“Now, Earl—” I began, but got no further.
“You tell her what I said,” said Earl. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t take offense,” he said. “She’s a nice woman. She’ll settle down once she’s got herself a couple of kids to occupy her.” He winked. “That’s your department.”
My department, indeed; but the time passed. Month after month we were disappointed.
“Maybe it’s better this way, just now,” Joan said, one night.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I got a promotion,” she admitted, pleating the sheets with her fingers. “They want me to go full-time.” She looked up at me. “I didn’t say yes,” she said, quickly. “I wanted to discuss it with you first. But there’s no harm in accepting it, is there? For now,” she amended. “It’s more money.”
“I thought this job was temporary,” I said.
“Oh, it is,” she said. “But why can’t I do something I like to do while I’m waiting?” She looked down at her fingers. “I really like it, Gil,” she confessed.
“What do you like so much about it?” I asked her. “Listening to kids talk all day.”
“You make it sound boring,” said Joan.
“It sounds boring to me,” I said.
“Well, it isn’t,” she retorted. “It’s—don’t laugh,” she said, severely. I shook my head. “It’s exciting,” she said. “So much responsibility.”
“I’d think you’d hate that,” I said, puzzled. “I think of you as kind of shy.”
“I am,” said Joan. “I always have been. I was even scared of you when we first met.” She laughed, and I lifted my lips briefly.
“You hide from the paper boy when he comes to collect,” I said. “That’s shy.”
“That’s different,” she said. “I don’t feel like that at work. I’m not afraid there.” She frowned at me. “Why are you looking like that?” she asked. “Are you afraid I won’t keep your house and cook your meals? You’re not that much trouble.”
“It isn’t that,” I said.
“What is it, then?”
“I liked you before,” I said, after a pause.
“I haven’t changed that much,” she said. “I just feel braver these days. In the house. In the office, most of all. There, I feel,” and she hesitated, then breathed the word, “powerful.”
Sheer practice made her more so. She began to work full-time, adding the role of college counselor to her list of duties. She was certainly dedicated, taking unofficial visits at our home, ushering students into the downstairs study she had set up for herself, inviting them to supper. Through the imperfectly soundproofed door of her study, I caught parts of conversations.
“… work harder,” came Joan’s most severe voice. “How do you expect to get anywhere?”
She tucked into the students’ home problems and academic difficulties with an almost indecent zeal, using her solid tools of excavation: boundless sympathy, utter dispassion. Nothing shocked her. The students sensed this, and trusted her; they brought to her their wounds, their fears, their deepest secrets. They were undismayed by her stern lectures, recognizing them for what they were: the salt in her recipe for success. She exhorted them to greater efforts while they nodded, shamefaced, at the supper table, and they went off and tried harder for a few weeks. Then they were back, with new failing marks, related and unrelated problems: love affairs, family turbulence, bad dreams. Joan took them all in, listened to their litanies without expression, talked no-nonsense to them, and sent them away again, patched, healed for the moment.
At first, there was a clean division. When she entered our yellow house, she left her job behind. But soon she began to bring a new confidence home with her, a new brusqueness, carrying it into our house like a cloak of her profession, hanging it just inside the door. And sometime after that, she lost entirely the ability to strip it off; it had become a part of her. Her work had changed her: a hardness entered her philosophy. The new Joan believed in cutting one’s losses, in facing facts; she liked informed decisions, and knowing what lay ahead. If the future was impossible to forecast, she wanted educated guesses, estimates, directions.
“Aim yourself,” she told the career-boggled, the confused, the hopeless. “It doesn’t much matter where. Correct your trajectory as you go.”
In her new swift, assessing way, she diagnosed my shortcomings. “You’re too sensitive,” she told me. “You need to toughen up.” And another time, absently, “You seem to have no ambition.” But she remained devoted to me, so these remarks bore little sting; after saying them, she would rub her hands fondly across my shirtfront and kiss me. “I love you all the same,” she would say. “I always will.”
I could not justify the sense of loss I felt. Joan seemed to love me no less; but the form of her loving changed. And she changed. Her strengthening public image seemed to have its physical component; her whole skin was rosier, as though the work nourished her blood.
Sometimes when I looked at her now, a vibrant woman with a trace of metal in her laugh, I found her utterly strange. Two years after our wedding, she was stronger, fuller, and I was still the same.
I had continued to work at Devlin Co., pushing papers across my desk for the office boys to collect and carry away. At least I’m not one of them, I thought, not at the very bottom.
Devlin himself stalked through the basement room on the average of once a week. His visits were unexpected; perhaps he meant to surprise us in something. He never did: whenever he arrived there was a little tumult at the door, and the men craned to see, and then the heads bent forward again in a silence restored, which lasted until he had passed through.
“Man’s got a bug up his ass,” said Rick Beller, one day after one of Devlin’s appearances.
“I heard he started as a—” I said. “Farm boy.”
