She took the two boys back up to the lodge again for the final week in August, and on returning she began outfitting them for the school year ahead.
The meeting which she had both anticipated and dreaded for a long time took place in Eaton’s College Street. She had just started up the escalator to the children’s wear department when some woman stumbled getting off at the top. There was a little flurry of excitement by the time Esther reached the scene — the escalator attendant had propelled the woman to a chair, a floorwalker was waving his handkerchief in front of her face in the vague hope of whipping up more oxygen, and a clerk had been sent for some water.
The woman, heavy with child, seemed embarrassed at all the fuss, and when the clerk returned with a paper cup full of water she refused it. Instead, she rose with awkward dignity, made her way to the nearest counter and stood there a moment to steady herself.
Esther approached the counter and said, “Thelma?” and the woman turned, squinting, as if she’d been summoned from some dark world into sunlight.
“Are you all right, Thelma?”
“Yes. I’m fine.” Her face was puffy, like rising dough, and her legs distorted by swelling. Her maternity dress, soiled around the collar, clung in wet patches between her shoulder blades and under her arms. Perspiration and oil had seeped through her make-up and stood out in droplets along her forehead.
“It’s good to see you,” Esther said. “I’ve thought of you so often.”
“Have you?” Thelma smiled dryly. “Thanks.”
“I — look, couldn’t we go some place for a cup of tea? We can’t talk here.”
“I have nothing to say. Besides, my intake of fluids is very limited. Thanks all the same.”
“I’ll admit I felt bitter toward you at first, but not any more. I wish we could be friends.”
“Do you?” Thelma turned back to the counter which was filled with infants’ toys, rattles and teethers and rubber dolls and stuffed animals. “I’ve gone this far alone. I think I can manage the rest of the way.”
“How much longer do you have to wait?”
“Why all the sudden interest?”
“It’s not sudden. Listen, we could go over to the Honey Dew for some toasted scones. Or some butter cakes at Child’s.”
“I’m on a diet.”
“All right then, a leaf of lettuce and a dab of cottage cheese.”
“Why are you being so persistent?”
“I want to talk to you,” Esther said truthfully. “I’ve wanted to all summer, actually, but didn’t have the nerve.”
“Nerve?”
“Well, whatever you want to call it. I was — embarrassed, I guess.”
“That’s a word I’m beginning to understand quite well.”
“Have things — has it been hard for you?”
Tears appeared in Thelma’s eyes. She blinked them away, obstinately. “Why should you care?”
“I don’t know why, exactly, but I do.”
“It’s been hell.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t, don’t be sympathetic. It’s the one thing I can’t stand. Oh, for God’s sake, let’s get out of here, people are staring, I think I’m going to cry.”
She didn’t cry, though. By the time they reached the nearest Child’s she seemed to have herself under good control. The coffee-break crowd had left and the early lunchers
hadn’t arrived, so the place was nearly deserted. They chose a table in the corner farthest from the windows, and Esther ordered butter cakes and black tea, and Thelma a chicken salad which she looked at ravenously but barely touched, as if she knew too well the penalties of such a splurge.
“My blood pressure’s up,” she explained. “The doctor’s afraid of eclampsia. I have to count every ounce of fluid, every grain of salt.”
“Does Harry know?”
“Know what?”
“That you’re not well.”
“I am well,” she said stubbornly. “I have to be careful, that’s all. Harry.” She repeated the name, frowning, as if she had trouble identifying him. “No, Harry doesn’t know. I haven’t written to him since June.”
“He’s been writing to you, though?”
“Oh yes. He sends me money twice a month, more than he can afford, actually — a money order from Kansas City and two hundred dollars from here — I guess he arranges the two hundred through the local office. I don’t know why, it seems an odd way of doing things, but I’m grateful for the money. He must have been given a raise in pay.”
Esther didn’t even blink. “That’s very likely. Wages are higher over there.”
“His letters have changed recently. Oh, nothing definite you can put your finger on, he still misses me and so on, but I have the feeling — well, that it’s only words, that he’s doing quite nicely by himself. Or not by himself.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe he’s found somebody else,” Thelma said in a low voice. “Oh, I don’t blame him. I wanted it to happen.”
“Are you sure it has?”
“No. But I have this intuition. And I know Harry. If some woman ogles him at an office picnic he’s not going to run away, he’ll stand there and be ogled and love every minute of it.”
“I grant you there may be something in intuition, but carrying it as far as an office picnic and an ogling woman...”
“There actually was an office picnic. He mentioned it in his last letter. He said he’d had a very good time. Oh, not that I care. I want him to have a good time, to be happy. He deserves it. Only...”
“Only what?”
“I wish he wouldn’t tell me about it. I’m so miserable. I’m so miserable.” She dabbed at her eyes with a piece of Kleenex. “Office picnic. To hell with him.”
“Now don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Think of the future, the baby. How much longer do you have to wait?”
“Nearly three weeks.”
“That’s not very long.”
“It seems — it feels like an eternity.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No. No, thanks.” She took another bite of the chicken salad, then pushed the dish away from her. “The next letter I get from him, I’m not going to read. I won’t even open it.”
“Aren’t you being a little unreasonable?”
“Just as unreasonable as I can get, I know that. I’m a dog in the manger. I don’t want Harry back, I could never live with him again. It’s just — well, the thought of him carousing around with other women, going to all kinds of parties...”
“One office picnic.”
“That’s all he mentioned. There are probably dozens of occasions he didn’t mention.” She dabbed at her eyes again. “It’s not that I begrudge him anything. I want him to be happy. I’ll give him a divorce so he can marry her.”
“By her, you mean the woman who ogled him at the picnic and pursued him relentlessly through a round of wild parties?”
“You needn’t laugh at me,” Thelma said sulkily. “I can read between the lines.”
“Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don’t read the lines. You’re letting your imagination run riot. You’ve taken an office picnic and blown it up into a series of orgies.”
“No. Harry wouldn’t enjoy orgies. He’s not like that. He’s just the kind of man who should be married.”