“Yes, but she’s very fond of her father, too.”

“Fonder than she is of you?”

“No. Not really. But he’s bought her a goat to play with now. He takes

her to school on his way to work, and he picks her up at four. Neglects

his business for her—and what more can you ask of a man?”

“You didn’t see her Christmas, did you?” Therese said.

“No. Because of something that happened in the lawyer’s office. That was

the afternoon Harge’s lawyer wanted to see us both, and Harge had

brought Rindy, too. Rindy said she wanted to go to Harge’s house for

Christmas. Rindy didn’t know I wasn’t going to be there this year. They

have a big tree that grows on the lawn and they always decorate it, so

Rindy was set on it. Anyway, it made quite an impression on the lawyer,

you know, the child asking to go home for Christmas with her father. And

naturally I didn’t want to tell Rindy then I wasn’t going, or she’d have

been disappointed. I couldn’t have said it anyway, in front of the

lawyer. Harge’s machinations are enough.”

Therese stood there, crushing the unlighted cigarette in her fingers.

Carol’s voice was calm, as it might have been if she talked to Abby,

Therese thought. Carol had never said so much to her before. “But the

lawyer understood?”

Carol shrugged. “It’s Harge’s lawyer, not mine. So I agreed to the

three-month arrangement now, because I don’t want her to be tossed back

and forth. If I’m to have her nine months and Harge three—it might as

well start now.”

“You won’t even visit her?”

Carol waited so long to answer, Therese thought she was not going to.

“Not very often. The family isn’t too cordial. I talk to Rindy every day

on the telephone. Sometimes she calls me.”

“Why isn’t the family cordial?”

“They never cared for me. They’ve been complaining ever since Harge met

me at some deb party. They’re very good at criticizing. I sometimes

wonder just who would pass with them.”

“What do they criticize you for?”

“For having a furniture shop, for instance. But that didn’t last a year.

Then for not playing bridge, or not liking to. They pick out the funny

things, the most superficial things.”

“They sound horrid.”

“They’re not horrid. One’s just supposed to conform. I know what they’d

like, they’d like a blank they could fill in. A person already filled in

disturbs them terribly. Shall we play some music? Don’t you ever like

the radio?”

“Sometimes.”

Carol leaned against the window sill. “And now Rindy’s got television

every day. Hopalong Cassidy. How she’d love to go out West. That’s the

last doll I’ll ever buy for her, Therese. I only got it because she said

she wanted one, but she’s outgrown them.”

Behind Carol, an airport searchlight made a pale sweep in the night, and

disappeared. Carol’s voice seemed to linger in the darkness. In its

richer, happier tone, Therese could hear the depths within her where she

loved Rindy, deeper than she would probably ever love anyone else.

“Harge doesn’t make it easy for you to see her, does he?”

“You know that,” Carol said.

“I don’t see how he could be so much in love with you.”

“It’s not love. It’s a compulsion. I think he wants to control me. I

suppose if I were a lot wilder but never had an opinion on anything

except his opinion—Can you follow all this?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never done anything to embarrass him socially, and that’s all he

cares about really. There’s a certain woman at the club I wish he’d

married. Her life is entirely filled with giving exquisite little dinner

parties and being carried out of the best bars feet first—She’s made her

husband’s advertising business a great success, so he smiles on her

little faults. Harge wouldn’t smile, but he’d have some definite reason

for complaint. I think he picked me out like a rug for his living room,

and he made a bad mistake. I doubt if he’s capable of loving anyone,

really. What he has is a kind of acquisitiveness, which isn’t much

separate from his ambition. It’s getting to be a disease, isn’t it, not

being able to love?” She looked at Therese. “Maybe it’s the times. If

one wanted to, one could make out a case for racial suicide. Man trying

to catch up with his own destructive machines.”

Therese said nothing. It reminded her of a thousand conversations with

Richard, Richard mingling war and big business and Congressional

witch-hunts and finally certain people he knew into one grand enemy,

whose only collective label was hate. Now Carol, too. It shook Therese

in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like

death or dying or killing. Those words were somehow future, and this was

present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to _know_, know anything, for

certain, had jammed itself in her throat so for a moment she felt she

could hardly breathe. Do you think, do you think, it began. Do you think

both of us will die violently someday, be suddenly shut off? But even

that question wasn’t definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after

all: I don’t want to die yet without knowing you. Do you feel the same

way, Carol? She could have uttered the last question, but she could not

have said all that went before it.

“You’re the young generation,” Carol said. “And what have you got to

say?” She sat down on the glider.

“I suppose the first thing is not to be afraid.” Therese turned and saw

Carol’s smile. “You’re smiling because you think I am afraid, I

suppose.”

“You’re about as weak as this match.” Carol held it burning for a moment

after she lighted her cigarette. “But given the right conditions, you

could burn a house down, couldn’t you?”

“Or a city.”

“But you’re even afraid to take a little trip with me. You’re afraid

because you think you haven’t got enough money.”

“That’s not it.”

“You’ve got some very strange values, Therese. I asked you to go with

me, because it would give me pleasure to have you. I should think it’d

be good for you, too, and good for your work. But you’ve got to spoil it

by a silly pride about money. Like that handbag you gave me. Out of all

proportion. Why don’t you take it back, if you need the money? I don’t

need the handbag. It gave you pleasure to give it to me, I suppose. It’s

the same thing, you see. Only I make sense and you don’t.” Carol walked

by her and turned to her again, poised with one foot forward and her

head up, the short blond hair as unobtrusive as a statue’s hair. “Well,

do you think it’s funny?”

Therese was smiling. “I don’t care about the money,” she said quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that,” Therese said. “I’ve got the money to go. I’ll go.”

Carol stared at her. Therese saw the sullenness leave her face, and then

Carol began to smile, too, with surprise, a little incredulously.

“Well, all right,” Carol said. “I’m delighted.”

“I’m delighted.”

“What brought this happy change about?”

Doesn’t she really know, Therese thought. “You do seem to care whether I

go or not,” Therese said simply.

“Of course I care. I asked you, didn’t I?” Carol said, still smiling,

but with a twist of her toe, she turned her back on Therese and walked

toward the green room.

Therese watched her go, her hands in her pockets and her moccasins

making light slow clicks on the floor. Therese looked at the empty

doorway. Carol would have walked out exactly the same way, she thought,

if she had said no, she wouldn’t go. She picked up her half-finished

demitasse, then set it down again.

She went out and across the hall, to the door of Carol’s room. “What are

you doing?”

Carol was bending over her dressing table, writing. “What am I doing?”

She stood up and slipped a piece of paper into her pocket. She was

smiling now, really smiling in her eyes, like the moment in the kitchen

with Abby. “Something,” Carol said. “Let’s have some music.”

“Fine.” A smile spread over her face.

“Why don’t you get ready for bed first? It’s late, do you know that?”

“It always gets late with you.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“I don’t feel like going to bed tonight.”

Carol crossed the hall to the green room. “You get ready. You’ve got

circles under your eyes.”

Therese undressed quickly in the room with the twin beds. The phonograph

in the other room played “Embraceable You.” Then the telephone rang.

Therese opened the top drawer of the bureau. It was empty except for a

couple of men’s handkerchiefs, an old clothesbrush, and a key. And a few

papers in the corner. Therese picked up a card covered in isinglass. It

was an old driver’s license that belonged to Harge. Hargess Foster Aird.

Age: 37. Height: 5'8½". Weight: 168. Hair: blond. Eyes: blue. She knew

all that. A 1950 Oldsmobile. Color: dark blue. Therese put it back and

closed the drawer. She went to the door and listened.

“I am sorry, Tessie, but I did get stuck after all,” Carol was saying

regretfully, but her voice was happy. “Is it a good party?... Well, I’m

not dressed and I’m tired.”

Therese went to the bed table and got a cigarette from the box there. A

Philip Morris. Carol had put them there, not the maid, Therese knew,

because Carol remembered that she liked them. Naked now, Therese stood

listening to the music. It was a song she didn’t know.

Was Carol on the telephone again?

“Well, I don’t like it,” she heard Carol say, half angry, half joking,

“one damn bit.”

_... it’s easy to live ... when you’re in love ..._

“How do I know what kind of people they are?... Oh-ho! Is that so?”

Abby, Therese knew. She blew her smoke out and snuffed at the slightly

sweet smelling wisps of it, remembering the first cigarette she had ever

smoked, a Philip Morris, on the roof of a dormitory at the Home, four of

them passing it around.

“Yes, we’re going,” Carol said emphatically. “Well, I am. Don’t I sound

it?”

_... For you ... maybe I’m a fool but it’s fun ... People say you rule

me with one ... wave of your hand ... darling, it’s grand ... they just

don’t understand ..._

It was a good song. Therese closed her eyes and leaned on the half-open

door, listening. Behind the voice was a slow piano that rippled all over

the keyboard. And a lazy trumpet.

Carol said, “That’s nobody’s business but mine, is it?... Nonsense!” and

Therese smiled at her vehemence.

Therese closed the door. The phonograph had dropped another record.

“Why don’t you come say hello to Abby?” Carol said.

Therese had ducked behind the bathroom door because she was naked.

“Why?”

“Come along,” Carol said, and Therese put on a robe and went.

“Hello,” Abby said. “I hear you’re going.”

“Is that news to you?”

Abby sounded silly, as if she wanted to talk all night. She wished

Therese a pleasant trip, and told her about the roads in the corn belt,

how bad they could be in winter.

“Will you forgive me if I was rude today?” Abby said for the second

time. “I like you O.K., Therese.”

“Cut it, cut it!” Carol called down.

“She wants to talk to you again,” Therese said.

“Tell Abigail I’m in the tub.”

Therese told her, and got away.

Carol had brought a bottle and two little glasses into the room.

“What’s the matter with Abby?” Therese asked.

“What do you mean, what’s the matter with her?” Carol poured a brown

colored liquor into the two glasses. “I think she’s had a couple

tonight.”

“I know. But why did she want to have lunch with me?”

“Well—I guess a lot of reasons. Try some of this stuff.”

“It just seems vague,” Therese said.

“What does?”

“The whole lunch.”

Carol gave her a glass. “Some things are always vague, darling.”

It was the first time Carol had called her darling. “What things?”

Therese asked. She wanted an answer, a definite answer.

