Wives and Lovers

8

Mrs. Freeman heard the click of the front door. She laid aside her pen and waited, with a pleasant feeling of alarm and anticipation. Doors were, in her opinion, one of the most interesting inventions of man. A closed door held a secret, on the other side there could be practically anyone: Robert returning from his travels, one of the girls coming in after an early movie, a stranger looking for another stranger, an old friend or a pen pal arriving unexpectedly. It could be a lunatic, an escaped convict, a man with a gun. Mrs. Freeman had had considerable mental practice handling these eventualities. To the convict, the lunatic, and the man with the gun, she would be very amiable; she would disarm them by kindness (food, conversation, hot coffee, and if worst came to worst, the bottle of rum she’d saved from last Christmas). Having allayed their suspicions, she would then maneuver them into the kitchen, lock the door very fast, run over to Mr. Hitchcock’s place next door and phone the police. Sometimes, when she was alone in the house as she was now, she thought of possible hitches in these plans. The man with the gun might shoot her before she had a chance to be amiable to him, the lunatic might be beyond understanding and the convict, with the police on his trail, might be in too much of a hurry to dally over food and drink. There was also the fact that Mr. Hitchcock’s telephone had recently been disconnected.

Mrs. Freeman was, on the whole, rather glad to see Ruby.

“You gave me a start,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “I confess, I’ve never gotten used to staying alone in the house. You never can tell. Look at all those sex murders down in L.A. Even a town like this, I bet you’d be surprised at the things that are going on. My advice to young girls, and I see a lot of them, running a place like this, my advice is to stay out of bars. Bars are the breeding place of crime, also they don’t wash the glasses properly, I’ve heard, just rinse them in cold water. By the way, that Mr. Anderson phoned for you. Wait a minute, he left a number for you to call. Here it is, 23664.”

Without answering, Ruby started up the stairs.

“Aren’t you going to call him?”

“No — no, I’m too tired.”

“Maybe it’s about the job he promised you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Yon ought to care. Jobs don’t grow on trees. What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know.” She paused, leaning against the banister. “I don’t want to talk to him. He makes me feel crawly.”

“Crawly, for goodness sake. I thought he was such a nice man, clean-cut looking. Crawly. The way you girls talk, I don’t understand you.”

Ruby merely stared at her woodenly.

Mrs. Freeman said, offended, “It’s none of my business, but I can’t help taking an interest and when I see a nice-looking man obviously all gone on a girl — and what with the war and so many young men being killed, girls can’t afford to be too choosy.”

“I’m not looking for a young man.”

“Even so, you should be sensible. You can’t have too many irons in the fire.” Mrs. Freeman shook her head in sincere bewilderment. “Here is this man, putting himself out to get you a job and you won’t even call him, no, he makes you feel crawly, you put on an emotional display.”

Some of the bitter resentment Ruby felt against Gordon spilled over on Mrs. Freeman and George. “I know it’s none of your business, but I don’t like him and I don’t like the way he looks at me. Also he’s too fat and his face is too pink and shaved-looking. And I don’t like the way he talks to me as if I was a worm.”

“Even so,” Mrs. Freeman said helplessly. “Even so.”

She had no daughters of her own and so she had developed a proprietary interest in the young unmarried women who came to her house. Her chief concern was to get them married. In spite of her own experience, she still believed that marriage had curative qualities and that a bad husband was better than no husband at all. She was worried by the fact that most of the girls she knew were like Ruby. They had left their homes in search of romance, and overweight pink-faced men didn’t belong in their dreams.

Mrs. Freeman read the Vital Statistics in the paper every night and she was shocked by the number of divorces in the town. She blamed it partly on the town itself. People who saw it for the first time believed that they had reached the end of the rainbow, here between the violet mountains and the jeweled sea. And it was the end of the rainbow, Mrs. Freeman knew that; but she knew, too, how difficult it was to live there. The romantic postcard perfection of nature contrasted too sharply with the ordinary human existence. The stretches of beach, the parks, the bridle paths, the mountain trails — they were there, free for everybody, except the girls like Ruby who worked all week and washed and ironed their clothes on Sunday. Living beside a subway in Flatbush or in a small flat town in Kansas, they could have held on to their dreams of traveling some day to a tropical Eden. Now that they had reached Eden they were all the more discontented to find themselves leading the same old lives. The end of the rainbow was no longer around the corner; it was six miles north to the mountains and nineteen blocks south to the sea. Yet these blocks were more difficult to travel than three thousand miles across the country.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Freeman said, still with her air of helplessness. “Maybe it’s true about every place, but here it’s very true, people expect too much.”

“I expect nothing,” Ruby said.

“I remember once when I first came here years ago. It was in the spring and I was standing out in the yard at night. The acacia tree was in bloom and the moon was so bright that the shadows were as sharp as sun shadows and I could see the little yellow acacia blossoms like chenille. I picked a sprig and held it against my face, so soft, like a baby’s fingers. The sky was full of stars, and the air wasn’t just air, it was rich and thick and cold, I can’t describe it. There was a bird at the top of the tree making a funny little noise, a mockingbird perhaps. I had such an odd feeling, standing there, as if anything might happen in the midst of all this beauty, something wonderful. I saw Robert’s shadow against the kitchen blind, this very kitchen, and he looked as handsome as a god. Oh, the feeling I had.”

She paused, twisting the wedding ring round and round her finger.

“Well?” Ruby said.

“Well, then Robert flung open the kitchen window, and told me to come in, he was hungry and wanted a grilled-cheese sandwich.” She added, very earnestly, “I’m glad he did. It was a good lesson for me. Acacia doesn’t last long after it’s picked. I put it in water but the blossoms got smaller and smaller and finally they fell off.”

The doorbell pealed. Smoothing down her dress and adjusting her face into an expression of amiability, just in case, Mrs. Freeman answered the door.

She was agreeably surprised to see George, who was not too pink-faced or fat, merely a sturdy, healthy-looking man.

“She just came in,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Ruby, here’s Mr. Anderson.”

Ruby came down the stairs slowly.

“I left my number for you to call,” George said.

“I just got home.”

“I thought you might like to go for a drive or something.”

“It’s a nice evening,” Mrs. Freeman said. “And too late in the year for acacia.”

