But I did not object to doing her work for her, as Charley did and, to some extent, Nat did. I could not be sure how Nat felt, or if he understood that in addition to her having an emotional relationship with him she was also employing him as she employed everyone else around her. In fact, she employed her children. She had persuaded them that it was their job to fix their breakfasts on Saturday and Sunday morning, and until I came she simply refused to cook breakfast for them on the weekends, no matter how hungry they got. Usually they had fixed themselves cocoa and jelly sandwiches and gone off to watch tv until afternoon. I put an end to that, of course, preparing for them an even heartier breakfast than I did on weekdays. It seemed to me that on Sunday especially they should have a really important breakfast, and so I fixed waffles for them, with bacon; sometimes nut waffles, or strawberry waffles—in other words, something that constituted a genuine Sunday breakfast. Charley, too, before his heart attack, appreciated this. Fay, however, complained that I was fixing so much food that she was becoming fat. She actually became irritable when she appeared at the breakfast table and found that instead of grape juice and toast and coffee and applesauce I had prepared bacon and eggs or hash and eggs and cereal and rolls. It made her angry because she wanted to eat it, and having no capacity to deny herself anything, she sooner on later ate what I had fixed, her lower lip stuck out with petulance throughout the meal.

One morning when I got up as usual before anyone else—about seven o’clock—and walked from my bedroom into the kitchen to open the drapes and put on water for Fay’s coffee and generally begin fixing breakfast, I saw that the door to the study had been shut and and locked from the other side. I knew that it had been locked,just to see it, because unless the lock is thrown the door hangs open slightly. Somebody had to be in there, and I suspected that it was Nat Anteil. Sure enough, about seven-thirty when the girls had gotten up and Fay was combing their hair, Nat appeared from the front part of the house.

“Hi,” he said to us.

The girls stared at him, and then Elsie said, “Where did you come from? Did you sleep here last night?”

Nat said, “No, I just walked in the front door. Nobody heard me.” He seated himself at the breakfast table and said, “Could I have some breakfast?”

“Of course,” Fay said, showing no surprise at seeing him. Why should she? But she did not even go through the motions of pretending, of asking him why he had come over so early… after all, nobody comes calling at seven-thirty in the morning.

I put out an extra plate and silverware and cup for him, and presently there he was eating with us, having his grapefruit and cereal and toast and bacon and eggs. He had quite an appetite, as always; he really enjoyed the food that he got to eat, the food that Charley Hume sick in the hospital provided.

As soon as I had cleared the table and done the dishes I went off into my room and sat down on my bed to record, in my notebook, the fact that Nathan Anteil had spent the night.

Later in the morning, after Nat had departed and I was busy sweeping the patio, Fay approached me. “Did it bother you,” she said, “fixing breakfast for him?”

“No,” I said.

With ill-concealed agitation, she hung around me as I worked. Suddenly she burst out in her impatient manner, “You’re no doubt conscious that he spent the night in the study. He was working on a paper last night and he couldn’t make it home he was so tired, so I—said, you can sleep in the study. It’s perfectly all night, but when you go down to visit Charley don’t say anything to him; it might get him all upset for nothing.”

I nodded as I worked.

“Okay?” she said.

“It’s none of my business,” I said. “It’s not my house.”

“True,” she said. “But you’re such a horse’s ass there’s no telling what you might do.”

To that, I said nothing. But as I worked I was busy constructing, in my head, a more vivid method of presenting the true facts to Charley. A dramatization, such as you see on tv when they are showing the effects of, say, Anacin or aspirin. Something to really drive the message home to him.

11

In Nat Anteil’s mind a suspicion had appeared, and he could do nothing to get rid of it. It seemed to him that Fay Hume had gotten herself involved with him because her husband was dying and she wanted to be sure that, when he did die, she would have another man to take his place.

But, he thought, what’s so bad about that? Is it unnatural for a woman who has two children to take care of, plus a big house, plus all those animals and all that land, to want a man to take the responsibility off her shoulders?

It was the deliberateness of it that bothered him. She had seen him, selected him, and set about getting him despite the fact that he was married and had a life already planned for himself. It did not matter to her that he wanted to get his degree and support himself and his wife in the modest fashion that he now engeged in; she saw him only as a support to her life. On at least that was his suspicion. He could not pin her down; she appeared genuinely emotionally involved with him, possibly even against her will. After all, she was taking a terrible risk,jeopardizing her house and home, her whole life, by her meetings with him.

He thought, When it comes down to it, I don’t fully understand her. I have no way of knowing how deliberately she acts, how conscious she is of the consequences of her actions. On the surface she seems impatient, childish, wanting something in the immediate present, with no concern for the future. She plays for the short haul. Admit. tedly, she saw me and Gwen and wanted to meet us; there’s never been any doubt of that. And she herself admits that she’s selfish, that she’s used to having her own way. That if she’s denied something she has a tantrum. Hen having an affair with me—when she’s a social pillar of the community, owns such a large and important home, here, knows everyone, has two children in school—proves how short-sighted she is. Is this the action of a woman thinking about long-term consequences?

And yet, he thought, I consider myself a mature and responsible person, and I’m involved with her. I have a wife, a family, a careen to think about, yet I’m jeopardizing everything in this involvement; I’m throwing away the future—possibly—for something in the present.

Can we know our own motives?

He thought, Actually a human being is an unfolding biological organism that’s every so often gripped by instinctive forces. He can’t perceive the purpose of those forces, what their goal is. All he’s conscious of is the stress they put on him, the pressure. They force him to do something. But why … he can’t tell that at the time. Perhaps later. Someday I may look back and see exactly why I got involved with Fay Hume, and why she risked everything to get involved with me.

Anyhow, he thought, I have this conviction that whatever the reason, it’s some deeply serious, deeply responsible calculated matter, and not the caprice of the moment. She knows what she’s doing, better than I.

And, he thought, she’s using me; she’s the prime mover in this, has always been, and I’m nothing but her instrument. So what does that make me? Where does that put me? Is my life to be turned to the serving of another person, a woman who is determined to keep her family on a sound operating basis and doesn’t mind breaking up somebody else’s marriage, future, dreams, so that she can accomplish it?

But if she’s not conscious of this, if she’s acting instinctively, can I hold her morally responsible?

Am I thinking like the college boy that I am?

For days now he had tormented himself with such notions. And he seemed to be getting himself deeper into the circular swamp of pure reasoning. It was his philosophy class all over again, where debate led not to solution on insight but to further and further debate. Words begat words. Thoughts begat a feverish preoccupation with thinking, with logic as such.