Wives and Lovers (24 page)

“Crap.”

Ruth's face grew pale with disapproval. “I wish you—you really shouldn't use words like that, Hazel. I know it's your house and all that but—”

“All right, I'll say baloney then, but it's the same thing no matter how you slice it.”

“Really, Hazel!”

“I get so damn tired of your admiration for that snippy little bitch. I know why she's not getting a divorce, be­cause she's too damn mean for one thing. It would kill her to see Gordon have a life of his own. And also because she knows she'll never get another husband if she lets Gordon go.”

“Such a thought would never occur to her,” Ruth said harshly. “And I'm surprised at you, Hazel. You talk as if you actually
approve
of Dr. Foster and what he's done.”

“I've always approved of him, why should I change now? A good man doesn't turn into a bad man over­night.”

“That's all very well, but we must judge people by their actions. There's no other way to judge them, and you—”

Hazel raised her voice to interrupt. “I don't want to judge them. I want to go on liking the people I like and making excuses for them when I have to, and having a few excuses made for me too.”

“Moral softness. I want no excuses made for me, ever.”

“You need them, like everyone else.”

“I wouldn't take them!” Ruth shouted, making a wild gesture with her fists. “I wouldn't listen!”

“Don't get so worked up. I wasn't trying to—”

“I don't want any excuses from anybody. Discipline, not excuses, that's what we need in this world, more self-denial and discipline. Oh yes, I can see what you're think­ing now—poor Ruth, she can't help getting worked up, she had a nervous breakdown and lost her job, and she's an old maid too, of course, and her father was—”

“Stop guessing,” Hazel said. “If you want to know what I was thinking I'll tell you. I was thinking that people who are hard on themselves the way you are, are usually pretty hard on other people too.”

“Not hard enough.”

“Elaine Foster's kind of like that too. I can't explain it so well, but maybe if she liked herself a little better and had a little more self-respect, she'd be better off.”

“Well, well! You're getting to be quite a psychologist, Hazel Anderson. You've got Mrs. Foster and me all figured out, and the trouble with us is we have no self-respect!”

“I meant, respect for yourselves as you really are, not expecting to be perfect and accepting the fact that you've got a few human weaknesses that maybe aren't so bad after all.”

“No self-respect, eh?” Ruth cried. “And what do you think you've got, the kind of things you do, drinking and carrying on and traipsing after your divorced husband—”

Josephine came to the door with an anxious little smile on her face. “Gee whiz, the way you two sound you'd think you were quarreling. Mrs. Hatcher's outside work­ing in her garden, she's bound to hear every word you say.”

“That's all right,” Hazel said. “We're finished.”

“We
have
finished,” Ruth corrected her. “We
are
finished would mean we are dead.”

“Close enough to suit me.”

“The least I can do in exchange for your analysis of my character is to give you a free lesson in English grammar.”

Josephine turned on her and said hotly, “That's no way to speak to Hazel after all she's—”

“You stay out of this,” Hazel said. Then she addressed Ruth in a quieter voice, “I'm sorry if I said anything to hurt you. I didn't mean to.”

“Hurt me,” Ruth sneered. “You can't hurt me. I don't
allow
myself to be hurt.”

“There you go again. Don't kid yourself.”

“And I repeat, you don't have to make any excuses for me, Hazel Anderson. I don't require them and I don't be­lieve in them, for me or anybody else, let alone a man like Dr. Foster. A man that leaves his wife and children and runs off with another woman is a bad man. He stands con­demned by his own action in the eyes of all decent people.”

“Maybe I'm not decent.”

“If the shoe fits, wear it.”

“There's a car stopping out front,” Josephine said nervously. “You two just better quit arguing right now.”

Hazel got up to look out of the window. Then, without a word of explanation, she picked up her purse from the top of the radio and went outside.

Gordon was alone in the car. Though Hazel had seen him only twenty-four hours ago, he seemed to have changed more than a day's worth. Wearing the old slack suit that she'd seen hanging in his office and needing a shave, he looked like an ordinary workingman relaxing on a Sunday morning. There was none of that do-or-die air about him that he put on along with his white surgeon's coat.

He smiled at her as she came down the walk. “I was just coming in.”

“It'd be better if we talked out here. Too many people.” She opened her purse and took out the roll of bills bound together with an elastic. It looked like a lot of money and Hazel wondered if Gordon knew how little it actually was in these times. Maybe to him it looked like more because it meant his freedom for a week or two and he was too excited at the prospect to think further ahead than that.

He handed her two checks, one for five hundred dollars made out to Cash, and the other for a hundred made out to Hazel.

“What's this for?”

“Your salary for the next two weeks.”

“What am I supposed to do to earn it?”

“Answer the phone. Cancel all appointments for the next month. If there are any emergencies send them over to Dr. Tower. Appointments for routine check-ups and cleanings you can step up till next month if the people are willing to wait. If they aren't ask Dr. MacPherson to take them. Tell everyone I'm on a holiday, naturally.”

“Then you're coming back?”

“I hope so. You'll hear from me anyway.” He paused for a moment. “Thanks for everything, Hazel. Not just getting the money, but for understanding that this is the only way I could do it. It seems pretty sordid, I guess, for me to be sneaking away like this. But I couldn't go home to say goodbye because I know I wouldn't get away. Elaine would pull out every stop on the organ, and I'm afraid I'd change my mind. I want to do now what has to be done eventually. Ruby isn't the issue, I want you to understand that. It's true that if I didn't know her and if she didn't love me, I probably wouldn't have the guts to leave Elaine now. But Ruby has
caused
nothing, do you see that?”

