turned to Aubrey, who had chosen this evening of all evenings to tell me about his sterility. To tell me how lovely Emily Kaye’s little girl was. To warn me that he wanted children and couldn’t have them with me, but that Emily already had a child who could be his in all but name. I had always theoretically wanted a baby of my own, but—I thought now—if I loved Aubrey enough, I would have forgone my own children. If he had loved me enough.
This was not going to happen. Aubrey was not going to hold me fast to his anchor while the danger of Martin Bartell passed by. He was going to cast me adrift, I thought melodramatically. I took a bite of my roll. Martin looked at me, and I smiled. It was better than smoldering at him. He smiled back, and I realized this was the first time I’d seen him look happy. My mother eyed us, and I took another bite of roll.
An hour later we were all protesting how full we were and that the cake had been the clincher. Chairs were pushed back, everyone stood up, my mother swept into the kitchen to compliment Mrs. Esther, Barby excused herself, and I walked back into the living room. Martin fell in beside me. Behind us Aubrey and John discussed golf.
“Tomorrow night,” Martin said quietly. “Let’s eat dinner in Atlanta tomorrow night.”
“Just us?” I didn’t mean to sound stupid, but I didn’t want to be surprised when he turned up with his sister.
“Yes, just us. I’ll pick you up at seven.” His fingers brushed mine.
After thirty or forty more minutes of polite conversation, the little dinner party broke up.
Aubrey and I went to his car after Martin and Barby had pulled away, and we exclaimed over how cold it was and how soon Thanksgiving seemed, all of a sudden. Talking about the food lasted us until my place, when he courteously got out to walk me to the door. This was where our dates usually ended; Aubrey wasn’t taking chances on being swept away by passion. Tonight he kissed me on the cheek instead of the lips. I felt a surge of grief.
“Good night, Aubrey,” I said in a small voice. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, sweetheart,” he said with some sadness. He kissed me again and was gone.
I dragged myself up the stairs to the bedroom and undressed, moving slowly with an exhaustion so deep it was like a drug. Once I’d washed my face and pulled on my nightgown, I crawled into bed and was out when my head hit the pillow.
I woke up slowly the next day. It was sunny and cold. The tree on the front lawn of the townhouse row flicked its bare branches at my window. I was house-hunting this afternoon and had a date for the evening: that made it a very crowded day indeed, by my recent (non working) standards. I pulled on an old pair of jeans and a shirt, some thick socks and sneakers, and made myself a big breakfast: biscuits, sausage, eggs-Then I had three hours before Eileen picked me up. Rather than wander around restlessly thinking about Martin, I began to clean. Starting with the downstairs, I picked up, scrubbed, dusted, vacuumed. Once the downstairs was done to my satisfaction, I moved to the upstairs. The guest bedroom was full of boxes of things from Jane’s I’d decided to keep, and another bedstead was leaning up against the wall; so cleaning wouldn’t be of much use. But in my bedroom I really went to town. My sheets got changed, the bed was perfectly made, the bathroom shone with cleanliness, the towels were fresh, and all my makeup was put away in the drawer where it belonged instead of cluttering the top of my vanity table. I even refolded everything in my chest of drawers.
Then I decided to pick out my clothes for the evening, in case I had a lot of houses to look at today and got home late. What did you wear to a presumably fancy restaurant with a worldly older man you had the hots for?
I’d recently discovered a women’s clothing place in the city that stocked things just for petites. My purchases there were among my best and most becoming, because my friend Amina’s mom’s shop, Great Day, just didn’t carry that many petites. Now that I had money, I could buy things even when I didn’t need them at the moment. I had