The Price of Salt

by Highsmith, Patricia

  Therese stared at her.

  "I'll tell you about it one day. Whatever happened is past. Months and months ago," she said, so softly Therese could hardly hear.

  "Only months?"

  "Yes."

  "Tell me now."

  "This isn't the time or the place."

  "There's never a time," Therese said. "Didn't you say there never was a right time?"

  "Did I say that? About what?"

  But neither of them said anything for a moment, because a fresh barrage of wind hurled the rain like a million bullets against the hood and windshield, and for a moment they could have heard nothing else. There was no thunder, as if the thunder, somewhere up above, modestly refrained from competing with this other god of rain. They waited in the inadequate shelter of a hill at the side of the road.

  "I might tell you the middle," Carol said, "because it's funny—and ironic. It was last winter when we had the furniture shop together. But I can't begin without telling you the first part—and that was when we were children. Our families lived near each other in New Jersey, so we saw each other during vacations. Abby always had a mild crush on me, I thought, even when we were about six and eight. Then she wrote me a couple of letters when she was about fourteen and away at school. And by that time I'd heard of girls who preferred girls. But the books also tell you it goes away after that age." There were pauses between her sentences, as if she left out sentences in between.

  "Were you in school with her?" Therese asked.

  "I never was. My father sent me to a different school, out of town. Then Abby went to Europe when she was sixteen, and I wasn't at home when she came back. I saw her once at some party around the time I got married.

  Abby looked quite different then, not like a tomboy any more. Then Harge and I lived in another town, and I didn't see her again—really for years, till long after Rindy was born. She came once in a while to the riding stable where Harge and I used to ride. A few times we all rode together.

  Then Abby and I started playing tennis on Saturday afternoons when Harge usually played golf. Abby and I always had fun together. Abby's former crush on me never crossed my mind—we were both so much older and so much had happened. I had an idea about starting a shop, because I wanted to see less of Harge. I thought we were getting bored with each other and it would help. So I asked Abby if she wanted to be partners in it, and we started the furniture shop. After a few weeks to my surprise, I felt I was attracted to her," Carol said in the same quiet voice. "I couldn't understand it, and I was a little afraid of it—remembering Abby from before, and realizing she might feel the same way, or that both of us could. So I tried not to let Abby see it, and I think I succeeded. But finally—here's the funny part finally—there was the night in Abby's house one night last winter. The roads were snowed in that night, and Abby's mother insisted that we stay together in Abby's room, simply because the room I'd stayed in before hadn't any sheets on the bed then, and it was very late. Abby said she'd fix the sheets, we both protested, but Abby's mother insisted." Carol smiled a little, and glanced at her, but Therese felt Carol didn't even see her. "So I stayed with Abby.

  Nothing would have happened, if not for that night, I'm sure of it. If not for Abby's mother, that's the ironic thing, because she doesn't know anything about it. But it did happen, and I felt very much as you, I suppose, as happy as you." Carol blurted out the end, though her voice was still level and somehow without emotion of any kind.

  Therese stared at her, not knowing if it was jealousy or shock or anger that was suddenly jumbling everything. "And after that?" she asked.

  "After that, I knew I was in love with Abby. I don't know why not call it love, it had all the earmarks. But it lasted only two months, like a disease that came and went." Carol said in a different tone, "Darling, it's got nothing to do with you, and it's finished now. I knew you wanted to know, but I didn't see any reason for telling you before. It's that unimportant."

  "But if you felt the same way about her—"

  "For two months?" Carol said. "When you have a husband and child, you know, it's a little different."

  Different from her, Carol meant, because she hadn't any responsibilities.

  "Is it? You can just start and stop?"

  "When you haven't got a chance," Carol answered.

  The rain was abating, but only by so much that she could see it as rain now and not solid silver sheets. "I don't believe it."

  "You're hardly in a state to talk."

  "Why are you so cynical?"

  "Cynical? Am I?"

  Therese was not sure enough to answer. What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them.

  "It's letting up," Carol said. "How about going on and finding a good brandy somewhere? Or is this a dry state?"

  They drove on to the next town and found a deserted bar in the biggest hotel. The brandy was delicious, and they ordered two more.

