XVII

“SOMEONE SHOULD GIVE A party for Peter and Harriet,” Amelia said at the dining room table.

“Why?” Cole asked.

“It’s done,” Amelia answered simply, “and Harriet’s mother can’t really manage it.”

“So you think you should,” Agate said.

“I can have it catered.”

Agate did not protest as she might have done a month earlier. She was heavily uncomfortable, and her temper, even with Amelia, was often short. There were too many chores for the strength she had and not enough distractions from the anxiety she increasingly felt for herself, and the baby she was about to have. Sometimes she wanted to talk with Amelia, confront her with the knotted angers and doubts that Agate couldn’t untangle for herself, never before having bothered. But Amelia was too old and too tired, and it was unlikely that she had any of the answers herself. She was really no more interested in analyzing and judging than Agate was. Which was all right on the way to the grave, but on the way to giving birth maybe some things should be understood. Just the other day Agate had been tempted to talk a little with Rosemary Hopwood, but they had established a bantering habit that was hard to break through. Also Agate sensed in Rosemary some trouble or preoccupation of her own, as if somewhere under that easy control she had been badly shaken. And exactly what was there to sort out? The question she really wanted to ask was why she had to go through with it, and who knew why? Maybe it wasn’t a question at all but just a protest. Her life in these last months had been full of alternatives, all of them lousy. So much for free will.

“I wonder if we should hire chairs,” Amelia was saying. “Our own haven’t been out of the shed in five years.”

“Let people stand up,” Agate said. “They won’t stay as long.”

“Too many won’t be able to stand up at all,” Cole answered glumly.

“What are you going to do if it rains? Getting all of you old crocks up the stairs is no joke,” Agate said.

“It won’t rain,” Amelia said. “If it does, the front room is large enough for forty.”

“Forty!” Cole repeated.

“You’re too young to be getting as antisocial as you are, Cole. Besides, I simply need your help.”

“Oh, I’ll help,” Cole said hastily. “I didn’t mean that.”

Didn’t he? he read in Agate’s mocking eyebrows. Well, he knew he had to face Peter sooner or later, and a crowd of forty people was preferable to an hour across from him at the dinner table. With plenty of time to think about it, to plan what he would and what he wouldn’t say, he could deal with the brief confrontations of greeting and saving good-bye. Peter himself had instructed Cole in just such formalities. The trick would be not to stammer into phony apologies, for the guiltier Cole felt about avoiding Peter the less he wanted to apologize. If anyone needed to be forgiven… but Cole turned away from that idea. The vision of Peter apologizing to him for anything whatever gave Cole hot flashes.

“We’re all reluctant,” Amelia said. “Peter and Harriet may be, too, but it needs to be done.”

“Does it really?” Agate asked.

“Being engaged isn’t a private matter,” Amelia said, smiling.

“Something like having a baby.”

“Something.”

“Do you always do what’s expected?” Agate asked irritably.

“If I can,” Amelia said.

“You don’t have to be so superior about it,” Cole said crossly to Agate. “You work just as hard to do what’s unexpected.”

“Children, children,” Amelia said, knowing it was better for them to bicker through these last hard weeks of Cole’s job and Agate’s pregnancy than to sulk, but sulking would have been easier on her.

It turned out to be an unusually hot day, but in the large, old garden there was shade for twice again the number of people who had been invited. Agate and Cole were stationed at the side path to direct people around the house, through the rose garden, and out onto the lawn, the deepest shade brilliant with begonias.

Ida Setworth and Maud Montgomery were among the first to arrive, never having been able to break themselves of the old-fashioned courtesy of being on time. Peter, Harriet, and Harriet’s mother were right behind them, and the cluster of people made it easier than he had anticipated for Cole to greet Peter, but the tic still jumped frantically in his cheek.

“Congratulations,” was all he needed to say, and he managed that.

Agate, knowing her size and presence were a scandal to Mrs. Montgomery, went out of her way to be helpful about the uncertain footing for the trifocaled old lady.

“But someone should be looking after you,” Maud protested.

Agate kept herself from responding by concentrating on the variety of replies that were impossible, the wickedest one of which would have been “How’s Arthur?”

What began to look like a pensioners’ tea gradually became something more of a community as Harriet’s sister and brother arrived with their families, along with several neatly middle-aged women with accustomed husbands, who had probably gone to school with Harriet. Cole, who seemed to know most of them, did the greeting and directing, leaving Agate to observe and occasionally gesture.

Cole, so occupied, did not see Feller and Grace Hill get out of their car, but Grace saw him and stopped in mid-stride.

“I can’t,” she said to Feller. “I can’t go through with it.”

“Yes you can,” Feller said quietly. “We don’t have to stay more than a few minutes.”

“I can’t.”

