Ask for Me Tomorrow

Twenty

She remembered the last time she’d seen the house.

B. J. was waiting to let her in. His face was flushed with excitement and anticipation.

“We’ll have the whole house to ourselves for a week. Ethel’s gone to visit her sister in Tucson and I’m supposed to be staying at the University Club while she’s away. Isn’t that marvelous?”

It was marvelous.

They used the guest room, which had a king-size bed with a blue silk spread that wrinkled. Afterward B. J., still naked, tried to iron out the wrinkles with his hands. He looked foolish and helpless. She loved him desperately.

“Next time,” she said, “we’ll take the spread off.”

“Next time?” He couldn’t cope with this time, let alone think about a next time. He glanced over at the suitcase she’d brought as if he couldn’t recall carrying it upstairs for her and putting it on the rack at the foot of the bed. “Maybe you shouldn’t actually move in, G. G. It might be better if we met at a motel.”

“I want to stay here. I love this room. I love you.”

“That damn spread, it’ll be the first thing she notices. Why couldn’t she have picked some material that doesn’t wrinkle?”

“You mustn’t be afraid of her.”

“She might faint. She faints a lot.”

“What if I fainted? Right this minute?”

“Oh hell, G. G., you wouldn’t. I mean... would you?”

“I guess not. I’m trying, but I can’t seem to get the hang of it.”

She sat down on the bed again, deliberately, heavily.

“For God’s sake,” he said. “Get off there.”

“No.”

“You don’t realize—”

“I realize. I just want you to love me so much that you don’t care about anything else in the world.”

“That’s crazy.”

“So I’m crazy. Do you love me anyway?”

“Sure I do. But Ethel brought that spread all the way from Hong Kong.”

“Maybe if we’re lucky she’ll take it back to Hong Kong.”

He began to laugh in spite of himself at the image of Ethel dragging the spread all the way back to Hong Kong.

Later he was sober again, and scared. Gilly wasn’t. “I don’t care,” she said, “if Ethel walks in right this minute.” She didn’t. She walked in five days later. She and her sister had an argument and Ethel came home early. She was shocked, disgusted, reproachful. She sobbed, she fainted, she screamed. Then she went back to her sister’s in Tucson to think things over.

B. J. thought things over, too. “She doesn’t really like me, you know. I don’t blame her. I’m no prize.”

“You are to me,” Gilly said.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you were crazy. Me a prize. That’s a laugh.”

“It’s true.”

“What do you suppose I should do now?”

“Get a divorce and marry me.”

“Is this — are you proposing to me?”

“Yes.”

“Women aren’t supposed to do that, G. G. They’re supposed to wait to be asked.”

“I waited. You never asked.”

“How could I? I’m married.”

“I’m not. So I’ll do the asking. Will you marry me?”

“Well, for Christ’s sake—”

“Leave Christ out of it. It’s you and me, B. J.”

B. J. consulted a lawyer and moved to the University Club. Ethel sent the bedspread to the dry cleaner. Gilly started shopping for a trousseau. If a shadow of remorse appeared now and then, she closed her eyes or turned her back. It’s you and me, B. J.

From a distance the big white stucco house looked the same. But as she approached, Gilly saw that the paint was peeling off the walls and the window frames. The trees in the courtyard had turned brown from lack of water and were dropping their leaves in the dry birdbath and the empty lily pond. A black cat crouched on top of the wall as if he were waiting for Halloween or for the birdbath to be filled. It watched with green-eyed interest as Gilly walked through the courtyard and pressed the chime of the front door.

This time it was Ethel who let her in.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said. “Violet Smith called to tell me you were on your way.”

“I don’t know exactly what I’m doing here.”

“You will. Come inside.”

“We can talk out here.”

“Are you afraid I’ve arranged some kind of trap for you? How quaint. I assure you I bear no grudges and I have forgiven all my enemies. Come, you’ll want to see the changes in the house.”

Gilly went inside, wondering about the changes and whether the blue silk bedspread had been one of them. Probably the first.

The living room was lavishly furnished, but it had the pervasive chill of a place that was never used. A layer of dust covered everything, like a family curse, the red velvet chairs and marble-topped tables, the gilt-framed portraits of plump gentle women and stiff-necked men. Silver vases for rosebuds, and crystal bowls made to float camellias, were empty. Spiderwebs hung undisturbed across the chandeliers, and there were cracks in the plaster of the ceiling as though the house had been shaken by a series of explosions.

There were matching cracks in Ethel’s face, dividing it into sections like a relief map. She was very thin. Everything about her was thin, her arms and legs, her greying hair, even her skin looked transparent. The blue veins in her temples seemed barely covered.

“It’s rude to stare.” She spoke just above a whisper, hissing slightly over the s sounds. The effect was soft and deadly like escaping gas. “I told you there were changes. I can’t afford to keep the place up.”

“B. J. left you well provided for.”

“He did. But times change — increasing taxes, inflation, some bad investments, a loan to an old friend. No wild extravagances, simply normal living, yet in a few years a house begins to look like this. B. J. would be distressed to see it.”

“Don’t worry, he won’t see it.”

“No? You might be wrong.”

“What makes you say that?”

“ESP, perhaps. Perhaps something a good deal more practical... Gracious, I’m forgetting my manners. Please sit down. The wing chairs by the fireplace are very comfortable, but then, you know that, don’t you? Now, how shall I address you? I don’t believe it would be quite appropriate to call you Gilly or G. G., as B. J. did. B. J. and G. G. How sweet.”

“My name is Mrs. Decker. I prefer to stand.”

