III

That conversation with Lucia about ex-wives was a year and more past the night Peter left me sitting in his Aunt Janet’s armchair.

I sat there four and a half hours. I know exactly, because when I heard Pete’s taxi start, I looked at the banjo clock my grandfather gave us. It was ten minutes past six.

There was an unopened package of cigarettes beside me. I tore two or three of them in opening it; lighted one; and tried to realize that there was no more Peter. But instead, I began to remember things we had done. They slid through my head like moving pictures that were being run off much too fast—except that these were vividly coloured, not black and white and grey, and they had sounds of voices and fragrances of things in them.

Winter in London. (We spent every penny of our wedding-present checks on four months in England and a Springtime in Paris; because, after that, Peter would have to work hard a long time and get to be a star reporter. Or, I suggested, a dramatic critic, because I liked the theatre so much.) After luncheon we used to rush to Brown-Shipley’s on Pall Mall to get a check cashed; and then hurried down the Strand to Romano’s American bar, so that we would get there before it stopped serving at two-thirty. We usually reached the door, breathless, at two twenty-five.

Peter ordered enough double Scotch and soda all at once to last the afternoon. A little of the fog filtered in. I could remember the smell of the fog; the smoky fragrance of Scotch; the lights glancing off little bottles of Schweppes, spread all across the table; Peter’s deep voice saying gay things about how pretty I was, and what fun we would have, and the strange places to which we would travel someday soon when we had money—Moscow and Buenos Aires, and Budapest and China.

Or, over the third highball: “I’m teaching you how to drink properly, Patty darling. Most men’s wives drink so badly. Good Scotch . . . it’ll stand by you, Pat, in the days you have great sorrows. . . . But I’m not ever going to let you have any great sorrows.

“No great sorrows . . . and no baby, at least no baby for years and years. You are too young and nice-looking, and I don’t want you to be hurt.”

We did have a baby though after we got home, when Peter was earning forty-five dollars a week. He was so disturbed about it. When he was not worrying as to how we’d ever support it, he wondered if it was going to hurt me much, and whether I would ever be pretty again.

He was twenty-two years old, then. I was twenty-one.

Our families were letting us struggle, because that is supposed to give young people a sense of life’s realities. They did think they were letting us struggle on seventy-five dollars a week though: for we had told them that was Peter’s salary.

After I got used to the idea of having a baby, I thought it might be rather nice . . . a small son something like Pete.

He said: “Where in hell will we put it in a livingroom-bedroom-and-bath? We’ll never be alone again. It’ll take all your time. They have to be washed and rocked and fed incessantly.”

I said: “Maybe it can sleep in the kitchenette, and I’ll let it spend long visits with my family, so you won’t get tired of it.”

“Oh, God,” he said, “they cry all the time, don’t they?”

“I don’t know. Pete, do I look very awful?”

“Of course not, and anyway I expect you’ll get over it.”

I went home to Boston for the baby to be born. I felt that whatever happened to me would be more easily endured if I did not see Pete looking miserable and trying hard to be helpful.

The baby was a boy. He had enormous dark blue eyes and a fuzz of light hair like Peter’s, and weighed eight and a half pounds. I was crazy about him; in intervals between feeling that I had neither energy nor interest for anything, and never would any more.

Pete came up to look at him, of course; but was so delighted that I was thin again, that he did not talk about the baby at all, except to say, “Call him Patrick, because your name’s Patricia; and because, by the time he grows up, Patrick will be such a rare name that it will be in good standing again.” So I did. I thought it was entertaining to have a baby called Patrick.

After I had stayed at home with Patrick for three months, I went alone to visit Pete for a week, to find an apartment where we could have the baby. The kitchenette solution did not seem adequate, now that he was born.

The baby died, the second day I was in New York.

When I went back to Peter, we were frantically hard-up. He had borrowed money to pay my hospital bill, for we had not wanted our families to know we could not pay that. He expected to get ten dollars more a week, and got only five.

We were not very happy. Sometimes, when he was tired, he grew exasperated because I cried so much about the baby, and I was always vaguely resentful that he did not seem to be sorry about the baby at all.

Things grew better, after a time. Our families, who had begun to realize that we were very poor, sent us checks for our birthdays, and those paid our debts. We moved to an apartment toward the western border of Greenwich village. It had a roof, where we sat, hot August nights, and talked again about places we would go and things we would do, fairly soon (but not so soon as it had seemed the year before).

A man across the street played Chopin gloriously. I used to sit with my head against Pete’s shoulder, listening; feeling tranquil.

One day: “Patty, we have to adjust the budget to include one pair of shoes for me. These split at the side and wore through a sole simultaneously.”

“It’s a major tragedy, Pete. I haven’t had the iceman and the laundryman placated at the same time for a month. How much do men’s shoes cost?”

“Darling, what I used to pay for mine, and what I can get a pair for now, are things altogether different.”

Next day: “I saw a pair for six dollars that don’t look too hellish. Can we hold out three dollars this week and three next, my child?” He was cutting out cardboard to put in the sole of the one that was worn through, and being very cheerful about it.

I felt altogether sad. Poor Peter. He had always been so well-if-casually dressed.

The new shoes became the event of those two weeks.

The night before the second pay day, he came home gaily. “Uncle Harrison wired me at the office, he’ll be at the Brevoort at seven, to take us to an enormous dinner, Pat. Hurry and dress. I wish it were tomorrow and I had the handsome shoes.” They had grown from “not too hellish” to “handsome” in a fortnight of anticipation.

I dressed. I had one or two things left over from my trousseau that were quite possible. But, “Pete, which do you prefer, a stocking with a large run down the inside, or a medium-sized one down the back?”

“My God, dearest, are all your stockings worn out?”

“Seem to be.”

We chose the pair with the run on the inside, and had a most beautiful meal with his uncle.

Next day, he came in looking rather self-conscious. I looked for the lovely shoes, but he was not wearing them. He was carrying a small package. “I bought you a present, Patty,” he said. He had bought me three pairs of stockings.

