The Town and the City: A Novel

  “I’m going to Hartford tonight and I want you to help me. I want you to promise—now!” And she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk staring solemnly into her brother’s eyes, searching his face eagerly and nervously for signs of his disapproval.

  “Now?” murmured Peter absentmindedly. “Say, wait a minute! You mean you’re sneaking out, you haven’t told Ma or Pa?”

  “There!” hissed Liz wrathfully. “There it is! Even you! Even you!” She looked at him with tears in her eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, don’t be so damn dumb!” she cried out.

  “Wait a minute,” said Peter. “You know you don’t have to run away at all, if you want to marry Buddy. Who’s going to stop you? Nobody can say anything to stop you. You know how Pa is, he’d never really try to stop you if you wanted—”

  “I know that!” she snapped.

  “Ah—big mysteries,” sighed Peter wearily. “You and your mysteries, always.”

  “It’s not that either, Petey. I don’t want to go through all that stuff with you! I don’t want to go through all that with them. I don’t want to see anybody or talk about it with anybody, I just want to go. Don’t you understand? Just go, go, go!”

  They strode along rapidly.

  “Do you understand?” she insisted, looking in his face.

  “Sure I do. Still you don’t have to go like that, running away. What’ll Ma say, what’ll Pa say? They’ll be worried. Holy cow!”

  “You’re afraid,” she said contemptuously, “you’re afraid of what they’ll say if you help me. And I thought you weren’t afraid of anything.”

  “I’m not afraid!” he cried hotly. “I’m just thinking about you. And money! How much money have you got? And where’s Buddy if he’s going to marry you?”

  “In Hartford. He doesn’t know I’m coming.”

  “Great! He doesn’t know you’re coming.”

  “He expects me two weeks from now when he finds an apartment for us, but I’m coming tonight.”

  “Why doesn’t the guy come and get you if he’s going to marry you?” demanded Peter with stout indignation.

  “You still haven’t promised!” she persisted shakily.

  “Promised what?”

  “I want you to sneak my suitcase out of the house.”

  They looked at each other with a kind of crazy desperation. They were hurrying along the street in the general direction of the river and home, not even thinking where they were going. Peter was shaking his head, asking himself if anything had ever been so crazy. There was something else on his mind also, it was annoying him, he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “I hid my suitcase under the bed, see?” Liz was telling him eagerly. “The big one that weighs a ton. I hope you can handle it without making any noise—without waking up Ruthey! Hear me?”

  “I’m listening,” he said. Now it came to him, as for the first time, that his sister Liz had packed all her things in a suitcase and was actually running away from home, tonight.

  “I’m taking the one-thirty train. I got my ticket yesterday. Hear me?”

  “Good God, yes, I hear you!” he cried irritably.

  “I’ll wait for you on the corner while you get it,” she said gleefully now, squeezing his hand, almost laughing with delight. “Then we’ll go get my train—and Petey, you’ll see me off, you’ll kiss me good-bye. I’m scared!” she brooded suddenly. “I want you to be with me when I leave.” And she started to bite her fingernails furiously, searching eagerly once more in Peter’s face as they hurried along.

  But he was scowling and preoccupied.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re mad. You’re mad because I’m running away and you’ll have to tell them you helped me.”

  “I’m not mad!”

  “You’re mad because I’m going to get married and I’m not your little sister any more. Huh?” she asked nervously.

  “You’re crazy!” he muttered.

  “I’m not doing wrong, am I? You know that, too. That’s why I came to you to help me, because you’re not afraid of anything, you don’t care, and sometimes you’re just like me!”

  “You came to me to help you!” he echoed sarcastically. “One suitcase! You and your big dramas!”

  “But I always made big dramas, remember? The time you told me a secret about who started that big fire on the river. It was you, but nobody ever found out—and I made a big drama of it, don’t you remember? I sealed the secret in a box, my Chinese box, and I burned it on my altar. Remember? That was me and my big dramas. Petey, I’m not crazy, am I? You don’t think I’m crazy!” she demanded anxiously.

