“He told Mrs. Pearson. I heard him.”
There was no expression in Brown’s voice. None was necessary. The statement stood by its own strength.
Martha’s first piece of carelessness. A lie. Hardly even a lie so much as a small error in reporting. “The doctor said you could sit quietly in a chair,” had been transformed into, “The doctor said you may get up as soon as you’ll make the effort, he said it would be good for you to get up.”
Not perhaps such a difference in meaning, but a striking difference in texture. The first suggested that the doctor was rather grudgingly allowing him to get up; in the second, the doctor seemed to be implying that he could have been up long before this if he, Charles, hadn’t been a lazy bum.
A sourness formed on his tongue, as if the tears that he had dammed behind his eyes had found a secret passage to his mouth. The heat in the room became suddenly unbearable. It seemed to whirl, to gather itself into a ball that spun around and around him, forcing the moisture out of his body and leaving him as dusty and dry as a mummy.
I do not care about spinning things. Spinning things do not affect me. I can think quite clearly. Sweat and tears contain the same percentage of salt as sea water, and the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Right? Right. I have always had a very remarkable memory, Martha. I recall exactly what you said, and I recall exactly what Brown said. You are getting careless.
The doctor said...
The sentence rang over and over again in his mind like a dirge.
Chapter 3
Martha disapproved of the car. It was too sleek and ostentatious and didn’t match the personality she had selected for herself. Besides, every time she rode in the car, she was reminded, annoyingly, of the presentation speech Charles had made when he’d given it to her for her birthday, three years before. Charles had probably intended the speech to be ingratiating but it hadn’t sounded that way.
“I want you to have the best I can afford, Martha. I want to make up to you for all the years when you had so little.”
Those were his exact words. Implying that he’d picked her up from the gutter and rescued her from starvation, instead of from a $35-a-week-and-chance-for-advancement job at Burleson, Bonds. All the years when you had so little. Hooey. Maybe her salary wasn’t so large then as the one she received now for being Charles’s wife, but the hours were shorter and she was free. Free, at least, for something to happen to her.
Well, there was no point in thinking about that. It was over, she was married and settled, and nothing more would ever happen to her because she wouldn’t let it. She was not one to shirk her responsibilities or change her mind. Duty was her favorite word and doing it was her favorite occupation. No matter what her personal feelings about Charles were, she would have gone through hell for him if she thought people expected her to, and someone was watching. She had a great deal of what she considered strength of character, but which Charles called a perfectionist obsession. She was deeply hurt when he told her that. “You have an obsession, Martha. You want everything to be perfect, yourself and me and your mother and Laura and the servants and the house, and we’re all failing you daily and hourly.”
They continued to fail her and she continued to do her duty. As one dull and blameless day followed another, she had only one outlet, Charles’s money. Money was her drug, and spending it was her method of escaping from her life. The department stores and antique shops and French salons and auction houses all intoxicated her. Like a drunk who doesn’t care what he drinks as long as it contains alcohol, she bought without discrimination, without restraint. Later, when she took her purchases home and unwrapped them, her euphoria would evaporate and she would be left with a hangover. The genuine antique candlesticks looked shoddy, the bargain French original didn’t fit, and the still life was childish. But she couldn’t restrain herself from buying things, nor could she force herself to return or exchange them once they were bought. That would be a confession of failure, a weak spot in a strong character, a rift in the obsession.
“Forbes.”
She tapped on the glass partition that formed a Mason-Dixon line between her world and Forbes’s world.
The chauffeur gave no sign that he had heard. She frowned at the back of his head, trying to decide whether Forbes was getting deaf or subtly insolent. It was difficult to tell. From behind, he looked very young and guileless. His ears stuck out a little too far from his head, and the back of his neck was shaved and scrubbed and vulnerable, like a victim’s ready for sacrifice.
“Forbes.” She tapped again. This time he turned his head slightly and the illusion of youth and innocence disappeared. His face was ugly and sharp as a witch’s.
“Stop at Ryrie’s, Forbes.”
“Pardon, ma’am?” He kept one hand on the steering wheel and with the other he turned down the glass partition.
“Stop at Ryrie’s.”
“I won’t be able to get a parking place near there. Is it all right if you have to walk a couple of blocks?”
“Why, certainly,” she said, a little hurt that Forbes should have forgotten that she was very fond of walking. Though she seldom did any, she often pictured herself striding freely along country lanes with the sheerest enjoyment; and striding with her, at her heels, a dog. The dogs varied in breed, but their behavior was always perfect; they responded to her faintest whisper and were of indeterminate sex.
The car stopped smoothly beside the curb. Forbes was a good driver and a good mechanic — let credit be given where credit was due — but he had one baffling peculiarity. Every few months he would disappear for a week or so without telling anyone. When he returned, looking rather worn, he offered no explanation and Charles asked for none. It was as if Charles had some secret way of understanding and tolerating the various necessities of people’s natures; he would no more question Forbes about his disappearances than he would remind her of her extravagances.
She got out of the car and crossed the street, raising her feet carefully because the glasses made the sidewalk appear too close. She turned off onto Madison Avenue, excited to be out of the house again, and pleased with the crowds who seemed more polite and cheerful than she remembered them.
She quickened her pace. The drug was already having its effect.
A diamond clip for her mother for Mother’s Day. Two sweaters and a slip for Laura. A set of canisters, a crystal vase, a pair of real gold bobby pins. A tie for Charles. From counter to counter, out of one revolving door into another revolving door, until her arms were full and the euphoria had taken possession of her.
The tie for Charles was bought as an afterthought. He would never wear it, but it was a nice gesture, a nod in the direction of the fact that it was his money, after all, and he might as well get something out of it.
She passed from the last door into the street again. She paused, blinking gently behind her glasses, her eyes scanning the crowd as if she hoped, half-expected, to find a friend there. But there was no one she knew. She had lost touch with her old friends and had made no new ones. These people were all strangers, indifferent to her. They were all hurrying from someone and some place to someone and some place. Without interest, they brushed past her and she loathed them.
She began to walk again. The sun was warm on her face, the wind fresh off the lake, but in that minute’s pause outside the store she felt that she had died a little. She had waited and no one had come, nothing had happened.
The hangover was setting in already. She felt cheated — by the spring, by Charles, by the very packages which had grown heavy in her arms, by the whole world.