The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  "I'm not much in the mood," Carol said, but Therese heard the play of possibility in it nevertheless.

  Abby squirmed a little and looked around her. "This place is gloomy as a coalpit in the mornings, isn't it?"

  Therese smiled a little. A coalpit, with the sun beginning to yellow the window sill, and the evergreen tree beyond it?

  Carol was looking at Abby fondly, lighting one of Abby's cigarettes. How well they must know each other, Therese thought, so well that nothing either of them said or did to the other could ever surprise, ever be misunderstood.

  "Was it a good party?" Carol asked.

  "Mm," Abby said indifferently. "Do you know someone called Bob Haversham?"

  "No."

  "He was there tonight. I met him somewhere before in New York. Funnily enough, he said he was going to work for Rattner and Aird in the brokerage department."

  "Really."

  "I didn't tell him I knew one of the bosses."

  "What time is it?" Carol asked after a moment.

  Abby looked at her wrist watch, a small watch set in a pyramid of gold panels. "Seven thirty. About. Do you care?"

  "Want to sleep some more, Therese?"

  "No. I'm fine."

  "I'll drive you in whenever you have to go," Carol said.

  But it was Abby who drove her finally, around ten o'clock, because she had nothing else to do, she said, and she would enjoy it.

  Abby was another one who liked cold air, Therese thought as they picked up speed on the highway. Who rode in an open-topped car in December?

  "Where'd you meet Carol?" Abby yelled at her.

  Therese felt she might almost, but not quite, have told Abby the truth.

  "In a store," Therese yelled back.

  "Oh?" Abby drove erratically, whipping the big car around curves, putting on speed where one didn't expect it. "Do you like her?"

  "Of course!" What a question! Like asking her if she believed in God.

  Therese pointed out her house to Abby when they turned into the street.

  "Do you mind doing something for me?" Therese asked. "Could you wait here a minute? I want to give you something to give to Carol."

  "Sure," Abby said.

  Therese ran upstairs and got the card she had made, and stuck it under the ribbon of Carol's present. She took it back down to Abby. "You're going to see her tonight, aren't you?"

  Abby nodded, slowly, and Therese sensed the ghost of a challenge in Abby's curious black eyes, because she was going to see Carol and Therese wasn't, and what could Therese do about it?

  "And thanks for the ride in."

  Abby smiled. "Sure you don't want me to take you anywhere else?"

  "No, thanks," Therese said, smiling, too, because Abby would certainly have been glad to take her even to Brooklyn Heights.

  She climbed her front steps and opened her mailbox. There were two or three letters in it, Christmas cards, one from Frankenberg's. When she looked into the street again, the big cream-colored car was gone, like a thing she had imagined, like one of the birds in the dream.

  CHAPTER 8

  "AND NOW YOU make a wish," Richard said.

  Therese wished it. She wished for Carol.

  Richard had his hands on her arms. They were standing under a thing that looked like a beaded crescent, or a section of a starfish, that hung from the hall ceiling. It was ugly, but the Semco family attributed almost magical powers to it, and hung it up on special occasions. Richard's grandfather had brought it from Russia.

  "What did you wish?" He smiled down at her possessively. This was his house, and he had just kissed her, though the door into the living room was open and filled with people.

  "You're not supposed to tell," Therese said.

  "You can tell in Russia."

  "Well, I'm not in Russia."

  The radio roared louder suddenly, voices singing a carol. Therese drank the rest of the pink eggnog in her glass.

  "I want to go up to your room," she said.

  Richard took her hand, and they started up the stairs.

  "Ri—chard?"

  The aunt with the cigarette holder was calling him from the living-room door.

  Richard said a word Therese didn't understand, and waved a hand at her.

  Even on the second floor, the house trembled with the crazy dancing below, the dancing that had nothing to do with the music. Therese heard another glass fall, and pictured the pink foamy eggnog rolling across the floor. This was tame compared to the real Russian Christmases they had used to celebrate in the first week in January, Richard said. Richard smiled at her as he closed the door of his room.

  "I like my sweater," he said.

  "I'm glad." Therese swept her full skirt in an arc and sat on the edge of Richard's bed. The heavy Norwegian sweater she had given Richard was on the bed behind her, lying across its tissued box. Richard had given her a skirt from an East India shop, a long skirt with green and gold bands and embroidery. It was lovely, but Therese did not know where she could ever wear it.

  "How about a real shot? That stuff downstairs is sickening." Richard got his bottle of whisky from his closet floor.

  Therese shook her head. "No, thanks."

  "This'd be good for you."

  She shook her head again. She looked around her at the high-ceilinged, almost square room, at the wallpaper with the barely discernible pattern of pink roses, at the two peaceful windows curtained in slightly yellowed white muslin. From the door, there were two pale trails in the green carpet, one to the bureau and one to the desk in the corner. The pot of brushes and the portfolio on the floor by the desk were the only signs of Richard's painting. Just as painting took up only a corner of his brain, she felt, and she wondered how much longer he would go on with it before he dropped it for something else. And she wondered, as she had often wondered before, if Richard liked her only because she was more sympathetic with his ambitions than anyone else he happened to know now, and because he felt her criticism was a help to him. Therese got up restlessly and went to the window. She loved the room—because it stayed the same and stayed in the same place—yet today she felt an impulse to burst from it. She was a different person from the one who had stood here three weeks ago. This morning she had awakened in Carol's house. Carol was like a secret spreading through her, spreading through this house, too, like a light invisible to everyone but her.

