rather have had her desire him than pity him. When we were getting ready for bed that night, the telephone rang, and when I picked it up and said hello, no one answered. Fifteen minutes later, the telephone rang again, and when there was no answer this time, I began to shout and swear at Trencher, but he didn’t reply?there wasn’t even the click of a closed circuit and I felt like a fool. Because I felt like a fool, I accused Ethel of having led him on, of having encouraged him, but these accusations didn’t affect her, and when I finished them, I felt worse, because I knew that she was innocent, and that she had to go out on the street to buy groceries and air the children, and that there was no force of law that could keep Trencher from waiting for her there, or from staring up at our lights.
We went to the Newsomes’ one night the next week, and while we were taking off our coats, I heard Trencher’s voice. He left a few minutes after we arrived, but his manner?the sad glance he gave Ethel, the way he sidestepped me, the sorrowful way that he refused the Newsomes when they asked him to stay longer, and the gallant attentions he showed his miserable wife made me angry. Then I happened to notice Ethel and saw that her color was high, that her eyes were bright, and that while she was praising Mrs. Newsome’s new shoes, her mind was not on what she was saying. When we came home that night, the baby-sitter told us crossly that neither of the children had slept. Ethel took their temperatures. Carol was all right, but the boy had a fever of a hundred and four. Neither of us got much sleep that night, and in the morning Ethel called me at the office to say that Carl had bronchitis. Three days later, his sister came down with it.
For the next two weeks, the sick children took up most of our time. They had to be given medicine at eleven in the evening and again at three in the morning, and we lost a lot of sleep. It was impossible to ventilate or clean the house, and when I came in, after walking through the cold from the bus stop, it stank of cough syrups and tobacco, fruit cores and sickbeds. There were blankets and pillows, ashtrays, and medicine glasses everywhere. We divided the work of sickness reasonably and took turns at getting up in the night, but I often fell asleep at my desk during the day, and after dinner Ethel would fall asleep in a chair in the living room. Fatigue seems to differ for adults and children only in that adults recognize it and so are not overwhelmed by something they can’t name; but even with a name for it they are overwhelmed, and when we were tired, we were unreasonable, cross, and the victims of transcendent depressions. One evening after the worst of the sickness was over, I came home and found some roses in the living room. Ethel said that Trencher had brought them. She hadn’t let him in. She had closed the door in his face. I took the roses and threw them out. We didn’t quarrel. The children went to sleep at nine, and a few minutes after nine I went to bed. Sometime later, something woke me.
A light was burning in the hall. I got up. The children’s room and the living room were dark. I found Ethel in the kitchen sitting at the table, drinking coffee.
“I’ve made some fresh coffee,” she said. “Carol felt croupy again, so I steamed her. They’re both asleep now.”
“How long have you been up?”
“Since half past twelve,” she said. “What time is it?”
“Two.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down. She got up from the table and rinsed her cup and looked at herself in a mirror that hangs over the sink. It was a windy night. A dog was wailing somewhere in an apartment below ours, and a loose radio antenna was brushing against the kitchen window.
“It sounds like a branch,” she said.
In the bare kitchen light, meant for peeling potatoes and washing dishes, she looked very tired.
“Will the children be able to go out tomorrow?”
“Oh, I hope so,” she said. “Do you realize that I haven’t been out of this apartment in over two weeks?” She spoke bitterly and this startled me.
“It hasn’t been quite two weeks.”
“It’s been over two weeks,” she said.
“Well, let’s figure it out,” I said. “The children were taken sick on a Saturday night. That was the fourth. Today is the?”
“Stop it, stop it,” she said. “I know how long it’s been. I haven’t had my shoes on in two weeks.”
“You make it sound pretty bad.”
“It is. I haven’t had on a decent dress or fixed my hair.”
“It could be worse.”
“My mother’s cooks had a better life.”
“I doubt that.”
“My mother’s cooks had a better life,” she said loudly.
