It was as if she turned to wood. "This dress," she said, enunciating with insulting distinctness, "is brand-new. I have never had it on before in my life. In case you are interested, I bought it especially for this occasion."
"I"m sorry, honey," he said. "Oh, sure, now I see it"s not the other one at all. I think it"s great. I like you in black."
"At moments like this," she said, "I almost wish I were in it for another reason."
"Stop it," he said. "Sit down and tell me about yourself. What have you been doing?"
"Oh, nothing," she said.
"How"s the office?" he said.
"Dull," she said. "Dull as mud."
"Who have you seen?" he said.
"Oh, n.o.body," she said.
"Well, what do you do?" he said.
"In the evenings?" she said. "Oh, I sit here and knit and read detective stories that it turns out I"ve read before."
"I think that"s all wrong of you," he said. "I think it"s asinine to sit here alone, moping. That doesn"t do any good to anybody. Why don"t you go out more?"
"I hate to go out with just women," she said.
"Well, why do you have to?" he said. "Ralph"s in town, isn"t he? And John and Bill and Gerald. Why don"t you go out with them? You"re silly not to."
"It hadn"t occurred to me," she said, "that it was silly to keep faithful to one"s husband."
"Isn"t that taking rather a jump?" he said. "It"s possible to go to dinner with a man and stay this side adultery. And don"t use words like "one"s." You"re awful when you"re elegant."
"I know," she said. "I never have any luck when I try. No. You"re the one that"s awful, Steve. You really are. I"m trying to show you a glimpse of my heart, to tell you how it feels when you"re gone, how I don"t want to be with anyone if I can"t be with you. And all you say is, I"m not doing any good to anybody. That"ll be nice to think of when you go. You don"t know what it"s like for me here alone. You just don"t know."
"Yes, I do," he said. "I know, Mimi." He reached for a cigarette on the little table beside him, and the bright magazine by the cigarette-box caught his eye. "Hey, is this this week"s? I haven"t seen it yet." He glanced through the early pages.
"Go ahead and read if you want to," she said. "Don"t let me disturb you."
"I"m not reading," he said. He put down the magazine. "You see, I don"t know what to say, when you start talking about showing me glimpses of your heart, and all that. I know. I know you must be having a rotten time. But aren"t you feeling fairly sorry for yourself?"
"If I"m not," she said, "who would be?"
"What do you want anyone to be sorry for you for?" he said. "You"d be all right if you"d stop sitting around alone. I"d like to think of you having a good time while I"m away."
She went over to him and kissed him on the forehead.
"Lieutenant," she said, "you are a far n.o.bler character than I am. Either that," she said, "or there is something else back of this."
"Oh, shut up," he said. He pulled her down to him and held her there. She seemed to melt against him, and stayed there, still.
Then she felt him take his left arm from around her and felt his head raised from its place against hers. She looked up at him. He was craning over her shoulder, endeavoring to see his wrist watch.
"Oh, now, really!" she said. She put her hands against his chest and pushed herself vigorously away from him.
"It goes so quickly," he said softly, with his eyes on his watch. "We"ve-we"ve only a little while, darling."
She melted again. "Oh, Steve," she whispered. "Oh, dearest."
"I do want to take a bath," he said. "Get up, will you, baby?"
She got right up. "You"re going to take a bath?" she said.
"Yes," he said. "You don"t mind, do you?"
"Oh, not in the least," she said. "I"m sure you"ll enjoy it. It"s one of the pleasantest ways of killing time, I always think."
"You know how you feel after a long ride on a train," he said.
"Oh, surely," she said.
He rose and went into the bedroom. "I"ll hurry up," he called back to her.
"Why?" she said.
Then she had a moment to consider herself. She went into the bedroom after him, sweet with renewed resolve. He had hung his blouse and necktie neatly over a chair and he was unb.u.t.toning his shirt. As she came in, he took it off. She looked at the beautiful brown triangle of his back. She would do anything for him, anything in the world.
"I-I"ll go run your bath water," she said. She went into the bathroom, turned on the faucets of the tub, and set the towels and mat ready. When she came back into the bedroom he was just entering it from the living-room, naked. In his hand he carried the bright magazine he had glanced at before. She stopped short.
"Oh," she said. "You"re planning to read in the tub?"
"If you knew how I"d been looking forward to this!" he said. "Boy, a hot bath in a tub! We haven"t got anything but showers, and when you take a shower, there"s a hundred boys waiting, yelling at you to hurry up and get out."
"I suppose they can"t bear being parted from you," she said.
He smiled at her. "See you in a couple of minutes," he said, and went on into the bathroom and closed the door. She heard the slow slip and slide of water as he laid himself in the tub.
