The Wintering (30 page)

Turning her gaze from the window, Amy answered with a small but matter-of-fact smile, “I'm working in a bookstore.”

While waiting for her answer, the husband had poised a dubious fork over a mushroom cap. Now he sank in the prongs deliciously. He looked up, chewing. Nancy generously thrust toward Amy the salad bowl. Sighs had escaped them. If only they had known, they seemed to say, that Amy led some plausible life, they would have invited her much sooner. Nancy knew a bachelor, she said, whom Amy must meet. The husband, gazing past candlelight, had a look of appreciation, as if then discovering she was female. In the glow, bending toward her plate, Amy had the satisfactory feeling that her hair falling softly over her shoulders looked pretty.

After a second crème de menthe—and the trouble of making a frappé had not been at all too much, the husband had said—Amy felt she ought to go. She protested she was not at all afraid of the dark streets, but they would not hear of her going out alone. Though it meant Nancy had to change into street clothes, they went with Amy and waited until she was on the bus.

“Too bad you couldn't stay longer,” the husband said. The bus came into sight. He gave her shoulder a companionable pat, adding, they knew what it was to have to get up and face the old grind in the morning.

She entered her own room with a refreshed sense of its bleakness. A great deal of that was her fault. She could have put pictures on the walls, at least. Was it ferns Nancy had said were marvellous for filling up bare corners? Tomorrow should she buy four pots of ferns, Amy thought, looking around. Tears went their frequented and familiar course down her cheeks. She sat on the bed in resignation, that all that ever was to happen in her life already had. A sense of destiny had been ridiculous. Fate had never had anything in store for her. To live was only to put off dying. She created a sad picture of her life, coming to an end willfully at so young an age.

She agonized over the discovery of her body, taking a razor out of her dresser drawer. The room was so small, to draw out the drawer meant pressing herself against the bed. At its head, a small washbasin was attached to the wall.

There, she bent over with the razor poised above a wrist. She realized the blade had not been cleaned since she shaved her legs last. Warning about infection, dinned into her ears in a lifetime of maids and a mother, came into her mind. Only when she was wiping the dull edge did she wonder what difference infection made if she were dead. Sticking the clean razor to her wrist, she was unable to cut deeply. No blood appeared, and she looked closer at the minutely parted edges of skin. Her interest was aroused. How intricately people were made, and she considered the whole fantastic process of birth. A fetus she thought of as being like one of the tiny sea horses advertised in the back of the New York
Times
magazine section; if she ordered one would it live? She stuck the razor unsuccessfully again to her wrist and thought how sad it would be never to have a baby.

If you had to gather courage to die, you might as well use it to live, she supposed. Or, either she had to kill herself in some irretrievably quick way, like shooting off her head. Amy put the razor back in the drawer again. She would try life a little longer. But if she was still an old maid when she was thirty, then she would kill herself! And she promised, staring into the mirror.

She looked from the window, thinking of having more than one baby. She would teach her children so they might avoid all the wandering and searching and all her mistakes. Taking her experience as their own, they would have a head start in life. She had rejected this attempt on Jeff's part, she saw, having wanted to find her own way. Her children, however, would listen and be forever grateful for her advice. She would be consoled by them for her own loneliness and suffering. How grateful they would be to her, Amy imagined, ready to cry again, erroneously consoled.

She would tell her children how once she had thought of killing herself, without being able to tell everything, for always much she had felt would be nameless. Having described the terrible rented room in which she had lived, she would tell of standing a long time at its window, looking out toward an avenue, the glow of lights like colored mist. A florist's window, filled with spring flowers, had glimmered most brightly. Rushing there, she had bought the most enormous pot of pink tulips she had ever seen. It had been a test of living or dying, whether or not she reached the shop before it closed. The streets had seemed less aloof when she returned with the flowers. When she had put the pot on her windowsill, the blooms had seemed to overflow the room.

