The Wintering (16 page)

“Heavens no!” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I like places like this much better. Besides, there are tables for ladies.”

Inside at one, a woman sat with her head bent down to flattened palms. A sick-looking man leaned from the next table speaking to her in sad monologue. He glanced up as Amy and Almoner came past, then extended his conversation to them. “It's nice to be remembered but what good does it do ya?” he demanded more loudly, since neither of the new customers spoke. “What good does it do ya?”

“None,” Amy guessed.

“Right!” he said happily and drank his beer.

“I should not have ordered a whiskey sour in a place like this,” Almoner said, though he had drained his glass. “I suppose beer is the only thing.” She looked at the man who was sleeping next to his empty beer bottle, then twirled an orange slice in her Old Fashioned. “What will you be doing tonight after I leave?”

“I'm to have dinner with Alex and several of his friends.”

“Oh, I'm so glad you won't be alone. I was worried.” She chewed on the orange slice and tucked the peel into her glass.

Almoner ordered a second drink which slid about the table in its own morose wet circles. He bent suddenly across the table. “Amy, I have no reputation to lose. But you are a young girl and not to be harmed. I'm afraid my family and yours can picture me as no older than my heart is telling me I am. Only you do. I'm afraid the risks you take in meeting me may be too great, after all. I don't think you understand them.”

Not understanding them fully, she said, “Of course I do. I want to see you.”

He leaned back, his eyes urgently on her. “It's almost impossible for a middle-class Southerner to be anything else. But you wanted to escape your background and since I had done it, I thought I could help you. I wanted to save you some of the knocks I knew. But I'm going to fall in love with you. Probably, I already have. I keep trying to warn you what it could mean if you keep seeing me.”

“I'm not afraid,” she said.

“I almost didn't answer your first letter for that reason,” he said. “I knew when I read it, this could happen. I dream of you in a way you don't want me to, Amy. And I hope those dreams will come true. I see you don't even want me to talk about it, and I won't if I can help it.” He closed his eyes, then opened them tiredly. “I dread tomorrow.”

“So do I! I have the most terrible French exam. I should have stayed at school and studied.” When he closed his eyes again, she stared at his face worriedly and admitted, “I don't know what to say, Jeff, when you talk about being in love.”

He said, “Don't say or do anything then. You can't help it if you don't love me, as much, in return.”

“I do love you in some ways.”

“Do the best you can. Do you want another drink?”

“I really think I'd better be going.”

“You have time. Let's talk about your future. That may have nothing to do with me. Alex says if you want a job when you've finished school to come and see him.”

“That's very nice of Mr. Boatwright.”

“A job here might give you the same freedom as marriage, without saddling you with some champion of the middle class,” he said.

That remark annoyed her; it was he who had not made the right marriage. She would make no mistake. And the sort of people she liked were not middle-class champions—Quill or Leigh. She did not go out with people who were dull and stupid. She said, “I do think I'd better go. I might have trouble getting a cab. You're so close to Alex's, there's no sense your coming all the way down to the station with me.”

“No sense to it, at all,” he said. “Except to be with you longer.”

“Yes, but it wouldn't be very long. And there's really no sense to it.”

“All right. If you're meeting a young man, I can accept that.”

“It's only a boy who's taking the same train back to school,” she said.

While he searched for change to leave on the table, she went ahead to wait on the freezing windy street, drawing in breaths. When he came out, they sheltered themselves against a building and hunched into their coats as if they were inadequate, kin to bums they had seen huddled in doorways.

“I'm to keep the postbox, then?” he said.

“Yes, of course. And I'll write on Wednesdays, so that it always gets there on Saturdays.”

He said, “There.” He had touched her lips briefly and drawn back. “We've used the kiss a second time. Did it hurt this time?”

She made herself smile. “No,” she said. But she turned quickly toward the street and hailed her own cab. It drove off swiftly through a light about to change. Having been directed toward the station, the driver looked into the rearview mirror, his eyes filling it. Amy's glance met his there.

