Wives and Lovers

13

Ruth came home at noon, her cheeks pink from the walk and from excitement. Dr. Foster had stayed out all night, and never in all her born days had such a thing happened to someone who was as close to her as Elaine was. It was dreadful, it was scandalous, but the excitement kept flooding through her in waves. She greeted Wendy with almost hysterical fondness and the dog responded, leaping up at her, turning in circles, barking in ferocious delight.

“Quiet,” she said. “Be quiet. Down, down, Wendy. Quiet.” But the dog was positive she didn’t mean it and kept leaping up at her and nibbling affectionately at her clothes with its tiny front teeth. “Ah there, there. Yes, I’m home. Now that’s enough. Yes, yes, of course you’re glad to see me, oh my, yes, you are!” Dr. Foster didn’t come home! “She’s always glad to see her mother, yes, she is. Now get down, Wendy.” Dr. Foster ran away! “That’s a good girl, you get down. You get down like your mother’s good girl.” And I am the king of the castle.

She was not consciously aware of the children’s chant running through her head, but the derisive notes picked their way out of her memory and she thought of Manuel who climbed the pepper tree, and Margaret and the pennies she hoarded in her desk. Where were they now, all the children? Carrying the dog she went to the window and looked out at the playground across the street. The dust was rolling across it like a wall of yellow fog pushed by the wind.

She thought, some day soon I will go back. I feel much better. I feel very strong, actually.

The dog squirmed out of her arms and headed for the kitchen. She turned from the window, laughing, filled with a sense of power because Dr. Foster had run away from his wife. In contrast to Elaine, she had very little, only a dog instead of children and a husband, but the dog was all hers. It would never run off and stay out all night and get drunk.

“There,” she said, “did someone forget to give my girl her breakfast? We’ll fix that.”

Josephine was in the kitchen, sipping a glass of milk and gazing placidly into space. Sometimes she could sit for hours without thinking of anything, only seeing a lot of warm rich color in her mind.

“Nobody had any breakfast,” she said in a vaguely surprised voice, “except me and Harold. I was wondering if I should do the dishes but there’s hardly enough to bother about.”

“I had breakfast at Mrs. Foster’s house. She asked me to stay there all night.”

With her mind swathed in the warm rich colors, Josephine was incurious. “Harold went out to look at an apartment. The ad was in the paper this morning, three rooms, it said, and no pets and no children allowed. Harold said I’d better stay home on account of someone might suspect my condition.”

“Mrs. Foster,” Ruth said, rather annoyed at Josephine’s obtuseness, “didn’t want to stay alone with the children.”

“Is she scared of the dark? I am, once in a while. I know very well it’s the same room in the dark as it is in the light, but I can’t be positively sure unless I turn the light on again for a minute.”

“Of course she’s not afraid of the dark. She was upset because he didn’t come home. He took the car and ran off last night, and this morning he phoned. She told me every word he said. He’s not coming back, he said, he doesn’t want to live with her any more and she’s to get a divorce.”

“My goodness.” Josephine was shocked. “I thought they were a very happy couple.”

“So did I. You can’t tell from appearances. He said no matter what grounds she gets a divorce on, he promises to give her reasonable alimony and not to ask custody of any of the children. That’s not all, either. There’s a girl mixed up in it. Mrs. Foster thinks they’ve been living in sin together. She’s not sure, but that’s what she thinks. Quite a young girl too. It doesn’t put him in a very good light, I must say.”

“I don’t believe it. No man would leave his kids like that.” The warm colors were gone, the scene was gray. She was having her baby and Harold was leaving her. The baby cried pitifully, and she herself held out her arms, pleading, but Harold turned away. A very slim, pretty girl was smiling at him. “Not a decent man like — like Harold.”

“Who can tell who’s decent nowadays? Look at Dr. Foster. There wasn’t a person in town who didn’t think he was the soul of honor. He fooled everybody, even Hazel.”

“What if he never comes back? Hazel won’t have a job.”

“I never thought of that.”

“It seems a shame,” Josephine said. “Just when she was all settled and getting the yard fixed up and everything.”

Ruth flung back her head as if she’d been challenged. “Well, at least that’s the end of the Mexican anyway. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.”

She walked decisively to the sink and began to rinse off the dishes under the tap, but she felt such a sudden sharp pain in her chest that she had to stop. She leaned over the sink, pressing her dripping hands against her bosom. It’s nothing, she thought. I feel very strong, actually. It’s one of those silly meaningless pains that everybody gets now and then. I’m really quite strong.

“Do you feel all right?” Josephine asked.

“Yes — dizzy spell — it’s over now.”

“It’s from that walking. If you walked all the way from Fosters’ house at your age — not that you’re old, my goodness, but it’s the way you walk, so fast no one can keep up with you. You’d think someone was chasing you.”

The pain was gone. She wiped her hands and dabbed at the water on the front of her dress, the damp imprint of two hands, one over each breast.

“I like to walk fast,” she said.

Josephine giggled. “I can’t say the same for myself, right now. I’ve gotten so I just hate to move, unless Harold’s around to help me up out of chairs and things like that.”

“I should change my dress.”

“It’ll dry in a minute on a day like this.”

“I’ll go and change it. I shouldn’t be working around in the kitchen in a good dress like this. It’s wasteful.”

She went into her bedroom, shutting the door against Josephine. Quite frequently lately, the sound of Josephine’s gentle voice talking about Harold, and the sight of her distended abdomen and swollen breasts, set Ruth’s nerves on edge. She wasn’t sure why she had these violent reactions to Josephine. They came at her suddenly, in the midst of quite ordinary conversations about the baby’s name, or the number of diapers that would be necessary, or the house Josephine meant to have someday down by the sea.

