Nothing That Meets the Eye (51 page)

“I refuse that,” Robert interrupted, “because it's not true.”

His parents exchanged a glance, then his father said calmly, “We'll see you again, Bob, after we talk with the lawyer. When is it, Mary, four, isn't it?”

“Between four and four-thirty, he said.”

“He's coming to see us at our hotel, and I know he'll want to talk with you tomorrow morning. His name is McIver. Good man, I'm told.”

It was all less important to Robert than a stage play taking place at a distance from him. Lawyers, rules, putting everything into abstract phrases, more abstract than himself and Lee—which was difficult enough for Robert.

His parents got up from their chairs. Robert thanked them. They left, and Robert with them, walking quietly out of the room, into the hall, where a guard stood up to escort Robert to his cell. His mother pressed Robert's hand. The guard looked at Robert's hand afterward, as if to see if his mother had put anything into it.

Before the guard closed his cell door, Robert asked for some paper and a pen. The guard brought him three sheets of ruled paper (Robert disliked ruled paper) and a ballpoint pen. When he sat down at the little table, he realized that a pack of cigarettes was bulging his back pocket. His mother had produced the pack from her handbag, Robert remembered, saying something about having had to use a machine to buy them in a hurry or she would have bought a carton.

Robert closed his eyes, deliberately tried to make his mind go blank, and at the same time think about his theme, as he did with sculpture, but now his theme was Lee as a person. When he tried to think of Lee as a piece of sculpture, he often thought of the words grace, strength, sometimes one or the other, sometimes combined. Grace was easy to combine with Lee. She had never made a clumsy gesture that he could recall. She walked gracefully, as if she weighed nothing. But the strength? She had had it, all her own, a strength that he didn't understand.

Finally he wrote (it seemed to him a fragment, but he could go back or forward from here):

To see her wilt before my eyes like that was frightening to me, like a slow death in itself. People speak of blossoming with childbirth, love, all that. It was not true in Lee's case. But what I write here is by no means an effort on my part to excuse what I did.

Did he have to add that awful last sentence? Well, he could cross it out later. For whom was he writing this, anyway?

She gave up her photography, except for some mediocre pictures of the baby. What can one do with a baby? At least in regard to Lee's ­former bent of character, intellect, tragedy in the human face—nothing. Instead of her good cameras, she might as well have been using a cheap pocket camera. She had stopped talking about the photography exhibitions in Indianapolis and Chicago. We used to go quite a lot. We knew some of the photographers who lived in those cities. They had gradually stopped visiting us.

All this was so unnecessary! I can look back now on the work Lee did just before we married, just after. Terrific! And easy for her! Powerful! I thought I was the cause of all this downslide, this collapse really, so I offered to go away, support her from afar, as it might be, until she found maybe another man to share her life with. She declined this and

Here Robert stopped, seeing suddenly the living room that last evening, Lee's photographs gracing the walls, blown-up, her old good stuff, people, buildings. There hadn't been a quarrel, no. Lee had been on her feet, talking about ordinary things—that there had been a telephone call from Fred Muldaven, a friend of Robert's who lived in Chicago, a painter. Melinda had been in her crib in the kitchen then. It was around six or seven in the evening. Robert had been in a strange mood, he had realized, staring at Lee without listening much to what she said. He had just driven back from Chicago, and maybe he had been drinking a cold beer straight from the can.

“Beecham's has a sale of desert boots,” Lee had said, “and you could use a new pair. Those look awful.”

That had been merely unimportant, boring. A couple of years before, Lee would have paid no attention whether his desert boots were worn out, or if his shoes needed a shine. Old falling-apart clothes had their place, and it was nice to dress up sometimes, too, but why talk about it? Why bother trying to please the public, or whoever might look at his sloppy desert boots?

Yet nothing that evening had been what Robert could call the last straw. Rather the atmosphere had been one of quiet gloom, hopelessness, a slowing up as if something were coming to an end, like a train losing momentum because the engine has been shut off. They had gone into the kitchen. Melinda, symbol of the future, had for once been sleeping quietly. And had any vision of Lee at the Chicago art school danced before his eyes as he watched her fussing at the stove? Had any of her enchanting air of “I don't care if I ever see you again or not,” as in the days before they married, come back into his head? Whatever, it was all gone now. He had picked up the rolling pin, floury from something Lee had just made, and that had been it.

