“Because of her insult?” Carey said.
“I guess,” Helen said.
“It didn’t sound like much of an insult,” he replied. “What Peyton said.”
“Let me go on.”
So Ella said, “Yes, ma’am,” and hobbled down the gravel walk, crunch crunch crunch beneath the trees, and was gone. Helen continued her weeding; Peyton and Milton said nothing to her: she could feel their silence at her back, feel them even eying each other significantly, and because of this the same old bitterness came back.
I will not yield to this, she said to herself. I will not yield to this …
And struck through the earth with her trowel. She looked up, thinking I will not yield to this despair; saw waves, sky, clouds high above Port Warwick, where twilight hung like umber, or the most faultless rusty shade of gold. Her mind spanned forth, encompassing some small vision of the future. It was silly, and so easy: to think of a moment when time has run down like an old woman’s heart, and the house on a sunny Sunday afternoon is full of grandchildren and, venerated, you rise to face the love of those who call you by name, being able to say then accomplished, accomplished. So that’s what she thought. They made no noise now, but it didn’t matter. She looked up past the beach, the bay, thinking: I will not yield. God willing, this sun will shine on me in the peace of my last days when Milton and I love each other once more, and I’ll be old but happy then because Peyton loves me too; I’ll have seen this through. …
But there it was. She looked down then, even smiling some, she recollected, prepared to get up at the sacrifice of pride and go sit and talk with Milton and Peyton; she looked down where her trowel had sliced through the earth and saw that it had cut a pomegranate root right in two. You could see it, she said, the buried ends exposed and green and moist, brutally severed.
“Carey,” she said, “I wonder what these moments are that come to fetch us off into desperation. The pomegranate root. You see, I’d been on my knees trying not to yield, seeking God’s help. Teach me to love, I’d been saying. I remember it all. I thought I could get up from my garden and decently, patiently, face those people who’ve harmed me the most. I’d show love and kindness. But it wasn’t just that root, bleeding and ugly as it was; it was something else behind me. Peyton’s voice. So undisciplined, so crude. Saying something like, ‘Bunny, quit pinching me!’ And the way he went on, ‘Why, baby, I’m shocked!’ and hers again: ‘You’re mean,’ things like that, and the sniggering and giggling back and forth.”
It was all these, she went on, but not alone: this other voice which she loved more than any on earth, floating through the dusk to touch her like hands: a voice, Maudie’s.
At the window. She had wakened Maudie when she’d called to Ella.
Helen turned. Peyton said, “I’ll get her, Mother,” and was up and across off the grass before she could rise or even move. Then she struggled to her feet, her mouth open: “Wait, no!” she began. “As God is my witness——” but only watched those smooth young wanton legs, limp-kneed, moving across the lawn and into the house, Milton sitting spraddle-legged in his chair, glass in hand, turning lazily to see Peyton disappear beyond the door, his red neck swelling, enlarging as Helen approached on the run, digging in with her heels past the lawn chair.
“For Christ’s sake, Helen! What’s the matter?” His hands on her shoulders, holding her.
“Let me go! She wants me. I won’t have Peyton——”
“What’s the matter with you? Get hold of yourself!” Shaking her now, his face red and frightened, one hand clamped on her shoulder, the other behind her neck, wet and cold where he had held the glass.
And she was shouting, “Let go of me! I’m going up there. It’s my baby. I’ll not have Peyton——”
But suddenly she was better, calmer—realized this craziness. The anger fell away: he was pressing her down in a chair, saying, “Helen, Helen, for Christ’s sake.” And then, more gently, saying: “Poor baby, you’re all tired out, that’s all. Take it easy. Take it easy, for Christ’s sake. Maudie’s all right. Peyton’ll take care of her.”
She sat there, not looking at him while he bent over her.
