Wives and Lovers (25 page)

“We all was,” the boy said. “My mother, too.”

“
His
name's Vicente,” Connie said, with a worldly shrug. “Only he's not old enough yet to realize how awful it is.”

“I do so,” the boy protested.

“If you realize now when you're only six, just think how much
more
you're going to realize when you're nearly
sixteen.
”

The boy hung his head under the weight of this future, and began to shuffle his feet in the dust. Connie glanced at Hazel as if she wasn't certain whether to continue the con­versation or not. Then she said curtly, “Come on, Vin,” and she and the boy took their places on the bicycle simultaneously.

It wasn't until they had moved a couple of yards ahead that Hazel recognized the skunk tail hanging from the carriage, and the reflector that spelled out “Watch My Speed.” She called out, and the bicycle stopped again, and the boy and girl turned their heads at exactly the same time and with equal suspicion.

“Maybe I can help,” Hazel said. “What are you look­ing for?”

“A hedge clipper,” Connie answered. “My pop lost it and it cost five ninety-five.”

“Enough for one hundred and nineteen ice cream cones, Pop said,” the boy added.

“That's not counting tax,” Connie said severely. “If we don't find it on the road, Pop said to go to Mr. Ander­son's house, 2124 the number is.”

“That's my house.”

Connie blinked. “I know.”

“You can come in the yard and look around if you like.”

“Pop said to look up and down the road first.”

“It would probably be picked up by now if he lost it on the road,” Hazel said. “He may have left it at my house, I'll go and see. Do you want to come inside and wait?”

“
I'll
come inside,” Connie said, flashing a look at the boy. “Vin can ride Bingo up and down the street.”

“He can come inside too,” Hazel said quickly. “He doesn't look big enough to sit on the seat and reach the pedals.”

“You don't have to sit on the
seat
to ride a bicycle. Go on, Vin, show the lady.”

Vin obliged.

“See?” Connie said, and Hazel admitted that she saw and the two of them went into the house.

The front room was empty but it had the air of having just been abandoned at the approach of company.

“Sit down, Connie,” Hazel said.

“I'd just as soon stand. I
like
to stand, I do it all the time.”

She stood along the wall with her hands behind her back. She felt too sophisticated to stare at the furniture with the crude curiosity of a child, the way Vin would have done. She narrowed her eyes and gazed out of their corners in a manner meant to indicate a bored indifference. It was the expression she used at school when one of the teachers asked her a question she couldn't answer. She merely lifted her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes to show that she didn't care but that she certainly would know the answer if she did care.

Every few minutes she heard Vin ride past the house yelling, “Honk, honk!” and “Yippee, bang bang!” She would have liked to open the door and order him to be quiet, but she didn't want to move for fear the lady of the house might think she'd been snooping while she was gone.

When Hazel returned Connie had barely moved a muscle.

“I can't find it,” Hazel said. “My sister-in-law and I both hunted for it.”

Though Connie continued to look bored, there was an undertone of anxiety in her voice: “Pop said not to bother you too much, but he's pretty sure he couldn't have dropped it on the road. It's heavy, it would have made a noise and he'd have heard it. Pop's awful careful about his tools.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

“And this was the last place he went to.”

“Well, I certainly can't find it,” Hazel repeated. She was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable under the girl's oblique gaze. The girl had not accused her of deliberately withholding the hedge clipper; the accusation lay in the facts themselves. Mr. Escobar had brought his hedge clipper to Hazel's yard, and when he arrived home the clipper was missing. It was practically impossible, Hazel thought, for it to have fallen from the bicycle basket with­out Escobar noticing it.

“Maybe someone stole it,” Connie said.

“I don't see how. Your father was working out in the yard all the time, and there wasn't anyone else around, not while I was here anyway. Wait a minute and I'll go and ask my cousin about it.”

“Pop said not to bother you too much, maybe I better just go.”

“It's no bother,” Hazel said quite sharply. “I want to get this thing cleared up.”

She went into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. The blinds were drawn, and Ruth was lying on the bed with a cloth over her eyes. She was absolutely motion­less, yet Hazel had the same impression that she'd had when she and Connie had come into the house, an impression of activity that stopped a split second before she opened the door. She wondered if Ruth had been listening at the door and if she'd been able to hear anything with the wind blowing so loud outside.

“What's the matter?” Hazel said.

“I have a headache.”

“I'm sorry to bother you, but Mr. Escobar's girl is here.”

Ruth sat up and the cloth fell off her eyes into her lap.

“What?” she said stupidly. “Who?”

“The Mexican's daughter.”

“Daughter?” She let out a sudden sharp laugh. “This is a surprise. He's got a daughter, has he? Who'd have guessed it, from the look of him? What's she like?”

“Quite pretty.”

“Pretty, is she? That
is
funny.” She laughed again. “She can't take after
him!
”

“Don't laugh like that.”

“Like
what?
”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“I don't! I was laughing because it's so funny, him hav­ing a daughter, and pretty at that. What's she doing here?”

“She came to get her father's hedge clipper. He says he left it here yesterday.”

“He's lying!”

Hazel looked annoyed. “Why should he lie about it?”

