Wives and Lovers

by Margaret Millar

“Shut up.” Going to the sink he turned the cold water on full and splashed his face, sucking the water into his mouth. Then he dried himself carefully on a tea towel, folded the towel and replaced it on the rack,

  “That’s a dish towel,” Hazel said.

  He looked at her bitterly, his eyes bloodshot from the water. “Well, I’m a dish. That makes it all right. Ask Ruby what a fancy dish I am.”

  “I didn’t have to ask her. She told me.”

  “Give it to me straight.”

  “I’d like a cigarette.”

  “Here.”

  He lit it for her and she took three quick puffs, as if she intended the smoke to blur George’s outlines and take the edge off reality.

  She spoke slowly: “Ruby thinks you’re a fine man and all that, but she—well, you’re more of a father to her, see?”

  “She said that?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What did she say, exactly?”

  “She implied that—”

  “What did she say?”

  “Goddamn it, are you threatening me? Get your hands off me!”

  “Tell me, tell me the truth.”

  “Or you’ll what?”

  “I’ll shake it out of you.”

  “Try.”

  His hand was still on her shoulder but force and ur­gency had gone out of it. It lay like a dead thing on Hazel’s black crepe shoulder, and when she moved to one side his hand fell away. He looked down at it, a little surprised, and then he put it in his pocket.

  “Hazel?”

  “Get out of here.”

  “Tell me the truth, what she said.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’ve got to know one way or another.”

  “You already know. You just can’t face it. You want me to face it for you, just like in the old days, I got to spell it out for you because it’s easier to take that way. Well, I won’t. Get out and leave me alone.”

  “You can’t—”

  “And the next time you come bursting in here with one of your two-bit heart-throbs I’ll have you both thrown out on your ear. Now start moving before she comes back. I don’t want her in here.”

  “She’s not coming back,” George said. “She didn’t have any purse.”

  He began moving toward the door, his head bent, and swinging slightly with each step like a bear’s.

  “Listen, George—”

  “No. I guess you won’t have to spell it out for me this time.”

  “You’re lucky she’s not coming back. You may not think so right now, but you’re really lucky, George.”

  “Sure. I’m a very lucky guy.”

  He went out on to the porch and down the creaking steps. From the shadowy denseness of the live-oak tree the relentless mockingbird chortled his derisive little song: Lucky guy, lucky guy, oh my!

  George picked up a pebble from the driveway and threw it hard and accurately into the heart of the tree. The mockingbird skittered through the prickly leaves and across the garage roof to a telephone pole where it sat in silence. But the alarm had sounded: the whole tree seemed to come alive with squawks and twitterings and the whirring of wings; the wood rats responded, and began their noisy racing up and down the walls of the garage and across the hood of Hazel’s car; and from a clump of bushes came the gentle regret of the mourning dove, lamenting the sad things of this world.

  The sound reminded him of Ruby. He quickened his step, stung by a sudden wild hope that he had been wrong about her; she had had her purse with her after all, and she had just gone to the car to get it; she would be there now combing her hair.

  “Ruby!” he shouted, and broke into a run.

  There was no one in the car, no one on the street. He looked carefully around as if he half-expected to find her hiding somewhere behind a tree or hedge, needing only a little encouragement to come out, like a half-tamed animal.

  “Ruby?”

  But the only sign of life was the blinking tail-light of the East Beach bus and the gray plume of its exhaust as it rolled down toward the sea.

  He got into his car. The air was stale because the win­dows were all shut, and the smell of Ruby’s powder mingled with the smell of dead cigars and souring hopes. He cranked down the window on his own side and was leaning across the seat to do the same to the other when he noticed that the door to the glove compartment was open. He knew he hadn’t left it that way. He rarely used the compartment except on trips, and then only to store his road maps and sunglasses and the five-dollar bill in the money clip which he kept for an emergency, using the same bill year after year because the emergency hadn’t occurred.

  The clip was still there but the money was gone.

  “Ruby,” he said, sounding very surprised. “Ruby.”

  He thought of her waiting in the car while he went to talk to Hazel, waiting, catlike and curious, exploring the glove compartment to pass the time: What’s this? Money. How nice. I don’t have any. It’s mine now. Finders keepers.

  Had it been that simple and childish? He knew in his heart that it had not, that she had taken the money not at the first opportunity, when she was left alone in the car, but at the second, when she had run out of the house; and she had taken it not like an amoral child, but like a woman, desperate to get away.

  For a full minute he sat there staring into the night and seeing in its deformed shadows a mocking image of the truth. Then he started the car and turned it around and headed back toward the sea. He had no destination but it seemed easier to follow the descent of the road.

  Six blocks down he caught up with the bus. As it pulled into a curb the interior lights switched on like stage lights suddenly revealing a new set and cast of characters. The set was almost empty. Two women in nurses’ uniforms were at the front of the bus talking to the driver, and behind them, oblivious to their chatter, an old man slept, knees up and chin on chest, in a return to infancy. At the back of the bus a girl sat with her forehead pressed against the window pane, her hands shielding her eyes from the interior lights as if she was trying to see into the darkness outside. She was very young and did not look like a thief.

