Wives and Lovers

14

On Sunday night after church Elaine Foster went to her minister for advice. The minister, a worldly man called Kriger, knew perfectly well that Elaine was incapable of taking advice, so he didn’t offer any. Instead, he let her talk. She talked for over an hour, being as truthful as she ever had to anybody, and when she had finished she went home and phoned Ruth.

The following morning about eleven o’clock, Ruth arrived carrying a suitcase and leading Wendy by a leash.

Elaine met her at the door. She looked coldly at the dog but didn’t say anything.

She spoke in a stage whisper: “The children are playing in the kitchen. I don’t want them to know you’re here until we’ve had a chance to discuss matters. They get so excited.”

“Have you told them yet?”

“Just that Grandma was sick and I have to go to Chicago to look after her for a week or so. They wouldn’t understand the truth.”

“Perhaps not.” Ruth hesitated, and then reached down and took off the dog’s leash. “I hope you don’t mind my bringing Wendy. I thought the children might like — it might take their minds off things.”

“I don’t mind in the least.”

“Besides, there’s no one at home to look after her. Harold and Josephine are moving today. They found a small house in the canyon.”

“I am very fond of dogs,” Elaine said, and leaned over and patted the little dog firmly on the head.

Leaving the suitcase on the hall stairs the two women walked on tiptoe into the living room. The drapes were drawn so that the morning sun wouldn’t fade the carpet and the slipcovers, and the room was twilight dark. From the kitchen came the sounds of the children playing, muffled by closed doors. Everything seemed muted, as if somewhere in the house, a person was about to die and mustn’t be disturbed by noise or light or movement.

“I hate to leave,” Elaine said. “But the Reverend Kriger told me it was the best thing to do, go away for a while and gain some perspective, think things out. If I sat around here feeling sorry for myself, I’d go mad.”

“You’re holding up wonderfully well.”

“That’s what he said, too. Some women would be simply prostrate, he said, having the bottom drop out of their lives like this. But I can’t afford to give in to my emotions.” She paused. “I wired Mother last night. Not that she’ll be surprised, she’s never had much use for Gordon. She was practically heartbroken when I married him. Reverend Kriger didn’t actually say so, but he implied that perhaps I am being punished for not taking Mother’s advice in the first place.”

She began to pace up and down the room, and the little dog, thinking that she might be taking a walk, followed, sniffing, at her heels.

“I told you about the charge accounts at the market and the pharmacy.”

Ruth nodded.

“You’ll need some cash too, for the laundry and the paper boy and things like that. I’ve left fifty dollars for you in the top left-hand drawer of the buffet in the dining room. We haven’t discussed your salary yet.”

“There’s no hurry.”

“I don’t even know how much I’ll be able to pay you.”

“You mustn’t worry about it.”

“That’s what Reverend Kriger said, I mustn’t worry about other people so much, I must think of myself.” The Reverend Kriger had done nothing more than nod and make a sympathetic sound, but out of these Elaine had fabricated a whole moral philosophy: You must be completely selfish, Mrs. Foster. “He said, what about money, and I said, I don’t know, I just don’t know how we’ll manage. With the house to pay for and three children to feed and clothe we’ve never been able to put much aside.”

“Dr. Foster certainly won’t let you starve.”

“Won’t he?” Elaine’s mouth twitched with a grim little smile. “How will he make a living?”

“Hazel says he’s a wonderful dentist.”

“Really?”

“First-rate, she said.”

“It seems to me Hazel might be a little prejudiced.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I wonder, why.” She had stopped pacing and the little dog had stopped too, and was standing at her side looking up into her face, trying to read her expression. “I saw her this morning.”

“Hazel? Where?”

“At the bank. She avoided me.”

“Oh, I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

“It was quite intentional.”

“She’s nearsighted.”

“Not that nearsighted. She was in line at the very next window.”

“Well.”

“She cashed a check, a large check, judging from the number of bills the teller gave her.”

“They could have been ones.”

“They could have been, but they weren’t. I am not nearsighted. They were twenties.”

“Hazel doesn’t keep much money in the bank. I can’t understand it.”

“I can. It wasn’t her money, it was mine. Half mine, anyway.”

