He never joined me for dinner. He never told me where he went. If I
asked, he laughed at me. Sometimes for days he did not speak to me—read
a newspaper at the breakfast table, and stayed out until after I had
gone to bed. Occasionally, I tried having guests. Usually then, he did
not come home; although I had told him they were coming. If he came, he
was polite to them and never spoke to me, through long evenings.
She had got him to promise to have nothing to do with me.
He forgot about that though, when he came home drunk. He would sit on
the edge of my bed, and say, “Patty the complete slut. So pretty, too
bad you are a slut. But you are a lovely one.”
I would think, “I shall scream, I shall go mad, I can’t bear this.” And
he would sit there, cool from a shower, smiling, strange. And I would
put my arms about his neck.
I would pretend that everything was as it had been, once. Next morning,
he would not speak to me.
Peter had always been an angel about money. Now, he stopped giving me
any, at all. I was faced with paying rent, the maid, the iceman, and the
telephone and electric light bill, and Pete’s tailor and my cleaner, on
fifty-five dollars a week.
We fought then—incredibly sordid and stupid fights about money. One
morning the iceman came, wanting two dollars. Pete was shaving in the
bathroom. The maid had not come.
I found twenty dollars in my purse, and nothing else. So I took two
dollars out of Peter’s wallet, and paid the iceman. Pete came out of the
bath. He had a hangover. He said, “I’ll teach you to go through my
pockets for money or anything, you bitch.” He struck me across the
mouth. It bled.
I thought, “This is a bad dream. Things like this just don’t happen to
people like Peter and me. He has gone crazy, and I have to stand by
until he gets better. He would do that, if I went crazy.”
He used to go to see Hilda week-ends. When he came back, he was always
much worse. He sat and read. I sat and read. I thought for half an hour
of something amusing to say. When I said it he sometimes threw his book
at me.
She wrote him every day. He took her letters out at night, and read and
re-read them in front of me.
Rickey gathered, as all our friends did, easily, that Peter and I were
coming to an end. Rickey struggled, through some weeks, to decide on the
correct attitude. Apparently, he weighed his fifteen years’ intimacy
against one night . . . and the decision was easy. He never came to see
us, any more, but dined with Pete at the Yale Club, two or three times a
week. That was logical, too.
Hilda had gone two months, when Peter asked her to New York for a
week-end. She stayed at a hotel for women on Gramercy Park. She and Pete
went to a party together.
I guessed she was in New York—he was so especially mysterious about his
goings and comings through those two days, and so much more sullen than
usual afterward. But I knew nothing specifically until Rick telephoned
me on Tuesday at the office.
He said, “Pat, I’m trusting you not to repeat this conversation. I’m
crazy about Pete, but I think that Hilda wench is awful. This may be
useful to you. On Saturday at the Hilles’ party, she made a minor scene
because Pete danced three times with another girl, and because he was
tight. It’s too soon for her to try the managing-him-for-his-own-good
attitude, but she hasn’t brains enough to know that. Sit tight. You may
pull through. Good luck.”
So I had a little hope.
After another month, and a few days of dizziness and headache in the
mornings, I gathered that I was pregnant.
I refused to believe it for weeks. I thought, “It’s too awful and I
can’t face this with everything else. Maybe if I just don’t think about
it, it will turn out not to be so.”
After another month—of dragging days writing copy, and horrible
quarrelling evenings with Pete, increasing headaches and dizziness, and
comments from my friends and Pete on how badly I was looking, (Pete
phrased it, “You look like hell nowadays; you aren’t even pretty any
more”) I knew it was so, all right.
I remembered the first time it had happened, how shy I had been about
telling Peter; and, although he thought then that the pregnancy was most
unfortunate, how kind he had been to me, bringing me gay boxes of
liqueur chocolates that I could not eat, and flowers and things. That
was two years before, though.
This time, I said to him, “Would you mind stopping reading for a moment?
I have something to tell you.”
He looked up: “Hurrah, you’ve got a new sweetie.”
“I’m ten or eleven weeks pregnant.”
He did not say anything for a minute. Then, “By whom this time, or do
you know?” . . .
I got up and screamed at him, as if I were a washerwoman and he were a
teamster. My voice sounded awful, even to myself.