  “Ruby!”

  He stopped his car alongside the bus and pressed the horn once and then again.

  The old man did not awaken. The young girl turned away from the window and closed her eyes. The bus lights went out.

  9

  Elaine called from the bedroom, “Is that you, Gordon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where on earth have you been?”

  He heard her sharp footsteps approaching the head of the stairs, and in the background the sounds of the children quarreling: Gimme it, it’s mine, gimme it.

  Elaine came down the steps with quick, exasperated movements. She wore her old housecoat, but her face was made up and her hair was swirled on top of her head, pinned with a large Spanish comb.

  “You know we were going to the party at the club tonight, Gordon. Where have you been?”

  “I took a drive.”

  “All this time? I even phoned Hazel to see if you had an emergency appointment or something. She said no, she left the office at twelve noon and so did you.”

  “I forgot about the party.”

  “I kept your dinner hot for a full hour.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Elaine.”

  “You’re sorry, well, that’s just fine,” she said with a bitter little smile. “You go off for eight hours without letting me know and then you say you’re sorry.”

  Gordon said dryly, “I keep getting sorrier and sorrier, if that’s any consolation to you.”

  “And now you’ve got the nerve to turn around and be sarcastic about it! I suppose you expect me to believe that, about your going for a drive.”

&n
bsp; “I went for a drive, you don’t have to believe it.”

  “I wonder.”

  “I can’t stop you wondering. I still went for a drive.”

  At the top of the stairs there was a faint rustle, a flutter of white. Gordon looked up and saw Judith and Paul standing there listening. They were in their pajamas, Paul delicate and nervous, and Judith round as a ball. She had a candy stored in her mouth and one cheek was distended.

  “Hello, Judith,” Gordon said with forced cheerfulness. “Hello, Paul.”

  The boy lowered his head and took a step back. Judith said, “Hello.”

  “Well. And what have you two been doing all day?”

  “We went for a drive.” She began to giggle. “We went for a drive. Didn’t we, Paul? Didn’t we went for a drive?”

  The boy began to giggle too, and the giggles grew into long shuddering sobs of laughter. “We went for a drive, we went for a drive!”

  They started to jump up and down, in time to the words, up and down the hall they went in a frenzy of excitement, repeating the magic, mysterious and somehow forbidden words: “We went for a drive!”

  “Stop it!” Elaine shouted. “If you don’t go right back to your rooms I’ll tell Miss Kane not to come tonight.”

  The boy stopped jumping immediately and said, “I want Ruth to come. I want Ruth.”

  “Then go quietly to your room.”

  “Is Ruth coming?”

  “She’s coming if you behave yourself.”

  “She’s not coming, you said she’s not coming!”

  “I said I’d tell her not to come if you make any more fuss.”

  “She’s not coming, she’s not coming!” The boy went, wailing softly, back to his room. He felt betrayed, cheated. She was not coming. His mother was a black witch and his father told lies.

  The parents were too ashamed to look at each other. Elaine turned and started up the steps, her shoulders sagging.

  “Elaine—”

  “I pressed your costume. It’s on your bed.”

  “Thanks.” He wanted to apologize, to his children, to his wife, but the children couldn’t understand and his wife wouldn’t listen.

  He did the next best thing to please them all. He gave Paul and Judith a dollar each and he put on his Fiesta costume without argument. The embroidered caballero coat was too tight and the gold braided trousers flapped around his ankles when he walked, like broken wings. Under the dangling pompons of his broad-brimmed hat, Gordon’s eyes held a vast bewilderment.

  He heard the front doorbell ring and Judith and Paul dashing down the stairs shouting for Ruth.

  Elaine came in from the dressing room. She was dressed as a Spanish bride in white lace with a heavy white lace mantilla over her hair. A red velvet rose was caught in the mantilla, and another was pinned to her waist. She had painted her mouth larger than usual, going beyond its own firm outline. The new mouth changed the emphasis of her face and made her look like a stranger to Gordon.

  “Ruth’s here,” Elaine said. “Are you ready?”

  “I guess so.”

  “That coat’s a little tight this year. You must be gaining weight.”

  “Probably.”

  “Gordon—” She sat down cautiously on the edge of the bed. “I wonder why Paul does that. I mean, he gets ideas in his head, he deliberately misunderstands. You heard me tell him Ruth was coming. He refused to believe me. He was practically hysterical, I don’t understand it.”

  “I don’t either,” Gordon said. He would have liked to sit down and discuss Paul’s difficulties, to try and trace their origin. But he knew that Elaine didn’t want a dis­cussion, she merely wanted to be reassured that it wasn’t her fault, that she was a good mother. Any serious dis­cussion of the children would lead to a scene, to Elaine weeping, I did the best I could singlehanded without any help from you, they might as well not have had a father, you’ve never loved them, you’ve never even played with them like a normal father.

  No, Gordon thought, I didn’t. She never gave me a chance. If I so much as picked one of the children up, she always found reasons why I shouldn’t—I was holding them the wrong way, or watch-out-for-his-arm-Gordon!, or it was too soon after a meal for them to be jostled around, or it was time for their nap.

