“I’m teaching,” Paul said, answering her next question.
Tim Frankland, a physician, had a habit of extending his lower lip beyond his upper lip; he combined this now with a brief nod. “No kidding,” he said.
“At the University,” Libby said.
Frankland paid his first bit of attention to her. “Down on the South Side,” he said, pointing at the floor.
“That’s right,” Paul said.
“Tim is doing research this year,” Marge told them. “We’ve been in Evanston for three or four years.” She turned, but only half looked at her husband. “Isn’t that right, darling?”
At the very same moment that he heard Marge say “darling”—and disbelieved it — Paul felt himself powerfully married to his wife. “We’ve been in Chicago for a year, a little more than a year.”
The other couple with the Franklands now moved out of the dining room, saying they would meet Tim and Marge in the lobby. Silence followed their departure.
“Well, it’s been three or four years,” Marge said, “since we’ve met, I think.”
Dr. Frankland gave a very stiff, very polite grin to everyone.
“Where is it we met before?” Libby asked.
“Iowa City,” Marge said.
“Do you have children?” Paul asked.
“One. A girl.”
“We have a girl too,” Libby said. “Six months.”
“Jocelyn is three,” Marge said to Paul.
“Time flies,” Dr. Frankland said to Libby, as though she might not have known. “Yours will be three before you realize it.”
“Do you ever see your friend?” Marge asked. “You remember—”
“Gabe Wallach.”
“Yes. How’s he doing? Do you ever hear from him?”
“He’s teaching at Chicago too,” Paul said.
“No kidding,” Tim Frankland said.
“Oh,” said Marge, “Tim has heard all these names.” She did not smile with much confidence.
“That was when Marge was revolting against her family. Your bohemian period, dear.” But the remark was meant for the edification of the crowd; there were obviously certain areas of the past with which Dr. Frankland didn’t have too much sympathy.
“Gabe’s baby-sitting for us tonight, as a matter of fact,” said Libby.
“I thought he’d be married—”
Libby made the announcement as though it gave her pleasure. “No, he isn’t.”
“Still knocking the girls over.” The words were spoken by Dr. Frankland.
“I suppose so,” Paul said.
Apropos of nothing, or so it seemed, Libby said, “He’s a very generous person.”
“It’s a coincidence,” Marge said, “all of us being in Chicago, isn’t it?”
“We were in Pennsylvania for a while,” Paul said.
“We should all get together,” Marge answered.
“Yes,” Paul said, when no one else did, “that would be fine.”
“Yes … It was nice running into you,” Dr. Frankland said. “We’re in the book, of course.”
“So are we,” Libby said, as though that tied the score.
“What do you call your daughter, Paul?”
“Rachel,” Libby said.
At this the two women were called upon to take a sudden interest in one another. Marge was the one who smiled.
Frankland felt called upon to be magnanimous. “That’s a nice old-fashioned European name.”
“Whom does she resemble?” Marge asked.
“Paul,” said Libby.
“I’m afraid Jocelyn looks just like me.”
“Well, we have to be going,” Tim Frankland said. “I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting—”
“Oh yes—”
“Goodbye. Say hello to Gabe Wallach—”
“Oh yes—”
Libby waited until they were barely out of earshot. “I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting,” she said, in a fair imitation.
“I had a feeling you didn’t like them.”
“I didn’t mean to be too obvious, but that man’s a horror. And she — I don’t know. At the end I suddenly thought she wasn’t so bad. Who is she? I don’t remember her at all. I thought we’d met her at Cornell.”
“She was a friend of Gabe’s.”
“That’s what I thought, after I found out it was Iowa. Gabe certainly has catholic tastes.”
“Of course, it was a long time ago.”
“She couldn’t have been any — Well, she didn’t strike me as very genuine. Did she you?”
“She’s all right, I suppose.”
“Well, she chose old Tim — I wouldn’t be so sure. ‘I’m afraid the Hodges are waiting.’ Hey, that’s not too bad, is it?” She did it again. “Did we know her well?” she asked suddenly.
“I met her once with Gabe. I don’t think you did.”
“Oh,” she said, “this isn’t the girl friend of his you once helped move, is it, when I was sick? The girl he dropped, ker-plunk.”
“I think,” Paul said, “that was somebody else.”
“The more I learn about Gabe,” Libby said, “the stranger he seems. I don’t know if he has any substance or what.”
“There are girls like her in everybody’s past, I suppose.”
“Well, sweetheart, who was there in yours?”
After a moment, he said, “Doris. I’ve told you about Doris …”
“But you were in high school. Gabe was a man.”
“Well …”
“Gabe knows a lot about some things,” said Libby, “but then he seems to have so little imagination about others. He didn’t even begin to know what I was saying when I spoke about religion, for instance.”
“You said …” He was looking directly at his wife now; he had forced himself to while she spoke of Gabe’s past, and he for some reason made references — veiled, to be sure — to his own. “You said you didn’t know what to tell him.”
She was surprised. “I didn’t say that.”
“You said that you didn’t know what I thought.”
“Well, I don’t know what you think …”
“Well …” He had led himself into this. “What do you want to know?”
“What?”
Marge Howells had come and gone, and nothing had happened to him. It was not shame that was filling him with the incredible desire to answer questions. “I’m not hiding anything,” he said, and indeed he did feel perfectly innocent.
“Paul … no?”
The moment passed, though it left its mark. “Well, no.” He was not sure he could believe himself — though he was not completely unsure. Marge had come and gone and nothing had happened to him. “So what do you want to know?” he asked jokingly.
“… I don’t know. What do you do when you go to the synagogue?” she asked, shrugging her shoulders.
“I sit there.” She might as well be told that. He was afraid, however, of other questions she might ask, though he could not really inform himself as to what they might be. He continued to close back upon himself. “I sit there,” he said again.
“You say the prayer.”
“No.”
“Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You did that Friday I went—”
“I did that Friday. I knew you expected certain things. I don’t when I’m alone.”
“You see — now there’s something I didn’t know that …”
“Well, we’re married, Libby, but we’re separate too.”
“I know that.”
“I don’t think that’s too unusual.”