“The Brents?” Elizabeth was momentarily startled, because she and Oliver had never consciously entertained Lucy and Steven. It was always more a matter of sitting around, arguing amicably, until someone, usually Oliver, said around midnight, “What’s in the icebox besides the light bulb?” And then there was a general exodus into the kitchen, without the thread of the argument even trembling.
But Constance Ives wouldn’t be a party to any such haphazard arrangements. The prop of an invalid mother for nearly twenty years, she had learned, along with infinite patience, that you could keep an iron-clad control of any social situation if things were arranged in advance. So many drinks, so much sustenance, offered with a sensible eve on the clock. After a suitable week or two had elapsed, you went to their house.
She was waiting now, eyebrows lifted a little over the pale gray eyes. The lids were thick and white and drooping, as though she were facing a strong light. Or as though, Elizabeth had thought once, Constance stored her secrets under those pale lazy folds of flesh, and you mightn’t know her if she suddenly opened them wide and the secrets blazed at you.
She brought her mind back guiltily to Constance’s question. “Oh —cheese and crackers, I suppose, isn’t that easier?”
“It isn’t a question of that,” said Constance, burying a rebuke in good humor. “I wasn’t sure what you usually gave them.”
“Cheese and crackers,” Elizabeth said mildly, zippering her dress, “because I’m lazy to begin with and it is easier.”
Constance stood up and went slowly to the door of the bedroom, plainly wanting to say something, hesitating. Elizabeth said cheerfully, “Slip showing?” and Constance flushed and shook her pale brown head. “This is the first time you’ve really entertained at all since—I mean . . . do you think . . . black?”
Distantly, downstairs, Oliver clattered ice into a bucket. Constance looked distressed. Elizabeth pushed back her involuntary anger and said, “I’ve always worn a lot of black. Heavens, you didn’t think it was mourning?”
The flush in the long face deepened to red. Constance said wretchedly, “No, I just—I . . . I’ll see about things in the kitchen,” and fled, stumblingly.
I’ll have to stop this, thought Elizabeth clearly, attaching earrings without looking at them. Or pretty soon I won’t be normal. . . .
Later, the evening telescoped itself for her. There was Lucy’s face, small, bony, elegant; Lucy’s voice with relief under its animation: “Look at her, Steven, she’s blooming. What’s the penalty for malingering in this state?” There was Steven, smiling and quiet and somehow reassuring: “Of course she’s blooming. She’s going to do a book for us soon, aren’t you, Elizabeth? Been at your typewriter yet?”
There was Constance, effacing herself expertly, giving precedence to talk and laughter just as she had given precedence to her mother’s illness and medicines. Most important of all for Elizabeth, there was Oliver, taking the brunt of the evening on his own shoulders, although you could only know that if you were married to him. Oliver glancing at the clock at close to midnight, and coming across to her as quietly and intently as though there were only the two of them in the room, and saying lightly, “Off you go. Doctor’s orders, at a hundred bucks a syllable.”
Elizabeth hadn’t felt tired until then; she realized all at once that the thin betraying dampness had started along her forehead. There were goodnights and apologies, and upstairs in their room Oliver’s sudden kiss, almost angry in its intensity. “Take care of yourself, hear? I won’t have you pushing our luck. Wait a minute. . . .”
He crossed the room to her bureau. Elizabeth, feeling bereft of his arms, said wearily and happily, “But I don’t want a pill, darling. Honestly.”
“That’s what you think tonight.” Oliver went briskly into the bathroom, filled a water glass and returned, holding pill and glass imperatively before her. Elizabeth laughed at him. “You don’t want me to fall asleep taking off my dress? This zipper requires the clearest of heads. I’ll take it when I’m in bed, and look, you’d better go down, you’ve been gone much too long already. . . .”
The bedroom was very peaceful: white candlewick on the beds, curly sea green rugs on the floor, toile curtains in ivory and burnt red shutting out the wild windy night. Elizabeth, prolonging the peace and the heavenly sensation of not being required to do anything at all, lay contentedly on her bed without undressing. Cigarette, shower, sleep . . .
For the first time in weeks she could laugh at herself, she could wake out of a disturbing dream to her own solid happiness. That was worth all the vitamin capsules in the world, all the sleeping pills—one of which she would presently take. . . .
She finished one cigarette and absentmindedly lighted another. In the middle of that a motor started into life down in the driveway, shouted farewells echoed on the air. After a few moments the stairs creaked and careful footsteps approached, receded. Constance.
Oliver would be coming up in a minute—or having a last brandy beside the fire. Elizabeth slid off the bed and smoothed her sheath of black. She thought. He must know I’ve been odd. It’s only fair he should know I’ve come to my senses, and opened her bedroom door and went down the stairs. They could still, after five years of marriage, with two children fathoms deep in sleep in the room next to theirs, come quietly and surprisingly to each other and find all the pleasure of the beginning.
But Oliver wasn’t beside the fire. She caught a glimpse of his shoulder in the glass door that led to the sunporch. The shoulder swung out of sight, as though he had bent very suddenly. Elizabeth had her hand on the knob of the door when she heard, mystifyingly, the sound of Oliver’s voice.
