Celestial Navigation (12 page)

Mary Tell sat beside him smelling of handmade lace and fine soap, lifting her mother-of-pearl opera glasses, but her dress was out of Jane Austen’s time and the opera she was watching had not been shown for a century.

Monday morning Jeremy got up early, dressed very carefully, and went to Mr. and Mrs. Dowd’s grocery store, where he bought a pound of chocolates. They were left over from Valentine’s Day—a heart-shaped box, a little dusty, but Mrs. Dowd wiped it off for him with a dishrag.
“Somebody’s
found himself a sweetheart,” she said. Jeremy was still knotted up from the ordeal of making a purchase, and he only gave a flicker of a smile and kept his eyes lowered. He returned home by way of the alley, so that he arrived in his backyard. There wild chicory flowers were waving among a tangle of sooty weeds, and he squatted and began gathering a bouquet. This was something he had thought out the night before. He had rehearsed it so thoroughly that now it seemed he was picking each flower for the second time. In a shady spot by the steps he found glossy leaves that he inserted between the chicory,
making a pattern of blue and green. Then he rose, hugging the candy box to his chest, and went into the house. Through the kitchen, through the dining room, straight to Mary Tell’s bedroom, where he instantly knocked. If he gave himself time to think, he would fail. He would run away, scattering flowers and chocolates behind him.

When she opened the door she was wearing a bathrobe and she carried a hairbrush. He noticed that the hairbrush was a wooden one with natural bristles, which gave him a sense of satisfaction. How fitting it was! He could have said from the beginning that she would never be the type to use a nylon hairbrush. But this thought was chosen at random, to take his mind off his embarrassment. He had expected to find her dressed. He had chosen the day and the hour so carefully, knowing that she would be in now and the other boarders out or upstairs; and here she stood in her bathrobe—a pink one, seersucker. Though at least her hair was up. He hadn’t wakened her. The brush was apparently meant for Darcy, who sat crosslegged on the bed in a pair of striped pajamas. “Hi, Mr. Pauling!” she called out. Jeremy couldn’t manage a smile. “These are for, I brought these for the room,” he said. He thrust the bouquet under Mary Tell’s chin. It was terrible to see how his hands were shaking; all the flowers nodded and whispered. “I found them by the trashcans.”

“Oh! Thank you,” she said. She looked at them a moment and then took them. Too late, he thought of the vase. Last night he had decided on his mother’s pewter pitcher from the corner cupboard in the dining room, but this morning it had slipped his mind. “Wait,” he said, “I’ll get a—” but she said, “Don’t bother, I’m sure we have something here. My, what a beautiful shade of blue.”

They’re
your
blue, Mary-blue, he wanted to tell her. The blue from a madonna’s robe. He had thought of that last
night, but he had known all along that he would never dare to say it. Instead he looked over at Darcy, whose eyes—more chicory flowers—surveyed him steadily. “How come you brought them to
us?”
she asked.

“Why, just, I thought—”

“Never mind, Mr. Pauling,” said Mary Tell. “I know why you’re here.”

Jeremy stood very still, breathing raggedly.

“You just have to understand,” she said. “Financially, things are a little difficult right now. Very soon I should be able to pay you, but—”

“Pay me?” he said. Did she think she had to
buy
the flowers?

“Pay you your money. I know that Saturday has come and gone but you see, with Darcy not in school yet I have to find work I can do at home. Till then I was hoping you wouldn’t care if the rent was a little—”

“The rent, oh,” Jeremy said. “Oh, that’s all right.”

“It is?”

“Why, of course.”

He kept his eyes on the flowers. It was important to see them safely into the water. And then what? Was he supposed to leave? Yes, almost certainly, in view of the fact that she was wearing a bathrobe. Yet that would make the visit so short, and he wanted to be sure he did everything he was supposed to. He raised his eyes to hers, hoping for a clue. The brilliance of her smile took him by surprise. “Mr. Pauling, I just don’t know how to thank you,” she said.

“Oh, why—”

“You’ve really been very kind.”

“Well, but I believe they should be put in water,” he said.

Then she looked down at the flowers and gave a little laugh, and he laughed too. He had not expected that things
would go so well the very first time. He watched her fetch a glass of stale water from the nightstand and set the bouquet in without disarranging a single flower, without upsetting his design. When she was finished she turned and smiled at him, apparently waiting for something. He drew in a deep breath. “Now I wish,” he said, “that you would call me Jeremy.”

