Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [159]
It ended, a quarter of an hour later, in his calling her a “neurotic” before he turned away and pretended to sleep.
For the first time they had failed to make peace.
“There are two races of people, only two, and they live side by side. His calls mine ‘neurotic’; mine calls his ‘stupid.’ We’ll never understand each other, never; and it’s madness for us to debate—to lie together in a hot bed in a creepy room—enemies, yoked.”
III
It clarified in her the longing for a place of her own.
“While it’s so hot, I think I’ll sleep in the spare room,” she said next day.
“Not a bad idea.” He was cheerful and kindly.
The room was filled with a lumbering double bed and a cheap pine bureau. She stored the bed in the attic; replaced it by a cot which, with a denim cover, made a couch by day; put in a dressing-table, a rocker transformed by a cretonne cover; had Miles Bjornstam build book-shelves.
Kennicott slowly understood that she meant to keep up her seclusion. In his queries, “Changing the whole room?” “Putting your books in there?” she caught his dismay. But it was so easy, once her door was closed, to shut out his worry. That hurt her—the ease of forgetting him.
Aunt Bessie Smail sleuthed out this anarchy. She yammered, “Why, Carrie, you ain’t going to sleep all alone by yourself? I don’t believe in that. Married folks should have the same room, of course! Don’t go getting silly notions. No telling what a thing like that might lead to. Suppose I up and told your Uncle Whit that I wanted a room of my own!”
Carol spoke of recipes for corn-pudding.
But from Mrs. Dr. Westlake she drew encouragement. She had made an afternoon call on Mrs. Westlake. She was for the first time invited up-stairs, and found the suave old woman sewing in a white and mahogany room with a small bed.
“Oh, do you have your own royal apartments, and the doctor his?” Carol hinted.
“Indeed I do! The doctor says it’s bad enough to have to stand my temper at meals. Do—” Mrs. Westlake looked at her sharply. “Why, don’t you do the same thing?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.” Carol laughed in an embarrassed way. “Then you wouldn’t regard me as a complete hussy if I wanted to be by myself now and then?”
“Why, child, every woman ought to get off by herself and turn over her thoughts—about children, and God, and how bad her complexion is, and the way men don’t really understand her, and how much work she finds to do in the house, and how much patience it takes to endure some things in a man’s love.”
“Yes!” Carol said it in a gasp, her hands twisted together. She wanted to confess not only her hatred for the Aunt Bessies but her covert irritation toward those she best loved: her alienation from Kennicott, her disappointment in Guy Pollock, her uneasiness in the presence of Vida. She had enough self-control to confine herself to, “Yes. Men! The dear blundering souls, we do have to get off and laugh at them.”
“Of course we do. Not that you have to laugh at Dr. Kennicott so much, but my man, heavens, now there’s a rare old bird! Reading story-books when he ought to be tending to business! ‘Marcus Westlake,’ I say to him, ‘you’re a romantic old fool.’ And does he get angry? He does not. He chuckles and says,