“You’ve got dirt on your forehead,” he said, “right there.” Touching her brow with his finger. She said nothing; however, she recollected, she supposed that at this moment she was thinking in an odd repetitive way: Yes, she’ll take care of her; Maudie’s all right. Not with relief or comfort, as she should have, because although she knew Peyton would take care of her, she still wanted to be up there and she couldn’t get this wild false notion out of her mind: usurping my place, that’s what; it’s not enough that she play with Milton but now she goes to Maudie too. False, she knew, but she wanted to get up then and push Milton out of the way. She wasn’t frantic about this; she wanted just to get up calmly and walk upstairs to Maudie. But she was afraid of revealing herself; the guilt was returning. She feared a new, ugly crisis with Milton: they had had too many arguments, too many.
Now he was gentle with her: “Let me brush it off, honey,” pulling out his handkerchief and wiping her brow. She let him, sat there fidgeting, breathing in uneasy gasps. “There, it’s all off,” he said finally. “Now relax, baby.” How could he be that way, so tender, pretending that nothing had happened between them? She wanted to get up then, started to, but thought better of it: I won’t let him see; he’s seen too much already. She sat back, avoiding his eyes. Night was coming, and wind: the willows were tossing up and down. She heard Maudie’s voice and Peyton’s above her, then his, very gentle: “Well now, Helen, why don’t you take it easy tonight? Just until she goes. Then she’ll be gone.”
That awareness. He knew. And to think that all along she should not have considered it: he knew. Part of a dream flitted across her mind: the gesticulating silhouette of a crazy female, no more than a shadow, which always came just before she went to sleep. Then she thought: how could he believe that Peyton hates me when—I’ve been a good mother, I’ve done what’s right.
“There wasn’t any reason for him to believe that, Carey, was there?” she said. Carey noticed she had almost ripped her handkerchief to shreds.
“There wasn’t any reason for him to believe that Peyton hated me. Even I—and I’ve been close to her—even I couldn’t think something like that. Wasn’t what he said cruel, Carey? Wasn’t it?”
“You mean,” Carey answered, “that what he implied was that you hated Peyton. Isn’t that what you mean?”
“I—I. No. I——”
“Take it easy, Helen. Go on.” Carey’s sinuses began to hurt. He blew his nose.
“Well, ‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
“And Milton said then—and he wasn’t bitter—he said, ‘Well, you’re just tired, I guess.’ ”
But it occurred to her again what Milton had said. Then she’ll be gone. What a rotten, rotten thing to say.
“Poor baby,” Milton said then, squatting down beside her, “we have a rough time sometimes, don’t we?”
She told Carey how she got up and turned away from him. “How can you say such a horrible thing? ‘Then she’ll be gone.’ Just because all this packing and shopping’s tired me out do you think I enjoy seeing my child leave from home? Do you think I like it? Do you?” She couldn’t help saying that.
He put his hands on her shoulders again. “No——”
“Let me alone!” she cried. And she remembered that it was then, more than at any other time during the evening, that she wanted to say something about Mrs. X, the mistress, the snake, the despised woman of the shadows and dreams. “Let me alone, Milton!”
Neither of them said any more then, but both of them, she thought, felt that something was about to happen. It hung in the air, vast and extraordinary—a thin twilight humming like mosquitoes suspended above a pond, a noise indistinct, querulous yet violent. It approached, revealed itself: an airplane with silver wings, immensely fast, dipping
overhead with a wild swoop toward the bay. The noise grew, night. fell with a crash, and a gathering wind sent the willows tossing like a jungle of buggy whips. “Helen——” Milton called, but drowning out his words another plane appeared and slanted through the dark behind the trees, full of noise and flame and danger, and was gone behind the first.
She thought, Something’s happened to Maudie.
“Helen!” Milton cried. “The fools!” And raised his fist to the sky. “You goddam crazy bastards!” His glass fell soundlessly to the lawn and the ice cubes which she stepped on, as she ran, glowed like diamonds in the grass. A light went on in the house. Maudie lay sprawled at the foot of the stairs, giggling.
“It doesn’t hurt, Mama,” she said. “Listen to the planes!”