But was she too solicitous and did she water them too much? It seemed more than ordinarily soon that they died. She began to sleep repeatedly through her alarm's ringing. Often she found, waking later, that she had at some point turned it off. The bookstore owner's indignation seemed to make her bangs stiffen. She would not reconsider, and Amy was fired. Customers, in the store, observed a girl evidently not to be gone near with a ten-foot-pole, for the owner looked at Amy that distantly, backing away.

Feeling she crept, Amy left the store. Beneath those bangs, the owner's eyes revealed Amy was no more reliable than Mack; she would, like him, simply disappear somewhere into the city.

Going empty-handed toward her room, having received no severance pay, Amy passed a public telephone booth on a corner. Quite simply, no one was left to call. Nancy and her husband had been busy whenever she had attempted to repay their invitation.

Reaching her street, Amy knew it must not matter the tailor seemed a bulky fish, left out to thaw. Any offer of friendship was too valuable to turn away. On her block, long and lonesome slants of afternoon sunlight fell across the buildings.

Her own window, between two slants, remained dark. Glancing up at it, she realized the pot of dead tulips was forgotten on the windowsill. Something figuring in the corner of her eye drew her attention. A man on the front steps of her building was making out the house number, almost eradicated. Curlicues, in stone, on the old house formed a frame behind him. Only a moment was her attention distracted by that thought. This silhouette was recognizable, even from a distance, and she started immediately toward it.

“Hush,” Jeff said, his arms going around her. “Hush. Didn't you know I was coming?”

“No.” Amy dabbed her eyes. “How could I? You didn't write.”

“Because you know I know things about you before you do. Didn't you realize I'd know you needed me. That I would come.”

“I don't know what I know. Whether I ever think anything. How did you find me?”

“Your mother sent me your address. Of course, you've moved. But the janitor told me this one.”

“Thank God. I gave him five dollars. But he told someone else he didn't know where I was.”

“I think he thought I was your father, come to drag you home by your ears. Probably thought you belonged there, too,” Jeff said.

“It's funny, but my mother seems different,” Amy said. “I was surprised she sent me your letter. No screaming about you, either. I sort of expected her to say not to see you.”

“I felt she wasn't fighting us,” Jeff said.

“I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do anything. I've read your letter so often, Jeff.” She looked at him hopefully but his face did not change. She said then, somewhat petulantly, “Why didn't you come sooner?”

“One thing after another delayed me,” and not until then did he see there had been a chain of events, as if planned. He supposed he had been taken in, though if he had come sooner, Amy might not have been so glad to see him. “I'll tell you why later,” he said. “We seem to have an audience.” The tailor had come out as far as the curb, ostensibly to sweep, though staring.

“Where shall we go?” Amy said, in a low voice.

A quality of innocence had disappeared from her face. And although he had wanted to mature her, he felt sad. When he looked at her his emotions clashed, he imagined the way hers did. “Listen.
Ton nom c'est une petite sonnette d'or pendant dans mon coeur, et quand je pense à toi je tremble, et elle sonne
. Do you know French?”

“I studied it, but not as well as I should.”

“Your name is a little golden bell hung in my heart and when I think of you, I tremble and it rings.”

“Jeff, that's beautiful!”

“That's why one of the great lovers said it to his love, long before I. Cyrano to Roxanne.”

“Then I must read that, too,” she said. “I don't think you've told me to before.”

“Alex is in Europe,” he said. “And I'm staying in his apartment while he's gone. Will you do me the honor of having dinner with me this evening, Miss Howard?”

Glancing about protectively, not knowing whether he was teasing, she feared someone overhearing and laughing at him.

“It would give me a great deal of pleasure.” She made a mock bow as a couple was passing.

“What is your wish, then? Hamburgers and soda pop?”

“I've become more sophisticated, Mr. Almoner. Nothing will do me but pheasant under glass. Oh no! I was kidding. Don't take me any place expensive.”

“Always,” he said, smiling, “you are considerate of my pocket-book, which makes me feel nicely protected. But, tonight, we'll throw caution to the wind.”

