Margaret Millar - Wives and Lovers

“Hazel? Where?”

“At the bank. She avoided me.”

“Oh, I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

“It was quite intentional.”

“She’s nearsighted.”

“Not that nearsighted. She was in line at the very next window.”

“Well.”

“She cashed a check, a large check, judging from the number of bills the teller gave her.”

“They could have been ones.”

“They could have been, but they weren’t. I am not nearsighted. They were twenties.”

“Hazel doesn’t keep much money in the bank. I can’t understand it.”

“I can. It wasn’t her money, it was mine. Half mine, anyway.”

“I don’t see—”

“When my turn came I asked the teller to check the joint account I have with Gordon. There was five hundred dollars missing. It adds up, doesn’t it? She wasn’t cashing that check for herself but for Gordon. She knows where he’s gone. She must, if she’s going to send the money to him. It’s laughable, isn’t it? — she and Gordon may have planned this whole thing weeks ago.”

“She never said a word about it, not a word.”

“She wouldn’t. She and Gordon are hand in glove, always have been.”

The sun had passed the front window. Elaine went over and pulled back the drapes. In the morning light she seemed tired, but every curl was in place and her light shantung traveling suit looked very smart and new. When she was a girl, Elaine had shown few signs of youth, and now that she had reached her middle thirties she showed almost no signs of age.

She said, contemptuously, “How typical of Gordon, to drag other people into his childish schemes. He can’t even manage his own love affair. Wait until the girl finds him out. Just wait. He’ll come slobbering back to me wanting me to wipe his chin for him and change his bib. Just wait until his dear little Ruby catches on to him.”

“Hello, Judith,” Ruth said in a falsely bright manner.

Elaine turned abruptly. The girl was standing pressed against the door frame with a slice of bread in one hand and a piece of clay in the other.

She looked gravely at Ruth. “I made something. Do you want to see it?”

“I’d love to,” Ruth said. “It looks very interesting.”

“It isn’t interesting, it’s just a worm. But it’s a good worm. Paul screamed at it blue murder.”

“I don’t blame him. It’s such an excellent worm I feel like screaming myself.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Perhaps I will, later on when your mother leaves.”

“It doesn’t count if you don’t do it right away like Paul did.” For the first time since she entered the room she turned her eyes on her mother. “Who is Ruby?”

“She’s just a girl, a woman,” Elaine said. “And how many times have I told you not to go around in your bare feet like that prying into grown-ups’ conversations? It’s cheating.”

“Linda’s mother has ruby earrings.”

“Well, that’s nice.”

“They cost a million or two dollars.”

“Now, Judith, you know perfectly well that a pair of earrings doesn’t cost a million dollars.”

“Linda’s mother’s did.”

“All right, all right. ”

“She got them from her boyfriend.”

“Really now, Judith, you mustn’t—” Elaine turned, sighing, to Ruth. “She makes up the weirdest things, honestly.”

Ruth smiled at the girl. “I brought Wendy along.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you want to pet her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll pet her later on when my mother leaves.”

She put the clay worm on the table beside Ruth and walked silently out of the room.

“It’s always like that,” Elaine said. “Always. The least little thing and she turns against me. You’d think I was an ogre or something. Why does she do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s no time to be worrying about it. I ordered the cab for eleven-thirty.”

“It’s almost that now.”

“I — it’s hard to believe I’m really leaving. I haven’t been anywhere for so long.” She hesitated. “Do I look all right? — I mean, not like a country bumpkin?”

“You look very citified.”

“Do I, really? People dress in Chicago, you know. Not like out here.”

When the cab came, Ruth gathered the children on the front porch to say goodbye to their mother. Since Elaine never went as far as the corner grocery store without last-minute admonitions, a trip to Chicago was worth a record number: promise not to eat too many sweets, to say your prayers, brush your teeth, stay out of the loquat tree, watch for cars, don’t spill anything on the new rug, keep out of the gopher poison in the garage, drink your orange juice, don’t catch poison oak; be good, obedient, neat, careful, wise, polite, clean and healthy.

The air was thick as jelly with promises. The baby went to sleep in Ruth’s arms, Paul played with the dog, Judith ate three bananas.

Elaine departed in the cab, laughing a little because she had wanted this trip for a long time, and crying a little too, because this wasn’t how she had planned it. She had meant to go with Gordon and the children, a happy little family off on a visit to Grandma. “What a beautiful family you have,” people would say. Or, “Such lovely, well-mannered children. It isn’t often in this day and age—”

No, it wasn’t often.

She leaned out of the back window of the cab and waved her lace handkerchief in farewell. But there was no one left on the porch except the little white mongrel scratching its ear.

Elaine put the lace handkerchief back in her pocketbook and dabbed at her eyes with a piece of Kleenex. She must keep the handkerchief clean for the plane trip. Kleenex looked common.

On Monday night the wind stopped and fog began to move in from the sea across the city like a giant cataract across an eye.

Mrs. Freeman watched it from her dining-room window. It settled down into the trees and between the houses and crept under the cracks of doors; lights grew hazy, people vanished; the foghorn began to bray from the lighthouse on the Mesa.

Mrs. Freeman closed all the windows and pulled down the blinds and went back to the letter she had received in the morning mail. It was written on cheap hotel stationery and the handwriting was like a child’s, hesitant and uneven, and punctuated with blobs of ink.

Dear Carrie, I bet you’re sore at me not writing before this but you know me “old girl,” I’m no good writing letters and stuff. Anyway here goes.

I am in Vegas where all the “big shots” come here to gamble. Every day you see somebody famous like movie stars and gangsters. I’ve been working steady for a week now a swell job with tips. I “turn on the charm” for them and the tips really roll in. You have to smile a lot that’s the secret, the others haven’t got wise to it yet.

It’s pretty hot here now in the day but the nights are just right. People come here with azsma and go away cured, also T.B. Well that’s about all Carrie. Just wait I’ll hit the jackpot yet and then I’ll be home and we’ll live in “the lap of the gods,” you can buy a whole new outfit. I miss you a lot and would sure love a home cooked meal for a change. I miss the ocean too, they can have the desert, give me a view of the sea any time. Well I guess that’s it.

Love,

P.S. Happy birthday on the 3rd of Sept. Ha, ha, I bet you thought I forgot!

Her birthday was on the fifth, but it was the nicest letter she had ever received from him. When the doorbell rang her heart quickened for an instant in the hope that it might be Robert, that the act of writing to her had made him homesick and he had decided to come back right away for a home-cooked meal and a view of the sea.