My Sister's Hand in Mine

by Jane Bowles

  As for the Turkish problem, I am coming to it. You must understand that I am an admirer of Western civilization; that is, of the women who are members of this group. I feel myself that I fall short of being a member, that by some curious accident I was not born in Turkey but should have been. Because of my usual imprecision I cannot even tell how many countries belong to what we call Western Civilization, but I believe Turkey is the place where East meets West, isn’t it? I can just about imagine the women there, from what I have heard about the country and the pictures I have seen of it. As for being troubled or obsessed by real Oriental women, I am not. (I refer to the Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, and so on.) Naturally I am less concerned with the Far Eastern women because there is no danger of my being like them. (The Turkish women are just near enough.) The Far Eastern ones are so very far away, at the opposite end of the earth, that they could easily be just as independent and masculine as the women of the Western world. The ones living in-between the two masculine areas would be soft and feminine. Naturally I don’t believe this for a minute, but still, the real Orientals are so far away and such a mystery to me that it might as well be true. Whatever they are, it couldn’t affect me. They look too different from the way I look. Whereas Turkish women don’t. (Their figures are exactly like mine, alas!)

  Now I shall come to the point. I know full well that you will consider the above discourse a kind of joke. Or if you don’t, you will be irritated with me for making statements of such a sweeping and inaccurate nature. For surely you will consider the picture of the world that I present as inaccurate. I myself know that this concept of the women (all three sets—Western, Middle and Eastern) is a puerile one. It could even be called downright idiotic. Yet I assure you that I see things this way, if I relax even a little and look through my own eyes into what is really inside my head. (Though because of my talent for mimicry I am able to simulate looking through the eyes of an educated person when I wish to.) Since I am giving you such a frank picture of myself, I may as well go the whole hog and admit to you that my secret picture of the world is grossly inaccurate. I have completely forgotten to include in it any of the Latin countries. (France, Italy, Spain.) For instance, I have jumped from the Anglo world to the semi-Oriental as if there were no countries in between at all. I know that these exist. (I have even lived in two of them.) But they do not fit into my scheme. I just don’t think about the Latins very much, and this is less understandable than my not thinking about the Chinese or Javanese or Japanese women. You can see why without my having to explain it to you. I do know that the French women are more interested in sports than they used to be, and for all I know they may be indistinguishable from Anglo women by now. I haven’t been to France recently so I can’t be sure. But in any case the women of those countries don’t enter into my picture of the world. Or shall I say that the fact of having forgotten utterly to consider them has not altered the way I visualize the division of the world’s women? Incredible though it may seem to you, it hasn’t altered anything. (My having forgotten all Latin countries, South America included.) I want you to know the whole truth about me. But don’t imagine that I wouldn’t be capable of concealing my ignorance from you if I wanted to. I am so wily and feminine that I could live by your side for a lifetime and deceive you afresh each day. But I will have no truck with feminine wiles. I know how they can absorb the hours of the day. Many women are delighted to sit around spinning their webs. It is an absorbing occupation, and the women feel they are getting somewhere. And so they are, but only for as long as the man is there to be deceived. And a wily woman alone is a pitiful sight to behold. Naturally.

  I shall try to be honest with you so that I can live with you and yet won’t be pitiful. Even if tossing my feminine tricks out the window means being left no better than an illiterate backwoodsman, or the bottom fish scraping along the ocean bed, I prefer to have it this way. Now I am too tired to write more. Though I don’t feel that I have clarified enough or justified enough.

  I shall write you soon about the effect the war has had upon me. I have spoken to you about it, but you have never seemed to take it very seriously. Perhaps seeing in black and white what I feel will affect your opinion of me. Perhaps you will leave me. I accept the challenge. My Hotel Henry experience includes this risk. I got drunk two nights ago. It’s hard to believe that I am forty-seven, isn’t it?

