Come Pour the Wine Page 23

  The whole week passed in such simple pleasures, and then it was New Year’s.

  Cheers and laughter, kisses and tears, a new year of promises was welcomed in, a year that could hardly surpass the previous one but that held every sign of being a very good one indeed for the William McNeils.

  Except signs could be deceptive—as the ancient gods had taught even the rulers of the earth.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WHEN THEY RETURNED FROM Kansas on January 3rd, Harriet called.

  “Bill, mother’s rather ill.”

  Bill couldn’t quite take it in. He’d spoken to Violet at Christmas and early on New Year’s Eve. She’d sneezed a bit and coughed slightly, but when he’d questioned her she assured him it was a simple cold.

  Yet Harriet’s voice sounded strangely ominous. “Don’t you think I should have been told, Harriet?”

  “I didn’t want to spoil your holiday … she’s been taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital—”

  “How long has she been there?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Well, as you know, she had a cold during the holidays and it seems to have worsened. This morning the doctor found she has a little fluid in her right lung. We’re all at the hospital—”

  All … the whole family? “I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He hung up, unable to control his trembling hands.

  Janet looked at him. His face was colorless.

  “What’s wrong, Bill?”

  “My mother’s in the hospital. I’m going into the city. Chances are I’ll stay.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “What about Nicole?”

  “She can go to Kit’s. I’ll send her over with Sarah.”

  While Bill packed his suitcase Janet called Kit. She was terribly sorry to hear the news, and of course Nicole could stay as long as need be.

  Bill’s sisters, their husbands and children were there when Bill and Janet arrived at the hospital.

  “Mother’s been asking for you, Bill,” Harriet told him.

  He followed her down the hall and she waited outside while he went into his mother’s room. He was shocked to see his mother lying so still. The shallow breaths she took under the oxygen mask seemed to come much too slowly. He observed the intravenous in her arm, the distended blue veins in her almost fleshless hands, the white hair that lay limp on the pillow. He was grateful that she was asleep so she could not see the tears in his eyes. Quietly, he moved the chair close to her bed. Watching her at this moment, all the antagonism, the anger … whatever had happened between them through the years seemed of no importance. When his mother was well and able to defend herself he could challenge her, but this was the first time she’d ever been in a hospital, and somehow he was more shaken than he dared admit …

  It seemed forever until Violet opened her eyes. She looked happy to see him sitting at her bedside … Dear me, he looked like a little boy sitting there … he would always be that to her, anyway … she would simply never get used to the idea of him being a husband and father … the one regret she had was all those years he’d spent away from home, especially those childhood years away at military school … dear Jason, you thought you knew best but I should have been stronger and not let you take my child away … of all of my children, he was the dearest to me, but I forgive you, dearest Jason …

  Shakily she removed the mask, and as she did so Bill said, “I don’t think you should, mother …”

  She smiled. “It’s all right… well, did you have a nice holiday, darling?”

  Swallowing hard, he answered, “Yes … How are you feeling?”

  “Quite well … really … I missed you so …”

  “I would have been here sooner if I’d known you were ill.”

  She reached out and he grasped her hand between his and held it tight. How well he remembered the times when those same hands had been young, and strong … had held him close to her as she sang him back to sleep after those childhood nightmares that had made him cry out in the night. Lord, he remembered, though he couldn’t have been more than four and five …

  The door opened slowly and the nurse came in. “You must be Mr. McNeil. Your mother has described you well, in fact she’s spoken of little else but you.” Looking at Violet, the nurse said, “Now, it’s time to get you ready for a little back rub, and let’s please put on the mask … you’ll have plenty of time to visit later.”

  Bill stood, looked at his mother for a long, silent moment. “I’ll be right outside, mother.”

  It was eight in the evening when the family returned to their rooms at the Waldorf to freshen up before dinner. Bill, though, decided he’d just use room service. Dinner was a silent affair. Janet had tried very hard to reassure him that his mother wasn’t so critically ill and that, in fact, the family all seemed to think that she was much improved since yesterday. He nodded, but something down deep kept nudging him that it wasn’t true … maybe it was only his own fears, his guilt …

  Janet held his hand in the dark that night, and he fell asleep quickly. But at two he woke up with a pounding headache. Quietly he got out of bed, went into the living room and poured himself a drink. By God, he’d been some great son, hadn’t he? Always so impatient with her, always taking everything she said literally … Damn it, she’d seemed so vulnerable today … Well, one thing he had made up his mind about. When she got well he was going to be different, stop acting like a spoiled child. Treat her like the lady she was …

  The week dragged on, the waiting became unbearable. Watching his mother deteriorate left Bill feeling totally helpless, but he persisted in telling himself that she was going to survive.

  Bill was awakened from a deep exhausted sleep by the sound of the telephone. He looked at his watch. Five in the morning. He looked at the receiver. Pulse racing, hand trembling, he picked it up. “Yes … ?”

  “Mr. McNeil, this is Dr. Goldberg. I think that you should come to the hospital. Your mother is asking for you.”

  There wasn’t any need to question the doctor. “I’ll be there immediately.”

