The Wintering (46 page)

“Are you,” Billy Walter said, not really a question, “dreaming about the living or the dead.” How long was she going to mourn? he wondered. He took her hand and toyed with it, his other beating time on the table to the band's music. After an intermission, being refreshed, the men played blaringly. He pulled his glass toward him, shoved Amy's toward her. “Let's get some drinking done around here,” he called to everyone at the table.

“When you think,” Amy said, after emptying her glass, “that I'm thinking about my father, I'm a lot of the time thinking about my book.”

“Have another drink and cheer up,” he said. “Hell, we need Quill here to liven up this party.” People kept asking, Where were he and Lydia? No one could remember, lately, Quill's being late for a party. Their appetizers, grapefruit halves, were wrinkling, the maraschino cherry in the center beginning to spread color. Waiters were removing dessert plates from the others. The two empty chairs made everyone feel silent, and Cindy leaned forward to say she hoped Quill's and Lydia's baby was not sick.

Billy Walter restlessly tapped his heels to the floor. “They're evidently not coming for dinner. Let's get a nigger over here to clear their places and bring more setups.”

“Billy Walter!” Amy said, shushingly.

“A Ne-gro.” He looked at her in a set way. “Honey, today I ate spareribs with some Negro clients. How many Yankee friends you have who even know any Negroes? I'm doing business with them every day. Now, I can't take this dullness.” Waving toward a waiter, he poured himself and Amy another drink.

“Quill's probably had some trouble with his daddy today,” Cindy said. “You know how it is when you work for your daddy. You can't tell your daddy a thing. Lydia's probably trying to get him calmed down. She says Quill comes home every night so maddd at his daddy, she thinks he's going to explode.”

Amy knew she had lost count of her drinks. What else was there to do? Setting the rim of her glass against her nose, she began on another glassful. Billy Walter, jumpy, both knees bouncing, decided he was going off to dance, since Amy sat like a stone and said she did not want to. She watched him head toward a blond divorcée, who rubbed pelvises when she danced. He lumbered off, his shoulders so broad, she remembered watching him, with her heart pounding, run across a football field when they were in high school. He had been the captain of the team. She had been willing to die, if he would look at her! The most ecstatic moment of her life had been when, finally, he had invited her to a movie. That evening, walking back to his car, he had dropped a matchbook into a gutter. When they reached a corner, he suddenly had whirled and run back to get the cover, which had his name printed on it. He had explained that, remembering it, he wanted nothing with his name on it in the gutter. How strange, she had thought. Now, she considered that at an age when she had never thought of it, Billy Walter had felt aware of who he was.

To be attentive, Cindy's husband refilled Amy's glass. She had looked down in surprise to find it empty. With the ghost of Billy Walter and herself in the room, younger, Amy began the drink, wondering how when you were old, it was possible to contain all your memories. People at the table chatted about inconsequential things, assuming that since she was silent, she was brooding. Had she and Billy Walter had a fight, they wondered. She looked at them a little blankly and tried to keep up a conversation, sorry her reverie had been broken. She sought silence again, by drinking.

“Potato chips?” Cindy offered a bowl. Amy shook her head, aware someone was pouring into all the glasses lining the table. She felt sick, smelling liquor. She hoped to avoid what amounted to a steady stream of questions about the wedding, her plans. Vaguely, she wondered why she was not jealous about Billy Walter and the divorcée. Others, she knew were watching her, solicitous. Her glass kept being refilled; a way of comforting her, the others felt. Dizzy, she began to eat potato chips, one after another, hoping they might make her soberer. She was either uninteresting, or had nothing in common. The husbands had drawn together at one end of the table, to talk about their afternoon's golf game. Billy Walter had gone out to the golf course with the divorcée.

Cindy, grouped together with the wives at Amy's end of the table, was saying intently, “What are we going to do about a car pool for day camp this summer?”

“Mondays,” said another girl, “would be my best day to drive. Except every third Monday, I have sewing club.”

“I could take Tuesday,” Cindy said, “except that has been my grocery shopping day.”

