Experiment in Springtime

by Margaret Millar

  She worked hard and late, without amusement and almost without reward. Though she was branded a blue­stocking at school, her marks were invariably mediocre. She was not popular. Some of the boys admired her from a distance and sent her mash notes, but she rejected them with scorn. She had some of the usual, wild schoolgirl crushes on her male teachers and assorted movie actors and orchestra leaders, dark and romantic men that passed her on the street and dark and romantic men who stared at her from the windows of cars or buses. Just one long deep look and the crush was born and was lifted tenderly from her heart into her diary: “I feel so wonderful today, diary, because I finally saw Him. I don’t even know his name, but in my secret heart I call him Mr. X. Names are not important anyway. When two people just look at each other, they should both know.”

  The parade of Mr. X.s marched briskly into oblivion, their scent lost in the musty odor of ink, while the silverfish slithered across their tracks.

  Before she married Charles, she cremated them all in the furnace. She left the furnace door open and watched the record of the years turn to dust, the forgotten men and giggling girls, the tears that had long since dried and the triumphs that no longer mattered. She clanged the iron door shut on her dead secrets, she washed the smoke grime carefully off her hands, and began her life with Charles.

  The gnome stirred, he was restless, he wanted to talk. He did think it was a crying shame she wouldn’t talk, he was so terribly bored.

  “We should be in Green Village in five minutes,” he said. “You can feel the lake breeze already if you put the window down more.”

  She didn’t answer, wasn’t even polite enough to open her eyes. Vulgar, she was. Insensitive. He could tell it to look at her. Cow of a woman. Cow breasts.

  He glared at her, but his viciousness was once-removed, in a mirror, and besides, she wasn’t looking.

  Charles had been very much in love with her at first. He could not do enough for her. He built the house exactly as she wanted it, and it was he who suggested that her family come to live with them, in case she might be lonely. When they did come, he put himself out to make them feel at home. He charmed her mother with his wit, and bought Laura’s heart with an adroit mixture of almond nougats and Saturday matinees. He entertained them, he played the piano and sang and told them stories. It was only when they were alone together that Martha couldn’t endure him. He changed abruptly, as soon as a closed door separated them from other people. He became humble, almost embarrassed. He followed her around, begging for attention like a dog, smiling at her in a radiant, in­credulous way as if he were just that minute on the point of convincing himself that she was really his wife. She could not read a book without feeling his eyes watching her, or his hand touching her shoulder or stroking her hair. She would read on, grimly, while he forged invisible chains around her with quiet, gentle skill.

  “Come to bed, Martha.”

  “Do you mind if I finish this chapter?”

  “Of course not. Can I get you anything? A drink? Cigarette?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Is it a long chapter?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t looked.”

  “If it is, I’ll put another log on the fire for you.”

  He put the log on, he mixed her a drink, he placed a lighted cigarette between her lips. Then he sat at her feet, his head resting against her knees and his fingers spanning her ankle.

  “What tiny ankles you have . . . Your legs feel cold, do you want a blanket?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Her ankle twitched, trying to escape its chains.

  “I’ll bring you one. I don’t want you to catch cold.”

  “Can’t you leave me alone, Charles?”

  There. She had kicked the dog. He was hurt but he didn’t cringe. He was a thoroughbred, and retreated with dignity.

  “I’m sorry, darling. I guess I’m a nuisance.”

  “No, you’re not. It’s just that I want to finish this chapter.”

  She finished a great many chapters that way, but she couldn’t remember any of them. She remembered only the drinks, the logs, the cigarettes, the blankets, and how they gradually ceased.

  Laura outgrew Saturday matinees, and almond nougats gave her acne. Her mother retired to her room to relive her life without mistakes.

  Green Village.

  “It’s not a bad little town,” said the gnome. “I wouldn’t mind living here myself.”

  Of course he would mind, really. In a small town people got to know you too well and too quickly. You couldn’t turn around without someone getting suspicious. A couple of the boys had taken a cottage here once and they didn’t last a week. The neighbors complained that the boys went around naked with the blinds up and spanked each other quite hard. They said they could hear the spanking sounds at all hours of the night, and it kept them awake.

  Dirty minds, thought the gnome.

  The pink cab skimmed like a butterfly beneath the dowager bosoms of maple trees and the scrawny spinster-arms of pines.

  It stopped where she directed, just out of sight of the cottage. She walked down the path alone. The sun was still shining but the wind was damp and chilly.

  The cottage was like a thousand others around the lake, square and ugly and insubstantial, as if the builder knew that some day the lake would destroy it anyway, and not too much money must be spent on it. A pair of bathing trunks that she recognized as Charles’s was hung over the railing of the back porch. From an open window came a faint smell of cooking, but she could see no one in the kitchen.

