You’re no good. You’re no good anymore for anything. That’s what you told yourself the afternoon you left the office and went to Eighty-fifth Street, the day she moved here. You’re in for it now, you thought, you’ve let this thing ride you into a hole there’s no getting out of.
She was there, moving chairs around and arranging rugs, with a silent concentration that made you laugh in spite of yourself. She changed them back and forth with an intense seriousness that was new to you, while you sat on the divan against the wall, smoking cigarettes and pretending to join in her earnestness. Later you understood that with her when a thing was once placed it was there to stay. Like the red rug she put just inside the entrance; it was so thick that every time the door opened it turned up the corner or got stuck, but when one day in exasperation you kicked it into the middle of the room you found it back in its old place the next evening, and you had to change it to the bedroom yourself.
When she agreed, on your return from the Pennsylvania trip, to leave Twenty-second Street and take a place with you as Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, she wanted it to be a furnished flat. It would cost too much, she said, to buy furniture, and would be too much bother. You were thinking to yourself that you weren’t really doing it for her at all, that never in your life had you had a place that was really yours, with your own things, never once had you sat in a chair that belonged to you. In any event, no matter what happened, it would be nice to have the rooms and furniture. You were pleasantly thrilled, that first time you came up these stairs and opened the door with your key. In a plain clean gingham dress Millicent looked quite domestic, normal, just a woman like any other woman, rather homely to be sure. Those were your rugs she was dragging around, those new fat clean cushions were yours, there was the upholstered leather chair you had brought especially for yourself.
You went through the little center passage, with the bathroom on the left, to the rear room. The beds had already been put up, one against either wall. You probably wouldn’t be able to sleep here very often, but there was your own bed, with its thick new mattress and bulging pillow of down. Millicent hadn’t understood why you insisted on two beds; she said she always slept so well that you could toss around all night as far as she was concerned. You went over and felt of the blankets and comforter. Then you went to the hall and got the bag you had brought, filled with additional purchases, and unpacked it, putting each article away in a considered spot—toothbrush, hairbrush, scissors, slippers, comb, a carton of cigarettes, benzine for your cigarette lighter.
“You got too many towels,” said Millicent from the door.
Under her silent indifference she was interested in all the pretty new things, more than she had been in her clothes. She helped you make up a list of items that had been overlooked: ashtrays, waste baskets, clothes hangers. She arranged the shades on the wall lights, carefully placed the two bronze vases on the table in front, and finally squatted on the floor and began putting away the books in the shelves in the corner. You knelt to help her. They were books she had brought from downtown, popular novels and detective stories.
“It’s going to be nice here,” she said.
You nodded. “Aren’t you glad we went ahead and bought our own furniture?”
“Yes, it wasn’t as much trouble as I thought it would be. It must have cost a lot of money.”
That was in September—a year ago September. It seems like a hundred. And yet in a way not a single thing has happened since then. It was already all over. What have you learned that you didn’t already know? Pathetically you knelt there and handed her the books, one by one, with your guts full of hate, knowing that whenever she wanted to she could do you in again, make you against your will lean back and close your eyes and feel that terrible tight strangling come in your throat.…
It isn’t in her at all—but it must be, or you’re crazy. Mrs. Jordan apparently thinks she’s just a stupid little woman without enough respect for herself to keep her clothes clean, judging from what she said to Grace one day. Grace likes her, likes to be with her or she wouldn’t come around here so often. There’s nothing queer in it, Grace is all right, just an ordinary good-looking girl like any of the girls you see anywhere.
“You’re too darned lazy to live,” she said to Millicent one evening, “but I love you just the same.”
