Evening Performance

by George Garrett

  “Oh, it’s all right.”

  Later on he’ll ask where something is, and when she can’t find it, he’ll just stand there looking hurt, and never a word. And when he sits down to cold cuts and a can of something, she’ll apologize, saying she spent all afternoon at the movies or the hairdresser’s. You’d think he’d take his belt to her.

  “I like you to have a good time,” he’ll say. “I like you to look nice.”

  He’ll eat salami and cheese sandwiches and drink a glass of beer and never complain. Later on in the evening, though, he’ll go in the kitchen and scramble himself some eggs.

  Sometimes, in a pure exasperation, Lucille will be direct with him.

  “Sam, you ought to be more aggressive.”

  “So, what am I supposed to be—Clint Eastwood or somebody? I’m supposed to slap you around and holler or something?”

  “Don’t be silly. I mean you ought to stand up for your rights more.”

  “I’m happy.”

  Lucille wants to say, “Well, I’m not,” but she never does.

  Sam is a good man. Almost everybody likes him. He always has a smile and a good word. He never has arguments. Mr. Seegar, now, he has some pretty radical political opinions, so much so that hardly anybody can listen to him for more than a few minutes. Not Sam. He’ll stand there and listen and nod from time to time, saying, “Maybe you got a point there,” or “You could be right, I guess.” Sometimes Lucille wishes more than anything that Sam had some enemies or even some crackpot ideas like Mr. Seegar. To be so mild-mannered, to be so kindly, seems to her to show a lack of discrimination.

  But this morning Lucille sighs and feels guilty. Why should she always be trying to change and improve him? She remembers what her mother said:

  “You better be happy with what you got, baby. Ignorance is bliss.”

  Lucille starts thinking about her mother. Maybe she will get a letter from her today. And this is her excuse for thinking about the postman. Isn’t that funny? She knew when she climbed back in bed and clutched the pillow to herself that she was going to end up thinking about the postman. But she had come to it gradually and naturally. Now, he’s a type that disturbs her.

  The postman, whatever his name is, and she isn’t going to ask, is broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped. He has a mass of unkempt red hair and a quick bright smile that worries her. It’s malicious, knowing, and a little contemptuous, she thinks. He arrives daily this summer with a sweat-wrinkled shirt open at the collar showing a tuft of fine red hair on his chest, his cap cocked a way back on his head, and a swagger, not a little boy’s swagger, not the swaggers she has seen on men who are just overgrown little boys, their silly strut that says Look at me, everybody, look at me! No, his is the natural rhythm of a young man secure in his manhood. Sometimes she imagines what it would be like to be his wife, to hear the clickety click of his tapped heels as he turns in from the sidewalk to where he lives. To be suddenly aware of his presence in the house, the odor of a pipe, the sound of him moving indifferently among the objects and furniture in the living room. She has an idea that for some reason she should furnish the house they lived in with a lot of delicate little feminine things. So he would prowl around uneasy there, necessarily break and bruise things. Isn’t that a crazy idea? Lucille has a vague sense of hopeless desire, unrealized, impossible, when she thinks of the postman. It is very close to love. It makes her a little ashamed.

  But Lucille has still more to be ashamed of. Why is it that she always happens to be taking a bath or something when he arrives and rings the doorbell? And she must get up and wrap a towel around herself and pad barefooted and dripping to peer around the door and take the mail. (He’s supposed to leave it in the mailbox, but ever since the first time, when it was a Special Delivery or something, maybe postage due, he’s brought the mail directly to her door.)

  “Why,” he said that first time, handing the envelope around the door to her, brushing her hand with his, as quick and light on her flesh as the shadow of a wing, “why I’ve interrupted your bath. And you’re as pretty as a peach.”

  She slammed the door and leaned against it, listening to him laugh as he went out. Fresh thing! Nevertheless, the same scene has been repeated and never without some remark—“Ah, the Goddess of Cleanliness,” or “So, once again we have Miss Bubble Bath”—inane, but italicized by his quick, arrogant smile. There is nothing more to it than that, and never will be (she hopes), but it makes her ashamed of herself to have this odd little compulsive feeling, ashamed, too, for Sam.

  This morning she’s determined that at least that won’t happen again. Suddenly she flings off the covers and starts to get dressed. There’s plenty to do. There’s, Lord knows, enough housework to discipline herself. She makes the bed hurriedly, picks up Sam’s socks and underwear, his shirt, and puts them in the bulging laundry hamper. For nearly a half hour she dusts and straightens until—what is it?—she suddenly feels very tired, trapped in the apartment. Is it the sound of someone whistling outside? She wants to get all dressed up, hat, gloves, and heels, and just go somewhere.

  Naturally, just when she’s in the middle of dressing again, the doorbell rings and it’s—who else?—the postman again. She throws on her robe and goes to the door, opens it, and peers around. He’s standing in the hall on the other side, leaning against the wall, smiling.

  “Hello there,” he says. “Sorry, no mail today.”