“Count me in. I'll take Wednesdays,” said another girl.

Cindy looked worried. “I don't know but one other soul sending a child to the camp. If we only have four, there's an extra day each week for someone to drive.”

Amy looked up, seeing blurrily that new setups had arrived. She found the potato-chip bowl empty. She felt pale, and tried to look interested. There was nothing to say, and nothing to do but finish her drink.

“Well, who is going to take the extra day which week?” said one of the girls.

Cindy said insistently, “I can never drive on Fridays. That's my bridge club. Though I can change my grocery shopping day for the summer.”

Another girl said, in mock worry, “We're boring Amy.”

“Oh no,” Amy said, beginning to stand up. “I just have to go to the ladies' room.”

“Who's going to take Monday?” said the girl, and they leaned toward one another as Amy left.

Objects were ahead in the room, which had to be carefully circumvented. Like a sailor, she set a fixed point, the ladies' room door, and attempted a steady course toward it. The last potato chips would not go down, and made a burning sensation where they seemed stuck, ready to rise, at the back of her throat. The club's band was engaged in a particularly agonized number, and people had stopped dancing to watch them play, and crowded close to the bandstand. Billy Walter and the girl had come back inside, hand in hand, to watch with the crowd. Amy prayed only to go unnoticed. The music seemed to make the room sway. Florists had decorated with forced spring blooms, which in the warmth and in the lateness of the hour, had begun to shed. Petals lay along her way, some from roses or redbud, pale pink. Looking down, Amy thought how meaningless to have once coveted a wreath of buds for her hair, and she gave up that old dream willingly.

A somewhat blousy girl on the bandstand sang “true lovvve” as Amy's hand touched the door to the ladies' room, in relief. Inside was solitude, silence. She only avoided mirrors, which reflected green shaded lights. At last, in a booth, she was sick. When she had washed her face, she stood in the dressing room, looking into those mirrors, and put on lipstick. She took off a shade from one of the lamps, to stare at herself, thinking how her mother said her friends loved to make up their faces in this powder room, because it was so dark, you couldn't see anything. Close to the bulb, Amy held her purse, searching for a dime.

Outside the room, a telephone booth had been artfully covered with flowers, and she headed toward it. She glanced once toward the main room, discovering that though the music was equally loud, though the singer with her full figure was still gyrating, the watching crowd had thinned. Curiously, she peered a little further into the room, wondering what other diversion there was. At her own table, she saw a group of people standing. Something hilarious, she thought, would be going on, of which Billy Walter would be the center, or likely the cause. That thought gave her a dragged-out feeling. She would have continued toward the phone, but saw that as Cindy and her husband came away from the table, Cindy was crying. Others, at the table, were picking up purses and leaving. Billy Walter, looking around for her, was holding her coat. He came toward her, indicating she must stand there, wait. Her coat hung limply over his arm, until, silently commanded, she put it on. People formed a line, moving like a sad pilgrimage. Filing out, Billy Walter pressed arms about her and said close to her ear, “There's been an accident. Quill's been shot.”

Shot! Amy covered her mouth with both hands. Images from that word had no association with Quill, who was meticulous and no outdoorsman. “Where?” She thought of burglars in his house, or muggers in the street.

“In the stomach,” Billy Walter said. Almost missing a step, going out of the club to the street, she repeated, “Stomach?” causing a friend, passing, to say, “That boy's liable to have done himself in.”

Billy Walter held her close saying, “He shot himself with that shotgun of his daddy's, that was hanging in their den.”

Quill was not dead; the word went quickly around. Though he would live, would he recover? A stomach wound could harm so much that was vital. The only thing to do was to go home, the hour was late, and people were yawning. Amy stared away from them, her throat deliberately tightened. Yawning can be a chain reaction, and be as contagious as a disease.

Why had Quill done it? everyone asked. Billy Walter looked at Amy quizzically, sensing she would know. She and Quill had had a lot in common. “Why,” he said, “would Quill risk mutilating himself for life?”

