Duet for Three (12 page)

“Oh, it's not bad. Mostly just a matter of paint and wallpaper. Can you tell me where's the best place to look?”

Mrs. Ames laughed, all white teeth and dark curly hair. “The best place, I don't know. The only place is Sinclair Hardware down on the next block. He'll have what you need, and if he doesn't you're out of luck.” The bell over the door tinkled, and another customer came in. “You look around and see what you need,” and she moved away saying, “Good morning Mrs. Johnson, and what can we get for you today?” For an instant Aggie was lonely; as if she'd lost a friend.

Starting from scratch to stock a house was quite a chore. They needed everything. It wasn't like home, where you just went to the basement or the root cellar for whatever was required, or made it. She didn't even have ingredients for baking.

Mrs. Ames returned. “My gracious, it'll take a while to fill all this.”

“But you can send it this afternoon?”

“Oh yes. I'll just start an account for you, shall I? We do up the bills every two weeks.”

“That's fine. Thank you.”

“Good luck at Sinclair's. I hope you find what you want.”

Oh, after all it was an ordinary town, nothing so frightening. A friendly voice, a pleasant beginning. The little stores, all built together, followed each other plunkety-plunk along the street — a pharmacy, a milliner's, a women's dress shop, a tailor's and a barber's, a bank, a restaurant, and across the street, for heaven's sake, a tavern of all things, right out in the open. The sun was warm. She suspected her walk had a jauntiness to it, and wondered if the teacher would find it lacking dignity. The idea made her smile.

Still. She paused outside the hardware. She could not pretend he wasn't going to be awfully upset. Certainly he'd made his meaning clear: he liked the rooms the way they were.

On the other hand, he wasn't there all day. His territory was the school, whatever went on when he went out the door. And had she not talked, for some years, about the home she would have? Much of this venture might not be working out precisely as foreseen, but surely this could.

Had he not blamed her for the lack of food on their trip? Had he not considered it her responsibility? And if she was responsible for such homely things, surely she must be responsible for the walls and floors as well?

The store smelled dry, with a touch of sharpness — sawdust, maybe, and bags and packages of powdered plaster, and liquids like shellac and paint. She might not necessarily buy anything today, but there was nothing wrong with looking.

Except that almost right away she found the perfect paper: pale blue with small cream flowers in a pattern. She saw it immediately on three walls of the front room, with the fourth wall painted cream. The difference that would make! Perfect in another way, too; both light, for her taste, and surely also dignified, for his. “You've decided then?” asked a man who might be Mr. Sinclair or not, but who did not introduce himself.

“Yes, please. I should have measured; I'm not sure how much I'll need. At least a dozen rolls, I expect.”

“Well, there's always more. That's not one of our more popular ones. Not,” he added quickly, “that there's anything wrong with it, I like it myself. Just, people seem to be going more for bigger patterns these days.”

“I'll want paint to match, enough for a wall. But then, it'll take several coats I expect,” she added doubtfully, recalling the nasty dark green.

“No trouble. Do you want it delivered this afternoon?”

What a luxury, these unexpected pleasures of living in a town: that one could walk down a street, go into stores and point at this or that, and go away and have things magically appear later on one's doorstep.

Not today, though. She had to do a little thinking about the teacher and how to approach this.

“Tomorrow morning? Early?”

“First thing, if you want. Eight-thirty, nine?”

“Nine would be best.” Just to be sure he was gone. Just in case she didn't mention it tonight.

Back in the house she stood in the front room imagining it tomorrow. A day from now it would be entirely altered. Oh, but she would have to work fast to get so much done that it could not be undone. So, she realized, she wasn't going to tell him. Never mind. She'd already seen him angry. There were no surprises in that direction.

Still, she took special care with supper and was quietly polite and didn't mind too much when he made another swift appearance in her room and vanished. “Well,” she thought, “if that's all he wants.” It wasn't much, and it also seemed not to have much to do with her. On the other hand, a day ahead spent accomplishing something was exciting. She pictured other things she might do, plans for other rooms.

She began as soon as he was out of the house in the morning: moving furniture away from the walls, covering it with sheets, wrapping a scarf around her hair. When all the paint and wallpaper arrived, she had it piled in the front hall. There was so much. Where should she begin, to get the most accomplished? Paint the wall — easier than dealing with the paper, and faster, and by the end of the day it might be dry enough for the second coat. It took an hour, and while it now looked only peculiar, the green showing through like damp spots, the room had begun to grow and brighten.

The wallpaper, though, was a chore; all the matching of delicate flowers really was a trick, and she wouldn't have quite enough to finish. But to alter the spirit of the place in such a broad fashion, to stand back and see that she had made this change, that was really something. She didn't even stop for lunch.

It was almost done. She would do the last part, which would involve moving his precious books so that she could get behind the shelves, tomorrow. It would be nice to get the second coat of paint on, though; would give a much better idea of how the room would be.

“Whatever,” she heard his astonished voice from the doorway, “do you think you're doing?” For a man who put stock in words, and who had told her they should be used precisely and not wasted, that seemed a fairly unnecessary question. Any fool could see not only what she thought she was doing, but what she had in fact done.

She stepped back from her work, turned and smiled brightly. There were streaks of paint across her forehead and one cheek, and her hands were sticky, and wallpaper paste had worked into her knuckles and beneath her fingernails. “It's nice, isn't it? Much more cheerful. Of course, it's not quite finished.”

“But I didn't say you could do this.” Blank astonishment, followed by outrage. “This is
my
house. Who said you could change it?” His house, as if she had painted something that was really his, like decorating his body with stripes, or drawing daisies on his chest.