“Oh!” she said. “Well, all right.”

He shifted his weight to the other foot.

“And you can call me Mary,” she said after a minute.

“You can call
me
Darcy,” Darcy said from the bed.

That gave them something new to laugh about, only he laughed hardest and had trouble stopping. Mary by then had returned to her smile. It became a little strained and started fading at the corners, and from that he understood that it must be time for him to go. He was glad that he had managed to catch the signal. He held out his hand and said, “Well, goodbye for now, Mrs.—Mary,” and she said, “Goodbye, Jeremy,” Her hand was harder than his, and surprisingly broad across the knuckles. While he was still holding it he said, “Um, may I come back sometime?”—the final hurdle of the visit. “Well, of course,” she said, and smiled again as she closed the door.

Although he had not had breakfast yet he returned to his studio, because it would have been awkward to run into her again in the kitchen. He went up the stairs on the balls of his feet, feeling weightless with relief. Not even the discovery that he still carried the chocolates—a warped cardboard heart plastered to his chest—could spoil his day. He only blushed, and then smiled too widely and sat down on his bed. He could always take them to her on another visit, couldn’t he? There were going to be lots of other visits. But while he was planning them he absently opened the box, and he took first one chocolate and then another and then a whole handful.
They had begun to melt, and they stuck to the paper doily that covered them and left imprints on his palm, but they tasted wonderful and the sweetness seeped into every corner of him and soothed his stretched, strained nerves.

He knew how these things worked. First you set up the courtship; he had just done that. Then there were certain requirements to be met—holding hands, a kiss—before he could propose. On television there were a lot of frills as well, people running through meadows together and pretending to be children at zoos and fairs and amusement parks, but he knew better than to try for anything like that. He wasn’t the type.
She
wasn’t the type. And after all, he had done very well so far, hadn’t he? He had completed the first step without any problems, and now he felt more confident about what was left.

Only it turned out not to be so easy. For the next morning, when he had made a pot of percolated coffee and knocked at her room, she opened the door only halfway and it seemed as if some veil fell immediately across her face. “Yes?” she said.

Today she was dressed. (He had deliberately waited fifteen minutes later than yesterday.) Even Darcy was dressed. Then why did she seem so unwelcoming? “I just made some coffee I wondered if you’d like some,” he said all in a rush.

“No, thank you, I don’t drink coffee.”

That possibility had not occurred to him. “Tea, then?” he said.

“No, thank you.”

“Well, maybe you’d just like to have a glass of milk with me.”

“I don’t think so. I have a lot to do today.”

He couldn’t leave. He had promised himself he would see
this through. “Please,” he said, “I don’t understand. Have I done something to offend you?”

Mary sighed and looked over her shoulder at Darcy, who was peacefully stacking dominoes on the rug. Then she stepped out of her room and shut the door behind her. She said, “Come into the parlor a minute, Mr. Pauling.”

Yesterday she had called him Jeremy. He felt like someone deaf or blind, prevented by some handicap from picking up clues that were no doubt clear to everybody else. “Is it something I’ve said?” he asked, stumbling after her. “You see, I just have no inkling …”

She led him to the couch, where he sat down while she remained standing. Then he realized his mistake and jumped up again. “Oh, excuse me,” he said.

“Mr. Pauling,” said Mary, “I realize that I’m behind on my rent.”

“Oh. Well, I thought we—”

“We had a talk about that yesterday. You said you wouldn’t pressure me for it. But I never suspected that there were strings attached.”

“Strings?” said Jeremy.

“Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“I don’t understand.”

Mary looked at him. He had been trying to catch her eye, but now that he had it he seemed unable to face her. He was not used to dealing with angry women. He had never pictured Mary angry at all. He said, “This is so puzzling. I don’t see—”

“Yesterday,” said Mary, “as soon as it was clear I’d missed paying my rent, you came calling in my room and brought me flowers. Well, I didn’t think anything of it at the time but then later I—and today! You come knocking again! Do you feel that now you have some hold over me? Because all I owe you is
money
, Mr. Pauling, and I will be happy to borrow elsewhere
and pay you this minute and be out of your house tomorrow. Is that clear?”

