She was nearly at term and even under the loosely flowing nightgown and robe she was wearing, the bulge was huge and clumsy. Rudolph had a pang of guilt when he watched her. She had had such a neat delicate way of walking and now she was forced to balance herself painfully, belly protruding, pace careful, as she went from room to room. Nature has provided women with a kind of necessary lunacy, he thought, for them to desire to bring children into the world.
They sat in the dining room, with the pale April sun streaming through the windows, while Martha brought them fresh coffee. Martha had changed miraculously since his mother’s death. Although she ate no more than before, she had filled out and was now matronly and comfortable. The sharp lines of her face had disappeared and the everlasting downward twitch of her mouth had been replaced by something that might even have been a smile. Death has its uses, Rudolph thought, watching her gently place the coffee pot in front of Jean. In the old days she would have banged it down on the table, her daily accusation against Fate.
Pregnancy had rounded Jean’s face and she no longer looked like a schoolgirl fiercely determined to get the best marks in the class. Placid and womanly, her face glowed softly in the sunlight.
“This morning,” Rudolph said, “you look saintly.”
“You’d look saintly, too,” Jean said, “if you hadn’t had any sex for two months.”
“I hope the kid turns out to be worth all this,” Rudolph said.
“He’d better.”
“How is it this morning?”
“Okay. He’s marching up and down wearing paratroop boots, but otherwise okay.”
“What if it’s a girl?” Rudolph asked.
“I’ll teach her not to overlap,” Jean said. They both laughed.
“What have you got to do this morning?” he asked.
“There’s a nurse coming to be interviewed, and the furniture’s coming for the nursery and Martha and I have to put it in place and I have to take my vitamins and I have to weigh myself,” Jean said. “A big morning. How about you?”
“I have to go to the university,” Rudolph said. “There’s a board of trustees’ meeting. Then I ought to look in at the office …”
“You’re not going to let that old monster Calderwood nag at you again, are you?”
Ever since Rudolph had told Calderwood he intended to retire from the business in June, Calderwood had argued with him almost every time he saw him. “Who retires at the age of thirty-six, for the Lord’s sake?” Calderwood kept repeating.
“I do,” Rudolph had once replied, but Calderwood had refused to believe him. Suspicious, as always, Calderwood felt that Rudolph was really maneuvering for more control and had hinted that if Rudolph would stay he would give it to him. Calderwood had even offered to move the main office down to New York, but Rudolph said he no longer wanted to live in New York. Jean now shared his attachment to the old farmhouse in Whitby and was pouring over plans with an architect to enlarge it.
“Don’t worry about Calderwood,” Rudolph said, standing. “I’ll be home for lunch.”
“That’s what I like,” Jean said. “A husband who comes home for lunch. I’ll make love to you after lunch.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind.” He leaned over to kiss the dear, smiling face.
It was early and he drove slowly, enjoying the town. Small children in bright-colored parkas were riding tricycles on the sidewalks or played on the drying lawns, burgeoning with the first frail green of spring. A young woman in slacks pushed a baby carriage in the sunshine. An old dog dozed on the warm steps of a big gingerbread house, painted white. Hawkins, the mailman, waved at him and he waved back. Slattery, standing beside his prowl car and talking to somebody’s gardener, saluted him with a smile; two professors from the biology department, walking toward the university deep in conversation, looked up long enough to indicate a mild hello. This part of town, with its trees and large wooden houses and quiet streets, had an innocent nineteenth-century neighborly air, before the wars, before booms and depressions. Rudolph wondered how he ever had been anxious to get away from the town, where he was known and greeted at every turn, for the anonymous uncertainties and stony hostility of New York.
He had to pass the athletic field on the way to the Administration Building and he saw Quentin McGovern in a gray suit, jogging along the track. He stopped the car and got out and Quentin came over to him, a tall, serious young man, his skin gleaming with the sweat of his exercise. They shook hands. “I don’t have my first class till eleven,” Quentin said. “And it was a nice day for running, after being indoors on the boards all winter.”
They didn’t run in the morning anymore. Since his marriage, Rudolph had taken up tennis, for Jean’s sake. Anyway, it was too Spartan a deed to make himself get up every morning at seven o’clock in all weathers from the bed of his bride to pound around a track for three-quarters of an hour, trying to keep pace with a young athlete at the top pitch of his form. Besides, it made him feel old. There was time enough for that bit.
“How’s it going, Quentin?” Rudolph asked.
“Not bad. I’m twenty-two eight for the two twenty and the Coach says he’s going to run me in the four forty and the relay as well.”
“What does your mother say now?”
Quentin smiled, remembering the cold winter mornings. “She says for me not to get too swell-headed. Mothers don’t change.”
“How about your work in school?”
“They must have made a mistake at the office,” Quentin said. “They put me on the Dean’s List.”
“What does your mother say about that?”
“She says it’s because I’m colored and they want to show how liberal they are.” Quentin smiled faintly.
“If you have any further trouble with your mother,” Rudolph said, “tell her to call me.”
“I’ll do that, Mr. Jordache.”
“Well, I’ve got to be going. Give my regards to your father.”
“My father’s dead, Mr. Jordache,” Quentin said quietly.
“I’m sorry.” Rudolph got back into his car. Christ, he thought. Quentin’s father must have worked at least twenty-five years at Calderwood’s. You’d think somebody would have had the sense to pass the word around.
The morning was no longer as pure and pleasurable as it had been before his conversation with Quentin.
All the parking places were taken in front of the. Administration Building and Rudolph had to leave his car almost five hundred yards away. Everything is turning into a parking lot, he thought irritably, as he locked the car. The radio had been stolen out of it some time before, in New York, and Rudolph now locked the car wherever he left it, even if he was only going to be five minutes. He had had a mild argument with Jean on the subject, because she refused to lock the car at any time and even left the front door of the house open when she was home alone. You could love your neighbor, he had told her, but it was foolish to ignore the larceny in his heart.
As he was testing the door, he heard his name called. “Hey, Jordache!” It was Leon Harrison, who was also on the board of trustees and was on his way to the meeting. Harrison was a tall, portly man of about sixty, with senatorial white hair and a misleading heartiness of manner. He was the publisher of the local newspaper, which he had inherited from his father, along with a great deal of real estate in and around Whitby. The newspaper was not doing very well, Rudolph knew. He wasn’t sorry about it. It was badly run by a small, underpaid, drunken, broken-down staff of men who had been thrown off other papers all across the country. Rudolph made a point in not believing anything he read in Harrison’s paper, even reports on the weather.