“I live here too.”

“I want it the way it was.”

“Too late, I'm afraid.” How airily, how daringly she spoke. “Anyway, wait till you see it finished, you'll see how much better it looks. It's just a bit funny now with the green showing through on this wall. The paper's nice, isn't it? Pretty, but dignified.”

“But how could you do this without my permission?” He still couldn't seem to believe this.

“Why would I need your permission?”

“Because you're my wife. You don't just go ahead and do things without asking me.”

So she was owned, like a house and some furniture and a bunch of books? “Oh, don't be so silly,” she said, impatient now, stalking past him. “Watch out for wet paint. I'm going to get cleaned up for supper. Only soup and sandwiches, I'm afraid.”

She could feel rage thundering into all the nooks and crannies of her body, making her tremble so that it was hard to do up the buttons of the dress she was changing into. She was no servant here. Who did he think she was?

“And how,” he resumed over the soup, “were you going to pay for all this?”

“I had Sinclair's — that's the hardware store — put it on a bill for you. We have an account there now and at the grocery.”

“So I'm to pay for it. I don't have a say in what my house looks like but I have to pay for whatever you choose to do to it?”

She shrugged. It was a matter of tactics: what would irritate him most? As when she fell asleep smiling in the buggy, she chose to be calm. “It's up to you, I suppose, whether you pay or not. But you probably should. I don't expect it's a good thing for a teacher to have bad debts.”

So here were the newlyweds, together in their kitchen. Not quite as she had pictured it.

(“It was like knitting a sweater,” she told Frances, “and having it get out of control, so you wind up with two necks and six arms and all the patterns muddled with flowers and stripes and diamonds — you could knit and knit and never make sense of it. But of course you couldn't stop knitting, that wasn't done, so you just had this — mess — you had to keep working at as best you could.”)

There was no question of going back home. They would still love her in their way, as she loved them in her way; but she was supposed to be gone, taken care of. They were even proud of how she'd been taken care of, moving off to a new, foreign sort of life. It would hurt them, and certainly dismay them, if she returned. And she would be something even worse than a spinster: a no longer chaste woman without a husband. Unheard of; or, if heard of, a disgrace.

She could see surviving here by caving in. She supposed that was an alternative. Or she could
not
give in, in which case either he would have to, or this house would be a battlefield. Well, it was early days. She smoothed her dress over her hips as if she were patting armor into place.

“You'll stop right where you are,” he commanded, regarding her sternly over his sandwich. “Whatever you'd planned, just don't bother.”

“I can hardly leave the front room the way it is, unless you like it streaked. That would really impress people, wouldn't it?” Was she so daring? That's what she remembers saying, anyway.

She went upstairs as soon as she had done the dishes, while he did his schoolwork at the table in the dining room. She could feel the muscles in her arms, shoulders, back, and legs tightening. By morning they would be cramped. Tomorrow she would finish off the front room.

Then what? Now that he had ordered her to stop, she could not. He would think, if she did, that she had learned obedience. Compromise, then. She could let him have the dining room, where he did his work, and his bedroom.

“Don't touch anything else,” he warned at breakfast. “Don't you dare do anything else.” She sipped her tea, said nothing. “Did you hear me? Finish the front room, since you have to, but no more.”

“Of course I heard you.”

Animals marked their territory by peeing around the edges. She was marking hers with the smell of paint.

She did her room a dusty pink, and liked it so well she did the third, still-unused bedroom with what was left. He could keep his military blue, if that was what he wanted. He came home sniffing at the fumes, but did not comment. Maybe he thought she had only finished the front room. He might never notice the change in hers, since he only saw it in the dark.

That left the kitchen, now grey with brown trim (what sort of people were those Campbells, to have lived like this?). Especially now, with the rest lightened, it was heart-sinking to go into it. And, after all, the kitchen was clearly hers. He had no interest in it, did not have to spend hours in it every day. Not that that would make a difference. There was no getting around it; this would be mutiny.

Should there not be a middle ground here between his way and hers? There must be techniques, or how did people live together? One needed patience, discretion and time, she supposed. It must be like dealing with stubborn children: one humored them, or tricked them. But there were no children here; only two grown-ups, both wilful and stubborn and possibly spoiled.

The kitchen must be yellow, she decided, to make it seem like sunshine despite the shading trees out back.

She worked nervously and swiftly. She needed, again, to have a great deal done by the time he got home. She wouldn't say she was frightened — never frightened — but she was tense, anticipating battle. “It will not be all his fault,” she thought. She was definitely goading him.

It was a matter of power, that's what it came down to. Marriage, surely, should not be reduced to that? His power was that she would dress up for teas with the parents of his pupils, and would smile graciously and probably make cupcakes and those fancy sandwiches with the crusts cut off. She would do his washing and his ironing, and prepare his meals and keep the house tidy and clean, and allow his thin body with its peculiar spasms to enter her room and her body at night. Her power was that none of this would touch her, if she didn't want it to.

She was raised, after all, to be a wife, and knew the job down pat. Also, she had a certain pride, that she could darn the heel of a sock so that it wasn't lumpy, or make the perfect banana bread. She had skills that were called for here and a job to perform. But that was only her part of the bargain, in exchange for which she received a roof and a name. Naturally, beyond that there ought to be love, at least fondness, perhaps passion, and maybe joy, but none of that, she supposed, was essential to the bargain. At least defiance was passion of sorts, and whatever his response was, it would likely be passionate also.