The Wintering (37 page)

“Is it my fault you're here?” Bending close, as he spoke softly, she wiped perspiration from his forehead.

“If only you had told the truth about not meeting me.” After a struggle, he focused on her face.

“I‘m sorry.”

“You always are,” he said. In the resultant silence, he closed his eyes, while Amy looked gladly toward a nurse who had come to the doorway and pointed to her wristwatch. Amy whispered, “I'm still here,” and the nurse had gone.

“Is it the same day?” Jeff stared up a little blankly, before whispering, “Today, you are more like Amy. Softer. People are like animals. You're secretive. A cat. Played possum too, hiding from things. I'm a mule. Stubborn. Wasn't I persistent?” And he relaxed into half-sleep, smiling.

A little sadly, she said, “Maybe you'll be sorry now you sent it, but the manuscript came and means so much. Do you hear?”

“I knew it was your voice.” His eyes gave up the effort to open.

“Do you still want me to have the manuscript of
Reconstruction
? It's come and means so much.”

Stronger, managing to look at her, he said, “You're the very person to have it. Not even I had thought of it.” His hand waved and lost direction. “That top drawer. There's something for you. Said once you wanted it. Bought it that day the book was done. You never came. What we had deserves a better goodbye than it was getting.”

“Goodbye?” Moving toward the top drawer, she turned, surprised.

“Wasn't that what you were trying to tell me?”

“I hadn't thought so.”

“Then I'm confused,” he said, attempting to push himself up.

“Yes, I know. We'd better talk another time. Jeff, the bell!” She had taken a small box from the drawer. The bell, gold, was not large enough to cap the end of her little finger. She held it out on a thin chain. “I thought you had forgotten.”

“I'm able to forget so little,” he said, lying back.

Following whim, chance, the less rational and the easiest way had not been goodbye to her, Amy thought, teetering on the curb outside. Though that assumption on Jeff's part might have been kinder than others he could have made. She thought again that he was too kind to her, knowing herself to be capable of dishonesty. Stepping off the curb, she headed toward the park, though at evening it was too foreboding to enter. Evening had blackened buildings and gave their windows a void look. The city seemed to grow upward toward disappearing rooftops, the streets became funnels, the reverse of wells. Staring up, Amy saw the bland grey sky, a link between avenues, and thought how responseless the city seemed. To whom might she speak? Wells, at least, revealed one's own wavery image. And she remembered suddenly the old barn near her school with the clock with the stopped hands, and the clock had not lied; time stood still. From the park, indrawn with dark, a man who had been selling balloons emerged. He stuck a pint of whiskey to his mouth a moment, the balloons on invisible strings motionless above him merged into an enormous greyish mass. Feeling herself colorless, Amy passed him and went along the block to the subway entrance, having too a feeling of being emptied, like the park. Was she responsible for her alienation? Trees dipped toward her and bore oncoming night as they might bend with rain. Glancing over her shoulder at no one, nowhere in particular, she thought of freedom and of its various degrees.

The other evening, after Tony had traitorously turned the corner, she had found a note inside tacked on her door. To return a call to Connecticut. From there, Billy Walter shouted as if he were calling from overseas, his voice hale and hearty, enlivening the hallway's gloom. Panes in the stained-glass window seemed to reverberate, and blithe yellow light shook like foil when she switched on a light near the phone.

“Billy Walter! I thought you never were going to get up here.”

“Honey, my back yard's the closest I've ever wanted to get to New York,” he said. “This pretty weekend I'd be hunting, and I'm indoors freezing, instead.”

“Freezing,” she said, laughing. “Billy Walter, it's nice and only October.”

“Shoot, the wind almost blew me off the streets of Hartford last night.”

She spoke in a remembered teasing voice, “I wonder how you could get warm?” But suddenly her voice rose, as if near hysterics. “You are coming down here, aren't you?”

“Whoa, of course,” he said. “Sugar, would I come this far and not see you? Last night, I waited up half the night for you to call me back. Evidently, you didn't come in. Shame. Want me to tell your daddy on you?”

“He might not care, if nobody else knew.”

