It should have been more of a clue to Ben and Ginny that, all that year, whenever they did have a chance to talk, they talked about money. Oh, it was reasonably amiable, with an infrequent edge of rancor showing only briefly. They tried to make a kind of joke out of it. And why shouldn’t it be a joke? When you’re making $23,500 a year, money problems are a joke, aren’t they?
Ben paid the bills, so the true nature of their situation was trying to intrude itself on his awareness long before Ginny became aware of the growing tensions. Let it be said firmly and finally right here that these were not two silly, improvident people, whimsically tossing money left and right. Ben had paid a good share of his own way through school. Ginny had been on a tiny allowance. They had started marriage with debts, not riches, and had lived to a rigid budget, and paid their way. Ginny knew every rice dish in the book.
Perhaps the first intimation of what would eventually and incomprehensively turn into disaster was the Incident of the Cigarettes.
In January — right after New Year’s, in fact — when the checking account needed very dexterous juggling, Ben Weldon switched from cigarettes to a pipe. He told himself it would be good for him. Ginny had always wanted him to smoke a pipe. He told himself that it was purely secondary that cigarettes, at a pack and a half a day, were costing him $164.25 a year. He wondered why he had bothered to figure it up.
He struggled with the pipe problem until he had mastered the techniques. His birthday was in April. He got home from the city later than he wanted to, because he knew Ginny would keep the kids up so they could give him their presents, but it was one of those unavoidable things.
He sat in the living room, and the cake was brought to him so the kids could see him blow out the candles, and the song was sung, and the kids gave him the presents, the littlest one first, as was the household custom. He lifted himself out of his weariness to make those exclamations that would satisfy them, and those jokes that would delight them.
The present from Ginny was the last one he opened. It was a pipe in a fitted case, with a beautiful grain in the wood. He remembered the brand name and the model name from the day when he had selected a pipe. And he certainly remembered the price. He had told the clerk that he didn’t feel like paying $25 plus tax for a pipe.
He looked at the beautiful thing, and he felt a resentment so sharp, so bitter that it shocked him. In one gesture she had cut the heart out of his campaign of frugality. He looked at her and saw her smile, which anticipated his pleasure in the gift, and in that instant he wanted to smash it to the floor in its fitted case.
Her smile faded and she said, “Don’t you like it? I thought it—”
He caught himself quickly and said, “It’s beautiful, honey. It really is. And the style is just perfect.”
So the kids had to see the ceremony of the first lighting of the new pipe, and then Ginny permitted them one small piece of birthday cake each, and shooed them off to bed.
After she came back to the living room she said, “Is anything wrong?”
“What could be wrong on my birthday, blondie? Bring me a kiss.”
The unexpected, irrational force of his anger over such a simple thing should have prepared him better for subsequent developments.
On an evening in early May, Ben got out the checkbook and paid the bills. This necessary ceremony was something that he had begun, not exactly to dread but to feel increasingly irritable about. He sorted them and paid all the little ones first — fuel oil, dentist, doctor, phone, light, gas, water, car repairs and so on. He totaled them and deducted the total from his balance. Next he looked over the big ones, and paid the ones that had to be paid. Every month it seemed as though an unexpected big one would come along. This time there were two discouragingly fat ones, the fire insurance on the house (paid annually and not included in the mortgage payments) for $208.20, and a life insurance premium of $442.50. They had to be paid. And a final check for $400 had to be drawn to Ginny’s order, for deposit in her checking account to take care of the household expenses. He tried not to think too much about the balance left: $41.14. He had his commutation ticket for the month and a little over $20 in cash. Light lunches in the city this month.
Ginny came in just then, and as she walked by she patted him on the shoulder and sat in the chair near the desk.
“Made out my check yet, financier?”
“Are you that hungry for it?”
“No. I think I’ve got to hit you for a raise, boss.”
“What?”
“Four fifty anyway, but five hundred would take some of the strain off.”
He glared at her and said, more loudly than he intended, “Just what do you do with all of it?”
She looked startled, then indignant. “What did you think I did with it? I buy groceries for five. I buy clothes for me and three children. Gas and oil for the car. A one-afternoon-a-week cleaning woman. Sitters. A yardman once in a while now that you don’t have as much time as you used to have. Dry cleaning. Toys. Movie money. Sometimes I even buy myself a dollar lunch. Prices are going up, darling. Up and up and up, and I’m asking for a cost-of-living adjustment. What’s the matter with you lately?”
He adjusted a weak smile. “I’m sorry, honey. Look here. Everything is paid. Here’s what’s left.”
She got up and stared at the figure and then sat down again rather heavily. “But you need more than that for the month!”
“I’ll get along. I can draw trip expenses in advance for the Toledo thing.”
“I’m not... foolish with money, Ben.”
“I know that.”
“But where on earth does it all go?”
“Good question.”
“You’re making good money. Don’t we owe the bank something on that open note?”
“Oh, I’ve whittled that down to just twelve hundred.”
“Will it be better when that’s paid off?”
“It might be. A little.”
She straightened her shoulders. “Well, I can certainly get along on the four hundred, Ben. If I’d known, I certainly wouldn’t have—”
“I didn’t mean to bark.”
“Golly, I don’t blame you. We’ll just have to live... simpler.”
“Where? How?”
“Those are good questions, too, aren’t they?”
And it was turned into a joke, but the strain was there, the tinge of poison. And all the affirmations of love could not make it go away entirely.
It was, Ben thought, as the lean month went by, just a case of holding on, cutting corners until income jumped again. It made him feel guilty, however. It was a shameful situation to be unable to live without strain on an income which, ten years ago, he would have considered wildly affluent. It was best not to think of what might happen should some emergency situation come up.
And so in June, of course, which had promised to be a better month, Chris nearly lost his right hand. He was in a school bus on the way to a picnic, sitting by the window on the right side of the bus, his right arm out the window. As they were making a turn at low speed on a gravel road the right front tire blew. The bus skidded, went through a shallow ditch and into a stand of small trees. Chris said later that he had tried to pull his arm in, but the motion of the bus had jammed everybody against him. At first it was believed that no one had been hurt. The sound Chris made was lost in the general turmoil. But then he fainted.
When Ben got to the hospital at four o’clock they had been working on the hand — pulped between tree and bus body — for over an hour. Ginny was very white and very still, and her eyes were huge.
They did the basic structural repairs in the first operation. The third day following there were evidences of infection. In spite of the sulfas and antibiotics, his fever went up to dangerous levels, there were consultations and tentative recommendations for amputation. It was a nightmare time, with the hospital the center of all thoughts and schedules. The child was so stolidly brave about it, so uncomplainingly courageous and gallant that it seemed to make the whole thing more pointlessly tragic.