Mary McCarthy

by Thomas Mallon

  And she still felt the force of this reasoning, even now, as she methodically filled the ice tray and carried it, spilling, across the kitchen to the icebox. The only thing that shamed her, looking back on the encounter, was the fact that her senses had awakened under Miles’s touch. She would have liked to blot out that part, which was only a minute or two, from her memory. But honesty compelled her to remember, with a half-desirous shudder, that moment when his hand had first squeezed her expectant breast and languorous delight had possessed her, like a voluptuary.

  She made a face and proceeded unsteadily to the bathroom. But as she stood there, brushing her teeth, her sensuality relived those few moments, and she longed for John to come home. Disgusted with herself, she rinsed out her mouth and spat into the basin. Nothing, she thought angrily, could be more immoral than utilizing your husband, whom you loved, to slake the desires kindled by another man, whom you detested. Moreover, her practical side added, she would be very unattractive to him in her present condition, still half-tight, swaying a little, and smelling of stale alcohol. He would be cross with her, anyway, for going to the Coes’ and getting drunk and seeing Miles again. And he would be right; it could not have come out worse if he had predicted it himself.

  Misgivings overtook her. He would be bound to find out that Miles had driven her home. Should she admit that she had asked him in or not? Tomorrow he might notice that there was an inch or so missing from the bottle of Scotch. She took three aspirins and drank two glasses of water, revolving the problem in her mind. She could say Miles had come in for a drink and made a pass at her, which was true enough but hard on Miles; or she could say he had come in for a drink and not made a pass at her, which was kind but hard on John’s credulity. Or she could say that he had left her at the door and blame the missing whiskey, if John noticed it, on the handyman, who was notorious for taking liquor whenever he came into a house. Martha steadied herself on the wash basin and stared at her flushed face in the mirror. She would never have thought that she could entertain such wicked ideas even for a second.

  A shiver ran through her. She had not realized how cold the house was. Poor Miles, she thought, picturing his big white perspiring body, clad only in socks and garters, exposed to the drafts of the parlor. And it would be a miracle if she herself did not get sick from lying naked on the sofa in late October, with only a coal fire going. John would never forgive her if he knew of this piece of heedlessness. If she died, he would be furious and blame it all on the Coes. She smiled fondly, thinking of John’s oddities, and hurried into bed. He liked to assign blame, arbitrarily, in military style. And he would be more annoyed if she caught cold than at any other feature of the seduction. Dear John, she said to herself. He would doubtless find a way of making New Leeds the villain of the whole episode, assuming she were to tell him. But she could not risk telling him, and precisely for that reason. Being intelligent and perceptive, he might forgive her and Miles and even see the absurd logic of it. But he would have to find some target for his stores of blame.

  She sighed, hugging the blankets to her. The best thing would be to say that she had had Miles in for a drink and then gloss over the next part. If he asked whether Miles had made a pass, it would be wisest to say yes, just a little one; if she denied it, he might doubt the whole story. The one thing to fear, aside from her getting a cold (for which he would certainly hold the Coes’ play-reading responsible), was that he would discover that her jet-and-crystal necklace had been broken. He had given it to her, two years ago, for her birthday, and though it could be restrung, he would never feel quite the same about it, like the watch, which was a gift too. John had a peculiar attitude toward fragile, delicate things—among which he included herself. He loved them angrily, foreseeing their destruction, and did not want them to be used, except on the highest occasions. This attitude always vexed Martha. It seemed to her somehow undemocratic. She believed firmly in use. That, in a sense, was what had got her into trouble tonight—with Miles, she could not treat herself as a precious vase to be kept on a top shelf, like their Bohemian glass, which she insisted on using too. And yet look what had happened. Her dress was a wreck—she would have to mend it and iron it the next time John went away; her necklace was broken; she had started lying and deceiving and thinking of implicating the poor handyman. And she would probably have an awful hangover.

