Hangsaman

by Shirley Jackson

  “She’ll keep your father out there all afternoon,” Mrs. Waite whispered urgently. “I know.”

  “Really,” Natalie was saying silently, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Do you pretend,” the detective said, “that you are actually the daughter of these people? That they will acknowledge you?”

  “Sir,” Natalie said silently, “this is my mother. That is my father out there.”

  “And if I ask them?” the detective demanded. “You must be very foolish to suppose that you can rely upon the generosity of strangers.”

  “The next people who come,” Mrs. Waite said, “I’ll ask them inside. Then maybe once she’s standing up she’ll think of going home.”

  “And your name?” said the detective.

  “My name is—” Natalie hesitated in her silent talk. She was about to change her name, was she not? But her hesitation had told against her; the detective was laughing.

  “Yes?” he prompted sardonically. “Your name is?”

  Mr. Waite rose from his chair on the lawn, and, taking Verna’s empty class, came to the doorway where Mrs. Waite and Natalie were standing.

  “Natalie,” he said, his back to Verna, and grinned. “I hardly know you from her description.”

  “You’ll have to get them out of here,” Mrs. Waite whispered.

  Mr. Waite had already donned his company manners which meant that his usual attitude toward his wife was subdued to a sort of tolerant dismay. “Why?” he asked. “Isn’t there plenty of liquor?”

  Mrs. Waite gestured helplessly; more people were arriving and she had planned to entertain them indoors; here was Mr. Waite, already too expansive to be reliable, calmly receiving and probably planning to seat these people out on the lawn, which had not been cleaned and which held only four iron chairs and would thus require more brought from the dining room, leaving less for company when they did move indoors, because unless you asked company to carry their own chairs, then the chairs would be left outside, and so it would rain, and the dining room chairs . . . not to mention company sitting probably on the floor. “Oh, please,” said Mrs. Waite madly.

  “Keep calm,” Mr. Waite said. “You’d be surprised how easy it is for people to have a good time.”

  “Easy for you, maybe,” said Mrs. Waite, but her husband did not hear her; he had gone, hand outstretched, to receive his new guests.

  * * *

  At one point Natalie counted the people on the lawn and found that there were fourteen. She knew that many more than that had been invited, so it seemed wise to go and help her mother now, rather than wait until later when there might be someone she wanted to talk to.

  In the kitchen Mrs. Waite, her almost-finished cocktail sitting on the sinkboard, was nervously dabbing cream cheese on crackers.

  “They’ve almost finished everything,” she said, without turning around as Natalie entered. “Why don’t I ever believe your father when he says he’s invited all those other people?”

  Natalie took the knife out of her mother’s hand and began spreading cream cheese. “They’re all having a wonderful time,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

  Mrs. Waite took up her drink, finished it in one swallow, and went over to the bottles on the shelf waiting to be produced later. She opened one with a twist of the top and poured whisky into her glass. “I never know what to do,” she said. “No matter how much I get ready, there are always too many of your father’s friends, and not enough food in the world to feed them all.”

  Natalie put one more cracker on the plate, considered piling more crackers on top, and decided it would look too lavish. “I’ll just go on in and pass these,” she said. “You stay out here quietly.”

  She had not yet had anything to drink, although it was not possible to pass Verna without being offered a “teentsy sip” of Verna’s cocktail. Natalie had decided privately that later on, when the first excitement of the party wore off, she would try one delightful—alas, not forbidden—taste of spiritous liquor, although her allegiance to her art was still dominant. Therefore, when she went onto the lawn with the plate of crackers and cheese, she tripped perfectly legitimately over the feet of the man in the big chair, although she fortunately saved the crackers and cheese. “My fault, madam,” said the man in the big chair.

  Natalie, preoccupied with the balance of the plate, only nodded.

  “Daughter mine,” said her father, who came to help her, “has anyone yet corrupted you?”