She returned to her letters.

“What’d she mean by that?” George said.

“I don’t know.”

“You look tired, Ruby.”

“You’re always telling me that.”

“Am I? I’m sorry. I can’t help paying attention to how you look. It’s getting to be a habit, I guess. Will you be warm enough in that suit?”

“It’s getting late—”

“You can’t turn me down all the time. Anyway, it’s Saturday night, and everybody celebrates on Saturday night.”

“What do they celebrate?” Ruby said dully.

“Anything.” He held the screen door open and she went out on the porch. “Are you going to be warm enough? Maybe you’d better get a coat.”

“No, I’ll be all right.”

He put his hand on her elbow, and guided her down the porch steps and across the clay path that substituted for a sidewalk. She didn’t shrink away from him as she usually did. She felt too remote to bother about it, as if she had had a great deal to drink and while she was still conscious of what was happening to her she had no interest in it.

George started the car. “Is there any special place you’d like to go?”

“No.”

“We’ll just drive around then.”

“Where’s Garcia Road?”

“What number?”

“Twenty-three hundred.”

“That’d be up in the hills. Why?”

“Nothing. I just overheard a — a customer say he lived there, that’s all. I wondered what it was like.”

“We’ll go and find out,” George said cheerfully. “Got to check up on our customers, see that they come from the right kind of houses.”

“No — no, I’d just as soon not. I’d just as soon drive along the beach.”

“All right.” He sent her a quick, puzzled glance. Her evasions irritated him. She had no reason to treat him as if he were a district attorney and she was accused of a crime. Yet this was actually how he felt about her. He wanted to put her on a spot and question her about herself, find out a few things about her. Her face rarely revealed anything but a kind of resigned unhappiness, and it was this expression of hers that agitated him. If she had cause for her unhappiness — money troubles? sickness in the family? loneliness? — he wanted her to break down and tell him, to bawl on his shoulder the way Hazel used to do.

They drove along toward the Mesa and George thought about Hazel and the night she had said out of a blue sky, “Jesus, I feel just like bawling the house down.” And bawl the house down she did, for a solid hour, until the police drove up to the front of the house, summoned by a neighbor to stop George from beating his wife. Hazel was delighted and she brought out two quarts of beer to celebrate the unexpected company. Neither of the two policemen could drink anything, since they were on duty, but Hazel invited them to come back during their off hours. They came back every now and then, bringing a friend or two, until eventually Hazel knew the whole police department.

“It must be lonely for you,” George said, “not knowing anyone in town.”

“I get along,” Ruby said. “I — read a lot. And write letters home.”

“How are your mother and father?”

“Fine.”

“Don’t you miss the big city?”

“Sometimes.”

“And your friends?”

“I’m not much for parties or things like that.”

“Maybe you should get out more, have a little fun and excitement.”

“I’d just be bored.”

“You should try it anyway.”

“I used to go to parties at school. I never had a good time. I was scared to death of the boys. I couldn’t even open my mouth.”

“You still are,” George said. “Scared, I mean.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Of me, anyway.”

“No.”

“Then I wish you were. I’d like to think I rang some kind of a bell with you somehow.” He kept his attention for a minute on the narrow winding road that crept up the Mesa. Then he said, “I need a drink. How about you?”

“If you want one, all right.”

“You certainly are an enthusiastic gal tonight. Is there anything worrying you?”

“No.”

“And you wouldn’t tell me anyway, I get it.” He made a right turn at the next crossing. “Here’s your Garcia Road.”

“I didn’t want to— Say, what’s the big idea anyway?”

“I didn’t believe that about ‘one of the customers.’”

“I don’t care what you believe, Mr. Anderson.”

“Here’s your twenty-three hundred.” George put the car in low and they went very slowly past a white frame ranch house. “Satisfied?”

She didn’t even look at the house. “Yes, thank you.”

“Who lives there?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can easily look it up in the City Directory.”

“Why bother?”

“Because it worries me. I think you told me a lie. Who lives there?”

“One of the customers, I don’t know his name. And you can let me out of this car right now. I’ll walk home. I never wanted to come anyway. You’re always accusing me of things.”

Instead of stopping the car he raced the engine and they shot ahead, up the hill.

“Why should I lie?” Ruby said. “If it was anyone I knew lived in that house why should I have mentioned it?”

“Maybe you thought I was too dumb to catch on, eh?”

“You can’t catch on when there’s nothing to catch on to, no matter how smart you are.”

“I didn’t say I was smart. I only want to be sure. I suppose I’m jealous of you, but if I tell you that you’ll only say I have no right to be jealous of you. Which is perfectly true.”

“Well, it is.”

“I said it first,” George said flatly. “Where do you want to go for a drink?”

“Anywhere.”

“You know what? I’d like to see you drunk sometime, Ruby. I bet you can be pretty vicious.”

“You’ll never find out,” she said with a sharp laugh.

“I wouldn’t want to. I like you better the way you are, so full of secrets you’re bursting at the seams.”

“You certainly have some funny ideas about me, Mr. Anderson. I can’t understand why you want to take me out all the time, when all you do is quarrel with me. Maybe you’re just a bully.”

“I’d hate to think that.”

“And whenever we’re out together all you want to talk about is me and what’s the matter with me and what a funny girl I am. I don’t talk about you like that.”

“That’s because you’re not interested.”

“Why can’t we ever talk about something else for a change? I’m — I’m so sick of myself I never even want to hear my own name again.” She covered her face with her hands, and with her closed eyes she saw Gordon looking at her with such quiet loathing that she wanted to tear at her own face for inspiring such a look. “I’m so sick of myself I could die. I hate—”

“Be quiet,” George said harshly. “That’s a hell of a way to talk.”

“I hate my own face, I hate it so much I’d like to slash it with a razor, I’d like to slash everything, everything I see!”

He pulled the car over to the curb and turned off the ignition. He said, with pain in his voice, “That’s kid stuff, Ruby, stop it.”

“A lot you know about it!”

“I do. You’re just depressed. You’ll snap out of it.”

She shook her head over and over again, refusing to be comforted. Powerless, he listened to her flow of words: it was a bad world, with bad people in it, she was as bad as the rest, worse, hateful.

