Proud Flesh (14 page)

Three years, three months and a week, to be exact. From the day it all began. For he was a man of principle, and he had known from the start, had known even as it was happening, that this thing he had done, and was going to do again, regularly, this thing which he would not have confided to his closest friend, if he had had a close friend, he was going to have to declare to his worst enemy. A worst enemy he did have. He hoped she appreciated what he had done. Not every man would have done it.

In his favor had been one factor: it happened over a weekend. A Friday was when it all began, and that night he had stayed out late. Not with Shug. He had gotten her back to the farm by four-thirty that afternoon. But he had stayed away from home, driving, until past midnight. He was pretty sure Eunice was awake and had heard him coming in. She slept like an underfed watchdog. Not that she was really jealous of him. Not that she really cared a damn what he did with himself. That was not the reason for her vigilance. Just that things had come to such a pass between them. Dog in the manger: that was what she slept like. He made enough noise to be sure she had heard him, then went to sleep in the boys' old room.

At breakfast Saturday morning he said he had come in late, offering no explanation why but contriving to look as though he was ready to lie to her if she insisted, and not wanting to wake her, had gone to sleep by himself. Such unexampled considerateness was enough in itself to arouse her suspicions. That night at bedtime he said he had slept so well the night before, not having to worry about keeping her awake by his restlessness, he believed he would sleep again in the boys' room.

He was skating on very thin ice. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and she was a woman just waiting to be. All she needed to make her divorce him was grounds, and he himself was giving them to her. Fortunately it was a Saturday. The lawyers' offices were closed and she could do nothing until Monday. By then he was counting on a drop in the temperature.

Meanwhile he ran no risk of having her forgive him, of having her impute his openhandedness to any twinges of guilt or remorse or any sense of obligation toward her. She knew him better than that. Lying in bed by herself that night—a state she would find she really preferred but was conditioned to think she ought to resent—she would think, if he is telling me about it, it is because he wants me to divorce him so he can marry the other woman. Br'er Rabbit to the farmer: oh, please, throw me anywhere but in the briar patch. And she was just spiteful enough to do it even though it might be what he wanted her to do. Fortunately the following day was a Sunday.

That morning he moved his clothes into the boys' room.

She had all day to consider the implications of that move. It would take all day, all evening, much of the night, for the meaning of it to come clear to her. Lying alone that night he could almost feel the moment, like the day's low on the weather report, when the chill of comprehension would descend upon her. When custom, convention, taboo, her own pride, her knowledge of him, would all conspire to lead her to an overwhelming conclusion. That he would never have confessed it to her if it had been merely a common case of adultery; that he was quite capable of deceiving her for life if it had been no more than that. This was the freeze he was expecting, and after it would come no thaw. Monday would be clear and cold. He could skate safely.

There were acceptable ways for a woman to be wronged and unacceptable ways. One whose husband left her for another woman of her own color and class could count upon some sympathy from the world, but one whose husband left her for an inferior or to pursue some unnatural taste was herself disgraced along with him.

It had been a gamble, but honesty once again was the best policy. He felt better for it. She, his worst enemy, was now his accomplice. She would be as anxious as he was that his attachment not be known. Even more anxious than he was. So long as she alone knew it, she could live with it. Other women had and so could she. If she could count on his being discreet then he could count on her being accommodating. Thus their understanding was negotiated and sealed without a word being spoken. Which meant that she had heard nothing to have to deny to herself having heard. She could tell herself that nothing had happened if she wanted to. She could tell herself her husband had gone off to sleep alone so as not to wake her when he got up at night. And if he had her in his hands did she not have him in hers? That was turn and turnabout. What could be fairer than that? His shameful secret was in pawn to her, and though she could not foreclose on the pledge, neither could he redeem it.

He had abided by his part in the pact. He had been discreet. He had provided the wench with a husband and had provided the couple with a house, detached, and in full view of all the world, and he had never gone near that house—though often enough drawn to it!—had never gotten near enough even to look at it. It was the one spot on the place that he had put off-limits to himself. He had not done all this out of affection for her. The affection between them had not outlasted their wedding-present chinaware. He owed her nothing. It was not even personal. He, the child of his mother, would have done the same for any woman who happened to be the mother of his children. It was a matter of principle, of duty. Some men would have gone right on sleeping in her bed—especially as sleeping was all they ever did together there any more—but not he. His conscience would not let him. He just hoped she appreciated it.

In fact, it was not hard to live with. Not as hard as she had expected, certainly not as hard as he had expected. It had its compensations, one of them unlooked-for. Knowing that he would never again dare ask to use it, her body was restored to her ownership. It made her take a fresh look at herself. She felt a renewal of interest in herself. For a long time she had been neglectful of her appearance, going around any old way, in any old thing, as though she was old, finished, taking no care of her skin, her hair. She was not old. She was still young. She began buying clothes again, fixing herself up. Friends all said, “Eunice, you've had a second blossoming!”

Anybody would have thought she was the one having an affair. She was. An affair with herself.

Her vanity table became both an altar and an easel, she both artist and artifact, priestess and idol. Her duties were so many that even if she had not lingered lovingly over them they would have occupied most of her waking hours. Masked all morning while creams made from cucumbers, egg whites, oils from the glands of unaging turtles worked their wonders on her face, she attended to her hands. She laved them in lotions, filed, buffed and polished her nails, restrained with orangesticks the encroaching cuticles. After lunch came the ritual of the bath, after the bath, rubbing with oil, powdering, perfuming, depilating. Hair-grooming came next: washing, drying, brushing, combing, experimenting with new stylings. Then upon her pale unfeatured face she drew her likeness. Blackening the brows, shading the lids, drawing their outlines, darkening the lashes. An undercoat followed by coloring brought the skin alive, lipstick made the likeness speak. At night before bed it had all to be undone. Weather permitting, she went shopping every afternoon. She bought nothing but the best. Her reflection when she caught it in the mirrors of dressing rooms, in shop windows, told her that the best was what she deserved. On afternoons too hot to go out, after her bath, after making up, she stretched herself on her bed and, raising a leg and arching the foot, or raising her arms from the slender wrists of which the pale hands drooped like lilies, she thought that never had she seen such loveliness, and it was all her own. Sleeping Beauty with no fear of being wakened by the kiss of any Prince Charming.

