“My, my!” the parrot croaked.
“Well,” he said, “guess we’d better be shovin’ along.” And he waved his hand. “ ’Gratulations!” The car moved slowly away, its siren moaning, vanished up the road.
“So there!” said Peyton and sat down.
He took her hand. “Loftis. Big name in these parts.”
“I’m glad it’s Miller now,” she sighed. “God, I’m glad. I’d have settled for Lipchitz.”
“Then you wouldn’t have Miller.”
“I know,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “Then life wouldn’t be worth living.”
“Tut, tut, my dear, I’m not all that important.”
“Yes, you are, too,” she said. “Give me a drink.” She sat erect suddenly, smoothing her hair. “Damn them,” she said. “God damn them!” At this the old woman gave a leap in her seat, got up and moved off into the waiting room, muttering to Spottswood about liquor and profanity.
“Take it easy, honey,” said Harry.
“I won’t take it easy,” she said. “I’m tired of taking it easy.” She looked down at her fingernails. “I broke one when I did it. Look here.” She wiggled her forefinger thoughtfully, displaying a nail broken near the end, with its red lacquer chipped away. “I went deep when I did it. I could have gone deeper if I’d wanted to, only I didn’t have enough time. I could have gone right down to the bone——”
“Such talk,” he put in, “you just forget about it all. Quit talking like that. You’ll feel better if you just forget the whole thing——”
“I don’t want to forget it. I want to remember it always. The blood corning out, the way the skin peeled away. I could feel the skin peeling away beneath the nail, then it broke——”
He turned toward her, gripping her by the wrist. “Now listen, Peyton,” he said sternly, “you listen to me. I know how you feel and all that. But if you keep talking about it and going over it in your mind, you’re going to make yourself miserable and me miserable, and the whole trip rotten——”
She turned away from him with a sniff, draining her cup. “Cut it out. You sound like Uncle Wiggly.”
They sat in silence for a moment, fidgeting, suddenly chilled and testy. Above them Mars rose in its course, hung pink as a gumdrop above a plump and amiable moon. A few cars rolled onto the dock, nosing up like dogs against each other’s bumpers. Across the water, silhouetted against the lights of Norfolk, the ferry approached, tooting importantly. Harry looked up at the sky. “What a wedding.”
Peyton said nothing, poured herself another drink.
“Look,” he said, “take it easy on that bottle. Part of it was nice, though, honey. The service, I mean. I liked Carey Carr. And that old fellow—what was his name?—Houston. And your old man.”
“He’s an ass.”
“No, I don’t think so. He was stewed to the eyes and confused. I think he thought you had attacked him, rejected him or something. He’s not an ass, he was just sad——”
“He’s an ass. He’s lived fifty years in total and utter confusion, made a mess out of his life.”
“Don’t be too bitter, baby——”
“Bitter!” she cried, “don’t be bitter, you say. How can I be anything else when I see where his kind of life’s led him? How can I be anything else? Don’t you see—he’s never been beyond redemption, like Helen. That’s the terrible part. Can’t you see? She was beyond hope I guess the day she was born. But Daddy! He’s had so much that was good in him, but it was all wasted. He wasn’t man enough to stand up like a man and make decisions and all the rest. Or to be able to tell her where to get off. And that idiotic woman he’s been messing around with all his life. What a farce! I’ll bet he goes back to her.”
“So——”
“What do you mean, so? So it’s awful, Harry. That’s what. I don’t mean I have any righteous feeling about him and her. God knows she’s better than that … that harpy! But isn’t it awful? Aren’t things bad enough in the world without having him crawl back to that idiot? Oh, I feel so sorry for him. Don’t you see the trouble—?”
“Yes——”
“You do not. For heaven’s sake, Harry, don’t be so Christlike. Quit trying to spare my feelings. Tell me what you think of them. Tell me you despise them as much as I do! Tell me. Use your head, Harry. Go on and say it!”
