Stranger On Lesbos (23 page)

She had to admit that Bill was a good host, probably because of the same qualities that made him a good sales manager. He was affable, he got everyone seated around the card tables (two of them for four diners, because there was so much food) and he watched the plates to be sure everyone was getting enough to eat. With Bob's girl he was at once teasing and flattering, a middle-aged man talking to an attractive teen-ager, and she was demure with him.

When the Flanagans showed up early, having been invited in for the afternoon, he seemed honestly pleased. "Sooner the better. How about a piece of pie?"

It can't be easy, Frances thought, moved to reluctant admiration. It can't be easy to keep up that kind of front when you're tired or worried
or when your wife is bitchy. She looked at him with unwilling sympathy. Then she recollected that she, not he, was the aggrieved one, and resumed her impassive expression before filling his cup.

Only Betty Flanagan's sharp look made her ask him politely, "More pie?"

He said, "Don't mind if I do. I hate to brag, Jack, but my wife makes the best pie you ever ate."

"In that case I’ll have a big piece."

She had to admit that Bill was showing up well, considering what he had been through in the last few hours. Whatever he might lack, it wasn't courage.

And what about me?

An
early dusk was setting in before she could stack the dishes and carry them to the kitchen. Bill made drinks, pulled the shades, turned on the television. I wish I had a drink, Frances thought. A real drink, enough to relax me. Since she had started out with the Flanagans as a total abstainer, she didn't want to invite comment from them now. She thought longingly of the bottles in the top of the cupboard. Maybe a quick one while I'm doing the dishes.

She refused help with the washing up. "I'll stack them." But when she had gotten out the canasta cards and made fresh coffee, Mari followed her into the kitchen. "I'm going to help," she said in her small, composed voice.

"Oh, you don't have to help."

"I will, though."

Frances looked at her. The girl had hardly spoken since her arrival. She had sat listening to Bob and Bill, laughing at their jokes, eating daintily but with a good appetite.

Frances said, "I'm so glad you could come."

"It was awfully kind of you to ask me."

"Oh, Bob's always having girls here." That'll fix her.

Mari smiled. "I'm always taking boys home, too. But this is different."

Frances turned her face away. "How different?" she asked when she could trust her voice.

"Bob thinks he's in love with me."

"Is he?"

"Maybe." Mari hung a cup on its hook. The unspoken question hung in the air between them. After a moment of silence she answered it. "I'm not sure about myself, though. I don't want to hurry things. Marriage is so permanent."

"Not always."

"It will be for me. Not because of my religion or anything. But my parents would be miserable if I ever got a divorce. My father's a judge, you know
he's very conservative. But that's not why." Mari hesitated, looking uncertain for the first time in Frances' short knowledge of her. "I want everything to be right."

This was a girl who wouldn't do anything on impulse. She would select a husband carefully, taking into account family backgrounds and religion and her husband's career. They taught all this in school now, Frances knew. Mari's children would be carefully spaced and well brought up, her house spotless; she would be president of the PTA and chairman of the women's culture club. She might hold a job before her babies were born or after they began to grow up, an inter-sting and well-paid one. A pang for her own hungry, fumbling early years struck Frances' heart, and a regret for the child Bob had been and would never be again.

She said carefully, "You're probably right.”

She was conscious again of the small purple bruise above her elbow, and for the second time she wondered whether it had been inflicted by the husband she had come to hate and was beginning to feel sorry for, or by the woman she loved and was beginning to distrust.

She averted her eyes from Mari, feeling guilty.

Mari would never have such a problem. Things would be clear and definite for her. Frances liked her, envied her, and wondered once again: suppose I'd been like that, had that sort of start in life, would things have turned out differently?

The phone rang around eight, while she was making cold turkey sandwiches and thinking, don't these people ever do anything but eat? Bob took it. "For you, Mom." He laid the instrument down and stepped aside, looking at her warily and, she thought, pleadingly.