  “Oh, Liz—no, no,—but why do you have to do this, like this!” he stammered chokingly. “I mean—well, dammit, I dunno.”

  “Big dramas,” she continued in a daze of recollection and fright. “You know why I always liked big dramas when I was young? Because people are such fools, oh, such fools!” she cried. “They let everything go to pot. If they lie, they forget about it the next day. Imagine! I lie too, but it’s important when you lie, the reason must be remembered. And, Petey, I always keep secrets. I could kill people who don’t keep secrets!” she cried almost in a rage, through her teeth. “That’s why I didn’t ask Francis to help me tonight—he’s home tonight—he was right there on the porch and I didn’t even ask him.”

  “Francis?” said Peter, surprised.

  “And I didn’t ask Joe either. Joe was in the house at seven before he went out. Do you know why I didn’t ask Joe?” she confided in a low voice.

  “Huh!” scoffed Peter, pretending that he was not curious.

  “Because Joe would laugh and change my mind if he wanted to, and if he didn’t want to change my mind he’d just laugh. He’d laugh at my big dramas. But you get mad! You’re not laughing, Pete—you just make believe you’re laughing.”

  They had crossed the White Bridge and had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Now what?” Peter was muttering in tortured confusion.

  “I’ve got enough money, don’t you worry! Buddy’s got a lot of money, he’s got two jobs in Hartford. Look at my money!” she insisted, holding it in front of Peter’s face. “I’m glad I’m quitting that damn job in the five-and-ten. Now I’ll get a good job in a defense plant.”

  He smote his brow in despair.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she cried, laughing. “You’re more scared than I am! But you’ll keep my secret! There’s got to be two or three persons in the world who believe in your secret secrets, and always believe, always. Otherwise I don’t want to live,” she brooded. “Not if there aren’t three persons like that. Isn’t it silly to live? The things you have to do to live!” she cried, blushing.

  Peter chuckled now.

  “My brother and my husband and my son,” said Elizabeth suddenly, and she stiffened quite dramatically as though struck by an astounding idea. “They will always believe in my secrets!”

  “Where do you pick up all that stuff?” asked Peter with amazement. He was used to hearing his sister talk on and on like this, yet it seemed that he never really heard her before.

  But she was squeezing his hand desperately. “Go get the suitcase. Quick, Petey, quick!” Her hand in his was trembling and thin, and he was embarrassed.

  “Look!” he cried. “Don’t be scared—there’s nothing to be scared about.”

  “I won’t be, as long as I’ve got my three persons.”

  They were at the foot of Galloway Road by the gas station on the highway, the station was closed, the corner was dark under tall close-packed trees with the river breeze blowing through the branches softly. Peter was just standing there abstractedly—but Liz was pushing him to get started. Halfway up the hill he turned and looked at her standing alone and ruminative, waiting and rueful under the trees, so forlorn-looking on the dark street corner in the night, very much alone—and he realized that she was his “little sister” and she was go
ing away at night with her suitcase, going away from the house and the place they had always known together.

  When he came to the house and saw how dark and silent it was with the family gone to bed, and when he saw the yard where they had played games together so often, the place by the hedge where Liz had kept her “altar” and burned great secrets so solemnly, and all the little places in the yard that he knew so well—when he saw all these things, and the halfmoon that seemed to touch the east gable on the roof, and the window just below it that was the window of her bedroom, he felt stranger and more confused than ever, and now suddenly very heartsick.

  “I don’t like it!” he heard himself muttering over and over. “I swear I don’t like it.”

  He went in the house quietly and wandered upstairs, moving slowly in the darkness, meditating as he groped along. He knew what he had to do, but he hated to do it.

  Ruth was sleeping soundly in the sisters’ bedroom. The other bed belonged to Liz, it was nearer the window and the dim moonlight fell across the clean smooth spread in leafy shadow—and it seemed to Peter that there was something haunted and forsaken in the sight of her bed. Someone had made the bed neatly that morning, probably Rosey or his mother. It was smoothed carefully, with loving skill, Liz was expected to sleep in it tonight as she had done all her life. He felt more helpless and terrified than he ever remembered.