Carol sighed. “A lot of things. The most important things. Taste your

drink.”

Therese sipped it, sweet and dark brown, like coffee, with the sting of

alcohol. “Tastes good.”

“You would think so.”

“Why do you drink it if you don’t like it?”

“Because it’s different. This is to our trip, so it’s got to be

something different.” Carol grimaced and drank the rest of her glass.

In the light of the lamp, Therese could see all the freckles on half of

Carol’s face. Carol’s white looking eyebrow bent like a wing around the

curve of her forehead. Therese felt ecstatically happy all at once.

“What’s that song that was playing before, the one with just the voice

and the piano?”

“Hum it.”

She whistled part of it, and Carol smiled.

“‘Easy Living,’” Carol said. “That’s an old one.”

“I’d like to hear it again.”

“I’d like you to get to bed. I’ll play it again.”

Carol went into the green room, and stayed there while it played.

Therese stood by the door of her room, listening, smiling.

_... I’ll never regret ... the years I’m giving ... They’re easy to

give, when you’re in love ... I’m happy to do whatever I do for you ..._

That was her song. That was everything she felt about Carol. She went in

the bathroom before it was over, and turned the water on in the tub, got

in and let the greenish looking water tumble about her feet.

“Hey!” Carol called. “Have you ever been to Wyoming?”

“No.”

“It’s time you saw America.”

Therese lifted the dripping rag and pressed it against her knee. The

water was so high now, her breasts looked like flat things floating on

the surface. She studied them, trying to decide what they looked like

besides what they were.

“Don’t go to sleep in there,” Carol called in a preoccupied voice, and

Therese knew she was sitting on the bed, looking at a map.

“I won’t.”

“Well, some people do.”

“Tell me more about Harge,” she said as she dried herself. “What does he

do?”

“A lot of things.”

“I mean, what’s his business?”

“Real estate investment.”

“What’s he like? Does he like to go to the theater? Does he like

people?”

“He likes a little group of people who play golf,” Carol said with

finality. Then in a louder voice, “And what else? He’s very, very

meticulous about everything. But he forgot his best razor. It’s in the

medicine cabinet and you can see it if you want to and you probably do.

I’ve got to mail it to him, I suppose.”

Therese opened the medicine cabinet. She saw the razor. The medicine

cabinet was still full of men’s things, after-shaving lotions and lather

brushes. “Was this his room?” she asked as she came out of the bathroom.

“Which bed did he sleep in?”

Carol smiled. “Not yours.”

“Can I have some more of this?” Therese asked, looking at the liqueur

bottle.

“Of course.”

“Can I kiss you good night?”

Carol was folding the road map, pursing her lips as if she would

whistle, waiting. “No,” she said.

“Why not?” Anything seemed possible tonight.

“I’ll give you this instead.” Carol pulled her hand out of her pocket.

It was a check. Therese read the sum, two hundred dollars, made out to

her. “What’s this for?”

“For the trip. I don’t want you to spend the money you’ll need for that

union membership thing.” Carol took a cigarette. “You won’t need all of

that, I just want you to have it.”

“But I don’t need it,” Therese said. “Thanks. I don’t care if I spend

the union money.”

“No back talk,” Carol interrupted her. “It gives me pleasure, remember?”

“But I won’t take it.” She sounded curt, so she smiled a little as she

put the check down on the table top by the liqueur bottle. But she had

thumped the check down, too. She wished she could explain it to Carol.

It didn’t matter at all, the money, but since it did give Carol

pleasure, she hated not to take it. “I don’t like the idea,” Therese

said. “Think of something else.” She looked at Carol. Carol was watching

her, was not going to argue with her, Therese was glad to see.

“To give me pleasure?” Carol asked.

Therese’s smile broadened. “Yes,” she said, and picked up the little

glass.

“All right,” Carol said. “I’ll think. Good night.” Carol had stopped by

the door.

It was a funny way of saying good night, Therese thought, on such an

important night. “Good night,” Therese answered.

She turned to the table and saw the check again. But it was for Carol to

tear up. She slid it under the edge of the dark-blue linen table runner,

out of sight.

chapter twelve

January.

It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold

sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was

a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory:

the woman she saw peering anxiously by the light of a match at the names

in a dark doorway, the man who scribbled a message and handed it to his

friend before they parted on the sidewalk, the man who ran a block for a

bus and caught it. Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January

was a two-faced month, jangling like jester’s bells, crackling like snow

crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar

yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.

A young man named Red Malone and a baldheaded carpenter worked with her

on the _Small Rain_ set. Mr. Donohue was very pleased with it. He said

he had asked a Mr. Baltin to come in and see her work. Mr. Baltin was a

graduate of a Russian academy, and had designed a few sets for theaters

in New York. Therese had never heard of him. She tried to get Mr.

Donohue to arrange an appointment for her to see Myron Blanchard or Ivor

Harkevy, but Mr. Donohue never promised anything. He couldn’t, Therese

supposed.

Mr. Baltin came in one afternoon, a tall, bent man in a black hat and a

seedy overcoat, and looked intently at the work she showed him. She had

brought only three or four models down to the theatre, her very best

ones. Mr. Baltin told her of a play that was to start in production in

about six weeks. He would be glad to recommend her as an assistant, and

Therese said that would work out very well, because she would be out of

town until then, anyway. Everything was working out very well in these

last days. Mr. Andronich had promised her a two-week job in Philadelphia

in the middle of February, which would be just about the time she would

be back from the trip with Carol. Therese wrote down the name and

address of the man Mr. Baltin knew.

“He’s looking for someone now, so call him the first of the week,” Mr.

Baltin said. “It’ll just be a helper’s job, but his helper, a pupil of

mine, is working with Harkevy now.”

“Oh. Do you suppose you—or he could arrange for me to see Harkevy?”

“Nothing easier. All you have to do is call Harkevy’s studio and ask to

speak to Charles. Charles Winant. Tell him that you’ve spoken with me.

Let’s see—call him Friday. Friday afternoon around three.”

“All right. Thank you.” Friday was a whole week off. Harkevy was not

unapproachable, Therese had heard, but he had the reputation of never

making appointments, much less keeping them if he did make them, because

he was very busy. But maybe Mr. Baltin knew.

“And don’t forget to call Kettering,” Mr. Baltin said as he left.

Therese looked again at the name he had given her: Adolph Kettering,

Theatrical Investments, Inc., at a private address. “I’ll call him

Monday morning. Thanks a lot.”

That was the day, a Saturday, when she was to meet Richard in the

Palermo after work. It was the seventh of January, eleven days before

she and Carol planned to leave. She saw Phil standing with Richard at

the bar.

“Well, how’s the old Cat?” Phil asked her, dragging up a stool for her.

“Working Saturdays, too?”

“The cast didn’t work. Just my department,” she said.

“When’s the opening?”

“The twenty-first.”

“Look,” Richard said. He pointed to a spot of dark-green paint on her

skirt.

“I know. I did that days ago.”

“What would you like to drink?” Phil asked her.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have a beer, thanks.” Richard had turned his

back on Phil, who stood on the other side of him, and she sensed an

ill-feeling between them. “Did you do any painting today?” she asked

Richard.

Richard’s mouth was down at both corners. “Had to pinch hit for some

driver who was sick. Ran out of gas in the middle of Long Island.”

“Oh. That’s rotten. Maybe you’d rather paint than go anywhere tomorrow.”

They had talked of going over to Hoboken tomorrow, just to walk around

and eat at the Clam House. But Carol would be in town tomorrow, and had

promised to call her.

“I’ll paint if you’ll sit for me,” Richard said.

Therese hesitated uncomfortably. “I just don’t feel in the mood for

sitting these days.”

“All right. It’s not important.” He smiled. “But how can I ever paint

you if you’ll never sit?”

“Why don’t you do it out of the air?”

Phil slid his hand out and held the bottom of her glass. “Don’t drink

that. Have something better. I’ll drink this.”

“All right. I’ll try a rye and water.”

Phil was standing on the other side of her now. He looked cheerful, but

a little dark around the eyes. For the past week, in a sullen mood, he

had been writing a play. He had read a few scenes of it aloud at his New

Year’s party. Phil called it an extension of Kafka’s _Metamorphosis_.

She had drawn a rough sketch for a set New Year’s morning, and showed it

to Phil when she came down to see him. And suddenly it occurred to her,

that was what was the matter with Richard.

“Terry, I wish you’d make a model we can photograph from that sketch you

showed me. I’d like to have a set to go with the script.” Phil pushed

the rye and water toward her, and leaned on the bar close beside her.

“I might,” Therese said. “Are you really going to try to get it

produced?”

“Why not?” Phil’s dark eyes challenged her above his smile. He snapped

his fingers at the barman. “Check?”

“I’ll pay,” Richard said.

“No, you won’t. This is mine.” Phil had his old black wallet in his

hand.

His play would never be produced, Therese thought, might not even be

finished, because Phil’s moods were capricious.

“I’ll be moving along,” Phil said. “Drop by soon, Terry. Cheerio, Rich.”

She watched him go off and up the little front stairs, shabbier than she

had ever seen him in his sandals and threadbare polo coat, yet with an

attractive nonchalance about his shabbiness. Like a man walking through

his house in his favorite old bathrobe, Therese thought. She waved back

at him through the front window.

“I hear you took Phil sandwiches and beer New Year’s Day,” Richard said.

“Yes. He called up and said he had a hangover.”

“Why didn’t you mention it?”

“I forgot, I suppose. It wasn’t important.”

“Not important. If you—” Richard’s stiff hand gestured slowly,

hopelessly. “If you spend half the day in a guy’s apartment, bringing

him sandwiches and beer? Didn’t it occur to you I might have wanted some

sandwiches, too?”

“If you did, you had plenty of people to get them for you. We’d eaten

and drunk everything in Phil’s house. Remember?”

Richard nodded his long head, still smiling the downward, disgruntled

smile. “And you were alone with him, just the two of you.”

“Oh, Richard—” She remembered, and it was so unimportant. Dannie hadn’t

been back from Connecticut that day. He had spent New Year’s at the

house of one of his professors. She had hoped Dannie would come in that

afternoon at Phil’s, but Richard would probably never think that, never

guess she liked Dannie a lot better than Phil.

