“Well,” Marvin said, “here we are.”
“Yes,” I said, “here we are.”
Marvin tossed her coat over a chair.
I laid mine beside hers. I wished that I could have thought of something bright and amusing to say to her, but my mind was filled with old thoughts, like the pages of a scrapbook. The way she had tossed her coat on the chair, quickly and impulsively, reminded me of days in the Bullard office when Marvin used to come in late and of times when we used to come up to her apartment after dinner and the theater. When she took her coat off I had always kissed her. I wondered if she were remembering that, and I wished that I could think of something to say to get my mind off it or that she would say something, but she did not speak. We just stood there, looking at each other.
“It’s been a long time,” she said, and I knew that we were thinking exactly the same thing, just the way we used to.
“Yes,” I said, “awfully long.”
We should have been talking about the weather or about the war or what plays there were in New York or about what she had done or I had done—anything that would make us natural and sensible. Instead of that we just stood there.
It hurt and yet I could do nothing about the silence. It seemed to say, There it was. It seemed to say, We had wanted to see each other and there we were—and what of it? I knew if I wanted to I could take her in my arms and kiss her. Perhaps she wanted me to and wondered why I didn’t, but if I did—what of it? Everything I had thought about her was there—grim and absolute. It made my eyes smart. It made a lump rise in my throat. I could not take my eyes away from her. Her lips were trembling.
“Harry,” she said. Her voice was shaky and uncertain.
I waited for her to go on. I did not want to try to answer her and I heard her voice again, slow and insistent.
“Harry, dear, have you been happy?”
I had to answer, but how could anyone answer that?
“Yes,” I said, “yes, I’ve been happy, Marvin.” It was as near as I could come to it. I could have gone on a good deal further. I could have asked her what she meant by happiness. The question in itself and the answer had no particular validity. I was struggling with what had come between us, and I knew what it was. It was time. There had been so much time, a whole road of it.
“How about you?” I asked.
“Me?” said Marvin. “I’ve had everything I wanted—nearly everything.”
Nearly everything, but then you couldn’t have everything. Marvin drew a quick breath. It was almost like a sob.
“Darling,” she said, “we—” and she choked on what she was trying to say. She reached out toward me as though she were frightened and her cheeks were wet with tears.
“Marvin,” I said, and her head was on my shoulder.
“Darling,” she said, “we can’t go back.”
That was the answer to it. That was what we had been trying to say all the time—the truth, absolute and perfect. I must have always had the idea somewhere in the back of my mind that we could, if everything were terrible, that we could go back—and now it was an ending. I had never faced an ending so complete, except death. She was crying and I was crying. I was ashamed of myself when I realized it. I had not done such a thing for years and years.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” I said.
I knew it was time for me to pull myself together. Suppose someone came in—a waiter or someone—and found us like that. You have to go on and it doesn’t do any good to bawl about it. Perhaps I was not bright or quick or clever, but I could take what was coming to me. It was finished nearly twenty years before.
“Darling,” Marvin said, “I used to love you so.”
“The same here,” I said, and I blew my nose.
“Give me that handkerchief,” Marvin said, “for a minute, will you?”
“It’s awfully dirty,” I said. “Ever since I’ve been married I’ve never had enough handkerchiefs.”
“That’s all right,” Marvin said and she took it and dabbed her eyes. “Harry—Harry, you’d better call up Kay and then we’ll order dinner.”
“Yes,” I said, and I didn’t mind the idea of calling up Kay at all.
When I left I kissed Marvin good-by, not that it meant any more than kissing Mary, and if I ever met her again I would kiss her, no matter who was there, Kay or anyone else. Although I felt tired, I felt peaceful. I was glad to walk home by myself and to go over it all, to walk slowly, breathing the cold night air. I was glad that I had seen her now, because it was out of my system like an operation, cut clean out. This was so simply because we had not stopped living. We had lived and we had grown and that growth had not been entirely a process of growing older. Everything I had seen and done had left some sort of mark on me. I felt a good deal stronger, a good deal more sure of myself, than I had felt years ago. I was not sorry that I was changed, because the change had been worth while. It was true what I had told her—that it would not have worked. I had lived, on the whole, the only sort of life for which I was really fitted. Perhaps there is some needle inside everyone which points the way he is to go without his knowing it. I had never known, not really until now, how fond I was of Kay. I could not have gone back if I had wanted to, because Kay and I had been so long together, and perhaps that was what love really was—not passion or wish, but days and years—and now I was going home.
If you fall down flat and knock your breath out you can pick yourself up and go ahead, and finally you forget that you have fallen down. I was wondering whether the gas stove were still leaking. The gas company had assured me that it was fixed, but it had never been a satisfactory stove. The pilot lights had never operated properly. It might be better if they were shut off entirely and if we used matches on the burners. I had not been down cellar for quite a while either. I had been meaning to look at the ashcans, which were pretty well battered out of shape. I was wondering what the market would do on Monday. That was one of the subjects I wanted to take up with Bill. He saw so many people and heard so much gossip that he sometimes gave me very good ideas. I wondered if Kay had arranged to have people for Sunday lunch, or if she thought that the maids had done enough for the week end after the dinner on Friday night. There were cars parked on both sides of our street, a solid line of them, and most of them stayed for hours in front of all our doors, with the police doing nothing about it. On second thought, perhaps this was just as well, because our Packard was probably in front of our own door. Kay never could remember to call up the garage and have it taken away. I wondered if Kay had thought of giving Bill anything to drink. It might be just as well if she hadn’t, because Bill had been drinking a good deal too much lately.