  With a feeling of silly lonesomeness the boy pulled the suitcase out from under the bed and listened breathlessly to the slow dragging sound it made in the sleeping house. Ruth did not stir. She was sleeping, he could see the faint pout on her face, he fancied wildly she was really awake and knew all about it and was playing cat-and-mouse with him. He stared at her.

  “Damn it all!” he thought fretfully.

  He stepped out of the room on tiptoe carrying the heavy bag. Out in the hall the old boards creaked. He could hear his father’s lion snore in the other room.

  “Petey!” his mother said from the darkness. “Is that you, Petey?”

  “Yeah!” he blurted.

  “Go to bed, it’s late.”

  “I’ll be back—the guys are outside,” he lied swiftly.

  “Don’t stay up too late, Petey.”

  “Okay.”

  He whistled casually, faintly, and went downstairs taking care not to bounce the suitcase against the banister. At that moment someone came in the kitchen door downstairs.

  “Petey!” his mother called from the darkness. “Is that Liz coming in now?”

  Peter knew it was Joe from the barging-around in the dark kitchen. “I guess so,” he said, gripping his head with anguish.

  “Tell her to come to bed.”

  “Okay, Ma.”

  The sound of her voice from out of the darkness and softness of the sleeping house was faint and sorrowful, and he was out of his mind with the thousand little anguishes that he suddenly felt everywhere, the brooding griefs that stalked slowly in the house, that seemed to surround him in the darkness.

  He hurried down the stairs and quickly placed the suitcase behind the couch with a desperate one-handed hoist that almost sprained his wrist. Now he was swearing up and down with pain and torment, rubbing his wrist and hitting himself on the side of the head like a madman.

  He went in the kitchen just as Joe was putting on the light. They looked at each other and said nothing. Peter drank a glass of water and Joe sat down at the table and began to read the Popular Mechanics he had brought home with him from the gas station.

  “Are you coming in or going out?” Joe inquired.

  “Going out. The guys are down on the corner.”

  “Hand me that piece of cake on the breadbox before you go. I’m dead on my feet, I pumped an hour straight before closing tonight. What a night!”

  Peter gave him the cake and started to go, then suddenly, sheepishly, he turned back and took a bottle of milk out of the icebox and poured a glass, and set it down before his brother with a strange forlorn look.

  “Well, thanks, Jeeves!” laughed Joe, looking up surprised.

  Without a word Peter went down the hall, hauled the suitcase from behind the sofa and slipped quickly out the front door. He waited a minute in the deep shadows of the hedge until he made sure Joe wasn’t looking out the window. He could still see him sitting in the kitchen with bowed head, reading and eating the cake. He, too, looked alone and forsaken. For a moment Peter thought he was going to start to cry, it was all too much for him, he didn’t know what to do or think or say, he was depressed and sick.

  “Ma’s always awake,” he thought heartbrokenly. “Poor Ma. I dunno—I wish Liz—I wish somebody’d do something.”

  He hurried back struggling to his sister with the heavy suitcase.

  At the corner bar he phoned for a cab and they were driven down to the depot. Elizabeth’s train was due in a half an hour; they went across the street to the cafeteria. They sat at a table by the plate-glass windows where they could see the ancient turret-topped depot across the street, the tracks, the signal lights, the old brown boxcars standing in the darkness by grimy redbrick warehouses, the cheap hotel with its red neon, the little depot lunchcart along the tracks—all the things in America that people notice when they go journeying, which they look at with a sense of awful loneliness and dread.

  Peter began to eat a plateful of frankfurters and beans, suddenly discovering that he was ravenously hungry. Liz ordered toast and coffee, but seeing how hungry her brother was, she gave him her toast.

  “Eat something, eat something!” Peter kept telling her. “You’re going on a trip, you’ve got to eat!”

