Fortune's Hand (24 page)

“Daddy likes that place we saw in the country,” Julie said the next day, while Robb was out on the lawn playing roll ball with Penn and Ellen was paying bills at the desk.

She looked up. “He does?”

“Yes, he says it would be fun to build our own house and have a little stable where we could have our own horses.”

A clever tactic, Ellen thought. Girls her age are in love with horses.

“And how would school fit into that?” she demanded.

“Daddy says it wouldn't hurt me to change schools, and I think it might be fun. I've been in this one all my life.”

“And what about you, missing all your friends?”

“I wouldn't mind,” Julie said earnestly. “I really wouldn't. I'll have to miss them anyway, when I go to college.”

And very probably she wouldn't mind, Ellen thought. She's an independent to the extreme. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. What I do know is that she adores Robb enough to agree with anything he says. But I am not going to be talked into leaving this house. It's a half-baked idea. It's reckless and senseless.

“What are you telling Julie?” she asked when Robb
came in. “It's not right to get her involved in our disagreement.”

“I didn't think it such a serious disagreement that Julie, as a member of the family, isn't entitled to an opinion.”

This reply certainly was pleasant enough, but there was a tight set to his mouth that made her uncomfortable.

“It is a disagreement, Robb, and I don't want it to become serious. How can you even consider upsetting our lives, leaving this home for a whim? Because you fell in love with some pretty scenery?”

“It's not a whim. I'm not happy here.”

“It's that bad? It goes that deep?” Her husband had given her a most hurtful blow.

“You don't understand. I would be happy in a tent on the desert with you if it were my own.”

“You never used to talk this way! I remember how thrilled we both were when my father turned this house over to us.”

“That's true. But a great many things have happened since then,” he said soberly.

“But they're past. Are you never going to forget them?”

“Forget?”

“Put it behind you, at least.”

“Perhaps I've oversimplified the way I feel. Or perhaps I've made it sound too complicated, too muddled up. Could it be as simple and ordinary as needing a change? Can't that happen?” And he smiled as if pleading.

Like a child, she thought, hoping that a smile will get him another piece of candy or another half hour before being sent off to bed. She did not want to be angry at him; anger depleted her, and she had been reared in a family not given to very much anger.

She stood up and went to the window beneath which, in a wide semicircle, a bed of narcissi was showing its first shy green, as they always had, through all the springs of her life.

Behind her back Robb's voice, his well-modulated, reasonable, courtroom voice, began to coax her.

“We'd leave the whole business to you, to your choice of everything. Decorate as you please. I'll like whatever you like. Add a wonderful room for yourself, for your writing. Someday you'll go back to it, you know. Add an entertainment room for Julie, where she can have parties and dances when she's older. We could even have an indoor pool, a conservatory—you love flowers—and—”

Ellen whirled around. “Oh Robb, isn't the way we live now enough for you? There's nothing wrong with our basement as it is. I grew up with it. And we don't need an indoor pool. Oh Robb,” she cried softly, “you have gotten such grandiose ideas lately that sometimes I hardly know you, and it worries me. It worries me terribly.”

“They're not ‘grandiose' as long as you can afford them. Anyway, to hear you now, a person would think I had proposed marble stairs and gilded ceilings.”

“If you ever become like Devlin and his friends,
you'll do that, too. Those people—they're all inflated. I only hope your investments aren't inflated, too.”

“My ‘investments,' ” Robb mocked. “They're a mosquito's portion. They're a mosquito standing on an elephant's back. But what are we talking about? I want to move, to build a house for my family, and you're acting as though the world were coming to an end.”

It was not as if her husband's job and a whole future depended upon making a move. That was happening every day all over the country, and then of course people packed up in an uncomplaining, cheerful spirit no matter how it hurt inside to leave the past behind. But that was not the case here.

“Don't you see,” she said, “what this would mean? You'd have your routine at the office; you'd be even more isolated from us all. As it is now we don't see you enough, with the hours you have to keep. We need more time together.”

Robb interrupted. “Twenty miles from here is ‘isolated'? Dammit, Ellen, you are dramatizing this whole thing. Nobody coming in and hearing all this emotion would guess that the subject is only four walls and a roof. They would think that one of us had just been diagnosed with cancer or had caught the other in adultery. For God Almighty's sake, Ellen—”

“Doctor Philip is here,” Julie said. “I think he heard you yelling. He's standing on the porch.”

“I wasn't yelling,” Robb grumbled.

Quite obviously, Philip had heard at least the final moments of the quarrel, for he was making a show of
tying his shoelaces, as if they were giving him a problem.

“Your turn to be on my route,” he said, looking up. “I hope I'm not interrupting anything.”

Robb said cordially, “Not at all. It's always a pleasure.”

Philip had not been there in many weeks. Ellen had seen him only when taking Penn to his office, once accompanied by Robb and twice alone. Now, as he stood with his foot braced against a step, he was a different man from the one who in jacket, white shirt and tie sat behind a desk. She had a startling recollection of that other man on that other day. She had spoken too frankly to him, confiding what she probably should not have confided, and he had heard her, really
heard
her. Unmistakably, he had read the thoughts that she should not have had. She knew that surely, and the knowledge frightened her.

Nevertheless, she spoke clearly. “We were having a little discussion. Robb wants to move and I don't want to.”

“Philip doesn't want to hear about our foolish little tiff, Ellen.”

Robb was furious, but being above all mannerly, he would never show it. And quickly regretful, Ellen tried to make amends.

“Excuse me, Philip. Robb is right. I only said it because you are always such a help to us through all our troubles. I spoke without thinking.”

Philip responded gracefully by inquiring for Penn. “Where's my friend Penn?”

“He's been playing ball with Robb.” She must make further amends to Robb for having embarrassed him. “They have a good time together. Now Penn's come in to watch television, nothing worse than cartoons, I hope.”

