someone. Never fails. That’s a promise.”
2 FRANCES WAS STILL CLUTCHING AT THAT PROMISE two weeks later, when she and Bill moved.
It was raining in Waubonsie. Mood weather, Frances thought, sitting upright beside Bill with her hands folded on her lap, looking like a housewife with nothing on her mind but packing cases. Or so she hoped. Maybe it always rained in Waubonsie—like Liverpool.
“Still worried about your dishes?”
“Why not?” She didn’t give a damn if every plate she owned got broken in transit. Life ought to be something more than dishes. You could always buy new ones—it was one way to pass the time.
“Tired?”
“Kind of.”
Suspiciously, “You’re not going to get temperamental, are you?”
Frances said sharply, “Not unless it’s temperamental to have your back ache from packing.”
“I told you to get a professional mover. You don’t have to put on the big martyr act.”
“I didn’t have anything else to do.”
She had been acting like a martyr. Might as well admit it. As though to punish herself for her perfidious thoughts by working extra hard. I will be a good wife, she resolved for the umpteenth time, looking out of the rain-drenched window. They were driving past a wood-working plant: soaked window frames stacked against the side of a low brick building, a pile of scrap lumber overflowing onto the sidewalk. Men stripped to the waist, their wet work pants molded to their legs, were loading backed-up trucks. Frances felt a qualm of envy as they disappeared from view. Silly, she thought, they’re no more free than you are, they probably all have wives and kids at home; they’re probably all making payments on those ugly little crackerbox houses and a lot of washers and dryers. But she envied them for a moment, working in the rain.
What waited for her at the end of the ride was even worse than she had pictured.
“Maybe you’re not going to be so crazy about the house,” Bill said, rounding a corner and peering through the rain at the street sign. “I guess you like modern architecture—well, some day we can afford to build, maybe. I told Bowers we’d sublease his place for a year; he’s made a big down payment and he stands to lose everything if he can’t find a tenant.” He sounded angry. It wasn’t in the picture of the successful American executive to be sick and harassed by money worries. “The damn fool won’t ever be able to do a full day’s work again; I might as well figure the job’s mine for keeps. Time we settled down and made ourselves part of some community, anyhow.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, there’s a nice big yard,” Bill continued. “It’s a good neighborhood, too.”
Frances cleared a segment of windshield with her hand and tried not to be nervous as he eased the car into a driveway between two square houses with bay windows. She said, “I’ll have to buy an aspidistra.”
“Huh?”
The house was large and solid, set firmly in the middle of a lawn with several trees in front and some non-blooming plants along the side walls. The first story had been painted white, but not recently, and the second story was bright yellow under a roof of wavy tan and brown asbestos shingles. Like a layer cake with fudge icing, Frances thought. She had sense enough not to say so.
A wide, railed porch ran across the front of the house. A concrete walk led to the front steps and another, narrower strip of concrete led around the house, to a side door where a green plastic hose dangled snakelike from a faucet. Oh goody, I can spend the long summer evenings watering the lawn.
Bill said, “This is it. Might as well go in.”
She got out of the car gingerly, holding her storm coat around her, trying not to step on the rubbery, pink angleworms spread on the grayish walk. Not exactly a tropical paradise, and who’s going to mow all this grass? She started bravely for the front door, trying not to feel that every step brought her closer to the prison gates.
The door stood open. Beyond the cavernous hall, lights bloomed. As they stood hesitant—Bill not quite sure, she thought, that this was the right house—women spilled out to meet them. Only five women, but making enough noise and shedding enough goodwill for twenty. The Young Married ones, thirtyish, in capri pants that showed their backyard tans. Frances stood dripping in her old trench coat, which was overdue at the cleaner’s, while they came burbling up and told her their names. Rose Sanderson, wife of the credit manager at the plant. Tisi Murphy, whose husband was head of the shipping room. Betsy Chancellor, wife of the purchasing agent. And so on. She wondered, didn’t they have anything to do but be wives? She should have expected something like this. Stupid not to. The miners’ wives back home used to do it too—social customs apparently were the same everywhere, whether you were a plant manager’s wife in tight pink pants or the wife of a mine foreman. She didn’t quite know how to react. Her parents had lived on the other side of the tracks—in a company town the criteria are piety and cleanliness rather than managerial status, but the principle is the same.
It was different here. Her husband was boss over all these women’s husbands, he made more than they did—and, too, her figure was better than any of theirs. For a moment she shared and understood the concern of women for position, a leaky umbrella in a rainy world.
She said, “I look terrible.” They were around her, hemming her in, assuring her that she looked fine and hadn’t they been through it all? The redhead in pink pants said vehemently, “Moving is hell, isn’t it? There’s coffee in the kitchen, and Jo-Jo brought cups. Paper makes it taste horrible.”
“Besides, we have to use all the plastic we can.”
They’re so friendly, Frances thought, warmed against her will by this show of neighborliness. She followed them into the house, looking into the rooms they passed but getting only an impression of bareness. The kitchen was bare too, but new linoleum and a shining, huge refrigerator brightened it and the overhead light was on. Someone had spread paper on the work counter, and an electric percolator was glugging. The redhead said, “We had the gas and electricity turned on, but you can’t get a telephone before next week. Feel free to use ours—we’re two doors over.”
How friendly would they be if they knew what I used to be? What I still am.
They wouldn’t throw stones at me. Probably wouldn’t even be rude to my face. Just snicker behind my back, and feel sorry for Bill.
She said, “I haven’t had a chance to look the house over yet, but I know our furniture’s going to rattle around in it.”
A freckle-faced blonde said, “We have some good stores here. Interior decorators, too. Besides, it’s only sixty miles to Chicago, and the big stores ship everything out by truck, so you only have to wait one day. Most of us get into Chicago every few weeks, do a little shopping and see a show. My bridge club and painting class both go once in a while.”
Frances took the cup somebody offered her. It was nice and warm in her cold fingers; she shifted it from hand to hand to get the full benefit.
“This would be a good house to do in Victorian. There’s even a bay window in the dining room. Victorian’s very good now.”
Sure. Dark wood, marble-topped tables and funereal footstools in fringed and tasseled velvet. Frances said a little shrilly, “I’m afraid I like contemporary,” and let it lie there. Someone tactfully switched the talk to the new plant—or maybe it wasn’t tact, the conversation kept coming back to plastics—and there was a respectful little huddle around Bill.
Frances stood drinking coffee, leaning against the door-jamb. Some of the furniture was still on the way and the rest sat huddled in the wrong rooms, looking shabbier than she remembered it. She felt that she could use a drink. There would be drinks at parties, she knew, unless one of the top men was ultra-religious, but