Mrs. Bridge (8 page)

Harriet came in to ask if she would like some hot chocolate.

“Oh, no thank you, Harriet,” said Mrs. Bridge. “You have some.”

Harriet was so nice. And she was a good worker. Mrs. Bridge was very proud of having Harriet and knew that she would be next to impossible to replace, and yet there were times when Mrs. Bridge half wished she would quit. Why she wished this, she did not know, unless it was that with Harriet around to do all the work she herself was so often dismally bored. When she was first married she used to do the cooking and housecleaning and washing, and how she had looked forward to a few minutes of leisure! But now how odd there was too much leisure. Mrs. Bridge did not admit this fact to anyone, for it embarrassed her; indeed she very often gave the impression of being distracted by all the things needed to be done phone the laundry, the grocer, take Ruth to the dentist, Carolyn to tap-dancing class, Douglas to the barber shop, and so on. But the truth remained, and settled upon her with ever greater finality.

The light snapped on in the back hall. She heard his cough and the squeak of the closet door and the familiar flapping sound of his briefcase on the upper shelf. Suddenly overwhelmed by the need for reassurance, she turned swiftly from the window and hurried toward him with an intent, wistful expression, knowing what she wanted without knowing how to ask for it.

He heard the rustle of her dress and her quick footsteps on the carpet. He was hanging up his coat as she approached^ and he said, without irritation, but a trifle wearily because this was not the first time it had happened, “I see you forgot to have the car lubricated.”

She reflected that her difficulties with Ruth and Douglas might be inevitable; after all, years had passed since she was their age.

Each of her own birthdays she celebrated without joy, with a certain resignation and doubt; it came and went as it was supposed to, and a few months later she would find herself depressed and unaccountably perplexed by how old she was. Thirty, thirty-five, forty, all had come to visit her like ad-monitory relatives, and all had slipped away without a trace, without a sound, and now, once again, she was waiting.

Someone was at the front door; the chimes were jingling sweetly. It was the postman with a package. It was from Memphis. She cut the masking tape, lifted the cardboard flaps, and underneath the excelsior she found a pewter tray in the shape of a clover. She took hold of the stem to lift it out, but the tray, instead of remaining rigid like all the other trays she had ever seen, began to droop. The alloy was much too soft to support its own weight, so that in a few seconds the tray was dangling almost straight down from the handle. Mrs. Bridge was not surprised. She pressed it back into shape, returned it to the box, carried the box to the attic, and that afternoon wrote her annual thank-you note to second-cousin Lulubelle Watts. In years past Mrs. Bridge had received from Lulu such birthday gifts as a bile green kitchen alarm clock, a long-haired pillow, a framed photograph of the Great Smokies, and a pair of heavy bronze balls which apparently should have had an instruction booklet. In thinking over these gifts she often tried to decide whether Lulubelle disliked her and was deliberately insulting her, or whether it was simply that Lulu had the world’s worst taste. She also thought of picking out something just as grotesque to send in return, but minding the Golden Rule she always shipped to Memphis on Lulu’s birthday some very nice gift in the nature of a leather-covered engagement calendar, guest towels, a cake knife, or a bisque figurine.

At his wife’s suggestion Mr. Bridge had walked around to the vacant lot to examine the eccentric and mystifying memorial Douglas had built and which he had not yet abandoned; Mr. Bridge tried to topple it and then simply attempted to shake it. The tower did not move. Satisfied that it would not collapse while Douglas or his friends were clambering about, and that they had sense enough not to impale themselves on the outcroppings, he returned to his evening newspaper and thought no more about it.

Mrs. Bridge, however, was uneasy. She sensed that people In the neighborhood were aware of the tower. Even so, she did not become actively alarmed until a man at a cocktail party, upon being Introduced to her, mentioned that he had driven over to see the tower.

“Oh, horrors!” she exclaimed as a means of registering her attitude. “Is It famous all over the city?* 1 And though she was joking she was dead serious.

“A curious form of protest,” the man replied, tucking his pipe with tobacco; then, after a sharp glance directly Into her eyes, he added, “You are aware of the boy’s motivation, are you not?”

