Wives and Lovers (13 page)

“I didn't say I was smart. I only want to be sure. I suppose I'm jealous of you, but if I tell you that you'll only say I have no right to be jealous of you. Which is perfectly true.”

“Well, it is.”

“I said it first,” George said flatly. “Where do you want to go for a drink?”

“Anywhere.”

“You know what? I'd like to see you drunk sometime, Ruby. I bet you can be pretty vicious.”

“
You'll
never find out,” she said with a sharp laugh.

“I wouldn't want to. I like you better the way you are, so full of secrets you're bursting at the seams.”

“You certainly have some funny ideas about me, Mr. Anderson. I can't understand why you want to take me out all the time, when all you do is quarrel with me. Maybe you're just a bully.”

“I'd hate to think that.”

“And whenever we're out together all you want to talk about is me and what's the matter with me and what a funny girl I am. I don't talk about you like that.”

“That's because you're not interested.”

“Why can't we ever talk about something else for a change? I'm—I'm so
sick
of myself I never even want to hear my own name again.” She covered her face with her hands, and with her closed eyes she saw Gordon looking at her with such quiet loathing that she wanted to tear at her own face for inspiring such a look. “I'm so sick of myself I could die. I hate—”

“Be quiet,” George said harshly. “That's a hell of a way to talk.”

“I hate my own face, I hate it so much I'd like to slash it with a razor, I'd like to slash everything, everything I see!”

He pulled the car over to the curb and turned off the ignition. He said, with pain in his voice, “That's kid stuff, Ruby, stop it.”

“A lot you know about it!”

“I do. You're just depressed. You'll snap out of it.”

She shook her head over and over again, refusing to be comforted. Powerless, he listened to her flow of words: it was a bad world, with bad people in it, she was as bad as the rest, worse, hateful.

Finally he started the car again. He didn't know what to do about Ruby. He couldn't force himself to try and stop her hysteria with a slap, and he couldn't take her back to Mrs. Freeman's until she calmed down.

He thought suddenly of Hazel. Her house was less than half a mile away; he could stop there and leave Ruby in the car while he got some whisky from Hazel. Hazel wouldn't mind, as long as she didn't know it was for Ruby.

“I'll stop off and get you something to drink,” George said. “It will make you feel better.”

“A drink—
you
think a drink will cure anything, any­thing in the world—”

“It helps, sometimes.”

“It can't help me, nothing can.”

“Let's try it.”

“You don't know, you don't
know—”

“I don't want to know. Just take it easy.”

She kept silent until he parked the car in front of Hazel's white stucco house. Then she said, in a low voice, “You're being very kind to me. It's no use, though.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know, it's just no use.”

“We'll see.”

He got out and walked around the lane to the back of the house. Parked beside the fence there was a car he didn't recognize, a black Cadillac with a monogram on the driver's door which was too elaborate to be deciphered at one glance.

George passed the car and went through the gate toward the back door. The moon had come up and it hung like a fruit among the top branches of the oak tree behind the garage. From the garage itself there came the scurrying and bustling noises of the wood rats as they raced along the ceiling and up and down the walls. Sometimes when George used to get his car out of the garage in the mornings he found their tiny paw marks in the dust on the engine hood. Aside from the paw marks and the dust they shook down from the ceiling, the wood rats did no harm. Their noise disturbed Hazel, though, and she used to go out now and then and bang on the garage roof with a broom. The wood rats froze in their tracks while Hazel banged away, breaking one or two of the tiles in her fury; but as soon as she returned to the house they started again, louder than ever, until the garage seemed to be cracking open. George had never been able to trap a wood rat, in fact he had never even seen one. The evidence that they existed at all was purely circumstantial, the noise and the paw marks on the roof tiles or on the engine hood of the car, like the tracks of the invisible man.

The sounds from the garage suddenly ceased, as though the rats had sensed the presence of an intruder. They seemed to be watching from under the tiles, listening, waiting for the stranger to leave the yard. George was struck by a feeling of loss and resentment. He thought, by God, I used to
live
here, this was
my
yard. I planted those two orange trees myself, with my own hands. And the hedge too . . . the hedge has been clipped, it looks too neat, like Willie's mustache . . . I ought to get back to work, what in hell am I doing here anyway?

The hedge had grown, as thick as a wall and as high as Ruby. He looked at it as he crossed the yard, feeling almost betrayed, as if he'd half-expected it to stop growing during his absence.

He went up the steps of the back porch and rapped, hes­itantly, on the screen door.

Harold and Josephine were at the kitchen table, making sandwiches. Harold was buttering bread and Josephine was slicing some meat loaf. Whenever a crumb of meat fell on the table Josephine picked it up and popped it in her mouth in a natural, unself-conscious way. They were both sunburned from their afternoon in the sailboat, and a row of freckles had sprung up out of nowhere along the bridge of Josephine's nose.

George rapped again and said, “Hey.”

“Well, for crying out loud.” Harold put down the butter knife and wiped his hands on the apron of Ruth's that he was wearing. “Come on in. Josephine, look who's here.”

“I see him,” Josephine said placidly. “Hello, George. What brings you to these parts?”

“I just dropped in to see Hazel for a minute.”

“She's got company.”

“Yeah, I saw the car.”