She stood just as she was. The room was lively with the perfume she had sprayed, too present, too insistent. Her eyes went to the bureau drawer where lay, wrapped in soft fragrance, the nightgown with the little bouquets and the Romney neck. She went over to the bathroom door, drew back her right foot, and kicked the base of the door so savagely that the whole frame shook.
"What, dear?" he called. "Want something?"
"Oh, nothing," she said. "Nothing whatever. I"ve got everything any woman could possibly want, haven"t I?"
"What?" he called. "I can"t hear you, honey."
"Nothing," she screamed.
She went into the living-room. She stood, breathing heavily, her finger nails scarring her palms, as she looked at the fuchsia blossoms, with their dirty parchment-colored cups, their vulgar magenta bells.
Her breath was quiet and her hands relaxed when he came into the living-room again. He had on his trousers and shirt, and his necktie was admirably knotted. He carried his belt. She turned to him. There were things she had meant to say, but she could do nothing but smile at him, when she saw him. Her heart turned liquid in her breast.
His brow was puckered. "Look, darling," he said. "Have you got any bra.s.s polish?"
"Why, no," she said. "We haven"t even got any bra.s.s."
"Well, have you any nail polish-the colorless kind? A lot of the boys use that."
"I"m sure it must look adorable on them," she said. "No, I haven"t anything but rose-colored polish. Would that be of any use to you, heaven forbid?"
"No," he said, and he seemed worried. "Red wouldn"t be any good at all. h.e.l.l, I don"t suppose you"ve got a Blitz Cloth, have you? Or a Shine-O?"
"If I had the faintest idea what you were talking about," she said, "I might be better company for you."
He held the belt out toward her. "I want to shine my buckle," he said.
"Oh . . . my . . . dear . . . sweet . . . gentle . . . Lord," she said. "We"ve got about ten minutes left, and you want to shine your belt buckle."
"I don"t like to report to a new C.O. with a dull belt buckle," he said.
"It was bright enough for you to report to your wife in, wasn"t it?" she said.
"Oh, stop that," he said. "You just won"t understand, that"s all."
"It isn"t that I won"t understand," she said. "It"s that I can"t remember. I haven"t been with a Boy Scout for so long."
He looked at her. "You"re being great, aren"t you?" he said. He looked around the room. "There must be a cloth around somewhere-oh, this will do." He caught up a pretty little c.o.c.ktail napkin from the table of untouched bottles and gla.s.ses, sat down with his belt laid over his knees, and rubbed at the buckle.
She watched him for a moment, then rushed over to him and grasped his arm.
"Please," she said. "Please, I didn"t mean it, Steve."
"Please let me do this, will you?" he said. He wrenched his arm from her hand and went on with his polishing.
"You tell me I won"t understand!" she cried. "You won"t understand anything about anybody else. Except those crazy pilots."
"They"re all right!" he said. "They"re fine kids. They"re going to make great fighters." He went on rubbing at his buckle.
"Oh, I know it!" she said. "You know I know it. I don"t mean it when I say things against them. How would I dare to mean it? They"re risking their lives and their sight and their sanity, they"re giving everything for--"
"Don"t do that kind of talk, will you?" he said. He rubbed the buckle.
"I"m not doing any kind of talk!" she said. "I"m trying to tell you something. Just because you"ve got on that pretty suit, you think you should never hear anything serious, never anything sad or wretched or disagreeable. You make me sick, that"s what you do! I know, I know-I"m not trying to take anything away from you, I realize what you"re doing, I told you what I think of it. Don"t, for heaven"s sake, think I"m mean enough to grudge you any happiness and excitement you can get out of it. I know it"s hard for you. But it"s never lonely, that"s all I mean. You have companionships no-no wife can ever give you. I suppose it"s the sense of hurry, maybe, the consciousness of living on borrowed time, the-the knowledge of what you"re all going into together that makes the comradeship of men in war so firm, so fast. But won"t you please try to understand how I feel? Won"t you understand that it comes out of bewilderment and disruption and-and being frightened, I guess? Won"t you understand what makes me do what I do, when I hate myself while I"m doing it? Won"t you please understand? Darling, won"t you please?"
He laid down the little napkin. "I can"t go through this kind of thing, Mimi," he said. "Neither can you." He looked at his watch. "Hey, it"s time for me to go."
She stood tall and stiff. "I"m sure it is," she said.
"I"d better put on my blouse," he said.
"You might as well," she said.
He rose, wove his belt through the loops of his trousers, and went into the bedroom. She went over to the window and stood looking out, as if casually remarking the weather.
She heard him come back into the room, but she did not turn around. She heard his steps stop, knew he was standing there.
"Mimi," he said.
