Experiment in Springtime

Chapter 10

He saw Brown walking across the lawn and stepped back quickly from the window, as if he’d been doing something he shouldn’t and didn’t want to be caught.

When Brown came in, Steve pretended he had just finished unpacking.

“All settled?” Brown said.

“Yes.”

“I saw the kid come out to the garage. She probably wanted to look you over, eh?”

“Probably.”

“She’s a good kid in some ways.”

“She seemed all right.”

“I have to pin her ears back sometimes, but I’m kind of fond of her. She’s a little irresponsible. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her. If you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I think I do,” Steve said dryly.

“Well, that’s fine. I hope you don’t mind my mentioning it.”

“Not at all.”

“If she makes a nuisance of herself, don’t tell Mrs. Pearson. Just tell me and I’ll handle it.” He added without any change of tone, “We eat in about half an hour. You’re welcome to eat with us. You haven’t any groceries.”

“Thanks, I’d like to.”

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind eating in the kitchen...”

“I wouldn’t.”

At dinner Brown remained unnaturally silent. They all served themselves and ate in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. Besides Brown and Steve himself, there was Mrs. Putnam and a maid called Lily. She was about Beatrice’s age. She had a very bad skin and she was on a diet. Mrs. Putnam was plainly outraged that anyone could be such a fool as to believe that the skin, which was outside, could be affected by food, which went inside. Lily remained cheerful but obstinate. Having paid a doctor five dollars for the diet, she intended to stick to it until death itself intervened, which, Mrs. Putnam asserted, it shortly would.

But the wrangling was not unpleasant. It was carried on in the family style — everything that was said had been said before and would be said again. It gave Steve a comfortable feeling of continuity, as if he were a child who’d been away visiting for a time and had come back to the family to find everything the same.

When the two women got up to wash the dishes Steve said, “A friendly town, this, don’t you think?”

“So-so.”

“Take this invitation for dinner tonight. I consider it a very friendly gesture.”

Brown grunted in reply.

“It makes me wonder whose idea it was,” Steve said.

“Mine.”

“Hands across the lawn, eh?”

“More or less.”

“You’re quite sure that it wasn’t Mrs. Pearson’s idea before it was your idea?”

“She only suggested that it would be nice for us to be neighborly. Food’s a good way of doing it, so here you are.”

“Here I am,” Steve said. The plan was very neat, very typical of Martha. In order to show him that she had no intention of acknowledging their friendship, she had persuaded her servants to “be neighborly” with him.

He went quietly back to the apartment to think it over. He could go directly to Martha and ask her what her game was, but he didn’t trust his own temper and nothing would be gained anyway. Martha would be pure, innocent and on the side of the angels. A subtler approach was necessary. He could never bludgeon Martha into admitting anything, but she could be tricked.

He phoned and told her that since he didn’t intend to start his book right away, he’d be glad to drive her any place she wanted to go.

She sounded pleased. “That’s nice of you. I don’t like to trust Brown with the Cadillac, he’s too careless.” She paused. “As a matter of fact, I wanted to take some flowers to the hospital tomorrow morning.”

“What time?”

“Nine.”

“I’ll have the car ready.”

“I hate to impose on you. I can easily get a cab.”

“You’re not imposing,” he said quickly. “I’ll be delighted.”

The next morning he had the car at the front door fifteen minutes early, but he didn’t have to wait for her. She came out almost before he had a chance to put on the brakes. She wore her glasses and the same kind of black suit she’d worn last time he saw her. She was carrying an armful of tulips, holding them rather cautiously as if she were a little afraid there might be insects on them.

He climbed out of the car awkwardly.

“Do you want to sit in the back seat, or do you want to slum?”

She hesitated, flushing slightly. “I’ll slum.”

She opened the front door for herself and got in.

“Where to?” Steve said.

“St. James Hospital. I thought I’d take some flowers over to the wards. We have so many.”

He started the car without answering her. He drove a couple of blocks in the direction of the hospital, then pulled over to the curb and cut off the ignition.

“Why are you stopping?” Martha said.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Well. I... hope you find the apartment comfortable?”

“It’s fine. Everything is fine, but I still wonder what’s going on behind those glasses.”

“Stop talking about my glasses. If I have to wear them you shouldn’t...”

“I had a nice dinner last night in the kitchen. I wanted to thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Can we go on now?”

“I’m not in a hurry. Are you?”

“I knew there was something fishy about your offering to drive me,” she said angrily. “If you have anything to say to me, say it and get it over with. I’m busy.”

“Would you like a cigarette?”

“No!”

“A bit shrewish this morning, aren’t you, Mrs. Pearson?”

An old man with a cane walked by very slowly, as if he were using the cane merely as an excuse to give himself time to stare at them.

“You might at least pick a more private place,” Martha said, “if you want to talk to me.”

“It’s pretty hard to get you in a private place, Mrs. Pearson.”

“Start this car.”

“I will when you tell me what you have in mind about me.”

“I have nothing in mind about you.”

