by Rona Jaffe
How strange it was, and how intimate, to be here in the darkness, listening to those sounds of someone she knew so well and loved so much. She heard the closet door close as he evidently put away his clothes. He was going to bed. Poor thing, he was going to bed. She looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to twelve.
Very faintly, she heard him cough as he settled down in bed. God, you could hear everything. She heard the telephone ring beside his bed, and she sat bolt upright, straining to hear. She heard his voice . . . his voice ... if he only knew how close to him she was, hearing everything. It was a business call. Gregg gave a sigh of relief. She only wanted him to go to sleep, to stay there all alone, separated from her by this thin, revealing wall, hers for the night. She heard him stop speaking, walk about the room, close another door. Then he came back and she knew he had gone to bed. For a long time there was no sound at aU, and Gregg knew that at last he had fallen asleep.
She put her hand against the wall, palm toward where he would be. My darling, she thought. Soon it would be morning and then she could call him on the phone. She knew she could telephone him early because he had gone to bed early, and so she would not be waking him up. Everything would be all right. It had to be all right. He was right here with her and she knew what he was doing. It
would be morning soon. At three o'clock in the morning Gregg left David's apartment house and took a taxi home and went to bed. Caroline was already asleep, breathing very quietly, curled up next to the wall. When Caroline's alarm went off at eight Gregg would get up too. That would be early enough so that David would not have had time to leave the house and escape.
It was only after a week had gone by that Gregg finally realized he had meant it. A week! It seemed like forever. She could hardly face the fact that it was only three days, then four, then at last seven. She called him every morning, early, often being answered by a sleepy voice that hardly seemed to know what she was saying. And he always hung up on her. "I meant it, Gregg," he would say. "Stop calling. Goodbye." She would call him right back and he would answer, innocently the first time, and then hang up on her. And when she would call him again his hello would be wary, and finally he would not answer at all. She got into the habit of telephoning him at night just to hear his voice, not answering his hellos, and then she would hang up on him before he could do it to her. She did not know if he ever realized these mystery calls were hers. She called him at dinnertime to see if he was out or at home, and at nine to see if he had stayed home for the evening. She called him after midnight to see if he had returned. But telephone calls told her nothing, for he could have been there all the time with another girl. If he was alone, if he was possibly suffering despite his firm refusals to give her another chance, then she wanted to know it. So a week after tlie night David had told her goodbye Gregg left her apartment at one in the morning and went to his.
She went furtively up to his floor and crept to her place at the top of the stairs. She hoped no one would decide to go home at this hour and accidentally find her; they might think she was peculiar. She huddled close to the wall, listening.
"Darling?" a voice said. It was a female voice, a light, sophisticated voice that would say "Darling" and not mean it—and tlie man she said it to would know she had not meant it. Gregg stiffened, seeing waves of light flickering in front of her eyes there in the half-darkness.
"Mmm?" It was he, she could tell even by this one syllable.
"Which side you sleep on?"
"This one."
"Do you mind if I have it? I'm peculiar that way."
Gregg was clenching her fists so tightly they felt numb.
There was afiFection in David's voice, but also an underlying touch of worry. "Don't tell me you're compulsive? Just don't tell me that."
The girl laughed. "No, darling."
Darling, Gregg thought. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Who did you sleep with last night? Somebody else you called darling? Or my David, my love? She was shaking with humiliation and grief, and hatred for this girl whom she did not know even by appearance, and she wanted to stand up and run away, downi the stairs to the street, but she was powerless to move. She had to stay, to listen, to hear the worst and suffer the more for it, and never give him up no matter what it cost her in pain and even disgust with her foolish self. She heard sounds then, the beginning of love sounds, and she wished more than anything to faint. She felt as if there were a flame running from her throat to the pit of her stomach. She was shuddering all over, like someone who is about to retch, but she could not pull herself away from that wall and those familiar words and soft noises.
It was over at last and she heard footsteps and a door close and then later returning footsteps and footsteps passing them. Dirty pig, Gregg thought, using his bathroom, using his towels, using his bed, using him. Using my love, my beautiful love. I wonder whether he's going to fall in love with her.
It didn't matter, as long as he didn't fall in love with tliat girl. Gregg had to know. She would forgive him anything, as long as he was only using that girl's body and did not love her. She wondered whether there was a way to find out these things as well, whether there would be a way to see what went on inside that apartment instead of only to hear.
Chapter 26
On an evening at the end of October Caroline invited April to dinner at her apartment. They met at the office at five o'clock and ytopped on their way home at a grocery store, where they bought
bread and cheese and ham for sandwiches, and chocolate milk and chocolate-marshmallow ice cream. They deposited their parcels in Caroline's kitchenette, and April took off her shoes and sat on the studio couch while Caroline took off her good office dress and hung it away and put on a pair of old velvet slacks and a sweater. She did not bother to make cocktails because neither of them ever drank when they were not out with men. She put some records on the phonograph and sat on the opposite studio couch, Gregg's bed.