  My love,

  Emmy

  Now that I have copied this letter into my journal (I had forgotten to make a carbon), I shall take my walk. My scheme included a few weeks of solitude at the Hotel Henry before attempting anything. I did not even intend to write in my journal as soon as I started to, but simply to sit about collecting my thoughts, waiting for the knots of habit to undo themselves. But after only a week here—two nights ago—I felt amazingly alone and disconnected from my past life, so I began my journal.

  My first interesting contact was the salesman in the Blue Bonnet Room. I had heard about this eccentric through my in-laws, the Moores, before I ever came up here. My husband’s cousin Laurence Moore told me about him when he heard I was coming. He said: “Take a walk through Grey and Bottle’s Department Store, and you’ll see a man with a lean red face and reddish hair selling materials by the bolt. That man has an income and is related to Hewitt Molain. He doesn’t need to work. He was in my fraternity. Then he disappeared. The next I heard of him he was working there at Grey and Bottle’s. I stopped by and said hello to him. For a nut he seemed like a very decent chap. You might even have a drink with him. I think he’s quite up to general conversation.”

  I did not mention Laurence Moore to the society salesman because I thought it might irritate him. I lied and pretended to have been here for months, when actually this is still only my second week at the Hotel Henry. I want everyone to think I have been here a long time. Surely it is not to impress them. Is there anything impressive about a lengthy stay at the Hotel Henry? Any sane person would be alarmed that I should even ask such a question. I ask it because deep in my heart I do think a lengthy stay at the Hotel Henry is impressive. Very easy to see that I would, and even sane of me to think it impressive, but not sane of me to expect anyone else to think so, particularly a stranger. Perhaps I simply like to hear myself telling it. I hope so. I shall write some more tomorrow, but now I must go out. I am going to buy a supply of cocoa. When I’m not drunk I like to have a cup of cocoa before going to sleep. My husband likes it too.

  * * *

  She could not stand the overheated room a second longer. With some difficulty she raised the window, and the cold wind blew in. Some loose sheets of paper went skimming off the top of the desk and flattened themselves against the bookcase. She shut the window and they fell to the floor. The cold air had changed her mood. She looked down at the sheets of paper. They were part of the letter she had just copied. She picked them up: “I don’t feel that I have clarified enough or justified enough,” she read. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She had been so happy copying this letter into her journal, but now her heart was faint as she scanned its scattered pages. “I have said nothing,” she muttered to herself in alarm. “I have said nothing at all. I have not clarified my reasons for being at the Hotel Henry. I have not justified myself.”

  Automatically she looked around the room. A bottle of whiskey stood on the floor beside one of the legs of the bureau. She stepped forward, picked it up by the neck, and settled with it into her favorite wicker chair.

  Going to Massachusetts

  Bozoe rubbed away some tears with a closed fist.

  “Come on, Bozoe,” said Janet. “You’re not going to the North Pole.”

  Bozoe tugged at the woolly fur, and pulled a little of it out.

  “Leave your coat alone,” said Janet.

  “I don’t remember why I’m going to Massachusetts,” Bozoe moaned. “I knew it would be like this, once I got to the station.”

  “If you don’t want to go to Massachusetts,” said Janet, “then come on back t
o the apartment. We’ll stop at Fanny’s on the way. I want to buy those tumblers made out of knobby glass. I want brown ones.”

  Bozoe started to cry in earnest. This caused Janet considerable embarrassment. She was conscious of herself as a public figure because the fact that she owned and ran a garage had given her a good deal of publicity not only in East Clinton but in the neighboring counties. This scene, she said to herself, makes us look like two Italians saying goodbye. Everybody’ll think we’re Italians. She did not feel true sympathy for Bozoe. Her sense of responsibility was overdeveloped, but she was totally lacking in real tenderness.

  “There’s no reason for you to cry over a set of whiskey tumblers,” said Janet. “I told you ten days ago that I was going to buy them.”

  “Passengers boarding Bus Number Twenty-seven, north-bound.…”

  “I’m not crying about whiskey tumblers.” Bozoe managed with difficulty to get the words out. “I’m crying about Massachusetts. I can’t remember my reasons.”

