A Domestic Dilemma-1
The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories 作者：卡森·麦卡勒斯 投票推荐 加入书签 留言反馈
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ON THURSDAY Martin Meadows left the office early enough to make the first express bus home. It was the hour when the evening lilac glow was fading in the slushy streets, but by the time the bus had left the mid-town terminal the bright city night had e. On Thursdays the maid had a half-day off and Martin liked to get home as soon as possible, since for the past year his wife had not been -- well. This Thursday he was very tired and, hoping that nular uter would single him out for versation, he fastened his attention to the neer until the bus had crossed the Gee Washingte. On 9-W Highway Martin always felt that the trip was halfway done, he breathed deeply, even in cold weather when only ribbons ht cut through the smoky air of the bus, fident that he was breathing try air. It used to be that at this point he would relax and begin to think with pleasure of his home. But in this last year nearness brought only a sense of tension and he did not anticipate the journeys end. This evening Marti his face close to the window and watched the barren fields and lonely lights of passing townships. There was a moon, pale on the dark earth and areas of late, porous snow; to Martin the tryside seemed vast and somehow desolate that evening. He took his hat from the rad put his folded neer in the pocket of his overcoat a few minutes before time to pull the cord.The cottage was a block from the bus stop, he river but not directly on the shore; from the living-room window you could look across the street and opposite yard ahe Hudson. The cottage was modern, almost too white and new on the narrow plot of yard. In summer the grass was soft and bright and Martin carefully tended a flower border and a rose trellis. But during the cold, fallow months the yard was bleak and the cottage seemed naked. Lights were on that evening in all the rooms itle house and Ma<cite></cite>rtin hurried up the front walk. Before the steps he stopped to move a wagon out of the way.
The children were in the living room, so i on play that the opening of the front door was at first unnoticed. Martin stood looking at his safe, lovely children. They had opehe藏书网 bottom drawer of the secretary and taken out the Christmas decorations. Andy had mao plug in the Christmas tree lights and the green and red bulbs glowed with out-of-seasoivity on the rug of the living room. At the moment he was trying to trail the bright cord over Mariannes rog horse. Maria on the floor pulling off an angels wings. The children wailed a startling wele. Martin swung the fat little baby girl up to his shoulder and Andy threw himself against his fathers legs.
"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"
Marti dowtle girl carefully and swung Andy a few times like a pendulum. Then he picked up the Christmas tree cord.
"Whats all this stuff doing out? Help me put it ba the drawer. Youre not to fool with the light socket. Remember I told you that before. I mean it, Andy."
The six-year-old child nodded and shut the secretary drawer. Martin stroked his fair soft hair and his hand lienderly on the nape of the childs frail neck.
"Had supper yet, Bumpkin?"
"It hurt. The toast was hot."
The baby girl stumbled on the rug and, after the first surprise of the fall, began to cry; Martin picked her up and carried her in his arms back to the kit.
"See, Daddy," said Andy. "The toast --"
Emily had laid the childrens supper on the uncovered porcelain table. There were two plates with the remains of cream-of-wheat and eggs and silver mugs that had held milk. There was also a platter of amon toast, untouched except for oooth-marked bite. Martin she bitten pied nibbed gingerly. The the toast into the garbage pail. "Hoo-phui -- What oh!"
Emily had mistakein of ne for the amon.
"I like to have burnt up," Andy said. "Drank water and ran outdoors and opened my mouth. Marianne did none."
"Any," corrected Martiood helpless, looking around the walls of the kit. "Well, thats that, I guess," he said finally. "Where is your mother now?"
"Shes up in you alls room."
Martihe children i a up to his wife. Outside the door he waited for a moment to still his anger. He did not knod onside the room he closed the door behind him.
Emily sat in the rog chair by the window of the pleasant room. She had been drinking something from a tumbler and as he entered she put the glass hurriedly on the floor behind the chair. Ititude there was fusion and guilt which she tried to hide by a show of spurious vivacity.
"Oh, Marty! You home already? The time slipped up on me. I was just going down --" She lurched to him and her kiss was strong with sherry. Wheood unresponsive she stepped back a pad giggled nervously.
"Whats the matter with you? Standing there like a barber pole. Is anything wrong with you?"