  Natalie smiled pleasantly, knowing from experience that it was unwise to answer her father at one of his own parties, since not even his family were at that time safe from practiced witticisms, and she offered the plate of crackers to the man in the big chair, saying, “You almost had this in your lap.”

  Her father came up behind her and said over her shoulder to the man in the big chair, “This one is my daughter.”

  “A fine figure of a girl,” said the man in the big chair. He took a cracker in each hand, and Natalie went on carefully around the group, presenting the plate to one person after another, answering their questions and watching their feet.

  “Natalie, when do you go to college?”

  “Aren’t you growing, though; you make me feel ancient.”

  “Aren’t you looking forward to education, after all these years with your father?”

  When she got to her father Natalie put the plate under his hand, and he looked up at her and smiled. A dark, pretty girl sat next to him, a girl whom Natalie did not recognize. Her father said to the girl, “This is my little daughter, my Natalie. Don’t you think she’ll grow up to be a beauty?” He and the pretty girl both laughed, and Mr. Waite, laughing, refused a cracker from the plate.

  Later, when Natalie had passed farther around the room, she heard her father’s voice rising above the rest.

  “—The sacredness of human droppings,” Mr. Waite was saying. “Let me illustrate from my personal life. When Natalie was a baby and used to play on the lawn, her mother ignored the droppings of the dog and cat—”

  “Only careful not to step in them,” said the pretty girl next to Mr. Waite.

  “Only careful not to step in them,” Mr. Waite agreed. “But when small Natalie fouled the grass, her mother carefully and laboriously cleaned it up with a paper towel—”

  * * *

  “It isn’t any single thing I mind so much.” Mrs. Waite sat up and took hold of Natalie’s hands, and looked earnestly into her eyes; it seemed, somehow, as though this at last were really true, and now, with all the words she knew, Mrs. Waite could not find unused ones, or authentic ones, or words not debased by her lifetime of whimsy and lies, to tell Natalie that after all, this at last was really true. “It isn’t any single thing,” Mrs. Waite repeated earnestly, the tears on her cheeks. “It’s just that—well, look, Natalie. This is the only life I’ve got—you understand? I mean, this is all. And look what’s happening to me. I spend most of my time just thinking about how nice things used to be and wondering if they’ll ever be nice again. If I should go on and on and die someday and nothing was ever nice again—wouldn’t that be a fine thing? Wouldn’t I have been cheated, don’t you think? I get to feeling like that and then I think I’ll make things be nice, and make him behave, and just make everything all happy and exciting again the way it used to be—but I’m too tired.”

  She lay back on the bed again, the tears still on her cheeks. When she had been eager to make Natalie understand the truth of what she was saying, she had not cried, but now, knowing from Natalie’s timid smile and soothing pats that of course Natalie did not understand, she began to cry helplessly again. “I keep telling you,” she said finally, sadly, “I keep telling you to watch out who you marry. Don’t ever go near a man like your father.”

  “Would you like to go outside and walk in the garden for a while?” Natalie asked, hardly knowing what she suggested. �
�We could go out the back door.”

  “It all starts so nice,” Mrs. Waite said, twisting her face into a horrible look of disgust. “You think it’s going to be so easy. You think it’s going to be good. It starts like everything you’ve ever wanted, you think it’s so easy, everything looks so simple and good, and you know that all of a sudden you’ve found out what no one ever had sense enough to know before—that this is good and if you manage right you can do whatever you want to. You keep thinking that what you’ve got hold of is power, just because you feel right in yourself, and everybody always thinks that when they feel right in themselves then they can start right off fixing the world. I mean, when I used to listen to him talking about what kind of people we were, then I used to believe him.”

  “Mother . . .” said Natalie.