“Not a big house. Two bedrooms, that will be enough.”

“You’ll get the fog down there.”

“I don’t care, I never get tired looking at the sea.”

“If you build above the fog line it would be better for the baby.”

“And wistaria vines over the front veranda. I’m crazy about wistaria.”

“It’s all right when it’s in bloom, but think of when it isn’t. It looks like old dead twigs.”

“And maybe a very small orchard, a couple of orange trees and an avocado. And a jacaranda, just to look at.”

“They say you’ve got to plant two avocados side by side, a single one won’t bear fruit.”

“I never heard of that.”

“You’ve got to be careful about jacarandas too. Some of them never bloom and some bloom in fits, maybe every few years. They’re very temperamental, someone told me.”

“My goodness, Ruth, you’ve said something kind of unpleasant about every single one of my ideas.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You have so. About the fog line and the wistarias and the jacaranda—”

“I was just urging you to be careful.”

“Well, it didn’t sound like it. It sounded like—”

Josephine couldn’t explain what it sounded like, and Ruth, who might have explained, didn’t try. It sounded as if she was jealous of Josephine with her baby who hadn’t arrived yet, the two-bedroom house that hadn’t been built, and the jacaranda that wasn’t planted. But she knew she wasn’t jealous of the baby, the tree, the house, only of Josephine’s capacity for dreaming of such things.

She took off the crepe dress she always wore to the Fosters’ on Saturday nights. Where the water had touched it, the crepe had puckered and the imprint of her hands was now indistinct and no larger than a child’s. She hung the dress on her side of the closet she shared with Hazel.

Standing in her white cotton slip, Ruth heard her heart knocking against the bones of her chest, extraordinarily loud and distinct in the stifling closet. It was the heartbeat of fear. She felt that her life was changing, but she didn’t know in which way and she was afraid to have it change at all. The indications of change were there. They were very small things that someone else mightn’t notice, little wings beating against the thin brittle walls of her world like moths at a window.

Dr. Foster had left, and though he scarcely knew she was alive, his leaving affected her. There would be no more Saturday nights for her, telling stories to Paul and Judith and giving the baby his bottle, and probably even no more job for Hazel. The four of them, and the fifth to come, would be forced to live on Hazel’s alimony and Harold’s wages, while the cost of living kept going up and up and up.

The excitement she felt when she entered the house had been only carbonated fear and now that the bubbles had disappeared she recognized it for what it was. She was terrified by the intricate complexities of even one small human act. A man who was almost a stranger to her had decided to leave his wife, and by this decision he had involved not only himself and his family and the girl, but herself and Hazel and Josephine and Harold and the baby, even the dog. Perhaps in the end, she thought desperately, everyone in the world was affected by the actions of every other person, a chain reaction was set up that never ceased. It went on and on, an interminable string tying them all together in an inextricably knotted mass. There was no escape, it was a universal law: one drop of water couldn’t be displaced without affecting all the other drops.

She stood in the narrow closet listening to her fearful heart and the pressing of the wind against the windows. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t take one step forward or backward for fear that step would be heard around the world.

At that moment she came, as close as she’d ever come, to some kind of revelation, but the moment passed and her mind had to withdraw to protect itself. She began to grope for some simple easy explanation that would shift the weight of responsibility. It’s this wind, she thought. I always get nervy like this when the wind blows in from the desert. It used to affect my classes too. The children were all cross and I had quite a time controlling them. They used to sag over their desks, their eyes reddened with dust—

She put on a wrap-around cotton dress that Josephine had given to her when Josephine had become too big to wear it any longer. She felt quite ashamed of herself for becoming irritated with Josephine. It was the wind, of course. Now that she realized that fact, she could discipline herself better. For the rest of the day she would force herself to be pleasant and to smile when she didn’t feel like it. She had the will power, she could do it. Ignore the desert wind.

She heard the front door slam and she knew it must be Hazel coming home because Harold always closed doors very softly to avoid startling Josephine. Bracing herself (against the wind, the drop of water, the knot of string) she went out to the living room.

She told Hazel the news while Hazel sat on the davenport rubbing her eyes.

“You don’t seem very surprised,” Ruth said.

“Not so very. My God, it’s hot. Is there some cold juice or something in the refrigerator?”

“Grapefruit juice. Don’t rub your eyes like that. You’re only rubbing the dust in, not getting it out.”

“It feels good anyway.”

“If you’re not surprised it means you must have had your suspicions all along. Mrs. Foster asked me that last night, and I said, of course not. Hazel’s never said a word except what a wonderful man Dr. Foster is. I said, I’m sure Hazel would never condone anything like that.”

“Like what?”

“His running around with other women.”

“He didn’t,” Hazel said deliberately. “There was just one woman.”

“How do you know?”

“Someone told me.”

“That’s even worse. It — it practically proves that they were — cohabiting.”

“If they weren’t, they soon will be.”

“I’m shocked to the core by your attitude, Hazel. You don’t seem to realize—”

“How’s Elaine taking it?”

“How would anyone take it? She’s beside herself, the poor woman. This morning he had the nerve to phone her and tell her, bold as brass, to go out and get a divorce. Naturally she refused. She said never, no matter what happens, will she disgrace her church and her parents and her children by becoming a divorced woman. And I agree with her. She’s convinced that divorce is wrong and I admire her for standing by her convictions.”

“Crap.”

