Steve felt great sympathy for her, because he remembered his own adolescence. He’d been all appetite and acne, diffidence and conceit. His wrists grew overnight while his coat sleeves insidiously shrank. He blushed when any girl spoke to him, but with the utmost confidence he related all kinds of improbable sex experiences to his friends and listened with complete gullibility to theirs.
He had met Martha when he was seventeen and in high school. She was two years younger than he was, but with the worldly precocity of certain females she seemed already grown up and ready for the responsibilities of marriage and children. Their first date together was a dance at the school. Neither of them could dance very well, so they sat most of the evening on one of the benches lined up along the gymnasium wall and studied the other dancers with desperate intensity.
They danced the last number together, “I Love You Truly.” She was as tall as he was and their knees bumped every now and then as they waltzed the length of the floor. The gymnasium had, as it always did at the dances, a strong odor of sweat and unwashed feet, but Steve didn’t notice.
He leaned close to Martha. “You smell swell,” he told her.
“It’s only perfume,” Martha said.
She was very direct like that, when he first knew her. She was never coy, she didn’t feign interest in anything merely to please him. Later on, when he was in the university and she was a stenographer with a contracting firm he took her to a few football games. She didn’t like or understand football and so she didn’t watch the game. But afterwards she would describe all the people who’d been sitting near them, particularly the girls. She thought that since they were college girls they were worth noticing, and, occasionally, copying.
Now and then they discussed, seriously, the idea of marrying for money, he, some rich old dowager who would eat herself into the grave, and she, some elderly man with a weak heart. They decided that money was very important, and even if the dowager and the elderly man required a few years to die, the money would be worth waiting for.
But the day he got his first job as a cub reporter, he paid the down payment on a $75 diamond ring. When he gave it to her he was very happy. He thought it was wonderful to be only twenty-one and have a job and be engaged to the prettiest girl in the world. In the ensuing months, some of the wonder wore off. Though the circumstances remained
the same, he began to interpret them differently. There he was, only twenty-one and already tied down to one woman and holding down a job that wouldn’t support them both. His own immaturity and the scornful attitude of his older, more sophisticated friends did nothing to help him.
Neither did Martha. She was very anxious to get married and showed it. When she met him in the evenings, she was starry-eyed, but in a few minutes she’d start talking about budgets and how much she’d saved and how much he could save if he really wanted to. He was always a little shocked that she could look so dreamy and moonstruck while she was talking about lunch allowances and necessary expenditures. The second quarrel came easier than the first, and after that there was a whole series of scenes, and they both realized that they couldn’t go on in this way. They must do something, break apart or get married, or become lovers.
They became lovers on the sofa in Martha’s parlor while the family slept upstairs. Silent and terrified, she lay down on the sofa, listening for sounds that would warn her if the family woke up. They didn’t, though they remarked off and on during the next few months that Martha was putting on weight, and how marvelous she looked with a little extra color in her cheeks and flesh on her bones.
Though he, too, noticed the miraculous physical change in Martha, he knew she was suffering from a feeling of guilt. When she was with the family her eyes shifted in a furtive way and she was unnaturally talkative and noisy, like a bird which makes a great racket over an empty nest to distract attention from its real one.
Alone with him, she was moody. Sometimes she cried, or she was cold and silent, or talked in a cynical, brassy way about their relationship. And because his own guilt echoed hers, he grew enraged with her. Most of the time he was with her they quarreled but when he wasn’t with her he felt strangely protective and responsible for her. He tried to figure out the cause of the situation, what was at fault—nature for maturing the female more rapidly than the male and having her ready for the responsibilities of marriage when she was still very young—or the economic system which forced the male to postpone marriage; or just the plain biological instincts which didn’t recognize the necessity for the ritual of marriage.
He thought a great deal about it but he always came to the same conclusion. He didn’t want to get married because he couldn’t support a wife. The present was precarious and he couldn’t depend on the future. To double the burden would be to double the risks.
He left early in the year 1941. She took it very calmly, giving him back his ring in a matter-of-fact manner. He refused to take it. He argued, and lost his temper. He told her he loved her, he was coming back, he wanted her to wait for him.
“You may change your mind,” she said, and dropped the ring casually into his pocket. “You couldn’t stand being tied down.”
The last he saw of her she was standing on the porch of the house. The snow was falling and he couldn’t tell whether she was crying or not because the snow kept melting on her eyelids and her cheeks.
He had one letter from her. It came before he left the country, while he was still at the camp in Florida. It was a crisp little note to the effect that it was “bad taste” for him to continue writing to her. Their engagement was broken and “people” were beginning
to think it was funny for her to get so many letters. She didn’t want any “talk.”
People, bad taste, talk. She’d always been very conscious of them and now her consciousness had doubled, nourished by her feeling of guilt. She had sinned and she had enjoyed sinning, and though no one found out about it, she was incapable of acting natural any longer. She must satisfy her conscience by appeasing the whole world.