It was Bake, more than a little under the influence. "Just wanted to say Merry Christmas, baby. Jane says it too. Don't you, honey?" There was a small scuffle in the background, then Bake came through again. "You're a sweet kid, Frankie. Too damn serious, though." She had a little trouble with "serious." It came out mangled, and she hung up laughing.

Frances said courteously, "Merry Christmas to you, too," and hung up before Betty's pricked-up ears could catch any more. "A girl from my office," she lied.

She looked at Mari, getting into her coat for the later dinner at her parents' home. Bill's attention was riveted to his cards; the wrinkles in his forehead deepened. Poor guy, she thought.

It was disturbing to see Bill this way; it annoyed her to think of him as needing pity. She had to admit that, viewed from some angles, the fault was at least partly hers. She stood beside him at the front door, shivering in the frosty air, when the Flanagans finally left.

But when they came back into the house, and he reached out to touch her, she moved away. “Please don’t,” she said coldly. “I’m tired.”

He looked at her for a moment, without expression. Then he turned and went into the kitchen, dragging his feet. In a moment she heard the opening of the cupboard and the clink of glass against glass.

CHAPTER 19

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?"

"For Christ's sake, baby, what is this, a Sunday school picnic?"

"Bake never knows when she's had enough," Jane said sharply. She moved her chair closer to Bake's so that their shoulders were touching.

"Well, I can tell the difference." Frances stopped abruptly, realizing that it did no good to argue when Bake was like this; realizing, too, that several people at nearby tables were looking curiously at them. She lowered her voice. "I'm sorry. Let's skip it."

"Like hell we'll skip it," Bake said. She looked narrowly at Frances, frowning, swaying a little with the intensity of her effort to focus. "It's none of your goddam business how much I drink. Or when. Or who with, see? Nobody tells me what to do. And further
furthermore," she added, picking up her glass and looking around for the waitress, "why don't you go home if you don't like it here? Nobody'd care."

Kay said, "Oh, for heaven's sake."

Jane was smiling a little. Bake said, "You can wipe the smile off your face, too. Another two-timer, that's what you are. Anything I can't stand, it's a two-timer. Me one day and Kay the next, that's the way you work it. You too," she said, pointing a trembling finger at Frances. "This gal's still sleeping with her husband, how do you like that? A straight girl. I don't know why they let her in a place like this."

Kay looked around uneasily ."We better go before Mickey throws us out, don't you think so?"

"God, yes," Frances said, "if we can get her away."

Kay raised her voice. "Look Bake, we're all going up to my place, okay? I'm going to the john first."

Frances followed her to the washroom. "I've never seen her this bad before," she said nervously. "Usually she gets loaded and then passes out."

"Oh, this is typical. She's working up to a tantrum. I've seen it happen before
not for a long time though, not since you came on the scene." Kay took a small comb from her jacket pocket and carefully arranged her short hair. "Last time I was the one she was mad at."

"You were?"

"Sure. I asked her to stay away from Jane. It was the wrong thing to do, it only made her anxious to have Jane back." She looked into the mirror, running a finger along arched eyebrows. "You do know they're seeing each other again?"

They looked miserably at each other.

"What did she say?"

"Oh, you know, the usual stuff. It's her life, nobody has any right to tell her what to do, and so on."

"Do you think it's serious between Jane and her?"

"I keep trying to tell myself it isn't. I don't know what I'd do."

"Jane means a lot to you, doesn't she?"

"I love her," Kay said simply. "Look, you and Bake have been together quite a while."

"A little over two years."

"I never knew Bake to stick to anybody that long. If that's any comfort."

"She used to go with Jane before. I know that." Frances tried to steady her voice.

"Sure. Jane was getting over Bake when I first met her. She was a mess
being dropped by Bake is quite an experience, in case you've never given it any thought."

"I know," Frances said in a muffled voice.

Kay's face was sad and a little stern. "We've been together four years, almost four and a half. Jane needs somebody to look after her. She's as helpless as a baby. She had analysis for more than a year after Bake threw her over. I hope to God the poor kid never has to go through anything like that again."