Chapter 23 A Domestic Dilemma-1

ON THURSDAY Martin Meadows left the office early enough to make the first express bus home. It was the hour when the evening lilac glow was fading in the slushy streets, but by the time the bus had left the mid-town terminal the bright city night had come. On Thursdays the maid had a half-day off and Martin liked to get home as soon as possible, since for the past year his wife had not been -- well. This Thursday he was very tired and, hoping that no regular commuter would single him out for conversation, he fastened his attention to the newspaper until the bus had crossed the George Washington Bridge. Once on 9-W Highway Martin always felt that the trip was halfway done, he breathed deeply, even in cold weather when only ribbons of draft cut through the smoky air of the bus, confident that he was breathing country air. It used to be that at this point he would relax and begin to think with pleasure of his home. But in this last year nearness brought only a sense of tension and he di d not anticipate the journeys end. This evening Martin kept his face close to the window and watched the barren fields and lonely lights of passing townships. There was a moon, pale on the dark earth and areas of late, poor snow; countryside seemed vast and somehow desolate that evening. He took his hat from the rack and put his folded newspaper in the pocket of his overcoat a few minutes before time to pull the cord.

The cottage was a block from the bus stop, near the river but not directly on the shore; from the living-room window you could look across the street and opposite yard and see the Hudson. The cottage was modern, almost too white and new on the narrow plot of yard. In summer the grass was soft and bright and Martin carefully tended a flower border and a rose trellis. But during the cold, fallow months the yard was bleak and the cottage seemed naked. Lights were on that evening in all the rooms in the little house and Martin hurried up the front walk. Before the steps he stopped to move a wagon out of the way.

The children were in the living room, so intent on play that the opening of the front door was at first unnoticed. Martin stood looking at his safe, lovely children. They had opened the bottom drawer of the secretary and took out the Christmas decorations. Andy had managed to plug in the Christmas tree lights and the green and red bulbs glowed with out-of-season festival on the rug of the living room. At the moment he was trying to trail the bright cord over Mariannes rocking horse. Marianne sat on the floor pulling off an angels wings. The children wailed a startling welcome. Martin swung the fat little baby girl up to his shoulder and Andy threw himself against his fathers legs.

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" Martin set down the little girl carefully and swung Andy a few times like a pendulum. Then he picked up the Christmas tree cord. "Whats all this stuff doing out? Help me put it back in the drawer. Youre not to fool with the light socket. Remember I told you that before. I mean it, Andy." The six-year-old child nodded and shut the secretary drawer. Martin stroked his fair soft hair and his hand lingered tenderly on the nape of the children frail neck. "Had supper yet, Bumpkin?" "It hurt. The toast was hot." The baby girl stumbled on the rug and, after the first surprise of the fall, began to cry; Martin picked her up and carried her in his arms back to the kitchen.

"See, Daddy," said Andy. "The toast --" Emily had laid the children supper on the uncovered porcelain table. There were two plates with the remains of cream-of-wheat and eggs and silver mugs that had held milk. There was also a platter of cinnamon toast, untouched except for one tooth- marked bite. Martin sniffed the bitten piece and nibbed gingerly. Then he put the toast into the garbage pail. "Hoo-phui -- What on earth!" Emily had mistaken the tin of cayenne for the cinnamon. "I like to have burnt up," Andy said. "Drank water and ran outdoors and opened my mouth. Marianne didn't eat none."

"Any," corrected Martin. He stood helpless, looking around the walls of the kitchen. "Well, thats that, I guess," he said finally. "Where is your mother now?" "She's up in your all room." Martin left the children in the kitchen and went up to his wife. Outside the door he waited for a moment to still his anger. He did not knock and once inside the room he closed the door behind him. Emily sat in the rocking chair by the window of the pleasant room. She had been drinking something from a tumbler and as he entered she put the glass hurriedly on the floor behind the chair. In her attitude there was confusion and guilt which she tried to hide by a show of spurious vivacity.

