Saturday Night

by MARJORIE ANAÏS HOUSEPIAN

SHE told herself that she wouldn’t start worrying until five o’clock, when it would begin to get dark. If he drove carefully and didn’t stop at a bar, Jim couldn’t possibly be back before four anyway. If only he had left Jamie at home!

By four-thirty she had scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen floors, waxed them and the woodwork, put the baby to sleep, and vacuumed the rugs. She turned on the radio before she began dusting the furniture. The good-music station was getting interference from the Italians again, and all the other stations seemed to have hillbilly music. She finally got Uncle Hugh’s Houseparty. Uncle Hugh was interviewing a Mrs. Entwhistle. “Entwhistle. Is that right, madam?” That was right. Mrs. Entwhistle was from Savannah, Georgia, and she had raised eight children, all living. “Eight children! Think of that, friends!” Mrs. Entwhistle giggled, the friends applauded, and Peg turned off the radio.

She heard the baby crying and went in and picked him up and began rocking him. Soon his eyelids fluttered and closed and he was asleep again. His head was damp where it touched her arm, and his dark hair lay in small wet curls around his forehead. As she held him she marveled at how much he looked like herself. The first time she saw Jamie, when the nurse brought him in and handed him to her with that condescending smile all maternity nurses seem to have at such moments, she had wanted to cry because he had nothing of her. He was all Jim, and she might as well have had no part in him at all.

“He’s his father every bit of him, isn’t he?” the nurse had said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It was the funniest thing to see them looking at each other — your husband on one side of the glass and this little fella on the other. I’ve never seen any two look more alike.” She had wanted to hit her.

She held the baby in her arms awhile, watching the jerky way he drew in his breath, the quiver of the skin on his closed eyelids. She ran her hand over his hair a few times before laying him gently in the crib face down. He drew up his legs and raised his rump, like a miniature porpoise, the moment he touched the bed, and she covered him and went into the kitchen. It was five after five by the kitchen clock.

Looking out the window she could see the street lights going on. She noticed the headlights on Bob Grant’s car glance off the wall as he swung into the driveway across the court. The car door slammed reassuringly and Bob, his collar turned up against the rain and his shoulders bent, ran for the back door of his apartment. Carol Grant operated very much on schedule and at five after five she would be setting the table. She would have bathed Roger and fed him his evening cereal and changed her dungarees for one of the frilly pastel cotton dresses she was endlessly sewing for herself. “Bob hates seeing me in dungarees,” she always said. “He likes me to kind of primp up for him in the evening. And he throws a fit if I don’t have dinner ready when he gets home.” Peg had come to realize long ago that Carol was endowing poor bland Bob with the one quality he didn’t have; but just then it mattered very little that Carol Grant was fooling herself, or that Bob Grant was a bore—myopic, bald, and ineffectual in his middle age. As he shut the kitchen door and disappeared inside, she felt a twinge of envy, even for Carol.

She went into the living room and picked up a magazine. No use worrying until five-thirty, really. It might be snowing up the mountain. If the roads were bad, it would surely slow him up. It would slow him up despite himself. If the brakes held.

“Jim,” she had said that morning, keeping her voice low, “it’s bound to be skiddy on the mountain. Will you stop and have the brakes checked?”

“The brakes are all right.”

“You have to step down all the way to the floor board.”

“They were tightened in September.”

It’s the way you’ve been driving lately, she had wanted to say, your damned erratic driving; and if you get one more ticket, they’ll take your license away and I wish to heaven they would.

“Must you go today? It might be nice tomorrow and we could take the baby and drive over to Carey’s.”

“What do you want me to do, sit around here all day and go nuts?”

She had walked out of the room then, because there was too much she wanted to say. All right, take the car and go wrap it and yourself around a tree. Be sure to stop at a bar first and then drive like mad because you can’t do anything halfway, and have another accident, only this time do it up right. We’ve got no hospital money now; you spent it on the power saw you had to have so you wouldn’t sit around and go nuts Saturdays. Dear God, she thought, why is it everybody can go nuts except me?

