Read Seasons of the Heart Online
Authors: Cynthia Freeman
Seasons of the Heart
A Novel
Cynthia Freeman
To Nini, with all my love
Chapter One
T
HE DAY BEGAN THE
same as a million others. Nothing in the universal scheme of things was any different, but by the time Ann Coulter watched the sun set low in the Pacific she knew the rest of her life had been unalterably changed. On December 23, 1969, Ann had come face to face with her own mortality.
Sitting in the shadows of early twilight, she was haunted by a hundred fantasies. Her life seemed to be made up of nothing but endings. Birth and death were inevitable, but the choices made along the way were her own. And such hard choices they had been.
What she had done this afternoon had taxed her strength to the breaking point. Placing Phillip in a nursing home was the hardest decision she had ever made. The sad images revolved in her mind until she thought she would go mad. Those long corridors filled with people in wheelchairs, the helpless men and women who had once raced to school, fallen in love, raised children of their own now reduced to total dependency. These were human beings no one seemed to want. Was this how people were expected to end their days? Ann could not come to terms with life’s cruelty. She was not afraid of growing old. It was the indignities of aging she could not bear. And for Phillip to have to suffer so before he was even sixty! She would never forget his bewildered expression when she said goodbye.
Leaving him in the nursing home had been like sending him to oblivion. How could she come to terms with herself, knowing that she alone was responsible?
It was tragic to end a marriage of almost thirty years, even if those years had not all been happy ones. In a way it would have been easier if he had died. Then the decision would have been God’s. She would have been sad, but surely she would have found some peace in the natural process of bereavement. This way there was no peace; instead, she was plagued with guilt. It wasn’t fair that life had placed that burden on her shoulders. Though she had watched Phillip’s decline, she had rejected the idea of sending him away by becoming oblivious to his loss of memory, and by reacting to his vagueness with anger. But what good would it do to think about all that now?
Staring out toward the San Francisco Bay she wondered what had happened to the years. Would she ever erase the sound of his voice asking, “Why are you doing this to me?” He knew that he was being abandoned, and at that terrible moment, she wanted to scream out, “I’m not leaving you here!” But she knew that she couldn’t do that. Dr. Cohn’s words kept her from weakening. “I know how you’re feeling, Ann. Sending someone you love to a nursing home is probably the most painful decision a person can make. But, as you asked me before—no, I don’t think it’s wise to keep him at home any longer. His condition will only deteriorate. No matter when you do this, it isn’t going to be easy.”
Wise Dr. Cohn. She knew he was right. It was no longer safe for Phillip to be home. Yet the rationale offered her no comfort. All she could do was hold him close and whisper, “I love you, Phillip. I’m sorry, darling….”
Suddenly she realized that it was completely dark. Brushing aside her tears, she turned on a lamp and poured herself a brandy. Passing the coffee table, she glanced down and saw a copy of New Horizons. Many of her professional achievements were chronicled in those pages. She laughed bitterly. During the interview, she had tried not to reveal too much of her personal life, especially facts concerning her marriage, but the reporter had kept pressing her for details. How had Phillip dealt with her success? Had he felt threatened by it? What was their relationship like? A marriage of almost thirty years was certainly good for a little space, surely worth mentioning for its longevity alone. Ann fielded most of the questions with vague but cheerful answers. On Phillip’s illness, she remained silent. He was entitled to his dignity.
Picking up the magazine, she turned the pages until she came to the image of herself which stared back. It belied her forty-nine years, although today she felt as if she were a hundred. The lonely silence was more than she could bear. Quickly she got up and put on a record, “Au Clair de Lune,” and sat back on the couch, still staring down at her picture. The caption was black and bold:
MODEST AFTER HUGE SUCCESS
.
A small voice within her whispered,
It’s all a travesty, isn’t it? I’m no more prepared to handle my life now than I was when my mother died.
As though a veil had lifted, Ann looked back to her childhood and saw herself clinging to her father after the funeral. She had been six then, and oh, how she had loved him. She was all he had left—or so he had said. And Ann had believed him, until two years later, when he had met Stella Burke. The pain of her mother’s death had hardly faded, and Ann could still hear her own pathetic sobbing as she sat alone in her room the night he’d married Stella.
All through her teens she’d continued to feel as if her father had betrayed not only her mother’s memory but Ann herself. No wonder that when Phillip had come into her life she had been so eager to escape home.