Ruth’s face grew pale with disapproval. “I wish you — you really shouldn’t use words like that, Hazel. I know it’s your house and all that but—”

“All right, I’ll say baloney then, but it’s the same thing no matter how you slice it.”

“Really, Hazel!”

“I get so damn tired of your admiration for that snippy little bitch. I know why she’s not getting a divorce, because she’s too damn mean for one thing. It would kill her to see Gordon have a life of his own. And also because she knows she’ll never get another husband if she lets Gordon go.”

“Such a thought would never occur to her,” Ruth said harshly. “And I’m surprised at you, Hazel. You talk as if you actually approve of Dr. Foster and what he’s done.”

“I’ve always approved of him, why should I change now? A good man doesn’t turn into a bad man overnight.”

“That’s all very well, but we must judge people by their actions. There’s no other way to judge them, and you—”

Hazel raised her voice to interrupt. “I don’t want to judge them. I want to go on liking the people I like and making excuses for them when I have to, and having a few excuses made for me too.”

“Moral softness. I want no excuses made for me, ever.”

“You need them, like everyone else.”

“I wouldn’t take them!” Ruth shouted, making a wild gesture with her fists. “I wouldn’t listen!”

“Don’t get so worked up. I wasn’t trying to—”

“I don’t want any excuses from anybody. Discipline, not excuses, that’s what we need in this world, more self-denial and discipline. Oh yes, I can see what you’re thinking now — poor Ruth, she can’t help getting worked up, she had a nervous breakdown and lost her job, and she’s an old maid too, of course, and her father was—”

“Stop guessing,” Hazel said. “If you want to know what I was thinking I’ll tell you. I was thinking that people who are hard on themselves the way you are, are usually pretty hard on other people too.”

“Not hard enough.”

“Elaine Foster’s kind of like that too. I can’t explain it so well, but maybe if she liked herself a little better and had a little more self-respect, she’d be better off.”

“Well, well! You’re getting to be quite a psychologist, Hazel Anderson. You’ve got Mrs. Foster and me all figured out, and the trouble with us is we have no self-respect!”

“I meant, respect for yourselves as you really are, not expecting to be perfect and accepting the fact that you’ve got a few human weaknesses that maybe aren’t so bad after all.”

“No self-respect, eh?” Ruth cried. “And what do you think you’ve got, the kind of things you do, drinking and carrying on and traipsing after your divorced husband—”

Josephine came to the door with an anxious little smile on her face. “Gee whiz, the way you two sound you’d think you were quarreling. Mrs. Hatcher’s outside working in her garden, she’s bound to hear every word you say.”

“That’s all right,” Hazel said. “We’re finished.”

“We have finished,” Ruth corrected her. “We are finished would mean we are dead.”

“Close enough to suit me.”

“The least I can do in exchange for your analysis of my character is to give you a free lesson in English grammar.”

Josephine turned on her and said hotly, “That’s no way to speak to Hazel after all she’s—”

“You stay out of this,” Hazel said. Then she addressed Ruth in a quieter voice, “I’m sorry if I said anything to hurt you. I didn’t mean to.”

“Hurt me,” Ruth sneered. “You can’t hurt me. I don’t allow myself to be hurt.”

“There you go again. Don’t kid yourself.”

“And I repeat, you don’t have to make any excuses for me, Hazel Anderson. I don’t require them and I don’t believe in them, for me or anybody else, let alone a man like Dr. Foster. A man that leaves his wife and children and runs off with another woman is a bad man. He stands condemned by his own action in the eyes of all decent people.”

“Maybe I’m not decent.”

“If the shoe fits, wear it.”

“There’s a car stopping out front,” Josephine said nervously. “You two just better quit arguing right now.”

Hazel got up to look out of the window. Then, without a word of explanation, she picked up her purse from the top of the radio and went outside.

Gordon was alone in the car. Though Hazel had seen him only twenty-four hours ago, he seemed to have changed more than a day’s worth. Wearing the old slack suit that she’d seen hanging in his office and needing a shave, he looked like an ordinary workingman relaxing on a Sunday morning. There was none of that do-or-die air about him that he put on along with his white surgeon’s coat.

He smiled at her as she came down the walk. “I was just coming in.”

“It’d be better if we talked out here. Too many people.” She opened her purse and took out the roll of bills bound together with an elastic. It looked like a lot of money and Hazel wondered if Gordon knew how little it actually was in these times. Maybe to him it looked like more because it meant his freedom for a week or two and he was too excited at the prospect to think further ahead than that.

He handed her two checks, one for five hundred dollars made out to Cash, and the other for a hundred made out to Hazel.

“What’s this for?”

“Your salary for the next two weeks.”

“What am I supposed to do to earn it?”

“Answer the phone. Cancel all appointments for the next month. If there are any emergencies send them over to Dr. Tower. Appointments for routine check-ups and cleanings you can step up till next month if the people are willing to wait. If they aren’t ask Dr. MacPherson to take them. Tell everyone I’m on a holiday, naturally.”

“Then you’re coming back?”

“I hope so. You’ll hear from me anyway.” He paused for a moment. “Thanks for everything, Hazel. Not just getting the money, but for understanding that this is the only way I could do it. It seems pretty sordid, I guess, for me to be sneaking away like this. But I couldn’t go home to say goodbye because I know I wouldn’t get away. Elaine would pull out every stop on the organ, and I’m afraid I’d change my mind. I want to do now what has to be done eventually. Ruby isn’t the issue, I want you to understand that. It’s true that if I didn’t know her and if she didn’t love me, I probably wouldn’t have the guts to leave Elaine now. But Ruby has caused nothing, do you see that?”

“Yes.”

