He thought suddenly of Hazel. Her house was less than half a mile away; he could stop there and leave Ruby in the car while he got some whisky from Hazel. Hazel wouldn’t mind, as long as she didn’t know it was for Ruby.
“I’ll stop off and get you something to drink,” George said. “It will make you feel better.”
“A drink — you think a drink will cure anything, anything in the world—”
“It helps, sometimes.”
“It can’t help me, nothing can.”
“Let’s try it.”
“You don’t know, you don’t know—”
“I don’t want to know. Just take it easy.”
She kept silent until he parked the car in front of Hazel’s white stucco house. Then she said, in a low voice, “You’re being very kind to me. It’s no use, though.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, it’s just no use.”
“We’ll see.”
He got out and walked around the lane to the back of the house. Parked beside the fence there was a car he didn’t recognize, a black Cadillac with a monogram on the driver’s door which was too elaborate to be deciphered at one glance.
George passed the car and went through the gate toward the back door. The moon had come up and it hung like a fruit among the top branches of the oak tree behind the garage. From the garage itself there came the scurrying and bustling noises of the wood rats as they raced along the ceiling and up and down the walls. Sometimes when George used to get his car out of the garage in the mornings he found their tiny paw marks in the dust on the engine hood. Aside from the paw marks and the dust they shook down from the ceiling, the wood rats did no harm. Their noise disturbed Hazel, though, and she used to go out now and then and bang on the garage roof with a broom. The wood rats froze in their tracks while Hazel banged away, breaking one or two of the tiles in her fury; but as soon as she returned to the house they started again, louder than ever, until the garage seemed to be cracking open. George had never been able to trap a wood rat, in fact he had never even seen one. The evidence that they existed at all was purely circumstantial, the noise and the paw marks on the roof tiles or on the engine hood of the car, like the tracks of the invisible man.
The sounds from the garage suddenly ceased, as though the rats had sensed the presence of an intruder. They seemed to be watching from under the tiles, listening, waiting for the stranger to leave the yard. George was struck by a feeling of loss and resentment. He thought, by God, I used to live here, this was my yard. I planted those two orange trees myself, with my own hands. And the hedge too... the hedge has been clipped, it looks too neat, like Willie’s mustache... I ought to get back to work, what in hell am I doing here anyway?
The hedge had grown, as thick as a wall and as high as Ruby. He looked at it as he crossed the yard, feeling almost betrayed, as if he’d half-expected it to stop growing during his absence.
He went up the steps of the back porch and rapped, hesitantly, on the screen door.
Harold and Josephine were at the kitchen table, making sandwiches. Harold was buttering bread and Josephine was slicing some meat loaf. Whenever a crumb of meat fell on the table Josephine picked it up and popped it in her mouth in a natural, unselfconscious way. They were both sunburned from their afternoon in the sailboat, and a row of freckles had sprung up out of nowhere along the bridge of Josephine’s nose.
George rapped again and said, “Hey.”
“Well, for crying out loud.” Harold put down the butter knife and wiped his hands on the apron of Ruth’s that he was wearing. “Come on in. Josephine, look who’s here.”
“I see him,” Josephine said placidly. “Hello, George. What brings you to these parts?”
“I just dropped in to see Hazel for a minute.”
“She’s got company.”
“Yeah, I saw the car.”
Harold whistled. “Some car, eh? They say a Caddy like that will do over a hundred miles an—”
“How fast a car goes doesn’t matter,” Josephine said, giving her husband a glance of disapproval. “If its owner happens to be married. Which he is.”
“Sure, honey. Sure—”
“Mr. Cooke’s interest in Hazel is purely businesslike, and vice versa. After all, she used to work for Mr. Cooke and there’s nothing more to it than that.”
Although both Harold and George were inclined to doubt this statement, neither of them cared to argue with Josephine. She had reached the stage where every remark, every incident, had a personal application for her. Harold knew this, and George sensed it.
The two men exchanged glances, then Harold said, hurriedly, “Say George, I didn’t get a chance to thank you for the boat this afternoon.”
“That’s all right.”
“We had a wonderful time. Josephine wasn’t scared a bit. Were you, Josephine?”
“I was so, at first,” Josephine said. “I would have been scared to death without Harold. Harold kept asking me if I was getting seasick, and finally he was the one got seasick!”
Harold looked very proud, as if he had deliberately shouldered the burden of seasickness to spare Josephine. “Josie makes a swell sailor. You’d think, with the baby and everything, she’d feel queasy.”
“Well, I didn’t, not one bit. And don’t think those waves weren’t high, George. They came at us, whoosh, didn’t they, Harold?”
She and Harold exchanged contented smiles. Together they had braved a new element, the sea. They had fought and won, and now after their shared victory they were relaxed, united.
“You’re both looking fine,” George said.
“I’m certainly not losing any weight, am I?” Josephine laughed. “The doctor thinks maybe I’ll have twins.”
“Holy cats.”
“That’s what I told Harold, holy cats. But Harold says it’d be sort of a bargain to get two for the price of one. Considering how much everything costs nowadays, it’d be nice to get a bargain for a change... How about a sandwich, George?”
“No thanks.”
“Well, the least you can do is sit down and make yourself at home.”
“I can’t. I’m in kind of a hurry.” George shifted his weight from one foot to another, already regretting his decision to bring Ruby here. Everything was so normal — the warm little kitchen, the pungent smell of the meat loaf, Harold with his pride and Josephine with her unborn child — that by contrast Ruby seemed eccentric, even depraved. “I’ve got someone waiting for me in the car.”
“Aha.”
“I’d like to speak to Hazel a minute, though.”
“Sure thing,” Harold said. “I’ll get her.”
When Harold had gone, Josephine said, casually, “Is it anyone we know?”
“No.”
“I just thought if it was, bring her in.”
“Thanks just the same.”
“If you ask me, George, you’re acting sort of jumpy.”
“Not as jumpy as I feel.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“Call it business.”
“I didn’t mean to be nosy,” Josephine said rather stiffly. “It just surprises me when a man of your iron constitution starts acting jumpy.”
“I left my iron constitution behind years ago.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. It makes me nervous. After all, I’m not terribly much younger than you are, and here I am, going to have twins.” She turned to him, her eyes suddenly anxious, seeking reassurance. “Maybe I waited too long and my bones are too set or something?”
“Baloney,” George said cheerfully. “Listen, any time you’re in doubt about your health take a look in the mirror. Go on, do it now.”
“No.”
“Go on. Look at yourself.”
Awkwardly, Josephine rose from her chair and approached the small oblong mirror hanging between the two windows over the sink. Her eyes were clear and glowing, her dark hair glossy, her cheeks pink from the sun.