“I don’t see—”

“When my turn came I asked the teller to check the joint account I have with Gordon. There was five hundred dollars missing. It adds up, doesn’t it? She wasn’t cashing that check for herself but for Gordon. She knows where he’s gone. She must, if she’s going to send the money to him. It’s laughable, isn’t it? — she and Gordon may have planned this whole thing weeks ago.”

“She never said a word about it, not a word.”

“She wouldn’t. She and Gordon are hand in glove, always have been.”

The sun had passed the front window. Elaine went over and pulled back the drapes. In the morning light she seemed tired, but every curl was in place and her light shantung traveling suit looked very smart and new. When she was a girl, Elaine had shown few signs of youth, and now that she had reached her middle thirties she showed almost no signs of age.

She said, contemptuously, “How typical of Gordon, to drag other people into his childish schemes. He can’t even manage his own love affair. Wait until the girl finds him out. Just wait. He’ll come slobbering back to me wanting me to wipe his chin for him and change his bib. Just wait until his dear little Ruby catches on to him.”

“Hello, Judith,” Ruth said in a falsely bright manner.

Elaine turned abruptly. The girl was standing pressed against the door frame with a slice of bread in one hand and a piece of clay in the other.

She looked gravely at Ruth. “I made something. Do you want to see it?”

“I’d love to,” Ruth said. “It looks very interesting.”

“It isn’t interesting, it’s just a worm. But it’s a good worm. Paul screamed at it blue murder.”

“I don’t blame him. It’s such an excellent worm I feel like screaming myself.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Perhaps I will, later on when your mother leaves.”

“It doesn’t count if you don’t do it right away like Paul did.” For the first time since she entered the room she turned her eyes on her mother. “Who is Ruby?”

“She’s just a girl, a woman,” Elaine said. “And how many times have I told you not to go around in your bare feet like that prying into grown-ups’ conversations? It’s cheating.”

“Linda’s mother has ruby earrings.”

“Well, that’s nice.”

“They cost a million or two dollars.”

“Now, Judith, you know perfectly well that a pair of earrings doesn’t cost a million dollars.”

“Linda’s mother’s did.”

“All right, all right.”

“She got them from her boyfriend.”

“Really now, Judith, you mustn’t—” Elaine turned, sighing, to Ruth. “She makes up the weirdest things, honestly.”

Ruth smiled at the girl. “I brought Wendy along.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you want to pet her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll pet her later on when my mother leaves.”

She put the clay worm on the table beside Ruth and walked silently out of the room.

“It’s always like that,” Elaine said. “Always. The least little thing and she turns against me. You’d think I was an ogre or something. Why does she do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s no time to be worrying about it. I ordered the cab for eleven-thirty.”

“It’s almost that now.”

“I — it’s hard to believe I’m really leaving. I haven’t been anywhere for so long.” She hesitated. “Do I look all right? — I mean, not like a country bumpkin?”

“You look very citified.”

“Do I, really? People dress in Chicago, you know. Not like out here.”

When the cab came, Ruth gathered the children on the front porch to say goodbye to their mother. Since Elaine never went as far as the corner grocery store without last-minute admonitions, a trip to Chicago was worth a record number: promise not to eat too many sweets, to say your prayers, brush your teeth, stay out of the loquat tree, watch for cars, don’t spill anything on the new rug, keep out of the gopher poison in the garage, drink your orange juice, don’t catch poison oak; be good, obedient, neat, careful, wise, polite, clean and healthy.

The air was thick as jelly with promises. The baby went to sleep in Ruth’s arms, Paul played with the dog, Judith ate three bananas.

Elaine departed in the cab, laughing a little because she had wanted this trip for a long time, and crying a little too, because this wasn’t how she had planned it. She had meant to go with Gordon and the children, a happy little family off on a visit to Grandma. “What a beautiful family you have,” people would say. Or, “Such lovely, well-mannered children. It isn’t often in this day and age—”

No, it wasn’t often.

She leaned out of the back window of the cab and waved her lace handkerchief in farewell. But there was no one left on the porch except the little white mongrel scratching its ear.

Elaine put the lace handkerchief back in her pocketbook and dabbed at her eyes with a piece of Kleenex. She must keep the handkerchief clean for the plane trip. Kleenex looked common.