The High Cost of Living (32 page)

“Oh, I admit it looked wicked,” Honor said. “In point of fact, I had a ticklish feeling that something was in the air.… You know, Mama is really unfair to him. He has no hot water at all in that dreadful depressing insecticide-smelling roominghouse—”

“Oh, you've been there?”

“Only for a moment! But who would have expected her to get so upset? I've never made her that angry. Nothing I've been able to say has got around her yet. I'm sure it was her tooth hurting so much. I always been able to talk her around before.… What's that?”

A key turned in the door and Mrs. Rogers walked in.

“Why, Mama, hello.” Honor sprang up. “Did your tooth start bothering you again?”

Mrs. Rogers kissed her on the cheek. “I had my hours changed. Isn't that wonderful? Your dad's not going to be tremendously pleased, but that's the way it goes. You can't please everyone, can you? I need to spend more time with my darling daughter.” Mrs. Rogers went to hang up her old black cloth coat, trimmed with fur that had long since lost its luster and most of its hair. “I'll be working nine to five. We can eat supper together the way a family should. After all, soon my Honor will be going to college. I have to enjoy your company while I can, don't I, darling? How are you, Leslie? We haven't seen you since last Monday. Have we?”

“I've been working very hard,” Leslie said woodenly. “I'm going to have to get my degree work done faster than I expected.”

“Then will you go back to—Was it Frankfort? Lake Michigan anyhow. It must be beautiful there.”

“I'll go wherever I can get a job.” With George. Whither thou goest.

“Mama, how does it happen you didn't tell me you'd changed your hours?” Honor asked carefully. Her face looked pinched. She could not conceal her lack of pleasure.

“I wanted to be sure it was really going through. I didn't want you to be disappointed if they couldn't give me the day shift.… I have a surprise for you.” Mrs. Rogers clasped her handbag before her meaningfully.

“Oh, what's that?” Honor asked dully.

“I got it on my lunch hour today. Heavens knows, I'm a bit overweight, how can it hurt me to miss lunch once in a while?” From her handbag she took a small box wrapped in white tissue paper.

“What is it? Honor took it, excited now. “Can I open it?”

“Certainly, darling. What else is it for?” Mrs. Rogers moved closer, standing at Honor's elbow. “Do open it.”

It was a watch. “Oh, Mama! I can't stand it! It's beautiful. Oh, Leslie, look! How does it go on? What a darling bracelet! It's a real bracelet too, not a cloddy band. Mama, it's heavenly, it really is. It's exactly what I wanted.”

“It's a good watch. Don't leave it on while you wash your hands. And don't forget it on the wash basin. It's a lady's watch, Honor, its not meant to take a beating.”

“I'll be ever so careful, Mama, truly I will! It's exactly what I've dreamed about. Exactly.”

Hmmmm, Leslie thought, what a clever bribe. She felt sorry for Bernie and automatically she glanced out the livingroom window. It was about time for her to leave and she was about to say so when she saw his broken-backed Mustang parking across the street. Oh, shit, she thought, and moved right up against the window. He got out of the car and began to cross the street. It hurt to see him, it hurt. She felt a little dizzy, as if something was pressing hard on her forehead. He saw Mrs. Rogers' old Chevy in the drive and slowed his steps, looking hard at the house. Leslie held up her hand in a stop sign.

Bernie waved back. Then he saw it was her and he stopped abruptly, scowling. Thinks I haven't cleared out on time. She tried shaking her head.

“What's wrong, Leslie?” Honor asked. “Isn't it a beautiful watch?”

“It's lovely, lovely.” Leslie jumped away from the window. “My goodness, it's close to six. Isn't it?”

“I can give you the exact time on my stunning seventeen-jewel timepiece. It is now six oh five exactly.” Honor was imitating an operator. Then she listened to herself and her eyes grew larger. “Oh.” Casually she drifted toward the front windows. Bernie stood across the street, leaning on his car and watching the house. Honor winced. She tried to make a concealed go-away wave as she turned back to the room. “Why don't we invite Leslie to stay for supper? I'll make supper for a special treat, Mama. Wouldn't you like that?”

