No Place for an Angel by Elizabeth Spencer

the other or both? There didn’t seem to be anybody for Irene. She was dressed rather more strictly than not, and had let her hair go; it was dark and oily, streaked with grey. Her look was still direct and clear. It burned for a second across him, then strayed away.
    â€œYou’re not going to get a divorce or anything?”
    â€œNot that I know of.”
    As he went out, Irene told him at the door, still chain-smoking, “People here think he’s in the Keys for his health. I think they’ve made it up that he has arthritis or TB or something. Well, I don’t care. Let them make up anything they want to.”
    Barry went away, walking home. Buses seamed by in the late afternoon traffic, edging along the park. The air was sodden and gloomy, but the trees in the park had trapped some violet light among the cold branches.
    He was more at peace than he could ever remember having been, and all things looked to him exactly as they were. The heavy war threat had shifted off for a time and even the skyscrapers looked the freer for it—when threatened they seemed to know it. There was a way of thinking that he had caught to himself the life that had flagged for Irene and Charles. But he did not want to admit even this as something he believed. He felt any idea was best left as another object one could look at.

    When Barry left, Irene locked herself in alone. She leaned out of the bedroom window, looking down an austere drop of opposite façade to a street lined by skimpy trees. She saw herself as a girl, standing in a doorway, saying, “But Mother, if you’d only tell me what it is . . . if you’d only say . . . please say. . . .” “No one has understood my life,” said the voice out of the dark. “Not a single soul.” “Would you be happy if I was pretty and had a lot of dates and friends and things, and a lot of people came to see me?” The voice inside was instantly defensive. “Well, that’s not my fault. You needn’t make me sound to blame.” “But Mother, I didn’t mean . . . I did not mean. . . . Listen, please, listen, if only I could go to another school . . . somewhere near, but not that one.” “You know the problem . . . you know the financial problem very well. You want to hurt my pride by making it an issue. I try not to blame anyone, God knows how hard I try.”
    There was the old-fashioned street outside, the porch of the old white house with its red brick front yard, and the school across the way—that awful girls’ school. Between entering the room where her mother lay in the dark and talked that way and crossing the street to go inside that school, there was no choice at all in Irene’s mind. She was trapped like the pendulum in a clock.
    Then there was Charles.
    As she stood remembering, the phone rang from the empty foyer, and it was Catherine. She was in New York and wanted to see Irene.
    This late! Irene thought. And with Barry just gone. But I can’t, she thought. She felt afraid and her heart began to go fast. “I’m alone, you know, Catherine,” she said. “Charles is—is away on business.”
    â€œBut it’s you I wanted to see,” the voice continued.
    It was the kind of voice used to speaking to doctors, to saying, “but can you please just tell me what . . .” If there was anything Irene kept herself away from, it was authority. Nobody knew. She had learned it long ago. But how to stay clear of someone who could not retreat from authority because of some inner weakness, exploited infinitely? Wasn’t that what Catherine permitted? Or was it? The highway to Key West began to unreel in Irene’s head by way of a nonsense answer. The road to Siracusa had led south also. But Catherine, innocent as a lamb, had been in neither of these places.
    â€œYes, certainly, Catherine. Why, yes, do come round.”
    What else could I say? she heard