They did it his way and it went well, so well, unfortunately, that Hank was moved to brag. “Pretty effective, huh?” he said.
She didn’t answer; the cold fog had moved back in. She got up and didn’t touch him the rest of the day. “I wish you weren’t coming to dinner,” she said as she was leaving.
“Why?”
“Because you make me feel small,” she said. And she cried a few tears of self-pity on the way home. She couldn’t believe she would ever have a grand passion or a man who was really right for her; she was not even having as wild an affair as she could have handled. Dreariness was what she deserved, and dreariness was what she was going to get.
The dinner, however, turned out to be pleasant, and the thanks were largely due to Kenny Cambridge. Kenny was going to pieces as spectacularly as it was possible for someone unspectacular to go to pieces. The university had long since come to regret its investment in him, but so much had been invested that there was nothing to do but lead him along the path toward the Ph.D. His hair was as long as it would grow, but it refused to hang down and stuck straight out from his head. He had adopted old fatigues as his uniform, with a yellow scarf for color, and his beard hung down in the way his hair ideally should have. He had decided, improbably and at the last minute, that he wanted to be a medievalist, as a means of escaping the sterility of modern literature, and had decided to make his thesis a verse translation of Bevis of Hamptoun. The department had okayed the project, mostly because they were too bored with Kenny to help him think up a viable topic; but as it became apparent that he was giving Bevis an extremely free, almost Ginsbergian, rendering, opposition to his project had begun to mass itself.
His chubby mistress had dropped out of school and gone to work for the phone company, to help support them, but she had gotten fired. Her parents, who had moved to Houston, would not have tolerated her living with Kenny, so it was necessary for him to pretend he was living somewhere else. What that meant was that he had to keep his clothes in a suitcase in the garage. They were not many, but it was still inconvenient, and if her mother happened to appear too early in the morning he would have to hide in a closet while she chattered with her daughter. To make the arrangement even more bizarre, they had decided to get a pet; not liking dogs, they got a parakeet. Unfortunately they had not noticed that the parakeet had only one leg. It seemed a small matter, but, as it developed, the bird’s one leg got tired from time to time and he would collapse off his perch with much fluttering and racket, usually while Kenny and his girl were making love. Kenny took a huge enjoyment in the idiosyncrasy of his own decline, and also a huge enjoyment in Patsy’s veal scallopini, which was quite good. The chubby mistress was there also, bland and silent as a fruit.
Patsy was happy all evening. She did not feel awkward with Hank at all. He was too silent. It was pleasant to see him in a normal context rather than one of unadorned adultery. The talk was all of the staples of graduate school: professors, papers, seminars, books of scholarship, read and unread. When the company all left, Patsy put on her yellow robe and sat in her rocker, a little high from what she had drunk. She felt mellow, very pleased that such a potentially tricky evening had gone so well. She and Hank had behaved like hostess and guest. It was surprising to her that such was possible.
Later, still rather dreamy, she was lying on the bed on her stomach, not really reading a New Yorker. Jim came in from his ablutions and stroked her calf. She had shaved her legs that afternoon and her calf was very smooth.
“Nice dinner party,” he said. “We ought to have Hank over more often.”
“Huum,” she said. “He didn’t have much to say.”
“He never does. But he’s still pleasant. Actually I think he’s scared of you.”
“Scared of me?” she said, irked by the remark.
“Sure. He doesn’t really know what to do with women. He was the same way around Clara last year—very quiet. I think she must have been too much for him.”
“It might be that he just didn’t like her, you know,” she said, but her mood was spoiled. Jim’s tone, though chatty, sounded insufferably pretentious. She wanted to kick him and shout at him but knew it was an impulse to resist. She did kick his hand off her calf and rolled across to her side of the bed. She kept looking at The New Yorker, but she was sulky and swollen with anger and afraid that Jim, hot with a conviction of superiority, was going to make a serious pass. But what upset her most was mention of Clara. It made it all seem smaller and drearier. A year before, Clara had been his mistress; now she was. A knot formed in her stomach, traveled up her back, between her shoulder blades—it lodged behind her eyes and swelled and filled her head. She began to cry.