She had waited a little, until it had worn off, and then she had come in to where he was sitting, tearing pieces out of the newspaper and throwing them into the fire. “Will you try to be back by four?” she had said, standing between him and the fireplace. “I promised Jamie I’d run him over to play with Mike this afternoon.”

“I’m taking Jamie with me,” he had said, not looking at her.

That was when she could have started it, she thought later. That was one of the ten thousand times she could have brought it to a head. Was it weakness, she wondered, or an aversion built up over the years when her parents’ voices had come to her shrill and taut, as she lay in bed, and she had felt something within her shrivel and turn inside out? The way it did when she first saw Jamie. The way it did when Jim quit his job while she was pregnant. The way it did when Jamie had pneumonia and Jim didn’t come home for three days.

She flipped the pages of the magazine on her lap. “How the Berchwassers Manage on $3800 a Year,” an article said. Bully for the Berchwassers, she thought. Why don’t they ask me for an article? “How the Clarks Have Managed on Less than Nothing and More than Enough,” or “The Ups and Downs of the Clarks — a Study in Adjustment.”

“Jim Clark is a genius,” the article would begin. “He can do anything he wants to do and nothing he must do. He can be witty, charming, and brilliant, and he has very often been almost successful. His faults, of course, are not his. They probably go back to a great many things his parents did to him and quite a few things his wife did not do for him, and now if he’s drinking too much it’s because nobody, nobody, nobody understands Jim Clark.”

It’s almost five-thirty, she thought, but I won’t start worrying until I finish looking through the magazine. “He also has a wife who worries too much. But she can’t help it either.” She turned over a few more pages. “Are You Helping Your Husband?” The headline shouted at her. “Every wife wants her husband to be a success, but find your score on the following quiz to see if you’re really helping or hindering him.”

“Do you go to bed with cold cream on your face?” Never, never, never. Not for the first few years, anyway, and no hair curlers either.

“Do you let him know in little ways that you secretly think he’s wonderful?” Of course. Always. Little ways, big ways. But you run out of things after a while. “Jim, you’re wonderful. I’m sure you would have gotten the promotion if you hadn’t quit the job.”

“Do you nag at him?” Stupid question. Ask twice at four-hour intervals and then do it yourself. Any fool knows that.

“Do you interrupt him when he’s enjoying himself at a party because you want to go home? “ Only when he gets insulting. What would you do? Lord, he ought, to be president of the company. She picked the magazine up and took it into the kitchen with her.

2

THE clock said ten of six and the rain was splintering, half frozen, against the kitchen window. She stepped on the trash can and dropped the magazine into it. She thought, I ought to finish dusting. I ought to wake the baby — he’ll never get to sleep tonight if I don’t. I ought to start worrying — it’s just about the time Jamie will be getting cranky and tired. “Daddy, when are we going home? I’m hungry.” “We’ll be home pretty soon. We’ll stop here first and get you a hamburger.” “ I don’t want a hamburger.” “Behave now, Jay, or Daddy won’t take you along next time.” If they weren’t in a heap halfway down the mountain. She closed her eyes and held her face in her hands thinking, But somebody would call — if anybody happened that way.

The phone rang just then. She ran, tripping over the hall rug where Jim still hadn’t nailed it down, and caught the call on the second ring.

“Hello?” she said. She could hear her voice cracking.

“Peg?” It was Susan, next door. Their walls adjoined, and they had discovered how thin the wall was when she and Susan had both been in bed with the flu and they found they could converse through it by shouting only slightly.

“Just wanted to check if you were in,” Susan said. “It’s so quiet over there and your car was gone. I’m desperate for a can of tomatoes. The rain’s so bad I can’t see going out.”

“Want me to run it over?”

“No, dear, thanks. I’ll come over and get it.”

I ought to wake the baby up, she thought again after she hung up, but she turned on the lights instead and lit a cigarette; then she heard Susan’s knock and let her in, quickly.

“Lord, what a night!” Susan said.

