When We Argued All Night (4 page)

He looked out the window. Virginia no longer sat on the ground outside, and he didn't see Artie or the boat. He'd noticed oars behind the cabin that morning. Probably Artie had found them and taken Virginia rowing.

He knocked softly on the bedroom door. Myra? he called. I just want a book from my bag.

There was no answer. He knocked again, then opened the door.

The bedroom was narrow, not much longer or wider than the bunk bed. Opposite the door was a wooden chest of drawers, with Harold's battered suitcase on top. He saw nobody.

—Myra? In the bottom bunk was nothing but an army blanket, left haphazardly on the bare mattress. In the top bunk, a dark shape. He tiptoed across the room and opened his suitcase, regretting the sound of the spring releasing the catch.

—Can you help me? said Myra, sounding different: not mocking.

—Myra? Harold said once more. What's wrong?

—I'm frightened. Virginia went off somewhere.

Harold looked over the iron rail that would keep a sleeper from rolling out of the top bunk. Myra lay with a blanket pulled up to her chin. Her hair was loose on the pillow and on her face. Without thinking, Harold reached to smooth it and position it behind her ears, then pulled his hand back. But he'd touched her hair, which was soft, like a child's.

—There's nothing to be afraid of, he said. Was she worried about the woods? About bears, or—he didn't know what animals might live in these woods.

—I need Virginia, Myra said.

—Why? I think she went rowing with Artie.

—That's what I pay her for, staying with me, Myra said.

—You pay Virginia?

—I'm the one with the money, Myra said, with a low laugh. And she's the one with the brains.

—I doubt that. What do you need her for?

—I promised my parents, she said. They worry about my nerves.

Harold looked at this woman with her red hair. He thought she probably could be talked or joked out of these nerves. So that's what this is, he said, this huddling in the bed? Nerves?

—I had a dream, she said.

He did and didn't want to find out what she'd dreamed. Myra had been dressed when they ate breakfast, but the arms holding the blanket to her chest were bare. She seemed newly awake, rumpled, more attractive than before. Harold was additionally shocked that Gus had carried on with a woman who had nerves, but his discomfort made him want to help Myra. Gus wouldn't leave his good wife and sweet children for her, he was sure of that. He felt sorry for Myra, and that made him desire her. Pity gave a gleam to the otherwise ordinary, giving it possibility. And since Harold secretly despised—very slightly—those he pitied, pity made moral action
less
essential, a relief in his rigorous life.

He folded his arms and pressed them against the iron railing, ducking his head to smile down at Myra. What sort of a dream? he said. He sounded condescending, and winced, but Myra didn't seem to mind.

—Oh, ugly things, ugly things, she said promptly.

—What would you do if Virginia was here?

—You must think I'm a baby, Myra said. She propped herself on an elbow, holding the blanket so it covered her breasts. She seemed to be naked. She was silent, then said, Oh, she just listens, talks, maybe rubs my neck.

So Virginia was a paid companion who was supposed to pretend to be a friend, even a dependent friend.

—Would it help to hold my hand? Harold said. He unfolded his arms and placed one hand—large, pink, steady—on the edge of the mattress. Persuading Myra to get up and dress would be best, but he would prefer this to happen without dissipating the intimacy in the room. He said, Where are your clothes?

Myra jutted her chin toward a tangle of clothing at the bottom of the bed.

—Shall I wait in the other room while you get dressed? Then we can go for a walk. He didn't want to leave the room. Again, he heard thunder. Maybe Myra was afraid of thunderstorms.

—Just hand me those things, would you? Myra said, and with some embarrassment Harold grasped the tangle and pulled it toward her. She held up a brassiere. She had become a child, with no sense of propriety. It was alarming but oddly attractive. What a funny garment, she said.

Harold turned to the open suitcase teetering on the chest of drawers and began self-consciously arranging the items inside: socks, pants, books. He'd been foolish to think he could read so many books. The suitcase had become heavy during those hours of hitchhiking. He said, I don't know why I thought I could read so many books in a week! He sounded phony.

There were scrambling sounds from the bed. I'm coming down, Myra said. There's no room up here to get dressed.