Finally he started the car again. He didn’t know what to do about Ruby. He couldn’t force himself to try and stop her hysteria with a slap, and he couldn’t take her back to Mrs. Freeman’s until she calmed down.

He thought suddenly of Hazel. Her house was less than half a mile away; he could stop there and leave Ruby in the car while he got some whisky from Hazel. Hazel wouldn’t mind, as long as she didn’t know it was for Ruby.

“I’ll stop off and get you something to drink,” George said. “It will make you feel better.”

“A drink — you think a drink will cure anything, anything in the world—”

“It helps, sometimes.”

“It can’t help me, nothing can.”

“Let’s try it.”

“You don’t know, you don’t know—”

“I don’t want to know. Just take it easy.”

She kept silent until he parked the car in front of Hazel’s white stucco house. Then she said, in a low voice, “You’re being very kind to me. It’s no use, though.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, it’s just no use.”

“We’ll see.”

He got out and walked around the lane to the back of the house. Parked beside the fence there was a car he didn’t recognize, a black Cadillac with a monogram on the driver’s door which was too elaborate to be deciphered at one glance.

George passed the car and went through the gate toward the back door. The moon had come up and it hung like a fruit among the top branches of the oak tree behind the garage. From the garage itself there came the scurrying and bustling noises of the wood rats as they raced along the ceiling and up and down the walls. Sometimes when George used to get his car out of the garage in the mornings he found their tiny paw marks in the dust on the engine hood. Aside from the paw marks and the dust they shook down from the ceiling, the wood rats did no harm. Their noise disturbed Hazel, though, and she used to go out now and then and bang on the garage roof with a broom. The wood rats froze in their tracks while Hazel banged away, breaking one or two of the tiles in her fury; but as soon as she returned to the house they started again, louder than ever, until the garage seemed to be cracking open. George had never been able to trap a wood rat, in fact he had never even seen one. The evidence that they existed at all was purely circumstantial, the noise and the paw marks on the roof tiles or on the engine hood of the car, like the tracks of the invisible man.

The sounds from the garage suddenly ceased, as though the rats had sensed the presence of an intruder. They seemed to be watching from under the tiles, listening, waiting for the stranger to leave the yard. George was struck by a feeling of loss and resentment. He thought, by God, I used to live here, this was my yard. I planted those two orange trees myself, with my own hands. And the hedge too... the hedge has been clipped, it looks too neat, like Willie’s mustache... I ought to get back to work, what in hell am I doing here anyway?

The hedge had grown, as thick as a wall and as high as Ruby. He looked at it as he crossed the yard, feeling almost betrayed, as if he’d half-expected it to stop growing during his absence.

He went up the steps of the back porch and rapped, hesitantly, on the screen door.

Harold and Josephine were at the kitchen table, making sandwiches. Harold was buttering bread and Josephine was slicing some meat loaf. Whenever a crumb of meat fell on the table Josephine picked it up and popped it in her mouth in a natural, unselfconscious way. They were both sunburned from their afternoon in the sailboat, and a row of freckles had sprung up out of nowhere along the bridge of Josephine’s nose.

George rapped again and said, “Hey.”

“Well, for crying out loud.” Harold put down the butter knife and wiped his hands on the apron of Ruth’s that he was wearing. “Come on in. Josephine, look who’s here.”

“I see him,” Josephine said placidly. “Hello, George. What brings you to these parts?”

“I just dropped in to see Hazel for a minute.”

“She’s got company.”

“Yeah, I saw the car.”

Harold whistled. “Some car, eh? They say a Caddy like that will do over a hundred miles an—”

“How fast a car goes doesn’t matter,” Josephine said, giving her husband a glance of disapproval. “If its owner happens to be married. Which he is.”

“Sure, honey. Sure—”

“Mr. Cooke’s interest in Hazel is purely businesslike, and vice versa. After all, she used to work for Mr. Cooke and there’s nothing more to it than that.”

Although both Harold and George were inclined to doubt this statement, neither of them cared to argue with Josephine. She had reached the stage where every remark, every incident, had a personal application for her. Harold knew this, and George sensed it.

The two men exchanged glances, then Harold said, hurriedly, “Say George, I didn’t get a chance to thank you for the boat this afternoon.”

“That’s all right.”

“We had a wonderful time. Josephine wasn’t scared a bit. Were you, Josephine?”

“I was so, at first,” Josephine said. “I would have been scared to death without Harold. Harold kept asking me if I was getting seasick, and finally he was the one got seasick!”

Harold looked very proud, as if he had deliberately shouldered the burden of seasickness to spare Josephine. “Josie makes a swell sailor. You’d think, with the baby and everything, she’d feel queasy.”

“Well, I didn’t, not one bit. And don’t think those waves weren’t high, George. They came at us, whoosh, didn’t they, Harold?”

She and Harold exchanged contented smiles. Together they had braved a new element, the sea. They had fought and won, and now after their shared victory they were relaxed, united.

“You’re both looking fine,” George said.

“I’m certainly not losing any weight, am I?” Josephine laughed. “The doctor thinks maybe I’ll have twins.”

“Holy cats.”

“That’s what I told Harold, holy cats. But Harold says it’d be sort of a bargain to get two for the price of one. Considering how much everything costs nowadays, it’d be nice to get a bargain for a change... How about a sandwich, George?”

“No thanks.”

“Well, the least you can do is sit down and make yourself at home.”

“I can’t. I’m in kind of a hurry.” George shifted his weight from one foot to another, already regretting his decision to bring Ruby here. Everything was so normal — the warm little kitchen, the pungent smell of the meat loaf, Harold with his pride and Josephine with her unborn child — that by contrast Ruby seemed eccentric, even depraved. “I’ve got someone waiting for me in the car.”

“Aha.”

“I’d like to speak to Hazel a minute, though.”

“Sure thing,” Harold said. “I’ll get her.”

When Harold had gone, Josephine said, casually, “Is it anyone we know?”

“No.”

“I just thought if it was, bring her in.”

“Thanks just the same.”

“If you ask me, George, you’re acting sort of jumpy.”

“Not as jumpy as I feel.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“Call it business.”