  “Well,” she says, “what did you ring for then?”

  He laughs. She sees that he has a large gold filling in one tooth.

  “Just wanted to say hello.”

  “Hello, then,” she says and she slams the door in his face.

  The nerve! The nerve of some people! She walks back to the bedroom and, catching sight of herself in the mirror over her dresser, she sees that she is smiling for the first time this morning.

  When she finishes dressing, she sits in front of that mirror to put on her makeup. The telephone rings. It’s Sally Rose, her friend from the beauty parlor. Sally is one of those ageless blondes that men seem to like so much. She must be thirty-five if she’s a day, but she looks younger unless you look at her very closely. She’s a friend Lucille has never told Sam about—he wouldn’t approve at all. Sally’s divorced and she’s a little wild. Of course most of the time she’s just like anybody else. She sticks to her job as a manicurist, faithfully, day by day. Oh, she has a date once in a while and she likes to take a drink now and then, but as far as anybody is concerned she’s perfectly respectable. She has a kind of cool, composed manner most of the time, and the women who go to the beauty parlor like her well enough to tolerate her good looks, though they wouldn’t trust her, probably. Sally has a little boy going to Junior High School. Lucille’s relationship with Sally is simple—Sally talks and she listens. Sally often tells Lucille about things which might not be so apparent.

  “You’re so sweet and pretty and innocent,” Sally has said. “I feel like I could tell you anything about myself. A person’s got to have someone to talk to once in a while, if you know what I mean.”

  Lucille is the only one who knows all about Sally’s vacation last year. Sally took her vacation in the middle of the winter and she came back deeply suntanned.

  “Well,” a lot of the women said, “I think I’ll get a job in the beauty parlor. Vacations in Florida yet!”

  Sally just smiled nicely. “A person ought to have some fun once in a while.”

  How could anybody disagree with that?

  But Sally told Lucille how she really spent her vacation.

  “You know Mr. Rogers?”

  Mr. Rogers is an elderly businessman—he must be sixty-five at least—who comes into the adjoining barber shop a couple of times a week and is one of Sally’s steady customers for manicuring. He’s in real estate or something like that. He’s always very well-dressed and dignified-looking, and he jokes around a lot with Sally. It seems that Mr. Rogers took Sally to Bermuda with him on a business trip. That was ho
w she spent her vacation.

  “Wasn’t it awful?” Lucille asked, wide-eyed.

  “What do you mean?” Sally said. “Bermuda?”

  “No,” Lucille said, “not exactly.”

  “Oh, oh,” Sally laughed. “You mean that part. Don’t be silly. Jack is just a dear sweet old man. Why, he’s just like a little boy.”

  “I wish Sam would take me on a trip like that.”

  “Why not, honey? You only live once. Tell him you want to go.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t. In the first place there’s the budget and everything. And even if he did, it wouldn’t be any fun. He’d mope around about how much everything was costing.”

  “Husbands,” Sally said. “They’re hell.”

  “Don’t you ever want to get married again?”

  “Not this kid,” Sally said. “I’ve had all that before.”

  Today Sally says she’s bored stiff. It’s her day off and she wants to do something.

  “Why don’t you come on over?” Sally asks.

  “I’ve got so much I ought to do.”

  “Nuts,” Sally says, “you’re just too lazy to budge. I’ll tell you what, let’s go swimming.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t.”

  “Well, come on over anyway. I want you to see my new bathing suit. It’s a howl. Just grab a cab and come on over.”

  “Okay,” Lucille says.

  Sally’s apartment is small, neat and trim as a ship. She keeps it that way all the time.

  “I envy you,” Lucille says. “If I could just get my place picked up once, I’d keep it that way.”

  “Lord, it’s hot,” Sally says. “Sit down and take a load off.”

  Sally goes in the kitchen and comes back with a couple of glasses.

  “Not so early in the day,” Lucille protests.

  “It’s nothing but a little gin and quinine water, honey. It’ll help you to cool off.”

  They sit and sip their drinks for a moment, then Sally gets up and switches on the record player.

  “Thank God for that machine,” she says. “I’d go out of my mind on my day off if I couldn’t have a little music.”

  “I’m going to get Sam to buy me one,” Lucille says. “One of these days.”

  “How is Sam?”

  “Oh, he’s all right. Same as ever.”

  “Let me show you the bathing suit Mr. Rogers got me. He saw it advertised in some man’s magazine and he ordered it for me. It’s a riot.”

  Sally goes into the bedroom.

  “Just be patient,” she calls.

  In a minute she comes out wearing a little-bitty red bikini bathing suit. She takes a turn around the room swinging her hips like a chorus girl.

  “How do you like it?”

  “It sure shows off your figure.”

  Sally laughs. “The old goat,” she says. “He’s getting senile.”

  “You wouldn’t wear it, would you?”

  “Why not?” Sally says. “Oh, not around here, I guess. But in Bermuda I would, sure.”

  “You going to Bermuda again next winter?”