“She’s over at her room packing. She’s been at it all morning and she’s only got one suitcase. I wonder if she’s giving me a chance to change my mind, or if she actually doesn’t want to leave under the circumstances.”

“Maybe she’s just particular,” Hazel said.

“That must be it.”

“It must be.”

Gordon drew in his breath. “Well, I guess that covers everything. Be sure and be at the bank when it opens tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“It’s a hell of a thing to say about your wife, but she might try to close our joint account and I don’t want you to be caught with two bad checks.”

“You’d better tell me where you’re going.”

“San Francisco, probably. Then if anything happens Ruby will at least have her aunt’s place to go to. Anything could happen you know, an accident or something like that.”

“Don’t sound so gloomy, Gordon.” It was the first time she had ever called him Gordon. She was surprised how the name slipped out so easily, as if she never expected him to come back and change into Dr. Foster again.

The wind veered suddenly, and picking up the dirt from the playground hurled it across the street. They both closed their eyes automatically until the sound of the wind died down.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Hazel said.

“I guess not. Well, thanks again, Hazel. I’d better get going, with four hundred miles to drive.”

They shook hands, and Hazel said, “Goodbye and good luck.”

“Goodbye, Hazel.”

She waited on the sidewalk until his car reached the corner, then she waved to him and Gordon waved back, very gaily.

Though she had a premonition that she’d never see him again, she wasn’t depressed at the prospect of losing a good job with a pleasant boss. It occurred to her then, for the first time, that she mightn’t have been so eager to help Gordon get away if he hadn’t been taking Ruby with him.

She stood on the small roofless porch reluctant to go inside and face the questions of Josephine and Ruth. A mockingbird flew up out of the pyracantha bush. Though the berries were barely beginning to show orange, the birds had already been at them. She resolved now, as she did every year, to save the berries for Christmas decoration by screening them with nets, but she knew perfectly well that by Christmas the bush would look as it always did. The red berries would be crushed and half-eaten, showing their yellowish pulp, like ruined immature apples, and every tiny leaf would be partly nibbled to its spine by snails and beetles. Even if she could save the bush from the birds it was hard to wash the beetles off before bringing the berries into the house. The beetles hid and clung, and only after they’d been in the house for a day or two would they abandon the berries and seek the bright yellow patches in the slipcover of the davenport. Motionless and rapt, they would sit absorbing the color. They never returned to the berries, and they never went anywhere else in the house.

The mockingbird came back and began to squawk insults at her from the porch railing.

A teenaged girl was coming up the street on a bicycle, riding very slowly, wobbling from side to side to keep her balance. She had long black hair that danced in a frenzy around her head with every gust of wind. Perched on the carrier behind her was a boy of five or six, hanging on to the girl’s waist and holding his legs out in the air to avoid interfering with the girl’s pedaling. In the basket at the front sat a fat sunburned baby with a soother in his mouth. Every time the bicycle wobbled the baby lurched to one side, but he didn’t make a sound, either because he didn’t want to lose the soother, or because he was enjoying the ride. The girl paid no attention to the baby or the boy behind her. Like the captain of a well-run ship, she seemed to assume that they each knew their places and would perform their duties.

The bicycle zigzagged again, and Hazel started down the porch steps and called out, “Aren’t you afraid he’ll fall?”

The girl stared at Hazel suspiciously for a moment. Then she applied the brakes and put her left foot down on the road. Simultaneously, as if from long habit, the boy put his left foot on the road, and slid off the carrier. “I didn’t hear what you said, lady.”

“I was just wondering if the baby would fall when you’re going so slow and wobbly like that.”

“He won’t fall,” the girl said flatly, blinking her dark eyes at the baby. “I got him tied in. Anyway, I’m only going slow because I’m looking for something. I can ride perfect, without hands even.”

“And backwards, and standing on the seat,” the boy added.

“My goodness,” Hazel said. “I never even heard of that.”

“Connie can do it,” the boy said. “Go on, Connie, do it for her.”

Connie hesitated, torn between the desire to show off and the desire to appear sophisticated. “Naw,” she said. “That’s baby stuff, and Pop wouldn’t like it anyway.” She explained to Hazel, “It’s my pop’s bicycle.”

“He goes to work on it,” the boy said. “He’s a gardener.”

“A landscape gardener,” the girl corrected him with a frown.

“I wouldn’t know the difference,” Hazel said.

“There’s lots of difference. You get more money if you’re landscape.”

The soother fell out of the baby’s mouth and he let out a howl of rage. The girl glanced at Hazel with some contempt. “See? I told you. He’s yelling because he thinks the ride’s over.” She picked the soother up off the road, wiped the dirt off on her blouse and popped it back into the baby’s mouth. “He’s not afraid of falling, even if he could. Which he can’t. Are you, Bingo?”

Bingo rolled his eyes and Hazel laughed. “He’s very cute.”

“He’s called Bingo because my mother was at a Bingo game just before he was born, only his real name’s Truman.” The girl added, with infinite scorn, “My parents haven’t the faintest idea how to name children.”

“Is that right.”

“I wouldn’t dream of using my real name at school. It’s Consuela, but I just call myself Connie, Consuela sounds so foreignish. If I just call myself Connie, people think my real name is Constance which stinks too, only at least it sounds as if I was born in this country. Which I was.”

“We all was,” the boy said. “My mother, too.”

“His name’s Vicente,” Connie said, with a worldly shrug. “Only he’s not old enough yet to realize how awful it is.”

“I do so,” the boy protested.

“If you realize now when you’re only six, just think how much more you’re going to realize when you’re nearly sixteen.”

