by Jane Bowles
“Most of the humanity you bump into is unhealthy and nervous,” the woman concluded, looking at Sadie with a cold eye, and then without further remarks she struggled out of her chair and began to walk toward a side door at the other end of the room. Just as she approached it the door was flung open from the other side by Beryl, whom the woman immediately warned of the new arrival. Beryl, without ceasing to spoon some beans out of a can she was holding, walked over to Sadie and offered to be of some assistance. “I can show you rooms,” she suggested. “Unless you’d rather wait till the manager comes back from the movies.”
When she realized, however, after a short conversation with Sadie, that she was speaking to Harriet’s sister, a malevolent scowl darkened her countenance, and she spooned her beans more slowly.
“Harriet didn’t tell me you were coming,” she said at length; her tone was unmistakably disagreeable.
Sadie’s heart commenced to beat very fast as she in turn realized that this woman in plus-fours was the waitress, Beryl, of whom Harriet had often spoken in her letters and at home.
“It’s a surprise,” Sadie told her. “I meant to come here before. I’ve been promising Harriet I’d visit her in camp for a long time now, but I couldn’t come until I got a neighbor in to cook for Evy and Bert. They’re a husband and wife … my sister Evy and her husband Bert.”
“I know about those two,” Beryl remarked sullenly. “Harriet’s told me all about them.”
“Will you please take me to my sister’s cabin?” Sadie asked, picking up her valise and stepping forward.
Beryl continued to stir her beans around without moving.
“I thought you folks had some kind of arrangement,” she said. She had recorded in her mind entire passages of Harriet’s monologues out of love for her friend, although she felt no curiosity concerning the material she had gathered. “I thought you folks were supposed to stay in the apartment while she was away at camp.”
“Bert Hoffer and Evy have never visited Camp Cataract,” Sadie answered in a tone that was innocent of any subterfuge.
“You bet they haven’t,” Beryl pronounced triumphantly. “That’s part of the arrangement. They’re supposed to stay in the apartment while she’s here at camp; the doctor said so.”
“They’re not coming up,” Sadie repeated, and she still wore, not the foxy look that Beryl expected would betray itself at any moment, but the look of a person who is attentive though being addressed in a foreign language. The waitress sensed that all her attempts at starting a scrap had been successfully blocked for the present and she whistled carefully, dragging some chairs into line with a rough hand. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, ceasing her activities as suddenly as she had begun them. “Instead of taking you down there to the Pine Cones—that’s the name of the grove where her cabin is—I’ll go myself and tell her to come up here to the lodge. She’s got some nifty rain equipment so she won’t get wet coming through the groves like you would … lots of pine trees out there.”
Sadie nodded in silence and walked over to a fantasy chair, where she sat down.
“They get a lot of fun out of that chair. When they’re drunk,” said Beryl pointing to its back, made of a giant straw disc. “Well … so long.…” She strode away. “Dear Valley…” Sadie heard her sing as she went out the door.
Sadie lifted the top off the chair’s left arm and pulled two books out of its woven hamper. The larger volume was entitled The Growth and Development of the Texas Oil Companies, and the smaller, Stories from Other Climes. Hastily she replaced them and closed the lid.
* * *
Harriet opened the door for Beryl and quickly shut it again, but even in that instant the wooden flooring of the threshold was thoroughly soaked with rain. She was wearing a lavender kimono with a deep ruffle at the neckline; above it her face shone pale with dismay at Beryl’s late and unexpected visit. She feared that perhaps the waitress was drunk. “I’m certainly not hacking out a free place for myself in this world just in order to cope with drunks,” she said to herself with bitter verve. Her loose hair was hanging to her shoulders and Beryl looked at it for a moment in mute admiration before making her announcement.
“Your sister Sadie’s up at the lodge,” she said, recovering herself; then, feeling embarrassed, she shuffled over to her usual seat in the darkest corner of the room.
“What are you saying?” Harriet questioned her sharply.
“Your sister Sadie’s up at the lodge,” she repeated, not daring to look at her. “Your sister Sadie who wrote you the letter about the apartment.”