&qu with me?" Marti over the rog chair and picked up the tumbler from the floor. "If you could only realize how sick I am -- how bad it is for all of us."
Emily spoke in a false, airy voice that had bee too familiar to him. Often at such times she affected a slight English at, copying perhaps some actress she admired, "I havent the vaguest idea what you mean. Unless you are referring to the glass I used for a spot of sherry. I had a finger of sherry -- maybe two. But what is the crime in that, pray tell me? Im quite all right. Quite all right."
"So anyone see."
As she went into the bathroom Emily walked with careful gravity. She turned on the cold water and dashed some on her face with her cupped hands, then patted herself dry with the er of a bath towel. Her face was delicately featured and young, unblemished.
"I was just going down to make dinner." She tottered and balanced herself by holding to the door frame.
"Ill take care of dinner. You stay up here. Ill bring it up."
"Ill do nothing of the sort. Why, whoever heard of such a thing?"
"Please," Martin said.
"Leave me alone. Im quite all right. I was just on the way down --"
"Mind what I say."
"Mind yrandmother."
She lurched toward the door, but Martin caught her by the arm. "I dont want the children to see you in this dition. Be reasonable."
"dition!" Emily jerked her arm. Her voice rose angrily. "Why, because I drink a couple of sherries iernoon youre trying to make me out a drunkard. dition! Why, I dont even touch whiskey. As well you know. I dont swill liquor at bars. And thats more than you say. I dont even <samp>藏书网</samp>have a cocktail at diime. I only sometimes have a glass of sherry. What, I ask you, is the disgrace of that? dition!"
Martin sought words to calm his wife. "Well have a quiet supper by ourselves up here. Thats a good girl." Emily sat on the side of the bed and he opehe door for a quick departure. "Ill be ba a jiffy."
As he busied himself with the dinner downstairs he was lost in the familiar question as to how this problem had e upon his home. He himself had always enjoyed a good drink. When they were still living in Alabama they had served long drinks or cocktails as a matter of course. For years they had drunk one or two -- possibly three drinks before dinner, and at bedtime a long nightcap. Evenings before holidays they <samp>..</samp>might get a buzz on, might even bee a little tight. But alcohol had never seemed a problem to him, only a bothersome expehat with the increase in the family they could scarcely afford. It was only after his pany had transferred him to New York that Martin was aware that certainly his wife was drinking too much. She was tippling, he noticed, during the day.
The problem aowledged, he tried to analyze the source. The ge from Alabama to New York had somehow disturbed her; aced to the idle warmth of a small Southern town, the matrix of the family and cousinship and childhood friends, she had failed to aodate herself to the stricter, lonelier mores of the North. The duties of motherhood and housekeeping were onerous to her. Homesick for Paris City, she had made no friends in the suburban town. She read only magazines and murder books. Her interior life was insuffit without the artifice of alcohol. The revelations of intinensidiously undermined his previous ceptions of his wife. There were times of unexplainable malevoleimes when the alcoholic fuse caused an explosion of unseemly anger. He entered a latent coarseness in Emily, insistent with her natural simplicity. She lied about drinking and deceived him with unsuspected stratagems.
Then there was an act. ing home from work one evening about a year ago, he was greeted with screams from the childrens room. He found Emily holding the baby, wet and naked from her bath. The baby had been dropped, her frail, frail skull striking the table edge, so that a thread of blood was soaking into the gossamer hair. Emily was sobbing and intoxicated. As Martin cradled the hurt child, so infinitely precious at that moment, he had an affrighted vision of the future.
The day Marianne was all right. Emily vowed that never again would she touch liquor, and for a few weeks she was sober, cold and downcast. Then gradually she began -- not whisky in -- but quantities of beer, or sherry, or outlandish liqueurs; once he had e across a hatbox of empty crême de metles. Martin found a dependable maid who mahe household petently. Virgie was also from Alabama and Martin had never dared tell Emily the wage scale ary in New York. Emilys drinking was entirely secret now, done before he reached the house. Usually the effects were almost imperceptible -- a looseness of movement or the heavy-lidded eyes. The times of irresponsibilities, such as the ne-pepper toast, were rare, and Martin could dismiss his worries when Virgie was at the house. But, heless, ay was always latent, a threat of indefined disaster that underlay his days.
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