The Wintering (29 page)

She went back to her room to straighten drawers. She threw away letters from friends, then from family, but took those back shortly from the wastebasket. She kept all the letters she had ever received from Jeff in a blue satin stocking box. Rereading them, she would think they were all posterity was ever to know of Amy Howard.

Her father wrote only exclamatory postscripts at the end of Edith's letters, which made Amy feel he was too busy to write. Though was it possible he could not find common ground with her, or that he was shy. Could her father be shy? If she went to the Waldorf, Edith wrote, look up an assistant manager with whom her father had gone to school back in Arkansas. Have you seen any Broadway shows with good-looking gals? her father added. Or been to any fancy night clubs? He wrote that he thought New York women smelled “prettier” than anywhere. Did she need any extra money, for some little thing like perfume? When Amy next went shopping on Fifth Avenue, Edith asked for a pair of short white pigskin gloves; she could find none in Delton. And Amy's friends at home, according to her mother, were always having a whirl. Wasn't Amy sorry to be missing all the parties? Billy Walter continuously, it seemed, asked about her. Every letter of Edith's ended with two questions: Have you met anybody? Do you have a job? With them, her mother's handwriting grew tinier, and the words appeared on paper timorous.

One day, in the jumbled window of a popular bookstore, Amy saw a sign asking for Sales Help. Inside, she made her way between shelves from which books were about to tumble, between rickety tables which were laden. Staring from beneath a heavy fringe of bangs, the owner wondered if the girl asking so hesitantly about the job had courage enough to sell books. However, she had a nicer appearance than many young people and was hired.

Amy, thrilled, thought each moment would be one of intellectual frenzy. She was disappointed to be handed a feather duster and told to use it each morning. She was warned never to approach the men who read books at the first rack by the window, the sex books. The owner was sad, too, that it was necessary to sell trashy stuff to stay in business. Seeing people near the window reading and browsing, passers-by had the idea of coming in. Those who came regularly to the sex rack never bought anything. That bothered Amy unreasonably. She liked fairness. A morning when the owner went to the bank, Amy sidled up with her duster and spoke quietly to one of the men. Always, he wore pearl grey suède gloves.

“May I help you?”

When this young man swallowed, his Adam's apple protruded as unfortunately as a growth on his throat. Gently closing his book, he set it on the rack. His mouth opened slightly, but saying nothing he vanished ghostlike from the store. Amy wondered if since being grown, even she had been as fearful and shy. She remembered the cache of beer cans at the abandoned house and how sympathetically Jeff had said, “Probably the only little pleasure the man had.” Another day an old man read with his hand on his zipper and gave her a hellish look out of sea blue eyes, brightening. Amy gave him a benevolent smile, though keeping at a distance.

Monotonous time stretched without customers and all the books would be dusted. Arms folded, she stared up at the street, the store several steps down from it. Several times, she recognized Tony's legs, thin and covered with auburn hair, and his sandals, always accompanied by a slim pair of feet in ballet slippers.

Once, a handsome, blond merchant marine ran in for Jane's and several navigational books, the names jotted down on paper. He was frantic and almost late for his ship. Amy darted helpfully around finding books for him. He tossed down by the cash register a large bill and told her to keep the change. Before she could ring up the sale he had disappeared. She held the bill, experiencing the newness of being tipped, probably for the only time in her life. She wanted to laugh, to tell someone. Only in the store at the time was Mack, the stock boy. She had never been able to determine whether he was Negro or Puerto Rican, and it had not occurred to her he might be both. With a diffident and defiant attitude, he wore, indoors, his hat, with feathers stuck in the band.

Amy went toward the back of the store, laughing, the money in her hand. Mack slouched among the stock and watched her come. She stopped short, but his dark eyes remained on her and his mouth was unsmiling. She folded the money neatly into a square. “I can certainly use this,” Amy said, and sensed not to offer it to him, as she wanted.