"Where's Gregg tonight?" April asked.
"I don't know. She's been acting peculiar lately," Caroline said.
"It's that David Wilder Savage thing."
"I know . . ." Caroline lowered her voice, as if Gregg actually were hiding somewhere, under the bed or in a closet. "She calls him up all evening long. And then at about twelve-thirty, just when I'm going to sleep, she leaves the house."
"I thought he wouldn't see her."
"He won't. I don't know where she goes. Well ... I do."
"Where?"
"You mustn't tell," Caroline warned.
April's eyes widened. "Of course not."
"She'd be terribly embarrassed if she thought anyone else knew. But I had to tell you. It gives me the creepie-crawlies. She goes to his apartment house and she sits outside his apartment and listens."
"My God!" April said. "How come he doesn't come out and catch her?"
"There's a sort of side place where she sits. On the stairs. And the worst part of it is, she calls me up at the office the next day and tells me everything that went on."
"Like, girls?"
"Yes."
"Oh, God," April said again. "Poor thing. How can she do that? I never dreamed of doing that with Dexter."
It was the first time in over a month that April had mentioned Dexter's name. Ever since she had met Ronnie Wood, the boy from home, she had been like a different person. They had gone out together every evening of his two-week vacation in New York, and when he had left he began writing to her every day. April had a resiliency even Caroline had never suspected. One day she had been a miserable girl with a false smile and httle real interest in anything,
and tiien suddenly she was in love, surprised at it herself, but not nearly so surprised as her friends were.
"What have you heard from Ronnie?" Caroline asked, to change the subject.
"He wrote to me again today," April said.
"And how often do you still write to him?"
"Every day."
"What do you ever find to write that much about?"
Caroline didn't want to ask the obvious question: What do you think is going to happen? She was afraid for April because she was always so full of hope and allowed herself to be hurt without ever thinking hardheadedly about anything, and yet, it had been two months, nearly sixty letters; it was incredible.
"You know," April said, "I keep looking between the lines of his letters for something to be wrong with him. Like, is he neurotic, or selfish, or a liar? But he seems so perfect I can't believe it. No neurosis at all. And he loves me." Her voice was the same soft, clear voice that had told Caroline so many shocking stories of heartbreak not long ago, but now it had wonder in it and a kind of pride. "It's amazing," April said. "He's normal."
"Is he still working for his father?"
"Yes. He says he likes it. He's going to take another vacation at Christmas if he can get away, and he's coming to New York. He says he wants to see me."
Caroline waited for the words she knew were coming next: "We're going to get married." And she expected them with trepidation, not because she mistrusted Ronnie Wood—although there were few boys she really trusted when you came right down to it—but because of April. April was always expecting so much, and the words "We're going to get married" coming from April had a pathetic ring. She would have much preferred to hear April say. He's proposed to me. But April said neither, she simply smiled happily.
"I'm so crazy about him," April said. "I'd like it if he'd marry me. I think . . . maybe ... I can get him to marry me. I wish he would."
And that, Caroline thought, coming from April, is like anyone else being ten years more grown up.
It was fun to make sandwiches with April and talk about people at the office and about life and to notice how, as often as she could, April would interject a reference to Ronnie into the conversation. It was obvious that she was in love with him, but she seemed so much surer of herself than she had been with Dexter that Caroline's fears were nearly allayed. "I didn't sleep with him," April said, "and I'm not going to when he comes to New York this time, either. He's very respectful. He didn't even try, he just kind of asked me if I'd come up to his hotel room one night and I said no, so he never asked again. I'm dying to, though; it's a real struggle for me not to. He's so darling, isn't he? Don't you think he's darling looking?"
'Tes," Caroline said, although Ronnie Wood's looks were not the type that had ever appealed to her. He seemed so young and unsure of himself. He probably was just the kind of boy who would worship April, and Caroline certainly hoped so.
"You know," April said, "I saw Dexter on Saturday. I went to Brooks Brothers to buy my father some ties for his birthday, and Dexter was there buying a tie. He tried not to notice me, but then he really had to, so he said, 'Hello. How are you?' And I said, 'Fine, how are you?' And then he told the salesman he really didn't see any ties he wanted and he would come back some other time, and he ran away. It was such a strange feeling."
"How did you feel about him?" Caroline asked.
"I don't know. I really didn't feel anything. I mean, I looked at him and I thought how if Dexter really tried he could have me back. After everything he did he could have me back anyway. And yet, I'm sure I don't still love him. I love Ronnie in a different way. I think I love him more than I loved Dexter. But it's different."
"But Ronnie's such a good person," Caroline said. "And Dexter's no good, you know that!"
"I know . . ." April said thoughtfully. "It's funny, I was thinking on Saturday how unfair it is that every girl's first love can't be the one who'll turn out to be right for her. Sometimes he's the worst person in the world. But there's always something about your first love —if you're old enough, I don't mean sixteen—that you can't forget. It's like suddenly, for the first time, everything's important because you're doing it with him. And then there are all the little things in
the world that hurt for a long, long time, because you used to do them with him and you can't any more."