So that, sitting in her parked car in the town's dark, deserted public square, she would be rigid with indignation enough for two. The indignation not just of a woman, a mother, one whose cooperation in order not to create a scene had been taken advantage of, but the indignation of an artist whose work had been vandalized, of a believer whose idol had been desecrated.

She would have been sitting there for some time already, not knowing what time it was, but she would know when 4 a.m. came because, seeing a car there at that hour, the town night watchman would come to investigate. This would be on the second of his three nightly tours through the square, the one that brought him in by the southwest corner where from its box on the wall of the bank he would take his clock key and put it in his clock, and then would see the car. To his question—Aaron Ashley's question—she had known him all her life—he had been the town night watchman for much of her life—what was wrong, she would say nothing was wrong, she was just waiting for the offices to open. That would be when he would look at his night watchman's clock that hung from his shoulder on a strap—it looked like the canteen carried by the marble Confederate soldier on his column in the center of the square—and ask if she had any idea what time it was? No, she would say, she had no idea. When he told her she would thank him.

She would be there when Aaron made his third and last tour of the night through the square and at that hour she would still be the only soul there. She would see, at dawn, the window-washer come with his pails and his long-handled sponge and squeegee and he would glance at her from time to time over his shoulder as he worked his way along the north side of the square washing the windows of those storekeepers there who subscribed to his services. She would be there when the first farmtrucks loaded with cotton came through on their way to the gin. She would see the first women come to the laundromat, and they would see her, and stare, and recognize, and gossip over their wash. The stores would begin to open—merchants with whom she traded. Then at exactly half-past seven, as he did every working day, the man she was waiting for would enter by the northwest corner and walk down the block to the middle of it and let himself in through the door on the frosted glass pane of which was lettered,
FRANCIS J
.
FLEURNOY
,
ATT
'
Y AT LAW
. She had chosen Judge Fleurnoy (the title was honorary; he was not a judge and never had been) because he better than any other would appreciate what she had endured. His dislike of Negroes went so far as to lead him once to hire a white housemaid. A white housemaid was an unheard-of thing, and all classes and both colors of the population were displeased, especially the women. The colored women felt that such work belonged by right to them, and looked down upon any white woman who would take it; the white women felt themselves implicated in this demeaning of a white woman—a girl from out of the deep piney woods with twins who between them had forty-eight fingers and toes but only one countable parent—and made life so miserable for her she had had to leave town.

“Are you a friend of my husband's?” she would begin by asking.

“Clyde? Why, I know Clyde,” Judge Fleurnoy would say. “Known him all his life. Knew his old daddy before him. Old Dot-and—”

“Are you a friend of his?”

“Why, I've always managed to get along with Clyde. With all the Renshaw boys. Never had any—”

“I have to ask because I don't know who my husband's friends are.”

After a moment then he would say, “Neither do I. Has he got any?”

“I want a divorce.”

“Nothing easier.”

“On grounds of—”

“Grounds? Sugar, where have you lived all your life? This is Texas. Does your husband snore in bed? Does he overcook the steak? I often wonder why people go to Mexico or Reno when here in Texas we have got the most liber—”

“I have got grounds. I have got grounds.”

He would see then that he was dealing with an outraged woman, and he would say, “Adultery?”

“Is that what it's called when it's been going on for three years?” And she would not know where or when she had even heard the phrase but it would be there ready on demand and it would taste as sweet to her as its own venom in the mouth of a snake: “Alienation of affections.”

“For that,” he would say, tilting back his swivel chair, “you must be prepared to name a corespondent.”

“Linda Carter,” she would say. “Mrs. Linda Carter.” She would let a moment pass, then would volunteer, “She's local.”

“Is she?” he would say. “I don't believe I know her.”

“You probably know her husband,” she would say. Again she would let a moment pass. “Jug Carter?”

He would look blank for a while. He would be expecting a knock on the front door of his memory; it would take a while for him to realize that it was somebody at the back door. When he recognized who it was he would frown, but by the time he spoke he would be smiling. His smile would be fleeting and fatherly. He would compose his face as a father might to listen gravely to a child who was making a mountain out of a molehill.

“Eunice,” he would say, trying to look grave but smiling with the corners of his mouth, parental, patient, wise, “Eunice, lawyers are not known for giving free advice, but let me give you a piece, will you?” He would look up at the clock on the wall. “The stores will be opening before long. Why don't you go and treat yourself at your husband's expense to a new fall outfit? Go get yourself a new permanent wave. Not that you need one, but just for the fun of it. It'll make you feel good. And let's both of us just forget that you were here this morning. Boys will be boys, Eunice, even when they get to be grown boys.”

She had picked the wrong man. The Renshaws had this one buffaloed, as they did most men in town. “You don't want the case then?” she would say. “You're afraid of it.”

“You haven't got a case,” he would say.

Maybe not the wrong man, but she had picked the wrong lawyer. She would see then, and she herself would appreciate the irony, that this one, on whose sympathy and allegiance she had counted particularly, was too prejudiced against Negroes. He thought they were provided for just such sport as her husband was having, and further, that she lowered herself by conferring upon one the status of rival.