Desperately, all this time, she had longed to be friends with Mack. Did he know she was not prejudiced, that her accent did not mean she held the opinions, by now clichés, attributed to all Southerners. After all, she had gone to that crazy liberal school, but that was not explainable to Mack. Her attempts at conversation were always stymied by his refusal to participate. Habitually, she used the weather as an opener but that was where the conversation ended. Arriving in the morning, she would say either that it was a nice day or a bad one; either it was clear or looked as if it might rain. To whatever she said, Mack replied flatly, Yeah. Sometimes, his voice gave the word a little inflection. Yeah? he might then say. He did not show up for work and his telephone number turned out to be bogus. Wearily brushing back her bangs, the owner said, you tried to help these people, but they were all alike, and none could be depended on.

This phrase sounded so much like her mother's in dealing with maids that Amy was surprised, realizing she had been under the false assumption prejudice existed solely in her part of the country. She would listen more carefully now wherever she was. It was apparent Mack was not coming back. He had left them at inventory time, and Amy fought down the owner's words, as well as her mother's, echoing from her past.

When Tony finally came clomping down the steps, she could not help being glad. Though after his absence, she was struck by his frailness and a look of insubstantialness. She could not imagine appearing at the Country Club in Delton with him. “How've you been?”

“You ought to know,” Tony said.

“How could I know?”

“Every time I've passed, I've seen that tiny face peering out.”

“I wasn't watching you! I was staring out. Thinking.”

On the edge of anger, her voice faltered; she was too lonely for Tony to leave. He leaned against a table, taking in that fact. As if in generosity, he said, “A guy I know, who's a drummer, gave me some peyote. Want to come up to my place this evening and try it out?”

Was it habit-forming? she wanted to know.

She might get nothing at all from it, once, Tony said.

She would give it a try, but acknowledged wanting no outside thing on which to be dependent. Tony patted his hollow-shaped stomach, having eaten peanut butter until it was coming out of his ears. And someplace else, he said, grinning. Would she pick up a couple of orders of spaghetti and meat balls on her way? He had some wine.

She would be glad to, Amy said, and meant it.

Gladly, after dinner, she washed plates in the bathtub at the end of his hall, having first washed a ring from the tub. Tony, at the stove, boiled the root. Amy came back and he had a pot full of what looked like pea soup. Was the whole idea hallucinatory, that drinking the mixture would fill her mind with visions such as she had never imagined? One saw, Tony had been told, anything one wanted to—the entire range of architecture since the world began, for instance. Toasting one another, they drank.

She lay flat with her hands folded expectantly on her stomach, thinking Tony would claim success whether he had visions or not. She could not find anything to think about. Enough times alone, she thought about herself. Once, she peeked at him, thinking how funny if he had fallen asleep. Though that moment, not surprisingly, Tony sighed; pearly gates might have opened ahead of him, she thought.

She resettled herself on the mattress, wondering what to see if she saw anything. Her imagination stretched toward some broad subject. She might know, at once, all of the great literature. Then to her mind's eye came the trellis full of June roses which had arched the driveway of the first house she remembered. Her mother was laughing and holding her father's hand.

A rabbit given to her some Easter, early in her life, came to mind. That gave way to colors of the rainbow always discernible when she closed her eyes. Tony sighed more blissfully. One of Amy's feet itched, but she was afraid to scratch it. She saw the Court House, the old men playing checkers, herself alighting from the bus, into blankness. She could not, she thought, face things, even in fancy.

“Fantastic. Wasn't it?” Tony stood and stretched.

With nerve then, she glanced at her wristwatch. Having been lying down several hours, she felt absurd. Nor was she going to believe Tony had experienced anything.

“I just saw the sort of things I see any time I close my eyes,” she said.

“You've got to be kidding.” Tucking in his shirtail, he threw back over his shoulder, “Maybe you're not so sensitive as you think.”

“I'm as sensitive as you,” she said, feeling mean.

“You don't really feel much in bed,” he accused her for the first time.

“Maybe that's your fault.”

His eyes took on a tiger's yellow gleam. It was not necessary to say what the look meant. Amy clearly saw those little feet in ballet slippers always close to his, passing the bookstore. She had to impress him.

“Did I ever tell you,” she said, “that I see Almoner?”

Tony turned, rebuckling his belt. Plainly, he assumed she was remembering an hallucination, after all.

“I know him,” she said. “I've been to his house, and we used to meet. We've written a lot. If you don't believe it, I can show you some letters.”

“What right,” Tony said, advancing in a menacing way, “do you have to know Almoner?”