The boy hung his head under the weight of this future, and began to shuffle his feet in the dust. Connie glanced at Hazel as if she wasn’t certain whether to continue the conversation or not. Then she said curtly, “Come on, Vin,” and she and the boy took their places on the bicycle simultaneously.

It wasn’t until they had moved a couple of yards ahead that Hazel recognized the skunk tail hanging from the carriage, and the reflector that spelled out “Watch My Speed.” She called out, and the bicycle stopped again, and the boy and girl turned their heads at exactly the same time and with equal suspicion.

“Maybe I can help,” Hazel said. “What are you looking for?”

“A hedge clipper,” Connie answered. “My pop lost it and it cost five ninety-five.”

“Enough for one hundred and nineteen ice cream cones, Pop said,” the boy added.

“That’s not counting tax,” Connie said severely. “If we don’t find it on the road, Pop said to go to Mr. Anderson’s house, 2124 the number is.”

“That’s my house.”

Connie blinked. “I know.”

“You can come in the yard and look around if you like.”

“Pop said to look up and down the road first.”

“It would probably be picked up by now if he lost it on the road,” Hazel said. “He may have left it at my house, I’ll go and see. Do you want to come inside and wait?”

“I’ll come inside,” Connie said, flashing a look at the boy. “Vin can ride Bingo up and down the street.”

“He can come inside too,” Hazel said quickly. “He doesn’t look big enough to sit on the seat and reach the pedals.”

“You don’t have to sit on the seat to ride a bicycle. Go on, Vin, show the lady.”

Vin obliged.

“See?” Connie said, and Hazel admitted that she saw and the two of them went into the house.

The front room was empty but it had the air of having just been abandoned at the approach of company.

“Sit down, Connie,” Hazel said.

“I’d just as soon stand. I like to stand, I do it all the time.”

She stood along the wall with her hands behind her back. She felt too sophisticated to stare at the furniture with the crude curiosity of a child, the way Vin would have done. She narrowed her eyes and gazed out of their corners in a manner meant to indicate a bored indifference. It was the expression she used at school when one of the teachers asked her a question she couldn’t answer. She merely lifted her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes to show that she didn’t care but that she certainly would know the answer if she did care.

Every few minutes she heard Vin ride past the house yelling, “Honk, honk!” and “Yippee, bang bang!” She would have liked to open the door and order him to be quiet, but she didn’t want to move for fear the lady of the house might think she’d been snooping while she was gone.

When Hazel returned Connie had barely moved a muscle.

“I can’t find it,” Hazel said. “My sister-in-law and I both hunted for it.”

Though Connie continued to look bored, there was an undertone of anxiety in her voice: “Pop said not to bother you too much, but he’s pretty sure he couldn’t have dropped it on the road. It’s heavy, it would have made a noise and he’d have heard it. Pop’s awful careful about his tools.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

“And this was the last place he went to.”

“Well, I certainly can’t find it,” Hazel repeated. She was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable under the girl’s oblique gaze. The girl had not accused her of deliberately withholding the hedge clipper; the accusation lay in the facts themselves. Mr. Escobar had brought his hedge clipper to Hazel’s yard, and when he arrived home the clipper was missing. It was practically impossible, Hazel thought, for it to have fallen from the bicycle basket without Escobar noticing it.

“Maybe someone stole it,” Connie said.

“I don’t see how. Your father was working out in the yard all the time, and there wasn’t anyone else around, not while I was here anyway. Wait a minute and I’ll go and ask my cousin about it.”

“Pop said not to bother you too much, maybe I better just go.”

“It’s no bother,” Hazel said quite sharply. “I want to get this thing cleared up.”

She went into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. The blinds were drawn, and Ruth was lying on the bed with a cloth over her eyes. She was absolutely motionless, yet Hazel had the same impression that she’d had when she and Connie had come into the house, an impression of activity that stopped a split second before she opened the door. She wondered if Ruth had been listening at the door and if she’d been able to hear anything with the wind blowing so loud outside.

“What’s the matter?” Hazel said.

“I have a headache.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but Mr. Escobar’s girl is here.”

Ruth sat up and the cloth fell off her eyes into her lap.

“What?” she said stupidly. “Who?”

“The Mexican’s daughter.”

“Daughter?” She let out a sudden sharp laugh. “This is a surprise. He’s got a daughter, has he? Who’d have guessed it, from the look of him? What’s she like?”

“Quite pretty.”

“Pretty, is she? That is funny.” She laughed again. “She can’t take after him!”

“Don’t laugh like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“I don’t! I was laughing because it’s so funny, him having a daughter, and pretty at that. What’s she doing here?”

“She came to get her father’s hedge clipper. He says he left it here yesterday.”

“He’s lying!”

Hazel looked annoyed. “Why should he lie about it?”

“So he can get a new one out of you. His was old, I saw it, it was all rusty.”

“The girl told me it was brand new.”

“They’re all lying,” Ruth cried. “They’re all the same, sly and scheming behind those innocent eyes of theirs! Yes, those innocent velvet eyes, they can hide a lot.”

“Keep your voice down. She’s right in the front room.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.”

Ruth picked up the cloth that she’d had over her eyes and began to twist it in her hands. Hazel watched her uneasily. She was afraid that Ruth was going to have another of her nervous spells. They always followed the same pattern — there was the hard mirthless laughter, the talk about self-discipline, and then the moment when the discipline broke open at the seams, exposing a quivering and uncoordinated mass of tissue.

“I certainly didn’t take his hedge clipper,” Ruth said. “What are you looking at me for? Why even ask me about it?”

