Deep Water (6 page)

       "You know, just the other day in the paper," Vic began conversationally, "I read a piece about a ménage à trois in Milan. Of course I don't know what kind of people they were, but the husband and the lover, who were very good friends, were killed together in a motorcycle accident, and the wife had them buried together with a niche in the same tomb for herself when she dies. Over the tomb she put the inscription: 'They lived happily together.' So you see, it can be. I just wish you'd choose a manor even several men, if you like—who have some brains in their heads. Don't you think that's possible?"

       "Yes," she said tearfully, and he knew she wasn't even thinking about what he had said.

       That was Sunday. Four days later, Melinda was still sulking, but he thought she would come out of it in a few days if he handled her properly. She was too energetic and too fond of having a good time to sulk for very long. He bought tickets for two musical comedies in New York, though he would rather have seen two other plays that were on. There would be time for the other plays later, he thought. There was all kinds of time now that Melinda wasn't busy or exhausted in the evenings. On the day he had gone to New York to buy the tickets, he had also paid a visit to the newspaper division of the Public Library and had reread the McRae story, because he had forgotten many of the details. He learned that the elevator operator in McRae's apartment house was the only person who had seen the murderer, and he had described him very vaguely as being rather heavy set and not very tall. That fitted him, too, and Vic remarked this to Horace.

       Horace smiled a little. He was a chemist in a medical analytical laboratory, a cautious man, accustomed to speaking in understatements. He thought Vic's story was fantastic and even a little dangerous, but he was for anything that would "straighten Melinda out." "I've always said all Melinda needed to straighten herself out was a little firmness from you, Vic," Horace said. "She's been asking for it for years—just a little sign that you care what she does. Now don't lose the ground you've gained. I'd like to see you two happy again."

       Horace had seen them happy for three or four years, but it seemed so long ago, Vic was surprised that Horace even remembered. The ground that he had gained. Well, Melinda was staying home, and willy-nilly she had more time for Trixie and for him. But she was not yet happy about it. Vic took her for cocktails several times at the bar of the Lord Chesterfield Inn, thinking that since even Sam the barman knew about the McRae story, Melinda would not have liked to go there alone: she had so often sat in the Lord Chesterfield bar with Ralph or Larry or Jo-Jo. Vic had tried to interest Melinda in two designs he had brought with him one afternoon, both Blair Peabody's, for the cover of Xenophon's 'Country Life and Economics'. Blair Peabody, a leather worker whose shop was in a barn in Connecticut, had done the tooling on all the leather-bound books that Vic had published. These two designs of Blair's were based on Greek architectural motifs, one somewhat more decorative and less masculine than the other, both beautiful in Vic's opinion, and he had thought Melinda would enjoy choosing between the two, but he had hardly been able to make her look at them for five seconds. For politeness' sake, which was really to insult him by its carelessness, she had expressed a preference for one over the other. Vic had been crushed and wordless for several moments. It surprised him sometimes to find how much Melinda could hurt him when she wanted to. That afternoon Melinda had been more interested in the pianist the Lord Chesterfield had engaged for the summer. There was a poster about him with a photograph in a corner of the bar. He was to arrive in about a week. Melinda said if he played in the Duchin style, like the one they had had last year, she would die.

       The evenings in New York when they saw the musical comedies were more of a success. Both shows were on Saturday nights, and Trixie spent the first one at the Petersons', the parents of Trixie's best friend Janey, and on the second, Mrs. Peterson came over with Janey to keep Trixie company during the first part of the evening. Trixie could be relied on to fall soundly asleep by ten at least, and Mrs. Peterson generally stayed on until midnight before she left the house. On both evenings after the theater Vic and Melinda went to a supper club where there were dance orchestras, though Vic did not propose dancing because he felt Melinda would have refused him. For all her good humor on those evenings, Vic could feel her lurking resentment because he had cut her off from Joel and Ralph. The second of the evenings, when they got home at four in the morning, Melinda was in the kind of gay mood that sometimes inspired her to wade in the brook that went through the woods only a few yards from the house, or to drive over to the Cowans' and jump in their swimming pool, but she did those things only with people like Ralph or Jo-Jo. She didn't propose a wade in the brook when they got home, and Vic knew it was because 'he' was there, her stodgy husband, and not one of the exuberant young men. He started to suggest the brook, but he didn't. He didn't really feel that silly, didn't want to cut his feet on the stones that they wouldn't be able to see in the dark, and he didn't think Melinda would appreciate such a proposal from him, anyway.