The next week he got a ten dollar increase in salary; and the month after that I answered an ad in the Times for a copy-writer, and lied about previous experience, and got it for forty dollars a week. At first Pete wrote my next day’s ads for me the night before, until I learned to do it myself.

We had, suddenly, money for a maid; and for Pete to stop for drinks on his way home; and for us both to go out to dinner every night; and money for gin for parties.

We lasted just a year after that.

Peter and I both drank well; that is to say, he did not get raucous and I did not get giggly; and neither of us was to be found at an evening’s end, pale and dizzy on the nearest bed; but that is not to say he did not hold more closely any girl with whom he danced on eight drinks than on three, or that I did not take pretty speeches from almost anyone with increasing interest in the same ratio.

We were still in love, and acutely jealous of each other; but we never admitted the jealousy: it was too outrageously old-fashioned. He encouraged me to go about to dinners and places to dance, places he could not afford, with the occasional old-friends-from-out-of-town who turned up; because he wanted me to have a nice time. And he acquired two or three slightly misunderstood pretty wives, who called him to make a fourth at bridge, or a second at tea. I thought all of that was pleasant for him.

But we were jealous. When I came upon him, once, kissing a pair of charming shoulders at a party, I said nothing but resented it. And, on a night that I was in a trivial automobile accident in New Jersey, and turned up, very rumpled, at five in the morning, he was the calm and amused modern husband in manner, but his eyes were raging.

There is a progression in things of that sort.

While I was at the shore for a week-end, Peter spent a night with one of the not quite happy wives. He told me. He and I were very definitely committed to the honesty policy. I made no scene about it—and I never felt about Peter, after, quite as I had before.

It would have seemed to me incredible that I should ever be unfaithful to him. But I was, two or three months after that episode.

Pete had gone to Philadelphia over Sunday. Rickey telephoned, asking if he could join us for the usual Saturday night drinking, dinner somewhere. I told him that Pete was away, and he said he would take me places and amuse me. That sort of thing had happened dozens of times before—a good many of them with Rickey.

He happened to be Pete’s very oldest friend. The same class at prep school, and so on. Rickey was an altogether charming person. He liked me; we danced well together; he usually kissed me once or twice in the course of an evening, and Pete knew it. I do not believe that Rickey had any more definite ambitions about me on this occasion than on any other.

We felt like slumming, and went to Harlem; but it was a warm evening and Harlem was crowded and sticky. So Rickey said: “Come down to my place, and I’ll make something cool to drink, and we’ll do a symphony on the phonograph. It’ll be calmer.”

There seemed to be no reason against this. It was fairly early, and I was not sleepy, anyway.

Rickey mixed gin fizzes, and we sat on his window seat admiring Washington Square for a while, and put on some records, and had some more fizzes. We talked about Galsworthy and Wells and Bennett, as I remember. I wandered into his bedroom to put on fresh lipstick; and he came in, and felt impelled to kiss me. I kissed him, too. I liked Rickey very much.

And then—whether it is put down to a summer night or physical attraction or fizzes is not very important—Rickey went caveman. At first, I was just startled. Then I was angry, and said: “Rickey, stop this instant.” The instant, specifically, was when he had stopped kissing my mouth and begun to kiss my throat.

He stopped, and stood for a minute with his arm around my shoulders. I looked up at him—he was about a foot taller than I—a pleasant brown-haired young man.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t have such a tragic face, Rickey de-ah. I don’t feel complimented by making anyone look like that.” He laughed then, and kissed me again; and in a moment, it was all to do over.

But in that moment I had lost the wish to do much about it. Curiosity? Desire? The feeling that Pete experimented and why should not I? The thought that it would be an adventure? I cannot remember now. So many things have intervened.

I woke at six. Rickey, sleeping, looked very peaceful. From whatever angle I regarded that personable head, I could not make it look much like a villain’s.

I thought about Peter, and I thought I was going to be sick. So I got up very quietly, and took a shower, and dressed. Rickey was still asleep. I left him a note. I remember it.

It read: “Rickey: I’m not having hysterics, but I know I could not think of anything to say at breakfast. Call us up soon.”

As soon as I got home I did have hysterics. All the ghosts of my ancestors who had been good women sat about and damned me. Then I considered the Peter problem. I had more hysterics. I was very hungry, so I went to Alice McCollister’s Coffee Shop and had a large breakfast.

Peter was to get home at six in the evening. It was about four when I discovered that I was afraid to tell him—that to confront a theoretically modern young husband with the actual fact of his wife’s infidelity was just beyond me.

So, what I did about Peter was to bathe again. Then I made up my face carefully, and greeted him with tea and muffins instead of a confession. We dined out, and met Rickey by accident; and he and Pete had one of their when-we-played-on-the-same-team reminiscent evenings. I listened and thought that life was not very simple. It was probably the first time that had ever occurred to me.

Also, I realized, that if I did tell Peter, I could not tell him that it was Rickey. The wife-and-the-best-friend pattern was so particularly dreadful. Besides, Peter might feel that the man who had led his wife astray should be beaten, in the conventional manner; and he probably could not beat Rickey, who was so much bigger. That would just add to Pete’s humiliation.

I know it all sounds absurd—as if I thought then the thing should be played as a farce. I did not. There was anguish and regret and bewilderment. But they have faded. I only remember my surprise that all the theories about the right to experiment and the desirability of varied experience—theories that had seemed so entirely adequate in discussing the sexual adventures of acquaintances—were no help at all when the decision concerned Peter and me.

Also surprise that, though I had been married to Pete for more than two years, I did not have the faintest idea how he would take this. I thought it conceivable he would shoot me—more likely that he would not, but would leave me for ever—and just possible that he would understand how fortuitous the whole thing was.

A week went by. I bought a hat Pete admired; wrote copy in the daytime; danced about evenings; tried being “good” to him, having things he liked for breakfast, and suggesting the restaurants he preferred for dinner.

And I thought, every time that he kissed me, that I should cry.

That was why, at the end of the week, I told him. I did not wait for a suitable moment. It never would have arrived, of course. I told him while we were finishing an amiable leisurely Sunday breakfast. At the point where anything that might happen seemed no worse than to go on as if nothing had, I was even relatively cheerful.