  “First they tell you lies,” said Mrs. Waite, “and they make you believe them. Then they give you a little of what they promised, just a little, enough to keep you thinking you’ve got your hands on it. Then you find out that you’re tricked, just like everyone else, just like everyone, and instead of being different and powerful and giving the orders, you’ve been tricked just like everyone else and then you begin to know what happens to everyone and how they all get tricked. Everyone only knows one ‘I,’ and that’s the ‘I’ they call themselves, and there’s no one else can be ‘I’ to anyone except that one person, and they’re all stuck with themselves and once they find out they’ve been tricked, then they’ve been tricked and maybe the worst of it is that it isn’t like anything else; you can’t just say, ‘I’ve been tricked and I’ll make the best of it,’ because you never believe it because they let you see just enough about the next time to keep you hoping that maybe you’re a little bit smarter and a little bit . . .”

  “Mother,” Natalie said. “Mother, please stop. You’re not making sense.”

  “I am making sense,” Mrs. Waite said. “No one ever made sense before.”

  “Mother, it’s all right,” Natalie said. “You had a little bit too much to drink and nothing to eat. I could bring you up some coffee.”

  “My own daughter,” said Mrs. Waite bitterly. “I can’t even tell my own daughter. If I were dead you’d listen to me.”

  “Now how could—” Natalie began and then saw that it was useless. “Shall I bring you some coffee?” she asked. “It won’t take a minute, it’s all hot downstairs.” Downstairs, she thought, the party going on without me, people laughing and making noise while I sit up here in the silence and this thin bad voice going on.

  “Listen,” said Mrs. Waite, and, suddenly, she rose and leaned on her elbow and looked sternly at Natalie. “You listen to me,” she said. “You’re my own daughter and the only person in the world I have any right to tell these things to. In another week—in another hour—it might be too late for me even to try telling you. Now you listen.

  “All these years your father has been trying to get rid of me. Not rid of me—he doesn’t care if I hang around the house, cooking and saying, ‘Yes, sir,’ when he opens his fat mouth. All he wants is no one to think they can be the same as he is, or equal to him, or something. And you watch out—the minute you start getting too big, he’ll be after you, too.”

  “I think you ought to go outside for a while,” Natalie said nervously.

  “With me,” her mother continued, “it was because I didn’t have anyone. He picks out the one way he can frighten you most, you see, and I didn’t have anyone at all, because my family didn’t understand me any more after I went off with your father, and I used to lie awake wanting my mother and she wouldn’t have me because I was different by then. And he’ll find the way he can frighten you, too, but it won’t be because you don’t have anyone because your mother won’t turn you down. She won’t, Natalie,” Mrs. Waite said, beggingly, pulling at Natalie’s sleeve, “she won’t, she won’t ever. I know what it’s like Natalie, and I’ll always protect you from them, the bad ones. Don’t you ever worry, little Natalie, your mother will always help you.”

  An agonizing embarrassment kept Natalie from looking away. She looked at her mother and her mother looked at Natalie; it was at this point in her mother’s drunkenness that Natalie always longed to say something sympathetic, and could never find the right, understanding words. Then suddenly Mr. Waite called from the foot of the stairs. “Natalie. Coming down?”

  Mrs. Waite began to cry, and buried her head in the pillow. “Poor little girl,” she said. “No mother.”

  A sort of intoxication possessed Natalie; this could surely not be the intoxication, she thought breathlessly, born of one weak cocktail sipped timidly in the kitchen. It was instead, and she was almost sure of this, the preliminary faint stirrings of something about to happen. The idea once born, she knew it was true; something incredible was going to happen, now, right now, this afternoon, today; this was going to be a day she would remember and look back upon, thinking, That wonderful day . . . the day when that happened.

  “Let us go over the sequence of events once more,” the detective said tiredly. He had leaned back and unbuttoned his jacket, and Natalie, who saw him more clearly than she saw the people on the lawn, thought that no matter how tired he was, he would not stop until he had from her what he wanted. “Let us start from the very beginning,” the detective said.

  “I’ve told you all I know,” Natalie said silently. She could see her father across the lawn, leaning forward and smiling as he talked, his arm carelessly around the waist of the pretty, dark girl. Somebody began to sing; at occasional points in the song many people stopped talking and joined in with the singer, even Mr. Waite and the pretty girl, who laughed when they sang.