“Yes.”

“She's over at her room packing. She's been at it all morning and she's only got one suitcase. I wonder if she's giving me a chance to change my mind, or if she actually doesn't want to leave under the circumstances.”

“Maybe she's just particular,” Hazel said.

“That must be it.”

“It must be.”

Gordon drew in his breath. “Well, I guess that covers everything. Be sure and be at the bank when it opens to­morrow.”

“I will.”

“It's a hell of a thing to say about your wife, but she might try to close our joint account and I don't want you to be caught with two bad checks.”

“You'd better tell me where you're going.”

“San Francisco, probably. Then if anything happens Ruby will at least have her aunt's place to go to. Anything could happen you know, an accident or something like that.”

“Don't sound so gloomy, Gordon.” It was the first time she had ever called him Gordon. She was surprised how the name slipped out so easily, as if she never expected him to come back and change into Dr. Foster again.

The wind veered suddenly, and picking up the dirt from the playground hurled it across the street. They both closed their eyes automatically until the sound of the wind died down.

“Nothing's going to happen,” Hazel said.

“I guess not. Well, thanks again, Hazel. I'd better get going, with four hundred miles to drive.”

They shook hands, and Hazel said, “Goodbye and good luck.”

“Goodbye, Hazel.”

She waited on the sidewalk until his car reached the corner, then she waved to him and Gordon waved back, very gaily.

Though she had a premonition that she'd never see him again, she wasn't depressed at the prospect of losing a good job with a pleasant boss. It occurred to her then, for the first time, that she mightn't have been so eager to help Gordon get away if he hadn't been taking Ruby with him.

She stood on the small roofless porch reluctant to go inside and face the questions of Josephine and Ruth. A mockingbird flew up out of the pyracantha bush. Though the berries were barely beginning to show orange, the birds had already been at them. She resolved now, as she did every year, to save the berries for Christmas decora­tion by screening them with nets, but she knew perfectly well that by Christmas the bush would look as it always did. The red berries would be crushed and half-eaten, showing their yellowish pulp, like ruined immature ap­ples, and every tiny leaf would be partly nibbled to its spine by snails and beetles. Even if she could save the bush from the birds it was hard to wash the beetles off before bringing the berries into the house. The beetles hid and clung, and only after they'd been in the house for a day or two would they abandon the berries and seek the bright yellow patches in the slipcover of the davenport. Motionless and rapt, they would sit absorbing the color. They never returned to the berries, and they never went anywhere else in the house.

The mockingbird came back and began to squawk in­sults at her from the porch railing.

A teenaged girl was coming up the street on a bicycle, riding very slowly, wobbling from side to side to keep her balance. She had long black hair that danced in a frenzy around her head with every gust of wind. Perched on the carrier behind her was a boy of five or six, hanging on to the girl's waist and holding his legs out in the air to avoid interfering with the girl's pedaling. In the basket at the front sat a fat sunburned baby with a soother in his mouth. Every time the bicycle wobbled the baby lurched to one side, but he didn't make a sound, either because he didn't want to lose the soother, or because he was enjoying the ride. The girl paid no attention to the baby or the boy be­hind her. Like the captain of a well-run ship, she seemed to assume that they each knew their places and would per­form their duties.

The bicycle zigzagged again, and Hazel started down the porch steps and called out, “Aren't you afraid he'll fall?”

The girl stared at Hazel suspiciously for a moment. Then she applied the brakes and put her left foot down on the road. Simultaneously, as if from long habit, the boy put his left foot on the road, and slid off the carrier. “I didn't hear what you said, lady.”

“I was just wondering if the baby would fall when you're going so slow and wobbly like that.”

“He won't fall,” the girl said flatly, blinking her dark eyes at the baby. “I got him tied in. Anyway, I'm only going slow because I'm looking for something. I can ride perfect, without hands even.”

“And
backwards,
and
standing on the seat,” the boy added.

“My goodness,” Hazel said. “I never even heard of that.”

“Connie can do it,” the boy said. “Go on, Connie, do it for her.”

Connie hesitated, torn between the desire to show off and the desire to appear sophisticated. “Naw,” she said. “That's baby stuff, and Pop wouldn't like it anyway.” She explained to Hazel, “It's my pop's bicycle.”

“He goes to work on it,” the boy said. “He's a gar­dener.”

“A
landscape
gardener,” the girl corrected him with a frown.

“I wouldn't know the difference,” Hazel said.

“There's
lots
of difference. You get more money if you're landscape.”

The soother fell out of the baby's mouth and he let out a howl of rage. The girl glanced at Hazel with some con­tempt. “See? I told you. He's yelling because he thinks the ride's over.” She picked the soother up off the road, wiped the dirt off on her blouse and popped it back into the baby's mouth. “He's not afraid of falling, even if he could. Which he can't. Are you, Bingo?”

Bingo rolled his eyes and Hazel laughed. “He's very cute.”

“He's called Bingo because my mother was at a Bingo game just before he was born, only his real name's Tru­man.” The girl added, with infinite scorn, “My parents haven't the faintest idea how to name children.”

“Is that right.”

“I wouldn't
dream
of using my real name at school. It's Consuela, but I just call myself Connie, Consuela sounds so foreignish. If I just call myself Connie, people think my real name is Constance which stinks too, only at least it sounds as if I was
born
in this
country.
Which I was.”