Agate watched them, not knowing who they were, only seeing the hard distress in a woman who should have been—but somehow was not—attractive, the uncertain concern in her very tired husband. “Cole?” she called quietly. “Cole?”

Cole turned, saw the Hills, and felt both kneecaps dissolve. He wanted to say to Agate just what Grace was saying to Feller, but he couldn’t. He had not known they were coming. Unlike his encounter with Peter, which he had had time to plan, he had simply not thought about Grace Hill. But there she was, not fifteen yards away, head sideways like a shying horse. Could he have hit such a woman?

“I’ll wait in the car,” Grace said. “I’m sorry. I’ll just wait in the car.”

“All right,” Feller said, and he turned back with her.

“What’s the matter?” Agate asked Cole.

“Mrs. Hill hasn’t been well,” he said. “Maybe she…”

“Shouldn’t you offer to help?”

“I don’t know.”

“Go on. Don’t stand there out to lunch. Maybe she needs a drink of water with her tranquilizer or something.”

He didn’t want to move. If Grace Hill couldn’t face it, why should he? But it must look odd to Agate to have him Just standing there doing nothing. Grace Hill was a sick woman. Dina had explained that.

“I’ll be right back,” he said and walked over to the Hills’ car quickly before he could change his mind. “Is there something I can do?”

“My wife doesn’t feel very well,” Feller said. “She thought she’d better just stay in the car.”

“Could I get you something to drink, Mrs. Hill?” Cole asked, forcing himself to look directly at her. “Or would you like to come into the house? It’s awfully hot here in the drive.”

“No,” she said abruptly and turned away.

“There are lots of chairs in the shade,” Cole persisted, not knowing why he did.

Grace looked at her husband.

“Don’t you want to just try it?”

“Oh, all right! There’s no point in making all this fuss.”

She got out of the car again, dropping her purse. Cole picked it up and handed it to her. She looked at him for an ironic moment and then said, without rancor, “Thank you.”

“It’s just around the house here. I’ll show you,” Cole said, leading the way.

“I haven’t been in this garden since I was a kid,” Feller said to his wife, partly to distract her but also to ease a bitter nervousness of his own.

As they rounded the house, Grace stopped again but this time simply to admire. “What roses! Look at those trees.”

“This garden and the Montgomerys’ are about the only ones left,” Feller said.

“Cousin A’s right over here,” Cole said, still directing them.

“Here are Mr. and Mrs. Hill.”

Amelia, sitting in one of the old covered swings at the edge of the shade, looked up and smiled. “How good of you both to come. Mrs. Hill, sit here with me and let’s get acquainted.”

At the front of the house, Agate was greeting Rosemary Hopwood.

“I’m badly late.”

“The last of the wheel chairs has been rented,” Agate said. “You’ll have to get there on your own two feet.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting off yours?”

“Probably. Cole will be back in a minute, and he can deal with any stragglers. He just had to drag one woman from her car and take her to the garden by force.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

Cole appeared from around the house.

“Who was that woman, Cole?” Agate asked.

“Mrs. Hill.”

“Oh,” Rosemary said.

“Hello, Miss Hopwood.”

“Hello, Cole. Just about everyone here?”

“I think so. Well, I haven’t seen Dina.”

“She’s not coming,” Rosemary said.”

“Why not?” Cole asked, obviously disappointed.

“She didn’t say,” Rosemary answered. “You’d better come sit down, Agate.”

“Yes, go ahead,” Cole said. “I’ll just wait a few more minutes and be along.”

Ida Setworth, resting a moment from a strained conversation with old Judge Howard, who was deaf, watched Agate and Rosemary come round the house. Anyone next to Agate would fall in the shadow of life. She had the height and carriage to make the size of her belly somehow marvelous, and those golden eyes in her golden face were remarkable. Beside her, Rosemary did not have even an attendant charm. She looked tired, ill, old. Even Harriet, who was walking over to greet them, seemed young and pretty next to Rosemary, though there couldn’t be many years’ difference.

“Are you being looked after, Miss Setworth?” Peter asked.

“Yes, thank you. I was just thinking how pretty Harriet looks today.”

“Yes, doesn’t she?” Peter sat down next to Ida, wishing there were something he could say or do, understanding that there was not.

“Was Dina invited?” Ida asked, watching Rosemary.

“Oh yes,” Peter said. “She was on everyone’s list. I don’t see her though. That’s odd.”

Rosemary was greeting Amelia. “I’m sorry I was late. It’s a wonderful thing to see this garden full of people again. Nothing could have made Harriet happier.”

“She’s a happy sort of person,” Amelia said with approval.

Rosemary smiled, but the sweat gathered at her hairline, one drop quickly escaping past her ear. She reached for a handkerchief.

“Just the heat?” Amelia asked, concerned.

“No,” Rosemary said with a wry smile.