“No, I——”
She jerked away from him. “Oh, honest to God, you’re impossible.” And with mustering despair he watched her getting drunk, frantic’ and unreasonable. The ferry came, warped into the slip with unhappy squeals against the pilings. They assembled their bags, paid a Negro fifty cents to help take them aboard. On the enclosed upper deck, to which they ascended without saying a word to each other, there was a harsh light and an overheated smell. They sat down on the rattan bench, still without speaking. The windows were frosty with steam. Other passengers straggled in—a middle-aged couple, two sleepy soldiers, an overalled youth with pimples, the old woman with the parrot. Spottswood was now covered up, and as she passed by the woman glanced at them reproachfully; then she sat down at the far end of the deck. A juke box was playing somewhere, and behind a counter, selling soft drinks and hot dogs and souvenirs—Come to Virginia, the ashtrays read, Cradle of the Nation—stood a young man absorbedly picking his nose. He wore the air of overwhelming tedium people have when, though hardly stirring from their tracks, they move miles each day, and when Harry asked him for ginger ale, the bottle was warm.
“It’s warm.”
“It’s all we got.”
“But it’s warm.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Here, baby,” Harry said to Peyton, “mix it with this. Or on second thought,” he added, pulling the bottle from her coat, “maybe you’d better wait until we get on the train. We’ve got two hours yet, you know.”
She looked up at him with red, weary eyes. “O.K. I’ll just finish this one.”
He sat down beside her again and she rested her head against his shoulder. He put an arm around her, murmuring “Sweetheart,” but she said nothing. From beneath the deck there was a throbbing; the boat moved out of the slip, past an arm of the peninsula where the gas tanks loomed up bleakly in the darkness, past a light buoy with its winking red eye, and on into the bay. The juke box was playing “Frenesi.” One of the soldiers sprawled out on the bench across from them and went to sleep. Presently Peyton said, “Harry. Where did you go?”
“When?”
“When she came and took me upstairs. Why weren’t you there?”
“I was talking to your father.”
“But I saw you talking to someone else, too. Just when I left. Some girl or other. Polly Pearson.”
“She’s quite a kid,” he said. “She thinks the world of you——”
Peyton pulled away from him, digging into his wrist with her hand. “That’s not the point, Harry! Don’t you see—I needed you then. If you’d been there maybe it would have been different. You could have done something. But you weren’t there. You left me just like you always do. When I needed you. Why didn’t you come and rescue me? Didn’t you see——”
He made a soothing noise. “No, honey, now listen. Please don’t give me a hard time about all this. I’m on your side, baby, believe me. Really. Just don’t raise hell now; this is our honeymoon, unquote. If I had known, it’d been different, but I didn’t know, I didn’t realize——”
She snatched the bottle from his hand, poured out some whisky, drank it down savagely. She turned to him, her eyes inflamed, not very pretty, and with the old despair again he prepared himself for a harangue, thinking bitterly: And how about me? Was this wedding a picnic for me? It had been months since she’d been like this, and he’d thought he’d straightened her out, but no: now, as at all those early parties in the Village, she was taking out on him—when he had done nothing at all—all her grief. “Can’t you keep your mind off these girls? Good God, Harry, on our wedding day! With all these other thi
ngs happening, too. When I needed you. Do you think I’m just someone you can walk off and neglect and forget? You’ve done it before and you’ll do it again, I know, and we’re going to have a rotten, rotten time if you don’t watch out.”
“Peyton, don’t be absurd.”
“I’m not being absurd. It’s all the truth. It’s always when I need you like that that you——” But he was no longer listening; he shut off her words from his mind, neatly and completely, as if he had turned a switch. It was the only thing to do because, since there was, despite her claims, no truth to what she had been saying, he couldn’t hope to combat her frightful illogic with phrases like, “Peyton, don’t be absurd.” He thought he’d had it licked, too, this kind of perverse, crazy talk, and now he felt weary and sad and disappointed. He stopped up his mind with pleasanter thoughts, thinking of Florida, watched the parrot woman nod and drowse and wake with a start. The horn blew, hollow and mournful, above them, and now Peyton, somewhat pacified by his quietness, was saying more softly, “All I want you to do is watch out for me. I’m not a nagger really, or a shrew. I’m sorry for what I said, darling. I married you because I need you.”
He looked into her eyes. “Need?”
“I mean——” She struggled to say something.
“Need?” he repeated.
“I mean——”
“Need? Love?”
She said nothing.
“Love? Love?” he said bitterly, holding her arms.