  Janet sat up in bed and watched as Bill began to dress, fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. “Darling, who was that?”

  “The hospital called.”

  “I’m going with you—”

  “No, I think it would be better if I went alone.”

  She lay back. There were moments, she knew, that no matter how close they were couldn’t be shared. Some things had to be done alone.

  He almost ran down the hall to Harriet, who stood in front of Violet’s room. “I’m glad you’re here, Harriet …” He started to open Violet’s door when Harriet said, “Don’t go in, Bill.” There was a pounding in his heart. From the look on Harriet’s face he knew he was too late. Always too late … Barely able to form the words, he said, “What happened?”

  “Her heart simply gave out.”

  He gave way to it then … the guilt, the recrimination.

  “Don’t beat on yourself, Bill … you loved her and she knew you did—”

  “No, I’m afraid I was selfish … she was an old lady, but she was my mother and I didn’t even get to tell her I loved her. Which is hardly her fault …”

  For all her own grief, Harriet stood like a fortress. Death always, she knew, evoked purifying feelings of remorse, anguish. Making the dead sacred, saintly and pure of heart, the living suddenly became the offenders, the evildoers, guilty for all the sins of omission. It always seemed to come down to what we should have done, what we could have done … what we didn’t do … if only we could relive it, it would all be different … But not so, Harriet thought, because the living never think about the ending. It’s easier to condemn oneself after …

  Harriet, Gordon and Bill made the funeral arrangements. There was little to do, inasmuch as Violet’s affairs were well in order. It was her wish that only her family should see her put to rest near her beloved husband.

  The small
group of black-clad mourners stood in a gentle snowdrift and saw the casket lowered into the ground. Bill especially thought how as long as she had been here they were a family … she was the mortar that held them together. Now they would go their separate ways, seeing one another only on special occasions … there’d be no more holidays on Long Island bringing together the McNeil clan …

  They left the cemetery, each with his and her own special memories … the embraces of childhood which mama had given them … a soothing kiss after a skinned knee … a smile when a splinter was painfully removed … the echoes of a tearful good-by. A train whistle, the waving of a handkerchief in the hand of a mother watching her only son depart for school … a silhouette in black standing so long ago in this same cemetery, witnessing what all widows must … a lonely lady, even in the midst of her children. The circle of life … today the world stood still, but tomorrow the wheels would start to turn again, and with time the painful memories would at least fade….

  Bill felt no relief until he went back to Kit’s, and held his child in his arms. She was his confirmation of life. Right now he badly needed it.

  That night Janet tried to comfort him, holding him like a child until he fell asleep.

  Nothing lasts forever, Janet thought wryly, realizing that her thought was hardly original. But how true … Not happiness, not grief. Somehow, though, there was that blessed in-between time that made forgetting easier. Thank God.

  March was a very special month. Janet and Bill celebrated their second anniversary, and Nicole became one year old. Her birthday party was for only a few—Harriet and Gordon, Kit, Nat and the twins, Janet’s mother, father and of course Effie, who baked the same kind of cake she’d made for Bill the year before. Nicole sat in her highchair near her father, banging on the metal tray with a spoon. Bill wiped the frosting from her face as she reached out her arms to him. He could have sworn she said “dada” as he took her on his lap. A brilliant girl, no question.

  “Janet, I think she’s talking … say ‘daddy,’ Nicole.”

  She said some inarticulate thing that Bill, of course, insisted was “daddy.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes,” Janet said, snapping a picture of Nicole putting the spoon up to Bill’s mouth. Bill put a tiny piece of cake in her mouth and she cooed appropriately.

  Tonight was Bill’s turn … He undressed her, changed her diaper, washed her hands.

  “You’re my princess, you know that, don’t you? Say ‘daddy.’” But she yawned, closed her eyes and in a moment was fast asleep. A brilliant girl, no question….

  The days fled, replacing one another like leaves in a gentle wind, like turning pages in the calendar…. It was June. That too was a special month. Bill became an old man of twenty-eight….

  The first week in November they went up to Maine. If possible this year was better than the first.

  Nicole was twenty months old and getting increasingly marvelous. No question. She took her first step to her father’s outstretched arms, and the first word she said was “dada.” A brilliant girl, no question. Not to mention smart.

  She fell in love with their new Irish setter, Duffy, and wouldn’t go to bed unless he slept in her room. The best of all was the snowman her father made, but the supreme moment in her young life was when he hitched the gelding to the sleigh and they drove into the village.

  Bill was openly preening when he held Nicole and led Janet into the general store. “You remember my wife?” he said to Mr. Swanson.

  “Yup, pleased to see you again, Mrs. McNeil, and this is the young one. Pretty little thing. Anything I can help you with, don’t hesitate.”

  Janet bought six yards of calico in various colors for pinafores which she would sew this winter. As she touched the fabric, her mind shifted to another place, another day … a lonely Sunday afternoon, and then Orchard Street. The country store’s display of two magnificent patchwork quilts completed the memory, bringing her mind back to the store just beyond Fayge’s … dearest Fayge … pastel satin comforters … white goosedown feathers floating about in back of a dimly lit room … Quickly she left the past as Bill said, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to buy these sweaters for Christmas gifts?”