I would be getting George’s report card within the next ten days for the first month of the new school year. I hoped it would only be a report, without a letter from the new headmaster discussing deficiencies in George’s attitude and personal habits. When any such difficulty arose, the school would always blame Kay and me for lack of oversight and Kay would say that all of George’s personal difficulties came from me directly. On the other hand, if George won a prize, which he had done once or twice, Kay would say that his mind or his physique, whichever it was that was responsible, came directly from the Motfords. Yet if you looked at it in the right way all of this was amusing, as long as you understood that nothing was ever perfect and that nothing ever could be.
Youth, after all, in spite of the efforts which everyone made to keep young, was a turbulent and terrible period, parts of which kept clinging to you like old clothes that you never wore out and did not want to throw away. There was my silk hat, for instance. I had not worn it for twelve years, and it was still right upstairs in a leather box on the top shelf of the closet, right next to the box that contained my Sam Browne belt and my overseas cap. I would never wear any of them again, but I could not throw them away. There were the linen plus-four knickerbockers and my brown tweed knickerbockers which had matched the tweed coat that was now worn o
ut, and all those heavy knitted golf stockings. For some reason no one wore them much any more, but they were all in too good condition to throw out. Now youth was like that. You kept coming upon it unexpectedly in corners in the closet and when you did it would give you a twinge sometimes. You had to clean it out and get through with it.
After all, home was all that mattered. I remembered a line of a poem by Edgar Guest which Kay and I had both laughed over: “It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.”
I would know about the stove as soon as I got into the front hall. For some reason the odor of gas was always there when it was not anywhere else. Sometimes Kay said that it was all my imagination, that she could not smell gas, and once I had bet her five dollars she could if she came down in the front hall and stood right by the closet below the stairs where Gladys kept her roller skates, and I had been right. I patted my left-hand trousers’ pocket to be sure I had not forgotten my keys. I remembered now what the front door key was like—a big notch at the base and then two little notches. As I had thought, the Packard was still by the front door, close against the curb. The lights were on in the parlor where Kay and Bill would be sitting. I wondered if Kay had remembered to water the plants.
Just as soon as I got into the front hall and closed the door I smelled it. The pilot light was out again and I would have to fix it before I went upstairs. I listened for a minute, thinking that Kay might call to me as she did sometimes when the door closed, and I wanted to tell her that the stove was leaking again, but she could not have heard me come in. There was no sound from upstairs. Bitsey must have gone to bed in Gladys’ room or he would have barked. The enameled kitchen table was bright and bare; and when the light was on there was that sort of heavy, secret solitude which had always met me in the kitchen when I had come down to get ice cubes late in the evening, or when I had gone down in my wrapper and slippers to heat hot water when Kay or one of the children was ill. I was right. The second pilot light in the gas range was out. I took a knife from the table drawer and adjusted the burner so there would be more gas, and finally I got it lighted.
Then I went back to the ground floor through the pantry and through the hall and I began to think what I would say to Kay, for of course she would ask me where I had been, since I had told her over the telephone only that I was staying out for dinner if she did not mind. Instead of minding she had been nice about it, perhaps because she had been sorry already about the tea. Perhaps she would start to bed pretty soon and Bill and I could talk for a while. I certainly did not want Bill to get the idea that I was neglecting him. We would talk about the war and what under the sun the Allies were going to do, and why they had not pushed at the west wall when Germany was busy in Poland. Bill might even know whether the Russian Army was good for anything or not, because Bill knew a lot of White Russians. At any rate I wanted to talk to him, just to get my mind off myself and to get the day straight.
The house had been absolutely quiet until I began walking up the stairs, but when I was halfway up I could hear Bill and Kay talking through the closed door of the parlor. At first their voices were indistinct, but they were plainer when I stood in front of the door. I paused there for a moment before I went in, not because I was curious about what they might have been saying, but because I had never realized that anyone could hear from the hall when the parlor door was closed.
“We were crazy—both of us,” Kay was saying.
“Don’t be so involved,” I heard Bill answer.
And then I heard Kay’s reply. It sounded just as though she were speaking to me, instead of Bill.
“Let’s not go all over it again. We can’t go back.”
“I thought you said—” I heard Bill’s voice again.
As I stood there, I had a thought of which I was almost immediately very much ashamed. It must have been all that had happened that day which put the idea in my head, because I actually found myself wondering if there could possibly be anything between Bill and Kay, such as people talk about sometimes. I confess it did flash across my mind, and then I knew that I had no business having such an idea even for a second. Bill King was my best friend, and besides he was a gentleman, and Kay was my wife. As I say, I was ashamed of myself. It made me feel like apologizing to both of them when I opened the parlor door, and I told myself I must never consider such a thing again—not ever.
