“Are you going to sit there all night?” Elaine said.
“A little rest. You could rest too, Elaine. The grass is damp but it’s not very damp.”
“Thanks. I’ll stand up.” She took a step nearer to him and leaned over, staring at him. Her face was white and furious. “All my life I’ve had to apologize for you and make excuses for you, and I’m sick of it, do you hear? I’m sick of it! I’ve apologized to the children because they’ve never had a decent father to play games with them or spend some time with them. I’ve apologized to my friends because every time we go out together you sit in the corner like a lump of lead, and don’t open your mouth. I swear, sometimes you act half-witted. Well, the great silent act wasn’t enough, oh no! Tonight you have to put on another one. You get drunk as a lord and sing, sing, mind you, in front of all those people. Out of tune, too.”
“I didn’t know the tune, I had to make it up.”
“That’s lovely! That makes everything all right, I suppose. Yes, and I’ve had to apologize to my mother, too. Little did she think that I’d be living from hand to mouth, without a maid or a car of my own. She thought you’d have enough gumption to go out and make some money the way other men do.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m trying to be reasonable, I’m trying to control myself, but there are limits. You just don’t seem to have any character, Gordon. You can’t resist things, you have no will power.”
Answers formed in his mind, rather cleverly, but he remained silent. Whatever he said, she could say more. It could go on all night and all tomorrow, it could go on until one of them died. Gordon, beloved husband of Elaine—
The thing to do was to attach equal importance to all sounds, the car, the heels on the sidewalk, the music, the mad tree. But the car had gone, the heels were silent, the tree drowsed. The music that seeped out of the windows was melancholy and sensuous. It whispered of love and betrayal, Perfidia. The notes ground into his wounds like salt. He thought of Ruby, and the tears welled in his eyes.
Elaine went on talking. She hadn’t raised her voice, it was flat, controlled, reasonable: now let us both admit, calmly, that you lack character, will power, earning power, social graces and fatherly instincts; in brief, let us admit that you bear no resemblance to a man.
“There’s one more thing,” Elaine said. “I swore for the sake of my own pride that I’d never discuss this with you. But I haven’t got any pride left any more. You managed that, all right. You were with your girlfriend this afternoon, weren’t you?”
Gordon shook his bowed head, not trusting himself to speak for fear Elaine might hear the tears in his voice.
“So you’re still going to lie about it, are you? I suppose you’re even going to deny that you have a girlfriend.”
Gordon shook his head again.
“They say a wife is always the last to know about it. But I wasn’t, I was one of the first. How you could hope to get away with it, in a town like this where everybody knows you — you, a man your age, with three children— Everyone’s laughing at you. Not at me, because they know I know. If they don’t know, I tell them. Everyone was laughing, and it was a case of me joining in the laughs or getting laughed at along with you. So I joined in.”
Gordon looked up at her, his mouth open with shock. No matter what happened to him she would always be on the opposite side, joining in the laughs.
“Surprised, aren’t you?” Elaine said harshly. “You didn’t think I’d do it, did you? I laughed with the rest of them. Yes, and if they didn’t know what the joke was, I’d tell them! I’d say, ‘Gordon? Oh, Gordon’s fine. Of course I don’t see much of him any more, he’s got a new interest in life.’ Then I’d smile, like this. You aren’t watching me, Gordon, don’t you want to see how I’d smile?”
She was leaning far over now, her face only a foot or so from his, and she was smiling viciously, her mouth drawn back from her teeth, her eyes narrowed to slits.
“You poor slobbering idiot, you thought you could make a fool of me, didn’t you? But I got there first, I turned the tables on you! When we were invited some place, you know what I’d say? I’d say, I’m sorry we won’t be able to come tonight. Gordon has a date. I haven’t the faintest idea whether it’s the same girl or not. You know how men get at that age and poor old Gordon needs a little fling. Heaven knows it’s better for some girl who gets paid for it to bear the brunt of it rather than me.”
He struggled to his feet, clutching at the palm tree. One of the shoulder seams of his coat ripped. He began to run clumsily across the grass to the driveway.
Elaine stood there under the tree, watching him. It was only when she heard the engine of the car start that she realized his intention, and she began to run after him, waving the hat. The car streaked out of the driveway with Elaine stumbling along behind it. Gordon didn’t look back.
She returned to the club, limping. She had turned her ankle while she was running, and it was already beginning to swell. Judge Bowridge was at the checking counter putting on his coat and still humming.
“I was wondering where you disappeared to,” Bowridge said. “What’s happened to Gordon?”
“He’s gone,” Elaine said curtly.
“Gone?”
“He took the car and left. We had a disagreement.”
“I hope I didn’t precipitate it.”
“No.”
“You must let me drive you home.”
“No thanks, I’ll call a cab. Do you think I should report it to the police?”
“Report what?”
“Gordon. He’s drunk, he shouldn’t be driving around in his condition, he might wreck the only car we have. And who knows where he’s gone? I could report that my car was stolen, couldn’t I?”
“Is it registered under your name?”
“Gordon’s.”
“Then it isn’t stolen, obviously. Now, if a divorce was pending and the car was listed as community property, Gordon could be enjoined from removing it from the premises without your consent, until the community property was equably divided.”
“There’s no divorce pending, I assure you.”
“Then if I were you I’d go home. You’ll probably find Gordon there ahead of you.”
The checkroom attendant called a cab, and Elaine waited for it outside. It was a long time in coming, and her ankle throbbed, but she couldn’t go back inside and face the smiles of her friends. She stood haughtily on the stone steps, holding her head high. She had done what she thought was right in bringing up the subject of the girl, but now that it was done she felt a slight anxiety at the back of her mind. Gordon hadn’t reacted as she thought he would. He had made no denials, no protestations of shame; he hadn’t promised to give the girl up and never see her again. He simply got in the car and drove off.
She half-expected that the judge was right and that she’d find Gordon at home, already asleep, when she got there. But when the cab stopped in front of the house she saw that the garage doors were still open and the garage was empty. Judith had left her scooter out. It was on the front lawn propped up against the pyracantha bush. Elaine picked it up and put it on the veranda beside Paul’s little bicycle. Judith’s one-legged doll, Nancy, was seated on the bicycle, draped in one of Paul’s sweaters. Elaine looked down at the abandoned toys of her sleeping children, and her throat thickened with regret and a growing fear.
In the dim light of the front room she saw Ruth asleep on the davenport. She had her tweed coat flung over her as a blanket, and she had spread a newspaper on the end of the davenport so that her shoes wouldn’t soil the slipcovers.
Elaine knew how nervous Ruth was about intruders, so she turned on another lamp in order that Ruth might see her immediately when she woke up.