“You only heard that once?” said Rick, rolling his eyes. “They must like you here. Shit, whenever you do something wrong, the office manager hauls you in and gives you the rundown, all that sob stuff about how Devlin made it to where he is without anything but his own grit. You never heard that speech?”
I shook my head.
“You must be doing okay,” said Rick, and bent his head again, as Devlin passed by on his return. After the door shut behind him, Rick turned to me again. “There ain’t no future in this bullshit,” he said. “You got to have something on the side.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Stocks, bonds,” said Rick, carelessly. “You got to make it big by yourself. Old Devlin ain’t gonna do jack for you. I play the market,” Rick said, proudly.
“You need money for that,” I said.
“Yep,” said Rick. “Takes it to make it, right? Sure as shit ain’t making it here.” He leaned a little closer to me, and lowered his voice. “So I’m taking it.”
“What?”
“Got a friend in Billing,” he whispered. “We work together. I work the figures, he handles the money. We split fifty-fifty.”
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll,” I said. “Get caught?”
“Shh,” he said. “We’re careful. Skim a little here, a little there. It all adds up, and no one the wiser. Every now and then we cut a deal with the contractors. That’s big money.”
“But—” I said.
“Got to take some chances in life,” he said, and winked. “Sides, these folks don’t know nothing about money. All they know is paper.” He shook a sheaf at me. “I give them that, all right.”
Since Joan had started working full-time, I had had the unpleasant experience of coming home to an empty house on a few occasions. So that she might get home before me, I had taken to dropping into Stokes’s at the end of the day. The men there talked about all manner of things, from hunting to football to sex. They were mostly older than me, Jack’s friends; and I frequently served as the butt of their jokes. But they suffered my company, and it was nice at times, sitting with the boys in the cool semidarkness, putting a word in now an
d again.
That night, I listened to them with new purpose. Was it part of the nature of men to steal, to cheat, to take the short way? I attended carefully, but there was nothing of dishonesty in any of their ramblings.
“Heard about some,” I said. “Guy taking money from work.”
“How’d he do that?” Ned inquired. “Y’all don’t have a till in the secretary pool.”
“No,” I said, above the laughter. “But we deal with figures and such. Easy to change some numbers,” I said. “Make a penny.”
“Losing a job ain’t worth no penny,” said Steve Grissom.
“Losin’ a job ain’t worth nothin’,” said an old-timer.
“You thinking about telling?” asked Sam.
“Well,” I said.
“That ain’t your place,” said Steve. “You don’t know what kinda life this guy’s got. Maybe family, maybe scraping to make ends meet.”
“I could tell you about scraping,” said the old-timer.
“I feel for the bastard,” agreed Sam. “Working along in some shit job, watching the bosses make all the money, and at night he goes home to the wife and she says, ‘The kid needs new shoes.’” He shook his head.
“Men don’t stick together, we all go down,” said Ned.
“Down and out,” said the old-timer. “No way to be.”
“Probly just a regular guy,” said Andy. “Suffering along like the rest of us, wouldn’t take nothing a-tall except it gets too much for him.”
“He doesn’t seem like that,” I said, doubtfully. “He seems naturally crooked.”
“Crooks, shit jobs, I seen it all,” said the old-timer.
“This little extra he’s taking, maybe it’s all he’s got to keep his family fed,” said Steve. “You want to take it away from him?” He curled his lip at my treachery.
“I don’t think he’s struggling,” I said.
“How can you tell?” said Steve, scornfully.
“I could tell you terrible things,” said the old-timer, loudly. “Things you wouldn’t believe. You had to seen ’em to believe.”
“Here he goes again,” said Andy, under his breath. He bent forward with the other men, listening.
“Joan,” I said, that evening. “What does Freud say about good and evil?”
“That’s Nietzsche,” she said. “Basically he said we’re all evil.”
“Do you believe that?” I asked her.
“No,” she said, slowly. “Of course not. I believe people do the best they can. There are the psychopaths, but then they’re not really people.”
“Not people?” I asked.
“I think to be a person, you have to have a morality structure.”
“So someone who cheats someone else is not really a person?” I asked.
“No,” she said, putting her book down. “Someone who cheats someone else is just an ordinary person, but weak. He knows he’s wrong, but he convinces himself he’s right. Moral structure, you see, but not a conventional one. He’s putting his own needs above everyone else’s.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “What about someone who knows about it?”
“You mean, knows and doesn’t tell?” I nodded. “He’s normal, too. Afraid of repercussions, afraid to hurt someone else. He’s being overmoral, in fact, unless he just doesn’t care or he’s doing it for gain.” She looked at me. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious,” I said. “Never mind.” I moved closer to her on the sofa.
“Honey,” she said.
“What?” I said, innocently.
“Not tonight.”
“I’m not doing anything,” I said.
“I know you,” said Joan. “Look, it’s not a good time.”
“Oh,” I said. “Why waste it, right?” I was a little hurt.
“Oh, Gil,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m just tense, is all. Give me a neck rub and see what happens.”