"I know," Caroline said,
"I wish Ronnie could have been my first love. He was right there, all the time, and neither of us had ever met each other. He was in college, and then I was in New York, and he was away in the Army ... I guess it's just a question of timing."
"But maybe if you'd met him before you wouldn't have fallen in love with him," Caroline said. "You might have been looking for different things."
"Oh, I'd always have loved him!" April said. "Any time. I know I would have."
I think she really would have, Caroline thought.
"I'll wash the dishes," April said.
"There's nothing to wash."
"Well, let me do it."
"I'll show you my new shoes," Caroline said. "Very dark gray calf, wait till you see." She went to the closet and rooted around among the shoes, hers and Gregg's, on the floor, and a pillowcase full of dirty laundry which Gregg had forgotten to take downstairs to the Chinaman, and one of Gregg's skirts which had fallen off the hanger on the overcrowded rod. "I never can find anything in this mess. I wish we had more room." She found the shoe box at last, and picked up Gregg's skirt to put it back on its hanger. As she did, something fell out of the skirt pocket to the floor.
She picked it up. It wasn't "something," it was three cigarette butts, one with lipstick on it, an empty lipstick case, and a torn piece of a letter. She looked at this rubbish with distaste, shrugged, and put it back into the pocket of Gregg's skirt. But her hand felt something else which made her recoil, withdraw, and then, with amazement, reach in to take it out to look at it. It was two more cigarette butts ringed with a darker lipstick, a piece of a colored envelope, an empty matchbook from a restaurant and a black bobby pin. "Ugh," she said. Her shoes didn't seem important any more, and she put the box on the closet shelf.
She didn't know what made her think of it, perhaps the fact that the pillowcase seemed not full enough to contain laundry and did not have the odd bulges in it that crumpled towels made. Caroline
knelt and gingerly opened the knotted top of the pillowcase and peered inside. "Oh, my God!"
"What's the matter?" April asked.
"Look at this stuflF." Caroline carried the pillowcase out into the room and looked around for a place to put it. Not the studio couch, certainly, nor the dining table. She finally put it on top of the radiator. "Look." She held the top of the pillowcase wide open, and April bent over it, looking inside.
"Garbage!" April whispered. "Where did you get the garbage?"
"It's Gregg's."
"In a pillowcase?"
"The thing that really gets me," Caroline said, "is it's in my pillowcase."
It wasn't really garbage, in the sense of what you find in a garbage pail; it was wastebasket refuse: a torn stocking, a piece of a stocking box with the size printed on it, an envelope that had held air-line tickets, some more bits of letters and bills and papers, discarded cigarette wrappers from two different brands, empty matchbooks and an empty vial that had contained a prescription, with the code number and name still in it, made out to a Miss Masson. Caroline and April stared at these things for a moment in bewilderment, and then Caroline hastily knotted the top of tlie pillow slip again.
"I'd better put it all back right away."
"What is she doing with that stuff?" April asked. "I don't understand."
"I wonder how long this has been going on. . . ." Caroline thought back to how long the pillowcase had been on the floor in the closet, but it was impossible to remember. Gregg had always been untidy, but even so, something as large as a half-filled pillowcase ... It hadn't been there last week, that she knew, because that was when she had bought the shoes and put the shoe box on the closet floor in the comer.
"Cigarette butts," April said. "I mean, cigarette butts!"
"Those
other things aren't much better," Caroline said.
"Caroline," April said, "do you think Gregg is crazy? That's pretty peculiar, to collect all that stuff."
"Maybe she just likes garbage," Caroline said. The two of them looked at each other, and then suddenly it seemed very funny and they began to giggle.
"What does your roommate do for a living?" April mimicked. "Why, she's a garbage collector. Only there's one thing wrong with her. She brings it home." Their giggles turned into laughter and they gasped with mirth.
"I'm sorry," Caroline choked, "I can't go out with you tonight. I have to go and collect some garbage." She wiped her eyes.
"I'll have to save mine for her from now on," April said.
"No. She doesn't want yours." Caroline's laughter faded, she looked at April again, and it wasn't funny any more. "It's awful," she said. "Do you know that?"
"I know . . ."
"Whose do you think it is?"
"I don't know."
"Yes you do."
"Yes," April said slowly, and her face was troubled. "Yes, I do. Don't you?"
They talked for a while of other things, but their thoughts were on Gregg and what had happened to her, and finally they talked about that again. "She told me everything else," Caroline said. "But she never told me this."
"She was probably embarrassed."
"I don't blame her."
"It's his, isn't it?" April said.
"Who else's?"
"How does she get it?"
"She must wait until he dumps his rubbish. Or till his maid does, he has a maid. I know Gregg never gets into his apartment, she told me so."