It sounded grotesque to hear that word love used to her. Even as a joke, and probably Grace meant it. I love you. For that matter who is there you could say it to? Imagine Erma, your dear wife! I love you. My god! Of course that was one woman to another woman. Try it on a man. Dick or Larry or Schwartz or Victor—Victor would be perfect. I love you, you damn lousy pig.…
Jane talked as if she knew something, last summer when you came back from Maine, and again the other day. That telephone number…Millicent acted queer too, about the same time. So for that matter did all of them. They might as well mind their own business—what do they think you are, an imbecile that has to have his shirt buttoned for him? Jane does, you might as well admit it, she thinks just that. She thinks you ought to find an interest in life! She’s dumb and futile as the rest—wanted you to go with her and her menagerie down to Nassau and lie around in a bathing suit and build forts in the sand. Thanks, you should have said, I’ve got an interest in life, I’ve got a pretty mistress in a pretty little flat, with a bowl of flowers on a stand and William the Conqueror on a table.…
That was funny, the only really funny thing that Millicent ever did. You thought you were being ironic when you brought the thing here, and she went you one better. It was only a few days after you moved in that she said there ought to be more vases and things. In fact you hadn’t bought any bric-a-brac at all except the two bronze bowls. The next afternoon you went to a department store and got some candlesticks, and some more vases, and two or three little bronze figures. She tried them here and there and finally got them arranged to her satisfaction, while you sat with an unread evening paper on your lap, grinning inwardly at what Erma would have thought of this display of art objects.
“It’s very nice,” said Millicent finally, standing in front of you and looking around to view the effect, “but there ought to be something big for the table. A big statue or something. I saw one over on Broadway yesterday of some girls, with some bunches of grapes, that was only seven dollars.”
“Ha, a statue!” you exclaimed.
“Yes, for the table.”
“I know the very thing. Beautiful white marble, and just the right size. I’ll get it tomorrow.”
The next day you went to Park Avenue, wrapped a piece of paper around the head, and carried it to a taxi. You were afraid you might have to get someone to help you, but were able to manage it all right when you once got it on your shoulder. Half an hour later, panting after the two flights of stairs, you let it down in the middle of the table, removed the paper and invited Millicent to admire.
“It’s very modern, a fine piece of work,” you said. “Its name is William the Conqueror.”
She stood and looked at it solemnly, and then went up to it and rubbed her hand over the roughness of the column and the white smoothness of the cheek, and brow. You felt the hand as intensely as if it had been on your own skin, and with an effort you controlled an impulse to pull it violently away—to seize her wrist in both hands and twist it till it snapped.
“It looks like you.” She chuckled. “I think it looks exactly like you.” She turned and looked at you appraisingly. “If you were really like that,” she said, “you wouldn’t be afraid of me.”
Startled and astonished, you exclaimed, “Good lord, I’m not afraid of you!”
“Oh yes you are. You think I’m wicked. All men do, just because I’m not ashamed of anything. That’s why they don’t mind if I’m not pretty.”
“Who told you that? Somebody told you that.”
She dismissed the question with a shake of her head, and put her hand again on the marble, caressingly. “It’s very nice the way it comes out of that rock,” she said.
She had taken all the flavor out of your irony, and you wished you had left it at home in its corner.
The next evening you came in and up the stairs, and let yourself into the front room, and at the first glance around you sat down on the nearest chair, with your hat and coat still on, stared incredulously, and roared with laughter. How you laughed! Millicent sat in the blue chair, reading, and on the table beside her stood William the Conqueror with a string of little yellow chrysanthemums around his neck!
“No, it’s too damn good!” you choked. “My god it isn’t possible! Erma darling come and look at it!”
Millicent, unmoved and unsmiling, merely said:
“I don’t think it’s so funny. I think they look nice there.”
You spluttered into another roar. Then suddenly you became calm. “Look here,” you said, “just as a matter of curiosity, exactly why did you do that?”
She had closed the book in her lap and sat quietly regarding you with her unwavering gaze.
“I don’t know what you mean. I just did it.”
“You did it to make fun of me, didn’t you? I ask in the interest of science. Don’t mind my feelings.”
“Why should I make fun of you? I don’t think you’re funny.”
“Come, you’re not so stupid,” you insisted, “what were you thinking when you hung that thing there?”
