Free Homecoming by Belva Plain Page A

movies. Later she learned that indeed he had been wearing an English suit, bought for him by his parents on their trip to Britain. But that was another story.
    “Is there anything you would care to know about it?” he asked.
    “Well, yes, the price,” she said, which, having been a fine arts major and having recognized all the names on all those walls, she could easily estimate.
    “It is thirty-five thousand dollars. An exceptionally fine example of his work. He died last year, you know.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “His prices are bound to go up, so this is actually a remarkably good investment.”
    She did not reply. The young man had lovely eyes, extraordinary eyes, brown, but yet almost gold around the pupils. Or perhaps it was the light slanting in from the street?
    “Of course I understand that you would only purchase a work like this out of love for it, but still, it is always nice to know that your investment will hold up.”
    He wanted so much to sell it! Naturally; they worked on commissions. The place was hardly busy, either, and there were two other men standing and sitting, the latter idly turning the pages of the catalog. It must be a difficult life, very frustrating.
    “I’ll think about it,” she told him, aware that he must, hundreds of times, have heard the same words from people who were only looking.
    For an indecisive moment they stood there; she saw his glance fall to her hand, to the dazzle of Kevin’s four-carat round-cut diamond engagement ring. When he spoke, there was a touch of hope in his tone. After all, a young woman who owned such a ring—might she not also do more than just think about that snow falling in the woodland brook? Bowing almost imperceptibly, he gave her his card.
    Mark Sachs
, she read.
    “Ellen Byrne. I’ll think about it,” she repeated. “And thank you so much.”
    She walked slowly home up Fifth Avenue, where there were no shops, only the summery park on the left with its carriages, beautiful babies in fashionable strollers, and beautiful dogsbeing led by professional dog-walkers. On the right, all the way to the museum and beyond, rose the limestone walls of apartment houses with green awnings and doormen in maroon uniforms. In one of these she still lived with her parents, there being no sense in setting up an apartment of her own when she was so soon to be married anyway.
    It occurred to her that most likely she would be spending her life in just such an apartment, spacious, quiet, and filled with valuable possessions in simple good taste. Her children would be reared as she had been, sledding in the park and sailing a marvelous boat, given for her seventh birthday, in its pond. Late in the afternoons they would do their homework in their little bedrooms above the side street; the important rooms, living room, library, and master bedroom, would face the park.
    The master bedroom. The term had a masterful sound, almost patriarchal, when you thought about it. And thinking further, it seemed to fit Kevin, who was authoritarian, competent, and very kind, as well.
    On first meeting him her father had observed, “That young man will go far.”
    He had already done so. Although not yet thirty, only four years out of law school, he had been offered a place in the firm’s Paris office. At this moment he was in Paris getting some orientation, after which he would return, they would be married, and go abroad to live for two or three years; then after that, following the usual track, he would return to the New York office and a promotion.
    The prospect of living in France had thrown Ellen, as in a sudden analytic mood she now saw herself, into a kind of rapture. An adolescent rapture. Ever since having been there once with her parents, she had sustained a long love affair with France. She had also sustained a love affair with Kevin.
    They had been casually introduced on the campus of the university at which she was an undergraduate senior and he a graduate of its law