I finished my waffle. (I’d made waffles because Pete loved them.) I thought, “I bet I never eat another waffle in my life.” (I never have, either.)

Pouring Pete a second cup of coffee, I thought, “My hands are cold, but they don’t shake.” Lighting a cigarette, I thought, “It is nice to have a breakfast room.”

And, looking at Pete and myself in the wall mirror—Pete, blond and lean and fit and comfortable in an aged purple silk dressing gown, myself small and dark-haired and white skinned, relatively decorative in a turquoise satin negligee—I thought that we both were definitely charming looking.

I can see us sitting there now, but not as if it were Peter and myself. As if, through a dusty windowpane, I regarded two strangers in a doorway across a wide street.

I managed flippancy. “Peter, I want to put on a wife-confesses-all show.”

He looked unworried. “My God, darling, have you bought a fur coat and charged it?”

“Worse than that.”

“You’ve lost your job, and we’ll have to go back to honest poverty?”

“Don’t be funny, Pete.”

His voice changed. “Sorry, Patty, what is it? . . . Don’t look so worried. I won’t beat you, you know.”

I drew a long breath. “I’ve been unfaithful to you.” (“Unfaithful” . . . what an odd word it was.)

I could not look at him, and then I had to look at him. I always had admired Pete’s poise. Now he was sitting absolutely expressionless . . . but how dreadfully still.

“Patty . . . is this a joke by any chance?”

“No.” What had I loosed . . . what was he thinking?

“How did it happen?” His voice was very quiet.

I could not tell him about Rickey. I had not planned what to tell or not to tell; had not thought what he would ask. Well . . .

“I was drunk, Peter.” That was thin; he knew I did not get as drunk as that.

He let it go. “Who was the man, Patty?”

(Play for time. Maybe someone will telephone or something and I’ll get time to think.)

“I didn’t ask you the name of the woman you stayed with.” I had known anyway, of course.

“That has nothing to do with it.”

And it did not, if he did not feel that it did.

(Must not say “Rickey.” . . . Is there anyone who has just gone away? . . . No, must not name anybody.)

“Tell me who it was Patty.” He had known Rickey fifteen years . . . he cared more about Rickey than anyone, except me. I did not care about Rickey. I did not care if he went and died somewhere really, but I could not humiliate Pete so dreadfully.

He took my hand: “Don’t look so frightened. I’m going to try to understand about it, darling.” What an old voice.

“But you must tell me who it was. I shall have something to say to him.”

(Get time . . . get time to think.)

“You’ve gone conventional, Pete.”

No good, that.

“I expect I have. Will you please not be evasive?”

I lost my head. Like the traditional tabloid murderess, I then heard a shot fired, it seemed.

I heard myself saying, “There’s no use in that. You see . . . it was more than one man.”

He knocked his coffee cup off the table.

“Sorry,” he said. “That was awkward of me. Go on. . . . What were you saying?”

“Peter, you don’t know, but sometimes on parties when I’ve had too much to drink I just get pretty vague . . . and I don’t seem to have much control, and this has been going on for some time” . . . (I can’t have him checking up dates) “and I’ve wanted to tell you but I haven’t dared . . . and of course I’ll go home or give you a divorce or anything you like.” (Oh, let him believe me, no, let him not believe me.)

He moved his mouth as if it hurt him. “Don’t talk so fast, Patty.”

I stopped talking altogether. He was going to believe me, all right. He always had. I had never lied to him before.

He stood up. He said, in a completely impersonal voice, “And I always thought you were the cleanest person in the world.”

I began to cry, not because it would do any good—because I could not help it.

“Don’t do that, Patty,” he said, again very gently. “Listen, will you do something to please me?”

I said “Yes.”

“Will you sit down and read a book for a while, like a nice child. . . . It’s all right . . . I just want to be by myself.”

I sat down. He went into the bedroom and closed the door. I shed tears over all the rotogravure pictures; and knew that was a silly thing to do.

Suddenly I thought, “Maybe he’ll kill himself. I must tell him not to.” I opened the bedroom door softly. He did not hear me. He was lying face down across his bed, sobbing.

That was the only time I ever saw Peter cry.

I did not dare go in. I went back and stared at the livingroom wall. It was cream-colour. It needed redecorating, but not badly.

After awhile, I heard Peter taking a shower. He came in, looking all right, or pretty nearly.

“Listen, Pat, I have a short speech to make, and don’t interrupt, darling. You’re an enormously desirable young woman, and I’ve never taken the least care of you. I have encouraged you to drink and that sort of thing. This show is my fault. We won’t talk about it any more. Only . . . you won’t do it again, will you?”

“No, no, no,” I said. “Never. But it wasn’t your fault, you trusted me.”

“More to the point if I’d looked after you a bit. . . . Well, my dear, go take a shower, and dress, and I’ll mix cocktails, and we’ll have a couple and then go calling. Might find out what Rickey’s doing.”

I dressed, we had two Manhattans apiece, and went to see Rickey. He mixed highballs. After my first, Peter took my glass away. “The child’s cutting down on liquor, Rick. It’s bad for her nerves,” he said. Rickey looked surprised, but said nothing.

He and Peter got pretty drunk, and talked about football.

After two weeks I said to Peter, “Look here, if on second thought you want me to go home or anything, because of that show, tell me.”

He said: “Forget about it, angel. I have.” He had not, but I did not speak of it again.

Then we had three very serene months. Small things were different. Peter censored what I drank; and when Bill Martin, whom I had known in Boston, came to town and asked me to go roof dancing, Pete said he did not want me to go.

I did not mind at all. I had loved Peter before all this and I loved him twice as much after. I thought he was so marvellous about it. I still do.

I thought: “I will try to make it up to Pete by being good-tempered always, and looking as pretty as possible, and following all his stories, and not being extravagant any more.” I felt very grown-up.

One day Peter said, “You know, you are turning out the loveliest person to whom to be married. Just a perfect wife.”

Then I was really happy again.

It was the week after that that Hilda Jarvis came to New York.