Helen knelt beside her, stiff with fright.
“I let her slip and fall,” Peyton said. “I’m sorry. It was dark. I didn’t mean to.”
“Mama, Peyton didn’t mean to. Listen to the planes!”
She lifted Maudie up. Milton dashed in, and she heard his voice behind her: “Oh, good, thank the Lord! I thought something had happened.”
She told Carey how another plane had joined that procession across the sky, the house rocking beneath this furious noise as if shearing buzzsaws had been brought earthward on the wings of some perilous bird. Then swiftly the noise diminished, the planes were gone, leaving only far out across the bay a receding and innocent billow of sound, almost musical, a tremulous twilight humming which faded, vanished, returned once, quavering, and became silent altogether. She looked up from where she knelt by Maudie. There was a bruise on Maudie’s leg—a little place, but it appeared to her huge and awful. As in a dream, everything she had imagined had come true. A result, it seemed, of nothing more than some crazy mischief. She looked past Peyton—the shorts, the slim, tanned legs, her hips again. All these lost. Hers. She was going away. But something prevented her from saying the right words.
So, she told Carey, she yielded—to her pride, her hurt, her own abominable selfishness. She got up and put her arm around Maudie and said to Milton, quite without emotion: “Something has happened, Milton. Didn’t I tell you? Peyton let her fall. I’ll have to stay here.” And she turned and went upstairs without a word more, to Peyton or anyone.
After Helen had finished that part of her story, Carey remembered, he had been inclined at first to say: so what? He hadn’t wanted to make all these snap judgments, but his initial pity for her had been tempered by a strong irritation: here was a woman who had not been the dupe of life, but had been too selfish, too unwilling to make the usual compromises, to be happy. And although he didn’t know her well, he would like to venture that she was also a complete prig. No wonder life had seemed a trap. All she had needed to do at certain times was to have a little charity, and at least measure the results. And he had told her so, trying to be objective, if, as he was later afraid, rather sententious. When she had paused, obviously miserable and overwrought, he had looked away from her and made doodles on his blotter, saying: “Was Maudie hurt bad?”
“No. At least, I really don’t think so.”
Then he had thought ah, well and had gone on to say weakly, “Well, like the adage, Helen: ‘As the smallest leavening maketh bread firm, small kindness maketh love grow.’” Actually it was an epigram he had made up just that moment and a poor one; because he was never sure of the worth of his judgments he often quoted imaginary sources to lend an air of authority—a low habit but relatively harmless. And Helen had said then, after a long dead silence full of torment and indecision: “Well, I guess that’s right. But I guess you’re like all the rest.”
“How do you mean that, Helen?” he had said gently.
“No. No, then. Not like all the rest. You’re the first I’ve talked to.”
“Well——”
“I sound terrible, don’t I?”
“No.”
“You say no because you’re being kind.”
“No, now, Helen, look here. I’ll give you all the help I can. I’m not here to judge or condemn. I only said that because—well, suppose I take it back. I wasn’t suggesting any lack of kindness on your part. I guess—— Well, maybe the way you told this thing to me has given me just the false idea that you’ve been maybe—selfish. At least this particular time. Or something.” What else could he say?
“You mean that——”
“I mean that … Helen. Oh, I don’t know——” he said hopelessly. “I mean that maybe it’s not as bad as it might seem.”
She closed her eyes and raised her fingers to her brow. “I thought that you maybe could help me,” she said in a small voice.
Poor woman. It was a funny circumstance. In a day when a minister felt perpetually deserted, when the one thing one wanted most was to be able to offer spiritual guidance, here was a person who seemed to be in great need of whatever help he could give, and what could he say? Nothing really. So in the little gap before he spoke he concentrated heavily upon something up and beyond him and prayed, himself, for guidance. Finally he said: “Helen, do you believe in God?”
She looked up slowly, and said in a surprisingly self-possessed voice: “Yes. Or at least I want to.”
