# Kept Woman/Chapter 22

When Hubert left the apartment Lillian went to the chair by the window. For once she did not gaze down into the hot, glittering street. Some strange impulse caused her to turn the chair so that she sat regarding the shabby, dusty little room. The door of the kitchenette closet was open and she saw a cake of yellow soap with coffee grounds clinging to it, an empty condensed-milk can, and water dripping with persistent dreariness from the unpolished faucet.
Hubert should not have gone out. His cold was very bad. She sighed. He really had had to go. She was fairly certain that he had gone to borrow money from one of his friends. She wondered which one. Would it be either of the McKay brothers? More likely, though, it would be a close friend rather than a business acquaintance. He really had to have some money. Anybody who saw him would recognize how necessary it was for him to have a doctor's care. Poor Hubert. A cold was rotten. She hoped that he wouldn't borrow much money. Money was so hard to repay, and they had one obligation now. Her ring would have to be redeemed. That would probably be around sixty dollars or so. Now if Hubert borrowed twenty-five today that would be all right. They'd only have around a hundred dollars to pay out when they got on their feet again.
​Lillian ran her hand over her thick, wavy hair. A sudden thought had come to her. Shocking and terrifying, it came like a jeer from an angry mob. She sank an inch lower in the chair and looked at the room and gave herself up to disquieting thoughts. There seemed to be a curious brittle silence. Everything waited with a pitying politeness while Lillian Cory's little brain struggled to encompass a fact. Only the water continued to drip into the sink with a nerve-racking regularity. The small room seemed to grow smaller and hotter. The furniture seemed shabbier, dustier, more rickety. She thought of the roaches, the people upstairs, the garbage-laden dumb-waiter. She thought of the butcher who never let her see the meat he chopped, the one unblemished pair of stockings she owned, the haircut she needed.
Was it true that things would never be better? That Hubert would never be on his feet again? She tried to brush the doubt from her mind, but it would not go, and she knew that it would not go because it belonged there. It was the truth. This period of getting by on nothing was not the tedious intermission she had thought it. This was the show. The two cars, the shopping orgies, the long drives and carefree days—that had been the intermission. Of course. Hubert had sold his business and had had money to burn. They had spent it. There was nothing now and he could not even get a job. Perhaps he was incompetent. Certainly. Funny how thick she had been. He was never going to be able to furnish another home for her, replace her roadster, or trick her out again in new outfits. He wasn't able to. ​He wasn't a slam-bang live wire of a business man. How could she have been so dense? Why, God, if he had had the brains it takes to hold a decent position he wouldn't have acted as he had with all that money.
She sat for a time musing on her stupidity and on Hubert's inadequacy. A couple of dumbbells, her and Hubert. Well, God must love dumbbells, He makes so many of them. That had been in a book she had read. Funny how she had been so dumb all the time and just now had realized it.
Trucks were passing her door with scraping and rumbling noises. Passenger cars were honking horns. Children were shrieking. The usual sounds of the street had recommenced. The moment of silence that had been given her was past now, but she had used it well. She was even satisfied to accept the truth and not try to cast it out by kidding herself.
She reviewed all that had passed through her mind in the last ten minutes. She was giving herself one last chance to find it all empty foolishness brought on by low spirits and worry. No, it was true.
When she was thoroughly satisfied that the facts which had presented themselves were honest, well-meaning facts she went to her bedroom and dressed.
She dressed quickly but carefully. She stopped to press her blue georgette dress but did it without waste of time. She was out of the house in twenty minutes.
When she came back it was noon. She looked hot and tired, but there was a new aliveness about her. She did not throw herself on the couch but began at once to straighten the apartment. She made the bed and ​washed the breakfast dishes. She mopped the floor in all the places that the rug didn't cover and she dusted thoroughly even into places that had not been reached since she had rented the apartment. She stopped once and ate a slice of bread and butter. When she was finished she went to the window to watch for Hubert.
