The Wintering (31 page)

Opening his eyes, he said, “You ever eat blackberries straight from the vine?”

“Of course, at my grandmother's in the country,” Amy said. “Aren't they great. The wine's the same color. I was thinking that, too.”

Her eyes roved pensively toward the dessert cart. He watched her pick and choose some frothy tart, thinking that she was still young enough that what was in her heart was usually on her face. Thank God for that. The thin-stemmed glass was twirled slowly between his fingers as he watched her eat industriously. Then laying down her licked fork, she said, “We're so quiet, we're like that sad married couple who haven't said anything since they've been here.”

“I noticed them, too. It is sad, Amy, that people can live in an isolation which blood ties, and even marriage, can't break, sometimes.”

“I don't understand why people are always marrying the wrong people,” she said, thinking of her parents and of him. “I hope Amelia hasn't. It's funny she wanted now to get married. Why is everybody acting different? My mother and Amelia, for instance?”

“I've begun to wonder if, as we've changed our own lives, we've changed theirs,” he said.

“Wouldn't that be funny?” Amy amused him then by leaning forward in what so clearly she felt to be a womanly way, her chin delicately balanced on the backs of her cupped hands. “Tell me about the wedding and why you stayed so long afterward,” she said.

He leaned comfortably toward her, relating details. Amelia had skipped a honeymoon, and things scheduled for before the wedding had been rescheduled for afterward. With relatives already assembled, it had seemed a good time for a cousin's baby to be christened. “Little things like that kept turning up,” he said. “Now, I realize it was perhaps all done to keep me there. But, of course, I had to stay on for the bride's first dinner party.” He began to chuckle. “Latham has a cook, Marguerite, who has been with them almost as long as Jessie has with us. Amelia's dinner was quite elegant. Only when we looked down, Marguerite was serving barefoot!”

“Oh no.” Amy fell back against her chair, laughing. “Poor Amelia, when she has such pretensions. What did she do?”

“Sent Latham out to threaten her with being fired, I guess.”

Long after the incident had been told, he was still smiling. “Why?” Amy asked.

“No reason,” he said, “except that I'm happy.”

“I'm glad,” she said.

“I too, Amy,” he said. “I'm glad to be happy.”

“Are writers often, though?” she said anxiously. “Or is it a cliché that they're not?”

Writers, he thought, had more extreme emotions than other people; seldom did they feel nothing. “When I'm happy, no one has ever been happier.” He looked pleased. Even boyish, Amy thought. “They don't fall in love lightly, either,” he said. “And now, as I thought, you want to run. You don't like either pressure or responsibility. But I've begun to believe you confuse them, Amy. You can't avoid responsibility. That is, if you want to grow up, which always you've said was what you wanted. All right, if you won't even look at me while I talk about it, I'll quit. For tonight, anyway. Happiness comes over me sometimes quite unexpectedly, without apparent reason.”

“Over me, too!” She looked excited. “Just sometimes if the sun is shining and I'm driving along the street, everything seems wonderful. We are the same.”

“The last time it happened to me I was walking across a frozen cotton field,” he said. “My God, how I longed for you to be there to kiss you. But, even without you, I was suddenly and simply struck by an unbearable happiness.”

“One time when I was in a phone booth talking to you, I remember thinking, Look at the day! Everything seemed so marvellous and fascinating, Jeff. The feeling never lasts.”

“No, it never lasts,” he said. “But knowing what you are going to say before you do, sometimes, makes me happy. Always, something serene and nice and never foolish.”

“Most of the time I feel stupid.”

“You have never been stupid.”

“I don't know why not. I
feel
stupid. I don't think I'm growing up at all.” Knowing it would exasperate him, she did not confide she thought of trying another city, or country, to see what turn her life might take.

“Things are going on in you all this time, which you don't realize,” he said. “I believe that. You've had a lot in your past to clear away. It's not done yet.”

“It won't ever be.”

“Probably, not completely.”

“What then?”

“I hope you will learn to live with some things. I've stuck my neck out for you. I wouldn't have if I didn't believe in you completely.”