  “I feel,” Elaine said virtuously, “that it’s we parents who are to blame.”

  Gordon nodded, and the pompons on his hat danced in wild irony.

  “I might have known that something would happen to­night, it always does when I’ve been looking forward to something, like this party.”

  “I’m sorry if—if I’ve spoiled it for you.”

  Elaine gave a hard brief laugh. “You haven’t, don’t worry! I wouldn’t let anything spoil it. I’m not like some people. I don’t let circumstances get the best of me.”

  To Gordon, her eyes added, I’m not like you, Gordon, you poor weak mouse, letting people, letting circumstances, letting—

  Letting you too, Elaine.

  Well, that just shows how weak you are. And you’ll go on letting me, forever and ever!

  Gordon took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

  “It’s too bad you couldn’t have grown a beard like some of the other men,” Elaine said. “You’d look more authentic.”

  “You look very authentic.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It was the way you said it that I don’t like.”

  “Listen, Elaine. Would you mind if I had a drink be­fore we leave?”

  Elaine wrinkled her forehead in exasperation. “What on earth for? There’s going to be plenty of liquor there. The liquor was included in the price of the tickets like last year. Anyway,” she added as an afterthought, “Ruth is here.”

  “What’s Ruth got to do with it?”

  “Well, you know, she’s death on liquor. If she saw you taking a drink she’d probably go home and tell Hazel and Hazel would spread it all over the town, exaggerating it, of course. A dentist can’t be too careful of his reputa­tion. Anyway, why do you want a drink now, just when we’re ready to go?”

  “So I’d feel a little less foolish in this outfit, to dull my sensibilities, in brief.”

  Elaine shook her head in wry satisfaction. “I knew, I said to myself, if we get out of this house tonight without Gordon making some kind of a fuss about his costume, it’ll be a miracle.”

  “I wouldn’t call this a fuss.”

  “I can’t understand why other people can dress up and go out and have a good time and you can’t even seem to make the effort. My goodness, what difference does it make whether you’re dressed up like a businessman or a gay caballero?”

  “I don’t feel like a gay caballero,” Gordon said dryly. “That’s the difference.”

  “Well, all right then! We won’t go! We’ll stay home! We’ll spend one of our nice jolly evenings at home for a change!”

  “Not so loud, Elaine. Ruth and the kids will hear you.”

  “Well, it’s time somebody heard me. It’s time some­body heard my side of the story!”

  “Come on, Elaine, let’s go.”

  “I won’t.” She sat rigidly on the edge of the bed, re­fusing to budge.

  “Look at it sensibly, Elaine. You’re getting your own way. I’m wearing the costume, I’m not having a drink. I’m a gay caballero, see, come hell or high water, and lips that touch liquor shall—”

  “You’ve got a nerve getting sarcastic again.”

  “I wish I had a nerve. Or two nerves.”

  “What would you do?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”

  “That’s a very vague threat,” Elaine said, but she got up and went to the door
. She seemed to have a sixth sense about how far she could go without rousing Gordon’s temper, and when she reached that point she stopped. Not that Gordon would actually do anything—he never had, the presumption was that he never would—but he could spoil the party for her by sulking or refusing to dance with some of her bridge-club friends or by drinking too much, as he had on one occasion.

  Elaine folded her troubles away in one corner of her mind, neatly and carefully, so that it wouldn’t be hard to find them again and unfold them as good as new.

  The caballero and his Spanish bride went down the steps together, trailing the faint odor of mothballs and the fainter but more pervasive and sour odor of a quarrel.

  Ruth was sitting on the davenport in the front room, with Paul on her lap and Judith pressed against her side. “. . . and this little girl was in the first grade, just like you, Judy, and she had a little brother who was just going to start to school, like you, Paul. And they had a baby brother too, and a dog.”

  “I want a dog,” Paul said. “That’s what I want, is a dog as big as a pony to ride and sleep in my bed and I sleep on the floor, or maybe both of us sleep in the bed.”

  Ruth laughed, and stroked his hair gently. “Ah, I’m afraid Mother wouldn’t like that.”

  “I’m afraid she wouldn’t,” Elaine said with a smile.

  “I want a small dog,” Judith said, “to go in my baby buggy.”

  Elaine put on her sweetly reasonable expression. The children recognized it and knew what was coining. They waited, bored and resentful, for the judge to lay down the law and hurry out of court.

  “Now children, I believe we’ve settled the dog question before. We’re going to get a dog when I feel that you’re both old enough to appreciate a dog and take the respon­sibility of looking after it properly.”

  “Ruth has a dog named Wendy,” Judith said. “Ruth says it’s a Heinz dog.”

  “A what?” Elaine said.

  “A Heinz dog, fifty-seven varieties.” Judith howled with laughter, and Paul joined in, laughing even harder than Judith because he didn’t understand the joke.

  “Hush now,” Elaine said. “Be quiet. We’ll be later than usual tonight, Ruth, but Dr. Foster will drive you home and you can take a nap if you like.”