Unlike Others (18 page)

For a long time she had supposed that only gay people felt like this. Not until a girl in an office where she worked slashed her wrists did she realize that depression was, as Jeannine said, a modern epidemic. It was part of being alive in a vast, mechanized, impersonal culture that made intimate association almost impossible, so that even two coming together in bed might be strangers to each other and therefore find no real pleasure or fulfillment in the closest of contacts. Everyone was lonely, bored and tired, and no one knew what to do about it.

This kind of thinking made her nervous. People in offices were supposed to work—at least, they were supposed to give the impression of working. She called Richard at his realty office and found him there early for once, feeling more cheerful. Mag had called to say that the charges against him were being withdrawn. The whole thing had been an embarrassing mistake; the police had dropped the matter. Jo wondered who had been paid and in what coin. Favors, probably. Operators like King Fosgett didn't stoop to vulgar bribery unless they had to.

"Of course it might come out some time in the future, but you learn to live with that," Rich said. He sounded muffled. Hearing the voices of his fellow workers in the background, she guessed that he had a hand cupped around the mouthpiece to keep the others from hearing. He said, "I'll see you in a day or two, darling," and hung up.

She called Mag's apartment and got no answer. Either Mag was out, in which case she felt better, or she had taken a sleeping pill (or a good slug of gin) and was too far gone to wake—in which case she didn't care how she felt. Jo considered and rejected the possibility that she might be in the hospital. When Mag went to the hospital she notified everyone she'd met in sixty-two years of gusty living, and the result was pandemonium.

Jo made a mental note to call later, and started to dial Betsy's number. After the second digit she hung up, shaking her head. It's no good, she thought. She has to call, or it doesn't mean anything.

If she doesn't call, it's over. End it nice and clean. Gayle came in, spent ten minutes arranging her hair, and sprayed herself and most of the office from a pink flask of perfume, very fine if you liked Night of Passion or Seductive Temptress or whatever she was using this week. Jo opened a window and gratefully breathed in exhaust fumes and soft-coal smoke. Stan came in, hung up his hat and spring topcoat and stood around in the hall for a while, looking undecided. He said good morning to Gayle, got a drink of water from the cooler and opened and shut his desk drawers. After about five minutes, during which Jo sat seething with restrained impatience, he plodded back to her office and took up his stance against the doorjamb. She was almost irresistibly tempted to put a foot out and trip him.

She said "Hi," instead and went on looking through the morning mail as though she expected to find a million dollars in one of the letters. Stan tried to light a cigarette. His hands were shaky, but he finally made it. His eyes were pouchy, his cheeks vertically lined; he avoided looking at her. Feeling guilty, she thought coldly. Let him suffer, he deserves to.

He said stiffly, "Betsy's not coming back. She called to say she's found another job. Will you make out a check for what she has coming?" He hesitated. "Give her a week's severance pay. She didn't give us any notice, but what the hell, she probably has extra expenses. New place and all."

Some people paste prayer slips on a wheel, Jo ought. Others say a specified number of Hail Marys. Others leave their millions, gouged out of working people, to set up charitable foundations. Penance is penance. She nodded.

Stan said, "She wasn't very good on the job anyway."

"She was all right. Where's she going?"

"She didn't say. I wish women wouldn't call me at home," he said, aggrieved. "My mother answered the hone, and she raised holy hell. She can't understand why an employee would call on business, she thinks everybody's chasing me." His face got red, even redder than Betsy's when she was embarrassed. It's catching, Jo thought. He said, "It's so silly. I was a little bit late getting home the other night, and she had an asthma attack. I was up almost all night giving her medicine and heating the steam kettle."

Of course, Jo thought. You fight a rival by demanding extra attention. The poor jerk, all worn out from the session on auntie's davenport. But she kept a straight face. "She might be better off in a nursing home."

"Oh, I think she would. With people her own age, and all. My aunt's in an old ladies' home, my father's sister, and they have a fine time. A nurse on hand all the time, and everything. She won't do it, though, and the house belongs to her."