  “Rockport, Rayville, Muriel.…”

  “Why don’t you listen to the loudspeaker, Bozoe? It’s giving you information. If you paid attention to what’s going on around you you’d be a lot better off. You concentrate too much on your own private affairs. Try more to be a part of the world.”

  * * *

  “… The truth is that I am only twenty-five miles away from the apartment, as you have probably guessed. In fact, you could not help but guess it, since you are perfectly familiar with Larry’s Bar and Grill. I could not go to Massachusetts. I cried the whole way up to Muriel and it was as if someone else were getting off the bus, not myself. But someone who was in a desperate hurry to reach the next stop. I was in mortal terror that the bus would not stop at Muriel but continue on to some further destination where I would not know any familiar face. My terror was so great that I actually stopped crying. I kept from crying all the way. That is a lie. Not an actual lie because I never lie as you know. Small solace to either one of us, isn’t it? I am sure that you would prefer me to lie, rather than be so intent on explaining my dilemma to you night and day. I am convinced that you would prefer me to lie. It would give you more time for the garage.”

  “So?” queried Sis McEvoy, an unkind note in her voice. To Janet she did not sound noticeably unkind, since Sis McEvoy was habitually sharp-sounding, and like her had very little sympathy for other human beings. She was sure that Sis McEvoy was bad, and she was determined to save her. She was going to save her quietly without letting Sis suspect her determination. Janet did everything secretly; in fact, secrecy was the essence of her nature, and from it she derived her pleasure and her sense of being an important member of society.

  “What’s it all about?” Sis asked irritably. “Why doesn’t she raise kids or else go to a psychologist or a psychoanalyst or whatever? My ovaries are crooked or I’d raise kids myself. That’s what God’s after, isnt’ it? Space ships or no space ships. What’s the problem, anyway? How are her ovaries and the rest of the mess?”

  Janet smiled mysteriously. “Bozoe has never wanted a child,” she said. “She told me she was too scared.”

  “Don’t you despise cowards?” said Sis. “Jesus Christ, they turn my stomach.”

  Janet frowned. “Bozoe says she despises cowards, too. She worries herself sick about it. She’s got it all linked up together with Heaven and Hell. She thinks so much about Heaven and Hell that she’s useless. I’ve told her for years to occupy herself. I’ve told her that God would like her better if she was occupied. But she says God isn’t interested. That’s a kind of slam at me, I suppose. At me and the garage. She’s got it in for the garage. It doesn’t bother me, but it makes me a little sore when she tries to convince me that I wouldn’t be interested in the garage unless she talked to me day and night about her troubles. As if I was interested in the garage just out of spite. I’m a normal woman and I’m interested in my work, like all women are in modern times. I’m a little stockier than most, I guess, and not fussy or feminine. That’s because my father was my ideal and my mother was an alcoholic. I’m stocky and I don’t like pretty dresses and I’m interested in my work. My work is like God to me. I don’t mean I put it above Him, but the next thing to Him. I have a feeling that he approves of my working. That he approves of my working in a garage. Maybe that’s cheeky of me, but I can’t help it. I’ve made a name for myself in the garage and I’m decent. I’m normal.” She paused for a moment to fill the two whiskey tumblers.

  “Do you like my whiskey tumblers?” She was being unusually spry and talkative. “I don’t usually have much time to buy stuff. But I had to, of course. Bozoe never bought anything in her life. She’s what you’d call a dead weight. She’s getting fatter, too, all the time.”

  “They’re good tumblers,” said Sis McEvoy. “They hold a lot of whiskey.”

  Janet flushed slightly at the compliment. She attributed the unaccustomed excitement she felt to her freedom from the presence of Bozoe Flanner.

  “Bozoe was very thin when I first knew her,” she told Sis. “And she didn’t show any signs that she was going to sit night and day making up problems and worrying about God and asking me questions. There wasn’t any of that in the beginning. Mainly she was meek, I guess, and she had soft-looking eyes, like a doe or a calf. Maybe she had the problems the whole time and was just planning to spring them on me later. I don’t know. I never thought she was going to get so tied up in knots, or so fat either. Naturally if she were heavy and happy too it would be better.”

