“Is that something you’re good at?”
“I’m not too bad,” she said, paying for what she had bought. “I have to get some Italian cottage cheese…have you ever had any? It’s called ricotta.”
At the delicatessen she stood at the glass counter, scrutinizing the sausages and cheeses. The clerk recognized her and greeted her. They all recognized her, the old Italian grocery-store owners, the people behind the meat and fish counters. This was her route; with her shopping cart she went from store to store, looking into everything, finding out what was good.
“Here,” the clerk said to her, giving her a wedge of the white Monterey jack cheese. “See what you think.”
She tried it. “No,” she said, “It’s too mild.”
“You want it for a salad?” The clerk found her some cheddar.
“That’s fine,” she said. “And the ricotta.” She paid the clerk, put the packages in her shopping cart, and then they went outside.
“They let you try stuff?” Jim said.
“If you don’t ask them,” she said. “If you just stand looking. Do you like how it smells in there? It’s the garbanzo beans and the olive oil and spices, and the different sausages. I can’t usually afford to buy any of the sausages.”
“They know you,” he said.
“I spend a lot of time in there.”
At the supermarket she bought brown rice and a pound of butter, which was on sale, and a quart of mayonnaise, which was also on sale.
“They don’t have eggs on sale,” she said. “Look, they want sixty cents a dozen. We’ll have to go over to the Safeway and see.” Pushing her cart to the checker’s stand; she joined the line. He remained beyond the railing. Behind her was a large, elderly woman in a silk dress, and ahead of her were two colored women. Among the housewives and shoppers she was confident; she smiled at him.
“You know how to shop,” he said as they left the store.
“I enjoy it.”
“Do they get in front of you?” he asked. “In the line?” It did not seem likely.
“They try. But you can tell before they do it. They get a certain kind of look.”
At the Safeway she bought eggs and coffee.
“Now,” she said, “I want to go to the drugstore. Then we can go home and I’ll fix lunch.”
With a prescription in her hand she waited by the magazines and chewing gum and display of razor blades. This was her element. The routine of shopping. The measuring, the judgment, the comparing of prices, one store with another. The cautious proceeding from one store to the next.
On the trip back to the apartment the shopping cart was weighed down with packages.
“Where’d you get it?” he said, meaning the cart.
“Art made it.”
In the front room of the apartment she unloaded the packages one by one onto the heavy oak table; she was careful with each, making sure that the eggs and tomatoes were undamaged. She had bought a package of berries, and now she carried them to the kitchen to wash them. Filling a pan with water, she lit the burner under it and put in two of the eggs. She took out a large bowl and began fixing the tomatoes and lettuce and green onions for the salad. Seated at the kitchen table, with the bowl in her lap, she cut bits of celery and hard-boiled egg.
“There’s nothing they can do about your sterility?” she asked.
“No.”
“It won’t change?”
“It won’t go away,” he said.
Rachael said, “Do you think about it?”
“Sometimes. When I have nothing else to do.”
“It must make a man feel awful. What do they do, do they find out by—I guess they can’t use a rabbit.”
“They make counts on a slide. Number of sperm per cubic centimeter. There has to be sixty million.”
“Were there?”
“Yes,” he said, “but too many, of them were irregular. So they weren’t fertile.”
“But there were some that were okay, weren’t there?”
“If,” he said, “I had intercourse day and night, over a period of years, I might conceivably impregnate some woman. Pat and I went to find out why we hadn’t had any success, and that was the reason; it was my, fault.”
“Sixty million sounds like a lot.”
“But statistically,” he said, “there just isn’t enough of a chance.”
With the salad she fixed cheese sandwiches. “I made the bread,” she told him.
The bread was excellent.
“Do you like the salad?” she said.
“Fine.” He ate as much as he could. Across from him she watched; she kept her eyes on him.
“Do you think she went after Art because she knew he had had a child?” she said.
“Maybe. That’s part of it.”
“It was to make up for you?” She did not seem embarrassed.
“I think she didn’t know what to do,” he said. “She wanted to do something, and she felt she couldn’t have anything to do with me. And then she ran into Art.”
Rachael said, “Don’t you see how no good she is?”
“Let me decide that,” he said.
She nodded.
“It’s up to me,” he said.
“Then decide.” Her eyes ignited; she gazed at him menacingly. “She’s no good. She isn’t; why do you pretend she is? I don’t see how somebody like you can get mixed up with her.”
“You have no charity,” he said.
“What’s that? What do you mean?” She was suspicious.
He said, “You’re too much of a Puritan, Rachael. You’re too righteous.”
“Are you marrying her to get away from me?”
“No,” he said.
“Why then?”
“Because I love her.”
“You don’t feel she’s sort of—public property by now?”
“No,” he said.
“Do you know what I meant by the note I gave you?”
“Yes,” he said, “I know. That’s why I followed after you.”
