Other Plans by Constance C. Greene

your life for your child?” He’d put one finger on her arm, the way he did when he wanted her full attention. He was getting over the measles and the two of them, trapped in the house, watched a great deal of television.
    â€œWhy do you want to know?” she’d said, shaken by his question, by the intensity with which he’d asked it.
    â€œIt was on television. There was a fireman who said the lady had gone back into her house to find her child and the flames engulfed her. What’s ‘engulfed’ mean?”
    â€œIt means to swallow up,” she said.
    â€œThen the flames swallowed her up.” He took that in. “Does that mean she got burned up?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” she said.
    â€œWell, they found her child was already out of the burning house so the lady didn’t even need to go back. But the fireman said she gave her life for her child. So I wondered if you would do that for me.”
    He waited, finger still on her arm. She chose her words carefully, knowing he needed reassurance, if not comfort.
    â€œI hope so,” she said. “Yes, I would.”
    â€œHow about Leslie?”
    â€œYes, Leslie, too.”
    â€œThat’s what I figured,” he said. He seemed relieved. “That’s exactly what I figured.” A few minutes later, she heard him upstairs, making warlike sounds as he moved his myriad little plastic men through battle maneuvers.
    Something about John’s face tonight had brought that back to her. She took a crumpled tissue from her sleeve and blew her nose. Then she reread the chapter she’d been finishing when John came with his news of being let off the hook. Even after reading it a second time, she still couldn’t remember what she’d read. She turned off the light and, feeling her way in the dark, made her way up the stairs to bed.

7
    Henry was a genuine romantic. He became Ceil’s friend before he became her lover. But before that, they had almost become enemies.
    They worked together in the office of the architect who eventually took Henry on as a junior partner. Ceil had a way of holding her head, thick hair swinging, a way of walking, as if she owned the world, that got to him. When he first laid eyes on her, his breathing actually grew labored and his chest hurt, like a man in the throes of a heart attack. He suggested they have lunch at the drugstore around the corner; they would go Dutch, he said, and have a BLT, which the drugstore did superbly, and a chocolate float.
    Sorry, she was busy. That day and the next. The whole week, in fact. It wasn’t so much the Dutch bit as it was his presumption that she’d be free on such short notice. Henry lunched instead with a frivolous blonde whose brother was a friend from college. Henry paid the check.
    Henry was a Yale man, a fact he did nothing to either conceal or belabor. Yale turned out to be a drawback, as far as Ceil was concerned. Oh, he was debonaire; rangy, square-jawed, with neat fingernails and beautiful manners. Every time they stepped off a curb, his hand cupped her elbow; doors were opened for her as if it were second nature for him to open doors. If she had been a smoker, she knew he’d have lighted every cigarette for her. But she thought him a snob, not realizing until much later that his ways were his own and had nothing at all to do with snobbishness. Gradually, she began to like, rather than resent, the fact that Henry had done well at Yale and was on the fast track at the firm where they worked. She herself had quit a mediocre college after two years, eager to get on with the business of life. Well, that was her somewhat high-minded reason. The real reason she’d quit was that she hated to study, despised taking exams. Years later, the mother of two almost-grown children, she still occasionally dreamed of being alone in a large, echoing hall, bent over her paper, chewing on a pencil, knowing she had none of the answers.