Any estimate I give of that woman’s character will necessarily be inaccurate, I suppose. She told me once, when she was being kind and explaining why I was so bad for Peter, that I had no moral sense, and so could not understand people who did.

And I told her that might be so, but that I had more sense about men in my left thumb than she did in her whole hundred forty-five pound body.

All our conversations became as irrelevant and vicious as that. We never had talked the same language. That had not mattered, all the years we lived around the corner from each other in Boston, because we only talked about books, clothes and her struggles with her Aunt Genevieve. She was wonderful to her Aunt Genevieve.

Let me try again. . . . Hilda was a little rigid in her joints, likewise in her soul. She was well built and had capable hands and feet. She had smooth long brown hair, blue eyes that would have looked deeper if she had rouged her cheeks under them, but she would not. She was a very pure girl. She should have married some simple soul, and made him an amiable wife. Of course, she would have got very fat, after a couple of placid children.

Yes, I do dislike her. She convinced me of the relativity of virtue: i.e. if a woman has been asked into twenty beds, and managed to stay out of nineteen of them, on a purely percentage basis she is a good deal more virtuous than a woman who has only been asked into one, and went.

She had not married, because her invalid aunt would not let her go about and meet any men. She was unpaid nurse, companion, secretary and housekeeper for this aunt. She had a boring life, and was extremely pleased with the idea of visiting us in New York for three months, when I asked her. (The aunt had been invited to Florida, and Hilda was not.)

Pete and I both had salary increases, and actually achieved an apartment with an extra bedroom. So I could ask her. She was our first and last house guest.

In the beginning she disapproved of us both somewhat—our cocktails, cigarettes and conversation—and Pete was a trifle bored with her attitude. But after we had taken her to a couple of amusing Italian restaurants, she had decided she was seeing life. Over two glasses of red wine she just bloomed. I thought it was rather sweet and a trifle pathetic—so revelatory of the very little gaiety she had ever had.

Pete discovered one evening that she read French poetry superbly, and was delighted. It was one of his passions. I could read French, but my teachers had been bad, and my pronunciation was awful. So they had a lovely time, beginning with François Villon, and going on from there, two or three evenings a week, while I worked. (I had taken a couple of free-lance advertising accounts that occupied evenings, temporarily, to make money for a beaver coat.)

Hilda fell in love with Pete, over the French poets. I thought that was understandable, and nothing to worry about. She had never seen as much of any man as she had of Pete, and he was utterly charming. He liked her by now—she was so placid and amiable and well-mannered.

I meant to do something dextrous about her—considered who among the men we knew would be likely to find her attractive and not too dull; and planned to have him about a good deal, and see if the transfer of affection from Pete could be effected with no damage anywhere.

But I was extremely busy, and tired all the time, and let the thing slide. I knew that she was growing increasingly absorbed in Pete, because she began to be definitely rude to me. She was always objecting to the amount of lipstick I used, or the lowness of my decolletage, or the shortness of my skirts. It irritated me somewhat, but I was too busy to bother.

One rainy Friday evening I had a choice of intruding on a poetry session of Peter and Hilda, or dining with Rickey, who was the only person at this era with whom Pete was willing to have me dine. That was logical enough. Rickey was his oldest friend, and the person he trusted most.

Rick and I had already adjusted any embarrassment there might have been between us. In ten minutes, when the occasion offered, he told me he was sorry that it had happened, because of Pete. He did not know what, if anything, I had told my husband; but, on the basis that what had happened was a regrettable accident, he and I were at ease with each other.

With a choice of being audience at a poetry evening, or dining with Rick, therefore, I decided on Rick. I telephoned Peter that I would be home at eleven or thereabouts. He took Hilda to dinner.

By eleven Hilda had pulled my life about my ears, and felt she had performed her Christian duty in so doing. Though I maintain that she used unscrupulously a weapon put into her hand at that dinner, to effect what she wanted.

Pete got drunk. He began to talk about me. Hilda grew patronizing about me, as an impulsive and unstable person. Peter, to be comforted by this stable and “good” girl for the terrific and unhealed hurt I had dealt him, grew confidential, understandably enough.

He told Hilda that I was impulsive and unstable; so much so that I had been unfaithful to him, with four or five different men.

Well—Peter had never met Hilda’s Aunt Genevieve.

He did not know that Hilda had been brought up to believe in good and bad women; black and white; right and wrong; vice and virtue; and that her life had contained no experience to modify her confidence in absolutes.

She said: “Poor Peter. She’s an utterly worthless and promiscuous woman. I’m pretty sure she had four or five affairs with men in Boston before she met you. Perhaps she can’t help it. But you—you understand honour and keeping faith. You should put her out of your heart before she lets you down again.”

(It might be labelled footnote to a life. Maybe Hilda believed what she said, since on Pete’s statement I was “bad.” But it was not until two years later, at one of our rare dinners together, that Pete explained what Hilda had told him.)

What she told him was not true. I had never had any affairs before I knew Peter.

I went home that Autumn evening in ’25, feeling tranquil, feeling gala, to a Peter who was through with me; and I was never to know why, while the knowledge could conceivably be useful.

I let myself in. The apartment was dark. Undressing, I said to Peter, who stirred restlessly, “Rick and I saw an awfully amusing show.”

He said, “I don’t care what you saw.”

I thought, “He’s very cross . . . probably fed up with evenings with Hilda. Must do something about that.” And went to sleep.

Next day when I came home, Peter asked me for a divorce.

Just like that, with no introduction.

I said, “This is rather surprising. Why?”

He said, “Because I want to marry Hilda.” (Hilda had absented herself for the evening.)

I thought one of us had gone mad, and did not believe it was I.

I said, “Why do you want to marry her, all of a sudden?”

Pete said, “Because she’s pure, and you haven’t the least idea what that means.”

All this was before I had taken off my hat or coat. I did not take them off. I walked out. I went for a long walk, along the docks, and tried to think.

I decided Pete had told Hilda about my infidelity and that somehow she had used it. I decided also that I would have left him months earlier, if he had wanted it; but that I would not leave him now because of any little girl from home who offered him aphorisms about virtue versus vice, and did not know what it was all about.