“How about splitting a beer?” she said. “Or are you in a rush?” If she would only stay a little while. Surely Jim would drive up any minute.

“Good idea. It’s a madhouse over there and I’ll have to put the stew in the pressure cooker anyway. The kids go wild on a day like this.” She looked around. “Jamie away? Baby asleep? Lucky you!”

“I’m beginning to get worried,” Peg said from the kitchen, and her voice sounded strangely unconcerned to her own ears. “Jim took Jamie with him up to Bailey’s Ridge this morning. They left at ten and they’re not back yet. It’s not more than a twohour drive, is it? The roads will be fierce.”

“We’ve done it in an hour in the summer. What in heaven’s name did he go up there for in this weather?

“He looked at that Llewellyn property last summer, and he decided he wanted to see how it looked in December. It had to be today, of course. I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to pay for it.”

“Isn’t that the truth,” Susan said as Peg came into the room with the two glasses on a tray. “Bruce got the bug a year ago spring. Hunting lodges, no less, and the car hadn’t been paid off. Don’t worry, one trip in this weather will cure him.”

You don’t know Jim, Peg thought; lordy, you don’t.

“Well,” said Susan, settling back with her glass and raising her eyebrows, “our neighbors to the left were at it again this morning.”

“Oh, goody,” Peg said sarcastically, but she felt a well of nausea building up inside her.

“Honestly,” Susan was saying, “I’m not going to let Jeremy go over there any more. The language! Half of it Bruce has to translate for me. It’s unbelievable!”

“She seems rather nice when you talk to her,” Peg said, hating herself.

“Oh, sure. Sweet as pie. You ought to come over some morning and hear them. Bruce keeps threatening to knock on the wall and referee. Oh well, it takes all kinds, I always say. I really ought to go.” She drained her glass.

“No, look, the stew’ll wait. One more cigarette.” She looked, involuntarily, toward the window. It was snowing. The large white flakes drifted endlessly in the glow of the street lamp.

“I know you’re worried,” Susan said. “But you know they’re all right. Look, if they’re not back in half an hour leave a note on the door and come on over and have supper with us.”

“I have to get Allen up and feed him. He’ll be? awake all night — he’s all off schedule.”

“Bring him along and we’ll put him in the play pen. Okay?”

“I’ll see,” Peg said. “Thanks anyway. If I’m not there by seven, go ahead and cat.”

3

SHE hadn’t eaten all day, she realized as she shut the door. She was hungry, but the thought of food repelled her. Even the one glass of beer made her head light, and if she could forget about them, they would surely show up soon. Forget about them, she said to herself. You’re just an old worry-wart anyway. Remember the time you were worried sick because he went to Galveston overnight on flying time during his vacation and didn’t show up for four days? And he had a perfectly good reason. He always had a perfectly good reason, in those days. The boys chartered a boat and went deep-sea fishing for a couple of days. Sure, he’d called, but you were out hanging clothes and Jamie answered the phone and when you came in Jamie said, “Daddy’s gone fishing.” He was pretty good to remember that much when he was hardly three. And you said, “No, dear. Daddy’s gone in his airplane to Texas,” and Jamie kept saying, “Nope, Daddy’s gone fishing.” “Serves you right for taking your son for a moron,” Jim had said, laughing, when she told him. “You know perfectly well Base Operations would have told you if anything had happened.”

It’s me, she thought, I anticipate trouble. But then that time when I didn’t, they called me from the hospital; and another time I didn’t they had to carry him home, drunk—he’d always managed to walk in before then. And now he has Jamie with him on top of a mountain and it’s snowing. But I’m not going to think about it.

She went into the bedroom and picked up the baby. He was soaking wet and the side of his face on which he had been sleeping was red and creased. He kicked his legs and cried lustily while she changed him.

“Cheer up, old fella,” she said, “chow’s on.” She carried him to the kitchen and held him in one arm while she put on some water, to heat the bottle, with the other.