“Oh, my goodness,” Jeremy said. He lowered himself to the couch again. Horror curled over him like an icy film, followed by a rush of heat. He felt his face grow pink. “Oh, Mary. Mrs. Tell,” he said. “I
never
meant to—why, I was just—” Now a picture came to him of exactly how he had looked to Mary Tell the day before. He heard the tentative mumble of his knuckles on her door, he saw his sickly, hopeful smile, beseeching her for everything as he stuck his bouquet under her chin. This was something he was never going to be able to put out of his mind; he knew it. He was going to go over and over it on a thousand sleepless nights, all of them spent alone, for a woman like Mary Tell would never in a million years give a thought to a man like him. He should have guessed that. He felt himself beginning to tremble, the final indignity. “Mr. Pauling?” Mary said.

“But I’m a
good
man,” he said. “What I mean to say—why, I never even knew you owed me! I don’t keep track of that money, the others just put it in the cookie jar.”

“Cookie jar?”

If he spoke any more she would notice his voice was shaking.

“In the cookie jar, Mr. Pauling?”

“The cookie jar in the kitchen. Then I take it out to buy groceries whenever—” He gulped, a sound she must have heard three feet away. She came closer and bent over him, but he kept his head ducked. It was the worst moment he had ever lived through. He didn’t see how it could possibly go on for so long. Couldn’t she leave now? But no, he felt the sofa indenting as she settled down beside him. He saw the edge of her blue skirt, such a calm, soft blue that he felt a flood of pain for those few days when he had loved her and had some hope of her loving him back. “Jeremy,” she said.
“I feel just terrible about this. Won’t you say you forgive me? I wasn’t thinking straight. I’m going through a bad time just now and I must have—Jeremy?” She leaned closer and took one of his hands. “Look at me a minute,” she said.

Why not? It didn’t mean a thing to him any more. He raised his eyes and found the perfect oval of her face level with his. The inner corners of her eyebrows were furrowed with concern. “Won’t you accept my apology?” she said. He had to nod. Then he even smiled, because it had finally dawned on him what was happening: They had been discussing an issue as old-fashioned as Mary Tell herself, and here they were side by side holding hands in this second stage of their courtship.

Mornings now he woke feeling hopeful, and getting up was easier. He started being careful of his appearance. He began wearing a pen-and-pencil set in his shirt pocket—a sign of competence, he thought. He practiced smiling with his mouth shut, hiding a dark turmoil of bad teeth. In the bathroom mirror the thought of Mary hung like a mist between himself and his reflection. Her long cool fingers reached into his chest. He carried her image downstairs with him, treading gently as if it might break up and scatter like snowflakes in a paperweight. When the other boarders greeted him he sometimes failed to answer, but that had happened before and none of them thought anything of it.

Then why did his vision of Mary Tell always turn out to be wrong? Oh, not wrong in any concrete way. He had got her nose right, and the set of her head and the shape of her mouth. But when she entered the kitchen, tying an apron around her waist and smiling at Darcy’s chatter, there was some slight difference in her which both disappointed and awed him. Her skin had a denser look and the planes of her
face were flatter. Her manner of moving was more purposeful. In his mind she glided; in real life she stepped squarely on her heels. Every night he forgot that and every morning he had to learn it all over again.

In the beginning she used to make bacon and eggs for breakfast, but now their diet had changed. She and Darcy filled up on cold cereal. “We
always
have this,” Darcy said. “I know, honey,” said Mary, and then she told Jeremy, “Yesterday I heard of a job addressing envelopes. Do you think they’d let me do it at home? I’m going to see them today and ask, and if they say yes we’ll never eat cornflakes again.” But that job fell through, and so did the next one and the one after that, and they continued to eat cornflakes while Jeremy sat at the table with them trying to think up topics of conversation. He kept a glass of orange juice in front of him, although he never drank it. (It was impossible to swallow with Mary watching.) He rehearsed a hundred sentences offering help, what little he could manage: “Could I lend you some of the cookie jar money? Well, then, eggs? Just eggs?” But he never said any of them out loud. He was afraid to. Rinsing off their little stack of dishes Mary
bustled
so, as if she were daring him to feel sorry for her. Then she said, “All right, Miss Slowpoke, ready to go?” and she and Darcy would set off on their walk. Which was another change: in the beginning Mary waited for her friend to call before she went out. Now she went immediately after breakfast, and the few times the telephone rang it was never for her.