What a Woman Must Do

by Faith Sullivan

  “Of course.”

  “Send her home after breakfast.” She leaned to kiss Kate’s cheek, but Archer had honked, not once but several harsh brays, startling Celia so that she grew flustered and backed away, waving.

  Such an incomplete, unsatisfactory good-bye. Kate held her hand outstretched toward the vision, but dropped it suddenly, heaving a rough sigh as it evaporated.

  God had forgiven the world the death of His son. Well, she wasn’t God. She was a spiteful old woman, and Archer had been a willful, driven fool. She hoped he was rotting in hell.

  And Archer’s child was willful, too. Bess was clever and unforgetting and willful. And she could not tolerate disaffection, not even the possibility. She must always be the one who forsook. She would half bury you under her affection and generosity, but let there be a hint of disloyalty or retreat on your part, and she’d pull back as from a leper, walking away without a backward glance. Look how she’d treated Mrs. Stubbs, the piano teacher.

  Opening the back screen door and flicking on the porch light, in the event that Harriet or Bess came in that way, Kate headed toward the dim, distant living room and her rocking chair.

  Whom did Bess trust? Kate wondered, the trail of thought winding onward down the same path. Kate, Donna, and Harriet. Perhaps that was all.

  Harriet had been awfully good to the child after Celia’s death, clucking over her, giving her her first bicycle, taking her to the movies and on trips to the Cities. She’d shared her time and money as if Bess were her own.

  Now Harriet deserved a splash of romance, though Kate doubted there’d be much of that in an alliance with DeVore Weiss. But if marriage to DeVore didn’t bring Harriet romance, it would at least bring her the kiss of conventional domesticity, a condition for which she sorely longed. Harriet felt a great hungering to say “my house” and “my husband,” a need not to live on the edge of someone else’s life. And Harriet would more than keep up her end of the bargain. She always gave more than she got, for fear of stinting. No, DeVore Weiss would have no reason to regret marrying Harriet, should he be so wise.

  Easing herself into the rocker, Kate thought: Bess has to see how much she owes Harriet. It would be too bad if Harriet were to lose Bess. Harriet’s world was meager to begin with, while Bess’s world was expanding, opening like gates swung wide. After Labor Day she would be gone. Off to college. Off to the world.

  She gripped the arm of the rocker as though clinging to a safe place. She guessed that she loved Bess even more than she had loved Celia. Loving Celia had been as effortless as breathing, while loving Bess was often aggravating. But once you’d invested your wit and effort, you created something larger and stronger than what could be had without labor or tears.

  Losing Harriet, if she married DeVore Weiss, would be hard enough for Kate, though Harriet would move only a few miles, out to the Weiss farm. Bess’s departure, on the other hand, was a double loss: not only the child gone but, with her, the last tangible remnant of Celia.

  Nevertheless, Kate was desperate to see Bess away. Harvester, for Bess, was a stifling, cramped room too full of old photographs, fading yet potent reminders of scandal and exclusion. If she stayed, the lingering must of disgrace would undo her. And she would go bad.

  Kate nodded her head emphatically. College was needed. And that thought reminded her: Anthea Dorsey had phoned for Bess, and Kate had forgotten to mention it. Anthea was inviting a few college-bound friends out to Sioux Woman Lake to the Dorseys’ cottage for a Sunday-afternoon party.

  Kate pressed the cane hard against the floor and set the rocker moving. A few months after Celia’s death that same Anthea, seven then, had issued party invitations. Bess had come home from school excited because she was going to Anthea’s birthday party.

  “Where’s the invitation?” Kate asked. “When’s the party?”

  “I don’t know, but all the girls in the class are going to be invited.”

  “Well, when she gives you your invitation, bring it home and we’ll buy a present.”

  The following day Kate asked if Anthea had passed out the invitations.

  “Yes,” Bess told her.

  “And where is yours?”

  “Anthea forgot it or it got lost or something, ’cause when she got to school, she didn’t have it.”