A chuckle came from her throat. “I was thinking that if I hadn’t spent a dollar for those flowers, I’d have twenty dollars left out of the money you gave me this week.”
You looked at her suspiciously and helplessly; the laughter was gone. But you felt no resentment, it was too vastly comic, even considered as a mere coincidence: and you doubted, and still doubt, if that was the truth of it. Who could be more unlike than the brilliant cynical articulate Erma and this little dumb drab insect? Yet observe the parallel! What hidden centuries of preparation led up to that identical gesture? A part of you, the part that was still able feebly to pretend that it was looking across the footlights, would have liked to tell Erma about it, would have enjoyed her exclamation of delight at this perfect confirmation of her malice.
The temptation arrived, for it was only a few days later that she returned from the mountains, in an unusually good humor and loaded with scandal. That first dinner in the apartment with her, alone together in the luxurious and spacious surroundings—your first dinner away from Millicent in two months—gave you an immense feeling of relief and gratitude, an assurance of solidity and security which you felt you owed to her. You felt that for all her egotism and her silky brutality she was the best friend you had, and that she was strong and confident and wise; you wanted to tell her about Millicent, you wanted to say to her:
“I’m tied somehow, I don’t know how, to an ugly and ignorant little bitch whom I despise. She is dull, unhealthy, perverted, false (that would be good, Erma would smile at that), but the intimate touch of her hands has stayed with me twenty years in my dreams and now I’m a hopeless slave to it. For god’s sake tell me what to do.”
Erma would have said, put a pillow on her face and sit on it while you count ten thousand. At that she might have pulled you out of it, just for the fun of showing what she could do. What could she have done? What could anybody do except choke her, or smother her, or shoot her? You’ve tried hard enough. What could anybody do?
Erma couldn’t understand why you hadn’t gone to the Adirondacks, why you’d gone off alone somewhere in Pennsylvania and hadn’t even taken one of the cars. She said you looked yellow, bad around the eyes, worse than she’d ever seen you. What was the matter? You grinned it off and declared it to be a combination of hard work and longing for her; and after dinner went to your room and examined yourself carefully in the mirror. You found yourself evading the reflection of your own eyes and forced your gaze into them. What was back of those brown and white balls, you demanded. What uneasy secret things were happening back there? What rust or decay was eating into that intricate mechanism and turning its order into chaos? Great god, what was happening to you? Steadily you gazed, and your eyes looking back at you seemed suddenly friendly and unafraid—but there was something back of them, something that made you almost visibly shudder.—Erma was right, you looked yellow; you were in fact a fairly attractive man, but you wouldn’t be very long if this kept up.
Now that Erma was returning, as you had explained to Millicent, the daily arrangement of your movements presented a little difficulty. You had always kept yourself pretty well at Erma’s disposal, when she was in town, for bridge, dinners, theatre, opera, concerts, dances. Of course there had been frequent and extended periods when you were, so to speak, on vacation, but their nature made it impractical for you to expect the convenience of a notice in advance. You had a telephone installed at Eighty-fifth Street and told Millicent that whenever possible you would let her know during the afternoon whether you would be able to come for dinner—not that it mattered particularly, since you always went to a restaurant.
You had never before realized, finding time heavy on your hands, how well-filled it actually was. As the autumn weeks rolled by and the first snow came, you thought sometimes that it was coming out all right after all, that being with her continuously for two months had tied you up in a knot which was now being unraveled by the resumption of a normal routine; but then you would find yourself thinking of her, specifically, when dancing with someone at a party, or in the middle of a play, or at Jane’s house with the children playing and shouting around you. You couldn’t get her away from your mind. It was all in you; she didn’t bother you, not her. You would telephone her from the booth in the cigar store on Broadway, not wanting to call from home or the office:
“I’m sorry, Mil, I can’t make it today or tomorrow, or Thursday either. I’m pretty sure I can Friday.”
“All right,” her voice would come.
