Wives and Lovers (7 page)

The fact was that dentists were very important, and after two days of the convention Gordon was beginning to feel proud that he was a man who was doing hard and important work for the welfare of humanity. He was a little afraid for his new pride, though. It was too precious and fragile a thing to survive the journey home, and God
knew, he'd never get it past the front door of his house.

He thought of Elaine, not bitterly, but with a kind of helpless pity. Whatever Elaine had wanted and expected from her marriage—great wealth? social position? an idyll of romance?—she hadn't got it and he was unable to give it to her. She was, in the long run, worse off than he was. He had his job, he could become so absorbed in his work that he sometimes didn't think of Elaine for two or three hours. He knew that Elaine had no such respite, that she was always conscious of him as she would have been conscious of a continuous nagging toothache.

He hadn't, come to think of it, remembered Elaine once all day until the girl in the chair beside him asked him for a match. What had the girl said?—that he looked like a doctor or a lawyer. Some answer was expected of him, he must play the game, whatever it was.

“Appearances,” he said with ponderous humor, “are deceiving.”

“Aren't they just!” She laughed, and he saw that her teeth were very small and even, like canine incisors. “Still, I always say I can tell a nice character by his face, I really can too. Look, isn't that someone waving at you, over there by the cigar counter?”

Gordon turned, and recognizing a colleague of his, he waved back.

“He's from my home town,” Gordon said. He men­tioned the name of the town. Ruby said that she'd never been there but she knew lots of people who had, and they all agreed that it was the most beautiful place in the country.

“I certainly intend to go there,” she said. “I've just never found the time and my parents are terribly old school. They think girls should stay home all the time.”

“Do you work any place?”

“Just for the fun of it I'm working at the perfume counter in Magrim's. Honestly, the people you meet! I never had any idea how the other half lives.”

“Didn't you?” Gordon smiled at her innocence.

“Actually I'm not crazy about working, but it's better than sitting at home watching Daddy fuss over his silly stamps and coins. A girl should get out on her own, don't you agree?”

Gordon agreed.

Ruby's “party” failed to appear. Gordon had intended to go to a movie by himself but he couldn't think of any polite way to abandon the girl. She was too young to sit around a hotel lobby alone so Gordon offered to get her a taxi and send her home.

“That's terribly kind of you,” Ruby said with a rueful little smile. “But I guess it wouldn't do much good for me to go home this early. Mummy and Daddy are out tonight and I haven't got a key.”

Gordon took her along to the movie. She was a trusting little thing. Even though he was a complete stranger she seemed to rely on him already and when they walked down the dark aisle she put her hand on his coat sleeve, tugging at it like a child who doesn't want to be left behind.

Three days later she still didn't want to be left behind.

“Don't go, Gordon, please.”

“I have to. You don't understand. I told you about Elaine and the children and my work.”

“Take me with you.”

“I can't, Ruby.”

“Will you be back?”

“You know I will.”

“I'm afraid you'll change your mind.”

“I would if I could,” Gordon said quietly. “It's too late, I love you.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you.”

“What if I never see you again?” she sobbed. “What if you change your mind?”

“I won't.” He held her in his arms while she wept. “I'll be back, darling. Don't worry, don't cry,”

She sobbed over and over again, “What if I never see you again?”

He drove home alone, buoyant, frightened, intoxicated, ashamed of himself, confused, in love. Once or twice as he drove along the rocky coast he thought of sending himself and the car over the cliff, but he didn't do it, and when he got home, Elaine seemed genuinely glad to see him.

Elaine fussed over him, unpacked his suitcase, and told him he was looking tired.

“Staying up late at all those burlesque shows, I bet!” she said with a gay laugh.

“I didn't go to any burlesque shows.”

“My goodness, I thought that's what conventions were
for!
”

He looked at her steadily. “Did you?”

“What's the matter with you, Gordon? Can't you take a joke any more?”

“It depends on the joke.”

“As if I didn't know you have too much self-respect to go to a burlesque show,” Elaine said reproachfully. “What did you do with your evenings?”

“I went to the movies,” Gordon said. I fell in love with a girl named Ruby. At first I thought she was just an innocent, wide-eyed kid, and then afterwards at the movie I thought she was an ordinary pick-up. When it was too late I found out something else—she was a virgin.

Four days later he had a letter from her. During office hours he kept the letter in his pocket and at night he left it in the office safe.

 

Dear Gordon:

I guess by this time you've forgotten all about me and I wouldn't blame you, really I wouldn't Gordon, I'm not worthy to shine your shoes. In fact I've got some things on my conscience and I thought I'd tell you, then if you've forgotten me you can just read this and forget it too, but if you haven't and if you still feel about me the way I do about you, you will know anyway that I'm trying to play fair and square with you. Well, here goes, Gordon.

I wasn't waiting for anybody that night in the lobby, I was just sitting there. I was walking home and I got tired so I went and sat there pretending I was waiting for someone because otherwise it wouldn't be good taste. Isn't it funny Gordon that if my feet hadn't been hurting I wouldn't ever have met you. I'm glad I did, no matter what happens to us I'll never be sorry. I swear on my honor I never did that before, talking to a strange man like that and I will never do it again. I haven't even looked at another man since you left, what's the use they look silly beside you.

Point two: I told you I lived with my parents, this isn't true either because my parents are divorced and have married other people and I live with my aunt and cousin, my cousin is older than I and she has a good job. I guess you will think I am a terrible liar. I don't know why I said that about my parents I haven't seen them for years, but I want you to know the truth now anyway because I love you Gordon. I've never been in love before only crushes.

