Promises (22 page)

Margaret nodded. “I know. But we’re all so busy. I sometimes think we could use four or five more hours in our day.”

“Well, we women could, anyway. The men have it so much easier. Home on the dot every night to eat and relax while we’re hardly through before midnight.”

“Some men, yes, but you don’t mean the men at ADS, that’s for sure.”

“Why, what do you mean?” asked Ruth Hudson in surprise.

“The late hours! All the night meetings. I think the men here work very hard.”

“There are not that many meetings,” said Madeline Jenks.

Now Margaret was surprised. “Not many? Two or three every week. Of course,” she said, mindful that she must not seem to be complaining, “the work has to be done. Goodness knows, they do marvelous work. Oh, but yesterday! Half past one in the morning! In all that storm. I thought Adam would never get home from the office. It was awful.”

The other two women said nothing. Then the men’s
conversation took their attention; somebody rose to give a brief welcoming speech, and the orchestra struck up for dancing.

Adam, not liking to dance, moved stiffly around the floor with Margaret. After that she had three or four dances with assorted men, one nice old man whose wife was on crutches and a couple of young ones who had come without a companion. She danced well and was complimented for it.

When the time came to leave, she made a mental assessment of the evening: Like her life it had been satisfactory—except for its one bewildering, huge, miserable trouble.

Adam sat in his office unable to concentrate on the work that lay piled before him. The pounding in his head had begun to nauseate him. The pounding questions would not and could not possibly let him alone. They were crying for a solution. Should he end it with Randi? On the one hand: yes. He should never have begun with her. On the other hand: no. They loved each other. But Margaret was so visibly distraught; he thought, knowing her as he did, that her heart must be aching now, and surely it would break entirely if she should find out. As for the children—he could but shudder at what the news would do to them. And yet, how could they possibly go on as they were? The mood of the house was grim and dark; whenever light did flash through the gloom, it was artificial light and all of them must feel that it was.… Besides, how long would it be before his deception would become known? And he thought of Fred, hovering silently in the background, and of last night’s narrow escape.

It was a mess, a dreadful mess. He got up to stare out of the window, as he tended to do whenever he needed to think hard, and as if there were some solution to be found in the air or on the street. But the air was empty and the street was banked with dirty snow.

One of the secretaries knocked and entered with a message. “Mr. Jenks wants to see you in his office.”

Arrogant bastard! Before his promotion Jenks would have come to Adam’s room to say whatever he wanted to say. Now because of it he had suddenly become superior to Adam.

Two men were apparently waiting for Jenks in his outer office. Jenks had a larger office now, one for himself, and the outer one for his secretary. The two rooms were separated by a glass partition.

Jenks began. “I hear you’re not so happy at ADS.”

In utter astonishment Adam stammered, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You complain of overwork.”

“I never—why, that’s absurd. Who told you such a thing?”

Jenks looked him in the eye. “All those late-night meetings. After one o’clock in the morning in the storm, your wife said.”

“My wife?” repeated Adam.

He cursed his blasted tendency to break out into a sweat. And just as he had that time on the street with Fred Davis, he went wet. And he stared back at Jenks.

“Don’t be angry with your wife. She meant no harm, Crane. It was just idle talk. I understand that. Or should I say ‘innocent’ talk?”

“I don’t know what Margaret could have meant. I never discuss the company or my work here, even at
home.” The words emerged in a mumble. “I like my work here, you should know that. I’m loyal.”

“Be that as it may, any talk of long hours and late meetings makes us look inefficient or on the rocks, which we definitely are not. As
you
know, as you should well know, Crane.” Jenks’s voice rang loud enough to be heard beyond the office. “So I would advise you to see to it that neither you nor anyone in your household does it again.”

“Of course not, of course not. It was an error, not seriously meant. A complete misunderstanding.”

“As to your private life, that’s your concern. As long as it doesn’t interfere with your work here. Is that clear, Crane?”

He despises me, Adam thought. A C student, I’ll wager, from a tenth-rate college in Squeedunk.

“It’s clear,” he said, still mumbling.

“Good,” said Jenks.

