“I couldn’t stand it,” she said, “to walk on a city street and always be expecting to meet you; to look up at a plane and wonder if you’re in it; to watch every window on a passing train. Are those such funny love words?”
“No.”
“When I’m gone will you wonder like that about me? Will you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
She tore her hand out of his grasp and backed away from him.
He said, “If you can’t bear to hear the truth, don’t ask for it.”
She spat the word back at him. “Truth!”
“That’s it. I’m trying to be honest with you. What do you want...? A couple of quick seductions good for a few tear drops on the pages of your diary? Or do you want to lock me up in your house? Either way, it’ll be a first-class mess. Wash the dreams out of your eyes and you’ll see it for yourself. I know, I’ve been in a mess like this before,” he said grimly, “and I’ve learned a little. I nearly lost my family for the sake of a woman whose face I can’t even remember anymore.”
“Can’t you?”
“I remember she had three kids.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yes.”
“I hate you,” she whispered. “I hate you!”
“That’s better than watching train windows,” he said.
He sounded perfectly under control. But he knew that if she came over and touched him, he would forget his own words and make her forget them, too.
She went back into the house, shielding her crumpling face with her hand.
He smoked another cigarette and watched the sunrise and wondered what would happen if he told Evelyn.
15
He didn’t tell Evelyn; he didn’t have to. Though she wasn’t aware of what had happened on the sundeck, she had read, surely and expertly, the signs of guilt: too much or too little silence, a forced laugh, a shift of glance, a sudden change in an old habit. The last sign was the most striking — for the first time since they’d come here, Mark had shaved and dressed very carefully before breakfast.
She kept the knowledge to herself, letting it grow inside like a tumor hidden, temporarily, under a whole and healthy skin.
During breakfast she was very cheerful, paying special attention to Jessie but not missing a flicker of Mark’s eyelids. Mrs. Wakefield had eaten early and had already gone upstairs with her notebook to finish listing the contents of the bedrooms.
“Don’t dribble like that, Jessie,” Evelyn said. “We don’t want the place to be swimming in oatmeal.”
“My manners are better when I’m out.”
“Well, pretend you’re out then. Pretend you’re at — how about Schrafft’s?”
Schrafft’s was fine. She pretended that she was dining alone at Schrafft’s on porridge-sherbet; her mother and father were total strangers, and Luisa, coming in with the coffee, was the cross waitress who wouldn’t get a tip.
“Here’s the coffee,” Luisa announced, as if she had just barely been able to survive the grueling journey from kitchen to dining room. “Mama says it’s terrible this morning because the water’s beginning to smell again. We may not have any water at all pretty soon unless it rains.”
“I’m sure it will,” Evelyn said. “Let’s hope so.”
“It never rains here in June. Do you want anything else besides the coffee?”
“No, thanks, Luisa.”
The cross waitress disappeared, and the total strangers began to talk.
“Mark, did you see that necklace Luisa’s wearing?”
“Sorry, I didn’t notice.”
“It looks like the same one Mrs. Wakefield had on that first day she came.”
“Maybe it is. Who cares?”
“I don’t actually care, darling,” Evelyn said pleasantly, “only it seems odd that she’d let Luisa wear it. It looks rather expensive.”
“Mrs. Wakefield gave it to her,” Jessie said, forgetting she was at Schrafft’s. “For keeps.”
“You’re not making that up, angel?”
Jessie never made anything up, and said as much, with virtuous indignation. “I know for a fact because she almost traded it to me for the watch, only not quite.”
“In any case,” Mark interrupted, “it’s not your business, Jessie. It’s not ours either, for that matter. Let’s drop the subject.”
“Well, really,” Evelyn said, widening her eyes. “Surely it’s a perfectly innocent subject — unless you know more about it than I do?”
“I know nothing about it.”
“Then why get so touchy? Jessie, sweet, if you’ve finished, you may go now.”
She hadn’t finished, but she rose anyway, and sped for the door. She knew what was coming. The total strangers weren’t total strangers anymore. They were her mother and father, and they were going to have an argument.
“All right, let’s have it,” Mark said. “Let the brave front fall and we’ll see what’s behind it.”
“Not a thing.”
“That’s the way you’re going to play it, is it?”
Impulsively she reached out and touched his coat sleeve. “Mark, why do you talk to me lately as if I were your enemy?”
“If I do, then I’m sorry. I apologize.”
“What good’s an apology? I’d like to know where I stand.”
“Where you’ve stood for the last twelve years. You’re my wife, and I wouldn’t give you up for all the other women in the country.”
She turned away, biting her lip. “Those are nice words, but the way you say them makes me want to bawl.”
“You have no reason to bawl, Evelyn,” he said quietly. “Perhaps I don’t act the dashing lover as well as I did ten years ago, but I do love you. I think you’re sweet and bright and amusing, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else I’d rather see every day.”
“But... Now let’s have the but.”
“Can’t think of any...”
“I can,” she said. “But along comes a woman like Mrs. Wakefield — or Patty — one of these dreamy June-moon-soon gals who’s made a mess out of her life — and what happens? You want to rescue her or make it all up to her or something. And immediately I begin to look like something that crawled out from under the floorboards.” She hesitated. “Hell, darling, I can be dreamy, too. June, moon, soon, swoon. See?”
“I’ve never been unfaithful to you.”
“You’ve come pretty close, though.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Patty and Mrs. Wakefield?”
“Patty and Mrs. Wakefield. Right.”
She was silent for a moment before she let out a queer little cry. “What am I sitting here for? Why don’t I do something about it? Could I... no, I don’t suppose I could.”
“Could what?”
“Talk you out of it. You know, sort of analyze her so she won’t look quite so good to you.”
He smiled, very slightly. “She doesn’t look so good to me. You’re a funny girl.”
“Listen, Mark. Do you really have a crush on her? I mean when you look at her, do you — do you want her?”
“No.” It was the first lie he told, and he told it as much for her sake as his own.
“You wouldn’t admit it anyway.”
“Probably not.”
She said, after a time, “I wish you weren’t so honest. Sometimes I think that people who bend over backward to be honest only do it to be... to be cruel.”
“If I lied, though, you’d think up stronger words for me than cruel.”
“I guess.”
“It’s a case of hell if I do and hell if I don’t.”
She poured his coffee and passed it across the table. “I suppose you think I’m unreasonable?”