He said, “The hell with washing the car.”
“All right. I just mentioned it because it would give you something to do.”
“You don’t seem anxious to think of anything to do yourself.”
“That’s different,” Brown said. “I’m inclined to be lazy. I don’t mind doing the same things over and over again. That’s because I know I haven’t got anything to set the world on fire with. Maybe you have, I couldn’t say.”
“Maybe I have.”
“Well, let’s wait and see if it lights up and goes bang.”
Steve was silent. His chest felt constricted, as if someone had tied a knotted rope around it and every knot drew blood. He hunched over to ease the pain.
“Anything the matter?” Brown asked.
“No.” He was pretty sure now that what the doctor had suggested was true — the pains weren’t caused by his injuries, they appeared only when he was challenged and couldn’t meet the challenge and needed an excuse for not being able to meet it.
“I think,” he said finally, “that I’ll wash the car.”
“Dear Charles,” Martha wrote. “You still haven’t sent me your address so I presume that means you don’t want to hear from me. But I can write anyway. I will give this letter to Dr. MacNeil and you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. I have no news or anything to tell you, but I wanted to say that I am very sorry...”
She paused, the pen seemed to grow limp in her hand. “I am very sorry...” I am very sorry I met you.
She stared out of the window of her bedroom at the flowers, the hedges, the rolling lawn. It didn’t look like grass from here, but like sheets of velvet. Her eyes softened, as if her mind had slipped away for a moment to lie down on the velvet and dream.
I am sorry, sorry.
She turned away and stiffened her fingers around the pen.
“...that we have drifted so far apart that you can believe me capable of anything. I loved you, Charles...”
Someone was walking around the side of the garage. Steve.
“...and I thought you loved me. MacNeil told me you still do. If you do, why do you keep on being suspicious of me? I’ve never done anything to deserve it.”
Not walking, exactly. Gliding. He had always walked like that, as if he were keeping time to music no one else could hear.
She fastened her eyes to the paper. “I really tried to be a good wife to you. I don’t know where I went wrong. If I knew my mistakes I could correct them. Perhaps there was too great a difference between our environments. I wasn’t brought up the way you were.”
When she looked out again, Steve had disappeared. He’s gone, she thought in sudden panic, he won’t come back. She must rap on the window and call out to him.
“You must realize, Charles, how hard I tried to accustom myself to a new way of life and how humiliating it was sometimes. We didn’t have any money, you see.”
We, not my father and Mother and Laura and I. But we, Steve and I. She hesitated, trying to decide whether to stroke the sentence out. Charles had such a sly way of guessing at things, he might wonder about the “we.” But if she stroked it out, he would wonder even more. She could see him bending over the paper, trying to decipher the crossed-out letters one by one, his face white with suspicion.
She laid down her pen and reached down and opened the window. Summer sounds filtered in through the screen, the jangle of insects, the throbbing hysterical screech of tree toads. A spider minced elegantly across the window ledge. A housefly paused a moment on the screen. In the fall he’d be slow and sleepy, wanting only to be let alone to drowse like an old man; but now he was alert, quickened with spring, and she had only to wave her hand a little and away he fled, lightly, contemptuous of her ponderous movements. Where are you going? Ah, I’m not going anywhere. You have to go somewhere. Not I!
She followed him with her eyes but he darted up, up, going nowhere.
She heard the hum of a motor and saw the car backing out of the garage. Steve climbed out of the car and began uncoiling the garden hose. He was wearing a pair of shorts, nothing else.
She put the letter to Charles back in the box of notepaper. Then she went downstairs and out across the lawn.
He didn’t see or hear her coming. The splutter of water from the hose was too loud, and he was intent on his work.
She said loudly, “Steve.”
He jumped and turned. The stream of water missed her by inches.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Turn it off.”
“All right.”
He shut the water off and put the hose down. When he bent over the muscles of his back moved like snakes under silk. There was a brown mole beneath his left shoulder blade.
He stood up straight again and faced her.
She stepped back. “Who told you to do that?”
“Nobody.”
“I... your costume is a little informal, isn’t it?”
“So is the job.”
“The neighbors might see you. It wouldn’t make a very good impression.”
“I don’t see any neighbors.”
“Are you... are you arguing with me?”
He shook his head. He seemed docile, but he was watching her in an oddly insolent way.
“If you really want to wash the car,” she said, “you’d better put on something more suitable. A raincoat and rubber boots, perhaps.”
“Perhaps.” A trickle of sweat ran down from his neck and disappeared in the little clump of hair in the middle of his chest. He scratched himself without self-consciousness. The hair looked moist and silky.
“You’re deliberately thinking up ways to annoy me.”
“No, I’m not,” he said earnestly.
“It looks like it. You should know that people who live in this section of the city don’t go around in shorts.”
“I’ve never been around such class before. It’ll take me a while to catch on.”
“I’m sure there’s a raincoat somewhere that you can wear.”
“And rubber boots? Oh, goody.” Without changing his expression he added, “Remind me to slap your puss some day for that section-of-the-city crack.”
He walked away.
“You come back here,” she said.
He went into the garage without answering. After a moment’s doubt she followed him.
“You can’t talk to me like that,” she said. “Not if you want to stay here.”
“My rent is paid. You’ll have to give me an eviction notice. You probably didn’t think of that angle when you hatched your fancy little idea for getting back at me.”
“You can’t stay if I order you to leave.”
He smiled. “These legal niceties are too subtle for your brain, Martha. No, I think I’ll stay for a time. I want to investigate life in the upper brackets. Anything for a laugh, I always say.”
There was a long silence.
“Well,” she said at last, “I’m glad you’re having a good laugh.” The garage was murky after the bright sunlight, and she could scarcely see him. “Am I that funny?”
“You’re a scream, darling.”
“Well. Thank you.”
“That’s all right. When people ask me, I tell them.” He spoke quietly and without emotion. “Do you want to see something, Martha? Come here.”
She didn’t move.
“It’s just a picture,” he said, “of a girl who looks a lot different now. I’ve carried it around with me for years.”
He came toward her holding out the picture.
“I don’t want to see it.” But she looked anyway and saw herself laughing into the camera.
“Pretty, isn’t she?” Steve said. “I was crazy about her. I still am.”
“Don’t. Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s all right. I was talking about her, not about you. I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.”