The Husband (17 page)

He couldn’t, so he called Elizabeth. Thank heaven she was home. He gave her a one-minute summary of Adventureland, bowling, Nathan’s, and what Margaret was now doing.

“Can I talk to her?” asked Elizabeth.

The girls chatted on the phone. Then Margaret put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Miss Kilter wants to know if we can come over,” she said.

Peter glanced at his watch.

“She says she lives very close,” said Margaret.

“Let me talk to her,” said Peter.

On the phone he said, “It’s after four. I have to get Margaret home by five.”

He saw the film of disappointment over Margaret’s face.

“Look,” said Peter into the mouthpiece, “compromise. Can you meet us downstairs in five minutes?”

They agreed. Margaret quickly finished putting things away. She instructed Peter to get the refrigerator filled. And to keep the place clean. And to open the window a crack when he was out so the room would air out.

“I think more dirt comes in than air,” he said.

“Never mind.”

Elizabeth met them downstairs, and she talked with Margaret all the way to the subway.

Here’s where I leave you,” Elizabeth said.

Margaret shook Elizabeth’s hand, then looked for Peter to do the same. He did. He wondered what Margaret was thinking.

They descended into the subway. Their train came along in a minute and wasn’t crowded, so they were able to sit side by side. At one point Peter put his hand on Margaret’s, not casually the way he used to, but self-consciously. He quickly withdrew his hand, wondering, when parents separate, what do children feel? They must blame whoever does the leaving.

He had not wanted to be a villain in Margaret’s life. He wanted nothing to change between them.

“Penny for your thoughts,” he said, putting the copper into her hand.

She returned it, saying nothing.

Was she biting her lip?

Was she trying to keep from crying?

They got out of the subway and walked in silence to the house, where, on impulse, Peter lifted Margaret under the arms up the three stairs to the door, something she had always liked him to do. She was like wood in his arms. He put her down.

Peter rang the bell just as Margaret turned the knob. The door was open.

Rose was coming through the door from the kitchen.

“Is Jonathan around?” he asked.

“He’s not back yet,” said Rose.

Peter turned to go.

“I’d like to show you something,” said Rose. “Margaret,” she said, “Janie is playing out back.”

Margaret took the hint.

Rose beckoned Peter to follow her up the stairs. A small alarm went off in his senses.

He followed Rose into the bedroom. She went around behind him to close the door. He heard the sound. He turned to see her pulling the zippered front of her one-piece outfit completely open. She hadn’t a thing on underneath. She stepped out of the suit and came over to him and did something she knew out of long practice would arouse him instantly.

Chapter Ten

Thoughts strode through Peter’s head like lectures.

A woman who has successfully seduced a man before, however long ago, can do the same again.

In sexual relations, past experience with an individual counts more than past experience with other individuals.

If a woman tries to get something by means of sex, and if sex has never been of special moment to her, then what she wants must be important.

Peter thought of fighting back the temptress, as it might have happened in an old movie, with the man all stilts and bones jerkily moving about, getting back into his clothes, fleeing against one wall and then another, hiding under the bed, inside a closet, while a piano banged chase music into every corner of the house.

But Peter, being Peter, was fleeing his own way, by letting her do what she wanted, while his lecturing mind ran wild with propositions.

A rejected wife has the seductive power of a stranger.

Not exactly. Reframe.

A rejected wife has the seductive power of a stranger, plus a catalog of experience.

Rose, he thought, was going through every item in the catalog. If only she knew how distracted he was.

“Why don’t you relax?” she said into his ear.

Why do people say “relax”? Sex was one of the least relaxed experiences mankind was capable of, ordinary people performing an olympian event.
Relaxation is not the route to orgasm.

“Peter,” she was saying, “Peter, Peter, Peter.”

“Rose,” he was tempted to say, “Rose, Rose, Rose,” but it would be too funny. He thought of stopping, getting off the bed, dressing, tipping his hat (what hat?), and leaving.

Sex once begun was the least frustratable of sequences. Unless the equipment failed. Why was his equipment not failing? Why did his body want to finish the process, the sooner the better, but finish?

For the first time he could remember, he thought,
it’s only a lay
. He had heard that from so many men who were regularly and unimportantly unfaithful to the wives, men who kidded him for, as they put it, not getting a piece now and then from another store.

Was Elizabeth his new wife? Was he now, at this moment, committing adultery with Rose?

Peter started to pull out when Rose began a very low rolling sound. Her eyes were shut but her mouth was moaning. He had never seen her fake excitement quite that way. Had she learned it? Had she studied, practiced, was she conscious of what she was trying to do?

He had better stop.

It was too bold a performance to stop.

Get it over with.
He plunged on.
What am I doing here?
On and on, and then, suddenly, the clear sound, footsteps bounding up the stairs.

He stopped.

Rose’s eyes were open with alarm.

Was the door locked?

A knock at the door. Another knock at the door.

“Get up, quick,” said Rose.

Her recovery was instantaneous.

“Yes, yes,” she was saying to the door, fixing her clothes hurriedly and motioning him to get his on as well.

“Hurry up, Mom!” Jonathan was yelling through the door.

“What is it?”

“Hurry up, something’s in the laundry room.”

“Something’s what?”

“Burning in the laundry room. Hurry up!”

Rose closed the door behind her as she left. Peter was still adjusting his clothes. He glanced in the mirror. Okay.

He opened the door.

Jonathan was following his mother down the stairs. Hearing Peter, he stopped and turned. He was obviously startled to see his father coming out of the bedroom.

“Go ahead,” said Peter. “I’ll follow you.”

