Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

“I just wondered,” said Charles. “I was wondering about that kind of situation,”

“Well, I don’t like it,” said Bernice. “You’re positively morbid. I’d rather talk to the cat.”

“Come on, kitty-kitty-puss,” Charles heard her say in the kitchen. “Come to your own mother, who loves you.”

At eleven o’clock Charles let himself into his own apartment. His wife was sitting up in bed, reading.

“Tough client?” she said. Her hair was wrapped in a scarf. The room smelled of perfume, of cream, of toning lotion.

“Kind of,” said Charles.

“Anything I’d be interested in?” said Marian.

“I don’t think so,” said Charles. “Something about airlines. Look, I think I’ll get myself a drink. I don’t suppose you want one,” he said.

“No,” said Marian. She closed her book as he came back into the room, glass in hand. “You look tired,” she said. She pushed her pillows on the floor and slid down in bed. “Good night,” she said, closing her eyes.

“Did you take a pill?” said Charles.

“No. I don’t need one. I’m quite tired.”

“Could you stay awake a minute, then?” said Charles. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“About airlines?” She opened one eye and he was reminded of how, the previous day, she had peered at him, without seeing anything, through her gloves.

“I saw you yesterday morning, in front of the museum,” he said. “You were wearing some black thing. God, you must have been cold.”

“Yes, I was. Is that what you want to talk about?”

“No.” He sat down on the edge of his own bed and gave her Miss Mercer’s letter. Marian propped herself up on one elbow while she read it. She folded it and ran her long thumbnail along the fold.

“When is she coming home?” she said.

“Tomorrow,” said Charles, “in the afternoon. What should we do?”

“Meet her,” said Marian. “What else can we do?” She lay back in bed again. “If there was ever anything else to be done, it looks as though we’ve missed it. Will you meet her, or shall I?”

“I thought you should, perhaps,” said Charles carefully. “Sometimes a woman is better…and if she sees me, she may be frightened.”

Marian turned her head to look at him. “Now, why in the world would she be frightened?” she said.

“I don’t know,” said Charles, confused. “I think that in these cases, the father…I mean, traditionally, the father….”

“Never mind,” said his wife. “We could, of course, both go.”

“Oh, no,” said Charles quickly. “The sight of us both …I mean, even if she hadn’t done anything, it might be overwhelming.”

“All right,” said Marian. She settled into her bed. “Well, good night again.”

“Is that all?” said Charles. He was surprised, and rather scandalized, that his wife could take it so calmly. He had known her to be greatly upset over much lesser things: a broken string of pearls, the accidental death of a cocker spaniel.

“What else can I say?” said Marian. “We can’t lie here and discuss her character and all her little ways. Evidently neither of us knows anything about them. We can talk about what lousy parents we are. That won’t help either. We might as well sleep, if we can.”

Marian was wonderful, he thought. He turned out the lights, leaving only the small spotlight over his bed and the light from the half-opened bathroom door. He undressed quietly. His father had liked Marian, he remembered. “If you marry your own kind of person, you know exactly where you’re at, every minute,” he had said, and he had been right. Charles and Marian had never had a full-dress quarrel. In this, Charles congratulated himself that he had made many allowances for her nerves and the strain of her profession. He looked around and, finding nothing he wanted to read, put out the light over his bed.

A moment later, in the dark, he heard his wife’s voice, so softly that he was not certain she had spoken at all.

“I said,” Marian repeated, “is he coming too?”

“Who?” said Charles, thinking, for a second, that she was talking in her sleep.

“The party of the second part,” said his wife. “Young Lochinvar. The boy with the good family and the good school.”

“No,” said Charles. “Why should he?”

“I thought not,” said Marian. “I suppose she went back to school all alone, too?”

“I suppose so,” said Charles, perplexed. “She cut her hair off,” he said, suddenly remembering this. “With a pair of nail scissors, I think.”

“Oh?” said Marian. “Well, that isn’t too serious. It’ll grow. I’ll show her how to fix it. That, at least, I can do for her.” Her voice dropped and he wondered if she could possibly be crying. She was silent and a few moments later she said quietly: “God, I don’t like them.”

“Who?” said Charles.

“Men,” his wife said. It was quite unlike Marian to be dramatic: he wondered if the shock of the news had unhinged her, and if she were planning to talk like this, off and on, all night.

“It’s the first inkling I’ve had that you hated men,” he said, smiling in the dark.

Marian stirred in her bed. “I don’t hate them,” she said. “If I hated men, I’d probably hate women, too. I don’t like them . It’s quite different.”

“I don’t see the difference,” said Charles, “but it doesn’t matter.” He sat up and switched on the light over his bed. His wife was crying. She had pulled the sheet up over her face and was drying her eyes on it.

“You mean,” said Charles, “that you hate men because of this boy, this…” He stopped, realizing he must not undersell his daughter.

“Weak, frightened, lying…” said Marian. “Thieves and rascals.” She sat up and, groping in the pocket of her dressing gown, found a handkerchief. “Thieves,” she said. She blew her nose. “And never any courage, not a scrap. They can’t own up. They can’t be trusted. They can’t face things. Not at that age. Not at any age.”

“I think it’s going a little far to say you can’t trust any man, at any age,” said Charles.

“I don’t know any,” said his wife.

“Well,” he said, “there’s me, for instance.” When she did not reply, he said: “Well, it’s a fine time to find out you don’t trust me.”

“The question isn’t whether I do or not,” said Marian. “I have to trust you. I mean, I either live with you, and keep the thing on the tracks, or I don’t. So then, of course, I have to trust you.”

“It’s not good enough,” said Charles. “You should trust me out of conviction, not because you think you have to.”

“All right,” said Marian.

“No,” he insisted. “It’s not good enough. Say you trust me.”

“All right,” said Marian. “I trust you. Don’t put the light out. I have to get some ice for my eyes. I’m working in the morning.”

“I’ll get it,” Charles said quickly, glad to end the conversation. One couldn’t blame her if she sounded a little unreasonable, he thought. It would be a shock for any mother. He put the ice cubes in a bowl and carried them back through the dark apartment to their bedroom.

Marian had stopped crying. “Put them in that gadget over there,” she said. “There, next to the lamp. That’s it.” She lay back again and Charles placed the mask of ice cubes across her eyes.

“You see,” he said, “men are some use. Shall I get you anything else?”

She shook her head, then she said: “You know who used to say that about men, ‘thieves and rascals’? My sister. You wouldn’t remember her. She didn’t come to our wedding. She didn’t want me to marry you. It broke her heart, I think. She went out to the West Coast, and she died before Joyce was born. I didn’t even know she was sick.”