The Wintering (12 page)

Deserted now, the parking lot was an expanse of asphalt slick with rain, shiny as tar. The descendent grey afternoon had brought on lights in houses early. It seemed much later than it was. Though her bottom felt paralyzed with sitting, Amy climbed into the car, unable to think anything but that she would be glad to get home.

They went along in silence for a while. Then Almoner said, “I almost wrote you first, you know. I felt I owed you an apology. I was going to get your address on some pretext from that Decker woman. And then when that blue envelope came, I knew it was from you. Now, I almost know what your letters are going to say before I open them. I think if you had come alone that first day, we would have talked right away and intimately, not as strangers.”

“Oh yes, I've thought that, too. I was so sorry afterward I hadn't come alone, I can't tell you. I had thought about it, but I was afraid to.”

“Amy, you'll never get anywhere being afraid,” he said. “If I haven't already told you that, it should have been the first thing I ever told you. And if I have no chance to impress anything else on you, let it be that.”

“All right,” she said, thinking it was easy to be told, and to agree to not being afraid; but then how did you actually go about it? “Aren't we, though, going to meet in the spring?” She glanced at him, wondering if he had forgotten suggesting it, or whether she had been so boring that he had changed his mind.

“Let us meet,” he said.

“But we had decided.” He sat a little queerly, his head dropped slightly. She looked at him cautiously. “We will meet!” she said brightly, glad that he sat up.

She drove the most circuitous route she could to the station, passing time; they spoke mostly of the bad weather and of the increasing difficulties of ever finding a parking place in the city. At last, she found a place a short walking distance from the station and they started toward it down a block where, above them, now glitterless reindeer arched on their hind legs and met over the street, having been forgotten since Christmas. Walking along, she and Almoner glanced inside a dilapidated apartment building and both saw a Negro woman standing and pressing her hair; remarking on her expression, each found they had seen the same minute details in the room.

Almoner slowed a moment and, looking around, said, “Is there a park near here, with a fountain?”

“There's one in the middle of the city,” Amy said, slowing. “A developer wanted to tear it down and build a shopping mall. A lot of old people got up a petition to save it, so he built all these modern buildings around it, and it looks stupid. Could that be the one?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “And I'm sure it does look stupid. I hadn't realized how much the city has changed. I'm not sure I should let you go back to the car alone at this time of day.”

“It's fine. I like it here,” she said, liking being somewhere no one else she knew would be, as she felt about going to the river. Then, several Negro children ran past them, laughing; flashing white teeth, their grins seemed to separate from their faces in the gloom.

“Have you ever noticed,” Almoner said, “how their voices are not raucous like white people's?”

“No,” Amy said, carefully considering and wanting to know and to see everything as Almoner did. She was not, she thought, afraid of tangible things like dark streets, but all day, without courage, she had wanted to ask him a question and now forced herself. “Do you mind our long silences?”

“I hadn't noticed them,” he said. “There's not enough silence.”

They had been about to cross a street and suddenly Amy extended her elbow. He took it as the light changed. In the moment they hesitated, about to step off the curb, a man rushed from a building behind them and vomited into the street, spattering one of Almoner's shoes.

“Excuse me,” said the man afterward, throwing a handkerchief to his mouth and running back from where he came.

“Now that man has really been raised politely,” Almoner said, grinning. “Imagine being sick and begging pardon.”

“He certainly was sick a lot,” Amy said. As they started across the street, she looked protectively both ways.

“Yes,” Almoner said. “Good metal at the bottom of his stomach. But I'm afraid I've brought you to a bad spot.”

“No, I like it here,” she said, pressing his arm reassuringly. His humbleness, she thought, was part of his greatness; she could imagine how mad her father would be if anyone vomited on his shoe!

Almoner, slowing, said considerately though, “Won't you go back now? No need for you to see me onto the train.”

To abandon him to wispy twilight, Amy felt, would be to abandon him to further loneliness, and she could not do it. “It doesn't matter about its being dark,” she said. He came rather laggingly up the station steps, rubbing his lips as if guessing they had a bluish cast, while she waited. If they met ever again in Delton, there had to be something to do besides drive endlessly around, she thought. “Do you remember a letter you wrote me once but said you never mailed?” she said. “Why not?”