Her mausoleum, Jo thought. She had taken a walk in Stan's neighborhood one Sunday afternoon when she had nothing better to do, had walked down a street of two-story brick and frame houses until she came to the number that was on his personal correspondence and stood for a minute or two looking at it. Four-square and ugly, its bay window filled with thick-leaved plants, it looked like a house that would smell of cellar and dusty upholstery and old cooking.

She had never seen Stan's mother, but she knew, from Cottonwood Falls, the kind of old woman who lived in a house like this. She might be skinny and querulous, with her hair strained back from a shiny forehead. She might be shapeless and tallowy. She might even be a corseted travesty of style, with her hair curled though thinning. But she would be a familiar figure if you met her (as you were likely to meet her) at a meeting of church women or in a relative's home on Sunday afternoon.

Maybe she did have asthma. It was almost always emotional in origin, wasn't it? Maybe she really did have a bad heart, especially if she was a fat old lady who ate too much. (Stan, she knew, resembled his father; his mother had never forgiven him for it.) Doctors were cagy about things like that, especially the lovable old family physician type who hadn't opened a medical journal since 1920. You could have a functional heart disorder, you could have attacks brought on by rage or fear, and they hurt just as much as the real thing. Like arthritis, like allergy, it was a genuine illness.

It was easy to feel that she'd have left the old lady wheezing if she had been in Stan's place, but how did she know? What did she expect him to do, for God's sake, step over the old bitch's prostrate form and walk away? And even if that were the thing to do, what could you expect from a man who had been smothered and squeezed to death by that kind of maternal devotion, among the aspidistras or whatever the hell they were?

She always fetched up against this conclusion, and it always spoiled the fine contempt she'd have liked to feel for Stan. I'm a better man than he is, she reminded herself, looking at him with new curiosity. He wasn't just the friendly colleague or the weak-kneed yearner after women, he was the man who had possessed Betsy. More or less against her will, yes. Clumsily, yes. But he was her rival. She hated him for it.

She could see the whole thing, just as though she had been hiding in the shadowy corner of the living room. The girl pushed back against the scratchy couch, the man half undressed, at once forceful and ridiculous in eagerness. And later, the shame that overcame both of them, and the wordless parting.

No wonder Stan had the flu. No wonder Betsy, bewildered by the way things were developing, decided to leave her job in a year when jobs weren't too plentiful. Neither of them could bear to face the other.

She asked, "How's your flu?"

"Better."

"The corrected pages are on your desk."

He wasn't thinking about the magazine. He said abruptly, "Make that two weeks severance pay, will you? I guess it's my fault she didn't stay and work out her notice. I got a little fresh the other night."

"All right."

Stan's blush deepened to purple. "Tell her she should let me know if she ever needs anything."

The hell I will, Jo thought. If what you're thinking about happens, I’ll take care of it myself. You’ll never know. She looked at him blankly.

She wondered for the hundredth time why normal people were always getting into such sickening messes. They ought to be happy as all get-out, she thought. Everything was on their side, religion and morality and even the advertising industry, a bigger influence than either morality or religion. Yet almost everyone she knew was all miserable and confused, either because of sex or because of its lack. It made her own problem seem clean and honorable, a question to be answered or, if no solution were forthcoming, a sorrow to five with in dignity.

Stan hovered. She knew what he wanted. He wanted to tell the whole story and get rid of it, to lay his guilt in a mother's hands and be forgiven. She had been a mother surrogate about as long as she cared to be. She said sharply, "I better get to work, they're waiting for the okay on the last folio," and turned over a page.

Stan wandered away, looking rebuffed.

She did all the routine things. She made out a check for half a month's pay, improving on Stan's instructions by two days, and another check for the money Betsy had coming as of right then. She put both slips in an envelope and addressed it to Betsy. A wave of faintness swept over her; she sat staring at the envelope, waiting for things to come into focus again. This couldn't be the end.

She held the envelope for a while as though some of her feeling might penetrate and permeate it; then she carried it into the hall and dropped it down the chute, watching it until it disappeared. That's that, she thought. At least the kid won't go hungry for a while.

She had forgotten that she wanted Betsy to be self-reliant.