“If any other girl did that, I’d suspect something was brewing and I’d

be right,” Richard went on.

“I think you’re being silly.”

“I think you’re being naïve.” Richard was looking at her stonily,

resentfully, and Therese thought, it surely couldn’t be only this he was

so resentful about. He resented the fact that she wasn’t and never could

be what he wished her to be, a girl who loved him passionately and would

love to go to Europe with him. A girl like herself, with her face, her

ambitions, but a girl who adored him. “You’re not Phil’s type, you

know,” he said.

“Whoever said I was? Phil?”

“That twerp, that half-baked dilettante,” Richard murmured. “And he has

the nerve to sound off tonight and say you don’t give a damn for me.”

“He hasn’t any right to say that. I don’t discuss you with him.”

“Oh, that’s a fine answer. Meaning if you had, he’d know you didn’t give

a damn, eh?” Richard said it quietly, but his voice shook with anger.

“What’s Phil suddenly got against you?” she asked.

“That’s not the point!”

“What is the point?” she said impatiently.

“Oh, Terry, let’s stop it.”

“You can’t find any point,” she said, but seeing Richard turn away from

her and shift his elbows on the bar, almost as if he writhed physically

under her words, she felt a sudden compassion for him. It was not now,

not last week that galled him, but the whole past and future futility of

his own feelings about her.

Richard plunged his cigarette into the ash tray on the bar. “What do you

want to do tonight?” he asked.

Tell him about the trip with Carol, she thought. Twice before she had

meant to tell him, and put it off. “Do you want to do anything?” She

emphasized the last word.

“Of course,” he said depressedly. “What do you say we have dinner, then

call up Sam and Joan? Maybe we can walk up and see them tonight.”

“All right.” She hated it. Two of the most boring people she had ever

met, a shoe clerk and a secretary, happily married on West Twentieth

Street, and she knew Richard meant to show her an ideal life in theirs,

to remind her that they might live together the same way one day. She

hated it, and any other night she might have protested, but the

compassion for Richard was still in her, dragging after it an amorphous

wake of guilt and a necessity to atone. Suddenly, she remembered a

picnic they had had last summer, off the road near Tarrytown, remembered

precisely Richard’s reclining on the grass, working ever so slowly with

his pocketknife at the cork in the wine bottle, while they talked

of—what? But she remembered that moment of contentment, that conviction

that they shared something wonderfully real and rare together that day,

and she wondered now where it had gone to, on what it had been based.

For now even his long flat figure standing beside her seemed to oppress

her with its weight. She forced down her resentment, but it only grew

heavy inside her, like a thing of substance. She looked at the chunky

figures of the two Italian workmen standing at the bar, and at the two

girls at the end of the bar whom she had noticed before, and now that

they were leaving, she saw that they were in slacks. One had hair cut

like a boy’s. Therese looked away, aware that she avoided them, avoided

being seen looking at them.

“Want to eat here? Are you hungry yet?” Richard asked.

“No. Let’s go somewhere else.”

So they went out and walked north, in the general direction of where Sam

and Joan lived.

Therese rehearsed the first words until all their sense was rubbed out.

“Remember Mrs. Aird, the woman you met in my house that day?”

“Sure.”

“She’s invited me to go on a trip with her, a trip West in a car for a

couple of weeks or so. I’d like to go.”

“West? California?” Richard said surprisedly. “Why?”

“Why?”

“Well—do you know her as well as that?”

“I’ve seen her a few times.”

“Oh. Well, you didn’t mention it.” Richard walked along with his hands

swinging at his sides, looking at her. “Just the two of you?”

“Yes.”

“When would you be leaving?”

“Around the eighteenth.”

“Of this month?—Then you won’t get to see your show.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s so much to miss.”

“Then it’s definite?”

“Yes.”

He was silent a moment. “What kind of a person is she? She doesn’t drink

or anything, does she?”

“No.” Therese smiled. “Does she look like she drinks?”

“No. I think she’s very good looking, in fact. It’s just damned

surprising, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“You so seldom make up your mind about anything. You’ll probably change

your mind again.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Maybe I can see her again sometime with you. Why don’t you arrange it?”

“She said she’d be in the city tomorrow. I don’t know how much time

she’s got—or really whether she’ll call or not.”

Richard didn’t continue and neither did Therese. They did not mention

Carol again that evening.

Richard spent Sunday morning painting, and came to Therese’s apartment

around two. He was there when Carol telephoned a little later. Therese

told her that Richard was with her, and Carol said, “Bring him along.”

Carol said she was near the Plaza, and they might meet there in the Palm

Room.

Half an hour later, Therese saw Carol look up at them from a table near

the center of the room, and almost like the first time, like the echo of

an impact that had been tremendous, Therese was jolted by the sight of

her. Carol was wearing the same black suit with the green and gold scarf

that she had worn the day of the luncheon. But now Carol paid more

attention to Richard than to her.

The three of them talked of nothing, and Therese, seeing the calm in

Carol’s gray eyes that only once turned to her, seeing a quite ordinary

expression on Richard’s face, felt a kind of disappointment. Richard had

gone out of his way to meet her, but Therese thought it was even less

from curiosity than because he had nothing else to do. She saw Richard

looking at Carol’s hands, the nails manicured in a bright red, saw him

notice the ring with the clear green sapphire, and the wedding ring on

the other hand. Richard could not say they were useless hands, idle

hands, despite the longish nails. Carol’s hands were strong, and they

moved with an economy of motion. Her voice emerged from the flat murmur

of other voices around them, talking of nothing at all with Richard, and

once she laughed.

Carol looked at her. “Did you tell Richard we might go on a trip?” she

asked.

“Yes. Last night.”

“West?” Richard asked.

“I’d like to go up to the Northwest. It depends on the roads.”

And Therese was suddenly impatient. Why did they sit here having a

conference about it? Now they were talking about temperatures, and the

state of Washington.

“Washington’s my home state,” Carol said. “Practically.”

Then a few moments later, Carol asked if anyone wanted to take a walk in

the park. Richard paid the check for their beer and coffee, pulling a

bill from the tangle of bills and change that bulged a pocket of his

trousers. How indifferent he was to Carol after all, Therese thought.

She felt he didn’t see her, as he sometimes hadn’t seen figures in rock

or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him. He was

looking down at the table now, the thin careless line of his mouth half

smiling as he straightened up and shoved his hand quickly through his

hair.

They walked from the entrance of the park at Fifty-ninth Street toward

the zoo, and through the zoo at a strolling pace. They walked on under

the first bridge over the path, where the path bent and the real park

began. The air was cold and still, a little overcast, and Therese felt a

motionlessness about everything, a lifeless stillness even in their

slowly moving figures.

“Shall I hunt up some peanuts?” Richard asked.

Carol was stooped at the edge of the path, holding her fingers out to a

squirrel. “I have something,” she said softly, and the squirrel started

at her voice but advanced again, seized her fingers in a nervous grip

and fixed its teeth on something, and dashed away. Carol stood up,

smiling. “Had something in my pocket from this morning.”

“Do you feed squirrels out where you live?” Richard asked.

“Squirrels and chipmunks,” Carol replied.

What dull things they talked of, Therese thought.

Then they sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette, and Therese, watching a

diminutive sun bring its orange fire down finally into the scraggly

black twigs of a tree, wished the night were here already and that she

were alone with Carol. They began to walk back. If Carol had to go home

now, Therese thought, she would do something violent. Like jump off the

Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Or take the three benzedrine tablets Richard

had given her last week.

“Would you people like to have some tea somewhere?” Carol asked as they

neared the zoo again. “How about that Russian place over by Carnegie

Hall?”

“Rumpelmayer’s is right here,” Richard said. “Do you like

Rumpelmayer’s?”

Therese sighed. And Carol seemed to hesitate. But they went there.

Therese had been here once with Angelo, she remembered. She did not care

for the place. Its bright lights gave her a feeling of nakedness, and it

was annoying not to know if one were looking at a real person or at a

reflection in a mirror.

“No, none of that, thanks,” Carol said, shaking her head at the great

tray of pastry the waitress was holding.

But Richard chose something, chose two pastries, though Therese had

declined.

“What’s that for, in case I change my mind?” she asked him, and Richard

winked at her. His nails were dirty again, she noticed.

Richard asked Carol what kind of car she had, and they began discussing

the merits of various car makes. Therese saw Carol glance about at the

tables in front of her. She doesn’t like it here either, Therese

thought. Therese stared at a man in the mirror that was set obliquely

behind Carol. His back was to Therese, and he leaned forward, talking

animatedly to a woman, jerking his spread left hand for emphasis. She

looked at the thin, middle-aged woman he spoke to, and back at him,

wondering if the aura of familiarity about him were real or an illusion

like the mirror, until a memory fragile as a bubble swam upward in her

consciousness and burst at the surface. It was Harge.

Therese glanced at Carol, but if Carol had noticed him, she thought,

Carol would not know that he was in the mirror behind her. A moment

later, Therese looked over her shoulder, and saw Harge in profile, much

like one of the images she carried in her memory from the house—the

short high nose, the full lower face, the receding twist of blond hair

above the usual hairline. Carol must have seen him, only three tables

away to her left.

Carol looked from Richard to Therese. “Yes,” she said to her, smiling a

little, and turned back to Richard and went on with her conversation.

Her manner was just as before, Therese thought, not different at all.

Therese looked at the woman with Harge. She was not young, not very

attractive. She might have been one of his relatives.

Then Therese saw Carol mash out a long cigarette. Richard had stopped

talking. They were ready to leave. Therese was looking at Harge the

moment he saw Carol. After his first glimpse of her, his eyes drew

almost shut as if he had to squint to believe her, and then he said

something to the woman he was with and stood up and went to her.

“Carol,” Harge said.

“Hello, Harge.” She turned to Therese and Richard. “Would you excuse me

a minute?”

Watching from the doorway where she stood with Richard, Therese tried to

see it all, to see beyond the pride and aggressiveness in Hargie’s

anxious, forward leaning figure that was not quite so tall as the crown

of Carol’s hat, to see beyond Carol’s acquiescent nods as he spoke, to

surmise not what they talked of now but what they had said to each other

five years ago, three years ago, that day of the picture in the rowboat.

Carol had loved him once, and that was hard to remember.

