Pay the Piper by Joan Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

on.”
    â€œWell, this Saturday,” she said reluctantly, “we’re going to look at a new car at the Chevrolet place.”
    She wanted to tell him how they never bought anything on credit, how buying a new car was a large event in their lives, how conscientiously William had pored over Consumer Reports ; she wanted to say how she felt disloyal replacing faithful products with newer ones.
    â€œFine,” he said. “Call me just as you’re leaving home.”
    How could she call? she wanted to ask. And she knew right off, she’d find a way. She could see herself already running back indoors to the bathroom while William sat impatiently at the wheel of the old car. Why was she apt and capable? Why did people know innately how to be sly? She longed to ask Mr. Woodsum if everybody had the same ability to learn so quickly to deceive.
    â€œI’m afraid I’ll have to ask you for a retainer’s fee.” He seemed truly apologetic. She wrote out a check, wishing her father had not died and left her money.
    â€œDon’t forget the viewing,” he called after her.
    She said, without looking back, “I won’t.” William laid out waxen in a coffin rose to mind, and he would hate that idea since his family believed only in cremation. At her father’s funeral he had made fun of people coming up to the casket and saying things like, “Look at that rascal, doesn’t he look peaceful?” “Wasn’t he handsome?” “God broke the mold after he made old Frank.”
    â€œThis is barbaric,” William had said. “Primitive. I’ve never seen anything so disgusting.”
    â€œIt’s Southern,” she had said, shrugging.
    She found her way back to town where gulls were wheeling and dealing over the saltwater inlet that ran in from Long Island Sound. In a bank, she transferred money from her savings account into the checking account to cover Mr. Woodsum’s check, thinking how she’d always been aghast at the idea of being a woman who had to ask her husband for every penny. Had she been in that position, she could not have seen Mr. Woodsum. She might have been better off. Across from the bank, she looked at the marquee of a movie she wanted to see. William said they had seen it. Then he clapped an obvious hand to his mouth saying, “Oops. I must have read a review in Time. ”
    How many movies had he seen twice? she wondered. William’s wanting her to know the truth was curious. Laurel shopped carefully, having never been a piker about cooking, though she hated time spent in grocery stores. She bought bubble gum, hoping Rick did not already have the baseball cards inside. She spied Almond-Mocha ice cream and was thrilled. She bought a lot. It was William’s favorite flavor and hard to come by. She rummaged around in a bin of odds and ends, hoping to come up with a device she once bought William, which he was crazy about but lost. His habit on the train was to cut out newspaper items of interest for his work; the little cutter slit them out without raggedy edges and had its own case. Alas, there was not another one. She thought the marriage revolved around William and his likes and dislikes.
    She came from the store thinking of her habit of silence. Too often in childhood to speak out had had disastrous results. Long ago, she told herself about her parents, “They’ll never make me cry again. I won’t feel anything.” Perhaps she had learned her lesson too well. A time came when her father threw up after a week-long binge, her mother frantically spreading newspapers around the floor, and she had been unmoved that her father thought he was throwing up blood. She had stated, “It’s the tomato soup he had for lunch.”
    â€œWhat does she think it is?” He used her mother as intermediary too.
    â€œShe says it’s tomato soup,” her mother had said.
    She remembered a sad sense of