“But she can’t be!” Harriet screeched. “She can’t be! It was all arranged that no one was to visit me here.”
“That’s what I told her,” Beryl put in.
Harriet began pacing up and down the floor. Her pupils were dilated and she looked as if she were about to lose all control of herself. Abruptly she flopped down on the edge of the bed and began gulping in great draughts of air. She was actually practicing a system which she believed had often saved her from complete hysteria, but Beryl, who knew nothing about her method, was horrified and utterly bewildered. “Take it easy,” she implored Harriet. “Take it easy!”
“Dash some water in my face,” said Harriet in a strange voice, but horror and astonishment anchored Beryl securely to her chair, so that Harriet was forced to stagger over to the basin and manage by herself. After five minutes of steady dousing she wiped her face and chest with a towel and resumed her pacing. At each instant the expression on her face was more indignant and a trifle less distraught. “It’s the boorishness of it that I find so appalling,” she complained, a suggestion of theatricality in her tone which a moment before had not been present. “If she’s determined to wreck my schemes, why doesn’t she do it with some style, a little slight bit of cunning? I can’t picture anything more boorish than hauling oneself onto a train and simply chugging straight up here. She has no sense of scheming, of intrigue in the grand manner … none whatever. Anyone meeting only Sadie would think the family raised potatoes for a living. Evy doesn’t make a much better impression, I must say. If they met her they’d decide we were all clerks! But at least she goes to business.… She doesn’t sit around thinking about how to mess my life up all day. She thinks about Bert Hoffer. Ugh!” She made a wry face.
“When did you and Sadie start fighting?” Beryl asked her.
“I don’t fight with Sadie,” Harriet answered, lifting her head proudly. “I wouldn’t dream of fighting like a common fishwife. Everything that goes on between us goes on undercover. It’s always been that way. I’ve always hidden everything from her ever since I was a little girl. She’s perfectly aware that I know she’s trying to hold me a prisoner in the apartment out of plain jealousy and she knows too that I’m afraid of being considered a bum, and that makes matters simpler for her. She pretends to be worried that I might forget myself if I left the apartment and commit a folly with some man I wasn’t married to, but actually she knows perfectly well that I’m as cold as ice. I haven’t the slightest interest in men … nor in women either for that matter; still if I stormed out of the apartment dramatically the way some do, they might think I was a bum on my way to a man … and I won’t give Sadie that satisfaction, ever. As for marriage, of course I admit I’m peculiar and there’s a bit wrong with me, but even so I shouldn’t want to marry: I think the whole system of going through life with a partner is repulsive in every way.” She paused, but only for a second. “Don’t you imagine, however,” she added severely, looking directly at Beryl, “don’t you imagine that just because I’m a bit peculiar and different from the others, that I’m not fussy about my life. I am fussy about it, and I hate a scandal.”
“To hell with sisters!” Beryl exclaimed happily. “Give ’em all a good swift kick in the pants.” She had regained her own composure watching the color return to Harriet’s cheeks and she was just beginning to think with pleasure that perhaps Sadie’s arrival would serve to strengthen th
e bond of intimacy between herself and Harriet, when this latter buried her head in her lap and burst into tears. Beryl’s face fell and she blushed at her own frivolousness.
“I can’t any more,” Harriet sobbed in anguished tones. “I can’t … I’m old … I’m much too old.” Here she collapsed and sobbed so pitifully that Beryl, wringing her hands in grief, sprang to her side, for she was a most tenderhearted person toward those whom she loved. “You are not old … you are beautiful,” she said, blushing again, and in her heart she was thankful that Providence had granted her the occasion to console her friend in a grief-stricken moment, and to compliment her at the same time.
After a bit, Harriet’s sobbing subsided, and jumping up from the bed, she grabbed the waitress. “Beryl,” she gasped, “you must run back to the lodge right away.” There was a beam of cunning in her tear-filled eyes.
“Sure will,” Beryl answered.