“Can we get free now, Terry?” Richard asked her.

Therese saw Carol nod good-by to the woman at Harge’s table, then turn

away from Harge. Harge looked past Carol, to her and Richard, and

without apparently recognizing her, he went back to his table.

“I’m sorry,” Carol said as she rejoined them.

On the sidewalk, Therese drew Richard aside and said, “I’ll say good

night, Richard. Carol wants me to visit a friend of hers tonight with

her.”

“Oh.” Richard frowned. “I had those concert tickets for tonight, you

know.”

Therese remembered suddenly. “Alex’s. I forgot. I’m sorry.”

He said gloomily, “It’s not important.”

It wasn’t important. Richard’s friend Alex was accompanying somebody in

a violin concert, and had given Richard the tickets, she remembered,

weeks ago.

“You’d rather see her than me, wouldn’t you?” he said.

Therese saw that Carol was looking for a taxi. Carol would leave them

both in a moment. “You might have mentioned the concert this morning,

Richard, reminded me, at least.”

“Was that her husband?” Richard’s eyes narrowed under his frown. “What

is this, Terry?”

“What’s what?” she said. “I don’t know her husband.”

Richard waited a moment, then the frown left his eyes. He smiled, as if

he conceded he had been unreasonable. “Sorry. I just took it for granted

I’d see you tonight.” He walked toward Carol. “Good night,” he said.

He looked as if he were leaving by himself, and Carol said, “Are you

going downtown? Maybe I can drop you.”

“I’m walking, thanks.”

“I thought you two had a date,” Carol said to Therese.

Therese saw that Richard was lingering, and she walked toward Carol, out

of his hearing. “Not an important one. I’d rather stay with you.”

A taxi had slid up beside Carol. Carol put her hand on the door handle.

“Well, neither is our date so important, so why don’t you go on with

Richard tonight?”

Therese glanced at Richard, and saw that he had heard her.

“Bye-bye, Therese,” Carol said.

“Good night,” Richard called.

“Good night,” Therese said, and watched Carol pull the taxi door shut

after her.

“So,” Richard said.

Therese turned toward him. She wouldn’t go to the concert, and neither

would she do anything violent, she knew, nothing more violent than walk

quickly home and get to work on the set she wanted to finish by Tuesday

for Harkevy. She could see the whole evening ahead, with a half-dismal,

half-defiant fatality, in the second it took for Richard to walk to her.

“I still don’t want to go to the concert,” she said.

To her surprise, Richard stepped back and said angrily, “All right,

don’t!” and turned away.

He walked west on Fifty-ninth Street in his loose, lopsided gait that

jutted his right shoulder ahead of the other, hands swinging

unrhythmically at his sides, and she might have known from the walk

alone that he was angry. And he was out of sight in no time. The

rejection from Kettering last Monday flashed across her mind. She stared

at the darkness where Richard had disappeared. She did not feel guilty

about tonight. It was something else. She envied him. She envied him his

faith there would always be a place, a home, a job, someone else for

him. She envied him that attitude. She almost resented his having it.

chapter thirteen

Richard began it.

“Why do you like her so much?”

It was an evening on which she had broken a date with Richard on the

slim chance Carol would come by. Carol hadn’t, and Richard had come by

instead. Now at five past eleven in the huge pink-walled cafeteria on

Lexington Avenue, she had been about to begin, but Richard was ahead of

her.

“I like being with her, I like talking with her. I’m fond of anybody I

can talk to.” The phrases of some letter she had written to Carol and

never mailed drifted across her mind as if to answer Richard. _I feel I

stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down

upon me._

“You’ve got a hell of a crush on her,” Richard announced, explanatorily

and resentfully.

Therese took a deep breath. Should she be simple and say yes, or should

she try to explain it? What could he ever understand of it, even if she

explained it in a million words?

“Does she know it? Of course she knows it.” Richard frowned and drew on

his cigarette. “Don’t you think it’s pretty silly? It’s like a crush

that schoolgirls get.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. She felt so very sure of herself. _I

will comb you like music caught in the heads of all the trees in the

forest...._

“What’s there to understand? But she understands. She shouldn’t indulge

you. She shouldn’t play with you like this. It’s not fair to you.”

“Not fair to me?”

“What’s she doing, amusing herself with you? And then one day she’ll get

tired of you and kick you out.”

Kick me out, she thought. What was in or out? How did one kick out an

emotion? She was angry, but she did not want to argue. She said nothing.

“You’re in a daze!”

“I’m wide awake. I never felt more awake.” She picked up the table knife

and rubbed her thumb back and forth on the ridge at the base of the

blade. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

He frowned. “Leave you alone?”

“Yes.”

“You mean, about Europe, too?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Listen, Terry—” Richard wriggled in his chair and leaned forward,

hesitated, then took another cigarette, lighting it distastefully,

throwing the match on the floor. “You’re in some kind of trance! It’s

worse—”

“Just because I don’t want to argue with you?”

“It’s worse than being lovesick, because it’s so completely

unreasonable. Don’t you understand that?”

No, she didn’t understand a word.

“But you’re going to get over it in about a week. I hope. My God!” He

squirmed again. “To say—to say for a minute you practically want to say

good-by to me because of some silly crush!”

“I didn’t say that. You said it.” She looked back at him, at his rigid

face that was beginning to redden in the center of the flat cheeks. “But

why should I want to be with you if all you do is argue about this?”

He sat back. “Wednesday, next Saturday, you won’t feel like this at all.

You haven’t known her three weeks yet.”

She looked over toward the steam tables, where people edged slowly

along, choosing this and that, drifting toward the curve in the counter

where they dispersed. “We may as well say good-by,” she said, “because

neither of us will ever be any different from what we are this minute.”

“Therese, you’re like a person gone so crazy, you think you’re saner

than ever!”

“Oh, let’s stop it!”

Richard’s hand with its row of knuckles embedded in the white, freckled

flesh was clenched on the table motionless, like a picture of a hand

that had hammered some ineffectual, inaudible point. “I’ll tell you one

thing, I think your friend knows what she’s doing. I think she’s

committing a crime against you. I’ve half a mind to report her to

somebody, but the trouble is you’re not a child. You’re just acting like

one.”

“Why do you make so much out of it?” she asked. “You’re practically in a

frenzy.”

“You make enough out of it to want to say good-by to me! What do you

know about her?”

“What do _you_ know about her?”

“Did she ever make any passes at you?”

“God!” Therese said. She felt like saying it a dozen times. It summed up

everything, her imprisonment now, here, yet. “You don’t understand.” But

he did, and that was why he was angry. But did he understand that she

would have felt the same way if Carol had never touched her? Yes, and if

Carol had never even spoken to her after that brief conversation about a

doll’s valise in the store. If Carol, in fact, had never spoken to her

at all, for it had all happened in that instant she had seen Carol

standing in the middle of the floor, watching her. Then the realization

that so much had happened after that meeting made her feel incredibly

lucky suddenly. It was so easy for a man and woman to find each other,

to find someone who would do, but for her to have found Carol—“I think I

understand you better than you understand me. You don’t really want to

see me again, either, because you said yourself I’m not the same person.

If we keep on seeing each other, you’ll only get more and more—like

this.”

“Terry, forget for a minute I ever said I wanted you to love me, or that

I love you. It’s you as a person, I mean. I like you. I’d like—”

“I wonder sometimes why you think you like me, or did like me. Because

you didn’t even know me.”

“You don’t know yourself.”

“But I do—and I know you. You’ll drop painting someday and me with it.

Just as you’ve dropped everything else you ever started, as far as I can

see. The dry-cleaning thing, or the used-car lot—”

“That’s not true,” Richard said sullenly.

“But why do you think you like me? Because I paint a little, too, and we

can talk about that? I’m just as impractical as a girl friend for you as

painting is as a business for you.” She hesitated a minute, then said

the rest of it, “You know enough about art anyway to know you’ll never

make a good painter. You’re like a little boy playing truant as long as

you can, knowing all the time what you ought to be doing and what you’ll

finally be doing, working for your father.”

Richard’s blue eyes had gone suddenly cold. The line of his mouth was

straight and very short now, the thin upper lip faintly curling. “All

that isn’t quite the point now, is it?”

“Well—yes. It’s part of your hanging on when you know it’s hopeless, and

when you know you’ll finally let go.”

“I will not!”

“Richard, there’s no point—!”

“You’re going to change your mind, you know.”

She understood that. It was like a song he kept singing to her.

A week later, Richard stood in her room with the same expression of

sullen anger on his face, talking in the same tone. He had called up at

the unusual hour of three in the afternoon, and insisted on seeing her

for a moment. She was packing a bag to take to Carol’s for the week end.

If she hadn’t been packing for Carol’s house, Richard might have been in

quite another mood, she thought, because she had seen him three times

the past week, and he had never been pleasanter, never been more

considerate of her.

“You can’t just give me marching orders out of your life,” he said,

flinging his long arms out, but there was a lonesome tone in it, as if

he had already started on that road away from her. “What really makes me

sore is that you act like I’m not worth anything, that I’m completely

ineffectual. It isn’t fair to me, Terry. I can’t compete!”

No, she thought, of course he couldn’t. “I don’t have any quarrel with

you,” she said. “It’s you who choose to quarrel over Carol. She hasn’t

taken anything away from you, because you didn’t have it in the first

place. But if you can’t go on seeing me—” She stopped, knowing he could

and probably would go on seeing her.

“What logic,” he said, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eye.

Therese watched him, caught by the idea that had just come to her, that

she knew suddenly was a fact. Why hadn’t it occurred to her the night of

the theater, days ago? She might have known it from a hundred gestures,

words, looks, this past week. But she remembered the night of the

theater especially—he had surprised her with tickets to something she

particularly wanted to see—the way he had held her hand that night, and

from his voice on the telephone, not just telling her to meet him here

or there, but asking her very sweetly if she could. She hadn’t liked it.

It was not a manifestation of affection, but rather a means of

ingratiating himself, of somehow paving the way for the sudden questions

he had asked so casually that night, “What do you mean you’re fond of

her? Do you want to go to bed with her?” Therese had replied, “Do you

think I would tell you if I did?” while a quick succession of

emotions—humiliation, resentment, loathing of him—had made her

speechless, had made it almost impossible for her to keep walking beside

him. And glancing at him, she had seen him looking at her with that

soft, inane smile that in memory now looked cruel, and unhealthy. And

its unhealthiness might have escaped her, she thought, if it weren’t

that Richard was so frankly trying to convince her she was unhealthy.

