“Yes,” Dolly said, and raised her head timidly, and Helen could see on her lip a faint beady mustache of sweat.
They were both silent then. Finally Helen said, “Don’t you want some coffee?”
“No, thanks; no, really, I’ve got to be going. Melvin’s going back to school on Monday and I’ve just got to do some shopping.” She ventured the first part of a smile, as if Helen’s suggestion about coffee had really indicated, marvelously, despite the telephone conversation, that this was a social visit after all. It was the smile of a reprieved prisoner, and it broadened upon her pretty face, and became suddenly a laugh of deliverance: “Honey,” she giggled, “we sure do have a time with our children, don’t we? Melvin’s just like his daddy, the fat old thing. Sixteen, imagine that, and I got to get him size-thirty-six pants.” She paused, smiled and looked at her watch. “Well——”
Now.
“Listen here,” Helen said, bending forward. Again she couldn’t bring herself to repeat Dolly’s name. “I want to talk to you about something serious.”
Dolly turned, alert and intent. “Why, sure, what’s the matter?”
“I’ll get down to cases,” Helen went on, not smiling, but not betraying anger, either—controlling herself. “It’s my husband. Now listen—now I think you know why I wanted to see you. Listen—” she arched her eyebrows and, without raising her hand from the table, waved an admonitory finger—“I think really I’ve had just about enough, don’t you? You see, I have a family, which is very important to me, a very important thing. Also, there’s something else, the decency or indecency of the thing, if you know what I mean, and frankly—listen: Frankly, I’m tired of having these hints and rumors reaching me about the way Milton has been carrying on. Now, I know Milton isn’t beyond reproach, he’s got many faults like I suspect all husbands do, but I want to make it plain right now that I’m not going to let you carry on like this anymore.” While she talked she knew somehow that things were not going well at all; she seemed to have lost the advantage of surprise, her face felt suddenly feverish and, besides, Dolly had not become immediately crushed, as she had intended, but was only returning her gaze with receptive, placid eyes, and with her lower lip tucked thoughtfully between her teeth. “You see what I mean,” Helen went on in a level voice, “I’m not being vindictive. I’m right now offering you an opportunity to mend your ways and then we’ll say, all’s forgotten, live and let live, and so on. Do you understand?” What on earth had happened?
Dolly stretched languidly, all fear gone, as if now—having met the adversary—the apprehension, the pre-contest anxiety had vanished. Slowly she stretched, raising clasped hands to the ceiling, and made a small rude noise—like a belch—of apathy, of indifference. “Honey,” she sighed, letting her arms fall, “I just wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What do you mean—” Helen hadn’t foreseen this: the fury—“what on earth do you mean? What do you mean—don’t know what I’m talking about? I’ll tell you what I’m talking about very well. You know exactly. For six years I’ve known about you and Milton. Six years. That’s what. Watching you make a fool of him! Breaking up my family, that’s what! And you don’t know what I’m talking about! As God is my witness——” How disordered she had become, and how quickly her sure determination had gone astray! That subtle, secret weapon of Dolly’s—of indifference, of smug, easy denial—had thrown her attack into wild confusion. Swiftly she said, in a loud clear voice: “You see what I mean, don’t you? You’re breaking up my family because you’re a selfish, immoral, vicious woman. For six years you’ve worked your way with Milton and now that my daughter has gone off to school I need him even more and I won’t have it! Understand, I just won’t!” She wagged her forefinger, then stretched out her whole hand, trembling, casting anathema through the Bide-A-Wee. Old Mrs. Prosser, who ran the place, appeared at the door with a bevy of wild-eyed Negroes. “I’ll not suffer for six years,” Helen shouted, “and then plan—look forward to spent … spending the rest of my life in human bondage to your dirt-smut.”
