Mavis Gallant - The Moslem Wife and Other Stories

“Not an ounce of fat on you,” said Mrs. Thompson. “You know something? I’m sorry you’re going. I really am. Tomorrow you’ll be gone. You know that, don’t you? You’ve been counting days, but you won’t have to any more. I guess Vern’ll take you back to Montreal. What do you think?”

Jeannie dropped her gaze, and began smoothing wrinkles on the bedspread. She muttered something Mrs. Thompson could not understand.

“Tomorrow you’ll be gone,” Mrs. Thompson continued. “I know it for a fact. Vern is at this moment getting his pay, and borrowing a jeep from Mr. Sherman, and a Polack driver to take you to the train. He sure is loyal to you . You know what I heard Mr. Sherman say? He said to Vern, ‘If you want to send her off, Vern, you can always stay,’ and Vern said, ‘I can’t very well do that, Mr. Sherman.’ And Mr. Sherman said, ‘This is the second time you’ve had to leave a job on account of her, isn’t it?’ and then Mr. Sherman said, ‘In my opinion, no man by his own self can rape a girl, so there were either two men or else she’s invented the whole story.’ Then he said, ‘Vern, you’re either a saint or a damn fool.’ That was all I heard. I came straight over here, Jeannie, because I thought you might be needing me.” Mrs. Thompson waited to hear she was needed. She stopped rocking and sat with her feet flat and wide apart. She struck her knees with her open palms and cried, “I told you to keep away from the men. I told you it would make trouble, all that being cute and dancing around. I said to you, I remember saying it, I said nothing makes trouble faster in a place like this than a grown woman behaving like a little girl. Don’t you remember?”

“I only went out for a walk,” said Jeannie. “Nobody’ll believe me, but that’s all. I went down the road for a walk.”

“In high heels?” said Mrs. Thompson. “With a purse on your arm, and a hat on your head? You don’t go taking a walk in the bush that way. There’s no place to walk to . Where’d you think you were going? I could smell Evening in Paris a quarter mile away.”

“There’s no place to go,” said Jeannie, “but what else is there to do? I just felt like dressing up and going out.”

“You could have cleaned up your home a bit,” said Mrs. Thompson. “There was always that to do. Just look at that sink. That basket of ironing’s been under the bed since July. I know it gets boring around here, but you had the best of it. You had the summer. In winter it gets dark around three o’clock. Then the wives have a right to go crazy. I knew one used to sleep the clock around. When her Nembutal ran out, she took about a hundred aspirin. I knew another learned to distill her own liquor, just to kill time. Sometimes the men get so’s they don’t like the life, and that’s death for the wives. But here you had a nice summer, and Vern liked the life.”

“He likes it better than anything,” said Jeannie. “He liked the Army, but this was his favorite life after that.”

“There,” said Mrs. Thompson. “You had every reason to be happy. What’d you do if he sent you off alone, now, like Mr. Sherman advised? You’d be alone and you’d have to work. Women don’t know when they’re well off. Here you’ve got a good, sensible husband working for you and you don’t appreciate it. You have to go and do a terrible thing.”

“I only went for a walk,” said Jeannie. “That’s all I did.”

“It’s possible,” said Mrs. Thompson, “but it’s a terrible thing. It’s about the worst thing that’s ever happened around here. I don’t know why you let it happen. A woman can always defend what’s precious, even if she’s attacked. I hope you remembered to think about bacteria.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean Javel, or something.”

Jeannie looked uncomprehending and then shook her head.

“I wonder what it must be like,” said Mrs. Thompson after a time, looking at the dark window. “I mean, think of Berlin and them Russians and all. Think of some disgusting fellow you don’t know. Never said hello to, even. Some girls ask for it, though. You can’t always blame the man. The man loses his job, his wife if he’s got one, everything, all because of a silly girl.”

Jeannie frowned, absently. She pressed her nails together, testing the polish. She licked her lips and said, “I was more beaten up, Mrs. Thompson. It wasn’t exactly what you think. It was only afterwards I thought to myself, Why, I was raped and everything.”

Mrs. Thompson gasped, hearing the word from Jeannie. She said, “Have you got any marks?”

“On my arms. That’s why I’m wearing this shirt. The first thing I did was change my clothes.”

Mrs. Thompson thought this over, and went on to another thing: “Do you ever think about your mother?”

“Sure.”

“Do you pray? If this goes on at nineteen —”

“I’m twenty.”

“— what’ll you be by the time you’re thirty? You’ve already got a terrible, terrible memory to haunt you all your life.”

“I already can’t remember it,” said Jeannie. “Afterwards I started walking back to camp, but I was walking the wrong way. I met Mr. Sherman. The back of his car was full of coffee, flour, all that. I guess he’d been picking up supplies. He said, ‘Well, get in.’ He didn’t ask any questions at first. I couldn’t talk anyway.”

“Shock,” said Mrs. Thompson wisely.

“You know, I’d have to see it happening to know what happened. All I remember is that first we were only talking …”

“You and Mr. Sherman?”

“No, no, before. When I was taking my walk.”

“Don’t say who it was,” said Mrs. Thompson. “We don’t any of us need to know.”

“We were just talking, and he got sore all of a sudden and grabbed my arm.”

“Don’t say the name!” Mrs. Thompson cried.

“Like when I was little, there was this Lana Turner movie. She had two twins. She was just there and then a nurse brought her in the two twins. I hadn’t been married or anything, and I didn’t know anything, and I used to think if I just kept on seeing the movie I’d know how she got the two twins, you know, and I went, oh, I must have seen it six times, the movie, but in the end I never knew any more. They just brought her the two twins.”

Mrs. Thompson sat quite still, trying to make sense of this. “Taking advantage of a woman is a criminal offense,” she observed. “I heard Mr. Sherman say another thing, Jeannie. He said, ‘If your wife wants to press a charge and talk to some lawyer, let me tell you,’ he said, ‘you’ll never work again anywhere,’ he said. Vern said, ‘I know that, Mr. Sherman.’ And Mr. Sherman said, ‘Let me tell you, if any reporters or any investigators start coming around here, they’ll get their … they’ll never …’ Oh, he was mad. And Vern said, ‘I came over to tell you I was quitting, Mr. Sherman.’ ” Mrs. Thompson had been acting this with spirit, using a quiet voice when she spoke for Vern and a blustering tone for Mr. Sherman. In her own voice, she said, “If you’re wondering how I came to hear all this, I was strolling by Mr. Sherman’s office window — his bungalow, that is. I had Maureen out in her pram.” Maureen was the Thompsons’ youngest doll.

Jeannie might not have been listening. She started to tell something else: “You know, where we were before, on Vern’s last job, we weren’t in a camp. He was away a lot, and he left me in Amos, in a hotel. I liked it. Amos isn’t all that big, but it’s better than here. There was this German in the hotel. He was selling cars. He’d drive me around if I wanted to go to a movie or anything. Vern didn’t like him, so we left. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”