Therese turned and tossed into the overnight bag her toothbrush and her

hairbrush, then remembered she had a toothbrush at Carol’s.

“Just what do you want from her, Therese? Where’s it going to go from

here?”

“Why are you so interested?”

He stared at her and for a moment beneath the anger she saw the fixed

curiosity she had seen before, as if he were watching a spectacle

through a keyhole. But she knew he was not so detached as that. On the

contrary, she sensed that he was never so bound to her as now, never so

determined not to give her up. It frightened her. She could imagine the

determination transformed to hatred and to violence.

Richard sighed, and twisted the newspaper in his hands. “I’m interested

in _you_. You can’t just say to me, ‘Find someone else.’ I’ve never

treated you the way I treated the others, never thought of you that

way.”

She didn’t answer.

“Damn!” Richard threw the newspaper at the bookshelf, and turned his

back on her.

The newspaper flicked the Madonna, and it tipped back against the wall

as if astonished, fell over, and rolled off the edge. Richard made a

lunge for it and caught it in both hands. He looked at Therese and

smiled involuntarily.

“Thanks.” Therese took it from him. She lifted it to set it back, then

brought her hands down quickly and smashed the figure to the floor.

“Terry!”

The Madonna lay in three or four pieces.

“Never mind it,” she said. Her heart was beating as if she were angry,

or fighting.

“But—”

“To hell with it!” she said, pushing the pieces aside with her shoe.

Richard left a moment later, slamming the door.

What was it, Therese wondered, the Andronich thing or Richard? Mr.

Andronich’s secretary had called about an hour ago and told her that Mr.

Andronich had decided to hire an assistant from Philadelphia instead of

her. So that job would not be there to come back to, after the trip with

Carol. Therese looked down at the broken Madonna. The wood was quite

beautiful inside. It had cracked cleanly along the grain.

Carol asked her in detail that evening about her talk with Richard. It

irked Therese that Carol was so concerned as to whether Richard were

hurt or not.

“You’re not used to thinking of other people’s feelings,” Carol said

bluntly to her.

They were in the kitchen fixing a late dinner, because Carol had given

the maid the evening off.

“What real reason have you to think he’s not in love with you?” Carol

asked.

“Maybe I just don’t understand how he works. But it doesn’t seem like

love to me.”

Then in the middle of dinner, in the middle of a conversation about the

trip, Carol remarked suddenly, “You shouldn’t have talked to Richard at

all.”

It was the first time Therese had told Carol any of it, any of the first

conversation in the cafeteria with Richard. “Why not? Should I have lied

to him?”

Carol was not eating. Now she pushed back her chair and stood up.

“You’re much too young to know your own mind. Or what you’re talking

about. Yes, in that case, lie.”

Therese laid her fork down. She watched Carol get a cigarette and light

it. “I had to say good-by to him and I did. I have. I won’t see him

again.”

Carol opened a panel in the bottom of the bookcase and took out a

bottle. She poured some into an empty glass and slammed the panel shut.

“Why did you do it now? Why not two months ago or two months from now?

And why did you mention me?”

“I know—I think it fascinates him.”

“It probably does.”

“But if I simply don’t see him again—” She couldn’t finish it, about his

not being apt to follow her, spy on her. She didn’t want to say such

things to Carol. And besides, there was the memory of Richard’s eyes. “I

think he’ll give it up. He said he couldn’t compete.”

Carol struck her forehead with her hand. “Couldn’t compete,” she

repeated. She came back to the table and poured some of the water from

her glass into the whisky. “How true. Finish your dinner. I may be

making too much of it, I don’t know.”

But Therese did not move. She had done the wrong thing. And at best,

even doing the right thing, she could not make Carol happy as Carol made

her happy, she thought as she had thought a hundred times before. Carol

was happy only at moments here and there, moments that Therese caught

and kept. One had been in the evening they put away the Christmas

decorations, and Carol had refolded the string of angels and put them

between the pages of a book. “I’m going to keep these,” she had said.

“With twenty-two angels to defend me, I can’t lose.” Therese looked at

Carol now, and though Carol was watching her, it was through that veil

of preoccupation that Therese so often saw, that kept them a world

apart.

“Lines,” Carol said. “I can’t compete. People talk of classics. These

lines are classic. A hundred different people will say the same words.

There are lines for the mother, lines for the daughter, for the husband

and the lover. I’d rather see you dead at my feet. It’s the same play

repeated with different casts. What do they say makes a play a classic,

Therese?”

“A classic—” Her voice sounded tight and stifled. “A classic is

something with a basic human situation.”

* * * * *

When Therese awakened, the sun was in her room. She lay for a moment,

watching the watery looking sunspots rippling on the pale green ceiling,

listening for any sound of activity in the house. She looked at her

blouse, hanging over the edge of the bureau. Why was she so untidy in

Carol’s house? Carol didn’t like it. The dog that lived somewhere beyond

the garages was barking intermittently, halfheartedly. There had been

one pleasant interval last evening, the telephone call from Rindy. Rindy

back from a birthday party at nine thirty. Could she give a birthday

party on her birthday in April. Carol said of course. Carol had been

different after that. She had talked about Europe, and summers in

Rapallo.

Therese got up and went to the window, raised it higher and leaned on

the sill, tensing herself against the cold. There were no mornings

anywhere like the mornings from this window. The round bed of grass

beyond the driveway had darts of sunlight in it, like scattered gold

needles. There were sparks of sun in the moist hedge leaves, and the sky

was a fresh solid blue. She looked at the place in the driveway where

Abby had been that morning, and at the bit of white fence beyond the

hedges that marked the end of the lawn. The ground looked breathing and

young, even though the winter had browned the grass. There had been

trees and hedges around the school in Montclair, but the green had

always ended in part of a red brick wall, or a gray stone building that

was part of the school—an infirmary, a woodshed, a toolhouse—and the

green each spring had seemed old already, used and handed down by one

generation of children to the next, as much a part of school

paraphernalia as textbooks and uniforms.

She dressed in the plaid slacks she had brought from home, and one of

the shirts she had left from another time, that had been laundered. It

was twenty past eight. Carol liked to get up about eight thirty, liked

to be awakened by someone with a cup of coffee, though Therese had

noticed she never had Florence do it.

Florence was in the kitchen when she went down, but she had only just

started the coffee.

“Good morning,” Therese said. “Do you mind if I fix the breakfast?”

Florence hadn’t minded the two other times she had come in and found

Therese fixing them.

“Go ahead, miss,” Florence said. “I’ll just make my own fried eggs. You

like doing things for Mrs. Aird yourself, don’t you?” she said like a

statement.

Therese was getting two eggs out of the refrigerator. “Yes,” she said,

smiling. She dropped one of the eggs into the water that was just

beginning to heat. Her answer sounded rather flat, but what other answer

was there? When she turned around after setting the breakfast tray, she

saw Florence had put the second egg in the water. Therese took it out

with her fingers. “She wants only one egg,” Therese said. “That’s for my

omelette.”

“Does she? She always used to eat two.”

“Well—she doesn’t now,” Therese said.

“Shouldn’t you measure that egg anyway, miss?” Florence gave her the

pleasant professional smile. “Here’s the egg timer, top of the stove.”

Therese shook her head. “It comes out better when I guess.” She had

never gone wrong yet on Carol’s egg. Carol liked it a little better done

than the egg timer made it. Therese looked at Florence, who was

concentrating now on the two eggs she was frying in the skillet. The

coffee was almost all filtered. In silence, Therese prepared the cup to

take up to Carol.

Later in the morning, Therese helped Carol take in the white iron chairs

and the glider from the lawn in back of the house. It would be simpler

with Florence there, Carol said, but Carol had sent her away marketing,

then had a sudden whim to get the furniture in. It was Harge’s idea to

leave them out all winter, she said, but she thought they looked bleak.

Finally only one chair remained by the round fountain, a prim little

chair of white metal with a bulging bottom and four lacy feet. Therese

looked at it and wondered who had sat there.

“I wish there were more plays that happened out of doors,” Therese said.

“What do you think of first when you start to make a set?” Carol asked.

“What do you start from?”

“The mood of the play, I suppose. What do you mean?”

“Do you think of the kind of play it is, or of something you want to

see?”

One of Mr. Donohue’s remarks brushed Therese’s mind with a vague

unpleasantness. Carol was in an argumentative mood this morning. “I

think you’re determined to consider me an amateur,” Therese said.

“I think you’re rather subjective. That’s amateurish, isn’t it?”

“Not always.” But she knew what Carol meant.

“You have to know a lot to be absolutely subjective, don’t you? In those

things you showed me, I think you’re too subjective—without knowing

enough.”

Therese made fists of her hands in her pockets. She had so hoped Carol

would like her work, unqualifiedly. It had hurt her terribly that Carol

hadn’t liked in the least a certain few sets she had shown her. Carol

knew nothing about it, technically, yet she could demolish a set with a

phrase.

“I think a look at the West would do you good. When did you say you had

to be back? The middle of February?”

“Well, now I don’t—I just heard yesterday.”

“What do you mean? It fell through? The Philadelphia job?”

“They called me up. They want somebody from Philadelphia.”

“Oh, baby. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s just this business,” Therese said. Carol’s hand was on the

back of her neck, Carol’s thumb rubbing behind her ear as Carol might

have fondled a dog.

“You weren’t going to tell me.”

“Yes, I was.”

“When?”

“Sometime on the trip.”

“Are you very disappointed?”

“No,” Therese said positively.

They heated the last cup of coffee and took it out to the white chair on

the lawn and shared it.

“Shall we have lunch out somewhere?” Carol asked her. “Let’s go to the

club. Then I ought to do some shopping in Newark. How about a jacket?

Would you like a tweed jacket?”

Therese was sitting on the edge of the fountain, one hand pressed

against her ear because it was aching from the cold. “I don’t

particularly need one,” she said.

“But I’d particularly like to see you in one.”

Therese was upstairs, changing her clothes, when she heard the telephone

ring. She heard Florence say, “Oh, good morning, Mr. Aird. Yes, I’ll

call her right now,” and Therese crossed the room and closed the door.