       They sat on Melinda's bed, still completely dressed, looking through some Sunday papers Vic had bought in Manhattan, all the papers except the 'Times', which was delivered to them on Sunday mornings. Melinda was laughing at something she was reading in the 'News'. She had slept on his shoulder during most of the ride home. Vic felt very wide awake and could have stayed up the rest of the night. Perhaps, he thought, his wide-awakeness was due to the unusual circumstances of his sitting on Melinda's bed—it had been years since he had sat on her bed—and, though he was interested in what he was reading about American defectors in China, another part of his mind tentatively examined the sensations that sitting on her bed produced in him. Intimacy, rapport, were not among them, he thought, or the anticipation of them. He felt a little uncomfortable. Yet he was aware of something plucking at him to ask her if she minded if he stayed in her room tonight. Just slept in her bed with his arms around her, or perhaps not even touching her—Melinda knew that he wouldn't do anything to annoy her. Then he thought of what she had said about the Cowans tonight on the drive to New York, that the Cowans had changed toward them because of his "bad taste" in telling the McRae story, that the Mellers as well as the Cowans were cooler toward them. People were shunning them, Melinda insisted, though Vic, insisting that they weren't, pointed out incidents that proved people were not shunning them at all, and reminded her that the Cowans were leading a quiet life just now because Phil was working hard on his economics book, trying to finish it before he had to start teaching again in September. Vic wondered if he should risk asking her if he might stay in her room tonight, or would she seize it as another opportunity to show him how much she resented him by refusing him indignantly? Or, even if she didn't refuse indignantly, would it so surprise her that it would spoil the pleasant mood of the evening? Did he particularly 'want' to stay, anyway? He didn't.

       Melinda yawned. "What're you reading so hard?"

       "About defectors. If the Americans go over to the Reds, they call them 'turncoats.' If the Reds come over to us, they're 'freedom-loving.' Just depends from what side you're talking." He smiled at her.

       Melinda made no comment. He hadn't thought she would make a comment. He got up slowly from the bed. "Good night, honey. Sleep well." He bent and kissed her cheek. "Did you enjoy the evening?"

       "Umm-m, I did," Melinda said with no more expression than a little girl might have used in replying to her grandfather after a day at the circus. "Good night, Vic. Don't wake Trixie when you go by her room."

       Vic smiled to himself as he went out. Three weeks ago she wouldn't have thought about Trixie. She would have been thinking about calling Ralph as soon as he had left her room.

Chapter 5

June was a delightful month, not too warm, not too dry, with twice- or thrice-weekly rains that came around six in the evening, lasted about half an hour, and brought the raspberries and strawberries in the woods behind the house to a fat, juicy perfection. Vic went out with Trixie and Janey Peterson on several Saturday afternoons and gathered enough to supply both families with berries for cold cereal, pies, and ice cream for a week at a time. Trixie had decided not to go to camp this summer, because Janey wasn't going. She and Janey had registered at the Highland School four miles away from Little Wesley, a semiprivate grade school which offered sports and arts and crafts classes five days a week from nine to four in summer. It was the first summer that Trixie had caught on to swimming, and she did so well that she won first prize in a swimming contest for her age group. Vic was glad Trixie hadn't wanted to go to camp this summer, because he liked to have her with him. He supposed he had the Petersons' comparative lack of money to thank for Trixie's being with him. Charles Peterson, an electrical engineer in a leather factory in Wesley, made less money than most of Little Wesley's inhabitants. Or, rather, he supported his family on what he earned, whereas many people in Little Wesley, like himself and Phil Cowan, for instance, had incomes with which to supplement their earnings. Melinda, to Vic's regret, looked down on the Petersons as a bit uncouth and couldn't see that they were no more uncouth than the MacPhersons, for example, and that perhaps what she objected to was their white clapboard house. Vic was glad it didn't bother Trixie.

       In a distinguished British publisher's annual that came out in June, the Greenspur Press of Little Wesley, Massachusetts, was cited for "typography, fine workmanship, and general excellence," a tribute Vic valued more than any material success that could have come to him. It was Vic's boast that in the twenty-six books he had published, there were only two typographical errors. Xenophon's 'Country Life and Economics' was his twenty-seventh book, and there were as yet no errors that either he or his meticulous printer, Stephen Hines, could find, though they had the added peril of the left side of the pages being in Greek. The likelihood of typographical errors in spite of rigorous proofreading was going to be the subject of an essay that he would write one day, Vic thought. There was something demoniacal and insuperable about typographical errors, as if they were part of the natural evil that permeated man's existence, as if they had a life of their own and were determined to manifest themselves no matter what, as surely as weeds in the best-tended gardens.

