Desert of the Heart: A Novel (28 page)

“No, I never would. I love her.”

There was no one downstairs when Evelyn got back to the house. Walter had gone out with his new girl. Ann was probably in her room working. Evelyn found Frances upstairs in Virginia’s old room, making up the bed.

“Are you expecting someone new?”

“Sunday or Monday,” Frances said, “and another the middle of the week.”

“I saw Bill. He hasn’t gone to the lawyer.”

“Well, that’s good! I did think he had more sense than that, but you never can be sure of people. I should have gone down there myself. That’s what I should have done. I wouldn’t have had to bother you at all.”

“I’m glad you told me,” Evelyn said. “It’s something I ought to know. Is Ann in her room?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go on up.”

Ann was sitting in her armchair surrounded by newspapers. She got up quickly as Evelyn came into the room.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Just out on errand, darling. Don’t look so worried.”

“I didn’t know where you were. I went down to your room, and you weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere in the house.”

“Well, I’m back now,” Evelyn said, smiling. “What have you been doing?”

“I’ve been reading the ads. There’s a house for sale on the bluff overlooking the river. Most of them are too big, but this one isn’t. Look.” She picked up the paper. “Three bedrooms and a den. I wanted to go look at it this evening. I wonder if it’s too late.”

“Ann, darling …”

“I know you have to go back. I know you can’t just quit, but I was thinking that maybe you could find out about a job here before you go, maybe for January, maybe even for next fall. I could buy a house, and we could come back.”

“We’ve got to talk,” Evelyn said. “No, don’t sit over here. Sit over there in the chair.”

Ann sat down obediently, her eyes concerned but trusting. Evelyn realized that this final suggestion of compromise was only preliminary to total surrender. Ann would go to California and stay. Evelyn had only to ask. For a moment, she wavered in her resolution, but Ann’s very vulnerability forced Evelyn to be hard. She must not take advantage of Ann’s need.

“I’ve just been down to the Club. Did you know that Bill was thinking of going to George’s lawyer to tell him about you and me? He didn’t, but he might have. You might have been involved in the court proceedings, very nastily involved.”

“He never would have done it. Anyway, I wouldn’t have cared.”

“Maybe not, but I would have cared. It frightened me, and it still does frighten me to think what might have happened. You’re young, and you’re independent. Scandal isn’t anything that troubles you…. It does trouble me. Practically, I could be badly hurt by it. I could lose my job, and I care very much about my job.”

“Yes,” Ann said quietly, “it’s different for you. I understand that.”

“Lots of things are different for me, Ann. I care what people think. I care about morality. I like to do the right thing.”

“How do you know what that is?”

“Sometimes I don’t. I haven’t been at all sure that divorcing George is the right thing. I agreed to it only because anything else I thought of doing seemed even less right. So many little dishonesties are involved; so many rationalizations are necessary. It’s a demoralizing business. It makes you begin to question the meaning of everything you believe. But that’s rationalizing, too. Failure to live up to what you believe is right doesn’t destroy the value of it. And one failure doesn’t justify giving up entirely. Or suggesting that someone else give up.”

“Give up what?” Ann asked.

“I can’t really argue about it,” Evelyn said in sudden desperation. “I know I talk in clichés. I can’t help it. I feel we’re wrong, Ann. It isn’t right. It isn’t natural. I can’t go on with it. I don’t want to.”

Ann looked down at the newspaper in her hands. She was crying.

“Ann,” Evelyn said softly, “forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive,” Ann said, looking up. “I had a lovely time.” She got up. “I think I’ll go out for a drive. Maybe I’ll take a look at that house, just for the hell of it. I’ll see you.”

Evelyn was left, sitting alone in Ann’s room. She got up quietly and walked to the door, but she did not go right out. She turned to look back at the room, at the chair where Ann had been sitting.

“Why didn’t you argue, even a little? There isn’t any argument for a lie. And it is a lie, my darling. Nothing else I’ve ever known has been as right and as natural as loving you. And there isn’t anything I wouldn’t risk … except you.”

