The Wintering (35 page)

On pink paper with its edges all fringed, one letter broke her heart on sight, being delicate and girlish. She had to make clear surface differences were only that, surface differences. Could she say to people, here, the color of skin makes no difference. Probably to some people, she could. She might start with Amelia, and make her understand by showing her the letters. She would say, Look! The girl and I are years apart in age, but the same in our hearts. And Amelia would surely see; anyone could. (I feel these are among the last months in my life I'll be young. Twenty will not come again.) The tears on Inga's face met the corners of her mouth, turned up into a smile. (I'm older and wiser after reading anything you've written. Never again will I be the same person. When I read your work now I wonder, How did he know that? Why did he think that? Your last story gave me a funny feeling when you wrote about dying. Don't think old. Once I stood on a corner, my throat dry, trying to eat a bagel for lunch. So much beyond one incident sent me there. It makes life lonely and difficult not being able to tell everything. I do love you and not only, as you once asked, because you know how to construct a proper sentence, but because you understand. This moment, I love you so much. I think I understand your pressures, too. Thank God, for letting us meet. Sometimes, I've thought I didn't, but now I think, How good to live. You've done that for me. Goodnight.)

Inga had long known where Jeff kept hidden the key to his lockbox and had wondered what he kept there, besides manuscript. To have the key in her possession was to have the one to him, she thought. She began to replace the letters gently, in sensible piles. Askew, they had overwhelmed everything. She gave to one pile a settling rap, like a deck of cards, against the title page of
Reconstruction
. Staring down, she focused slowly on the list of characters, the name March Walsh immediately standing out. Then she felt clearly how much Jeff's work meant that he entangled it, as he did, with the rest of his life. In this room where he had created time of his own, how appropriate that the desk calendar remained dated backward to the day he had left. How much and too late, Inga wished to commend him. She settled another letter onto the pile, her face grown haunted. (Please keep writing me. Your letters are so beautiful. I hope knowing that just your writing me gives me a certain faith in things, makes you happy. Aside from unhappiness about me, are you happy? Try not to worry and to work. That's the important thing. Despite it's all being so hard, this is a wonderful wonderful time in my life because of knowing you. I hope all this adoration isn't irritating. I read once, and I don't know where, adoration is a universal sentiment; it differs in degrees in different natures. I can't help being emotional about knowing you. Others feel as strongly as I, but happen not to write you. I'm afraid you don't understand that nothing in your life has been worthless. You must be proud knowing your writing can inspire me so much that I write you the way, at eleven, I wrote to movie stars. And now I feel silly!)

A confusion of insects crying and, at once, falling silent gave night a pulsing feel. In one of the silences, Inga was aware of the determined beating of her own heart and felt not afraid of the rapidity, as she had often. It had never been a doctor she needed. In the hall, she flipped on a light to reveal the wallpaper, now meaningless. The light spread outward, upward to catch, as remotely as starshine, the dining room's chandelier, which sprang alive in varicolored gleamings. A firecracker might have exploded, the floorboards leapt alive with sparks, and reflected everywhere in multitints, like Christmas bulbs, or the silver seed-like ornaments of birthday cakes, reflecting candlelight. When Amelia right away had given her silk stockings, she could have said, No, thank you. Jeff liked the ones she had. She could have done the milking, which he had not minded. In the hall, listening to the nothing that was there, Inga clutched a letter. (I might be nothing but a dreamer; that's what I fear most. Being like that Henry James character who thought all his life he was destined for something different and died realizing the only thing different about him was that he had never done anything, that he was the only person to whom nothing had ever happened. Suppose that turns out to be me! If I haven't quite been able to break out of my shell, you do reach me. Something, somewhere inside me is touched deeply. Obviously, I can never forget you. But more important, you have partially formed what I am to be. I remember your saying, someday you would be so damned proud of me. I sleep at night, now, telling myself, someday he is going to be so damned proud of me. I'm going to make this a chain. The hope you've given me, I will someday hand on.)

