Ex-wifePart 6
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Part 6
“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 _un_happy 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.”
IV
March sunlight came palely through the window that was dingy with the drippings of two-day old snow, and shone along the crinkled counterpane on Peter’s bed. Under the crisp blue and whiteness, the doctor slept, peacefully. I could touch his shoulder, by sitting up and stretching out my arm, but I did not want to, at all.
Peter said, yesterday, “Don’t mourn me long.”
In a sense, my dear Peter, I mourned you only seven hours, but I may be going to mourn you all my life besides. The doctor is an efficient person. I do not like him much, though. The way he shifts from professional to passionate manner, and back again, is a bit automatic. Hot water faucet, cold water faucet, hot water faucet . . . He must have been Don Juan of some hospital staff six or seven years ago. But he solved one night for me, and that was what I thought I wanted.
(I wonder if Peter is waking up by himself, or not. Peter.—I could scream and beat my fists against the floor and sob hours and days and weeks to have you back—to have the year 1922, again. And all that would happen, if I began, is that I would wake up the doctor. He would fish bromide tablets out of his dinner jacket pocket, for the emergency, I do not doubt.
He will have to telephone for a cab to get home in those dinner clothes. Wonder if he will sleep all day.)
I did sleep well, extraordinarily enough. One is not supposed to; one is supposed to lie awake biting sheets, or something of the sort, when one’s husband deserts. But I was so tired.
It feels remarkable to be a deserted wife when one is only twenty-four. Not what I planned to do with my life, precisely. I planned to be a Red Cross nurse, in time for another war. Was just sixteen in the war, and felt sick because I was too young to marry someone on his last leave, for my-country’s-sake, under a flag.
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