At the top step, he had paused to catch breath. “If you have to ask,” he said softly, “you're not old enough to know.”

Inside, at the newsstand, he bought a paper. Amy stood before the array thinking that his smile had implied there was a great deal she did not know. She did want to know everything he did and wondered how she might learn it all; it was so much more difficult if one was a girl to have a free life, with any degree of wildness in it. Her hand had lingered over a news magazine, but as if of its own accord strayed to a fashion magazine. Almoner, glancing at the headlines of his paper, had started off toward the proper gate, without realizing Amy was not behind him. At the moment she closed the magazine, the aproned vendor leaned down with an extended hand.

“Miss,” he said, “your father forgot his change.” His newsprint-blackened hand dropped the money into her mittened one.

Almoner was turning, perplexed, as she reached him. “Did you think I had left without saying anything,” she said teasingly. “No, I'm not going to leave you. I feel responsible for Almoner. You've got to get safely on that train.”

“Yes, that's what I've needed,” he said, looking happy. “Someone to take care of me. Perhaps our roles are to be reversed. You're to be the teacher.”

“Oh no,” she said. “You're the teacher, but I can see to your safety for the world.” She dismissed the idea of repeating the vendor's mistake and thought instead of the faces of young men, outside, which had bothered her; observing Almoner take Amy's elbow, to draw her closer as they went across the street, the young men had made some joke among themselves, and one had looked back. She had been surprised, realizing she had no outward appearance different from girls who went out with older men to get from them what they could. Probably those young men had surmised that this coat, which she did not even want, was a reward.

Buckets of sand along the station platform held cigarette butts and ugly tobacco-juice stains; against one post a drunk loitered, while a legless drooling pencil salesman half-lay nearby. Yet in their midst and among the sooty grey stones, Amy felt her life expand. Her heart soared knowing Almoner. She watched him drop the change into the pencil man's tin cup, noting that piecemeal light, filtering through the station's platform roof, turned his hair silver. He removed his somewhat funny checked hat, his eyes grown serious.

“No goodbyes,” he said.

“All right. I won't say goodbye.” She hugged herself against the cold. “Spring then. That's not so long.”

“It seems very long to me,” he said.

Parting from someone, Amy always turned to look back. She waited but Almoner went on, unnoticed among workmen and women who had come to the city for after-Christmas sales and now dragged along, by upward-extended arms, small children who resentfully scuffed their shoes. What was the point of achieving? Amy wondered, watching him go. Why struggle, when people who never did anything had lives that turned out happier? His back seemed unnaturally erect; he was an alone figure in the crowd, disappearing. She wondered also why being deceitful worked. On the way home, she stopped at one of the city's most exclusive shops and had a saleswoman pick out for her an expensive suit. At home, Edith was ecstatic and said it was the most becoming thing Amy had ever owned.

“Except for my coat,” Amy said winningly.

More pleased, Edith said, “I hadn't been sure you liked it.”

Lifting his first predinner martini, having inspected the suit, her father meant it as a toast. “Well,” he said approvingly. “Well.” He was careful to avoid putting fingerprints on his frosted glass. At dinner, he stared at her with his eyes shining. Edith smiled continually from her place at one end of the table, beaming, and her look said plainly, Amy was learning to be like the other girls, at last.

Mister Jeff laid on the sofa, say he got wore out in Delton and wasn't going for the mail, so I had to be the one go. Sho would have to be Jessie bring home trouble. That letter on the hall table since noon. Miss Amelia been wanting to open it all day, curious as a cat. Finally, Miss Inga come down at suppertime and read it. Didn't say nothing till they were eating. I could hear the forks against they plates and then this sound like that old bullfrog down in the pond at night, “Old goat old goat old goat.” Miss Inga kept on going. The do' is swole open. I could see Miss Amelia looking from one to the other. “What's going on?” she say. Miss Inga taken the letter out of her lap and act po-lite saying, “A friend have been kind enough to tell me my husband is running around juke joints in Delton with a young woman, very young.”

