Experiment in Springtime

Chapter 4

She drove home with the packages clutched tight against her body as if in self-defense.

She was certain that Forbes had seen her talking to Steve. There was no need for secrecy, merely talking to a man was no crime, no matter who the man was. Yet she was reluctant to have Charles find out about the meeting, and find out, especially, from Forbes, who disliked her. Forbes had such a guileless method of tale-bearing. He managed to give Charles an exact account of her movements without ever seeming to: “Yes, Mr. Pearson, it’s a beautiful day. A lot of people out. The Avenue was very congested, I couldn’t get a parking place anywhere near Ryrie’s...”

She could, of course, tell Charles herself. Just a simple harmless sentence: “I just met an old friend of mine on the street, Steve Ferris. I’ve probably mentioned him before.”

No, that wouldn’t do. Charles would remember distinctly that she hadn’t mentioned him before and he would demand to know why. Charles’s memory was very inconvenient.

In the long run, she felt, it would be safer to tell her mother, and then if Charles found out she could claim that she wasn’t being secretive, she merely thought he wouldn’t be interested. Let him pounce on that if he wanted to, let him lie awake every single night thinking about it, but he’d never be able to prove a thing except that, beginning in high school and continuing until the time he entered the Air Force, Steve had been her boyfriend. That was all that anyone knew, and even Charles, with his fiendish ability to ferret out secrets, would never know anything more.

As soon as she reached home, she went up to her mother’s room.

The shades were drawn and Mrs. Shaw was asleep on the lounge beside the bay window. Martha stood in the doorway for a moment listening to the sound of her mother’s breathing. She was not exactly snoring, but at the end of every breath she gave a little grunt as if of satisfaction.

“Mother.”

“Eh?”

“Sleeping?”

“Eh? Oh, it’s you, Martha.” She made a half-hearted attempt to raise herself, then sank back with a groan. “I dozed off. Exhausting weather. I can’t seem to breathe.”

Martha crossed the room and pulled the shades back with a jerk. “Try taking off those hideous corsets.”

“I’m sure they have nothing to do with it. I’ve always worn corsets.” She blinked and sat up, holding her hands over her eyes. “I wonder if it could be my lungs.”

“Steve Ferris is back.” The air smelled of chocolate. She opened a window. “I saw him on the street.”

“Well.” Mrs. Shaw’s round blue eyes glanced around the room as if they wildly expected to see printed somewhere on the wall the correct and tactful reply. “Well. Isn’t that nice? Did he — how did he look?”

“Same as ever.”

“Well.”

“He asked about you.”

“That was nice. I always wanted to see him in his uniform. You remember we never did.”

“I remember. He’s not in uniform anymore. He’s been discharged. He was wounded.”

“What a shame! I was very fond of Steve. So was Harry. He didn’t know about Harry, I guess?”

“No. I told him.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that Father was a good man, that he was full of laughs.”

“That’s right, he was, wasn’t he?” You hear that, Harry? People haven’t forgotten you. “Martha.”

Martha was staring stonily out of the window.

“What?”

“I hope... I hope you...”

You are my child and I love you and I hope you are happy. What she felt was very simple but she couldn’t say such things to Martha. She was beyond the reach of words. “Martha, my dear...” Her confusion and helplessness brought tears to her eyes.

Slowly Martha turned her head. Her mother looked a little grotesque in her grief. Her spine was stiff because of the corsets, her legs were spread apart in front of her, and from the bottom of the pink lace negligee her feet stuck straight as boards into the air.

She said wearily, “Why are you crying?”

“Oh, I don’t know — everything...”

“I hope it’s not on my account. Don’t get the romantic idea that seeing Steve again has upset me. As a matter of fact, I’m rather glad I ran into him. If I had any illusions left about him, they’re gone.” She laughed. “I’d forgotten he was no taller than I am.”

“Charles is very tall.”

“He still bites his fingernails. And he talks — well, he doesn’t talk like a gentleman. It was painful listening to him.” Outside she could see the round cherubic buttocks of the infant Hermes. “He has bad taste. You should have seen the suit he was wearing. It didn’t fit and it was the wrong color, a sort of cinnamon brown. He thinks he’s going to write a book. He’s as cocky as ever. Let’s drop the subject.”