The two men in the outer office looked at Adam and quickly looked away. They had heard the whole thing. He had been humiliated, like a schoolboy who has been sent to the principal’s office. And as if naked he walked down the corridor to his room, where he sat with both hands pressed over his burning face.

He seethed with the outrage of it. What I should do, he thought, is march right back there and say, “You could have talked to me in private like a gentleman, or better still, you could have ignored the whole business instead of repeating all that silly women’s gabble. And as to your allusions to my private life—” But of course, he could not march back there and say anything at all.

If he could only escape from his whole complicated life! Life pulling at him from every direction! Just go
someplace with Randi, some quiet, simple place, sit in the sun and walk through pine woods in the shade without having to
think.
He was always
thinking
!

And he experienced now a bad sensation, a loss of equilibrium, as if he were falling, tumbling, with nothing to grab on to. If their mutual dislike had turned Jenks into an enemy, there was no telling what might happen. Among all the rumors that buzzed like bees around a hive was one about some young genius of twenty-four who had been researching software at the state university and was being wooed by a few companies, including ADS. A fellow like him could move in here with his team and turn the place inside out.…

The dinner was about to be served when he got home. He had driven three times around the block trying to slow his heartbeat and still his fury.

“I thought you were going to be late again,” Margaret said. “We were just going to start without you. They all have so much homework tonight.”

“Let them eat without me. I’ve no appetite. I want to see you upstairs now, anyway.”

She followed him into their bedroom. Filled with alarm, she sank down on the dressing-table bench and waited.

Still wearing his outer coat, Adam stood frowning with his hands in his pockets, jingling coins and keys. He was obviously so disturbed about something that he was unable to begin.

“Listen,” he said roughly. “Listen to me. Jenks called me in today. He treated me like dirt. You told his wife I wasn’t happy in the company.”

“What? Are you crazy? I never said that. Do you think I’m a lunatic that I would say such a thing?”

“You said something. They didn’t make it up out of whole cloth.”

What could she have said? Whatever it was, it must have been trivial indeed, for she had to strain to recall it. Adam was glaring at her, making it harder to pull her thoughts together.

“Well, I’m waiting, Margaret.”

“All I remember is saying something about how hard the people work at ADS. It was really a compliment. Oh, yes, I mentioned all the meetings and how you got caught in the storm the other night. That was all.”

“That’s all? All?” Adam’s cheeks and eyebrows, his whole face, seemed to rise toward his hairline. “You damn fool. You utter damn fool. You may do fine in the chem lab teaching a bunch of teenagers, but you haven’t got the faintest notion of the real world, have you? Shooting your mouth off in front of those women—”

“I did not shoot my mouth off, Adam. I never do. I can’t help it if they chose to exaggerate a passing, innocuous remark.”

“You were talking to Jenks’s wife, of all people! If I’m transferred out of here to some backwater or even fired, God forbid, I’ll have you to thank for it. Do you realize that? Do you?”

She stood up. He had never in all their years spoken to her with such fury, such venom. He was breathing heavily and still glaring. She thought she saw hatred in his eyes. At that her adrenaline began to pour, and rising to her full height, she brought herself up almost to the level of that hatred.

“Now you listen to me,” she cried, seizing hold of his coat lapels. “I’ve had just about enough from you. If you’re sick, and I do believe you are, go get some help, as I’ve asked you twenty times to do. But sick or not, I won’t take this from you anymore. I can’t stand the way you treat me! What is this about? Who are you? You’re not here, you’re someplace else where I can’t find you. Where are you hiding? I’ve been fighting clouds and shadows, and I’m tired of it. I’ve tried to be patient, to understand that there’s something wrong with you, yet there’s a limit—”

“Oh, you’ve got a lot to complain about, you have. Go ask other women, women whose husbands come home and raise hell over every little thing, while I go out quietly to work in the yard or stay in and teach the children at the computer. Do I fight? Do I ever raise my voice?”