I guess that's all Gordon. I hope you won't hate me the way I hate myself for telling you those lies, but I wouldn't blame you if you turned against me. I am not good enough for you maybe I never will be but I'm going to try hard. I think of you all the time, please write to me Gordon. I love you. Ruby.

 

Every evening, while Hazel was cleaning up the front office, Gordon went into the lab and sat down on the high stool. He read the letter over and over and then he put his head down on the lab table and wept without tears.

Ruby arrived in town three weeks later. She came by bus carrying a suitcase containing two letters from Gordon, a few clothes and her aunt's red fox neckpiece (borrowed for a limited time only). She had nearly two hundred dollars, scraped together from various sources. Seventy dollars was her own, her cousin lent her twenty-five, and a hundred came from her father in Seattle. She had written to him for the first time in two years telling him she was going to be married and needed money for a trousseau. Her father sent her a check and a note wishing her happiness and telling her not to mention the check to her mother under any circumstances.

She took a room in a boarding house a couple of blocks from the bus terminal. Here she unpacked her suitcase, shook out the red fox neckpiece and washed her face. Then she went to the nearest café to phone Gordon and have something to eat.

She sat down in a booth, trembling with weariness and excitement. She was here at last, in the same city as Gordon, perhaps even just a few blocks from him right this minute. From now on all her days would be colored by the possibility of seeing Gordon. He might be walking past the café right now (she looked and could see nothing beyond the closed Venetian blind) and every time she stepped out of the door she might catch a glimpse of his car. She had memorized the license number on that first night, standing on the curb outside Gordon's hotel. She had repeated it aloud over and over, without realizing why. Everything that concerned Gordon had become absorbingly important to her, with the exception of Elaine. She thought of Elaine vaguely as a shadow-figure crossing Gordon's path now and then without touching him or interfering with him. Ruby's one-sided imagination flung a veil over Elaine and her children, her own future, her financial difficulties, Gordon's reputation, and any preconceived notions she had of right and wrong. Right was something you were going to do anyway, and if it didn't justify itself afterwards it became wrong. Ruby's mind worked with disastrous simplicity. It was “wrong” to lie to Gordon about her parents, but it was “right” to follow him here without telling him about it in advance or asking his opinion.

She wanted to surprise Gordon, and she did.

She dialed the number of his office while Mr. Gomez reheated a batch of French-fried potatoes and the juke box moaned a soft, disturbing song. The music brushed her ears and her lips like a kiss.

Watching her from behind the counter Mr. Gomez made one of his quick, wrong analyses of character: kid from a small town, on her way to Hollywood, due for a shock, no jobs around, lousy with pretty girls already, the kid's asking for it.

“I'm not hungry,” Gordon told Elaine at dinner. “I think I'll go out for a walk.”

Elaine glanced at him across the table. She believed nothing and so she could always spot a lie, an ability which was her pride and joy.

“A walk? I should think after standing on your feet all day a walk would be about the last thing you'd want.”

“I don't get enough exercise.”

“You have your golf on Sunday afternoons.”

“If you've any objections to me going for a walk, say so. Don't beat around the bush. Is there something you want me to do around the house, is that it?”

“You don't have to get irritable, Gordon. I didn't object to your going for a walk, it just seemed peculiar, that's all.”

“Well, perhaps I
am
peculiar,” Gordon said.

Elaine sighed and thought, how true. Gordon was peculiar, and little did these people who were always telling her how lucky she was to have a good husband, little did they know what she had to put up with. It was quite possible that Gordon's trouble was glandular. If this was the case, Elaine would stand by, she would even nurse him herself, if necessary, until Gordon's glands readjusted and he had completely recovered. Complete recovery, in Elaine's terms, meant that Gordon would be constantly sweet, affectionate, devoted to herself and the children. He would stay home at night and they would all play games together, a gay, happy, united little family. This was Elaine's dream, this picture of Gordon and herself and the children sitting at a table reading aloud or playing Parcheesi and Casino and Snakes and Ladders . . . She and Gordon would touch hands and smile with pride and love at the children's excitement . . . This was what she wanted but she had never told Gordon, and her own attempts in the direction of the dream were hopelessly inadequate. The boys were too young for such games and the girl Judith got overexcited and tried to cheat. Elaine was horrified by this cheating, she could not believe it was natural for a seven-year-old to try to cheat, and in the end she blamed Gordon for passing on his hereditary weakness to his daughter. The gay evenings with the children were nightmares for Gordon and agonizing frustration for Elaine.

Elaine confided in no one. To her friends she appeared invulnerable, and it was only when she said her prayers in the evening that she admitted, even to herself, that she was not.

When Gordon had left she put the children to bed. Then she went into the bedroom she shared with Gordon. Kneeling beside the bed Elaine confided in her doctor-psychoanalyst-father-mother-confessor-God. She talked to Him quite naturally, as to an old friend.

“Dear Father, I need your help, we all do. We turn to you in our unhappiness. I don't ask you to make me happy, only to show me what is wrong and what I should do. Whatever it is I have enough strength and faith to do it. Something terrible is wrong in this house, it is crushing us all, and I know it must be my fault as well as Gordon's. Gordon is out for a walk—it's funny how I keep telling You things You must know—and I miss him the way I did when he was in San Francisco. I think I love him, I don't know. When he's away I love him, but when he comes back everything starts over, all the small irritations and differences. I do my best to lead a virtuous life but some­ times I have wicked thoughts and when I look at Gordon I resent him. Where does this terrible resentment come from? Sometimes I want to hit out at him, and just tonight when he swallowed some soup and it went down the wrong way, I felt glad, really glad! I thought,
that will teach him
—those were the very words that came into my mind. But why? What would it teach him? How could I have been glad? Dear Lord, show me the way, I am lost and wicked—I don't know—what a mess, Oh God, what a mess—”