The Wintering (40 page)

“It's probably as well,” Amy said, sitting down. “Even the salad is white. And cauliflower, ugh!” Feeling listeners behind the walls and to dull their second attack of laughing, she and Jeff stuck napkins against their mouths. Then whispering, “It's so quiet,” Amy lowered hers.

“We've finally managed to play house but in the most genteel surroundings!”

“There's color in your cheeks, at least.”

“I've tried to tell you, I don't need drink. I need you. I was afraid that would make you look away and feel pressured. I'm telling you again, you confuse pressure with responsibility. Amy, that's what you don't like.”

“Does anyone?” she said hopefully.

“Probably not. But some people don't run from it. That's the difference. All right, that's all the lessons for now. Don't look so worried.”

“I have to keep learning.”

“I'll tell you a last …” He broke off, then said, “Not a last piece of advice, I hope, but another piece. Learn something each day you didn't know before. It'll be worth living through today to get to tomorrow. Life will never be for you the way it is for those people below.” He leaned over the table. “I see so much in those violet eyes that wasn't there before. Tell me something you think you've learned, Amy.”

“Life's full of disillusionments. I accept that. Dullness, too.” She looked down at her plate; he watched her. “Once,” she said, looking up, “I did want to kill myself. I can't imagine that now. Despite everything, I simply would hate—and I know this might sound a silly way to put it—but I would hate not to see tomorrow. I don't think life ever will be empty for me, the way it is for those people downstairs. You're responsible for that.” She said, looking at him directly, “But I don't think I'll ever like responsibility. Anyway, I'm tired of being serious. Look at these little cakes.” She peeped under a napkin, then held a dessert plate toward him. “I wish you weren't watching your weight.”

“Do you know,” he said, and looked at her bashfully, “that I can still get into a pair of white flannel pants and a blazer I had when I was a college freshman?”

She had put a cake toward her mouth and let it remain halfway there. “You still try them on?” she said, thinking how curious. She did not like this glimpse of vanity and was sorry when Almoner nodded. But while he spoke briefly about his short college experience, and she ate several sticky little cakes, she considered that she must stop putting people on pedestals. What could you be then but disappointed? Jeff had said, she wanted the world to be as she wanted it: that was bound to cause clashes when other people wanted it their way. How did you ascertain what was real? Licking icing from her fingers, touching them to water in her glass, she dried them on her napkin, and Jeff watched from behind cigar smoke rings. Amy looked after the pattern he made, complimenting him on being able to send one ring through another. He was another human being and, therefore, had his little vanities. I must must must, she thought, mentally pounding her fist on the table, accept people as they are. She kept herself to herself, afraid of being wrong. That came clear suddenly. Suppose, she thought, she was wrong?

The last smoke ring jumped through the air and dispersed. He was saying, “It seems so long, Amy, I've watched you struggle. I could see it on your face just now. Perhaps you've tried to find something which doesn't exist. That may have been my curse, too. Nothing can match our dreams.” He saw some wiser look on her face but thought of their broken appointments, the reasons never exactly given. “Remember this. Nothing you do can hurt someone who loves you as much as lying to them.”

Amy avoided both the seriousness of the moment and his look by picking carefully among the differently iced cakes. She studied with pretended interest the inside of one, having bitten into it. “I realize the pressure you've been under from your family,” he had continued. “You know that, and also from your friends. You didn't even need money, which might have made things between us explainable. I know your young friends must have asked why you'd waste what you have on an old—”

Comforting him immediately, as she could, Amy said alertly, “You're not old.”

“You wanted a young man, naturally,” he said. “But when you went to one, I think you found something missing. Belief in you. The tenderness I've tried to give. You've always come first with me. That's why you kept coming back. Someday you'll know, Amy, no one will ever love you as I have.” As if to state it with more finality, he crushed out his cigar with a grave air.

Something seemed taken from her, and Amy's shoulders drooped. She wanted even less to look at him and said, “Coffee?” picking up the pot.

“All right.” He held out his demitasse.

