Jewels Read Free Page A

She tried to get him to spend more time with her, but he didn’t seem to want to. And his drinking was worse than ever. He had his first drink every day long before noon, sometimes when he got up in the morning, and he insisted to Sarah that it wasn’t a problem. He called her “his prim little girl,” and brushed off her concerns with amusement. And to make matters worse, she had just learned that she was pregnant.
    “But that’s wonderful!” Jane exclaimed, looking delighted “I am too!” she added, and Sarah smiled through her tears, unable to explain to her older sister how unhappy her life was. Jane’s life was totally different. She was married to a serious, reliable man who was interested in being married to her, while Freddie Van Deering most assuredly wasn’t. He was many things, charming, amusing, witty; but responsibility was as foreign to him as another language. And Sarah was beginning to suspect that he would never settle down. He was just going to go on playing forever. Sarah’s father had begun to suspect that, too, but Jane was still convinced that everything was going to work out happily, especially after they had the baby. The two girls discovered that their babies were due at almost exactly the same time—within days of each other, in fact—and that bit of news cheered Sarah a little before she went back to her lonely apartment.
    Freddie wasn’t there, as usual, and didn’t come home that night at all. The next day he was contrite when he came home at noon, explaining that he had played bridge till 4 A.M. and then stayed where he was because he was afraid to come home and wake her.
    “Is that all you do?” For the first time, she turned on him angrily after he had explained it, and he looked starded by the vehemence of her tone. She had always been very demure about his behavior before, but this time she was clearly very angry.
    “What on earth do you mean?” He looked shocked at her question, his innocent blue eyes opened wide, his sandy-blond hair making him look like Tom Sawyer.
    “I mean, what exactly do you do at night when you stay out until one or two o’clock in the morning?” There was real anger there, and pain, and disappointment.
    He smiled boyishly, convinced he would always be able to delude her. “Sometimes I have a little too much to drink. That’s all. It just seems easier to stay where I am when that happens than come home when you’re asleep. I don’t want to upset you, Sarah.”
    “Well, you are. You’re never home. You’re always out with your friends, and you come home drunk every night. That’s not how married people behave.” She was steaming.
    “Isn’t it? Are you referring to your brother-in-law, or normal people with a little more spunk and joie de vivre? I’m sorry, darling, I’m not Peter.”
    “I never asked you to be. But who are you? Who am I married to? I never see you, except at parties, and then you’re off with your friends, playing cards, and telling stories, and drinking, or you’re out, and God knows where you are then,” she said sadly.
    “Would you rather I stayed home with you?” He looked amused, and for the first time she saw something wicked in his eyes, something mean, but she was challenging his very lifestyle. She was frightening him, and even threatening his drinking.
    “Yes, I would rather you stay home with me. Is that such a shocking thing?”
    “Not shocking, just stupid. You married me because I was fun to be with, didn’t you? If you’d wanted a bore like your brother-in-law, I imagine you could have found one, but you didn’t. You wanted me. And now you want to turn me into someone like him. Well, darling, I can promise you that won’t happen.”
    “What will happen then? Will you go to work? You told Father last year you would, and you haven’t.”
    “I don’t need to work, Sarah. You’re boring me to tears. You should be happy that I don’t have to scrabble like some fool, at some dreary job,