If she had given any indication that she wanted him back, he would have come running. He missed her a good deal. In the regimentation of his new life, his ego took a beating that her presence could have softened for him. Quite a few of the boys at camp were married and their wives lived in the town. Most of them were cheerful, good-looking girls who
sat and drank beer with their husbands on Saturday nights. They didn’t appear nervous or irritable, the way he’d expected women to be who knew their husbands were going to leave them shortly and stood a good chance of never coming back.
The more he saw of wives, the more taken up he was with the idea of marrying Martha and bringing her down to camp. One night, after a shattering experience in a new fighter, he phoned her. While he was waiting for a chance at the phone, he planned what he was going to say: Listen, Martha, I was wrong, I was a chump. Martha, let’s get married. You could come down here and I could be home a couple of nights a week and over the weekends. There are lots of wives here. They’re a swell bunch, you’d like them. How about it, darling?
The phone rang and rang but nobody answered.
It was after that that her letter came and he realized he was just pipe-dreaming. She would never marry him; or, if she did, she would never forget his initial reluctance. It would come between them for the rest of their lives because her pride would never entirely heal. He sailed for England without seeing her.
He looked out across the lawn to the house. He wondered if Martha was there now, thinking over the same things as he had. What had she felt when she met him on the street? Surprise and resentment, that was obvious. Perhaps a sudden desire for revenge, too, using Charles as the weapon. The empty apartment might be merely a part of a preconceived plan she had for getting back at him; it would help to assuage her vanity, to be in a position to do him favors and make him feel obliged to her.
He didn’t actua
lly believe she had such a plan, but its possibilities annoyed him. For a moment he thought of packing and leaving right away, just in case. But the rent had already been paid and he couldn’t afford to throw away fifty dollars. Nor could he afford to turn down favors.
He thought of at least a dozen reasons why he should stay, but the real one hadn’t yet occurred to him—that he wanted to be near Martha.
10
He saw Brown walking across the lawn and stepped back quickly from the window, as if he’d been doing something he shouldn’t and didn’t want to be caught.
When Brown came in, Steve pretended he had just finished unpacking.
“All settled?” Brown said.
“Yes.”
“I saw the kid come out to the garage. She probably wanted to look you over, eh?”
“Probably.”
“She’s a good kid in some ways.”
“She seemed all right.”
“I have to pin her ears back sometimes, but I’m kind of fond of her. She’s a little irresponsible. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. If you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I think I do,” Steve said dryly.
“Well, that’s fine. I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it.”
“Not at all.”
“If she makes a nuisance of herself, don’t tell Mrs. Pearson. Just tell me and I’ll handle it.” He added without any change of tone, “We eat in about half an hour. You’re welcome to eat with us. You haven’t any groceries.”
‘‘Thanks, I’d like to.”
“If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind eating in the kitchen . . .”
“I wouldn’t.”
At dinner Brown remained unnaturally silent. They all served themselves and ate in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. Besides Brown and Steve himself, there was Mrs. Putnam and a maid called Lily. She was about Beatrice’s age. She had a very bad skin and she was on a diet. Mrs. Putnam was plainly outraged that anyone could be such a fool as to believe that the skin, which was outside, could be affected by food, which went inside. Lily remained cheerful but obstinate. Having paid a doctor five dollars for the diet, she intended to stick to it until death itself intervened, which, Mrs. Putnam asserted, it shortly would.
But the wrangling was not unpleasant. It was carried on in the family style—everything that was said had been said before and would be said again. It gave Steve a comfortable feeling of continuity, as if he were a child who’d been away visiting for a time and had come back to the family to find everything the same.
When the two women got up to wash the dishes Steve said, “A friendly town, this, don’t you think?”
“So-so.”
“Take this invitation for dinner tonight. I consider it a very friendly gesture.”
Brown grunted in reply.
“It makes me wonder whose idea it was,” Steve said.
“Mine.”
“Hands across the lawn, eh?”
“More or less.”
“You’re quite sure that it wasn’t Mrs. Pearson’s idea before it was your idea?”
“She only suggested that it would be nice for us to be neighborly. Food’s a good way of doing it, so here you are.”
“Here I am,” Steve said. The plan was very neat, very typical of Martha. In order to show him that she had no intention of acknowledging their friendship, she had persuaded her servants to “be neighborly” with him.
He went quietly back to the apartment to think it over. He could go directly to Martha and ask her what her game was, but he didn’t trust his own temper and nothing would be gained anyway. Martha would be pure, innocent and on the side of the angels. A subtler approach was necessary. He could never bludgeon Martha into admitting anything, but she could be tricked.
He phoned and told her that since he didn’t intend to start his book right away, he’d be glad to drive her any place she wanted to go.