“I didn’t mean to be nosy,” Josephine said rather stiffly. “It just surprises me when a man of your iron constitution starts acting jumpy.”

“I left my iron constitution behind years ago.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. It makes me nervous. After all, I’m not terribly much younger than you are, and here I am, going to have twins.” She turned to him, her eyes suddenly anxious, seeking reassurance. “Maybe I waited too long and my bones are too set or something?”

“Baloney,” George said cheerfully. “Listen, any time you’re in doubt about your health take a look in the mirror. Go on, do it now.”

“No.”

“Go on. Look at yourself.”

Awkwardly, Josephine rose from her chair and approached the small oblong mirror hanging between the two windows over the sink. Her eyes were clear and glowing, her dark hair glossy, her cheeks pink from the sun.

“I do look healthy, don’t I, George?”

“Wonderful.”

“There can’t be anything wrong if I look so healthy.”

Harold came back with Hazel, who was wearing her pearl choker and her black crepe dress, an outfit she reserved for sober and important functions. She looked warm and strained, and when she walked she took mincing little steps because her feet hurt; flesh bulged from her new patent-leather pumps like rising dough.

“I tried to get you on the phone,” she said to George. “Willie told me you weren’t there. You just up and blew, didn’t say a word to anybody, just blew. That’s no way to run a business, George.”

“I’ll make a note of that. Thanks loads.”

“Whenever you’re in the wrong you always sound like that.”

“Like what?”

“You know like what. Whenever you make a mistake you get sore. Isn’t that right, Harold?”

“You leave Harold out of it,” Josephine said sharply. “Harold and me, we mind our own business. Live and let live.”

“All right, all right, skip it.” Hazel dabbed at her moist forehead with the back of her hand. “My God, it’s hot. Come on out and I’ll show you the yard.”

“I saw it,” George said. “It looks fine.”

“Cost me eleven bucks. I need some air.” She opened the screen door and went outside on the porch. George followed her, feeling a little hurt that she wasn’t in a friendlier mood. “The place looks pretty good, eh?”

“Just great.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic. Maybe you don’t realize how a nice yard increases the value of a home.”

“Sure, sure I do,” George said. “It increases it plenty.”

“You can’t tell. After all, some day I might want to sell the place, I might get married.”

“I guess you might.”

She leaned against the porch railing, easing a little of the weight off her feet. “I suppose Harold and Josephine told you I have company?”

“Yes.”

“You remember Arthur Cooke that I used to work for.”

“Sure.”

“He’s very refined.”

“Hazel—”

“Doesn’t drink or smoke and always dresses in the best of taste.”

“I’m sorry to bust in on you like this.”

“That’s all right. He was just leaving anyway. He’s a very busy and important man, he—”

“Look, Haze, I don’t mean to change the subject or anything, but I’m in kind of a hurry. I’ve got someone waiting for me in the car.”

Hazel raised her eyebrows. “So?”

“She’s not feeling very well, and I thought if you had a little brandy or one of those pills you used to take when you got upset, the ones the doctor gave you—”

“I’ve got a quart of warm beer and some aspirin,” Hazel said curtly. “Who is it, the new girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Why bring her here?”

“Well, we were passing by and I figured I’d drop in and get her a pill or something to calm her down.” He scowled at a point in the darkness where a mockingbird sat trying to stir up his sleepy friends, hi there! hi there! “She’s so darned unhappy, Hazel.”

“I should give one half of one per cent of a good goddamn whether she’s unhappy.”

“All right, all right. I’ll shove off.”

“You can have the beer and the aspirin.”

“No thanks. Sorry to have bothered you.”

He went down the porch steps, stumbling slightly on the last one where the wood had been undermined by termites and sagged in the middle.

“Well, don’t go away mad,” Hazel said.

“I’m not mad.”

“Not much you aren’t.”

“I am not mad.” He scuffed the coco mat at the bottom of the steps with his shoe. “The thing is I want to do what’s right, only I don’t know how. She’s just a kid, she needs help. I get the feeling that she’s on the edge of something, something bad.” He kicked at the mat again, more violently this time, as if it were an obstacle that had to be kicked away. But the mat didn’t budge. It had been there for a long time and was so heavy with the dirt of years that during the rainy winters weeds sprouted in it and grew two or three inches high.

“I know what she’s on the edge of,” Hazel said. “And it’s not so bad.”

George looked at her hopefully, and for a moment Hazel wished that she didn’t have to say what she had every intention of saying both for George’s own good and for her own personal satisfaction.

“It’s not so bad,” she repeated. “Hooking you and cutting herself in on your share of the Beachcomber.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea, as far as Ruby’s concerned anyway. She’s not interested in me.” In an unconscious gesture, he put his left hand to his head and smoothed back his hair, as if to reassure himself that he still had hair left, that he wasn’t quite so old as some people might think. He remembered what Ruby had said when he’d gone to Mrs. Freeman’s to give her the back pay she hadn’t stopped to collect: “You don’t look a day over forty—”

“To her I’m a nothing.” He cleared his throat. “A big fat nothing.”

“I don’t believe it,” Hazel said, sounding a little angry, as if Ruby, by repudiating George, was casting an aspersion on Hazel herself. “Maybe she’s just playing hard to get.”

“You think so, Hazel? Honest?”

“I said, maybe.”

“Could you tell if you met her?”

“I don’t know. How should I know?”

“I mean, suppose I brought her in and you talked to her, sort of sounded her out a little?... Then maybe I could find out if I had a chance, and if I haven’t, well, that’s that, I’ll chalk it down to experience. Would you do it, Hazel, just talk to her?”

“Why should I?”

“No reason, I guess. Except — well, suppose you find out she’s not interested, then you wouldn’t have to worry so much about me getting married again.”

“I am not worried about your getting married again,” Hazel said, in a very calm, reasonable tone. “It’s who you marry that concerns me. It beats me why you can’t find some nice sensible widow with a little cash or some real estate.”

“You already said that, a hundred times.”

“Isn’t it true a hundred times?”

“Sure, sure. But—”

“There’s always a but.” She shifted her weight impatiently. The porch railing squawked a protest, and from his new position on the television antenna next door the tireless mockingbird answered, oh my, oh my, oh my. “The world would be O.K. if it wasn’t for the buts.”

