The Golden Cup by Belva Plain
“But you have nothing to read. I don’t think you’d like any of these.”
“That’s all right. I’ll just think.”
She leaned her head against a pine trunk. Without seeming to watch Freddy, she could watch him. How unthinkable not to be able to run across a field, have a whole life like this ahead, knowing that nothing would get any better!
Only one good thing had happened, in the midst of his doom: the amazing new house, finer than Aunt Florence’s, finer than the Dakota apartment. Meg was glad about that. If you had to spend your life in a chair or on crutches, it might help a little bit to do it in a beautiful place.
There was hardly a sound, except for the flick of a turned page every minute or two.
Suddenly, Freddy whispered, “Look on the other side of the pond.”
A deer had come out of a thicket and paused. It was a young buck without antlers. One forefoot was raised: the delicate head was held high, as though he were listening. Feeling safe, he went to the water’s edge and drank, then stood staring in their direction without seeing where they were hidden. For a minute he waited, quite still, with the sunlight glistening on his reddish satin back, then turned about and disappeared in the thicket as silently as he had come out of it.
“You know what makes me furious?” Meg made a fist. “Dad’s friends who hunt deer. Dad doesn’t, because he can’t belong to their hunt club, but he tells me, and anyway, I can see them on the roads when we come here for the weekend in the fall. It makes me sick to see deer slung over a car, or heads on the wall in somebody’s house. It’s not as if those people needed them to eat.”
“Yes, that’s what Paul always used to say.”
“It’s revolting. Sometimes they use bow and arrow; when they don’t kill, the wounds fester for days until the poor things die. And trapping is even worse. Sometimes, when a raccoon or a fox is caught”—Meg’s voice trembled—“you find that it’s tried to chew its own paws off to get free. I shall never wear furs,” she finished.
Freddy closed the book. “I remember when you were born, Meg,” he said softly. “The first day you got up and walked, it happened at my house. Your parents were visiting.”
“Do you know? I always loved to go to your house. I would have liked to go more often. I love your mother.”
“She loves you too. She thinks you’re like her, inside.”
Meg ventured to say, “I’m sorry about your parents. They’re all trying to figure it out in the family.”
“Let them figure, for all the good it will do them.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or be curious.”
“I know you didn’t, Meg.”
“I only meant—I love your side, Dad’s side, of my relatives. I suppose I shouldn’t say it, because Mother’s people are really very nice, but I’m always more at home with Dad’s, with you and Paul and Florence too. Only, my two grandmothers”—she began to giggle—“luckily, they hardly ever see each other since Grandma Hughes went back south, but when they do, it’s so funny to watch them insulting each other so politely about their ancestry. They’re both so proud.”
Freddy laughed. “Oh, well, there’s nothing new in that. Just human nature. Some people’s natures, anyway.”
A sudden recollection caused Meg to sigh. “I want to tell you something. It may be silly of them, but I wish I could feel as sure of who I am as my grandmothers do. And not only they. You’re sure, and Leah is too.” Her mind ran off then into another path. “Oh, Leah is so sweet, Freddy! I wish I had a sister like her. Isn’t she the sweetest thing?”
“You were going to tell me something,” Freddy replied.
“Oh, yes, I was saying … Mother’s Episcopalian and now Dad’s joined with her, but they hardly ever observe anything and I think they don’t really believe very much. It’s just something to be. And I get so mixed up, going to seders at Aunt Florence’s and then Easter services at school. I still don’t know where I am. At least you do, Freddy. Don’t you?”
“Yes … it’s the only thing that’s stayed with me and hasn’t changed.”
“To celebrate Easter and a seder is to do nothing.”
Meg sensed her father’s confusion, which he denied. When he was with his new friends here in the country or with his wife’s family, he didn’t interrupt or contradict or laugh as loud as he did when he was with his own family or his New York friends, who were mostly Jewish.
