Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

be somewhere,” Stan said.
    “I did. I put it somewhere,” said Queenie.
    “Maybe you were drunk and you threw it out,” he said.
    She said, “I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t throw it out.”
    But she went and looked in the garbage. No.
    He sat at the table watching her. If you put it somewhere it must be somewhere. She was getting frantic.
    “Are you sure?” said Stan. “Are you sure you didn’t just give it away?
    She was sure. She was sure she hadn’t given it away. She had wrapped it up to keep. She was sure, she was almost sure she had wrapped it to keep. She was sure she had not given it away.
    “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Stan said. “I think maybe you gave it away. And I think I know who to.”
    Queenie was brought to a standstill. Who to?
    “I think you gave it to Andrew.”
    To Andrew?
    Oh, yes. Poor Andrew, who was telling her he couldn’t afford to go home for Christmas. She was sorry for Andrew.
    “So you gave him our cake.”
    No, said Queenie. Why would she do that? She would not do that. She had never thought of giving Andrew the cake.
    Stan said, “Lena. Don’t lie.”
    That was the beginning of Queenie’s long, miserable struggle. All she could say was no. No, no, I did not give the cake to anybody. I did not give the cake to Andrew. I am not lying. No. No.
    “Probably you were drunk,” Stan said. “You were drunk and you are not remembering very well.”
    Queenie said she was not drunk.
    “You were the one who was drunk,” she said.
    He got up and came at her with his hand raised, saying not to tell him that he’d been drunk, never to tell him that.
    Queenie cried out, “I won’t. I won’t. I’m sorry.” And he didn’t hit her. But she began to cry. She kept crying while she tried to persuade him. Why would she give away the cake she had worked so hard to make? Why would he not believe her? Why would she lie to him?
    “Everybody lies,” Stan said. And the more she cried and begged him to believe her, the more cool and sarcastic he became.
    “Use a little logic. If it’s here, get up and find it. If it isn’t here, then you gave it away.”
    Queenie said that wasn’t logic. It did not have to be given away just because she could not find it. Then he came close to her again in such a calm, half-smiling way that she thought for a moment he was going to kiss her. Instead he closed his hands around her throat and just for a second cut off her breath. He didn’t even leave any marks.
    “Now,” he said. “Now—are you going to teach me about logic?”
    Then he went to get dressed to go and play at the restaurant. He stopped speaking to her. He wrote her a note saying he would speak to her again when she told the truth. All over Christmas she could not stop crying. She and Stan were supposed to go and visit the Greek people on Christmas Day, but she couldn’t go her face was such a mess. Stan had to go and say that she was sick. The Greek people probably knew the truth anyway. They had probably heard the hullabaloo through the walls.
    She put on a ton of makeup and went to work, and the manager said, “You want to give people the idea this is a sob story?” She said she had infected sinuses and he let her go home. When Stan came home that night and pretended she didn’t exist she turned over and looked at him. She knew that he would get into bed and lie beside her like a post and that if she moved against him he would continue to lie like a post until she moved away. She saw that he could go on living like this and she could not. She thought that if she had to go on in this way she would die. Just as if he really had choked off her breath, she would die.
    So she said, Forgive me.
    Forgive me. I did what you said. I’m sorry.
    Please. Please. I’m sorry.
    He sat down on the bed. He didn’t say anything.
    She said that she had really forgotten about giving the cake away but that now she remembered that she had done it and she was sorry.
    “I wasn’t lying,” she said. “I forgot.”
    “You forgot you gave the cake to Andrew?” he said.
    “I must have. I forgot.”
    “To Andrew. You gave it to Andrew.”
    Yes, Queenie said. Yes, yes, that was what she had done. And she began to howl and hang on to him and beg him to forgive her.
    All right, stop the hysterics, he said. He did not say that he forgave her, but he got a warm washcloth and wiped her face and lay down beside her and cuddled her and pretty soon he wanted to do everything else.
    “No more