The Trespassers

by Laura Z. Hobson

  The summer days slipped by. Vee was often alone and the week ends in the small house were often disappointing, for she so rarely shared them with Jasper. His Saturdays and Sundays were as driven and tight as every other day. Often he was out of sight for a week at a stretch—New England, California, Washington, a swing through the South.

  A week at a stretch, but never longer. He was extraordinary in his faithfulness to his weekly appointments with Dr. Gontlen. These he never missed. Once, early in August, he abandoned some still unfinished deal in San Francisco and flew back overnight, rather than interrupt even once the schedule of treatment.

  “You astonishing guy,” Vee complimented him. “You’d come back from Europe for this, wouldn’t you?”

  “A regime’s a regime,” he only said.

  The first time she had to tell him that so far nothing had happened, he merely shook his head cheerfully. “Don’t expect miracles, sweet,” he counseled her. But the second time, he gestured impatient dismissal with his quick hand. “Don’t get feeling tense about it, or I will too, and I’ve got enough to be tense about, with this damn summer slithering by.”

  “I wasn’t tense. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “I do want to know. But it’s not the only thing worrying me. It’s probably a pipe dream, anyway.”

  “Jas, darling, don’t lose faith so soon.”

  “Christ, I’m not losing faith,” he said irritably, and abrupt panic hit into her. If it took a long time—if it were not to happen for a year or two…

  In the street, among the customers at the store, whenever Vee saw a woman who was soon to have a baby, she felt a curious new interest, a secret friendliness. She loved just seeing them. She watched their flat-heeled, careful walking, she noted the lift of the dress hem in front when the woman was poor, she smiled at the “matching jacket for concealment” when the woman was well dressed.

  Nothing could conceal the splendid fact of a pregnant body. Under the straining buttons of the matching jacket, over the hiked-up hem of the gingham house dress, was the same fine, meaningful spring of line. Vee shrank from self-pampering fat women, but this strong, purposeful bigness was good and beautiful.

  She knew in some clear, instinctive place how it would be with her if it ever happened. She was small, but she would be at ease with her changing body, she would feel strong and well, welcoming the silent, patient process within her from the first moment to the last.

  For years she had not thought much about children. She liked them when she was near them at her friends’ houses, she found them invariably appealing or amusing. But now she spent more time talking and playing with them, whenever she visited their parents. She noticed their toys, their picture books, the games they played. It was as if she were rehearsing something, learning something. Now, the very words, “a child,” had a lovely promise, an intimate and rich prophecy for her.

  She had seen Bronya’s baby once. Bronya had telephoned, not long after their talk, but when Vee invited her to come on her first day off, she hesitated.

  “The trouble, my baby—”

  “Bring her along, Bronya. I’d love to see her.”

  “Ach, so? I love to show baby—”

  They came on a hot Saturday morning. Vee had been hurrying, for she was driving to Connecticut at noon. But when Bronya came in, carrying the curly-haired, dark-eyed baby, she forgot everything she still had to do.

  “You’re little Bronya,” she said to the baby. “You pretty baby, you.” She held out her arms, and the baby lurched toward her.

  “She pretty, no?” Bronya asked proudly.

  Vee held the baby in her lap while they talked briefly about the problem of a better job for Bronya. Vee was asking friends, telephoning teachers in private schools. There was nothing hopeful yet, but she would keep on. Bronya reported that she had received another letter from her mother. The visa application was recorded, train and steamship passage bought. Now it was only a question of waiting.

  Then, as if declaring a truce on painful subjects, they both turned to the baby. She was on the floor now and Vee got down beside her. Bronya watched; the pride of her smile warmed and inspirited her whole face.

  “It’s so hot for a baby in New York in summer,” Vee said. “Does it bother her much?”

  “No, oh, not bad.”

  “But the woman you leave her with—has she time to take her- to the park every day?”

  Bronya laughed, as if at her friend’s naïveté.

  “No time, no. She poor woman, cook, clean all day. No time for park.”

  “But every baby ought—”

  “Yes, outside better,” Bronya said simply.

