He would see her. He would explain to her. Explain what to her?
Again, he did not know.
So he sat during lunch and plotted the lie he would tell Eve, and he felt an enormous sense of shame when she turned to him and asked, “Are you listening to me?”
He sprang the lie at one-forty-five.
He left the drawing board, wiping his hands on the rough tweed of his trousers. “Eve!” he called.
“I’m in the basement, honey,” she answered.
He took the steps down, entering the dim concrete vault. The washing machine was making discordant music in one corner of the basement. Eve stood over her wash basket, sorting clothes. He did not want to see her face when he told the lie. From the steps he said, “I want to run into town a minute, Eve.”
“All right,” she said.
“I may be a while. Few things I have to get.”
“All right,” she said. “Will you be near the drugstore?”
“I can stop. Why?”
“Get some St. Joseph’s aspirin. I think David is coming down with something.”
“Okay,” he said. He turned quickly and went up the steps. His heart was pounding. She had accepted the lie, had almost abetted it, but his heart was pounding nonetheless, pounding so hard that he began trembling as he put on his overcoat. From the front door, he felt compelled to say something else to her.
“I won’t be too long, honey,” he shouted.
He waited for an answer, but the washing machine had probably drowned him out. He sighed, left the house, and walked to the car. Sitting in the kitchen across the street, clearly visible in the large picture window, was Mrs. Garandi. He smiled pleasantly and waved at her. He unlocked the car, got in, and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to two.
His heart was still pounding. He realized that he was very frightened, and he wondered whether he had looked peculiar to the Signora, wondered suddenly whether Eve had detected the lie in his voice, wondered what he could bring back from town to make his trip look legitimate. The simple assignation was somehow assuming gigantic proportions. He backed the car out of the driveway, and then self-consciously nodded and waved to Mrs. Garandi again, thinking he saw suspicion on her face.
He half expected Eve to appear accusingly at the front door, but she did not. Sighing in what he supposed was relief, he turned the corner and headed for the shopping center. It did not occur to him until he was almost there that Margaret Gault hadn’t even said she’d definitely come. In a strange way he was beginning to hope she would not be there. But at the same time he wanted her to be there; and he knew that if she did not keep the date, he would seek her out again.
He felt suddenly trapped.
He wanted to turn the car, head back for the house, and he almost did. But his hands remained firm and steady on the wheel, and he pulled into the parking lot, stopped the car, and looked for her.
She was not there.
Nervously, he lighted a cigarette and began waiting.
Adrienne Gault was a widow.
She did not drive, and she found the train trip to her son’s house tedious, but she nonetheless made the trip every week. She usually arrived on Wednesday, slept overnight, and then left Thursday morning.
This week she arrived unexpectedly on Tuesday.
At 1:35, while Margaret stood in the bathroom combing her hair, Mrs. Gault stood in the doorway and said, “If you’re going shopping, I’d like to go with you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Margaret said.
“Why?” Mrs. Gault asked, knowing very well why. This girl simply didn’t like her. In Donald’s home, in her own home, she was always treated like some sort of a visiting dignitary. She did not mind being made comfortable, but she did object to feeling tolerated. It certainly would not have killed Margaret to generate a little warmth. Well, that was the way it went. You raised your children and then you lost them.
“I want to get it done quickly and then come straight home,” Margaret said.
“I’ve been shopping since I was eleven years old,” Mrs. Gault said. “I’m certainly not a slow shopper.”
“Besides, I’ll be walking. Don took the car.”
The idea of walking did not appeal to Mrs. Gault, but she did not think badly of her son for having taken the car. Her son, as she saw him, was a warm and genuine person who happened to have married a cold fish. Actually, he was warmest when Margaret wasn’t around. It was then that they recaptured old times, when she told him of little things he’d done or said as a boy, told him of how terrible it had been after his father — God rest his soul — had died. They had been very close then, and talking alone they recaptured some of that closeness, a mother and son talking the way no two strangers could ever talk, flesh and blood, her flesh and blood. It was good to reaffirm the bond. It was good to talk to her son without Margaret around.
Margaret put down the comb and picked up her lipstick brush. Mrs. Gault watched while she traced the outline of her lips. She could feel indifference emanating from the well-built girl who stood before the mirror. What is it? she thought. Am I not a good mother? What does this girl want from me now that she has my son? And her thoughts almost always ended with the identical four words: The hell with her.
“What are you going to buy?” she asked.
“Oh, just some odds and ends.”
“Well, if you’re absolutely set against my going with you...”
“I’m not. I just don’t want to make this an expedition.”
“... will you buy me a newspaper?”
“Certainly.”
“The Journal-American. It should be out by now.”
Margaret blotted her lips, then touched her little finger to the lipstick and dabbed each cheek lightly, spreading the color.
“Shouldn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, Mom. Shouldn’t what?”
“Shouldn’t the paper be out by now? Where are you, anyway?”
“I just didn’t hear you, that’s all.”
“Maybe I’d better go with you. You’re in a fog. You’ll probably get killed by a car.”
“No,” Margaret said quickly.
Her mother-in-law stared at her.
“I... I want to go alone.”
“I wouldn’t force myself on you, believe me,” Mrs. Gault said, and she walked away from the open bathroom door and into the kitchen. The clock on the kitchen wall read 1:45. She sat at the pine-top table thinking how sad it was that her daughter-in-law didn’t love her. When Margaret came out of the bathroom, she studied her with a dispassionate eye. She honestly couldn’t see any resemblance whatever.
Adrienne Gault was a handsome woman with brown hair and blue eyes. Her bosom was large and firm, and she had the wide hips of a peasant woman, with the narrow waist of a young girl. But she certainly didn’t look like Margaret, and she resented anyone’s mistaking them for mother and daughter, as so often people did.