She sounded pleased. “That’s nice of you. I don’t like to trust Brown with the Cadillac, he’s too careless.” She paused. “As a matter of fact, I wanted to take some flowers to the hospital tomorrow morning.”
“What time?”
“Nine.”
“I’ll have the car ready.”
“I hate to impose on you. I can easily get a cab.”
“You’re not imposing,” he said quickly. “I’ll be delighted.”
The next morning he had the car at the front door fifteen minutes early, but he didn’t have to wait for her. She came out almost before he had a chance to put on the brakes. She wore her glasses and the same kind of black suit she’d worn last time he saw her. She was carrying an armful of tulips, holding them rather cautiously as if she were a little afraid there might be insects on them.
He climbed out of the car awkwardly.
“Do you want to sit in the back seat, or do you want to slum?”
She hesitated, flushing slightly. “I’ll slum.”
She opened the front door for herself and got in.
“Where to?” Steve said.
“St. James Hospital. I thought I’d take some flowers over to the wards. We have so many.”
He started the car without answering her. He drove a couple of blocks in the direction of the hospital, then pulled over to the curb and cut off the ignition.
“Why are you stopping?” Martha said.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Well. I—hope you find the apartment comfortable?”
“It’s fine. Everything is fine, but I still wonder what’s going on behind those glasses.”
“Stop talking about my glasses. If I have to wear them you shouldn’t . . .”
“I had a nice dinner last night in the kitchen. I wanted to thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Can we go on now?”
“I’m not in a hurry. Are you?”
“I knew there was something fishy about your offering to drive me,” she said angrily. “If you have anything to say to me, say it and get it over with. I’m busy.”
“Would you like a cigarette?”
“No!”
“A bit shrewish this morning, aren’t you, Mrs. Pearson?”
An old man with a cane walked by very slowly, as if he were using the cane merely as an excuse to give himself time to stare at them.
“You might at least pick a more private place,” Martha said, “if you want to talk to me.” “It’s pretty hard to get you in a private place, Mrs. Pearson.”
“Start this car.”
“I will when you tell me what you have in mind about me.”
“I have nothing in mind about you.”
“You always were a great little planner and I just wondered whether you’d been having any plans lately.”
“Why should I have? I suppose you’re just conceited enough to think that I’ve spent the past five years thinking about you.”
“I don’t give a damn what you’ve been thinking the past five years. The point is, what are you thinking now?”
“I can see it was a mistake, my trying to help you,” she said. “It seems to have given you the impression that I have some obscure motive. Well, I haven’t. I was only trying to be kind and to show you I didn’t bear any grudge against you.” She sounded very sincere.
“Okay,” he said wearily. “I’m sorry I went off the deep end.”
He drove her to the hospital and sat in the car smoking while she was gone. She came out again in half an hour and he took her straight home. She didn’t speak a word, not even when he apologized again. He let her off at the front door.
“Couldn’t we talk decently together sometime?” he said.
“What about?” She went into the house without looking at him.
He spent the rest of the morning wandering restlessly around his apartment. H
e tidied up a little and made some coffee and started to read a novel Forbes had left behind. It was a very bad novel. He decided he could do better, so he got out his typewriter and put a blank sheet of paper in it. By noon the paper was still blank. Hungry and embittered, he walked six blocks to the nearest drugstore and had a sandwich and a malted milk.
When he returned, Brown was clipping the hedge along the driveway. Brown waved to him cheerfully and put the clipper down, as if the appearance of Steve was an unexpected but satisfactory excuse to stop work.
“Hi,” Brown said. “What have you been doing all morning?”
“Nothing.”
“Bored, eh?”
“You said it.”
“It’s bad to sit around and be bored. Take me. When I’m bored I get outside and do something.”
“Such as?”
“Well, maybe I clip the hedges or mow the lawn. Why don’t you wash the car or something?”
“It isn’t dirty,” Steve said.
“It’ll pass the time.”
Pass the time. That’s what he’d been doing for five years, passing the time, waiting, the way the others were waiting, to go home again. And now that he was home, he was waiting still, but this time he wasn’t waiting for anything.
What a waste, he thought violently, what a stinking waste.
He said, “The hell with washing the car.”
“All right. I just mentioned it because it would give you something to do.”
“You don’t seem anxious to think of anything to do yourself.”
“That’s different,” Brown said. “I’m inclined to be lazy. I don’t mind doing the same things over and over again. That’s because I know I haven’t got anything to set the world on fire with. Maybe you have, I couldn’t say.”
“Maybe I have.”
“Well, let’s wait and see if it lights up and goes bang.”
Steve was silent. His chest felt constricted, as if someone had tied a knotted rope around it and every knot drew blood. He hunched over to ease the pain.
“Anything the matter?” Brown asked.
Experiment in Springtime Page 11