Hesitantly, she had once told him so, saying simply that he had been “different,” without saying precisely in what ways. He had widened his eyes in amazement and denied it.
“You’re imagining things, Meggie! I’m the most natural person—whatever else my faults, I do know that about myself. No posing, no airs, that’s me. No, I’m the same no matter where I am.”
And she had seen that he believed it was so.
She repeated now, thinking aloud, “I really don’t know who I am.”
“I can understand that,” Freddy answered.
“Am I boring you?” she cried, for he was gazing away from her.
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Why should you think that?”
“Well, I thought … I’m only fifteen. We haven’t much in common.”
“Come here in front of me, Meg, so I won’t have to crane my neck.”
A ray of sunlight turned his fair hair almost white. He was a Greek youth; he had a statue’s head, like those photographed in her textbook of ancient history: long, narrow, and elegant as a woman’s. If his hair were longer, she thought, he would perhaps even look a little like a woman.
“If I had it all to do over,” he told her now, “you’d be the girl I’d marry.”
Caught between shock and embarrassment, she giggled again.
“We’re cousins! It’s illegal.”
“All right, then, another girl like you. There must be a few others to find somewhere, if one looks hard enough.”
She sought for something to say, and in confusion blurted, “But you have Leah …”
“That’s true.”
“Oh, she’s so pretty! Mr. Marcus—Uncle Ben—he told me to call him that—says she reminds him of Pola Negri. Once, when they were at the opera, he heard somebody whisper that’s who she was.”
“I didn’t know they’d gone to the opera.”
“Yes, when you were in the army. They saw Girl of the Golden West, I remember, and Leah said it would have been better if it had been sung in English.”
“That’s probably so.”
Freddy’s tone was oddly flat. Meg hoped she wasn’t annoying him. She thought maybe she ought to stop talking; yet the silence, which lasted for several minutes, was too uncomfortable, since he wasn’t reading but only looking down at brown moss and old dried leaves. So she tried again.
“He’s awfully nice, Uncle Ben is. Daddy says he’s a very smart lawyer and he’ll go far.”
“No doubt he will.”
Then she was appalled. To speak of another man “going far,” when Freddy couldn’t go at all—how unforgivably stupid of her.
Freddy looked very tired. He was her responsibility. It worried her to think that she might have worn him out and that he should probably be lying down.
“Shall I take you back now?” she asked anxiously.
“No, let’s stay a little longer. This place reminds me of a summer afternoon in England. Oh, England was wonderful that summer! It was a paradise—a fool’s paradise. And we’d have tea on the lawn and talk, good talk, even if, as it turned out, so much of it was fantasy. It was so innocent, all that bravery and sacrifice. I made the closest friend I ever had, in that month. I could say anything to Gerald and be understood—”
Abruptly, he returned to his book, and Meg lay back again on the pine trunk. The day drowsed. The dogs slept on their sides, twitching as they dreamed.
What an odd thing to have said, about marrying her! He must think she was awfully ignorant to believe such flattery. After all, he had Leah! He was always watching
Leah was kind. When you were with her, she paid genuine attention and didn’t treat you like a child from whom things had to be hidden. She was practical and gave practical advice, not sermons, but answers to questions you were ashamed to ask anyone else—certainly not Mother or even Aunt Hennie.
“Always let a man talk about himself. Men love that. Widen your eyes a little while you listen; it looks pretty and makes you seem to be fascinated. Take care of your hands, keep them white to show off the rings you will have someday.”
And she’d laugh; her round eyes sparkled; she was frank and joyous; you felt that she wasn’t afraid of anyone and you hoped you could learn to be like that.
Oh, how terrible it must be for her to see the man she loves come home to her like this! It would never—how could it ever—be romantic again?
The man I will love must be … will look like … not Freddy, he’s too … too slight. Someone like Paul … Serious, with a gentle smile.
“I’m tired of reading,” Freddy said. “Talk to me, please, Meg.”
“What shall I talk about?”