  “I have no flesh on my bones at all,” said Sis McEvoy, as if she had not even heard the rest of the conversation. “The whole family’s thin, and every last one of us has a rotten lousy temper inherited from both sides. My father and my mother had rotten tempers.”

  “I don’t mind if you have a temper display in my apartment,” said Janet. “Go to it. I believe in people expressing themselves. If you’ve inherited a temper there isn’t much you can do about it except express it. I think it’s much better for you to break this crockery pumpkin, for instance, than to hold your temper in and become unnatural. For instance, I could buy another pumpkin and you’d feel relieved. I’d gather that, at any rate. I don’t know much about people, really. I never dabbled in people. They were never my specialty. But surely if you’ve inherited a temper from both sides it would seem to me that you would have to express it. It isn’t your fault, is it, after all?” Janet seemed determined to show admiration for Sis McEvoy.

  “I’m having fun,” she continued unexpectedly. “It’s a long time since I’ve had any fun. I’ve been too busy getting the garage into shape. Then there’s Bozoe trouble. I’ve kept to the routine. Late Sunday breakfast with popovers and home-made jam. She eats maybe six of them, but with the same solemn expression on her face. I’m husky but a small eater. We have record players and television. But nothing takes her mind off herself. There’s no point in my getting any more machines. I’ve got the cash and the good will, but there’s absolutely no point.”

  “You seem to be very well set up,” said Sis McEvoy, narrowing her eyes. “Here’s to you.” She tipped her glass and drained it.

  Janet filled Sister’s glass at once. “I’m having a whale of a good time,” she said. “I hope you are. Of course I don’t want to butt into your business. Bozoe always thought I pored over my account books for such a long time on purpose. She thought I was purposely trying to get away from her. What do you think, Sis McEvoy?” She asked this almost in a playful tone that bordered on a yet unexpressed flirtatiousness.

  “I’m not interested in women’s arguments with each other,” said Sis at once. “I’m interested in women’s arguments with men. What else is there? The rest doesn’t amount to a row of monkeys.”

  “Oh, I agree,” Janet said, as if she were delighted by this statement which might supply her with the stimulus she was after. “I agree one thousand percent. Remember I spend more time in the garage with the men than I do with Bozoe Flanner.”
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br />   “I’m not actually living with my husband because of my temper,” said Sis. “I don’t like long-standing relationships. They disagree with me. I get the blues. I don’t want anyone staying in my life for a long time. It gives me the creeps. Men are crazy about me. I like the cocktails and the compliments. Then after a while they turn my stomach.”

  “You’re a very interesting woman,” Janet Murphy announced, throwing caution to the winds and finding it pleasant.

  “I know I’m interesting,” said Sis. “But I’m not so sure life is interesting.”

  “Are you interested in money?” Janet asked her. “I don’t mean money for the sake of money, but for buying things.”

  Sis did not answer, and Janet feared that she had been rude. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” she said. “After all, money comes up in everybody’s life. Even duchesses have to talk about money. But I won’t, any more. Come on. Let’s shake.” She held out her hand to Sis McEvoy, but Sis allowed it to stay there foolishly, without accepting the warm grip Janet had intended for her.

  “I’m really sorry,” she went on, “if you think I was trying to be insulting and personal. I honestly was not. The fact is that I have been so busy building up a reputation for the garage that I behave like a savage. I’ll never mention money again.” In her heart she felt that Sis was somehow pleased that the subject had been brought up, but was not yet ready to admit it. Sis’s tedious work at the combination tearoom and soda fountain where they had met could scarcely make her feel secure.

  Bozoe doesn’t play one single feminine trick, she told herself, and after all, after struggling nearly ten years to build up a successful and unusual business I’m entitled to some returns. I’m in a rut with Bozoe and this Sis is going to get me out of it. (By now she was actually furious with Bozoe.) I’m entitled to some fun. The men working for me have more fun than I have.