       Far from noticing any coolness in their friends—which Melinda still insisted she did—Vic found their social relations much easier. The Mellers and the Cowans no longer issued an invitation tentatively, half-expecting that Melinda would make a date with Ralph or somebody else at the last minute, as she often had. Everybody treated them as a couple now, and as a couple supposedly happy and getting along. Vic had loathed, in the last years, being coddled by understanding hostesses, being pressed to take second helpings and big pieces of cake as if he had been a neglected child or some kind of cripple. Perhaps his marriage with Melinda had been something short of ideal, but there were certainly many worse marriages in the world—marriages with drunkenness, with poverty, with sickness or insanity, with mothers-in-law, with unfaithfulness but unfaithfulness that was not forgiven. Vic treated Melinda with as much respect and affection as he had at the beginning of their marriage, perhaps with even more now, because he realized she missed Ralph. He did not want her to feel bored or, lonely, or to think that he was unconcerned if she did feel that way. He took her to two or three more shows in New York, to a couple of Tanglewood concerts, and on one weekend they drove up to Kennebunkport with Trixie to see a play that Judith Anderson was in, and they spent the night at a hotel. Nearly every evening Vic came home with a little present for Melinda—flowers, a bottle of perfume, or a scarf he had seen at the Bandana, the only chic women's shop in Wesley, or simply a magazine that she liked, like 'Holiday', which they didn't subscribe to because Melinda said it was expensive and that the house was already cluttered with magazines that came every month, though 'Holiday' in Vic's opinion was better than many of the magazines whose subscription they continually renewed. Melinda's sense of economy was odd.

       She had never wanted a maid, for instance, and yet she never did much to keep the house straight, either. If the bookshelves were ever dusted, Vic did it—about every four months. Occasionally Melinda would get started with the vacuum cleaner, and give up after one or two rooms. When people were due to come over, the living room, kitchen, and bathroom were "checked," Melinda's undefined term. But she could be relied on to keep a supply of steaks in the freezing compartment of the refrigerator, green vegetables and potatoes and plenty of oranges, and one of the things that Vic appreciated very much in her, she could be relied on eventually to come home for dinner with him regardless of what she did in the afternoon. Perhaps she considered she owed him this much, Vic didn't know, but she was as determined about it as she was determined sometimes to keep her appointments with her lovers. And about once a week she managed to cook one of his favorite dishes—frogs' legs provençale, or chile, or potato soup, or roast pheasant, which she had to get from Wesley. She also saw to it that he was never out of his pipe tobacco, which had to be ordered from New York and was hard to keep track of because Vic smoked his pipe sporadically, and sometimes the tobacco humidor was in the living room and sometimes in the garage or his own room, which Melinda seldom went into. Vic thought that his friends, even Horace, did not always remember the nicer things about Melinda, and Vic often took the trouble to remind them.

       On Saturday night of the July fourth weekend, Vic and Melinda went to the annual dance at the club, the biggest affair of the summer. All their friends were there, even the Petersons and the Wilsons, who didn't belong to the club but had been invited by members. Vic looked around for Ralph Gosden, expecting to see him, but Ralph was not there. Ralph had been seeing a good deal of the Wilsons, according to Evelyn Cowan, who had been advising June Wilson about her flower garden. Evelyn was an enthusiastic gardener. The Wilsons had been in Little Wesley only four months, and they lived in a modest house on the north side of town. Evelyn Cowan had told Vic, when they met one day in the drugstore, that Don Wilson was taking a very serious view of the story he had told Ralph about Malcolm McRae, and Vic felt sure that Ralph was helping to rub it in by making himself out a victim of Vic's jealousy, ill will, and general "bad taste." Ralph would of course have said that Melinda had been nothing but a dear friend of his and, since the Wilsons were rather out of the group who knew him and Melinda well, Vic supposed that they had swallowed it. People in Little Wesley had not been particularly friendly to the Wilsons since their arrival, and Vic thought it was Don's fault. He was humorless and standoffish at social gatherings, perhaps because he considered smiles and conviviality unintelligent or unbecoming in a writer. And he was such a hack—western stories, detective stories, love stories, some of which his wife collaborated on, though Vic had heard from somebody that her speciality was children's books. The Wilsons had no children.