Too
hung in the air unsaid; with all else she had, Tony meant.

Stepping back, Amy wished she had not intentionally tried to hurt anyone. Now all her family's warnings about her possibly being murdered in a place like New York rang in her ears. She saw herself, strangled or blood-splattered, found by disinterested policemen. Who, here, would mourn? Only when she was home would her resting place not be thoroughly ignominious. She had tears, unnoticed.

Tony stopped halfway toward her, then combed his hair. His sharp nose seemed lengthened and similar to a fox's. Recently, the fact had begun to sink in that he was never going to have a show. He longed for Amy to leave so he might have all of what was left of the wine.

“I don't know what you mean by the right to know him,” Amy said. She then thought well enough of herself to think, why shouldn't she?

“I didn't know Almoner liked young girls,” Tony said. “I'd heard lots about him, but never that.”

“That's not it, at all. We're friends because I want to be a writer. We are—” but Amy bit off the words “soul mates,” knowing what fun Tony would make of them, “friends,” she said.

“So I didn't go to college, I'm not dumb, babe.” Above that lengthened nose, his eyes narrowed. “I guess to an old man, you'd be a good lay.”

Reversed in Amy's mind instantly was who might lie dead and bloody in this filthy apartment. She stalked toward the other room and picked up her purse. She looked openly into the wallet before going to the hall door. Supporting himself against the bedroom door, Tony yawned.

“If this is the way you want it!” Amy said, before slamming the door behind her. She had wanted to yell further that he was not a good painter! Starting down the stairs into dimness, she laughed at their childishness. She might be playing a part in an old melodrama, she thought, as the stairs creaked.

Her block, when she reached it, stretched ahead, an unremitting row of similar grey stone buildings. The tailor took a few steps out of his shop and stood with flabby arms folded. His face seemed to reflect the greyness of the buildings, not the sunlight. The sun's shaft, entering the street, avoided him altogether. Light, for him, was confined to that tiny single bulb illuminating his machine. As he watched Amy coming down the block, she could not deliberately cross the street.

“It's a nice day,” she said.

“A nice time of the day to walk.”

Loneliness led her to the verge of changing her mind about going out with him. Then he smiled, and red veins sprayed across his cheeks like map routes. God, he seemed a bloated grey fish, out of water. And nodding slightly, Amy crossed the street. Her building inside was silent and odorless, and neither her footsteps nor her entrance created a ripple. It was better not to be inflexible, she decided, setting her back against the door, facing her room. She again had to seek help but in this emergency she could think of no one to telephone.

I'm lonely. Would the police emergency squad answer that summons? A meager list of people came to mind, all of whom she had contacted last. They seemed all to have given her the joking message, Don't call us, we'll call you. She could think only of Nancy. She spoke to her, saying she was dying to see Nancy's new apartment; in a humiliating pause afterward, Nancy obviously tried to decide about an invitation and gave a vague one. “You'll have to come to dinner, sometime.”

Through innuendoes, Amy managed finally an invitation for that evening. If she would take potluck, Nancy said. What she ate was the least of her worries, Amy confessed.

Nancy's building, newly renovated, gave Amy a comfortable feeling, with dirtless corners and shiny floors. There was a smell of fresh paint and an outdoorsy scent, as if carpenters had just departed carrying wood shavings. The same freshness rushed out when Nancy opened her door. Amy did not belittle her, standing there in a sweeping taffeta hostess gown.

Though the husband had grown fatter and was chewing the first of an evening's supply of antacid mints, he seemed a nice man. Kindly, he dismissed standoffishness had ever existed between them and shook her hand warmly. Amy came gratefully inside, telling Nancy how beautifully she had co-ordinated the apartment. She went all about admiring what Nancy had achieved, all that she must ever have envisioned for herself, Amy thought, oyster-white wall-to-wall carpeting and satin-covered headboards. For a moment, while Nancy smoothed the unwrinkled bedspread, Amy considered one person ought not to judge the aims of another. The point was to determine on and achieve what one wanted, as Nancy had. Liking the new building, Amy liked also the table set with pretty things, as she had known at home. Candles reflected in a window, which revealed the black void that was night. Inconsequential chatter done, Nancy asked reluctantly the question, “What have you been doing, Amy?”