“Haze—”

“All right, all right. I’ll talk to her. Bring her in the house.”

There was a slight edge to her voice, but George was too pleased to notice it. He had great faith in Hazel’s ability to handle people, to make them feel at home and get them talking about themselves. It was exactly what Ruby needed, an older woman to confide in. Perhaps — who could tell? — they might even become friends.

George was an incurable optimist. Like an alcoholic who needs only one drink to set him off, George needed only one happy thought, and the happy thought was that Hazel and Ruby should become real pals, lunching together, shopping together, telephoning each other at all hours. Each passing second made the idea more irresistibly logical: Ruby and Hazel, Damon and Pythias.

Oh my, said the mockingbird. Oh my, oh my.

“You’ll be crazy about her,” George said warmly. “She’s shy, kind of hard to know at first, but once you get underneath the surface you’ll see how sweet she is.”

Hazel made an impatient gesture as if she were swatting at an invisible mosquito. “I saw her, the day she came to Dr. Foster’s office.”

“That’s right, you did. What did you think of her? She’s not an ordinary girl at all, is she?”

“I only saw her for a few minutes.”

“Couldn’t you tell she was different?”

“I told you I only saw her for a few minutes. What could have happened in a few minutes, that we should’ve become bosom pals or something?”

“Not exactly.” But it was too close for comfort, and George was unpleasantly surprised at the easy way Hazel could reach into his mind and pick out one of his dreams and pinch it out of shape like a marshmallow.

He said, “I’ll get Ruby,” and started across the yard, stepping slowly and carefully because he knew Hazel was watching him and he didn’t want to appear too eager.

She called after him, “Hey, George.”

He stopped.

“George, hold your stomach in.”

“Jes—”

“And stick out your chest more. You might as well show up to the best advantage.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, but Hazel didn’t hear him. She had gone back into the house and the slam of the screen door was loud and final.

Straightening his shoulders George walked back to his car. Ruby was half-sitting, half-lying, with her head pressed against the back of the seat and her eyes closed.

“Ruby?”

She blinked in a surprised way, as if she had been hundreds of miles away and couldn’t understand how George had gotten there.

“How are you feeling?”

“All right, I guess.”

“You’re looking better.”

“Am I?” She yawned, making a funny little squeaking noise like a puppy. George wanted to laugh at the noise, which seemed to him charming, but he didn’t dare. He was beginning to realize how deadly serious Ruby was about everything. She seldom laughed herself, and the laughter of others always carried a note of menace.

“We’ve been invited to come in,” George said.

“I heard laughing. Is it a party? I don’t like parties, I really don’t, I wish you’d take me home.”

“There’s no party. I just want you to come in and meet Hazel, my ex-wife.”

Her entire face seemed to tighten, around the eyes and the nostrils and the mouth, as if it had been splashed by a strong astringent. “I guess this is your idea of a big joke, Mr. Anderson.”

“It’s not a joke. Hazel asked me to bring you in.”

“Why?”

“I told her you were waiting in the car. Hazel likes people. She invites everybody to come in.”

“She won’t like me.”

“Sure she will, and I’ll bet a nickel you’ll like her too.” He spoke with confidence. Nearly everyone liked Hazel. She could always make people feel good about themselves, and George had such implicit faith in her generosity that it didn’t even occur to him that possibly she wouldn’t care to make Ruby feel good.

“It doesn’t seem proper,” Ruby said. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to inflict myself.”

“You won’t be. Come on.”

He opened the car door and Ruby got out. She brushed off her skirt and the shoulders of her suit, and smoothed down her hair. “Do I look all right?”

“You look fine.” He wanted to say, beautiful, but he was afraid that the word would only increase her self-consciousness and that she wouldn’t believe him anyway. “Let’s go around to the back. Hazel’s in the kitchen.”

“Is it your house?”

“Not any more. We had a property settlement and Hazel got the house.”

“It’s funny you’re still friends like this.”

“Like what?”

“Well, calling on her like this, and bringing me here.”

“It doesn’t strike me as funny. Why should it?”

“I thought when two people break up, they wouldn’t ever want to see each other again.”

“It’d be pretty hard not to see Hazel again,” George said dryly. “She’s all over the place. I don’t mean she checks up on me or anything. But it’s a small town and we have mutual friends, and so we bump into each other.”

“I’d hate that. If I ever got a divorce I’d run away, far away. I’d never want to see him again, never, I’d run away.”

“Well, don’t get excited. You’re not even married yet.” He paused. “Not even considering it, I guess.”

“No.”

“You’ll change your mind someday when you meet the right man.”

She didn’t bother to answer. In silence they went across the yard and up the steps of Hazel’s back porch.

Hazel opened the screen door, wearing a fixed smile on her face that looked as if it had been attached with glue. During the time it had taken George to go out to the car and get Ruby, Hazel had freshened her make-up and combed her hair, but already along her upper lip and the hairline of her forehead little pinpoints of sweat were oozing up through the new layer of powder.

When she spoke she used her office-voice which had a professional lilt to it intended to make Dr. Foster’s patients feel at ease. “Come on in and make yourself at home — Ruby, is it?”

“Yes.”

She looked at Hazel, dully, with no sign of recognition. It was as if the two days since they had met had lengthened into years for Ruby and these years had numbed her memory.

“George tells me you’re not feeling very well,” Hazel said.

Ruby shook her head. “I feel fine, just fine.”

“That’s good.”

“I get nervous sometimes, that’s all. Everybody does. It’s nothing. I wouldn’t dream of imposing—”

“You’re not imposing.” Hazel turned to George. “Harold’s in the front room. He wants to talk to you about the boat.”

“My boat?”

“Yes. He says it’s sprung a leak.”

“A leak? He must be imagining things. Sure, on a day like this, she ships a little water, naturally.”

“All right, so it doesn’t leak. Talk to Harold about it. I never said it leaked.”

“He didn’t either.”

“Go and ask him.”

“I will. If that suits Ruby.”

Ruby glanced at him listlessly, as if the conversation and the moods and tensions beneath it had been too difficult to follow. “What did you say?”

“Is it O.K. with you if I leave you here with Hazel for a while?”

“I don’t care.”

“I won’t be long.”