  "You're different today," Richard said so abruptly that a thrill of peril passed down her body.

  "Maybe it's the dress," she said.

  She was wearing a blue taffeta dress that was God knows how old, that she hadn't put on since her first months in New York. She sat down on the bed again, and looked at Richard who stood in the middle of the floor with the little glass of straight whisky in his hand, his clear blue eyes moving from her face to her feet in the new high-heeled black shoes, back to her face again.

  "Terry." Richard took her hands, pinned her hands to the bed on either side of her. The smooth, thin lips descended on hers, firmly, with the flick of his tongue between her lips and the aromatic smell of fresh whisky. "Terry, you're an angel," Richard's deep voice said, and she thought of Carol saying the same thing.

  She watched him pick up his little glass from the floor and set it with the bottle into the closet. She felt immensely superior to him suddenly, to all the people below stairs. She was happier than any of them.

  Happiness was a little like flying, she thought, like being a kite. It depended on how much one let the string out— "Pretty?" Richard said.

  Therese sat up. "It's a beauty!"

  "I finished it last night. I thought if it was a good day, we'd go to the park and fly it." Richard grinned like a boy, proud of his handiwork.

  "Look at the back."

  It was a Russian kite, rectangular and bowed like a shield, its slim frame notched and tied at the corners. On the front, Richard had painted a cathedral with whirling domes and a red sky behind it.

  "Let's go fly it now," Therese sai
d.

  They carried the kite downstairs. Then everybody saw them and came into the hall, uncles,. aunts, and cousins, until the hall was a din and Richard had to hold the kite in the air to protect it. The noise irritated Therese, but Richard loved it.

  "Stay for the champagne, Richard!" one of the aunts shouted, one of the aunts with a fat midriff straining like a second bosom under a satin dress.

  "Can't," Richard said, and added something in Russian, and Therese had a feeling she often had, seeing Richard with his family, that there must have been a mistake, that Richard might be an orphan himself, a changeling, left on the doorstep and brought up a son of this family. But there was his brother Stephen standing in the doorway, with Richard's blue eyes, though Stephen was even taller and thinner.

  "What roof?" Richard's mother asked shrilly. "This roof?"

  Someone had asked if they were going to fly the kite on the roof, and since the house hadn't a roof one could stand on, Richard's mother had gone off into peals of laughter. Then the dog began to bark.

  "I'm going to make you that dress!" Richard's mother called to Therese, wagging her finger admonishingly. "I know your measurements!"

  They had measured her with a tape in the living room, in the midst of all the singing and present opening, and a couple of the men had tried to help, too. Mrs. Semco put her arm around Therese's waist, and suddenly Therese embraced her and kissed her firmly on the cheek, her lips sinking into the soft powdered cheek, in that one second pouring out in the kiss, and in the convulsive clasp of her arm, the affection Therese really had for her, that Therese knew would hide itself again as if it did not exist, in the instant she released her.

  Then she and Richard were free and alone, walking down the front sidewalk. It wouldn't be any different, if they were married, Therese thought, visiting the family on Christmas Day. Richard would fly his kites even when he was an old man, like his grandfather who had flown kites in Prospect Park until the year he died, Richard had told her.

  They took the subway to the park, and walked to the treeless hill where they had come a dozen times before. Therese looked around her. There were some boys playing with a football down on the flat field at the edge of the trees, but otherwise the park looked quiet and still. There was not much wind, not really enough, Richard said, and the sky was densely white as if it carried snow.

  Richard groaned, failing again. He was trying to get the kite up by running with it.

  Therese, sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees, watched him put his head up and turn in all directions, as if he had lost something in the air. "Here it is!" She got up, pointing.

  "Yes, but it's not steady."

  Richard ran the kite into it anyway, and the kite sagged on its long string, then jerked up as if something had sprung it. It made a big arc, then began to climb in another direction.

  "It's found its own wind!" Therese said.

  "Yes, but it's slow."

  "What a gloomy Gus! Can I hold it?"

  "Wait'll I get it higher."

  Richard pumped at it with long swings of his arms, but the kite stayed at the same place in the cold sluggish air. The golden domes of the cathedral wagged from side to side, as if the whole kite were shaking its head saying no, and the long limp tail followed foolishly, repeating the negation.

  "Best we can do," Richard said. "It can't carry any more string."

  Therese did not take her eyes from it. Then the kite steadied and stopped, like a picture of a cathedral pasted on the thick white sky.

  Carol wouldn't like kites probably, Therese thought. Kites wouldn't amuse her. She would glance at one, and say it was silly.

  "Want to take it?"

  Richard poked the string stick into her hands, and she got to her feet.