  Janet looked at the handmade cable-stitched sweaters. “I think that’s a fine idea.”

  They purchased those and a jug of molasses for Effie….

  After Nicole had been put to bed they sat by the fire, remembering as they looked at the dancing flames how tempestuously they had made love their first time here. But none was better than what they had known the previous night.

  Life, time was like legerdemain, Janet thought. Now you see it, now you don’t. The magical week was over, it was time to go home again. Magical … yes, that seemed the word for it … Only last month Kit had told her how amazing she found their marriage …

  “You know, you two are almost too good to be true. Especially after your, shall we say, stormy courtship. Now you never argue—hell, I don’t even detect a little old frown, never mind an occasional spat … I don’t know whether to congratulate you or warn you that maybe you’re living a bit of a fantasy. The couple that never fights together … All right, enough from Kit the Cassandra …

  Fantasy? Well, if that’s what this was, she didn’t want to wake up to reality. Not now, not ever, Janet thought determinedly.

  A month later and it was time for another Christmas in Kansas, and this year Nicole was old enough to be caught up in the excitement of Christmas Eve.

  Her eyes were bigger and bigger as she watched her grandfather set up the electric trains he had bought her, complete with overalls, red handkerchiefs and caps for the three of them.

  Nicole took over as engineer, but when she switched the generator off, making the trains come abruptly to a halt, she was frustrated. “Daddy, make the train go, daddy.”

  Bill turned the generator on and explained they wouldn’t work if she kept playing with the switch—and somehow managed to catch her just in time as she reached out to test this new fact.

  Janet was ready with her camera, and thought of the news she would tell him later on. He was going to be a father again….

  She told him as she lay in his arms that night. He immediately sat up and turned on the light. “Impossible.”

  “Evidently not. It must have happened last month in Maine.”

  “But your diaphragm?”

  “That’s what I asked. According to my doctor it must have tipped over, or slipped or something.”

  “You’re kidding. I mean—”

  “I mean I don’t know what happened, but I do know I’m pregnant.”

  “Wow! I sure married one fertile lady.”

  “I guess you did. Between your virility and my fertility …”

  “What a present … listen, Janet, I’m telling you now, it had better be a boy or else.”

  “Or else, what?”

  “Well, I’m just warning you, it better be. I already have one perfect daughter, and that’s a tough act to follow.”

  “Okay, if you’re that set on—”

  “Stop talking and turn off the light.”

  “It’s on your side.”

  “Oh …” And the light went off and the room was silent, but their lovemaking was more eloquent than any words might have been in celebration of the occasion.

  In August Janet gave Bill exactly what he’d demanded the previous Christmas—she was delivered of a baby boy weighing just under nine pounds.

  Bill preened like a male peacock, even handing out cigars to complete strangers in the hospital corridor. And when Janet suggested naming the child after his father, he was ready to buy her the moon. He could see it now, in big bold type on the office door … “MCNEIL & SON.” It had started that way. First Jason, then Bill … now it would be Bill and Jason once again. God, wouldn’t his father have been proud?

  And the mother of the wonderful boy child? Well, she’d done her job …

  CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

  THE NEXT YEARS MOVED on steadily. No sudden shocks, mostly the rhythms of conventional living.

  Alice’s children married, as did Betsy’s.

  Kit’s family had increased too. Chairs had been added one by one to her dining room table after the birth of Mark and Deborah. Joel, Jeremy and the youngest, Rebecca, known to her peers as Becky … Kit was now the mother of five. When she looked around her table at her husband and children she never forgot to say to herself, Thank you, God, for blessing me … I’m not sure I rate it, but I’ll take it …

  Janet settled into the life of a suburban housewife. Her apparent contentment was a quality Bill both envied, and, face it, resented at the same time. Changing events were so normal … matter of fact … all in a day’s work. No traumas … no special upset that Nicole was growing up and would soon be ready to start nursery school. It didn’t seem to bother her a bit. Well, it did him….

  After the children were put to bed they went to the den and settled into their favorite chairs. Bill read the paper, Janet worked on her needlepoint. From time to time she interrupted his scanning the column of the stock market report, but he scarcely heard—though he was careful to nod his head as though he hung on every word.

  “… if you could have seen how excited Nicole was …”

  Bill poised his index finger on a quotation for U.S. Steel and looked up at her in sudden interest. “Sorry … I’m afraid I didn’t hear. Who did you say was excited?”

  “Nicole.”

  “Oh? What about?”

  “Going to nursery school.”

  “What nursery school?”

  “The one Kit’s sending Mark and Deborah to. Of course they’re in kindergarten, but Nicole will be in the same group as Joel and—”

  As though he’d been struck by lightning he said, “You’re sending Nicole to school? For God’s sake, she’s only three.”

  Janet was shocked by his outburst. Suppressing her own anger, she said quietly, hoping not to upset him more, “Kit sent the twins when they were two …”