Everything is Nice (28 page)

In fact, she was unpleasantly startled when Rita asked Berenice whether she remembered the Sundays at Felicia Kelly's.

"Not as good as you do," said Berenice. "Because I was a little tyke."

"That was ten years ago," Rita said. "I was twenty years old and you were ten. She had her bushes and trees growing so close to the walk there that we used to get soaking wet from the branches after the rain. I used to rub Berenice's hair with a Turkish towel when we got in the house—my own too. It's a mistake to plant them so close." Rita was actually addressing Berenice rather than Laura, for she was never certain that Laura could really understand much of what was said. Berenice, who was interested in almost any topic of conversation, listened attentively.

"She made tutti-frutti ice cream for her family on Sunday, so she always served us some. It was very good quality. You could see the Old Man and the Old Woman on clear days from her kitchen window. I think you could see the Old Man from the parlor window too, but not the Old Woman. I'm sure you couldn't see the Old Woman from the parlor—no, you couldn't have, it wasn't facing right. Berenice used to get a kick out of that. We can't see any mountain peaks from here, just the valley and the woods. But Berenice could see those two peaks very clear from the Kellys', so she was pleased about that, I guess. Do you remember the Old Man and the Old Woman, Berenice?"

Laura was thoroughly bored by the present turn in the conversation, but she felt compelled to question Rita further, since this account about Felicia Kelly's house was a roundabout answer to Laura's, original question "Do you like Sundays?", which proved that at least Rita had heard her question, and that the possibility of finding out more concerning Rita and her tastes was not entirely closed to her.

"Did you like going to see Felicia Kelly on Sunday?" Laura asked her, trying to conceal her weariness by tossing her head back and smiling.

Again Rita's face was closed, and instead of answering Laura's question she poured herself some beer very carefully so as to avoid its forming a head.

"Rita doesn't go to see Felicia Kelly any more," said Berenice, and there was such warmth and radiance shining in her eyes even as she made this announcement that Laura felt recompensed, in spite of Rita's queer stubborness; and was not annoyed with Berenice for interrupting.

"Really?" she said.

"No. One Sunday she went all the way over there—it's about fifteen miles from here—and nobody was home, not even the dog. The cat was there but the dog wasn't. So she never spoke to Felica Kelly again."

"We drove all the way over there," said Rita, "and then we had to come all the way back without seeing anyone. Poppa was mad too. He used to drive us over there in the truck and call for us every Sunday. She didn't leave a note, either."

"What happened to her?" Laura asked with some degree of real interest.

"I don't know," said Rita. "I never talked to her again."

"She called up once or twice but Poppa just told her Rita wouldn't talk to her, and then he'd hook the receiver on the telephone," put in Berenice.

"Then you never knew why she wasn't home?" Laura asked Rita, looking at her with wonder.

"No," said Rita. "I never talked to her again." She seemed pleased with the end of her story.

At this point Laura gave up thinking about Rita because she was so much of a mystery to her that there seemed to be no hope of her ever understanding any more about how Rita felt than she did that afternoon, even had she persisted in questioning her for the next fifty years. In a sense it was satisfying to know that such mysteries existed and that she did not have to exert herself any further.

Just then, Mr Cassalotti, came in with the raviolis. He had dished out the portions in the kitchen and now carried the full plates over to the table on a tray.

"I got everything ready so all you have to do now is eat. Move your chair in," he said to Sally, putting a plate of raviolis down on the table for her.

They had all forgotten Sally's presence, and looked toward her with surprise. She had moved her chair even further away from the table during the conversation about Felicia Kelly, although no one had noticed it.

"No, thank you," said Sally, her aloof expression changing quickly into one of vivid revulsion. "I'm going home in a minute."

"Not before you eat your ravioli," said Mr. Cassalotti calmly, and going over to her chair he got behind it and lifted her over to the table, where he set her down, chair and all, in front of her raviolis.