  Bess was sitting at the dining room table with her schoolbooks and papers. Kate sat down opposite.

  “If Anthea doesn’t invite you—”

  “She’s going to! She said she was going to. I believe her! Don’t say she’s not!”

  “Listen to me. I’m not saying that—but if she doesn’t, it won’t have anything to do with how nice you are. You’re the nicest girl in the second grade, whether you get an invitation or not.”

  The invitation had not been forthcoming. Rightly, Bess blamed Mrs. Dorsey, not Anthea, but the harm had been done. The child felt accused of something, without knowing what it was.

  “Chk, chk, chk.” Muttering meaningless syllables of exasperation, Kate struggled to let go of her thoughts, to let go of the hatred of Archer Canby that burned in her joints and shriveled her body. Beside her, stacked on the living room radiator, were copies of Country Gentleman. Still muttering, she shook her head and reached for the September issue, which had arrived yesterday.

  Then the phone was ringing. They’d have to hold on until she could get there. Her hip would not carry her quickly. I’m coming. I’m coming. Keep ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “Kate. Frieda. Can you walk across the street for cards?”

  “Yes.”

  “Harriet’s not home?”

  “She’s with Rose Miller tonight.”

  “Then I’ll call Marie Wall for a fourth.”

  When she’d returned the receiver to the cradle, Kate sat for some minutes marveling at how the world turned around, and how the day turned around, and how she could be brooding and pessimistic one minute and then have the gray wiped away as if it were finger marks on the woodwork by something like Frieda’s homely voice coming too loud over the wire. Frieda still talked on the phone as though she were a country girl calling to town on an echoing, crackling six-party line.

  What card game would they play, Kate wondered, bridge or Five Hundred? Frieda wasn’t much good at contract bridge, and Kate wasn’t so fond of auction bridge. But it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter.

  With one hand on her cane and the other on the desk where Celia’s picture smiled at her, she prised herself up and started off to Frieda’s.

  Chapter 7

  HARRIET

  How soon should we leave for the dance?” Rose Miller asked.

  Harriet glanced at the electric clock on her friend’s stove. “It’s almost eight. I guess we can leave any time we’re finished here.”

  The two women were clearing supper dishes in the kitchen of Rose’s apartment, down the street from the public library. Harvester had only two structures that might be called apartment buildings. This, the Ashley Building, was one of them. It had fourteen units, four on each of three floors, and two in the basement. Rose had one of the basement units. The basement apartments rented for less.

  Harriet didn’t think she would ever want to live in a basement apartment. She didn’t like the idea of people walking by outside, looking down on her. She also didn’t like the idea of looking up to see out. If a woman were walking past on the sidewalk, you could see her underslip. Harriet herself felt uncomfortable walking by the Ashley Building, even though she knew the two basement apartments were rented to women, Rose and Mrs. Harvey.

  On the other hand, the basement units were heavenly cool in summer and cozy in winter. The nice thing about the Ashley Building, if you were single, was that it was right in the heart of things, near the library, half a block from the school, and less than a block from Main Street. Of course, if you were married and especially if you had children, you wouldn’t want to be this close to Main Street. The children would always be wandering off. Harriet put thou
ghts of children from her mind. One thing at a time. Dreaming too far ahead was bad luck.

  “The chicken salad was delicious,” she told Rose. “I’m glad you didn’t put in onion,” she added, thinking of the dance ahead.

  “It was my mother’s recipe, rest her soul.” Rose lowered their two plates and silverware into sudsy water.

  “Could I have it or don’t you like to give it out?”

  “The recipe? Sure. I’ll copy it down before we leave.”

  Harriet put on the apron Rose handed her and picked up a dish towel. She felt fluttery and slightly nauseated. No fault of the chicken salad. The salad had been fine—not as good as what she made, but fine. She’d asked for the recipe because it made Rose feel good, and it was one of those things that women did, especially married women.