I decided to make a fight for Peter. But I did not know what I was fighting.

I bought myself some dinner in a Coffee Pot, where a couple of dock-workers tried to talk to me. I did not realize that they were there until an hour or so later, when I remembered it.

Hilda was at home when I got there looking pure, and like a cat gorged on cream, and asking me if I had a pleasant walk. Peter looked uncomfortable.

How badly I managed it!

I was brief. I said, “Hilda, you are going home tomorrow. It’s not convenient to have you any more. Pete’s had three weeks of your life, and some three years of mine.

“You and he seem to have developed a great love for each other. All right. I won’t keep you apart for ever. You go home. Pete stays here. If, after six months, during which I’ll try to convince Peter that he’s quite insane, you and he feel about each other as you do now, I’ll divorce him with no further protest. If you don’t give me six months, I’ll never divorce him. Whatever my faults, and I’m not admitting any to you, he’s condoned them and he cannot divorce me. Take it or leave it. Good evening.”

I went to bed. Pete spent the night in Hilda’s room.

I lay in bed, and said, “I’ll fight this. I offered to pay the check for what I did, and was told I need not. That’s that. I won’t give up Pete to this woman. I know her better than he. First time he’s drunk and comes in saying, ‘Everything spins, my dearest, but it spins so felicitously if you let me put my head against your shoulder,’ and puts his head there like a tired child, she’ll speak to him severely about the evils of drink. She doesn’t know what he’s like, or what any complicated person is like. And I want Peter, and won’t lose him to a stupid woman like her.”

Next day she went home, after making the speech to me about my lack of moral sense. Pete said to me, “You get your six months. Much good may they do you. I’m taking a chance that you are telling the truth, for once, about divorcing me at the end of them. It seems to be my best chance to get rid of you, relatively swiftly.”

I said to myself, “This is incredible. But I must keep my head, and not get angry. After all, he finds me desirable; he’s used to me; there are things on my side. And I have six months.”

I worked; I bought pretty clothes; I kept my temper. And I found soon, that Peter was never going to kiss me again—when he was sober.

I said to myself, “That too may go past,” and kept my head.

He never joined me for dinner. He never told me where he went. If I asked, he laughed at me. Sometimes for days he did not speak to me—read a newspaper at the breakfast table, and stayed out until after I had gone to bed. Occasionally, I tried having guests. Usually then, he did not come home; although I had told him they were coming. If he came, he was polite to them and never spoke to me, through long evenings.

She had got him to promise to have nothing to do with me.

He forgot about that though, when he came home drunk. He would sit on the edge of my bed, and say, “Patty the complete slut. So pretty, too bad you are a slut. But you are a lovely one.”

I would think, “I shall scream, I shall go mad, I can’t bear this.” And he would sit there, cool from a shower, smiling, strange. And I would put my arms about his neck.

I would pretend that everything was as it had been, once. Next morning, he would not speak to me.

Peter had always been an angel about money. Now, he stopped giving me any, at all. I was faced with paying rent, the maid, the iceman, and the telephone and electric light bill, and Pete’s tailor and my cleaner, on fifty-five dollars a week.

We fought then—incredibly sordid and stupid fights about money. One morning the iceman came, wanting two dollars. Pete was shaving in the bathroom. The maid had not come.

I found twenty dollars in my purse, and nothing else. So I took two dollars out of Peter’s wallet, and paid the iceman. Pete came out of the bath. He had a hangover. He said, “I’ll teach you to go through my pockets for money or anything, you bitch.” He struck me across the mouth. It bled.

I thought, “This is a bad dream. Things like this just don’t happen to people like Peter and me. He has gone crazy, and I have to stand by until he gets better. He would do that, if I went crazy.”

He used to go to see Hilda week-ends. When he came back, he was always much worse. He sat and read. I sat and read. I thought for half an hour of something amusing to say. When I said it he sometimes threw his book at me.

She wrote him every day. He took her letters out at night, and read and re-read them in front of me.

Rickey gathered, as all our friends did, easily, that Peter and I were coming to an end. Rickey struggled, through some weeks, to decide on the correct attitude. Apparently, he weighed his fifteen years’ intimacy against one night . . . and the decision was easy. He never came to see us, any more, but dined with Pete at the Yale Club, two or three times a week. That was logical, too.

Hilda had gone two months, when Peter asked her to New York for a week-end. She stayed at a hotel for women on Gramercy Park. She and Pete went to a party together.

I guessed she was in New York—he was so especially mysterious about his goings and comings through those two days, and so much more sullen than usual afterward. But I knew nothing specifically until Rick telephoned me on Tuesday at the office.

He said, “Pat, I’m trusting you not to repeat this conversation. I’m crazy about Pete, but I think that Hilda wench is awful. This may be useful to you. On Saturday at the Hilles’ party, she made a minor scene because Pete danced three times with another girl, and because he was tight. It’s too soon for her to try the managing-him-for-his-own-good attitude, but she hasn’t brains enough to know that. Sit tight. You may pull through. Good luck.”

So I had a little hope.

After another month, and a few days of dizziness and headache in the mornings, I gathered that I was pregnant.

I refused to believe it for weeks. I thought, “It’s too awful and I can’t face this with everything else. Maybe if I just don’t think about it, it will turn out not to be so.”

After another month—of dragging days writing copy, and horrible quarrelling evenings with Pete, increasing headaches and dizziness, and comments from my friends and Pete on how badly I was looking, (Pete phrased it, “You look like hell nowadays; you aren’t even pretty any more”) I knew it was so, all right.

I remembered the first time it had happened, how shy I had been about telling Peter; and, although he thought then that the pregnancy was most unfortunate, how kind he had been to me, bringing me gay boxes of liqueur chocolates that I could not eat, and flowers and things. That was two years before, though.

This time, I said to him, “Would you mind stopping reading for a moment? I have something to tell you.”

He looked up: “Hurrah, you’ve got a new sweetie.”

“I’m ten or eleven weeks pregnant.”

He did not say anything for a minute. Then, “By whom this time, or do you know?” . . .

