Wives and Lovers (14 page)

“That's all right. He was just leaving anyway. He's a very busy and important man, he—”

“Look, Haze, I don't mean to change the subject or anything, but I'm in kind of a hurry. I've got someone waiting for me in the car.”

Hazel raised her eyebrows. “So?”

“She's not feeling very well, and I thought if you had a little brandy or one of those pills you used to take when you got upset, the ones the doctor gave you—”

“I've got a quart of warm beer and some aspirin,” Hazel said curtly. “Who is it, the new girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Why bring her here?”

“Well, we were passing by and I figured I'd drop in and get her a pill or something to calm her down.” He scowled at a point in the darkness where a mockingbird sat trying to stir up his sleepy friends, hi there! hi there! “She's so darned unhappy, Hazel.”

“I should give one half of one per cent of a good goddamn whether she's unhappy.”

“All right, all right. I'll shove off.”

“You can have the beer and the aspirin.”

“No thanks. Sorry to have bothered you.”

He went down the porch steps, stumbling slightly on the last one where the wood had been undermined by termites and sagged in the middle.

“Well, don't go away mad,” Hazel said.

“I'm not mad.”

“Not much you aren't.”

“I am not mad.” He scuffed the coco mat at the bottom of the steps with his shoe. “The thing is I want to do what's right, only I don't know how. She's just a kid, she needs help. I get the feeling that she's on the edge of something, something bad.” He kicked at the mat again, more violently this time, as if it were an obstacle that had to be kicked away. But the mat didn't budge. It had been there for a long time and was so heavy with the dirt of years that during the rainy winters weeds sprouted in it and grew two or three inches high.

“I know what she's on the edge of,” Hazel said. “And it's not so bad.”

George looked at her hopefully, and for a moment Hazel wished that she didn't have to say what she had every intention of saying both for George's own good and for her own personal satisfaction.

“It's not so bad,” she repeated. “Hooking you and cutting herself in on your share of the Beachcomber.”

“You've got the wrong idea, as far as Ruby's concerned anyway. She's not interested in me.” In an unconscious gesture, he put his left hand to his head and smoothed back his hair, as if to reassure himself that he still had hair left, that he wasn't quite so old as some people might think. He remembered what Ruby had said when he'd gone to Mrs. Freeman's to give her the back pay she hadn't stopped to collect: “
You don't look a day over forty—
”

“To her I'm a nothing.” He cleared his throat. “A big fat nothing.”

“I don't believe it,” Hazel said, sounding a little angry, as if Ruby, by repudiating George, was casting an aspersion on Hazel herself. “Maybe she's just playing hard to get.”

“You think so, Hazel? Honest?”

“I said, maybe.”

“Could you tell if you met her?”

“I don't know. How should I know?”

“I mean, suppose I brought her in and you talked to her, sort of sounded her out a little? . . . Then maybe I could find out if I had a chance, and if I haven't, well, that's that, I'll chalk it down to experience. Would you do it, Hazel, just talk to her?”

“Why should I?”

“No reason, I guess. Except—well, suppose you find out she's not interested, then you wouldn't have to worry so much about me getting married again.”

“I am
not
worried about your getting married again,” Hazel said, in a very calm, reasonable tone. “It's who you marry that concerns me. It beats me why you can't find some nice sensible widow with a little cash or some real estate.”

“You already said that, a hundred times.”

“Isn't it true a hundred times?”

“Sure, sure. But—”

“There's always a but.” She shifted her weight im­patiently. The porch railing squawked a protest, and from his new position on the television antenna next door the tireless mockingbird answered, oh my, oh my, oh my. “The world would be O.K. if it wasn't for the buts.”

“Haze—”

“All right, all right. I'll talk to her. Bring her in the house.”

There was a slight edge to her voice, but George was too pleased to notice it. He had great faith in Hazel's ability to handle people, to make them feel at home and get them talking about themselves. It was exactly what Ruby needed, an older woman to confide in. Perhaps—who could tell?—they might even become friends.

George was an incurable optimist. Like an alcoholic who needs only one drink to set him off, George needed only one happy thought, and the happy thought was that Hazel and Ruby should become real pals, lunching together, shopping together, telephoning each other at all hours. Each passing second made the idea more irresistibly logical: Ruby and Hazel, Damon and Pythias.

Oh my
, said the mockingbird.
Oh my, oh my.

“You'll be crazy about her,” George said warmly. “She's shy, kind of hard to know at first, but once you get underneath the surface you'll see how sweet she is.”

Hazel made an impatient gesture as if she were swatting at an invisible mosquito. “I saw her, the day she came to Dr. Foster's office.”

“That's right, you did. What did you think of her? She's not an ordinary girl at all, is she?”

“I only saw her for a few minutes.”

“Couldn't you tell she was different?”

“I told you I only saw her for a few minutes. What could have happened in a few minutes, that we should've become bosom pals or something?”

“Not exactly.” But it was too close for comfort, and
George was unpleasantly surprised at the easy way Hazel could reach into his mind and pick out one of his dreams and pinch it out of shape like a marshmallow.

He said, “I'll get Ruby,” and started across the yard, stepping slowly and carefully because he knew Hazel was watching him and he didn't want to appear too eager.

She called after him, “Hey, George.”

