“I wish I was taller,” she said. “If you’re tall you can carry things off. Like clothes.”
Ruth was making the bed. When Josephine paused between sentences Ruth could hear the gentle shriek, smack, shriek, smack, of Escobar’s shovel. He’s working. Well, he’d better be. I’ll keep an eye on him. I’ll see Hazel doesn’t get cheated.
She went to the window and peered out through layers of mauve net curtains. He was only two feet away from her. He had rolled up the sleeves of his plaid shirt and opened the collar. He wore a yellow undershirt. Sweat glistened on his forehead and in the crooks of his elbows, and his hair was a cap of wet black silk. He was breathing through his mouth. She could see part of his lower front teeth, and they were very white, almost as if he’d cleaned them.
He looked up suddenly and his eyes pierced the mauve net curtains like needles. She stepped back with a shock, feeling the needles in her breasts and her stomach. Her insides curled up and then expanded, disintegrated, dissolved into fluid. I feel quite faint. It’s the heat. It’s going to be a hot day.
“It’s going to be quite a hot day,” she said.
“Oh, I hope not,” Josephine said. “I feel the heat so. Remember? — I never used to mind the heat— Remember? — I never even sweated. And now — it’s the extra weight, don’t you think? Harold says I should sweat if I’m hot. Otherwise the poison stays in my system.”
Josephine said the same things nearly every morning. Her mind revolved in ever-decreasing circles as her body became larger. I feel, how do I feel? Have I a headache? I wish I was taller. The heat bothers me. Harold says. Harold, Harold.
Always she referred to Harold. No matter how small the circle got, Harold was right there in the middle of it, sometimes sliding along smoothly and sometimes getting bounced and jostled and bruised beyond all recognition.
Harold was Josephine’s second husband. Her first had been a silent irascible man, a veterinary doctor named Bener. Though he kept no pets of his own, Bener had a great deal of patience with the animals he boarded and treated. He had none at all with Josephine, and it was rather a relief to both of them when he died quietly one night, of coronary thrombosis, leaving all his money to his mother and his brother Jack. Josephine later received some of it under the Community Property Law. She spent it on clothes and then she married Harold.
She married Harold partly because he was handsome and partly because he was the exact opposite of Bener. In their three years together Harold had never spoken to her sharply, and even lately, when she wept or abused him and all men, including God, Harold remained tender and took the abuse as being well deserved.
Harold was no ball of fire, but he was a good deal sharper than most people thought. He showed up badly in front of Hazel (his older sister) and Ruth (his conscience). In their presence he was always making inconsequential remarks, holding his hand up to his mouth as he spoke, as if in apology. Alone with Josephine he was different and talked quite freely about the government and the Teamsters Union, which had nice new headquarters downtown with a neon sign, and the atom bomb, which something would have to be done about, no matter if the baby turned out to be a boy or a girl.
The others might underestimate Harold, mistaking his good nature for laziness, and his dreaminess for impracticality, but Josephine knew better. Make no mistake, Harold thought great thoughts as he drove his truck.
Josephine took her toothbrush and tube of toothpaste from her bureau drawer and carried them into the bathroom. She squeezed a quarter of an inch of paste onto her brush and thought, by the time this tube is finished, I’ll know. I’ll be dead or the baby will be dead or we’ll both be alive and all right and Harold will be a father. By the time—
She had an impulse to press the tube and squeeze out the future inch by inch, an inch for each day, squeeze out the time, a long white fragile ribbon of toothpaste.
She replaced the cap, soberly. It was a brand-new tube, giant size, eighty-nine cents, and it would last a long, long time.
“—for breakfast?” Ruth’s voice floated into the turning pool of her thoughts.
“Oh. Anything. I’m not very hungry. Shredded wheat, maybe.”
“Hot or cold?”
“Cold. It’s going to be a hot day.” She was sweating already. The poison was seeping out of her system through her pores, underneath the maternity corset and the wraparound skirt and flowered smock. “No, I think I’ll take it hot, don’t you think so, Ruth?”
“I don’t know, it depends on how you feel.”
“Oh, cold then. It doesn’t matter. Anything.”
She followed Ruth into the kitchen like a sheep, and sat down heavily at the table.
“It’s such a nice day,” she said. “We should all do something, go down to the beach.”
“We can’t,” Ruth said sharply. “Not with the Mexican here. He’d probably go to sleep if he thought no one was watching him.”
Josephine smiled pensively. “Mexican babies are cute.”
“The very small ones.”
“And Chinese babies. I saw a Chinese baby in a buggy outside the Safeway yesterday. The way it looked at me! So knowing. It seems a shame — to grow up, I mean. Ruth, I know what we could do this afternoon. We could all go down to the harbor and see George. Maybe he’d lend us his sailboat, Harold’s crazy about boats.”
“I don’t know that it’d be good for you, all that up and down motion.”
“I don’t think it would hurt.”
“Anyway, you know my feelings on the subject of George.” Ruth let her feelings about George show on her face. They pulled down the muscles around her mouth and shriveled her eyes. “It’s my opinion that when you divorce a man you ought to stay divorced from him and not go phoning him and asking him over all the time the way Hazel does.”
“She feels sorry for him. He gets lonesome.”
“Even so. It’s a matter of taste. I have nothing against George, and I have nothing against Hazel, but if they want to see each other they should never have gotten divorced. It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Oh well. It doesn’t matter.” Josephine sighed imperceptibly. It was hard to talk to Ruth without coming eventually on something which was a matter of principle or good taste. Divorce, George, drunkenness, Mexicans, horse racing, leaving dirty dishes overnight, teenaged girls who giggled, motor scooters, two-piece bathing suits, dyed hair, chewing gum, not airing blankets every week and the School Board.
It was becoming increasingly difficult for Josephine to excuse Ruth, but each time she did it anyway.
“I bet the ocean looks nice today,” she said.
“The rest of you can go down if you want to. There’s nothing to stop you.”
“There’s nothing to stop you either.”
“I want to take the curtains down and wash them. Besides—” She left the word hanging in the air, radiating implications. Besides, there was the Mexican, he couldn’t be left alone to be lazy. And besides, she didn’t like the sea. Its soft inexorable voice spoke of violence and eternity. When she went out onto the pier where George worked, she felt the water beneath her and the water on each side of her and she always had the wild idea that the sky itself was part of the ocean and ready to drop down on her and slowly and gently drown her. Watching the sea gave her a feeling of expansion and disintegration inside her.
“Besides,” she said after a time, “there’s too much to be done around the house.”
She rose briskly, unable to resist her own bait. Something would have to be done about something, and everything about everything, and right now. Like a professional soldier ready to take up arms against anyone, for any reason, she marched out into the back yard on the offensive.