Robert got up from the chair and walked around the cell. He moved back to the table, his hand reached out for the cigarette pack, and drew slowly back. He was thinking of something else—Lee dead, the baby at Lee's mother's, himself dead, too. It was all abstract somehow. There had been no word from Lee's mother, or from Fred Muldaven (that was a new friendship and Robert supposed that Fred was now afraid of him), only from his parents, natural appurtenances, calling on him, because by blood they were linked, like a triple star floating around in space. And to be just a little more concrete, though the fact as such did not matter, Robert was going to spend the next fifteen years (with the lightest sentence) in prison, working if he worked at all in a prison art department, being told when to get up and when to go to bed, being reminded of Lee day after day by barred window and door, being reminded of the way she had been, which was even worse.

He wrote one more sentence: What a terrible shame I once loved her so much. I do think that ruined everything.

Then he did light a cigarette, and stood looking at the gray and rather rough wall across from his cot. And Melinda. Should he write one more sentence to that young creature of whose personality he knew nothing at all? He knew something, of course: she seemed to be cheerful by nature, but that could change by the time she was twelve or so.

He decided not to write a word to Melinda. She was in good hands. She would grow up to hate him. She would look at all the pretty, the beautiful photographs of her mother, and hate him. And his statues of Lee? Would Lee's mother have those thrown away, broken up?

Robert sat on his cot for a couple of minutes, finishing his cigarette. Then he put it out in the metal ashtray on his table. For no reason he lifted his left hand and looked at his watch: 4:37 in the afternoon.

Robert stooped by his cot, facing the wall opposite in the position of a runner about to take off. Then he ran forward with all the force he had, all the force, he felt, that he had ever put into his work, and very briefly with a vision of a statue of Lee, better than any he had ever made. His head hit the wall.

THE TROUBLE WITH MRS. BLYNN, THE TROUBLE WITH THE WORLD

M
rs. Palmer was dying, there was no doubt of that to her or to anyone else in the household. The household had grown from two, Mrs. Palmer and Elsie the housemaid, to four in the past ten days. Elsie's daughter Liza, age fourteen, had come to help her mother, and had brought their shaggy sheepdog Princy—who to Mrs. Palmer made a fourth presence in the house. Liza spent most of her time doing things in the kitchen, and slept in the little low-ceilinged room with double-deck bunks down the steps from Mrs. Palmer's room. The cottage was small—a sitting room and dining alcove and kitchen downstairs, and upstairs Mrs. Palmer's bedroom, the room with the two bunks, and a tiny back room where Elsie slept. All the ceilings were low and the doorways and the ceiling above the stairway even lower, so that one had to duck one's head constantly.

Mrs. Palmer reflected that she would have to duck her head very few times more, as she rose only a couple of times a day, making her way, her lavender dressing gown clutched about her against the chill, to the bathroom. She had leukemia. She was not in any pain, but she was terribly weak. She was sixty-one. Her son Gregory, an officer in the R.A.F., was stationed in the Middle East, and perhaps would come in time and perhaps wouldn't. Mrs. Palmer had purposely not made her telegram urgent, not wanting to upset or inconvenience him, and his telegraphed reply had simply said that he would do his best to get leave to fly to her, and would let her know when. A cowardly telegram hers had been, Mrs. Palmer thought. Why hadn't she had the courage to say outright, “Am going to die in about a week. Can you come to see me?”

“Missus Palmer?” Elsie stuck her head in the door, one floury hand resting against the doorjamb. “Did Missus Blynn say four-thirty or five-thirty today?”

Mrs. Palmer did not know, and it did not seem in the least important. “I think five-thirty.”

Elsie gave a preoccupied nod, her mind on what she would serve for five-thirty tea as opposed to four-thirty tea. The five-thirty tea could be less substantial, as Mrs. Blynn would already have had tea somewhere. “Anything I can get you, Missus Palmer?” she asked in a sweet voice, with a genuine concern.

“No, thank you, Elsie, I'm quite comfortable.” Mrs. Palmer sighed as Elsie closed the door again. Elsie was willing, but unintelligent. Mrs. Palmer could not talk to her, not that she would have wanted to talk intimately to her, but it would have been nice to have the feeling that she could talk to someone in the house if she wished to.

