A Special Providence (25 page)

“You really do have a wonderfully sculptural head, dear,” she said. “I can’t imagine why this never occurred to me before.”

She asked Eva to bring her a sketch pad and some drawing pencils from town the next day, and she began sketching Bobby’s head from every conceivable angle.

On the morning she expected to receive her check there was something else for her in the mail instead: a densely worded letter from George’s lawyer. She had to read it through several times before she understood it, and then it was sickeningly clear. She had violated the terms of the divorce agreement by taking Bobby out of New York State without George’s consent;
accordingly, all payments would be suspended as long as she stayed away.

“Well, that
is
unfortunate,” Eva said when Alice showed her the letter. “Still, I imagine you can write to George and explain. I imagine he’ll send you the money if he knows you’ll use it for going back.”

But Alice wasn’t so sure. How could she explain what she planned to do when she
got
back? She spent all of one day and part of another writing and rewriting her letter to George: she was trying to make him feel guilty for his action and at the same time trying to persuade him that one month’s payment was all she would need to re-establish herself in New York. But she knew, even as she mailed the final draft, that it probably wouldn’t do any good.

“Are we just going to stay here forever, then, or what?” Bobby asked her.

“No, dear. We’ll go home just as soon as we can find a way. And a way will come; I know it will. We mustn’t lose faith.”

“Lose faith?”

“Faith in God, dear. Have you forgotten what you learned in church?” And she was able to quote, from memory, her favorite Collect from the Book of Common Prayer: “ ‘Oh God, who hast prepared for those who love thee such good things as pass man’s understanding; pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire.’ ”

“Well,” he said, “okay, but doesn’t that mean getting good things in Heaven? After you’re dead?”

“Not necessarily. Besides, there’s another one that says ‘Grant that those things which we ask faithfully we may obtain effectually.’ And there’s another one – oh, how does it go? Something about God’s ordering all things both in Heaven and
earth, and then it says, ‘We beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable to us.’ We can’t always know exactly what it is God wants for us, but we know He wants what’s right. We know He wants us to find a way. That’s what ‘The Lord is my shepherd’ means.”

Even so, her own faith was sorely tested by the long, idle days.

It was only May, but as hot as August. The heat rose in shimmering waves over the fields, and the house was like an oven. A few hundred yards away, on the way into town, the highway was under repair: men were cutting through the surface with jackhammers, the powerful noise of which clattered all day, and a heavy pall of white dust hung over the excavation, eclipsing the distance.

“Hot!” Owen Forbes exclaimed, coming out of his study one afternoon. Alice and Bobby were in different parts of the living room, reading detective stories that Eva had brought home from a local lending library, and they looked up at him in apprehension.

“Sweet
Jesus
, it’s hot,” he said. He tore off his soaked shirt, flapped it in the air, bunched it into a ball and used it to mop his armpits, one after the other. He threw the shirt into the laundry hamper in the hall; then they heard him banging at the refrigerator in the kitchen, and he reappeared with a cold bottle of beer in his hand. He went to stand near Bobby’s chair, in front of a small electric fan that slowly turned its buzzing head from side to side. “Damn thing doesn’t do any good at all,” he said. “Doesn’t even stir up the air. What’re you reading, boy?”

“Just a mystery,” Bobby said. “It’s by Erle Stanley Gardner.”

“You enjoy books like that?”

“I don’t know; I guess so.”

“You ought to be in school,” Owen said. “You ought to be studying math and Latin and history. Pretty nice how you got
out of half a year’s school by coming to Texas, isn’t it? What’re you going to do with him in the fall, Alice? Put him in school out here?”

It was impossible for Alice to think that far ahead. “If we’re still here,” she said, “I suppose so, yes.”

“What grade you in? Seventh?”

“I’ll be starting the eighth.”

“You mean you’ll be starting the eighth assuming they give you credit for the seventh. If you ask me, that isn’t a very safe assumption. And you’ll find they don’t just fool around in the school system here: it won’t be much like your fancy little private academy for young ladies back East.”