Restlessly, she began to put the room in order, hung her clothes in the

closet, and smoothed the bed she had already made. Then Carol knocked on

the door and put her head in. “Harge is coming by in a few minutes. I

don’t think he’ll be long.”

Therese did not want to see him. “Would you like for me to take a walk?”

Carol smiled. “No. Stay up here and read a book, if you want to.”

Therese got the book she had bought yesterday, the _Oxford Book of

English Verse_, and tried to read it, but the words stayed separate and

meaningless. She had a disquieting sense of hiding, so she went to the

door and opened it.

Carol was just coming from her room, and for an instant, Therese saw the

same look of indecision cross her face that Therese remembered from the

first moment she had entered the house. Then she said, “Come down.”

Harge’s car drove up as they walked into the living room. Carol went to

the door, and Therese heard their greeting, Carol’s only cordial, but

Harge’s very cheerful, and Carol came in with a long flower box in her

arms.

“Harge, this is Miss Belivet. I think you met her once,” Carol said.

Harge’s eyes narrowed a little, then opened. “Oh, yes. How do you do?”

“How do you do?”

Florence came in, and Carol handed the flower box to her.

“Would you put these in something?” Carol said.

“Ah, here’s that pipe. I thought so.” Harge reached behind the ivy on

the mantel, and brought forth a pipe.

“Everything is fine at home?” Carol asked as she sat down at the end of

the sofa.

“Yes. Very.” Harge’s tense smile did not show his teeth, but his

face and the quick turns of his head radiated geniality and

self-satisfaction. He watched with proprietary pleasure as Florence

brought in the flowers, red roses, in a vase, and set them on the coffee

table in front of the sofa.

Therese wished suddenly that she had brought Carol flowers, brought them

on any of a half a dozen occasions past, and she remembered the flowers

Dannie had brought to her one day when he simply dropped in at the

theater. She looked at Harge, and his eyes glanced away from her, the

peaked brow lifting still higher, the eyes darting everywhere, as if he

looked for little changes in the room. But it might all be pretense,

Therese thought, his air of good cheer. And if he cared enough to

pretend, he must also care in some way for Carol.

“May I take one for Rindy?” Harge asked.

“Of course.” Carol got up, and she would have broken a flower, but Harge

stepped forward and put a little knife blade against the stem and the

flower came off. “They’re very beautiful. Thank you, Harge.”

Harge lifted the flower to his nose. Half to Carol, half to Therese, he

said, “It’s a beautiful day. Are you going to take a drive?”

“Yes, we were,” Carol said. “By the way, I’d like to drive over one

afternoon next week. Perhaps Tuesday.”

Harge thought a moment. “All right. I’ll tell her.”

“I’ll speak to her on the phone. I meant tell your family.”

Harge nodded once, in acquiescence, then looked at Therese. “Yes, I

remember you. Of course. You were here about three weeks ago. Before

Christmas.”

“Yes. One Sunday.” Therese stood up. She wanted to leave them alone.

“I’ll go upstairs,” she said to Carol. “Good-by, Mr. Aird.”

Harge made her a little bow. “Good-by.”

As she went up the stairs, she heard Harge say, “Well, many happy

returns, Carol. I’d like to say it. Do you mind?”

Carol’s birthday, Therese thought. Of course, Carol wouldn’t have told

her.

She closed the door and looked around the room, realized she was looking

for any sign that she had spent the night. There was none. She stopped

at the mirror and looked at herself for a moment, frowningly. She was

not so pale as she had been three weeks ago when Harge saw her, she did

not feel like the drooping, frightened thing Harge had met then. From

the top drawer, she got her handbag and took her lipstick out of it.

Then she heard Harge knock on the door, and she closed the drawer.

“Come in.”

“Excuse me. I must get something.” He crossed the room quickly, went

into the bathroom, and he was smiling as he came back with the razor in

his hand. “You were in the restaurant with Carol last Sunday, weren’t

you?”

“Yes,” Therese said.

“Carol said you do stage designing.”

“Yes.”

He glanced from her face to her hands, to the floor, and up again. “I

hope you see that Carol gets out enough,” he said. “You look young and

spry. Make her take some walks.”

Then he went briskly out the door, leaving behind him a faint

shaving-soap scent. Therese tossed her lipstick onto the bed, and wiped

her palms down the side of her skirt. She wondered why Harge troubled to

let her know he took it for granted she spent a great deal of time with

Carol.

“Therese!” Carol called suddenly. “Come down!”

Carol was sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. Harge had gone. She

looked at Therese with a little smile. Then Florence came in and Carol

said, “Florence, you can take these somewhere else. Put them in the

dining room.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Carol winked at Therese.

Nobody used the dining room, Therese knew. Carol preferred to eat

anywhere else. “Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday?” Therese

asked her.

“Oh!” Carol laughed. “It’s not. It’s my wedding anniversary. Get your

coat and let’s go.”

As they backed out of the driveway, Carol said, “If there’s anything I

can’t stand, it’s a hypocrite.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing of any importance.” Carol was still smiling.

“But you said he was a hypocrite.”

“Par excellence.”

“Pretending all this good humor?”

“Oh—just partially that.”

“Did he say anything about me?”

“He said you looked like a nice girl. Is that news?” Carol shot the car

down the narrow road to the village. “He said the divorce will take

about six weeks longer than we’d thought, due to some more red tape.

That’s news. He has an idea I still might change my mind in the

meantime. That’s hypocrisy. I think he likes to fool himself.”

Was life, were human relations like this always, Therese wondered. Never

solid ground underfoot. Always like gravel, a little yielding, noisy so

the whole world could hear, so one always listened, too, for the loud,

harsh step of the intruder’s foot.

“Carol, I never took that check, you know,” Therese remarked suddenly.

“I stuck it under the cloth on the table by the bed.”

“What made you think of that?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to tear it up? I started to that night.”

“If you insist,” Carol said.

chapter fourteen

Therese looked down at the big cardboard box. “I don’t want to take it.”

Her hands were full. “I can let Mrs. Osborne take the food out and the

rest can stay here.”

“Bring it,” Carol said, going out the door. She carried down the last

dribble of things, the books and the jackets Therese had decided at the

last minute that she wanted.

Therese came back upstairs for the box. It had come an hour ago by

messenger—a lot of sandwiches in wax paper, a bottle of blackberry wine,

a cake, and a box containing the white dress Mrs. Semco had promised

her. Richard had had nothing to do with the box, she knew, or there

would have been a book or an extra note in it.

An unwanted dress still lay on the couch, a corner of the rug was turned

back, but Therese was impatient to be off. She pulled the door shut, and

hurried down the steps with the box, past the Kellys’ who were both away

at work, past Mrs. Osborne’s door. She had said good-by to Mrs. Osborne

an hour ago when she had paid the next month’s rent.

Therese was just closing the car door, when Mrs. Osborne called her from

the front steps.

“Telephone call!” Mrs. Osborne shouted, and reluctantly Therese got out,

thinking it was Richard.

It was Phil McElroy, calling her to ask about the interview with Harkevy

yesterday. She had told Dannie about it last night when they had had

dinner together. Harkevy hadn’t promised her a job, but he had said to

keep in touch, and Therese felt he meant it. He had let her come to see

him backstage in the theater where he was supervising the set for

_Winter Town_. He had chosen three of her cardboard models and looked

very carefully at them, dismissed one as a little dull, pointed out some

impracticality in the second, and liked best the hall-like set Therese

had started the evening she had come back from the first visit to

Carol’s house. He was the first person who had ever given her less

conventional sets a serious consideration. She had called Carol up

immediately and told her about the meeting. She told Phil about the

Harkevy interview, but she didn’t mention that the Andronich job had

fallen through. She knew it was because she didn’t want Richard to hear

about it. Therese asked Phil to let her know what play Harkevy was doing

sets for next, because he said he hadn’t decided himself between two

plays. There was more of a chance he would take her on as apprentice, if

he chose the English play he had talked about yesterday.

“I don’t know any address to give you yet,” Therese said. “I know we’ll

get to Chicago.”

Phil said he might drop her a letter general delivery there.

“Was that Richard?” Carol asked when she came back.

“No. Phil McElroy.”

“So you haven’t heard from Richard?”

“I haven’t for the last few days. He sent me a telegram this morning.”

Therese hesitated, then took it from her pocket and read it. “I HAVE NOT

CHANGED. NEITHER HAVE YOU. WRITE TO ME. I LOVE YOU. RICHARD.”

“I think you should call him,” Carol said. “Call him from my house.”

They were going to spend the night at Carol’s house and leave early in

the morning.

“Will you put on that dress tonight?” Carol asked.

“I’ll try it on. It looks like a wedding dress.”

Therese put on the dress just before dinner. It hung below her calf, and

the waist tied in back with long white bands that in front were stitched

down and embroidered. She went down to show it to Carol. Carol was in

the living room writing a letter.

“Look,” Therese said, smiling.

Carol looked at her for a long moment, then came over and examined the

embroidery at the waist. “That’s a museum piece. You look adorable. Wear

it this evening, will you?”

“It’s so elaborate.” She didn’t want to wear it, because it made her

think of Richard.

“What the hell kind of style is it, Russian?”

Therese gave a laugh. She liked the way Carol cursed, always casually,

and when no one else could hear her.

“Is it?” Carol repeated.

Therese was going upstairs. “Is it what?”

“Where did you get this habit of not answering people?” Carol demanded,

her voice suddenly harsh with anger.

Carol’s eyes had the angry white light she had seen in them the time she

refused to play the piano. And what angered her now was just as

trifling. “I’m sorry, Carol. I guess I didn’t hear you.”

“Go ahead,” Carol said, turning away. “Go on up and take it off.”

It was Harge still, Therese thought. Therese hesitated a minute, then

went upstairs. She untied the waist and the sleeves, glanced at herself

in the mirror, then tied them all back again. If Carol wanted her to

keep it on, she would.

They fixed dinner themselves, because Florence had already started her

three weeks’ leave. They opened some special jars of things that Carol

said she had been saving, and they made stingers in the cocktail shaker

just before dinner. Therese thought Carol’s mood had passed, but when

she started to pour a second stinger for herself, Carol said shortly, “I

don’t think you should have any more of that.”

