Wives and Lovers

by Margaret Millar

  The pain was gone. She wiped her hands and dabbed at the water on the front of her dress, the damp imprint of two hands, one over each breast.

  “I like to walk fast,” she said.

  Josephine giggled. “I can’t say the same for myself, right now. I’ve gotten so I just hate to move, unless Harold’s around to help me up out of chairs and things like that.”

  “I should change my dress.”

  “It’ll dry in a minute on a day like this.”

  “I’ll go and change it. I shouldn’t be working around in the kitchen in a good dress like this. It’s wasteful.”

  She went into her bedroom, shutting the door against Josephine. Quite frequently lately, the sound of Jose­phine’s gentle voice talking about Harold, and the sight of her distended abdomen and swollen breasts, set Ruth’s nerves on edge. She wasn’t sure why she had these violent reactions to Josephine. They came at her suddenly, in the midst of quite ordinary conversations about the baby’s name, or the number of diapers that would be necessary, or the house Josephine meant to have someday down by the sea.

  “Not a big house. Two bedrooms, that will be enough.”

  “You’ll get the fog down there.”

  “I don’t care, I never get tired looking at the sea.”

  “If you build above the fog line it would be better for the baby.”

  “And wistaria vines over the front veranda. I’m crazy about wistaria.”

  “It’s all right when it’s in bloom, but think of when it isn’t. It looks like old dead twigs.”

  “And maybe a very small orchard, a couple of orange trees and an avocado. And a jacaranda, just to look at.”

  “They say you’ve got to plant two avocados side by side, a single one won’t bear fruit.”

  “I never heard of that.”

  “You’ve got to be careful about jacarandas too. Some of them never bloom and some bloom in fits, maybe every few years. They’re very temperamental, someone told me.”

  “My goodness, Ruth, you’ve said something kind of unpleasant about every single one of my ideas.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You have so. About the fog line and the wistarias and the jacaranda—”

  “I was just urging you to be careful.”

  “Well, it didn’t sound like it. It sounded like—”

  Josephine couldn’t explain what it sounded like, and Ruth, who might have explained, didn’t try. It sounded as if she was jealous of Josephine with her baby who hadn’t arrived yet, the two-bedroom house that hadn’t been built, and the jacaranda that wasn’t planted. But she knew she wasn’t jealous of the baby, the tree, the house, only of Josephine’s capacity for dreaming of such things.

  She took off the crepe dress she always wore to the Fosters’ on Saturday nights. Where the water had touched it, the crepe had puckered and the imprint of her hands was now indistinct and no larger than a child’s. She hung the dress on her side of the closet she shared with Hazel.

  Standing in her white cotton slip, Ruth heard her heart knocking against the bones of her chest, extraordinarily loud and distinct in the stifling closet. It was the heart­beat of fear. She felt that her life was changing, but she didn’t know in which way and she was afraid to have it change at all. The indications of change were there. They were very small things that someone else mightn’t notice, little wings beating against the thin brittle walls of her world like moths at a window.

  Dr. Foster had left, and though he scarcely knew she was alive, his leaving affected her. There would be no more Saturday nights for her, telling stories to Paul and Judith and giving the baby his bottle, and probably even no more job for Hazel. The four of them, and the fifth to come, would be forced to live on Hazel’s alimony and Harold’s wages, while the cost of living kept going up and up and up.

  The excitement she felt when she entered the house had been only carbonated fear and now that the bubbles had disappeared she recognized it for what it was. She was terrified by the intricate complexities of even one small human act. A man who was almost a stranger to her had decided to leave his wife, and by this decision he had in­volved not only himself and his family and the girl, but herself and Hazel and Josephine and Harold and the baby, even the dog. Perhaps in the end, she thought desperately, everyone in the world was affected by the actions of every other person, a chain reaction was set up that never ceased. It went on and on, an interminable string tying them all together in an inextricably knotted mass. There was no escape, it was a universal law: one drop of water couldn’t be displaced without affecting all the other drops.

  She stood in the narrow closet listening to her fearful heart and the pressing of the wind against the windows. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t take one step forward or backward for fear that step would be heard around the world.

  At that moment she came, as close as she’d ever come, to some kind of revelation, but the moment passed and her mind had to withdraw to protect itself. She began to grope for some simple easy explanation that would shift the weight of responsibility. It’s this wind, she thought. I always get nervy like this when the wind blows in from the desert. It used to affect my classes too. The children were all cross and I had quite a time controlling them. They used to sag over their desks, their eyes reddened with dust—

  She put on a wrap-around cotton dress that Josephine had given to her when Josephine had become too big to wear it any longer. She felt quite ashamed of herself for becoming irritated with Josephine. It was the wind, of course. Now that she realized that fact, she could discipline herself better. For the rest of the day she would force herself to be pleasant and to smile when she didn’t feel like it. She had the will power, she could do it. Ignore the desert wind.

  She heard the front door slam and she knew it must be Hazel coming home because Harold always closed doors very softly to avoid startling Josephine. Bracing herself (against the wind, the drop of water, the knot of string) she went out to the living room.

  She told Hazel the news while Hazel sat on the daven­port rubbing her eyes.

