Three Women (5 page)

"Here's cab fare home." Byrne tilted Paula's chin. "And don't think about this too much. If I didn't like you, I wouldn't take the trouble."

Paula felt a beaming smile leap to her face. Byrne pressed a five dollar bill into her hand and pushed her out the door.

She skipped dizzily up the street. She likes me! She likes me no matter what I did!

At the corner of Fifth Avenue, she hailed a cab. Once inside, she crossed her legs and tried to sit like a lady. It wasn't often that she could ride like this. What wonderful, marvelous things would Byrne make possible for her? If she could only return some of the joy, some of the gratefulness that filled her. She resolved that anything Byrne asked her to do—sketch her nude, anything—she would do if it took all the courage she could muster. She would please Byrne. She must please Byrne. Nothing in life was so important as Byrne's approval.

The cabbie changed the five dollars and raised his eyebrows when she told him to keep the change.

Paula burst into the apartment and ran to her room, anxious to be alone with her dreaming. It was hardly four o'clock and the smell of roast chicken reminded her that she hadn't eaten all day.

Her mother came into her room and waited until Paula had taken off her things.

"Phil was here," she said. "He waited for you an hour and a half." Her voice held a question.

"Didn't you tell him I was out?"

"Yes. But he expected that you would be back soon."

The idea of Phil returned to Paula like an old shoe, suddenly found. She wished he would stay, like an old shoe, in the closet and wait until she was ready for him.

"Maybe you'd better call him," her mother offered. She was wearing an apron over the Sunday dress. The family hadn't gone out today. Uncomfortably, Paula supposed they were worrying about her.

"All right, I’ll call him. After dinner." She didn't want to speak to Phil. He would ask where she'd been. Now that he had proposed, he probably felt a right to question her. Could she put him off without making him angry? Perhaps. But not without hurting him. Oh, she seemed to be hurting everybody. Ma and Pa this afternoon and now Phil.

"I only spent a harmless afternoon," Paula explained, "away from my troubles. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

Her mother looked at the pencil smudges on her fingers. "If you're feeling better, I'm glad you went wherever it was."

"I'm feeling fine," Paula almost sang. If only I could tell you about it! The faint odor of pomade lingered as her mother went to light the stove under the cold chicken.

Why can't I tell her, she thought. What's wrong with what I've done? But she didn't want to speak about her dear Byrne. Even the thought of Byrne in this apartment didn't fit She wasn't the kind of person you discussed in cold water flats. Not even to your mother. Byrne was meant for dreaming late at night. Late at night in the dark and all alone.

She changed into a pair of corduroy slacks and looked at herself in the bubbles of the mirror that framed the old dressing table. She didn't have those trim lines. Her hips were too rounded, her waist too small. She searched out one of Mike's old shirts and jammed the tails into her trousers. Then she rolled up the too-long sleeves and once more examined her reflection. Nope. She just wasn't impressive.

The mound of mashed potatoes and gravy added strength to her unwound nerves. Halfway through the meal the phone rang. Pa was taking a nap in the bedroom She and her mother looked at each other.

"If it’s Phil, tell him I'm eating and he can pick me up at seven."

Paula knew she would have to see him. No matter how much she didn't want to, it was better to get this over with soon. Or he would be calling and wondering and having fits.

"Don't you want to talk to him?" Ma tried to cover her perplexity.

"Not just now." Paula attended to the chicken.

She listened to her mother deliver the message while she poured vinegar into the almost empty bottle of ketchup.

"He’ll be over," her mother said, setting a dish of fruit salad on the table.

Well, she didn't have to think about Phil until he got there. Some excuse would come to her by then. She didn't care to lie to him. But he would never understand the truth. What was the truth? She hardly knew herself. All she knew was that this afternoon was her own private possession.

Phil arrived almost promptly at seven, his features muddled with concern. She motioned him to a chair and he sat on it sideways because his long legs wouldn't fit comfortably under the table. She could tell he wanted to talk to her earnestly but he made polite conversation for the sake of her mother.

At last he said, "Want to catch a movie?"