And Therese deferred, with a smile. And the mood went on. Nothing

Therese said or did could change it, and Therese blamed the inhibiting

dress for not being able to think of the right things to say. They took

brandied chestnuts and coffee up to the porch after dinner, but they

said even less to each other in the semidarkness, and Therese only felt

sleepy and rather depressed.

The next morning, Therese found a paper bag on the back doorstep. Inside

it was a toy monkey with gray and white fur. Therese showed it to Carol.

“My God,” Carol said softly, and smiled. “Jacopo.” She took the monkey

and rubbed her forefinger against its slightly dirty white cheek. “Abby

and I used to have him hanging in the back of the car,” Carol said.

“Abby brought it? Last night?”

“I suppose.” Carol went on to the car with the monkey and a suitcase.

Therese remembered wakening from a doze on the glider last night,

awakening to an absolute silence, and Carol sitting there in the dark,

looking straight before her. Carol must have heard Abby’s car last

night. Therese helped Carol arrange the suitcases and the lap rug in the

back of the car.

“Why didn’t she come in?” Therese asked.

“Oh, that’s Abby,” Carol said with a smile, with the fleeting shyness

that always surprised Therese. “Why don’t you go call Richard?”

Therese sighed. “I can’t now, anyway. He’s left the house by this time.”

It was eight forty, and his school began at nine.

“Call his family then. Aren’t you going to thank them for the box they

sent you?”

“I was going to write them a letter.”

“Call them now, and you won’t have to write them a letter. It’s much

nicer to call anyway.”

Mrs. Semco answered the telephone. Therese praised the dress and Mrs.

Semco’s needlework, and thanked her for all the food and the wine.

“Richard just left the house,” Mrs. Semco said. “He’s going to be

awfully lonely. He mopes around already.” But she laughed, her vigorous,

high-pitched laugh that filled the kitchen where Therese knew she stood,

a laugh that would ring through the house, even to Richard’s empty room

upstairs. “Is everything all right with you and Richard?” Mrs. Semco

asked with the faintest suspicion, though Therese could tell she still

smiled.

Therese said yes. And she promised she would write. Afterward, she felt

better because she had called.

Carol asked her if she had closed her window upstairs, and Therese went

up again, because she couldn’t remember. She hadn’t closed the window,

and she hadn’t made her bed either, but there wasn’t time now. Florence

could take care of the bed when she came in on Monday to lock the house

up.

Carol was on the telephone when Therese came downstairs. She looked up

at Therese with a smile and held the telephone toward her. Therese knew

from the first tone that it was Rindy.

“... at—uh—Mr. Byron’s. It’s a farm. Have you ever been there, Mother?”

“Where is it, sweetheart?” Carol said.

“At Mr. Byron’s. He has horses. But not the kind you would like.”

“Oh. Why not?”

“Well, these are heavy.”

Therese tried to hear anything in the shrill, rather matter-of-fact

voice that resembled Carol’s voice, but she couldn’t.

“Hello,” Rindy said. “Mother?”

“I’m still here.”

“I’ve got to say good-by now. Daddy’s ready to leave.” And she coughed.

“Have you got a cough?” Carol asked.

“No.”

“Then don’t cough into the phone.”

“I wish you would take me on the trip.”

“Well, I can’t because you’re in school. But we’ll have trips this

summer.”

“Can you still call me?”

“On the trip? Of course I will. Every day.” Carol took the telephone and

sat back with it, but she still watched Therese the minute or so more

that she talked.

“She sounds so serious,” Therese said.

“She was telling me all about the big day yesterday. Harge let her play

hooky.”

Carol had seen Rindy day before yesterday, Therese remembered. It had

evidently been a pleasant visit, from what Carol had told Therese over

the telephone, but she hadn’t mentioned any details about it, and

Therese had not asked her anything.

Just as they were about to leave, Carol decided to make a last call to

Abby. Therese wandered back into the kitchen, because the car was too

cold to sit in.

“I don’t know any small towns in Illinois,” Carol was saying. “Why

Illinois?... All right, Rockford.... I’ll remember, I’ll think of

roquefort.... Of course I’ll take good care of him. I wish you’d come

in, nitwit.... Well, you’re mistaken, very mistaken.”

Therese took a sip from Carol’s half-finished coffee on the kitchen

table, drank from the place where the lipstick was.

“Not a word,” Carol said, drawling the phrase. “No one, so far as I

know, not even Florence.... Well, you do that, darling. Cheerio now.”

Five minutes later, they were leaving Carol’s town on the highway marked

on the strip map in red, the highway they would use until Chicago. The

sky was overcast. Therese looked around her at the country that had

grown familiar now, the clump of woods off to the left that the road to

New York passed, the tall flagstaff in the distance that marked the club

Carol belonged to.

Therese let a crack of air in at her window. It was quite cold, and the

heater felt good on her ankles. The clock on the dashboard said quarter

to ten, and she thought suddenly of the people working in Frankenberg’s,

penned in there at a quarter of ten in the morning, this morning and

tomorrow morning and the next, the hands of clocks controlling every

move they made. But the hands of the clock on the dashboard meant

nothing now to her and Carol. They would sleep or not sleep, drive or

not drive, whenever it pleased them. She thought of Mrs. Robichek,

selling sweaters this minute on the third floor, commencing another year

there, her fifth year.

“Why so silent?” Carol asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” She did not want to talk. Yet she felt there were thousands

of words choking her throat, and perhaps only distance, thousands of

miles, could straighten them out. Perhaps it was freedom itself that

choked her.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania they went through a section of pale sunshine,

like a leak in the sky, but around noon, it began to rain. Carol cursed,

but the sound of the rain was pleasant, drumming irregularly on the

windshield and the roof.

“You know what I forgot?” Carol said. “A raincoat. I’ll have to pick one

up somewhere.”

And suddenly, Therese remembered she had forgotten the book she was

reading. And there was a letter to Carol in it, one sheet that stuck out

both ends of the book. Damn. It had been separate from her other books,

and that was why she had left it behind, on the table by the bed. She

hoped Florence wouldn’t decide to look at it. She tried to remember if

she had written Carol’s name in the letter, and she couldn’t. And the

check. She had forgotten to tear that up, too.

“Carol, did you get that check?”

“That check I gave you?—You said you were going to tear it up.”

“I didn’t. It’s still under the cloth.”

“Well, it’s not important,” Carol said.

When they stopped for gas, Therese tried to buy some stout, which Carol

liked sometimes, at a grocery store next to the gas station, but they

had only beer. She bought one can, because Carol didn’t care for beer.

Then they drove into a little road off the highway and stopped, and

opened the box of sandwiches Richard’s mother had put up. There was also

a dill pickle, a mozzarella cheese, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs.

Therese had forgotten to ask for an opener, so she couldn’t open the

beer, but there was coffee in the thermos. She put the beer can on the

floor in the back of the car.

“Caviar. How very, very nice of them,” Carol said, looking inside a

sandwich. “Do you like caviar?”

“No. I wish I did.”

“Why?”

Therese watched Carol take a small bite of the sandwich from which she

had removed the top slice of bread, a bite where the most caviar was.

“Because people always like caviar so much when they do like it,”

Therese said.

Carol smiled, and went on nibbling, slowly. “It’s an acquired taste.

Acquired tastes are always more pleasant—and hard to get rid of.”

Therese poured more coffee into the cup they were sharing. She was

acquiring a taste for black coffee. “How nervous I was the first time I

held this cup. You brought me coffee that day. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“How’d you happen to put cream in it that day?”

“I thought you’d like it. Why were you so nervous?”

Therese glanced at her. “I was so excited about you,” she said, lifting

the cup. Then she looked at Carol again and saw a sudden stillness, like

a shock, in Carol’s face. Therese had seen it two or three times before

when she had said something like that to Carol about the way she felt,

or paid Carol an extravagant compliment. Therese could not tell if she

were pleased or displeased. She watched Carol fold the wax paper around

the other half of her sandwich.

There was cake, but Carol didn’t want any. It was the brown-colored

spicecake that Therese had often had at Richard’s house. They put

everything back, into the valise that held the cartons of cigarettes and

the bottle of whisky, with a painstaking neatness that would have

annoyed Therese in anyone but Carol.

“Did you say Washington was your home state?” Therese asked her.

“I was born there, and my father’s there now. I wrote him I might visit

him, if we get out that far.”

“Does he look like you?”

“Do I look like him, yes—more than like my mother.”

“It’s strange to think of you with a family,” Therese said.

“Why?”

“Because I just think of you as you. _Sui generis._”

Carol smiled, her head lifted as she drove. “All right, go ahead.”

“Brothers and sisters?” Therese asked.

“One sister. I suppose you want to know all about her, too? Her name is

Elaine, she has three children and she lives in Virginia. She’s older

than I am, and I don’t know if you’d like her. You’d think she was

dull.”

Yes. Therese could imagine her, like a shadow of Carol, with all Carol’s

features weakened and diluted.

Late in the afternoon, they stopped at a roadside restaurant that had a

miniature Dutch village in the front window. Therese leaned on the rail

beside it and looked at it. There was a little river that came out of a

faucet at one end, that flowed in an oval stream and turned a windmill.

Little figures in Dutch costume stood about the village, stood on

patches of live grass. She thought of the electric train in

Frankenberg’s toy department, and the fury that drove it on the oval

course that was about the same size as the stream.

“I never told you about the train in Frankenberg’s,” Therese remarked to

Carol. “Did you notice it when you—”

“An electric train?” Carol interrupted her.

Therese had been smiling, but something constricted her heart suddenly.

It was too complicated to go into, and the conversation stopped there.

Carol ordered some soup for both of them. They were stiff and cold from

the car.

“I wonder if you’ll really enjoy this trip,” Carol said. “You so prefer

things reflected in a glass, don’t you? You have your private conception

of everything. Like that windmill. It’s practically as good as being in

Holland to you. I wonder if you’ll even like seeing real mountains and

real people.”

Therese felt as crushed as if Carol had accused her of lying. She felt

Carol meant, too, that she had a private conception of her, and that

Carol resented it. Real people? She thought suddenly of Mrs. Robichek.

And she had fled her because she was hideous.

