Carol Ann’s smile was bitter. She knew that she could tell the man why Tom Lamar acted so dull on the field. She could say, “No, he didn’t celebrate. You see, he’s having wife trouble. His wife is a silly woman who loves him so much that she’s made him feel guilty all week. That’s what’s the matter with Lamar.”
It had been so stupid. She should have told him what her heart said. But she knew that she had been afraid of what was happening to them, what would happen to them.
Fear is a poor companion in marriage.
She knew that he was down there thinking of her, and wondering. She wished that she could have taken back the bitter words said when he left the apartment.
He moved as though he carried a heavy load of weariness. Near the end of the first quarter, Robertson took him out. She watched the game without interest. Southern Mines made an eighty-yard march for their third touchdown and, with minutes to play in the half, Tom was sent back in.
Twice he tried to run with the ball and was smothered. Then, with Sigel carrying, Tom looked for a moment like his old self. He cracked through, smashed two of the secondary out of the way, made room for Sigel to make eight yards before he was downed.
But then they had to kick, being too close to their own goal to risk running it with two yards to go.
Southern Mines hung onto the ball for four slow running plays. The half ended. The big board said 20-0.
During the third quarter and most of the last, Southern Mines should have scored again. But there was a fumble at a crucial moment, a back who slipped when he was almost in the clear, a pass that didn’t get away properly, dropped into the hands of the Carvel center.
Carvel was doing little to deserve the breaks. Big Tom Lamar’s apathy had somehow infected all the rest of them.
Carol Ann was watching him when the change began to occur. Suddenly he seemed more alert. There seemed to be some sort of argument in the huddle. They came out, and Judge fed the ball to Tom. He made a bruising, punishing drive into the center of the Mines line, and smashed through for five.
On the next play, he slanted off tackle, picked up Sigel who smeared the closest man in the secondary, and Tom wasn’t downed until he had made twelve.
Fifteen thousand Carvel fans yelled, and then looked nervously at the seconds ticking by on the clock.
The Mines team was laying for him the next play, but somehow little Judge appeared streaking around the right end with the ball tucked under his arm.
He made over twenty yards. Another first down was hung up when Brugan, on a naked reverse, cut back in time to dive for a good six yards.
With fifteen to the goal, Big Tom Lamar took it over in three smashes at the line. On the third and last smash, the sound of impact was so loud that Carol Ann heard it high in the stands and shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Carvel was lining up to try for the conversion. Tom was still in the back-field.
The extra point was kicked and Carvel, for the first time, kicked off to Southern Mines. Mines felt the new spirit in the Carvel team and tried to hold onto the ball. But they were forced to kick short of a first down and Brugan took it on the Carvel twenty-three, fighting, spinning, slipping all the way up to midfield.
Carol Ann realized that Tom was playing harshly and well, channeling his anger at the world against the Mines eleven.
His smashes were so successful that Mines adopted, for the first time in the game, a seven, three, one defense.
At that point, Tom took the backward pass from Judge, picked his receiver calmly and threw a flat pass into the arms of Sid Carver, the left end. Sid was dumped on the four. The game ended as Tom was stopped on the one-foot line and Carvel began to line up for the next play.
The man who had spoken before said, “If this game was ten minutes longer, it’d be another story.”
She went out with the crowd, walked the long way home, thanked Janet, fixed Tommy’s evening meal and put him to bed. Then she dressed carefully and sat to wait for her husband.
He came in and his step was weary. But when the light hit his face, she saw that he had rid himself of much of the anger and frustration. His face was calm, almost relaxed.
He kissed her, said, “Hmmm! You smell good, punkin. All dressed up and noplace to go?”
“Are you too bushed to talk, Tom?”
She saw the stubborn look appear on his face. He sat down and said, “No. Let’s talk if you want to talk.”
“Darling, I’m sorry for the way I acted this morning. I should have been spanked.”
“You’re a big girl now.”
“I wonder. I haven’t handled this right, Tom.”
He looked puzzled. “What should you have done?”
She sat down opposite him, her chin on her fists, her eyes sober and grave. “Darling, I’m not a very brilliant woman. I like keeping your home and raising your child and cooking for you. Those, I suppose, are peasant delights. Anyway, I like doing it. I like it because our marriage is a partnership. We both have an equal vote. I’m not a chattel or a possession. I’m part of this tight little unit called a family.”
He smiled. “So far, I don’t know where you’re heading.”
“Patience, my love. I’m long-winded. As an equal partner in, say a company of some kind, if I saw the company adopting a policy that I thought was wrong, what could I do?”
“Change the policy or sell out. That’s easy.”
“This is a marriage, not a company, Tom. My investment isn’t in money, but in emotions. I gave in to you and I shouldn’t have. Now I want to change the policy.”
“Or?”
“Or I want to get out.”
“Could you?” he asked, his face white.
“It would be the closest thing to death that I can think of, darling, but I could do it.”
He stood up and began to pace back and forth. The expression on his face frightened her. He said, “But I wanted to do this—”
“I know. For me. So that I might be gay and happy and carefree.”
“And why not?” he demanded.
“It’s what is called an initial error, I guess. You want something very badly. You know what you want to do with your life. It is a strong motivation with you. And through me you are forced to give it up. I think you are enough of a gentleman so that for all the rest of our life, you would never throw it up to me and say, ‘Look at the sacrifice I made for you!’ But that would be in your thoughts one day. And I’m too selfish to permit that sort of thing to happen.”
He walked with the nervous monotony of a trapped animal. Suddenly he stopped and turned to her, his palms spread.
“But, Carol Ann! What else can we do?”
“I did three things today, Tom. Probably every one of them will make you angry.”
“I’m too tired and confused to be mad.”
“I sold the little star sapphire you brought back from India. The eighty dollars I got for it are in my purse. I wrote for the accumulated dividends on my life insurance. They amount to another twenty-three fifty. At eleven o’clock I saw Mr. Bargoman who handles the employment fund. I told him about the cost of living and if you stay, they’ll pay you sixty-five a month instead of fifty for tending the oil furnaces. And on Monday, I’m going to go to the campus office of the newspaper and put in an ad. There’s no reason why I can’t tend a few extra kids during the afternoons.”
She looked at him defiantly. The silence was heavy between them. He had his hands shoved deeply into his trousers pockets and she couldn’t read the expression on his face.
“I told Robertson,” he said.
“I know you did. He’ll be glad if you change your mind.”
“I told Tide too.”
“You didn’t sign anything. This is where we belong, Tom. No matter how hard it is, this is what we want to do. We just forgot that for a little while.”