The Cost of Living (19 page)

“Did you take a pill?” said Charles.

“No. I don't need one. I'm quite tired.”

“Could you stay awake a minute, then?” said Charles. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“About airlines?” She opened one eye and he was reminded of how, the previous day, she had peered at him, without seeing anything, through her gloves.

“I saw you yesterday morning, in front of the museum,” he said. “You were wearing some black thing. God, you must have been cold.”

“Yes, I was. Is that what you want to talk about?”

“No.” He sat down on the edge of his own bed and gave her Miss Mercer's letter. Marian propped herself up on one elbow while she read it. She folded it and ran her long thumbnail along the fold.

“When is she coming home?” she said.

“Tomorrow,” said Charles, “in the afternoon. What should we do?”

“Meet her,” said Marian. “What else can we do?” She lay back in bed again. “If there was ever anything else to be done, it looks as though we've missed it. Will you meet her, or shall I?”

“I thought you should, perhaps,” said Charles carefully. “Sometimes a woman is better…and if she sees me, she may be frightened.”

Marian turned her head to look at him. “Now, why in the world would she be frightened?” she said.

“I don't know,” said Charles, confused. “I think that in these cases, the father…I mean, traditionally, the father….”

“Never mind,” said his wife. “We could, of course, both go.”

“Oh, no,” said Charles quickly. “The sight of us
both
…I mean, even if she hadn't done anything, it might be overwhelming.”

“All right,” said Marian. She settled into her bed. “Well, good night again.”

“Is that all?” said Charles. He was surprised, and rather scandalized, that his wife could take it so calmly. He had known her to be greatly upset over much lesser things: a broken string of pearls, the accidental death of a cocker spaniel.

“What else can I say?” said Marian. “We can't lie here and discuss her character and all her little ways. Evidently neither of us knows anything about them. We can talk about what lousy parents we are. That won't help either. We might as well sleep, if we can.”

Marian was wonderful, he thought. He turned out the lights, leaving only the small spotlight over his bed and the light from the half-opened bathroom door. He undressed quietly. His father had liked Marian, he remembered. “If you marry your own kind of person, you know exactly where you're at, every minute,” he had said, and he had been right. Charles and Marian had never had a full-dress quarrel. In this, Charles congratulated himself that he had made many allowances for her nerves and the strain of her profession. He looked around and, finding nothing he wanted to read, put out the light over his bed.

A moment later, in the dark, he heard his wife's voice, so softly that he was not certain she had spoken at all.

“I said,” Marian repeated, “is he coming too?”

“Who?” said Charles, thinking, for a second, that she was talking in her sleep.

“The party of the second part,” said his wife. “Young Lochinvar. The boy with the good family and the good school.”

“No,” said Charles. “Why should he?”

“I thought not,” said Marian. “I suppose she went back to school all alone, too?”

“I suppose so,” said Charles, perplexed. “She cut her hair off,” he said, suddenly remembering this. “With a pair of nail scissors, I think.”

“Oh?” said Marian. “Well, that isn't too serious. It'll grow. I'll show her how to fix it. That, at least, I can do for her.” Her voice dropped and he wondered if she could possibly be crying. She was silent and a few moments later she said quietly: “God, I don't like them.”

“Who?” said Charles.

“Men,” his wife said. It was quite unlike Marian to be dramatic: he wondered if the shock of the news had unhinged her, and if she were planning to talk like this, off and on, all night.

“It's the first inkling I've had that you hated men,” he said, smiling in the dark.

Marian stirred in her bed. “I don't hate them,” she said. “If I hated men, I'd probably hate women, too.
I don't like them
. It's quite different.”

“I don't see the difference,” said Charles, “but it doesn't matter.” He sat up and switched on the light over his bed. His wife was crying. She had pulled the sheet up over her face and was drying her eyes on it.

“You mean,” said Charles, “that you hate men because of this boy, this…” He stopped, realizing he must not undersell his daughter.

