The Innocent (14 page)

Charles smiled for her. “Let's make an occasion of it. Come on, Margie, get your best bonnet on. Put on the little red one I like, put your bonnet on and I'll take you out to lunch, the way I used to.”

“You know I can't, darling. We can't leave the baby.”

“For an hour? Less than an hour? There's that little French place around the corner. Come on, onion soup with croutons, maybe
pot au feu
. We used to have such lunches, remember, Margie?”

“Of course I remember, darling.” They used to lunch so elegantly to make up for dinners and breakfasts which he had to eat opposite Claire. Charles would read
Cue
and
Gourmet
and find new places for them. With sweet pride he would order the
specialité de la maison
. Before they were married, it didn't seem her place to keep Charles thin, and she couldn't resist his simple, childlike, greedy enjoyment. In fact, both economically and phychologically she used to be able to afford to pamper Charles' appetites more when she was single. “We did have lovely lunches, didn't we? And we will again, but of course we can't today.”

Charles looked miserable, so downcast. She hated to disappoint him. “Let me fix you something here, something you particularly like. A cheese omelet? You like the way I do them. A cheese omelet, Charles? Fresh coffee? A salad with Hollywood dressing, if I have anchovies. We have some crisp McIntoshes in the refrigerator and there's some chocolate cake from last night. I'll fix you a nice lunch here, darling.”

Briskly she moved toward the kitchen, thinking she would feed Charles and get him back to work and then telephone the doctor. She told herself it was idiotic to feel that Edna would kill herself while she fed Charles a nice lunch, to feel that every second counted. She assured herself that Edna was safe now because probably that doctor was still with her, still trying to find out what was real and what was fantasy, which, please God, he never would find out. Marjorie shivered and heard the heavy thud of Charles' feet behind her as he slowly followed her. He walked heavily like that because his heart was heavy. He had hoped to give her a good time and she wouldn't permit him to. Like a good mother she put all other problems aside to concentrate on him, to lighten his disappointment. “We have half a bottle of
rosé
, too. Shall we have wine with our lunch? Let's. You get the good crystal glasses, will you, Charles?”

He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, not fetching the wine glasses, not wanting to be helpful at all. Charles didn't want Marjorie to fix him an omelet, even though it would be as good as a chef's. He didn't want her to fix anything. He didn't want
vin rosé
, he wanted a restaurant
rosé
, with a knowing headwaiter and a huge cardboard menu with gilt suggestions and gilt prices. Poor darling. She took the bottle out of the refrigerator so that it would warm up enough and reached into the eggtray for four eggs. “Sit down, Charles. Just relax, dear, and you needn't glare at the kitchen; we won't eat in here. We'll do it proper in the dining room and have lace doilies and everything. You won't know you're not in Henri à la Bonne Soupe. Do sit down, you must be tired.”

That reminded Charles of something. “I've been working damn hard, haven't I, Margie?”

“You have, indeed. I'm very proud of you.” She broke the eggs into the mixing bowl and began to beat them.

“Maybe you won't be so proud of me when I tell you.”

“What have you done?” She was holding the egg beater in the air, drops of yellow egg dripped slowly, as blood would drip from a wound, for she was thinking, who have you killed now? She said, “Oh, Charles, what have you done now?”

“Evans,” Charles said. “Goddamn it, Margie, Evans has been asking for it! I've told you how he picks on me. I told you that he'll pass practically anything the others do, but with me—he's all the time on the lookout for something with me.”

“Oh, Evans.” Marjorie knew he hadn't killed Evans. Evans could take care of himself. “He's jealous of you. He's such an ugliness that he's jealous, and ever since Mrs. Evans made that play for you at the Christmas party, he's been twice as difficult. You should just put anything Evans does down to jealousy and not let it get you.” Charles was squeezing his powerful hands between his powerful knees. “Did something special happen?”

“Of course something special happened. If you weren't so absent-minded or something today, you'd know that being a very unimportant cog in the B & B wheel, I get a lousy twelve-thirty to one-fifteen for lunch.”