“How do you ever expect to create anything if you get all your

experiences second hand?” Carol asked, her voice soft and even, and yet

merciless.

Carol made her feel she had done nothing, was nothing at all, like a

wisp of smoke. Carol had lived like a human being, had married, and had

a child.

The old man from behind the counter was coming toward them. He had a

limp. He stood by the table next to them and folded his arms. “Ever been

to Holland?” he asked pleasantly.

Carol answered. “No, I haven’t. I suppose you’ve been. Did you make the

village in the window?”

He nodded. “Took me five years to make.”

Therese looked at the man’s bony fingers, the lean arms with the purple

veins twisting just under the thin skin. She knew better than Carol the

work that had gone into the little village, but she could not get a word

out.

The man said to Carol, “Got some fine sausages and hams next door, if

you like real Pennsylvania made. We raise our own hogs and they’re

killed and cured right here.”

They went into the whitewashed box of a store beside the restaurant.

There was a delicious smell of smoked ham inside it, mingled with the

smell of wood smoke and spice.

“Let’s pick something we don’t have to cook,” Carol said, looking into

the refrigerated counter. “Let’s have some of this,” she said to the

young man in the earlapped cap.

Therese remembered standing in the delicatessen with Mrs. Robichek, her

buying the thin slices of salami and liverwurst. A sign on the wall said

they shipped anywhere, and she thought of sending Mrs. Robichek one of

the big cloth-wrapped sausages, imagined the delight on Mrs. Robichek’s

face when she opened the package with her trembling hands and found a

sausage. But should she after all, Therese wondered, make a gesture that

was probably motivated by pity, or by guilt, or by some perversity in

her? Therese frowned, floundering in a sea without direction or gravity,

in which she knew only that she could mistrust her own impulses.

“Therese—”

Therese turned around, and Carol’s beauty struck her like a glimpse of

the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Carol asked her if she thought they

should buy a whole ham.

The young man slid all the bundles across the counter, and took Carol’s

twenty-dollar bill. And Therese thought of Mrs. Robichek tremulously

pushing her single dollar bill and a quarter across the counter that

evening.

“See anything else?” Carol asked.

“I thought I might send something to somebody. A woman who works in the

store. She’s poor and she once asked me to dinner.”

Carol picked up her change. “What woman?”

“I don’t really want to send her anything.” Therese wanted suddenly to

leave.

Carol frowned at her through her cigarette smoke. “Do it.”

“I don’t want to. Let’s go, Carol.” It was like the nightmare again,

when she couldn’t get away from her.

“Send it,” Carol said. “Close the door and send her something.”

Therese closed the door and chose one of the six-dollar sausages, and

wrote on a gift card: “This comes from Pennsylvania. I hope it’ll last a

few Sunday mornings. With love from Therese Belivet.”

Later, in the car, Carol asked her about Mrs. Robichek, and Therese

answered as she always did, succinctly, and with the involuntary and

absolute honesty that always depressed her afterward. Mrs. Robichek and

the world she lived in was so different from that of Carol, she might

have been describing another species of animal life, some ugly beast

that lived on another planet. Carol made no comment on the story, only

questioned and questioned her as she drove. She made no comment when

there was nothing more to ask, but the taut, thoughtful expression with

which she had listened stayed on her face even when they began to talk

of other things. Therese gripped her thumbs inside her hands. Why did

she let Mrs. Robichek haunt her? And now she had spread it into Carol

and could never take it back.

“Please don’t mention her again, will you, Carol? Promise me.”

chapter fifteen

Carol walked barefoot with little short steps to the shower room in the

corner, groaning at the cold. She had red polish on her toenails, and

her blue pajamas were too big for her.

“It’s your fault for opening the window so high,” Therese said.

Carol pulled the curtain across, and Therese heard the shower come on

with a rush. “Ah, divinely hot!” Carol said. “Better than last night.”

It was a luxurious tourist cabin, with a thick carpet and wood-paneled

walls and everything from cellophane-sealed shoe rags to television.

Therese sat on her bed in her robe, looking at a road map, spanning it

with her hand. A span and a half was about a day’s driving,

theoretically, though they probably would not do it. “We might get all

the way across Ohio today,” Therese said.

“Ohio. Noted for rivers, rubber, and certain railroads. On our left the

famous Chillicothe drawbridge, where twenty-eight Hurons once massacred

a hundred—morons.”

Therese laughed.

“And where Lewis and Clark once camped,” Carol added. “I think I’ll wear

my slacks today. Want to see if they’re in that suitcase? If not, I’ll

have to get into the car. Not the light ones, the navy-blue gabardines.”

Therese went to Carol’s big suitcase at the foot of the bed. It was full

of sweaters and underwear and shoes, but no slacks. She saw a nickel

plated tube sticking out of a folded sweater. She lifted the sweater

out. It was heavy. She unwrapped it, and started so she almost dropped

it. It was a gun with a white handle.

“No?” Carol asked.

“No.” Therese wrapped the gun up again and put it back as she had found

it.

“Darling, I forgot my towel. I think it’s on a chair.”

Therese got it and took it to her, and in her nervousness as she put the

towel into Carol’s outstretched hand her eyes dropped from Carol’s face

to her bare breasts and down, and she saw the quick surprise in Carol’s

glance as she turned around. Therese closed her eyes tight and walked

slowly toward the bed, seeing before her closed lids the image of

Carol’s naked body.

Therese took a shower, and when she came out, Carol was standing at the

mirror, almost dressed.

“What’s the matter?” Carol asked.

“Nothing.”

Carol turned to her, combing her hair that was darkened a little by the

wet of the shower. Her lips were bright with fresh lipstick, a cigarette

between them. “Do you realize how many times a day you make me ask you

that?” she said. “Don’t you think it’s a little inconsiderate?”

During breakfast, Therese said, “Why did you bring that gun along,

Carol?”

“Oh. So that’s what’s bothering you. It’s Harge’s gun, something else he

forgot.” Carol’s voice was casual. “I thought it’d be better to take it

than to leave it.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Yes, it’s loaded. Harge got a permit, because we had a burglar at the

house once.”

“Can you use it?”

Carol smiled at her. “I’m no Annie Oakley. I can use it. I think it

worries you, doesn’t it? I don’t expect to use it.”

Therese said nothing more about it. But it disturbed her whenever she

thought of it. She thought of it the next night, when a bellhop set the

suitcase down heavily on the sidewalk. She wondered if a gun could ever

go off from a jolt like that.

They had taken some snapshots in Ohio, and because they could get them

developed early the next morning, they spent a long evening and the

night in a town called Defiance. All evening they walked around the

streets, looking in store windows, walking through silent residential

streets where lights showed in front parlors, and homes looked as

comfortable and safe as birds’ nests. Therese had been afraid Carol

would be bored by aimless walks, but Carol was the one who suggested

going one block farther, walking all the way up the hill to see what was

on the other side. Carol talked about herself and Harge. Therese tried

to sum up in one word what had separated Carol and Harge, but she

rejected the words almost at once—boredom, resentment, indifference.

Carol told her of one time that Harge had taken Rindy away on a fishing

trip and not communicated for days. That was a retaliation for Carol’s

refusing to spend Harge’s vacation with him at his family’s summer house

in Massachusetts. It was a mutual thing. And the incidents were not the

start.

Carol put two of the snapshots in her billfold, one of Rindy in jodhpurs

and a derby that had been on the first part of the roll, and one of

Therese, with a cigarette in her mouth and her hair blowing back in the

wind. There was one unflattering picture of Carol standing huddled in

her coat that Carol said she was going to send to Abby because it was so

bad.

They got to Chicago late one afternoon, crept into its gray, sprawling

disorder behind a great truck of a meat-distributing company. Therese

sat up close to the windshield. She couldn’t remember anything about the

city from the trip with her father. Carol seemed to know Chicago as well

as she knew Manhattan. Carol showed her the famous Loop, and they

stopped for a while to watch the trains and the homeward rush of five

thirty in the afternoon. It couldn’t compare to the madhouse of New York

at five thirty.

At the main post office, Therese found a post card from Dannie, nothing

from Phil, and a letter from Richard. Therese glanced at the letter and

saw it began and ended affectionately. She had expected just that,

Richard’s getting the general delivery address from Phil and writing her

an affectionate letter. She put the letter in her pocket before she went

back to Carol.

“Anything?” Carol said.

“Just a post card. From Dannie. He’s finished his exams.”

Carol drove to the Drake Hotel. It had a black and white checked floor,

a fountain in the lobby, and Therese thought it magnificent. In their

room, Carol took off her coat and flung herself down on one of the twin

beds.

“I know a few people here,” she said sleepily. “Shall we look somebody

up?”

But Carol fell asleep before they quite decided.

Therese looked out the window at the light-bordered lake and at the

irregular, unfamiliar line of tall buildings against the still grayish

sky. It looked fuzzy and monotonous, like a Pissarro painting. A

comparison Carol wouldn’t appreciate, she thought. She leaned on the

sill, staring at the city, watching a distant car’s lights chopped into

dots and dashes as it passed behind trees. She was happy.

“Why don’t you ring for some cocktails?” Carol’s voice said behind her.

“What kind would you like?”

“What kind would you?”

“Martinis.”

Carol whistled. “Double Gibsons,” Carol interrupted her as she was

telephoning. “And a plate of canapés. Might as well get four Martinis.”

Therese read Richard’s letter while Carol was in the shower. The whole

letter was affectionate. You are not like any of the other girls, he

wrote. He had waited and he would keep on waiting, because he was

absolutely confident that they could be happy together. He wanted her to

write to him every day, send at least a post card. He told her how he

had sat one evening re-reading the three letters she had sent him when

he had been in Kingston, New York, last summer. There was a

sentimentality in the letter that was not like Richard at all, and

Therese’s first thought was that he was pretending. Perhaps in order to

strike at her later. Her second reaction was aversion. She came back to

the old decision, that not to write him, not to say anything more was

the shortest way to end it.

The cocktails arrived, and Therese paid for them instead of signing. She

could never pay a bill except behind Carol’s back.

“Will you wear your black suit?” Therese asked when Carol came in.

Carol gave her a look. “Go all the way to the bottom of that suitcase?”

she said, going to the suitcase. “Drag it out, brush it off, steam the

wrinkles out of it for half an hour?”