When we came to the kitchen she examined everything thoroughly, even looking at the cooking utensils and into the cupboards where the food was kept.
“Don’t worry about the kitchen now,” I said. “Helen will be over in the morning and cook breakfast for us.” I had already told her about our arrangement, of course.
I thought she looked at me queerly, but she didn’t say anything, and I forgot it. Mary and Lee were on my mind anyway and I was too preoccupied to notice much.
The next morning when I opened my eyes it was just becoming light. It was too early to get up, at least for this time of year when the crops were laid by and there wasn’t much to do, so I started to go back to sleep when I noticed she wasn’t there with me. Then I heard stove lids clattering out in the kitchen.
I crossed the dining-room linoleum on my bare feet and looked in. She was fully dressed and was building a fire in the cookstove. There was such deadly seriousness in her face and she was so oblivious to everything else that I grinned. She hadn’t even heard me get up.
“What’s all this activity?” I asked. “Come on to bed and relax. Helen’ll be over pretty soon and cook breakfast for all of us.”
She turned on me, bristling like an outraged porcupine. “Over my dead body, she will!” she said, banging one of the stove lids down on top of the wood in the firebox.
“Keep your shirt on,” I said, without thinking. “Helen’s a good cook and she won’t poison us.”
“Bob Crane, I don’t doubt but what she’s a good cook. She’s probably the greatest cook in the world, from the way you go on about her.” I couldn’t recall having even mentioned Helen’s name more than twice since we’d been married. “Maybe I’m not so good and I’ll poison us, but no woman is going to come in my kitchen and cook! I’ll burn the house down first.”
“But, Christ,” I said, beginning to get sore, “what do you expect Jake and Helen to do? Go into town for their meals? They haven’t even got a cookstove over there in that house.”
“You’re just deliberately trying to misunderstand me. I didn’t say they couldn’t eat here with us. I said she couldn’t run my kitchen. Of course they can eat with us. But if you think for a minute—”
“I don’t think for a minute. I guess I haven’t thought for years,” I said, beginning to see that she was right, as usual. And she looked so small and lovely and belligerent drawn up there for battle I had to grin. I walked in and grabbed her up until her feet were off the floor and kissed her.
“All right, Lady of the Manor, I’ll go right over now and murder Jake and Helen in their bed. What do we have for breakfast?”
“Bacon and eggs. Do you love me, Bob? And hot biscuits.” Her voice was muffled down against my neck.
“Of course I love you and hot biscuits. Now you take one that’s cooked right on top of that hot head of yours—”
“I’m sorry,” she broke in. “I’m ashamed of myself. But the idea of anybody else coming in my house and cooking for you makes my blood boil.”
I laughed. “I know, you little wildcat. Your blood has the lowest boiling point of any fluid known to science.”
After I had shaved and dressed I went out on the front porch and saw Helen and Jake come out of the house and start across the road. They saw the Buick parked under the sweet-gum trees and must have noticed the smoke coming out of the kitchen stovepipe, for they turned around after a brief conference and went back inside. I was puzzled by this until they came out again in a few minutes and came on up to the front yard and I saw that Helen had changed into another dress and had put on stockings.
They were glad to see me and we went on back to the dining room, where Angelina had breakfast on the table. She and Jake knew each other, of course, from Jake’s foxhunting trips with Sam, but she and Helen hadn’t met before.
Breakfast came off successfully. Jake and I did most of the talking at first, but gradually Angelina and Helen got over their polite sparring around and became a little warmer. It would be hard for anyone to resist Helen for long, with her simple and greathearted friendliness, and after Angelina had established her beachhead with several references to “my kitchen” and what she was going to do with the house and had decided that Helen was a very plain girl, pleasant-looking but homely and therefore nice, everything went along all right.
There, was some embarrassment about the cooking arrangements, Jake and Helen insisting after breakfast that they didn’t feel they should impose on us now that I was married. I had to return Lee’s car, so I said I’d pick up a stove for their house while I was in town.
I went in alone. Angelina said she wanted to unpack the bags and clean up the house, and I didn’t much want her to go anyway until I found out what was happening or had happened. It was a little before nine when I stopped under the big oaks in front of the house.
My Ford was parked in the driveway, with one fender knocked off. It hadn’t been there last night. I went up on the porch and knocked, but no one came to the door. I knocked again and then tried the door. It wasn’t locked and I went in and walked down the dark hallway to the living room, hearing my footsteps echo in the silence.
There were cigarette butts and ashes on the rug in the living room and one of the pillows on the sofa was half burned up and feathers were all over everything. There was a fruit jar sitting on the hearth in front of the fireplace.
I knew then I wouldn’t find Mary there, so I went in all the bedrooms looking for Lee. In their room the bed looked as if somebody had been sleeping in it with his shoes on, and there was a girl’s coat over a chair, a coat I knew didn’t belong to Mary.
I found him in the kitchen. He was sitting in a chair, asleep, with his head and shoulders slumped over the table. Near his arms there was a half-eaten sardine sandwich that a fly was buzzing around, and a cigarette butt that had burned a long charred furrow in the top of the table before it had gone out.
I sat down across the table from him and shook him gently by the shoulder. “Wake up, Lee,” I said. “It’s Bob.” It took several shakes to stir him, and when he finally did come to he sat up shakily, pushing himself slowly up with his arms, and stared at me without saying anything. His eyes were shot with red and there were dark circles under them.
“Hello,” I said.
He looked at me stupidly for a minute. “You sonofabitch,” he said.
I got up and went back into the living room and got the fruit jar. There was about an inch of whisky in the bottom of it and I poured it into a water glass and gave it to him. His hands were trembling badly but he got it up to his mouth and swallowed it and then coughed and retched. He shook his head, but when he looked up at me again I could see the stuff working on him. His eyes began to come alive a little.
“Well,” he said, “if it isn’t Handsome himself. So you finally came back?”
“Yes. I’m back.” I sat down again, across the table, and lit two cigarettes and handed one to him.
“Where’d you leave her?” he demanded. He leaned across the table and took hold of my arm and I could feel him shaking.
“Leave who?”
“You know who I mean. Where’d you leave her? Jesus Christ, I’ve almost gone nuts the past ten days, thinking about you off in a hotel room somewhere with that.”
“Take it easy,” I said, but he began talking louder. He looked like a madman.
“Hell, haven’t you been with her? What’ve you been doing all this time? If you’ve been with her this long, what’s holding you up? I don’t see how you’d be able to walk.”