Harold whistled. “Some car, eh? They say a Caddy like that will do over a hundred miles an—”

“How fast a car goes doesn't matter,” Josephine said, giving her husband a glance of disapproval. “If its owner happens to be married. Which he is.”

“Sure, honey. Sure—”

“Mr. Cooke's interest in Hazel is purely businesslike, and vice versa. After all, she used to work for Mr. Cooke and there's nothing more to it than that.”

Although both Harold and George were inclined to doubt this statement, neither of them cared to argue with Josephine. She had reached the stage where every remark, every incident, had a personal application for her. Harold knew this, and George sensed it.

The two men exchanged glances, then Harold said, hurriedly, “Say George, I didn't get a chance to thank you for the boat this afternoon.”

“That's all right.”

“We had a wonderful time. Josephine wasn't scared a bit. Were you, Josephine?”

“I was so, at first,” Josephine said. “I would have been scared to death without Harold. Harold kept asking me if I was getting seasick, and finally
he
was the one got sea­sick!”

Harold looked very proud, as if he had deliberately shouldered the burden of seasickness to spare Josephine. “Josie makes a swell sailor. You'd think, with the baby and everything, she'd feel queasy.”

“Well, I didn't, not one bit. And don't think those waves weren't high, George. They came at us, whoosh, didn't they, Harold?”

She and Harold exchanged contented smiles. Together they had braved a new element, the sea. They had fought and won, and now after their shared victory they were relaxed, united.

“You're both looking fine,” George said.

“I'm certainly not losing any weight, am I?” Josephine laughed. “The doctor thinks maybe I'll have twins.”

“Holy cats.”

“That's what I told Harold, holy cats. But Harold says it'd be sort of a bargain to get two for the price of one. Considering how much everything costs nowadays, it'd be nice to get a bargain for a change . . . How about a sandwich, George?”

“No thanks.”

“Well, the least you can do is sit down and make your­self at home.”

“I can't. I'm in kind of a hurry.” George shifted his weight from one foot to another, already regretting his decision to bring Ruby here. Everything was so normal—the warm little kitchen, the pungent smell of the meat loaf, Harold with his pride and Josephine with her unborn child—that by contrast Ruby seemed eccentric, even depraved. “I've got someone waiting for me in the car.”

“Aha.”

“I'd like to speak to Hazel a minute, though.”

“Sure thing,” Harold said. “I'll get her.”

When Harold had gone, Josephine said, casually, “Is it anyone we know?”

“No.”

“I just thought if it was, bring her in.”

“Thanks just the same.”

“If you ask me, George, you're acting sort of jumpy.”

“Not as jumpy as I feel.”

“What's the trouble?”

“Call it business.”

“I didn't mean to be nosy,” Josephine said rather stiffly. “It just surprises me when a man of your iron constitu­tion starts acting jumpy.”

“I left my iron constitution behind years ago.”

“I wish you wouldn't say things like that. It makes me nervous. After all, I'm not terribly much younger than you are, and here I am, going to have twins.” She turned to him, her eyes suddenly anxious, seeking reassurance. “Maybe I waited too long and my bones are too set or something?”

“Baloney,” George said cheerfully. “Listen, any time you're in doubt about your health take a look in the mir­ror. Go on, do it now.”

“No.”

“Go on. Look at yourself.”

Awkwardly, Josephine rose from her chair and ap­proached the small oblong mirror hanging between the two windows over the sink. Her eyes were clear and glowing, her dark hair glossy, her cheeks pink from the sun.

“I
do
look healthy, don't I, George?”

“Wonderful.”

“There can't be anything wrong if I look so healthy.”

Harold came back with Hazel, who was wearing her pearl choker and her black crepe dress, an outfit she re­served for sober and important functions. She looked warm and strained, and when she walked she took mincing little steps because her feet hurt; flesh bulged from her new patent-leather pumps like rising dough.

“I tried to get you on the phone,” she said to George. “Willie told me you weren't there. You just up and blew, didn't say a word to anybody, just blew. That's no way to run a business, George.”

“I'll make a note of that. Thanks loads.”

“Whenever you're in the wrong you always sound like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know like what. Whenever you make a mistake you get sore. Isn't that right, Harold?”

“You leave Harold out of it,” Josephine said sharply. “Harold and me, we mind our own business. Live and let live.”

“All right, all right, skip it.” Hazel dabbed at her moist forehead with the back of her hand. “My God, it's hot. Come on out and I'll show you the yard.”

“I saw it,” George said. “It looks fine.”

“Cost me eleven bucks. I need some air.” She opened the screen door and went outside on the porch. George followed her, feeling a little hurt that she wasn't in a friendlier mood. “The place looks pretty good, eh?”

“Just great.”

“You don't sound very enthusiastic. Maybe you don't realize how a nice yard increases the value of a home.”

“Sure, sure I do,” George said. “It increases it plenty.”

“You can't tell. After all, some day I might want to sell the place, I might get married.”

“I guess you might.”

She leaned against the porch railing, easing a little of the weight off her feet. “I suppose Harold and Josephine told you I have company?”

“Yes.”

“You remember Arthur Cooke that I used to work for.”

“Sure.”

“He's very refined.”

“Hazel—”

“Doesn't drink or smoke and always dresses in the best of taste.”

“I'm sorry to bust in on you like this.”