“Won’t you miss me?” You would despise yourself for each word as you uttered it.
“Of course I will, but Grace will go to some shows with me. You might send up some more books.”
Before returning to the office you would go across the street to Donaldson’s and order a dozen novels sent, any novels. Once, when they put in Lord Jim she even read that, though you wouldn’t believe it until she proved it by answering questions.
You went through the books once, looking for something to read—when was it? That weekend she went somewhere with Grace. They left Friday afternoon. You and Erma had been asked out to Shotwell’s, but you begged off so you could be here alone. It was early in December, not quite a year ago. That was fun, the only real pleasure you’ve ever had here. Curious how still and empty it seemed with Millicent away. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, she’ll be gone three whole nights, you said to yourself; and you picked up her things that were lying about and put them out of sight in the closet; you even put her hats up on the top shelf. This is my place, you thought, this is mine, as you rearranged things in the bathroom and put a new bulb in the light in the hall and took the silk coverlet off your bed and carefully folded it.
Seated in the leather chair, under the reading lamp, with a novel in your lap, you felt away from the world, peaceful, almost happy. This place would be wonderful, you reflected, if it weren’t for her. To be alone here like this, in your own place, with no one in the world knowing where you were! Why didn’t you think of it before—you could have done it years ago. She’ll be back Monday. What if she never comes back? It was a thrilling thought; it made you stop breathing for a moment. What if she died, got killed in an accident, for instance? God that would be wonderful—absolutely dead and done for. Your name needn’t appear, Grace would take care of things. Did Grace know your real name? Mil swore she didn’t. You believed it on account of the way Grace acted; nothing you could put your hand on, she just acted as if she wondered who you really were. You could give her all of Millicent’s things, the whole works, and give her plenty of money for the funeral expenses…get hit by a car maybe, or just simply get pneumonia or something and die.…
You rubbed your hand across your forehead and reached to the table to push the lamp back a little; there was a flash of white marble in your eyes. You turned and looked at it, studied it, and spoke to it aloud:
“No such luck, eh, old man? You wouldn’t wait for luck, would you? No, you’re a regular hell-raiser, you wouldn’t wait for anything; you wouldn’t even bother to shoot her or stick a knife in her, just snap your fingers and bingo, she wouldn’t exist. Do you know what you are? You’re my son Paul’s little joke on his father, only he doesn’t know it’s his father and that’s a joke on him. You’re a cock-walloper, you are. You look like a goddam turkey gobbler.”
Later, much later, you fell asleep in your chair, trying to read.
The week preceding Christmas was filled with duties which couldn’t very well be avoided. Erma had a lot of new people on the string, and it seemed to you that she was becoming increasingly insistent on your presence and assistance, though that was probably imagination. Certainly she was becoming curious about your sudden tendency to find excuses to be away; it amused her, and she didn’t think it worthwhile to resent it, but she was curious.
“Just when I begin to think you are at last explored you take on a new mystery,” she said. “You never objected to the Hallermans before. You always were able to tolerate bridge at least twice a week. You are developing a positive distaste for the theatre. You never before refused a weekend at Holcombe. Have you found a pretty mistress or are you learning to swim?”
“I already know how to swim,” you laughed.
“By Saint Mary I’ll bet it’s true!” she exclaimed. “And you took her to Pennsylvania and went berry-picking with her, and by now the only question is whether it will be a boy or a girl. Bravo!”
She came over to you, smiling at you.
“Please have it a girl, and call it Erma, and I’ll be godmother and give her a million dollars,” she said. “Seriously, Bill, I think it might buck you up to be a father; though,” she added, “I must say that the prospect doesn’t seem to be helping you any—you look more done in than ever. What’s the matter?”
You shrugged your shoulders. “I’m worrying for fear it will be twins.”
“Then you aren’t going to tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“All right. But you aren’t very amusing lately, you know. It rather frightens me for my old age. I had pictured us sitting on our piazza in the sunshine of the Midi, side by side, being wittily reminiscent.”