He said, “You must be going off for a long time. Your father's still standing on the curb, watching you go.”

Almoner said, “I've put her into a taxi.” He came slowly off the elevator and stood in the foyer.

“It's late to be starting such a long trip,” Alex said.

“Yes, it is.” Then not meaning to, Almoner said, “Alex, she's modest and tender. Not many are any more, but she is. I'm afraid I'm too old for the responsibility of this incredible luck.”

“You are lucky,” Alex said. “But don't worry about it, just deserve it. I thought at first she was pretty. But later, looking at her, I discovered she's beautiful.”

“Yes, I've discovered it, too,” Almoner said. “Also, that she's brave, and it breaks my heart.”

“It should break your heart.”

“I'm sorry to be a little unsteady. I was up half the night. I'm writing again, Alex.”

“I thought so,” Alex said, smiling.

“Let's don't talk about it any more.”

“No, let's don't. Have another drink, instead.”

French exam yesterday. Worst thing I've ever seen! I went to New York over the weekend and saw A. Had a nice time, but I should have stayed here and studied. God, just please don't let me fail. I don't think I did, but I didn't do well. When I was coming out of the exam, I had a phone call and guess what? It was Almoner! I assumed the call was from the city when the operator said who was calling, so I picked up the phone and said, “How are you?” Then he said, “I'm here, in the village. At the inn.” He sounded apologetic, as if afraid I would not want him to be here, and in a lot of ways I did not want him to be, but I couldn't let him think so. So I just said, “My goodness,” or something like that, and then he said all tumbling out, “I couldn't bear it, I couldn't bear it.” And I said, “What?” Then he said he had drunk a lot at this party with Alex and couldn't bear his hangover and so just got on a train and came up to school. Wasn't that wild? He wanted to know if I would see him and I wondered how I could not have seen him; can you imagine my saying, “No,” when he had come all that way? While we were talking it had begun to snow, and I said could he believe it when at home forsythia would be budding. And he said the snow reminded him of me: unharmed as yet, gentle, soft, a little cold to the touch. And I said, “Oh dear, I'm sorry.” And he said, “You shouldn't be sorry, you can't help it, yet.” My past had made me the way I was, he said, and I had to get rid of all the Sunday-school morality I had been brought up on in order to be free to write or do anything. Was he saying that to get me to do what he wants??? Or because it's right? I am trying not to be so afraid of everything if that's what he means. But I had to tell him truthfully I'd love to see him the rest of the afternoon but I had to study at night for a history exam. Yes, of course, I would have to study, he said; that he was always forgetting that in actual fact I was a schoolgirl, that never from the first moment had I seemed it to him, and that was why he kept forgetting how much older he was. He sounded worried about his age so I said it didn't matter to me. And he said, It didn't? He kept worrying that it did. And would I lie? So, of course, I said, “No. I wouldn't lie.” And he said, “Thank you for that.”

I told him how to walk out from town and meet me at that old barn, where the clock is stopped. In June, daisies cover that field as high as my knees and now the snow was almost as high, with only a few slightly worn paths through, and with new snow lightly sprinkled over it, showing colors, as it snowed only an hour and then the sun came out. He had boots, I was glad to see, and he was there waiting in front of the red blank barn and with nothing else around but the field of snow and as I was coming along toward him, we could only watch each other, and for a long time it was as if we were never going to speak; he never did say anything until I said, “I'm glad to see you,” and then he said the same thing. There was nothing to do but walk. I said the fresh air would probably make him feel better. He said, to breathe the same air I did made him feel better and probably that was why he had come. The trees groaned so. That is an eerie sound, even in daylight, but I said that I liked it, did he? And he said, “No. Trees are our enemies; they wait for us in enmity and don't care whether we live or die.” He thinks they hope we'll lose our way in the woods among them. I'm so glad to know a grownup who thinks this way and talks this way; most older people don't, or many people my age either; and I've always felt things had thoughts. But then suddenly he stopped and put his hand on my chin and said, “May I kiss you?” I felt embarrassed and walked on and he said despite what I had said on the phone, I must think he was too old. “That's it,” he said, “isn't it?” Then I felt sad and I was sorry he was older, but I'd never tell him that. I worry mostly about his being married. But I want so much for nothing ever to hurt Almoner; it would seem unfair; and I said, “It's not it. I love you.” And, in many ways, I do.

