She could, of course, tell Charles herself. Just a simple harmless sentence: “I just met an old friend of mine on the street, Steve Ferris. I’ve probably mentioned him before.”
No, that wouldn’t do. Charles would remember distinctly that she hadn’t mentioned him before and he would demand to know why. Charles’s memory was very inconvenient.
In the long run, she felt, it would be safer to tell her mother, and then if Charles found out she could claim that she wasn’t being secretive, she merely thought he wouldn’t be interested. Let him pounce on that if he wanted to, let him lie awake every single night thinking about it, but he’d never be able to prove a thing except that, beginning in high school and continuing until the time he entered the Air Force, Steve had been her boyfriend. That was all that anyone knew, and even Charles, with his fiendish ability to ferret out secrets, would never know anything more.
As soon as she reached home, she went up to her mother’s room.
The shades were drawn and Mrs. Shaw was asleep on the lounge beside the bay window. Martha stood in the doorway for a moment listening to the sound of her mother’s breathing. She was not exactly snoring, but at the end of every breath she gave a little grunt as if of satisfaction.
“Mother.”
“Eh?”
“Sleeping?”
“Eh? Oh, it’s you, Martha.” She made a half-hearted attempt to raise herself, then sank back with a groan. “I dozed off. Exhausting weather. I can’t seem to breathe.”
Martha crossed the room and pulled the shades back with a jerk. “Try taking off those hideous corsets.”
“I’m sure they have nothing to do with it. I’ve always worn corsets.” She blinked and sat up, holding her hands over her eyes. “I wonder if it could be my lungs.”
“Steve Ferris is back.” The air smelled of chocolate. She opened a window. “I saw him on the street.”
“Well.” Mrs. Shaw’s round blue eyes glanced around the room as if they wildly expected to see printed somewhere on the wall the correct and tactful reply. “Well. Isn’t that nice? Did he — how did he look?”
“Same as ever.”
“Well.”
“He asked about you.”
“That was nice. I always wanted to see him in his uniform. You remember we never did.”
“I remember. He’s not in uniform anymore. He’s been discharged. He was wounded.”
“What a shame! I was very fond of Steve. So was Harry. He didn’t know about Harry, I guess?”
“No. I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that Father was a good man, that he was full of laughs.”
“That’s right, he was, wasn’t he?” You hear that, Harry? People haven’t forgotten you. “Martha.”
Martha was staring stonily out of the window.
“What?”
“I hope... I hope you...”
You are my child and I love you and I hope you are happy. What she felt was very simple but she couldn’t say such things to Martha. She was beyond the reach of words. “Martha, my dear...” Her confusion and helplessness brought tears to her eyes.
Slowly Martha turned her head. Her mother looked a little grotesque in her grief. Her spine was stiff because of the corsets, her legs were spread apart in front of her, and from the bottom of the pink lace negligee her feet stuck straight as boards into the air.
She said wearily, “Why are you crying?”
“Oh, I don’t know — everything...”
“I hope it’s not on my account. Don’t get the romantic idea that seeing Steve again has upset me. As a matter of fact, I’m rather glad I ran into him. If I had any illusions left about him, they’re gone.” She laughed. “I’d forgotten he was no taller than I am.”
“Charles is very tall.”
“He still bites his fingernails. And he talks — well, he doesn’t talk like a gentleman. It was painful listening to him.” Outside she could see the round cherubic buttocks of the infant Hermes. “He has bad taste. You should have seen the suit he was wearing. It didn’t fit and it was the wrong color, a sort of cinnamon brown. He thinks he’s going to write a book. He’s as cocky as ever. Let’s drop the subject.”
She went over to the mirror and took off her hat and smoothed the hair back from her temples. Her eyes were a little bloodshot and they ached as if invisible thumbs were pressing on her eyeballs.
Mrs. Shaw watched her in silence. Thinking back into the past had forced her to realize how alien and detached Martha had become. The change had been so gradual and the physical aspects of it so slight in themselves that they had escaped notice at the time — the disposal of a piece of jewelry, the sudden switch to black clothes, the gift of all her makeup and perfume to Laura, the resurrection of the glasses she’d worn in high school. All very small things and done subtly over a period of years, yet here they were, added up and totaling a different Martha.
A nun, Mrs. Shaw thought with a shock. She’s like a nun, dedicated to something, no one knew what. She had taken her life and placed it on some nameless altar as a sacrifice and an atonement for some nameless sin.
“Why are you staring at me?” Martha asked. Even her voice had altered. It was cold and even, as if for years now nobody had said anything to interest her and nobody ever would again. “Is anything wrong?”
“No. Oh, no.”
“Were you in to see Charles?”
“We talked for a while. After I left he got up for some reason. It was too much for him; he fainted in the hall. Lily happened to be there and she and Brown got him back to bed. There’s nothing to worry about, he’s all right now.”
“Did they phone Dr. MacNeil?”
“Yes. He may drop in tonight to see him.”
Martha put one hand casually in her pocket and her fingers curled around the key to her room. “Where in the hall?”
“I don’t know.”
“What was Lily doing?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Shaw said in bewilderment. “My door was shut. I didn’t hear anything. What does it matter?”
“I just wondered how far he’d gone. I wouldn’t want him to strain his heart.” She had never seen a picture of a heart but she could imagine Charles’s heart quite plainly. It was pink and moist, a wet, spongy breathing tumor with the blood flowing in and out, thereby keeping Charles alive. “He must take better care of himself.”
“You’ve been wonderful to him, Martha. So devoted, I’m sure he appreciates it.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Martha said dryly. She picked up the parcels that she’d dropped on the bed. “I’ll go in and see him.”
“What’s in the boxes?”
“One of them is yours. For Mother’s Day.”
“Can I open it now?”
“If you want to.” She had lost all interest in the gifts. The diamond clip had joined its predecessors and taken its place between the shoddy brass candlesticks and the French original that didn’t fit.
Charles was sitting up in bed in a confusion of pillows. The room was darkened but she could see his eyes turned toward the doorway, hard and bright and dry, as if they’d been watching for her for a long time.
“Well, Charles,” she said cheerfully. “I hear you overdid things a bit. Are you feeling better?” She entered the room swiftly, thrusting the boxed tie toward him as an appeasement: here is a tie for you, so you can’t possibly say anything unpleasant to me. She put the box in his lap. “Here, I brought you something.”
He looked at her sardonically. “Thank you very much.”
“It’s nothing.”