“Peter’s not in,” she said.
“Where is he?”
“He’s at work. Where do you think he is?”
“How should I know? Look, Laura — this is Herbie, Peter’s brother. Will you tell him when he gets in that I’ve got a job for him, and if he wants it, to call me back. Even if he doesn’t want it. Okay?”
“Peter’s got a job,” she said, irritated at Herbie’s officiousness.
“Is that right? That’s not what he tells me. Okay. Just give him my message, please, will you? How are you, Lila? What’s new? We’ll have to get together one of these days and have a brother-to-sister talk. What do you say?” She had the odd feeling that Herbie was winking at her on the other end. The hell with him, she thought afterward, looking at herself in the mirror, combing her hair; her face was breaking out — the damn pregnancy! — she was getting uglier by the minute. She combed her hair, the act a comfort in itself, washed her face with soap, then studied herself in the mirror again. Her skin seemed to be turning yellow. How any man could bear to look at her — her face, once beautiful, a ruin of itself — was more than she could comprehend. (Her breasts were beginning to swell; that, at least, was an improvement.)
Unable to do anything else, made lonely by betrayal, she called home.
“Mildred,” she said, when her mother answered, “I just discovered that Peter’s been lying to me.” She picked at a stain on her brown skirt.
A sigh on the other end. “I don’t want you to say I didn’t warn you.”
“Let’s not go into that again.”
“You know any time you feel you’ve had enough, your father will come right over there and bring you home. I don’t want to interfere, Lois, but any man who would say what he said to your mother …”
“Please!”
“All right. Not another word about it, though I think you’re crazy for putting up with him. Lois, what kind of lies has he been telling you? Tell me the truth. Is he in trouble with the police?”
Her mother was too much. Lois smiled, the image of her amusement in the mirror of her mind, made a comic face for Peter’s sake as though he were there in the kitchen to appreciate the joke. “He pretends to go to work every morning,” she said, glad of someone to complain to, “but according to his brother he doesn’t have a job. Where can he possibly go?”
“Is that all? I expected something worse.” Her mother sounded disappointed. “You know if you need any money, Lois, Dad and I will give it to you. We won’t let you starve.”
It was beginning to rain, the odor of damp wool permeating the kitchen. “It’s not only that,” Lois said, called on to justify her grief. “There are other complications.”
“Like what? Tell me.”
I’m having a baby that will kill me, that is eating up my insides. For a moment she was going to tell her mother, in need of sympathy, but then — a complicated decision — she decided not to. “Like I still think I’m in love with Stanley,” she said.
“Oh!”
“Mildred, Peter will be home soon. I’d better get some dinner on the stove. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Stanley was over yesterday to get some things he left over here.” Mildred lowered her voice as though it were a secret. “He’d take you back in a minute, Lois. I know what I’m saying.”
“Okay. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. So long, Mildred.”
“Good-bye. And another thing, don’t go out if you still have a cold. Your voice is very hoarse. And don’t tell me that it isn’t, because I can hear that it is. Remember to call.” Lois hung up.
When Peter came home Lois embraced him, behaved as if nothing was wrong. It made him suspicious, though he pretended to be pleased — a nervous pleasure in willful pretense. Sensitive to the tremors of distrust, neither said much during dinner, chary of what was unsaid.
“Is the meat loaf too rare for you?” Lois asked, reverent of the silence, watchful.
“Good,” Peter mumbled, his mouth full.
“Your brother called,” she said casually, as if it was the next thing to come to mind, watching him like a spy. Peter flinched but didn’t know it, went on eating.
“What did he want?” He took a drink of water, coughed, another drink, choking.
Lois turned her head, a pang of satisfaction, a bitter victory.
“He didn’t tell me. He wants you to call him back.”
“You don’t have any idea why he called?”
Her chin poised on her palm, she played at being thoughtful, thought of other things. “No idea,” she said.
He went on eating. “I like your hair that way,” he said, enjoying his meal again.
She had a moment of hating him. “It’s not any way,” she said, withholding her irritation. “I just washed it, it’s just hanging straight.”
“I like it that way,” he said.
She smiled wanly. He reached across the table for her hand; it wasn’t there.
After dinner: Peter was reading a book, was trying to read, while Lois knocked about in the kitchen, clearing up, dropping an occasional dish — the disconcerting music of her mood.
He was out of touch. The tension buzzing at the back of his ears his only sense of things, his knowledge of the world. He wondered, worried — looking for explanations — if Lois had found out about Gloria. Whether she knew or not, he regretted it, that long day in bed, wished it undone; yet thinking about it, succeeded in recalling only the profits of pleasure, the languor, the act of love. He got up, paced the room, tweaked by shame and desire, the ghosts of unrest.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said as she came into the room.
“Why don’t you?” she said softly, without bitterness, a martyr’s frail irony. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, not moving.
“Good-bye.”
He took a cautious step.
“See you,” she said, her hand at her throat, a curious gesture of despair. “If you leave now, I won’t be here when you get back.” She went by him into the bathroom at the other end of the long room, locked the door.
He grabbed his lumber jacket, rushed to the door, stopped, turned back, a shriek inside him unspoken. He didn’t want to go. He had to. He plunged out, slamming the door — always problems — walked quickly around the block and came back.
She was still in the bathroom. “Lois,” he called, thinking she was gone.
“What do you want?” She stuck her head, turbanned in a violet bath towel, through the opening in the door. “I’ve been washing my hair.” A tender smile for him, faintly pitying.
Were they both mad? “I’ve come back,” he said foolishly. And added, “It’s pretty raw out,” as though it explained something.
Later she was sitting on the bed in her slip, a weed of a girl, her chest undernourished — a wistful, hard-nosed little girl. She puffed on her cigarette with secret pleasure, as though it were against the law. He was back at his book again, his spirit restive, wandering.
“I don’t want to have a child,” she said.
That again. It was their most abundant, most fruitless topic of conversation. He closed the book, impatient with his life, losing his place mark, his place. “I‘m sorry,” he said. “You know that I’m sorry to death that you don’t want it, but it’s done. It can’t be undone.”
“You know it can.”
He stood up abruptly, a reflex gesture of protest.
“Peter, the truth: apart from the fact it’s a fait accompli, you don’t really want the kid, do you? Do you? If it were wholly a matter of choice, would you want a kid now?”
“Why not?” He was sitting again, the bile-green-walled squalor of their basement apartment moving in and around him — no life for a kid. For whom then? For no one. “It’s not such a tragedy,” he said. “We’re married.”