Mrs. Palmer had no close friends in the town, because she had been here only a month. She had been en route to Scotland when the weakness came on her again and she had collapsed on a train platform in Ipswich. A long journey to Scotland by train or even airplane had been out of the question, so on a strange doctor's recommendation, Mrs. Palmer had hired a taxi and driven to a town on the east coast called Eamington, where the doctor knew there was a visiting nurse, and where the air was splendid and bracing. The doctor had evidently thought she needed only a few weeks' rest and she would be on her feet again, but Mrs. Palmer had had a premonition that this wasn't true. She had felt better the first few days in the quiet little town, she had found the cottage called Sea Maiden and rented it at once, but the spurt of energy had been brief. In Sea Maiden she had collapsed again, and Mrs. Palmer had the feeling that Elsie and even a few other acquaintances she had made, like Mr. Frowley the real estate agent, resented her faiblesse. She was not only a stranger come to trouble them, to make demands on them, but her relapse belied the salubrious powers of Eamington air—just now mostly gale-force winds which swept from the northeast day and night, tearing the buttons from one's coat, plastering a sticky, opaque film of salt and spray on the windows of all the houses on the seafront. Mrs. Palmer was sorry to be a burden herself, but at least she could pay for it, she thought. She had rented a rather shabby cottage that would otherwise have stayed empty all winter, since it was early February now, she was employing Elsie at slightly better than average Eamington wages, she paid Mrs. Blynn a guinea per half-hour visit (and most of that half hour was taken up with her tea), and she soon would bring business to the undertaker, the sexton, and perhaps the shopkeeper who sold flowers. She had also paid her rent through March.

Hearing a quick tread on the pavement, in a lull in the wind's roar, Mrs. Palmer sat up a little in bed. Mrs. Blynn was arriving. An anxious frown touched Mrs. Palmer's thin-skinned forehead, but she smiled faintly, too, with beforehand politeness. She reached for the long-handled mirror that lay on her bedtable. Her gray face had ceased to shock her or to make her feel shame. Age was age, death was death, and not pretty, but she still had the impulse to do what she could to look nicer for the world. She tucked some hair back into place, moistened her lips, tried a little smile, pulled a shoulder of her nightdress even with the other and her pink cardigan closer about her. Her pallor made the blue of her eyes much bluer. That was a pleasant thought.

Elsie knocked and opened the door at the same time. “Missus Blynn, ma'am.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Palmer,” said Mrs. Blynn, coming down the two steps from the threshold into Mrs. Palmer's room. She was a full-bodied, dark blond woman of middle height, about forty-five, and she wore her usual bulky, two-piece black suit with a rose-colored floral pin on her left breast. She also wore a pale pink lipstick and rather high heels. Like many women in Eamington, she was a sea widow, and had taken up nursing after she was forty. She was highly thought of in the town as an energetic woman who did useful work. “And how are you this afternoon?”

“Good afternoon. Well as can be expected, I think you'd say,” said Mrs. Palmer with an effort at cheerfulness. Already she was loosening the covers, preparatory to pushing them back entirely for her daily injection.

But Mrs. Blynn was standing with an absent smile in the center of the room, hands folded backward on her hips, surveying the walls, gazing out the window. Mrs. Blynn had once lived in this house with her husband, for six months when they were first married, and every day Mrs. Blynn said something about it. Mrs. Blynn's husband had been the captain of a merchant ship, and had gone down with it ten years ago in a collision with a Swedish ship only fifty nautical miles from Eamington. Mrs. Blynn had never married again. Elsie said her house was filled with photographs of the captain in uniform and of his ship.

“Yes-s, it's a wonderful little house,” said Mrs. Blynn, “even if the wind does come in a bit.” She looked at Mrs. Palmer with brighter eyes, as if she were about to say, “Well, now, a few more of these injections and you'll be as fit as can be, won't you?”

But in the next seconds, Mrs. Blynn's expression changed. She groped in her black bag for the needle and the bottle of clear fluid that would do no good. Her mouth lost its smile and drooped, and deeper lines came at its corners. By the time she plunged the needle into Mrs. Palmer's fleshless body, her bulging green-gray eyes were glassy, as if she saw nothing and did not need to see anything: this was her business, and she knew how to do it. Mrs. Palmer was an object, which paid a guinea a visit. The object was going to die. Mrs. Blynn became apathetic, as if even the cutting off of the guinea in three days or eight days mattered nothing to her, either.

Guineas as such mattered nothing to Mrs. Palmer, but in view of the fact she was soon quitting this world, she wished that Mrs. Blynn could show something so human as a desire to prolong the guineas. Mrs. Blynn's eyes remained glassy, even when she glanced at the door to see if Elsie was coming in with her tea. Occasionally the floorboards in the hall cracked from the heat or the lack of it, and so they did when someone walked just outside the door.

The injection hurt today, but Mrs. Palmer did not flinch. It was really such a small thing, she smiled at the slightness of it. “A little sunshine today, wasn't there?” Mrs. Palmer said.

“Was there?” Mrs. Blynn jerked the needle out.

“Around eleven this morning. I noticed it.” Weakly she gestured toward the window behind her.

“We can certainly use it,” Mrs. Blynn said, putting her equipment back in her bag. “Goodness, we can use that fire, too.” She had fastened her bag, and now she chafed her palms, huddling toward the grate.

