But back in the kitchen she could not think what he could really do or say that she should allow to dissuade her from what she had planned. Her decision had come much too hard — it had been a week of dialing the number one minute and hanging up the next. She would not permit herself to be tricked by a pleasant breakfast; she wouldn’t let him get away with that. It wasn’t as though all their troubles had begun yesterday.
She remembered yesterday — specifically, the dinner of the night before. Paul had said nothing all the way home, though she knew he had disapproved of her behavior. Wherever they went lately she wound up arguing with people. But it was not her fault! Everyone else had been awful — that son of a bitch Gabe, that woman … But what had they done? What had they said to her? Why did she hate people? She would have to admit that too when she went downtown — that she couldn’t control her responses, that out of the clear blue sky she began to hate people.
“I think I’m going to go out this afternoon,” Libby said, picking at her orange.
“Just dress warmly.”
“Don’t you want to know where I’m going?”
“Out. For a walk …” he said. “I thought you said you were going out.”
“If you’re not interested …”
“Libby, don’t be petulant first thing in the morning.”
“Well, don’t be angry at me for last night.”
“Who said anything about last night?”
“That’s the whole thing — you won’t even bring it up. Well, I didn’t behave so badly, and don’t think I did.”
“That’s over and done with. You were provoked. That’s all right. That’s finished.”
She did not then ask him who had provoked her; she just began cloudily to accept that she had been.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“When?” Now she was petulant, perhaps because she no longer considered it necessary for her to feel guilty about last night.
She saw Paul losing patience. “This afternoon. You said you were going out, and then I didn’t ask you where, you remember … so now where is it you’re going?”
“Just out. For a walk.”
Paul closed his eyes, and touched his palms together, as though he were praying. “Look”—his eyes opened—“you can’t allow yourself to get too upset. We’re doing all we can.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“That adoption business is what I’m talking about. It seems confused now and a little hopeless. But it won’t be. Things will get sorted out. We’ve only just begun — you can’t allow it to get to you so soon.”
“I wasn’t even talking about that,” she said, thinking: I wasn’t even talking about that!
“No,” Paul said, “but anyway, try to relax. I’m going to call that Greek orphan place today.”
“Paul, I don’t mean to be hopeless, but that particular setup sounds so—”
“We’ll just look into it,” he said sharply.
Adopting a baby had been her idea in the first place, hadn’t it? She could no longer keep perfectly straight in her mind who had said and done what. “Okay,” she said.
“And the Jewish agency is going to send somebody next week.”
“What good will that do?”
“Libby, it’s an interview. It’s part of adopting a baby.”
“Other people just get pregnant—”
“Forget other people!”
“Don’t shout at me.”
“I don’t shout at you.”
“Not outside you don’t,” she said bitterly. “If I made you angry last night, why didn’t you shout at me there? Why do you only quarrel with me at home?”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Well …” she said, trying to think of something sensible to say, some simple fact. “Well, that Jewish agency, I don’t see what good it is anyway. They have a three-year waiting list. Who can wait three years? I could have had a baby a long time ago—”
“That’s enough.”
“Well, I could have.”
“So you could have,” he said, raising his hands, then dropping them.
And how bald he had become, she thought, since that time I could have had my baby. How old. She felt suddenly as though they had been married a hundred years. A harsh laugh rang in her ears, and it was only herself laughing to think that it had not even been the abortion that had knocked out her reproductive powers — just her own two kidneys. How much easier for her if it had been something Paul had put his hands to, or that doctor, or her parents. Anyone. But it was only what had always lived inside her. How can he bear me? she thought. I deserve sick kidneys. Why doesn’t he just leave me?
But he, unlike her, had no illusions; she knew him to be too good and too patient. She was the nut in the family, and he was the one with his hands full. She let that serve as an accurate description of their life.
“Paul, I won’t be falsely pessimistic if you won’t be falsely optimistic.”
“It’s not being falsely optimistic to say that we’ll work something out. Besides, the waiting list is only two years.”
“No,” she said, nodding, “that’s not falsely optimistic. People adopt babies …”
“Why don’t you go downtown, Libby? Why don’t you go to the Art Institute today? It’s a beautiful day. Get out. Just put on that little tan hat—”
“It’s a beautiful day, I don’t need a hat.”
He set down his coffee cup as though suddenly it weighed too much. “I only thought you looked pretty in that hat.” He left it at that.
She was crushed for having crushed him, especially when he had only been suggesting that she was pretty. Still, if he found her so damned attractive … Everything between them was hopelessly confused.
“I thought I would go downtown.”
He rose. “Fine.”
“So I probably won’t be here when you get back.”
He only leaned down and finished the last of his coffee.
“Don’t you want to talk about last night?” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
What she wanted to ask him was who had provoked her. Often when she tried to puzzle out the circumstances of her life, her mind was a blank. Last night seemed beyond understanding, and yet it was probably so simple. “I behaved rudely—” she began.
“Everybody behaved badly. Shouldn’t we leave it at that?”
“I guess so.”
After Paul left she put the breakfast dishes in the sink, on top of the lunch dishes from the day before. In the bedroom she decided once again to save the bedmaking until later. Her appointment was not until one, so there was plenty of time.
She sat down gingerly upon the sofa in the living room. She still had trouble easing her head back onto the pillows, though she had brushed and brushed them with a whisk broom and been over them many times with a damp sponge. The trouble with their furniture was that it had all been bought one afternoon at Catholic Salvage, a place she could not forget. How Paul had discovered it she still did not know, but one day after they had found the apartment, a bleak but moderately priced four rooms on Drexel, they had taken a bus, and then changed to another bus, to the brick warehouse on South Michigan. They had been the only two white people there — except in the first floor clothing section, where two spinsters, with skin the color and texture of pie crust, stood around a table full of secondhand underwear, fingering and discarding numerous foundation garments. They had already started up the metal stairs to the furniture section when Paul had turned and gone back down to a pipe rack he had spotted in men’s wear; it was then Libby had seen the two pathetic old ladies holding up faded corset after faded corset, and then dropping them from crippled fingers back onto the heap. She turned away from them, tears already in her eyes, to see Paul picking out a blue pin-striped suit from amongst a half dozen limp garments strung along the rack. When she saw that the jacket fitted — with a little give and take here and there — she drew in her breath. Though she knew it didn’t matter, that it was what a person was and not what he wore that counted, she nevertheless had begun to pray: “Mary, Mother of God, please don’t let him buy that thing.” And her prayer had been answered. He came clanging up the stairs in his Army-Navy Store shoes to tell her that the two suits he already had were plenty.