After dinner, I wasn’t surprised when Henry said he was going back to the factory. “I’ve spent too much time at the hospital,” he said. “Everything at the factory is going to seed. The phone’s still not working properly. The boiler’s giving Zeke fits and he ordered a new igniter for it. We’re so short staffed, we’re way behind on our orders.”
I went to bed around nine, which was early for me. I wanted time alone to remember how it felt to work with Vincent in the admissions tent. When I was near him, his presence felt like something tangible, something I could put in a little box and carry around with me. A few times during the day, I caught him looking at me and each time our eyes met, he would smile. A couple of times, he touched my arm. My shoulder. This was all I could ever have of him, these stolen touches. Was he thinking about me right now? Was he too aching with the knowledge that we could never be together?
*
I’d drifted off to sleep when I was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. I got out of bed, pulled on my robe, and headed downstairs, wondering who would be calling us this late. The hallway was dark as I walked toward the kitchen, and I heard no sound from Ruth’s room as I passed her door.
In the kitchen, I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Tess? This is Susannah Bowman.”
“Hello, Susannah,” I said, perplexed by the hour of the call. Susannah was the nighttime nursing supervisor at the hospital.
“We’re in a bind,” she said. “Three night nurses are out sick, and five new patients are checking in. I know you worked a full day today, but is there a chance you could come back for a few hours?”
“Of course,” I said, without hesitating. I was worried about those sick nurses though. I hoped none of them had polio symptoms. “I’ll get there as soon as I can,” I told her.
“Hurry, honey,” Susannah said. “We’re desperate.”
I got off the phone with Susannah, then dialed the number for the factory to see if Henry could give me a ride to the hospital, but there was no ringing on the other end of the line. Just dead air. I remembered: the phone at the factory still wasn’t working. I’d call a taxi to take me to the hospital. I could ask the driver to stop for a moment at the factory so I could let Henry know where I was going.
Upstairs, I quickly pulled on my uniform and stockings, taking only a few seconds to run a comb through my wild hair and pin it up in a bun. The taxi honked its horn out front as I made my way downstairs, and by the time I settled myself into the backseat I was winded.
“I need to go out to the polio hospital,” I said, “but first we have to stop at the Kraft Furniture factory.”
“The factory at this hour?” The driver looked at me in his rearview mirror. I couldn’t make out his face well in the darkness, but the tone of his voice told me he thought I was a bit crazy.
“Yes,” I said. “My husband is working there late tonight.”
Neither of us spoke on the drive to the factory and I used the time to catch my breath after racing around to get ready.
“Don’t look like nobody’s home, ma’am,” the driver said as we pulled up in front of the factory.
He was right. From where I sat, the enormous factory looked completely dark, but the small parking lot was illuminated by a street lamp, and I could see Henry’s car parked next to Zeke’s truck.
“He’s here,” I said, reaching for the door handle. “I’ll just be a few minutes.”
The front door was unlocked, as I expected it to be, and I walked into the foyer. The darkness felt overwhelming to me and I had to feel my way to the door that led to the stairwell. At the top of the stairs, I walked into the hall. There was no light coming through the crack at the bottom of Henry’s office door, and I guessed he was somewhere else in the factory. How would I find him? Zeke’s room was on my right, and a faint light came from beneath his door. He would probably know where Henry was.
I knocked on Zeke’s door. At first there was no response and I worried I was waking him up. I knocked a bit more assertively.
“Yes?” It was Henry’s voice, and I imagined Zeke was letting him nap on his sofa.
“It’s me, Henry,” I said, pushing open the door. The light from a lamp on the dresser illuminated the room with a soft glow and it took my eyes half a second to understand what I was seeing. They were covered only by a sheet in Zeke’s bed, white and brown skin, arms wrapped around each other. Henry and Honor.
74
Honor sat up quickly, gasping. Turning away from me, she held the sheet to her chest, her free hand over her cheek as she tried to hide her face. As though I might possibly not recognize her. Henry stared at me, speechless, his face a pale blank slate. I shut my eyes, willing the scene in front of me to go away. Backing out of the room, I shut the door quietly. I stood in the hall, my heart pounding and my fists clenched at my sides. My fury was matched only by my humiliation. All those nights Henry came home late—or didn’t come home at all. His inability—or unwillingness—to make love to me. To kiss me or even touch me. When all the while he’d been sleeping with Honor? I felt so foolish for how I’d helped her see Jilly in the hospital. How kind I’d been to her, when all the while, she must have been laughing at me behind my back.
I turned and ran to the stairwell and pounded down the steps to the foyer. Pushing open the exterior door, I ran out into the dark night heading toward the taxi, my steps fueled by my anger. I had to get away from the scene in Zeke’s room.
“Tess!” Henry called from behind me.
I ignored him and kept running. I heard his footsteps, rapid, growing closer. In a moment, he grabbed my arm.
“Wait!” he said as I twisted away from him. He caught my arm again and this time I turned to face him. I tried to hit him, stupidly, ineffectually, both my arms flailing at him, my handbag jerking through the air. He grabbed my wrists, holding them at my sides.
“I hate you!” I shouted, not caring if the taxi driver could hear me. Not caring if anyone could hear. “I hate everything about you!”
“Tess, please,” he said, his voice annoyingly calm. “Please come back inside. We need to talk. We—”
“I’m not going back in there!” I pulled my wrists free of his grasp. “I’m going to the hospital,” I said, reaching for the door of the taxi. “They’re down three nurses.” I tried to yank the door open, but Henry leaned his weight against it.
“I’ll take you,” he said, then repeated, “We need to talk, Tess.”
I hesitated, my heart still pounding with fury. There was only one thing we needed to talk about as far as I was concerned: divorce.
“Pay the driver,” I said, turning around, and I headed for the parking lot and his car.
*
He caught up with me in the parking lot as I reached the passenger side door of his car. Leaning past me, he opened the door for me, and without a word, I slid onto the seat.
He got in on the driver’s side and put the key in the ignition, but before he turned it, he looked over at me. The overhead light in the parking lot caught his pallor. The skin around his sad eyes looked bruised. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Just drive,” I said.
He turned the key and headed for the exit of the parking lot.