Berenice had a hunted, frightened look in her eyes as she watched her father with amazement. Ordinarily she would have laughed heartily at such playfulness, but being extremely sensitive, she felt that Sally was not a person to be lifted through the air even in jest. Rita wasn't either worried or amused.

"Oh, Poppa," she said. "If she don't want to eat don't force her."

Mr. Cassalotti returned to the kitchen and there was silence in the dining room. Even Rita noticed the queer strained look on Sally's face, and she stared at her shamelessly while Laura and Berenice averted their eyes.

Sally was so insulted by Mr. Cassalotti's gesture that, although she wanted to flee from the room, she remained rooted to her chair by such shame and by an anger so burning that it temporarily blotted from her mind its source, so that only the present moment existed for her. Her eye fixed on a red-and-white checked curtain on the wall opposite, and immediately she felt that to draw this curtain was her only hope against suffocation. Then the fear that she would not reach the curtain gradually stole the place of both her shame and her anger, imparting a more pitiful and appealing expression to her eyes.

"It's so hot in here," said Berenice, whose sensitive nature was becoming more and more aroused.

Sally heard the remark and now her heart started to beat with panic lest Berenice reach the window before she did. She felt it was absolutely necessary that she herself draw the curtains and not Berenice.

With what seemed to her superhuman effort, she rose to her feet and then walked like a person lightheaded with fever over to the window. She drew the curtains aside with a shaky hand. Behind them was a black shade which Mr. Cassalotti had hung there so that no daylight would ever penetrate the restaurant. He thought that to eat by electricity was more elegant, and that all restaurateurs should equip their restaurants so as to appear in a land of perpetual night.

Sally lifted the shade and there at last was the window. It had been pouring outside only a moment before, so that streams of rain were still sliding down the window pane. Through the pane the leaves of the elm, whose branches almost brushed against the side of the house, appeared larger and more glistening than they actually were. The grass, a brilliant green in the afterlight of the storm, seemed particularly so around the thick wet trunk of the tree.

Sally felt that she was losing ground faster and faster every minute, a condition which she qualified at calmer moments as "going too fast for myself." But it was not because she was so much of a lady or even particularly dignified that Mr. Cassalotti's gesture had insulted her so deeply. The insult lay in the suddenness of the actual interruption, which had violated abruptly her precarious state of balance.

"I'll have to get out on the ground," she said to herself three or four times. Behind her she could hear the subdued voices of the two other women and Berenice. But they seemed far away, as if they were speaking in a separate room. She felt along the glass several times as if she would find a way of going through the window to get outside, but in a moment she sighed and turned around, scanning the room for the right door. In order to reach it she had to pass the table where the others were sitting. But she kept her head high and was in truth scarcely aware of their presence at all.

Unfortunately Laura was drinking her eighth beer, which suddenly changed her mood into one of lachrymose affection.

"Sally, sweetheart," she called as Sally stalked past the table. "Sally, darling, where are you going?" Sally already had her hand on the knob and was pulling on it, but Laura sprang to her feet and reach Sally's side before she was able to get through the door.

"You have to come and eat your ravioli, because it's delicious, but if you won't eat you can talk to Berenice and Rita and me," Laura said to her. Putting her arms around Sally she searched her face with tenderly swimming eyes.

Sally looked as though she were about to be sick, but with unexpected energy she wrenched herself loose from Laura's embrace and fairly flew out of the room.

The evening air was cold and still, now that the storm had passed, and the sky near the horizon was green, the color green that chills the heart of a person of melancholic or tempestuous nature. But Sally did not even notice it. No natural sight ever depressed her and she did not know what it was to be melancholic.

Pine cones, now soggy and darker-colored after the rain, were scattered about underneath the trees. Sally's sister Henrietta liked to paint pine cones different colors and then heap them into a bowl for decoration.

