The Man in the Net Read Free Page B

had been far worse in New York than she’d been in the country. She would have forgotten it, of course, because she was bored now and playing the role of the exiled martyr. But another desperate bid for competition with the Mrs. Raines, the Parkinsons, all those mercilessly chic and sophisticated women in Manhattan would break her.
    Dr. MacAllister, the only person he’d confided in, had been emphatic about that.
    “Since Linda won’t come to me as a patient, John, I can only give an opinion based on my observations. But I’d say if you don’t take her out of this rat-race she’ll be a hopeless alcoholic in a couple of years.”
    As he put the letter down on a table, he looked at his wife for the first time. He had expected a virago explosion; he’d even expected her to break in before he’d finished reading the letter. But, as so often before, he’d been wrong about her. She’d lit another cigarette and was standing watching him, very quietly, with the forlorn dignity of someone who has abandoned hope because there was no point in hoping.
    “You’re not going back,” she said.
    He felt amazement and gratitude and a stab of guilt. Had he then underestimated her?
    “So you do understand?”
    “Of course I understand. You know you can paint. The critics haven’t changed that at all. And you want to paint. That’s all you want. That’s all you care about.”
    “I couldn’t go back, Linda. Not unless we were starving, and we’re not starving. We’ve got enough to go along the way we’re going for five years, at least. You know that.” Because she wasn’t fighting him, all his old only partially destroyed affection for her was flooding in. He went to her, putting his hands on her arms. “Going back would be the end. You do understand, don’t you? You can see what a weasel letter that is. Charlie knows what that job would really be! Up to my eyes in it twenty-four hours a day. Doing my painting on the side! I couldn’t do anything on the side. Painting isn’t something you can do on the side anyway. I’ll go to New York tomorrow and explain. Charlie will understand.” It was heady, this realization that, against all expectations, he could still talk honestly with her. “After all, I made my decision when I made it. You remember, don’t you? We decided it together. You as much as I. You know it was the right thing. Not only for me but for you, too. You .. .”
    “For me?” Suddenly her body stiffened. “What do you mean—for me?”
    “You were just as fed up with New York as I was. You …”
    “Me? Fed up with New York? Are you out of your mind? New York was my whole life.”
    He felt the sense of well-being—that absurd, deluded sense of well-being—draining away.
    “There hasn’t been an hour,” she said, “not an hour when I haven’t been dreaming that just possibly, one day, just possibly all this would be over and I would be back in my apartment, with my friends, with my kind of life. I haven’t said anything. I’ve tried so desperately not to say anything. And I’m not going to say anything now. But when you claim that it was for me, that it was only because of me that you dragged us here . .
    “Linda, I didn’t say just for you. You know I didn’t. I said …”
    “It doesn’t matter what you said. Nothing matters.” Her lower lip under the cigarette was trembling. “I’m not important anyway. I’ve always known that. I’m just the woman around the place—the woman to cook the meals, to clean the house. That’s a woman’s function, isn’t it? While you go off and lock yourself up all day in that dreary barn, painting your pictures. Off somewhere—God knows where—in a world of your own. And then, when you do have some free time, when we might be together doing things, getting closer—when you might be making it better for me, you just sit here blaring that phonograph or go off in those goddam woods with those goddam