Ruth got up and folded the newspaper and carried it out to the kitchen. When she returned, Elaine was sitting in the wing chair staring straight ahead of her at the lamp beside the davenport. Ruth glanced at the lamp too, to see if anything was wrong. No, the shade was on straight and there wasn’t a speck of dust to be seen.

When she had put her coat on, she said hesitantly, “Well, I guess you won’t be needing me any more tonight. Let’s see, I’ve been here three and a half hours, but we needn’t count the half, and you don’t have to pay me tonight if it’s not convenient.”

There was a long pause. Ruth kept buttoning and unbuttoning her coat, nervously. She was beginning to fear the worst — that Mrs. Foster had been drinking.

Without taking her eyes off the lamp, Elaine said, “Why don’t you stay here overnight?”

“Here?” Ruth said, immediately flustered. “Overnight? Oh, I couldn’t. Hazel’s expecting me, and what will Dr. Foster say when he gets home?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know whether he’s coming home.”

“A party can’t last forever.”

“He isn’t at the party,” Elaine said in a cold, dry voice. “He took the car and ran away.”

“Oh dear.”

“He was drunk and we had a fight.”

“What a shame.” We must close our ears. Yes, but my ears won’t close! “If he drives around, the air will sober him up.”

“I said some things I shouldn’t. Some of them were lies. I only lied to protect myself. I didn’t want him to think that he’d made a fool of me. I didn’t — I tell you I never did say anything to other people about Gordon and his — girl. I pretended she never existed. I never mentioned her, I don’t even know her name.”

She transferred her eyes, very carefully, as if they would break under any swift movement, from the lamp to Ruth. “You’re shocked.”

“No, no, I’m not.” Ruth’s face was burning.

“Yes, you are. So am I. I never thought anything like this would happen to me.”

“Perhaps it hasn’t,” Ruth said anxiously. “Perhaps you’re imagining. At certain times in the month I often get depressed and start to imagine the awfullest things, mostly about myself, but about other people too.”

“He didn’t deny it,” Elaine said.

“Oh, but if he was drunk — you can’t take drunk people seriously. I wouldn’t tell this to another living soul, but my father — drank. That’s why I’m a little prejudiced against spirits. My goodness, the things he’d say when he was in his cups. But Mother learned not to take them seriously. She knew that as soon as he’d sobered up he’d be his real self again.”

“No, no, this isn’t like that.” She heard a car coming up the hill. She listened, extremely relieved because she knew it was Gordon. The relief passed and gave way to a deep anger. She was already planning how she’d act and what she’d say, when the car passed the house without a pause.

“Hazel must have known,” she said wearily. “Hazel must have said something to you.”

“Hazel? My goodness, no. Even if she did know she’d never breathe a word to anyone. Hazel’s very loyal, and you know what she thinks of Dr. Foster. She’s always said he was a wonderful man.”

“And she never mentioned a girl? A young girl?”

Ruth shook her head, embarrassed, uneasy, trying to recall anything that Hazel had said about Dr. Foster. But her remarks were all ordinary: Dr. Foster had removed two impacted wisdom teeth in half an hour; Dr. Foster had gone home early with a cold; one of Dr. Foster’s patients was an old lady who talked to herself, and even with her mouth crammed with instruments her words were miraculously clear and articulate; Dr. Foster wondered if Hazel could do anything about getting a job for a friend of his, a young girl, pretty inexperienced.

Ruth frowned, annoyed at herself for remembering this at such an awkward time. It couldn’t be the same young girl — Dr. Foster must have hundreds of friends and acquaintances whom he helped. Besides, Hazel said later that George had given the girl a job, and if this girl really was Dr. Foster’s kept woman she wouldn’t have needed a job, she would be kept. In the back of her mind Ruth saw a fleeting image of a heavily draped, heavily scented boudoir, with a large canopied bed; Dr. Foster would never fit such a place.

“No, really,” Ruth said earnestly. “Hazel’s never said a word.”

“She’d be on Gordon’s side anyway.” Elaine unpinned the velvet rose in her mantilla, and took the high Spanish comb out of her hair. She held them in her lap, moved by the same feeling she had had when she picked up Judith’s abandoned scooter and put it on the veranda; as if something was gone, lost, dead, and only its death gave it any value. “Not that it matters, whose side anybody’s on. It isn’t a tug-of-war. It isn’t a case of me winning if I get twenty people on my side and Gordon has only ten. It’s a case of what we are going to do. I pray—” She raised her eyes suddenly to the ceiling, as if she were half-afraid that the person she prayed to was listening in, checking up on her. “I pray every night. I was brought up very religious, but now, I don’t know, I seem to have lost my faith, I can’t really believe that anyone is listening to me. Or if He is, He’s not going to help, He’s going to judge me, very harshly.”

