When She Was Good (25 page)

“Why don’t you just trust me! I’m not going to kill you!”

“Oh, Duane,” her mother said, “she
does.
”

“Don’t speak for me, Mother!”

“Hear that?” he cried to his wife.

“Well, he might just be some quack drinking friend who says he’s a doctor or something. Well, how do I know, Mother? Maybe it’s even Earl himself in his red suspenders!”

“Yeah, that’s who it is,” her father shouted. “Earl DuVal! sure! What’s the
matter
with you? You think I don’t mean it when I say I want you to finish college?”

“Dear, he does. You’re his daughter.”

“That doesn’t mean he knows whether a doctor is good or not, Mother. Suppose I die!”

“But I told you,” he cried, shaking a fist at her, “you won’t!”

“But how do
you
know?”

“Because she didn’t, did she!”

“Who?”

No one had to speak for her to understand.

“Oh, no.” She dropped slowly back against the headboard.

Her mother, at the side of the bed, covered her face with her hands.

“When?” said Lucy.

“But she’s alive, isn’t she?” He was pulling at his shirt with his hands. “Answer the point I’m making! I am speaking! She did not die! She did not get hurt in any way at all!”

“Mother,” she said, turning to her, “when?”

But her mother only shook her head. Lucy got up out of the bed. “Mother, when did he make you do that?”

“He didn’t make me.”

“Oh, Mother,” she said, standing before her. “You’re my mother.”

“Lucy, it was the Depression times. You were a little girl. It was so long ago. Oh, Lucy, it’s all forgotten. Daddy Will, Grandma, they don’t know,” she whispered, “—don’t have to—”

“But the Depression was over when I was three, when I was four.”

“What?” her father cried. “Are you kidding?” To his wife he said, “Is she kidding?”

“Lucy,” her mother said, “we did it for you.”

“Oh yes,” she said, moving backward onto her bed, “for me, everything was for me.”

“Lucy, we couldn’t have another baby,” said her mother. “Not when we were so behind, trying so to fight back—”

“But if only he did his job! If he only stopped being a coward!”

“Look,” he said, coming angrily at her, “you don’t even know when the Depression was, or what it was, either—
so watch what you say!
”

“I do too know!”

“The whole country was behind the eightball. Not just me! If you want to call names, you, call the whole United States of America names!”

“Sure, the whole
world.
”

“Don’t you know history?” he cried. “Don’t you know anything?” he demanded.

“I know what you made her do, you!”

“But,” her mother cried, “I
wanted
to.”

“Did you hear that?” he shouted. “Did you hear what your mother just said to you?”

“But you’re the man!”

“I am also a human being!”

“
That’s no excuse!
”

“Oh, what am I arguing with
you
for? You don’t know
a
from
z
as far as life is concerned, and you never will! You wouldn’t know a man’s job if I did it!”

Silence.

“Hear, Mother? Hear your husband?” said Lucy. “Did you hear what he just said, right out in the open?”

“Oh, hear what I
mean
,” he cried.

“But what you
said—
”

“I don’t care! Stop trapping me! I came in here to solve a crisis, but how can I do it when nobody lets me even begin? Or end! You’d rather trap me—throw me in jail! That’s what you’d rather do. You’d rather humiliate me in this whole town, and make me looked down on as the town joke.”

“Town
drunk!
”

“Town drunk?” he said. “Town
drunk?
You ought to
see
the town drunk. You think
I’m
the town drunk? Well, you ought to just see a town drunk, and then think what you’re saying twice before you say it. You don’t know what a town drunk is. You don’t know what anything is! You—you just want me behind bars—that’s your big wish in life, and always has been!”

“It’s not.”

“It is!”

“But that’s
over
,” cried Myra.

“Oh, sure it’s over,” said Whitey. “Sure, people just forget how a daughter threw her own father in jail. Sure, people don’t talk about that behind your back. People don’t like to tell stories on a person, oh no. People are always giving other people a chance to change and get their strength back. Sure, that’s what this little scene is all about too. You bet it is. Oh, she’s got me fixed, boy—and that’s the way it’s going to be. That’s how brilliant she is, your so-called college girl scholarship daughter. Well, go ahead, so-called daughter who knows all the answers—solve your own life. Because I’m not good enough for a person like you, and never have been. What am I anyway? The town drunk to her.”