“I don’t care.”

He paused in the doorway and looked back, but she was no longer watching him. Letting the door swing shut behind him he was conscious of a feeling of relief, and of gratitude to Hazel for insisting that he go and talk to Harold. Sometimes he wanted to leave Ruby and couldn’t; he deluded himself into thinking that if he stayed another minute, or five, or ten, his words, his presence and the very passage of time would change her in his favor.

The door swung into place with a squeak of hinges. The noise seemed to focus Ruby’s attention more sharply than any human voice. She looked at the door thoughtfully, as if it had said something to her, without words to distort its meaning.

“It needs oiling,” Hazel said. “Everything does around here. Including me. Want some beer?”

“No. No, thanks. You go right ahead, though.”

“I don’t mind if I do.” She took a quart of beer out of the refrigerator and poured out a glassful. The beer was warm and foamed out over the sides of the glass like soapsuds. “Sit down, why don’t you, before you drop.”

“I won’t drop.” But she pulled out one of the straight-backed wooden chairs and sat down at the kitchen table. “I feel fine.”

“Ruby—”

“Just fine.”

“Ruby, snap out of it.”

“What?”

“Listen, you haven’t been taking drugs or anything, have you?”

“Drugs? No, I never take drugs.”

“You don’t remember me, Ruby?”

“Remember?”

“We’ve met before.”

Ruby shook her head, slowly, unable for the moment to make any connection between the plump and perspiring woman holding the glass of beer, and the composed efficient nurse in the white uniform who ran Gordon’s office and answered the telephone. Even the voices were different.

“What you need,” Hazel said, “is some food and rest.”

“No, thank you.” She stared at the table in front of her, at the half-prepared sandwiches, the buttered bread and the thick slices of meat loaf containing bright blobs of green which might have been peas or green pepper but which looked to Ruby like some phosphorescent decay. She had missed dinner — she hadn’t, in fact, had a square meal for a week now — and the sight of the meat and its strong oniony smell nauseated her. She never wanted to see food again. There was no fight, no resolution, left in her, only the numbness of despair that made her want to lie down in a quiet place and go to sleep for a long time until many things were forgotten. She hadn’t even the energy to get up and leave. She was bound by sheer inertia to a chair at Hazel’s kitchen table, shrouded by the smell of meat loaf and the sweet, fermented memories of the summer with Gordon.

“You’re Gordon’s Hazel,” she said, and a nerve began to twitch in her left cheek, contracting the muscle and pulling up the corner of her mouth. It was as if, minutes before Ruby herself could see any humor in the situation, her face was preparing to smile. But instead of smiling, she threw back her head and laughed, and kept on laughing while Hazel watched her uneasily over the moist, foamy rim of her glass.

“You’re George’s Hazel and you’re Gordon’s Hazel and they both begin with a G!” It was so excruciatingly funny that tears oozed out from between her eyelids and fell down her cheeks almost to the point of her chin. She did not weep like Josephine who had a wealth of tears, fat and silver and smooth like ball bearings. Ruby’s tears came out pinched and meager, little coins squeezed out of shape between a miser’s fingers. Josephine wept from a great reservoir of self-regard and self-pity; Ruby wept from the dry ducts of self-hate.

“You’re punchy.” Hazel took a piece of Kleenex from the window ledge over the sink. “Here. Use this.”

“I don’t want anything from you, I don’t want anything from anybody.”

“All right, but not so loud. George might hear you.”

“I don’t care.” She took the piece of Kleenex and rubbed her face, savagely, as if she had a grudge against her own skin. “He brought me here on purpose. It was a trap. He wants to find out things about me.”

“He wants to help you.”

“I hate him. I hate him and his help.”

“Now listen—”

“He’s a fat creepy old man and when he looks at me I feel like screaming, my skin crawls. I know what he’s thinking. I know what he wants. And it’s not to help me. He wants to help me, what a laugh.”

“Shut up,” Hazel said, but without authority, without even conviction. “He’ll hear you.”

“Let him. I want him to hear. All this time him putting on the big act, poor Ruby, Ruby needs help, there’s something the matter with her. Well, I know who there’s something the matter with and it’s not me. It’s him. Him and his greasy eyes that never let you alone, that you can’t ever get away from because even when he’s not around I feel them looking at me and I get sick in my stomach!”

“You’re imagining things.”

“Am I? That’s what you think. I’ve been around. I know men like him.”

Hazel finished the beer and put the empty glass on the sink. With one part of her mind she felt pity for George and the need to defend him: George has nice eyes, they’re not greasy, they’re luminous — and he always tries to help people, not just you. But from another and deeper part of her mind, words gushed up like water from an underground river: Go on, tell me more. Show me how you hate him. Talk louder and he’ll hear you. Let him find out. Raise your voice, Ruby.

“Shut up,” she said roughly. “You’ve got no right shooting off your mouth about one of my best friends.”

Ruby didn’t answer. She had picked up a crumb of meat from the table and was rolling it between her fingers until it looked like a little brown pill.

“You’ve got no right,” Hazel repeated. “And anyway, what are you doing going out with him if you can’t stand the sight of him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have a reason.”

“No. He came to the house and wanted to take me for a drive and I was too tired to argue, that’s all, too tired.” She made another brown pill and placed it carefully beside the first one on the oilcloth table cover. “We drove up Garcia Road.”

“You don’t have to tell me where you—”

“I’ve never been in that part of town before. It’s very pretty, all the trees and flowers, and the houses with such wide windows like the people in them have got nothing to hide. I’d like to live in a place like that with big wide windows and never pull the blinds. I would keep myself very well groomed so that people walking by on the sidewalk would never catch me looking sloppy or anything. I would always have on a pretty dress or one of those quilted satin housecoats, and I’d keep the house very clean and tidy, nothing lying around. People walking by would glance in and wonder who I was and think how lucky, that girl, to have such a beautiful clean house with such shiny furniture.” She paused for breath, sucking the air in through her mouth greedily as if it was not air at all but an ether to prolong the dream. “Blue is my color but a red robe would be nicer. It’s more cheerful, like Christmas. Red always reminds me of Christmas at home.”

