“And when I didn’t, you slapped me.”
“It wasn’t so much an angry slap as a slap of awe and wonder.”
Hank mumbled the words “awe and wonder,” then took a drink of milk.
“Do you want some of that cake?” I asked.
“Is there any left?”
“One more slice. You can have it. I couldn’t eat anything right now.”
As I was getting the last slice of cake for Hank, he turned to me, droplets of milk clinging to his Warner Baxtery moustache. “I can’t find another job. I don’t know when I’ll find another job. For good or bad, you’re the sole breadwinner right now, Frances. We can’t afford for you to get yourself fired as well.”
I sat back down. The last slice of chocolate cake was larger than I’d remembered. I brought two forks.
“You answered very quickly, Hank. You answered as if there was no need to even think about what this means.”
“It means, honey, that I’m giving you permission to commit adultery with your boss. If I were a better husband, I would put my foot down. I would defend your honor and our marriage. I’m not a better husband. I am a failure as a provider. Ergo, I am a failure as a husband. When it comes right down to it, I’m probably also a failure as a human being. I have been thinking about jumping off the Bulkeley Bridge. I know it isn’t very tall, but if I hit the water just the right way it might slap me so hard I’ll get knocked out and then I’ll drown.”
“Oh, shut up, Hank.”
I took a bite of cake. It was delicious. Rosemary Peterson makes the most delicious cakes in Hartford. And why shouldn’t she? Her husband’s a chef.
The Petersons have a good marriage, by all appearances. Tom works at one of the nicest hotels in town and their little girl Peggy just won the Baby Clara Bow lookalike contest. Hank and I have been trying to have children for five years, and it’s probably for the best that we haven’t succeeded since things have gotten so difficult for us as of late, financially speaking.
This morning I went in to ask my boss at the railroad yard for a raise, and he said, “Well, of course not,” but that he was glad that I came in, and “please sit down” and “I have two letters to dictate, Frances, and then a question I need to put to you.” And he dictated his two letters and then he asked the question, which required a slight preface: there are a lot of out-of-work secretaries out there, Frances, times being tough for everybody these days…
And here he gestured out his window and toward the yard, where, with exquisite timing, one of his yardmen was in the process of chasing off two hobos with obvious hopes of securing free passage and gratis accommodations on one of our empty outgoing boxcars that afternoon…so would I consider continuing to be his secretary between the hours of eight and five, and then after hours and on weekends doing some things for him that his wife was unwilling to do?
“Errands?” I asked naïvely.
“You’re very beautiful, Miss Hellmann.”
“Mrs. Hellmann, Mr. Gaither. I am married.”
“I like to think of you as unmarried, Miss Hellmann. Unmarried and willing to do those things for me that my wife, who is not an adventurous woman — who really is not much of a woman at all, but a fleshy cow, a Marie Dressler sort of foghorn-throated, muscle-bound sort of — I will just put it right out there, Miss Hellmann—gorgon. The marriage is all but — well, this is certainly beside the point, I’m sure. The point is that your job now depends on whether or not you will be able to meet my new requirements for keeping the position. I’ll give you until tomorrow to make up your mind. Should you decide against my proposal, I’ll have no choice but to let you go.”
“Oh.” I looked out the window. One of the hobos was being clubbed by the yardman. I turned away. “I’ll have to talk it over with my husband.”
“Your husband? You’re pulling my leg.”
I shook my head. “I’d really like to speak with him about this. He may not like it.”
Mr. Gaither exhaled rather noisily. He ran his hand over his mouth with some exasperation and a little bit of pity, as if I were too stupid to see that talking his proposition over with Hank was something that only an imbecilic woman would do.
“And if he doesn’t like it, where does that put things? You’re out of a job and you could be out of a marriage. Do you want that, Miss Hellmann?”
“Mrs. Hellmann, Mr. Gaither. And I will consider your proposal. I will. But I really have to speak with Hank about it. It is only right. We took vows. I don’t want to break my vows to him without his permission.”
Mr. Gaither shook his head. He wore a grimace that said that he was more than a little put out with me. I think the look also said that he didn’t believe I was going to speak to Hank. I was bluffing, testing him. And if this were true, if he called my bluff — well, where was the risk in having ever asked such an audacious thing of me? Whom otherwise would I tell? What person of consequence would believe that he had actually used this awful economic depression to compromise me in such a way? I had no avenue for appeal or redress. So testing him like this could only be a stupid move.
“Ask him if you wish, Miss Hellmann, but if you do, don’t bother to come to work tomorrow. It should not be my desire each time we embrace to be on silent alert for the approaching footsteps of a cuckold with a gun.”
“Hank doesn’t have a gun. He does have a very sharp fishing knife, though. The kind you gut the big fish with.”
Mr. Gaither lost a little of the color in his face.
Hank laughed when I told him this. And I told it all to him in between forkfuls of Mrs. Peterson’s Dutch chocolate cake (did I mention that Monday was my birthday?) and stolen sips of Hank’s milk. I always tell my husband everything. Just as he tells everything to me. We are very open and honest with one another. Which has made the difficulties of the last several months all the harder to bear. Night after night we have lain in bed and discussed the bleak uncertainty of our joint future. Night after night Hank has held me close to him as we have yearned in a single voice for things to get better, for the Depression to end, for Eddie Cantor to sing again to us in our very own living room, and not through the open kitchen window.
“But did you really mean it, Hank? That you would have actually agreed to what that lecherous old man was asking?”
“Well, yes. On practical grounds, of course. Look at the alternative. Me selling apples on a street corner and you taking in laundry.” He added, “And you’re not even very good at laundry.”
I felt like slapping him again. Hank had surprised me. No, it was something stronger than surprise. It was utter stupefaction. Total awe and wonder. To think that he would give me up in such a way, regardless of the guaranteed return. I felt a little sick.
After a long moment, I said, “Well, your answer shouldn’t matter so much at this point. Because I’m fired.”
“Maybe I should call him. Maybe we could work something out.”
The second slap came even harder than the first. I had a little of Mrs. Peterson’s cake on my fingertips and they left parallel streaks of chocolate frosting upon his cheek. I was like Norma Shearer in that other movie — the one she made early in her career — in which she got to do the slapping. It had the most appropriate title you could think of — that is, for a movie in which there is no shortage of face-slapping going on: He Who Gets Slapped. She slapped Lon Chaney, who played a clown.
That was my husband to a T. My Hank. The slappable clown.