Margaret Millar - Wives and Lovers

The dog paused and Ruth said, “Come and get your goody. Here’s your goody. Come on.”

She opened the door and the dog streaked into the house. Escobar had a momentary glimpse of her before she closed the door again. She was an old lady with white hair.

Ruth fed Wendy the rest of the scrambled eggs from breakfast, bit by bit, and as she fed her she talked. This was Ruth’s hour — two of them had gone to work, and the other one was still in bed — and she intended to spend it as she usually did. But with the Mexican out in the yard, she felt self-conscious, as if he might be eavesdropping. He couldn’t hear anything, of course, since she talked in whispers to avoid waking Josephine, but still he was there, and the words she used to the dog were a little different from usual.

“There, my pretty, there’s your goody. What a glutton you are. What a fat little glutton. And the manners! Sniffing people like that, my goodness, what bad manners!”

He probably smells, Ruth thought. He looked clean enough but they all smelled under the surface. Their dark skins didn’t show the dirt and they were too lazy to wash if it wasn’t necessary. Bone-lazy. She would have to supervise him and see that he didn’t cheat Hazel out of her hard-earned money by standing around watering things instead of really working, or by taking too much time to eat his lunch. Hazel was too easy on other people and too easy on herself as well.

You had to watch these Mexicans very carefully. They were sly. They put on a great show of innocence and stupidity but Ruth saw through that clearly enough. She had had several of them in her fifth-grade class before she lost her job, and one of them in particular was very sly. He had curly black hair and brown eyes like an angel’s, but Ruth knew that the instant she turned her back the Mexican boy did something. What this something was or how he did it, she never knew, but she knew it was done. The boy terrified her and she reported him to the principal at least once a week. “He does something, Mr. Jamieson, I swear it, I feeI it!” “I think you need a rest, Miss Kane.”

That had been two years ago, but she still thought of the Mexican boy, she thought of his smooth innocent forehead and the dark angel’s eyes. In the middle of the night she tried and tried to figure out what he had done, until desperation seized her and she had to cram her fist into her mouth to keep from screaming and waking Hazel. The boy had become a symbol of fascinating, exciting, evil things she dared not name.

You need a rest, Miss Kane.

To: The Superintendent of Schools, Ernest Colfax, A.M.

From: Percy Hoag, M.D.

I advise an immediate medical leave of absence for Miss Ruth Kane, such leave to extend for an indefinite period of time.

She was only thirty-six, but her hair was white and her skin and eyes were pale as if she had been bleeding internally for years.

Josephine called from the bedroom, “Ruth.”

“Coming.”

She went through the dining room, drying her hands on her apron, and opened the door of Josephine’s bedroom.

“Oh dear,” Josephine said. “I woke up — what time is it?”

“Nine.”

“Oh dear.”

“How do you feel?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t moved yet.” She hadn’t moved at all during the night. She’d gone to sleep on her back with her head propped on two pillows, and now she was awake in the same position, and not a strand of her long brown hair was out of place. Nearly every night Josephine slept like this, quietly and without dreams, and when she woke up she lay without moving for a long time, remote and self-contained. During the day she brooded or wept, she had placid daydreams or she quarreled, she had headaches and spells of overwhelming fear. But at night she entered another world, and emerging from it in the morning she was rejuvenated. Her face was untroubled, her eyes clear and lustrous, and her skin seemed to glow. It was as if she drew nourishment, during sleep, from a part of her mind or body that she didn’t know existed.

“Something woke me,” Josephine said. “A noise. There, you hear it?”

They listened and heard just outside the window the spasmodic sounds of Escobar’s shovel. The faint shriek as it cut the ground, and the smack as Escobar spanked each clod of earth to free the roots of the weeds.

“That’s the Mexican,” Ruth said.

“So early.”

“Do you want a graham cracker before you get out of bed?”

“No, no, I think—” Josephine moved her head experimentally. “No. Is Harold—? Of course. Oh dear. I guess I’ll get up. It’s Saturday, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Harold’s off this afternoon. It’s nice having Harold around. The days—” She helped herself up with her elbows — “awfully long sometimes. The waiting — hand me my corset, will you? — four months yet, oh dear.”

She stood up and began lacing up the maternity corset, not too tight, just tight enough to give her some support. She was small-boned and slender, and her condition was becoming much too noticeable.

“I wish I was taller,” she said. “If you’re tall you can carry things off. Like clothes.”

Ruth was making the bed. When Josephine paused between sentences Ruth could hear the gentle shriek, smack, shriek, smack , of Escobar’s shovel. He’s working. Well, he’d better be. I’ll keep an eye on him. I’ll see Hazel doesn’t get cheated.

She went to the window and peered out through layers of mauve net curtains. He was only two feet away from her. He had rolled up the sleeves of his plaid shirt and opened the collar. He wore a yellow undershirt. Sweat glistened on his forehead and in the crooks of his elbows, and his hair was a cap of wet black silk. He was breathing through his mouth. She could see part of his lower front teeth, and they were very white, almost as if he’d cleaned them.

He looked up suddenly and his eyes pierced the mauve net curtains like needles. She stepped back with a shock, feeling the needles in her breasts and her stomach. Her insides curled up and then expanded, disintegrated, dissolved into fluid. I feel quite faint. It’s the heat. It’s going to be a hot day.

“It’s going to be quite a hot day,” she said.

“Oh, I hope not,” Josephine said. “I feel the heat so. Remember? — I never used to mind the heat— Remember? — I never even sweated. And now — it’s the extra weight, don’t you think? Harold says I should sweat if I’m hot. Otherwise the poison stays in my system.”

Josephine said the same things nearly every morning. Her mind revolved in ever-decreasing circles as her body became larger. I feel, how do I feel? Have I a headache? I wish I was taller. The heat bothers me. Harold says. Harold, Harold.

Always she referred to Harold. No matter how small the circle got, Harold was right there in the middle of it, sometimes sliding along smoothly and sometimes getting bounced and jostled and bruised beyond all recognition.

Harold was Josephine’s second husband. Her first had been a silent irascible man, a veterinary doctor named Bener. Though he kept no pets of his own, Bener had a great deal of patience with the animals he boarded and treated. He had none at all with Josephine, and it was rather a relief to both of them when he died quietly one night, of coronary thrombosis, leaving all his money to his mother and his brother Jack. Josephine later received some of it under the Community Property Law. She spent it on clothes and then she married Harold.

She married Harold partly because he was handsome and partly because he was the exact opposite of Bener. In their three years together Harold had never spoken to her sharply, and even lately, when she wept or abused him and all men, including God, Harold remained tender and took the abuse as being well deserved.