Margaret Millar - Wives and Lovers

“Oh?”

“Well, you do. And I just thought — oh well, skip it. Where’d he go?”

“He said he had to go home and get something; a sprayer. He says the eugenia hedge has some disease called scale.”

“It doesn’t look diseased to me.”

“He showed it to me himself. You know that part at the end where you thought the hedge was just dirty? It isn’t dirt at all. The sap has been sucked out. He showed me some of the things that do it. They’re like little bumps on the wood, hardly noticeable. He scraped some of them away with his thumbnail to show me. I told him, I said, why show me? I’m not the lady of the house, I just work here. And do you know what his answer was? He said he thought I’d be interested. Me, interested .” Ruth laughed, and color splashed across her cheeks. “I said—”

“Little bumps,” Hazel said bitterly. “Jesus Murphy, I thought we had everything, gophers, snails, sowbugs, ants, and now we got little bumps besides.”

“They can be sprayed.”

“I don’t know what’s the matter with this damn place.”

“Neglect is the matter.”

“Or maybe it isn’t the place, maybe it’s just me. I attract things, that’s all there is to it. I’m like Millie, I’ve got a jinx.”

Ruth looked blank. She didn’t know Millie or the nature of her jinx. “He said if the hedge is sprayed now the other things in the yard won’t catch the disease. He says it’s very catching.”

Like measles , Escobar had said, scraping the little bumps away with this thumbnail while Ruth watched him with fastidious distaste. She did not want to be out in the garden with a Mexican laborer, and she experienced a sense of shock and unreality at finding herself there, and even more strongly, the feeling that a cruel fate had driven her there. I did not come, I was driven.

Persecuted by fate, she stood beside the eugenia hedge and watched Escobar’s thumb. It was thick and blunt, the nail heavy with dirt and every crack in the skin outlined as if in charcoal. The thumb moved, bent on destruction, but without hurry, without savagery.

Like measles, Escobar said.

She jerked her eyes away, she laughed nervously, without mirth, she put her hand in the pocket of her apron and shifted her weight to her other foot. She coughed to clear her throat, and when her throat was cleared she had nothing to say. The rays of the sun pelted her face and she thought of the dark house with the blinds drawn and she could not believe that she had left it to come out here. I was driven.

Still she couldn’t force herself to return to the house, and in the end it was Escobar who left. He said, “I have a hand spray at home. I will go and get it. It is not far.”

She moved with quick jerky steps toward the back door, her head ducked as if to avoid a blow.

Escobar wheeled his bicycle out of the garage. A bicycle was a delicate and expensive vehicle, and Escobar lavished great care on his. It was over four years old now, but there wasn’t a single dent in the mudguard or a nick in the red and green paint. Throughout the years he had equipped it with several pounds of gadgets. It had two headlights, one reflector (plain) and a larger one bearing the words “Watch My Speed!” On the handlebars there was a bell, a horn, a speedometer, a basket and a rabbit’s foot, and from the end of the carrier at the back dangled a skunk’s tail. The original seat was softened with a lamb’s wool cover, and between the seat and the cover a St. Christopher’s medal was hidden.

Escobar adjusted the pedals and swung his right leg over the bar. He rode away, moving his feet up and down in a proud, ponderous, dignified manner. The reflectors winked behind his back, “Watch My Speed!”

From the kitchen window Ruth had seen him pedaling down the street like a grave and happy child.

“It’s a jinx,” Hazel said. “We’re a pair, Millie and me. Where’s my other shoe?”

“I thought you had it.”

“I haven’t.”

“I thought you took it away from her.”

The shoe was located under the bed with the lift flapping loose from the heel, but the dog Wendy had disappeared.

“Jesus Murphy !”

“She didn’t mean it,” Ruth said anxiously. “It can be fixed. Look, it’s easy as pie to fix.” She held the lift in place. “All it needs is a nail or two. I’ll pay for it, naturally. I’m going over to the Fosters’ tonight to sit with the children, and I’ll have the money.”

“Oh nuts, forget it.”

“Very well.”

From outside came a rhythmic hissing sound. A pulse began to beat in Ruth’s temple and the spot of color reappeared at the base of her throat.

“The Mexican’s back,” she said.

She went out into the kitchen and stood at the screen door.

Escobar was spraying the orange tree. She could see his face, among the leaves. It was beautiful and innocent, like Manuel’s face looking down at her through the green feathers of the pepper tree.

Some of the African tribes live in tree houses to protect themselves from the wild animals.

I think you need a rest, Miss Kane.

Mrs. Freeman heard the click of the front door. She laid aside her pen and waited, with a pleasant feeling of alarm and anticipation. Doors were, in her opinion, one of the most interesting inventions of man. A closed door held a secret, on the other side there could be practically anyone: Robert returning from his travels, one of the girls coming in after an early movie, a stranger looking for another stranger, an old friend or a pen pal arriving unexpectedly. It could be a lunatic, an escaped convict, a man with a gun. Mrs. Freeman had had considerable mental practice handling these eventualities. To the convict, the lunatic, and the man with the gun, she would be very amiable; she would disarm them by kindness (food, conversation, hot coffee, and if worst came to worst, the bottle of rum she’d saved from last Christmas). Having allayed their suspicions, she would then maneuver them into the kitchen, lock the door very fast, run over to Mr. Hitchcock’s place next door and phone the police. Sometimes, when she was alone in the house as she was now, she thought of possible hitches in these plans. The man with the gun might shoot her before she had a chance to be amiable to him, the lunatic might be beyond understanding and the convict, with the police on his trail, might be in too much of a hurry to dally over food and drink. There was also the fact that Mr. Hitchcock’s telephone had recently been disconnected.

Mrs. Freeman was, on the whole, rather glad to see Ruby.

“You gave me a start,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “I confess, I’ve never gotten used to staying alone in the house. You never can tell. Look at all those sex murders down in L.A. Even a town like this, I bet you’d be surprised at the things that are going on. My advice to young girls, and I see a lot of them, running a place like this, my advice is to stay out of bars. Bars are the breeding place of crime, also they don’t wash the glasses properly, I’ve heard, just rinse them in cold water. By the way, that Mr. Anderson phoned for you. Wait a minute, he left a number for you to call. Here it is, 23664.”

Without answering, Ruby started up the stairs.

“Aren’t you going to call him?”

“No — no, I’m too tired.”

“Maybe it’s about the job he promised you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Yon ought to care. Jobs don’t grow on trees. What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know.” She paused, leaning against the banister. “I don’t want to talk to him. He makes me feel crawly.”

“Crawly, for goodness sake. I thought he was such a nice man, clean-cut looking. Crawly. The way you girls talk, I don’t understand you.”