“Send the girl home and then find the hedge clipper. Maybe we’d both better hunt for it, you and me.”
“I can’t, I have this headache.”
Hazel stood looking at her indecisively for a moment, then she burst out, “Oh, for God’s sake, Ruth, be sensible and tell me where you hid it.”
Ruth turned her face to the wall.
When Hazel went back to the front room the girl was gone. Thinking she might have decided to wait outside, Hazel opened the door in time to see the bicycle just turning on to Castillo Street. At the hole in the corner which Hazel was always careful to avoid when she was driving, the baby and the boy and Connie herself all bounced in the air, but Connie kept pedaling furiously and in a moment the bicycle had disappeared behind the stucco wall of the school.
Hazel turned back into the house. Through the closed door of the bedroom she could hear Ruth talking to herself in a thin, reedy monotone that sounded as though Ruth had not intended to talk, she had merely opened her mouth and the desert wind blew through it like a pitch pipe.
She opened the door. Ruth was sitting on the edge of the bed with the little dog cradled in her arms. The dog looked uncomfortable and puzzled, but it did not attempt to escape.
“Ruth.”
“I will come out and speak to her personally,” Ruth said.
“You can’t. She’s gone.”
“Gone? Why?”
“I don’t know. She had her little brothers with her, maybe she wanted to get them home.”
“Brothers. Yes, of course. They breed like pigs.” The little dog squirmed out of her arms, sensing danger in their sudden contraction, and went to hide under the bed. “Like pigs. It’s disgusting. He probably has a new child every year.”
“That’s his business.”
“I’m sure it is his business. He seems to do very little else.”
“There’s no sense in—”
“But then they’re all lazy, every one of them.”
“I thought he worked very hard yesterday.”
“You weren’t here. I was. I watched him. I watched him the whole day.”
“Yes,” Hazel said slowly. “Yes, I guess you did.”
“You can rest assured that I did. Josephine wanted me to go along on the boat ride but I stayed home deliberately. They’ve got to be watched.”
“Do they?”
“Every minute of the time.”
Hazel had turned quite pale. “You stood outside and watched him?”
“Not outside. In here.”
“In where?”
“In— Why are you looking at me like that? Stop it. Stop it immediately.”
“Ruth.”
“I won’t tolerate it.”
“Listen to me a minute. I’m only trying to get at the truth.”
“Truth. Truth. There’s no such thing — it’s all a pack of lies.”
“What is?”
“All, all of it. Lies. Slander. You can’t believe anything you’re told.”
“Nobody told me anything. I figured it out for myself.”
Ruth laughed. “Oh, you did, did you? You’re quite a figurer for a woman with no education, who never got past high school.”
She was trembling so violently that the bed rattled and the dog hiding under it made a sudden dash for the door.
“I can figure, all right,” Hazel said. “You didn’t know he was married.”
“I didn’t know, or care. I wasn’t interested enough to think about it.”
“You thought about it.”
“No!”
“If you watched him all day, you must have.”
“How can you imply such a thing? — A Mexican — a dirty Mexican—” She took a long, shuddering breath. “We’ve always held our heads high, all the Kanes, we’re a good family.”
“Why did you take the clipper? So he’d have to come back for it?”
“No, no, how can you — how—”
“It’s the only reason I can think of.”
“No, no! I did it for your sake, Hazel, for you. I knew he was going to try and cheat you. I cheated him first. That’s fair, isn’t it, isn’t it fair?”
“You’re talking crazy. Why should he try to cheat me?”
“Because they all do. Everybody knows that. You can’t trust them. They’re sly, deceitful. He didn’t let on he was married, never gave a sign. We talked, I remember every word. Nothing about a wife and family, nothing. It shows, doesn’t it, how deceitful they are, how they can’t be trusted? I remember every word. We talked about Wendy, him pretending to be interested in her but all the while sizing me up with those innocent eyes of his. Ah, but I was too smart for him. I cheated him before he cheated me. You see that?”
“Yes, I think I see it. I think I do.” Hazel walked over to the window, her hands jammed in the pockets of her jeans as if it was necessary to keep them under control. The sun poured through the net curtains, a golden stream of warmth and light. “Where did you hide it?”
“In the garage.”
“Whereabouts in the garage?”
“I — can’t tell you.”
“You’ve got to.”
Ruth stared down at the floor, mute and suffering.
“Now try and be sensible, Ruth. I looked in the garage a few minutes ago and couldn’t find it. You’re sure you hid it there?”
“Yes.”
“What part? Tell me.”
“I want to, I want to, but I—” She moved her head from side to side, like an animal with a pain it couldn’t understand or communicate.
“Ruth. Listen to me.”
“Yes.”
“You’re over the bad part, you’ve admitted you took it and hid it some place. That was hard for you, but you did it.”
“Yes.”
“The rest can’t be any harder. Tell me where it is and I’ll take it back to him and we can forget the whole thing. Are you listening to me, Ruth?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“The — the buggy.”
“Buggy.”
“That Harold got for the baby. It’s right — right there. I didn’t hide it. I just put it down — it seemed — such a good place for it.”
“Yes,” Hazel said quietly, “I guess it was.”
“You won’t — tell Josephine?”
“No.”
“She’d be mad — germs and everything.”
“I won’t tell her.”
“I don’t know — why I took it. It’s only a clipper.”
“Sometimes things have a special meaning.”
“What meaning could it have? Only a clipper.” She raised her head, slowly. “To you it must seem — quite humorous.”
“No.”
“But it is, it is humorous, in a way. I often see the funny side of things only I can’t laugh easily like some people. Oh, yes, I see the humor in it. You must, too, only you won’t admit it — a grown woman spying on a Mexican gardener, yes spying, and then stealing his hedge clipper and hiding it in a baby buggy. That’s humorous enough. You’re a great laugher, why don’t you laugh?”
“I don’t feel like it,” Hazel said. “I’ll go and get the clipper.”
“Wait. I’ll go with you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I must.” She grasped the bedpost and pulled herself to her feet. Two spots of color had appeared over her cheekbones like round red poker chips. “I must learn to face things.”
The garage smelled of oil and dust and dead leaves. Each time a gust of wind blew past the door the leaves were sucked up into the vacuum it left behind; they jerked and spun for a moment like frenzied dancers and then drifted down to the concrete floor, rustling with self-applause.
Throughout the morning dust had sifted into the garage like snow, and now it covered everything, the oil leavings from Hazel’s car, the broken chair from the kitchen, the bicycle Harold had used on his paper route years and years ago, Ruth’s trunkful of books, George’s collection of shells and driftwood; and, in the far corner near the window, the buggy which Harold had gotten, fourth- or fifth-hand, from the furniture store where he worked. Someone (Josephine? Ruth?) had covered the buggy with an old yellow slicker.