Margaret Millar - Wives and Lovers

He smiled at her as she came down the walk. “I was just coming in.”

“It’d be better if we talked out here. Too many people.” She opened her purse and took out the roll of bills bound together with an elastic. It looked like a lot of money and Hazel wondered if Gordon knew how little it actually was in these times. Maybe to him it looked like more because it meant his freedom for a week or two and he was too excited at the prospect to think further ahead than that.

He handed her two checks, one for five hundred dollars made out to Cash, and the other for a hundred made out to Hazel.

“What’s this for?”

“Your salary for the next two weeks.”

“What am I supposed to do to earn it?”

“Answer the phone. Cancel all appointments for the next month. If there are any emergencies send them over to Dr. Tower. Appointments for routine check-ups and cleanings you can step up till next month if the people are willing to wait. If they aren’t ask Dr. MacPherson to take them. Tell everyone I’m on a holiday, naturally.”

“Then you’re coming back?”

“I hope so. You’ll hear from me anyway.” He paused for a moment. “Thanks for everything, Hazel. Not just getting the money, but for understanding that this is the only way I could do it. It seems pretty sordid, I guess, for me to be sneaking away like this. But I couldn’t go home to say goodbye because I know I wouldn’t get away. Elaine would pull out every stop on the organ, and I’m afraid I’d change my mind. I want to do now what has to be done eventually. Ruby isn’t the issue, I want you to understand that. It’s true that if I didn’t know her and if she didn’t love me, I probably wouldn’t have the guts to leave Elaine now. But Ruby has caused nothing, do you see that?”

“Yes.”

“She’s over at her room packing. She’s been at it all morning and she’s only got one suitcase. I wonder if she’s giving me a chance to change my mind, or if she actually doesn’t want to leave under the circumstances.”

“Maybe she’s just particular,” Hazel said.

“That must be it.”

“It must be.”

Gordon drew in his breath. “Well, I guess that covers everything. Be sure and be at the bank when it opens tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“It’s a hell of a thing to say about your wife, but she might try to close our joint account and I don’t want you to be caught with two bad checks.”

“You’d better tell me where you’re going.”

“San Francisco, probably. Then if anything happens Ruby will at least have her aunt’s place to go to. Anything could happen you know, an accident or something like that.”

“Don’t sound so gloomy, Gordon.” It was the first time she had ever called him Gordon. She was surprised how the name slipped out so easily, as if she never expected him to come back and change into Dr. Foster again.

The wind veered suddenly, and picking up the dirt from the playground hurled it across the street. They both closed their eyes automatically until the sound of the wind died down.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Hazel said.

“I guess not. Well, thanks again, Hazel. I’d better get going, with four hundred miles to drive.”

They shook hands, and Hazel said, “Goodbye and good luck.”

“Goodbye, Hazel.”

She waited on the sidewalk until his car reached the corner, then she waved to him and Gordon waved back, very gaily.

Though she had a premonition that she’d never see him again, she wasn’t depressed at the prospect of losing a good job with a pleasant boss. It occurred to her then, for the first time, that she mightn’t have been so eager to help Gordon get away if he hadn’t been taking Ruby with him.

She stood on the small roofless porch reluctant to go inside and face the questions of Josephine and Ruth. A mockingbird flew up out of the pyracantha bush. Though the berries were barely beginning to show orange, the birds had already been at them. She resolved now, as she did every year, to save the berries for Christmas decoration by screening them with nets, but she knew perfectly well that by Christmas the bush would look as it always did. The red berries would be crushed and half-eaten, showing their yellowish pulp, like ruined immature apples, and every tiny leaf would be partly nibbled to its spine by snails and beetles. Even if she could save the bush from the birds it was hard to wash the beetles off before bringing the berries into the house. The beetles hid and clung, and only after they’d been in the house for a day or two would they abandon the berries and seek the bright yellow patches in the slipcover of the davenport. Motionless and rapt, they would sit absorbing the color. They never returned to the berries, and they never went anywhere else in the house.

The mockingbird came back and began to squawk insults at her from the porch railing.

A teenaged girl was coming up the street on a bicycle, riding very slowly, wobbling from side to side to keep her balance. She had long black hair that danced in a frenzy around her head with every gust of wind. Perched on the carrier behind her was a boy of five or six, hanging on to the girl’s waist and holding his legs out in the air to avoid interfering with the girl’s pedaling. In the basket at the front sat a fat sunburned baby with a soother in his mouth. Every time the bicycle wobbled the baby lurched to one side, but he didn’t make a sound, either because he didn’t want to lose the soother, or because he was enjoying the ride. The girl paid no attention to the baby or the boy behind her. Like the captain of a well-run ship, she seemed to assume that they each knew their places and would perform their duties.

The bicycle zigzagged again, and Hazel started down the porch steps and called out, “Aren’t you afraid he’ll fall?”

The girl stared at Hazel suspiciously for a moment. Then she applied the brakes and put her left foot down on the road. Simultaneously, as if from long habit, the boy put his left foot on the road, and slid off the carrier. “I didn’t hear what you said, lady.”

“I was just wondering if the baby would fall when you’re going so slow and wobbly like that.”

“He won’t fall,” the girl said flatly, blinking her dark eyes at the baby. “I got him tied in. Anyway, I’m only going slow because I’m looking for something. I can ride perfect, without hands even.”

“And backwards, and standing on the seat,” the boy added.

“My goodness,” Hazel said. “I never even heard of that.”

“Connie can do it,” the boy said. “Go on, Connie, do it for her.”

Connie hesitated, torn between the desire to show off and the desire to appear sophisticated. “Naw,” she said. “That’s baby stuff, and Pop wouldn’t like it anyway.” She explained to Hazel, “It’s my pop’s bicycle.”

“He goes to work on it,” the boy said. “He’s a gardener.”

“A landscape gardener,” the girl corrected him with a frown.

“I wouldn’t know the difference,” Hazel said.

“There’s lots of difference. You get more money if you’re landscape.”

The soother fell out of the baby’s mouth and he let out a howl of rage. The girl glanced at Hazel with some contempt. “See? I told you. He’s yelling because he thinks the ride’s over.” She picked the soother up off the road, wiped the dirt off on her blouse and popped it back into the baby’s mouth. “He’s not afraid of falling, even if he could. Which he can’t. Are you, Bingo?”

Bingo rolled his eyes and Hazel laughed. “He’s very cute.”

“He’s called Bingo because my mother was at a Bingo game just before he was born, only his real name’s Truman.” The girl added, with infinite scorn, “My parents haven’t the faintest idea how to name children.”