“Anything. Tell me what you’ve been thinking of, with your eyes closed and that little smile that looks so secretive.”
“I was thinking I’d like to have a permanent wave, my hair’s so straight. I saw pictures of a girl with long hair like mine, before and after. It comes out all rippled. Leah says they started in Paris, and now they do them here, too, only Mother won’t let me.”
“Hush!” Freddy commanded sharply.
Twisting his head to one side, he strained to see through the shrubbery. Surprised, Meg followed his gaze.
“Oh, that’s Leah and Ben, they’re back—”
He turned on her. “Quiet, I said!”
Not understanding, she obeyed. The little breeze had subsided; birds had gone to their afternoon rest; nothing rustled or moved, and in the dead stillness voices carried distinctly across the small pond.
“A magic spot, isn’t it?” Leah said. “You would think you were miles away from another human being.”
“I wish we were,” Ben answered.
“I know, darling, but it can’t be, so there’s no use thinking about it.”
Meg made a little sound in her throat. Freddy grasped her hand, hurting it. His expression was so —so awful! And rather than see what he was seeing, Meg stared at him.
When she did look back through the leaves, Leah and Ben were clasped together. She was frozen, horrified, and fascinated. For the first time she was seeing what she was used to imagining: the way they were actually folded into each other, the way their lips were fastened as though they were burrowing, tasting or eating; not that, at this distance, one could see as small an area as a mouth, and yet one knew that the joined lips did not want to come apart.
Meg’s heart beat faster. She breathed faster and bent forward to see better, until she was recalled to the presence of Freddy by his painful grip on her hand. He was tightening it as if he, too, had forgotten everything except what they were seeing there in the dappled light between the branches: a picture of woods, pond, sky, and, at the center, the lovers.
Then came Leah’s voice, high and clear. The two had separated.
“Not here, are you completely crazy?”
As they walked out of the picture the voices blew away, but not before the man’s voice was heard saying something about “New York” and “Tuesday.”
Freddy let go of Meg’s hand. Her fingers were squeezed and whitened, so that she had to rub them; a terrible fear washed over her, trickling and shuddering down her back. She was ashamed to look at Freddy; it was as if she had caught him, rather than Leah, in a dishonorable act. What she ought to be feeling for him was pity. How could Leah? How could she? Then Meg remembered her responsibility.
“Shall we go back, Freddy?” she asked, not looking at him, and without waiting for his answer, turned the chair about.
The emerald grove was sinister. I will never be able to come down to this pond again without remembering, Meg thought: It has been spoiled. There was no sound now except the swish of the wheels and the padding of the dogs. She had still not looked into Freddy’s face.
Should loving be so complicated or so dangerous? A recollection of Paul’s wedding, the only one she had yet seen, came shimmering; so grave it had been, the vows so awesome. Leah must have made such vows.…
The silence, as they trudged, became unbearable. Not wanting to embarrass Freddy by forcing him to answer, since possibly he might be weeping or wanting to, she addressed the dogs instead.
“King, do be careful, don’t step on Strudel! He’s only a little fellow.”
Freddy flung out an arm. Meg stopped and came around to see what he wanted. Red blotches had come out on his forehead. He clenched his fist, and involuntarily she stepped out of his reach.
“Don’t you ever, Meg, don’t you ever say anything to anybody about this …” The fist flailed the air.
“You’re scaring the life out of me, Freddy! I won’t tell, I promise I won’t.”
“Well, see that you don’t. Because if …”
He did not finish. His arm dropped to his lap and his head drooped to his chest. The books slid to the ground.
Meg picked them up and slowly, with great effort, pushed the wheelchair up the slope to the house.
From the porch there sounded a pleasant babble and the clink of teacups. Leah’s voice, cheerful and gay, rose over the rest.
“Goodness, where can Freddy be? Meg must have taken him on a sightseeing tour!”