“I hope you’re getting pills then. The blessing nowadays is that you don’t have to be that uncomfortable.”

Cole came up to Amelia and Rosemary. “I phoned Dina. She’s just sitting in the shop. I told her to lock up and come along.”

I hope she said she would,” Amelia said.

“She said she’d see.”

“Excuse me,” Rosemary said. “I must speak to Ida.”

Cole glanced at her with alert uncertainty as she left. “Anything wrong?”

“No, dear,” Amelia said. “Nothing but change of life.”

Cole knew he was blushing and hated it. He was not embarrassed, He was irritated. It seemed to him that women always had some urgently important physiological excuse for everything from sweating to slander. He just had to stand, humiliated, in the tics and twinges of his own system, without periods, pregnancies, changes to excuse his terrors. It wasn’t fair.

Across the lawn Peter stood as Rosemary approached, easy in his manners, which was what Cole had first envied and admired in him. A kind invulnerability. Fake. Cole could have forgiven Peter even that. Or thought he could. It was Peter’s apparent ability to cover the whole thing up that made Cole angry. He had even somehow been able to influence Feller and Grace Hill so that statements were retracted or at least never made public. And now, to ensure his safety, he was marrying Harriet. Perhaps that was why Dina had not come. She had helped to whitewash him herself, but she obviously couldn’t stomach this final step of correction. Cole’s indignation only faltered at what should have happened instead. He didn’t want Peter humiliated, fired, or jailed. It wasn’t that. He wanted only some sign, some gesture … of guilt? If Peter was guilty, admitted his guilt, the burden of Cole’s own fantasy guilts would be more bearable, or at least he thought so. Was that the temptation he had had to read Cousin B’s diaries? If even such a woman as that could be shown to have a nervous stomach or secret lust, life might be easier. But Cole didn’t want communal shame, even with its comforts. That’s what he had struck out against: the unbearable, easy, desired knowledge of Grace Hill’s announcement. Still, he hated Peter’s way out, and he was ashamed of Dina a little, too. Why did she have to go even so far as to pretend she believed nothing was wrong?

“Cole?”

“Yes, Harriet,” he answered out of his distraction, embarrassed again.

“Are you all right?”

“All right? Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

“I feel as if I’d lost track of you this summer,” Harriet said.

Cole, against his resolves, began to stammer the old excuses.

“Yes, I know,” Harriet said. “I understand. But it isn’t just that, is it? You know, Peter would very much like to talk with you and he simply hasn’t had a chance. Don’t wait too long to let him, will you? He cares a great deal about you, and he wouldn’t want some sort of misunderstanding to settle between you.”

“Peter hasn’t anything to explain to me,” Cole said, in a confused sense of loyalty and fear.

“I think he does. I know he wants to. Sometime give him a chance.”

She had to turn away then to speak with Feller and Grace Hill, who were leaving after what Feller considered a decent interval. He wondered, as he walked back around the house with his wife and Harriet Jameson, if it would be more difficult for him or for Grace to admit that it had been a pleasant hour. They had made such a habit over the years of having no such thing to admit.

Harriet, leading the way, was the first to encounter Dina, standing uncertainly in the front drive in a violet linen dress.

“I’m so glad you’re here, Dina,” Harriet said. “Do you know the Hills? Of course you do. Everyone knows everyone.”

“I didn’t know you owned a dress,” Grace Hill said.

“We haven’t really met,” Feller said quickly. “Peter tells me you’re as interested as I am in the downtown development plan he’s working on.”

“Yes,” Dina said.

“When it gets to the talking stage, I hope you’ll come over to the house one evening. A thing of this sort profits by some off-the-record discussion early on.”

I’d like to.”

“Good,” Feller said, turning Grace firmly toward their car. “Thank you again, Harriet. You know how pleased we are for you both.”

Harriet, embarrassed by Grace Hill, though her own surprise at Dina’s dress was acute, waved them off quickly and walked with Dina back into the garden.

“I didn’t know you were interested in real estate.”

“I have a piece of property next to Mr. Hill’s… parking lot.”

“How interesting.”

“It could be,” Dina said, her senses suddenly distracted by the roses.

At the edge of the lawn she hesitated, trying to collect the reasons for her so recently changed resolution, for she really had had no intention of being here. What she hadn’t realized was that she should then have refused. Cole’s phone call was a rebuke which she accepted. She did not want to offend Miss A or Peter Fallidon or Harriet Jameson, no matter how awkward her position would be. So she had put on the dress she had bought so long ago to meet Peter, and here she was, faced with this gathering of friends to celebrate an engagement she did not pretend to understand, and she was simply, genuinely frightened.

“Dina!” Peter called and crossed to her.

Cole saw her at the same moment, and even Peter’s intention of greeting her could not postpone his own.

