She nodded.
“You can see it in yourself,” he said. “That feeling is one of the strongest elements in you. You’ll have a baby pretty soon, and maybe you can turn some of them onto him. And you have Art; god knows he can use some help.”
In the front yard of a house, in a fenced yard, a vast dahlia plant with shaggy cactus blossoms caught Rachael’s eye. The blossoms were as large as plates. She went to the fence, and before he could stop her, she had reached over the fence and had broken one of the dahlias from its stalk.
“That’s a mortal sin,” he said.
“It’s for you,” Rachael said.
“Put it back.”
“It won’t go back.” She held out the dahlia, but he refused to accept it.
An elderly heavyset woman was sweeping the walk by the house and when she saw the flower she hurried toward them. “What is this?” she demanded, wheezing with outrage. The wattles of her neck lifted and fell. “You people have no right to steal flowers out of other people’s yards. I think I’m going to call the police and have you arrested!”
Rachael handed the dahlia to the old woman. Without a word the old woman snatched the flower, picked up her broom, and went inside the house. The screen door slammed shut after her.
As he and Rachael walked on, Rachael said, “Who am I supposed to look out for?” Suddenly she stood up on tiptoe and kissed him; her lips were dry and chapped. “I don’t have anybody.” Again she kissed him, and then she let him go. “That’s all I can do,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
He said, “Take the poor kid back.”
“No,” she said.
“Relent just a little.”
On her face emotions appeared and were suppressed. She struggled, inside herself; she fought it out inside.
“Give him this feeling you have,” he said. “That’s where it belongs. He’s your husband and the baby is his.”
“It’s yours,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I wish it was, but it isn’t. It isn’t mine and you aren’t mine.”
“I am,” she said.
He said, “I can’t marry you, Rachael. I’ll pay for your baby, if you’ll let me. You want me to do that? And if you don’t want to keep the baby, if you’re by yourself and you feel you can’t keep it, maybe we can adopt it.”
“You and Pat?”
“Maybe. If you decide you don’t want it.”
“I want it,” she said. “It belongs to me.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“You can’t have it,” she said, “without me. You have to take both of us.”
“Then it’s out,” he said.
For the rest of the walk back, she did not look at him or say a word. At the door of her apartment, as she fitted her key into the lock, she said, “Would she take care of you?”
“I hope so.”
“Tell her to go on the wagon—”
“I will,” he said.
“Maybe if she didn’t drink she’d be okay. I can’t see how a woman can drink like that.” She started into the apartment. “I have to get ready for work. I have to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” he said. He touched her hair, and then he went off, up the steps, to the path.
Still at the door, she said, “If you’re going to marry her, I want to give you a present.”
“Just go find your husband,” he said.
But she was already coming up the stairs.
“What would she like?” she asked. Her face was grim and intense. “Maybe I can get her some kitchen thing; I wouldn’t want to get her any clothes. She knows more about clothes than I do.”
“Just wish us luck.”
Rachael took hold of his hand. “Can I hold onto you? Just for a while. You don’t mind, do you?”
Together, holding hands, they walked until they came to a Woolworth’s dime store.
“No,” she said, stopping. “This isn’t any good.”
After a time they came to a jewelry store, and she started in.
“You can’t afford any of these things,” he said, halting her. “If you’re serious about this, buy one of those cards.”
“Are you going to have a party?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She went into the jewelry store, to the front counter. “I only have three or four dollars,” she said to him.
In the front counter were a number of silver and silver-plated articles, and she had the clerk bring them out one by one for her inspection. After much consideration she bought a cake server and had the clerk wrap it as a gift.
“She’ll like that,” she said, as they left the jewelry store. “Won’t she?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Did you look at it?” Rachael said. “It was made in Holland. It isn’t big and ornate like most of them.”
At her place she unwrapped the cake server and rewrapped it with her own wrapping paper and ribbon and seals.
“This is better,” she said, curling the ribbon with the blade of the scissors. “I worked a couple of Christmases at this department store downtown . . . I wrapped packages.”
Into the ribbon she put a stalk of gladiola and some green leaves; she used Scotch tape to hold them in place.
“Very pretty,” he said.
She put the package into a paper bag. “This is for both of you,” she said. “Thank you,” he said, accepting it. “I better not come along,” she said. “Maybe not.”
Following him to the door, she said, “Can we come over and visit you?”
“Any time,” he said.
At the door she lingered, speaking slowly, not facing him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Maybe this is a favor. I wondered if you had decided to go back on your program.”
“You want me to?”
“If you do,” she said, “then we can listen to you again.”
“I’ll go back.”
“Fine.” She nodded. “I’d like to hear you. I always felt better listening to you. It always seemed to me you really cared about us.”
“I did,” he said. “I do.”
“Even now? Right now?”
He said, “Certainly.”
“Goodbye,” she said. She put out her hand, and he took hold of it. “Thanks for the lunch,” he said. “Thanks for cooking for me.”
“I cook pretty good,” she said, “don’t I?”
“Very good.”
She walked away. After a moment he went on outside the apartment and up the stairs.
“Wait,” Rachael said. “You forgot to take this.” In her hand was the present, the brown paper package.
Going back, he took it from her. This time she watched him as he left; behind him she came out into the doorway and stood until he had gotten into his car and started the motor. As he drove away, he saw her. She did not cry; she showed no emotion in the least. She had accepted things and now she was planning; she was deciding what to do. She was working out the problems and difficulties, considering herself and her husband, her job, the future of her family. Even before he was out of sight, she was busy at work.
The time was four o’clock in the afternoon when he parked in front of his apartment house and started up the steps. The door of his own apartment was unlocked; he opened it and found the apartment dark, the shades pulled down, the room silent.
“Pat?” he said.
By the record cabinet the phonograph hummed, and on the turntable the stack of records revolved on and on. He shut the machine off and put up the window shades.
The room was smeared with paint. On the furniture, the walls and drapes, the paint shone. The paint had been smeared by hand; her prints were everywhere, the childish outline of her thumbs and palms. She had gone about pressing her hands against everything she touched; the easel and brushes and tubes lay in a chaotic heap on the floor, by an overturned glass. Red paint trailed across the rug, and he thought suddenly that it was not paint but blood. He bent down and touched it; the paint was sticky and hot. It was both paint and blood, mixed together and spread throughout the apartment.