  “I’m not hungry. I wonder what Buddy’ll say when he sees me.”

  “Good God! Don’t you even know?” he cried. “What are you going to do when you get to Hartford? It’ll be about four o’clock in the morning when you get there. Oh, this is whacky!”

  “I’ll sit in a cafeteria till morning,” she said simply. “Then I’ll go to Buddy’s place and catch him just when he’s going to work. That’s what I’ll do.”

  Peter kept looking at the clock as though he were waiting for the train himself but Liz just sat drinking coffee and thinking out loud about all her poor childlike newlywed plans.

  Peter grew hungrier and hungrier, for some odd reason. He went back to the counter for an order of bacon and eggs, but he discovered he only had twenty cents left in his pockets and came back to the table morosely.

  “Where’s your food?” Liz demanded. “What’s the matter with you? I know you’re hungry—I know you when you’re hungry, you never stop eating. Go get some food. Here! Take this dollar and buy all the food you want,” and she pulled a bill out of her purse.

  “Don’t be silly!” he cried.

  “If you don’t go get it, I’ll get it myself!”

  “Look, I can’t be spending your money, you need it for your trip. What do you think I am!”

  “Eat, dammit!” she cried angrily. “If I can’t feed my brother when he’s hungry, I’m not worth marrying.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You are too! I know you. Go ahead, get some bacon and eggs, get some of those lamb chops there. I’ve got lots of money. Do you hear me?” And she took Peter’s hand and thrust the dollar bill firmly in his fist.

  “I don’t want it.”

  “By God, I’ll bash you over the head!” she yelled furiously, as people looked up astonished.

  “You need this,” he said, about to fling the dollar back at her, but then he saw that her eyes were misty and she was looking at him sorrowfully, almost mournfully, with a poignant heartsick loneliness that made him choke up with anguish. He wished she would come home again and stay—but there was nothing for him to say.

  He took the dollar and went and got another plate of food, knowing now that it would please her hugely if he ate. Moreover he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was mad with hunger, too. She watched him eat with brooding satisfaction.

  “God, you make me hungry when you
eat like that!” she said, fascinated. “You ought to get a job eating in a restaurant window, everybody’d rush in to try it.”

  “I don’t know why I’m so hungry,” Peter said sadly.

  “Oh, look!” said Liz, excitedly. “I bought a pack of Camels. See them? I’m going to start to learn to smoke tonight. I’ll smoke on the train. Buddy smokes Camels. He’ll like me more if I smoke too, the same brand as him. I’m going to do everything he does. When we wake up in the morning I’ll always light up two Camels for both of us.”

  Peter stared wonderingly at her over his food.

  Suddenly there was the rumbling of the train coming. They took the suitcase and ran across the street, right up to the platform where the giant engine overtopped them passing in a tremendous flare of red smoke and roaring steam. And they saw the weary faces of travelers in the windows of the coaches that glided by and stopped.

  It was time, time. Liz and Peter looked at one another. He brushed her soft sister’s-cheek with his lips, and swung the big suitcase up on the train platform. They looked at each other once more, she kissed him swiftly and stepped up. Suddenly the train was moving, moving.

  Peter was stricken with a lonesome terror: he jogged alongside the train looking up at Liz, and she just stood there looking down at him sadly, waving.

  As the train picked up speed, Peter ran with it. When it was really underway, he stopped, and waved at her for the last time—forsaken little Liz going off in the night with her big suitcase. Then the train rumbled off, sudden silence passed, he heard a vast breeze passing through branches everywhere around, the locomotive whistle howled going away, the tracks gleamed nakedly in the moonlight—and he was sick now with a crying lonesomeness, he somehow knew that all moments were farewell, all life was goodbye.

  He went home, he walked under the dark swishing trees of home and July and nighttime.

  [4]

  George Martin sat on the dark porch of his house with his son Peter in the cool, breezy, starwealthy darkness of a late August night. The trees and hedge all around swished softly and swayed, nodding and bowing in the dark advancing wave of the breeze. They sat brooding on the porch.