“Then that’s part of the fight already, and the better part of the eventual triumph. God has a strong adversary in the devil—” and he thought yes, she knows that. She knows that. Which is all to her credit—“ ‘his craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate’ as the hymn goes—” of this Carey was sure—“God gives His greatest reward to those whose fight is desperate and whose struggle at the bleakest hour seems most hopeless. Because then one’s only weapon is faith, which indeed often seems a flimsy thing, but unless you have it the struggle can avail nothing.” And as an afterthought: “ ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth.’ “
He leaned forward and suddenly felt unburdened, sensing so completely the truth of what he was saying, that he had to communicate this to her: “Does it sound funny I can talk to you like this in an age like ours?” She began a negative nod of her head, but he went on: “Excuse me for this, but you must—listen, Helen, remember that our age is only a moment in that time we can perceive as the timeless love of God. The devil, if you want to call him that, walks abroad today as he has before, but always he’s been defeated and cast down. He rises with greater strength each time to try our faith. If our moment is worse and the devil seems more strongly armed, then it is our joy and our exaltation to seek combat: ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.’ Oh, Helen, there’s nothing stupid or arrogant in such an affirmation, or nothing to compromise the reason; it’s a tribute to the faith and strength and love of one’s self, which becomes the love of others, and which is the timeless love of God.”
“Who is He?” she said after a silence.
Could anything be more simple, or trite, or so hard to understand? “God is love,” he said, with a small feeling of triumph, and of sadness, too.
She looked away. “Maybe you’ve found him,” she said, rather accusingly.
“I have,” he said, lying, but not with any premeditation. He only felt that he had struggled for twenty years with simple, tangible evils. These, added up, were Evil, and they depressed him and in his dreams at night they gave him phosphorescent visions of earthly horrors and spiritual damnation. He could rationalize, he could say “These things happen to every man”—his gluttony, which kept his weight up and gave him gas, his petty parsimony—but nonetheless he knew that it was the little temptations which held him forever apart from true Christian peace, caused him to hurry through dark rooms at night and down the stairs, fearing even then, as reassuring light beckoned from the hall below, the clutch of a cold invisible hand. But he had struggled incessantly—against both the temptations and the vaguely mystical, idiotic fears; the struggle was the important part, and he felt that he could lie to Helen a little bit, if just to make h
er believe that anything might be possible through the grace of Jesus Christ.
But even this, he remembered now, had not given her a momentary contentment. She hadn’t seemed to notice. She had gone on dredging the shallows of her despair, embarrassing him and, occasionally, touching him with her confusion. They had sat there until long past midnight—until Adrienne had called from upstairs in a muffled, cross voice: “Carey, Carey, aren’t you coming to bed?”—but that had gone unnoticed. And Helen, never letting her voice rise now—she seemed to be getting tired—and pausing only to light innumerable cigarettes (even then continuing to talk so that the smoke came out in small voice-thickening gusts) had told him how she had gone to see Dolly Bonner the next day. It was all of a year afterward—when the gossip around town was unavoidable, even for a minister—that Carey learned who the woman was, because Helen persisted in calling her, with a certain charity, “Mrs. X.” But later he was able to reconstruct the scene in his mind. Even though he didn’t know Dolly, her ubiquitous smiling photograph had been in the newspapers every time the Red Cross or the Community Chest or the North Port Warwick P.T.A. had had the slightest excuse for a conclave: Dolly (“Mrs. Sclater Bonner”) could apparently be imposed upon by her sister members to serve as hostess, or take the more arduous responsibilities. He remembered that picture. And later, when he learned “Mrs. X’s” identity, he saw clearly all that Helen told him: the two handsome women facing each other at noon in a hot tearoom, each, through some propriety inbred or learned, controlling herself in a painful undercurrent beneath the gentle, ironic, hateful words, but ready at the first improper bat of an eyelash to do violence, even in public, to assert her claim upon Loftis, who by that time was fully halfway to Sweet Briar.