She wanted to surprise Gordon, and she did.
She dialed the number of his office while Mr. Gomez reheated a batch of French-fried potatoes and the juke box moaned a soft, disturbing song. The music brushed her ears and her lips like a kiss.
Watching her from behind the counter Mr. Gomez made one of his quick, wrong analyses of character: kid from a small town, on her way to Hollywood, due for a shock, no jobs around, lousy with pretty girls already, the kid’s asking for it.
“I’m not hungry,” Gordon told Elaine at dinner. “I think I’ll go out for a walk.”
Elaine glanced at him across the table. She believed nothing and so she could always spot a lie, an ability which was her pride and joy.
“A walk? I should think after standing on your feet all day a walk would be about the last thing you’d want.”
“I don’t get enough exercise.”
“You have your golf on Sunday afternoons.”
“If you’ve any objections to me going for a walk, say so. Don’t beat around the bush. Is there something you want me to do around the house, is that it?”
“You don’t have to get irritable, Gordon. I didn’t object to your going for a walk, it just seemed peculiar, that’s all.”
“Well, perhaps I am peculiar,” Gordon said.
Elaine sighed and thought, how true. Gordon was peculiar, and little did these people who were always telling her how lucky she was to have a good husband, little did they know what she had to put up with. It was quite possible that Gordon’s trouble was glandular. If this was the case, Elaine would stand by, she would even nurse him herself, if necessary, until Gordon’s glands readjusted and he had completely recovered. Complete recovery, in Elaine’s terms, meant that Gordon would be constantly sweet, affectionate, devoted to herself and the children. He would stay home at night and they would all play games together, a gay, happy, united little family. This was Elaine’s dream, this picture of Gordon and herself and the children sitting at a table reading aloud or playing Parcheesi and Casino and Snakes and Ladders... She and Gordon would touch hands and smile with pride and love at the children’s excitement... This was what she wanted but she had never told Gordon, and her own attempts in the direction of the dream were hopelessly inadequate. The boys were too young for such games and the girl Judith got overexcited and tried to cheat. Elaine was horrified by this cheating, she could not believe it was natural for a seven-year-old to try to cheat, and in the end she blamed Gordon for passing on his hereditary weakness to his daughter. The gay evenings with the children were nightmares for Gordon and agonizing frustration for Elaine.
Elaine confided in no one. To her friends she appeared invulnerable, and it was only when she said her prayers in the evening that she admitted, even to herself, that she was not.
When Gordon had left she put the children to bed. Then she went into the bedroom she shared with Gordon. Kneeling beside the bed Elaine confided in her doctor-psychoanalyst-father-mother-confessor-God. She talked to Him quite naturally, as to an old friend.
“Dear Father, I need your help, we all do. We turn to you in our unhappiness. I don’t ask you to make me happy, only to show me what is wrong and what I should do. Whatever it is I have enough strength and faith to do it. Something terrible is wrong in this house, it is crushing us all, and I know it must be my fault as well as Gordon’s. Gordon is out for a walk — it’s funny how I keep telling You things You must know — and I miss him the way I did when he was in San Francisco. I think I love him, I don’t know. When he’s away I love him, but when he comes back everything starts over, all the small irritations and differences. I do my best to lead a virtuous life but some times I have wicked thoughts and when I look at Gordon I resent him. Where does this terrible resentment come from? Sometimes I want to hit out at him, and just tonight when he swallowed some soup and it went down the wrong way, I felt glad, really glad! I thought, that will teach him — those were the very words that came into my mind. But why? What would it teach him? How could I have been glad? Dear Lord, show me the way, I am lost and wicked — I don’t know — what a mess, Oh God, what a mess—”
She remained on her knees for a long time, staring up at the ceiling, a blank relentless heaven.
In terror and exultation Gordon opened the door of Mr. Gomez’s café and found Ruby in the back booth.
“Gordon — Gordon, are you glad I’m here?”
“Yes, yes, you know I am—”
“I’m glad too.”
He took her hand and held it against his mouth.
“Gordon, I didn’t come here to ask you for anything.”
“I know. Don’t talk.”
“I have to say this,” she said earnestly. “I mean, I don’t want you to give up your family or anything, I wouldn’t ask you to. I just came to be near you.”
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Here I am, though.”
“Here you are.”
“Are you happy?”
“Very.” He smiled at her but his eyes were worried. “I’m very happy.”
She noticed his worry and said quickly, “Now don’t start thinking, Gordon. For one night we won’t think or plan or anything, eh?”
“All right.”
“If it’s me you’re worrying about, you can stop right now. I can take care of myself and I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“What did you tell your aunt?”
“That I was going to get a job here, and I am, too. She didn’t mind. She even let me borrow her red fox fur so I could look more presentable. Naturally I didn’t tell her about you, she’s death on men anyway.”
“Have you any money?”
“Lots. My father sent me some. I had to tell a lie to get it. Does that shock you, Gordon?”
He shook his head. He was beyond the stage of shock, no matter what happened. His life, which for eight years had run like an engine on schedule, had without warning jumped its tracks and roared off into the woods.
It couldn’t have happened, Gordon thought in sudden panic, it isn’t true. Yet here was Ruby sitting by his side, accepting with mature complacence her new role as mistress to a married man. She seemed to have tossed away her girlhood and walked on without looking back and without looking ahead. She had no goal, no ambition, and no purpose beyond the immediate satisfaction of being near Gordon.
“You’ll have to go back home before your aunt finds out the truth,” Gordon said wearily.
“I have no home. My aunt’s house is no more home to me than the room up the street that I just rented. Why should I go back? Gordon—” She put her hand on his wrist. “Listen, Gordon, after you left, the whole city seemed dead to me. The people were there just the same and they did the same things they always did, walked and laughed and drove cars, but they looked dead to me, like they had motors in them like that dummy that rides the exercycle on Powell Street. Remember when we passed it on the cable car and you said it was wonderful, a typically American invention to get nowhere fast?”
Gordon nodded, marveling at the way she remembered, with absolute accuracy, all the words he had spoken in her presence, as if she had deliberately, right from the first, set out to memorize them. Why? Gordon thought. Why me? He saw himself as an ordinary man crowding forty, getting a little bald, a little stooped, a little tired. There was nothing about him to appeal to a young girl, yet for Ruby his departure had murdered a city. She loves me, Gordon thought, and he felt a nameless fear draining the blood out of his head.