The Richer, the Poorer

by Dorothy West

  I thereupon told her a story, some of it true, some of it not, about a pain I had had once in some joint or other, which I thought would cure itself with home remedies. When it didn’t I went to a doctor who promptly put me in the hospital for X rays and tests which showed up the cause and the cure became evident. Hospitals were havens.

  Having pressed that point and, I hoped, impressed her with that point, I then pursued another. Didn’t she have a friend named Connie, who was often between jobs or between husbands, and at such times showed up on the Island with some winnings from the numbers, and stayed and played until it was gone. Why not call her tonight to find out if she was free to come and stay for a while until she, Nancy, was back on her feet. I added that from my recollection of her, Connie just didn’t seem the sort to say no to someone she liked.

  I made a meal for Nancy. There was plenty of food in her refrigerator that she hadn’t felt like fixing or eating. She ate what I gave her to please me more than because she wanted it.

  But it made us both feel better that she had something hot in her stomach.

  Now it was time for me to go. I had obligations at home. I stood by Nancy’s bed, and my voice was very serious. I said, “Nancy, I’ve kept you company a long time. I think you’ve enjoyed my being here. So now you must do something for me. You must promise me that if you feel one more pain too bad to bear you will pick up the telephone and call the ambulance. I’m writing down the number, and I’ll leave it here beside you. Now I want you to say what I asked you to say. I beg you.”

  And softly Nancy said, “I promise.”

  And I said, “I’ll come again tomorrow.”

  I could not sleep that night. And the little sleep I had was troubled, jerking me awake. At half past six I got up for good, dressed, drank some coffee, and drove to Nancy’s house. I had to know whether or not she had lived through the night. I tried the door and it was locked. I knocked on the door and it stayed mute. I called Nancy’s name, and there was no answer. The stillness was overpowering.

  I did not want to wake a neighbor at that early hour. And so I sat in my car, waiting for some stirring of life in some nearby house. There must be someone on that street who had some inkling of what I had to know.

  Across the street a sleeping house came awake. A child’s treble voice gave birth to the morning. A window shade shot up. Somebody coughed a routine morning cough. And presently the front door opened and a man in his bathrobe came out on his porch to pick up his newspaper that had landed on the porch instead of the sidewalk.

  It was Harry, a fisherman, Nancy’s good neighbor, who kept an eye out on her house whenever she was away. I got out of my car, crossed the street and said quietly, “Good morning, Harry. I’m worried about Nancy. I saw her yesterday and didn’t like her looks. So I had to come over to see how she looked today. But her door is locked, and she didn’t answer when I called her name. There may be something wrong. Do you have the key?”

  “What happened is she’s in the hospital. I saw the ambulance and me and my wife went over. That was toward dark last night. Nancy was taking it calm. She said she called the ambulance herself. Maybe that cold turned to pneumonia.”

  We exchanged a few more words, then I drove back home, and at a reasonable hour called the hospital. I was told that Nancy was undergoing tests and to come and see her later in the day.

  In the late afternoon I visited Nancy. She was sitting up in bed and looking cheerful. She had never been a patient in a hospital before, and everything had made her feel happy. She thought the doctors and nurses were wonderful. She said she felt good. She felt, of course, safe in that place of healing which was better than feeling scared at home alone.

  She was brimming over with good news and told me gratefully that I had been right about hospitals. She was only sorry she had waited so long to find out for herself. The doctors had examined her inside and out and located the cause of her pain. In three weeks they would operate and she would be a new woman, or at least as good as she used to be. In the meantime they were sending her home in a day or two to build herself up to go under the knife.

  Now, like Nancy, I felt good, too, maybe even better. I felt so good to have been wrong. My infallible intuition had been far from the mark. Maybe that knowing, that anguish of knowing was over. Maybe Nancy was going to outlive us all.