He pulled open the door and went loudly down the stairs. They could hear him bellowing in the parlor. “Go ahead, Mr. Carroll. You’re the only one can solve things around here. Go ahead, it’s Daddy Will everyone wants around here anyway. I’m just extra anyway. I’m just along for the ride, we all know that.”

“Shouting won’t help anything, Duane—”

“Right, right you are, Berta. Nothing will help anything around here.”

“Willard,” said Berta, “tell this man—”

“What’s the trouble, Duane? What’s the fuss?”

“Oh, nothing you can’t fix, Willard. Because you’re the Big Daddy, and me, I’m just along for the ride.”

“Willard, where is he going? Dinner is all ready.”

“Duane, where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go down and see old Tom Whipper.”

“Who’s he?”

“The town drunk, Willard! That’s who the town drunk is, damn it—Tom Whipper!”

The door slammed, and then the house was silent except for the whispering that began downstairs.

Lucy lay without moving on the bed.

Her mother was crying.

“Mother, why,
why
did you let him make you do that?”

“I did what I had to,” said her mother mournfully.

“You didn’t! You let him trample on your dignity, Mother! You were his doormat! His slave!”

“Lucy, I did what was necessary,” she said, sobbing.

“That’s not always right, though. You have to do what’s
right!
”

“It was.” She spoke as in a trance. “It was, it was—”

“It wasn’t! Not for you! He degrades you, Mother, and you let him! Always! All our lives!”

“Oh, Lucy, whatever we say, our suggestions, you refuse.”

“I refuse—I refuse to live your life again, Mother, that’s what I refuse!”

Roy’s best man was Joe Whetstone, home from the University of Alabama, where he had kicked nine field goals and twenty-three consecutive extra points for the freshman football team. The maid of honor was Eleanor Sowerby. Unbeknownst to Joe, Ellie had fallen in love at Northwestern. She simply had to tell Lucy, though she made her promise to speak of it to no one, not even Roy. She would shortly be having to write Joe a letter, and she would just as soon not have to think about that during her vacation; it would be difficult enough at the time.

Either Ellie had forgiven Lucy for calling her a dope at Thanksgiving, or else she was willing to forget it during the wedding. All through the ceremony tears coursed down her lovely face, and her own lips moved when Lucy said, “I do.”

After the ceremony Daddy Will told Lucy that she was the most beautiful bride he had seen since her mother. “A real bride,” he kept saying, “isn’t that so, Berta?” “Congratulations,” her grandmother said. “You were a real bride.” That was as far as she would go; she knew now that it was not the grippe that had caused Lucy to be sick in the kitchen sink.

Julian Sowerby kissed her again. “Well,” he said, “I suppose now I get to do this all the time.” “Now
I
do,” said Roy. Julian said, “Lucky you, boy, she’s a cutie-pie, all right,” in no way indicating that he had once lectured Roy for four solid hours in the taproom of the Hotel Kean on the evils of becoming her husband.

Nor did Irene Sowerby indicate that secretly she believed Lucy had unusual emotions. “Good luck to you,” she said to the bride, and touched her lips to Lucy’s cheek. She took Roy’s hand and held it for a very long time before she was ready to speak. And then she was unable to.

Then her own parents. “Daughter,” was all she heard in her ear; so stiff was she in his embrace that perhaps it was all he said. “Oh, Lucy,” her mother said, her wet lashes against Lucy’s face, “be happy. You can be if only you’ll try. You were the happiest little girl …”

Then both Roy’s parents stepped forward, and after a moment in which each seemed to be deferring to the other, the two Bassarts lunged at the bride simultaneously. The mix-up of arms and faces that ensued at long last gave everyone present something to laugh about.

Lloyd Bassart was the adult who had finally gotten behind the young couple and supported them in their desire to be married at Christmas—sooner than Christmas if it could be managed. This sharp change of attitude had occurred one night early in December when Roy broke down over the phone and in tears told
his
parents—who had been pouring it on, once again—to stop. “I can’t take any more!” he had cried. “Stop! Stop! Lucy’s pregnant!”