Evelyn went back downstairs. Frances had finished preparing the room across the hall. There would be someone new Sunday or the next day. Evelyn went into her own room and sat down at her desk, but she could not work. It had been weeks since she had felt the absolute weight of time, for, as trapped in any evening as she might have been, Ann had always been at the end of it to set her free. Now there was nothing to anticipate but Monday morning when, with her suitcases already packed, she would go to court to offer up, with guilt and goodness, the little perjuries that would free her of nothing important any more.

The expected guest did not arrive on Sunday. Monday morning not only Frances and Walter were up for breakfast but Ann. Evelyn had hoped that somehow they would not have to meet again today after the tense hide-and-seek they had been playing all weekend. There was nothing left to say. Yet, when she saw Ann sitting at the breakfast table, she could not help being glad.

“Evelyn,” Frances said, “I’m awfully sorry. I’m expecting a guest about ten thirty, and I think I must be here to greet her, but Ann can go to court with you. She’s as good a witness as I would be, and she’s got the car.”

“Couldn’t Ann meet her?” Evelyn asked. “It’s just that I think Mr. Williams is expecting you, Frances.”

“It’s happened before,” Frances said. “It won’t matter to him. Ann knows what to do just as well as I do.”

“I’m sure she does. I just hate to … I wish I didn’t have to ask either of you.”

“I won’t stay in the courtroom,” Ann said. “I’m called first. Then I can leave.”

“It isn’t that …” She looked down at Ann who was obviously no more eager to witness than Evelyn was to have her; but, as it happened again and again, she seemed to be the only one who was available. Apparently no vow Evelyn could make would keep Ann out of court.

“If you’d waited until next year, I could have done it,” Walter said, getting up from the table. “I guess you’ll be gone tonight by the time I get home. We’re going to miss you around here, but I guess you’re glad it’s over.”

“Will you come see me if you’re ever in the Bay area?”

“You bet I will.”

“Goodbye, Walt.”

“Goodbye.” He took the hand she offered and then quickly and shyly kissed her on the cheek. “Take care.”

“I’m afraid Walter really is going to miss you,” Frances said.

“I’d better go up and get dressed,” Ann said. “What time does your plane leave, Evelyn?”

“Three o’clock.”

“Are you packed?”

“Just about.”

“Anyway,” Frances said, “you’ll both be home for lunch.”

“Yes,” Evelyn said, “Mr. Williams says it doesn’t take more than about twenty minutes.”

Frances smiled. “I’ll miss you myself.”

As they drove together to the courthouse, Ann offered no amusing stories or interesting hits of information to disguise the real silence between them, nor did she sulk. She was simply quiet, her attention given to stop signs and pedestrians. Evelyn watched her and wanted to speak, but there was nothing honest that she could say aloud. She was silent, therefore, until they walked up the courthouse steps together and met Arthur Williams in the lobby.

“Mrs. Packer couldn’t come,” Evelyn said.

“How are you, Ann?”

“Fine, Arthur.”

“Ann’s practically a professional witness,” Arthur Williams said to Evelyn. “When she was ten, she already knew court procedure better than her father and I did. How are Frances and Walter?”

“Just fine,” Ann said.

“We can go right on up. If you’ll show Mrs. Hall where the waiting room is, Ann, I’ll come and get you when it’s time to go into court.”

They rode up together in the elevator to the second floor. Then Ann and Evelyn went together to the waiting room where several other people had already settled in the uncomfortable wooden chairs. A young man got up to give them a place to sit together. Evelyn nodded and smiled, but she did not speak her thanks. She could not bring herself to break the apathetic silence of the room. It was neither shabby nor dirty, but it was small and bare, and the people in it only exaggerated its lack of personal definition.

It was a room Evelyn had become familiar with on the stages of a dozen little theaters and coffeehouses, the set located by the dialogue as a prison cell, a bus depot, a room in hell. The young man coughed discreetly into his hand. A woman reached into her purse and then furtively slipped a tranquilizer into her mouth, swallowing it without water. Someone’s stomach growled. Everyone shifted guiltily. Evelyn felt the beginning pressure, the dizziness and slight nausea that she had become almost accustomed to since she had arrived in Reno. Her hands were cold, and her mouth was dry. She prayed that it would not be long. She must try to relax. She looked over at Ann and saw in the stillness of her body and the quietness of her face an unselfconscious patience, a serenity that Evelyn had seen before often, at the bar in Virginia City, on the beach at Pyramid Lake, on the terrace with Kate, and, yes, sometimes even at the Club when she moved among the crowds of people, “almost a professional witness,” bearing witness to the world, at home in it. Ann became conscious of Evelyn and turned to smile, in her eyes nothing of her own need, only gentleness and reassurance.