“Hello,” I said.
The lamp that stood on the table by the sofa was on, and the lights were on above the mantelpiece. Bill and Kay were standing up. When someone is startled by a sudden noise there must be a sort of contagion in it. There must have been something in their manner that startled me too. Bill’s lips were half open and Kay’s right hand was pressed against her throat. She tried to laugh, but instead she caught her breath.
“Why, Harry,” she said, “I didn’t hear you.”
I had an idea for a moment that they did not expect me at all, although I could not understand why, since I distinctly told Kay that I would be back early.
“Why, hello,” Bill said, and his voice did not sound exactly natural. “So there you are.”
“Of course I’m here,” I said, but Bill did not seem to think it was funny. His face looked flushed and his voice was hoarse. He must have done a lot of cheering at the game.
“Yes,” he said, “naturally. Where else would you be?”
It seemed to me that he sounded a little rude and out of sorts, but then he was probably tired. I looked at Kay and wondered whether she were still angry about the tea, but when she spoke, I realized that she must have forgotten all about it.
“Harry,” she said, “where under the sun have you been?”
Of course I had known that she would ask me. I had intended to tell them both, perfectly casually, that Marvin Myles had asked me to dinner with her, but as soon as she asked that question I knew that I would never tell her, never, because it was something that was gone, and it was something that belonged to me and to no one else. It seemed to me that it was the only thing I possessed which was entirely my own.
“Oh,” I said, “I just met some people there and we had dinner. I thought as long as you had a headache—I hope you didn’t mind.”
“Why, no,” Kay answered, “of course I didn’t mind.”
I knew by the way she spoke that she did mind, really, but for some reason she didn’t want me to go on about it. I waited for someone to say something, but neither of them did, and then I remembered about the stove.
“When you came in did you smell any gas?” I asked.
“Gas?” Bill said hoarsely. “What gas?”
“You don’t mean to say that you didn’t smell it in the front hall?” I said. “It’s that pilot light in the range downstairs, Kay. It was out again, but I fixed it.”
“Oh,” Kay said, “was it out again?” But she did not seem interested. She never was interested in anything mechanical, but for some reason they seemed to expect me to go on with the conversation.
“Well,” I said, “what are we all going to do tomorrow?”
They made me a little impatient. I wanted to get something organized and moving, and everything seemed to be standing still.
“If it’s a good day,” I said, “we might take a picnic and motor somewhere. Or if you don’t want to do that, Bill and I might go and play squash at the Club in the morning.”
“Squash!” Bill said. “Oh, my God, squash!” And then Kay interrupted, as though she had just been reminded of something.
“Harry,” she said, and she spoke the way she did when she wanted something made perfectly clear, “Bill can’t. He has to go back the first thing tomorrow morning.”
“What?” I said. “Why, tomorrow’s Sunday.”
Then Bill spoke very quickly.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “just this evening I got called about one of those radio contracts. I’ve got to hop a train the first thing in the morning.”
“Why, Bill,” I said, “I’m awfully s
orry.” There were a great many things I wanted to talk to him about, and I had not really seen him at all. “Listen, it can’t be as important as that, Bill.”
Bill looked at Kay and Kay looked at the Inness above the mantelpiece. He seemed to be waiting for Kay to say something, but Kay only looked at the Inness.
“That’s the way it goes,” Bill said. “Here today and gone tomorrow, and if I’m going to hop that early train I’d better get some sleep. Good night, Kay.” He seemed to hesitate about what he was going to say next. “I had a swell time. It was wonderful.”
Kay moved her head impatiently.
“Don’t say ‘hop’ a train,” she said. “You catch it. You don’t ‘hop’ it. Well, good night.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go, Bill,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning. Have you got everything you want?”
“That’s a damned silly question,” Bill said, “and you know it, boy. Nobody ever has everything he wants. Well, good night.”
He opened the door into the hall and smiled and waved his hand at us, and then he closed it softly. Kay sat down on one corner of the sofa.
It may have been my imagination, but I could not get it out of my head that something discordant had happened while I was gone.
“Look here, Kay,” I said. “I really think you might have tried to make Bill stay over tomorrow.”
“Harry,” Kay said, “I wonder if you would get me a little whisky.”
“Why, Kay,” I said, “I thought you didn’t believe in drinking in the evening.”
The whisky and the glasses and the ice cubes and the soda were on the table near the wall where Ellen always put them when we had guests. I did not give her much whisky, because I knew she would have a headache in the morning, but I saw that she did need it. She had been doing altogether too much lately, and Bill must have been getting on her nerves, because she looked awfully tired.
“Why, Kay,” I said, “your hand’s shaking!”
“It’s just that I’m tired,” she answered. “Never mind it now. I’ll be all right in a minute,” and she drank her drink very quickly, in a way that was not like her at all, because Kay never did approve of drinking, particularly for women.
H. M. Pulham, Esquire Page 44