Stranger On Lesbos (19 page)

That sounded reasonable. The trouble was, there was no reason in the way she felt. She was hurt, yes, and jealous. With the familiar cycle of fatigue, desire, passion and relaxation, her weariness had cleared away and she was able to react emotionally again.

She rocked back and forth on the bed, in actual pain.

"I don't think I can stand this.”

"Will you listen to me, or do I have to knock some sense into you? I went with Jane for a while when I first came to town, sure. She wasn't the first one, either. You didn't think I never cared for anybody else, did you?”

"I don't care how many other
"

"As if going to bed was all there is to it." Bake's voice was scornful. "There's liking each other, being friends. Reading the same books and listening to the same music. Thinking the same things are funny." She took a deep breath. "There's caring. I care what happens to you."

"I found that out yesterday." As though triggered by her own scorn, Frances got out of bed and began pulling on her clothes. One stocking ripped from hem to toe, but she gartered it tightly and put on her shoes. "I'm going now."

"Look, let's not fight."

"I'm not fighting." She turned wide, hurt eyes on Bake. "Maybe I'll get over this some time."

Bake swung her feet over the edge of the bed, slid her arms into a terry housecoat. "I'm sorry. Maybe it would have been better if I'd lied to you."

"It wouldn't have done any good. I always had a funny feeling about Jane. Now I know why. I always knew," Frances said slowly, in wonder, "but I wouldn't let myself know."

“I'm sorry."

They walked to the door together, not touching. Bake held it open impassively. "Remember, this is your idea, not mine. I'll be around when you get to feeling better."

Frances didn't answer. All the way down the endless stairs she was conscious of Bake standing there, watching her go.

Now what? she asked herself, slumped into the corner of the taxi. She couldn't go back to Bake; she never wanted to see Bake again. She couldn't go home, to Bill's house. She thought wildly of a hotel, and then realized that she had less than two dollars in her purse, not even enough for a cheap room. Besides, that would be a temporary solution. What she had to find was an answer.

The streets were crowded with salespeople and office workers getting out for the day. She stopped the cab at the corner of State and Lake, gave the driver all the money she had except fifty cents, and wandered aimlessly for several blocks. There was a kind of comfort, or at least distraction, in lights and crowds, the excitement of color and motion. She stopped several times to look in store windows, without really seeing the merchandise on display.

She was getting chilled. The wind was ominous of snow, and her coat was thin. She went into a drugstore and ordered coffee. It was Thursday night, late closing for Loop department stores, and the fountain was crowded with shoppers and store personnel. Housewives, high-school kids drinking cokes and eating hamburgers, tired salesgirls, grabbing a quick cheap meal. She drank the coffee black and hot, thankful for the warmth and stimulus of it, unwilling to get up and leave the brightness of the store.

"You alone?"

She looked up, startled. The woman was somewhere between fifty and sixty, thin to emaciation, with rolling, veined eyes and a long corded neck. "Don't you remember me? I saw you at Karla's one night. You were with a dark-haired girl. She's not with you tonight, though."

"No," Frances said. She put a nickel under the edge of the saucer and stood up, clutching her check and a dime.

The woman stepped into her way. "You look sort of beat. Is there anything I can do for you, dear? Anything at all?" She looked hopeful. "Would you like a drink? Maybe you'd like to come home with me for a drink?"

"No thanks." Oh God, Frances thought in pure terror, is that what I'm becoming? Is that me in twenty years? She said coldly, "I think you've made a mistake. I have an appointment with my husband."

"Oh, now look
"

"I'm in a hurry."

She pushed her way to the cashier and paid for her coffee, ignoring the stares of the other customers.

It was beginning to snow. The sidewalks were slippery with half-frozen slush, and a cold wind blew off Lake Michigan. Frances shivered. The soles of her shoes would be soaked through in a few minutes, and she was already chilled to the bone.

Where do you go when there's no place you belong?

She sneezed. It's no time to be melodramatic, she admonished herself. Go home, get into a hot tub, take a couple of aspirins and get into bed.

She got into a southbound bus and sat huddled miserably next to a fat salesman with a smelly cigar, trying to think about the mess she had made of her life, but able only to think of her warm, waiting bed.

CHAPTER 15

“We going to have a Christmas tree this year?"

Frances studied her son's face. It was a replica of Bill's, only a little younger now than the face Bill had worn when she first knew him. He was as tall as Bill and as broad, too, and his hands were those of a grown man, hard from tennis and basketball and the summer job, with hair on the backs. A boy's question in a man's voice, making her smile.

