“Oliver,” she said, brushing her hair, looking at his reflection in the mirror as he quickly and neatly put an envelope full of papers, a pair of slippers, a sweater into the bag on the bed.
“Yes?” He snapped the bag shut, crisply, like a man cinching a horse.
“I hate the idea of your going home.”
Oliver came over to her and stood behind her, putting his hands around her. She felt his hands on her and the cool stuff of his suit against her back, and fought down a sudden quiver of distaste. He owns me, she thought, he must not behave as though he owns me. Oliver kissed the back of her neck, under her ear.
“You have a wonderful belly,” he said, moving his hands, kissing her.
She turned in his arms and held onto him. “Stay another week,” she said.
“You heard what Sam said about earning enough to pay for his bill,” Oliver said. Gently, he stroked her shoulder. “He wasn’t kidding.”
“But all those people at the plant …”
“All those people at the plant are out at the first tee by two o’clock in the afternoon, if I’m not there,” Oliver said good-naturedly. “You’re turning a marvelous color.”
“I hate being alone,” Lucy said. “I’m not good at being alone. I’m too stupid to be alone.”
Oliver laughed and held her tighter. “You’re not stupid at all.”
“Yes, I am,” Lucy said. “You don’t know me. When I’m alone my brain is like an old washrag. I hate the summers,” she said. “I’m in exile in the summertime.”
“I admire the color you turn in the summertime,” Oliver said.
Lucy felt a little touch of anger because he was treating her lightly. “Exile,” she repeated stubbornly. “Summertime is my Elba.”
Oliver laughed again. “See,” he said “you’re not so stupid. No stupid woman would have thought of that.”
“I’m literary,” Lucy said, “but I’m stupid. I’m going to be so lonesome.”
“Now, Lucy …” Oliver moved away and started walking around the room, opening drawers and looking in closets to make sure he had left nothing behind. “There’re hundreds of people around the lake.”
“Hundreds of horrors,” Lucy said. “Women whose husbands can’t stand them. You look at them congregated together on the porch of the hotel and you can almost see the ghosts of their husbands, in the cities, roaring with delight.”
“I promise,” Oliver said, “not to roar with delight in the city.”
“Or perhaps you’d like me to cultivate Mrs. Wales,” Lucy said. “To improve my mind and pick up some interesting facts to amuse the company with when we play bridge with the Pattersons next winter.”
Oliver hesitated. “Oh,” he said lightly, “I wouldn’t take that so seriously. It’s just Sam …”
“I just wanted to let you know that I knew about it,” Lucy said, with an unreasonable desire to make Oliver uncomfortable. “And I don’t like it. And you might tell Sam about it on the way home, since everybody’s being so damned candid this afternoon.”
“Very well,” Oliver said. “I’ll mention it. If you want.”
Lucy began to dress. “I’d like to go home with you,” she said. “Right now.”
Oliver opened the bathroom door and looked in. “What about Tony?” he asked.
“Take Tony with us.”
“But it’s so good for him here.” Oliver came back into the room, satisfied that he had left nothing behind him. He never left anything behind him, in any room, but he never neglected this final, swift checkup. “The lake. The sunshine.”
“I know all about the lake and the sunshine,” Lucy said. She bent over and put on a pair of moccasins, the leather feeling cool and pleasantly tight against her bare feet. “I think his father and mother, all together, will do him more good.”
“Darling,” Oliver said gently, “do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Don’t insist.”
Lucy put on a blouse. The blouse had a long row of buttons up the back and she went up to Oliver and turned around so that he could do them for her. Automatically, he began, at the bottom, his hands neat and quick.
“I hate the idea of you rattling around all by yourself in that big, empty house. And you always overwork when I’m not there.”
“I promise not to overwork,” Oliver said. “I’ll tell you what … Try it for a week. See how you feel. How Tony’s getting along. Then if you still want to come home …”
“Yes?”
“We’ll see,” Oliver said. He finished the buttons and tapped her lightly on the small of her back.
“We’ll see,” Lucy repeated. “Every time you say we’ll see, it means no. I know you.”
Oliver laughed and kissed the top of her head. “This time it means we’ll see.”
Lucy moved away from him, back to the mirror, to put on lipstick. “Why is it,” she asked coldly, “that we always do what you want to do?”
“Because I’m an old-fashioned husband and father,” Oliver said, amused at it as he said it.
Lucy put the lipstick on heavily, because she knew Oliver didn’t like it and she wanted to punish him, even by that little bit, for denying her. “What if one day I decided to turn into a new-fashioned wife?”
“You won’t,” Oliver said. He lit a cigarette, and noticing the lipstick, crinkled his brow a little, which he did when he was annoyed. “You won’t,” he said, keeping his tone playful. “That’s why I married you so young. To catch you before you became set in your ways.”
“Don’t make me sound so malleable. It’s insulting,” Lucy said.
“I swear,” Oliver said with mock gravity, consciously avoiding an argument, “that I find you absolutely unmalleable. Do you like that better?”
“No,” Lucy said. She made a big, garish bow of red on her lips, pouting her lips, using her little finger. Oliver had never said anything about it, but she knew that he disliked the moment at the mirror when her lips were in that vain, self-satisfied posture and the tip of the finger shiny with the red grease, and she prolonged it spitefully.
“We know a lot of modern couples,” Oliver said. He turned away, pretending to be looking for an ashtray, so that he wouldn’t have to watch her. “With both parties making decisions all the time. Every time I see a woman with a dissatisfied expression on her face I know her husband is letting her make decisions for herself.”
“If I weren’t married to you, Oliver,” said Lucy, “I think I’d hate you.”
“Think of the couples we know,” Oliver said. “Am I right or wrong?”
“Right,” Lucy said. “Right. Always right.” She turned and made a mock bow in his direction. “I bend the neck because you are always right.”
Oliver laughed and then Lucy had to laugh, too.
“It’s funny,” Oliver said, coming close to her again.
“What’s funny?”
“When you chuckle,” Oliver said. “Even when you were a young girl. It’s as though there’s somebody else in there”—he touched her throat—“who does your laughing for you.”
“Somebody else,” Lucy said. “What’s she like?”
“Husky-voiced,” Oliver said softly, “with a swaying walk and wild red hair …”
“Maybe I’d better stop laughing,” Lucy said.
“Never,” said Oliver. “I love it.”
“I was waiting to hear that word.”
“Love?”
“Uhuh. I haven’t heard it in a long time.” Lucy held the lapels of his coat and pulled him gently toward her.
“None of the present crop of writers would ever dream of using it,” Oliver said gravely.
“Go ahead.”
“Go ahead what?”
“Go ahead and use it. Nobody’s looking.”