Dolly had got up, collected her purse and umbrella. She looked down at Helen with a brief hard gaze. “You wait a while,” she said softly, “just you wait a while. I’ll put things right out in the open, which you’d never do. O.K. Listen,” she whispered, bending toward her, “if I’ve done wrong with Milton—wrong, as you put it—it hasn’t been any six years. It was two weeks ago, honey, at the country club at your dance. There, see, that’s a confession. And we’re going to keep on as long as Milton wants to. And I don’t care how much or where, honey, or how much people talk. Because I love him and that’s more than you do and you know it.”
She slipped the umbrella straps over her arm, slowly, without effort, as if she were going shopping, which in fact she was. “Now,” she said, “we’re making all kinds of noise, and I’d better go. Don’t talk about six years, ‘my dear,’ because it isn’t true. Just remember that whatever Milton does it’s because he’s just been lonesome. Remember that.” She threw a dollar on the table.
Then she wheeled and sauntered out with high heels disdainfully clacking on the linoleum, past Mrs. Prosser and the astonished waitresses, through the door. “Now——” Helen cried, half-risen from her seat, but her words fell emptily on the hot, still air, above the skittish noise of aprons and skirts and giggles, as the Negroes popped out of sight.
A few minutes later Helen boarded a bus at the corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Washington Avenue and, being deeply involved in thought, failed to notice that her nickel slipped past the coin slot and onto the floor. The driver glared at her briefly, but this, too, went unnoticed. She would just have to remain silent, she thought, as the bus bore her rocking gently toward home. There would come a working out. Of course, she herself had not been really sinful, she had only misjudged in too many cases, perhaps—been too impetuous. … Yes, remain silent, bear it all—and, above everything, try to keep out of her mind the abysmal mistakes, like just now——Oh, the shame! The humiliation! But then … forget it, forget it.
That night she was sitting in her garden alone when Milton returned from Sweet Briar. She told Carey later how Milton, after putting the car away and disappearing into the house for a moment—to go to the bathroom, she supposed—came out and sat down beside her.
“Well,” he said, shaking his drink, “our little girl’s a college woman now.”
“Did everything go all right?” Helen asked quietly.
“Oh, wonderful. What a kid! She’ll be the beauty queen. She sticks out like a jool in a coal pile, like the nigger says. Already.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, “I wish—I really wish I’d gone. I was sick last night. I really felt better this morning. I had a nice day, really.”
“That’s good,” he said, without much interest. “How’s Maudie?”
“All right. We went over in the playground with the swings this afternoon. She got a little tired.”
“Mmm-hh.”
They were quiet for a while. Then Helen said: “Did I hear you talking to someone in the house just now?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I was making a call.”
“Oh.” She paused. “I do hope Peyton makes good grades, not just the beauty queen business. If she’s going to be something——”
“Aw, Helen,” he said with a little laugh, “she won’t worry about that for a while. You know that. She’s got to worry about the boys. First. She’s a bright kid.”
“Yes. I worry about that, too. The boys.”
“She’ll be O.K.”
“I hope so.” Again they stopped talking. Finally Helen said: “Did she say anything about me—about me not going today?”
“Yeah, yes, she was mad. Hurt. She doesn’t understand you. I told her you were nervous—with Maudie and all. She knows all about that.”
Helen didn’t answer, and was surprised in a way—for they rarely came to her—that tears were running down her face. Milton stretched, yaw
ned, stood up with a faint snapping of unlimbered joints. “Well—” he yawned—“I’m going to bed. I’ve got to go down to the C & O tomorrow and see Peterson about that draft. What’s wrong, Helen?”
She shook her head without answering and held out her hand, which he ignored, or didn’t see. “Good night, Milton,” she said, which was difficult, considering the swelling in her throat. “Forgive me.”
“What for, Helen?” he said softly.
“Nothing,” she said quickly, her heart pounding. “Everything.”
“Good night.”
Something in his voice told her that he was startled, even pleased, at her gentleness, her decency. Or just this weakness? But apparently, being surprised, there was nothing else he could say, and so he walked into the house. It was a very close moment, she thought, but not close enough for comfort.
Oh, how can he be that decent with me?