You went off to the subway, bound for the office; but on arriving downtown you went first to the cigar store and telephoned Millicent. She answered in a sleepy voice; you had got her out of bed, as usual when you phoned in the morning.
“I’m sorry,” you said, “but I can’t make it today or tomorrow. And Wednesday there’s an all-night party at home, and Christmas Day we’re going out to Dick’s place on Long Island.”
“All right,” came her drowsy voice.
“I’m sorry about Christmas—I don’t know what you’ll do, all alone—”
“Oh it will be all right. Perhaps Grace and I will do something.”
At the office, where there was never much of anything for you to do anyway, you sat at your desk and looked out of the window at the grey sky. Was Erma going to get difficult? Not in any conventional sense, of course, but she had never yet had a strong curiosity about anything without satisfying it. That would be all, but it was too much. You couldn’t bear the thought of her seeing Millicent, as she would somehow manage to do if her curiosity got strong enough; it was intolerable that she should see her, perhaps even talk to her. What might not Erma guess? Things that you yourself did not know, dim and inadmissible things which, if they existed at all, might as well remain sealed, since it would do no good to uncover them. You must be more careful, you must dissimulate more cleverly; or perhaps you could invent some tale that would satisfy her and leave her to poke her nose in some other hole where it didn’t belong.…
Christmas morning, not having got to bed till after five, you turned out sleepily at eleven in response to the summons you had told Allen to give you, and hurriedly bathed and dressed and had orange juice and coffee. You were not expected at Dick’s until three and could drive it easily in two hours. Leaving a message for Erma that you would be back in time to leave at one o’clock, you left the house and took a taxi to Eighty-fifth Street. You hadn’t seen Millicent for three days. You might be an ass, you reflected, but this was Christmas Day and she was all alone and it wouldn’t hurt you any to take the trouble to drop in for a minute and give her a little present and say Merry Christmas. “Whatever else she may be,” you said to yourself aloud, “she’s probably human.” The present was in a large package beside you on the seat; you had been glad to get it out of the house, for Erma had unfortunately seen you bring it home the preceding afternoon; you had evaded her curiosity, which would have been considerably increased had she known that it contained a woman’s fur coat.
You had seen them so rarely in the daytime that the street and house seemed unfamiliar. Asking the taxi-driver to wait, for you expected to stay only a few minutes, and taking the bulky package under your arm, you ran up the stoop and up the two flights of stairs and let yourself in. The room was empty; you glanced around, called, “Hello, Merry Christmas!” and, leaving the package on a chair, started for the passage leading to the rear room. You heard nothing, but all at once there she was, in her nightgown and bare feet, confronting you at the entrance to the passage.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, smiling. It was the smile that betrayed her; you had never seen her try so hard to smile; it made you alert and woke you up. You continued straight ahead, as if to go with her or past her to the bedroom.
“Don’t go in there,” she said calmly, putting out her hand.
You stopped and looked at her.
“Grace is still in bed,” she said.
You grasped her by the arm and brushed past her, took two steps down the passage. From there you could see that there certainly was someone in your bed, against the right wall, hidden under the covers; you could see nothing but the long irregular hump. But a shifting of your glance showed you, on the floor at the bed’s foot, a pair of shoes that were assuredly not Grace’s; and, thrown across the chair by the dressing-table, a shirt and a pair of trousers. You took another step forward, then wheeled sharply and returned to the front room and sat down on the edge of a chair, feeling as if you were going to vomit, as if all your insides wanted to leave you; you swallowed, hard, several times. You were aware that she was standing in front of you, towards the passage; you didn’t look at her.
“If you had telephoned—” she began in a slow and quiet voice.
“Shut up!” you said. You were feeling nothing whatever about her; your sick rage was for your place, your bed. The temple, not the priestess, was violated. Ha, the priestess!
You stood up and looked around the room; it nauseated you and you felt weak on your legs. The package on the chair caught your eye and you nodded toward it.