“How do you feel about it?”
He had no answer for that.
Rachael said, “I think you ought to forget about her and marry me. Will you? I’d make you a good wife; don’t you think I would? Don’t you think I’d do everything in the world to make you happy?”
In his mouth the words fell into bits. “I can’t say yes,” he said finally.
“What, then? You mean you won’t?”
He knew that this was the last time she was going to ask. And, he thought, when he said no to her this time, it was finished. How much of a temptation it was; how close he was to saying yes. The hell with everything else, he thought. Surely this was worth more than all the rest of it.
“Wait,” Rachael said. She put her hands up over her ears. “Don’t say anything to me right now. Walk with me to this store… I want to look at some maternity clothes.”
She collected the dishes and put them in the sink. Then, with her brown coat trailing, she went out of the apartment. He followed along, willing to go with her, wanting to be with her as long as he could. They both felt the same way; they loitered and moved reluctantly past the stores, across the streets. They looked at the window displays and people. Rachael entered stores and talked to the clerks; she poked into everything. By the time they reached the clothing store, the time was three o’clock.
On the trip back, she said, “Let’s stop and have a Coke.” Ahead of them was a hot dog counter; a radio played jump tunes.
“What do you want?” he said, getting out change.
“Just a Coke.”
With her Coke she leaned against the side of the stand, her coat over her arm, her package of clothes by her feet. She did not say anything to him; she appeared to be mulling over the things he had said.
“Are you sorry for her?” she said. “Is that it?”
“No,” he said.
“Then I don’t understand.”
He said, “How do you feel when somebody is he
lpless? Do you take advantage of them?”
With her straw between her lips, she studied him; she was listening and she said nothing.
“Sonic people do,” he said. “Most people do.”
“It’s their own fault if they’re weak,” she said.
“Christ,” he said.
“If they’re weak, then they disappear. Isn’t that evolution? Isn’t that the survival of the fit or something?”
“Sure it is,” he said futilely.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.”
“But you don’t feel that way,” she said.
“I don’t feel that way when I love somebody; if they’re helpless and need help, I want to help them. You feel the same way. You said so.”
“No,” she said. “Did I?”
“You said I should want to take care of her.”
“But,” Rachael said, “she doesn’t deserve it.”
“Let it go,” he said.
“Can’t you tell me?”
“No,” he said, “I guess not.”
“Do you love her because she is weak; is that it? You can’t have children, so you want somebody you can take care of.”
“That’s not it,” he said.
“You can—look out for her.” Finishing her Coke, she put the empty cup down on the ledge of the window; she picked up her package and started off.
“That’s some of it,” he said. “The rest of it is that she and I understand each other in a way I can’t explain. You’re trying to make this into a rational thing, and it isn’t. I don’t love her because she’s helpless, any more than I might love you because you aren’t helpless. I love her first, before anything else, and if she’s helpless I want to take care of her. If I were helpless, you would want to take care of me, wouldn’t you? You’d be glad. It would make you happy.”
She nodded.
“You can see it in yourself,” he said. “That feeling is one of the strongest elements in you. You’ll have a baby pretty soon, and maybe you can turn some of them onto him. And you have Art; god knows he can use some help.”
In the front yard of a house, in a fenced yard, a vast dahlia plant with shaggy cactus blossoms caught Rachael’s eye. The blossoms were as large as plates. She went to the fence, and before he could stop her, she had reached over the fence and had broken one of the dahlias from its stalk.
“That’s a mortal sin,” he said.
“It’s for you,” Rachael said.
“Put it back.”
“It won’t go back.” She held out the dahlia, but he refused to accept it.
An elderly heavyset woman was sweeping the walk by the house and when she saw the flower she hurried toward them. “What is this?” she demanded, wheezing with outrage. The wattles of her neck lifted and fell. “You people have no right to steal flowers out of other people’s yards. I think I’m going to call the police and have you arrested!”
Rachael handed the dahlia to the old woman. Without a word the old woman snatched the flower, picked up her broom, and went inside the house. The screen door slammed shut after her.
As he and Rachael walked on, Rachael said, “Who am I supposed to look out for?” Suddenly she stood up on tiptoe and kissed him; her lips were dry and chapped. “I don’t have anybody.” Again she kissed him, and then she let him go. “That’s all I can do,” she said. “Isn’t it?”
He said, “Take the poor kid back.”
“No,” she said.
“Relent just a little.”
On her face emotions appeared and were suppressed. She struggled, inside herself; she fought it out inside.
“Give him this feeling you have,” he said. “That’s where it belongs. He’s your husband and the baby is his.”
“It’s yours,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I wish it was, but it isn’t. It isn’t mine and you aren’t mine.”
“I am,” she said.
He said, “I can’t marry you, Rachael. I’ll pay for your baby, if you’ll let me. You want me to do that? And if you don’t want to keep the baby, if you’re by yourself and you feel you can’t keep it, maybe we can adopt it.”