  She walked around to the front of the cottage. The ground, spongy with pine needles and moss, muffled her steps. No one heard her, no one knew she was there. She could retreat now, she didn’t have to stay . . .

  She turned the corner and saw Forbes.

  He was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe and watching the water. The rocking chair groaned rhythmically like a broken sax.

  He removed the pipe from his mouth and tapped it against the porch railing.

  “Forbes?” she said.

  He moved his head toward her, slowly.

  “I thought there must be someone coming,” he said. “I heard a car.” His eyes shifted back to the lake. “Mr. Pearson’s in swimming.”

  She followed his gaze and saw Charles’s head bobbing like a ball on the waves.

  “The water looks cold.”

  “It is.” He made no attempt to rise or be polite. “He shouldn’t be in swimming, he’s not strong enough. Some­body should stop him. I can’t.”

  His voice was cold, condemning. It pointed at her like a finger.

  “Do you mean I should?” she said.

  “You could try. You’re the one he’s doing it for.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “All these daffy new antics of his, the raw carrots, and cold baths, and swimming in water like this. I guess they’re for you. I don’t know who else.” He tapped the pipe again. “Or else he’s trying to kill himself. It’ll probably amount to the same thing in the long run.”

  “Aren’t you being a little insolent?”

  “Well, frankly, I don’t think so. I’m just talking natural, for a change. I can afford to. I don’t work for you anymore. I don’t work for anybody. I’m not staying here for pleasure, either. That bloody lake makes me sick and the mosquitoes are eating me up.” He pulled up one of his pant legs and scratched a bite with savage satisfaction. “I’m sticking around because I hate to leave any guy in the lurch. Especially one who hasn’t anybody he can trust.”

  She wheeled away from him and called in a sudden piercing scream, “Charles! Charles!”

  “He can’t hear you,” Forbes said dryly. “He’s wearing earplugs.”

  She ran down to the edge of the lake, staggering under the added weight of sand in
her shoes. He must have seen her, for he began to swim toward shore with short, feeble strokes of his arms.

  When he reached the shallow water he stood up and took out his earplugs and shook the water out of his hair. He appeared not to notice her, to be giving himself time to adjust his manner.

  “Hello, Charles,” she said, thinking how surprising it was that she’d forgotten the way he looked when his face was as familiar to her as her own.

  He came shivering out of the water. When at last he looked directly at her, she saw that he was smiling in a shy, sweet, hopeful manner.

  “Martha. Well, Martha.”

  “You’re chilled. It’s too cold for swimming.”

  “Is it?” He laughed. “I don’t care.”

  “Put my coat over your shoulders,” she said brusquely. “Here.”

  “No. No, it’ll get wet.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “All right then.”

  She draped her coat over his shoulders. It reminded her of the times she had covered him when he’d gone to sleep naked on her bed, and she never knew whether she did it to hide him from her sight or to keep him warm.

  They started to walk, rather solemnly in step, back to the cottage.

  “You look wonderful, Martha,” he said. “What have you been doing?”

  17

  When he was dressed again, they sat side by side on the porch, talking.

  “Why did you come?” he said. “Because you wanted to see me?”

  “Why, of course. But . . .”

  “I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?” He smiled at her, his lips, still blue with the cold.

  She nodded. He didn’t look fine at all, but he seemed a great deal stronger than he had been.

  “I eat a lot,” he said. “Raw things. You know, like carrots.”

  “Forbes told me.”

  “Forbes thinks it’s silly, even though it saves him a lot of work cooking.”

  As if in response to his name, Forbes came silently out of the house carrying a steamer rug.

  Charles waved him away. “Stop treating me like an old man. I don’t need a rug over my knees.”

  Forbes snorted, very faintly, and went inside again.

  “Would you like a cigarette or anything, Martha?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Will you stay for lunch then?”

  “I’d like to, but I’ve got a cab waiting.”

  “Let it wait, won’t you? I have so many things to say to you. I can’t even get started.”

  “I have something very important to discuss with you, too.”

  “Then you’ll have to stay. What I’m going to say may require two hours, perhaps the whole rest of my life. Look, Martha.” From the inside breast pocket of his jacket he brought out a battered envelope with his own name written across the front. “Remember this?”

  “Yes.”

  “I carry it around with me all the time. It’s the only letter you ever wrote me.”

  “Throw it away,” she said sharply.

  He stared at her. “Why?”

  “Because it’s a silly letter.”

  “Extremely silly. That’s why it’s so important. Do you remember what you wrote?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “You told me you were afraid and you wanted me to come back home.”

  She wet her lips. “Did I?”

  “Afraid. Can you imagine? It bowled me over because I never dreamed you were capable of fear. I thought you were a rather hard woman.”

  “I am. Don’t let a letter change your mind.”

