Wives and Lovers

by Margaret Millar

  “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.”

  “I don’t mind if I do.” She took a quart of beer out of the refrigerator and poured out a glassful. The beer was warm and foamed out over the sides of the glass like soapsuds. “Sit down, why don’t you, before you drop.”

  “I won’t drop.” But she pulled out one of the straight-backed wooden chairs and sat down at the kitchen table. “I feel fine.”

  “Ruby—”

  “Just fine.”

  “Ruby, snap out of it.”

  “What?”

  “Listen, you haven’t been taking drugs or anything, have you?”

  “Drugs? No, I never take drugs.”

  “You don’t remember me, Ruby?”

  “Remember?”

  “We’ve met before.”

  Ruby shook her head, slowly, unable for the moment to make any connection between the plump and perspiring woman holding the glass of beer, and the composed efficient nurse in the white uniform who ran Gordon’s office and answered the telephone. Even the voices were different.

  “What you need,” Hazel said, “is some food and rest.”

  “No, thank you.” She stared at the table in front of her, at the half-prepared sandwiches, the buttered bread and the thick slices of meat loaf containing bright blobs of green which might have been peas or green pepper but which looked to Ruby like some phosphorescent decay. She had missed dinner—she hadn’t, in fact, had a square meal for a week now—and the sight of the meat and its strong oniony smell nauseated her. She never wanted to see food again. There was no fight, no resolution, left in her, only the numbness of despair that made her want to lie down in a quiet place and go to sleep for a long time until many things were forgotten. She hadn’t even the energy to get up and leave. She was bound by sheer inertia to a chair at Hazel’s kitchen table, shrouded by the smell of meat loaf and the sweet, fermented memories of the summer with Gordon.

  “You’re Gordon’s Hazel,” she said, and a nerve began to twitch in her left cheek, contracting the muscle and pulling up the corner of her mouth. It was as if, minutes before Ruby herself could see any humor in the situation, her face was preparing to smile. But instead of smiling, she threw back her head and laughed, and kept on laugh­ing while Hazel watched her uneasily over the moist, foamy rim of her glass.

  “You’re George’s Hazel and you’re Gordon’s Hazel and they both begin with a G!” It was so excruciatingly funny that tears oozed out from between her eyelids and fell down her cheeks almost to the point of her chin. She did not weep like Josephine who had a wealth of tears, fat and silver and smooth like ball bearings. Ruby’s tears came out pinched and meager, little coins squeezed out of shape between a miser’s fingers. Josephine wept from a great reservoir of self-regard and self-pity; Ruby wept from the dry ducts of self-hate.

  “You’re punchy.” Hazel took a piece of Kleenex from the window ledge over the sink. “Here. Use this.”

  “I don’t want anything from you, I don’t want any­thing from anybody.”

  “All right, but not so loud. George might hear you.”

  “I don’t care.” She took the piece of Kleenex and rubbed her face, savagely, as if she had a grudge against her own skin. “He brought me here on purpose. It was a trap. He wants to find out things about me.”

  “He wants to help you.”

  “I hate him. I hate him and his help.”

  “Now listen—”

  “He’s a fat creepy old man and when he looks at me I feel like screaming, my skin crawls. I know what he’s thinking. I know what he wants. And it’s not to help me. He wants to help me, what a laugh.”

  “Shut up,” Hazel said, but without authority, without even conviction. “He’ll hear you.”

  “Let him. I want him to hear. All this time him putting on the big act, poor Ruby, Ruby needs help, there’s something the matter with her. Well, I know who there’s something the matter with and it’s not me. It’s him. Him and his greasy eyes that never let you alone, that you can’t ever get away from because even when he’s not around I feel them looking at me and I get sick in my stomach!”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “Am I? That’s what you think. I’ve been around. I know men like him.”

  Hazel finished the beer and put the empty glass on the sink. With one part of her mind she felt pity for George and the need to defend him: George has nice eyes, they’re not greasy, they’re luminous—and he always tries to help people, not just you. But from another and deeper part of her mind, words gushed up like water from an underground river: Go on, tell me more. Show me how you hate him. Talk louder and he’ll hear you. Let him find out. Raise your voice, Ruby.

  “Shut up,” she said roughly. “You’ve got no right shooting off your mouth about one of my best friends.”

  Ruby didn’t answer. She had picked up a crumb of meat from the table and was rolling it between her fingers until it looked like a little brown pill.

