436
PARTISAN REVIEW
She did not seem to notice, looking pointedly past me, as she talked
to Fenton. "Mr. Fenton, we-Hank and I-were wondering if you
could come over for supper day after tomorrow, about six or six-thirty.
We've been thinking that you must be missing-well, home cooking and
a house with children in it. We don't have five, but I can guarantee
our little girl will be up, whatever we do. These-"
"He's drunk," I cut in, a little jealous, and wondering whether that
were not perhaps the whole point of the invitation. It irked me to have
risen so stupidly to the bait.
"I may be drunk, but I know an invitation when I hear one. I'd
be delighted, Mrs. Somers, delighted." He tried to leer, but his face
kept collapsing around the effort. "As for the child, strangle it in its
cradle, or ship it off to grandma's. My own five children, I'm proud
to say, were all accidents-totally unwanted!" He held up the fingers
of one hand, apparently by way of illustration, and turned away.
"I'll remind him in the morning," I assured Judith later, when we
had left Fenton sagging comfortably between his two friends. "I'm glad
you invited him-he seems very lonely...." My voice sounded uncon–
vincing even to me; but she did not appear to be listening.
It
was only after the others had all left us, and I was saying good
night to Hank and her, that she spoke at last. I had already started to
move off with a sense of disappointment that I resented but could not
quell, when she came running up the steps of their basement apartment,
out of the darkness where Hank still fumbled at the door.
"I just remembered that I may not have invited you yet-the same
night for dinner, I mean. But I must have, surely. I must." She was
obviously lying, and I resolved to refuse.
"No."
"How silly of me! But you will come, you must- I know how
much you must miss your family. Besides, I have a special favor to ask."
She paused for a while, but I did not respond. "I want you to look
at my husband's poetry." There was something about the way she said
"husband" that made me uneasy, a particular emphasis, as if Hank's
simple name would not do, only that generic, comic word which put
him (and her, too) into my hands.
I said nothing.
"You
will
come, won't you? I'm a good cook. Really! And you
must see Hank's poetry. That's the real reason I'm asking you. It's
really wonderful, you know. It
is!"
She insisted on the last word, as
if
my merely embarrassed silence were a scornful dissent. "He needs to
be praised- Somebody must tell him how good he is! He's lost all