“You always were a great little planner and I just wondered whether you’d been having any plans lately.”

“Why should I have? I suppose you’re just conceited enough to think that I’ve spent the past five years thinking about you.”

“I don’t give a damn what you’ve been thinking the past five years. The point is, what are you thinking now?”

“I can see it was a mistake, my trying to help you,” she said. “It seems to have given you the impression that I have some obscure motive. Well, I haven’t. I was only trying to be kind and to show you I didn’t bear any grudge against you.” She sounded very sincere.

“Okay,” he said wearily. “I’m sorry I went off the deep end.”

He drove her to the hospital and sat in the car smoking while she was gone. She came out again in half an hour and he took her straight home. She didn’t speak a word, not even when he apologized again. He let her off at the front door.

“Couldn’t we talk decently together sometime?” he said.

“What about?” She went into the house without looking at him.

He spent the rest of the morning wandering restlessly around his apartment. He tidied up a little and made some coffee and started to read a novel Forbes had left behind. It was a very bad novel. He decided he could do better, so he got out his typewriter and put a blank sheet of paper in it. By noon the paper was still blank. Hungry and embittered, he walked six blocks to the nearest drugstore and had a sandwich and a malted milk.

When he returned, Brown was clipping the hedge along the driveway. Brown waved to him cheerfully and put the clipper down, as if the appearance of Steve was an unexpected but satisfactory excuse to stop work.

“Hi,” Brown said. “What have you been doing all morning?”

“Nothing.”

“Bored, eh?”

“You said it.”

“It’s bad to sit around and be bored. Take me. When I’m bored I get outside and do something.”

“Such as?”

“Well, maybe I clip the hedges or mow the lawn. Why don’t you wash the car or something?”

“It isn’t dirty,” Steve said.

“It’ll pass the time.”

Pass the time. That’s what he’d been doing for five years, passing the time, waiting, the way the others were waiting, to go home again. And now that he was home, he was waiting still, but this time he wasn’t waiting for anything.

What a waste, he thought violently, what a stinking waste.

He said, “The hell with washing the car.”

“All right. I just mentioned it because it would give you something to do.”

“You don’t seem anxious to think of anything to do yourself.”

“That’s different,” Brown said. “I’m inclined to be lazy. I don’t mind doing the same things over and over again. That’s because I know I haven’t got anything to set the world on fire with. Maybe you have, I couldn’t say.”

“Maybe I have.”

“Well, let’s wait and see if it lights up and goes bang.”

Steve was silent. His chest felt constricted, as if someone had tied a knotted rope around it and every knot drew blood. He hunched over to ease the pain.

“Anything the matter?” Brown asked.

“No.” He was pretty sure now that what the doctor had suggested was true — the pains weren’t caused by his injuries, they appeared only when he was challenged and couldn’t meet the challenge and needed an excuse for not being able to meet it.

“I think,” he said finally, “that I’ll wash the car.”

“Dear Charles,” Martha wrote. “You still haven’t sent me your address so I presume that means you don’t want to hear from me. But I can write anyway. I will give this letter to Dr. MacNeil and you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. I have no news or anything to tell you, but I wanted to say that I am very sorry...”

She paused, the pen seemed to grow limp in her hand. “I am very sorry...” I am very sorry I met you.

She stared out of the window of her bedroom at the flowers, the hedges, the rolling lawn. It didn’t look like grass from here, but like sheets of velvet. Her eyes softened, as if her mind had slipped away for a moment to lie down on the velvet and dream.

I am sorry, sorry.

She turned away and stiffened her fingers around the pen.

“...that we have drifted so far apart that you can believe me capable of anything. I loved you, Charles...”

Someone was walking around the side of the garage. Steve.

“...and I thought you loved me. MacNeil told me you still do. If you do, why do you keep on being suspicious of me? I’ve never done anything to deserve it.”

Not walking, exactly. Gliding. He had always walked like that, as if he were keeping time to music no one else could hear.

She fastened her eyes to the paper. “I really tried to be a good wife to you. I don’t know where I went wrong. If I knew my mistakes I could correct them. Perhaps there was too great a difference between our environments. I wasn’t brought up the way you were.”

When she looked out again, Steve had disappeared. He’s gone, she thought in sudden panic, he won’t come back. She must rap on the window and call out to him.

“You must realize, Charles, how hard I tried to accustom myself to a new way of life and how humiliating it was sometimes. We didn’t have any money, you see.”

We, not my father and Mother and Laura and I. But we, Steve and I. She hesitated, trying to decide whether to stroke the sentence out. Charles had such a sly way of guessing at things, he might wonder about the “we.” But if she stroked it out, he would wonder even more. She could see him bending over the paper, trying to decipher the crossed-out letters one by one, his face white with suspicion.