  She buried her head in the pillow and resolutely went to sleep. When she woke, it was daylight and the place beside her was empty. She came into full consciousness instantly and sprang up in bed, her heart pounding with terror. Her watch said eight o’clock. He should have been home five hours ago. She listened; the house was silent. Not even the pump was running. Flinging off the covers, she vaulted out of bed and sped in her bare feet across the cold floors up to the guest bedroom. There was no one there. A ringing scream came out of her. It smote her with utter certainty that he had somehow come home and seen them there through the window and quietly gone away forever. She tried to reason with herself. After all, she had looked at her watch before Miles turned out the lights, and it had been only a quarter of two. Nobody could have made it from Boston in that time. And she had looked again, at two-twenty, after Miles had left. John must have been killed in an accident.

  But her common sense refused to credit this. The police would have called her. A hideous thought came to her. Perhaps her watch had been wrong. Suppose it had started losing more than its allotted twenty minutes a day? And now that she thought about it, she could not remember setting it ahead yesterday morning, as she usually did, right after breakfast—the day had been upset with John’s leaving early. Another memory jogged her. When Warren came to fetch her last night, she had been surprised: she had not expected him so early. “Oh, my God!” she heard herself cry. Her watch said eight-five now, but it might be much later. The clock in the parlor had stopped last week, when John tried to fix it himself; he could not get the pendulum back right. She stumbled to the telephone. But the operator said: “I am sorree; we are not allowed to give out the time.” She tried the Coes’ number; it was busy. Dolly had no telephone, and she and John had no radio. Outside, it had stopped raining, but the gray sky did not reveal whether it was morning or afternoon. A peculiar inhibition checked her when she thought of calling the Hubers; she did not know them well enough, she considered, to call them and ask them the time. She could call the vicomte and ask the time casually while ordering some liquor. She picked up the phone and set it down again irresolutely, stricken with shyness, like stage fright. She perhaps did not want to hear what time it was, for then she would know the worst for certain.

  The only thing that mattered was to find John and try to explain it all to him. But she did not know how to set about this. Her hand went out again to the telephone, but she shrank from calling the police. If he had been killed in an automobile accident, she did not want to know. The only course that seemed really feasible was to go back to sleep. Numbly, she started to the bedroom. Someone, eventually, would come and find her there, hiding under the covers. She got into bed and closed her eyes but opened them almost at once as another cry escaped her. “I can’t stand it,” she moaned. And indeed it seemed to her that she could not endure another moment of existence. She began to sob aloud, as if from a physical pain.

  Unable to stay in bed, she wandered into the parlor and wanly commenced to rebuild the fire, and as she knelt crouched by the hearth, weeping, she noticed that black and crystal beads were lying in the cracks between the floorboards and that two bone hairpins were in plain sight on the sofa. A strange relief swept through her. What if John had come home and seen this, she said to herself, forgetting that he had already, so she believed, seen everything. She poked out the beads and swept them into the dustpan, marveling at how tight she must have been last night to have presumed that she had cleaned them all up. And yet—as she now noticed for the first time—she did not have a hangover. She remembered reading somewhere that fear did something to your adrenaline and that pil
ots, during the war, never got hangovers on a flight, no matter how much they had drunk the night before. A wild laugh broke from her. What a price to pay for not having a hangover!

  Just then, down the hill, she thought she heard a car’s motor. But she went back to building the fire, reluctant to look out the window, lest it not be he. In a moment, there was a knocking on the kitchen door. Nearly fainting, Martha went and pulled it open. It was only Jane Coe.