  "It's French brandy," Carol said. "Someday we'll go to France."

  Therese turned the little bowl of a glass between her fingers. A clock ticked at the end of the bar. A train whistle blew in the distance. And Carol cleared her throat. Ordinary sounds, yet the moment was not an ordinary one. No moment had been an ordinary one since the morning in Waterloo. Therese stared at the bright brown light in the brandy glass, and suddenly she had no doubt that she and Carol would one day go to France. Then out of the shimmering brown sun in the glass, Harge's face emerged, mouth and nose and eyes.

  "Harge knows about Abby, doesn't he?" Therese said.

  "Yes. He asked me something about her a few months ago—and I told him the whole thing from start to finish."

  "You did—" She thought of Richard, imagined how Richard would react. "Is that why you're getting the divorce?"

  "No. It's got nothing to do with the divorce. That's another ironic thing—that I told Harge after it was all over. A mistaken effort at honesty, when Harge and I had nothing left to salvage. We'd already talked about a divorce. Please don't remind me of mistakes!" Carol frowned.

  "You mean—he certainly must have been jealous."

  "Yes. Because however I chose to tell it, I suppose it came out that I'd cared more about Abby at one period than I'd ever cared for him. At one point, even with Rindy I'd have left everything behind to go with her. I don't know how it was that I didn't."

  "And taken Rindy with you?"

  "I don't know. I know the fact that Rindy existed stopped me from leaving Harge then."

  "Do you regret it?"

  Carol shook her head slowly. "No. It wouldn't have lasted. It didn't last, and maybe I knew it wouldn't. With my marriage failing, I was too afraid and too weak—" She stopped.

  "Are you afraid now?"

  Carol was silent.

  "Carol—"

  "I am not afraid," she said stubbornly, lifting her head, drawing on her cigarette.

  Therese looked at her face in profile in the dim light. What about Rindy now, she wanted to ask, what will happen? But she knew Carol was on the brink of growing suddenly impatient, giving her a careless answer, or no answer at all. Another time, Therese thought, not this moment. It might destroy everything, even the solidity of Carol's body beside her, and the bend of Carol's body in the black sweater seemed the only solid thing in the world. Therese ran her thumb down Carol's side, from under the arm to the waist.

  "I remember Harge was particularly annoyed about a trip I took with Abby to Connecticut. Abby and I went up to buy some things for the shop. It was only a two-day trip, but he said, 'Behind my back. You had to run away.'" Carol said it bitterly. There was more self-reproach in her voice than imitation of Harge.

  "Does he still talk about it?"

  "No. Is it anything to talk about? Is it anything to be proud of?"

  "Is it anything to be ashamed of?"

  "Yes. You know that, don't you?" Carol asked in her even, distinct voice.

  "In
the eyes of the world it's an abomination."

  The way she said it, Therese could not quite smile. "You don't believe that."

  "People like Harge's family."

  "They're not the whole world."

  "They are enough. And you have to live in the world. You, I mean—and I don't mean anything just now about whom you decide to love." She looked at Therese, and at last Therese saw a smile rising slowly in her eyes, bringing Carol with it. "I mean responsibilities in the world that other people live in and that might not be yours. Just now it isn't, and that's why in New York I was exactly the wrong person for you to know—because I indulge you and keep you from growing up."

  "Why don't you stop?"

  "I'll try. The trouble is, I like to indulge you."

  "You're exactly the right person for me to know," Therese said.

  "Am I?"

  On the street, Therese said, "I don't suppose Harge would like it if he knew we were away on a trip, either, would he?"

  "He's not going to know about it."

  "Do you still want to go to Washington?"

  "Absolutely, if you've got the time. Can you stay away all of February?"

  Therese nodded. "Unless I hear something in Salt Lake City. I told Phil to write there. It's a pretty slim chance." Probably Phil wouldn't even write, she thought. But if there was the least chance of a job in New York, she should go back. "Would you go on to Washington without me?"

  Carol glanced at her. "As a matter of fact, I wouldn't," she said with a little smile.

  Their hotel room was so overheated when they came back that evening, they had to throw open the windows for a while. Carol leaned on the window sill, cursing the heat for Therese's amusement, calling her a salamander because she could bear it. Then Carol asked abruptly, "What did Richard have to say yesterday?"