He took a deep swig of beer and let all the air out of his lungs in a long, harsh sigh of satisfaction that ended in a belch. He wiped his mouth with his forearm, then let his hand fall to his hairy, protuberant belly and slowly scratched himself.

Watching him, Alice decided she had never seen so gross and ugly a man. He was hideous in his massive half-nakedness, and she shuddered with the knowledge that she hated him. She hated his sour face; she hated his damp, pale, flabby-breasted torso; she hated his moving around this room with his cruel stare and his bottle of beer. Let him just say one more thing, she silently vowed; let him just say one more hurtful, bullying thing to Bobby and I’ll – I’ll—. She didn’t know what she would say, but it would be final. She wouldn’t stand for any more of this. She saw herself rising to confront him with a controlled, well-worded, withering remark – she wouldn’t lose her temper – and then quietly instructing Bobby to go and pack his suitcase. She would go unhurried to her room and pack her own belongings; then without another word they would simply walk out of the house and down the driveway. The trouble was that her fantasy took her only as far as the road. She had something less than a
dollar in her purse – not enough for calling a taxi. Where would they go? How far would they get, walking with four suitcases in this dreadful heat?

“All right,” Owen said, starting back toward his study. “All right, have it your way. Stay indoors, laze around the house all your life, let your brains rot. Turn into a goddam
woman
if you want to.”

“That’s enough, Owen,” she said, getting to her feet. “I won’t have you picking on him this way.”

“Can’t he stand up for himself? Do you have to answer for him?”

“Owen,
please
. He’s only a child.”

“And you’re going to make damn sure he stays that way, aren’t you?” He went into the study and shut the door behind him.

Bobby looked hurt and embarrassed. “You shouldn’t have
said
anything,” he told her, keeping his voice down. “That only made it worse.”

“But he has no right to talk to you that way. I won’t allow it.”

“Don’t pay any
attention
to him,” Bobby said. “Just ignore him when he gets like that.”

“All right, dear; I’m sorry. Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Outside, I guess.”

She watched him leave; then from the window she watched him walking aimlessly around the yard, hands in his pockets, kicking up little puffs of dust.

When she heard the car in the driveway – Eva coming home – she went into her room and shut the door. She decided not to go out to the front porch for drinks: if they wanted her, they could come and get her. She decided further that she would say “No, thank you,” when Eva stood outside the door and asked her to join them, and if Eva said, “What’s the matter?” she
would try to explain, as calmly as possible, that Owen had behaved very badly and she wanted nothing more to do with him for one day. “And it hasn’t been only today,” she would say. “He’s been absolutely impossible ever since we
came
here. Either he will start acting like a gentleman or we’re leaving. I mean that.”

She sat in her room pretending to read, silently rehearsing her speech as she listened to Eva’s bustling around the kitchen, and she waited. But in the end it wasn’t Eva who came to the door: it was Bobby.

“Aren’t you coming out to the porch?” he asked.

“No, I’m not, dear. I’d rather stay here.”

“Why?”

“Never mind why.”

She would have stayed there through dinner, too, except that the sounds Eva made in the kitchen made her hungry. When she did go in to the table she was careful to meet no one’s eyes. She looked soberly at her plate and said nothing, determined to speak only when spoken to.

“Alice?” Eva said after a while. “Are you all right?”

She said she was fine.

“I think this heat is making us all a little – out of sorts,” Eva said, and that was the end of the dinner conversation.

When he had finished eating, long before the others were finished, Owen pushed his plate away and scraped back his chair. “I’m going out for a drive,” he said, and then he turned to Bobby. “Want to come along?”

Bobby said “Okay” and Alice said “Oh, no!” at the same moment, which caused them all to turn and look at her.

“Please,” she said to Bobby. “I don’t want you to go.”

But Bobby had already left his chair and started toward Owen? and Owen was glaring at her, “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “You scared to let him out of your sight?”