  No, she felt this kind of sickening before all the dances at the Dakota since that first time DeVore Weiss had asked her to fill out a threesome for the butterfly. Rose didn’t understand what Harriet saw in DeVore. She wasn’t sure she understood it herself. He was a long drink of water, with face and hands a cordovan color from the sun. He had hawkish features and only one, all-purpose and indecipherable, expression. Whatever energies would have gone into facial expression, he saved for farming and dancing.

  And fathering children. His wife had given him six before she was carried off by sleeping sickness. Two of the children were grown: DeVore Junior, who had moved to Worthington, the Turkey Capital of the World, where he had some connection with the turkey business, and Daryl, who lived in Harvester and worked at the Chevrolet garage.

  Although he had two children grown and gone from the farm, DeVore was only forty-two. He was not some old man who was only looking for a cook and cleaning woman. He loved to dance and he told her he liked movies, although he hadn’t asked her to one. Actually, he hadn’t asked her to anything. But of course his wife was less than a year in the ground, and Harriet would have felt improper parading to the movies with him so soon. But it would be nice if he asked to take her home from the dance one of these nights. She didn’t think that would be too disrespectful.

  She and Rose had made an agreement that if one of them got asked home from the dance, the other would drive the car home, whether it was Rose’s or Harriet’s.

  “What if someone asked to take you home from the dance,” Harriet began, drying spoons and forks and returning them to their spaces in the drawer, “and someone also asked me? Who would drive the car home?”

  Rose rinsed an iced-tea glass and set it in the drainer, then wrung water from the dishcloth and began to wipe off the counter and the kitchen table. She was thinking.

  “We could leave the car there and one of us drive the other back to get it the next day.”

  “Of course. That’s a wonderful idea.”

  Relieved, Harriet resumed her thoughts of DeVore. DeVore was three years older than Harriet. It was right that a man should be older than his wife—not that Harriet was saying she was going to be his wife. But she was glad she was younger.

  It had been—what was that word?—kismet, the way they’d met. Harriet didn’t usually go to Old Time night. The music was, well, common. But that night she and Rose had been to see The African Queen at the Majestic, and when it let out, they were both restless and not ready to go home.

  In all honesty, the movie may have had some effect on them, since Katharine Hepburn played a woman who was no longer a spring chicken, but who nevertheless found true love with Humphrey Bogart, who was not exactly a strapping boy either.

  In any case, Rose had said impulsively, “Let’s go see who’s at the Dakota.”

  Harriet wasn’t sure. They stood huddled under the marquee, a frigid April wind slapping their calves and reaching up their skirts.

  Rose looked at her watch. “It’ll be after ten when we get there. At Old Time everybody’s in free after ten.” Pulling her collar up, she whined, “I’m freezing. For the love of Mike, let’s go someplace.”

  That was how Harriet happened to be at the Dakota on a Wednesday night. Well, actually, DeVore went to the modern dances on the weekends as well, but Harriet thought he might not have asked her to dance if he hadn’t been looking for a third for the butterfly, and of course that could only happen on a Wednesday.

  She didn’t know how it was that they’d hit it off so well right away. They had almost nothing in common. Harriet had never lived on a farm, and DeVore had never lived in town. Harriet was a business school graduate, and DeVore had quit high school in the eleventh grade, when his dad had been hurt in an accident with the combine.

  DeVore liked any music with a hard beat that made the floor shake, whereas Harriet collected love songs and semiclassical records. She was partial to Carmen Cavallero, André Kostelanetz, and Phil Spitalny and His All Girl Orchestra.

  Harriet was at the library once a week checking out Taylor Caldwell and Edna Ferber and Howard Fast. Upon tactful cross-examination, DeVore confessed to having no time for reading beyond the Standard Ledger, and sometimes he fell asleep before he finished that.

  Still, they found things to talk about: the weather, the farm, Harriet’s work at the Water and Power Company, the latest John Wayne movie. She had shown an interest in all things agricultural, and he now felt comfortable sharing with her the problems he was having with a couple of milk cows.