“Don't sell the man short. I'm sort of his emissary.”

“What?”

“I said, don't sell your daddy short. The man wants you home.”

Though not given to inner reflection, Billy Walter thought back to Amy's father, as he had stood at the club's bar one Saturday night, or had it been a Sunday? Nights there ran in memory similarly together. He only knew it had been that late hour when the neon tubing around the bar's mirror had melded indistinguishably and blurrily into it, the whole glowing like a halo. Gaily and effusively, he and Mr. Howard had fallen onto one another, the older man giving him a hefty slap on the back. Here, Mr. Howard had announced loudly to anyone within earshot, was a good old boy! That pleased Billy Walter, being an epithet he bestowed on himself at his best moments, on his friends at theirs. He went hunting only with cronies who were good old boys.

“Son,” Mr. Howard had said, “aren't you going up yonder to the big insurance convention in Hartford?” Stabbing for it, he had at first missed the bar with the edge of his elbow. Billy Walter had helped to right him. Modest, his rounded cheeks reddened as apples, Billy Walter admitted to having been chosen as his company's representative. When Mr. Howard asked, Billy Walter had promised to see Amy, promising further that if he found out anything not suitable for Delton's ears, he would not tell it.

“I mean,” Mr. Howard had said, “if she's become a Communist, or something,” his eyes watery. Promising, Billy Walter knew the man was not worried about Amy's politics at all.

“Honey,” he was saying, “get on your face. I'm coming down to show those Yankees some dancing.”

“Oh,” Amy said. “But I have other plans.”

“All I don't have is time,” he said. “I only have tonight.”

In Delton, he had turned toward the picture window overlooking the golf course, while his drink was being refilled, in order not to see Mr. Howard's tears. “She'll come home, won't she?” Mr. Howard had said. “Amy,” Billy Walter had said, “is kind of cerebral, not like us drinking and tearing up!” For a moment, they had forgotten everything to roar in appreciation of their own kind, heads lolling. “My wife, I guess she's more the other kind, too,” Mr. Howard had said when he could. “Well,” Billy Walter had said, “that's worked out all right.”

“Oh, has it?” Mr. Howard had asked. Slipping from the bar stool, he had gripped Billy Walter's arm. “Son, I appreciate it. I was happy as a bluebird when you and Amy were running around together. By the time you get back now, I'm going to be needing some insurance on my dancing school.”

“I'd sure be glad,” Billy Walter had said, “to come around and talk to you about that.” He had gotten up respectfully when Mr. Howard stood, and they had parted, veeringly.

Billy Walter thought Amy might not need much coaxing to come home, hearing her voice trembling. “Billy Walter,” she said, “I'm so glad to hear from you I don't know what to do. Come on down here quick as you can.” She heard her accent return.

“Honey, you bawling? Tell old Billy Walter what's the matter?”

She said, “I'll stop. Just you come on down here, quick as you can.”

Dancing exuberantly from the phone and almost lightheartedly, Amy thought of her first kiss, from Billy Walter with closed dry lips when they were fourteen. Jeff was full of understanding and would realize her need to see someone from home, but she should not tell him exactly who it was.

“An old friend from Delton,” she said, phoning.

“Amy,” he said, “you won't be young and attractive always. That does enter in, now. You aren't going to be able always to do with people what you want. If people can't trust you, you won't have anything left. How many times have you changed our plans?”

She was irritated knowing that he knew and had answered, “Twice.” Confidently afterward she apologized and said she would call him later. Later, when she telephoned, the ringing had gone on and on in the apartment, the following day and the following. Where would he have gone without telling her? The only possiblity which occurred was that an emergency had called him home, until Alex came back from Europe and found Jeff in his apartment, unconscious.