“You’re wrong. I’m sure you’re wrong.”

“I know I have lots of faults, but I try to restrain myself, I try to be just. I try to be humble too, but I can’t. Something comes flooding over me like acid, it’s terrible, it spreads all over me. When I’m alone and calm, I think to myself, I will do anything for the sake of my children, I will control myself, I will by sheer determination keep my family together. Then I start thinking about Gordon going to meet that girl in the café. That’s where they meet, at an awful little place down on lower Main Street. Only drunks go there, and people like Gordon, people with secrets.”

Ruth turned her face away. “Perhaps you’re just imagining—”

“No. I know it.”

“Even so,” Ruth said helplessly. “Even so. He might be quite innocent.”

“He might be,” Elaine said with a sharp laugh. “That’s the crazy part of it. I don’t even know if anything happens. I don’t know if they sit there and hold hands and stare at each other, or if they go to her place, or take a room in a hotel, or park down by the ocean.” She broke off suddenly, her face squeezed up with pain. “I’ve always done Gordon’s planning for him. I suppose if I wanted to save my reputation, I should have planned this affair of his too. As it is, everyone in town is laughing at me. They never laugh at the man, the one who’s making a fool of himself. Oh no! They laugh at the wife, the one who gets left, who gets the wool pulled over her eyes.” Tears were burning the inside of her eyelids. She turned off the lamp beside her and said in a controlled voice, “Did the baby take all his bottle?”

“Every drop. Honestly, he’s the greediest little angel I ever saw. He must have gained two pounds since I saw him last.”

“Nearly.”

“Paul didn’t want to go to bed after our story was finished, but I told him—” Ruth flushed guiltily. “I told him that maybe next Saturday night I’d bring Wendy, my dog, with me. Would that suit you, Mrs. Foster?”

“I guess so.

“Then I gave him his pretend-dog which he promptly named Wendy, and he popped right off to sleep holding the dog in his arms.” She saw the look on Mrs. Foster’s face (grief? remorse? fright?) and she added, uncertainly, “If you really want me to stay the night, I’d be glad to.”

“It’s very kind of you, Ruth.”

“I’ll just phone Hazel, then, so she won’t worry.”

She phoned Hazel, and then she tiptoed upstairs to the baby’s room. She checked to see if his blankets were straight, she listened to his breathing, and she felt his cool, soft forehead. Then she lay down in her slip, on the cot beside the baby’s bed.

11

Gordon swung the car off the highway and switched off the ignition. He had turned the radio on very loud, to keep him awake. As long as this fast, jerky music continued, he didn’t feel like sleeping and he didn’t feel like thinking. He didn’t know the tune the orchestra was playing but he sang anyway, “chewy, chewy, chewy,” and honked the horn to emphasize the rhythm.

By squinting up his eyes and concentrating, he could make out the row of houses along the highway, dark, locked for the night. In one of these houses Ruby was sleeping. He couldn’t see very well but he was pretty sure which house it was, so he honked the horn insistently. As if in answer, a train came wailing around the bend, and all other sounds were lost in its dismal echo, Yoo hoo, yoo hoo hoo! The road shuddered, the houses trembled, their windows vibrating like chattering teeth. Long after the light on the caboose had disappeared, Gordon could hear the train mourning its farewell, adieu, adieu! He would have liked to follow the train, driving along the tracks, until he caught up with it. But this was impracticable, he realized. The wheels of the car wouldn’t fit the tracks, and even if they did it would be hard to keep on them. And suppose another train came along from behind? It would smash the car to pieces, and Elaine would be mad.

He honked the horn again, to drown out the echo of the train whistle.

In one of the houses a light appeared in an upstairs window. A shadow moved behind the blind, and a minute later a light went on in the downstairs hall. A woman in a bathrobe came out on the porch, carrying a flashlight. She shone the flashlight at the car, then directly into Gordon’s face. Gordon blinked. The woman came down the porch steps, cautiously, as if she didn’t quite trust them. She was middle-aged, heavily built. Her gray hair swung in pigtails against her shoulders. She had some kind of grease plastered on her neck and around her eyes.