Pouring studiously, as if because of the smallness, she fought resentment against his implication. She was to live out the rest of her life without love. Did he mean that?

He said, “Something's come between us. If it is a young man, I hope like hell you really want him.”

“It's not,” she said.

“I feel often now as if we're still running the same race, but on different tracks.”

Her face distressed, Amy pushed away the empty plate. “I shouldn't have eaten all those cakes! I feel sick.”

“Well, I'm going to tell you this simple piece of advice. Chin up. I've found more than once that stood me in good stead.” He leaned back, and she lifted her face then, to look past him and around the room. There were not even pictures, and the furniture was dry as bones. “Life grows more difficult,” he said, watching. “When you're older, it comes down to a few friends, and many small things. Not much, after all. Writing, I've said, filled up the void for me. Maybe you won't write, but you've got to find something. End of lecture,” and he drank coffee.

She said, “How awful.”

Thinking he followed her gaze, Jeff said, “Yes, I'd hate to end up in a place like this.”

“This cart's taking up the whole room. I'll push it into the hall,” she said, and stood up. The wheels lamented her pushing; their creaks seemed to fill the building. With hollow and echoing clangs, the elevator had stopped several times at their floor, and whispery, the old people had passed their door, to shut themselves into their own rooms. Amy struggled and got the cart with difficulty through the door and stood with it in the hall then, feeling senseless accomplishment. From behind one door came an uneven snoring. Once, it ceased. She stood as if her heart had stopped, until the snoring resumed. The elevator shaft had a dark threatening look, like a grave. Smoked glass shades wore away light in the hall to a melancholy dimness, like the worn-away goldness of an old pocket watch. She felt ghosts here, and these might be their footsteps, the thin rubbed places down the corridor's red runner. Her inclination was simply to follow them out of here, but Amy turned and re-entered the room.

From where he had not moved, Jeff said, “Are you wearing the bell?”

Circumventing his chair, she stood beside one which held her coat. “That man downstairs knows I'm here,” she said.

“I thought when you moved, I heard the faintest tinkle.”

“I've worn it ever since you gave it to me,” she said.

“Just once,” he said, as if that were all the time he had, “I've wanted to kiss you, with the bell there.”

Amy looked indecisive and at the window, leaving her coat on the chair.

“It was raining, but I think now it's freezing.” Backed against the windowsill, she said, “Could we just sort of be together and listen to the rain?”

“I've never wanted to force you to do anything,” he said.

She went to one of the twin beds, where he sat beside her. She undressed to her slip, and he bent to where the bell rested. Lifting his head, his face remained close. He said, “Amy, have I done you any harm?”

“No.”

He moved onto his own bed and stared at her seriously. “No matter what course your life takes, there are some things between us that can't change. There's a bond that nothing can break. There's been love between us, but sin. No, I'm not talking about morality. I know I was the father you wanted. We've committed incest, then. That alone will always hold us together. Now, are you going to run?”

“No,” she said, complacently lifting the cover.

He lay back, and watched her settle for sleep. “I'm better for all that's happened between us. I hope, someday, you'll feel you are. If what I've believed since the beginning is right, you will.”

“I know so now,” she said, looking directly at him.

He settled to a pillow and turned off the light. Rain in a sudden gust burst open on the window. A blinking red sign on a near rooftop revealed them to one another. Jeff rested cupped hands beneath the back of his head. Amy turned, having felt he was laughing, and made out a mischievous look, as well as an amused one.

“You know what I'd like very much to do,” he said. “Cut a hole through the title page of the book and make love through that. I've always dreamed of being that close to someone.”

She said, “Oh,” in a small voice. “That would be impossible.”

“Don't ever tell youself anything's impossible. If we let ourselves believe that,” he said, “we wouldn't be here.”

Next morning, Amy sat up to see that it had not snowed, as expected. A weak sun sent dejected piles of slush sliding along the window. As immediately as she had opened her eyes, she knew that Jeff had, that he now watched her. He was waiting to know her mood, and she felt selfish. As happily as possible, smiling, she said, “I hope you slept. I dreamed terribly all last night.”

