“I hope not,” she said.
“Is Leo going to be there?” he asked.
“No, she’s out of town for the weekend.”
“Oh.”
He yearned to confide in her, tell her what he felt. How lost and afraid he was becoming as all the old things fell away. But the thought of telling her didn’t appeal to him. Something had left their relationship. The spring before, even the early fall before he’d met Melissa, he could have spoken to her. He could have put his head in her warm lap and told her everything without holding back, pouring the words from his heart because he knew she would understand and comfort him. But the closeness had faded. He tried not to pretend any more that he wasn’t the one who had destroyed it.
It was about nine thirty as they walked up the sidewalk to the gym.
“Ever been to a dance here?” he asked.
“A few times,” she said.
They went in. Erick handed his ticket to one of the men standing at the door. The sound of the band entered their ears, mixed up with the swish of dancing feet, like far-off breakers.
“Shall we check our coats?” he asked.
“We’d better,” she said.
“Okay.”
They went down the side hall into the field house. Sally said hello to a young man crouching behind a counter made of a wooden plank balanced on two barrels. The young man was jamming coke bottles into a dishpan of cracked ice.
“Hi, Sally,” he said, “How’s my favorite dancer tonight?”
“Fine,” she said.
Erick helped her off with her coat at the checking table. The men looked her over and whistled.
“Look who’s here,” said one of them.
“Danged if it ain’t that shapely fizz-ed teacher.”
“Oh you kid.”
“Twenty three skiddoo.”
“Wow wow!”
“Don’t tell me they finally put you boys to work?” Sally said.
“You know us,” said one of them.
“That’s why I asked.” Sally said.
They made noises of mock protest. Erick dropped the coats irritably on the table. One of the men looked at him briefly, and scraped two checks across the counter. Then he beamed at Sally again.
“Look at that gown! Man, is she showing us a thing or two.”
Whistles in unison. Sally laughing. Erick glowering, endless nasty remarks filling his head.
“What are you doing here?” one of the men asked her.
What the hell do you think she came here for, idiot! Erick’s mind snapped, to play basketball? He stood there, invisible.
Then he stepped away from the counter, turning his back on her. He felt like walking out of there and going home. He was sorry he’d come, sorry he’d asked her. All the longing and the quiet reverie had been washed away. He wanted to be alone, to get away from all this.
Finally, her hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry Erick, one of the boys was telling me about his new baby.”
“Legitimate?”
She looked at him and one side of her mouth twitched in the beginning of a smile. They walked down the hall wordlessly. Another member of the football team said hello to her as they passed him.
They entered the gym.
It was dimly lit, looking deceptively large. Long curled streamers of red and green were stretched from the beams to the walls and fluttered brightly in the smoky yellow light from the overhead fixtures. Glowing paper discs of every color hung down from the streamers. A giant cotton snowball was suspended from the center of the ceiling. Colored balloons undulated gently around it.
On the left side, as they entered, the band platform was set up. The members, in grey slacks and red corduroy jackets sat slumped in their chairs between sets. Their faces glowed whitely, spectrelike from the standlights. The band leader was leaning over speaking to the girl vocalist who sat, white arms crossed over her breasts.
Around the edge of the sawdust sprinkled floor, almost a hundred couples sat on folding chairs, stood arms folded or leaned against the yellow firebrick walls. The broken chatter of their conversations filled the air. Smoke ghosts swirled up lazily over their heads.
“Pretty,” said Sally.
“Yeah.”
She took his hand and they walked over to a large decorated Christmas tree standing between the doors. A sprinkle of colored lights shimmered in the dark branches. The air around it was heavy with the pungent odor of pine.
“Isn’t it pretty?” she said.
“Mmm.”
“I love Christmas.”
“I used to.”
“You mean you don’t anymore?”
He sighed. “It’s like anything else. You get out of the habit.”
“Get in the habit.”
“I can’t very well in my room.”
She looked at him in surprise. “You mean you’re not going home?” she said.
He shook his head.
“Oh Erick!” she said, her face filled with sympathy, “How come?”
He said nothing as they walked over under the shadow of the track.
“Why, Erick?”
“Oh, mostly finances. But there’s nothing to go home to anyway.”
“Oh.”
“I could dig up the money I suppose. My mother said she’d send it to me. But I don’t want to go.”
She squeezed his hand then and smiled tenderly. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be,” he said, “I have no home life.”
“But your mother?”
He stared at the floor. “I suppose she’ll miss me,” he said, “I don’t know.”
“I do,” she said.
“I’ll be home for good in June anyway,” he said bitterly.
She was quiet and he looked at her. The band lights reflected in her eyes. Her face was blank.
“You’ll be home,” she repeated quietly. “For good.” Her eyes seemed haunted.
Then she threw off the feeling and looked around the dance floor.
“A lot of people.”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“For being nice,” he said, “For being sorry about my having to stay here.”