“If only I could believe in me. It wouldn't be so hard just to go on.”

“But what else is there? I can't imagine anyone's taking their own life. That's one thing I've never thought of.”

Amy was altogether astonished. Jeff did not, after all, understand the extent of her despair; therefore, he might not understand much about her, as she had questioned before. He had never understood how she feared her life passing; she knew that.

“Don't let me have this grey head for nothing,” he said, seeing how she stared at him. “If I believe in you, then know there's something in you worth being believed in. Damn it!” He struck the table forcefully. And having thought that she would never laugh again, Amy began to. His attempt to seem angry seemed so much only that—an attempt.

“All right,” she said. “Almoner can't be wrong. I'll believe in myself, or I'll try to. That's all I can promise.”

“Jeff's not wrong, either. You haven't stumbled into my orbit for nothing. We aren't spinning about together for nothing. I'll never believe this time is wasted.”

“No, it's not wasted,” she said quickly. “I've never thought that. And someday, I will know what it means, won't I?”

“Yes, Amy. I think you will.”

She let out a long breath. “I feel better.” She reached out and lightly lay her hand on top of his.

The touch had the same gentleness of the butterfly; he was as afraid to move. “I had begun to think maybe I was an untouchable,” he said, grinning. “When I see your aunt, she runs as if I were a leper. Or a rapist. Or head of the NAACP. You don't mind if I indulge in foolishness, do you? You seem never to mind. For now, I would like to present you with a little bouquet of violets with a star inside.”

“But that,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “is not foolishness. That's beautiful, like the bell in Cyrano. And so sweet.”

“Never now, Amy, can you be some beldame concerned with position or money. I know that.” He dared turn his hand over and took hers. “If only I could help you avoid pitfalls in your life.”

But she did not want to avoid whatever pitfalls were to come, Amy thought. She felt jealous of her own life. With all its own misfortunes, she wanted to live it. Sometimes, she felt that in trying to help her, Jeff was about to take over what belonged to her. Those times, she longed to be with friends her own age, who had the same problems. Her attention had been distracted, and he saw that he had again said something confusing for her. Silent, he drank his wine. But she was wondering how in the world the women in this restaurant, who all looked so chic, had kept their hair looking so nice despite the windy streets. Peeking at Jeff, she saw him looking moody and deep in thought, and she worried that her own thoughts were so shallow. But she felt so disheveled and so wrongly dressed. Though the beige shirtwaist she wore was raw silk, she simply had disappeared into the candlelit atmosphere. These other women, the sort who knew everything, wore dark dresses which stood out, and their throats had some silvery glistening sheen, and even their faces seemed pearlized; what make-up had they found? Beneath great swoops of starched tablecloth, Amy rubbed her thumb nervously against a hangnail, anxious to bite and get done with it; but she could not here. She felt fearful of the women, never realizing they might covet the unbeatable thing she had, youth. While presenting his check, the waiter seemed to smirk. Amy looked up at him, then bent her head and shrank a little, so that the tablecloth rose up like a bed sheet around her arms. The waiter's smirk had seemed to say so clearly that he knew all about May-December couples.

Jeff made small talk with him during the exchange of money. Having received his tip, the waiter grandly swept Amy's dessert plate from the table, causing the fork to clatter. From him escaped some watery sound like “Tch,” as other diners looked their way. That sound, his rolling eyes, made clear the disturbance had not been his fault. Someone had placed the fork on their plate incorrectly. He stood aside, and people watched the nervous-looking young woman lead from the restaurant the much older man; but certainly a father and daughter would not be dining in this tête-à-tête sort of place.

Immediately upon reaching the street, Amy bit the hangnail. She was more than glad to be out of sight of those languidly turning heads. She was comfortable, being alone with Jeff. There were not many people with whom she felt so comfortable. That thought reached him, and he returned it by pressing her hand. Whenever she drew close to him, she had observed that a slight smile settled onto his lips. Despite whatever conflict was inside her, knowing that she made him happy made her happy. She felt she had a purpose, then. Her hair flew about her face, wind rushing down the narrow streets as if through tunnels. She determined, however, not to bother about her looks.

