The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (55 page)

It was late fall when he come to us, there was a scum of ice on all the puddles and I could feel the winter cold and fearsome in my bones, the hunger inside me was already uncurling, it would pace through the first of the year but by spring it would be raging like a tiger, consuming me until the thaw when Maude could hunt again and we would get the truck down the road to town. I was done canning but I got the tomatoes we had hanging in the cellar and I canned some more; Maude went out and brought back every piece of meat she could shoot and all the grain and flour and powdered milk she could bring in one truckload, we had to lay in everything we could before the snow came and sealed us in. The week he come Maude found a jackrabbit stone dead in the road, it was frozen with its feet sticking straight up, and all the meat hanging in the cold-room had froze. Friday there was rime on the grass and when I looked out I seen footprints in the rime, I said Maude, someone is in the playhouse and we went out and there he was. He was asleep in the mess of clothes we always dressed up in, he had his head on the velvet gown my mother wore to the Exposition and his feet on the satin gown she married Father in, he had pulled her feather boa around his neck and her fox fur was wrapped around his loins.

Before he come, Maude and me would pass the winter talking about how it used to be, we would call up the past between us and look at it and Maude would end by blaming me. I could of married either Lister Hoffman or Harry Mead and left this place for good if it hadn’t been for you, Lizzie. I’d tell her, Hell, I never needed you. You didn’t marry them because you didn’t marry them, you was scared of it and you would use me for an excuse. She would get mad then. It’s a lie. Have it your way, I would tell her, just to keep the peace.

We both knew I would of married the first man that asked me, but nobody would, not even with all my money, nobody would ask me because of the taint. If nobody had of known then some man might of married me, but I went down to the field with Miles Harrison once while Father was still alive, and Miles and me, we almost, except that the blackness took me, right there in front of him, and so I never did. Nobody needed to know, but then Miles saw me fall down in the field. I guess it was him that put something between my
teeth so I wouldn’t bite my tongue, but when I come to myself he was gone. Next time I went to town they all looked at me funny, some of them would try and face up to me and be polite but they was all jumpy, thinking would I do it right there in front of them, would I froth much, would they get hurt, as soon as was decent they would say Excuse me, I got to, anything to get out of there fast. When I run into Miles after that day he wouldn’t look at me and there hasn’t been a man near me since then, not in more than fifty years, but Miles and me, we almost, and I have never stopped thinking about that.

Now Father is gone and my mother is gone and even Lister Hoffman and Miles Harrison and half the town kids that used to laugh at me, they are all gone, but Maude still reproaches me, we sit after supper and she says, If it hadn’t been for you I would have grandchildren now and I tell her I would of had them before ever she did because she never liked men, she would only suffer them to get children and that would be too much trouble, it would hurt. That’s a lie, Lizzie, she would say, Harry and me used to … and I would tell her You never, but Miles and me … Then we would both think about being young and having people’s hands on us but memory turns Maude bitter and she can never leave it at that, she says, It’s all your fault, but I know in my heart that people make their lives what they want them, and all she ever wanted was to be locked in here with nobody to make demands on her, she wanted to stay in this house with me, her dried-up sister, cold and safe, and if the hunger is on her, it has come on her late.

After a while we would start to make up stuff: Once I went with a boy all the way to Portland … Once I danced all night and half the morning, he wanted to kiss me on the place where my elbow bends … We would try to spin out the winter, but even that was not enough and so we would always be left with the hunger; no matter how much we laid in, the meat was always gone before the thaw and I suppose it was really our lives we was judging but we would decide nothing in the cans looked good to us and so we would sit and dream and hunger and wonder if we would die of it, but finally the thaw would come and Maude would look at me and sigh: If only we had another chance.

Well now perhaps we will.

We found him in the playhouse, maybe it was seeing him being in the playhouse, where we pretended so many times, asleep in the middle of my mother’s clothes or maybe it was something of mine; there was this boy, or man, something about him called up our best memories, there was promise wrote all over him. I am too old, I am all dried out, but I have never stopped thinking about that one time, and seeing that boy there, I could pretend he was Miles and I was still young. I guess he sensed us, he woke up fast and went into a crouch,
maybe he had a knife, and then I guess he saw it was just two big old ladies in Army boots, he said, I run away from the Marines, I need a place to sleep.

Maude said, I don’t care what you need, you got to get out of here, but when he stood up he wobbled. His hair fell across his head like the hair on a boy I used to know and I said, Maude, why don’t you say yes to something just this once.

He had on this denim shirt and pants like no uniform I ever seen and he was saying, Two things happened, I found out I might have to shoot somebody in the war and then I made a mistake and they beat me so I cut out of there. He smiled and he looked open. I stared hard at Maude and Maude finally looked at me and said, All right, come up to the house and get something to eat.

He said his name was Arnold but when we asked him Arnold what, he said Never mind. He was in the kitchen by then, he had his head bent over a bowl of oatmeal and some biscuits I had made, and when I looked at Maude she was watching the way the light slid across his hair. When we told him our names he said, You are both beautiful ladies, and I could see Maude’s hands go up to her face and she went into her room and when she came back I saw she had put color on her cheeks. While we was alone he said how good the biscuits was and wasn’t that beautiful silver, did I keep it polished all by myself and I said well yes, Maude brings in supplies but I am in charge of the house and making all the food. She come back then and saw us with our heads together and said to Arnold, I guess you’ll be leaving soon.

I don’t know, he said, they’ll be out looking for me with guns and dogs.

That’s no never mind of ours.

I never done anything bad in the Marines, we just had different ideas.

We both figured it was something worse but he looked so sad and tired and besides, it was nice to have him to talk to, he said, I just need a place to hole up for a while.

Maude said, You could always go back to your family.

