The Widow’s Children. Paula Fox

the room rang with the sound. Desmond’s lapels were wet with spilled bourbon. His suit, Clara judged, was expensive. By a hair’s breadth, Desmond had inherited a family business. That had been Laura’s doing. Old Mrs. Clapper had wanted to leave it to Desmond’s ex-wife and his daughter. She had been enraged by his marriage to Laura.

      “But I won her over,” Laura had told Clara once. “I took care of that wicked old woman when she was dying,” she’d said. “Oh, I know, Clara, what you’re thinking. That I couldn’t take care of a flea,” and Clara had shaken her head vigorously. “No, no, I wasn’t thinking that at all,” because Laura had been very drunk, and God knows what she might have said if Clara had agreed with her. “I used to carry those rich bones into the bathroom and lift up her skirt and put her on the toilet,” Laura had gone on. “And do you know – in the end – she told me I’d made a man out of her son! And she changed her will. I couldn’t stand not having money anymore, for the rest of my life, the way it’d been with Ed, depending only on windfalls from his work. We were so broke in so many places, like gypsies …”

      Laura’s stories. She related them with a strange shallowness, an air of wry disbelief. “But you were good to her,” Clara had said, despising herself. “You took care of her.” And Laura, with such a knowing look, had replied, “No, no. I knew what I was doing,” meeting Clara’s effort to excuse her opportunism with no interest. Why, Clara had wondered, did she try? Why did she try to offer absolution to her intransigent mother? Laura recounted her frightful tales as if she were describing a typhoon, and Clara, insistently trying to provide her with the bolt-holes through which people escaped from the moral responsibility for what they did, felt like a fool.

      “Damn!” exclaimed Laura, “I forgot to dilute that batch of sleeping pills I brought for Peter.”

      “How do you do that?” asked Clara.

      “The weakest prescription is too strong for him,” explained her mother. “I open the capsules, spill out half the contents and fit them back together. Desmond says I look like a witch over a cauldron. Poor old Peter.”

      At that moment there was a knock at the door and Laura got vigorously to her feet. Desmond said, “I’ll go.” Then, from the other side of the door came a sustained cry that grew louder every second until it fragmented into shrill, birdlike shrieks. Laura fell back on the bed, laughing wildly and rubbing her face with her hands, this fierce scouring of flesh a habit she shared with Carlos. “He has perfected his seagull cry,” Laura gasped. “My God!” exclaimed Carlos. Desmond opened the door and Peter Rice stepped into the room.

      He was a few years younger than Laura, although he didn’t look it. His thin hair was gray, his features narrow, and from behind his glasses, his pale blue eyes gazed out mildly. He gave an impression of being clean and dry as though he’d been pressed between two large blotters which had absorbed all his vital juices.

      He went directly to Laura and she stood up and put her arms around him and for a moment he rested his head on her shoulder. Carlos held up his liquor glass and stared at it thoughtfully. Clara’s and Desmond’s glances met, then each turned away as though embarrassed. Peter Rice and Laura broke apart gracefully.

      “Isn’t it marvelous!” said Peter in a gentle, cultivated voice. “It’s taken me three years. My masterpiece. I think I’ve caught it exactly. It’s flying from one piling to another. My gull announces the advent of twilight … on the cruisers in the marina, people are preparing their suppers of stale carrot sticks and peanuts and hamburgers. They are still wearing their boat gear. Some are drinking from bottles of prepared Manhattans. Some are walking along the pier looking for a small, jolly party they can join. There is the smell of bilge tanks, of roasting meat, of the salt water …” And once again, eyes closed, he did his seagull.

      Laura laughed until tears came to her eyes. “Charming,” murmured Carlos several times. He had, indeed, caught that note of wild complaint in a seagull’s cry, thought Clara, and was suddenly miserable. She resolved to make no comment, to remain calm. The main thing was to get through this evening. The Clappers would be gone for months. She would not be compelled to think about Laura, especially if she made a few visits to her grandmother. Her own life was far distant from this hotel room. She must, as she had done as a child, take in good faith what was given. She had not been placed in the wrong crib. Everyone had trouble. She presented the room with a brave face.

      “Darling Peter!” Laura said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief Desmond had handed her. “What will you have?”

      “Oh, anything,” replied Peter. “Why, this is Clara, isn’t it? I haven’t seen you for years. What a lovely dress!”

      “Yes, isn’t it,” agreed Laura. “Look, Peter, what Desmond did. He bought me all these clothes … on his own.”

      “Splendid,” said Peter.

      “Clara, isn’t that a French dress?” Laura asked her suddenly.

      “No,” replied Clara at once. But it was. In another month, she would have paid for it. “I got it on sale,” she said.

      Desmond said, “You look fine in anything.”

      “Oh, did you make that reservation for us at Le Canard Privé?” Laura asked him.

      Peter sipped at his drink. “I’ve been longing for this,” he said. Then he handed Laura a package. “A few things to keep you from being seasick – or to make you seasick.”

      Laura made a joke of unwrapping the package, uttering greedy cries, and tearing at the paper until she extracted a half dozen books.

      “Oh, Peter, aren’t you a dear,” she said. “Scandal and mystery stories! My meat!”

      “My girl, I even included two we didn’t publish,” said Peter.

      “I did make the reservation this morning, Laura,” Desmond declared. “You were standing next to me.”

      Clara heard Carlos sigh. He was looking at her. “Let’s go have another drink by ourselves,” he whispered, bending over her. She held his hand and they walked to the table near the windows where the liquor was.

      “My dear puppy, I wasn’t listening,” Laura was saying. “You mustn’t be belligerent. I don’t listen to your phone conversations. I only wanted to be sure you’d made the reservations.”

      She should have brought a gift, too, Clara thought. But Carlos hadn’t brought anything either, not that he ever did. She could have bought some flowers in the lobby.

      “Stop tormenting your poor husband and pay attention to me,” demanded Peter. Clara glanced back at them. Laura was rolling her eyes upward with comic exaggeration. Desmond, swaying ever so slightly, stood next to her. Laura touched Peter’s cheek lightly with a finger, and Clara saw him blench. But Laura appeared not to notice. “Vel? So vat’s new?” she asked, smiling.

      Carlos squeezed Clara’s arm and nodded at the window. They stood close to it, breathing the rusty-smelling heat from the radiator nearby, not speaking at once, both staring out at the rain, the black sky with its pale underbelly of reflected light, until, persuaded perhaps by the continuing chatter of the other three that he and Clara would not be overheard, Carlos began to speak about Ed Hansen. Ed was their serious subject, delivering them from further displays of affection, allowing their facial muscles, exhausted by nugatory smiles, to relax into sobriety.

      “Ed was in town Saturday. God. God. I don’t know what to do. He wants me to go to Norway with him. He was so damned drunk – after two or three glasses of beer – I didn’t know what to do with him. He says Adelaide hates him – Norway! Last year it was the Canary Islands. He’s sick. He says Adelaide finds him repulsive … he only speaks of the past now … always comes to me– ”

      “Is he really so sick, medically, I mean?” Clara asked. “He told me it was angina, but I don’t know when to believe him – I thought you told Laura you hadn’t seen him for months?”

      “My dear Clarita, your