Sally felt infinitely weary as she looked at these cones, which seemed to be scattered about the grass as far as her eye could see. However (and in spite of the fact that pine cones were abundant in all the surrounding region and lay scattered about even at the very door of her own cabin at Camp Cataract), she felt challenged to gather some, soggy as they were, to take back to her sister. She had nothing but her hat to carry them in, which she determined to use. Squatting down on her heels, she was quickly absorbed in selecting the most perfect cones. In her thoughts there was not a shadow of concern about Laura or the Cassalotti sisters. As far as she was concerned, they did not exist.

Laura had never seen Sally out of control before, and she returned to the table worried and yet excited. Although she was drunk enough to behave carelessly, her instincts forbade her to follow Sally out of doors.

"What do you suppose got into her?" Laura asked.

"A jackass," said Berenice.

Rita reprimanded her sister. "You don't have to use such talk," she said to her.

"She was quite beside herself when she left the room," Laura added, ignoring Berenice's language. Laura knew that she should not be discussing Sally with the Cassalottis, who were certain to interpret her more simply than her unbalanced nature merited.

"She's a stuck-up jackass," Berenice said again. "She doesn't want to associate with us or have you associating with us either. Don't you think I've known it all along? She didn't eat those raviolis just to insult Poppa. I'd like to see the rotten stinking food they got at her house."

"Fried skunk," said Rita placidly, without a smile.

"That's right." Berenice nodded her approval.

Laura had not expected the conversation about Sally to be on such a low level as this. She was particularly surprised to hear Berenice attack Sally so bitterly, since it had never occurred to her that Berenice could be anything but warmhearted and generous toward everyone.

"Poppa took a lot of trouble making that ravioli for her, and he's a very busy man. I didn't care how the crazy loon acted with us, but she's got to be decent with Poppa. She can't come in here anymore now, that's all.. . . Let her go to a stuck-up place."

"Sally isn't stuck-up," said Laura, who could never be dishonest. "She is high-strung but not stuck-up. High and strict. She's got systems for living."

"So have Rita and me got systems, and one of them is not to look like a rat bit us if we are served food in somebody else's house. We say thank you and we eat our food. So do you, Laura. Don't make excuses for her. Anyway, she hates us."

Berenice was calming down. She scraped at her empty plate with her fork for a little while. Then soon the glow returned to her face, and her eyes were once again shining with warmth and enthusiasm.

"Life is too short ..." she said, smiling at Laura, and she poured some more beer. But Laura felt ashamed now to have referred to Sally's behaviour at all, and she was determined to continue the conversation so as to vindicate in some way the cheapness of her original impulse to gossip.

"I don't think Sally hates you," she said to Berenice. "It's very possible that she loves you."

Berenice opened her eyes wide with incomprehension.

"It's not a bit unusual to love and to hate the same person," Laura continued. Her tone was didactic.

"Unusual," said Berenice. "It's impossible." But she spoke hesitatingly because she was really at sea thus far in the conversation.

"No, no," Laura insisted. "That's partly why living is such trouble. We are likely to love and to hate the very same person at the very same time, and yet neither emotion is more true than the other. You have to decide which you're going to cater to, that's all. Fortunately, if you are at all decent, you manage to keep pushing love a little bit ahead . . . but it can be very, very difficult keeping it that way. I was that way about my mother, and I have been that way about one other person, but particularly my mother."

"Oh, no—" The words escaped Berenice involuntarily.

"Oh, yes!" Laura was vehement. "Sometimes I wanted to hit Mother so hard that it would knock her head right off her body. She's dead now but I think I would feel the same way if she were alive."

Berenice didn't say anything. She clasped both hands tightly around her glass of beer and stared ahead of her. Rita Cassalotti had long since been occupied with some private concern and remained mute.

After a moment Berenice broke the silence. "I've got to go out now," she announced. Cocking her head to one side, she smiled at Laura—a charming smile that showed the dimple in her cheek— and she looked for all the world like a young girl taking leave of her hostess at a tea party.

"But," said Laura, horrified at this unexpected announcement, "I thought we had hours ahead of us still. You didn't say anything...."

Berenice stood up. "I've got to go into town," she said, and once more she tilted her head to one side and smiled enchantingly at Laura, but without meeting Laura's eye.