  “Listen, Bronya. Next week end—come up with me for two days. You and the baby. There’s a small beach—”

  “It is wonderful. It is a whole holiday, by us.”

  “Next Saturday. I’ll stop at your house at eleven and we’ll all drive out together.”

  “You—never children?” Bronya asked suddenly. “While marriage—no baby?”

  There was shock in the words for Vee; why, she did not know. She wanted to explain, to tell this simple, direct woman why it had seemed impossible to have a baby while she was married. But to try explaining to this woman that the 1929 crash had seemed reason enough, this woman who had gone ahead in Hitler’s Germany to have her baby…

  “No, when I was married, I didn’t have a baby,” she only said.

  “I—I am sorry.” There was a pause.

  “But someday,” Vee heard herself say, “someday soon I will marry again and then I will.”

  The baby stumbled just then, and Vee caught her. She held her close to her breast, leaning down into the thin, gauzy curls. The baby’s arms went tight around her neck, stayed there. A moment later Vee raised her head, turning her face sharply away from Bronya’s eyes. Bronya said nothing. Then she leaned down and touched Vee’s shoulder.

  “It gives no—there is no shame, to cry,” she said.

  The door of Jasper’s car slammed with a metallic thud. Vee, waiting on the porch, glanced at her watch as she ran out to greet him. He had been delayed for three hours; it was nearly six. He looked haggard. The heat of this first September week end was reason enough for that, but with the official opening of the network now announced for October 15, Vee knew that his slumped shoulders and tired eyes came from more basic causes.

  Everywhere she went, people were showing strain again. Ever since early August, when Lord Runciman and his wife and retinue of secretaries and assistants had gone from England to occupy almost an entire floor of the Hotel Alcorn in Prague, fear had again been sending its seeping poisons through the nerve channels of the watching world. Fear for Czechoslovakia’s future—and Europe’s.

  “Hello, darling,” Vee said softly. “I’ve a fine tall drink all waiting for you.”

  “God, I need it,” he said, and leaned down to kiss her. His lips were lifeless on hers. “I’m bushed.”

  “You must be.”

  On the porch, he took off his coat, stretched out on the striped chaise, and yawned. He accepted the rum swizzle she gave him and said, “This will put me on my feet again,” staring at it reflectively.

  But after he had finished with it, he remained silent, his head back, his eyes closed. His whole body bespoke lethargy and a passive disinterest in everything and everybody.

  For long minutes, Vee waited in a matching silence.

  “Would you like to take a nap before dinner, darling?” she asked him at last.

  “God, no. If I start sleeping, I’ll be gone for the night.”

  They made an effort to talk. It was plodding and false, and they soon gave up. Vee turned on the portable radio, but he frowned, and she turned it off again as soon as she could do so without making a point of the difficulty of pleasing him. Again there was silence, as heavy and dead as the heat.

  “I’m going for a walk,” he announced abruptly. “I’ll be back in half an hour. That all right?”

>   She looked up, startled. His eyes told her nothing. He was already standing.

  “Of course, it’s all right,” she said, “I—is there—”

  “No, there’s nothing wrong,” he said. “I just feel like walking.”

  His voice was moody. He went off with no other word. Vee sat, watching his rapid stride until he turned at the end of the lane and was out of sight. She continued to sit perfectly still. There was in him this freedom to do anything he needed to do, regardless of the effect on another person.

  “He just doesn’t think that it might hurt me, that’s all,” she told herself. “But if I suddenly said to him, after I hadn’t seen him for a week—”

  She broke off her thought as if it were a spoken sentence. No use in being sensitive, not with Jasper. You took him as he was or else you became too vulnerable. Without transition, her next thought was of Beth. If she had already left for Reno, Vee did not know it. “She’ll be starting any day now,” was Jasper’s last report. That was three or four weeks ago.

  She checked her speculation about Beth, also. Better think of pleasanter things just now. A vision of Bronya and the baby tumbling and laughing together on the beach came into her mind. The very memory of Bronya’s laughing face rebuked her for letting trifles like this distress her.

