The Day's Heat Page 27

  Several had formed in Lee’s mind on the drive over from Thrope Street and now, complimenting herself on the even tone of truthfulness, she said, “In case something happens to me, I’d like to leave my house to my brother in Arizona—Louie Waters. He’s helping me with the payments.”

  As it had been with the banker, there were questions: What about her husband? His opinion? That the house was in Lee’s name hardly seemed to matter. Finally, without intending to, as if to place Charles where he belonged, where he really was—forever—Lee said, “My husband no longer lives with me. He’s at his parents’ home.”

  Anticipation spread like oil across the lawyer’s smile. “You’re considering a divorce?” The man seemed capable of combining question and answer into the same sentence.

  “No.” Lee had no idea what she was considering.

  “Separate maintenance then?”

  That sounded better. “Well, perhaps, later. When I’m sure my brother will get the house.” A promise for Basila to be involved in future legal procedures.

  Like the jerking of the minute hand on a clock, the lawyer registered another emotion, in his eyes a gray shadow lurking in shallow water. Lee allowed herself an inside nod of understanding; it had been a long time since she’d received any man’s speculative appraisal.

  Whatever caused the change, the man oozed kindness and information. Besides a “last will and testament” thing, there was something called a “quit-claim deed,” he explained. Lee could sign the house over to whomever she chose. A signature, and if the payments were kept up, the house would belong to that person if something happened to Lee.

  “I’ll prepare the papers, Miss Bettlemain.”

  “How… how much?” she interrupted.

  “A nominal fee, and I’ll call you—say tomorrow? Late afternoon?”

  Relieved, feeling that all the trouble with the bank earlier had somehow earned her this simpler solution, progressive lessons in finance, each one slightly easier than the one before. Lee stood to leave.

  The lawyer, in a minuet of gallantry, reached across the desk, took her hand, and led her to a back door of his office. “Here, this will put you right out in the parking lot.”

  His hand and touch at the small of her back was soft and repulsive, but all Lee did was shake her curly head, smile, and look straight into the opaque blanks of his bifocal glasses.

  Little enough, she thought as she walked to her car, if his fee was nominal.

  On the way back to Willie Mae’s to pick up her children, she sang along with a country western tune on the radio—easy to follow the words, all clichés; sometimes she counted them. On arriving, she clasped Denny around the shoulders in a schoolgirl hug, telling her, “It’s going like a dream.” Willie Mae’s daughter did not flinch or stiffen as her mother had.

  Father Palmer’s car, the pale tan sedan—that was so seldom out of the garage—sat in the driveway of the old house, and Lee, who was focused on turning into the Teflers’, since she’d missed the driveway several times before, now almost didn’t see the priest’s car. When she did, along with the realization that it was truly his car and truly he sat on the driver’s side, came the feeling that somehow this was as it should be. She’d earned his presence and that in forgetting to look for him yesterday, he should be here today.

  Buoyed by the lawyer’s flattery and the surprising existence of a quit-claim deed—an easy way to get Willie Mae the house—and feeling the priest watching, she opened the car door for her daughters and took Baby Charlie from the front seat with a composure she would not have felt at any other time.

  There is a god, she thought. David Palmer could have come the same day Claire had, found me in mismatched work clothes, dirty, nursing, and drinking beer with Willie Mae. She held the baby up on her shoulder, knowing from black patent-leather heels to black patent hair the picture she made: competent, presentable, even sexy—what her mother never was. She turned and stared, finally beckoned as one does to an underling, with fingers only, stiff-handed. She was the queen of this territory.

  Slowly, under an October sun that seemed hotter than any August one, David Palmer got out of his car and walked across the two lawns. The dry grass crackled under his priestly black shoes. Lee watched, not moving, not blinking. He seemed a specter in his black soutane holding himself very square and his head very high, like someone who after a long illness is determined to be well. Step by step, he came toward her.

  Is crossing this small space all it takes? she thought. He might as well be coming from the moon.