“I am sorry,” she said, “I think Christmas is beautiful. But not alone.”
He put his arm around her and they stood watching the people. He smelled the quaint combination of odors in the air; stale sweet and perfume. Roses and old socks. He smiled at it.
Then the saxophones began to moan suddenly as if with an attack of stomach trouble. The beat of the moment died in their groaning. Drums introduced an orderly beat. All complexity departed in a methodical four-four rhythm.
He turned and extended his arms and they moved out onto the floor. Couples slipped out of the shadows. The broad floor was soon filled with them. The music gasped brassily over their heads as their feet glided over the smooth, saw-dusted floor.
Erick closed his eyes and they danced. He felt the hypnosis of swaying in darkness. He pulled her closer and their cheeks pressed together. He wondered why he didn’t bump into anyone. Usually they crashed periodically into other couples. Usually he made girls gasp as he dug heels across theirs. That night he seemed to weave in and out among the dancers like a radar-driven bat in a black cavern.
“Are you leading me?” he asked once.
“No,” she said but he was half convinced she was.
When a rumba started he said that was where he got off.
“Can’t you rumba?”
“After these years, you ask that?”
“I don’t remember ever trying with you.”
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
“All right but God help your tootsies.”
They started. He kept glancing at his feet.
“Don’t look so grim,” she said.
“I can’t help it,” he said, stumbling. He stopped. Started again. He lost the rhythm.
/> “Relax,” she said.
“I can’t.”
“Sure you—oh!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “We better quit.” He stumbled again, shook his head. “It’s no use.”
She shrugged slightly as they left the floor and stood by the wall. A tall boy in a tuxedo gangled over.
“Have this dance Sally?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
He looked startled. “Huh? Oh. Oh! H-how you been?”
“Fine, thank you,” she said.
He goggled. He smiled. He glared at Erick momentarily. He turned on his heel and strode away rapidly.
“What’s this?” Erick asked, “Refusing?”
“I don’t like him,” she said.
“I thought you liked everybody,” he said.
She looked down at the floor without answering. He looked her over, wondering just how many men she knew at the school. It must have been a lot. And he was the one. Or had been at least.
He put his arm around her. “That’s some dress,” he said.
“Gown. It cost too much to be a dress.”
“Gown.”
“Mmmm.”
“Go get a coke?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
The next set began and they started to dance. He liked dancing with her, he realized for the first time. She was the best dancer he’d ever known. He couldn’t even feel her motion, it seemed to parallel his exactly. No matter what he did, how he altered his motion or timing, she followed without a struggle.
“I like the way you dance,” he said.
“That’s good.”
He pulled her closer and their cheeks rested together again. He kissed her cheek, letting his mind go as blank as it could. Their outstretched hands came down and rested on his left shoulder. He closed his eyes again.
He sighed and rubbed his cheek against hers as they danced. Her left hand tightened on her shoulder. He heard her throat contract and a slight gasp passed her lips. Her breath was warm on his cheek. She made a slight grumbling noise.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Oh.”
“Oh, what?”
“I’m …”
“You’re what?” He kissed her hair.
“I’m mad at you and …”
“Mad? Why?”
She pressed against him pugnaciously. “Because you’re not nice. Because you’re … oh, I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“Every time I want to be cool you do thisssss,” she said, the last word extending into a hiss as he kissed her ear lobe.
He locked his arm tightly around her. They danced slower and slower, circling in small motions. Finally, they stopped completely. He bent over and their warm lips touched. He felt as though he were floating in dark space with rustling winds about them and far off music playing. Deep in the dark center of life…
She looked at him through half-closed eyes.
“Oh,” she sighed, “Here we go again.”
* * * *
When he took her home she fried some eggs for him. He liked sitting there at the kitchen table watching her, noting the odd pleasing contrast made by the homey little apron and the sophisticated gown.
They sat at the kitchen table smiling at each other. He seemed to sense a new warmth coming into their relationship. So much was past. Separations, arguments, everything. They had weathered all of them. They were still together, smiling at each other.
But time was passing. He felt that again too, felt a chill in realizing that he would be leaving soon. He had to make up his mind. Yet there was still no consuming fire of love as there had been with Melissa. He wondered why. Sally was just as beautiful, her dark brown hair framing her well shaped face, her kind shining features soft with affection. He reached over and took her hand.
“I like to be with you,” he said.
“What, hon?”
“I said I like to be with you.”
She smiled and her eyes glistened a little. She shook her head slowly.
“Erick,” she whispered, “Oh, Erick”
And then sighed with gentle despair as a patient mother might sigh over her impossible son.
* * * *
Again the doubts. It wasn’t as though he were a downright cynic. If he were as cynical as he pretended to be, he probably would have hanged himself long before, he decided. But he wasn’t. He just had an abiding humor that was all. He couldn’t relax.
