struggled, without much success, to remain remote and gloomy. But his eyes changed and the shape of his mouth changed. “Kit too?”
“Kit too, dear.”
He looked slightly disappointed. “I guess that’s fair.” He turned and looked out the side window toward the driveway. “There’s Cal.”