I got up and screamed at him, as if I were a washerwoman and he were a teamster. My voice sounded awful, even to myself.

I said, “By you, by you, damn you and you know it.”

“Stop yelling, and go look at yourself in a mirror,” he said. “That ought to stop you quicker than anything.”

I did go look at myself. I looked horrible, red-faced and distorted, and about thirty-five years old. And I hated Peter, as I had never hated anyone. I forgot all about how we had got to this place; I only knew that he was a person who said dreadful things in a disgusting calm voice; and that he had turned me into a person who looked like a hag, and that I hated him, hated him.

“Well, you are an attractive object to have about, aren’t you?” he said, behind me. I turned. My voice had got quite steady.

“All right, we’ll let ‘by whom this time’ ride,” I said. “Now would you be interested in knowing what I’m going to do about it?”

“Yes indeed. The workings of your mind are always entertaining.”

He lighted a pipe, watching me over it. I stood there and said words very slowly. My throat hurt so.

“I’m writing to your father and mother tonight telling them we’re having another baby, and that I’m giving up my job instantly, of course. I’m writing Hilda the same thing. She’s so ‘good’ I’ll give her something to be good about. Then we’ll have the baby, and you’ll take care of me and it. That’ll be all about Hilda.”

He got up, slowly. He put his pipe down. He stared at me. I was afraid.

He said, “Will you get out of this room this minute, before I kill you? If I have to look at you ten seconds longer, I’ll strangle you.” Then he came close, suddenly, and put his hands around my throat.

But I hated him more than I was afraid of him. I said: “You won’t kill me. You’ll just do as I say, from now on.”

He did not kill me. He just picked me up and threw me through the glass door of the breakfast room. Then he went out.

I lay on the breakfast room floor, and thought vaguely that things like this did not happen. I seem to have spent a good deal of time, off and on, thinking that.

Then I noticed that my left arm was bleeding. I got up, and went into the bath, slowly. The whole left arm of my dress was in shreds, where glass had cut it. Apparently I had put my arm in front of my face, instinctively. My face was not cut. I felt a little faint, but not very.

I took off the dress. My left arm had seven cuts on it, but all but one were just scratches. I bathed the arm carefully. One cut was deep and I could not stop the bleeding. So I bandaged it as tightly as possible, and put on a sleeveless dress, and changed my slippers to match the dress.

I knew Pete had a flask of Scotch in his dresser, and hunted around for it, and poured myself a drink. In a detached sort of way, I wondered if he would strangle me when he found out I had taken some of his Scotch.

But I did not hate him any more, or love him, or feel anything about him at all. I felt tired. There was not the slightest chance that I would attempt to hold him, by going through with having the baby. It would not work. And anyway it was just too much trouble.

My arm kept on bleeding. I remembered that next day I had to do the Sunday Times’ ad on Paris imports. So I thought I had better go to a doctor and have my arm fixed.

I knew a doctor who lived on Waverly Place. I had been to him for colds and tonsilitis and things like that.

When I went out to find a taxi, the cold air was amazingly pleasant. It was nine o’clock and the doctor’s office hour was almost over. I did not have to wait long.

He was a polite blond young man, very dependable-looking. When he asked me what had happened to me, I told him calmly that my husband had thrown me through a glass door. I could not think of anything else to say. He gasped, but did not make any further inquiries.

He had to take one stitch in my arm. When he was through, he said I had better sit down and have a cigarette, and he mixed me some spirits of ammonia. He asked me about my work—he remembered I did advertising.

I interrupted him. “By the way,” I said, “I have to have an abortion. Will you do it for me? And how much does it cost?”

He did not look shocked. “Better finish that spirits of ammonia. And would you mind telling me why you must have an abortion, if you actually are pregnant?”

That was easy. “Because my husband’s leaving me any day now, and I have no money, and must keep my job.”

“But—I don’t want to ask you about your private affairs—having a child has been known to bring husbands and wives together, you know.”

I laughed and laughed. I just sat there and laughed. “Pete was so pleased when the baby we had died, Doctor.”

“Steady,” he said.

There was a pause. I caught myself on the verge of telling him, as a fact of extreme significance, that the baby Patrick . . . dead more than a year, now . . . had the longest eyelashes I ever saw.

He said, “I’m sorry for you. But I can’t perform an operation of that sort. Never, in the six years that I have practised . . . the ethics of the profession do demand—”

I stopped him. I knew all about the ethics of the medical profession. My father was a doctor.

“All right. You won’t do it. Tell me someone who will. I have acquaintances who would give me some physicians’ telephone numbers, but I don’t know how good they would be. And dying by an ‘operation of that sort,’ as you describe it, seems so messy.”

He said, again, “Steady.”

I said, “You are a nice man.”

He said, “You aren’t likely to die. The dangers are only of infection; or if the physician is the sort who depends on that class of practice for his income, perhaps the night before he may have been drunk and his hand isn’t quite steady. . . . Well, there is no need of frightening you. How old are you, anyway?”

“Almost twenty-four.”

“You look nineteen.”

He hesitated. “Sometimes physicians of the type that perform this operation, say that it is necessary whether it really is or not. . . . If you would be willing to have me make an examination—”

Later: “You shouldn’t delay unduly. You seem to be nearly three months’ pregnant. There is a man whom I could recommend, who was in my class at medical school. I hear that he has a very scientific procedure. However, because he is compelled to deal with women who are frequently somewhat hysterical he is, a little—what you might call hard-boiled. I would go with you, if it would make it easier for you.”

“Well, Doctor, if you could make the appointment for Saturday morning, I could arrange to take the day off.”

“Would your husband go with you?”

“I think not.”

“Then you can depend on me. Telephone me tomorrow, and I shall have made the appointment.”

I felt very grateful to this capable young man.

Pete and I had no more conversation, between then and Saturday. I managed to get an advance on my salary, by a few engaging lies to my publicity director.

Saturday.

I dressed with extreme care, with the feeling that I might be turning up a corpse before sunset, and that did not matter very much; but I would prefer to be a well groomed one.