“I thought you might have seen it.”

“I didn’t.”

“You said you did.”

“Only for a minute, long enough to see that it was old and rusty.” She fell back on the pillow, and when she spoke again her voice was high and suffering: “Anyway, it’s all a lie. The whole thing is a lie from beginning to end. Perhaps there never was a hedge clipper, perhaps I only imagined I saw it or I mistook it for something else. That’s it, I’m sure — I don’t believe there ever was such a thing, so I couldn’t have taken something that wasn’t there. You mustn’t accuse me.”

“I wasn’t accusing you.”

“You were, with your eyes.”

“I’m only trying to get to the bottom of the matter,” Hazel said. “I feel responsible for a loss that took place on my property.”

“That’s how he wants you to feel, so you’ll buy him another.”

“I have no intention of buying him another. I intend to find the one he left here and I’ll find it, by Jesus, if I have to take the whole damn house apart.”

“You’ll never find it,” Ruth said softly. “There never was such a thing. It’s all a lie, it was all meant to take you in because you’re innocent. You talk so rough, Hazel, and you know so many different kinds of people, but you’re very innocent.”

She put the cloth over her eyes again, as a gesture of dismissal.

“Listen, Ruth,” Hazel said quietly, “if you know anything about where that hedge clipper is, you better tell me now. I’ll find out anyway.”

Ruth lay on the bed, mute and rigid.

“Let’s put it this way, suppose you had one of your screwy ideas and decided to take the hedge clipper and put it away some place. Maybe you were going to teach him a lesson, or maybe you even did it for my sake, to save money or something — I don’t care what reason you had. Just tell me where you put it and then we’ll forget the whole thing.”

“I’ve already forgotten.”

“Listen, you’ve got to tell me where it is.”

“I don’t know. I never saw it.”

“You don’t realize, this is one of those small things that can turn out to be very serious. He’s a poor man, he might go to the police. We’ll all get in trouble.”

“See? You are accusing me. I felt it when you came in the room.”

“I wasn’t accusing you when I came in. I only got suspicious when you began to talk about seeing it and not seeing it.”

“I’m not a liar. Sometimes I appear to lie, but it’s only that my imagination is so vivid, pictures form so clear and real in my head. But I’m not a liar.”

“I know that,” Hazel said patiently.

“So that’s where I must have seen it, in my head. It was lying on a shelf, or on the grass, I’m not sure which.”

“Ruth, did you take it or didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t there to take, and besides, I’d have no reason to do such a thing. I can’t think of any reason at all.” Though there had been no change in her voice and no overt sign of weeping, the cloth over her eyes was wet with tears. “If I could think of a reason, any reason — for your sake, perhaps, for your sake—”

“The reason doesn’t matter. Did you take it?”

“No, no, I didn’t!”

“All right,” Hazel said. “We’ll forget it for now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Send the girl home and then find the hedge clipper. Maybe we’d both better hunt for it, you and me.”

“I can’t, I have this headache.”

Hazel stood looking at her indecisively for a moment, then she burst out, “Oh, for God’s sake, Ruth, be sensible and tell me where you hid it.”

Ruth turned her face to the wall.

When Hazel went back to the front room the girl was gone. Thinking she might have decided to wait outside, Hazel opened the door in time to see the bicycle just turning on to Castillo Street. At the hole in the corner which Hazel was always careful to avoid when she was driving, the baby and the boy and Connie herself all bounced in the air, but Connie kept pedaling furiously and in a moment the bicycle had disappeared behind the stucco wall of the school.

Hazel turned back into the house. Through the closed door of the bedroom she could hear Ruth talking to herself in a thin, reedy monotone that sounded as though Ruth had not intended to talk, she had merely opened her mouth and the desert wind blew through it like a pitch pipe.

She opened the door. Ruth was sitting on the edge of the bed with the little dog cradled in her arms. The dog looked uncomfortable and puzzled, but it did not attempt to escape.

“Ruth.”

“I will come out and speak to her personally,” Ruth said.

“You can’t. She’s gone.”

“Gone? Why?”

“I don’t know. She had her little brothers with her, maybe she wanted to get them home.”

“Brothers. Yes, of course. They breed like pigs.” The little dog squirmed out of her arms, sensing danger in their sudden contraction, and went to hide under the bed. “Like pigs. It’s disgusting. He probably has a new child every year.”

“That’s his business.”

“I’m sure it is his business. He seems to do very little else.”

“There’s no sense in—”

“But then they’re all lazy, every one of them.”

“I thought he worked very hard yesterday.”

“You weren’t here. I was. I watched him. I watched him the whole day.”

“Yes,” Hazel said slowly. “Yes, I guess you did.”

“You can rest assured that I did. Josephine wanted me to go along on the boat ride but I stayed home deliberately. They’ve got to be watched.”

“Do they?”

“Every minute of the time.”

Hazel had turned quite pale. “You stood outside and watched him?”

“Not outside. In here.”

“In where?”

“In— Why are you looking at me like that? Stop it. Stop it immediately.”

“Ruth.”

“I won’t tolerate it.”

“Listen to me a minute. I’m only trying to get at the truth.”

“Truth. Truth. There’s no such thing — it’s all a pack of lies.”

“What is?”

“All, all of it. Lies. Slander. You can’t believe anything you’re told.”

“Nobody told me anything. I figured it out for myself.”

Ruth laughed. “Oh, you did, did you? You’re quite a figurer for a woman with no education, who never got past high school.”

She was trembling so violently that the bed rattled and the dog hiding under it made a sudden dash for the door.