It was a few minutes past one when he came. She saw him walking toward the house and she wondered about the car. Her first thought was that he had been in an accident which had completely destroyed the car but left him hale and hearty. She convinced herself that he had been to the garage first and had walked home to save himself a trip later. As he came toward her she studied his expression anxiously. Had he had any luck? How was he feeling? His expression told her nothing.
She thought it took him an unusually long time to reach the apartment. He probably was warm and ill. She drew away from the window and opened the door. She stood waiting on the threshold listening to his footsteps. Slow footsteps. If she hadn't seen Hubert coming she would have thought a very old man was climbing the stairs. He must be pretty sick.
He came in and sat down immediately. "Hello," he said. "God, it's hot."
"Yes. Why didn't you drive home? You could have taken the car back when you were more rested."
"I came down by train. That's what delayed me so. I had to wait for a train and then fell asleep and rode past my station and had to come back by subway and everything. It was a nuisance. What were you saying? Oh, the car? Why, I left it with Helen. She—she ​wanted to borrow it for a day or two. I hadn't the heart to keep refusing her any longer. It will probably be hell to get it back from her, but you know how she is. Excitable and all. She always liked the car, you know. I promised her once that sometime I'd let her take it for a day or two. I thought I'd better let her have it. We don't use it so much any more."
"No, of course not. I didn't know you were going to see Helen today, though."
"Neither did I. I met her on the street. Worse luck."
He didn't get any money. If he had he would have said so by now. She put her hand on his forehead. It felt hot. He was taking off his coat and there was a little breeze coming in at the window. Oh, he'd have pneumonia sure.
"Hubert, you're feverish and everything. Please go to bed."
"Go on. I'd roast to death in bed. I'll tell you what you can do for me, Lil. Run me a nice cold drink of water."
She turned the dripping faucet on full force and the water splashed on her arms and face in a vindictive little shower. She brought him the water.
"Thanks, Lil."
"You're welcome. Did you—did you see anybody today besides Helen?"
"No, Lil, I didn't. I'll tell you the truth. It might sound silly to you, but the training you get when you're a kid lasts all your life. My old man always hammered it into me that borrowing money was right next door to stealing it. I went up there today with full intentions ​of borrowing from Carl Feldman or the McKays or any of the dozen guys I know well, but I'll be damned, Lil, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just couldn't. I wanted to, but I kept thinking of what my old man used to say and I swear I couldn't bring myself to going near one of them. They'd have given it to me. I know they would have, but I just couldn't ask."
"Well," said Lillian after a moment of thought, "if that's the way you are, you just are. I understand all right. It don't sound silly to me. I can figure people having funny little ideas. Only you feeling so rotten and all, I did hope that you would get some money. You wouldn't ask Helen, I suppose."
"That would be the same thing, Lil. Borrowing from her would be just like borrowing from anybody else. And worse because she's a woman."
"Yeh, that's right."
Lillian sat down. She looked at Hubert. He looked terribly beaten. Perhaps he had always known what she had just discovered that day. She thought he looked as though he would like to cry. That was probably her imagination. He was just warm and tired and perhaps a trifle blue. Men didn't really cry.
She watched him for a few seconds more. Presently she arose and crossed the room to the couch. She sat down beside him and put her arm around him.
"Honey," she said. Then again, very sternly, "Honey, listen. It's all right. We'll pull through. Listen, I went downtown today and got a job. Honestly I did. I start tomorrow. Handkerchiefs, of course. Now don't you worry. Wasn't that smart of me? Oh, go ​ahead, say it was smart. And listen, I'll run you a nice cool bath. How will that be? And later I'll take you on for a checker game."
She went to the bathroom and started the water running for his bath. It was only after he had bathed that she remembered that a cool bath would probably be dangerous with his cold. She worried quite some about it and played a very bad game of checkers.
Hubert cautioned her twice to keep her mind on the game. It was only, he revealed as he jumped one of Lillian's men, by strict concentration that he was able to beat her consistently.