The refrigerator rumbled and started to hum when she slammed the door. It made the apartment seem ominously quiet. It was a quarter of seven, and the snow was beginning to settle. An hour and a half to Winchester, another half hour up the Ridge. One hour — at the most one hour — to walk around the property, and two hours back. Say three, if they stopped on the way. If the ear was stuck halfway up the Ridge it would be pretty cold, even with the heater on. And Jamie would be hungry. I wish the damn phone would ring, she thought.

She fed the baby and put him in the pen, then made herself a sandwich and sat on the couch to eat, wondering whether to start the mending or write some letters or straighten out the desk drawers or pay some bills; but the thought of the bills depressed her. The rest can wait, she thought, and she wrapped the baby in a blanket and ran next door to Susan’s.

They were in the midst of dinner when she arrived. She declined the plate Susan offered, but Bruce drew up a chair for her by the table and brought her a drink, while they finished dessert.

“Jim not back yet?” Bruce asked it almost too casually.

“Did Susan tell you? They went up to the Ridge. I guess the weather’s slowed them up.”

“Sure it has,” Bruce said. “It’s a rough climb even in the summer. He has probably holed up somewhere till it blows over.

“Probably.” Why don’t you say what you’re thinking? Why don’t you say nobody in his right mind would go up that mountain in December?

“Jim’ll be all right,” Bruce said.

Jim’ll be all right. She remembered Wynn Kelly at Jim’s promotion party, right after the war ended. Wise old Kelly, who never did make major. How she had hated him that night!

“Colonel, suh, faction above ‘n’ beyon’ the call of duty — ah present you with the Croix de Guerre avec Trois Palmes!” Joe Rocca, whose Mississippi accent veritably curled after three drinks, was sticking a toothpick speared in an olive into Jim’s blouse while everybody screamed. Peg, her face a little tired from smiling, had retreated to the chartreuse settee at the rear of the club lounge and had been caught there by Bonnie Richards, who never conversed with anyone whose husband was below the rank of lieutenant colonel, though she occasionally flirted with the younger officers. It had amused Peg to see her coming toward her.

“Peg Clark! What are you doing hiding back here on a night like this?”

“Hello, Mrs. Richards,” Peg had said. They had been introduced at a dozen parties since she’d been living on the post, but this was the first time Bonnie Richards was acknowledging the fact that they had met before.

“Oh, call me Bonnie, please! We’re all informal here on the post. I’ve been meaning to call you up for the longest time, but you know how it is.”

“Of course I do,” Peg said.

“It’s awful how little time you get to do all the things you want to. Now that you’ll be putting in for larger quarters you’ll know what I mean. They’re wonderful, of course, but much too big to take care of without the kind of help we used to get before the war.”

“I hope we don’t have to move,” Peg said. “There are only three of us, and our quarters are almost too big now.” Bonnie was looking at her as though she were a little odd.

“Naturally you’ll have to move. I’ll never forget the quarters we had at Hamilton. They’ve divided them in two now. I hear. Six bedrooms. But they even gave us a houseman in those days, and Rog was only a major. Well, times have changed.”

She had finally bored Bonnie into leaving. Now Jim and Joe Rocca were singing a duet, a rollicking ditty about what the boy did on Pig-Alle. In pantomime. “Hallelujah!” Joe was shouting between choruses. “Man, ah’m gettin’ stewed t’night!” And then she noticed Kelly standing in a corner and looking at her. When he caught her eve he came over, slowly, until he was standing by the settee, looking down at her with his twisted smile.

“Hi-ya, m’am Colonel?” he said. “Bursting with pride?”

Why, you ten-cent runt, she wanted to say, what’s the matter — sour grapes? But she had never been the type to hit back.

Jim and Joe Rocca had their arms around each other singing: “. . . and . . . they . . . gave him up for lost on . . . Pig . . . Alle!”

“The Colonel’s in great shape tonight,” Kelly said.

“You’re pretty sharp-witted yourself.”