A movie? The theatre? he suggested.

They bought
Cue
in a small tobacco shop. Their heads touched bending over it, while they consulted one another solicitously. Nor were they surprised by the affableness with which they agreed that there was nothing to see. Jeff dropped the magazine into a wire trash basket. They kept strolling. Amy said, “Maybe you ought to go to bed early. Get a good night's sleep.”

“I'd never be able to sleep this early,” he said.

Arm in arm, they went on and paused to look into windows, if something attracted one or the other of them. She thought how he cancelled out her feelings of being alone in the world. Sometimes, the smile he had when she looked at him took the form of a slight trembling of his bottom lip. All that mattered to him these times was their being together. Amy read that quite clearly on his face. She would smile back, but sometimes had to look away. She worried that it was not fair to be with him when she had thoughts of a life apart.

Never did she want to use him. Whenever he was with her, he seemed to walk more erectly. She knew then that her presence did give him something. And often, when she had another desire, as now to go home and go to bed, she stayed on.

“Would you come to Alex's for a brandy?”

They had paused indecisively in the middle of the block. Cars drew alongside, halted by a red light commandingly changed. Jeff had begun to walk more slowly. She had tried to hide a yawn. The cars rolled away rather darkly, their occupants' faces turned studiously ahead, intent and preoccupied. The green light, coming on at the corner, gave an eerie cavelike feeling to the spot where they stood. Without quite nodding her head, Amy said she could come for a little while.

Turning on the doorman a wan smile when he opened his spotless glass doors, she thought how the man well knew that Alex was out of town. But he was trained to be blind and subservient toward anyone who could afford to pass through his doors. She supposed him not watching them as they crossed the lobby. As immediately as Jeff opened the door to the apartment, however, it seemed hostile and withdrawn. Like a sleeping porter, it did not want to be bothered and had assumed itself with Alex on vacation. It had lent itself magnificently to a large party and, otherwise, had long been accustomed to a settled bachelor's existence. It gave itself up to the impersonal thoroughness of a cleaning service, and did not care in its owner's absence to have a cigar crushed into an ashtray, even to have pictures and books inspected. About to take a book from a pile stacked on a table, Amy suddenly drew back her hand. Jeff brought out the brandy, set out glasses like a boy stealing from the family liquor supply, as if not to be heard. He came across the stretches of quietude and soft carpet, holding out her glass.

The hushed quality of everything irritated Amy. He seemed humble approaching, too eager to please her; so often, she wanted to tell him to be more assertive. Patience with her might simply be the wrong approach, she thought. She wanted really a man to drag her around by a hank of hair and tell her what to do. Jeff, by waiting to see what she was going to decide, made her often feel put on a spot. Making a design in the carpet with her shoe, she watched the resultant dark pattern change gradually lighter again. She stuck her nose into the brandy glass repeatedly to avoid speaking, sorry about the perverseness of her nature. If only she could make herself affable when necessary. That would seem to be the ultimate in growing up.

Yet, the thought of Jeff's not being kind to her seemed unbearable. She raised eyes a little moist. “Brandy fumes really get me,” she said. She held her breath and drank. He made a motion with his own glass and thought she sometimes seemed a child he wanted to tuck into bed; directly afterward, he could have the desire to yank away the covers.

Amy was thinking she was lucky to be with him, though. Curling her legs beneath her, she reached out to faintly touch his hair above each ear; his hair shone dimly in light from beneath the fluted shade of a lamp. Having nothing to say, it was understood, they would say nothing. With that situation, they were comfortable. After drinking, they set their glasses down into silence, and the brandy, shifting from side to side in the bulbous glasses, turned more golden in the light.

Suppose she said, Think of rain falling in places we'll never see. He would understand and know she was thinking how lonely they both had been. Turning, he seemed to ponder, too, the enormity of this moment in which no longer were they lonely. Amy moved toward him, and his arm went around her.