“Go back to the lodge and see if there’s a room left up there, and if there is, take her grip into it so that there will be no question of her staying in my cabin. I can’t have her staying in my cabin. It’s the only place I have in the whole wide world.” The beam of cunning disappeared again and she looked at Beryl with wide, frightened eyes. “… And if there’s no room?” she asked.
“Then I’ll put her in my place,” Beryl reassured her. “I’ve got a neat little cabin all to myself that she can have and I’ll go bunk in with some dopey waitress.”
“Well, then,” said Harriet, “go, and hurry! Take her grip to a room in the upper lodge annex or to your own cabin before she has a chance to say anything, and then come straight back here for me. I can’t get through these pine groves alone … now … I know I can’t.” It did not occur to her to thank Beryl for the kind offer she had made.
“All right,” said the waitress, “I’ll be back in a jiffy and don’t you worry about a thing.” A second later she was lumbering through the drenched pine groves with shining eyes.
* * *
When Beryl came into the lodge and snatched Sadie’s grip up without a word of explanation, Sadie did not protest. Opposite her there was an open staircase which led to a narrow gallery hanging halfway between the ceiling and the floor. She watched the waitress climbing the stairs, but once she had passed the landing Sadie did not trouble to look up and follow her progress around the wooden balcony overhead.
A deep chill had settled into her bones, and she was like a person benumbed. Exactly when this present state had succeeded the earlier one Sadie could not tell, nor did she think to ask herself such a question, but a feeling of dread now lay like a stone in her breast where before there had been stirring such powerful sensations of excitement and suspense. “I’m so low,” she said to herself. “I feel like I was sitting at my own funeral.” She did not say this in the spirit of hyperbolic gloom which some people nurture to work themselves out of a bad mood, but in all seriousness and with her customary attitude of passivity; in fact, she wore the humble look so often visible on the faces of sufferers who are being treated in a free clinic. It did not occur to her that a connection might exist between her present dismal state and the mission she had come to fulfill at Camp Cataract, nor did she take any notice of the fact that the words which were to enchant Harriet and accomplish her return were no longer welling up in her throat as they had done all the past week. She feared that something dreadful might happen, but whatever it was, this disaster was as remotely connected with her as a possible train wreck. “I hope nothing bad happens…” she thought, but she didn’t have much hope in her.
Harriet slammed the front door and Sadie looked up. For the first second or two she did not recognize the woman who stood on the threshold in her dripping rubber coat and hood. Beryl was beside her; puddles were forming around the feet of the two women. Harriet had rouged her cheeks rather more highly than usual in order to hide all traces of her crying spell. Her eyes were bright and she wore a smile that was fixed and hard.
“Not a night fit for man or beast,” she shouted across to Sadie, using a voice that she thought sounded hearty and yet fashionable at the same time; she did this, not in order to impress her sister, but to keep her at a safe distance.
Sadie, instead of rushing to the door, stared at her with an air of perplexity. To her Harriet appeared more robust and coarse-featured than she had five weeks ago at the apartment, and yet she knew that such a rapid change of physiognomy was scarcely possible. Recovering, she rose and went to embrace her sister. The embrace failed to reassure her because of Harriet’s wet rubber coat, and her feeling of estrangement became more defined. She backed away.
Upon hearing her own voice ring out in such hearty and fashionable tones, Harriet had felt crazily confident that she might, by continuing to affect this manner, hold her sister at bay for the duration of her visit. To increase her chances of success she had determined right then not to ask Sadie why she had come, but to treat the visit in the most casual and natural way possible.
“Have you put on fat?” Sadie asked, at a loss for anything else to say.
“I’ll never be fat,” Harriet replied quickly. “I’m a fruit lover, not a lover of starches.”
“Yes, you love fruit,” Sadie said nervously. “Do you want some? I have an apple left from my lunch.”
Harriet looked aghast. “Now!” she exclaimed. “Beryl can tell you that I never eat at night; in fact I never come up to the lodge at night, never. I stay in my cabin. I’ve written you all about how early I get up … I don’t know anything about the lodge at night,” she added almost angrily, as though her sister had accused her of being festive.