Knowing none, Billy Walter had not picked a sedate small hotel, but the city's brassiest and largest. It fitted him, too, Amy thought, watching him cross the lobby, which was full of nearly riotous conventioneers. In a forelock like a pony's, blond hair fell over his forehead, and though he wore an expensive suit, it was buttoned straight up like a uniform. He elbowed his way, happily, toward her. The morning after his call, with some quicker perception of what was right for her, Amy had found a black crepe dress with a (moderately) plunging neckline, as well as the suit. She felt more than well-dressed in the bar which Billy Walter picked. With her bosom shaking, a fat lady, who played a thumping piano, began immediate rapport with him. “Bourbon and branch water,” he had ordered, which bored the waiter. But, overhearing, the lady had laughed loudly and played the piano accordingly. “That's Tennessee wine!” Billy Walter had called. She shook, bending over her pudgy thumping hands, the waiter looking sour. Disapproving, in parody, Amy drew down her own face. Billy Walter was glad to see she had not become pretentious living in the city. “Big girl,” he had said, “when are you coming home?”

Teasingly, she had said, “Oh, Billy Walter, you don't care.”

“I didn't call you for a while,” he had said, so seriously Amy was surprised, “because I thought you had something going with Quill.” Having pretty much looked over the field and finding nothing left but much younger girls, and tired of his mother questioning his comings and goings, Billy Walter had decided he needed to get married.

“How is Quill?” Amy asked, hoping for some clue as to what had gone wrong between them.

“Crazy as ever, maybe crazier. Cutting up every time I see him. Though don't mistake me, Quill's a pretty good old boy. Last time I saw him out to dinner, he had everybody in the place looking at him and knowing who he was, too, by the time he left.”

“Isn't he happy?” Amy had asked quickly.

“I don't know why he wouldn't be. But I've never found any cure for unhappiness but keeping busy, have you?” Billy Walter had given her an affectionate poke with his swizzle stick, shy about his pronouncement, and had gone back to talking about Quill. “You and Quill are up on the same cloud.”

“I think I'm coming down off mine. But you're a philosopher, Billy Walter. I never knew you had such thoughts.” And feeling naive, she said, “I'm impressed,” and looked at him a bit differently. “Is Quill still thin?”

“As a rail. Too thin.”

“I hope his father is happy.”

“You going to show me around tomorrow? What's on the agenda, art galleries and museums?”

Dismissing those plans, Amy said, “Whatever you want to do.”

He looked doubtful, but said, “You wouldn't be interested in Yankee Stadium?”

“I'd love it, if you would!”

“Careful, you almost looked as if you enjoyed smiling.”

“Oh. Don't I usually?” she said, continuing to.

“No, you're always solemn as an owl.”

“I'm afraid to have a good time,” she said.

“Why?”

“I don't know. It makes me feel guilty.”

“You always were a screwball,” he said, but kindly. He took her hand. “But you're not going to bawl!”

“Oh, dear. It seems like it. I don't want to here.” She looked around.

He began to urge her up from the table saying, “Come on up to my room. You can cry your heart out.”

Going through the lobby, he put an arm about her waist and kept her close. While observing the deriding glances of several obvious New Yorkers, Amy did not move away from him. Suppose they looked like hicks, she thought, entering the elevator. And who decided how many buttons to button on a coat? She was concerned, however, with how many people she ought to go to bed with, numbering Tony and Jeff and, momentarily, Billy Walter.

This hotel room, like most, was innocuous, the carpet without pattern was merely a covering for the floor, and a couple of un-noteworthy pictures hung over the bed. The curtains were there only to frame the gayer view outside. Amy, in the middle of this room, was aware of nothing except Billy Walter, who seemed enormous coming from the door, which he had locked. He crossed from it in two strides and put his arms about her. She was suddenly frail as a flower stem in strong wind, and bent against him. Totally new feeling filled her at his touch. With a sense of awe and astonishment, she was lifted, and Billy Walter carried her to the bed.

There, Amy felt no desperate need to cover herself, even when she had removed her dress at the moment Billy Walter began to tug open his tie. As quickly as he got into bed, she turned toward him, liking this closeness: that she could see minuscule flecks of green in his eyes, never before noticed. She felt compulsive about being even closer to him. When he turned off the light, she was sorry, for she had liked the sight of their bodies together and wondered at her previous embarrassment. Time, which seemed so often to her endless, seemed now not long enough. Closing her eyes, and wishing to prolong it, she felt a potential in herself never before felt.