“Very well.” She herself sat down in one of the wing chairs and began stroking its red velvet upholstery very gently as though soothing an elderly family pet. “You mustn’t think Violet Smith has been indulging in idle gossip. She felt compelled to tell me certain facts.”

“Such as?”

“That you were attempting to locate B. J. and the trail ended in the Rio Seco jail, where he is believed to have died.”

“And why did Violet Smith feel compelled to tell you all this?”

“Because your facts and mine don’t agree. That loan to an old friend I mentioned a few minutes ago, it wasn’t actually for an old friend.”

“It was for B. J.?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Three years ago. He didn’t die in jail. I paid ten thousand dollars to get him out of there. It wasn’t easy to collect that much extra cash. I sold some of my antiques and borrowed the rest from my sister. I know the money arrived safely. He wrote me a thank you note after his release, just a line or two, without any return address. I didn’t keep it. I guess I was piqued because it was so short, so — almost ungracious. I don’t think he’d ever accepted money from a woman before and perhaps it hurt his pride.” There was a ragged edge of doubt in her voice. “I still have the first letter, though, the one where he asked for the money. That was gracious, oh yes, very gracious indeed. I want you to read it.”

“Why?”

“So you won’t have to take my word for anything.”

“I take it.”

“Don’t you think it would be better if you took his? Here.”

The letter Gilly had received five years before had been written on heavy bond, engraved Jenlock Haciendas, Bahía de Ballenas, Baja California Sur. This one was on a kind of onionskin paper Gilly hadn’t seen since she was a child. It was postmarked Rio Seco and the return address was the Quarry: LA CANTERA, PENITENCIARIA DEL ESTADO.

Gilly said, “Who was Angel?”

“Our Yorkshire terrier.”

“I didn’t know B. J. ever had a dog.” It was such a small thing, completely unimportant, but it bothered her. It made her realize that he’d had a whole life before she even met him, that he’d been married to Ethel twice as long as to her.

Gilly’s hands had begun to tremble. The paper made little rustling sounds like evil whispers. “He was desperate. People tell lies when they’re desperate.”

“Or truths.”

“There’s not a word of truth in—”

“Go on reading.”

Gilly folded the letter and put it back in the envelope very quickly so that Ethel might not notice how badly her hands were trembling. She felt sick, as if someone had struck her a mortal blow in the stomach, and the lump in her throat was so large and heavy that she was afraid her voice couldn’t push past it: “Why did you ask me to read this?”

“So you’d understand how useless it is for you to go on searching for B. J. Even if you found him, he wouldn’t want to live with you anyway. He turned to me in his hour of need, not you. It’s all there in the letter. I am the only woman he ever loved and admired and respected.”

“Shut up, damn you! Shut your vicious mouth, you—”

“B. J. was right,” Ethel said softly. “You have no class.”

During the afternoon Gilly cried, sometimes for B. J., sometimes for herself. Mrs. Morrison gave her two pills and Violet Smith brought her the kind of drink Violet Smith had often made for her own consumption before she’d taken the pledge.

When she finally ran out of tears she used eye drops to clear her eyes, and witch hazel pads to reduce the swelling, and make-up to obscure the lines of grief around her mouth. Then she walked across the hall to her husband’s room.

She said, without looking at him, “I went to see Ethel Lockwood this morning. She showed me the letter she got from B. J. in prison.”

He moved his head. He didn’t want to hear about it. Everything was far away and long ago. Who was Ethel?

“The letter had a number of interesting things in it, personal things about me. The consensus of opinion is that I have no class. Imagine that. I always thought I was such a classy dame. Didn’t you?”

He knew what was coming.

“Also, I’m dirty. I don’t stand around in the shower all day, so I’m dirty.”

He could hear the note in her voice that meant she was going to throw a fit and nothing and nobody could stop her. Not even Mrs. Morrison, who thrust her head inside the door and asked if there was anything she could do.

“Yes,” Gilly said. “You can drop dead.”

“I told you to lie down and rest after taking those pills. I naturally assumed—”

“You can assume right up your ass to your armpits.”

“Your knowledge of anatomy is rather meager.” Mrs. Morrison turned her attention to the wheelchair. “I’ll be out in the hall if you need me, Mr. Decker. Press the buzzer and I’ll hear it. I’ll probably hear a great many other things as well, but it is my duty to stick with my patient in fair weather or foul. Press your buzzer. Have you got that, Mr. Decker? Signify that you understand me by raising two fingers of your right hand for yes. Or did we agree on one finger for yes and two for no? I’m not sure. No matter. Buzz.”

“You buzz,” Gilly said. “Buzz off.”

“I shall be in the hall, Mr. Decker. Listening.”

He lay silent and motionless, wishing all the women would go away and never come back, Mrs. Morrison and Violet Smith and Gilly, and now this other one, Ethel. Who was Ethel?

Gilly described her briefly. Ethel was a vicious-tongued, sanctimonious snotty old bitch.

“Where’d she get the right to criticize me? I have as much class as she has. Goddamn it, I’m a classy dame. Are you listening? Do you hear that, you nosy parker out in the hall? I’m a classy dame!”

She began to cry again.

“You know what it said in the letter? It said, ‘I don’t understand how it all happened between Gilly and me. She was a lot of fun and we had some laughs, but then suddenly she was expecting me to marry her. She asked me to.’ That’s what it said in the letter, making it sound like I begged, like I was lower than low.”

Tears and more tears.

He wished he could offer her some comfort or explanation, anything to stop the deluge that threatened to wash them both out to sea. We are drowning, Gilly and I, we are drowning together.