The man’s mother pays for her to take the crafts classes. In the summer, June through August, they spun the bowls (they could have made vases, plates, but she stuck with bowls); September through November they learned macramé, and for Christmas she gave all of it away — a useless tangle of knots. She had no plants to hang in them, and she did not want them hung on her walls. She likes plain walls. The one Seurat is enough. She likes to look at the walls and think. For the past four months they have been making silver jewelry. She is getting worse at things instead of better. Fatigue at having been at it so long, perhaps, or perhaps what she said to her teacher, which her teacher denied: that she is just too old, that her imagination is insufficient, that her touch is not delicate enough. She is used to handling large things: plates, vacuums. She has no feel for the delicate fibers of silver. Her teacher told her that she certainly did. He wears one of the rings she made — bought it from her and wears it to every class. She is flattered, although she has no way of knowing whether he is wearing it out of class. Like the garish orange pin Robby selected for her in the dime store, his gift to her for her birthday. He was four years old, and naturally the bright orange pin caught his eye. She wore it to the PTA meeting, on her coat, to show him how much she liked it. She took it off in the car and put it back on before coming in the house — just in case the baby-sitter had failed and he was still awake. Now, however, she would never consider taking off the pin. She wears it every day. It’s as automatic as combing her hair. She’s as used to seeing it on her blouse or dress as she is to waiting for the phone to ring.
The man says it is remarkable that they always have such good meals when she shops so seldom. She went out two days ago to the cleaners, and she showed him the stub, so he knows this, but he is still subtly criticizing her failure to go out every day. She gets tired of going out. She has to go to crafts classes Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and on Sunday she has to go to his mother’s house. She says this to him by way of argument, but actually she loves to go to his mother’s house. It is the best day of the week. She does not love, or even like, his mother, but she can be with Robby from afternoon until his bedtime. They can throw the ball back and forth on the front lawn (who cares if they spy on them through the window?), and she can brush his hair (she cuts it too short! Just a little longer. He’s so beautiful that the short hair doesn’t make him ugly, but he would be even more beautiful if it could grow an inch on the sides, on the top). He gives her pictures he has colored. He thinks that kindergarten should be more sophisticated and is a little embarrassed about the pictures, but he explains that he has to do what the teacher says. She nods. If he were older, she could explain that she had to make the bowls. He rebels by drawing sloppily, sometimes. “I didn’t even try on that one,” he says. She knows what he means. She says — as the man says to her about the bowls, as the crafts instructor says — that they are still beautiful. He likes that. He gives them all to her. There is not even one tacked up in his grandmother’s kitchen. There are none on her walls, either, but she looks through the pile on the coffee table every day. She prefers the walls blank. When he comes with Grandma to visit, which hardly ever happens, she puts them up if she knows he’s coming or points to the pile to show him that she has them close-by to examine. She never did anything to Robby, not one single thing. She argues and argues with the man about this. He goes to business meetings at night and comes home late. He does not fully enjoy the meals she prepares because he is so tired. This he denies. He says he does fully enjoy them. What can she say? How can you prove that someone is not savoring sweet-potato soufflé?
“How do you cook such delicious things when you shop so seldom?” he asks.
“I don’t shop that infrequently,” she says.
“Don’t vegetables … I mean, aren’t they very perishable?”
“No,” she says. She smiles sweetly.
“You always have fresh vegetables, don’t you?”
“Sometimes I buy them fresh and parboil them myself. Later I steam them.”
“Ah,” he says. He does not know exactly what she is talking about.
“Today I was out for a walk,” she says. No way he can prove she wasn’t.
“It’s a late spring,” he says. “But today it was very nice, actually.”
They are having a civilized discussion. Perhaps she can lure him into bed. Perhaps if that works, the phone will also ring. Hasn’t he noticed that it doesn’t ring at night, that it hasn’t for nights? That’s unusual, too. She would ask what he makes of this, but talking about the phone makes him angry, and if he’s angry, he’ll never get into bed. She fingers her pin. He sees her do it. A mistake. It reminds him of Robby.
She sips her wine and thinks about their summer vacation — the one they already took. She can remember so little about the summer. She will not remember the spring if she doesn’t get busy and write in her book. What, exactly, should she write? She thinks the book should contain feelings instead of just facts. Surely that would be less boring to do. Well, she was going to write something during the afternoon, but she was feeling blue, and worried — about the telephone — and it wouldn’t cheer her up to go back and read about feeling blue and being worried. Her crafts teacher had given her a book of poetry to read: Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath. It was interesting. She was certainly interested in it, but it depressed her. She didn’t go out of the house for days. Finally — she is glad she can remember clearly some details — he asked her to go to the cleaners and she went out. She did several errands that day. What was the weather like, though? Or does it really matter? She corrects herself: it does matter. It matters very much what season it is, whether the weather is typical or unusual. If you have something to say about the weather, you will always be able to make conversation with people, and communicating is very important. Even for yourself: you should know that you feel blue because the weather is cold or rainy, happy because it’s a sunny day with high clouds. Tonight she feels blue. Probably it is cold out. She would ask, but she has already lied that she was out. It might have turned cold, however.
“I was out quite early,” she says. “What was the weather like when you came home?”
“Ah,” he says. “I called this morning.”
She looks up at him, suddenly. He sees her surprise, knows she wasn’t out.
“Just to say that I loved you,” he says.
He smiles. It is not worth seducing him to make the phone ring. She will shower, wash her hair, stand there a long time, hoping, but she won’t make love to the man. He is a rotten liar.
In the morning, when he is gone, she finds that she remembers her feelings of the night before exactly, and writes them down, at length, in the book.
On Friday night he no longer picks her up after crafts class. He has joined a stock club, and he has a meeting that night. The bus stop is only a block from where the class meets; it lets her off five minutes from where she lives. It is unnecessary for the man ever to pick her up. But he says that the streets are dangerous at night, and that she must be tired. She says that the bus ride refreshes her. She likes riding buses, looking at the people. There is good bus service. He smiles. But it is not necessary to ride them; and the streets are dangerous at night.