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“Just put on a vacant look?”

“You notice nothing.”

As she had told it, Val was due to act silly, but ugly is the word I would use. He got so furious he trembled, the first time I’d seen him like that, and said it made no sense. He called the doctor, with a squawk that reminded me suddenly of what Bill had said about power, and the kind of people that want it. The idea, as he dished it out, was that Dr. Semmes had “exceeded his authority,” and that he “ought to have been consulted.” Dr. Semmes, to judge from the rasp in the receiver, dished out some stuff of his own, and told him he was responsible to his patient and nobody else, and also spoke pretty sharp of the treatment the patient had had, and the horrible effect of “all that rich food,” words Val picked up and roared back, so I had to know what had been said.

All that time, while Val was camped by the phone table, which stood against the wall with two chairs beside it, and I sat on the love seat, she sat on the sofa, the pink dress ballooned all around, not looking at me or at him, but somewhere out front, her eyes narrowed to slits. I felt the hammers’ beat, and then fear of prison would speak. I made myself simmer down, but kept having this hot wish I could smash things up for her, set her free of this man I was starting to hate. It was a grim meal, and at the end of it I was the one who took the dishes out and started them in the washer. She went in the living-room, while he still sat blinking, at the rib roast on its plank, for the first time only half eaten.

Val got uglier and uglier as the summer crept along, and two things made him worse. One was the sugar, which she was improving on, as she knew from some home testing-kit the doctor made her get. But instead of making him glad to accept the diet, it seemed to act just opposite. He dingdonged at it; there was no need for diet now, and she should enjoy her food. There was some little honesty to it, as he loved to show off his cooking, as well as the applause it got him. But it seemed a costly bid for a hand to risk his wife’s health, and maybe even her life. The second thing was the awful Maryland weather. I had never known anything like it, a heavy, push-down heat that was out there whether the sun was shining or not, a mug, a humidity, that wouldn’t let you sweat, relax, or even so much as breathe. It was simply hell on this earth, and when a storm would come piling up, generally around supper time, it never helped with the mug, but it did frazzle Val’s temper. He snarled and snapped and growled, and once, when a flash put the power on the blink, I thought he’d throw things at her.

But the first big fight, or say the first one when she fought back, wasn’t about food, and wasn’t even during a storm. It was about church, on a bright Sunday morning when we’d been sitting in recliners, the three of us, out front. They’d been going to church as usual, and each Sunday I’d load take-outs into his car, twenty-five for needy people, which seemed to be the “good” she had talked of so much, or the main part of it anyway. I had done the same today — brought the car out front, and sat down, as invited. I was in shirt and slacks, he in fresh blue mohair, she in a house dress, a new one but not at all fancy. By then her weight had come down, under the two-hundred mark, so she had bought herself a few clothes, “in-between things,” as she called them. Soon he looked at his watch, said: “Dear, I don’t want to hurry you, but — it’s getting quite late. It’s getting on to ten, and we really ought to get started.”

“Oh, I’m not going to church.”

“Holly, I’m surprised.”

“But I’ve nothing to wear.”

There was kind of a break, and she said: “I’m being sensible, I think. On this clothes question at least. I still have to come down by pounds and pounds, so nothing I get can be more than temporary. I can’t go in this very well, and my decent things, such as I have, are practically hanging on me.” She went on, very airy: “Besides, I’m only human, and I don’t relish the talk.”

“What talk, Holly?”

“About the change in my figure.”

“I didn’t know there was talk.”

“Oh, there will be.”

“It’s not a thing you can hide.”

“Then all right, Val. When I’m normal, properly dressed, and ready, I’ll go through with it once and for all. Right now it doesn’t suit me to do it over and over, week after week, telling all those women how I lost the weight.”

“I would think it would be duck soup.”

“Val, I don’t understand you.”

“A normal woman likes such talk.”

That’s what I thought, and I wished she’d get off that tack. But I also thought it was time for me to get out, so I asked if I could have the day, and went back to put on a coat. When I came from the cottage and started out front, they were at it again, and I could see him, through his bedroom windows, marching around. As it seemed a bad time to walk past, I stopped and heard him say: “Why don’t you out with it, Holly? It’s not the clothes and it’s not the talk.”

“What is it, then?”

“And it’s not a what. It’s a who .”

I could feel her heart stop as mine did, as she said, very muffled: “...Oh.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh.”

His voice was mean, and he roared on: “It’s me, the forgotten man on this place. That tries to please you. By giving you the one thing you ever loved in your life, which is food. Food fit for a king. Food I’ll serve to a king, if a king’s coming to town. But no, though you love it, you look down on those who make it, and so you try to be half married and half not married. You want to eat a little bit, enough to live on, but not a real meal, enough to thank me for. You—”

“Val!”

She got up and did some marching, of a kind I’d never seen. Her hands, though pretty, had always seemed quite clumsy, as to keep them from bumping her side, she did what a fat woman does, swung them wide from the elbows, as though doing the crawl stroke. But now, with the hips straighter, she could let her hands act natural. One went to her belt, the other hung down straight, as she went to him and said: “What’s the matter, Val, you afraid to go alone?”

“Go where?”

“To church, of course.”

“What’s to be afraid of, there?”

“Mr. Commissioner Dayton, and his prowtocowl. And Dr. Carroll, and his hawndshake. And Mrs. Carroll, and her lorgnette. And—”

If it was how she mimicked, or what, I don’t know, but he broke, without letting her finish. He cringed, rubbed his hands, and was the same old bus boy again. He said: “What’s come over you, Holly? We had our differences, like when we gave the party. But we’d each concede a point, and—”

“I conceded the points!”

“And I did!”

“No.”

By then she was looking right up at him, smiling, almost laughing. She said: “You love to crack the whip, don’t you, Val? But like all whipcrackers, you jump at a whip too, don’t you? And those people, in church up there today, frighten you, don’t they? Well, they won’t bite you. You go now, leave soon if you want, and when I’m normal — we’ll see.”

She snapped her fingers under his nose and went swaying into the house. I waited, whistled some tune, scuffed my feet, and came bustling out. By then he was in the car, and said he’d ride me to town. For some minutes he had nothing to say, and then: “Holly, if you ask me, spends entirely too much time on the telephone, talking to her relations.”

“...You mean, in St. Mary’s?”

“I mean in Waldorf.”

Then one of those fights jarred me in a way I didn’t expect. It was late September, and his special dish that night was some kind of a lamb roast, done like a broil, on top of the stove. But while he was working on it and I was in the pantry, putting stuff in the freeze that he’d brought in the car, she called from the living-room door: “If that’s lamb you’re cooking, just leave me out altogether. I thought it would simplify everything if I had dinner alone. Little stew I made — not much but quite enough. I’ll keep you company and have some coffee with you, but on dinner, no.”