“I don't much feel like scrambled eggs tonight, and I'm sure Leslie, if she accepts your invitation, would want something more substantial.”

“Mama, I can do more than make scrambled eggs. You go change and relax and I'll make a tunafish casserole. You'll be surprised!”

“I wouldn't mind the surprise at all.” Mrs. Rogers chuckled. “I'm weary enough. All right, I'll change. My feet are killing me.”

As soon as Mama shut the bedroom door, Honor flew to the window. Bernie was slumped across the street staring at the house. Honor waved wildly, Go away. He waved back briskly. “What's wrong with him?” Honor asked. “Standing there like a prospective burglar casing our house. Like a peeping tom! Leslie, go out and tell him to go away.”

“No.” Leslie shook her head. “I don't want to speak to him. I won't run errands to him for you.”

“Leslie!” Honor pulled the blinds shut. “Let him stare at a blank wall then. What's wrong with him?” She got busy in the kitchen as Mama came back and dropped on the couch with a sigh. She was wearing a flowered housedress and old blue mules. “Maybe I'll watch the evening news,” she said, flicking on the television. Then she frowned. “Honor, why did you shut the blinds? It isn't even dark yet.”

“Oh, let it be. It's cozier this way.” Honor came quickly back to the livingroom carrying a stalk of celery. “Who wants everyone looking in from the street?”

“Really, if you're that nervous, I don't know how you stood it alone in the evenings. It's high time I changed my hours.”

Leslie did not want to encounter Bernie, but she had work to do and she did not want to eat what she saw Honor putting together with a self-important frown. It did not look edible to her—cornflakes and tunafish and celery and pimientos and mayonnaise about to be baked in the oven. She decided to take a chance on Bernie. When she walked out, he was sitting in his car. He had the radio turned to a rock station and he was sitting in the driver's seat slumped over the wheel glowering, drumming his fingers on the wheel. She grimaced and walked on, staying on her side of the street.

Then she stopped. It really was absurd. It was still broad daylight at six-thirty and Mama might decide to put the blinds back up at any moment. She could not help seeing Bernie—or hearing him. Honor would be in more trouble.

She turned back and crossed the street, coming up behind him. He did not hear her, with the radio blasting away. She kicked the car door, standing there feeling like an imitation punk with her hands shoved in her jean pockets. “Hey,” she said roughly, not looking at him, “her mother came home early. She's had her hours changed. Surprise. You better get out of here.” Then she turned on her heel and marched off. Behind her the radio ceased. She walked more quickly. Then she heard him gun the motor. He could not exactly get off to a squealing start in the old Mustang, but he turned it around in a driveway, and then went past her at what speed the wreck could summon, barging up the street leaving a wake of oily smoke to envelop her.

She thought she had avoided looking at him, but nevertheless she had seen him out of the corner of her eye. She kept seeing his face: haggard, furious, chewing on something—some sour rind of anger, of disgust, of frustration. He looked awful. He looked sick. What was wrong with him? Why was he acting so crazy? It did not concern her. It had nothing to do with what had happened with her, because he had run from her to Honor. He had run straight from her to tell Honor he loved her, interchangeable women. Never mind him, never mind him. Forget him. Never think of him again. Forget him as he had forgotten her. If only he was out of her life for good, out and gone. What a relief that would be. Never to hear his name again. She was proud of herself for having summoned the raw nerve, the strength to speak to him, for Honor's sake. That made up secretly a little of the shame she had toward Honor. That was one stroke back from the thing she had done. But she was bothered by flashes of his haggard, desperate face chewing on cold anger as he slumped over the wheel with the radio on raucous and loud. It was not the face of someone in love, she thought. Only someone in raw need.

Tasha was insistently showing her the rooms of the women's school, some freshly painted and inviting, others still begrimed with the dirt of decades. Two of the rooms were ready for use.

“It wouldn't be like the rape hot line,” Tasha was saying. “I can understand your getting tired of doing that month after month. It's such an emotional drain.”

“Can you understand? You never let on you could.”

Tasha shrugged. “To me it's important to continue.… But this is different. It's not emergency work. It's not tending the wounded, Leslie.”

