Molly laughed. “A very great man! For goodness’ sake!” She laughed again, but stopped when she realized that neither Ben nor Ginny was laughing or even smiling. They were looking at her with distant, cool curiosity.
“All these things are relative, of course,” Ben said. “Greatness is an elusive word, at best. If you divorce it from public renown, which I think you have to, to retain a true balance, I guess I would apply it to Tom with at least as few reservations as I would apply it to twenty other contemporaries in all fields of knowledge.”
“You mean that, don’t you?” Molly said.
“For heaven’s sake!” Ginny said, “How can you be so—”
“Hold it, darling,” Ben said. “Molly would be the next to the last person to see Tom in any perspective. Tom would be the last, of course. Molly, my dear, all human knowledge is a great wall man has been building for centuries. We build it of the mortar of dusty research and of the great solid stones of original thought. Tom has put two and perhaps three stones in that wall, and they will endure as long as man endures. Man is the total of what he knows. So Tom has enriched the race. And of every hundred thousand people in this country, you will find just one who will recognize his name.”
“He thinks they are going to make him head of the department,” Molly said, with a certain defiance.
Ben made an ugly face and said, “Every bit of intellectual energy Tom spends on administration is a criminal waste. That’s one thing we’re very anxious to ask you about, Molly. There are any number of grants he could have, and all he would have to do is show a willingness to accept one of them.”
“Maybe,” Molly said weakly, “he just likes what he — I mean, I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea he— You see, he doesn’t tell me very much any more.” Suddenly she understood one special thing about her marriage, something she should have known a long time ago. It was like shining a bitterly bright light into the dark and hidden places of her heart, cruelly exposing things that shamed her. She looked at Ben and Ginny and saw their concern — and their pity. She snapped the lid shut on painful things, sat up straight, gave them a dazzling smile, and said, “This is a sort of celebration, you know! I’ve been offered the most marvelous opportunity.”
And she began to talk. And talk. And talk. She would illumine for these academic peasants the shiny, wonderful world of reality, and so, with much animation, she opened all her glittering packages for them — the luncheon anecdotes; the special deals; the interplay of sponsors, talent, press agents, and columnists; the desperate infighting in the cosmetics industry; the struggles, the compromises, the bitternesses. She explained how the chance to have her own agency would catapult her right into the vortex of the endemic hurricane. Throughout the almost hysterical vehemence of her talk, she was aware of their stunned expressions, their mechanical smiles. She talked herself up out of her chair and, still talking, moved toward the door, saying, “It has been such a wonderful evening, and if you’ll drive me back to the hotel now, Ben, I’ll be very grateful, because I still have plotting and planning to do with my fellow conspirator, Johnny Quinn, a young man who is truly exciting to work with. You see, I—”
They had gone to the door with her. Ben was putting on his jacket. Ginny wore a bland social smile.
“You see, I just want to—” She stopped. Her mouth felt rigid under the pressure of her smile. She looked at her old and dear friends for a long second, and then her heart seemed to burst, and as the wild tears came and she clung, weak and shuddering, to Ginny’s comforting warmth, she found herself with the idiot thought that the last time she had cried three times in one day, she had been eleven years old and her dog had been run over.
Ginny made the living-room couch into a bed for her. Long after Ben had gone up, Ginny stayed with her, sitting on the floor beside the couch. The kitchen light cast a narrow beam into the dark room. They had given her a mild sedative and warm milk. She felt cozy and exhausted, all emotions spent. She kept drifting to the edge of dreams and coming back again.
Molly sighed and said, “It’s like skating.”
“Skating?” Ginny asked.
“When I was little and the ice froze on the pond. You could lie on your stomach and lick a little place to make it shiny and look down and see the weeds standing so still in that icy water down there, like a special secret world.”
“I know.”
“But when you skated, you saw only the ice. I’ve been skating for a long time. I guess I’m not making sense. Go to bed, Ginny. I’m all right now. I love you both. You’ve been so kind.”
“Phoo. Meat loaf, wine, and sympathy.”
“And a loan of pajamas.”
“The kids will have us both up awfully soon. So good-night, Molly-O.” Ginny stood up, kissed Molly on the temple, patted her shoulder, and went away. The kitchen light went off. The house was still.
Molly heard sirens far away in the summer night. A small girl licked a seeing-place on the sugary ice and looked down into the still darkness of the weedy world and tumbled slowly down and down...
Her taxi pulled up to the hotel at ten-thirty the next morning. She went to the suite. When she was dressing after her shower, the phone rang.
“You sound revoltingly joyful,” John Quinn said.
“It’s a pretty morning in Texas.”
“Is it? I haven’t looked. Where were you?”
“Visiting friends.”
“I sat there like an idiot and partook of too much of those free drinks and watched television until my eyes gave out, and then I sacked out on that couch. The maid woke me up when she came in at nine. I think the situation baffled her. I know it baffled me.”
“Poor Johnny.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“Long ago. Have you?”
“Not yet. Shall I come and—”
“Suppose you go down and have breakfast. I’ll join you for coffee. And please get over the grumps.”
“I shall be jolly. Ho ho ho,” he said bitterly, and hung up.
He saw her as she came across the dining room. He got up quickly, to smile warmly at her and say. “Good-morning, lovely darling,” and hold her chair and lean over it to kiss her cheek before going back to his place. He looked across the table at her and said, “You’re so beautiful, Molly, I have to forgive you. But you owe me a full report.”
“They’re dear old friends. We just talked and talked until it was really too late to ask Ben to drive me back here.”
“Houston has taxis, I’ve heard.”
“But if I’d tried to get a taxi, he’d have insisted on driving me in. You know how those things are.”
“It’s the little courtesies that count. Thoughtfulness.” He leaned closer to her and, with slightly hooded eyes and a deeper, more personal intonation, said, “Darling, you can tell me you got a little timid. About us. I’d understand. You know I’d understand.”
She gave him the same smile of delight and approval with which one awards a child for a perfect recitation. “And I couldn’t trust myself? Isn’t that how it goes?”
“What’s so funny?”
“We’re funny, Johnny. We’re hilarious.”
“What happened to you last night?”
The waiter brought a pot of coffee. As he walked away, Molly smiled at John Quinn and said, “Last night, we peered through the ice and talked of great men. I slept on a couch in borrowed pajamas and was roused by urchins as the sun came up.”
“What happened to your hand?” She looked at the red streak on the back of her right hand. “Wound stripe for a housewife. Their youngest took a wild grab at the handle of the frying pan, and I got it before he spattered himself with hot grease.”
“Sounds terribly homey,” he said. “Oh, it was! Johnny Quinn, while I was taking my shower this morning, I thought up a question to ask you.”