She blew her nose, a mosquito lit on her brow. She got up. Moonlight flooded her garden and the shadows sprang up, one by one, of dying flowers, the pomegranate, the patient, hovering trees. She knelt down by the flower bed. Even after one day, more dead petals littered the ground and she picked them up until she had a handful. She looked up. Above her the mimosa leaves were smooth, unhurried in the stillness, reflecting moonlight like pale hands of water: she thought of God—painfully—it was beyond reflection, like trying to picture your remotest ancestor.
Who is He?
From her hand the petals dropped away, dry ghostly husks; somewhere a door slammed and a bat, fluttering silently, swung down through the night and vanished among the eaves. I will not yield, she thought, I will not yield. Gray smoke from her cigarette in garlands, like hope, ascending eternally, rose through the darkness, and I will not yield—but it made no difference: the loneliness swept down around her, a mountain of withered grass.
Now, as Carey made a turn on the street, a row of houses facing on the bay appeared to the left of him. None of them were mansions but they were spacious and faced on neat lawns and here at midday, shaded by trees thick with the greenest of leaves, they all had the cool, withdrawn, silent look of nice houses on a summer day. The Loftis house was only a couple of blocks away and Carey drove on, hot and pensive and disorganized, beneath the shelter of the trees. Once the whine of a vacuum cleaner disturbed the silence, but faded, and somewhere a child, unworried by the heat, made a wild and momentous scream. Carey drove on, full of worry: what would he say to Helen? Now and then he looked at the houses, as if to take his mind off the matter at hand, but turned suddenly away, retaining only the small vision of things well kept and drowsy and heavy with summer: an old man prodding at a flower bed, the huge white cat that lay sleeping on a coil of garden hose—and there was a woman with a rag about her head, who paused to wipe her brow with quiet exhaustion, looking hopefully upward between the fading wilted leaves.
What would he say to Helen? Yes, what could he say? What had he ever been able to say to her? Virtually nothing. And even through his sorrow—at the time of judgment, it occurred to him suddenly, the sun would shine like this all day, searching from an immovable apex, casting no shadows—he felt a sharp pang of resentment, and anger: she would not compromise, she would make no concessions. Which was bad, wrong. Yet he couldn’t tell her that—not today. Not ever, perhaps. He had not been able to tell her so that night, nor on the other nights when she had come to him—cool, precise, reserved at first—repeating in essence the same tortured accounts of separate guilt, communal guilt, uneasy accusations, righteous accusations—differing only in small details: “I wrote Peyton three letters, Carey, and she didn’t answer. It’s Milton, I know; he’s writing her, too, he’s warping her mind——”
Did she really care? And was she crazy? No. He didn’t think so. Obsessed, or something. But not crazy.
“Oh, no, Helen. Really, I don’t believe that.” Smiling a little. “Really, Helen, that’s not a very nice thing to say. Why should he——”
Did she really care? he wondered.
Bending forward, she would look into his eyes, the reserve, the statuesque poise all going to pieces, as he had learned to expect it to, after an hour or so; and the fine, lovely mouth would quiver a little as she said: “Oh, Carey, what am I going to do? Should I get down on my knees to him? Is that what he wants? What in God’s name does he want?”
No! Yes! He wanted to bang on his desk, arise magisterially, like a good confessor, being purposeful and stern. He wished to say both at the same time: No! Yes! No, my dear Helen, he doesn’t want you to get down on your knees; that insults, at least embarrasses, any man. He wants only affection, decency, humanness, a woman’s tender greeting. Yes! For heaven’s sake, yes, get down on your knees not to him but to yourself: get down on your knees to that image you hate, be humble for one moment and perhaps your prayer will cast a light through the darkness around you; ask forgiveness for despising yourself.
Once he had tried that—“Helen, I think you have a low opinion of yourself—” but she had become disappointed and sulky. And once, irritated and rather bored, he had said shortly: “Helen, I can’t help you, you know. I can only listen. You’ve got to look into your own heart and mind.”
And she had wept, horribly, the only time he had seen her collapse. “You desert me, too! Even you!”