But she had stretched the dream too far — there had never been a Christmas at home that she could remember without bitterness — and it snapped like an elastic band and stung her skin and brought moisture to her eyes. Through the moisture she could see Hazel looking blurred and fuzzy as if she had just grown a crop of tiny feathers.

“You should have something to eat,” Hazel said.

“No. No, please, I’m not hungry.”

“A glass of milk, then.”

“No.” She blinked the moisture out of her eyes. “Gordon lives in a house like that, doesn’t he?”

“Like—? Oh. Yes, kind of like that.”

“Did you ever go there?”

“Once.”

“It’s like I said, isn’t it, when you walk by you can look right into the windows?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe you can.”

“I bet she keeps the place very clean. Just judging from what I’ve heard of her, I bet she’s very tidy.”

“I guess she is,” Hazel said. The girl was making her nervous. She wished George would come back and take her away. “I don’t notice those things much.”

“Naturally, being a friend of Gordon’s, I’ve had invitations to dinner and things like that, but I’ve always been too busy to go, so I’ve never even met his wife. I guess you know her pretty well.”

“Well enough.”

“What’s she look like?”

“She’s kind of blonde and pale.”

“Pretty?”

“She has nice teeth. She gets them cleaned every three months. That’s the only time I ever see her, when she comes to the office, except the once I went out to the house to take her the car keys.”

“I thought you might be friendly with her, she might tell you things.”

“No. She isn’t the kind that confides in the office help.”

“You don’t like her much, I can tell that.”

“I don’t think about her.”

“I do,” Ruby said in a whisper. “I think about her a lot.”

Hazel gave her a wary, uneasy glance. “If that’s your idea of fun, go ahead.”

“I think about her, what is she like, and is she prettier than I am, and what do her and Gordon talk about and what does she give him for breakfast and do they sleep in the same room — all the things that Gordon never tells me, that’s what I think about. Gordon and I — Gordon—” She put her head down on the table and cradled it with her arms for comfort. Her voice came out, muffled by the press of flesh: “You wouldn’t understand. Nobody would, nobody.”

Slowly and stiffly Hazel crossed the room and sat down at the table opposite her. Her hands were shaking and her teeth were clenched together so tight that her jaws ached.

“So you’re the girl,” she said, sounding helpless and confused, as if the fact had struck her like a fire in the night, exposing her nakedness. “The one he talks to on the phone, that’s you.”

“We never talked more than a minute. We—”

“Why did you have to tell me? I’ve got troubles of my own. I didn’t want to know. Why did you have to tell me?”

“I — don’t know.”

“I’ve kept out of it. I knew something was going on but I managed to keep out of it. It’s none of my business what Gordon does, or you.” But she was aware as soon as the words were out that they were a lie. What Gordon did was her business because he was her employer, he paid her salary; and what Ruby did was her business because it affected not only Gordon, but George as well. “Why drag me into it, for God’s sake?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“How many other people have you told?”

“No — no one.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Just her — Elaine.”

“Just Elaine,” Hazel said with a brief, mirthless laugh. “That’s very funny, if you know Elaine. Just.” She paused a moment. Through the closed door she could hear George’s bass rumble and she thought, so that’s why she hates George so much, not for what he is or does, but because he isn’t Gordon. “How did Elaine find out?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly one night she phoned the café where I meet Gordon and asked for him. She told him the children were sick and he was to come right home. I said to Gordon, we’ll have to meet some place else, and he said it was no use, no matter where we went she would find out.” She raised her head. Her eyes were dry and glassy like marbles, and there was a round red indentation on her left cheek where it had pressed too long and tight against one of the buttons on her sleeve. “He’s scared of her. There’s no fight in him.”

“I’ve seen him fight.”

“Not her. Not against her. He means to, he says he will, and then when the time comes he can’t. It’s like she paralyzes him and he can’t even talk to her. How can anything be settled if he won’t talk to her? What will happen to us?”

“You already know. It’s already happened.”

“You mean bad things.”

“What else?”

“They show, here?” She reached up and touched her face, running her fingertips along her forehead and down her cheeks to the point of her jaw. “You can see them?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t—”

“I’ve always looked old for my age,” Ruby said stiffly. “It’s because I got such fine skin, it wrinkles easier than other people’s.”

“I didn’t mean you had wrinkles.”

“You were just trying to scare me, that’s what you meant.”

“I’m trying to warn you what you’re messing around in. The top’s been ready to blow off that house for years.”

“Let it blow.”

“You think you can pick up the pieces?”

“Yes.”

“Your own, maybe. Not Gordon’s. There’ll be nothing to pick up.”

Ruby leaned across the table. “You don’t want Gordon to go away with me and be happy, do you? You want things to stay like they are. You don’t care about Gordon, it’s your job you care about.”

“There are other jobs,” Hazel said grimly. “And probably other Gordons. But if there’s a sure thing on God’s green earth, there’s only one Elaine.”

“Trying to scare me — what can she do to me?”

“She can twist you out of shape like you were a pipe cleaner. I’ve seen what she does to him.”

“I can fight back. I’m stronger than I look. I’m tough.”

Hazel turned away. “Sure. Sure you are.”

“Wait and see. Someday, when everything’s settled and Gordon and I are married, I bet you’ll look back on tonight and have a big laugh about how you tried to scare me.”

“I like a big laugh,” Hazel said wearily. “Good luck to you anyway, Ruby.”

“Why do you say it like that, like I was going to die or something? I’ve got a future, me and Gordon. No matter what it is, it’ll be better than this. You can see that, can’t you?”

“I guess I can.”

“I’m strong and I’m tough.”

“Sure.”

The door from the hall swung open and George came in. His face was flushed and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and he was rubbing his hands together as if he’d just told a good joke and had led the laughing. George knew a million jokes.

“Time to break this up, isn’t it?”

Neither of the women answered.

“You girls been having a nice little chat?”

“Swell,” Hazel said. “Dandy.”

He approached Ruby’s chair, almost shyly. “I told you Hazel was a real tonic. You look better already, that’s a feet.”

She kept her eyes fixed on the table. “I look a mess.”

“No, you don’t.”

“My hair—”

“Your hair looks great.” He reached out to touch it, but she shrank away from his hand.

“I left,” she said, “I left my purse in the car.”