Going back to the study, Inga put away the letters, once and for all. Hungry now, she went to the kitchen, certain Jessie would have left a plate of food for her in the oven. Silence companionably went along with her. In this place undeniably Jessie's, Inga was aware the thumping of the headboard against the wall had been continuous. She shut the oven door without removing the plate. The door's minute squeak was forerunner of the squeaks her feet made on the back stairs. At the top, she stood timidly an instant before knocking.

“Who?” Jessie said immediately.

“Only me,” Inga said. “I kept hearing you turn over and wondered why you were so restless. Can I get you something to eat or drink?”

“Come on,” Jessie said. “If you want.”

Inga, opening the door, thought that here was fear she could not even imagine, for reasons learned over many years and handed on from generation to generation, like less realistic tales. If she had stopped to think, she might have guessed that in this stuffy and remote room, Jessie slept winter and summer with the windows down and bolted when, from outside, the room was not even accessible.

“Ovaltine?” Inga said inadequately.

“No'm.” Jessie lifted a perspiring face from her pillow. “But, I thank you.”

“Jessie, you know all of us would do anything for you. You would be taken care of even if something happened to all of us.”

“Yes 'um. Anything I got is yours, too.”

“I know.”

“Haven't nobody come up in a long while. I'm glad you come.”

“I'm glad, too.” Then after turning, Inga looked back. “Thank you,” she said. She went back down the stairs and watched herself descend, a shadow on the wall.

“I swear to my soul,” Dea said. “You give 'em half of Hades, and they want the other half. Why did they have to go and carry on the night we wanted to go to the show? If they want to sit with white people, why don't they go to Delton. They've taken over that town. Every one of them on welfare's got a car, too.” She turned down, dispiritedly, Joe's offer of a “sody” at Chester's, instead.

“They won't picket more'n one night,” he said. “If they shut down the show every night it's like cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Negroes like shows, you know.” He had taught himself to stop saying “nigger,” though he never had meant anything wrong by it. It had been habit, learned from his daddy, he guessed. If you did think about it, the name had a ring that didn't set right. He wished them no harm, but was darned if he was going around calling them black people, the way he had heard on television they wanted to be called.

“Well,” Amelia said when she and Dea met in the parking lot, “you disappointed as I am over missing Cary Grant? I'm crazy about that man.”

“Who?” Joe said, coming up. “Your bridegroom?”

“Naw, we're old married folks now,” Latham said. “She's talking about Grant.”

At the wet base of the fountain before the post office, frogs croaked. In the headlights of the police-directed cars, circling around the movie, they watched several hopping. Near the fountain, illuminated by its base lights and on display, was the first bale of cotton ginned in the county. Latham began to mention it and leaned in pain, instead, against his car fender. The others solicitously helped him to the front seat. Amelia explained he had, that afternoon, fallen off a ladder while fixing up Marguerite's cabin.

“You've probably done something to the kidney you've got left,” she said, half-angrily, thinking this pain in his back was the second ruination of their evening out. “I'm glad we didn't ask Inga to come,” she said. “As crazy as she is about Cary Grant, it would have been too much.”

Inga's being mentioned made Dea feel she had to ask, “How are the Almoners?”

It was a good thing she had, she thought, afterward.

Amelia said, “She's been sick, but is better. We haven't heard too much since he's been in New York.”

“Swear to my soul!” Joe muttered, not particularly meaning to be heard.

“She hasn't mentioned seeing him?” Amelia said quickly.

“Not to me,” Dea said. “I'm sure not to her momma either, or she'd have been on the phone to me.” And Joe was right. She'd like to swear herself.

“They'd do something if they knew he was up there,” Joe said.

“What?” Latham asked. The others pretended not to hear, having no answer.

Amelia said, “To tell the truth, we've expected some kind of news.” Or else, she thought, she wouldn't be here married to a man apt to have no kidneys, who spent his time hammering on a Negro's house when he ought to be hammering on his own. “We've just been waiting.”

She meant existing, Dea thought, thinking of people who went other places, and she gazed at frogs and cotton and the limits of her life. Perhaps she had settled for too little and now she lacked something. She hoped Amy fared better.

