He put his glass on the bar and started thoughtfully through the passage to the living room. His head was down, and he walked straight into Mrs. Walpole, a very plain woman. “I see that your wife hasn’t recovered sufficiently to face the public today,” she said gaily.
A peculiar fate seems to overtake homely women at the ends of parties—and journeys, too. Their curls and their ribbons come undone, particles of food cling to their teeth, their glasses steam, and the wide smile with which they planned to charm the world lapses into a look of habitual discontent and bitterness. Mrs. Walpole had got herself up bravely for the Townsends’ party, but time itself—she was drinking sherry—had destroyed the impression she intended to make. Someone seemed to have sat on her hat, her voice was strident, and the camellia pinned to her shoulder had died.
“But I suppose Maria sent you to see what they’re saying about her,” she said.
Will got past Mrs. Walpole and went up the stairs to get his coat. Bridget had gone, and Helen Bulstrode was sitting alone in the hall in a red dress. Helen was a lush. She was treated kindly in Shady Hill. Her husband was pleasant, wealthy, and forbearing. Now Helen was very drunk, and whatever she had meant to forget when she first poured herself a drink that day had long since been lost in the clutter. She rolled a little in her chair while Will was putting on his coat, and suddenly she addressed him copiously in French. Will did not understand. Her voice got louder and angrier, and when he got down to the hall, she went to the head of the stairs to call after him. He went off without saying goodbye to anyone.
MARIA was in the living room reading a magazine when Will came in. “Look, Mummy,” he said. “Can you tell me this? Did you lose your shoes last night?”
“I lost my pocketbook,” Maria said, “but I don’t think I lost my shoes.”
“Try and remember,” he said. “It isn’t like a raincoat or an umbrella. People usually remember when they lose their shoes.”
“What is the matter with you, Willy?”
“Did you lose your shoes?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you wear a girdle?”
“What are you talking about, Will?”
“By Christ, I’ve got to find out!”
He went upstairs to their room, which was dark. He turned on a light in her closet and opened the chest where she kept her shoes. There were a great many pairs, and among them were gold shoes, silver shoes, bronze shoes, and he was shuffling through the collection when he saw Maria standing in the doorway. “Oh, my God, Mummy, forgive me!” he said. “Forgive me!”
“Oh, Willie!” she exclaimed. “Look what you’ve done to my shoes.”
WILL FELT all right in the morning, and he had a good day in the city. At five, he made the trip uptown on the subway and crossed the station to his train automatically. In the train, he got an aisle seat and scanned the asininities in the evening paper. An old man was suing his young wife for divorce, on the ground of adultery; the fact that this story had no power to disturb Will not only pleased him but left him feeling exceptionally fit and happy. The train traveled north under a sky that was still spread with light.
A little rain had begun to fall when Will stepped onto the platform at Shady Hill. “Hello, Trace,” he said. “Hello, Pete. Hello, Herb.” Around him, his neighbors were greeting their wives and children. He took the route up Alewives Lane to Shadrock Road, past rows and rows of lighted houses. He put his car in the garage and went around to the front and looked at his tulips, gleaming in the rain and the porch light. He let the fawning cat in out of the wet, and Flora, his youngest daughter, ran through the hall to kiss him. Some deep recess in his spirit seemed to respond to the good child and the light-filled rooms. He had the feeling that there would never be any less to his life than this. Presently, he would be sitting on a folding chair in the June sunlight watching Flora graduate from Smith.
Maria came into the hall wearing a gray silk dress—a cloth and a color that flattered her. Her eyes were bright and wide, and she kissed him tenderly. The telephone began to ring, for it was that hour in the suburbs when the telephone rings steadily with board-meeting announcements, scraps of gossip, fund-raising pleas, and invitations. Maria answered it and he heard her say, “Yes, Edith.”
Will went into the living room to make a cocktail, and a few minutes later the doorbell rang. Edith Hastings, a good neighbor and a friendly woman, preceded Maria into the living room, protesting, “I really shouldn’t break in on you like this.” Still protesting, she sat down and took the glass that Will handed her. He had never seen her color so high or her eyes so bright. “Charlie’s in Oregon,” she said. “He’ll be gone three weeks this trip. He wanted me to speak to you, Will, about some apple trees. He meant to speak to you before he left, but he didn’t have the time. He can get apple trees by the dozen from a nursery in New Jersey, and he wanted to know if you wouldn’t like to buy six.”
Edith Hastings was one of those women—and there were many of them in Shady Hill—whose husbands were away on business from one to three weeks out of every month. They lived—conjugally—the life of a Grand Banks fisherman’s wife, with none of the lore of ships and sailors to draw on. None—or almost none—of these widows could be accused of not having attacked their problems gallantly. They solicited funds for cancer, heart trouble, lameness, deafness, and mental health. They cultivated tropical plants in a capricious climate, wove cloth, made pottery, cared tenderly for their children, and did everything imaginable to make up for the irremediable absence of their men. They remained lonely women with a natural proneness to gossip.
“But of course you don’t have to decide this minute,” Edith went on when he didn’t answer her question. “I don’t suppose you really have to decide until Charlie comes back from Oregon. I mean, there isn’t any special time for planting apple trees, is there? And, speaking of apple trees, how was the fete?”
Will turned his back and opened a window. Outside, the rain fell steadily, but he doubted then that it was the rain that had heightened Edith’s color and made her eyes shine. He heard Maria reply, and then he heard Edith ask, “When did you people leave?” She could not keep the excitement out of her voice. “And I understand that a pair of slippers and a girdle—”
Will swung around. “Is that what you came here to talk about?” he asked sharply.
“What?”
“Is that what you came here to talk about?”
“I really came here to talk about apple trees.”
“I gave Charlie a check for those apple trees six months ago.”
“Charlie didn’t tell me.”
“Why should he? It was all settled.”
“Well, I guess I’d better go.”
“Please do,” Will said. “Please go. And if anyone asks how we are, tell them we’re getting along fine.”
“Oh, Will, Will, Will!” Maria said.
“I seem to have come at the wrong time,” Edith said.
“And when you call the Trenchers and the Farquarsons and the Abbotts and the Beardens, tell them that I don’t give a good goddamn what happened at the party. Tell them to think up some gossip about someone else. Tell them to imagine some filth about the Fuller Brush man or the chump who delivers eggs on Friday or the Slaters’ gardener, but tell them to leave us alone.”