“You and Pat?”
“Maybe. If you decide you don’t want it.”
“I want it,” she said. “It belongs to me.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“You can’t have it,” she said, “without me. You have to take both of us.”
“Then it’s out,” he said.
For the rest of the walk back, she did not look at him or say a word. At the door of her apartment, as she fitted her key into the lock, she said, “Would she take care of you?”
“I hope so.”
“Tell her to go on the wagon.”
“I will,” he said.
“Maybe if she didn’t drink she’d be okay. I can’t see how a woman can drink like that.” She started into the apartment. “I have to get ready for work. I have to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” he said. He touched her hair, and then he went off, up the steps, to the path.
Still at the door, she said, “If you’re going to marry her, I want to give you a present.”
“Just go find your husband,” he said. But she was already coming up the stairs.
“What would she like?” she asked. Her face was grim and intense. “Maybe I can get her some kitchen thing; I wouldn’t want to get her any clothes. She knows more about clothes than I do.”
“Just wish us luck.”
Rachael took hold of his hand. “Can I hold onto you? Just for a while. You don’t mind, do you?”
Together, holding hands, they walked until they came to a Woolworth’s dime store.
“No,” she said, stopping. “This isn’t any good.”
After a time they came to a jewelry store, and she started in.
“You can’t afford any of these things,” he said, halting her. “If you’re serious about this, buy one of those cards.”
“Are you going to have a party?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She went into the jewelry store, to the front counter. “I only have three or four dollars,” she said to him.
In the front counter were a number of silver and silver-plated articles, and she had the clerk bring them out one by one for her inspection. After much consideration she bought a cake server and had the clerk wrap it as a gift.
“She’ll like that,” she said, as they left the jewelry store. “Won’t she?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Did you look at it?” Rachael said. “It was made in Holland. It isn’t big and ornate like most of them.”
At her place she unwrapped the cake server and rewrapped it with her own wrapping paper and ribbon and seals.
“This is better,” she said, curling the ribbon with the blade of the scissors. “I worked a couple of Christmases at this department store downtown… I wrapped packages.”
Into the ribbon she put a stalk of gladiola and some green leaves; she used Scotch tape to hold them in place.
“Very pretty,” he said.
She put the package into a paper bag. “This is for both of you,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said, accepting it.
“I better not come along,” she said.
“Maybe not.”
Following him to the door, she said, “Can we come over and visit you?”
“Any time,” he said.
At the door she lingered, speaking slowly, not facing him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Maybe this is a favor. I wondered if you had decided to go back on your program.”
“You want me to?”
“If you do,” she said, “then we can listen to you again.”
“I’ll go back.”
“Fine.” She nodded. “I’d like to hear you. I always felt better listening to you. It always seemed to me you really cared about us.”
“I did,” he said. “I do.”
“Even now? Right now?”
He said, “Certainly.”
“Goodbye,” she said. She put out her hand, and he took hold of it.
“Thanks for the lunch,” he said. “Thanks for cooking for me.”
“I cook pretty good,” she said, “don’t I?”
“Very good.”
She walked away. After a moment he went on outside the apartment and up the stairs.
“Wait,” Rachael said. “You forgot to take this.” In her hand was the present, the brown paper package.
Going back, he took it from her. This time she watched him as he left; behind him she came out into the doorway and stood until he had gotten into his car and started the motor. As he drove away, he saw her. She did not cry; she showed no emotion in the least. She had accepted things and now she was planning; she was deciding what to do. She was working out the problems and difficulties, considering herself and her husband, her job, the future of her family. Even before he was out of sight, she was busy at work.
The time was four o’clock in the afternoon when he parked in front of his apartment house and started up the steps. The door of his own apartment was unlocked; he opened it and found the apartment dark, the shades pulled down, the room silent.
“Pat?” he said.
By the record cabinet the phonograph hummed, and on the turntable the stack of records revolved on and on. He shut the machine off and put up the window shades.
The room was smeared with paint. On the furniture, the walls and drapes, the paint shone. The paint had been smeared by hand; her prints were everywhere, the childish outline of her thumbs and palms. She had gone about pressing her hands against everything she touched; the easel and brushes and tubes lay in a chaotic heap on the floor, by an overturned glass. Red paint trailed across the rug, and he thought suddenly that it was not paint but blood. He bent down and touched it; the paint was sticky and hot. It was both paint and blood, mixed together and spread throughout the apartment.
She was not in the bedroom. But the paint and blood were there, too, on the bed-covers and walls.
“Pat,” he said. He felt alert and rational. He went into the kitchen.
In the corner of the kitchen, crouched against the cupboards, she stared up at him. She was covered with blood and paint; her clothes dripped shiny, sticky red, the warm mixture from the tubes and from her body. As he approached, she lifted her hand up at him. Her hand shook.