  I asked her if she had called Connie. She said she had called her while she was waiting for the ambulance, and Connie had said for her to hang in there, she’d be on the Island the day after tomorrow. I asked her for Connie’s telephone number if she knew it offhand or her address if she didn’t. I wanted to call her and tell her I’d meet her ferry and help her with whatever needed doing.

  When I left Nancy’s room I went to the desk to see if there was someone who could give me instructions on how to prepare Nancy for her operation, what to eat, how much to exercise, if any, how much rest. The nurse looked a little uncomfortable, I thought, as if I was being intrusive. But in the same moment she said with relief, “Here comes her doctor. You can speak to him.”

  The doctor and I found a quiet corner at the end of the hall. I said that Nancy had told me about her coming operation, and had sounded glad. She only wished she could have it tomorrow instead of having to wait three weeks. But she knew she had to build up her strength. Three weeks was not a lifetime. She could wait.

  The doctor said quietly, “Her condition is inoperable. But she will die without ever knowing it. That is why I set that date. She will not live three weeks.”

  I called Connie that night to make sure of the hour of her coming and to tell her the stark truth about Nancy’s sickness. She arrived at the time planned, and we stopped at the hospital before going to Nancy’s house to get Connie settled in.

  We sat on either side of her bed, each trying to outdo the other in milking some outrageous story to the last ounce of laughter. We reach an age, beginning with our thirties, when acting becomes a natural part of our existence. Without it, in so many instances, we fail our fellow beings with gratuitous blunt truth that may hurt more than it helps.

  At one time Nancy said she forgot she was in a hospital. She forgot she was going to have an operation. She did not envy us our wholeness. Her spirit, if not her body, took strength from it. We brought her home the next day along with the medication that, in her mind, would prime her for the operation. We knew it was to ease her dwindling days. As the first week ended and the second week began it was visibly clear that from then on, any day might be her last.

  But Nancy stubbornly clung to life, holding on for several weeks longer, an exercise in willfulness beyond credibility. Every day her strength diminished and death stood ready to carry the burden of her body to some appointed place.

  At such times she reached for our hands instead, making us help her out of bed, making us walk her up and down the room until the dying inside of her subsided, and she could sleep without the fear of never waking.

  She was fighting for time for all the things she had put off to let her house come first. She had never even taken one second to break off a flower and tuck it in a little girl’s tangle of hair. She had never telephoned anybody and said, “Let’s stop whatever we’re doing and go for a walk on this lovely day.” I think she had never felt the joy of just being.

  When we spoke in praise of her house, expecting to please her, she made a grim line of her mouth and turned her head away. She probably blamed it for causing her sickness, wearing down her resistance, and using up so much of her strength that she didn’t know when she’d be ready for her operation.

  One day when I had done some errands for her, she said, “All I ever do is say thank you. I want to do more. Maybe there’s something you’ve seen in my house that you’d like to have. Whatever you saw, I wish you’d take it.”

  I said, “I’d be delighted. I saw a small, square pan in your kitchen. Some day I want you to make me an apple pie in that square pan that’s just the right size.”

  She looked
at me hard to see if I was teasing or if I really meant it. My face was serious. She said, “I wish I could tell you when.”

  “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

  That apple pie in that small, square pan became a routine between us. Time and again she would hint for me to tell her about the coming miracle of my finding her in the kitchen making a square apple pie.

  Then, all in one day, it was over. It was the day the doctor made his routine visit and found Connie lying limp across a couch, with me standing over her, still in my coat, having just preceded him, and murmuring words of comfort to her for the anguish Nancy had just put her through with no one there to help her. Connie, alone, had had to walk Nancy up and down the room, a tour de force that she had somehow managed.

  The doctor had been told of these excursions, but perhaps had not given thought to how devastating they must be to those involved, and on this particular occasion, to Connie, having to handle Nancy alone.

  He called the hospital to prepare for Nancy’s arrival. He asked if Connie and I could take her to the hospital. We could. And, of course, there was someone to receive her. The doctor had told Nancy he wanted to observe her in the hospital for a few days.