  “I may be going lots of places.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lucille has known all along that Sally wants to tell her something important. That’s why she called up in the first place. Like everything else in life, you have to kind of sneak up on it.

  “The old guy wants to marry me.”

  “Sally!”

  “No kidding.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know,” Sally says. “He’s got piles of money.”

  “But what about your boy?”

  “They’d get along somehow,” Sally says. “Anyway, the old man can’t live forever.”

  Sally sips her drink and her mouth draws tight. She looks harder and older.

  “The hell with it,” she says. “When you get my age you’ll understand. I get so tired, tired, tired, putting on a clean white starched uniform every day and going down there and working on people’s dirty fingernails. You don’t know how ugly hands can be. Sometimes I think there’s nothing in the world but dirty hands. I’m fed up. I want to live a little.”

  “Well,” Lucille says, “I think it’s wonderful.”

  “No you don’t,” Sally says. “You do not. I know what you’re thinking. But you’re still young and you don’t understand.”

  “Yes I do,” Lucille says. “I think I understand how you feel.”

  Strangely, Lucille’s disgust is mixed with envy. For one thing she’d suddenly like to have the freedom to choose to do even something like that. And she wishes Sam was making more money so they could go places and see things. Even if they could afford it, Sam would have to change. She winces inwardly picturing him in the setting of some tropical hotel, the rustling of rich palm trees, the candlelight, an orchestra playing, beautiful suntanned people sitting under the stars, herself in an expensive off-the-shoulder white evening dress, and Sam, Sam awkward and self-conscious in dinner clothes, not knowing exactly what to say to the imperious headwaiter, carefully adding up the check at the end of the evening. It makes her feel ashamed of him. Her mother would feel differently about it. Once Sam took them out to an expensive place for dinner when her mother was visiting. When they had finished, Sam examined the check in great detail. He even put his glasses on to read it.

  “Oh, Sam,” Lucille said, “they know how to add.”

  “Sometimes they make mistakes,” he said.

  “What’s the difference?” Lucille said. “It’s so embarrassing.”

  “What’s the difference?” her mother said. “You’ll learn what’s the difference one of these days. One of these days you’ll be glad Sam’s got common sense.”

  Sam smiled. “You got to understand,” he said. “It’s good sound business to know what you’re paying for.”

  “You’ll see how it is when you get my age,” Sally is saying bitterly.

  “You always talk as if you are so ancient,” Lucille says. “You make me tired.”

  Sally laughs.

  “There’s life in the old girl yet,” she says, and she struts around the living room once more before she goes to change out of her bikini.

  They end up having lunch and then spending the afternoon talking about whether or not Sally is going to marry Mr. Rogers. One minute she’s praising him to the heavens. The next, she’s calling him the old goat. Then she’s on the defensive, saying she has a perfect right to do what she wants to do and why shouldn’t she live a little. Then she’s vulgar, telling Lucille all the jokes she knows about young women married to old men.

  “I think you ought to go ahead and do whatever you want to,” Lucille says finally.

  “Well, maybe so,” Sally says. “I just don’t know. Right now I’m playing it coy.”

  Suddenly it is four o’clock. Lucille must hurry home if she’s going to get some dinner for Sam. She sits in the back of an extravagant taxi, feeling depressed, upset. Poor Sam! Here she’s dawdled away the whole afternoon talking with that woman while there are a thousand things to do at home. She’ll make it up to him some way. She’s been all wrong about Sam. She’s lucky to have such a good sweet man like that. She gets out at the grocery store to shop for dinner. She buys a couple of steaks and some ice cream. She hurries home.

  Once inside the apartment she’s suddenly let down again. It’s so hot and stuffy. The windows have been shut ever since she left. She throws open all the windows and changes into more comfortable clothes. She goes into the kitchen and washes the breakfast dishes and begins to fix dinner.

  It’s nearly six by the time Sam gets home. She hears him coming. When he gets to the door, he knocks. He always knocks. Why does he always have to knock at his own door, I ask you?

  “Sam?” Who else?

  “Yeah,” he says, walking in. “What a scorcher today,” he says.

  He looks wilted, worn out and sweated through.

  “Rough day?”

  “Those peopl
e are crazy,” he says. “They blow their tops about everything. Every little thing has got to be a crisis.”

  “Want a beer?”

  “I’d love a beer,” he says.

  She gives him a bottle from the icebox. He likes to drink it from the bottle when he first comes home. He takes the beer with him while he goes back to change out of his office clothes. She hears water running in the bathroom, and then, at last, she hears him whistling.

  “Lucille,” he calls, “did you call the plumber?”

  “Tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  Why doesn’t he come charging into the kitchen and give her hell? She’s furious about that leaky faucet. He comes into the living room. She can hear him padding around in his bedroom slippers. He turns on the TV to watch the news. She smells the cigarette he has just lit. Lucille is nervous now. This is the part of the long day that’s the worst. She wants to, she has to do something a little different; so she puts four tall dinner candles on the table. At least they’ll have candlelight!