Her eyesight was strained from the afternoon's sketching, but she agreed just to get them out of the house.

They didn't go to the movies, of course. He took her to Jack's place.

"Look," he said, when they had closed the door, "I didn't do anything—I mean, it was all right?"

She considered the appeal in his eyes, then the yellow rumpled bedsheets. The musty smell of stale furniture and cat hairs over everything curdled her stomach.

"Sure," she said. "It was all right."

The sound of Whitey scratching in the Kitty Litter filled the silence. A pot of left-over spaghetti filled with water sat in the wash basin. "No, it wasn't all right," she blurted. "It's miserable here and I hate it. Why do we always have to come to this place? Why couldn't you have waited until we had somewhere decent?"

He looked at her with confusion. She saw the irritation growing within him and the line of his mouth tightened. "You're a strange girl today. I can't believe it was all my fault."

Immediately she felt sorry for him. After all, he was battling against something he didn't even know about. She couldn't help him. She could hardly help herself, let alone Phil.

"If I'm so strange, then just leave me be." The hardness in Paula's voice-covered her own groping to understand.

"Oh, honey, why don't you come off it? That was bound to happen sooner or later. What difference could it make that we didn't have a license for it last night?"

There was no point in arguing. How can you explain to a man, still dear to you, he has suddenly been replaced?

"The fact is, Phil, I'm not sure that I'm ready to get married just yet."

"And why not, suddenly? You seemed plenty eager these past couple of months."

That was the truth and it slapped her. She went to open a window, thinking some fresh air might chase the musty smell. She opened the window and thought: If I jumped out all this mess would be over. She stood looking down the narrow alleyway at the empty clotheslines tangled from the wind.

"I know I owe you an explanation, but the truth is I haven't any."

"Sure, you haven't. You don't know what in hell you're talking about. When they say women are addle-brained, I have an idea this is exactly what they mean."

He was being nasty. But it was nastiness out of desperation, she knew. He had to fight back against this unknown enemy. If he fought clumsily, it was none the less brave.

"Phil, I love you. I just need time to work something over in my mind. Will you try to be patient and not force me?"

"Patient? God save us all! Here I'm planning for our marriage next month and you say to be patient. Is that what you call love?"

"All right, then," she challenged. A stabbing frustration and restlessness shot through. "Call it off. Go away and leave me alone. I don't want to see you, Phil. I want to be alone. Do you near me? Alone!"

He grabbed her away from the window and pulled her beside him against the wall. "You're nuts," his voice rasped. "Stark, raving nuts."

She struggled, pounding his chest with clenched fists. "Leave me be!" she shouted. "Leave me be!"

He held her fast. "You're going to calm down and straighten out" Grabbing her wrists, he held them fast behind her back. "Honey, you're hysterical."

Twisting and turning, she tried to free herself from his grasp. Biting at his arm, she caught the material of his shirt between her teeth and ripped it.

But his bulk was too much for her. Panting, she let her body collapse. For a moment he stood supporting the weight of her in his arms. Then slowly, she slipped to the floor and collapsed at his feet. He kneeled beside her, not knowing what to do. She crawled over, put her head in his lap and sobbed wretchedly.

Clumsily, he stroked her hair. 'It's all right honey. If you want to be alone, it's okay." His voice was heavy with sadness. "Just don't get lost" he said- "We need each other too much."

When he brought her home, he didn't try to kiss her. He sort of patted her shoulder and ran off down the steps. She listened to the disappearing jingle of his house keys.

* * *

Paula was grateful for Monday. Getting up and yelling at Mike to hurry up out of the bathroom kept her from thinking for the moment about the strange state of affairs in her life.

The rush hour crowds carried her down the steps to the subway and she stood on line to buy a week's supply of tokens.

Her office friends greeted her and chatted about their dates as if this had been a weekend like any other. Paula felt as though she had been away for a hundred years. But her desk, her typewriter, the small switchboard with its tails and plugs hypnotized her back into the meaningless routine.

