This was in December. Late one afternoon, Georgie left his office in Brooklyn and went into New York to do some shopping. All the high buildings in mid town were hidden in rain clouds, but he felt their presence overhead like the presence of a familiar mountain range. His feet were wet and his throat felt sore. The streets were crowded, and the decorations on the store fronts were mostly at such an angle that their meaning escaped him. While he could see the canopy of light at Lord & Taylor’s, he could only see the chins and vestments of the choir plastered across the front of Saks. Blasts of holy music wavered through the rain. He stepped into a puddle. It was as dark as night; it seemed, because of the many lights, the darkest of nights. He went into Saks. Inside, the scene of well-dressed and brightly lighted pillage stopped him. He stood to one side to avoid being savaged by the crowds that were pushing their way in and out. He distinctly felt the symptoms of a cold. A woman standing beside him dropped some parcels. He picked them up. She had a pleasant face, wore a black mink coat, and her feet, he noticed, were wetter than his. She thanked him, and he asked if she was going to storm the counters. “I thought I would,” she said, “but now I think I won’t. My feet are wet, and I have a terrible feeling that I’m coming down with a cold.”
“I feel the same way,” he said. “Let’s find some quiet place and have a drink.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t do that,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked. “It’s a festival, isn’t it?”
The dark afternoon seemed to turn on that word. It was meant to be festive. That was the meaning of the singing and the lights.
“I had never thought of it that way,” she said.
“Come on,” he said. He took her arm and led her down the avenue to a quiet bar. He ordered drinks and sneezed. “You ought to have a hot bath and go to bed,” she said. Her concern seemed purely maternal. He introduced himself. Her name was Betty Landers. Her husband was a doctor. Her daughter was married and her son was in his last year at Cornell. She was alone a good deal of the time, but she had recently taken up painting. She went to the Art Students League three times a week, and had a studio in the Village. They had three or four drinks and then took a cab downtown to see her studio.
It was not his idea of a studio. It was a two-room apartment in one of the new buildings near Washington Square and looked a little like the lair of a spinster. She pointed out her treasures. That’s what she called them. The desk she had bought in England, the chair she had bought in France, the signed Matisse lithograph. Her hair and her eyebrows were dark, her face was thin, and she might have been a spinster. She made him a drink, and when he asked to see her paintings she modestly refused, although he was to see them later, stacked up in the bathroom, where her easel and her other equipment were neatly stored. Why they became lovers, why in the presence of this stranger he should suddenly find himself divested of all his inhibitions and all his clothing, he never understood. She was not young. Her elbows and knees were lightly gnarled, as if she were some distant cousin of Daphne and would presently be transformed, not into a flowering shrub but into some hardy and common tree.
They met after this two or three times a week. He never discovered much about her beyond the fact that she lived on Park Avenue and was often alone. She was interested in his clothes and kept him posted on department-store sales. It was a large part of her conversation. Sitting in his lap, she told him that there was a sale of neckties at Saks, a sale of shoes at Brooks, a sale of shirts at Altman’s. Jill, by this time, was so absorbed in her campaign that she hardly noticed his arrivals and departures, but, sitting one evening in the living room while Jill was busy on the upstairs telephone, he felt that he had behaved shabbily. He felt that it was time that the affair, begun on that dark afternoon before Christmas, was over. He took some notepaper and wrote to Betty: “Darling, I’m leaving for San Francisco this evening and will be gone six weeks. I think it will be better, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me, if we don’t meet again.” He wrote the letter a second time, changing San Francisco to Rome, and addressed the note to her studio in the Village.
Jill was campaigning on the telephone the next night when he returned home. Mathilde, the high-school girl, was reading to Bibber. He spoke to his son and then went down to the pantry to make a drink. While he was there, he heard Jill’s heels on the stairs. They seemed to strike a swift and vengeful note, and when she came into the pantry her face was pale and drawn. Her hands were shaking, and in one of them she held the first of the two notes he had written.
“What is the meaning of this?” she asked.
“Where did you find it?”
“In the wastepaper basket.”
“Then I will explain,” he said. “Please sit down. Sit down for a minute, and I’ll explain the whole thing.”
“Do I have to sit down? I’m terribly busy.”
“No, you don’t have to sit down; but would you close the door? Mathilde can hear us.”
“I can’t believe you have anything to say that would necessitate closing a door.”
“I have this to say,” he said. He closed the door. “In December, just before Christmas, I took a mistress, a lonely woman. I can’t explain my choice. It may have been because she had an apartment of her own. She was not young; she was not beautiful. Her children are grown. Her husband is a doctor. They live on Park Avenue.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Park Avenue!” and she laughed. “I adore that part of it. I could have guessed that if you invented a mistress she would live on Park Avenue. You’ve always been such a hick.”
“Do you think this is all an invention?”
“Yes, I do. I think you’ve made the whole thing up to try and hurt me. You’ve never had much of an imagination. You might have done better if you’d tasted some Thackeray. Really. A Park Avenue matron. Couldn’t you have invented something more delectable? A Vassar senior with blazing red hair? A colored night-club singer? An Italian princess?”
“Do you really think I’ve made this all up?”
“I do, I do. I think it’s all a fabrication and a loathsome one, but tell me more, tell me more about your Park Avenue matron.”
“I have nothing more to tell you.”
“You have nothing more to tell me because your powers of invention have collapsed. Isn’t that it? My advice to you, old chap, is never to embark on anything that counts on a powerful imagination. It isn’t your forte.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I do not, and if I did I wouldn’t be jealous. My sort of woman is never jealous. I have more important things to do.”
AT THIS POINT in their marriage, Jill’s assault on the highway commission served as a sort of suspension bridge over which they could travel, meet, converse, and dine together, elevated safely above the turbulence of their feelings. She was working to have the issue brought to a public hearing, and was to appear before the commission with petitions and documents that would prove the gravity of her case and the number of influential supporters she had been able to enlist. Unluckily, at this time Bibber came down with a bad cold and it was difficult to find anyone to stay with him. Now and then, Mrs. Haney would come to sit beside his bed, and in the afternoons Mathilde read to him. When it was necessary for Jill to go to Albany, George stayed home from his office for a day so that she could make this trip. He stayed home on another day when she had an important appointment and Mrs. Haney couldn’t come. She was sincerely grateful to him for these sacrifices, and he had nothing but admiration for her intelligence and tenacity. She was far superior to him as an advocate and as an organizer. She was to appear before the commission on a Friday, and he looked forward to having this much of their struggle behind them. He came home on Friday at around six. He called out, “Jill? Mathilde? Mrs. Haney?” but there was no answer. He threw off his hat and coat and bounded up the stairs to Bibber’s room. The room was lighted, but the boy was alone and seemed to be asleep. Pinned to his pillow was this note: “Dear Mrs. Madison my aunt and uncle came to visit with us and I have to go home and help my mother. Bibber’s asleep so he won’t know the difference. I am sorry. Mathilde.” On the pillow next to the note was a dark stain of blood. He touched the boy lightly and felt the searing heat of fever. Then he tried to rouse the child, but Bibber was not sleeping; he was unconscious.