Betty’s Luncheonette

Weeks went by, and Laura did not return. I wanted to write to her, telephone her, but Richard said that would be bad for her. She did not need to be interrupted, he said, by a voice from the past. She needed to concentrate her attention on her immediate situation—on the treatment at hand. That is what he’d been told. As for the nature of this treatment, he wasn’t a doctor, he didn’t pretend to understand such things. Surely they were best left to the experts.

I tortured myself with visions of her, imprisoned, struggling, trapped in a painful fantasy of her own making, or trapped in another fantasy, equally painful, which was not hers at all but those of the people around her. And when did the one become the other? Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway every day, we use the passwords of grammar—I say, you say, he and she say, it, on the other hand, does not say —paying for the privilege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we’ve agreed on.

But even as a child, Laura never quite agreed. Was this the problem? That she held firm for no when yes was the thing required? And vice versa, and vice versa.

Laura was doing well, I was told: she was making progress. Then she was not doing so well, she’d had a relapse. Progress in what, a relapse to what? It should not be gone into, it would disturb me, it was important for me to conserve my energies, as a young mother should do. “We’ll have you well again in no time flat,” said Richard, patting my arm.

“But I’m not really sick,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “Back to normal.” He gave a fond smile, a leer almost. His eyes were getting smaller, or the flesh around them was moving in, which gave him a cunning expression. He was thinking about the time when he could be back where he belonged: on top. I was thinking that he would squeeze the breath out of me. He was putting on weight; he was eating out a lot; he was making speeches, at clubs, at weighty gatherings, substantial gatherings. Ponderous gatherings, at which weighty, substantial men met and pondered, because—everyone suspected it—there was heavy weather ahead.

All that speech-making can bloat a man up. I’ve watched the process, many times now. It’s those kinds of words, the kind they use in speeches. They have a fermenting effect on the brain. You can see it on television, during the political broadcasts—the words coming out of their mouths like bubbles of gas.

I decided to be as sickly as I could for as long as possible.

I fretted and fretted about Laura. I turned Winifred’s story about her this way and that, looking at it from every angle. I couldn’t quite believe it, but I couldn’t disbelieve it either.

Laura had always had one enormous power: the power to break things without meaning to. Nor had she ever been a respecter of territories. What was mine was hers: my fountain pen, my cologne, my summer dress, my hat, my hairbrush. Had this catalogue expanded to include my unborn baby? However, if she was suffering from delusions—if she’d only been inventing things—why was it she’d invented precisely that?

But suppose on the other hand that Winifred was lying. Suppose Laura was as sane as she ever was. In that case, Laura had been telling the truth. And if Laura had been telling the truth, then Laura was pregnant. If there really was going to be a baby, what would become of it? And why hadn’t she told me about it, instead of telling some doctor, some stranger? Why hadn’t she asked me for help? I thought that over for some time. There could have been a good many reasons. My delicate condition would just have been one of them.

As for the father, whether imagined or real, there was only one man who was at all possible. It must be Alex Thomas.

But it couldn’t be. How could it?

I no longer knew how Laura would have answered these questions. She had become unknown to me, as unknown as the inside of your own glove is unknown when your hand is inside it. She was with me all the time, but I couldn’t look at her. I could only feel the shape of her presence: a hollow shape, filled with my own imaginings.

Months went by. It was June, then July, then August. Winifred said I was looking white and drained. I should spend more time outside, she said. If I would not take up tennis or golf, as she’d repeatedly suggested—it might do something about that little tummy of mine, which ought to be seen to before it became chronic—I could at least work on my rock garden. It was an occupation that accorded well with motherhood.

I was not fond of my rock garden, which was mine in name only, like so much else. (Like “my” baby come to think of it: surely a changeling, surely something left by the gypsies; surely my real baby—one that cried less and smiled more, and was not so pungent—had been spirited away.) The rock garden was similarly resistant to my ministrations; nothing I did to it pleased it at all. Its rocks made a good show—there was a lot of pink granite, along with the limestone—but I couldn’t get anything to grow in it.

I contented myself with books—Perennials for the Rock Garden, Desert Succulents for Northern Climes, and the like. I went through such books, making lists—lists of what I might plant, or else lists of what I had indeed already planted; what ought to have been growing, but was not. Dragon’s blood, snow-on-the-mountain, hen-and-chickens. I liked the names, but didn’t care much for the plants themselves.

“I don’t have a green thumb,” I said to Winifred. “Not like you.” My pretense of incompetence had now become second nature to me, I scarcely had to think about it. Winifred on her part had ceased to find my fecklessness altogether convenient.

“Well, of course you have to make some effort,” she would say. At which I would produce my dutiful lists of dead plants.

“The rocks are pretty,” I said. “Can’t we just call it a sculpture?”

I thought of setting off on my own to see Laura. I could leave Aimee with the new nursemaid, whom I thought of as Miss Murgatroyd—all our servants were Murgatroyds to my mind, they were all in cahoots. But no, the nursemaid would alert Winifred. I could defy them all; I could sneak off one morning, take Aimee with me; we could go on the train. But the train to where? I didn’t know where Laura was—where she had been stashed away. The Bella Vista Clinic was said to be up north somewhere, but up north covered a lot of territory. I rummaged around in Richard’s desk, the one in his study at the house, but found no letters from this clinic. He must have been keeping them at the office.

One day Richard came home early. He seemed quite disturbed. Laura was no longer at Bella Vista, he said.

How could that be? I asked.

A man had arrived, he said. This man claimed to be Laura’s lawyer, or acting on her behalf. He was a trustee, he said—a trustee of Miss Chase’s trust fund. He’d challenged the authority by which she had been placed in Bella Vista. He had threatened legal action. Did I know anything about these proceedings?

No, I did not. (I kept my hands folded in my lap. I expressed surprise, and mild interest. I did not express glee.) And then what happened? I asked.

The director of Bella Vista had been absent, the staff had been confused. They had let her go, in custody of this man. They had judged that the family would wish to avoid undue publicity. (The lawyer had threatened some of this.)

Well, I said, I guess they did the right thing.

Yes, said Richard, no doubt; but was Laura compos mentis? For her own good, for her own safety, we should at least determine that. Although on the surface of things she’d appeared calmer, the staff at Bella Vista had their doubts. Who knew what danger to herself or others she might pose if allowed to run around at large?