She burst into tears. He let her cry quietly against his shoulder for a while, and held her hand. The middle-aged woman looked at Peyton doubtfully and, when Harry gave her a dark look, primly did something with her veil. The pimpled youth watched her, too, but became suddenly embarrassed and began to gnaw dreamily at a Hershey bar. Then Peyton stopped crying and dried her tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That’s all right, honey,” he said gently. “You’ll be O.K. when we get on the train.”
“Yes.”
“Now let’s cheer up a little, for God’s sake.”
“Yes.” She smiled and squeezed his hand. They danced then, after considerable persuasion by Harry, in a place secluded from the other people’s eyes, a sort of passageway near the juke box, behind the lunch counter, where the souvenir pennants hung in gaudy rows and steam from the coffee urn got into Peyton’s hair. It was cramped and crowded; occasionally they ran into the fire hose but when they did so, tilted off-balance, he bent down and kissed her, running his hand shamelessly, lovingly, up and down her thigh. She giggled and kissed him back with parted lips, the light making shiny sparks on her perfect white teeth. Once she nibbled at his ear and when it began to hurt he pinched her on the tail. The music, a sort of boogie-woogie, was full of trembling piano notes and a groaning bass; they played the record twice. An old Negro, a beggar with a coonskin cap and a mouthful of blackened gums, hobbled over from the colored section to watch them, to clap his bleached palms feebly in rhythm and to beg for a dime. Harry felt happy, gave him all his change, which was nearly a dollar, and received the blessings of Jesus. Peyton had another drink. They danced some more, this time to “Frenesi,” and they were borne down the passageway like feathers on a gale of bawling trombones. The boat, hitting a swell, rocked beneath them, but of this Harry was not so much aware as of Peyton, sagging against him now, confused in her steps, her head heavy against his shoulder.
“What’s the matter, honey?” He looked down at her, raised her chin. She was weeping helplessly and without a sound, her mouth drawn down in anguish.
“Oh, sweetheart——” he said.
She shook her head. He sat her down on a box full of life preservers. “Sweetheart,” he said again, moving his hand against her cheek.
“They just never learned,” she sobbed, “they just never learned.”
But soon once more he had soothed her. She sat pale and shivering on the box, a little sick at her stomach, as she said. Harry had to go to the men’s room. He patted her on the shoulder. When he came back she was gone.
He looked around for her, with a growing dread. He asked the middle-aged couple where she had gone; they didn’t know. Nor did the sleeping soldier, who gazed up at him with one eye and belched. The boy behind the counter said she had gone out on deck. Harry tried to hide his fear—which was just nervousness, he began to tell himself, over and over—but at the end of the passageway he threw open the doors furiously, to be met by a salty and glacial breeze.
“Peyton!” he cried desperately. “Peyton, Peyton!”
The deck was empty. He ran to the forward part of the boat, bruising himself once on the davit of a lifeboat. Then he ran aft down the other side—filled each instant with a larger horror—to the stern, and it was here that he found her, standing placidly against the rail. He put his arms around her waist, squeezing it.
“Your heart’s beating so,” she said quietly.
“Yes.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Peyton was silent for a while. Then she leaned forward and propped her elbows on the rail, spitting over the side.
“Ladies shouldn’t spit,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“Look at it,” she said, “it is dark and lovely. I wonder if it’s cold.”
“Don’t you——”
“Don’t what?” She seemed calmer now.
“Nothing. It’s cold out here.”
“Look there,” she said, “there it goes.” He looked up. From the rail they could see it—or imagined they could—among a chain of encircling lights upon the farthest shore—the house, surrounded like all the others by oaks and mimosas and willows. The streetlights, obscured by intervening, tossing trees, twinkled like stars. Harry rubbed the bruise on his arm. Then he leaned down and kissed her—sick and solemn as she was—on the ear, with as much love, he imagined, as ever a man had summoned.
“Which house is it? I can’t tell.”
“Oh, nuts, I can,” she said. “They aren’t all alike.”
West of the cemetery great clouds rose up in the sky; they sent long shadows across the land and wind through the trees. A few miles away it was raining; thunder crashed over the cornfields and the highway, there was lightning, too, far off but menacing, a brief white streamer blown through the gathering wind: Dolly was aware of these things about the weather, these and the sudden chin she had, pulling her raincoat about her shoulders, plus the fact that there in the limousine, drawn up in front of a brick chapel the color of dried blood, she was quite alone. She was surrounded by tombstones. A hideous angel looked at her vacantly with oval, alabaster eyes, flourishing a wreath over the name of McCorkle. Against another tomb a bunch of brown, dead roses, propped up in a wire stand, gave a heave in the wind, and came down on the roadway with a clatter. Dolly jumped nervously in her seat, blew her nose into a wet piece of Kleenex and cried some more. No one now could assess her misery; how could he have been so rotten? And it had been so quick and cruel: “You just stay right here.” Just like that.