"Of course, Christmas tree and all the fixings. Why?"

"Nothing." He leaned against the door jamb, watching her as she moved from sink to table to stove.

She slid a panful of cookies into the oven and closed the door carefully. "What's on your mind?"

"Nothing." But he didn't meet her eyes. "You suppose you could call Mari up and invite her for Christmas dinner?"

"Why, I guess so."

In spite of his casual tone, she knew suddenly that this meant a lot to him. He had been thinking about it for quite a while, trying to think of an approach that was sufficiently casual, because it meant so much.

"She's a nice girl. Only won't her family want her at home on Christmas Day?"

"Aw, they eat at night. I'm going over then."

"Think you can eat two holiday meals?"

Bob grinned. "I'll pass up the bread and potatoes," he said, sounding eighteen again. "You call her up and invite her, huh?"

"Why so formal all of a sudden? You've been bringing kids home for meals as long as I can remember.”

He said gravely, "Mari is no kid."

She looked at him sharply, disquieted as she had been by her first glimpse of the girl's serene, closed face. He reddened.

She was aware of a mixture of emotions: amusement at the sight of her boy putting on man's ways, tenderness for the child he had been, nostalgia for the days when the three of them had really been a family, resentment because his growing up meant that her own youth was slipping away.

She said flatly, "Sure, I'll call her up if it means so much to you."

"Thanks."

She bent to turn the oven down a trifle, and straightened up to tear yesterday's page off the wall calendar. December 24. Five years ago she would have been downtown, on the day before Christmas, jostled by tired shoppers, trying to spread the saved-up grocery money over all the things Bob wanted. Toys were marked down on the day before Christmas, and so were trees in the open-air lots.

She said aloud, "Remember the little table tree we had in Fayetteville?" and turned to catch Bob's answer, but he was gone. Off to tell his girl she was going to be officially invited to dinner, she supposed.

You wouldn't catch Bill Ollenfield lugging home a bargain tree, on Christmas Eve this year, getting spruce needles all over his old jacket, staying up until after midnight to hang the colored lights and dime-store trinkets and the silver tinsel. He would be at the office, going over his damned old reports and adding up the take from the pre-Christmas boom. Plastic Playthings were on every dime-store counter in the United States, she guessed. Cheap junk, most of them would be broken by New Year's Day. But they were important enough to keep a busy executive away from his family. If he stayed home all day on the twenty-fifth she would be surprised.

She supposed he had a present for her, something or other his secretary had picked up on her lunch hour, gift-wrapped by Carson's or Marshall Field's professional wrapping service. He didn't have to go without lunches any more in order to buy her a pair of nylons or a small bottle of perfume. She had bought him a watch, ten dollars down and ten a month until it was paid for, hoping against hope that the generosity of the gift would crack the polite impersonality that had formed around him, like a thin coating of ice. As a gift it didn't really mean anything.

There would have to be a gift for Mari too, something impersonal but good
not an easy decision to make. She suspected that Mari was selective about her possessions, was used to having the best.

Well, she couldn't call Mari until Bob got back. She didn't know the girl's phone number or address. She tried to put out of her mind the memory of Bob's young face so intent and full of love, of Mari's pure oval at once so serene and so unrevealing. This was more than another girl friend. I feel like a mother-in-law, she thought wryly.

The front door opened and shut again. Bill came through the house, shedding his overcoat on the davenport as he passed, dropping his briefcase on the coffee table. He stood in the doorway as Bob had done, taking in the fragrance of browning dough and the clutter of baking utensils on the dinette table.

Frances said, "Hi," looking away from him, her hands busy. He didn't answer.

Stubborn as a mule, she thought. She ran hot water into a mixing bowl.

He took down a whiskey bottle from the top shelf of the cupboard, poured a little into a plastic tumbler, and stood sipping it slowly, looking away from her.

There was a smell of scorching, a puff of acrid smoke. She rushed to the oven and pulled out the cookie sheet. At the sight of the charred lumps she began to cry, idiotically. Bill set down his glass.

"Scrape it in the garbage," he said a little thickly. "It's no great loss."

Anger flamed in her. "Thanks. If that's all you've got to say, you might as well keep still."

"You haven't got anything to complain of." Bill refilled the glass, his hand shaking so that a little of the clear light liquid spilled over. "You've got it pretty soft."

"Have I? You haven't said a decent word to me since
"