Seeing her, he began to cry. The warm water from his eyes spilled down his cheeks. Fay got Kleenex from her purse, spilling things out onto the floor, and, crouching down, roughly rubbed his face dry. She scoured his face until it burned.
“I’m sick,” he said to her, wanting to reach up and fondle her.
Fay said, “The girls made you an ashtray and I had it fired down at the kiln.” Her voice sounded like the rasp that was his, as if she had been smoking too much again. She did not try to clear her throat as she usually did. “Can I get you anything? Bring you your toothbrush and pajamas? They didn’t let me until I asked you. I have mail for you.” On his chest, near his right hand, she laid a stack of mail. “Everyone’s writing, even your aunt in Washington, D.C. The dog is all right, the children miss you but they’re not feeling frightened or anything, the horse is all right, one of the sheep got out and we had to get Tom Sibley to get it with his pick-up truck.” She turned her head this way and that to stare at him.
“How’s the plant doing?” he said.
“They all send their regards. It’s doing fine.”
Later on, in the next week or so, he was considered well enough to be allowed to sit up and drink milk through a bent glass tube. Propped up on pillows he took in the sun. They put him in a cart and wheeled him around, raised and lowered him. Different people, his family, men from the plant, friends, Fay and the children, people from the area, came to see him.
One day as he lay out in the solarium, getting sun through the double windows, Nathan Anteil and Gwen Anteil came to see him, bringing a bottle of aftershave. He read the label on the bottle. It came from England.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Anything else we can bring you?” Nat Anteil asked.
“No,” he said. “Maybe the back issues of the Sunday Chronicle.”
“Okay,” Nat said.
“Has the place gone to pot? The house?”
“The weeds need to be roto-tilled,” Nat said. “That’s about all.”
Gwen said, “Nat was going to ask you if you wanted him to do it.”
“Fay can operate the roto-tiller,” he answered. For a time he thought about it, the weeds, the gallon bottle of white gas, how long it had been since the roto-tiller had been started up. “She can’t work the carburetor,” he said. “Maybe you could get it started up for her. It’s hard to get the mix right, when it’s been sitting.”
“The doctors say you’re doing fine,” Gwen said. “You have to stay here a while longer and recuperate, that’s all.”
“Okay,” he said.
“They’re building your strength back up,” Gwen said. “It shouldn’t be long. They’re really good here; they’ve got a really good reputation here at the U.C. Hospital.”
He nodded.
“It’s cold down here in San Francisco,” Nat said. “The fog. But the wind isn’t so much as back up at Point Reyes.”
He said, “How does Fay seem to be holding up under this?”
“She’s been very strong,” Gwen said.
“She’s a very strong woman,” Nat said.
“The drive down here from Point Reyes is pretty bad,” Gwen said. “With the children in the car especially.”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s about eighty miles round trip.”
Nat said, “She’s come down every day.”
He nodded.
“Even when she knew she couldn’t see you,” Gwen said, “she still made the drive, with the kids in the back of the car.”
“How about the house?” he said. “Can she manage okay in such a big house?”
Gwen said, “She told me that she’s been a little uneasy alone at night, in such a big house. She had a couple of bad dreams. But she keeps the dog around. She has the kids come into her bedroom and sleep with her. At first she started locking all the doors, but Dr. Andrews said that once she got started on that there’d be no end of it, so she managed to throw off her fears, and now she doesn’t lock any of the doors; she leaves them all unlocked.”
He said, “There’s ten doors leading into that house.”
“Ten,” Gwen said, “Is that so.”
“Three into the living room,” Charley said. “One into the family room. Three into her bedroom. That’s seven right there. Two into the kids’ rooms. That’s nine. So there’s more than ten. Two into the hall, one from each side of the house.”
“That’s eleven so far,” Gwen said.
“One into the utility room,” Charley said.
“Twelve.”
“None into the study,” Charley said. “I guess it’s twelve. At least twelve. There’s always one of them hanging open, letting out heat.”
“Fay’s brother has been giving her a lot of help,” Gwen said. “He’s been doing all the shopping and housecleaning for her, running all kinds of errands for her.”
“That’s right,” Charley said. “I forgot about him completely. He’s there, if anything happens.” It had been in his mind that Fay and the children were the only ones there, alone in the house, now, without a man. The Anteils had overlooked him, too. None of them considered it the same as there being a man in the house, and apparently Fay felt the same way. But anyhow, Jack did the chores for her, so she did not have the burden of work around the house, along with her worry.
“There’s no financial problems that you’ve heard her mention, is there?” he asked. “There shouldn’t be. She has the joint checking account, and I have insurance that ought to be paying off around now.”
“She never mentioned any problem if there is one,” Gwen said. “She seems to have money.”
“She’s always down at the Mayfair cashing a check,” Nat said, with a smile.
“She’ll manage to get it spent,” Charley said.
“Yes, she seems to be doing okay,” Nat said.
“I hope she remembers the bills,” Charley said.
Gwen said, “She has a whole box of bills; I saw it on the desk in the study. She was going over them, trying to decide which ones to pay.”
“I usually do that,” Charley said. “Tell her to pay the utility bills. That’s the rule. Always pay them first.”
“Well, there’s no problem, is there?” Nat said. “She has the ready capital to pay all of them, doesn’t she?”
“Probably does,” Charley said. “Unless this god damn hospitalization is running too much.”
“She could always borrow from the bank,” Gwen said.
“Yes,” Charley said. “But she shouldn’t have to. We have plenty of money. Unless she fouls it up.”
“She’s quite resourceful,” Nat said. “Anyhow, she always gives the impression; I assume she is.”
“She is,” Charley said. “She’s good in a crisis. That’s when she’s the best. One time we were out on Tomales Bay in a sailboat and we couldn’t pump. The pump was busted. Water was coming in. She steered the boat while I bailed by hand. She never got scared. But actually we might have gone down.”
“You told us about that,” Gwen said, nodding.
“She can always get somebody to help her,” Charley said. “If she breaks down on the road she always gets somebody to stop.”
“A lot of women are like that,” Nat said. “They have to be. It’s almost impossible for a woman to change a tire.”
“She wouldn’t change a tire,” Charley said. “She’d rustle up somebody to change it for her. Do you think she’d change a tire? Are you kidding?”
Nat said, “She sure is a good driver.”
“She’s a fine driver,” he said. “She likes to drive.” He added, “She’s good at anything she likes to do. But if she doesn’t like to do it she doesn’t do it; she gets somebody else to do it. I never saw her do anything she didn’t want to do. That’s her philosophy. You must know that; you’re always talking philosophy with her.”
“She’s made the drive down here,” Gwen said. “There’s nothing pleasurable about that.”
“Sure she’s made the drive,” Charley said. “You know what she never has done and never will do? Think of another person besides herself. Everybody’s just somebody to do things for her.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Gwen said.
“Don’t tell me about my wife,” he said. “I know my wife; I’ve been married to her for seven years. Everybody in the world’s a servant. That’s what they are, servants. I’m a servant. Her brother is a servant. She’ll get you to wait on her. She’ll sit there and have you doing things for her.”
The doctor came in and said that the Anteils had to go. Or perhaps it was the nurse. He saw a white figure approach; he heard them talking. Then the Anteils said a rapid good-bye and were gone.
Alone, he lay in the bed, thinking.