“Weak, frightened, lying…” said Marian. “Thieves and rascals.” She sat up and, groping in the pocket of her dressing gown, found a handkerchief. “Thieves,” she said. She blew her nose. “And never any courage, not a scrap. They can't own up. They can't be trusted. They can't face things. Not at that age. Not at any age.”

“I think it's going a little far to say you can't trust any man, at any age,” said Charles.

“I don't know any,” said his wife.

“Well,” he said, “there's me, for instance.” When she did not reply, he said: “Well, it's a fine time to find out you don't trust me.”

“The question isn't whether I do or not,” said Marian. “I have to trust you. I mean, I either live with you, and keep the thing on the tracks, or I don't. So then, of course, I have to trust you.”

“It's not good enough,” said Charles. “You should trust me out of conviction, not because you think you have to.”

“All right,” said Marian.

“No,” he insisted. “It's not good enough. Say you trust me.”

“All right,” said Marian. “I trust you. Don't put the light out. I have to get some ice for my eyes. I'm working in the morning.”

“I'll get it,” Charles said quickly, glad to end the conversation. One couldn't blame her if she sounded a little unreasonable, he thought. It would be a shock for any mother. He put the ice cubes in a bowl and carried them back through the dark apartment to their bedroom.

Marian had stopped crying. “Put them in that gadget over there,” she said. “There, next to the lamp. That's it.” She lay back again and Charles placed the mask of ice cubes across her eyes.

“You see,” he said, “men are some use. Shall I get you anything else?”

She shook her head, then she said: “You know who used to say that about men, ‘thieves and rascals'? My sister. You wouldn't remember her. She didn't come to our wedding. She didn't want me to marry you. It broke her heart, I think. She went out to the West Coast, and she died before Joyce was born. I didn't even know she was sick.”

“Don't start crying about your sister, for God's sake,” said Charles. “It's awfully late, and if you have a job in the morning…” Vaguely, he did recall a sister: a scowling female form that had chaperoned his early meetings with Marian and then disappeared.

“She brought me up,” said Marian. “She thought I was so pretty. She used to wake me up in the morning, and say, ‘Little pretty one.' She said it every day. Mother died…And Father was pretty useless. She went everywhere with me. I was seventeen when I started modeling. Father was dead against it. We lived in New Canaan then.”

“Darling, I know all this,” said Charles. “I just happened to have forgotten about Margaret.”

“No, listen to this,” said Marian. “You can't imagine what a beautiful kid I was. No, really you can't. People used to stare at me on the street. I remember the men, mostly. They still look at me like that, like someone rubbing their dirty hands all over you. Only now it doesn't frighten me. I was so beautiful that people hated me. Men hate beautiful girls, if they can't have them.”

“I don't know where you picked up that idea,” said Charles. “Everyone likes you. Everyone.”

“That's not what I mean,” said Marian. “My sister was with me all the time. She used to sit and read a book all the while I was working. The men were so scared of her that no one looked at me twice. I never minded. They did the best they could, though: a shove here, a little pat there. Then, the same year, when I was seventeen, I fell in love with a photographer. He was a Dane, or rather, his parents were. I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he was killed in the war.”

She was silent for several minutes, and Charles, reaching overhead, put out his light. Then she began again: “We started passing notes, right under Margaret's nose, like a couple of school kids. I started coming in town without her, afternoons, saying I was shopping or something. I could only manage it afternoons, of course. So we decided to go away together. Up to then, it had all been pretty innocent. We were going to see if we liked each other—he told me that was how it was done in Europe, though I don't think he'd ever been there—and then we'd get married. We didn't run very far. We went to Philadelphia.”

“You're making this up,” said Charles. “It doesn't sound like you.”

“Why?” said Marian. “Because now I don't run off to Philadelphia with photographers? I'm trying to tell you, I was seventeen.”

“Do you think that makes it better, or something?” said Charles. “A girl of seventeen…and I met you a year later.”

“Well, it wasn't too pleasant, if you're looking for a moral,” his wife said. “In fact, I was so upset and frightened and unhappy that on the train when we were coming back to New York I said, ‘You needn't look at me that way. It's just as sinful for you as it is for me.' He looked surprised, but he kept looking at me that funny way. Then he told me what they used to call me behind my back: this Lily Girl from New Canaan.”