  When we got back to Nancy’s, Connie said, “Do you mind if I get drunk?” I said with understanding, “Go ahead,” knowing that having received my consent, she wouldn’t, not wanting me to have to deal with it.

  We sat around musing, sipping, telling each other about our misadventures, laughing a little hysterically. I don’t know what Connie felt, but I somehow suspected that this was the end of the story. The script would not be replayed, Nancy coming home again, and Connie and I resuming our roles. Everything comes to an end, one way or another.

  Sometime in the night Nancy died. I often wonder if she died calling Connie and me to come walk her. And nobody heard. It was long ago written in the stars that that was the way it would be.

  THE ROOMER

  She followed her roomer to the front porch and stood dispiritedly in the doorway of the small, two-story house, which stood a shabby block away from the railroad tracks.

  Her roomer got into his little car, and she waved a listless goodbye. The wind whipped her skirts and sent a cold shiver down her spine. The air smelled of snow. It was time to get out her winter coat. The woman’s sullen expression changed to one of half-frightened anticipation.

  She re-entered the house and went upstairs to the cheerless back bedroom which she shared unwillingly with her husband. In nervous haste she began to unpack the worn cedar chest at the foot of the bed. At the bottom of the chest was the winter coat which she had bought at an August sale and hidden all these months. She was probably thirty, and when she was twenty, her hair had undoubtedly been shining black, her well-shaped mouth without petulance, and her big, brown eyes without the deep shadows of discontent.

  She took off the coat, got a hanger from the closet, and went downstairs to the small, untended back yard. She hung the coat on the clothesline, and stood back and looked lovingly at it. Then her eyes filled with uneasiness. What would she tell her husband? How would she explain her possession of a sixty-dollar coat? She shrugged, and set her lips grimly. She would tell him the truth.

  At noon she prepared her husband’s tasteless lunch of warmed-up leftovers. There was a lamb chop far back in the icebox and a covered dish of strawberries. She would eat her own lunch later. For weeks now, ever since her coat was purchased, she had had these secret, special meals.

  Her husband’s key turned in the front door. His anxious voice called back to the kitchen, “Hon, I’m home.”

  He had said the same thing every day for a year, and for a year she had never bothered to answer. He came heavily down the hall and into the kitchen, his little apologetic smile turning up the corners of his flaccid mouth.

  “Well, here I am,” he said bashfully. She saw no need to reply to that either. He went to the sink to wash his hands. “Mike go to work?” Mike had not missed a day in the twelve months he had been their roomer. It was a foolish question. But she knew she had to acknowledge her husband’s presence sometime. “Yes,” she said.

  “That’s fine,” he said uncertainly. “That’s just fine.” He surveyed the unattractive table. “This looks just fine, too,” he said hollowly.

  She stood by the window. “I got something to say to you.”

  The pulse in his temple began to throb. His head slumped into his shoulders. “Are you gonna dog me about my pay cut? You ain’t let up all year. Mike’s four dollars makes up the difference. We’re no better off and no worse.”

  “It ain’t about your pay cut,” she said contemptuously. “It’s about that coat you promised me.”

  “I ain’t forgot my promise,” he said desperately. “I’ll see you get your coat. In two or three months.”

  “I ain’t gonna freeze no two or three months.” She drew a long breath. “I got the coat already.”

  For the first time he faced her, staring at her with an expression of tortured incomprehension.

  “Quit kiddin’,” he said through dry lips.

  “Come see for yourself,” she said coldly.

  He lumbered to the window. They stood together and gaped through the grimy curtains. Neither had ever believed it possible that she could possess a fine, fur-trimmed coat.

  “How much it cost?” he asked bleakly.

  “Sixty dollars,” she answered proudly.

  The pulse in his temple beat like a hammer. Little beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He could not control the quivering of his mouth. After a while his words came slowly and even softly. “I bet Mike give you the money.”