“I'll go tell him his friend is here,” Robb said. A moment later he returned. “Penn's not there.”

“He's probably bothering Julie in her room. She's doing her homework.”

When she had searched upstairs and downstairs without finding him, Ellen was alarmed, although not too much so. Last week he had gone wandering to the house next door, but the neighbors, friendly people, had brought him back within minutes before either Ellen or Mrs. Vernon had known he was missing. So she went next door, fretting, “In cold weather at least we can lock the doors, and he doesn't know how to open them. But as soon as it warms enough to want some fresh air—”

The house was closed and there were no cars in the garage. Therefore, Penn was not at that house. Trying the next one and not finding him, her alarm became serious, and she ran back home to report.

Robb jumped up. “Get Julie. We'll each take a street. He can't have gone very far.”

“Calhoun Street! There's all that traffic, and he doesn't know how to cross!”

In four directions, running, calling, and shattering the Sunday quiet, they dispersed.

* * *

“Have you seen Penn?” Ellen inquired of some ten-year-old boys not doing much of anything in somebody's front yard.

“Who's Penn?” asked one.

“The funny one. You know,” another answered, tapping his head and screwing up his face. “Did he run away?”

“Yes. If you see him, please tell your parents, will you? They'll take him home. They know where he lives.”

Indeed, everyone in the neighborhood must know Penn MacDaniel. How that had hurt during those first years! But what difference did it make now, or had it made for a long time, what people said or thought about her child? Only let him be safe!

She ran. Falling over a curb, she bloodied her knee, picked herself up, and kept running. On Calhoun Street only the pharmacy was open. No one there had seen Penn. He could not possibly, in this short time, have gone any greater distance than this. She must try elsewhere, must go home by another route. Please, God, let somebody have seen him!

Exhausted now, with plodding steps, she walked. To think that only a few minutes ago we were arguing about a house, she thought. A house.

The commotion was audible before it became visible. Penn's voice, when he raised it, was a piercing treble. And there he was, not five blocks from home, surrounded by a small mob of gesticulating children and a cluster of parents whose Sunday rest had obviously been broken by the racket.

“Mom!” he shrieked when he saw her. His face was furiously red; he was twisting, kicking, and fighting off three boys at once. One of them knocked him down.

“Get off the hopscotch, you big dope!”

“I won't! I won't! You can't make me. Ouch! I'll kick you!”

A little girl wailed, “He punched me! You're not allowed to hit girls! I'm going to tell my father and he'll punch you!”

Two men grabbed Penn's arms and pulled him up just as Robb, Phil and Julie appeared, all converging from different streets. The men handed Penn over, still furiously fighting. And a woman scolded.

“You his parents? A boy like him should be watched, shouldn't be allowed out to bother other people's children.”

Clearly this person was new in the neighborhood. How was one to answer her? But another woman, who had known Penn from the day he was born, intervened.

“He meant no harm. It was a misunderstanding, that's all. These children were playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, and he was standing on the chalk marks. When he wouldn't move out of the way, they pushed him. So he pushed back hard, and of course he's older and bigger, and so—” She threw up her hands. “Go home, Ellen and Robb. Don't worry.”

They went home while Robb and Phil restrained Penn, still roaring and struggling. Ellen and Julie followed. Both saddened and embarrassed, they were silent.

“I'll get him some ice cream, Mom,” Julie said as they neared home. “That'll soothe him.” She looked into her mother's face. “I know you feel like crying, and I do, too. But what's the use?”

“You're right, darling. None. We'll just have to keep all the doors locked from now on. He wants to play, you see, but he doesn't know how, and nobody lets him.”

And so the small procession entered the house. Penn, having been given an oversized bowl of ice cream, quieted down, Julie went back to her homework, and the three adults were left with their tired thoughts.

After a while, Robb said, “I'm glad you were here, Philip. Did you have any idea he was so strong?”

“He's going to be a big man,” Philip replied.

“And fast. He can almost outrun me.”

They were looking at Ellen. He'll soon be out of your control, if he isn't already, their silence told her. And so, what next?

“What next?” she whispered.

“I think you know,” Philip answered.

“We don't want to do it until we absolutely must,” Robb said.

To part with him! Who would be as patient as his mother? thought Ellen. And she saw him afraid and bereft among strangers who were at best indifferent. The worst did not bear thinking about.

Then Philip spoke. “Granted that this is premature, but I'm thinking you should hear about something I just learned. Do you remember the place near Wheatley
where we went about six or seven years ago? They had some good people in charge, but the plant was so rundown it was pathetic. You'd only take someone there as a last resort. Well, I learned recently that they've received a huge benefaction, and big changes are taking place. It might be worth looking into.”

Robb shook his head. “We're not ready.”

“Even so. It's better not to wait until the last minute. It's better to be prepared.”

Robb was examining his fingers, and Ellen said faintly, “You think the time's not far off, Philip, but you don't want to say so.”

“If I had a crystal ball, Ellen, they'd be bringing patients to me from Timbuktu. I only said it might be worth looking into.”

Robb raised his head. “I think you're right. Will you, or do you have the time to investigate?”

“Of course. But I think we should all go.”

“Fine, but not this week, nor the next, either. I've court here and something in Washington. Just a minute till I get my datebook.”

Robb's dark red leather appointment book was a meticulously kept duplicate of the one that had been Wilson Grant's annual Christmas present in the period when Robb MacDaniel was his admired son-in-law. All of a sudden, it occurred to Ellen that their house was indeed filled with such reminders of her father's beneficence: a handsome dressing case for Robb's out-of-town commitments, tennis rackets, and first editions.

“How about Monday, three weeks from tomorrow? All right with you, Philip? And you, Ellen?”