“I’m drunk,” Kelly said. “Mind if I sit down?” She moved over. “What’re they gonna do without a war to fight Maybe we oughtta cook up a new little war for ‘em.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Kelly said, “worry about those poor bastards. I’m only a misfit inside the outfit.”

“You’re pretty insulting,” she said, “even if you were right.”

“So you know I’m right! I thought you would. You’re a misfit around here yourself.”

“Thanks,”she said.

“What’s he gonna do, stay in?”

“No. Why are you so concerned about him.'”

“I like, him,”Kelly said. “I like you too. I like you even better.”

“Look, Captain,” she said, “that’s not necessary.”

“Who said it was necessary? I’m merely exercising my prerogative of saying what I think ‘cause I’m drunk and don’t know any better. What’s he gonna do when he gets out?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to lie awake nights worrying about it?”

“You have, haven’t you?”

“Oh shut up,” she said.

“I’m sorry.” Kelly was looking pretty sober now. “I’m sorry. I was being rotten. Don’t worry about Jim, he’ll be all right.” But he had said it as Bruce was saying it now. It sounded like a dirge.

“How about some three-handed bridge? The dishes’ll wait.” It was Susan talking. She didn’t feel like bridge, three-handed or any other kind, but she said she’d love to play. She played sloppily, and after a while she offered to start the dishes while Susan put the kids to bed. Glancing at her watch as she took it off, she noticed that it was almost nine-thirty, and the thought suddenly occurred to her that if her phone were ringing, she wouldn’t hear. She raced through the dishes, picked up the baby, and left, rather abruptly, before Susan was through with the children.

“Give us a ring if you get worried,” Bruce said, looking at her with pity, she thought.

“Thanks,” she said, and she wondered just at what time he would advise her to get worried.

4

SHE had half expected the phone would be ringing as she opened the door, but it was relentlessly silent. Her tongue felt dry and she recognized the slightly sickening feeling of panic gathering in her stomach. She put the baby to bed mechanically, and felt the panic gather momentum when he quickly fell asleep and she was left with nothing more to do. What do I do now? I ought to call somebody, she thought. Who do you call — the police? “Pardon me, have you had an accident reported? Could you send a patrol car up to the Ridge? I’ve lost a husband and child. They left this morning at ten and it’s after ten-thirty now and they’re not home yet.” “Yeah, yeah, lady, we’ll let you know.” I wonder how many calls like that they get every night. I ought to go to bed and sleep, and they’ll be here when I wake up. But how’ll I get to sleep? Why did I let him take Jamie along! I wouldn’t worry if Jamie weren’t with him. I wouldn’t care if he never got back. I’d wish to heaven he’d never come back!

“Oh, ring, damn you!” she said aloud to the telephone.

She felt her anger toward him growing, almost physically. When she went in to brush her teeth and found that he had been squeezing the toothpaste from the top again, it appeared in front of her eyes like a great black blurb. She could feel the sweat forming on her chin and above her eyebrows and on the back of her neck. Her face, in the mirror, was chalk white. She took the bottle of aspirin and a glass of water into the bedroom with her, and was about to put them on the dresser, when she heard the door open and suddenly she froze.

“— in there and get to bed, Jay,” his voice came through a slate wall, grating. “For God’s sake,” he was grinning in the doorway, “what in hell’s wrong with you?”

She hurled the glass. Violently. With such force that it splintered as it struck his chin and left a diluted stream of blood running along the edge of his still half-grinning mouth. He didn’t move, and she threw the bottle after it but it missed its mark and shattered against the wall, and she heard herself screaming.

It wasn’t her voice. It was an aggregate of the voices that shriek from the windows of tenements on hot summer nights, filled with all the measure of the world’s despair and frustration and failure. It was a wild voice; coarse, distorted, malignant. It came out in words she thought she had never known before, and he stood there and didn’t move. Then she saw that Jamie was standing behind him, his eyes wild with terror and the saliva dripping down his chin, looking ridiculously like his father, even now. She ran past them into the nursery and closed the door and leaned, exhausted, against it. And then she picked up the baby and held him so tight that he began crying too.