“Two years later—two years of falling back into my old fears and dreaming ways, and rising up above them for moments of happiness, only to fall back again, and finally leveling out—Cecil and I were married.
“The first several weeks of living with him, I remembered Bill and wondered if I shouldn’t run away. But that was mostly when I was alone, and when Cecil came home I felt better, and then I didn’t remember Bill any more.
“Cecil had a terrible temper, and though he was never violent around me, and tried to hide it, I could tell when he would bump his head or see something he didn’t like that his true reactions, if he didn’t keep them hidden and falsify them, would be abnormally brutal. Sometimes he would even look at me like an animal when I’d done something he didn’t like. Yet those times were very rare. . . . It’s just that he lived in sort of a set way. Healways sat in the same chair, slept on the same side, approached any problems with the same attitude, wouldn’t eat certain foods that he had decided long ago were distasteful regardless of the way they were fixed, listened to the same programs on the radio, went to bed within a half-hour of the same time every night and generally planned out every waking hour according to a long schedule.
“After a year they put him on night shift. He was very angry about that, and said there were plenty of other drivers with less seniority, and that there were only two night buses. So he had to work Saturday nights, which was his bowling night, and there was no end to the pain that caused him. I tried to get him to quit driving, and even offered to go back to the factory while he found another job, because after two months he still resented it as much as he had when he’d first been notified of his shift change. But he said he wouldn’t let me work, and for some reason refused to look for another job in the afternoon after he had gotten up. It became frustrating, because he seemed so miserable, yet didn’t seem to want to do anything about it. . . .
“Maybe I better stop.”
“No, no,” said Della, “go on. I can’t tell you how interested I am.”
“You’re so kind. I knew she would be wonderful,” she said to John, and put out her arm. He turned to her, away from watching his sleeping father, and smiled as though he’d been listening. On the horizon, an exhausted rim of pink was all that remained of the daylight, which stretched, yawned and finally slid unannounced below the dark line of the ground.
“Then after leaving home on a Saturday night at a little before eleven so that he could be at work at a quarter after and have a cup of coffee at the station before beginning the eleven-thirty run, he didn’t come home. I waited clear through Sunday, Sunday night and Monday morning. Monday afternoonI became frantic and telephoned Bart Lewis, a bowling friend of his. But he hadn’t seen him, and sounded like he resented being called—as though my husband’s business shouldn’t concern him. At eleven thirty I called the station. The man from the bus company, in a voice like a radio announcer, told me that Cecil had not driven a bus since over six months ago. He elaborated to say, ‘It was December and Cecil was upset about the shift change. We explained to him that it was only for a reorganizational period of two weeks while the new drivers and new routes were worked out. He got angry, demanded his money for the last week and quit, so soon that he never learned that because of so much protest the reorganization plan had been discontinued and the company agreed to have the training period of the new drivers be completed on the night buses. But he’d got his money and left, and never came back. Who did you say was calling?’
“I set the phone down into its cradle and looked at the floor. The green specks in the linoleum swirled around. I felt like I was drowning. December. For over three months Cecil’d been leaving home every night at ten minutes to eleven and coming home at seven thirty in the morning, sometimes as late as eight, but never as late as eight thirty. Every week he gave me money for the groceries, my own allowance, and paid the bills. Nearly every night he would complain about having to go to work just as the rest of the folks were beginning to have a good time.
“It was more than a betrayal or a lie. It had no explanation that I could discover. It was like someone saying to you, ‘What you know isn’t true.’ And when, in indignation, you turn to your storehouse of undeniable facts to prove yourself, you find they’ve shifted just enough to make you out to be a fool.
“Then the shame: trying to find out what one’s husband has been doing every night of the week, and Saturdays too, for three months. The bowling was a ruse as well, and alleged friendships . . . everything. His mother’s address in St. Louisbelonged to a trucking company. The high-school ring in his drawer turned out to be authentic, but the few years he’d spent there twenty-five years ago were gone from the memory of the teachers and only dimly remembered by others, who were able, however, to point out where he had lived with his parents. So I stood there and looked at the house, and