Bath salts were pleasant. Very beautifully tailored glove silk underthings were pleasant against the skin. Life had been full of rather nice sensations like that, once, and why not enjoy what remained of them? The Doctor was calling for me at ten o’clock. Peter had gone to work.

I had said to him, “I’m having an abortion this morning.”

He had said, “Your show. Hope it’s not too bad.”

I wonder if those are last words from Peter in this life.

Well—be a credit to that extremely kind young doctor. Cold cream, skin food, astringent, rouge, powder, lipstick. Enormous grey eyes I have, fringed with thick black lashes. And an awfully white skin, considering how black and straight my hair is.

Wonder if it is true that my great grandfather found romance with an Indian girl, and that that accounted for the straight, very black hair. Wonder if he was nice to her.

Black hair, black eyebrows, lovely shoulders, very white. And a lot they had got me, first and last. More than anything else had got me, though, at that.

“A woman five feet one, weighing a hundred nine pounds” . . . would I be a paragraph in various newspapers among the day’s casual deaths? Probably not.

Be a credit to that young doctor, who was taking a good deal of trouble on my account. Wear the Jane Regny original that the manufacturer sold me for a song and a couple of ads for Women’s Wear. Soft grey tweeds, a grey wolf collar and deep cuffs, a cream-coloured blouse. Its scarlet piping matches the close fitting hat, and the shining flat purse. Brilliant scarlet and blue scarf, grey mocha gloves that matched my stockings, precisely, and black lizard sports’ shoes. A small, slim, scared, extremely smart young figure.

“I may not be pure, but thank heaven I look immaculate.”

Five to ten. Find a handkerchief that exactly matches the blue in the scarf. Is that important? What is important? That dead baby Patrick, little and fragrant and toothless and rosy-lipped. To die when his mother had gone away and left him. Sentimentality, that. Well, this one would not live to die.

Put some perfume on handkerchief and hair. Just a little essence of gardenia, faint aroma for daytime.

Peter, Peter.

Doorbell ringing. The maid will answer. “The Doctor, ma’am.”

“Tell him I’ll be in in a minute, Nora.”

Purse, money, gloves.

“Good morning, Doctor.”

“You are looking very well. I hope you don’t feel nervous.”

(Hell. I just feel dead.)

“Not at all, Doctor, shall we start?”

In the taxi. “You are going to survive this, you know. You are the healthy, glandularly normal sort that can survive a great deal with no ill effects. I should be interested in seeing you do it. This may sound rather—unethical—but I do wish, if you and your husband separate, that you would let me know, from time to time, how you are getting along.

“You are very young, and life holds a great deal for you.”

(Isn’t he sententious?)

He went on: “I should appreciate the privilege of taking you to dinner sometime, when you’ve forgotten about this whole—unfortunate—affair. Do feel free to telephone me at any time, it would give me great pleasure.”

(A nice young man. Rather attractive. Peter, Peter, are you thinking about me at all? In the midst of re-writing City News copy, are you thinking about me—five minutes?)

“Doctor, do you mind if I ask—does this take very long?”

“At most—twenty minutes. I strongly advise against gas, if you think you can maintain your poise, at all. The heart—”

“Whatever you advise, Doctor.” (Did I want this baby? No sense to wonder about that now.)

“You are being extremely kind, Doctor. I am appreciative. I shall look forward to telephoning you one day, soon, and ask if you are free for dinner?”

He beams. Well, it is a lovely tweed ensemble, and I am clear-skinned enough to wear a bright red hat.

“Here we are. Now remember, I’ll be close by, and it will be all over within the half hour.”

(Be a corpse by then, maybe? Oh, don’t lose your nerve, Patricia. A thousand a day in the city of Chicago, they say.)

Dingy waiting room. Green plush livingroom set. No magazines. Patients can contemplate their thoughts, I suppose. Drawn curtains, a desiccated potted palm.

My doctor is holding my hand, in an entirely impersonal and very helpful way. A man and a girl come in. Her clothes were bought on the Bowery, but she is a lovely, gentle-faced blonde child, and so amazingly young. Seventeen at most.

She looks at that boy as if he were her saviour. He is a nice boy, too, blue eyed Jewish. Waistline coat. Maybe he is as old as twenty-one.

“Doctor,” (very softly.) “That girl is nothing but a child.”

“I noticed. These places depress me. Ah—Dr. Cohen.”

“My patient.”

The Paris tweeds impress Dr. Cohen. What a hard face he has, but efficient, clean hands.

“Come this way.”

(Office is camouflage obviously. Operating room looks very sanitary, I’ll say that for it. Room with five beds in back. Nurse. Isn’t she pretty? Sort of lavender kimona, she gives one. Wonder if the colour is symbolic, or if they got a lot of them at a sale. Give the nurse five dollars. She is pleased.)

“Now don’t be frightened, madame. I hear your doctor advised against gas. That’s sensible, really.”

“May I hold your hand, nurse?”

“Of course, dearie.”

Set one’s teeth. Now.

Bed feels very comfortable. Here is my doctor. I have to think of something to say to him, something appropriate? Would it do to say, “Well, I lived through it and I don’t care if I did?”

“Don’t try to talk. You are a courageous young woman.” (Just because I would not cry in front of that disgusting doctor who made a joke about the price of pleasure.) “I’m going to give you a hypodermic. Try to sleep, and I’ll be back to take you home in a couple of hours.”

He is gone.

Just to rest—not to think. Here is that young blonde child getting into her lavender kimona, slowly. She wants to talk.

“Listen, does it hurt much?”

(Give the little girl a hand.) “It’s not bad, my dear, and soon over.”

What a brilliant yellow chemise she has on. Amazing. And what a pretty undeveloped figure.

She is very scared. Undressing so slowly. She wants to talk some more. Maybe I can stay awake.

“Gawd, I’m scared. But my boyfriend’s worse. He’s sitting in front wipin’ sweat off his forehead.”

“I saw him. I thought he was very handsome.”

“Say, that boy’s grand. He gave me this chemise. I wore it to make me feel brave.”

Poor little devil.

“It’s soon over, you know.”

