“Don’t what? Don’t assume she’ll have access to your bank account? Don’t assume that while you’re gone she can spend whatever she wants?”
Her words weren’t spoken to me, but they pierced me nonetheless. I winced.
“Mother,” Hugh said, taking a step forward and laying a hand on her arm. She shook it loose.
“Why are you doing this, Ralph?” Frances’s voice trembled with restrained anger. “What are you trying to prove?”
“I’m not trying to prove anything. And, yes, Elise can spend whatever she wants. I hope she spends it all. But I can tell you right now she won’t. If you spent any time at all getting to know her, you’d see for yourself that she’s not that kind of person.”
“Ralph,” I whispered, and a small sob came out with it.
He turned to me. “You don’t have to stay here another day if you don’t want to, Elise. If you want to get an apartment this very afternoon, get one.” He glanced at his mother before turning back to me. “You don’t have to live with people who aren’t going to respect you.”
The sound of two quick horn blasts sounded from beyond the front door. Ralph’s taxi had arrived. He bent down to retrieve his things.
“Ralph, can’t you wait a few days or weeks to take this trip?” Hugh said softly. “You’ve been gone for four years. You just got home.”
Ralph looked at his brother. “I need to do this now.”
“But to leave like this,” Hugh continued, nodding toward their mother.
“I didn’t want to say good-bye this way,” Ralph said, hiking the duffel and camera bags on his shoulder. “I came inside to say I was going on a trip. I didn’t think I’d have to defend my wife’s character in the process.”
He took my hand so that I would come with him to see him out.
As we passed Frances, she reached out to stop him. “You don’t have to go,” she said in a much softer voice.
“Yes. I do,” Ralph said, matching her tone.
She squeezed his arm in what appeared to be affection, and he allowed it. Then she let go.
Ralph and I started for the front door again.
“Bye, Uncle Ralph!” Pamela called down from the top of the stairs. She and Irene and Teddy were seated on the top step with a stack of puzzles. Irene had been listening to the shouted conversation. She waved to Ralph with a look of amused bewilderment on her face.
“Good-bye,” Ralph called up to them. “Be good, Pamela. You and Teddy mind your mommy.”
Ralph opened the front door. I walked down the steps with him to the waiting cab. He opened the passenger door of the taxi, tossed in his bags, and then turned to me.
“I meant what I said. You don’t have to stay here. But if I’m being honest, I think you’ll have an easier time of it if you do. Just keep to the casita when you’re not out and about. Stay out of the big house until I get back. She can’t insult you if you’re not within earshot.”
Then Ralph embraced me, something he had not yet done, and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re going to be fine,” he whispered in my ear. “Compared to what you’ve already survived, this is nothing. Okay?”
I smiled and nodded, and he pulled away.
“I’ll send a postcard from every city!” he said cheerfully as he got into the taxi and shut the door.
“All right,” I said.
He motioned me to lean in close to the open window. “Show them what you’re made of,” he whispered. Then he winked and touched my chin with his thumb.
“Be careful,” I said.
Ralph shrugged off the advice and smiled wide. “Okay,” he said to the driver. “Let’s hit the road. I’ve a plane to catch.”
The taxi started to move and Ralph waved. I waved back. When the vehicle was out of the driveway and on its way down the hill, I turned to the house. Hugh, Frances, Irene, and the children were all standing just a step or two outside the door, watching.
I had to summon courage to walk to where they stood at the threshold of my new life. They were all looking at me, even the children, though I don’t think Pamela and Teddy were having troubling thoughts about me. Hugh’s gaze on me communicated both pity and frustration. Irene’s expression was one of solidarity that I was in her club, the club of wives whose husbands have treated them badly. Frances didn’t look at me as I walked toward her but rather at the direction the retreating taxi had taken. Then she turned to go inside and we all followed her into what now seemed to me a cavernous entryway.
Hugh turned to me. “You don’t have to leave,” he said.
Frances swung around. “Good God, Hugh. Where would she go? She’s only seventeen.”
“Would you just leave her alone, Mother?” Irene said. “Ralph’s leaving is not her fault and you know it.”
Frances sighed heavily, lifting and lowering her shoulders before she turned to me. “Hugh is right,” she said stiffly. “You do not have to leave. You are Ralph’s wife and you are welcome to stay in the casita for as long as he is away on this fool’s errand of his.”
“Thank you,” I said, glad that my voice didn’t sound as bereft of strength as I felt inside. Irene linked her arm in mine.
“You know what I think? I think you and I should get rip-roaring drunk tonight at the Mocambo.”
“Did you not hear what I just said? She’s only seventeen!” Frances shot back.
“I don’t think anyone needs to get rip-roaring drunk tonight,” Hugh offered.
“Speak for yourself, brother.” Irene dropped my arm and headed for the stairs.
“Do you wanna come play?” Pamela said to me. A long Saturday stretched before me, with a collection of empty hours I had no plans for.
“Sure,” I said, and the children led me upstairs to the playroom, where we stayed until Martha arrived to make lunch.
That night at dinner, Frances’s resentment toward me seemed to have cooled. When she asked me what it was I was going to be doing with myself while Ralph was away, her tone seemed nearly kind toward me, as though she did not want me to go crazy with boredom. It was just her, me, and Hugh at the table. The children were in bed and Irene had gone out, no doubt to get rip-roaringly drunk. I told Frances I didn’t have that figured out yet.
She studied me for a moment. “What is Ralph really up to?” she said. “Can you please explain to me why he would leave you when he’s just gotten back from Europe and you’ve only been married a short time? Why on earth would he leave you now?” She didn’t sound accusatory this time. I could tell she was concerned for Ralph and her question had more to do with him than with me.
“What he said this morning is true,” I replied. “He did want to take this trip right after he got out of the army. We talked about it before we got married and after. I understand why he needed to go.”
“Well, I don’t. I don’t understand why he needed to go. What did he mean that after what he had seen he needs to rediscover his purpose? What did he see in the war that made him think that? His letters said nothing about anything like that.”
Ralph had never elaborated on what he’d had to do prior to his platoon marching into Stuttgart as victors, and I’d never pressed him because I didn’t have to. I’d seen for myself what the war had done, what the war had made people do. But I could not say that to Frances. And I had a pretty good idea that in the end, Ralph’s four years in the army hadn’t fit into his idea of a utopian world, not by a long shot. Hugh seemed to understand that I didn’t know how to answer his mother.
“We saw the newsreels, Mother. We saw the photographs in the paper. If this trip is what Ralph truly needs to move on from all of that, then I don’t think it is too hard for us to let him do it.”
He glanced at me, perhaps to see if I approved of his answer, but his gaze didn’t linger long enough for me to let him know that I did.
“Oh, all right, all right,” Frances muttered, sighing heavily again. She started to cut a piece of meat on her plate. “If you’re going to be staying here, Elise, do you need anything?” she asked. “Clothes? Shoes? Something for the casita? Anything?”
“No. But thank you.”
Frances nodded, but then stared at me for a moment, as if gauging me and my answer. It would take a while for her to realize I hadn’t married Ralph to divest him of his fortune, but I believe her acceptance of me began over that dinner, when she asked me those questions and I replied that I wanted nothing.
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