Immediately he heard her move. Part of her—her buttocks?—brushed his shoulder. Now he was trapped in the small, dim bedroom with a naked or half-clothed woman behind him. The space between the wall and the bed was so narrow, he couldn't leave without squeezing against Myra.

She took her time. Harold, who rarely tried anything with women, knew he seemed so assured that he'd look foolish if he made a move that wasn't just right. He often envied Artie's boyishness and suspected that his friend—with his shrugs and whistles and confusion—had done more with girls than he had. Now he didn't know whether Myra was flirting, making fun of him, or just getting dressed in her own way.

—My father says I'm high-strung, Myra was saying. I love thunder, though. Harold wasn't sure he loved thunder. It seemed to be getting louder.

At last she reached around him and put her hands on his eyes. Okay, turn around! Of course she was wearing the same clothes as before: a gray skirt, a blue sweater, and heavy socks. Her red hair was pretty. As he made up his mind not to take any chances with her, he put his hands on her shoulders, or his hands put themselves on her shoulders. Strands of hair caught under his hands.

—Ooh, what are you reading? she said, shaking him off and pushing past him.

—Never mind, he said, and closed the suitcase with
The Portrait of a Lady
still inside, a scrap of paper marking his place. Scribners had brought it out—part of their reprint of the New York Edition—and Harold had saved up for it.

—Let's see if it's raining, he said. I don't know what's become of Artie and Virginia. He put his hand on her shoulder again, turned her, and ushered her into the main room of the cabin.

—I don't want to go outside, she said. I don't really like it here. His desire had turned to discomfort. He went out alone.

It was windy, blowing from behind him across the lake. He didn't see the boat. A thought he didn't like approached his mind, and he deliberately didn't think it. Harold walked slowly around the cabin, but if Artie and Virginia were nearby, he would have heard their voices. He had an image of them lying on a simplified forest floor—the stage set of a forest floor—rolling and grappling in passion. He wondered if Artie had discovered that Virginia was a paid companion. On the side of the cabin—the side with the bedroom window—was an ell, because the bedroom was not as wide as the house. Leaning against the wall in the ell was a rusted iron shovel, and behind it were the two oars Harold had noticed before.

They weren't much, as oars went. They had no pins, nothing to fit into oarlocks, but a skilled rower could manage, balancing them on the side of the boat. Probably Artie couldn't row, but that was irrelevant because Artie had not taken these oars. Harold continued around the cabin, back to where he'd stood facing the lake. The thought he'd rejected returned, an image more than a thought: Artie, the day before, struggling to swim, choking and sputtering. Harold swam with his eyes open and missed little.

It started to rain and lightning flashed. He knew he should stay away from the water. The boat was definitely gone. He searched the lake, now gray with raindrops, and at last he thought he saw the boat across the lake, far from shore and empty. Harold called, Artie! Virginia! He tried to call loudly but could not do it. Except for that rally in 1930, Artie did the shouting. He considered discussing the problem with Myra but didn't want to. He wished for binoculars, then knew he didn't need them. Nobody was in the boat. In the wind, Harold took off his pants and shirt and shoes and socks, and waded into the lake in his shorts. With rain falling into his open eyes each time he turned his face to breathe in, he began his angular, reliable crawl, elbows wide, in the direction of the boat. Cold and fear made his breath catch in his throat. He gave great gasps. In his mind he saw his mother weep and shout. He was terrified of the lightning but equally afraid of what might have happened. Artie's mother and his mother wept and shouted together. I had to try and save him, he explained in Yiddish to his mother as he swam. I knew it was too late, but I had to try and save him. He said it in Yiddish, in English, in Yiddish again to both mothers. After a while the use of his muscles and the rhythm of the stroke eased him slightly, and he breathed evenly. He didn't ask himself how he proposed to find Artie if he wasn't in the boat. He would be in the boat, huddled against the bottom. Or he'd be shouting from the nearest shore, singing something ridiculous. Or dog-paddling near the boat, and Harold would tow him back.

This trip was Harold's doing. He knew Gus and saw a possibility when Gus said he owned a little cabin. Harold had read Thoreau. He was trying to live like a nineteenth-century person in America, not one of the shouting, crowding immigrants who were his people. Gus was not Jewish: a newspaperman who'd once been Harold's editor, he was a sturdy, offhand Irish guy whose family ran a business he didn't want to work in.