  He started speaking before he reached her. “I thought you’d moved away. The house over there is empty.”

  “I’ve changed houses. I bought this one.”

  “I thought for a minute that you’d moved away,” he repeated.

  The better for you, Lee replied silently, but aloud she asked him to come in for coffee, exactly as she would Father Kennedy, leading the way into the Teflers’ house.

  On opening the door, Lee felt something contrived, planned for, an almost malevolent perfection at work, for she, in the moment, could not have asked for her house, or herself, or her children to be any neater or more pleasing. Going to the lawyer’s was a good explanation for her being dressed up, but the house was different. The kitchen had a shimmery appearance and the floors were freshly waxed. Why did I get into such a cleaning frenzy last night, bleaching counter tops and sink, even stowing the Mixmaster under the cabinet? She marveled on one level, while on another, she asked the priest to sit and put Baby Charlie down on the couch. It was as though she were seeing herself, the children, the house, through his eyes—beauty and order—and through her eyes too: the final result of the year behind her, all the work, all the suffering.

  In the kitchen, she put the metal coffee basket in the pot, the sharp coffee-bean smell only adding to the illusion that this was the perfect little household. It’s as if I knew he would be here today—but I didn’t.

  Glancing from the kitchen, where he would not catch her looking, she watched as she prepared the tray. The priest stood in the middle of the small living room as one does in a museum, turning as if viewing something original and unique.

  “This is very nice—very nice,” he called out, a terracotta shade of red spreading across his forehead just at the point where it swelled out from under his thick dark hair.

  Once I kissed him right there, right at the hairline, Lee thought.

  Pleased but puzzled at this orderly kingdom she suddenly possessed, she returned to the living room with the cloisonné tray and watched what appeared to be a scene in a play. Cassie and Lill, without being told, had gone to their bedroom. Their girlish voices, as smooth as the wax on the floor, whispered down the hall. The light from the curtainless windows gilded the cup rims, and the tray’s cloisonné shell threw a prism of color on the wall’s soft creams, the floor’s polished browns. On the couch, Baby Charlie slept determinedly, his face pressed into his blanket, his small bottom up in the air. Any other time, Lee thought, he’d have rolled off the couch, had a bump on his head, and been squalling. The room seemed a stage set, calculated, too perfect.

  “Please, sit down,” she repeated and pointed to the far end of the couch. “The coffee’ll be ready in a minute.”

  How many times had she imagined Father Palmer there, across from her, but never in this perfection. In those visions, she and the surroundings were at their worst—like a morality play: Here’s what happens when you commit adultery. The children, dirty and unhealthy, writhed on the ground around her feet, and she, still pregnant, in a ragged, dirty smock, clawed at the priest’s chest, shrieking like a harridan, “Why didn’t you call?”

  But she hadn’t tortured herself with those pictures in weeks. Not since Charles left, she realized, sitting down.

  The priest sat where he was told but was also silent, as though he had taken his place in the play, but no one had yet given him his lines.

  Have pity, Lee thought, be polite, talk, but th
en asked herself, why? Where had been his pity, the words that could have reassured her of some interest, some small concern?

  Why should he be concerned with a lie? she countered inwardly.

  But he thought it was the truth, she argued back.

  David Palmer cleared his throat, looked with his smoke-gray eyes past her to the baby, put his hand to his throat as if to resist clearing it again. “I’m sorry I haven’t called,” he said, as though somehow he was able to hear her arguments with herself.

  “I stopped expecting it,” she answered, half-laughing, but did not add, hardly a month ago. How many ways there were to lie and tell the truth all at the same time.

  Again, the priest was silent, again seemingly denied his script.

  He’s only used to speaking to underlings, she thought: to Algebra, altar boys, parishioners, to people who listen and are respectful. It’s harder to talk to someone he’s gone to bed with, who’s had his child. Who believes had his child, she rephrased to appease the over-voice that warned her: At least keep the record straight in your own head.

