Momma and Alma went on talking and speculating and I got sleepier and sleepier. I heard Alma say, “Worse things could happen. I had four years of living hell.” And Momma say, “He was always the soul of kindness and he doted on that girl.” I wondered how I could possibly be so sleepy, this early in the evening and after having a nap in the afternoon. Alma said, “Its very good you’re sleepy, its nature’s way. Nature’s way, just like an anaesthetic.” They both got me upstairs and into bed and I never heard them go down.
I didn’t wake up early, either. I got up when I usually did and got my own breakfast. I could hear Momma stirring but I yelled to her to stay put, like any other morning. She called down, “Are you sure you want to go to work? I could phone Mr. Hawes you’re sick.” I said, “Why should I give any of them the satisfaction?” I did my makeup at the hall mirror without a light and went out and walked the two and a half blocks to King’s, not noticing what kind of a morning it was, beyond the fact that it hadn’t turned into spring overnight. Inside the store they were waiting, oh, how nice, good morning Helen, good morning Helen, such quiet kind hopeful voices waiting to see if I’m going to fall flat on the floor and start having hysterics. Mrs. McCool, Beryl Allen with her engagement ring, Mrs. Kress that got jilted herself twenty-five years ago and then took up with somebody else—Kress—and he vanished. What’s she looking at me for? Old Hawes chewing his tongue when he smiles. I said good morning perfectly cheerfully and went on upstairs thanking God I have my own washroom and thinking, I bet this will be a big day for Children’s Wear. It was, too. I never had a morning with so many mothers in to buy a hair ribbon or a little pair of socks, willing to climb that stairs for it.
I phoned Momma I wouldn’t be home at noon. I thought I’d just go over to the Queen’s Hotel and have a hamburger, with all the radio people I hardly know. But at a quarter to twelve in comes Alma. “I wouldn’t let you eat by yourself this day!” So we have to go to the Queen’s Hotel together. She was going to make me eat an egg sandwich, not a hamburger, and a glass of milk not coke, because she said my digestion was probably in a state, but I vetoed that. She waited till we got our food and were settled down to eating before she said, “Well, they’re back.”
It took a minute for me to know who. “When?” I said.
“Last night around supper time. Just when I was driving over to your place to break you the news. I might’ve run into them.”
“Who told you?”
“Well Beechers live next to MacQuarries, don’t they?” Mrs. Beecher teaches Grade Four, Alma Grade Three. “Grace saw them. She had already read the paper so she knew who it was.”
“What is she like?” I said in spite of myself.
“She’s no juvenile, Grace said. His age, anyway. What did I tell you it was his sister’s friend? And she won’t win any prizes in the looks department. Mind you she’s all right.”
“Is she big or little?” I couldn’t stop now. “Dark or fair?”
“She had a hat on so Grace couldn’t see the colour of her hair but she thought dark. She’s a big woman. Grace said she had a rear end on her like a grand piano. Maybe she has money.”
“Did Grace say that too?”
“No. I said it. Just speculating.”
“Clare doesn’t need to marry anybody with money. He has money.”
“That’s by our standards, maybe but not by his.”
I kept thinking through the afternoon that Clare would come round, or at least phone me. Then I could start asking him what did he think he had done. I made up in my mind some crazy explanations he might give me, like this poor woman had cancer and only six months to live and she had always been deadly poor (a scrub-woman in his motel) and he wanted to give her a little time of ease. Or that she was blackmailing his brother-in-law about a crooked transaction and he married her to shut her up. But I didn’t have time to think up many stories because of the steady stream of customers. Old ladies puffing up the stairs with some story about birthday presents for their grandchildren. Every grandchild in Jubilee must have a birthday in March. They ought to be grateful to me, I thought, haven’t I given their day a bit of excitement? Even Alma, she was looking better than she has all winter. I’m not blaming her, I thought, but it’s the truth. And who knows, maybe I’d be the same if Don Stonehouse showed up like he threatens to and raped her and left her a mass of purple bruises—his words not mine—from head to foot. I’d be as sorry as could be, and anything I could do to help her, I’d do, but I might think well, awful as it is its something happening and its been a long winter.
There was no use even thinking about not going home for supper, that would finish Momma. There she was waiting with a salmon loaf, cabbage and carrot salad with raisins in it, that I like, and Brown Betty. But halfway through this the tears started sliding down over her rouge. “It seems to me like I’m the one ought to do the crying if anybody has to do it,” I said. “What’s so terrible happened to you?”
“Well I was just so fond of him,” she said. “I was that fond of him. At my age there’s not too many people that you look forward to them coming all week.”
“Well I’m sorry,” I said.
“But once a man loses his respect for a girl, he is apt to get tired of her.”
“What do you mean by that, Momma?”
“If you don’t know am I supposed to tell you?”
“You ought to be ashamed,” I said, starting to cry too. “Talking like that to your own daughter.” There! And I always thought she didn’t know. Never blame Clare, of course, blame me.
“No, I’m not the one that ought to be ashamed,” she continued, weeping. “I am an old woman but I know. If a man loses respect for a girl he don’t marry her.”
“If that was true there wouldn’t be hardly one marriage in this town.”
“You destroyed your own chances.”
“You never said a word of this to me as long as he was coming here and I am not listening to it now,” I said, and went upstairs. She didn’t come after me. I sat and smoked, hour after hour. I didn’t get undressed. I heard her come upstairs, go to bed. Then I went down and watched television for a while, news of car accidents. I put on my coat and went out.
I have a little car Clare gave me a year ago Christmas, a little Morris. I don’t use it for work because driving two and a half blocks looks to me silly, and like showing off, though I know people who do it. I went around to the garage and backed it out. This was the first time I had driven it since the Sunday I took Momma to Tuppertown to see Auntie Kay in the nursing-home. I use it more in summer.
I looked at my watch and the time surprised me. Twenty after twelve. I felt shaky and weak from sitting so long. I wished now I had one of Alma’s pills. I had an idea of just taking off, driving, but I didn’t know which direction to go in. I drove around the streets of Jubilee and didn’t see another car out but mine. All the houses in darkness, the streets black, the yards pale with the last snow. It seemed to me that in every one of those houses lived people who knew something I didn’t. Who understood what had happened and perhaps had known it was going to happen and I was the only one who didn’t know.