He said, They never wanted me. They was always mean-hearted, not like you.

I took her aside and said, It wouldn’t kill you to let him stay on. Maude, it’s time we had a little life around here.

There won’t be enough food for three.

He won’t stay long. Besides, he can help you with the chores.

She was looking at his bright hair again, she said, like it was all my doing, If you want to let him stay I guess we can let him stay.

He was saying, I could work for my keep.

All right, I said, you can stay on until you get your strength.

My heart jumped. A man, I thought. A man. How can I explain it? It was like being young, having him around. I looked at Maude and saw some of the same things in her eyes, hunger and hope, and I thought,
You are ours now, Arnold, you are all ours. We will feed you and take care of you and when you want to wander we will let you wander, but we will never let you go.

Just until things die down a little, he was saying.

Maude had a funny grin. Just until things died down.

Well it must of started snowing right after dark that afternoon, because when we all waked up the house was surrounded. I said, Good thing you got the meat in, Maude, and she looked out, it was still blowing snow and it showed no signs of stopping; she looked out and said, I guess it is.

He was still asleep, he slept the day through except he stumbled down at dusk and dreamed over a bowl of my rabbit stew, I turned to the sink and when I looked back the stew was gone and the biscuits was gone and all the extra in the pot was gone, I had a little flash of fright, it was all disappearing too fast. Then Maude come over to me and hissed, The food, he’s eating all the food and I looked at his brown hands and his tender neck and I said, It don’t matter, Maude, he’s young and strong and if we run short he can go out into the snow and hunt. When we looked around next time he was gone, he had dreamed his way through half a pie and gone right back to bed.

Next morning he was up before the light, we sat together around the kitchen table and I thought how nice it was to have a man in the house, I could look at him and imagine anything I wanted. Then he got up and said, Look, I want to thank you for everything, I got to get along now, and I said, You can’t, and he said, I got things to do, I been here long enough, but I told him You can’t, and took him over to the window. The sun was up by then and there it was, snow almost to the window ledges, like we have every winter, and all the trees was shrouded, we could watch the sun take the snow and make it sparkle and I said, Beautiful snow, beautiful, and he only shrugged and said, I guess I’ll have to wait till it clears off some. I touched his shoulder. I guess you will. I knew not to tell him it would never clear off, not until late spring; maybe he guessed, anyway he looked so sad I gave him Father’s silver snuffbox to cheer him up.

He would divide his time between Maude and me, he played Rook with her and made her laugh so hard she gave him her pearl earrings and the brooch Father brought her back from Quebec. I gave him Grandfather’s diamond stickpin because he admired it, and for Christmas we gave him the cameos and Father’s gold-headed cane. Maude got the flu over New Year’s and Arnold and me spent New Year’s Eve together, I mulled some wine and he hung up some of Mama’s jewelry from the center light, and touched it and made it twirl. We lit
candles and played the radio, New Year’s Eve in Times Square and somebody’s Make-believe Ballroom, I went to pour another cup of wine and his hand was on mine on the bottle, I knew my lips was red for once and next day I gave him Papa’s fur-lined coat.

I guess Maude suspected there was something between us, she looked pinched and mean when I went in with her broth at lunch, she said, Where were you at breakfast and I said, Maude, it’s New Year’s Day, I thought I would like to sleep in for once. You were with him. I thought,
If she wants to think that about me, let her
, and I let my eyes go sleepy and I said, We had to see the New Year in, didn’t we? She was out of bed in two days, I have never seen anybody get up so fast after the flu. I think she couldn’t stand us being where she couldn’t see what we was up to every living minute.

Then I got sick and I knew what torture it must have been for her just laying there, I would call Maude and I would call her, and sometimes she would come and sometimes she wouldn’t come and when she finally did look in on me I would say, Maude, where have you been, and she would only giggle and not answer. There was meat cooking all the time, roasts and chops and chicken fricassee, when I said Maude, you’re going to use it up, she would only smile and say, I just had to show him who’s who in the kitchen, he tells me I’m a better cook than you ever was. After a while I got up, I had to even if I was dizzy and like to throw up, I had to get downstairs where I could keep an eye on them. As soon as I was up to it I made a roast of venison that would put hair on an egg and after that we would vie with each other in the kitchen, Maude and me. Once I had my hand on the skillet handle and she come over and tried to take it away, she was saying, Let me serve it up for him, I said, You’re a fool, Maude, I cooked this, and she hissed at me, through the steam, It won’t do you no good, Lizzie, it’s me he loves, and I just pushed her away and said, You goddam fool, he loves me, and I give him my amethysts just to prove it. A couple of days later I couldn’t find neither of them nowhere, I thought I heard noises up in the back room and I went up and if they was in there they wouldn’t answer, the door was locked and they wouldn’t say nothing, not even when I knocked and knocked and knocked. So the next day I took him up in my room and we locked the door and I told him a story about every piece in my jewel box, even the cheap ones, when Maude tapped and whined outside the door we would just shush, and when we did come out and she said, All right, Lizzie, what was you doing in there, I only giggled and wouldn’t tell.

She shouldn’t of done it, we was all sitting around the table after dinner and
he looked at me hard and said, You know something, Arnold, I wouldn’t get too close to Lizzie, she has fits. Arnold only tried to look like it didn’t matter, but after Maude went to bed I went down to make sure it was all right. He was still in the kitchen, whittling, and when I tried to touch his hand he pulled away.

I said, Don’t be scared, I only throw one in a blue moon.

He said, That don’t matter.

Then what’s the matter?

I don’t know, Miss Lizzie, I just don’t think you trust me.

Course I trust you, Arnold, don’t I give you everything?

He just looked sad. Everything but trust.

I owe you so much, Arnold, you make me feel so young.