“I'm sorry. You slept quietly.”

“Didn't you sleep, at all!” she said.

“Yes, don't worry. I dozed. I dreamed a lot, too.”

“Mine,” she said, making a face, “was so obvious. I was shopping and my clothes kept falling off. A lot of old ladies were staring and talking about calling the police.”

He laughed. “No, we don't need even a good working Freudian to analyze that one.” He got up. “Shall I order breakfast?”

“But how? They'll know I'm here.”

“Don't look so alarmed. Suppose they do. But I'll order a large orange juice and a large pot of coffee and toast. That ought to work.”

“They send so much,” she said, relieved, and leaned tentatively against the headboard. “Tell me your dream.”

Jeff, at the window, the cold nickel-colored day as backdrop, seemed part of the cityscape. His voice seemed unattached, bodiless in the room. He looked thoughtful and about to begin a tale. Amy cocked her head, attentive.

“My father had a horse named Molly,” he said. “Last night, I dreamed I was lying in the hammock on the porch at home. My father, on Molly, came up out of our side lot. The horse's tail, in sunlight, looked on fire. It trotted up close to the porch's rail. I could see Molly's nostrils dilating. My father took his foot out of a stirrup and said, ‘Come on, climb up.' And I said, ‘No. I have to see Amy grow up some more.' His foot kept on dangling outside the stirrup. He said again, ‘Get on.' And I'm lying there still shaking my head and saying, ‘No, no, just a little longer. I have to see Amy grow up some more. Just a little while longer,' I said. ‘Then, I'll go.' So, he rode on around the side of the house, but waited there.”

“My goodness. That is a dramatic dream. No wonder you're the world's greatest writer,” she said, touching him affectionately.

“Yes,” he allowed, grinning, “ain't I got some imagination though?”

She leapt up at the sound of dishes rattling a distance down the hall, closeted herself hurriedly in the bathroom, and emerged only when Jeff knocked on the door and said, “All clear.” Indicating the tray, he could not keep a straight face. “I'm afraid, though, we haven't fooled anyone. They've sent two cups,” he said.

Amy was still somewhat vexed when she had on her coat, the collar turned up carefully, though her face had, too, the eagerness of a child about to be taken for an outing. In the hall, she tiptoed in a storkish, erratic pattern down the red runner, though no one was to be seen. Jeff, behind her, thought of the old rhyme about stepping on a crack and breaking your momma's back, as she continued in her half-hopping way, hurrying. He was not, however, going to wait much longer to give her the final test, he thought. He could not help being annoyed that she refused to take the elevator and led them down seldom-used back stairs.

“You're going to have to face crossing the lobby,” he said. But while he said, “Good morning,” to vague, watery-eyed residents, Amy darted on with her head down, out to the street. There, she turned to greet him triumphantly when he emerged. “I made it!” she said when they were away from the door. “I don't think anyone saw me.”

He took her impatiently by the elbow, leading her to the curb. “There's never a taxi in midtown when it's rainy,” she said, after a time.

“The buses are jammed, though,” he said, watching one pass. “I can't take that much cooped-up humanity. Do you mind walking until we find a taxi?”

“No. Though if we do see one, I'd like to take it. I don't want to wander about this city. I've begun to hate it. I think maybe I'll go to San Francisco. Have you been there? Or, I might try Europe.”

Jeff drew her suddenly and roughly into a doorway, protected by an awning. “You still don't know where you're going,” he said, in a rush. “Let me take all of your life into the rest of mine, Amy. Let me tell Inga we want to marry.”

She gave an involuntary twist of her body, as if squirming out of a tight place, her arms drawn against her. “Oh,” she said. “I don't think so,” and when he stepped back immediately toward the sidewalk, Amy realized she had spoken without thought. She had not given an answer but a response. Her mother or Aunt Dea might have spoken for her. It seemed irrevocable now, like time wasted. Having followed him to the curb, she stood, uncertain and shivering there.