  As their friendship grew more secure, Harriet determined not to throw herself at him. The man was still in mourning, for one thing. And she was a romantic who believed that man should pursue and woman flee. Well, perhaps not flee, literally, but not fall all over him, at any rate. Besides, she wasn’t that desperate. She’d had chances. Not proposals, exactly, but interested men who would have proposed, she didn’t doubt, had fate not intervened.

  Herb Brilley, who used to work at the Water and Power Company, had been interested. Hadn’t they dated for several months before he’d inherited a piece of land in Oregon and thrown over his position? And Bill Hahn. They’d been close before he landed that high-paying job in Greenland that he would have been a fool to turn down. For that matter, quite possibly Bill Hahn would show up one of these days looking for her.

  No, Harriet wasn’t desperate, and she wasn’t about to give DeVore that impression. Nothing made a man run faster than a desperate-seeming woman. At the same time, she felt that she was definitely ready for marriage. She wasn’t some fool girl who would let the dishes pile up in the sink or the dirty clothes molder in the laundry basket. She was trained and ripened and ready to run a household. Not for nothing had she clipped articles from Better Homes and Gardens every month. She would come to DeVore laden with information regarding inexpensive home beautification and repairs, as well as delicious seasonal recipes.

  Also, unlike young girls, Harriet had had a career. She’d had the experience of making her own way in the world. She was not unprepared to give that up, of course, but she wouldn’t find herself standing at DeVore’s washing machine, yearning for what might have been.

  If, on the other hand, DeVore wanted her to continue working at the Water and Power Company until the children were raised, she was prepared to do that. It would mean having less time for sewing slipcovers and embroidering pillow slips, but a mature woman understood the necessity of sacrifice.

  “I suppose you’ll be looking for DeVore Weiss,” Rose said as she turned the Chevrolet onto Second Street and drove west toward the highway.

  “If he’s there, I’ll probably have a dance or two with him.”

  They could hear the high school band in the park playing “Bali Hai.” Not a tune that showed them off to advantage.

  “You want to stop at the band concert before we go to the Dakota?” Rose asked. “It’s still early. You used to love the band concerts.”

  “No. Let’s get to the dance.” I used to love the band concerts, that’s true. I didn’t have this awful, anxious feeling then, this fear of seeing him and fear of not.

  She closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply, bu
t there didn’t seem to be room enough down there in her lungs.

  Chapter 8

  BESS

  You’re just home on leave?” Bess asked the soldier, whose name was Jim Arliss.

  “Yeah. I wish I was getting out, but that won’t be for a while. You finished with high school?”

  “I’m going to college in September.”

  “I wish to hell I was back in high school. I used to hate it. I was in trouble all the time, but I’d sure like to have that kind of trouble again. You like school?”

  “It was okay. I’m not going to miss it.”

  “You would if you was in Korea.” He laughed. “If anybody’d told me I was going to miss school, I’da said they was a damned liar. I see now what a good time I was having. Maybe you’ll find out you were having a good time and didn’t even know it.”

  “Maybe,” she said, unconvinced.

  The music ended and they walked the few steps back to the booth.

  “Okay if Bob and I sit with you and your friend awhile?”

  “Sure.” Bess knew that nothing was going to come of it. He was a nice boy who’d probably dreamed about coming home on leave and, now that he was home, didn’t know what to do with himself. Life had gone on while he was away; things had changed. He wanted someone to help him kill time until he went back to the army, where things hadn’t changed while he was away.

  The four of them, she and Donna, Jim and Bob, sat drinking beer and talking about things Bess had no interest in. But you wouldn’t walk away from a boy home on leave. You didn’t have to neck with him or anything, but you wouldn’t hurt his feelings. What if he went back to Korea and was killed?

  They talked about cars, stock cars in particular. When Jim got out of the service, he and Bob planned to break into stock car racing. Bob was an ace mechanic, and Jim could drive the hell out of anything on wheels.