That night he wondered again for one of those brief incredible moments if he was all wrong about people. It was at times like that that he wondered. And Sally always seemed to be with him when it happened. When he wondered if maybe he were full of hot nothings. And if his iconoclasm was a derelict commodity.
Then again he knew it wasn’t so.
It was just that there were brief moments of pleasure to offset the manifold stupidities, he thought. There were wonderful seconds when man, for all his ignorance and bigotry, attained a divine beauty of love and friendship.
I know these people, he thought that night, I have seen them in their paths. I have heard their brutal laughter and seen the leer behind their smiles. I have seen the cruel currents flowing behind their every word. Their lowness and their loss of dignity.
Yet for all that, he thought, I have found beauty in them.
He went to a Christmas carol sing. There were hundreds of people in the dark street. They came from all over. It looked like a Ku Klux Klan meeting at first with all the torches. But there was peace and not hatred. There were songs of pity on lips instead of oaths and screams of intolerance.
There were hundreds of them. And the torches touched their orange fingers against the face of the night. Gently with a touch that sent sparks and smoke into the sky. There were boys and girls all over. Arm in arm, singing. And a chubby man on a truck with a microphone directing their singing and inserting pat little aphorisms here and there.
“That’s right!” he said, “And Christ is really on his way! Take a tip folks! Christ is with us! And now let’s sing …”
Dividing of the audience to see who could sing Jingle Bells the loudest. The man shouting, “That was pretty good but I bet you-could sing it-louder if you tried!” Cheers after the singing. Religious tone of the carols. Those beautiful and hypothetical carols, he thought.
He whispered to Sally and Leo that Jesus was born in Nazareth when they sang Oh Little Town of Bethlehem. He told them that no records verify the presence of royalty at the nativity when they sang We Three Kings of Orient Are. And he suggested that Jesus was born about ten fifteen when they sang It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.
Leo laughed out loud.
Sally only smiled tenderly and squeezed his hand. And, as she sang, he got the feeling that she was much closer to reality than he was.
That was when he stopped short in the middle of the milling crowd. With the myriad voices surrounding him. And wondered if maybe he was all wrong.
There was goodness here, wasn’t there? Couldn’t he go on ranting and raving for a century without even touching it once? He could scorn at carols and people and simplicity until his dust swirled away. But the carols and the people and the simplicity would still be there. Bringing smiles of joy to little children as they flew into their living rooms and looked at the lovely tinseled trees. As they played with their toys. As they romped in the snow. And bringing joy to their elders as they stood around a piano and sang carols. As they sat together in warm comfort and knew each other’s presence and were happy. As they talked and felt the sweet caress of a loved one’s hand and saw the smile on a loved one’s face.
I cannot have these things. It was what he thought.
I’m no good for them. It’s not that I’ve put myself apart.
It seems to be someone else’s doing. These things have gone away from me. I have only done what seems natural. And yet I am no longer in the city of men. I am out on a mountain looking at the distant lights. Reaching out to warm my hands from it
and feeling only the cold winds that chill unto death.
I’m exaggerating, he thought, I’m being too damn melodramatic.
No, I’m not.
I do sense a parting of the ways with these things. I can appreciate them, sure. I can see the glory of man. I can also see the paltry dust of him. The passing faith of him. I would like for him to be all good. But he never has been. And am I alone to effect it now? I think not.
No, I can never do anything but look and suggest. I could write a million tracts for the people. But they would do no good. All that needs to be written about the truth has already been written. People are still the same.
I will go on with my silent, my hungry needs. I must write. I must create what is within me, symbolize my hunger. It must come out of me so I can die in peace when the time comes. And what I do will make me happy. If I never marry. If I lose every friend I have. If there is nothing but my writing. I will be happy. It will be a miserable happiness probably. Sometimes I’ll want to die. But in the end, I’ll not be sorry for what I’ve done.
Was it wrong to think these things? He wondered. Was it wrong to hate ugliness? When he understood quite well that within this ugliness there had to be beauty. For if there was no beauty, what was there to call ugly?
* * * *
School was out.
Like an uptilted saucer the town drained itself rapidly of its student body. Erick could almost sense the exit of them as he lay on his bed in the room looking at the ceiling. Lynn was sitting on the other bed in his underwear.
“Why don’t you go home?” Erick said, “You’ve got money.”
“Why should I?” Lynn said, “I have less than you have to home to. At least your father is dead. Mine is a disgustingly healthy, jowly, repugnant salesman. My mother is a driveling clubwoman. My only hope in life is that my father was, in actuality, the iceman who had some philosophy as I recall.”
Erick grinned. “Filial affection.”
“Yeah,” Lynn said, “To quote your Brooklyness.”
“Well you and I will probably be only ones left in the whole town,” Erick said.
“How chummy,” Lynn said, “Sally gone yet?”
“I’m going out tonight to say goodbye, she’s leaving in the morning.”
Lynn looked over at the package on Erick’s desk.
“What’d you get her?” he asked.