“Aren't we all wounded?”

“Aw, don't bullshit. We're all wounded some, but you don't have any trouble recognizing somebody who's bleeding. Here you'd be working with women who want to learn what you'd be teaching them. You'd get feedback. You'd feel better, not worse.”

“Like the stupid fight I got in at your house.”

“Was it so stupid, Leslie? I mean”—Tasha took her arm—“do you really think that quantitative stuff helps anybody? I mistrust it too.”

“You mistrust everything academic.”

“But I don't mistrust knowledge. I really don't. Tell me what you're doing at school. So I'll understand. What's that foundation paying you to do?”

“It's pretty technical—computers and that stuff.” Leslie felt rotten. But she just could not tell Tasha what George had told her, the way he had described it. George liked to make things sound … oh, stood on their heads. She had to think up some way to describe it to Tasha so it would sound better. She had to think up some way to describe it to herself. “What are you living on, Tasha? Is the women's school paying you?”

“You have to be kidding! We're still raising money for the building. We need everything—tables, chairs, equipment, everything!”

“So what are you living on?”

“I still got unemployment from the hospital job. Maybe six, seven more weeks,” Tasha said.

“Then what?”

“I'll find something. Another hospital job. Why worry now? I want to get the school on its feet first.”

“If I quit George, I wouldn't get unemployment. I wouldn't get anything but a job waitressing. I can't even type.”

“But, Leslie, Rae works full time as a nurse. I'm not asking you to give up but one evening a week.… And you won't look at the work you're doing.”

No, I won't, Leslie thought, feeling herself clenched tight. I won't. You can't make me. “Tasha, I don't have any free evenings. I really don't.”

“Why don't you make one free?”

“It's fine,” George said, slapping his palm down on her thesis proposal. “We'll take it to the committee, but we'll carry it. Good job. Now an outline. Let's say by the end of June.”

“I can't.”

“Red, you have to.” He grinned his little square grin, enjoying applying the pressure. “You've got no choice.… Okay, dismissed. And send in Hennessy. I have a little bad news for him.”

What was the use of good news to her about the proposal when it only made him push her harder on an impossible schedule? She felt as if she were staggering out of his office. Hennessy was down the hall in the room where the teaching fellows and research assistants in the department hung out, where they shared desk space and met students. She came in a little shyly, because she did not spend a lot of social time with the other students, two thirds men, and because she had her own desk outside George's office. This seemed a traditional smoke-filled room, a male enclave. It took her a moment through the haze of smoke and her shyness to pick out Hennessy straddling a chair backwards and boasting, as usual, to the only woman in the room. “So I walked into my bedroom and what was all over the floor but a woman's black lace undies—”

“Hey, Hennessy,” she said gruffly, to cover her embarrassment. “George wants you.”

“How come?”

“How would I know?”

“I thought you were into all his secrets, hey, Red?” Hennessy very reluctantly rose from the chair, and the woman with evident relief pushed out of the room past Leslie.

“It'd take ten r.a.'s to keep track of George's secrets, don't you know that?” She walked beside him back to the office. He was looking a little worried, his broad forehead wrinkled, his mouth pouting more than usual.

“What did he say, exactly?” Hennessy asked.

“Just to tell you he wanted to see you,” she lied nervously.

Cam was on the phone. She blew a kiss at Hennessy. “Hi, darling. Hey, Leslie, it's my sister, but she wants to talk to you.” Cam did not look at all happy about that, but handed her the phone and looked down as if going on with her work. But Cam did not resume typing. She pretended to be proofreading.

Leslie had to take the phone call at Cam's desk, sitting on the edge. “Leslie, here. How're you doing, Honorée?”

“I'm furious at Bernie, just furious!”

“What did he do now?”

“I walked into school this morning and there was a note stuck to my locker. Anybody could have read it, it wasn't even sealed. Listen to this: ‘My sweet love, Don't let your mother's tyranny'—spelled t-i-r-a-n-y—‘keep us apart. We can beat the rap if we stick together. I'll be on tap all day hanging around this dump. Know I'm always with you and never letting go. Love, XXXX, Bernie.' He stuck it right on my locker!”