“Well, I don't know what to say,” Dea said. Joe slipped an arm about her, saying, “That's a first,” making the others smile. “Take care of yourself,” she told Latham, thinking how intent people were on their lives. She wondered whether the children were only waiting to divide the little acreage and the house which was all she and Joe had to leave them, or whether they would care when they were dead.

“We got to get on,” Amelia was saying. “We're practically baby sitters for our Negro out back. She's scared when we're not home.” Only when she said it out loud and laughed, it did not seem so funny. She tucked unconsciously into her mind the way Joe almost glanced at Latham, then did not.

“I'm so glad Edith's coming down Sunday,” Dea said, after she and Joe drove off. “I can save a toll call.” But to wait even a few days was going to be hard.

“You still ain't going to say nothing to Mallory?” Joe said.

Since she had discovered long ago that he knew perfectly well how to talk and willfully talked like a fieldhand, Dea had given up correcting Joe. His reason for it was one more thing she would go to her grave wondering about. Though in a way, Joe's talk often gave him a flavor, which made people notice him. Maybe that was why he did it, to set himself apart. Oh, Joe. Dea suddenly placed her hand tenderly on his thigh. She had not before thought Amy cared what her daddy thought and had not herself thought Mallory thought about much of anything. Now she asked herself, Who knew? She might give up trying to account for other people. “If anybody tells him, it's Edith's business to,” Dea said.

Every year she had Mallory's birthday dinner, though since the children had been grown and gone, Dea had known he had rather stay in Delton. Still, she had insisted, telling herself it would be good for him to be out in the country and somewhere a lot of whiskey was not served. Now, seeing Joe in a different way, she would not mind their being home alone. She had taken a book out of the library yesterday, and today she did not want to cook any dinner. Wishing Mallory was celebrating where he wanted, Dea felt no triumph this year about holding the party.

Brushing past ferns, Edith came in wearing a pink mohair stole, which made her look pretty but stouter, her eyes revealing what Dea already knew: have dinner as soon as possible. They could not, however, avoid having out the one bottle they always kept.

“Got snake bit on the way!” Mallory cried, seeing the bottle. “Jesus,” and he added another jigger, “you don't get to be sixty-five years old every day in the year!” He poured with the others grouped about the table familiarly, as if over open ground to mourn.

“Ain't that roast ready to come out?” Joe prided himself on one sophistication, rare meat. Dea jerked her head suggestively toward the living room. After a slow moment, Joe got the hint. “Come on, Mal, let's leave things to the womenfolks,” he said.

But he had left things too long, Mallory thought, draining his glass. “Better freshen this up first,” he said, tugging at an ice tray.

Knowing she could not wait all day, Dea said innocently, “How's Amy?”

Edith popped a radish into her mouth and answered evasively, chewing. “Fine, worked in a bookstore.”

When Joe said, “I imagine she runs into folks from this part of the country up there, don't she?” Edith thought, They know.

“Joe!” Dea said. “You and Mallory run on.”

“Boy, they're trying to get rid of us,” Mallory said, his glass full. “Edith doesn't want me to say Amy's quit her job. She's not doing anything up there.”

Stirring mashed potatoes, Dea dropped open her mouth, as if about to taste them. “I said ‘worked,'” Edith said, blushing.

“She's going to come home,” Mallory said. “I've decided that.”

Edith said, “She's doing something.” They turned faces of inquiry toward her which asked, What? When Edith said she could not explain, they looked away feeling justified, having felt she could not. Tired, which he must be now, Mallory had a look in his eyes similar to one in Amy's, and only then could Edith ever realize this was the father of her child. The night she had conceived, sensing it, looking out, seeing the moon full, she had tried to weld them together inseparably afterward and had clutched him; saying he could not breathe, Mallory had drawn her hands away, as if knowing people always lived apart. Though, surprisingly, he had seen through her trying to hide Amy's joblessness. What else did he understand about her? Edith wondered, less lonely. Funny that one little radish had killed her appetite, or perhaps feeling happier, she was not hungry.