There was a new groan of thunder, ending in a gigantic crackle. The very air seemed ripped apart. She jumped again, looking fearfully out of the rear window. The storm came on across the distant cornfields, sweeping before it dust and debris; borne on the blast a squadron of crows scooted frantically, wings flapping like windmills, filling the air with their dismal cries. In the farmyard two cows galloped clumsily for shelter, the chapel door began to swing, another wreath fell down in the road. Dolly hid her face in her hands, between sobs sucking for air, and clawed blindly for the handle to roll up the window. It was stuck. She moved over in her seat away from the storm: how could he be such a monster? She looked up at the chapel into which, twenty minutes ago, though it seemed to Dolly centuries, the party had disappeared. She could see nothing, hear no music, no organ or anything: would they never come out? Peyton’s coffin, Milton, Helen looking like a ghost, the fat preacher, Mr. Casper, his stupid assistant, that
old nigger—all of them had vanished into the place, leaving her behind and alone; it was, she thought, with an effort at fantasy, as if they had disappeared into the gates of hell. She felt rocked by dread, she was getting sick, although in some vaguely whimsical fashion one thought supported her in her suffering: she was the only one who was still sane. Helen was crazy, the preacher was crazy, and Milton—how else explain the way he’d been acting? “You just stay there!” Violently, furiously, as if by her presence in there she’d be defiling the temple.
Now, as though shades were being drawn down in her heart, she was tormented by one single dread, and it became larger and blacker than the storm. Not that Helen would take him back—something told her that this could never happen—but that Milton wouldn’t return to the car, today, to her. This, in its temporariness, was her greatest fear: she knew, or thought she knew, that Milton was going through a great, tragic crisis—hence his wild actions, his mean words, his hostility. Of course the poor darling was deranged, what with Peyton and all. She knew that when all this blew over he’d come back to her, would apologize for his brutishness today, and his neglect, and for making her stay out in the car. She knew his moods as well as her own. But that, still demented and crazy, or whatever he was, he wouldn’t return to the car today, that he’d make her drive back to town alone—humiliated in front of everyone—with the stupid undertaker and the crazy nigger: this paralyzed her with fright. No, he just couldn’t do it to her.
She wept softly, listening to the moaning wind. A few drops of rain fell on the roof of the limousine; one of them, huge and soft and cold, struck her on the cheek: she moved to the center of the seat. They’d had such fine times, too; she was getting in at the club, meeting better people, and his divorce was to come through on October 21. It was so sad—but no, he wouldn’t leave her: then he’d have no one, no Helen, no Peyton, no little Maudie, no Dolly-pooh. Which was what he’d called her when, nights at the club, they lay awake all tired out and watched the ivy shake against the moonlight and she’d stick her finger, playfully, in his navel. Almost two years of bliss, free of that ghostly bitch. Now this. What would she do if he left her again? It was too much to think about. Now no more could she stay alone in her apartment listening to the radio, as she’d done those long months when he and Helen had been reconciled—an endless stream of Aldrich Families and Gangbusters and Contented Cows, mooing serenely only half-heard through the evenings filled with wistful tears, thrice-read newspapers, chocolate boxes empty and forlorn. The heartaches were too much, as were the times when she ventured out, to go to the bank or to her lawyer’s for Pookie’s criminally dwindling alimony checks, her face averted from the stares of those who might see, who might say: “Poor woman. Milton left her stranded high and dry.” She’d have to leave town, go to Norfolk or Richmond, or back to Emporia and sit by her mother’s bedside, watch the withered, wasting flesh of multiple sclerosis, look at her twitch and moan, change her clothes when her sphincter gave way; it was sad country, unsophisticated and dull and awful; she’d sit in the parlor and stare at the peanut vines stacked up in the fields like big brown thumbs, the peanuts and the red earth and in December the sad, rain-drenched cotton, looking as if it had already been used.