“I am absent-minded, dear. It's been a day.” She poured the eggs into the heated omelet pan, folded in the cheese, and closed the top of the pan. “Tell me, darling.”

“I spent from twelve-thirty to one walking the streets. I tried to take it for your sake, because you asked me to. I've stayed at B & B longer than anywhere else for you—”

“I know,” she said, feeling herself beautiful and valuable in the way only Charles could make her feel.

“Well, I couldn't take it any longer. I couldn't go back. Evans's last trick was too much, and he's not the only bastard there. All of them! It wasn't so bad when I could lunch with you every day, I'd tell you what happened and—you know how you build me up,” he said softly. “I don't have to tell you. You fortified me, kind of, Margie. After talking to you, I could take the damned afternoon, but now I can't. I walked out, Margie. I didn't go back after lunchtime. I just came home.” He went to the window and stood there, staring out, his feet planted far apart, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets.

Marjorie sighed. Measuring the coffee into the percolator, seeing the stubbornness in Charles' posture. “I doed it,” Charles was saying. “Now make something of it.” She adjusted the flame under the omelet pan and then went to the window. “Darling,” she whispered, throwing her arms around him, leaning her head against his back. “Everything always looks so desperate on an empty stomach. Let me fix lunch and set the table and sit opposite you and listen to you the way I used to and then”—she held him tighter—“then back you go. We'll fix up some reason for the extra time you took. I'll think of something.”

“Don't ask me to go back. You're not going to talk me into that.”

Marjorie did not contradict Charles, just pressed her cheek into his shoulder, then left him. She was an efficient cook and in a few minutes had the salad dressing mixed and the salad, green and just wilted enough with tossing, in a small wooden bowl. She poured the wine, heated some rolls, and polished the apples to a jewel-like brilliance.

“Come on, darling,” she said when the omelet puffed and was golden and quivering. She slipped it onto a heated plate. “Come and be fed, darling.”

Charles came. He seated himself, unfolded his napkin, and stabbed the omelet which, Marjorie could see as he lifted a mouthful on his fork, was perfect. But his face did not relax its guarded sulkiness. He saw her empty plate. “Aren't you eating? Are you feeling ill, Margie?”

He was white. His voice trembled. He cared so much for her. He became so panicky when she wasn't well. He had almost gone out of his mind while she was having Petey. Even the doctor, who didn't seem to like Charles, had been worried about him. “I'm perfectly well, dear. I'm just not hungry,” she said gently. For she couldn't eat, seated at the pretty table opposite the perfect omelet and the twinkling jewel-like fruit, because she was reminded of the table before which Edna would be seated. She thought of the food of charity Edna would eat because of her. She hoped they would not give Edna a sharp knife to cut her meat with. Surely they would be careful enough not to give her a sharp knife? She must hurry Charles up, get him out of the apartment, back to work. “Charles, dear, I know Evans is a pain in the neck. I know it isn't easy for you, but you'll have to eat your nice lunch and swallow your medicine. You'll simply have to pocket your pride and go back. Ah, don't be so childish,” she begged, for he had put the salad fork with which he had been about to help himself back into the bowl. He would not eat. He would starve and that would show her. She would be sorry she had been so mean to him when he starved. You couldn't become angry with Charles for these childish tactics; they were so infantile, so pathetic. Other men had other weapons, other men could fight; Charles couldn't. You loved him more for this kind of behavior. You were fiercer in your determination to fight for him. Marjorie helped Charles to some salad and set the plate before him, picking up a piece of lettuce that had fallen out of the bowl and tucking it into her mouth. “Mmm—yummy! Eat it. Charles do. Go on.” Firm, kind, that was the way. “You simply can't walk out on your job now. You can't do it, darling.” Marjorie stood up and walked around the table. She ran her fingers affectionately through Charles' hair. He tossed his head. “There's me to think about, and little Pete.”

“Lillte Pete—little Pete—” Charles' mouth was full of salad. He spoke thickly. “That's all you hear around here. If he isn't mewling up there—waah—waah—you're up their to find out why he's so quiet. If he's O.K. you come down and you yip about him. I just want to be happy with you. I just want to be with you, Margie.”

