Gill kissed his wife, who was already at the table with the morning paper in front of her opened to the lovelorn column. “Any phone calls?”
“No.”
“It’s damned peculiar.”
“What is?” Helene said, knowing perfectly well what was, since Gill had talked of nothing else for a week. Thank God it was Monday and he had to go into the city to work. If the stock market was fluttery, so much the better. It would take his mind off other things. “Here’s a terribly funny letter from some woman in Atherton. I wonder if it’s anyone we know. It could be Betty Spears. Listen. ‘Dear Abby: My problem is my husband is so stingy that he even snitches my green stamps.’ I know for a fact Johnny Spears saves green stamps...”
“Will you listen to me?”
“Of course, dear. I didn’t know you were saying anything.”
“Rupert’s been down there for a week now and I haven’t heard a word since that first phone call from his secretary. Not a word about how Amy is and what’s going on, when they’ll be back, nothing.”
“He may be busy.”
Gill scowled at her across the table. “Busy doing what, may I ask?”
“How should I know?”
“Then stop making up nonsensical excuses for him. Nobody’s too busy to pick up a phone. He’s damned inconsiderate. And what Amy ever saw in him I’ll never know.”
“He’s very good-looking. And very nice.”
“Good-looking. Nice. Great Scott, is that what women marry men for?”
“You’re hungry, dear. I’ll ring for breakfast.”
Helene pressed the buzzer under the table, feeling a mild surge of power. She had been born and raised in an Oakland slum, and never, in all her twenty years of marriage, had she become accustomed to the miracle of ringing for anything she wanted. Breakfast, martinis, chocolate creams, tea, magazines, cigarettes — you pressed a button, and bingo, whatever you wanted, there it was. Sometimes Helene just sat and thought of things to want so she would have the pleasure of pulling the tasseled bell cord or pressing the buzzer underneath the table.
Occasionally she visited Oakland but more frequently her parents came down the Peninsula to see her, Mrs. Maloney wearing her teeth and Sunday clothes, Mr. Maloney sober as a judge and dry as a herring. After the initial greetings of genuine pleasure, both parents stiffened into silence, too stunned by the luxurious surroundings to do much of anything except sit and stare. Back home they were affectionately voluble about their daughter Helene, who had gone to Mills College on a scholarship and lived in a fine house in Atherton with her wealthy husband and three beautiful children.
Face to face with her, they became mute and embarrassed, and their visits were a nightmare, especially to Gill, who tried harder than Helene did to make the Maloneys feel at home. His tactics were peculiar: he sought to minimize his wealth by calling attention to some of his economies, by talking forcefully of having his thirteen- year-old son take a paper route and his seventeen-year-old daughter work her way through college. The result of this stratagem was more confusion on the part of the Maloneys and complete frustration for Gill, who meant, as usual, only to do the right thing. No one had ever been able to figure out why such good intentions as Gill’s often had such disturbing consequences.
“Amy’s association with the Wyatt woman,” Gill said, “has meant nothing but trouble. She was obviously unbalanced. Anyone but Amy would have seen that and avoided her.”
Helene mentally crossed herself. “Now Gill. De mortuis... Besides, they were friends. You don’t go back on a friend because she’s having, well, a few emotional problems. Wilma could be a very charming and entertaining person when she wanted to. That’s the way I prefer to remember her.”
“You have a very simple and convenient memory.”
“And I intend to keep it that way. Eat your breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry,” Gill said irritably. “Personally, I’m inclined to blame Rupert for this whole business. He should have vetoed the trip as soon as the subject was broached. Two women wandering alone around a foreign, uncivilized country — why, it’s preposterous.”
It sounded rather pleasant to Helene whose traveling was confined to shopping trips to the city and summers at Tahoe. She munched on a piece of crisp bacon, listening to Gill the way one listens to waves breaking on a beach, knowing the noise will always be the same, only varying in volume now and then with the tides and the weather.
So often the noise was about Amy, and Helene listened out of habit, without interest. In her opinion, Amy was a dull little creature, invested with wit by her brother and beauty by her husband, and having, in fact, neither. Helene, too, had often wondered about the relationship between Amy and Wilma, but she wondered from quite a different point of view from Gill’s: why should such an intense and energetic person as Wilma have wasted so much time on a mouse like Amy?
Gill turned up his volume. “I still think the American Embassy should have called me about this unfortunate affair.”
“Why?”
“Amy’s my kid sister.”
“She is also a grown woman with a husband. If she needs looking after, let Rupert do it.”
“Rupert is incapable of handling certain situations.”
“What’s to handle?” Helene said blandly.
“There are probably decisions to be made, actions to be taken. Rupert’s too soft. Now if I were down there I’d be firm with those foreigners.”
“If you were down there, dear, you’d be the foreigner.”
“I suppose you think that’s terribly clever?”
“It’s just the truth.”
“You seem,” he said with a dry little smile, “to be hitting on a great many truths these days.”
“Oh, I am. Some large, some small.”
“Tell me a few of them.”
“Another time. You’d better hurry if you’re going to take El Camino instead of Bayshore.” She smiled at her husband across the table. In spite of his manner of talking she knew him for a gentle man, more like Amy than he would ever realize. “You’ll drive carefully, won’t you, Gilly?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It sounds absurd.”
“You don’t object when Amy calls you...”
“It was my nickname when we were children. She uses it unconsciously. And I do object. Remind me to speak to her about it when she comes home.”
Helene’s expression didn’t change, but she felt a sudden sick feeling in her stomach and the coffee she was drinking seemed to have turned sour. I don’t want her to come home. She is two thousand miles away. I like it this way.
David, the thirteen-year-old, bounced into the room, wearing the uniform of the military day school he attended. “Morning, all.”
“What on earth,” Helene asked, “is the matter with your face?”
“Poison oak,” he said cheerfully. “Roger and Bill got it, too, when we were out on maneuvers. Boy, the sergeant was mad. He said the Russians could have landed while the whole bloody bunch of us were chasing around after poison oak.”
“I’ll call for you after school and take you to the doctor.”
“I don’t want to go to any bloody doctor.”
“Stop saying that word. It’s not very nice.”
“The sergeant uses it all the time. He’s an Englishman. They always say bloody. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Uncle Rupert’s home. He phoned last night when you were out.”
“You might,” his father said, “have told me before.”
“How could I, when you were out?”