“There's nothing wrong with that,” said Charles.

“Margaret met me at the door, when I got out of the taxi,” said Marian. “My father was upstairs, collapsing, or writing me out of his will. She took me in her arms. She kissed me. She said, ‘Little pretty one.' She looked around and she said, ‘No, I guess he didn't come with you.' She put me to bed. She brought me my dinner, on a tray. She brushed my hair, and she said, once, under her breath, ‘Thieves.' She never mentioned it again. No, not once. Until I said I was going to marry you. Then she called you a thief and a rascal.”

“She didn't even know me. Frankly, I think she sounds neurotic.”

“She was wonderful. And I wasn't even there when she died.”

“I don't see why you're crying about it
now
,” said Charles. “If she died before Joyce was even born, that's seventeen years. I wish you hadn't told me all this. When I think that a while back you were saying men couldn't be trusted. I'd certainly tell you…I mean, if something had happened nearly twenty years ago, I'd certainly tell you about it. As if we weren't upset enough about Joyce; or do you think this helps?”

“I'm sorry,” said Marian. “I keep thinking about Margaret, and saying ‘Thieves,' and bringing my dinner, and dying all by herself. I get it all mixed up with Joyce, being all by herself right now. Joyce sort of looks like her, something about the way she stands, something sturdy. Put on your light, will you? I've lost my handkerchief.”

Charles looked at her critically. “You'll never be able to work tomorrow,” he said. “Your eyelids are a mess.”

“I don't care,” said Marian. “Only I don't want to look too funny for Joyce. Oh, I want her hair to grow! Don't you see her, being alone, and cutting it off? Her femininity, because she's been made ashamed of it, or afraid?”

“Don't start on that,” said Charles. “Don't give her complexes she hasn't got. It won't mark her for life. It didn't mark you. You made a happy marriage. And a career. Everyone respects you.”

“Oh, I'll tell her about it,” said Marian. “I should have talked to her before, but she seemed such a kid. I'll talk to her. I'll tell her how to live in the world with them as decently as one can.”

“With who?” said Charles.

“With all of you,” said his wife.

Charles turned off his light. “I don't see where I come into this at all,” he said. He turned over to lie on his side, his sense of injury wrapped around him like an eiderdown. “Try to sleep,” he said. “From the sound of your voice, you've given yourself a cold.”

His wife did not reply. She was overwrought, Charles decided. As for her story, he scarcely knew whether to believe it or not. It's so plainly out of character, he thought, recalling their blameless courtship. She was never that interested in men, and she thinks all photographers are morons. But then, he thought, she may have made it all up so that I wouldn't be too hard on Joyce. He wanted to suggest this to Marian, but he was afraid of provoking another scene. He said, kindly: “Good night,” and his wife whispered something back.

At last he fell asleep, undisturbed, leaving his wife to think and to weep alone in the dark, under her mask of ice cubes.

1956

O
N THE HUNDRED
and twenty-sixth day, Bernadette could no longer pretend not to be sure. She got the calendar out from her bureau drawer—a kitchen calendar, with the Sundays and saints' days in fat red figures, under a brilliant view of Alps. Across the Alps was the name of a hardware store and its address on the other side of Montreal. From the beginning of October the calendar was smudged and grubby, so often had Bernadette with moistened forefinger counted off the days: thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six…That had been October, the beginning of fear, with the trees in the garden and on the suburban street a blaze of red and yellow. Bernadette had scrubbed floors and washed walls in a frenzy of bending and stretching that alarmed her employers, the kindly, liberal Knights.

“She's used to hard work—you can see that, of course,” Robbie Knight had remarked, one Sunday, almost apologizing for the fact that they employed anyone in the house at all. Bernadette had chosen to wash the stairs and woodwork that day, instead of resting. It disturbed the atmosphere of the house, but neither of the Knights knew how to deal with a servant who wanted to work too much. He sat by the window, enjoying the warm October sunlight, trying to get on with the Sunday papers but feeling guilty because his wife was worried about Bernadette.