  Instantly, she was clear of the vague ache born of Jasper’s solitary departure. Instead, a warm sympathy for him, for his fatigue, flowed into her. Now she felt only eager for him to return, so she could comfort him and ease away his tenseness.

  He came back just as dinner was ready.

  “I feel better,” he said. “I wasn’t fit company for anybody before.”

  “I’m glad you’re better,” she said. “I wish I—” She hesitated.

  “Don’t wish anything, darling,” he said. But now his voice was easy. “You can’t help the way I feel, can you?”

  “No, I know, but it’s just that—oh, Jas, I’ve been so happy all summer that I just wish, I can’t help wishing that you—”

  “Happy!” A cold, hard laugh escaped him. “I don’t know what people mean when they talk about ‘happy’—I’m happy—he’s happy—we’re happy.”

  “Darling, don’t—”

  “You don’t like to hear it, but it’s true. I don’t like to feel it, but it’s true. I guess there’s something just missing from me, but I don’t know what in God’s name they’re always talking about.”

  “But you’ve been happy, Jas. I’ve seen you—I’ve been with you when you are happy.”

  “Oh, there are times when I feel good, sure. Opposite of feeling terrible. There are times when I feel fine and strong and know it’s going to come out all right, whatever it is I’m thinking about. But ‘happy’—how the hell do you feel, when it makes you say you’re ‘happy’?”

  Each time he used the word, he snapped it out. He stood, almost glowering, challenging her to answer him in terms that he could accept. She was partly bewildered by this unexpected onslaught, partly aware that he was only putting into words something she had long known about him.

  “Well, I don’t know how to describe it,” she said dubiously.

  “Skip it.”

  “Dinner’s ready, anyway; let’s have it before everything gets warm.”

  Out on the porch once more, over their coffee, Vee felt that some danger had sifted itself out, and she was content. Jasper brought her up to date on the decisions, plans, achievements of the past week. He said he hoped she had nothing planned for this evening, and she replied immediately that she had not. (She had been tentative that morning in responding to an invitation from the Melsings in Westport.)

  “Let’s go up, and talk there, darling,” Jasper said finally. It was barely nine o‘clock.

  “Oh, lovely,” Vee answered. “You have a cool shower, and I’ll have a cool shower, and it will be fine.”

  Jasper’s room was across the hall from Vee’s. When he went in, he saw the bed already turned down for him and smiled at the routine fakery that Vee still insisted upon following. He would have to wake in the early morning and go back there. Vee would never learn that Dora or any other maid could tell at a glance whether a bed had been honestly slept in all night, or whether it had been occupied only for an hour or so. But there was no arguing with women about things like this. He had tried it, with Vee, once or twice at the beginning of the summer, but she had been shy and charming in her stubborn refusal to give up the attempt at deception.

  He showered quickly and went into Vee’s room. She was still in her bathroom. She was taking a tub, not a shower, his ears told him. He lay down on the wide bed. The light from the bedside table lamp hit his eyes, and he reached out and turned it off. He heard and interpreted every sound that came from beyond the closed door. The brisk toweling, the slap, slap of a large powder puff, the squishy sound of mouth rinsing—it was pleasant to lie in the dark waiting, resting at last when every yelling nerve cried out for rest and sleep…

  Several minutes later, Vee came out. She was wearing a new chiffon nightgown; it was gray, the pale, silvery gray of a morning fog.

  There was no word from him, and in silence herself she reached under the shade of the bedside lamp and clicked on the light. Then she straightened and looked at him expectantly.

  He was asleep. His eyelids fluttered under the impact of the light, and he gave his head a brief shake as if to rid it of an offending touch. But his eyes remained closed.

  She was taken aback. Blood rushed in tumult to her throat and face. A strange, embarrassed feeling stole over her, as if at a rebuke.

  She stood, looking down at him. Slowly the feeling changed to concern for him. Poor, tired Jas. Let him sleep for a bit—he would wake in half an hour and be refreshed and grateful for the rest.