  “You don’t seem very surprised,” Ruth said.

  “Not so very. My God, it’s hot. Is there some cold juice or something in the refrigerator?”

  “Grapefruit juice. Don’t rub your eyes like that. You’re only rubbing the dust in, not getting it out.”

  “It feels good anyway.”

  “If you’re not surprised it means you must have had your suspicions all along. Mrs. Foster asked me that last night, and I said, of course not. Hazel’s never said a word except what a wonderful man Dr. Foster is. I said, I’m sure Hazel would never condone anything like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “His running around with other women.”

  “He didn’t,” Hazel said deliberately. “There was just one woman.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Someone told me.”

  “That’s even worse. It—it practically proves that they were—cohabiting.’’

  “If they weren’t, they soon will be.”

  “I’m shocked to the core by your attitude, Hazel. You don’t seem to realize—”

  “How’s Elaine taking it?”

  “How would anyone take it? She’s beside herself, the poor woman. This morning he had the nerve to phone her and tell her, bold as brass, to go out and get a divorce. Naturally she refused. She said never, no matter what happens, will she disgrace her church and her parents and her children by becoming a divorced woman. And I agree with her. She’s convinced that divorce is wrong and I ad­mire her for standing by her convictions.”

  “Crap.”

  Ruth’s face grew pale with disapproval. “I wish you—you really shouldn’t use words like that, Hazel. I know it’s your house and all that but—”

  “All
right, I’ll say baloney then, but it’s the same thing no matter how you slice it.”

  “Really, Hazel!”

  “I get so damn tired of your admiration for that snippy little bitch. I know why she’s not getting a divorce, be­cause she’s too damn mean for one thing. It would kill her to see Gordon have a life of his own. And also because she knows she’ll never get another husband if she lets Gordon go.”

  “Such a thought would never occur to her,” Ruth said harshly. “And I’m surprised at you, Hazel. You talk as if you actually approve of Dr. Foster and what he’s done.”

  “I’ve always approved of him, why should I change now? A good man doesn’t turn into a bad man over­night.”

  “That’s all very well, but we must judge people by their actions. There’s no other way to judge them, and you—”

  Hazel raised her voice to interrupt. “I don’t want to judge them. I want to go on liking the people I like and making excuses for them when I have to, and having a few excuses made for me too.”

  “Moral softness. I want no excuses made for me, ever.”

  “You need them, like everyone else.”

  “I wouldn’t take them!” Ruth shouted, making a wild gesture with her fists. “I wouldn’t listen!”

  “Don’t get so worked up. I wasn’t trying to—”

  “I don’t want any excuses from anybody. Discipline, not excuses, that’s what we need in this world, more self-denial and discipline. Oh yes, I can see what you’re think­ing now—poor Ruth, she can’t help getting worked up, she had a nervous breakdown and lost her job, and she’s an old maid too, of course, and her father was—”

  “Stop guessing,” Hazel said. “If you want to know what I was thinking I’ll tell you. I was thinking that people who are hard on themselves the way you are, are usually pretty hard on other people too.”

  “Not hard enough.”

  “Elaine Foster’s kind of like that too. I can’t explain it so well, but maybe if she liked herself a little better and had a little more self-respect, she’d be better off.”

  “Well, well! You’re getting to be quite a psychologist, Hazel Anderson. You’ve got Mrs. Foster and me all figured out, and the trouble with us is we have no self-respect!”

  “I meant, respect for yourselves as you really are, not expecting to be perfect and accepting the fact that you’ve got a few human weaknesses that maybe aren’t so bad after all.”

  “No self-respect, eh?” Ruth cried. “And what do you think you’ve got, the kind of things you do, drinking and carrying on and traipsing after your divorced husband—”

  Josephine came to the door with an anxious little smile on her face. “Gee whiz, the way you two sound you’d think you were quarreling. Mrs. Hatcher’s outside work­ing in her garden, she’s bound to hear every word you say.”

  “That’s all right,” Hazel said. “We’re finished.”

  “We have finished,” Ruth corrected her. “We are finished would mean we are dead.”

  “Close enough to suit me.”

  “The least I can do in exchange for your analysis of my character is to give you a free lesson in English grammar.”

  Josephine turned on her and said hotly, “That’s no way to speak to Hazel after all she’s—”

  “You stay out of this,” Hazel said. Then she addressed Ruth in a quieter voice, “I’m sorry if I said anything to hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”

  “Hurt me,” Ruth sneered. “You can’t hurt me. I don’t allow myself to be hurt.”

  “There you go again. Don’t kid yourself.”

  “And I repeat, you don’t have to make any excuses for me, Hazel Anderson. I don’t require them and I don’t be­lieve in them, for me or anybody else, let alone a man like Dr. Foster. A man that leaves his wife and children and runs off with another woman is a bad man. He stands con­demned by his own action in the eyes of all decent people.”

  “Maybe I’m not decent.”

  “If the shoe fits, wear it.”

  “There’s a car stopping out front,” Josephine said nervously. “You two just better quit arguing right now.”

  Hazel got up to look out of the window. Then, without a word of explanation, she picked up her purse from the top of the radio and went outside.

