“Oh, well,” he said.
“You know how fond children are of things that make noise,” Mary told him.
He looked at her helplessly, at her kind, protecting, understanding eyes, and for lack of words he finished the last of his sandwich with a single chomp and wiped the crumbs off on the front of his shirt. Chewing gave him a good reason not to speak. He gazed straight ahead of him, chewing hard, conscious of seven faces turned in his direction and frozen there.
“How is your work going?” Mary asked him.
He chewed on. He couldn’t seem to finish. The bread and cheese seemed to have molded together like soggy newspaper.
“Jeremy?” she said. “Aren’t you working any more?”
Her face was so concerned. She was being so careful of him. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “Of course I am,” he said.
“You are?”
“My work is going very well. Very well. I am very pleased with it.”
“Oh,” said Mary. “Well, that’s wonderful.”
“In fact, it’s going better than it ever has before,” he said.
“That’s nice.”
She turned and went out of the bedroom. Following her, he had to bat his way between the damp diapers. The children came behind him in a shuffling, whispering line. When he located Mary again — just easing herself onto a dingy mound of a sofa and arranging Rachel upon her lap — Jeremy sat down too, but at some distance from her. The children settled themselves on the floor, all facing their parents, completely silent now. He winced to see them on that cold, blackened linoleum. He noticed how shabby and unattractive they looked — ragged children with reddened noses and chapped hands and lips, their sleeves short enough to expose their wrists and their shoes muddy and curling at the toes. And the house filled him with despair. At each gust of wind outside the cold burst in upon him like little knives from several directions. The furniture seemed untrustworthy — infested or disease-ridden. He sat gingerly on the edge of the couch. He kept his eyes averted from the miserable attempt at a kitchen that he had glimpsed across the room. Why must she choose the very worst house to live in? Why had she gone husbandless to the hospital that time, no doubt calling down all the nurses’ pity and indignation? Was it purposeful? Was it aimed at him? Yet the next thing she said was, “We’re doing very well, too.”
He stared at her.
“We’re doing beautifully,” she told him.
Yes. She would do beautifully anywhere. There was no defeating her. He felt tired at the thought of her.
“I have a job now, you know,” she said. “I work at a day nursery in one of those cottages up the road. You probably passed it.”
“Do — but what about the children?” he said.
“Well, the younger ones I take with me. The others go to school.”
“School? Is there a school out here?”
“There are schools everywhere, Jeremy. They can walk out to the highway and catch a bus that takes them right to the door.”
He imagined them in a huddle at the bus stop, shivering in their thin, patched dresses, their bare legs blotchy with cold. “Mary, I don’t think — it sounds so—”
“The day nursery lets out the same time school does. I’m home before they are. And I like my work.”
Yes, but what about me? he asked silently. Are you saying you won’t consider returning? Have I come all this way for nothing?
“You know, Jeremy,” Mary said, “I’m managing on my own now. I’m not depending on a soul. I’m doing it on my own.”
Well, of course she was. Mary had always managed on her own. Why did she even bother mentioning it? The answer was simple: she was telling him she had no place for him. He turned to meet her eyes and found her glowing and confident, as beautiful as ever, more beautiful. “I’ve even started paying Brian rent money,” she said. “I don’t want to be beholden to him.”
“Mary, haven’t you used any of the money in the bank?”
“That’s your money, Jeremy. I’m trying to manage on my own.”
“But the children! I mean—”
“How are things at home? Is Miss Vinton helping you out?”
“Oh, Miss Vinton, yes.”
“How’s Olivia?”
“Why, she left,” he said. “She didn’t even tell us goodbye.”
“Left? Where’d she go to?”
“I’m not at all sure. And toward the end she didn’t seem to be herself, I do hope—”
“Oh dear, I’ve thought of her often,” Mary said. “I should have taken her with me.”
“Where, here?”
“Certainly here.”
“I don’t understand how you have room for the number you do have,” he said, looking around.
“Really, we’re very comfortable. Also I’m planning to buy an oil stove,” she told him. “That will help when it gets colder. And Darcy and I are winterizing the place ourselves, did you notice?”
“Um—”
“Sealing off the windows and everything.”
He thought of the rolled-up newspapers. “Ah, yes,” he said. “No, I know what winterizing is, I just thought—”
“We’re doing a pretty good job, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Most people would have to ask some man to do that.”
“Oh. Well, I think I had better take care of it now,” he said.
“You?”
“I’ll go tend to it right away.”
“But Jeremy,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like to—”
“Do you think I don’t know how?”
“No, of course not. I don’t think that for a minute. I’m sure you know how.”
“Well, then,” he said. “I expect I’d better get started.”
“Do you mean right this minute?”
“Why, yes.”
“Wouldn’t you like to sit here a while? I could give you a bite to eat.”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“You could sit and talk, maybe. Don’t you want to?”
If they talked, she would say what he dreaded to hear, and once said it could never be taken back. He rose hastily, draping his bald spot with the sudden coolness of a diaper. It was important to take action at once. To surround her with efficiency and authority. “I’ll do it all, you see to the children,” he told her. And he had clapped his cap on and was out the door before she had time to rise to her feet.
He had to do a better job of it than she and Darcy could. That was essential. Instead of folding tubes one by one as he needed them he did them all at once, and weighted them with a stone. He cut off lengths of masking tape and fastened them by their tip ends to the sills of the various windows. Only then did he climb up on the crate and begin the actual task. It seemed that his fingers could not make a wrong move today. Everything proceeded so smoothly, in such a well-ordered fashion. Why, there was nothing to this sort of work! He could have been taking care of it all these years. The wood was rotten and it crumbled beneath the tape but he managed anyway, locating the most solid places, feeling a sense of patience and tolerance for this pitiful world that Mary thought so much of. He could win her back in no time, it wasn’t impossible. Wasn’t he managing this windowsill well? Wasn’t he finally in control?
Mary came out of the house carrying a mug of coffee, balancing Rachel on her left hip in a familiar way that hurt him to see. She still had not put on a sweater, and the baby’s feet were bare. “She’ll get sick, Mary,” he told her.
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s much too cold out here.”
“Cold?”
She looked up at him, at where he stood teetering on the crate. “Jeremy, it’s not cold,” she said. “This is the warmest fall in anyone’s memory. It’s November and people still have their boats out.”