Stoner

The enormity came upon him gradually, so that it was several weeks before he could admit to himself what Edith was doing; and when he was able at last to make that admission, he made it almost without surprise. Edith's was a campaign waged with such cleverness and skill that he could find no rational grounds for complaint. After her abrupt and almost brutal entrance into his study that night, an entrance which in retrospect seemed to him a surprise attack, Edith's strategy became more indirect, more quiet and contained. It was a strategy that disguised itself as love and concern, and thus one against which he was helpless.

Edith was at home nearly all the time now. During the morning and early afternoon, while Grace was at school, she occupied herself with redecorating Grace's bedroom. She removed the small desk from Stoner's study, refinished and repainted it a pale pink, attaching around the top a broad ribbon of matching ruffled satin, so that it bore no resemblance to the desk Grace had grown used to; one afternoon, with Grace standing mutely beside her, she went through all the clothing William had bought for her, discarded most of it, and promised Grace that they would, this weekend, go downtown and replace the discarded items with things more fitting, something "girlish." And they did. Late in the afternoon, weary but triumphant, Edith returned with a load of packages and an exhausted daughter desperately uncomfortable in a new dress stiff with starch and a myriad of ruffles, from beneath the ballooning hem of which her thin legs stuck out like pathetic sticks.

Edith bought her daughter dolls and toys and hovered about her while she played with them, as if it were a duty; she started her on piano lessons and sat beside her on the bench as she practiced; upon the slightest occasion she gave little parties for her, which neighborhood children attended, vindictive and sullen in their stiff, formal clothing; and she strictly supervised her daughter's reading and homework, not allowing her to work beyond the time she had allotted.

Now Edith's visitors were neighborhood mothers. They came in the mornings and drank coffee and talked while their children were in school; in the afternoons they brought their children with them and watched them playing games in the large living room and talked aimlessly above the noise of games and running.

On these afternoons Stoner was usually in his study and could hear what the mothers said as they spoke loudly across the room, above their children's voices.

Once, when there was a lull in the noise, he heard Edith say, "Poor Grace. She's so fond of her father, but he has so little time to devote to her. His work, you know; and he has started a new book ..."

Curiously, almost detachedly, he watched his hands, which had been holding a book, begin to shake. They shook for several moments before he brought them under control by jamming them deep in his pockets, clenching them, and holding them there.

He saw his daughter seldom now. The three of them took their meals together, but on these occasions he hardly dared to speak to her, for when he did, and when Grace answered him, Edith soon found something wanting in Grace's table manners, or in the way she sat in her chair, and she spoke so sharply that her daughter remained silent and downcast through the rest of the meal.

Grace's already slender body was becoming thinner; Edith laughed gently about her "growing up but not out." Her eyes were becoming watchful, almost wary; the expression that had once been quietly serene was now either faintly sullen at one extreme or gleeful and animated on the thin edge of hysteria at the other; she seldom smiled any more, although she laughed a great deal. And when she did smile, it was as if a ghost flitted across her face. Once, while Edith was upstairs, William and his daughter passed each other in the living room. Grace smiled shyly at him, and involuntarily he knelt on the floor and embraced her. He felt her body stiffen, and he saw her face go bewildered and afraid. He raised himself gently away from her, said something inconsequential, and retreated to his study.

The morning after this he stayed at the breakfast table until Grace left for school, even though he knew he would be late for his nine o'clock class. After seeing Grace out the front door, Edith did not return to the dining room, and he knew that she was avoiding him. He went into the living room, where his wife sat at one end of the sofa with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

Without preliminaries he said, "Edith, I don't like what's happening to Grace."

Instantly, as if she were picking up a cue, she said, "What do you mean?"

He let himself down on the other end of the sofa, away from Edith. A feeling of helplessness came over him. "You know what I mean," he said wearily. "Let up on her. Don't drive her so hard."