“It won’t be long,” she said, and her voice did not seem to threaten the frail dignity of silence that the others kept.

Then Arthur Williams was at the door, signaling to them. They got up and followed him down the corridor to the courtroom, which was empty except for the clerk, the judge, and a young woman who was talking with the judge. Ann and Evelyn walked down to the front of the room and sat down in one of the pews. Evelyn had to check her instinct to kneel.

“Would you like me to wait outside after I’m through?” Ann asked quietly.

“Not unless you’d rather,” Evelyn said, and then she added, though she knew she should not, “I’d really like you to stay. I wonder when George’s lawyer will arrive,”

“She’s here.”

“She? That young woman?” Evelyn asked, surprised.

“Yes. She’s the one Arthur almost always uses.”

The young woman had taken a seat to the left and in front of them. Arthur Williams spoke to the judge for a moment and then stepped back.

“Hall against Hall.”

“Your honor, may we have a private hearing?”

“That will be the order of the court.”

Ann was called at once as a witness and sworn in. Then Arthur Williams asked her to state her name and address.

“Do you know this lady?” Arthur Williams turned and indicated Evelyn.

Ann looked down at Evelyn, her eyes unguarded. “I do.”

“She is Mrs. Evelyn Hall, the plaintiff?”

“Yes.”

“When did you meet Mrs. Hall?”

“In my home on July twenty-seventh.”

“And she has lived at your home since that time?”

“She has.”

“From July twenty-seventh, up to and including the present time you have either seen Mrs. Hall in Reno, Nevada, each and every day or you know that she was here all of that time?”

“I do,” Ann said again.

The young woman, representing George, stepped forward.

“Are you in any way related to the plaintiff?”

Ann hesitated. “We are not related.”

“No further questions.”

Ann returned to her seat, and Evelyn was directed to take the stand.

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?”

“I do.”

“Will you state your name, please?” Arthur Williams asked.

“Evelyn Hall.”

“Are you the plaintiff in the case in which George Hall is the defendant?”

“I am.”

“And is the defendant your husband?”

“He is.”

“Where do you reside, Mrs. Hall?”

She gave the address.

“When did you come to Reno, Nevada, to reside?”

She gave the date.

“Do you have any other home or place of legal residence other than your home here?”

“No.”

“When you came, did you come with the intention of making Reno, Wahsoe County, Nevada, your home and residence for an indefinite period of time?”

“Yes.”

“And has that been your intention since?”

“Yes.”

“And is it still?”

Beyond Arthur Williams, Evelyn saw Ann. It had not been her intention at first. It had not been her intention ever. And it was not her intention now, but it was her desire to be here or anywhere with Ann, a desire which all her intentions denied.

“And is it still, Mrs. Hall?”

“Yes, it is,” Evelyn said, in her voice an uncertain resonance.

The questions were factual then. Evelyn answered them with easier control. The written agreement of settlement was submitted as evidence and accepted as Exhibit “A,” a term Evelyn could almost smile at.

“Mrs. Hall, you have alleged as cause for divorce that the defendant has treated you with extreme cruelty during the marriage and that the cruelty was mental in nature. Is that true?”

“Yes.” Her mouth was dry again.

“Would you please tell the court just what the defendant’s acts of cruelty were upon which you rely as a cause for divorce?”

“He refused to work,” Evelyn recited. “He ran up debts …”

“Please speak to the judge, Mrs. Hall.”

“He refused to work. He ran up debts.” Evelyn could think of nothing else to say. She turned back to Arthur Williams. “I supported him.”

“Is it true that he was extremely rude to your friends?”

“Yes, yes, he was.” Evelyn turned back to the judge. “He was extremely rude to my friends.”

“He did not want them in the house?” Arthur Williams prompted.

“No.” She spoke to Arthur and then turned to the judge. “No.”