When she looked back on it she could remember that they had been happy, wonderfully happy, for a while. But that happiness had become so tortured and racked that now it seemed it could not have been happiness at all. She couldn’t remember when the shadow of V appeared, although it was before Marian Huber had come to tell her about Jack and his Mrs. Denton, but she couldn’t detach any of it in her mind from all of it, so suffused with it had her mind become.
She had been unable to know Jack completely. From the beginning there had been something standing between them, although it had been vague and phantomlike. But then, the night Arch and Marian had been invited over to dinner, Jack hadn’t come home. He had not even phoned, and Gene had cried herself to sleep, worrying about him.
Gray light was streaming in the window and across the tangled bedclothes when she heard someone moving around in the apartment and she jerked awake. She blinked the sleep from her sodden eyes and raised herself on her elbows, calling Jack’s name. The morning was cold and there were goose pimples on her arm as she reached for the clock. It had stopped. She had forgotten to wind it. She called again, and then Jack was standing in the doorway, his face haggard, his features wooden and indistinguishable.
“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” he said.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried. “Where were you?” She knew her face must be ugly from crying and heavy sleep, and she dug her knuckles into her eyes. The tears started again.
“I had to work till just now,” Jack said. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”
“They trucked the hot plant down from Kearny. I had to stay down till we got it unloaded. We had a lot of trouble.”
“But couldn’t you phone? Couldn’t you even have phoned to let me know?”
“I didn’t have a chance.” He said it brusquely, but he came over and kissed her on the cheek. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, but he was stiff and resisting. She had never felt so separated from him.
“I’m sorry I jumped on you like that,” she whispered. “But I was so scared. I know you must have been working hard.”
He pulled away and stood erect, looking down at her. His bare chest was enormously wide, hairy, wrapped in hard, flat muscles. “I’m sorry you got worried,” he said, running the palm of his hand up and down over the hair. He had his shaving brush in the other hand and behind him in the gray hall was the thin, yellow outline of the bathroom door. As he retreated toward it, he said, “Go on back to sleep, Gene. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Don’t you want any breakfast?” she called after him. “Let me get you something to eat, Jack!”
There was a sound of rushing water from the bathroom and his voice was muffled: “I’ll get something in town. Go on back to sleep, honey.”
But she didn’t go back to sleep, and as the gray turned lighter in the bedroom and the hall she lay awake and looked at the ceiling with wet, frightened eyes. She heard Jack finish shaving, heard him tiptoeing down the hall, heard the front door close, and then the apartment was deathly quiet. When it had been too quiet too long she got up and made herself some coffee.