So we made up and this time we were going to have a chance. We were twenty-three years old and we had suffered. Even the Greeks knew you had to suffer to be wise. Aeschylus knew that and put it in the mouths of the chorus in Agamemnon, the play that Donald had given me to read. We had suffered and I had met some people who weren’t crazy and Malcolm had begun to make a small success in the world. People had begun to talk about him in his profession. They said he was a comer, they said he was after it. He still had to spend nine and ten hours a day inside of manufacturing plants but at least people had their eyes on him.
“I talked to my boss about you,” he said to me. “He let me have extra time to come and get you. He’s really a nice guy. I’m really going to like working for him, I think. It’s going to be a damned hard job though, Rhoda. You have to help me. You have to start acting like a wife. You can’t drink all the time and act like you’re crazy.”
“I will,” I swore. “I can. I want to. I love you. Come here, get closer to me.” We were in bed, waiting to get up and buy our new station wagon and drive it down to Alexandria and begin our life.
“I mean it, Rhoda. You have to help me. You have to do your part. I mean it about drinking. We can do it on the weekends but not during the week.”
“I won’t. I swear I won’t. I won’t do it at all.” I snuggled my head down into his chest. I was so glad to be in his arms. So glad not to be alone. I had a vision of the bottles of diet pills I had hidden in my suitcase. If I took them they made me want to drink. But if I didn’t take them I would get fat and he would never love me, never touch me, would be disgusted by my body.
“Don’t you think I look good?” I asked. “Did you notice how thin I am? Do you think I feel good?”
“You’re a lot thinner. You look better. You’re fine.” He lay back against the pillows. “We’d better get up now. I want to get packed. I want to leave as soon as we can.”
“Do you think I’m thin enough?”
“You could lose a little around the hips. That wouldn’t hurt.” He got out of bed and began to put his clothes on his perfect flawless body. I hated him. I hated his goddamn little girlfriend, Pepper Allen, who was as thin as a boy, and I hated his perfect body. I got up and began to put on my clothes and get ready to leave. His body might be better than mine but my face was prettier and my daddy was richer and they were my babies.
“I’m going to be making six hundred dollars a month,” he said. “We have to make a budget. We have to live within our means.”
“I’m going to get the babies up and feed them before we leave. I’m so excited, Malcolm. I can’t wait to get there.”
“They’ve never had a plant engineer. I’m going to do the first time-studies ever done in this plant. If it works, they’ll use the program in the other plants. I’ll be gone a lot. You’ll have to amuse yourself. I won’t be there all the time.”
“I’ll do anything.” I went to him and put my arms around him. “I’ll be so good. I’ll be good at everything. I love you so much. I love you more than words can say.”
“We have to make a home for these boys. We have to go to church and stay home with them and have a real home.”
“I want that too. It’s what I want. I want it more than anything.”
“Okay, go get them up. Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
I wanted to stop in Montgomery and see Derry on our way to Alexandria but Malcolm didn’t want to spend the time. He did let me stop and call from a pay phone at a gas station. “Are you better?” I asked her. “Are you okay?”
“I will be. The arm’s pretty bad. I may not be able to type but I think my face will be like new. Can you come over? I’d like to meet your husband. I’m glad you made up with him, Rhoda. You were so sad when you were here. It made me sad to watch you.”
“No, he’s impatient to get there. He’s just getting gasoline. Oh, Derry, I can’t believe this happened. I can’t believe it happened to you.”
“I have bodyguards now. Two bodyguards from the Justice Department. They’re very nice. They live here, even at night. It’s driving Charles crazy, of course. Well, I’m sorry you can’t come by. Keep in touch with me though.”
“Derry.”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen Jim?”
“Not in a few days. He’s going back to Washington next week. He liked you so much.”
“Tell him hello for me, will you?”
“Of course.”
“Take care of yourself. Maybe I’ll get to see you someday. I hope I do. I hope I see you again.”
“There’s an organization in Alexandria you might want to get in touch with, Rhoda. The American Friends Service Committee. They’re doing studies to start a tutoring program for poor children. If you have some time on your hands, call them up. They’ll find work for you to do.”
“Oh, I will. Thanks for telling me that. Well, I’d better hang up. Malcolm’s having a fit. He wants to go.”
“Where will you spend the night?”
“I have to go. I really have to go. He’s getting mad.” I hung up the phone and walked back over to the station wagon and got in and tried to quiet the boys down and my husband revved up the motor and pulled out onto the highway and we continued on our way.
At twelve the next afternoon we drove up into the yard of our new house, a small brick duplex across the street from an apartment development. It was clean and the walls were painted white and although the rooms were small they would do. What furniture Malcolm had managed to salvage from the apartment in Atlanta was arranged haphazardly around the room. A moving van was coming that afternoon from Dunleith with the baby beds and furniture from my room. It was not going to be much compared to the life I had been leading but it would do. It would do as soon as I found someone to take care of the babies. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them or resented them coming unbidden into the world. I just didn’t like to take care of them. It bored me to take care of small children because it’s a boring job. Nature never intended a young woman to be alone in a house with small children. In any simple natural culture women gather in the daytime in groups and the older women care for the children and the younger women find work to do. Nowhere in nature is there anything like the boring life I was fixing to lead in Alexandria, Louisiana. Of course, by the time I had been there forty-eight hours I had found Klane Marengo and for forty dollars a week she was going to come at breakfast and stay until supper and take my boring work off my hands. Daddy had put two thousand dollars into a checking account for me to use for emergencies. The way I figured it, at forty dollars a week I could keep the wolf of motherhood from my door for at least six months. If that wasn’t an emergency, I didn’t know what one was.
“How do you like it?” Malcolm asked. He was standing in the middle of the half-empty living room holding Little Malcolm in his arms.
“It’s great. It’s really nice. It was nice of them to get this ready for us. Nothing’s going to happen, Malcolm. We’re going to be okay now. We’re going to love each other from now on.”
“I hope so. I really hope so. I can’t take much more of this, Rhoda. I can’t take another year like the last ones.”
“Momma,” Jimmy said. “Hold me, Momma. I’m hungry. I want to eat.” I pulled his fat little happy body into my arms. I kissed his face and arms. We had been in Alexandria for an hour. Who knows, he may already have been bitten by a dozen mosquitoes.