Distances look shorter over water. The lake was not big, and Harold was ordinarily a tireless swimmer, taking regular breaths each time his left arm cleared the surface of the water. Yet this swim took a long time. He stopped and paddled to rest and look around. The boat was closer. It was definitely a boat. The storm was letting up, but he still saw lightning and heard thunder. He still saw nobody in the boat.

He was stupid, that was the trouble with Harold Abramovitz. For all his brilliance—he knew he was brilliant—he was stupid. It was stupid to risk his life for his boyish, exasperating friend. It was probably stupid to become a Communist, and he suspected that others at meetings found his earnestness comical. Not all of Harold's ideals were Communist ideals: he cared too much for the particular person. He would keep his ideals all his life, he knew. He was tired. He wasn't swimming well. He'd been stupid to think he could easily swim to the boat, rescue Artie, who could not even dog-paddle, and maybe drag Virginia in by the hair at the same time.

But now, at last, his arms aching, he was at the boat. He grasped the gunwale and pulled himself up, and the boat tipped toward him. Nobody was lying in the bottom. The shore closest to the boat looked almost as far away as the shore he'd just swum from, and nobody waved from the edge of the water. He turned to swim back to the cabin, but his arms ached, and now the wind was against him. The rain caught in his throat, and tiredness made him take a breath at the wrong time. He made himself slow down and hang, resting, his arms loose, until he caught his breath. If Artie was underneath, he was dead, and Harold knew no way to find out. He continued to hear thunder.

A
rtie had some trouble poking the boat away from the shore with his stick. It looked like rain but maybe not yet. For the second time in two days he took off his shoes and socks outdoors. Then he rolled up his pants, so he could step into the water and push the boat off again as it bumped its way along the shore, past the cabin and beyond it, along the side of the lake that was roughly parallel to the road. Frogs he never noticed until they jumped, splashed into the water at his approach, and Artie tried to remember if he'd ever before seen a living frog. For a minute he'd thought they were big bugs. He couldn't have said what he was looking for, but as he slogged, poled, and dragged his boat along the shore, his camera bag still bumping on his chest, he liked the intense feeling the dense trees gave him, as if they were dangerous, or in danger. The air had become heavier, grayer.

—
You had better reconsider,
he sang, to the tune of a line in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Then he remembered what the line came from. It was a song the protesters had made up, trying to prevent the layoffs from the WPA project where he'd worked. The boss was a bad man named Ridder. Poling his boat, bumping the shore here and there, Artie sang the whole thing, timing the phrases to fit the rhythm with which he jabbed the pole at the lake bottom.

Here's our answer Mr. Ridder,

You had better reconsider.

Stop the layoffs, Mr. Ridder,

Or [waving his stick in the air] we'll get rid 'er you!

The layoffs in question—of clerical workers—had not stopped, and Artie was among those laid off, but Mr. Ridder, the administrator, was gone. Only last week—Artie had plenty of time now—he'd participated in yet another demonstration, the death watch for Mr. Ridder, when the demonstrators lay on the ground around his car.

Something caught his eye. Farther along the lake, past a tangle of water lilies that kept snagging him, was some scrap or rag, something white that didn't belong. Soon—as he tried to make his way to the white scrap, at last having a destination—he got tired of the boat, which was sloshing with water anyway. The edge of the lake was so dense with reeds and bushes that he couldn't walk along the shore to see what the white thing was. He yanked the boat up a little way, so it would stay put, tied his shoes together with their laces and draped them around his neck. He felt like a donkey with the shoes bumping against the camera case, but he began to wade toward the scrap of white, using his pole as a walking stick and continuing to sing with occasional winces and stumbles. His pants were getting soaked. He was having a wonderful time, and when, years later, he'd tell his children the story of the cabin, he emphasized this outing: the boat, the frogs, the weeds, and the water. Forever he would advocate going outside and getting your feet wet, would always see himself as an outdoorsman, while other people—especially Brenda and Carol—might need to be reminded that nature was just out the window.