“You don’t?” Sadie looked at her stupidly.
“No, I don’t. Are you hungry, by the way?”
“If she’s hungry,” put in Beryl, “we can go into the Grotto Room and I’ll bring her the food there. The tables in the main dining room are all set up for tomorrow morning’s breakfast.”
“I despise the Grotto,” said Harriet with surprising bitterness. Her voice was getting quite an edge to it, and although it still sounded fashionable it was no longer hearty.
“I’m not hungry,” Sadie assured them both. “I’m sleepy.”
“Well, then,” Harriet replied quickly, jumping at the opportunity, “we’ll sit here for a few minutes and then you must go to bed.”
The three of them settled in wicker chairs close to the cold hearth. Sadie was seated opposite the other two, who both remained in their rubber coats.
“I really do despise the Grotto,” Harriet went on. “Actually I don’t hang around the lodge at all. This is not the part of Camp Cataract that interests me. I’m interested in the pine groves, my cabin, the rocks, the streams, the bridge, and all the surrounding natural beauty … the sky also.”
Although the rain still continued its drumming on the roof above them, to Sadie, Harriet’s voice sounded intolerably loud, and she could not rid herself of the impression that her sister’s face had grown fatter. “Now,” she heard Harriet saying in her loud voice, “tell me about the apartment.… What’s new, how are the dinners coming along, how are Evy and Bert?”
Fortunately, while Sadie was struggling to answer these questions, which unaccountably she found it difficult to do, the stout agnostic reappeared, and Harriet was immediately distracted.
“Rover,” she called gaily across the room, “come and sit with us. My sister Sadie’s here.”
The woman joined them, seating herself beside Beryl, so that Sadie was now facing all three.
“It’s a surprise to see you up at the lodge at night, Hermit,” she remarked to Harriet without a spark of mischief in her voice.
“You see!” Harriet nodded at Sadie with immense satisfaction, “I was not fibbing, was I? How are Evy and Bert?” she asked again, her face twitching a bit. “Is the apartment hot?”
Sadie nodded.
“I don’t know how long you plan to stay,” Harriet rattled on, feeling increasingly powerful and therefore reckless, �
��but I’m going on a canoe trip the day after tomorrow for five days. We’re going up the river to Pocahontas Falls.… I leave at four in the morning, too, which rather ruins tomorrow as well. I’ve been looking forward to this trip ever since last spring when I applied for my seat, back at the apartment. The canoes are limited, and the guides.… I’m devoted to canoe trips, as you know, and can fancy myself a red-skin all the way to the Falls and back, easily.”
Sadie did not answer.
“There’s nothing weird about it,” Harriet argued. “It’s in keeping with my hatred of industrialization. In any case, you can see what a chopped-up day tomorrow’s going to be. I have to make my pack in the morning and I must be in bed by eight-thirty at night, the latest, so that I can get up at four. I’ll have only one real meal, at two in the afternoon. I suggest we meet at two behind the souvenir booth; you’ll notice it tomorrow.” Harriet waited expectantly for Sadie to answer in agreement to this suggestion, but her sister remained silent.
“Speaking of the booth,” said Rover, “I’m not taking home a single souvenir this year. They’re expensive and they don’t last.”
“You can buy salt-water taffy at Gerald’s Store in town,” Beryl told her. “I saw some there last week. It’s a little stale but very cheap.”
“Why would they sell salt-water taffy in the mountains?” Rover asked irritably.
Sadie was half listening to the conversation; as she sat watching them, all three women were suddenly unrecognizable; it was as if she had flung open the door to some dentist’s office and seen three strangers seated there. She sprang to her feet in terror.
Harriet was horrified. “What is it?” she yelled at her sister. “Why do you look like that? Are you mad?”
Sadie was pale and beads of sweat were forming under her felt hat, but the women opposite her had already regained their correct relation to herself and the present moment. Her face relaxed, and although her legs were trembling as a result of her brief but shocking experience, she felt immensely relieved that it was all over.