Jim was startled; he had just switched off the bed light and was under the impression that she was in a good mood.
“Are you sick?” he asked, switching the light on again.
“No,” she said with a sob of misery. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Jim was very confused; he didn’t understand it at all. He tried to pull her close to him, but she stiffened. “No,” she said. “Go on to sleep. Just go on to sleep.”
“Okay,” Jim said a little angrily. He was silent for a few minutes. “I’ll never understand you,” he said.
Patsy didn’t answer and didn’t care. She didn’t want to be understood. She had felt good for an hour, felt in possession of herself, and suddenly, because of a few words from Jim, she felt worthless again and unsure of everything. Jim was silent and patient, sure that she would calm down and be apologetic. While he was waiting, his mind wandered and he went to sleep. The fact registered itself on Patsy and she became calmer at once. When he was in bed with her and awake she could not feel calm. It was like listening to the ticking of a human bomb, and the bomb, she knew, inside her. If he were to jostle her she might explode, and she lay tensely, hoping not to be jostled in the wrong way. As soon as he went to sleep the ticking stopped and she relaxed.
She got up and washed her face, rueful at the thought of how puffy she would look in the morning. Back in bed, she felt wakeful and turned on her reading light and reached across Jim to get her New Yorker. The sight of him asleep made her feel guilty for having been upset over so little. He had disposed of his beard, and looking at his quiet familiar face made her wonder what he would feel if he really knew her. How would it change his face, knowing what she had become? What would he do? What sort of man would he become, in the face of her disloyalty. Would he beat her, leave her, weep, blame it on Hank, be quietly hurt, forgive her, be blasé? She couldn’t predict; his feeling for her was too indefinite in the forms it took for her to be able to predict. Worse, she couldn’t decide which of the various reactions she would like him to have. Her feelings were just as indefinite as his, but when she turned off the light again and heard his quiet breathing she felt calm and safe, not to have been discovered. Better to stay calm and safe, with husband and son. All the other wildness could not really be worth as much as it seemed. There was no permanency in it. So long as she was not jostled the familial darkness was nice.
The next morning she was making French toast when the resolve to have a house awakened in her. Davey was scuttling around at her feet on the cold floor, mumbling and exclaiming and discoursing. He was fascinated with her fuzzy yellow house shoes and she had taken one off and given it to him, to keep him out from under her feet. He rubbed it against his face and sneezed and then beat it against the floor for a while; then he came and got underfoot anyway, convinced the other house shoe was more desirable. She took it off and scooted him back from the stove and finished breakfast barefooted, watching him happily mouth the shoe. It was time for a house. There was no point in more shilly-shallying. What if her midnight fits were penetrating to Davey in some way, worrying him in ways that didn’t show?
When Jim staggered into the bathroom a half hour later Patsy was on the phone talking to Lee Duffin, and, two hours after that, while Davey was having a morning nap, she left Jim to baby-sit and went
to see the house. The morning was fresh, bright, not nippy exactly but refreshingly cool, and she felt extremely good and extremely businesslike. She felt like doing something smart and positive. As she passed Albans Road it occurred to her that if she had happened to meet Hank just then she could have dispatched him from her life with a smile. She was in a mood to dispatch things.
The Duffins were awed by her mood. Bill was hung over and could not quite get with it. He tried being laconic with Patsy and found that she was even more laconic with him; she was not really seeing him at all, or listening to him. She was inspecting the house with strict concentration. He became grave and formal and then decided to hell with it and left for school, leaving Lee to deal with Patsy. Lee had no trouble. She assimilated herself to Patsy’s mood and showed the house from attic to basement. When the tour was done she poured them coffee and brought it into the living room. Patsy was looking at the windows and brooding about drapes. She looked at Lee and smiled; they were both in sweaters and skirts. Lee’s face was quiet.
“How much do you want?”
“Thirty. We arrived at that figure the night we agreed to offer it to you.”
Patsy sipped some coffee, leaned back on the comfortable sofa and looked at the long windows again, picturing them with drapes. Her drapes. Lee’s drapes were beige and not quite bright enough for the room, she thought.