“Juke joint!” Mister Jeff say. Seem like he always can find something to laugh about. “For heaven's sake when?” Miss Amelia say. “The day he took his precious manuscript to the typist,” Miss Inga say. “All ten pages?” Miss Amelia say. Then he turn white. Seem like they oughtn't do Mister Jeff that way no matter what.

Jessie's sister nodded.

Then he starting off from the table, and Miss Inga held up the letter. “Don't you want to read it?” she say. He look back and say, “There's enough without having to read it at my own dinner table.” And Miss Amelia say, “Enough what?” And Miss Inga say with her head bowed, “Lying misery defeat.” Then Miss Amelia say, “Oh, shut up.” She the onliest one take dessert. So then he laid down some more with a book on his stomach but the whole time I cleared up, I didn't see him turn no page. Miss Inga's shadow was going all over the room and she walking up and down telling him she wasn't going to put up with it and he not saying nothing. Usually he say something make her just shut up. Some reason he ain't saying nothing. Then I thought, Mister Jeff care. He ain't taking no chances on saying nothing because this time, Mister Jeff care. Seem like I be glad he be happy tell you the truth, though I see Miss Inga's side. She got tired of talking to herself, finally. I had did mopped and they come in tracking up the flo'. Then Miss Amelia read the letter and say, “You know why Reba's done this, don't you? Because you didn't invite her to that party you gave for Jeff's publisher ten years ago. I told you she'd get even no matter how long it took.”

Miss Inga shake her head saying, “Ten years,” not thinking 'bout Miss Reba. Miss Amelia say Miss Reba get her hair done on Fridays and so it would be all over town by now. “Tall and blonde and wearing an expensive coat and alligator shoes,” Miss Amelia read. “Are we supposed to think he gave her those? We've outlasted others. We can outlast this one.”

“But where will it all end?” Miss Inga say.

“At the grave, I guess,” Miss Amelia say. “Jessie, what's the matter with you?”

“Rabbit done run over mine,” I sayed.

Then they fixing to go on to the picture show. Get they mind off it, Miss Amelia sayed. But they ain't going to get they mind off it. Like I can't keep my mind off Vern. I keep telling him church ain't meeting no mo', it's taking up collection. And everybody full of hate when the Bible say love. Too little love. Black and white folks going to be fighting out yonder in the road. Mark my words. It's all laid out in the Bible. History just goes round. “Love,” Vern sayed to me. “What white man love me?” I sayed, “He give you a job.”

“That white man where I plow at need me bad as I need him,” he sayed. Then he gone off to another meeting. Preacher got a new car, Vern ain't. Sets up to the lunch counter, they close it down.

“It takes the process of time,” Jessie's sister said. “Like you may want you some field peas in the wintertime, it takes till the summertime to get them.”

“I see,” Jessie said. “And I guess that what us going to do: see.”

But, that evening, Miss Amelia tell Miss Inga to stop crying and run put her face back on. She had some wrinkle-erase cream on her dresser and sayed it would hide the red around Miss Inga's eyes, go use it. Miss Inga say, “It won't hide the wrinkles though, will it?” And Miss Amelia act like she don't hear. So Miss Inga sayed to me, “Will it, Jessie?” And I sayed, “No'm.”

“It's like you sayed, Sister, everything going to go according to the process of time,” Jessie said.

That evening, waiting on the porch to go to the movies, Inga had seemed like a little bird huddled on its perch, Amelia had thought. They had stared back in at Jeff with the book still on his stomach, and he never turned a page, she had noted. The winter-dry muscadine had scraped the porch's eaves with a groaning sound that reminded her of arthritic old people complaining about their swollen joints. The car's headlights, bending obliquely, tore through the forsythias, and the car rattling over the cattle gap had made a sound as if something had been dropped hollowly into frozen ground from a distance. How old she felt, Inga had thought. How much better Amelia seemed to be bearing up under life. She wondered what her secret was, and for the first time, having often wondered why Amelia had never married, she had thought that it was because she had had sense enough not to. It aged you, Inga thought, having realized when she looked into the mirror that the hair rinse she had put on was not enough; tomorrow she would go to Billie Jean's.