Well. Well. It had required only the two “wells.” If what Roy had just confessed was the actual situation as it existed,
then his father did not see that Roy had any choice but to take the responsibility for what he had done. Between a man doing the right thing and a man doing the wrong thing, there was really no choice, as far as Mr. Bassart could see. Weeping, Roy said it was more or less what he had been thinking to himself all along. “I should certainly hope so,” said his father, and so that, finally, was that.

S
he moved into his room at Mrs. Blodgett’s. Mrs. Blodgett, who had called her a hussy. Mrs. Blodgett, who had called Roy crooked. Mrs. Blodgett, with her thousand little rules and regulations.

But Lucy said nothing. In the weeks and months following the wedding she found herself trying with all her might to do what she was told. You could not question someone’s every word and deed and expect to be happy with them, or expect them to be happy either. They were married. She must trust him; what kind of life would it be otherwise?

Mrs. Blodgett and Roy had worked out the arrangement beforehand: only another five dollars a month for the room. Surely Lucy had to admit that was a bargain, especially since Roy had gotten Mrs. Blodgett to throw in kitchen privileges for the hour between seven and eight in the evening. Of course, they would have to leave the kitchen exactly as they had found it. It was not, after all, the kitchen of a hotel, it was the kitchen of a dwelling place; but apparently Roy had assured Mrs. Blodgett that Lucy was neat as a pin, and knew her way around a kitchen, having worked for three years after school and summers in the Dairy Bar up in Liberty Center. “But that, Mr. Bassart, is my very point, it is not some dairy bar, it is not some—” He assured her then that he would
work in the kitchen right along with Lucy. How would that be? In fact, if Mrs. Blodgett had any dishes left over from her own dinner, they could easily wash hers while washing up their own. In the Army he had once had to wash pots and pans for seventeen hours straight on K.P.; as a result, one dish more or less wouldn’t faze him too much, she could be sure.

Mrs. Blodgett said she would extend them the privilege, on a trial basis, and only for so long as they didn’t abuse it.

During the next few months Roy several times went out after dinner and knocked on the parlor door to ask the landlady if she would like to join them in the kitchen for dessert. Privately he said to Lucy that the extra chocolate pudding or fruit cup cost no more than a few pennies, and with someone of Mrs. Blodgett’s changeable disposition, it was worth building up points on your side. Their getting married had more or less restored Mrs. Blodgett’s faith in him, but still and all, where three people were living together under one roof, there was no sense looking for trouble, especially if you could just as easily avoid it by using your head in advance.

She said nothing. They must not squabble over issues that were of no real consequence. She must not criticize him for what—she told herself—was really nothing more than a desire to please. Some people did things one way, and Roy did them another. Weren’t they married? Hadn’t he acted as she had wanted?

TRUST HIM.

To her surprise, hardly a Sunday passed when they did not travel up to Liberty Center to visit his family. Roy said that under ordinary circumstances it wouldn’t be necessary, but what with all the strain of the past months and the hard feelings that had developed, it seemed to him a good idea to try to smooth things over before the baby was born and life
really
began to get hectic. The fact was that she was a stranger to his family, as he was a stranger to hers. Now that they were married, what sense did that make? They would all be seeing a lot of one another in the years to come, and it seemed to him ridiculous to start off on the wrong foot. It was an easy two-hour
ride up, and aside from the gas, what would it cost them?

So she went—to Sunday dinner at the Bassarts’, and on the way out of town, over to say hello to her own family. Silently she sat in the parlor she had hoped never to set foot in again, while Roy engaged her family in fifteen minutes of small talk, most of it for the benefit of her father and Daddy Will. They talked a lot about prefab houses. Her father was supposed to be thinking about building a prefab house, and Daddy Will was supposed to be thinking that it was something her father was capable of doing. Roy said he had buddies down at Britannia who could probably help them draw up plans, when they got to that stage. Contractors were throwing up whole communities of prefabs overnight, Roy said. Oh, it’s a real building revolution, her father said. It sure is, Mr. Nelson. Yep, looks like the coming thing, said Daddy Will. It sure does, Mr. Carroll, they’re throwing up whole communities overnight.