“We can offer twenty-seven five,” she said, considering the high bookcases.
Lee smiled as if pleased with something. “Did you arrive at that figure the night we offered to sell?” she asked.
“No, just now. I’m so glad the third floor’s carpeted. It’s perfect for Davey.”
“We’ll take twenty-eight,” Lee said.
“Okay,” Patsy said.
They chatted for a while about various aspects of the house, which Patsy had come immediately to consider hers. As they were standing up, Patsy about to leave, it seemed to occur to Lee that the house had in some way ceased to be her own, that soon she would be without the beautiful dark floors of her living room and its lovely afternoon light. There was a look of unhappiness in her eyes, as if she already foresaw herself placeless. She kept glancing out her living-room windows, as if remembering the light. Some of the briskness left Patsy too when she thought of moving. Inadequate as the old apartment was, it had been her first home as a woman and she loved it. She didn’t feel businesslike any more.
“How is Peter?” she asked, a little startled by her own question.
Lee showed no surprise. “He’s fine,” she said. “He’s a perfect darling. No one could help loving him.”
“That was my impression,” Patsy said.
Lee looked up, brightening by an effort of will. “Well, now that we’ve done the essential dealing let’s leave the details to the men.” They walked out on the steps and looked up at the shedding elm. When Patsy left she had the impression that, however glad Lee may have been to have the house selling done, the larger part of her was sad at the thought of losing the house, or Peter, or both. Passing back by Albans Road, she herself felt much less clear and positive, much less in a mood to dispatch anyone from her life. Her mood of decision had passed. Who was she to be making such positive moves, a woman with so little certain in her life? It was almost winter. Someday soon she would have to take Davey to the zoo and see if Peewee Raskin had returned to his favorite job on the zoo train.
At home a sense of briskness returned. She felt she had accomplished something major. Jim and Davey were on the floor, playing with each other somewhat disgruntledly, Davey slapping petulantly at the toys Jim held out to him. Jim was mildly peeved to have been left out of the house dealing, while Davey seemed to be annoyed at the world in general.
“We can move in January,” she said. The thought of the house and all the bookcases soon lifted Jim’s spirits and he went off to the library. Patsy remembered that she had forgotten to pick up her laundry, and she got Davey’s sweater and a neat-looking fall cap she had bought him and carried him underarm downstairs to his stroller, which they kept in the garage.
Wheeling him back toward Bissonnet in the bright fall sunlight, the trees on South Boulevard beautifully green, she felt a great surge of spirits. They would have a whole house, finally. There was a whole floor for Davey, narrow and piney, but just right for a little boy. The stairs were of a nice wood too, and she could not stop thinking about drapes for the living room.
Her launderer was a small jolly man named Mr. Plum. He thought she was gorgeous and was always telling her so; often when she was low his cheeriness and his fondness for her were a help. When she wheeled Davey in, her eyes sparkling, he saw that she was in an exceptional humor and immediately, in his wry way, began to seek the cause. Patsy was not reticent.
“Since you’re my only real friend you get to be the first to know,” she said, grinning with delight. “We’ve just bought a house.”
“Not far away, I hope,” he said. “Look at him, pretty soon he’ll reach it.”
Davey was standing up in his stroller, straining to reach the penny gum machine, in front of which Patsy invariably parked him. It was one of the mysteries of his life, the round globe full of gum. He could not quite reach it from the stroller and his face grew red with straining.
“You can’t chew it yet,” Patsy said. “It takes more teeth.”
But she stooped to lift him out of the stroller, and her hair fell over his head as she struggled to disengage one of his feet. Unless she gave him a close look at the gum machine he would cry all the way home. Once she had him out, she set him on her hip and watched him happily as he explored the mystery further, rubbing his hands on the glass, still unable to understand why the gum could not be touched. She held him with one hand and straightened her hair with the other, looking to see if Mr. Plum shared her delight in Davey’s obsession.