She turned toward him, her shoulders back, her chin high, cool, regal. Then she saw his eyes. They were no longer bright and gay and confident. Their blue was misty and they looked troubled; they looked at her as if they pleaded with her.
"Look, Mimi," he said, "do you think I want to do this? Do you think I want to be away from you? Do you think that this is what I thought I"d be doing now? In the years-well, in the years when we ought to be together."
He stopped. Then he spoke again, but with difficulty. "I can"t talk about it. I can"t even think about it-because if I did I couldn"t do my job. But just because I don"t talk about it doesn"t mean I want to be doing what I"m doing. I want to be with you, Mimi. That"s where I belong. You know that, darling. Don"t you?"
He held his arms open to her. She ran to them. This time, she did not slide her cheek along his lips.
When he had gone, she stood a moment by the fuchsia plants, touching delicately, tenderly, the enchanting parchment-colored caps, the exquisite magenta bells.
The telephone rang. She answered it, to hear a friend of hers inquiring about Steve, asking how he looked and how he was, urging that he come to the telephone and say h.e.l.lo to her.
"He"s gone," she said. "All their leaves were canceled. He wasn"t here an hour."
The friend cried sympathy. It was a shame, it was simply awful, it was absolutely terrible.
"No, don"t say that," she said. "I know it wasn"t very much time. But oh, it was lovely!"
Woman"s Home Companion, December 1943.
The Game.
A week after the Linehams came back from their honeymoon, they gave their first dinner party. The fete was by way of warming the new apartment, which awaited them completely furnished down to the last little gilded silver sh.e.l.l for individual portions of salted almonds.
It was in a big building on Park Avenue, not so far uptown as to make theater-going a major event; not so far downtown as to be a.s.sailed by the rumble and honk of native traffic and the screaming sirens of motorcycles, the spearheads for UN delegates quartered at the Waldorf.
The apartment was of many rooms, each light, high, and honorably square. Each, with its furnishings, might one day be moved intact to the American wing of some museum, labeled, "Room in Dwelling of Well-to-Do Merchant, New York, Circa Truman Administration"; and spectators, crowded behind the velvet rope which prevents their actual entrance, might murmur, according to their schools of thought, either, "Ah, it"s darling!" or else, "Did people really live like that?"
Each room, in fact, already had museum qualities: impersonality, correctness, and rigidity. In the drawing room, indeed, the decorator had made chalk marks on the carpet to indicate where each leg of each piece of furniture must rest. The drawing room was done in mirrors that looked as if they had hung for months in hickory smoke, and its curtains and carpets and cushions were a muted green, more chaste than any white. There were flowers with that curious waxen look flowers have when they come from the florist already arranged in the vase. On the ceiling were pools of soft radiance; light, delicate and genteel, issued from ma.s.sive lamps by routes so indirect they seemed rather more like detours. It was impossible to imagine the room with a fallen petal on a table, or with an open magazine face down on a sofa, or a puppy mark in a far corner of the carpet. It was utterly impeccable, and it was impossible not to imagine the cost of making it so and keeping it so. Happily enough in this blemished world, perfection is not unique; in the radius of twelve Park Avenue streets there must have been twenty rooms like it; all, like it, the property of nervous youngish men newly arrived at high positions in nervous youngish industries.
In the dining room-silver wall paper patterned with leafy shoots of bamboo-the Linehams and their six guests arrived at the finish of dinner. The dinner itself might well have been planned by the same mind that had devised the decor: black bean soup, crab meat and slivers of crab sh.e.l.l done in cream, roasted crown of lamb with bone tips decently encased in little paper drawers, tiny hard potatoes, green peas ruined by chopped carrots, asparagus instead of salad, and the dessert called, perhaps a shade hysterically, cherries Jubilee. It would have been safe to say that, within the before-mentioned radius of twelve streets, there occurred that night fifteen other dinners for eight, all consisting of bean soup, crab meat, crown of lamb, potatoes, peas and carrots, asparagus, and cherries Jubilee. That morning the same butcher and the same grocer, rubbing their hands, had made out the bills for all sixteen of them.
There was no division of men and women for the quarter hour after dinner. They went all together into the living room for their coffee and brandy. Little Mrs. Lineham poured the coffee, and her hand scarcely shook at all. She had the accepted and appealing timidity of the bride at her first appearance as hostess, and the condition was enhanced by the fact that the guests were her husband"s friends, whom he had known before he had ever seen or thought of her; but they had been so kind in their praises of the apartment, the food, the tableware, the champagne, her dress, and her husband"s newly gained ten pounds that she was almost entirely at ease. She felt all warm with grat.i.tude to them.
"Oh, I think," she said suddenly, "you"re all just lovely."
"Cute thing," two of the women said, and the third one, the one she liked best, smiled at her.