“That’s a fur coat,” you said, “you’re welcome to it. You’re welcome to everything. I hope I see hell before I see this place again.”
You looked straight at her; her slate-colored unblinking eyes returned your gaze calmly.
“You should have telephoned,” she said. “I never promised you anything. You know very well—”
You had crossed and opened the door, and without replying you went out and closed it behind you; and down the stairs. These stairs. The taxi was at the curb. You glanced at your watch and saw that it was only a little after twelve. “Go around the park,” you said, and got in.
In the front of your mind was a memory apparently irrelevant: the picture of yourself, the night Lucy went away, sitting on the culvert in the rain, sobbing, the tears streaming down your face. Why should you think of that? Because you wanted to cry now? Not likely. You were much more apt to laugh; and tried it, but managed only a croak. Why should you think of that night? For one thing it was an insult to the memory of Lucy—it would be an insult to any woman.
There he was, no matter who, on your mattress, under your blankets, his head on your pillow. His shoes on your rug, the rug you had carefully selected because you liked to have something soft and thick to step out of bed onto. You felt hot within, ready to burst, with helpless rage; no one had a right to do such a thing, it was inhuman. “The bastard, the bastard,” you said aloud.
In the midst of your anger you felt a swift sudden sense of relief: you were free of her! With a flash of joy you became aware that your anger was against him, against the grossness and impudence of his intrusion; there was no anger for her. As the significance of that struck you the turmoil died away and your whole body became perfectly still, there in the jolting taxicab, still within and without, it seemed almost that your heart stopped beating; and gingerly and with care, so as not to disturb that peace, you began to inspect it. Could it possibly be true? Why was your rage not directed against her? You deliberately created pictures in your mind of those two—but at that you trembled, that was dangerous; after all it was there that you pictured them. Certainly you would never go back there, you would never see that place again. Nor her. Nor her. What amazed you was that you weren’t merely saying it to yourself, you meant it and believed it, for the first awareness of it came up out of your heart. You felt a great freedom and cleanliness within you—you wanted to laugh aloud—the idiotic spell was broken!
You had some clothes and things there. Well, she could send them to you or sell them or give them to him, any him. Of course that wasn’t the first time your new thick mattress had entertained a guest; you had been an ass not to know it. Mr. Gowan and Mr. Peft and the lord knows how many others. You had in fact known it, in a way. No, not that; not that they had been there in your house. Other places—hotel rooms, perhaps. You realized with amazement that all the time, from the very first, there had been in the bottom of your mind a certain conviction that she was continuing her relations with other men, and that you had felt neither jealousy nor resentment—had, in point of fact, simply not bothered about it. What kind of a fish were you, anyway? It had become second nature, perhaps, after ten years of Erma. The best possible training for a complacent husband. Oh blah. You’d never cared for Erma, what did it matter to you? Nor for Millicent either. Lord what a gorgeous name for her—Millicent! You’d never thought of it before. Millicent, Lady Pembroke or something, by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
You got back to Park Avenue before one, and drank a cup of coffee with Erma before starting for Long Island.
That was a merry Christmas Day. First a little taxicab ride to give Millicent her fur coat. Then in the car all the way out to Dick’s, Erma gave you the devil because you’d been discourteous to that fat German when he came in the library the evening before. How could you know who he was? She didn’t care anyway; she was having one of her bad days and took it out on you, as usual.
After you got there it was all right. No one was missing but Larry and Rose. Even Margaret came, with her great scientist—not a bad guy at all. At the table you sat between Jane and Mary Alaire Carew Bellowes Carr, with Jane on your right; and when she thanked you for the things you’d sent the children and patted your hand and smiled at you, you thought, good old Jane, and your throat was so full you couldn’t speak. But you wanted to; you wanted to tell her of the blessed relief that had come to you; you would have liked to say to her:
“I’m happy, and clean, and free!” And then that she might not think it too important, you would grin and repeat the old Christmas morning jest of long years ago:
“Give me a cookie!”