  She thought, Richard had worked on the kite last night when she was with Carol, which was why he hadn't called her, and didn't know she had not been home. If he had called, he would have mentioned it. Soon there would come the first lie.

  Suddenly the kite broke its mooring in the sky and tugged sharply to get away. Therese let the stick turn fast in her hands, as long as she dared to under Richard's eyes, because the kite was still low. And now it rested again, stubbornly still.

  "Jerk it!" Richard said. "Keep working it up."

  She did. It was like playing with a long elastic band. But the string was so long and slack now, it was all she could do to stir the kite. She pulled and pulled and pulled. Then Richard came and took it, and Therese let her arms hang. Her breath came harder, and little muscles in her arms were quivering. She sat down on the ground. She hadn't won against the kite. It hadn't done what she wanted it to do.

  "Maybe the string's too heavy," she said. It was a new string, soft and white and fat as a worm.

  "String's very light. Look now. Now it's going!"

  Now it was climbing in short, upward darts, as if it had found its own mind suddenly, and a will to escape.

  "Let out more string!" she shouted.

  Therese stood up. A bird flew under the kite. She stared at the rectangle that was growing smaller and smaller, jerking back and back like a snip's billowed sail going backward. She felt the kite meant something, this particular kite, at this minute.

  "Richard?"

  "What?"

  She could see him in the corner of her eye, crouched with his hands out in front of him, as if he rode a surfboard. "How many times were you in love?" she asked.

  Richard laughed, a short, hoarse laugh. "Never till you."

  "Yes, you were. You told me about two times."

  "If I count those, I might count twelve others, too," Richard said quickly, with the bluntness of preoccupation.

  The kite was starting to take arcing step's downward.

  Therese kept her voice on the same level. "Were you ever in love with a boy?"

  "A boy?" Richard repeated, surprised.

  "Yes."

  Perhaps five seconds passed before he said, "No," in a positive and final tone.

  At least he troubled to answer, Therese thought. What would you do if you were, she had an impulse to ask, but the question would hardly serve a purpose. She kept her eyes on the kite. They were both looking at the same kite, but with what different thoughts in their minds. "Did you ever hear of it?" she asked.

  "Hear of it? You mean people like that? Of course." Richard was standing straight now, winding the string in with figure-eight movements of the stick.

  Therese said carefully, because he was listening, "I don't mean people like that. I mean two people who fall in love suddenly with each other, out of the blue. Say two men or two girls."

  Richard's face looked the same as it might have if they had been talking about politics. "Did I ever know any? No."

  Therese waited until he was working with the kite again, trying to pump it higher. Then she remarked, "I suppose it could happen, though, to almost anyone, couldn't it?"

  He went on, winding the kite. "But those things don't just happen.

  There's always some reason for it in the background."

  "Yes," she said agreeably. Therese had thought back into the background.

  The nearest she could remember to being "in love" was the way she had felt about a boy she had seen a few times in the town of Montclair, when she rode in the school bus. He had curly black hair and a handsome, serious face, and he had been perhaps twelve years old, older than she then. She remembered a short time when she had thought of him every day.

  But that was nothing, nothing like what she felt for Carol. Was it love or wasn't it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn't even know. She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions. "Do you think I could?"

  Therese asked simply, before she could debate whether she dared to ask.

  "What!" Richard smiled. "
Fall in love with a girl? Of course not! My God, you haven't, have you?"

  "No," Therese said, in an odd, inconclusive tone, but Richard did not seem to notice the tone.

  "It's going again. Look, Terry!"

  The kite was wobbling straight up, faster and faster, and the stick was whirling in Richard's hands. At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she had ever been before. And why worry about defining everything.

  "Hey!" Richard sprinted after the stick that was leaping crazily around the ground, as if it were trying to leave the earth, too. "Want to hold it?" he asked, capturing it. "Practically takes you up!"

  Therese took the stick. There was not much string left, and the kite was all but invisible now. When she let her arms go all the way up, she could feel it lifting her a little, delicious and buoyant, as if the kite might really take her up if it got all its strength together.

  "Let it out!" Richard shouted, waving his arms. His mouth was open, and two spots of red had come in his cheeks. "Let it out!"

  "There's no more string!"

  "I'm going to cut it!"

  Therese couldn't believe she had heard it, but glancing over at him, she saw him reaching under his overcoat for his knife. "Don't," she said.

  Richard came running over, laughing.

  "Don't!" she said angrily. "Are you crazy?" Her hands were tired, but she clung all the harder to the stick.

  "Let's cut it! It's more fun!" And Richard bumped into her rudely, because he was looking up.

  Therese jerked the stick sideways, out of his reach, speechless with anger and amazement. There was an instant of fear, when she felt Richard might really have lost his mind, and then she staggered backward, the pull gone, the empty stick in her hand. "You're mad!" she yelled at him.

  "You're insane!"

  "It's only a kite!" Richard laughed, craning up at the nothingness.

  Therese looked in vain, even for the dangling string. "Why did you do it?" Her voice was shrill with tears. "It was such a beautiful kite!"