  Gordon was alone in the car. Though Hazel had seen him only twenty-four hours ago, he seemed to have changed more than a day’s worth. Wearing the old slack suit that she’d seen hanging in his office and needing a shave, he looked like an ordinary workingman relaxing on a Sunday morning. There was none of that do-or-die air about him that he put on along with his white surgeon’s coat.

  He smiled at her as she came down the walk. “I was just coming in.”

  “It’d be better if we talked out here. Too many people.” She opened her purse and took out the roll of bills bound together with an elastic. It looked like a lot of money and Hazel wondered if Gordon knew how little it actually was in these times. Maybe to him it looked like more because it meant his freedom for a week or two and he was too excited at the prospect to think further ahead than that.

  He handed her two checks, one for five hundred dollars made out to Cash, and the other for a hundred made out to Hazel.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Your salary for the next two weeks.”

  “What am I supposed to do to earn it?”

  “Answer the phone. Cancel all appointments for the next month. If there are any emergencies send them over to Dr. Tower. Appointments for routine check-ups and cleanings you can step up till next month if the people are willing to wait. If they aren’t ask Dr. MacPherson to take them. Tell everyone I’m on a holiday, naturally.”

  “Then you’re coming back?”

  “I hope so. You’ll hear from me anyway.” He paused for a moment. “Thanks for everything, Hazel. Not just getting the money, but for understanding that this is the only way I could do it. It seems pretty sordid, I guess, for me to be sneaking away like this. But I couldn’t go home to say goodbye because I know I wouldn’t get away. Elaine would pull out every stop on the organ, and I’m afraid I’d change my mind. I want to do now what has to be done eventually. Ruby isn’t the issue, I want you to understand that. It’s true that if I didn’t know her and if she didn’t love me, I probably wouldn’t have the guts to leave Elaine now. But Ruby has caused nothing, do you see that?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s over at her room packing. She’s been at it all morning and she’s only got one suitcase. I wonder if she’s giving me a chance to change my mind, or if she actually doesn’t want to leave under the circumstances.”

  “Maybe she’s just particular,” Hazel said.

  “That must be it.”

  “It must be.”

  Gordon drew in his breath. “Well, I guess that covers everything. Be sure and be at the bank when it opens to­morrow.”

  “I will.”

  “It’s a hell of a thing to say about your wife, but she might try to close our joint account and I don’t want you to be caught with two bad checks.”

  “You’d better tell me where you’re going.”

  “San Francisco, probably. Then if anything happens Ruby will at least have her aunt’s place to go to. Anything could happen you know, an accident or something like that.”

  “Don’t sound so gloomy, Gordon.” It was the first time she had ever called him Gordon. She was surprised how the name slipped out so easily, as if she never expected him to come back and change into Dr. Foster again.

  The wind veered suddenly, and picking up the dirt from the playground hurled it across the street. They both closed their eyes automatically until the sound of the wind died down.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Hazel said.

  “I guess not. Well, thanks a
gain, Hazel. I’d better get going, with four hundred miles to drive.”

  They shook hands, and Hazel said, “Goodbye and good luck.”

  “Goodbye, Hazel.”

  She waited on the sidewalk until his car reached the corner, then she waved to him and Gordon waved back, very gaily.

  Though she had a premonition that she’d never see him again, she wasn’t depressed at the prospect of losing a good job with a pleasant boss. It occurred to her then, for the first time, that she mightn’t have been so eager to help Gordon get away if he hadn’t been taking Ruby with him.

  She stood on the small roofless porch reluctant to go inside and face the questions of Josephine and Ruth. A mockingbird flew up out of the pyracantha bush. Though the berries were barely beginning to show orange, the birds had already been at them. She resolved now, as she did every year, to save the berries for Christmas decora­tion by screening them with nets, but she knew perfectly well that by Christmas the bush would look as it always did. The red berries would be crushed and half-eaten, showing their yellowish pulp, like ruined immature ap­ples, and every tiny leaf would be partly nibbled to its spine by snails and beetles. Even if she could save the bush from the birds it was hard to wash the beetles off before bringing the berries into the house. The beetles hid and clung, and only after they’d been in the house for a day or two would they abandon the berries and seek the bright yellow patches in the slipcover of the davenport. Motionless and rapt, they would sit absorbing the color. They never returned to the berries, and they never went anywhere else in the house.

  The mockingbird came back and began to squawk in­sults at her from the porch railing.

  A teenaged girl was coming up the street on a bicycle, riding very slowly, wobbling from side to side to keep her balance. She had long black hair that danced in a frenzy around her head with every gust of wind. Perched on the carrier behind her was a boy of five or six, hanging on to the girl’s waist and holding his legs out in the air to avoid interfering with the girl’s pedaling. In the basket at the front sat a fat sunburned baby with a soother in his mouth. Every time the bicycle wobbled the baby lurched to one side, but he didn’t make a sound, either because he didn’t want to lose the soother, or because he was enjoying the ride. The girl paid no attention to the baby or the boy be­hind her. Like the captain of a well-run ship, she seemed to assume that they each knew their places and would per­form their duties.