  She looked at him with surprise and alarm. She had planned to tell him gradually, and now he had told her first. “That’s what I was going to tell you,” she said, and knew that it sounded weak.

  He turned away abruptly and walked back to the table. For a moment he stared down unseeingly, then hurled the plates to the floor.

  “I know how you and him eats,” he said thickly. “I been seeing them fancy things in the icebox.”

  She was terrified. She crossed to him swiftly. For the first time in years she clung to him. “You got it all wrong,” she said hoarsely. “Him and me never et together. Them things you seen in the icebox, it was me alone eatin’ ’em. Mike’s just my roomer. He ain’t nothing to me. We ain’t said two words to each other.”

  He shook her off as if she were a worrisome puppy, and he an old and tired dog.

  “He gave you the money,” he said inexorably. “I’ve known about you and him all along. You turned me out of my bedroom. You give it to him. That back room ain’t got no closet. The mattress ain’t fit. You give him the best of everything.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she cried despairingly. “Was it my fault you got a cut? One of us had to do something about it. You was too scared to speak to your boss. I rented our bedroom to Mike. So what? It was good money.”

  “Good money,” he said bitterly. “Four dollars. A guy that can buy and sell us. You said he couldn’t pay more than four dollars. You didn’t fool me. You was getting plenty on the side.”

  “Two dollars,” she sobbed, “but not like you think. Mike doesn’t know I’m alive.”

  She was telling the truth, and he did not believe her. He snorted derisively. “Why you think I call when I come in? I don’t want to catch him and you together. You been treating me like I was dirt ever since he first set foot in this house. It’s because he ain’t dirt, and I ain’t him.”

  She said with tired defiance, “It’s because he’s got get-up-and-go, and you ain’t.”

  The incoming local blew a derisive blast. The man jerked his head toward the sound. “Get-up-and-go,” he said softly. “Get-up-and-go.” He laughed in a crazy, exultant way. “You think I ain’t sick of our marriage? You think I don’t want to work for myself and have a fling with my landlord’s wife? Mike’s plenty smart. And I ain’t too dumb not to take his tip.” He turned and st
rode out of the kitchen.

  She ran after him and past him and began to climb the stairs.

  “Wait,” she panted. “For God’s sake wait. You don’t have to believe me. Believe your own eyes.”

  She raced up the stairs into Mike’s room and tore open the top bureau drawer. The front door slammed. She ran to the window, jerked it up, and shouted her husband’s name. He did not turn around. His rapid stride increased. She ran back to the open drawer, and after a moment’s frantic search, snatched out a banded packet.

  The sound of her sobbing filled the small house as she stumbled down the stairs. She reached the front door, flung it open, and unsteadily crossed the porch. Her straining eyes searched the empty street. She uttered a desolate cry. The outgoing train blew a mocking good-bye.

  The packet of penciled scraps, bearing her scrawled acknowledgment of the weekly receipt of six dollars, fluttered away from her hand. The high wind carried them skyward.

  THE MAPLE TREE

  Liz Terrell and Betsy Comden were summer neighbors. Their friendly relationship did not extend into winter, except for an exchange of Christmas cards, because their common interests ended with their return to the city.

  Liz and her husband, Clark, were a bright young couple, both busy with careers, she in the fashion world, he in advertising; and they and their New York circle of friends, most of them childless, as were Liz and Clark, moved under a compulsion of excitement and sophistication that was as natural to them as breathing.

  Betsy and Steve were born and bred Bostonians, which is to say, they were nothing like New Yorkers. In their own group they were as popular as Liz and Clark were in theirs. They were parents of four delightful children. They had a comfortable income from Steve’s law practice, and felt no compulsion whatever to live beyond it.

  Before Liz decided to buy a summer cottage, she had never heard of the little Massachusetts town that charmed her so on sight. She had made her pick from a list of likely places, choosing it for the sleepy sound of its name.