“Of course not; that’s not the point. I just—”

“It’s okay,” Bobby said.

“Do him good to get away from the house for a while,” Owen said, and he turned to Bobby again as he moved toward the door. “You coming, or not?”

Bobby followed him, glancing back once at his mother with an imploring look, as if to say
Please
don’t interfere with this.

There was nothing for Alice to do but watch them go. “Well, do be careful,” she called, and they were gone. She heard the car doors slam, heard the car start with a roar and go moaning down the driveway. “Oh dear,” she said. “Do you suppose they’ll be all right?”

“Of course. What do you mean?”

“Well, but where are they going? He didn’t even say where they were going.”

“I don’t know. Probably just for a drive in the country. Or perhaps they’ll visit friends. Owen has a number of friends around town. I certainly wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.”

“Well, but isn’t he – do you think he’ll be able to drive safely?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know what I mean. He
has
been drinking heavily.”

Eva stood up and began stacking the plates. “He’s perfectly capable of driving a car,” she said. “I think you’re being very foolish.” And she carried the plates into the kitchen. When she came back a moment later her face was set in a look that Alice remembered from earliest childhood: a look that meant trouble. It meant that Eva would stand for no more nonsense and was about to lose her temper, and it had the same effect on Alice that it had always had when they were children: it goaded her to press her advantage.

“He’s drunk and you know it,” she said, standing up for
emphasis. “He’s drunk every night, and even when he’s not drunk he’s hateful – he’s crude and stupid and
hateful.
”

“He’s my husband. I’ll not allow you to speak that way.” And it was just like Eva to say “I’ll not” at such a time instead of “I won’t.”

“He’s hateful. I
hate
him, I’ve never hated anyone so much in my life, and I’m glad I said it. I’m glad I said it. I
hate
him! I
hate
him!”

“Alice! I want you to stop this at once. You’re hysterical. I’ll not listen to another—”

“Ha! Hysterical! I’ll show you how hysterical I am. If that boy isn’t back here in half an hour I’ll call the police!”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. I’ll not listen to another word of this.”

“Yes you
will
listen. I’ve kept quiet long enough. Your husband’s a beast, do you hear me? He’s a
beast
. Oh, I know you only married him because he was all you could get, but you’re a fool! He’s a
beast
!”

That had the sound of a good exit line, so she went quickly into her room and slammed the door. But Eva followed right behind her, wrenched open the door, and stood facing her, quivering with anger.

“You’ll regret this, Alice,” she said. “I’ll never forgive you for this.”

And the quarrel went on and on. It drove them back into the living room, then into the kitchen, and back into the living room again.

“… and to think,” Eva said, “to
think
what we’ve done for you. To
think
what Owen and I have sacrificed to give you a home!”

“I
hate
your home! I promise you I’ll leave your home tomorrow! I won’t spend another
day
in this wretched place!”

In the end they collapsed crying in their separate rooms, and the house settled into silence as they both lay listening for the car in the driveway.

It was almost midnight before they heard it. The sound of it made Alice sit up, leave her bed, and stand close to her closed door, listening still more intently. With a sense of revulsion she heard Owen’s heavy tread pass the door, and then she heard Bobby. She opened the door a crack and called to him in a whisper.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“Nothing. Just come in here a minute, please.” When he was inside the room she drew him close in a tight hug. Then she released him and said, “Where did he take you?”

“No place special. First we went to a bar down the road where there were some men he knows, and he talked to them for a while. Then we went to another bar and played the pinball machine.”

“Is he drunk?”

“Not especially. I mean – you know – no more than usual.”

“Well, at least you’re back. Listen, dear: I want you to sleep in here tonight.”

“In here? Why?”

“Can you bring your cot in?”

“It’s too big. Why do you want me to—”

“All right, never mind. You take my bed and I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“But why? What’s the matter?”

“Just do as I say. I don’t want you sleeping out there tonight, that’s all. I want you close to me.”