“I can figure, all right,” Hazel said. “You didn’t know he was married.”

“I didn’t know, or care. I wasn’t interested enough to think about it.”

“You thought about it.”

“No!”

“If you watched him all day, you must have.”

“How can you imply such a thing? — A Mexican — a dirty Mexican—” She took a long, shuddering breath. “We’ve always held our heads high, all the Kanes, we’re a good family.”

“Why did you take the clipper? So he’d have to come back for it?”

“No, no, how can you — how—”

“It’s the only reason I can think of.”

“No, no! I did it for your sake, Hazel, for you. I knew he was going to try and cheat you. I cheated him first. That’s fair, isn’t it, isn’t it fair?”

“You’re talking crazy. Why should he try to cheat me?”

“Because they all do. Everybody knows that. You can’t trust them. They’re sly, deceitful. He didn’t let on he was married, never gave a sign. We talked, I remember every word. Nothing about a wife and family, nothing. It shows, doesn’t it, how deceitful they are, how they can’t be trusted? I remember every word. We talked about Wendy, him pretending to be interested in her but all the while sizing me up with those innocent eyes of his. Ah, but I was too smart for him. I cheated him before he cheated me. You see that?”

“Yes, I think I see it. I think I do.” Hazel walked over to the window, her hands jammed in the pockets of her jeans as if it was necessary to keep them under control. The sun poured through the net curtains, a golden stream of warmth and light. “Where did you hide it?”

“In the garage.”

“Whereabouts in the garage?”

“I — can’t tell you.”

“You’ve got to.”

Ruth stared down at the floor, mute and suffering.

“Now try and be sensible, Ruth. I looked in the garage a few minutes ago and couldn’t find it. You’re sure you hid it there?”

“Yes.”

“What part? Tell me.”

“I want to, I want to, but I—” She moved her head from side to side, like an animal with a pain it couldn’t understand or communicate.

“Ruth. Listen to me.”

“Yes.”

“You’re over the bad part, you’ve admitted you took it and hid it some place. That was hard for you, but you did it.”

“Yes.”

“The rest can’t be any harder. Tell me where it is and I’ll take it back to him and we can forget the whole thing. Are you listening to me, Ruth?”

“Yes.”

“Where is it?”

“The — the buggy.”

“Buggy.”

“That Harold got for the baby. It’s right — right there. I didn’t hide it. I just put it down — it seemed — such a good place for it.”

“Yes,” Hazel said quietly, “I guess it was.”

“You won’t — tell Josephine?”

“No.”

“She’d be mad — germs and everything.”

“I won’t tell her.”

“I don’t know — why I took it. It’s only a clipper.”

“Sometimes things have a special meaning.”

“What meaning could it have? Only a clipper.” She raised her head, slowly. “To you it must seem — quite humorous.”

“No.”

“But it is, it is humorous, in a way. I often see the funny side of things only I can’t laugh easily like some people. Oh, yes, I see the humor in it. You must, too, only you won’t admit it — a grown woman spying on a Mexican gardener, yes spying, and then stealing his hedge clipper and hiding it in a baby buggy. That’s humorous enough. You’re a great laugher, why don’t you laugh?”

“I don’t feel like it,” Hazel said. “I’ll go and get the clipper.”

“Wait. I’ll go with you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I must.” She grasped the bedpost and pulled herself to her feet. Two spots of color had appeared over her cheekbones like round red poker chips. “I must learn to face things.”

The garage smelled of oil and dust and dead leaves. Each time a gust of wind blew past the door the leaves were sucked up into the vacuum it left behind; they jerked and spun for a moment like frenzied dancers and then drifted down to the concrete floor, rustling with self-applause.

Throughout the morning dust had sifted into the garage like snow, and now it covered everything, the oil leavings from Hazel’s car, the broken chair from the kitchen, the bicycle Harold had used on his paper route years and years ago, Ruth’s trunkful of books, George’s collection of shells and driftwood; and, in the far corner near the window, the buggy which Harold had gotten, fourth- or fifth-hand, from the furniture store where he worked. Someone (Josephine? Ruth?) had covered the buggy with an old yellow slicker.

Ruth approached it slowly, holding a handkerchief against her mouth, partly to control its trembling and partly to protect it from the dust.

Her voice came through the handkerchief, muffled and strange. “Everything is so dirty. I must clean.” I must face things, I must expiate, I must clean, I must, I must... She removed the yellow slicker and a faint odor of urine rose from the mattress pad and vanished.

The hedge clipper lay snugly on its side, but it did not breathe or move; it did not look or smell or feel like a real baby, and yet for a brief time in Ruth’s mind it had been real. It had breathed against her scrawny chest and warmed her arms and made loving sounds in her ear.

She reached into the buggy and pulled the clipper out roughly by one handle.

“Only a clipper,” she said with a sharp little laugh. “You see? It is funny.”

“Yes.”

“I wish you’d laugh. You laugh at other things, why not at this?”

Hazel didn’t answer.

“I suppose you think I’m crazy. Well, I’m not. I sometimes wish I were. Life can be so dirty, so cruel, so terrifying.” Life is dirty, I must clean; it is cruel, I must be kind; it is terrifying, I must be brave, face things.

“Where does he live?”

“Who?”

“Mr. Escobar.” It was the first time she had ever called him by his name.

“On Quincy Street, 509, I think.”

“You said the hard part was over, Hazel. You were wrong.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m going to take the clipper back myself. That will be the hardest part, explaining to him.”

“For God’s sake, Ruth, be sensible. You can’t explain to him, you—”

“I must.”