She laid down her pen and reached down and opened the window. Summer sounds filtered in through the screen, the jangle of insects, the throbbing hysterical screech of tree toads. A spider minced elegantly across the window ledge. A housefly paused a moment on the screen. In the fall he’d be slow and sleepy, wanting only to be let alone to drowse like an old man; but now he was alert, quickened with spring, and she had only to wave her hand a little and away he fled, lightly, contemptuous of her ponderous movements. Where are you going? Ah, I’m not going anywhere. You have to go somewhere. Not I!

She followed him with her eyes but he darted up, up, going nowhere.

She heard the hum of a motor and saw the car backing out of the garage. Steve climbed out of the car and began uncoiling the garden hose. He was wearing a pair of shorts, nothing else.

She put the letter to Charles back in the box of notepaper. Then she went downstairs and out across the lawn.

He didn’t see or hear her coming. The splutter of water from the hose was too loud, and he was intent on his work.

She said loudly, “Steve.”

He jumped and turned. The stream of water missed her by inches.

“Oh, sorry.”

“Turn it off.”

“All right.”

He shut the water off and put the hose down. When he bent over the muscles of his back moved like snakes under silk. There was a brown mole beneath his left shoulder blade.

He stood up straight again and faced her.

She stepped back. “Who told you to do that?”

“Nobody.”

“I... your costume is a little informal, isn’t it?”

“So is the job.”

“The neighbors might see you. It wouldn’t make a very good impression.”

“I don’t see any neighbors.”

“Are you... are you arguing with me?”

He shook his head. He seemed docile, but he was watching her in an oddly insolent way.

“If you really want to wash the car,” she said, “you’d better put on something more suitable. A raincoat and rubber boots, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.” A trickle of sweat ran down from his neck and disappeared in the little clump of hair in the middle of his chest. He scratched himself without self-consciousness. The hair looked moist and silky.

“You’re deliberately thinking up ways to annoy me.”

“No, I’m not,” he said earnestly.

“It looks like it. You should know that people who live in this section of the city don’t go around in shorts.”

“I’ve never been around such class before. It’ll take me a while to catch on.”

“I’m sure there’s a raincoat somewhere that you can wear.”

“And rubber boots? Oh, goody.” Without changing his expression he added, “Remind me to slap your puss some day for that section-of-the-city crack.”

He walked away.

“You come back here,” she said.

He went into the garage without answering. After a moment’s doubt she followed him.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” she said. “Not if you want to stay here.”

“My rent is paid. You’ll have to give me an eviction notice. You probably didn’t think of that angle when you hatched your fancy little idea for getting back at me.”

“You can’t stay if I order you to leave.”

He smiled. “These legal niceties are too subtle for your brain, Martha. No, I think I’ll stay for a time. I want to investigate life in the upper brackets. Anything for a laugh, I always say.”

There was a long silence.

“Well,” she said at last, “I’m glad you’re having a good laugh.” The garage was murky after the bright sunlight, and she could scarcely see him. “Am I that funny?”

“You’re a scream, darling.”

“Well. Thank you.”

“That’s all right. When people ask me, I tell them.” He spoke quietly and without emotion. “Do you want to see something, Martha? Come here.”

She didn’t move.

“It’s just a picture,” he said, “of a girl who looks a lot different now. I’ve carried it around with me for years.”

He came toward her holding out the picture.

“I don’t want to see it.” But she looked anyway and saw herself laughing into the camera.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” Steve said. “I was crazy about her. I still am.”

“Don’t. Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s all right. I was talking about her, not about you. I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.”

She stepped forward, raising her arm as if to ward off more words. He caught her wrist and held it.

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to hurt you,” she said contemptuously.

“I wanted to be sure,” he said. “You’re a pretty big girl, you could pack a pretty big wallop.”

“You’ve probably been slapped by quite a few women.”

“Not so many.”

“Let go of me.”

He stared at her a minute. Then he held up her wrist between his thumb and forefinger and let it drop suddenly.

“You’d better start thinking about that eviction notice, Martha, because I think I’m going to stick around for a while.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t want me to. Besides, I like it here. The atmosphere is so friendly.”

“I’m so glad you like it.”

“Let’s put it this way,” he said, turning his head away and speaking in an impersonal manner. “I want you to have your little revenge, if that’s what you can call it. I want you to get everything off your chest. Then we’ll start over.”

“We’ll...? I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re preposterous!”

“And don’t bring up the subject of Charles. I don’t give a damn about Charles. I wouldn’t walk a block to see Charles wearing nothing but his hives.”

“I warn you, you’re not going to mess up my life again. I’m perfectly happy and I’m going to stay that way.”

“I see. Everything’s just dandy between you and Charles, is it?”

“Yes.”

“And when he gets better, he’s going to come home and you’re going to be right there at the door to welcome him and take up where you left off?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

“Why should I?”

“It’s funny, but I have the impression that you don’t like him very much.”

“I love him very much.”

“Say it again.”

“I love him very much.”

“Again.”

“Damn you,” she said quietly.

When she reached her room she felt exhausted and in pain, as if someone had stripped off a layer of her skin and exposed the raw stuff underneath.

“Charles,” she wrote. “I am afraid. I want you to come home.”