To which she smiled politely, being somewhat confused, and made a mental note that the man had been drinking.

The next morning as soon as Douglas left for school she telephoned the fire department. Everyone called the fire department when there was a problem that deified clas-sification. Shortly before noon a small red truck parked In front of the house and two firemen she had never spoken to a fireman before and found the experience rather strange two of them entered the house as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and listened to what she told them about the tower. Then they went out to have a look. Mildly amused at first, presently they were startled. However they had been called upon by housewives for many unnatural labors, and so they unhooked their tools of de-struction and set to work. It took them until almost dark to turn it into a mound of rubble, but at last an area of several square yards was covered with splintered wood, broken glass, wire, great gritty chunks of lumpy concrete, and whatever else had gone into the creation of it, and the air was filled with dust as though there had been a peculiar explosion. The firemen said they* would make a report of the tower and Its de-struction and that the lot would be cleaned up within a day or two.

Douglas, having come home a few minutes before the firemen left, stood watching them in grieved silence. Mrs. Bridge, seeing him from an upstairs window, went out to stand behind him with her hands resting on his shoulders, and occasionally rumpled his hair.

“It was just getting too big/’ she confided to him gently. “People were beginning to wonder.”

It seemed to Mrs. Bridge that she had done the necessary thing, and therefore the right thing, in regard to the monstrous tower. Again and again she thought about it, and the reason she thought about it so intensively was that she perceived a change in Douglas’s attitude toward her. He was more withdrawn.

As time went on she felt an increasing need for reassurance. Her husband had never been a demonstrative man, not even when they were first married; consequently she did not expect too much from him. Yet there were moments when she was overwhelmed by a terrifying, inarticulate need. One evening as she and he were finishing supper together, alone, the children having gone out, she inquired rather sharply if he loved her. She was surprised by her own bluntness and by the almost shrewish tone of her voice, because that was not the way she actually felt. She saw him gazing at her in astonishment; his expression said very clearly: Why on earth do you think I’m here if I don’t love you? Why aren’t I somewhere else? What in the world has got into you?

Mrs. Bridge smiled across the floral centerpiece and it occurred to her that these flowers she had so carefully arranged on the table were what separated her from her husband and said, a little wretchedly, “I know it’s silly, but it’s been such a long time since you told me.”

Mr. Bridge grunted and finished his coffee. She knew it was not that he was annoyed, only that he was incapable of the kind of declaration she needed. It was so little, and yet so much. While they sat across from each other, neither knowing quite what to do next, she became embarrassed; and in her embarrassment she moved her feet and she inadverently stepped on the buzzer, concealed beneath the carpet, that connected with the kitchen, with the result that Harriet soon appeared in the doorway to see what it was that Mrs. Bridge desired.

Mrs. Bridge often referred to Harriet as a “gem,” adding that she had been with the family for more than nine years and that she didn’t know what she would do if Harriet ever decided to leave. Considering that cooks and chauffeurs in south-side Kansas City often stayed with a family for twenty or thirty years, Harriet’s nine years was nothing to boast about. Even so there were a good many matrons who knew her by sight at the bus stop and had been elegantly served by her during luncheons or cocktail parties, with the result that Harriet, though a comparative newcomer, had the reputation of being a catch*

Indeed there were few things about her to which Mrs. Bridge could object. The main thing was her smoking. She was an expert at smoking, expelling it through her nostrils and blowing rings like a man, and she had to be warned occasionally because she did not mind answering the door with a cigarette in her mouth. Otherwise Mrs. Bridge very rarely had to speak to her. On certain humid summer days when she was alone in the house she would take oft her uniform and put on a halter and an alpine dirndl skirt, and once or twice she had been caught wearing this outfit. But she was not lazy, and she did not drink at all, she was an excellent cook, and not only the children but Mr. Bridge himself seemed to like her.