  “This isn’t easy for me, Mrs. Be—Lee.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t, Father.” She rose and went to get the perked coffee, which now had filled the air with its dark brown aroma.

  If he’d come day before yesterday, she thought, I’d have been happy, but not today. She poured the coffee into what was really a teapot, not wanting to spoil what was playing itself out, this perfection, by using the ordinary metal container. Today, I can pour coffee without a tremor even though he’s in the next room.

  She returned. The priest cleared his throat again as if firming up a resolve to speak, but Lee put him off with a gesture, serving the coffee, passing sugar and milk. He tried to start again when he was sure the ritual was over, but she interrupted once more with the offer of a napkin.

  This charade could go on forever, she thought. Now, I could excuse myself to check on the girls, then return, and then leave again to put Baby Charlie in his crib.

  Stop, common sense warned. See this scenario through. Let him speak. Soon the girls will come thundering down the hall and climb all over him, and Baby Charlie will wake, wailing, demanding to be nursed. This playacting, or whatever it is, can’t go on forever.

  Obeying, she looked at the priest, silently encouraging him.

  “This, as I said, isn’t easy for me, Lee. I’ve prayed over it for months.”

  “And God didn’t answer?” She couldn’t help herself. “How strange. Perhaps I was tying up the line.”

  The priest jerked as if slapped, spilled a few drops of hot coffee on his knee, but ignored them. Lee, sure he was burned, forgot her desire to get even, started to rise, but he waved her off.

  “Let me say what I’ve come to say—please,” he said irritably, and now there was no hesitation.

  He rehearses too, she thought.

  “Algebra tells me your husband is staying at his parents’ home—at nights, also. She tells me he’s left you.”

  “Yes,” Lee answered. What else can one say about the final erasure in what now seemed an eight-year-long wearing away?

  “And she also tells me that Mr. Bettlemain has only sent you money once.”

  Lee saw the break in chronology of what must have been Willie Mae’s reports to Algebra, and then Algebra’s reports back to Father Palmer. The housekeeper must not have had time to tell the priest about the exchange of houses.

  “Quite a little spy you have there in Algebra—a slight delay now and then, but she gets the information to you, Father.” She vowed to never call him “David” again, and he could call her Mrs. Bettlemain forever, too.

  “She was concerned, Lee, that’s all. She doesn’t know—anything else.”

  “Ha!” Lee snorted. “Don’t be so sure. Of course, one afternoon is not that much to know. But our maids are on to more than you think. They take out our trash, remember.”

  He nodded, but she also saw his impatience rising at not being allowed to continue. Mocking, not wanting to let him take control with his planned speech, she veered off in another direction. “Willie Mae knows of a bit of forgery I’ve committed, could blackmail me if she wanted. And I’m sure Algebra knows of it, too. I’m surprised she hasn’t told you.”

  “Please, Lee, I haven’t come to talk about the servants.”

  Servants? Her mother’s word.

  “Thank goodness, Algebra’s kept me informed. I know that Mr. Bettlemain knows the child”—here Father Palmer’s voice sank, choked, and he motioned to Baby Charlie—“is not his.” The red that had been in the priest’s face only moments before had drained away.

  Lee sat, uncertain, then drank her coffee. How good it was, the first swallow of hot, milky liquid. Not much to be enjoyed in life sometimes, she thought, but the first swallow of coffee, the first swallow of beer.

  “So?” she asked, and added silently, What are you here to offer? Sympathy? Money? Why was Charles’s knowing now, so important? You knew through eight months of pregnancy, through the delivery, and since, and did nothing.

  The priest raised his cup to his lips, giving himself, it seemed, time also to taste and to gather his wits.

  “Please, go on. Finish,” Lee said. “I don’t see why Mr. Bettlemain’s actions should have any influence on you now, since none of mine ever did.”

  There, the playacting was over. She would be truthful from this moment on.

  Not soon enough, reason scolded.