She turned and walked back through the dead leaves and the dust, with the hedge clipper hanging loosely from her hand, striking her thigh as she moved.

She took a bus across town in the direction of Quincy Street. Since it was Sunday, the bus was nearly empty and the driver had to go very slowly to kill time. On weekdays, in order to keep to his schedule, he was compelled to drive at a wild clip, dodging in and out of traffic, blowing his horn, spurting through the streets like a grounded pilot demoted to the wheel of a dilapidated bus but not admitting it for a minute.

Sunday was different, low gear, five miles an hour. He had time to look around and enjoy himself and study his passengers through the rear-view mirror. The young Negro couple were in love, probably newly in love, from the way they sat and looked at each other in utter silence; the old man behind them was smiling drowsily to himself as if the bus was his own private Cadillac and he was taking a Sunday drive.

Only the gray-haired woman sitting taut and rigid near the rear exit door with a parcel across her knees seemed anxious for a destination. She kept peering out at the street signs.

“Driver?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You heard me say Quincy Street?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll be sure and—?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He looked at her curiously. Her features reminded him of a teacher he’d had years ago in Jefferson grade school, a very gentle, pretty, young woman who had trouble keeping the class quiet. When she said goodbye on the last day of school she had cried a little and most of the children had cried too. Miss Kane. He hadn’t thought of her for years.

“Quincy Street,” he said, and the woman got up, clutching her parcel, and headed for the door.

He swung around in his seat and stared at her, his eyebrows raised, as if he expected an answer to some question.

Miss Kane?

She stared back at him for a moment, and then turned away. Sorry, Miss Kane doesn’t live here any more.

The door closed behind her and the bus moved away, its ageing insides grumbling and letting off wind.

She stood and watched, remembering the bus driver perfectly, his name, his age, his report card. Melvyn Schlagel, grade three. Dear Mrs. Schlagel, Melvyn is a bright and lovable boy, and I am sure his indifferent marks are merely the result of high spirits and will improve greatly in time to come. Sincerely, Ruth Kane.

Miss Kane?

Yes, Melvyn.

She raised her hand and waved, just as the bus reached the corner. She was not sure whether Melvyn waved back or whether he was making a left-turn signal. No, they never make signals, she thought, he must have waved back at me. He knew me after all these years. I can’t have changed so much. Perhaps next time, if I see him again, we will have a little chat about old times. What a noisy class I had that year, but I loved them all.

The bus turned the corner and Ruth began to walk in the opposite direction down Quincy Street, a new glow in her eyes and a bounce in her step, as if the unexpected reminder of happy years made them more real in the past and more possible in the future. The gap between the two seemed suddenly smaller, its walls lower, its moats easier to leap across, its doors already half-open.

Quincy Street was packed solid with small square frame shacks, their front windows no more than six feet from the sidewalk. Five hundred and nine was in the middle of the block, indistinguishable from its neighbors except for two potted geraniums precariously balanced on the sagging railing of the tiny porch. On the front door someone had printed in chalk, “Viva la Fiesta,” and in ink, on a card above the doorbell, “Out of Order.”

She banged on the door with the side of her fist to make herself heard above the street noises, the rumble of roller skates, the shrieks of children, the barking of dogs. She was aware that people were watching her as they watched anyone new or different in the neighborhood. Windows were raised, blinds snapped up, lace curtains parted, eyes narrowed.

She knocked again and waited, half-hoping that Escobar would answer right away so that she could get the whole thing over with, and yet dreading the moment when she would come face to face with him and try to explain: Here is your hedge clipper, Mr. Escobar. You didn’t lose it, you didn’t leave it anywhere. I took it, yes, quite deliberately. I committed a sinful act. I must pay for it. I must—

A young Negro in a T-shirt and a straw hat came around the side of the house and looked at her over the porch railing.

He said, in a monotone, “Ain’t nobody in.”

“Oh.”

“They went away couple hours ago. Fishing. They eat a lotta fish.” He folded his arms on his chest and teetered back and forth on the balls of his feet. He was wearing very long pointed shoes the color of mustard. “I live next door. Name’s Jenkins.”

“I’m Miss Kane.”

He tipped his hat briefly. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I — you have no idea when they’ll be back?”

“Depends on the fishing.”

“Could I–I wonder if I could leave this parcel here on the porch? It’s Mr. Escobar’s hedge clipper.”

“Oh, that. I heard them talking about it. The walls are thin,” he added, as if that explained everything. “It fell off his bicycle.”

“No. No, it didn’t.”

“Just saying what I heard at supper.”

“He never had it on his bicycle!”

“Yes, ma’am.” Still holding his arms over his chest he took a step back, as if her voice had struck like a spear at his vital organs.

“I know, because I took it. I—” I stole it, I committed, a sin. I must expiate. Viva la Fiesta. Out of Order. She inhaled deeply and the hot dusty air rattled in her throat like gourds. “I took it and put it away in the garage — for safekeeping.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell him — tell him I found it in the back yard, just where he left it.” She propped the clipper up against the front door and turned away, wiping her hands on her skirt. “Tell him he is to be more careful of his tools in the future.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Jenkins.”

She walked back toward the bus stop, feeling extraordinarily light and agile without the weight of the hedge clipper. The noises of Quincy Street, the children, the dogs, the passing freight train, mingled with the remembered noise of the classroom into a pleasant dissonance she had not heard before.

Sitting on the concrete bench at the bus stop with her eyes closed against the wind and the sun, she breathed a quiet prayer. Thank you, Hazel, for being kind. Thank you, Mr. Escobar, for going fishing. Thank you, Mr. Jenkins. Thank you, God.