She went over to the mirror and took off her hat and smoothed the hair back from her temples. Her eyes were a little bloodshot and they ached as if invisible thumbs were pressing on her eyeballs.

Mrs. Shaw watched her in silence. Thinking back into the past had forced her to realize how alien and detached Martha had become. The change had been so gradual and the physical aspects of it so slight in themselves that they had escaped notice at the time — the disposal of a piece of jewelry, the sudden switch to black clothes, the gift of all her makeup and perfume to Laura, the resurrection of the glasses she’d worn in high school. All very small things and done subtly over a period of years, yet here they were, added up and totaling a different Martha.

A nun, Mrs. Shaw thought with a shock. She’s like a nun, dedicated to something, no one knew what. She had taken her life and placed it on some nameless altar as a sacrifice and an atonement for some nameless sin.

“Why are you staring at me?” Martha asked. Even her voice had altered. It was cold and even, as if for years now nobody had said anything to interest her and nobody ever would again. “Is anything wrong?”

“No. Oh, no.”

“Were you in to see Charles?”

“We talked for a while. After I left he got up for some reason. It was too much for him; he fainted in the hall. Lily happened to be there and she and Brown got him back to bed. There’s nothing to worry about, he’s all right now.”

“Did they phone Dr. MacNeil?”

“Yes. He may drop in tonight to see him.”

Martha put one hand casually in her pocket and her fingers curled around the key to her room. “Where in the hall?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was Lily doing?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Shaw said in bewilderment. “My door was shut. I didn’t hear anything. What does it matter?”

“I just wondered how far he’d gone. I wouldn’t want him to strain his heart.” She had never seen a picture of a heart but she could imagine Charles’s heart quite plainly. It was pink and moist, a wet, spongy breathing tumor with the blood flowing in and out, thereby keeping Charles alive. “He must take better care of himself.”

“You’ve been wonderful to him, Martha. So devoted, I’m sure he appreciates it.”

“Oh, I’m sure he does,” Martha said dryly. She picked up the parcels that she’d dropped on the bed. “I’ll go in and see him.”

“What’s in the boxes?”

“One of them is yours. For Mother’s Day.”

“Can I open it now?”

“If you want to.” She had lost all interest in the gifts. The diamond clip had joined its predecessors and taken its place between the shoddy brass candlesticks and the French original that didn’t fit.

Charles was sitting up in bed in a confusion of pillows. The room was darkened but she could see his eyes turned toward the doorway, hard and bright and dry, as if they’d been watching for her for a long time.

“Well, Charles,” she said cheerfully. “I hear you overdid things a bit. Are you feeling better?” She entered the room swiftly, thrusting the boxed tie toward him as an appeasement: here is a tie for you, so you can’t possibly say anything unpleasant to me. She put the box in his lap. “Here, I brought you something.”

He looked at her sardonically. “Thank you very much.”

“It’s nothing.”

“On the contrary, it’s a tie, unless the contours of the box deceive me.” He removed the paper. “As I thought. A tie. How very generous of you, Martha. I hope you didn’t pay more than a dollar for it?”

She had paid eighty-nine cents, but she had taken the precaution of having the clerk remove the price tag.

“I’d hate to think you were squandering money on me,” Charles said. “Let there be light, pull back the curtains, Martha. I want to examine this offering from the Greeks.”

Pale and angry, she crossed the room and opened the curtains. Charles was impossible. There wasn’t an ounce of gratitude in him. She had spent all of ten minutes selecting that tie.

“This is, Martha, a very important occasion. I can’t recall offhand that you’ve ever bought me anything before.” He rubbed the tie between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the texture. “Very nice indeed.” He turned it over and looked at the label. It bore the name of a nationally known firm who made one-dollar ties. “You’re incredible,” he said quietly.

“What are you talking about?”

“You make so many blunders and you make them in such an efficient, self-confident manner.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Like a child, always scheming and thinking you’re getting away with something.” He drew up his knee viciously and the box bounced off the bed.

She backed away, frightened and sincerely bewildered. She couldn’t understand why he was making a fuss. The tie was pretty, and what’s more, it looked expensive. She might have paid five dollars for it.

“The label, darling,” he said.

“What?”

“Not that I mind wearing dollar ties, I do most of the time, anyway. It’s your effrontery, because this is practically the first present you’ve ever given me. And more than effrontery, it’s your sly stupidity.”