"Oh, Marty! You home already? The time slipped up on me. I was just going down --" She lurched to him and her kiss was strong with sherry. When he stood unresponsive she stepped back a pace and giggled nervously. "Whats the matter with you? Standing there like a barber pole. Is anything wrong with you?" "Wrong with me?" Martin bent over the rocking chair and picked up the tumbler from the floor. "If you could only realize how sick I am -- how bad it is for all of us." Emily spoke in a false, airy voice that had become too familiar to him. Often at such times she affected a slight English accent, copying perhaps some actress she admired, "I havent the vaguest idea what you mean. Unless you are referring to the glass I used for a spot of sherry. I had a finger of sherry -- maybe two. But what is the crime in that, pray tell me? Im quite all right. Quite all right."

"So anyone can see." As she went into the bathroom Emily walked with careful gravity. She turned on the cold water and dashed some on her face with her cupped hands, then patted herself dry with the corner of a bath towel. . "I was just going down to make dinner." She tottered and balanced herself by holding to the door frame. "Ill take care of dinner. You stay up here. Ill bring it up." "Ill do nothing of the sort. Why, whoever heard of such a thing?" "Please," Martin said. "Leave me alone. Im quite all right. I was just on the way down--"

"Mind what I say." "Mind your grandmother." She lurched toward the door, but Martin caught her by the arm. "I dont want the children to see you in this condition. Be reasonable." "Condition!" Emily jerked her arm. Her voice rose angrily. "Why, because I drink a couple of sherries in the afternoon you are trying to make me out a drunkard. Condition! Why, I dont even touch whiskey. As well you know .I dont swill liquor at bars. And thats more than you can say. I dont even have a cocktail at dinnertime. I only sometimes have a glass of sherry. What, I ask you, is the disgrace of that? Condition!"

Martin sought words to calm his wife. "Well have a quiet supper by ourselves up here. Thats a good girl." Emily sat on the side of the bed and he opened the door for a quick departure. "Ill be back in a jiffy " As he busied himself with the dinner downstairs he was lost in the familiar question as to how this problem had come upon his home. He himself had always enjoyed a good drink. When they were still living in Alabama they had served long drinks or cocktails as a matter of course. For years they had drunk one or two -- possibly three drinks before dinner, and at bedtime a long nightcap. Evenings before holidays they might get a buzz on, might even become a little tight. a problem to him, only a bothersome expense that with the increase in the family they could scarcely afford. It was only after his company had transferred him to New York that Martin was aware that certainly his wife was drinking too much. he noticed, during the day.

The problem acknowledged, he tried to analyze the source. The change from Alabama to New York had somehow disturbed her; acccustomed to the idle warmth of a small Southern town, the matrix of the family and cousinship and childhood friends, she had failed to accommodate. herself to the stricter, lonelier mores of the North. The duties of motherhood and housekeeping were onerous to her. Homesick for Paris City, she had made no friends in the suburban town. She read only magazines and murder books. without the artifice of alcohol. The revelations of incontinence insidiously understood his previous conceptions of his wife. There were times of unexplainable malevolence, times when the alcoholic fuse caused an explosion of unseemly anger. He encountered a latent inheral harshness in Emily, with simplicity. She lied about drinking and deceived him with unsuspected stratagems. Then there was an accident. Coming home from work one evening about a year ago, he was greeted with screams from the children's room. He found Emily holding the baby, wet and naked from her bath. The baby had been dropped, her frail, frail skull striking the table edge, so that a thread of blood was soaking into the gossamer hair. Emily was sobbing and intoxicated. As Martin cradled the hurt child, so infinitely precious at that moment, he had an affrighted vision of the future. The next day Marianne was all right. Emily vowed that never again would she touch liquor, and for a few weeks she was sober, cold and downcast. Then gradually she began -- not whiskey or gin -- but quantities of beer, or sherry , or outlandish liqueurs; once he had come across a hatbox of empty creme de menthe bottles. Martin found a dependable maid who managed the household competently. Virgie was also from Alabama and Martin had never dared tell Emily the wage scale customary in New York. Emilys drinking was entirely secret now, done before he reached the house. Usually the effects were almost imperceptible -- a looseness of movement or the heavy-lidded eyes. The times of responsibilities, such as the cayenne-pepper toast, were rare, and Martin could dismiss his worries when Virgie was at the house. But, nevertheless, anxiety was always latent, a threat of indefined disaster that underlay his days.