The town got used to Joan quickly. Only three years of going to Purdy’s Market every week had to pass before Maida Tolliver spoke to her. It was a quiet beginning, a consultation over the lamb chops, but it led to greater things. So accepted, Joan was now the province of gossip. The ladies all joined in, and decided many useful things—that perhaps Joan was a little too severe in her dress; that she was a good judge of honeydew; that she could stand a permanent wave. They could not agree on a reason why she might hold a job; after extensive speculation involving my salary, the liberal views on child-rearing in the Northern states, and our degree of marital bliss, they came separately to the same sympathetic conclusions. “Barren, poor dear,” they whispered as she passed, smiling sweetly upon her, editing their conversations of references to infants and children.
Her role in their children’s lives was not so incredible to them, by now.
“She can’t be too bad,” it was said. “Mickey Shaffer’s Susie’s going to be a nurse, and those Shaffers have been stupid since the Fall.”
“She gets those kids to listen,” others said. “Damned if I can do that. She’d be a good mother.” Again, the sympathetic clucking.
Once they were softened, it was just a little while before they became enthusiastic as converts. What was good for the child was good for the parent; I was stopped in the street by people I hadn’t spoken to in years.
“Tell your wife thanks,” they said.
“Have you been giving out advice all over town?” I asked her later.
“We-ell,” she said. “Just when they ask.” Seeing my expression, she added quickly, “Well, why not, Gil? I like to be helpful. And it doesn’t take hardly any time at all. It’s not like they sit in my office for hours. It’s no trouble.”
But it became troublesome. I watched helplessly as Joan became the town soothsayer. On our fourth anniversary we had dinner out. During the entrée, a woman approached our table.
“My kid won’t study,” she said, without preamble. “He reads too many comic books. He sleeps a lot.” She waited.
“I can’t believe this,” I said. Joan put a hand on my wrist.
“How old is he?” she asked.
“Ten.”
“Take him to see the doctor,” said Joan. “There might be something medically wrong with him. Don’t worry about the comic books. Children need a fantasy life. At least he’s reading something.”
“If he doesn’t start studying, he’ll fail again,” said the woman.
“Start giving him his allowance only after his homework is done. Kids respond well to systems of work and reward.”
“Thank you,” said the woman.
“Remember, take him to the doctor first,” said Joan. “Let me know what happens.”
When the woman had gone, Joan sighed.
“Sorry,” she said.
“I didn’t even know her,” I fumed. “I’d never seen her before in my life.”
“Neither had I,” admitted Joan.
“It’s out of control,” I said.
“Sometimes,” she conceded. “Let’s not worry about it now.”
“The nerve,” I said.
“Forget her,” said Joan, sweetly. “We’re alone now.”
But we weren’t alone, except in the house. And there we were far too alone. The nursery remained empty, waiting.
“The way these people talk,” said Joan one day, returning from Purdy’s, closing the door behind her with her foot. I took the grocery bags from her and carried them into the kitchen. She threw her purse onto a chair with an exhausted little whinny, and followed me. I began putting up the groceries.
“I’ve been hearing about my uterus all over town,” she said. “Everyone says, ‘No offense, dear, but have you tried …?’ Some of the things they recommend are bizarre.”
“Some of them might work,” I said, shelving a box of macaroni.
“Like standing on my head right after?” she said. “No kidding, Gil, one woman told me that.”
“Well, what does Dr. Greene say?”
“You know what he said,�
�� she replied. “Everything’s normal, and we should be patient.”
“I’ve been patient,” I said. “We both have.”
“All this talk,” she said. “It makes me feel defective.” She looked at me. “Do you think I’m defective?”
I shut the icebox, and held out my arms.
“Joan, Joan,” I said into her hair. “Of course not.”
We stayed like that for a minute, and then she began to shake. I held her tighter, thinking she was crying; but she pushed herself away and turned her face up to mine. It was red with mirth.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Just think, Gil,” she gasped. “Fat Maida Tolliver, standing on her head.”
The summer passed that way: watching Rick steal from Devlin, and wondering what, if anything, I should do about it; timing my sexual advances toward Joan to match the timetable she carried in her head; opening the door to her students and making half-witted tabletalk with them; rubbing Joan’s neck at bedtime, often until she fell asleep; coping with the daily drifts of paperwork, vaguely musing about what might happen next.
And then, two things happened very suddenly: Joan got pregnant, and Beth Crawford started talking about divorce.
CHAPTER TWELVE
At the Hospital
GOODNESS, I HAVEN’T thought about her in years. We used to be best girlfriends when we were about your age. Or a little younger. I went away to school after she was married, and we wrote a couple of letters, but that was all. I worked twenty years at a hospital in Charlottesville after that, before this job came through. I took it, though I knew the town had changed, and I couldn’t be sure what I’d be coming back to. But the work was what I wanted, and for once the pay was right. It’s funny: Nurse is the first person you meet in the world, and she’s often the one who sees you out, but while you’re here you never think too much about her. If we got paid for the work we do, we’d be richer than the doctors. I hope none of them heard that. Well. We have to love the work; there isn’t much else to draw us to it.
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