“So he can get a new one out of you. His was old, I saw it, it was all rusty.”

“The girl told me it was brand new.”

“They're all lying,” Ruth cried. “They're all the same, sly and scheming behind those innocent eyes of theirs! Yes, those innocent velvet eyes, they can hide a lot.”

“Keep your voice down. She's right in the front room.”

“I don't care.”

“I do.”

Ruth picked up the cloth that she'd had over her eyes and began to twist it in her hands. Hazel watched her uneasily. She was afraid that Ruth was going to have an­other of her nervous spells. They always followed the same pattern—there was the hard mirthless laughter, the talk about self-discipline, and then the moment when the discipline broke open at the seams, exposing a quivering and uncoordinated mass of tissue.

“
I
certainly didn't take his hedge clipper,” Ruth said. “What are you looking at
me
for? Why even ask me about it?”

“I thought you might have seen it.”

“I didn't.”

“You said you did.”

“Only for a minute, long enough to see that it was old and rusty.” She fell back on the pillow, and when she spoke again her voice was high and suffering: “Anyway, it's all a lie. The whole thing is a lie from beginning to end. Perhaps there never was a hedge clipper, perhaps I only imagined I saw it or I mistook it for something else. That's it, I'm sure—I don't believe there ever was such a thing, so I couldn't have taken something that wasn't there. You mustn't accuse me.”

“I wasn't accusing you.”

“You were, with your eyes.”

“I'm only trying to get to the bottom of the matter,” Hazel said. “I feel responsible for a loss that took place on my property.”

“That's how he wants you to feel, so you'll buy him another.”

“I have no intention of buying him another. I intend to find the one he left here and I'll find it, by Jesus, if I have to take the whole damn house apart.”

“You'll never find it,” Ruth said softly. “There never was such a thing. It's all a lie, it was all meant to take you in because you're innocent. You talk so rough, Hazel, and you know so many different kinds of people, but you're very innocent.”

She put the cloth over her eyes again, as a gesture of dismissal.

“Listen, Ruth,” Hazel said quietly, “if you know any­thing about where that hedge clipper is, you better tell me now. I'll find out anyway.”

Ruth lay on the bed, mute and rigid.

“Let's put it this way, suppose you had one of your screwy ideas and decided to take the hedge clipper and put it away some place. Maybe you were going to teach him a lesson, or maybe you even did it for my sake, to save money or something—I don't care what reason you had. Just tell me where you put it and then we'll forget the whole thing.”

“I've already forgotten.”

“Listen, you've got to tell me where it is.”

“I don't know. I never saw it.”

“You don't realize, this is one of those small things that can turn out to be very serious. He's a poor man, he might go to the police. We'll all get in trouble.”

“See? You
are
accusing me. I felt it when you came in the room.”

“I wasn't accusing you when I came in. I only got suspicious when you began to talk about seeing it and not seeing it.”

“I'm not a liar. Sometimes I
appear
to lie, but it's only that my imagination is so vivid, pictures form so clear and real in my head. But I'm not a liar.”

“I know that,” Hazel said patiently.

“So that's where I must have seen it, in my head. It was lying on a shelf, or on the grass, I'm not sure which.”

“Ruth, did you take it or didn't you?”

“It wasn't there to take, and besides, I'd have no reason to do such a thing. I can't think of any reason at all.” Though there had been no change in her voice and no overt sign of weeping, the cloth over her eyes was wet with tears. “If I could think of a reason, any reason—for your sake, perhaps, for your sake—”

“The reason doesn't matter. Did you take it?”

“No, no, I didn't!”

“All right,” Hazel said. “We'll forget it for now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Send the girl home and then find the hedge clipper. Maybe we'd both better hunt for it, you and me.”

“I can't, I have this headache.”

Hazel stood looking at her indecisively for a moment, then she burst out, “Oh, for God's sake, Ruth, be sensible and tell me where you hid it.”

Ruth turned her face to the wall.

When Hazel went back to the front room the girl was gone. Thinking she might have decided to wait outside, Hazel opened the door in time to see the bicycle just turning on to Castillo Street. At the hole in the corner which Hazel was always careful to avoid when she was driving, the baby and the boy and Connie herself all bounced in the air, but Connie kept pedaling furiously and in a moment the bicycle had disappeared behind the stucco wall of the school.

Hazel turned back into the house. Through the closed door of the bedroom she could hear Ruth talking to herself in a thin, reedy monotone that sounded as though Ruth had not intended to talk, she had merely opened her mouth and the desert wind blew through it like a pitch pipe.

She opened the door. Ruth was sitting on the edge of the bed with the little dog cradled in her arms. The dog looked uncomfortable and puzzled, but it did not attempt to escape.

“Ruth.”

“I will come out and speak to her personally,” Ruth said.

“You can't. She's gone.”

“Gone? Why?”

“I don't know. She had her little brothers with her, maybe she wanted to get them home.”

“Brothers. Yes, of course. They breed like pigs.” The little dog squirmed out of her arms, sensing danger in their sudden contraction, and went to hide under the bed. “Like pigs. It's disgusting. He probably has a new child every year.”

“That's his business.”

“I'm sure it
is
his business. He seems to do very little else.”