10
Hennie, for months now, had been having vivid dreams. Often they were so oppressive that she woke with wet eyes. There was the dream in which Freddy was born: they showed him to her in the hospital, and he had no legs. Sometimes the dreams were sensual; she held a man’s head to her heart, felt his weight and warmth with a suffusion of longing so tender and yet so elusive that the fear of losing it was as marked as the thing itself. Once she woke laughing. In some vague way that, once awake, she could truly not remember, Emily’s well-bred, fine-spoken cousin Thayer had figured in the dream, and she had the airy sensation of being pleased with herself.
A rooster crowed far away; there was a plucky sort of cheer in the sound, as the creature prepared his welcome to the sun. It must, then, be almost dawn. A light rain began, then, turning heavier, struck at the windowpane and spattered on Alfie’s famous maples, with their flat leaves broad as an upturned palm. She lay still, listening, caught for a few moments in a trance of comfortable forgetfulness.
Reality swept back. In the room across the hall lay Freddy; Leah and Hank were in a room apart, for Freddy slept poorly and must not be disturbed. What was to become of him? The same constant, futile, senseless question! There was no answer to it. Or else there was an answer all too clear: fifty or sixty years more like this.
Sighing, Hennie fell back into half sleep.
Dreams again. Dreams.
The picnic cloth is littered with the remains of the cake, on which Happy Birthday is almost eaten away. The zoo is still uncrowded; people move easily along the path toward the haughty stone lions who guard the portico of the Lion House.
It has been a lovely day. Walter and Dan are having a pleasant discussion, with no veiled argument, while Paul is teaching Freddy to bat a ball.
The sun slides westward below the trees. People stand up, fold their blankets, and collect their children. It is time to go home.
A girl in a yellow straw hat, who has been catching Dan’s eye all during the afternoon, now drops a bag of apples. As they roll in his direction he retrieves them for her, and she gives him a pretty smile of gratitude.
“Why, thank you! Thank you so much!”
“Wonderful day,” Dan says.
“Yes, wasn’t it,” responds Yellow Hat. “I love it
“Dan, have you got Freddy’s sweater somewhere?” Hennie calls.
Now, quite aware that she is dreaming, she can remember how the familiar heat prickled her neck and can remember, too, having thought: This sort of thing never happens to Walter.
She woke up. A swath of light lay across her face; she watched it sway and flicker across the ceiling. The rain had stopped; there were voices below in the kitchen wing; the day had begun in Alfie’s house. For a while she lay still, allowing a tentative comfort to wash over her.
And, following a habit left over from childhood when, scared or sad, she had needed to bolster her spirits, she began to make a mental list of things for which to be thankful. “Count your blessings,” Mama had liked to admonish, forgetting how often she failed to count hers. (How strange it would seem when that rigid, carping, and yet loving mother was gone!)
So then, a list of positive things. One: Mama is still alive and well. Two: Florence and I are sisters again. Three: Leah has brought Hank into the world. Four: Freddy is with caring people.
The door to Freddy’s room was being opened; someone, either Ben or Alfie, was coming to lift him into the wheelchair and prepare him for the day. She thrust the blankets aside and got up. The morning was cool and overcast, so she set out a skirt and a sweater, a bright one; she had some vague idea that it was important to be bright when one was with Freddy. His door was opening again; they would be bringing a breakfast tray. She hurried, pulling the sweater on—
A terrible cry tore through the house like a gale wind, and stopped Hennie’s breath in her throat. Something went clattering, bumping … down the stairs? Thud and crash, smash as of ripping wood and screeching metal … and an animal howl … what … what …
She flung her door open; every door in the upstairs hall was open; people were screaming and scurrying; downstairs a door slammed; people came running. Hennie ran to the top of the stairs. Alfie in pajamas and Emily in nightgown and curlers were halfway down.
And at the bottom, oh, almighty God! At the bottom, heaped and crumpled and broken, lay the wheelchair with its wheels still spinning, while Freddy … Freddy lay still. Sprawled, bloody and still, with his arms flung out.