Margaret Millar - Wives and Lovers

“Is that right.”

“I wouldn’t dream of using my real name at school. It’s Consuela, but I just call myself Connie, Consuela sounds so foreignish. If I just call myself Connie, people think my real name is Constance which stinks too, only at least it sounds as if I was born in this country. Which I was.”

“We all was,” the boy said. “My mother, too.”

“ His name’s Vicente,” Connie said, with a worldly shrug. “Only he’s not old enough yet to realize how awful it is.”

“I do so,” the boy protested.

“If you realize now when you’re only six, just think how much more you’re going to realize when you’re nearly sixteen. ”

The boy hung his head under the weight of this future, and began to shuffle his feet in the dust. Connie glanced at Hazel as if she wasn’t certain whether to continue the conversation or not. Then she said curtly, “Come on, Vin,” and she and the boy took their places on the bicycle simultaneously.

It wasn’t until they had moved a couple of yards ahead that Hazel recognized the skunk tail hanging from the carriage, and the reflector that spelled out “Watch My Speed.” She called out, and the bicycle stopped again, and the boy and girl turned their heads at exactly the same time and with equal suspicion.

“Maybe I can help,” Hazel said. “What are you looking for?”

“A hedge clipper,” Connie answered. “My pop lost it and it cost five ninety-five.”

“Enough for one hundred and nineteen ice cream cones, Pop said,” the boy added.

“That’s not counting tax,” Connie said severely. “If we don’t find it on the road, Pop said to go to Mr. Anderson’s house, 2124 the number is.”

“That’s my house.”

Connie blinked. “I know.”

“You can come in the yard and look around if you like.”

“Pop said to look up and down the road first.”

“It would probably be picked up by now if he lost it on the road,” Hazel said. “He may have left it at my house, I’ll go and see. Do you want to come inside and wait?”

“ I’ll come inside,” Connie said, flashing a look at the boy. “Vin can ride Bingo up and down the street.”

“He can come inside too,” Hazel said quickly. “He doesn’t look big enough to sit on the seat and reach the pedals.”

“You don’t have to sit on the seat to ride a bicycle. Go on, Vin, show the lady.”

Vin obliged.

“See?” Connie said, and Hazel admitted that she saw and the two of them went into the house.

The front room was empty but it had the air of having just been abandoned at the approach of company.

“Sit down, Connie,” Hazel said.

“I’d just as soon stand. I like to stand, I do it all the time.”

She stood along the wall with her hands behind her back. She felt too sophisticated to stare at the furniture with the crude curiosity of a child, the way Vin would have done. She narrowed her eyes and gazed out of their corners in a manner meant to indicate a bored indifference. It was the expression she used at school when one of the teachers asked her a question she couldn’t answer. She merely lifted her eyebrows and narrowed her eyes to show that she didn’t care but that she certainly would know the answer if she did care.

Every few minutes she heard Vin ride past the house yelling, “Honk, honk!” and “Yippee, bang bang!” She would have liked to open the door and order him to be quiet, but she didn’t want to move for fear the lady of the house might think she’d been snooping while she was gone.

When Hazel returned Connie had barely moved a muscle.

“I can’t find it,” Hazel said. “My sister-in-law and I both hunted for it.”

Though Connie continued to look bored, there was an undertone of anxiety in her voice: “Pop said not to bother you too much, but he’s pretty sure he couldn’t have dropped it on the road. It’s heavy, it would have made a noise and he’d have heard it. Pop’s awful careful about his tools.”

“Yes, I saw that.”

“And this was the last place he went to.”

“Well, I certainly can’t find it,” Hazel repeated. She was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable under the girl’s oblique gaze. The girl had not accused her of deliberately withholding the hedge clipper; the accusation lay in the facts themselves. Mr. Escobar had brought his hedge clipper to Hazel’s yard, and when he arrived home the clipper was missing. It was practically impossible, Hazel thought, for it to have fallen from the bicycle basket without Escobar noticing it.

“Maybe someone stole it,” Connie said.

“I don’t see how. Your father was working out in the yard all the time, and there wasn’t anyone else around, not while I was here anyway. Wait a minute and I’ll go and ask my cousin about it.”

“Pop said not to bother you too much, maybe I better just go.”

“It’s no bother,” Hazel said quite sharply. “I want to get this thing cleared up.”

She went into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. The blinds were drawn, and Ruth was lying on the bed with a cloth over her eyes. She was absolutely motionless, yet Hazel had the same impression that she’d had when she and Connie had come into the house, an impression of activity that stopped a split second before she opened the door. She wondered if Ruth had been listening at the door and if she’d been able to hear anything with the wind blowing so loud outside.

“What’s the matter?” Hazel said.

“I have a headache.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but Mr. Escobar’s girl is here.”

Ruth sat up and the cloth fell off her eyes into her lap.

“What?” she said stupidly. “Who?”

“The Mexican’s daughter.”

“Daughter?” She let out a sudden sharp laugh. “This is a surprise. He’s got a daughter, has he? Who’d have guessed it, from the look of him? What’s she like?”

“Quite pretty.”

“Pretty, is she? That is funny.” She laughed again. “She can’t take after him! ”

“Don’t laugh like that.”

“Like what? ”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“I don’t! I was laughing because it’s so funny, him having a daughter, and pretty at that. What’s she doing here?”

“She came to get her father’s hedge clipper. He says he left it here yesterday.”

“He’s lying!”

Hazel looked annoyed. “Why should he lie about it?”

“So he can get a new one out of you. His was old, I saw it, it was all rusty.”

“The girl told me it was brand new.”

“They’re all lying,” Ruth cried. “They’re all the same, sly and scheming behind those innocent eyes of theirs! Yes, those innocent velvet eyes, they can hide a lot.”

“Keep your voice down. She’s right in the front room.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.”

Ruth picked up the cloth that she’d had over her eyes and began to twist it in her hands. Hazel watched her uneasily. She was afraid that Ruth was going to have another of her nervous spells. They always followed the same pattern — there was the hard mirthless laughter, the talk about self-discipline, and then the moment when the discipline broke open at the seams, exposing a quivering and uncoordinated mass of tissue.

“ I certainly didn’t take his hedge clipper,” Ruth said. “What are you looking at me for? Why even ask me about it?”

“I thought you might have seen it.”

“I didn’t.”

“You said you did.”

“Only for a minute, long enough to see that it was old and rusty.” She fell back on the pillow, and when she spoke again her voice was high and suffering: “Anyway, it’s all a lie. The whole thing is a lie from beginning to end. Perhaps there never was a hedge clipper, perhaps I only imagined I saw it or I mistook it for something else. That’s it, I’m sure — I don’t believe there ever was such a thing, so I couldn’t have taken something that wasn’t there. You mustn’t accuse me.”