“Bill?” she’d say. “Is that you?”
He would feign surprise. “Oh, hi, baby. What’s on your mind?”
“Bill, have you gone mad? Are you all right?”
“Never better, honey. Say, I’m sorry about that cup, and the other thing, the soap dish. That what you called about?”
“Listen to me, Bill. I don’t know what this is all about, but you’re going to get right on the bus and come home. Do you hear me? No, better take a taxi. This instant. Do you hear me?”
“But baby,” he’d say, “you know I can’t quit work in the middle of the day. Want me to get fired?”
He laughed aloud—the line about getting fired was a hot one. He was all ready to go now, except for the piece of tissue on his lip. He pulled it off carefully, but the cut was still fresh and started to bleed again. Cursing, he dabbed at it with his handkerchief and stood by the door, waiting for it to heal. What would she say next, after the line about getting fired? Probably something like “Look. Just what is all this supposed to prove? Would you mind telling me?”
“Sure,” he’d say. “Proves I’m well, that’s all. Well man’s got no business moping around the house all day making work for his wife. Ought to be out earning a living, providing a little security for her. Anything wrong in that?”
“Oh, nothing at all,” she would say. “That’s just lovely. You stay right there and make yourself ill, and come home tonight and collapse, and go to work tomorrow and come home in an ambulance. That’s just fine, isn’t it. That’ll give me lots and lots of security, won’t it?”
“Aw, now, honey, you’re all excited about nothing. You’ve just got this stubborn idea in your head that I’m—” But probably about this point George would walk into his office, the way he always used to do when Jean was on the phone. “Say, Bill, here’s a couple of reports you might want to look—oh, sorry.” And he’d sit down, well within earshot, to wait until Bill was free.
“All right, Bill,” Jean’s voice would say coldly in the receiver. “I’ll put it this way; either you come home right now—”
“Okay,” he’d say, cheerily, trying to convey by the false tone that he was no longer alone, “okay, then, honey, I’ll see you at six o’clock.”
“Either you come home right now—”
“Right, honey. Six o’clock.”
“—Or don’t expect to find me here when you do come home. I’ll be on the train for Mother’s, and so will Mike. I’ve had just about enough of your kind of security.” And there would be a little dry click as she hung up the phone.
Bill rubbed his head, sweating, looking at the note. He had never felt more thoroughly beaten in his life. He walked over to the table, crumpled the note and threw it into the wastebasket. That was that. And suddenly he stopped caring about the whole thing. Let her say or do whatever she wanted. Let anything happen. He was through. He surrendered. All he wanted was to go out and sit down in a bar and have a drink. Or two drinks or three. He grabbed his hat out of the hall closet, wrenched open the front door and stopped short. There she was, just coming in, about to put her key in the door he had flung open, looking up startled into his face. She was carrying only a few light packages, and Mike was neither crying nor pulling her skirt—he was grinning, in fact, and eating an apple.
“Well!” she said. “Where are you going?”
He jammed on his hat and brushed past them. “Out for a drink.”
“Like that? With your suspenders hanging down?”
One sickening glance confirmed the fact: the suspenders hung in loops against his trouser legs. He spun around and glared at her, then started back toward her at a slow and menacing gait. “Listen. It’s a good thing you came back before I left, because I’ve got a few things to tell you.”
“Is it necessary to tell the neighbors too?” she inquired.
Grimly, controlling himself with a supreme effort of will, he followed her back into the apartment, took off his hat and followed her around while she disposed of the groceries and shooed Mike off to his room. Then she confronted him with a prim smile. “Now.”
He planted his fists on his hips, rocked on his heels a few times and grinned evilly at her. “You know that soap dish? Well, it’s broken.”
“Oh.” Annoyance flickered briefly on her face; then she resumed her thin little smile. “So that’s what it is.”
“Whaddya mean that’s what it is? Another thing. You know those new cups? One of them’s broken too! And the saucer too!”
She closed her eyes for an instant and sighed. “Well,” she said. “I guess we don’t need to discuss it. I’m sure you feel bad enough about it already.”
“Feel bad? Feel bad? Why the hell should I feel bad? It wasn’t my fault!”
“Oh,” she said.
“Whatsa matter, don’tcha believe me? Don’tcha believe me? Huh? No, of course you don’t. You’re like a Communist court, aren’tcha? Everybody’s guilty until proved innocent, aren’t they? Huh? Oh no, not everybody, I forgot. Just me, right? Just poor stupid old Bill who drops ashes on the rug all day, right? Who’s always ‘resting,’ right? Pretending to be sick while you bear your burdens with a smile, right? Oh, you like that, don’tcha? Love every minute of it, don’tcha? Huh? Don’tcha?”
“I will not take this, Bill,” she said, her eyes blazing. “I will not take—”
“Is that so? Is that so? Because there’s a couple things I’m not gonna take any more, and you better get ’em straight right now. I’m not gonna take any more of your wisecracks about ‘resting,’ understand? That’s one thing. And I’m not gonna take any more of your—” His voice failed; he was out of breath. “Ah, never mind,” he said at last. “You wouldn’t understand.” He took off his jacket, flung it on the couch and started to fix his suspenders; then with a gesture of disgust he let them fall again and plunged his hands in his pockets, staring out the window. He didn’t even want a drink, now. He just wanted to stand here and look out the window and wait for the storm to pass.
“I certainly wouldn’t understand,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t understand why I should have to come home and find everything broken, and then get all this raging abuse from you too. Really, Bill, you do expect a lot.”
The only thing to do was stand there and let her get it out of her system. He was spent now, unable to strike back or even to defend himself, a fighter hanging groggy on the ropes.
“What does go on in that mind of yours, anyway?” she demanded. “You’re just like a child! A big, spoiled, stubborn child . . .”
It went on and on, but her voice lacked the shrill, nagging quality he had expected—instead it sounded hurt and almost tearful, which was worse. In the small part of his mind that remained clear he decided grimly that this quarrel would probably be a long one, the kind that lasted two or three days. The shouting and recriminations would stop soon, but there would be a long interval of cold silence, of polite little questions and answers over meals, of going to sleep without even saying goodnight, before he could decently go to her and say the big, simple thing that might have averted it all in the first place: “I’m sorry, darling.”
Her tirade came to an end, and he heard her flounce off into the kitchen. Then there was a series of curt, businesslike kitchen noises—the refrigerator opened and shut, pots rattled, carrots scraped—and in a little while she came back again and started briskly straightening a slipcover right behind the place where he stood. What would she do, he wondered tensely, if I turned around and said it right now?
But at that moment a remarkable thing happened behind his back. Her fingers took hold of the dangling suspenders, pulled them up and deftly slipped them over his shoulders, and her voice—a new voice with laughter in it—said, “Fix your suspenders, mister?” Then her arms went around him and squeezed, tight, and her face pressed warm between his shoulder blades. “Oh Bill, I have been awful since you came home, haven’t I? I’m so busy being tired and heroic I haven’t given you a chance to ge
t well—I haven’t even let you know how terribly glad I am to have you back. Oh Bill, you ought to break all the dishes, right over my dumb head.”
He didn’t trust himself to speak, but he turned around and took her in his arms, and there was nothing sick and nothing tired about the way they kissed. This was the one thing he hadn’t figured on, in all his plans—the one slim chance he had overlooked completely.
THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE
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Richard Yates, The Collected Stories
(Series: # )
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