  “I’ll marry you, Lee,” the priest said abruptly, too loudly, looking anywhere but at her, anywhere but into her eyes. “I’ve thought it all through. I’ll leave the priesthood and teach—in some college somewhere—to support us. I’ve done that before. I’ll give my son my name.” Again he gestured at the child, as one points to a piece of furniture.

  No desire to pick him up, Lee thought, no desire to see who he resembles. No imagination—just do what is proper.

  “It’ll take a little time, I know—your divorce, some papers through the Chancery for me. I cannot hope for a laicization, but otherwise, I’ve worked it all out.”

  “But I’m not getting divorced,” Lee said, without inflection. Just as in the lawyer’s office, she realized: there would be no divorce, at least not any time soon.

  “What? But isn’t Mr. Bettlemain divorcing you?”

  Suddenly, irritated to the point of nausea, that he should now at last be interested, should now be assuming “A and therefore B”—Charles would divorce her and he would marry her—Lee set her cup down hard on the coffee table.

  “No, he’s not, and I’m not divorcing him either.”

  “But I thought … I thought he left you?” Father Palmer seemed confused, as if he could yet see his plan so clearly as to not be put off.

  “He did leave, but he’s not divorcing me—at least not so far. And I’ve no intention of divorcing him. The children—all three of them—are his.” She paused, tried to catch the priest’s gray eyes with hers and hold them, to make him hear, really hear what she’d said.

  Father Palmer shook his head as if bothered by small flying insects. “That’s not true. You’re telling lies now, just to get even, just to hurt me, to ….”

  “No, no,” she raised her hand to hush him and as if to testify. “No, before—before I let you believe the baby was yours. That was to get even, that was to hurt you. Now, I’m telling the truth.”

  How much easier and more effective the lies had been compared to these honest declarations. Yet she could see he didn’t believe a word. “I’ve done a terrible thing, David, to you and to Charles. I want to say you both deserved it, but you didn’t.”

  The baby on the couch, asleep long past his schedule, stretched and mewed, and Lee picked him up. “He’s not yours, I promise. That afternoon in the rectory, I was already pregnant, and I knew it. It was part of the reason I went to bed with you. So, there’s no way he could be yours.”

  “Mr. Bettlemain told his mother you’d had a child by another ma
n. Algebra told me.” Father Palmer stated this revelation flatly, as though Charles’s word outweighed Lee’s, and was final. It reminded Lee of the banker and the lawyer, both of whom kept bringing up her husband, returning to his name as to a touchstone.

  “Charles believes it. I told him the baby wasn’t his so he’d leave, because it’s what he wanted. But it’s not true.” She jiggled Baby Charlie, who had started to squirm in her arms, trying to turn toward the nipple. She felt the milk in her breasts start to descend in response to his warm baby smell.

  “No, you wouldn’t have done that, it’s impossible. It’s …. It’s ….” She could see him searching for the cause. “It’s because you want to punish me now, for not acknowledging the child sooner And because ….” He couldn’t think of another reason.

  The sad love she’d carried all those months along with the pregnancy came flooding back, also the realization that here was a man, a human being; what her son would one day be. Part of her wanted to repeat aloud, just once, one of the hateful tirades she’d invented during the pregnancy, during those anxious days after the afternoon in the rectory. But the past dropped away, leaving her without any lines to remember and no desire to say them even if she could. All she really wanted now was to touch his cheek or take his big hand in hers, to say she loved him, but that it didn’t matter. She began a rhythmic rocking of the child, settling in on the couch, as one does to wait out a rain storm.

  “This is going badly, Lee. You don’t seem to want to understand.” He lowered his voice and leaned forward, “I’m willing to marry you, my dear. I’m going to take care of you and your children. You can’t make a life this way. The children will suffer.”

  “Thank you, David. Thank you very much,” she said slowly, using his name, she knew, probably for the last time. “I appreciate what you’re offering more than you know. And it means so much, maybe because I wanted something from you for so long. But I can’t let you do that. These are my children, really, no one else’s, no matter who their father is.”