“I love you, too,” he said. We linked arms walking on. Then he said, “But I have to tell you things I dream about I hope will happen.” And I let his arm go, wishing he had not said that, and there was this tiny bug crawling along in the snow and I said, “Look at that! Where can it possibly be going?” We bent down to look and he said, “It must know, and I wish I did, so I could help it. It's the bravest thing I've ever seen. It should have expired long ago with winter.” He was going to pick it up. I said, “Let's leave it alone. Let it find its own way.”

History was not so bad. I feel sorry about A. coming up here for just an afternoon, but I did have to study. And it was sort of a relief when he left; I felt glad to be back in my own life, as I feel responsible when I'm with him about seeing that he is not bored, though he never seems to be; he's so quiet it's hard sometimes to know what he's thinking. I understand now what people mean when they've said that about me. I feel if it's just friendship there's nothing wrong in our seeing each other, even if he is married. I kept thinking, suppose he got sick or something when he was at school and I had to notify his family. He said he had tried to warn me of the risks I was taking; did I want to change my mind? I said, “No.” But I don't know why he wanted to come so far for so short a time; I do want him to be happy; I hugged him goodbye.

Dear Jeff
:

I felt so depressed after you left, though I was not feeling sorry for myself. I just have been very unhappy, even though I passed all of my exams. Isn't that wonderful! It's some sort of unrest, wanting something and not knowing what, I guess. Being this age should be wonderful but it isn't. It's terrible not knowing what one is and what one is going to do, if anything at all. Though not knowing, I can still believe in myself, which is one thing about being young, instead of old. Then your violets came. It was as if you had known how I was feeling. It was snowing again. I pinned them on beneath my coat and walked in that calm snow and felt the cold but smelled the violets. In a great rush I thought of you but so much else, my whole life; the little girl I was; wondering what I am now. I thought about people leading different lives in one life, for the first time that my parents have a whole life separate from me, had one before I was born, and I don't really know them any way except as my parents. I wish you could help my mother find something in her life as you're helping me. But don't lie to me either. And promise me you will tell me if you do think I'm stupid, or worthless, and will never become anything. And as you asked, here is a letter with something green in it. One of the violets and its leaves
.

Amy, Amy, he thought; and her grief was his own; it was like her to send the violet. He put it in his wallet. Late spring or early summer, the pavement burned, and the post office had been a cool, brief respite where he had tried to read in a corner, but some
grande dame
had wanted to talk, or perhaps to peer at the letter. Was, as Inga said, the town full of talk? Somehow, he doubted that. Mud-hived cars clogged the street in the cold, late, wet spring, and the crops were behind; he felt sorry for farmers. “Dogtail cotton again?” he had greeted a farmer whose face was haggard, and then gone on wondering where he could read the letter. He did not want to give any appearance of hiding.

Dearest Amy
:

Don't grieve so, though I told you from the first that it is better than vegetating. And believe that something will come of it, though we don't know as yet what. But never think you are worthless. Out of all I might have, don't you know I would not have picked you, if you were. You are not, you know, the only young woman ever to write me. And at my age this may be the last cast I can make: don't you know that? Believe in yourself for me, if for no other reason. Write and say you will in your little girl's splash all over your lined school paper. I love you, I love you. I meant it that day in the snow. I do
.

You be a little brig and I'll he the ocean for you to sail on, your sails taut, running free. It's been a long time, Amy, but I'm writing again, and you did that for me: gave me hack what I had to have, a belief in what I was doing. I've needed someone to give something to, which was not money. I was tired of that. I needed someone saying Yes, to me, and to whom I could say it in return
.