“Him and I’d get married in a minute, and I wouldn’t have to do this, only his ma’s orthodox Jewish and she’d die if he married a girl who wasn’t kosher. He’s good to his ma.”

The vivid yellow chemise comes off. The kimona of sorts goes on. The child takes my hand. “It isn’t very bad, is it?” The nurse is calling her.

“No, really. Hold your breath and say, ‘I can last another five minutes’. Good luck.”

She smiles, gallantly.

The door of the operating room is ajar. That hard voice, “Are you paying for gas, young woman?”

Her ardent, rough young voice, “Why . . . why, I guess so. My boyfriend said for me to have all the trimmings.” The door of the operating room slams.

Sleep, sleep now. Patrick, Peter—wonder if this one might have been a daughter . . . well, better to sleep.

“All right?”

“Quite convalescent, Doctor, thank you. I’ll dress now.”

The blonde child is asleep, looking altogether tranquil. Never see her again. Like to give her a present. That cloisonne compact. Slip it in her hand, that closes on it, like a . . . like a baby’s.

“Will you tell her, nurse, I wanted her to have this?”

“Yes, madame.”

“Good-bye. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”

That night Peter said, “I’m sorry you feel so badly . . . could I make you some soup or anything?”

“Thanks, no.”

“Look here, Pat, I’m sorry about you and me, but it would be easier for you if you could let go . . . if you didn’t try to hold on so hard.”

It is worse when he is kind. Fight it through. One might have some luck. “Only nine weeks of servitude left, Pet-ah.” He said nothing. He went out.

All insane, all ridiculous, all horrible; but fight it through. Committed to that. Cannot think any more; cannot feel much; but play for a little more time. Hilda is stupid. She may be stupid in time to save me.

Another week, and another, and another. He kept all her letters in the top drawer of his desk. The drawer was not locked. Curious that he could place such dependence on a decent upbringing. He could, too . . . but if I knew what she was writing, what they were planning, perhaps I could think of something to do.

Meanwhile I was grateful for the advertising business. The Christmas rush. Two more weeks gone.

Peter twisted my wrist one night when, overtired, I did a parody of Hilda explaining why she was pure. I thought my wrist was broken. He left me crying, raging, pleading. That had got to be chronic. As soon as I began to protest, anything, he left for the evening. Sometimes for the night.

I had a curious suspicion that he sometimes went to see Judith, just-divorced wife of a well-meaning dullard. Judith had always looked avidly at Pete. That was odd, if he went to see her now. But too complicated for me to evaluate, along with Hilda. Those letters. My wrist throbbed, most painfully. If I knew what was in those letters . . .

I only read a sentence or two of the top one.

It said: “If you continue discouraging Pat’s advances, she’ll soon take another lover, and then you and I are rid of her, Peter my dearest.”

I put it back in the envelope carefully. That girl—that girl did not know what she was doing. She would not last a month, with a Peter who had recovered sanity. But—at that, she might last long enough to finish Peter and me.

When he came home that night, “Peter, I suggest you take those letters of your dear love and lock ’em up. If I read any more of her advice on how to handle me, I might take ’em to a lawyer. Also—I don’t care what I said before—I’m not going to give you a divorce to marry that woman, ever, ever, ever.”

I thought he would strike me. I did not care now. The first time I had wandered about with a bruise on my mouth, it did something rather permanent to my soul, or whatever I had like a soul. After that, I just jested about falling against a table in the dark. No one believed me. It did not matter, whether they did or not.

But he did not strike me. He took the letters and put them in his pocket and said, “I’m leaving a week from Saturday, Pat.”

It was a week from Saturday now, and I had been sitting a long time in the wing chair, remembering irrelevancies. I hunted about for a cigarette. There were no more. I had smoked the whole package.

The apartment seemed almost unbearably still. I thought that it probably always would be, now. No more Peter, to come in gaily, flinging coat on one chair, and hat on another, and gloves on a third, calling eagerly, “Patty, Patty, dearest. Oh, most delicious young woman, a husband is home for the night, thank God.”

Yes, it probably always would be desperately still, without Peter. It occurred to me, as a very surprising fact, that, since I was only twenty-four, I might well live forty or fifty years, with no Peter. How many nights was that? An appalling number of thousands.

I stood up. I wanted a cigarette. There was a package Peter had left, on the mantel, with just two or three in it. That fool woman upstairs was playing sentimental ballads. This was “What’ll I do?” God-awful idiotic song. “You-r lips an’ my lips were joi-uned in a ki-i-sss, a ki-is with an unhappy en-nnding . . . Whaddl’ I dooo with jest a mum-o-ry.” Would she stop her phonograph if I telephoned her? What’s the use.

I will telephone the doctor. That will be entertaining. Won’t he be startled? And why not? The number is in the book.

I looked at the banjo clock. It was twenty minutes to eleven.

“You said you’d be interested in knowing what happened after? Well, I’ve been deserted at last.”

(He remembers me all right. His voice was very cheery and decidedly non-professional.)

“That’s cause for celebration. May I come over and offer felicitations, and take you dancing? . . . In half an hour? Splen-did!”

Gold brocade dress and rose slippers, rhinestone necklace and rhinestone embroidered bag. Very bright lipstick. Rose velvet wrap. I half forget what the doctor looks like.

If I do not stop aching I shall cry in public, and disgrace the man. Hope he brings some Scotch. That will see me through—“to stand by you in the days you have great sorrows.” Someone said that once, to someone a lot younger than I.

All ready, and five minutes to spare.

There was a long old mirror between two windows. I regarded myself. Not bad, not bad at all. Straight black bobbed hair that shone, grey eyes, a straight nose, a red, red mouth, very soft and warm-looking, pointed chin, lovely shoulders, slim waist, straight legs, small feet. It was no good to me, no good any of it, with no Pete to make it come alive; but all I had for the next forty years or so.

There might have been a baby—like Pete, like me. Never now. What of it? The nights of forty years had to be got through. The door bell ringing—this would fill the first of them. “So nice to see you, Doctor. So you’re one of those men who turn out to look five years younger in a dinner jacket, and so much less awe-inspiring. Do have my last cigarette.”