“That woman is Dina Pyros?” Agate asked, near Miss A to see that she was all right and to take some rest herself.

“Yes,” Amelia answered.

“I thought she was supposed to be some sort of character in boots and trousers.”

“Today she’s a guest,” Amelia said, not quite taking in the significance of her own remark.

Rosemary, still sitting with Ida, looked down at her own hands.

“It’s silly to say I wouldn’t have recognized her,” Ida said. “Hadn’t you better join her? She may need you.”

But Dina already had the company of Cole, Peter, and Harriet as she crossed the lawn to greet Miss A. A stranger, observing the party, might even have supposed that this was finally the guest of honor not only from the attention given her but from her own manner, dignified and careful in the unaccustomed clothes, in her fear.

It was Cole who remembered to introduce Agate, out of his guilt at never having taken her to either George’s or Nick’s. Dina greeted the very pregnant and handsome young Agate with honoring and distant envy which seemed nothing more than kindness to those around them. Agate, who refused to feel awed by anyone, stood for a shy moment and then excused herself to go into the house.

Rosemary, watching Agate leave, saw her own excuse.

“I wonder if she’s all right.”

Ida no more than nodded to Rosemary’s departure. Since it was so rarely possible to care for whom one cared about, it was fortunate that there were always a number of substitutes. Ida did not have to move for anyone. Then she saw that Maud Montgomery was also sitting by herself in the shade. Ida raised herself up and walked over to her old friend.

“Don’t you think it’s a little peculiar to invite that young woman to a party of this sort?” Maud asked at once.

“Didn’t you know she’d bought the three parking lots next to the Hill property?” Ida asked.

“She did?”

“Some time ago,” Ida said.

“This town is changing out of all recognition,” Maud said, looking about the garden, familiar to her since childhood, at faces she had known most of their lives if not of hers. “Some things I find it better simply not to tell Arthur.”

“How is Arthur?” Ida asked.

“Are you all right, Agate?”

“In great shape,” Agate answered, out of the way of the caterers in Amelia’s chair in the library, a can of beer beside her.

“It’s hot,” Rosemary said.

“You want one of these?”

“No, I’ve had more than enough punch.”

“It hasn’t anything much in it,” Agate said.

They sat in an easy silence for some time, glad of the cool escape, Agate too preoccupied with physical discomfort to care what happened next, but gradually she was aware of Rosemary’s own distance.

“Is anything the matter with you?” Agate asked.

“Me? No.”

“Who is Dina Pyros anyway?”

“Dina?” Rosemary asked. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Agate said. “The way Cole talked about her, I thought she was a sort of a town character, driving around in a beat-up truck.”

“Yes, well, she’s a furniture dealer… antiques.”

“She’s… enviable,” Agate said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Imagine pulling off that sort of entrance at such a raggedy little party. And she’s got an incredible face. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” Rosemary said. “But so do you.”

“Oh well, so do you, if we’re handing out morale raisers, and neither one of you is pregnant, which is enviable in itself.”

Rosemary didn’t answer.

“Social workers aren’t supposed to go darkly sensitive all of a sudden.”

“Sorry,” Rosemary said, getting up.

“Don’t dash off,” Agate said. “Are you heartbroken over Harriet’s carrying off the handsome bank manager … or what?”

“In ten years or so I suppose people are going to tell you things like that,” Rosemary said, smiling.

“They do now. You’re one of the few cool hold-outs.”

“A bond between us,” Rosemary said.

“You can see my big secret before your very eyes,” Agate said.

“I must go.”

Agate watched her from the window. An odd woman whom she’d come to like against her own first judgment, which was that Rosemary Hopwood was cold. Miss A didn’t like her. No, that wasn’t really true. Rosemary troubled the old lady. Agate didn’t know why. They were saying good-bye now, familiarly affectionate. Then, as Rosemary turned to leave, Dina Tyros moved away from the others and spoke to her, standing curiously close for all the space there was. Rosemary listened, then shook her head without looking up, but Dina walked along with her until they got to the roses.

Across the lawn, the old ones were getting ready to leave. Agate couldn’t let Maud Montgomery out of the garden without another helping hand. She came down the back steps and out into the group just in time to hear Mrs. Montgomery’s parting comment.

“A year ago this wouldn’t have been a surprise, but by now we’d just about given up hope.”

“Thank you,” Harriet said with a smile that was irretrievably sweet.

Cole closed in on Mrs. Montgomery from one side, Agate from the other, and together they jolted her with as much show of accident as they could out of the garden while Amelia and Harriet exchanged amused glances.

“There doesn’t have to be any hope for our generation,” Ida Setworth said. “It’s a good thing there’s so much for yours.”

Peter leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, realizing that from now on until they died he would be kissing these old ladies good-bye as if he had been born to them.