Early Warning

Arthur got everyone out by seven, and he was good about sitting at the dinner table and asking the kids what they had been doing all day, but on the bad days, he just pushed his food around on his plate, even if it was sirloin steak, his favorite. Then, after he had joked with Timmy, listened to Debbie tell him everything she had done (by the minute, it seemed), spoken some French with Dean, and asked Tina about words that started with “b” or “t” or “n,” he would get up, veer ever closer to his office, then, finally, close himself in there while she did the dishes and watched TV and put the kids to bed. He reserved his one hour’s worth of high spirits for the dinner table.

She went to a kaffeeklatsch on Thursdays, after dropping Tina at her three-day-per-week nursery school — seven women who lived in the area and who were friendly and sociable. Lillian said nothing about Arthur, but what they said about their own husbands made her ears burn: everything from how hairy they were to how one of them picked his teeth at the dinner table and then threw the toothpick over his shoulder for the wife to find. Black eyes were discussed, and grabbed wrists, and yelling in front of the children. The three women who seemed happily married preened a bit. They complained about opportunities they had missed to work for a newspaper, or sing on Broadway (Really? thought Lillian — Rosanna would have called this woman “about as attractive as a shoe, if you ask me”). One of them swore that Ann Landers said that if you walked by your husband’s trousers hanging over a chair, and you bumped into them and his wallet fell out, then you could pick it up and remove necessary funds if you had to. Another woman said that her husband never stooped to pick up his change — he just left it on the floor of the closet. Ten or twelve dollars a week, it came to.

The day after Arthur had seemed especially blue, one woman said that she suspected her husband of stepping out on her, because he “had to work late” three Fridays in a row. She plied him with drink until he passed out on the couch, prodded him into bed, and then, when he was sound asleep and comfortable, stroked his forehead and whispered questions into his ear. He had come up with several endearments, and a name, “Liza,” and then she had whispered over and over, “Liza who, Liza who?” Liza Rakoff! Lo and behold, there was a secretary at his office, Elizabeth Rakoff, and when confronted, he admitted that he had taken her out and was attracted to her, but he swore he hadn’t gone to bed with her. He was in the doghouse now.

Four evenings later, on an especially troubling Monday, all the sad-sack men gathered, the Gilbey’s and the Grant’s were drained dry, and Arthur said so little over his pork chops that night at supper that Debbie afterward asked her, very seriously, if Daddy was all right. Lillian made Arthur a hot toddy, which she took to his office door around bedtime.

Arthur was sitting at his bare desk, glowering out the window. His office was on the opposite side from the pool, and his nice large window looked over a long slope to the woods. It was so dark that the only thing visible in the glass was Arthur’s own reflection.

She said, “I brought you something soothing.”

“Your voice is soothing.”

“Drink up. Come to bed.” She led him down the hall. He drank in a preoccupied way and fell asleep while she was doing her face in the bathroom.

Normally, Arthur did the last check of the night. Lillian did the best she could — she covered Tina, turned out Dean’s light, told Timmy he had to get up early, and smoothed Debbie’s always unruly hair. She made sure the garage was closed, locked the pool gates and the six doors. She wished for a nice big watchdog, turned out the porch lights, and walked down the dark hall to her bedroom. Arthur hadn’t moved.

She knelt on her side of the bed and leaned over him. His breathing was even, steady. After hesitating, she whispered, “What’s wrong, Arthur? What’s wrong, darling?” She felt like a fool. “What happened?”

Arthur groaned and shook his head. Lillian sat very still and watched his eyelids, but they didn’t open. He got quiet, and she tried again. “Just tell me, Arthur. I need to know. I won’t tell.” Her voice was almost inaudible, even to herself. “Just tell me a little little bit.” Arthur turned on his side and put the pillow over his head. Lillian waited, listening to an owl hoot in the distance, and then another call — a fox, she thought, which made her think of Frank. The house creaked. She sighed and eased under the covers.

The next thing she heard was “Wisssszzzzzner.”

She opened her eyes. Arthur was kneeling above her, scratching under his arm, and smiling. When he saw she was awake, he said, “A little birdie was whispering in my ear.”

Lillian said, “Oh. Were you awake?”

Arthur nodded.

“Now I feel silly.”