  “You’ve got no right,” Hazel repeated. “And anyway, what are you doing going out with him if you can’t stand the sight of him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have a reason.”

  “No. He came to the house and wanted to take me for a drive and I was too tired to argue, that’s all, too tired.” She made another brown pill and placed it carefully be­side the first one on the oilcloth table cover. “We drove up Garcia Road.”

  “You don’t have to tell me where you—”

  “I’ve never been in that part of town before. It’s very pretty, all the trees and flowers, and the houses with such wide windows like the people
in them have got nothing to hide. I’d like to live in a place like that with big wide windows and never pull the blinds. I would keep myself very well groomed so that people walking by on the side­walk would never catch me looking sloppy or anything. I would always have on a pretty dress or one of those quilted satin housecoats, and I’d keep the house very clean and tidy, nothing lying around. People walking by would glance in and wonder who I was and think how lucky, that girl, to have such a beautiful clean house with such shiny furniture.” She paused for breath, sucking the air in through her mouth greedily as if it was not air at all but an ether to prolong the dream. “Blue is my color but a red robe would be nicer. It’s more cheerful, like Christmas. Red always reminds me of Christmas at home.”

  But she had stretched the dream too far—there had never been a Christmas at home that she could remember without bitterness—and it snapped like an elastic band and stung her skin and brought moisture to her eyes. Through the moisture she could see Hazel looking blurred and fuzzy as if she had just grown a crop of tiny feathers.

  “You should have something to eat,” Hazel said.

  “No. No, please, I’m not hungry.”

  “A glass of milk, then.”

  “No.” She blinked the moisture out of her eyes. “Gor­don lives in a house like that, doesn’t he?”

  “Like—? Oh. Yes, kind of like that.”

  “Did you ever go there?”

  “Once.”

  “It’s like I said, isn’t it, when you walk by you can look right into the windows?”

  “I don’t remember. Maybe you can.”

  “I bet she keeps the place very clean. Just judging from what I’ve heard of her, I bet she’s very tidy.”

  “I guess she is,” Hazel said. The girl was making her nervous. She wished George would come back and take her away. “I don’t notice those things much.”

  “Naturally, being a friend of Gordon’s, I’ve had invita­tions to dinner and things like that, but I’ve always been too busy to go, so I’ve never even met his wife. I guess you know her pretty well.”

  “Well enough.”

  “What’s she look like?”

  “She’s kind of blonde and pale.”

  “Pretty?”

  “She has nice teeth. She gets them cleaned every three months. That’s the only time I ever see her, when she comes to the office, except the once I went out to the house to take her the car keys.”

  “I thought you might be friendly with her, she might tell you things.”

  “No. She isn’t the kind that confides in the office help.”

  “You don’t like her much, I can tell that.”

  “I don’t think about her.”

  “I do,” Ruby said in a whisper. “I think about her a lot.”

  Hazel gave her a wary, uneasy glance. “If that’s your idea of fun, go ahead.”

  “I think about her, what is she like, and is she prettier than I am, and what do her and Gordon talk about and what does she give him for breakfast and do they sleep in the same room—all the things that Gordon never tells me, that’s what I think about. Gordon and I—Gordon—” She put her head down on the table and cradled it with her arms for comfort. Her voice came out, muffled by the press of flesh: “You wouldn’t understand. Nobody would, nobody.”

  Slowly and stiffly Hazel crossed the room and sat down at the table opposite her. Her hands were shaking and her teeth were clenched together so tight that her jaws ached.

  “So you’re the girl,” she said, sounding helpless and confused, as if the fact had struck her like a fire in the night, exposing her nakedness. “The one he talks to on the phone, that’s you.”

  “We never talked more than a minute. We—”

  “Why did you have to tell me? I’ve got troubles of my own. I didn’t want to know. Why did you have to tell me?”

  “I—don’t know.”

  “I’ve kept out of it. I knew something was going on but I managed to keep out of it. It’s none of my business what Gordon does, or you.” But she was aware as soon as the words were out that they were a lie. What Gordon did was her business because he was her employer, he paid her salary; and what Ruby did was her business be­cause it affected not only Gordon, but George as well. “Why drag me into it, for God’s sake?”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “How many other people have you told?”

  “No—no one.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “Just her—Elaine.”

