Margaret Millar - Wives and Lovers

“Shut up,” Hazel said, but without authority, without even conviction. “He’ll hear you.”

“Let him. I want him to hear. All this time him putting on the big act, poor Ruby, Ruby needs help, there’s something the matter with her. Well, I know who there’s something the matter with and it’s not me. It’s him. Him and his greasy eyes that never let you alone, that you can’t ever get away from because even when he’s not around I feel them looking at me and I get sick in my stomach!”

“You’re imagining things.”

“Am I? That’s what you think. I’ve been around. I know men like him.”

Hazel finished the beer and put the empty glass on the sink. With one part of her mind she felt pity for George and the need to defend him: George has nice eyes, they’re not greasy, they’re luminous — and he always tries to help people, not just you. But from another and deeper part of her mind, words gushed up like water from an underground river: Go on, tell me more. Show me how you hate him. Talk louder and he’ll hear you. Let him find out. Raise your voice, Ruby.

“Shut up,” she said roughly. “You’ve got no right shooting off your mouth about one of my best friends.”

Ruby didn’t answer. She had picked up a crumb of meat from the table and was rolling it between her fingers until it looked like a little brown pill.

“You’ve got no right,” Hazel repeated. “And anyway, what are you doing going out with him if you can’t stand the sight of him?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have a reason.”

“No. He came to the house and wanted to take me for a drive and I was too tired to argue, that’s all, too tired.” She made another brown pill and placed it carefully beside the first one on the oilcloth table cover. “We drove up Garcia Road.”

“You don’t have to tell me where you—”

“I’ve never been in that part of town before. It’s very pretty, all the trees and flowers, and the houses with such wide windows like the people in them have got nothing to hide. I’d like to live in a place like that with big wide windows and never pull the blinds. I would keep myself very well groomed so that people walking by on the sidewalk would never catch me looking sloppy or anything. I would always have on a pretty dress or one of those quilted satin housecoats, and I’d keep the house very clean and tidy, nothing lying around. People walking by would glance in and wonder who I was and think how lucky, that girl, to have such a beautiful clean house with such shiny furniture.” She paused for breath, sucking the air in through her mouth greedily as if it was not air at all but an ether to prolong the dream. “Blue is my color but a red robe would be nicer. It’s more cheerful, like Christmas. Red always reminds me of Christmas at home.”

But she had stretched the dream too far — there had never been a Christmas at home that she could remember without bitterness — and it snapped like an elastic band and stung her skin and brought moisture to her eyes. Through the moisture she could see Hazel looking blurred and fuzzy as if she had just grown a crop of tiny feathers.

“You should have something to eat,” Hazel said.

“No. No, please, I’m not hungry.”

“A glass of milk, then.”

“No.” She blinked the moisture out of her eyes. “Gordon lives in a house like that, doesn’t he?”

“Like—? Oh. Yes, kind of like that.”

“Did you ever go there?”

“Once.”

“It’s like I said, isn’t it, when you walk by you can look right into the windows?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe you can.”

“I bet she keeps the place very clean. Just judging from what I’ve heard of her, I bet she’s very tidy.”

“I guess she is,” Hazel said. The girl was making her nervous. She wished George would come back and take her away. “I don’t notice those things much.”

“Naturally, being a friend of Gordon’s, I’ve had invitations to dinner and things like that, but I’ve always been too busy to go, so I’ve never even met his wife. I guess you know her pretty well.”

“Well enough.”

“What’s she look like?”

“She’s kind of blonde and pale.”

“Pretty?”

“She has nice teeth. She gets them cleaned every three months. That’s the only time I ever see her, when she comes to the office, except the once I went out to the house to take her the car keys.”

“I thought you might be friendly with her, she might tell you things.”

“No. She isn’t the kind that confides in the office help.”

“You don’t like her much, I can tell that.”

“I don’t think about her.”

“I do,” Ruby said in a whisper. “I think about her a lot.”

Hazel gave her a wary, uneasy glance. “If that’s your idea of fun, go ahead.”

“I think about her, what is she like, and is she prettier than I am, and what do her and Gordon talk about and what does she give him for breakfast and do they sleep in the same room — all the things that Gordon never tells me, that’s what I think about. Gordon and I — Gordon—” She put her head down on the table and cradled it with her arms for comfort. Her voice came out, muffled by the press of flesh: “You wouldn’t understand. Nobody would, nobody.”

Slowly and stiffly Hazel crossed the room and sat down at the table opposite her. Her hands were shaking and her teeth were clenched together so tight that her jaws ached.

“So you’re the girl,” she said, sounding helpless and confused, as if the fact had struck her like a fire in the night, exposing her nakedness. “The one he talks to on the phone, that’s you.”

“We never talked more than a minute. We—”

“Why did you have to tell me? I’ve got troubles of my own. I didn’t want to know. Why did you have to tell me?”

“I — don’t know.”

“I’ve kept out of it. I knew something was going on but I managed to keep out of it. It’s none of my business what Gordon does, or you.” But she was aware as soon as the words were out that they were a lie. What Gordon did was her business because he was her employer, he paid her salary; and what Ruby did was her business because it affected not only Gordon, but George as well. “Why drag me into it, for God’s sake?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“How many other people have you told?”

“No — no one.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“Just her — Elaine.”

“Just Elaine,” Hazel said with a brief, mirthless laugh. “That’s very funny, if you know Elaine. Just.” She paused a moment. Through the closed door she could hear George’s bass rumble and she thought, so that’s why she hates George so much, not for what he is or does, but because he isn’t Gordon. “How did Elaine find out?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly one night she phoned the café where I meet Gordon and asked for him. She told him the children were sick and he was to come right home. I said to Gordon, we’ll have to meet some place else, and he said it was no use, no matter where we went she would find out.” She raised her head. Her eyes were dry and glassy like marbles, and there was a round red indentation on her left cheek where it had pressed too long and tight against one of the buttons on her sleeve. “He’s scared of her. There’s no fight in him.”

“I’ve seen him fight.”

“Not her. Not against her. He means to, he says he will, and then when the time comes he can’t. It’s like she paralyzes him and he can’t even talk to her. How can anything be settled if he won’t talk to her? What will happen to us?”

“You already know. It’s already happened.”

“You mean bad things.”