Stranger On Lesbos (7 page)

She said, "I wish I were beautiful."

Bake came to look into the mirror too, as though the reflection might give back a deeper truth than warm flesh. "You are," she said seriously. "You have a beautiful sensitive mouth and winged eyebrows."

"I look like everybody else."

"You look like my Frankie."

She stepped into the shower reluctantly, feeling that the warm water must wash off Bake's touch and leave her again the sterile, neutral creature she had been before last night. Don't think about Bill.

Bake followed her into the bathroom. "Are you going to start feeling guilty about your husband?"

Frances' eyes widened. "I don't think so. He doesn't want me anyhow, he's all wrapped up in his work." Was it only two nights ago that she had lain wide-eyed until almost morning, rebuffed and hurt? "I don't care, though."

"I haven't got any other obligations, you see," Bake said. "I haven't had for quite a while now."

Frances looked at the familiar classroom Bake in a skirt and tailored blouse, drawing a bright-red mouth over soft pink lips. "Am I going to see you again? I don't mean at school."

"As soon as we can manage it. Frances
you're not mad at me, are you?"

"Because you made me do it? Oh, no. I didn't mean to get scared. That was stupid," Frances said gravely. She sat holding the soaped washcloth, looking up at Bake with big eyes. "Only it was the first time."

"Don't remind me." Bake went into the bedroom and came back with a pair of shoes. She bent to put them on, her face averted. "I'm not going to ask you what I want to ask."

"You don't have to."

"And so?"

"As good as it ever was with
anybody else. I mean it's not like in books anyhow, at least not much of the time." She paused, remembering the routine encounters of her married nights and the others, fewer, that were something special. "You do it and everything's all right, but not so wonderful. At least
well, I don't know."

"Sometimes it is," Bake said softly. "I promise you it will be better next time, when you're not scared. Come on, let's have some breakfast."

"I don't want anything but coffee. I would love some coffee."

They parted at the front door without a word or a touch, Frances watching Bake's cab carry her away to an early morning appointment. When the cab was out of sight she thriftily took a bus and sat down across from two teen-age boys. They reminded her of Bob, as boys his age always did, but she felt no upsurge of maternal affection or anxiety.

For the first time since the nurse had laid him beside her on the bed, a small blanketed bundle with tight-shut eyes and a stubborn red face, she felt that he was a completely separate person. He's growing up, she justified herself. He's going to be making his own friends and spending even more time away from home from now on. When they get big they're in a hurry to untie the apron strings. This first loosening of the bond between them didn't make her feel lonely or regretful, as she had expected, but light and free.

He doesn't need me. Bill doesn't either.

Bob was in the kitchen, all wrists and ankles below his pajamas, when she let herself in. He had cooked a vast plateful of bacon and eggs and was putting bread in the electric toaster. "Hi, Mom. Where were you?"

"Staying with a girl I know. And where were you at midnight, young man? I phoned home and nobody answered."

"Oh heck, we stayed to see the show twice.
Midnight Horror
and
The Ghoul from Outer Space.
It was real cool." He took a long drink of milk, wiping his mouth on his pajama sleeve. "Dad went to a Saturday sales conference. I made him some joe."

"Thanks, boy scout."

She went upstairs and sat for a long time on the edge of the unmade bed, suspended in a happy nothingness that was better than thought or feeling.

She expected to feel guilty and unhappy in the days that followed. She felt only hopeful and completely alive. This is infidelity, she told herself as she stood at the bus stop with an armful of books on Monday morning; I'm being unfaithful. And then: oh, nonsense. The words were meaningless.

Maybe if I were involved with some man, she thought. But she couldn't imagine it. Even in Bill's days with the welfare board some of his colleagues had made tentative, half-joking passes at her
the playful kiss, the double entendre, the hand on her knee under the card table. These routine efforts left her cool and unresponsive, like the more serious approaches of the men with whom Bill now did business. Married men, mostly, looking for a little excitement; the single ones were chasing young girls or sleeping with someone regularly. Seeing or sensing her lack of interest, none of them ever pressed the matter.

In fifteen years of marriage, she had never felt the slightest interest in any other man. For that matter, love, even as she explored it with Bill, had been a letdown. Marriage, so mysterious and desirable to a young inexperienced girl, turned out to be a matter of routine when the novelty wore off
not the grim sordid business she had seen it in her cramped and impoverished girlhood, but not magic, either.

You married a man. In the daytime you cooked his meals and looked after his house. At night, behind locked doors, you submitted or perhaps took a more active part while he made love to you. That was all. It was pleasant if you were in the mood for it; it was a bother if he felt amorous when you were tired. At best it was messy and undignified. She sometimes wondered if the movies and the advertising industry had dreamed the whole thing up, to make money.

But this
this loving someone like yourself, who knew what you wanted and how to give it to you! She felt her mouth curling into a smile, remembering the response Bake had wrung from her in spite of her fright and ineptness.

She boarded her bus and sat hugging her books, beaming at the commonplace houses and stores as they slid by.

For all the pleasure of remembering, she was a little shy about facing Bake. Reliving the hours in Bake's bed, she felt that the whole thing had been a dream. Things like this don't happen. I can't believe it. She took her accustomed chair and sat looking at the floor, with trembling knees and pounding heart, until Bake came in and sat down beside her, looking just as she always did. Then the fright dissolved. She felt cool and calm.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Everything all right with you?"

"Everything is fine with me."

"Really?"

"Sure."

Down between the chairs, Bake's hand brushed hers so lightly that the touch might have been an accident. "We might stay down for lunch, if you're free."

"That would be fine." The ruled lines of Frances' notebook came into focus; the instructor's voice, which had been an inane buzz above Bake's whispering, made sense again. Everything was all right.

CHAPTER 6

“So then what happened?"

"Oh, I don't know," Frances said a little vaguely. She came back to the present, looking around the living room with a slightly dazed expression. "I talk too much."

"No, it's fascinating." Bake stood up, carried the coffee cups into the kitchen, and brought them back full and steaming. "I mean, you read about things like that, but I've never known anyone it really happened to."

"It's nothing to brag about," Frances said shortly.

"Poor baby. I wish I'd known you then."

"But I had books. And then when I got into high school there was Miss Putnam." Tenderness crept into her voice. Miss Putnam, angular and strict like a comic-strip schoolteacher; where was she now? "She got me a scholarship to go to college," Frances said, cradling her cup in both hands and watching the tendrils of steam curl up into the warm air of the room. "A little denominational college where she'd gone. She knew somebody on the board, I think. She paid for my books and bought me a pair of shoes and lent me a suitcase to put my clothes in."

Ma had been pleased and excited. She sat up against the pillow, color coming to her face that had been pinched with pain since the last baby was born dead. "You go, Frankie. Don't let anything stand in your way. Not anything!"

"Who'll take care of things here?"

"Never mind. It's your chance."

Remembering, she laughed harshly. "My father whipped me when I told him. He'd have killed me, I guess, if Ma hadn't threatened to call the sheriff. It's the only time I ever saw her stand up to him."