“Ruth?”
“Who— Oh, dear.” She sat up and put her feet hastily on the floor. “My goodness, you’re home early. It’s not even midnight.”
“A quarter to.”
“What happened to your leg?”
“I turned my ankle on the dance floor,” Elaine said. “I thought I’d better come home. There was no sense in spoiling Gordon’s good time. I took a cab. I’ll call you one, when you’re ready to leave.”
“Oh no,” Ruth protested. “I can walk, it’s not a bit far.” It wasn’t, actually, very far, but the nights were dark, and all along the way there were high, dense hedges and massive shrubs. In the daytime they were pretty, with their bright green foliage, but at night they darkened to deep slate and black, shadows within shadows. The least sound, an exploring snail, a gopher, a bird threshing about in the leaves, would send her charging down the street seeking the shelter of the next street lamp. “I can walk,” she repeated stubbornly.
“No.” Elaine’s tone was final, and Ruth felt a deep gratitude toward her. No matter what some people might say, Hazel, for instance, Ruth had always found Mrs. Foster a lady, with a lady’s sense of obligation. It was hard for her to believe that the Fosters had quarrels, yet she knew it was true. Not only had Hazel told her, but Judith gave her detailed reports every Saturday night. The child had a wonderful memory, and sometimes she mimicked her mother with appalling cruelty. Ruth would try not to be shocked: “Now, Judith, it isn’t nice to imitate people.” “Well, she said it, she did so, didn’t she, Paul?” “She did so,” Paul agreed. “Well, you know,” Ruth said, “when we hear something we’re not supposed to hear, we must close our ears.” “Yes, but my ears won’t close,” Judith said earnestly.
Ruth got up and folded the newspaper and carried it out to the kitchen. When she returned, Elaine was sitting in the wing chair staring straight ahead of her at the lamp beside the davenport. Ruth glanced at the lamp too, to see if anything was wrong. No, the shade was on straight and there wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen.
When she had put her coat on, she said hesitantly, “Well, I guess you won’t be needing me any more tonight. Let’s see, I’ve been here three and a half hours, but we needn’t count the half, and you don’t have to pay me tonight if it’s not convenient.”
There was a long pause. Ruth kept buttoning and unbuttoning her coat, nervously. She was beginning to fear the worst — that Mrs. Foster had been drinking.
Without taking her eyes off the lamp, Elaine said, “Why don’t you stay here overnight?”
“Here?” Ruth said, immediately flustered. “Overnight? Oh, I couldn’t. Hazel’s expecting me, and what will Dr. Foster say when he gets home?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know whether he’s coming home.”
“A party can’t last forever.”
“He isn’t at the party,” Elaine said in a cold, dry voice. “He took the car and ran away.”
“Oh dear.”
“He was drunk and we had a fight.”
“What a shame.” We must close our ears. Yes, but my ears won’t close! “If he drives around, the air will sober him up.”
“I said some things I shouldn’t. Some of them were lies. I only lied to protect myself. I didn’t want him to think that he’d made a fool of me. I didn’t — I tell you I never did say anything to other people about Gordon and his — girl. I pretended she never existed. I never mentioned her, I don’t even know her name.”
She transferred her eyes, very carefully, as if they would break under any swift movement, from the lamp to Ruth. “You’re shocked.”
“No, no, I’m not.” Ruth’s face was burning.
“Yes, you are. So am I. I never thought anything like this would happen to me.”
“Perhaps it hasn’t,” Ruth said anxiously. “Perhaps you’re imagining. At certain times in the month I often get depressed and start to imagine the awfullest things, mostly about myself, but about other people too.”
“He didn’t deny it,” Elaine said.
“Oh, but if he was drunk — you can’t take drunk people seriously. I wouldn’t tell this to another living soul, but my father — drank. That’s why I’m a little prejudiced against spirits. My goodness, the things he’d say when he was in his cups. But Mother learned not to take them seriously. She knew that as soon as he’d sobered up he’d be his real self again.”
“No, no, this isn’t like that.” She heard a car coming up the hill. She listened, extremely relieved because she knew it was Gordon. The relief passed and gave way to a deep anger. She was already planning how she’d act and what she’d say, when the car passed the house without a pause.
“Hazel must have known,” she said wearily. “Hazel must have said something to you.”
“Hazel? My goodness, no. Even if she did know she’d never breathe a word to anyone. Hazel’s very loyal, and you know what she thinks of Dr. Foster. She’s always said he was a wonderful man.”
“And she never mentioned a girl? A young girl?”
Ruth shook her head, embarrassed, uneasy, trying to recall anything that Hazel had said about Dr. Foster. But her remarks were all ordinary: Dr. Foster had removed two impacted wisdom teeth in half an hour; Dr. Foster had gone home early with a cold; one of Dr. Foster’s patients was an old lady who talked to herself, and even with her mouth crammed with instruments her words were miraculously clear and articulate; Dr. Foster wondered if Hazel could do anything about getting a job for a friend of his, a young girl, pretty inexperienced.
Ruth frowned, annoyed at herself for remembering this at such an awkward time. It couldn’t be the same young girl — Dr. Foster must have hundreds of friends and acquaintances whom he helped. Besides, Hazel said later that George had given the girl a job, and if this girl really was Dr. Foster’s kept woman she wouldn’t have needed a job, she would be kept. In the back of her mind Ruth saw a fleeting image of a heavily draped, heavily scented boudoir, with a large canopied bed; Dr. Foster would never fit such a place.
“No, really,” Ruth said earnestly. “Hazel’s never said a word.”
“She’d be on Gordon’s side anyway.” Elaine unpinned the velvet rose in her mantilla, and took the high Spanish comb out of her hair. She held them in her lap, moved by the same feeling she had had when she picked up Judith’s abandoned scooter and put it on the veranda; as if something was gone, lost, dead, and only its death gave it any value. “Not that it matters, whose side anybody’s on. It isn’t a tug-of-war. It isn’t a case of me winning if I get twenty people on my side and Gordon has only ten. It’s a case of what we are going to do. I pray—” She raised her eyes suddenly to the ceiling, as if she were half-afraid that the person she prayed to was listening in, checking up on her. “I pray every night. I was brought up very religious, but now, I don’t know, I seem to have lost my faith, I can’t really believe that anyone is listening to me. Or if He is, He’s not going to help, He’s going to judge me, very harshly.”
“You’re wrong. I’m sure you’re wrong.”
“I know I have lots of faults, but I try to restrain myself, I try to be just. I try to be humble too, but I can’t. Something comes flooding over me like acid, it’s terrible, it spreads all over me. When I’m alone and calm, I think to myself, I will do anything for the sake of my children, I will control myself, I will by sheer determination keep my family together. Then I start thinking about Gordon going to meet that girl in the café. That’s where they meet, at an awful little place down on lower Main Street. Only drunks go there, and people like Gordon, people with secrets.”
Ruth turned her face away. “Perhaps you’re just imagining—”