Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

Investment in Happiness (Continued from page 47) ; a ; 8 li to authorize further purchases — " How stupid! Why Joe paid his bills on the dot. Only the other day she'd noticed him going over them. But her hands trembled so that she could hardly find a bill for the driver, and her key chattered in the lock so that she gave up and rang the bell for Hetty. After that it seemed like days before she heard the car crunching up the driveway. Joe, at any rate, wasn't blind to the story her face told. He came slowly into the living room and shut the door. "What's wrong?" he asked anxiously. "Aren't you well, Marsha? What's happened?" Marsha tried to compose herself. "I HI don't know exactly, Joe. It's nothing, I guess — just an accident. But so humiliating. They wouldn't let me charge anything at Hilton's today!" She gave a sharp, slightly hysterical laugh. "Imagine— after the way we've paid our bills and run such big ones too. It was the embarrassment that upset me. Like having a door slammed in your face." She talked on nervously, conscious that after her first words Joe had stiffened into wary attention that was a wordless confirmation of all her fears. Finally she could find nothing more to say. Staring into the fireplace, she waited. Joe said soberly, "If it's come, its come. You'd better know the truth.' Going to the desk, he pulled out some bankbooks and a scribbled sheet which he crumpled in his clenched fist. "We re darn near broke, Marsha. I've been out of my mind trying to think up a way to tell you." "Broke? All your father's money— "We've got a few hundred in bonds; that's all," Joe broke in. "Half what we had before Dad died." His laugh was bitter. "We just— haven't any m0re-" , -i-T 1. Marsha's throat was dry with horror. "Thirty thousand dollars — m two V&CLTS?" "Thirty-one thousand, five hundred and fifty-two." Joe flipped the pages of the bankbook. "I know where it's gone, all right. But it's gone just the same." Marsha's face, dead-white and drawn like an old woman's, frightened him. He began to sound defensive. "We've got he house." "There's only five thousand down on that. The rest was a mortgage." "The car — " "Yes, the car. Three thousand dollars." She hadn't wanted it. She had said all along it was too much money. Remembering her doubts and Joe's insistence, she slipped over definitely into the enemy camp, into the position of accuser. Joe should have managed better. She couldn't join forces with him now, to help in their mutual trouble. She went on bitterly, "How could I forget the car? When you explained so carefully that we needed an expensive one. And the club. A thousand dollars a year for membership alone. For business, that was." Joe was stung into anger. "I did it as much for you as for me. Quit kidding yourself. You were just as anxious to put up a good front, get some fun out of life — live decently — " "Don't you ever say that to me!" she whipped at him furiously. "Don't you ever say I encouraged you to live a lie, to throw away what we should have been saving — I won't stand for that! I would have been happy in a four-room bungalow with some money in the bank, and you know it! It was you who set the pace, you who had to take the Gordons out for dinner, entertain the Fieldings at golf and lunch — fifty dollars here, eighty dollars there . . ." "You sound like a fishwife," Joe cut in coldly. He slammed the drawer on his bankbooks and papers and stood up. A dreadful emptiness spread around Marsha, as she saw that now each of them stood alone, glaring at the other in spirit. But she couldn't do anything to close the gap; not right then. Joe added, "I'm going to bed." Hands clenched, back very straight, he walked out of the room and went upstairs. The Hubels' breakfast table was usually a quiet place, with the morning paper split between them and only necessary words exchanged. But normally it was a friendly stillness, so the next morning's tension was all the more painful. At Joe's place the paper lay untouched, while he worked diligently on his eggs. Marsha, fiddling with a piece of toast, decided she needed coffee to wash it down. As she was reaching across to pour it her eyes encountered Joe's. Instantly they were standing, his arms around her and his shoulder damp with the tears she had fought back during the night. "Oh, Joe . . . I'm so ashamed. Brawling like that, just when we need strength and help from each other . . ." "Yes, honey. Me too." Joe rested his cheek on her hair until she was quieter, then settled her in her chair and went back to his. They both began to eat with relish. "I'll tell you what, though, Marsha," he went on. "I've got an idea or two. We won't give up so easily. I've run across a couple of propositions lately that would make back everything we've lost and then some." Eagerness — what his sister Doris called "Joe's plunging look" — sparked from him, and Marsha warmed to it. Wasn't it something that you couldn't keep Joe down? He came back fighting! Only from now on, she vowed, she would guide him, somehow, so that his eagerness didn't go overboard. "I want to tell you," she began, "it was rotten of me to try to put all the blame on you. I didn't say it, but I was thinking it — " "I know." Joe's gesture stopped her. "Let's forget it, honey. No harm done. If this highway scheme of Flatoe's is all I think it is, we'll have our money back in a couple of weeks. Or if that doesn't work out, Curzon at the bank was talking to me the other day about some closed-out property." Marsha's brow wrinkled. "What do you mean, Joe? If we're in the position you say we are, how can you consider any investment or scheme or whatever you want to call it? I don't understand — what are you talking about?" "That's it. Just talking." 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