Each time he said it, it was a miracle. “Oh, Charles!”

“You said I'd hardly notice him. He'd be upstairs and we'd be happy down here. Well, I'm down here, all right, but you're up there. Half the time, you're up there.”

“Oh, I'm not, darling. That's not true. And he's so—you know what Dr. Larker said.”

“I know.” He smiled at her. His whole face changed. “I'm being a terrible jerk, aren't I, Margie?” He reached up and took her hand. “Forgive me for being such a jerk, Margie.”

Other men who were stuck with their wives in apartments with little babies who couldn't be left had some compensation. They went out with the boys, or they had lots of company in. Charles was afraid of people. They hadn't seen a soul until last night when the Winants came. Charles used to love to go to night clubs. He was like a god in black and white evening clothes. He loved musical comedies where his delighted laugh rang out into the dark. “I forgive you, darling. Don't think I don't know how hard this is on you, dear. I didn't plan this. If little Pete had been an ordinary baby, if he would have stood a fair chance any other way, I would have gone back to Bloomingdale's weeks ago, the way we planned. We'd have had a nurse for little Pete, and it would have been us down here and little Pete and the nurse up there. And when I get him past the danger stage, when he's on his feet, we'll do what we planned. Then you can thumb your nose at jealous stinkers like Evans and walk out on any job where you're not appreciated, but as things stand now, you must swallow it this time and go back to the office. No more salad?”

“No more, thanks. Another spoon of sugar, this coffee is bitter today.”

“Uh-uh, darling, you'll get fat.”

“Must I go back, Margie?”

“We can't manage otherwise unless—is there any alternative, Charles?”

“What do you mean any alternative?”

The three hundred dollars would last only a couple of weeks. Then the private sanatorium would want more funds. Then Dr. Gresham would call and ask her to supply them; then if she couldn't, if she had to admit that three hundred dollars was almost her complete bankroll and that all they had to go on was Charles' sixty-nine minus social security, etcetera, wouldn't Dr. Gresham think it queer? Wouldn't he be suspicious of a woman, however sympathetic, who handed over the family bankroll? “What I mean is, Charles, if you really find the work so repulsive, maybe you better quit and use Claire's money.”

“Claire's money?” He looked up quickly, then his lashes covered his eyes.

“Those bonds her mother left her. She used to talk about them, her nest egg, she said, her umbrella for the rainy season. I don't know quite how many thousands they were worth.”

Charles began to fold his napkin carefully along its creases. “Right after we were married you told me that you wouldn't touch any money Claire left with a ten-foot pole.”

“I know I did. But if you really can't stand the office, or if—say we needed it for something really important, not for luxuries or foolishness, but for something vital. If it was something life and death, Charles.”

“You've changed your mind about it, is that it? Well, that's too bad,” Charles said, “because there isn't any money. There never was any money for you not to touch with a ten-foot pole, and there isn't any now you've changed your mind.”

“None at all? No money at all? But I'm sure she had these bonds her mother left her, I know she did, Charles.”

“That's as you say, she did have them.” He put the napkin down on the table now, and was running his index finger along the folds.

“Did you—oh, Charles, it was wrong if you went ahead and spent Claire's money without telling me. I don't even see how you could have. We've managed on what I had saved. I mean, it paid for the trip we took and the hospital and Dr. Larker, and we've dipped into it every month for rent. I don't see how you could have spent the money on us.”

“I didn't.”

“Then—”

“You should guess,” Charles said. He threw the napkin away from him. “Where's your womanly intuition? This isn't the first lousy job I've had. I hated Calson Company as much as B & B. It was the same there. Whatever I tried to do, there was the rat who had it in for me. I was fed up. I heard about a good thing and I bought into it on margin. I put up those damned bonds of Claire's as security. I had my usual good luck and—down the hatch! Down the drain pipe!”

“Did Claire know?”

“She found out.”

“What did she—Didn't she—didn't Claire mind?”