  She turned the light out and crossed the room to a small slipper chair near the window. She sat looking out at the night, listening to the wind spring up over the water. For half an hour she remained there, then she walked back to the bed and leaned closely over him. His breathing was deeper, his body in the complete relaxation of deep sleep.

  She watched his face as she once more switched the light on. This time there was no stir. She slipped into bed beside him, propped herself up against the headboard, reached for a book, and began to read. Each time she turned a page, she did so with watchful care, lifting the page up between thumb and index finger, carrying it quietly over to the left and depositing it on the preceding page.

  For an hour she read. Once he stirred, and she looked over toward him quickly. But he only turned further away from the light and slept on. She persisted in her reading. At midnight, she closed the book and lay back, thinking. She knew what exhaustion could be, she knew how it could blanket every other need, every other purpose. That’s all this was.

  “But it wouldn’t have happened a year ago,” her mind slyly noted for her.

  Jasper shifted position. She turned to look at him. He had rolled over on his back. His lips parted. He began to snore.

  She reached out to the lamp and the room was in darkness. She slid down into bed, turned on her side, her back toward him. She had heard him snore many times. She had never been kept awake by it before. Now her attention was riveted by it.

  Endlessly she lay, seeking drowsiness and sleep. Her thoughts sharpened and sped. Something ached somewhere—she could not soothe it away. She stretched her hand out for a cigarette; the brief flare of the match showed her Jasper’s face, the lips open, the muscles slack. She turned quickly away.

  Two or three times more she reached for a cigarette, smoking in the dark. Each time she ground out the butt, she lay back relieved, sure that now she would sleep.

  Finally she reached her hand out to the lamp, turned on the light, and looked at her watch. It was nearly three.

  She got up, moving gingerly lest she disturb him. With no sound, she crossed to her bureau, opened the bottom drawer. She drew her filmy new nightgown over her head, folded it neatly, and put it away. She closed
the drawer, reached into her closet for the nightgown she had worn the night before, and put it on.

  Then she crossed the hall to the other bedroom and lay down in the neatly turned-down bed.

  The pale gray of dawn slowly whitened into morning and then yellowed into sunshine. Through her lids Vee responded to it as to an agreed-upon signal. She sat up and looked sleepily around the room.

  A dull, metallic thud sounded somewhere. She jumped awake now and ran to the window in sudden fear. Jasper’s car stood in the gravel driveway; Jasper was not there. She leaned against the window sill, jeering at herself. The thud was the door of the refrigerator downstairs, Dora starting breakfast. Nerves, sleepless hours, nameless apprehension—last night had put her in a state.

  She went into her own room. She leaned over Jasper, shook him gently. “Hey,” she whispered, “time to shift gears.”

  He opened his eyes, looked at her, and smiled drowsily. “That’s quite funny,” he said and sank into sleep once more. But she persisted. This part had to be, it was routine. “Darling, wake up. You can go back to sleep in there.”

  Obediently he sat up. He put a hand up to his chin, pulled his jaw down, and yawned. Then like a sleepy child he went uncertainly to the door.

  “It was lovely, darling,” he said slowly.

  ‘What was, Jas?”

  “You.”

  He was gone. She lay back, uncertainly laughing. He thought—

  Suddenly the laughter wiped out of her heart. No, oh, no, it couldn’t be that it had become so casual to him, so damn ordinary that he merely assumed it had been. What in God’s very name, was happening?

  She was springing angry. She wanted to go in to him, call him names, hit out at him any way she could. Instead she buried her face in the pillow.

  After a bit, she broke one of her own rules and smoked a cigarette before she had brushed her teeth. “It tastes fine,” she said defiantly and half aloud. She watched the smoke rise straight up in the still air and then feather out at the top of its own steady gray column. Her anger began to feather out into an intangible shape also.

  She decided to dress and go downstairs. She breakfasted alone on the porch. The morning sun felt benign, and she was comforted. When Jasper came down to her, she rose to greet him and her smile was open and without constraint. He looked sheepish.