  “Where’s John?” she demanded at once. Martha could not speak. She threw herself, sobbing, onto Jane’s bosom. “Gone,” she finally said. “Gone!” Jane hurried into the bathroom and got a wet washcloth to wash the tears and coal dust off Martha’s face, which gave Martha time to recover herself. In the first instant, she had wanted to confess everything and be comforted, but now caution intervened. “What time is it?” she asked huskily. It was quarter of nine, Jane said. Martha’s heart leapt with incredulous joy. Her own watch said eight-thirty. Therefore, therefore, she said to herself, her fears were groundless: he could not have seen anything. But then it came to her that he must be dead or injured, and though, two minutes before, she would have felt this was the lesser evil, now this new horror struck her with redoubled force. She moaned. “What happened? Did you have a fight? Why aren’t you dressed?” said Jane. “Or didn’t he come home last night?” Martha nodded, speechlessly, and burst into fresh sobs. “What did I tell you?” said Jane. “He probably spent the night in some tourist place, just the way I said.” “No,” retorted Martha. “He would have called me.” Jane looked grave. “Have you called the police?” Martha smiled sadly. “I was afraid to.”

  Jane herself called the police and the hospital in Trowbridge. There was nothing. But they were sending out an alarm, though Martha was not much use there: she could not remember the car’s registration number or the year of the make. All she could say was that it had a New York license plate and was an old black Ford convertible.

  Jane put a pot of coffee on and made Martha dress. Then she told the news she had brought with her: Warren’s mother had died. He was off to New York this morning on the little plane from Digby, and then on to Savannah, taking the afternoon plane. There was only one difficulty: he had no suit. “No suit?” exclaimed Martha, from the bedroom, trying to take an interest. Only his corduroy, it seemed, and that, agreed Martha, fighting down her tears, would not do for a funeral, not in the South, anyway. You must think of others, she said to herself. Jane is thinking of you. And she put her mind on the problem. “Well,” she suggested, coming back into the kitchen, “when he gets to New York, he can take a taxi in from the airfield and pick up something off the rack at Brooks Brothers. The fitter can probably baste the pants up while he waits.” But Jane did not take to this notion. She had had a better idea, it seemed. “What was that?” said Martha, absently. Jane lowered her eyes. “That blue suit of John’s,” she acknowledged. Martha buried her head in her arms on the kitchen table and began to laugh hysterically. “It’s gone,” she gasped. “Isn’t that ironical?” Jane gave her coffee, and she grew a little calmer. “Is that why you came?” she asked at length. Jane nodded. “Oh, dear,” said Martha. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

  She reflected. Actually, there was an old suit of John’s in the wardrobe, a dark gray, almost black, which he had never worn up here because it was too formal. The trousers were frayed at the bottom, but that would not matter, for Warren, since they could be turned up. She went to the bedroom and came back with the suit on a hanger. “Will this do?” she asked. Jane could not hide her delight. It was perfect, she declared, examining it as it lay draped over a kitchen chair on its hanger. There would just be the sleeves and trousers to fix. “Take it then,” said Martha, wiping her eyes with a paper napkin. It occurred to her that she was a monster to be lending John’s suit this morning, but she could find no reason not to, except a superstition, and the idea, too horribly practical to contemplate, that he might need it to be buried in himself. The gruesomeness of this interview was making Jane uncomfortable, and it was not Jane’s fault, Martha pointed out to herself, that John had not come home. “Go on, take it,” she said. Jane hesitated. “He’ll be all right, Martha,” she said, with real kindness, patting Martha’s shoulder. “I know,” lied Martha. She took a sip of coffee to show how brave she was going to be. “I ought to come and help you,” she added, uncertainly. This feeling was partly sincere. Jane needed somebody to help her get the suit ready; one person could work on the trousers and one on the sleeves. But she had expressed the wish aloud to show Jane that even in extremis she was capable of disinterestedness. If John were here, he would scold her for this.

  She could not help feeling that Jane was being selfish, as she watched her hurry down the hill with the suit over her arm. It never occurred to Jane, apparently, to offer to go and get Dolly, so that Martha would not be alone. Martha closed her eyes, waiting for Jane to be gone. She knew she was going to scream again, as soon as the station-wagon drove off. When she opened them, she saw their convertible. “JOHN!” she heard Jane yell, and in a second there he was, climbing out of the car, smiling imperturbably as he always did after an absence; the knowledge that he was lovingly awaited made him matter of fact—he looked away, so to speak, from his arrival, as if it were a present he was bringing.