So it came as a blow to Mrs. Bridge when, altogether by accident, she heard Harriet flirting with Mrs. Ralph Porter. The Porters had never been close friends but were decidedly in the same circle as the Bridges. It was one cloudy afternoon in spring when Mrs. Bridge, who had a headache, decided to telephone her husband at the office and ask him to bring home some Empirin. She was upstairs in the bedroom at the time, so she walked into the hall and picked up the receiver. The line was busy. She was about to replace the phone in its niche when she heard Harriet asking, “How much do you all pay?” Some instinct warned Mrs. Bridge what the conversation was about, and for a moment she had not the strength of character to stop eavesdropping. Mrs. Porter’s voice answered, “Whatever you’re receiving there, Harriet, 111 pay you ten dollars a month more.”

“Do tell,” murmured Harriet, her voice not giving away her thoughts, and Mrs. Bridge, frozen to the upstairs phone, could almost see her seated on the pantry stool with her legs crossed, blowing smoke rings.

There was a crucial pause. Mrs. Bridge was now afraid to replace the receiver because the click would be audible; all she could do was hold her head and wait.

“I feel/* Harriet murmured, **Mr. and Mrs. Bridge could not precisely survive too well should I depart here.” With chilling poise she added, “However, it was extremely nice of you to call.”

And that, as even such a bald soul as Mrs. Porter could tell, was the end of the matter.

The Porters were regular church-goers, and after the telephone incident Mrs. Bridge felt a sense of exasperation whenever she saw Mrs. Porter in church, It was difficult to imagine how a person could be so devout and so conniving, but that was Mrs. Porter.

For better or worse Mrs. Bridge did not often encounter her there, the reason being that she did not like attending church alone and it was quite difficult to get Mr. Bridge to go. He had little enough use for dogma and would rather lie abed reading vacation brochures on those Sunday mornings when he did not go to the office, or, dressed in old clothes, he would spend the morning in the yard with a can of snail poison. Now and then she became worried about his apathetic attitude toward religion, especially after one of Dr. Foster’s sermons on the consequences of atheism, and she would then half-fearfully go after her husband.

“When I need to know anything/’ he would reply with awful finality, “I go to someone who knows more than I do/* This was quite a slam at Dr. Foster.

“But don’t you think he has some very good ideas?** she would counter. “It certainly wouldn’t hurt you to attend once in a while. And people do ask where you are/”

So it came about that once or twice a year he would silently drive to church. They would climb to the balcony, for what reason she could never understand, and there with heads al-most touching the stained-oak rafters, surrounded by stifling, humid air, they sat through the sermon.

One Easter, an unusually warm day, just as Dr. Foster began easing into the familiar narrative the empty tomb, and so forth the scent of lilies became overpowering. Or was it the sight of Mrs. Porter looking altogether righteous? In any event Mrs. Bridge felt herself swaying. She reached toward the balcony rail for support and whispered giddily that she was going to faint. Mr. Bridge had been dozing, but he woke up immediately and turned his head and glared at her severely.

“Not here! Wait until we get outside/’ he told her in a voice that was audible throughout the balcony.

“All right, I’ll try/’ she whispered. She thought he meant to escort her outside, but apparently not, because he did not get up, and in a few minutes she realized he meant for her to wait until church was over. There was nothing to do but to try not to faint, and so she did try, and succeeded.

Dr. Foster had such an Impressive vocabulary that Mrs. Bridge was moved to amplify her own. She Intended to, she had been intending to for quite a while, but the opportunity never presented Itself until she received as second prize at bridge club a little book on how to build a more powerful vocabulary in thirty days. The dust jacket, an eye-catching red, guaran-teed that if the reader spent only a few minutes a day, his ability to express himself would so noticeably improve that within two weeks friends would be commenting. Tests had proved, so said the dust jacket, that the great majority of employers had larger vocabularies than their employees, which, the jacket hinted, was the reason for the status quo.

Although Mrs. Bridge had no more thought of becoming an employer than an employee, she was delighted with her prize; everyone else in Kansas City was reading it and she had, therefore, been planning on buying a copy If she could not get It from the rental library. She began to read it that same afternoon as soon as she got home. The next day she was busy, but the day after that she spent almost three hours studying, completing several lessons filling in the blanks and doing the multiple-choice exercises at the back of the book. She spoke of it enthusiastically to her friends, most of whom had either read it or were definitely intending to, with the exception of Grace Barren, who always read books no one else ever heard of.