  “Just Elaine,” Hazel said with a brief, mirthless laugh. “That’s very funny, if you know Elaine. Just.” She paused a moment. Through the closed door she could hear George’s bass rumble and she thought, so that’s why she hates George so much, not for what he is or does, but because he isn’t Gordon. “How did Elaine find out?”

  “I don’t know. Suddenly one night she phoned the café where I meet Gordon and asked for him. She told him the children were sick and he was to come right home. I said to Gordon, we’ll have to meet some place else, and he said it was no use, no matter where we went she would find out.” She raised her head. Her eyes were dry and glassy like marbles, and there was a round red indentation on her left cheek where it had pressed too long and tight against one of the buttons on her sleeve. “He’s scared of her. There’s no fight in him.”

  “I’ve seen him fight.”

  “Not her. Not against her. He means to, he says he will, and then when the time comes he can’t. It’s like she paralyzes him and he can’t even talk to her. How can anything be settled if he won’t talk to her? What will happen to us?”

  “You already know. It’s already happened.”

  “You mean bad things.”

  “What else?”

  “They show, here?” She reached up and touched her face, running her fingertips along her forehead and down her cheeks to the point of her jaw. “You can see them?”

  “Not exactly. I didn’t—”

  “I’ve always looked old for my age,” Ruby said stiffly. “It’s because I got such fine skin, it wrinkles easier than other people’s.”

  “I didn’t mean you had wrinkles.”

  “You were just trying to scare me, that’s what you meant.”

  “I’m trying to warn you what you’re messing around in. The top’s been ready to blow off that house for years.”

  “Let it blow.”

  “You think you can pick up the pieces?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your own, maybe. Not Gordon’s. There’ll be nothing to pick up.”

  Ruby leaned across the table. “You don’t want Gordon to go away with me and be happy, do you? You want things to stay like they are. You don’t care about Gordon, it’s your job you care about.”

  “There are other jobs,” Hazel said grimly. “And probably other Gordons. But if there’s a sure thing on God’s green earth, there’s only one Elaine.”

  “Trying to scare me—what can she do to me?”

  “She can twist you out of shape like you were a pipe cleaner. I’ve seen what she does to him.”

  “I can fight back. I’m stronger than I look. I’m tough.”

  Hazel turned away. “Sure. Sure you are.”

  “Wait and see. Someday, when everything’s settled and Gordon and I are married, I bet you’ll look back on tonight and have a big laugh about how you tried to scare me.”

  “I like a big laugh,” Hazel said wearily. “Good luck to you anyway, Ruby.”

  “Why do you say it like that, like I was going to die or something? I’ve got a future, me and Gordon. No matter what it is, it’ll be better than this. You can see that, can’t you?”

  “I guess I can.”

  “I’m strong and I’m tough.”

 
“Sure.”

  The door from the hall swung open and George came in. His face was flushed and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and he was rubbing his hands together as if he’d just told a good joke and had led the laughing. George knew a million jokes.

  “Time to break this up, isn’t it?”

  Neither of the women answered.

  “You girls been having a nice little chat?”

  “Swell,” Hazel said. “Dandy.”

  He approached Ruby’s chair, almost shyly. “I told you Hazel was a real tonic. You look better already, that’s a feet.”

  She kept her eyes fixed on the table. “I look a mess.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “My hair—”

  “Your hair looks great.” He reached out to touch it, but she shrank away from his hand.

  “I left,” she said, “I left my purse in the car.”

  “I’ll get it for you.”

  “No!”

  “Is anything the matter?”

  “No! I just want to get my purse so I can comb my hair.”

  “All right,” he said. “All right.”

  He stepped back and she darted toward the door, quick and frightened, like a bird. A moment later, through the open window, they could hear her frantic footsteps.

  For a long time George didn’t move or speak. Then sud­denly he reached down and picked up a whole slice of meat loaf and crammed it into his mouth. He began to chew, his cheeks distended like a squirrel’s. A moist blob of food dribbled out of the corner of his mouth and fell on his lapel. He didn’t wipe it off. He just stood there, chewing, out of rage and defiance and humiliation, chew­ing until his jaws ached and his throat contracted in re­vulsion and a lump formed in his chest like a knot of leather. And then, because he could not swallow, he opened the screen door and spat across the porch railing into the summer night. He came back into the kitchen, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, breathing noisily like a sprinter at the tape.

  “You don’t,” Hazel said coldly, “have to act like a pig.”

  “I am treated like a pig. I will be a pig.”

  “Well, pick somebody else’s kitchen to—”