The boy clattered down the rest of the stairs, Peter following, and then on around through the kitchen and down the basement stairs. Smoke was pouring out of the laundry room.

Rose stood, paralyzed. In a second Peter saw what must have happened. An armload of clothes had been dropped on top of the dryer, and over at the corner, where the dryer-flame burner vented, a part of some garment had caught and was blazing, and now the rest of the bundle was smoldering. He always had said there should have been a second fire extinguisher inside the house, not just in the garage. Damn! Peter quickly got to the other side of the basement and the garage doorway. He yanked the small extinguisher, intended for emergencies at his workbench, out of its holder and quickly tried to remind himself of the instructions as he hurried back to the laundry room.

“The fire alarm is on the corner,” said Peter to Jonathan. “Pull it. Hurry.”

“Go out the front door,” he yelled at Rose, “so you can direct the firemen down here when they come.”

She watched him turn the extinguisher on and went up the stairs. The smoke smarted his eyes. He didn’t seem to be able to get close enough to what was burning. Now the damn extinguisher wouldn’t stop. Maybe it’s not supposed to, once it’s started. With one hand he got out his handkerchief and held it under the tap, and then, holding the soaked handkerchief against his face, he got closer to the burning bundle. He remembered to aim not at the smoke, but at what was causing the smoke, zeroing in on the point of combustion, barely able to see for the tears streaming out of his eyes, coughing terribly, wondering how much the flames would spread before the firemen got here. What was keeping them? It seemed interminable, as he had to back off more and more because of the choking smoke, his small extinguisher no longer effective at that distance. What to do?

A strong arm yanked him back and motioned him out of the way.

The fireman in his helmet seemed a giant as he leveled a large extinguisher at the flames. At the laundry room door, there were two others, one with an ax. Peter hoped he wouldn’t have to use the ax.

The third fireman, he now saw, was holding the neck of a gigantic hose, which wound its way up the stairs. Peter went up the stairs to what he wanted most—fresh air.

Margaret and Jonathan were near the door, where another fireman was guiding the large hose snaking out to the street and being connected to the hydrant. Peter gulped the air. The neighbors were out in force, especially the children, all of whom seemed excited by the turn of events, with the singular exception of Jonathan, who was looking at his father in a very strange way.

“Are you all right, Dad?” asked Margaret.

He nodded, wiping his face now with the wet handkerchief. “Just smoke.”

Peter sat down on the stairs at the front of the house. Some of the neighbors knew, didn’t they?

As soon as Peter felt his breathing coming normally, though ever so deeply, he went back inside, out of the way of the stares. He slumped into his chair. He didn’t have any idea how much time passed till he looked up and saw one of the firemen, the one with the ax, coming around from the kitchen.

“It’ll be okay, mac,” said the fireman. “Gotta watch those gas dryers.”

Peter hadn’t really thought about gas dryers even when he was living with one, but the fireman was being friendly, and he couldn’t say that was the woman’s department or that he was just upstairs for a quick one with the lady of the house.

“Are you the owner?” asked the fireman.

Ah, Peter could have given a long and complex response to that unanswerable question.

“Yes,” he said.

“You better let your insurance company know.”

“Thanks,” said Peter and went downstairs to the basement.

The two firemen in the laundry room looked like they were washing clothes. Each was bent over one of the twin sinks, kneading away at blackened garments. One of them said, “You always gotta do this on a laundry fire. Burned clothes rubbed so every cinder is out dead. Otherwise, we leave and then the fire starts up all over again.”

“I see,” said Peter.

“Then it’s our necks in the wringer,” continued the talkative one. “They find out who covered the first alarm, and did they rinse and wring the clothes.”

“You’re doing fine,” said Peter.

“Almost finished,” said the fireman, wringing a wet bundle that had once been a nightdress of Rose’s.

As they finished up, Peter himself checked around to make sure there wasn’t a spark left anywhere. It would be some mess to clean up.

He offered a five-dollar bill to the talkative fireman. “I do appreciate you fellows coming to the rescue. Here, get some cigars for the guys.”

“We’re not allowed to,” said the fireman, taking the money. “But, okay. Thanks.”

“Thanks,” said the second fireman, his sole verbal contribution to the proceedings. All three of them, with a last look at the hopeless mess in the laundry room, went upstairs, Peter leading the way.

The hose was almost completely gathered up by that time and was being reloaded onto the huge red truck. It seemed an awfully big vehicle for the job that had to be done. Well, thought Peter, you never can tell the size of the job in advance, can you? And the men had to get there somehow; might as well be on the fire truck. He wondered how much it cost the city to douse his laundry room.

The fireman who seemed in charge, and who had not once stirred from the command car which had followed rather than preceded the truck, now came up to Peter with some advice. “Those dinky extinguishers don’t do much good. If I were you, I’d get a Blazebuster unit. Keep one in the basement and one in the garage. Get two.” He handed Peter a leaflet on Blazebusters. Peter thanked him and noticed the code key rubber stamped on the corner of the coupon. He wondered how much of a commission the fireman got for each of the extinguishers purchased this way.

The neighbors were dispersing. One or two waved at him, and he waved back.

Peter closed the large front door of the fortress. It seemed very quiet in the living room. Rose, sitting in her favorite chair, seemed remarkably cheerful. The kids waited for him to say something. He was very tired.

“I guess it’s okay if I sit down,” he said, half to himself.

He wondered how he would describe this day to Elizabeth. Would he ever?

“You were real good, Dad,” said Jonathan.

“Thanks,” said Peter wearily. “When I was six or seven, I wanted to be a fireman. Just didn’t think I’d have to wait this long.”

Margaret and Jonathan’s laugh was tense. Peter sat still.

“Well,” said Rose.