She corrected pages with great care, frowning over details that she would normally have caught at first glance.

She didn't want to go home. There was plenty to do there, the whole apartment needed to be cleaned, the laundry was overflowing the hamper again, she ought to stop at the supermarket and replenish her dwindling food supply. She didn't feel like doing any of these things. The long sleep of the day and night before had left her heavy-headed and, at the same time, restless. Calling it another wasted day, she was prepared for another un-relaxed night.

She plodded up the stairs to her own apartment, gripping the rail, although usually she ran up briskly. Unlocked the door and went in.

A girl was sitting primly in the overstuffed chair, gloved hands in her lap, handbag on the floor at her feet, wisps of hair escaping under a small brimmed hat. Jo stopped short in the doorway.

Karen.

CHAPTER 17

"How did you get in?"

Karen smiled. "I have a key, remember? Not that I meant to keep it, I was going to mail it back to you, but I keep forgetting. Aren't you even glad to see me?"

"Depends." Jo looked at her. "What do you want?"

"Do I have to want something? Can't I just come calling?"

"Not without an invitation," Jo said. "Most of my guests wait to be let in."

Karen shrugged. She was looking very soft and pretty—new dress, new topper, smart hat, fancy shoes with extremely high heels. On her wrist was a thin watch set about with diamonds. "Anyone would think I'd walked in on something," she said. "Are you expecting guests? Or a guest?"

"It doesn't matter." Jo shut the door behind her and came a little way into the room. "Do you want a drink? I'm sorry all I have is a little bourbon."

"No thanks. I had a couple before I came."

"Coffee?"

"All right. I'll come in the kitchen while you make it." Karen stripped off her gloves and laid them on the desk. "It's been a long time, Jo."

"Almost four months," Jo said flatly. "How's marriage? You look as though it agreed with you."

Karen stood beside the cupboard. "All right, I guess. Dave's nice. We're going to buy a house in Wilmette—his mother's lending us the money for the down payment"

"Sounds like fun."

"Oh sure. I'm going to furnish it all in contemporary. Hand-loomed fabrics and a couple of good original paintings. You know I've always wanted to furnish a home of my own."

Jo spooned coffee into the percolator basket. "I'm sorry I haven't any cream. You’ll have to take it black."

"That's all right. I have to watch my weight."

"You're not pregnant, are you?"

Karen's face changed. She looked at once frightened and stubborn. "No, and I'm not going to be. Dave keeps talking about having a family, he's crazy about kids, but I don't want to be tied down. It's twenty years—and then you're too old to enjoy life."

"Seems a little unfair to Dave. Not that it's any of my business."

Karen looked through her bag, found a cigarette case and snapped it open. "Smoke? Dave bought me this on our honeymoon. It's pretty, don't you think?"

"Sure."

"Are you going with anybody now?"

"Maybe." Jo turned on the burner under the coffeepot. A ring of blue flame leaped into being. She adjusted it.

Karen said, "Jo, I'm sorry I walked out on you the way I did. I've missed you terribly. Don't you miss me at all?"

"It's a little bit late to think about that." Jo looked at her. "It's all over. Don't try to get me stirred up. I'm not going to be dramatic about this."

Karen took three steps into the kitchen. She put her arms around Jo's waist and leaned her head against Jo's breast. She was still using the same perfume. "Don't you love me any more? Not even a little bit? I've been so lonesome I thought I'd die."

Jo looked down stonily at the back of her head. The chic little hat had fallen off, unnoticed. Tendrils of fair hair curled at the nape of Karen's neck. It reminded her of Betsy. "Look, girl, you left me of your own accord. I didn't throw you out. This getting married bit was your own idea, remember?"

"I'm sorry."

Jo stepped back, breaking Karen's hold. "The coffee's going to boil over."

"It isn't even hot yet." Karen's chin quivered. She looked pleadingly at Jo. That used to be a good way to get out of things, Jo thought. It isn't going to work this time. Not any more.

"Look, Jo, I'm not saying anything against Dave. He's a fine person. He gives me everything a girl could ask for."