  “It didn’t. It merely made me start wondering whether I hadn’t been the big failure in our marriage. You had so many good qualities, but I never seemed to be able to bring them out. I knew you didn’t love me, of course, and I used to get crazy jealous wondering if you’d ever loved anyone else, and what his name was and how he looked.”

  He leaned back in the chair, smiling.

  “Crazy jealous,” he said. “Wasn’t I a fool?”

  Her hand moved to her throat as if to loosen the in­visible chains that were growing around her again, choking off the words she would have said.

  “But I’ve changed, Martha. I know how ridiculous it is to get up suddenly and announce you’ve changed, but I have. I’ll prove it to you. You will let me, won’t you? You want me to come home, don’t you, as you said in the letter?”

  She rose violently. The chair teetered, the floor vibrated.

  “I’d better go and tell the cab driver to have lunch in the village,” she said.

  “But you didn’t answer me. You do want me to come home . . . Don’t you?”

  “Of course,” she said in a flat, thin voice. “Of course I do.”

  “When? Soon?”

  “Any time.”

  “You’re not just saying that because you feel sorry for me, or anything? I know you’ll tell me the truth, and you’re always so honest.”

  “Stop dreaming,” she said. “Stop making me up out of your imagination. I’m not honest. I doubt if any woman is.”

  Her words didn’t disturb him, he was beyond their reach, up in the clouds again. Later, in an hour, a week, a year, he would fall hard and noisily down to earth, and the dreams he carried in his pockets would explode like grenades. She was incapable of softening the fall for him, or even trying, because she was so contemptuous of the original ascent.

  “Lunch,” said Forbes from the doorway, “is ready.”

  Charles got up, eager and excited. “Come on, Martha.” He took her arm. “It’s like old times, isn’t it, Forbes, having Mrs. Pearson here? Just like old times.”

  Forbes’s satiric little eyes rested briefly on her face. There was dislike in them, but understanding, too, as if he realized quite as well as she did that Charles was up in the stratosphere again, detached completely from reality. “Old times” had become jolly evenings, sweet with love and gay with music. He had forgotten they were dull and inter­minable nights, shared with a woman who wanted to see him dead.

  “Yes, you have changed, Charles,” she said with a grim little laugh. “You’ve no idea how much. Do you remember the last time I saw you?”

  He reached across the table and put his hand over hers. “Yes. I was a brute.”

  “No, no, you weren’t. Considering how you felt about me, you acted perfectly natural. But we’ve had so many ugly scenes.” She repeated the word, “Ugly.”

  “I know. We won’t have any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have more control now.”

  “Oh, dear.” She laughed again, with an echo of hysteria. “You really are hopeless, Charles. Remember the day I bought you the tie?”

  “No.”

  “You do, I can tell by your face. You’re such a bad liar. Do you want to know something about that tie?”

  He moved uneasily. “No. I . . .”

  “I didn’t pay a dollar for it, I paid eighty-nine cents! It was on sale!” How hilariously funny it was, and how uncomfortable he looked. In a minute he would say it wasn’t the price that mattered, it was the thought.

  “It isn’t how much a thing costs that matters . . .”

  “Oh, dear!” She couldn’t stand it, he was too funny, everything was. She brushed the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. “It’s the thought,” she gasped.

  “Is anything the matter, Martha? Do you want some brandy?”

  “And I don’t even know whether there was any thought. Isn’t that insane?”

  “Here’s a handkerchief, darling. I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to upset you.”

  “And the things you called me that day. You said I was sly, stupid. Maybe I am.” She had her face behind the handkerchief. It was a refuge to her from Charles’s bewildered eyes a
nd Forbes’s listening ears. Within this world of damp linen, she could laugh or cry as much as she liked, and when she was through, she could squeeze it into a ball and toss it away.

  “So much ugliness,” she said. “Ugly names, ugly thoughts.”

  “Don’t keep saying that word. It’s going to be different from now on. Look at me, Martha. Please look at me.”

  “Oh, leave me alone.”

  “I love you, Martha. I promise you I’ll make you happy if you give me a chance. I won’t call you any more nasty names. If you irritate me sometimes, I won’t say anything, I’ll just go out for a walk around the block or something.” He added, hopefully, “Maybe you could do the same thing?”

  She lowered the handkerchief and stared at him. “We’re going to be doing an awful lot of walking.”

  She saw the two of them walking simultaneously around the block, Charles in one direction, herself in another, passing each other every five minutes but not saying a word because they both happened to be irritated. Eventually, perhaps, their system would be taken up by other people, and at all hours of the day and night the sidewalks would be jammed with husbands and wives walking their heads off.

  She began to laugh again, with genuine amusement this time.

  “I didn’t realize I’d become so funny,” Charles said with a stiff little smile. “You never used to laugh at me, not unless I broke an ankle or caught my hand in a lawn mower, that being the only sort of thing that would appeal to your macabre and practically non-existent sense of humor.”