“Thanks for getting the milk,” she said. Arising, she shut the checkbook, stuck the fountain pen away, and started past him. But then she halted, directly in front of him and very close to him, so that she breathed up into his face. For the first time he realized that she was much shorter than he. To talk to him while standing so close she had to look almost straight up. It gave her an imploring manner, as if she were begging him for something. “How can we make any profit if we don’t have any money to start out with? All we can do is meet the bills that come in for gas and lights. The Idaho Power Company really has us. And the paper and carbon paper we use—of course, we get it at cost. But still.” Standing in front of him, petitioning him, she seemed not only small, but bony and cold as well. Under her sweater her shoulders pulled forward, as if she were shivering. And all the time she kept her eyes fixed on his face.
He had never had an opportunity to see her this close up. It broke apart his memory of her. For one thing, he could tell that his life-long impression of her physical strength was erroneous; she had no more than any other woman, and he had always recognized that by and large, most women were delicate and even somewhat frail. And it seemed to him that she recognized it, too. But no doubt she always had. She had appeared mean and strong to them because first of all they had been so small, and, in addition, she had been angry at them, and it has been her job to terrify and badger and impress them. That was why the school board had chosen her; they needed a teacher that could keep the children in hand. Outside of her job, she had probably been like this even then. Yes, he thought, when he had later on delivered the paper to her house he had one day seen inside and noticed tiny china teacups on a table in the dining room. She had been serving tea to lady friends. It had not jibed with his image of her. So his image had always been false.
She padded past him, across the carpet, her shoes making no sound. “Oh,” she said, “I’ll bet you got homogenized milk. I should have told you to get the regular, so we can pour off the cream.” She opened the brown paper bag and saw the beer. “Beer,” she said.
“It’s a warm day,” he said, with nervousness.
“You did get regular milk,” she said, lifting out the carton.
“That’s right,” he said.
“Do you want coffee?”
“I’d rather have beer.”
“No beer for me. I can never drink beer.” At the drainboard she produced an opener and opened his beer bottle for him. She poured him a glassful and held it out to him. “What did you think of the R & J Mimeographing Service?” she said.
“Seemed very nice at first glance. Modern.”
She said, “Would you look over the office and tell me what you think we ought to do? I know you have experience we don’t have.”
Taken by surprise he could say nothing.
“Do you know what I wish?” she said. “I wish you’d take it over and run it. You could put in a line of portables. Then at Christmas when everybody else is making money we’d have something to sell.” With intensity she glared up at him, her eyes small. “I mean it. While you were gone I thought about it. Zoe is no good at all; I have to get rid of her. I’m going to anyhow. Each of us has three thousand dollars in it; that’s all. Just six thousand dollars in all. The settlement I reached with Walt gives me just about that. I was going to pay off this house, but what I think I’ll do—what I really want to do—is buy out Zoe and run the office myself. Then you can take it over and do what you want. Maybe I can make a deal with the bank and borrow enough so you can put in portables, or if you don’t want to do that, you can put in whatever else you want.”
He was silent with disbelief.
“I want to wash my hands of it,” she said.
“I know you do,” he murmured.
“I’m not cut out for cutthroat things like business. I want to stay home and be with Taffy. I only see her for an hour or so in the evenings. I have a woman come in about two and clean up the house and then go pick up Taffy and bring her home and be here with her until I get home at six. She took care of the house and Taffy while I was down in Mexico. Walt’s in Utah, in Salt Lake City. He’s been there for almost a year.”
“I see,” he said.
“Couldn’t you do that?” she demanded. “Run the office?”
“I guess so,” he said.
“Here’s what I thought about paying you. Zoe and I draw two salaries out. You can have exactly half the profits. Not a salary but exactly fifty percent of the net. How’s that? As much as I make, and you don’t have to worry about any investment.”
“That’s wrong,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s not fair to you.”
In an agonized voice she said, “I have to have somebody to help me.” She moved away from him, her arms folded tightly about her. “I need somebody I can depend on. I don’t have Walt—I used to depend on him. He’s in the galvanized pipe business. All my time has to be spent with Taffy; that’s all there is to it. That has to come first. I don’t know how much you’re making now … you’re probably making more. But if you were smart, you could make it pay off. Don’t you agree? It’s small, but it’s a good location.”
“Yes it is,” he said.
Suddenly she spun around to face him. “Bruce,” she said, in a husky, almost tearful voice, “last night I lay awake thinking about you. I knew you’d come by. I was sitting out in the backyard hoping you’d come by. I waited all morning. I knew you had this—” She waved her hand. “This business to finish up. That’s why I stayed home from the office. I didn’t want to see you down there. Zoe and I don’t get along at all; I don’t want her to know anything about this until it’s all been arranged and there’s nothing left but simply to walk up to her and face her squarely and tell her I want to buy her share. It’s part of the legal agreement between us. We agreed when we became partners. I dread telling her … we’ve been friends for years. She and I lived together in Montario, when I was teaching at Garret A. Hobart.”
He thought: Perhaps she was one of the women in that house.
“Listen, Bruce,” she said in a grindingly serious voice. “I’m going to be totally honest with you. I’m really up against it. I didn’t get any alimony from Walt. He’s out of the state. He will send some money every month, but that’s for Taffy. And it won’t be much. I have exactly four thousand dollars that was my share of what we had, plus this house. There’s about five thousand more in the house. He kept the car. I got some furniture but it isn’t much. I really feel desperate. I’m not going to get a job; I’ve had my fill of that. I gave up teaching when I got married. I’d go to my grave before I’d teach again, or get a job as a secretary or a typist or a clerk somewhere. I won’t be degraded. I’d let Walt have Taffy and I’d—” She broke off. Rocking back and forth, her arms wrapped about her, she said, “I’m very lonely. Most of our friends are off me because they think it’s my fault Walt and I split up. You saw those people at Peg’s. They’re just a bunch of—”
“Clerks,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s what you get in a small town,” he said.
“Maybe that’s what I should do. Go down and live in Reno. Or go to the East Coast. But I have this goddamn mimeographing and typing business. Bruce—” Her voice rose. “I have to make it pay.” She advanced toward him. “I’ll bet with you running it it would pay. I know it would. If you hadn’t come by I would have gone down to Reno on the Greyhound and looked you up. I even called them and found out when the buses go. I’ll show you.” She shot past him, out of the room. Almost at once she was back, waving a folded piece of typing paper on which, in pencil, she had jotted down the bus schedule.