He stopped.

“George, hold your stomach in.”

“Jes—”

“And stick out your chest more. You might as well show up to the best advantage.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, but Hazel didn't hear him. She had gone back into the house and the slam of the screen door was loud and final.

Straightening his shoulders George walked back to his car. Ruby was half-sitting, half-lying, with her head pressed against the back of the seat and her eyes closed.

“Ruby?”

She blinked in a surprised way, as if she had been hun­dreds of miles away and couldn't understand how George had gotten there.

“How are you feeling?”

“All right, I guess.”

“You're looking better.”

“Am I?” She yawned, making a funny little squeaking noise like a puppy. George wanted to laugh at the noise, which seemed to him charming, but he didn't dare. He was beginning to realize how deadly serious Ruby was about everything. She seldom laughed herself, and the laughter of others always carried a note of menace.

“We've been invited to come in,” George said.

“I heard laughing. Is it a party? I don't like parties, I really don't, I wish you'd take me home.”

“There's no party. I just want you to come in and meet Hazel, my ex-wife.”

Her entire face seemed to tighten, around the eyes and the nostrils and the mouth, as if it had been splashed by a strong astringent. “I guess this is your idea of a big joke, Mr. Anderson.”

“It's not a joke. Hazel asked me to bring you in.”

“Why?”

“I told her you were waiting in the car. Hazel likes people. She invites everybody to come in.”

“She won't like me.”

“Sure she will, and I'll bet a nickel you'll like her too.” He spoke with confidence. Nearly everyone liked Hazel. She could always make people feel good about themselves, and George had such implicit faith in her generosity that it didn't even occur to him that possibly she wouldn't care to make Ruby feel good.

“It doesn't seem proper,” Ruby said. “Besides, I wouldn't want to inflict myself.”

“You won't be. Come on.”

He opened the car door and Ruby got out. She brushed off her skirt and the shoulders of her suit, and smoothed down her hair. “Do I look all right?”

“You look fine.” He wanted to say, beautiful, but he was afraid that the word would only increase her self-consciousness and that she wouldn't believe him anyway. “Let's go around to the back. Hazel's in the kitchen.”

“Is it your house?”

“Not any more. We had a property settlement and Hazel got the house.”

“It's funny you're still friends like this.”

“Like what?”

“Well, calling on her like this, and bringing me here.”

“It doesn't strike me as funny. Why should it?”

“I thought when two people break up, they wouldn't ever want to see each other again.”

“It'd be pretty hard not to see Hazel again,” George said dryly. “She's all over the place. I don't mean she checks up on me or anything. But it's a small town and we have mutual friends, and so we bump into each other.”

“I'd hate that. If I ever got a divorce I'd run away, far away. I'd never want to see him again, never, I'd run away.”

“Well, don't get excited. You're not even married yet.” He paused. “Not even considering it, I guess.”

“No.”

“You'll change your mind someday when you meet the right man.”

She didn't bother to answer. In silence they went across the yard and up the steps of Hazel's back porch.

Hazel opened the screen door, wearing a fixed smile on her face that looked as if it had been attached with glue. During the time it had taken George to go out to the car and get Ruby, Hazel had freshened her make-up and combed her hair, but already along her upper lip and the hairline of her forehead little pinpoints of sweat were oozing up through the new layer of powder.

When she spoke she used her office-voice which had a professional lilt to it intended to make Dr. Foster's patients feel at ease. “Come on in and make yourself at home—Ruby, is it?”

“Yes.”

She looked at Hazel, dully, with no sign of recognition. It was as if the two days since they had met had lengthened into years for Ruby and these years had numbed her memory.

“George tells me you're not feeling very well,” Hazel said.

Ruby shook her head. “I feel fine, just fine.”

“That's good.”

“I get nervous sometimes, that's all. Everybody does. It's nothing. I wouldn't dream of imposing—”

“You're not imposing.” Hazel turned to George. “Harold's in the front room. He wants to talk to you about the boat.”

“My boat?”

“Yes. He says it's sprung a leak.”

“A leak? He must be imagining things. Sure, on a day like this, she ships a little water, naturally.”

“All right, so it doesn't leak. Talk to Harold about it. I never said it leaked.”

“He didn't either.”

“Go and ask him.”

“I will. If that suits Ruby.”

Ruby glanced at him listlessly, as if the conversation and the moods and tensions beneath it had been too diffi­cult to follow. “What did you say?”

“Is it O.K. with you if I leave you here with Hazel for a while?”

“I don't care.”

“I won't be long.”

“I don't care.”

He paused in the doorway and looked back, but she was no longer watching him. Letting the door swing shut behind him he was conscious of a feeling of relief, and of gratitude to Hazel for insisting that he go and talk to Harold. Sometimes he wanted to leave Ruby and couldn't; he deluded himself into thinking that if he stayed another minute, or five, or ten, his words, his presence and the very passage of time would change her in his favor.

The door swung into place with a squeak of hinges. The noise seemed to focus Ruby's attention more sharply than any human voice. She looked at the door thoughtfully, as if it had said something to her, without words to distort its meaning.

“It needs oiling,” Hazel said. “Everything does around here. Including me. Want some beer?”

“No. No, thanks. You go right ahead, though.”