“You can’t...”

“Sly, because you’ve no sense of human values, and stupid because you always overlook one or two details. You always think you can put something over on people, that no one is smart enough to catch on to you. And all the time you’re as transparent as glass.” He leaned back against the pillows. His voice was low but distinct. “You’d make a very poor murderer. They’d have you hanged within a month.”

There was a long silence. She said at last, in a bored way, “Well, that was quite a speech, Charles.”

“I have lots more material.”

“Have you?”

“Oh, yes. I’m gradually getting things straightened out, a detail here and there, a discrepancy — what the doctor said and what you said he said...”

“I don’t pretend to remember his exact words.”

“You haven’t the grace to pretend anything. For a whole month you’ve sat in that chair over there waiting for me to die.”

“That’s a lie.” And it was a lie. She didn’t want him dead. She had only thought, off and on during the years of their marriage, how pleasant it would be if Charles didn’t come home some night. That was natural, that was human, a lot of wives thought that about their husbands sometimes. It didn’t make her a criminal. Yet Charles treated her like one, exactly as if he’d read her mind and convicted her on her thoughts.

“That’s your secret, Martha. You don’t pretend anything. You haven’t even got sense enough to pretend you married me for anything but my money.” His voice had risen and his eyes glowed feverishly in their sockets. “Have you? Did you?”

She was startled by his fury, but in the back of her mind she felt a cold contempt for anyone who could lose his control so completely. She said, “I don’t believe you’re in any condition to talk.”

“I may never be in any condition to talk. You tried once and you’ll try again...”

“All this fussing about a tie. It’s disgusting.”

“Won’t you, Martha?” he shouted. “You will try again?”

“For heaven’s sake lower your voice. The servants will hear you.”

“I want them to hear, I want everyone to hear!”

Quietly, so he hardly realized she was moving, she backed toward the door and closed it. Then she stood against it, as if defying him to get up and push her aside and open it again.

“Open that door,” he ordered.

“Don’t be ridiculous. If you think I’m going to let an hysterical invalid make a fool of me in front of—”

“They’ll hear me anyway, I’ll see to it.”

“Have you gone completely insane, Charles? I’ve done nothing against you.”

He struggled to a sitting position and began to scream clearly and deliberately: “I accuse my wife of trying to kill me! I am perfectly sane. I have evidence. My wife...”

In two seconds she was across the room and had her hand over his mouth.

“Stop it. I warn you, Charles, stop it.”

He pulled feebly at her hand. Drops of sweat oozed out of his forehead and his screams were muffled into little animal grunts.

“I told you to be quiet,” she said. “You can’t fight me. I won’t take my hand away until you promise to be sensible.”

He was still for a moment and there was no sound but his labored breathing. Then, with a final spurt of strength, he sank his teeth into the palm of her hand.

She was too surprised to move. She felt her own warm blood and the thick frothy saliva from his mouth slide slowly down her wrist and touch the sleeve of her coat.

Filth, her mind shrieked. Filth, filth.

She stared in frozen horror at her hand.

Charles was smiling. “I can’t fight you, eh? Perhaps not according to the rules, but I do all right. Eh, Martha?” His mouth, smeared with her blood, was moistly red and voluptuous.

“Filth,” she said in a dazed voice. “You filth.”

She turned and walked blandly away, supporting her wounded hand with her good one, carrying it with tenderness and loathing as if it were her torn, bloody baby.

Confronted by the closed door she stopped, unable to comprehend that there was a door between her and escape, and that it must be opened before she could find water to wash this indescribable filth from her hand. She felt no pain, she seemed partially paralyzed as if Charles’s saliva was a poison that was swiftly destroying her nerve centers.

“Martha...”

“I must,” she said, “I really must — wash my hands. I must...”

“Turn around.”

She obeyed, slowly. Charles was still smiling, his rich, red mouth drawn back from his pink teeth, his eyes passionate and beautiful with fever.

“Did you ever put pennies in your mouth when you were a kid?” he said. “That’s how your blood tastes. Metallic.”

Her image began to waver before his eyes, to become larger and larger. White face, black dress, red blood. The colors bounced and jostled each other. Red face, black blood. She grew noisily, clinking like pennies, spreading into the corners of the room.

“Get out! Get out of my corners! Get out, get out!”