  “One is one and all alone and evermore will be so,” everyone sang.

  “I’ll sing you two-O,” the single voice sang, clearly through the noise.

  All around the lawn people were talking, raising their voices to override what someone else was saying, looking secretly at one another, frowning openly at one another, talking, laughing, talking. As though she had just come onto the lawn, Natalie heard suddenly the swell of sound that so surely meant “party.” It rose and moved and eddied, individual voices rising for a second, laughter riding high over the rest, the thin sound of glasses rattling, so fine that it could be heard straight through the heavier noises. It was shocking, loud, and Natalie stepped back, and found herself almost stepping again on the man who had tripped her when she came in earlier with the plate of crackers.

  “Bound we’re going to kill each other today,” the man said, smiling. He was alone now, and Natalie spared a thought for the odd recognition of the fact that his voice came clearly to her through the noise; in spite of the loudness of the party, which she could still hear, she knew exactly what the man was saying as though they had been alone, or, perhaps, as though his voice were in her mind like the detective’s.

  Two, two, lily-white boys, clothed all in green-O,

  One is one and all alone and evermore will be so.

  “Sit down,” the man said pleasantly. “Tired?” he asked her as she sat in the empty chair next to him, and Natalie nodded.

  “Now let me see,” the detective was saying, and she could not quiet him now; his voice came to her as clearly as that of the man in the chair. “This morning you were in the garden, were you not? At about what time was that?”

  “I don’t remember,” Natalie said. “Please leave me alone now; I want to think.”

  “Think?” said the detective. “Think? Suppose you think about the fact that you are very close to being in serious trouble?”

  “Are you having a good time?” Natalie said inadequately to the man in the chair. All the polite things she had heard so many people say this afternoon fled her mind, and she could only smile vacantly at him and say something foolish like, “Are you having a good time?”

  “Very nice,” said the man soberly. “Are you?”

 
“Very nice,” Natalie said. “One is one and all alone,” everybody sang, “and evermore will be so.”

  The man looked at her curiously and Natalie was provoked. Here he was, this man, in her father’s house—in her own house—and he was staring at her and very likely laughing. Worse, he was old, she could see now, much older than she had thought before. There were fine disagreeable little lines around his eyes and mouth, and his hands were thin and bony, and even shook a little. Natalie formulated a thought which she intended to use forever after: “I like a man with nice hands,” she told herself. “Nice hands are a particular beauty in a man.” She tried to remember what her father’s hands were like, and could only remember his doing things with them—lifting a fork, holding a cigar. She glanced quickly across the lawn and found that she could not see her father’s hands—one was in his pocket reaching for a pencil, the other lost around the waist of the pretty girl.

  “—And so I came,” the man was saying. He looked at her as though he expected some appreciation of the point of the story he had been telling her, and, Natalie, still provoked with him, smiled politely. “I’m glad you did,” she said, as her mother would have.

  “You realize,” said the detective weightily, “that you were seen at almost every moment?”

  The man in the big chair offered Natalie a cigarette and she took it, hoping earnestly that she would not fumble it, would not blow out the match he was holding for her, would, at all costs, not look as though she had not often smoked publicly before. “Your father tells me,” he said, holding the match, “that you’re quite the little writer.” As though he might have been saying, “a girl scout patrol leader,” or, “top in your grade in algebra,” and obviously meaning to make her sound less like her mother and more like a frightened girl not yet in college.

  Natalie wanted to hurt him back, so she said, quite with the air of a silly girl not yet in college, “I suppose you probably want to write too?” She knew she had done right because he blinked, and she felt a new wild excited joy in the thought that here was Natalie, enough a woman of the world to keep her head during a conversation, to perceive and follow and employ the innuendoes of a man who had probably talked to many people, most of them women, and heard many answers and who could very likely read almost any meaning. Perhaps someday, Natalie thought quickly, chiding herself, I’ll learn to talk for a longer time and not stop to think about it in the middle.