“I wish I could make a piece come out without having to give it to him,” she said. Mr. Plum wanted to know all about the house; he chided her for not having a contractor check the foundation. “I know I should have,” she said, “but I just couldn’t resist it. I had to get a house for this big boy of mine.” Her falling hair and his own straining had turned Davey’s cute cap awry. “I’m so happy about it,” she said, and she found a Kleenex and wiped Davey’s slobbers off the gum machine. She looked keenly pleased, like a young woman who had never known unhappiness, but a little abstracted by the rush of her own thoughts. She stuffed Davey back in his stroller, got the laundry, and in a moment was poised on the lip of Bissonnet, looking one way and another for a break in the traffic and hoping one would come before Davey grew fretful at being stopped. She didn’t want him trying to turn around in the stroller; with one hand full of clothes hangers it was hard enough to manage. She patted her foot a little impatiently while the cars swished by. Her hair was blowing again and she had many things on her mind.
BOOK IV
Summer’s
Lease
1
ONE EVENING in early November, only two or three days after they decided to buy the Duffin house, Roger Wagonner called. Patsy was cooking supper. A real norther had blown in and the windows were rattling. The trees in the Whitneys’ back yard were scraping the roof. The sound of rattling windows felt wintry and went well with the smell of the lamb chops she was cooking. It was almost dark. Davey was underfoot, where he almost always was, fretting a little because he was hungry and playing with one of the few remaining blocks from the block truck Dixie had given him during the summer. Patsy stood by the stove, in a comfortable mull, thinking about rugs and chairs. Jim answered the phone, and though she listened with one ear to what he was saying it took a minute or two to realize who he was talking to. Since deciding to buy the house she had more or less forgotten that she was unhappy with Jim and she seldom really listened to what he was saying. When she realized he was talking to Roger she turned from the stove at once, causing Davey to wail with impatience. She picked him up, turned the lamb chops off, and went to the
bedroom to the other phone.
When she picked up the receiver Roger was in the midst of a leisurely report on the weather in his part of the country, but he interrupted it to ask how she was.
“Fine, of course,” she said. “So’s Davey. Is it snowing up there?”
“No, it ain’t warm enough.”
“We just bought a house,” she said. “We can’t move in for two months.”
“So Jim was telling me. How big’s that boy now?”
“Enormous. He’s sitting on my hip.”
“Say,” Roger said. “Did the two of you ever give that little proposition I made you any thought? About taking this old worn-out ranch?”
“Goodness,” she said. “I completely forgot to tell him about it. He had an accident and it wiped everything else right out of my mind.”
“What’s this?” Jim asked. He took over, explained his accident as best he could, and listened to Roger’s proposition. Patsy broke in to say goodbye and wish Roger well. She put Davey in his highchair and fed him, listening with one ear to Jim’s half of the conversation. Roger’s voice had sounded exactly the same. It was rather pleasant to sit and poke baby goop into Davey’s mouth; she had grown so expert at it that only relatively small amounts got on his hands or into his hair. Jim sounded very interested in the ranch, and that too was okay. She could contemplate owning a house and rugs and chairs and tables, but a ranch was beyond her scale. Better to leave it to the men. Davey could hear his father’s voice and kept twisting his head about to look for him, causing Patsy to hit his cheek with a spoonful of spinach. Finally Jim hung up and came in and sat down. Patsy sighed. “If you like him so much, he can feed you,” she said, handing Jim the spoon. She wiped her hands on the dishtowel and went back to the stove.
Jim continued the feeding. He was obviously feeling happy, and he had developed some fatherly skills, enough at least to keep Davey amused when she needed him not to be under her feet. She opened some small peas and watched Davey bang his fist on the white apron of his highchair. They were a nice father and son; she felt well disposed toward them. The routine of meals was one routine she liked, for her kitchen was a pleasant bright place, cozy on winter evenings, and Davey was always doing something she and Jim could chatter about. The small routines of her life were attractive to her. It seemed they were gradually wearing the edge off the sword of her differences with Jim. It had seemed such a terribly sharp sword at one time that she could never have supposed anything could dull it, but breakfasts and suppers and Davey seemed to be doing it. It could still cut, particularly if they were in bed, but they were not always in bed, and in the kitchen, with her dinner taking shape, it could be forgotten.
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