“I’ve told you before, Mr. Decker doesn’t like to be talked about as if he’s not here.”
“Well, he’s not really here, is he?”
“He’s here, dammit.”
He was there. It was today. The bickering women were Violet Smith and his wife, Gilly. He wished they’d go away and come in again as two strangers. Strangers were easier to bear.
They talked in the hall, with Marco’s door closed. Rays of the sun slanted through the skylight, and the feathers in Violet Smith’s hat iridesced and looked alive.
“I’ve been turning this over and over in my mind,” she said, “until I’m on the verge of a sinking spell. I’m not sure what’s right and what’s not. There’s such a thing as minding your own business and then there’s such a thing as avoiding your responsibility.”
“Get to the point.”
“You told me I was never to talk in church about any of the things that happen here at the house — Mrs. Lockwood and all that hanky-panky — and I never did. I never so much as mentioned Mr. Lockwood. She did.”
“Who?”
“Ethel Lockwood, his first wife. She brought up the subject at the last meeting. I tried to stop her.” She couldn’t recall saying from the back of the room, Speak up, I can’t hear you. And if such a memory had struggled its way into her conscious mind, she would have disowned it. “Mrs. Lockwood was determined to continue.”
“I can’t prevent her from talking,” Gilly said. “About Mr. Lockwood or anything else.”
“But she’s saying bad things.”
“How bad?”
Violet Smith’s wooden face was splintered by uncertainty. “We’re honor-bound not to tell outsiders what goes on at the meetings and I’m scared. He is listening Up There. You better go and see Mrs. Lockwood for yourself.”
“I don’t want to. I haven’t seen her in years.”
“You better, anyway. She’s a little odd, which aren’t we all, but she knows something you don’t and you ought to.”
“Concerning B. J.?”
“Yes.”
“Is it important?”
“I wouldn’t be standing here talking like this with Him listening Up There if it wasn’t important.” Violet Smith’s feathers were quivering. “Do you want me to tell you her address?”
“I know her address,” Gilly said. “Ethel and I are old friends.”
Twenty
She remembered the last time she’d seen the house.
B. J. was waiting to let her in. His face was flushed with excitement and anticipation.
“We’ll have the whole house to ourselves for a week. Ethel’s gone to visit her sister in Tucson and I’m supposed to be staying at the University Club while she’s away. Isn’t that marvelous?”
It was marvelous.
They used the guest room, which had a king-size bed with a blue silk spread that wrinkled. Afterward B. J., still naked, tried to iron out the wrinkles with his hands. He looked foolish and helpless. She loved him desperately.
“Next time,” she said, “we’ll take the spread off.”
“Next time?” He couldn’t cope with this time, let alone think about a next time. He glanced over at the suitcase she’d brought as if he couldn’t recall carrying it upstairs for her and putting it on the rack at the foot of the bed. “Maybe you shouldn’t actually move in, G. G. It might be better if we met at a motel.”
“I want to stay here. I love this room. I love you.”
“That damn spread, it’ll be the first thing she notices. Why couldn’t she have picked some material that doesn’t wrinkle?”
“You mustn’t be afraid of her.”
“She might faint. She faints a lot.”
“What if I fainted? Right this minute?”
“Oh hell, G. G., you wouldn’t. I mean... would you?”
“I guess not. I’m trying, but I can’t seem to get the hang of it.”
She sat down on the bed again, deliberately, heavily.
“For God’s sake,” he said. “Get off there.”
“No.”
“You don’t realize—”
“I realize. I just want you to love me so much that you don’t care about anything else in the world.”
“That’s crazy.”
“So I’m crazy. Do you love me anyway?”
“Sure I do. But Ethel brought that spread all the way from Hong Kong.”
“Maybe if we’re lucky she’ll take it back to Hong Kong.”
He began to laugh in spite of himself at the image of Ethel dragging the spread all the way back to Hong Kong.
Later he was sober again, and scared. Gilly wasn’t. “I don’t care,” she said, “if Ethel walks in right this minute.” She didn’t. She walked in five days later. She and her sister had an argument and Ethel came home early. She was shocked, disgusted, reproachful. She sobbed, she fainted, she screamed. Then she went back to her sister’s in Tucson to think things over.
B. J. thought things over, too. “She doesn’t really like me, you know. I don’t blame her. I’m no prize.”
“You are to me,” Gilly said.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you were crazy. Me a prize. That’s a laugh.”
“It’s true.”
“What do you suppose I should do now?”
“Get a divorce and marry me.”
“Is this — are you proposing to me?”
“Yes.”
“Women aren’t supposed to do that, G. G. They’re supposed to wait to be asked.”
“I waited. You never asked.”
“How could I? I’m married.”
“I’m not. So I’ll do the asking. Will you marry me?”
“Well, for Christ’s sake—”
“Leave Christ out of it. It’s you and me, B. J.”
B. J. consulted a lawyer and moved to the University Club. Ethel sent the bedspread to the dry cleaner. Gilly started shopping for a trousseau. If a shadow of remorse appeared now and then, she closed her eyes or turned her back. It’s you and me, B. J.
From a distance the big white stucco house looked the same. But as she approached, Gilly saw that the paint was peeling off the walls and the window frames. The trees in the courtyard had turned brown from lack of water and were dropping their leaves in the dry birdbath and the empty lily pond. A black cat crouched on top of the wall as if he were waiting for Halloween or for the birdbath to be filled. It watched with green-eyed interest as Gilly walked through the courtyard and pressed the chime of the front door.
This time it was Ethel who let her in.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said. “Violet Smith called to tell me you were on your way.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m doing here.”
“You will. Come inside.”
“We can talk out here.”
“Are you afraid I’ve arranged some kind of trap for you? How quaint. I assure you I bear no grudges and I have forgiven all my enemies. Come, you’ll want to see the changes in the house.”
Gilly went inside, wondering about the changes and whether the blue silk bedspread had been one of them. Probably the first.
The living room was lavishly furnished, but it had the pervasive chill of a place that was never used. A layer of dust covered everything, like a family curse, the red velvet chairs and marble-topped tables, the gilt-framed portraits of plump gentle women and stiff-necked men. Silver vases for rosebuds, and crystal bowls made to float camellias, were empty. Spiderwebs hung undisturbed across the chandeliers, and there were cracks in the plaster of the ceiling as though the house had been shaken by a series of explosions.