  He had spent the night, he told them, by the side of the road, in the car. The driving had been terrible, and he had been sleepy. He had not called Martha because every place along the road was closed. He had not expected her to be silly and fearful, he added, tipping her chin. If he had known that, he would not have brought her a present—a white rose tree he had found for her at a nursery garden, next to the place where he had had breakfast. Martha studied him. He seemed rather strange and artificial, as he produced the rose tree from the car. If she had not herself had a bad conscience, she would have suspected him of being unfaithful. His story sounded very odd (though like him in a way) and she had good reason to be annoyed for the horrid suspense he had caused her. Yet it was lucky (if he only knew) that he had not come home last night and found the mess in the parlor. Everything, indeed, about his return was fortunate, even the fact that Warren’s mother had died, for they all went off at once, with the suit, to the Coes’ house, where Warren was packing and putting away his painting things. John did not ask her about last night; they were all too busy concentrating on getting Warren off on time. They tried the suit on him, and Martha shortened the sleeves and moved the buttons, while Jane did the trousers, which John then pressed with the steam-iron; he did it better than either of the girls. With all these hands working, the suit was ready in an hour, which left fifteen minutes for Warren to stop in Digby and pick up some black shoes. They did not talk much, out of respect for Warren’s mother; even Jane was quiet. It was Warren himself, finally, who brought up the subject of the play-reading. He asked Martha whether she and Miles had had a chance to go on with the discussion. “No,” said Martha, shortly, busy with her needle. She heard the iron pause. “Miles took you home?” John, in his shirtsleeves, his head bent over the ironing board, dropped the question casually. Martha, on the telephone, had promised him to go home with Dolly. Yes, she now acknowledged, in a slightly defiant voice; and she had asked him in for a drink. “You asked him in?” cried Jane, opening her mouth wide. “Why, you’re a nut, Martha. What happened? Did he make a pass at you?” They all turned their heads. Martha took her courage in her hands. “Of course not,” she said, smiling broadly. She held up the suit-coat and blushed. “Look at her,” said Jane. “Of course, he did. Confess, Martha.” Martha shook her head, stoutly. She put on a merry expression. “My lips are sealed,” she proclaimed. Warren, who was standing in his underclothes waiting to put on the trousers, had a grave, concerned look—what Martha called his jury face. But John let the matter drop lightly. “She doesn’t want to tell,” he said. “Martha is a gentleman.”

  Afterward, in the car, on their way home, he asked her, with his eyes forward, on the road. “My lips are sealed
,” she repeated, and added in a more serious tone, “Don’t ask me about it. It was nothing. For a minute, he misunderstood the invitation. One can’t really blame him.” John nodded. They drove on in silence, but she could see that he was satisfied. She put her hand over his on the steering wheel. “Did you spend the night on the road because you wanted to punish me for going to the play-reading?” “Maybe,” he said. “I thought so,” she replied. “But you’re not cross any more?” “No,” he said. “But we can’t have him dropping in all the time,” he added. Martha smiled. “He won’t.” She did not understand why he had decided not to scold her, but she accepted it as final. Men were like that; her father had been the same. They had tact at critical junctures, which was a sort of omniscience. And their mysterious decisions were final; she would not hear any more about the play-reading unless she brought it up herself. She essayed another subject. “Wasn’t it funny—about the suit?” she murmured. John laughed. “It was awful,” she went on, “when Jane came and I thought you were dead and I went and got out the suit anyway. It made me think of that poem of Yeats’s: ‘Twenty-one apparitions have I seen. The worst a coat upon a coathanger.’ ” She had not meant, by this, to reproach him, but he evidently thought she had, for his hand reached out and gripped hers tightly, in commiseration.