“If you say so. I'm sorry, but there's no place inside for you to wait while I change. Can you sit on the steps a minute. You look tired.”

“Yes, I will sit down. Amelia was married and with all the hoopla of a young woman. The kind of thing I imagine you will want, though,” he said and was silent. Then, “You look fine as you are, but run along if you must change.”

“I won't have all that hoopla,” she said. “I'm an old maid already by Delton's standards. Didn't you know that?” She took one step up toward the door.

“Maybe I haven't kept you from it, Amy. But I'm glad you haven't rushed into marriage. All this celebrating for what may be the worst mistake of your life. People can get married too easily. It ought to be hard, and divorces easier. Not the other way around.”

“Your trip probably tired you, too. We aren't going to stay out late.”

“You are very considerate.”

“It's about time,” she said apologetically.

“Part of growing up is learning to think of other people. But you have been considerate before.”

“I'm tired of thinking of myself, I can tell you. I've been alone, mostly.”

“You haven't been, at least, overindulging in small talk. That's been the exhausting thing about the parties. In a small town, as you know, it's always the same people over and over. Finally, there's nothing to say and nothing to do but drink.”

“Shame on you! I thought so. Tonight, you're not going to have anything but wine. I've still got to take care of you for the world, I see.”

Either the sunshine lingering over buildings filled his eyes with tears, or feeling did, and Amy wondered which.

“Is there any wonder I love you?” he said, love so obviously on his face, Amy felt guilty. She could not return as much.

“I don't know why you do,” she said, then.

“If this love for you hadn't come along, Amy, I'd never have finished my last book. Though until a few moments ago, when I looked at your face, by God, I couldn't believe I had. But it's done! Thank you for that.”

“I don't see that I do anything for you, Jeff,” she said. “But don't talk to me, ever again, about not writing another book!”

“Run along and change,” he said, softly and smiling.

As glass covers were whipped away, Amy thought again how surprising that Jeff had wanted to undergo the flurry ordering pheasant had caused. The Maître d' hovered, other diners watched. Jeff, his nose almost touching his plate, bent over to draw in the aroma of a browned bird on toast, which was soaking up deliciously basting juices. He might be saying, Ahhh, to himself. About more, she thought, than the food. Possibly about his book being finished, or possibly about their being together. Always, she was sad thinking it not fair that Almoner had known loneliness; unless, as he said, loneliness was the nature of living. For a hideous moment, she thought she might scream that it should not be so. She saw about the room opposing vignettes, a young couple holding hands on the table, a middle-aged couple who had yet to speak to one another. She ducked her head toward her plate, busily cutting meat, though she was not hungry any longer. Jeff had said that he wrote to fill up the void. She wondered why in the name of God, He had made life so difficult?

Having finally to lift her head, meeting happiness in Jeff's eyes because of her, she thought, God bless him. God should. If only she could give, as he gave to her. Always, she was stopped by the cold dread inside herself. Jeff had bent again to his food, enjoying it. Why when he cared so little for possessions, she wondered, watching him, had he become so entangled by them? Wrangles about bills, new wallpaper? Sitting back, wanting to escape all responsibilities and duties, Amy realized, apprehensively, that she had neither.

Wine in the glass Jeff lifted accepted light from the small one lighting their table. The color reminded him of purple-red blackberries, overripe in the sun. Closing his eyes while the wine went down, he thought back to walking carefully barefoot through tangled vine, while scratches on his legs tingled with sweat. Carefree however temporarily now, he was grateful, knowing some people never were, at all. At home, kudzu vine ran wild over the countryside and Johnson grass overtook the yard; mostly, he was overwhelmed, told in the midst of working that the neighbor's German shepherd was a threat he had to do something about, that there was a leak in a sink. How long he had wanted to say, “Take the house and take everything; I've been done with it a long time.” The wine, having gone down, left a taste like the mellowness of the warm overripe berries.