Princy was stretched full length before the fire, looking like a rolled-up shag rug.

Mrs. Palmer tried to think of something pleasant to say about Mrs. Blynn's husband, their time in this house, the town, anything. She could only think of how lonely Mrs. Blynn's life must be since her husband died. They had had no children. According to Elsie, Mrs. Blynn had worshiped her husband, and took a pride in never having remarried. “Have you many patients this time of year?” Mrs. Palmer asked.

“Oh, yes. Like always,” Mrs. Blynn said, still facing the fire and rubbing her hands.

Who? Mrs. Palmer wondered. Tell me about them. She waited, breathing softly.

Elsie knocked once, by bumping a corner of the tray against the door.

“Come in, Elsie,” they both said, Mrs. Blynn a bit louder.

“Here we are,” said Elsie, setting the tray down on a hassock made by two massive olive-green pillows, one atop the other. Butter slid down the side of a scone, spread onto the plate, and began to congeal while Elsie poured the tea.

Elsie handed Mrs. Palmer a cup of tea with three lumps of sugar, but no scone, because Mrs. Blynn said they were too indigestible for her. Mrs. Palmer did not mind. She appreciated the sight of well-buttered scones, anyway, and of healthy people like Mrs. Blynn eating them. She was offered a ginger biscuit and declined it. Mrs. Blynn talked briefly to Elsie about her water pipes, about the reduced price of something at the butcher's this week, while Elsie stood with folded arms, leaning against the edge of the door, letting in a frigid draft on Mrs. Palmer. Elsie was taking in all Mrs. Blynn's information about prices. Now it was catsup at the health store. On sale this week.

“Call me if you'd like something,” Elsie said as usual, ducking out the door.

Mrs. Blynn was sunk in her scones, leaning over so the dripping butter would fall on the stone floor and not her skirt.

Mrs. Palmer shivered, and drew the covers up.

“Is your son coming?” Mrs. Blynn asked in a loud, clear voice, looking straight at Mrs. Palmer.

Mrs. Palmer did not know what Elsie had told Mrs. Blynn. She had told Elsie that he might come, that was all. “I haven't heard yet. He's probably waiting to tell me the exact time he'll come—or to find out if he can or not. You know how it is in the Air Force.”

“Um-m,” said Mrs. Blynn through a scone, as if of course she knew, having had a husband who had been in service. “He's your only son and heir, I take it.”

“My only one,” said Mrs. Palmer.

“Married?”

“Yes.” Then, anticipating the next question, “He has one child, a daughter, but she's still very small.”

Mrs. Blynn's eyes kept drifting to Mrs. Palmer's bedtable, and suddenly Mrs. Palmer realized what she was looking at—her amethyst pin. Mrs. Palmer had worn it for a few days on her cardigan sweater, until she had felt so bad, the pin ceased to lift her spirits and became almost tawdry, and she had removed it.

“That's a beautiful pin,” said Mrs. Blynn.

“Yes. My husband gave it to me years ago.”

Mrs. Blynn came over to look at it, but she did not touch it. The rectangular amethyst was set in small diamonds. She stood up, looking down at it with alert, bulging eyes. “I suppose you'll pass it on to your son—or his wife.”

Mrs. Palmer flushed with embarrassment, or anger. She hadn't thought to whom she would pass it on, particularly. “I suppose my son will get everything, as my heir.”

“I hope his wife appreciates it,” Mrs. Blynn said, turning on her heel with a smile, setting her cup down in its saucer.

Then Mrs. Palmer realized that for the last few days it was the pin Mrs. Blynn had been looking at when her eyes drifted over to the bedtable. When Mrs. Blynn had gone, Mrs. Palmer picked up the pin and held it in her palm protectively. Her jewel box was across the room. Elsie came in, and Mrs. Palmer said, “Elsie, would you mind handing me that blue box over there?”

“Certainly, ma'am,” Elsie said, swerving from the tea tray to the box on the top of the bookshelf. “This the one?”

“Yes, thank you.” Mrs. Palmer took it, opened the lid, and dropped the pin on her pearls. She had not much jewelry, perhaps ten or eleven pieces, but each piece meant a special occasion in her life, or a special period, and she loved them all. She looked at Elsie's blunt, homely profile as she bent over the tray, arranging everything so that it could be carried out at once.

“That Missus Blynn,” said Elsie, shaking her head, not looking at Mrs. Palmer. “Asked me if I thought your son was coming. How was I to know? I said yes, I thought so.” Now she stood with the tray, looking at Mrs. Palmer, and she smiled awkwardly, as if she had said perhaps too much. “The trouble with Missus Blynn is she's always nosing—if you'll pardon me saying so. Asking questions, you know?”