In Billy Walter's car, Amy leaned her chin to one hand and mumbled that she had no idea.…

“It's me,” she said, softly, knowing she need not give her name. She knew every inflection in Jeff's voice, as he knew hers.

“It is,” he said. “Amy.”

“Are you all right? You sound faint.”

“Now, I'm stronger.” He moved closer to the receiver.

She said, “I'm in a phone booth, and I don't have any more change.”

“I was resting,” he said. “I'm sorry to have taken so long to get to the phone.”

“Oh, that's all right. I was going to call last night, but something happened. I needed very much to talk to you.”

“I'm glad of that. Having been the cat who walked by himself, and finding eventually it was a mistake, I had wanted you to try a different way. I only hope to know if it works.”

“You will,” she said. “I should have called person-to-person. The operator won't just cut us off, will she?”

“No, there'll be signals.”

“Not more than one?”

“Many,” he said.

“You're not talking about the operator,” she said sensitively.

“No. Life.”

“But how will I know them?”

“You will, now.”

“Why? Because I'm grown?”

“Well, apparently,” he said, “or why are you calling?”

“I think I have grown up,” she said. “Operator!”

“I'll take care of everything,” Jeff said. He had the charges reversed to his phone. “I've waited a long time for this, Amy. I thought, once, I could get over you. I know now, if I lived till I were ninety, I couldn't.”

“That's good,” she said. “Because will you still marry me?”

He said, “When you get here, you can make plans about the rest of your life. You'll know better what to do. Come with just what you need.”

“My toothbrush?” she said, laughing.

“Good,” he said, also laughing. “You've learned your lessons well.”

“I get an A?”

“Yes, and a star.”

“I can't help worrying.”

“Choices cost.”

“That's a hard thing to accept. But, I will.”

“I'm going to rest easy.”

“Do. When should I come?”

“As soon as possible. Tomorrow. On that first train past noon. You can be easiest met then. Will you?”

“Risk it, of course. I'll dance a jig smack-dab in the middle of town. In broad daylight, too. I can hardly wait, can you?”

“I was beginning to wonder how long I could wait, Amy,” he said.

Seeing her mother growing older, Amy was glad to have learned not to count on anything. Anything might end, as nothing happened of itself. This morning, Edith's sleep-swollen eyes grew doleful. Undefiantly, in a calm voice, Amy had said, “Last night I broke my engagement.”

“But why?” Edith said. “For what reason? Billy Walter's such a sweet boy.”

“I don't love him.” Amy then headed Edith off. “I'm not talking about being ‘in love' with him.”

But, “
Love
,” Edith had said automatically, impatiently looking out at redbud opening rapidly into pink bloom. The hot burst of spring was on them, though in the earliest part of the morning she found herself shivering and thought it was because the ground was still dank. However, she was hopeful, for jonquils were up. Directly down between where two peaks of the roof formed a right angle, breaking here and there the silvery dimness of her room, the sun came in. Clusters of yellow flowers were everywhere along the ground. On a bush, wind spun small white blossoms like pinwheels. “Marriage,” Edith began, watching the flowers, her bottom lip bitten. But she remained silent, and her lips settled into place, for she had nothing after all to say about marriage, having never understood her own.

“I believe in love,” Amy said firmly, seeing her mother was going to say no more. Edith got up and went into her bathroom. Bending over the basin to splash water, she looked up, with a slightly different face, then Amy noticed that her mother was growing older. The water seemed to have added weight, like worry, to Edith's face, and lines drew it down. She hung up her towel, but leaned upon the rack a moment, dependently. Having peered at Amy, seeing how strong her face looked, Edith relaxed. She let her chin sag, remembering being told from the time she first held Amy that she would be amazed how soon the shoe would be on the other foot, and Amy would be taking care of her. Spring, Edith thought, staring out again at the flowers, was as unbelievable as time's passing. And looking back, she agreed, to Amy's surprise. “Yes,” Edith said. “Love is necessary.”

Amy knew her decision would not have changed without her mother's unknowing blessing. But she was glad to have it.