“It would be better if you did once in a while. At least it would be more human. We would know you were here. What is the mystery about you? Why won’t you talk about yourself, anyway? How long can I go on feeling as alone as I have been feeling? I try, I try.…” She began to cry. “Why do you treat me like this, blaming me for something I didn’t do and would never do? Why do you hate me, Adam?—because I know you do. I see it in your cold eyes.”

“I don’t hate you. You’re being ridiculous. It’s laughable.”

“I don’t think so. Laughable? There’s been mighty little laughter in this house for a long, long time. When I think of the way it used to be …” She stopped and wiped her cheeks.

A momentous change was taking shape, as something
previously unthinkable, and therefore denied, insisted upon returning. And she looked around the room as if there, in the familiarity of the wallpaper with its yellow butterflies or the pictures of her parents in their double frame or the books on the night table, she might find either agreement with or final denial of this unthinkable thing.

There was no denial. And she said, speaking shrilly and loud, “There’s somebody else.”

Adam threw up his hands, addressing an invisible audience. “I come home to tell her that I may be in hot water at the office on account of her stupid remarks, and all she can do is accuse me of having ‘another woman.’ Does that make any sense? Does it?”

There was indeed no logic to it; the facts had no connection with each other, and yet the idea had taken hold, and she could only repeat it.

“It’s true! Yes, it is. It happens to women every day, so why not to me?”

“Not true, Margaret,” Adam said calmly. “Not.”

“It’s been eighteen years. Time for a change, a new woman, right? Who is she, Adam? Who? Who is the woman who’s going to take my place?”

“You’re hysterical. You’re making a fool of yourself.”

When she saw him looking beyond her, she turned and saw the group in the hall outside the door: the girls and Danny were standing there in numb astonishment. Now she was struck with horror: her children had caught their parents in a forbidden intimacy, almost as if they had come upon them in bed making love.

“Oh,” she cried, “oh, what are you doing here? We—it’s only a foolish argument, it’s nothing. Go have your dinner.”

And Adam echoed, “Yes. Go downstairs. Who told you to come up here? There’s nothing to worry about. Go.”

Obediently, they started to the stairs, but not before Margaret had seen Megan’s stricken face.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” Adam said. “Did you see Megan? You’ve given your young daughter something nice to remember, haven’t you?”

Margaret sobbed. Her nerves were going. She who had never had “nerves,” who was known for being “steady,” had just disgraced herself. She dropped her face into her hands and sat there shaking.

How long she sat, she did not know. When she looked up, Adam had removed his coat and was sitting on the bench watching her. He spoke to her quietly.

“We’re making too much of all this. I’m sorry if I began it, coming home frazzled and taking it out on you. I’m sure Jenks exaggerated that business. It’s like him to do. I’m sorry.”

She wiped her cheeks and nodded.

“But as to that other, the thing you said—it’s not true.”

“I don’t know why I thought—for a moment there, I was so sure,” she murmured. “And then I saw the children, and I knew it couldn’t possibly be true. You wouldn’t do that to them. I know you wouldn’t.”

“If I could help it,” Adam said gravely, “I would never hurt them.”

Whenever he spoke like that, with his dignity, his gravity, and the wise touch of his consoling smile, he touched her heart, touched it as he had done when she was seventeen.

“I’ll go down and straighten them out. They must be
terrified. But they have to learn that sometimes people’s emotions make them say outlandish things. They haven’t heard much of that in this house.”

“No,” she said, “no, they haven’t.”

“Perhaps that wasn’t all to the good. Perhaps they would be better off with a little toughening.”

This talk is becoming ambiguous, she thought, and my head aches. Probably I’ve been holding too much in for too long. And so I went a bit crazy just now. That’s all that happened.

“I’ll bring up something for you to eat.”

“Why? Do I look too frightful to go downstairs?”

“Not frightful. You just look as if you’ve been crying, that’s all. Stay here and let me wait on you for a change.”

“All right. And explain to them, will you?”

“Of course.”

He left her sitting quietly, under control, thoughts streaming through her tired head. He had spoken so gently just now, so kindly, like the Adam she knew. And yet she was quite aware that he had still not touched her flesh. Even a cheek or a hand laid upon either of hers would have meant so much. It was strange, all so strange.