“Oh, Cass,” he heard himself saying, “I wish I could do something to help.”
She smiled and touched his hand. The tiny arrows on her wrist had not moved. “Thank you,” she said — very gravely. Then, “I don’t know if Richard loves me any more or not. He doesn’t see me any more — he doesn’t see me. He hasn’t touched me”—she raised her eyes to Vivaldo’s and two tears spilled over and rolled down her face; she made no move to check them—“he hasn’t touched me in, oh, I don’t know how long. I’ve never been very aggressive; I’ve never had to be.” She struck at her tears with the back of her hand. “I sit in that house like — like a housekeeper. I take care of the kids and make meals and scrub toilet bowls and answer the phone and he just — doesn’t see me. He’s always working. He’s always busy with deals with — with Ellis, I guess, and his agent and all those horrible people. Maybe he’s mad at me because I don’t like them very much and I can’t help it.” She caught her breath, found another wad of Kleenex, and again accomplished miracles with it. “In the beginning, I sort of teased him about them. I don’t any more, but I guess it’s too late. I know they’re busy and important but I can’t help it, I don’t think it’s serious work. Maybe Richard’s right, he says I’m a New England snob and a man-killer but God knows I don’t mean to be and — I don’t think Richard’s work is any good any more and he can’t forgive me for that. What am I to do?” And she put both hands to her forehead, looking down, and began to cry again. He looked cautiously around the dark lounge. No one was noticing them. It was suddenly a quarter to seven.
Ineptly, he asked, “Have you and Richard talked about this at all?”
She shook her head. “No. We’ve just had fights. We don’t seem to be able to talk to each other any more. I know that people say that there comes a time in marriage when everything goes out of it except companionship, but this can’t be what they were talking about, not this, not so soon. I won’t have it!” And now the extraordinary violence in her voice did cause a few heads to turn in their direction.
He took both her hands, smiling. “Easy, girl, easy. Let me buy you another drink.”
“That would be nice.” The drink before her was mainly water, but she finished it. Vivaldo signaled the waiter for another round.
“Does Richard know where you are now?”
“No — yes. I told him I was going to have a drink with you.”
“What time does he expect you back?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. I left supper in the oven. I told him if I wasn’t back in time for supper to feed the children and eat himself. He just grunted and walked into his study.” She lit a cigarette, looking both desperate and distant; and he knew that there was more in her mind than she was telling. “I guess I’ll go on back, though. Or maybe I’ll go to a movie.”
“Would you like to have supper with me?”
“No. I don’t feel like eating. Besides”—the waiter came with their drinks; she waited until he left—“Richard’s a little jealous of you.”
“Of me? Why is he jealous of me?”
“Because you may become a real writer. And now he never will be. And he knows it. And that’s the whole trouble.” She made this pronouncement with the utmost coolness and Vivaldo began to see, for the first time, how deadly it must he for Richard, now, to deal with a woman like Cass. “Goddamnit. I wouldn’t care if he couldn’t read.” And she grinned and took a swallow of her drink.
“Yes, you would,” he said. “You can’t help it.”
“Well. If he couldn’t read, and knew it, he could learn. I could teach him. But I don’t care if he’s a writer or not. He’s the one who dreamed all that up.” She paused, bony and thoughtful. “He’s a carpenter’s son,” she said, “the fifth son of a carpenter who came from Poland. Maybe that’s why it’s so important. A hundred years ago he’d have been like his father and opened a carpenter’s shop. But now he’s got to be a writer and help Steve Ellis sell convictions and soap.” Ferociously, she ground out her cigarette. “And neither he, nor anyone else in that gang, can tell the difference between them.” She lit another cigarette at once. “Don’t misunderstand me; I’ve got nothing against Ellis, or any of those people. They’re just ordinary Americans, trying to get ahead. So is Richard, I guess.”
“And so is Ida,” he said.
“Ida?”
“I think she’s been seeing him. I know she had a date to see Ellis this afternoon. He’s promised to help her — with her career.” And he smiled, bleakly.
Suddenly, she laughed. “My God. Aren’t we a wonderful pair of slobs. Sitting here in this dark place, full of self-pity and alcohol, while our lovers are out there in the real world, seeing real people, doing real things, bringing real bacon into real homes — are they real? are they? Sometimes I wake up at night with that question in my mind and I walk around the house and go and look at the children. I don’t want them to be like that. I don’t want them to be like me, either.” She turned her face sideways, looking helplessly at the wall. With her golden hair down, and all the trouble in her face, she looked unbelievably young. “What am I to do?”
“I always thought,” he ventured, “that it was easier for women.”
She turned and looked at him; she did not look as young any more. “That what was easier?”
“Knowing what to do.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Vivaldo. Why?”
“I don’t know. Men have to think about so many things. Women only have to think about men.”
She laughed again. “What’s so easy about that?”
“It isn’t? I guess it isn’t.”
“Vivaldo. If men don’t know what’s happening, what they’re doing, where they’re going — what are women to do? If Richard doesn’t know what kind of world he wants, how am I to help him make it? What am I to tell our sons?” The question hung in the air between them; sluggishly (it was ten past seven) it struck echoes in him of Ida’s tone and Ida’s eyes when they quarreled. Oh. All you white boys make me sick. You want to find out what’s happening, baby, all you got to do is pay your dues!
Was there, in all that rage, a plea?
“I’ll buy you one more drink,” he said.
“Yes. Let me go home or do whatever I’m going to do with just a tiny hint of drunkenness. Excuse me a moment.” jauntily, she signaled the waiter; then gathered up her great handbag and walked to the ladies’ room.
All you got to do is pay your dues. He sat, islanded by the vague hum, the meaningless music, of the cocktail lounge, and recalled lapses and errors from his life with Ida which, at the time, he had blamed on her. Their first quarrel had occurred about a month after she had moved in, in April. His mother had called, one Sunday afternoon, to remind him of a birthday party, the following week, for his younger brother, Stevie. His mother assumed that he would not want to come, that he would try to get out of it, and this made her voice, before he could say anything, querulous and complaining. This he could not bear, which made his tone sharp and hostile. And there they were, then, the aging, frightened woman and her grown son, acting out their kindergarten drama. Ida, in the kitchen, watched and listened. Vivaldo, watching her, suddenly laughed and before he realized what he was saying, he asked, “Do you mind if I bring a girl friend?” And, as he said this, he felt Ida stiffen and become absolutely concentrated with rage.