T
HE YEAR WAS 1941
, the month was March, and the world was alive with the sounds of spring. It seemed as though fate had directed Ann to the right place at the right time. She was the maid of honor at the wedding of her dearest friend, Ruthie, and Phillip was best man for the groom, Kenny Newman. Ann’s first glimpse of Phillip made her believe in the refrain to “Love in Bloom,” which Jack Benny sang every Sunday on the radio. His tall good looks were exactly calculated to sweep a romantic, lovely, and very vulnerable girl off her feet.
It was all so simple back then. There were three rules: one fell in love, got married, and had children. Listening to the strains of
Lohengrin
as Ruthie came down the aisle, Ann dreamed of becoming Mrs. Coulter. Those were heady times for romance. America was on the brink of war, and Hollywood had taken a firm grip on the national imagination. Ann had grown up seduced by the silver screen with its instant romances and promises of happily ever after.
Whether or not Phillip Coulter resembled Robert Taylor, Ann saw him as a hero. His hair perhaps was not as dark, and his eyes not quite so blue, but she was convinced that his beautifully molded lips, which she longed to feel against hers, and his strong chin with the heartrending cleft, were identical to her idol’s.
She felt as though she’d melt as she danced in his arms the night of the wedding. He was her prince charming who had come to take her away, make her happy, transport her to a vine-covered cottage to the tune of “Tea for Two.”
But once the wedding was over and Phillip escorted her home, standing facing him at her front door she no longer felt quite like Cinderella. Her violet eyes misted over.
She prayed that Phillip would not sense that she was on the verge of tears. She had hoped, wished, that he would take her in his arms, kiss her lingeringly. But instead, he stood rather awkwardly, not quite knowing what to say. Finally he blurted out, “Well, it’s really been nice getting to know you.”
Ann wanted to cry. He made it sound so final. During the rehearsals and the little suppers after, she’d gotten the feeling that Phillip liked her quite a bit. At the wedding, he had danced with her more than with anyone else. Yet now, he was leaving without any mention of seeing her again.
Ann went to bed that night wondering what she’d done wrong. If only she looked more like Veronica Lake! But she didn’t, and Phillip didn’t like her enough even to ask for a date. She scarcely shut her eyes that night. When the alarm went off the next morning, she wanted to throw it against the wall.
Exhausted, she dressed with more reluctance than usual for her job at the stocking counter at I. Magnin’s. She envied Ruthie safely launched as a bride. Well, Ann thought, cheered somewhat by the soft spring morning, maybe he’d call. Maybe.
But a week came and went, and the phone didn’t ring for her. She cried into her pillow every night. It was obvious that Phillip just didn’t like her. The only comfort was Ruthie, already back from her honeymoon on romantic Santa Catalina Island. Sitting across from her at Townsend’s Restaurant, Ann found some comfort in being able to pour out her misery.
“I guess I’m just awfully dumb, Ruthie, to have fallen in love with someone who doesn’t even know I’m around. But I really thought he liked me.”
“I’m sure that he does, Ann. Who could help liking you?”
“Well, my stepmother for one. I don’t think I’m all that lovable. And obviously I’m not very desirable, or Phillip would have called.”
“Don’t put yourself down. So what if he doesn’t call? There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”
But at that moment, Ann thought that no one could ever love her, least of all Phillip Coulter. And he was the one she wanted.
But Ann was quite wrong. After Phillip had said goodnight that evening, he crossed the street and stood watching as the light went on in her bedroom. He leaned against a lamppost and lit a cigarette, hoping she might come to her window. When the cigarette burned down to his fingers without a glimpse of her, he turned and walked away.
Although Ann couldn’t know it, she had completely misread Phillip. Not only had he wanted to kiss her, he had become infatuated with her in the brief time they’d known each other.
The reason he had tried to remain aloof was precisely because he liked her so much. And he couldn’t possibly think about becoming seriously involved with a woman, not with his present—and future—obligation to support his parents. Although he’d been lucky enough to get a position after law school graduation working for Levin, Cahn and Smith, one of the most prestigious firms in the city, in reality he was nothing more than a glorified clerk. His salary was so pitiful that there was almost nothing left after the rent and bare necessities were paid. So how in the hell could he think of getting married? And girls like Ann expected marriage. No, he had only one choice—to put her out of his mind.
But every night for the next six weeks he lay in the dark and ached to feel her in his arms. All he could see was her face, those lovely violet eyes, that clear, porcelain skin. The harder he tried to forget her, the more difficult it became. As time passed, he decided he wanted Ann more than anything else in the world.
The truth was that there had been little time for girls in his life, since he had been so busy earning enough to put himself through college and law school. Until he’d met Ann, his celibacy had been annoying, but not a serious problem. But she had evoked a desire he could not extinguish. Where he had gotten the strength to refrain from kissing her the night of Kenny’s wedding, he would never know.