At five o'clock she looked for Phil's car but it wasn't there. She waited ten minutes. He didn't show up. She realized with huge relief that he really was going to let her alone for awhile. Poor guy. She didn't like herself very much for yesterday's scene. But even as she tried to think of Phil, the picture of him faded to be replaced by the image of that shirtless body, the tantalizing curves of warm flesh, coldly posed for sketching.

When she got home, the place was jammed with Mike's friends making a pretense of doing homework. Pa hadn't arrived yet. She helped set the table and prepared a place for him, even though she didn't know whether or not he would be in any condition to eat.

Ma said, "Did you have a good day?"

"Like every other," Paula answered. Then she said, "Ma, did you think when you got married that this was the way life was going to be?"

Her mother wiped her hands on the apron and studied the worn wedding ring on her finger. "That's a funny question, my dear. In those days, you know, we didn't think about how it would all turn out. We just took our chances. We trusted the man to do what he should do, and so would we." She always spoke in terms of "we" because she had seven sisters.

"But didn't you have any imagination? Didn't you wonder whether the future was going to be bright or not?"

"Maybe old-fashioned people take it for granted the future is going to be bright. I guess I don't know, dear."

Paula knew her mother wasn't trying to chide her. And she was being discreet enough not to ask why Phil hadn't brought her home. He always came upstairs for a short visit, and her mother enjoyed the company. She liked Phil. And Paula could see that her own sudden hesitance about getting married was a disappointment.

The boys were fighting so loudly over the verb of a sentence that nobody heard Pa come in. He stumbled forward into the kitchen and fell heavily on the table, his face yellow with a frightening pallor.

"Harry!" Her mother ran to him. He fell forward, upsetting the empty glasses, and lay with his cheek against the oilcloth.

Paula ran to the phone to call the doctor. Her hands trembled as they dialed numbers.

She cleared the boys out and sent Mike with them. Her father lay at the table, wretching with spasms, speechless in pain. She and her mother tried to move him to the bed but he couldn't make it.

The doctor arrived, and the three of them managed to get the old man in bed. After the examination, the doctor put his stethoscope in his bag and filled out a prescription.

"It's nothing to worry about, Mrs. Temple. He’ll have to stay in bed for a couple of weeks. No alcohol, of course. Plenty of tea and broth and rest. This will keep him quiet through the night. I'll drop by tomorrow."

Paula gave him the five dollar visiting fee, regretting the generous tip to the cabbie yesterday. Every penny she earned was tightly accounted for. Doctor bills were things to be dreaded. They could cut a hole into your life that sometimes took years to repair. Nothing to worry about, the doctor said. Well, there was plenty to worry about.

She put her lunch money into a pocket and went to the drugstore. Luckily, the pills cost only a couple of dollars. But there weren't many in the small glass vial. If Pa needed a new supply every day, she would have to start taking sandwiches to work.

She came back upstairs glumly, trying to muster a smile as she entered the apartment. Her mother was just coming out of the bedroom, the weight of her concern obvious in the dark pockets under her eyes.

Paula said, "It'll be okay. At least we don't have any babies to worry about. Mike's sixteen. It won't hurt him to take a job for a while."

"You're a good girl." The tone of her mother's voice made Paula feel that she herself was a baby with good intentions, but one who didn't really understand.

This wasn't the time to convince Ma about Mike. She dropped the subject and got a glass of water to take with the pills to Pa.

Limp with nausea and pain, her father lay beneath the covers. You could tell the pain was bad from the way his fingers were twisted. He looked small and shriveled.

What little of his strength she could remember had long ago been drained. Nothing inside the white skin, crepe-like over pale blue veins. She unwrapped the bottle and tried not to look at him. Tried not to think how things would be if Pa died.

She helped him sit up. She put two pills directly into his mouth rather than go through the agony of watching those weakened fingers struggle. He sipped enough water to get them down and gasped for breath.

"They'll put you to sleep," she comforted.

He was too ill to attempt a smile and she wished she could rush from the room to escape the nightmare of her father's sickness. But instead, she tucked the covers around his shoulders and asked if there were anything he wanted. The brown eyes, dull with their misery, closed to say no. Paula switched out the lights and went back into the kitchen.