“I’ll get it for you.”

“No!”

“Is anything the matter?”

“No! I just want to get my purse so I can comb my hair.”

“All right,” he said. “All right.”

He stepped back and she darted toward the door, quick and frightened, like a bird. A moment later, through the open window, they could hear her frantic footsteps.

For a long time George didn’t move or speak. Then suddenly he reached down and picked up a whole slice of meat loaf and crammed it into his mouth. He began to chew, his cheeks distended like a squirrel’s. A moist blob of food dribbled out of the corner of his mouth and fell on his lapel. He didn’t wipe it off. He just stood there, chewing, out of rage and defiance and humiliation, chewing until his jaws ached and his throat contracted in revulsion and a lump formed in his chest like a knot of leather. And then, because he could not swallow, he opened the screen door and spat across the porch railing into the summer night. He came back into the kitchen, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, breathing noisily like a sprinter at the tape.

“You don’t,” Hazel said coldly, “have to act like a pig.”

“I am treated like a pig. I will be a pig.”

“Well, pick somebody else’s kitchen to—”

“Shut up.” Going to the sink he turned the cold water on full and splashed his face, sucking the water into his mouth. Then he dried himself carefully on a tea towel, folded the towel and replaced it on the rack,

“That’s a dish towel,” Hazel said.

He looked at her bitterly, his eyes bloodshot from the water. “Well, I’m a dish. That makes it all right. Ask Ruby what a fancy dish I am.”

“I didn’t have to ask her. She told me.”

“Give it to me straight.”

“I’d like a cigarette.”

“Here.”

He lit it for her and she took three quick puffs, as if she intended the smoke to blur George’s outlines and take the edge off reality.

She spoke slowly: “Ruby thinks you’re a fine man and all that, but she — well, you’re more of a father to her, see?”

“She said that?”

“Not exactly.”

“What did she say, exactly?”

“She implied that—”

“What did she say?”

“Goddamn it, are you threatening me? Get your hands off me!”

“Tell me, tell me the truth.”

“Or you’ll what?”

“I’ll shake it out of you.”

“Try.”

His hand was still on her shoulder but force and urgency had gone out of it. It lay like a dead thing on Hazel’s black crepe shoulder, and when she moved to one side his hand fell away. He looked down at it, a little surprised, and then he put it in his pocket.

“Hazel?”

“Get out of here.”

“Tell me the truth, what she said.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’ve got to know one way or another.”

“You already know. You just can’t face it. You want me to face it for you, just like in the old days, I got to spell it out for you because it’s easier to take that way. Well, I won’t. Get out and leave me alone.”

“You can’t—”

“And the next time you come bursting in here with one of your two-bit heart-throbs I’ll have you both thrown out on your ear. Now start moving before she comes back. I don’t want her in here.”

“She’s not coming back,” George said. “She didn’t have any purse.”

He began moving toward the door, his head bent, and swinging slightly with each step like a bear’s.

“Listen, George—”

“No. I guess you won’t have to spell it out for me this time.”

“You’re lucky she’s not coming back. You may not think so right now, but you’re really lucky, George.”

“Sure. I’m a very lucky guy.”

He went out on to the porch and down the creaking steps. From the shadowy denseness of the live-oak tree the relentless mockingbird chortled his derisive little song: Lucky guy, lucky guy, oh my!

George picked up a pebble from the driveway and threw it hard and accurately into the heart of the tree. The mockingbird skittered through the prickly leaves and across the garage roof to a telephone pole where it sat in silence. But the alarm had sounded: the whole tree seemed to come alive with squawks and twitterings and the whirring of wings; the wood rats responded, and began their noisy racing up and down the walls of the garage and across the hood of Hazel’s car; and from a clump of bushes came the gentle regret of the mourning dove, lamenting the sad things of this world.

The sound reminded him of Ruby. He quickened his step, stung by a sudden wild hope that he had been wrong about her; she had had her purse with her after all, and she had just gone to the car to get it; she would be there now combing her hair.

“Ruby!” he shouted, and broke into a run.

There was no one in the car, no one on the street. He looked carefully around as if he half-expected to find her hiding somewhere behind a tree or hedge, needing only a little encouragement to come out, like a half-tamed animal.

“Ruby?”

But the only sign of life was the blinking tail-light of the East Beach bus and the gray plume of its exhaust as it rolled down toward the sea.

He got into his car. The air was stale because the windows were all shut, and the smell of Ruby’s powder mingled with the smell of dead cigars and souring hopes. He cranked down the window on his own side and was leaning across the seat to do the same to the other when he noticed that the door to the glove compartment was open. He knew he hadn’t left it that way. He rarely used the compartment except on trips, and then only to store his road maps and sunglasses and the five-dollar bill in the money clip which he kept for an emergency, using the same bill year after year because the emergency hadn’t occurred.

The clip was still there but the money was gone.

“Ruby,” he said, sounding very surprised. “Ruby.”

He thought of her waiting in the car while he went to talk to Hazel, waiting, catlike and curious, exploring the glove compartment to pass the time: What’s this? Money. How nice. I don’t have any. It’s mine now. Finders keepers.

Had it been that simple and childish? He knew in his heart that it had not, that she had taken the money not at the first opportunity, when she was left alone in the car, but at the second, when she had run out of the house; and she had taken it not like an amoral child, but like a woman, desperate to get away.

For a full minute he sat there staring into the night and seeing in its deformed shadows a mocking image of the truth. Then he started the car and turned it around and headed back toward the sea. He had no destination but it seemed easier to follow the descent of the road.

Six blocks down he caught up with the bus. As it pulled into a curb the interior lights switched on like stage lights suddenly revealing a new set and cast of characters. The set was almost empty. Two women in nurses’ uniforms were at the front of the bus talking to the driver, and behind them, oblivious to their chatter, an old man slept, knees up and chin on chest, in a return to infancy. At the back of the bus a girl sat with her forehead pressed against the window pane, her hands shielding her eyes from the interior lights as if she was trying to see into the darkness outside. She was very young and did not look like a thief.

“Ruby!”

He stopped his car alongside the bus and pressed the horn once and then again.

The old man did not awaken. The young girl turned away from the window and closed her eyes. The bus lights went out.