“No, Helen. Oh, no, listen, please don’t get me wrong!” And after coffee and a talk full of stupid (he knew) reservations about a woman’s right to happiness, all of which sounded vaguely like a soap opera, he had walked her to her car, a hand on her shoulder paternally—or in some fashion—saying, “I wish there was something I could do. Just hope, have patience. And pray, pray hard” (to yourself, he thought, love yourself), “this thing of his will wear itself out. It’ll be easier for you then.”
“And Peyton?” she said, absently.
“Oh, yes—” what could he say?—“I’m sure you’ll see her soon. Don’t worry about what she wrote Milton. I say she doesn’t want to come home not because of you, but … you know how girls are … I think … they like to visit, go places.” Fishing about hopelessly for words. Did she really care?
“Good night, Helen dear.”
Sometimes she scared him a little, but she interested him; secretly he knew that it flattered his vanity to have her seek him out, talk to him: her visits, usually at night, averaged one every two or three months for the next few years. They became good friends, they talked about other matters; on one or two occasions she failed to mention Milton or Peyton—“her sorrow,” as she put it once in an embarrassingly awkward attempt at irony. She seemed totally lacking in a sense of humor, but it really didn’t matter: they talked of God, immortality, time and space, all in the enthusiastic, disorganized, eclectic way of high-school seniors, which Carey, being nominally, at least, and at the most unquestioningly, committed to Faith, hadn’t employed in years, and which finally disturbed him so much that he guided the conversation back to the value of prayer. Then at times they would talk of Milton, of the sad vanishing of love and passion, and why, Carey explained, using Diotima’s discourse as a point of departure, it was necessary, after the falling away of years and the dissolution of the object of love on earth, to search for the lasting, the greater, the eternal love. To fight for love. And this, being in the larger, abstract realm and therefore less easily available to effort or practical application, stirred Helen—partly because Carey was, he had to admit, a fairly persuasive talker—and filled her, at least momentarily, with a sort of radiance: she was not, he figured, a highly intelligent woman but intelligent enough, if she concentrated, to be infected by the rhythms, the hard, pure grandeur of Plato’s lines. And even as he finished—letting the book fall with a decisive plop upon the desk, trembling himself with emotion and, a little startled, hearing Helen say: “Oh, Carey, isn’t that grand, isn’t that true?”—a thin sharp blade of despair sliced across his heart because he knew it was true but that, true as the love of Christ, truth like this poetry lay on the mountainto
ps, a temple. But humanity never stirred from the valleys to seek comfort there, or perhaps it suffered too much to attempt the climb. Which was right?
All this was fine. The sweet intoxication of poetry and truths and heady generalizations lulled her mind and heart and for a while gave her an excess of peace, and finally he had to deny her so many visits, telling her over the telephone, as nicely as he could, that she mustn’t, she really mustn’t: remember what he had told her about mind and heart, self-reliance? Of course he was flattered, to know that he, a churchman, could give a little comfort to a sufferer, yes, a real sufferer: flattered, and pleased, too, that Helen had sought him out instead of a doctor—although sometimes he thought with vague suspicion that it was a doctor she really needed. Oh, how could you reconcile these things! He thought that he was enlightened, and he wanted to be, but this business of psychology and such matters was to him maddening and strange: that so potentially strong an ally should still possess no real Godhead and be so indecently inquisitive and expensive, and have no respect for the tender and infinite mutations of the heart.
So he was proud, flattered that Helen had come to him, and they were good friends as long as he agreed with her, admitted she was right. Only when, as now, he remembered how she would not compromise and how little they had accomplished during the past few years—the words, the poetry, prayers, the terrible inaction—did he feel misgivings and anger. The devil—or somebody—was still around. And God had not revealed himself. But I must make her see, he thought. I must bring them together.
“Never. No more,” she had said, only a month before as he had left her house after a visit, hopeless, feeling that there was nothing he could do, “I’m alone now and there isn’t any difference between laughing and crying. I can’t do either.” And shook her head, absolutely. She had killed, denied, the very thing she had come to him for in the beginning.