  Therese had not even known that Carol knew about the last letter. The one he had promised, in the Chicago letter, to send to Minneapolis and to Seattle. "Nothing much," Therese said. "Just a one-page letter. He still wants me to write to him. And I don't intend to." She had thrown the letter away, but she remembered it, "I haven't heard from you, and it's beginning to dawn on me what an incredible conglomeration of contradictions you are. You are sensitive and yet so insensitive, imaginative and yet so unimaginative.... If you get stranded by your whimsical friend, let me know and I'll come after you. This won't last, Terry. I know a little about such things. I saw Dannie and he wanted to know what I'd heard from you, what you were doing. How would you like it if I had told him? I didn't say anything, for your sake, because I think one day you'll blush. I still love you, I admit it. I'll come out to you—and show you what America's really like—if you care enough about me to write and say so...."

  It was insulting to Carol, and Therese had torn it up. Therese sat on the bed with her arms around her knees, gripping her wrists inside the sleeves of her robe. Carol had overdone the ventilation, and the room was cold. The Minnesota winds had taken possession of the room, were seizing Carol's cigarette smoke and tearing it to nothing. Therese watched Carol calmly brushing her teeth at the basin.

  "Do you mean that about not writing to him? That's your decision?" Carol asked.

  "Yes."

  Therese watched Carol knock the water out of her toothbrush, and turn from the basin, blotting her face with a towel. Nothing about Richard mattered so much to her as the way Carol blotted her face with a towel.

  "Let's say no more," Carol said.

  She knew Carol would say no more. She knew Carol had been pushing her toward him, until this moment. Now it seemed it might all have been for this moment as Carol turned and walked toward her and her heart took a giant's step forward.

  They went on westward, through Sleepy Eye, Tracy, and Pipestone, sometimes taking an indirect highway on a whim. The West unfolded like a magic carpet, dotted with the neat, tight units of farmhouse, barn, and silo that they could see for half an hour before they came abreast of them. They stopped once at a farmhouse to ask if they could buy enough gas to get to the next station. The house smelled like fresh cold cheese.

  Their steps sounded hollow and lonely on the solid brown planks of the floor, and Therese thought in a fervid burst of patriotism—America. There was a picture of a rooster on the wall, made of colored patches of cloth sewn on a black ground, beautiful enough to hang in a museum. The farmer warned them about ice on the road directly west, so they took another highway going south.

  They discovered a one-ring circus that night beside a railroad track in a town called Sioux Falls. The performers were not very expert. Their seats were a couple of orange crates in the first row. One of the acrobats invited them into the performers' tent after the show, and insisted on giving Carol a dozen of the circus posters, because she had admired them.

  Carol sent some of them to Abby and some to Rindy, and sent Rindy as well a green chameleon in a pasteboard box. It was an evening Therese would never forget, and unlike most such evenings, this one registered as unforgettable while it still lived. It was a matter of the bag of popcorn they shared, the circus, and the kiss Carol gave her back of some booth in the performers' tent. It was a matter of that particular enchantment that came from Carol—though Carol took their good times so for granted—seemed to work on all the world around them, a matter of everything going perfectly, without disappointments or hitches, going just as they wished it to.

  Therese walked from the circus with her head down, lost in thought. "I wonder if I'll ever want to create anything again," she said.

  "What brought this on?"

  "I mean—what was I ever trying to do but this? I'm happy."

  Carol took her arm and squeezed it, dug her thumb in so hard that Therese yelled. Carol looked up at a street marker and said, "Fifth and Nebraska.

  I think we go this way."

  "What's going to happen when we get back to New York? It can't be the same, can it?"

  "Yes," Carol said. "Till you get tired of me."

  Therese laughed. She heard the soft snap of Carol's scarf end in the wind.

  "We might not be living together, but it'll be the same."

  They couldn't live together with Rindy, Therese knew. It was useless to dream of it. But it was more than enough that Carol promised in words it would be the same.

  Near the border of Nebraska and Wyoming, they stopped for dinner at a large restaurant built like a lodge in an evergreen forest. They were almost the only people in the big dining room, and they chose a table near the fireplace. They spread out the road map and decided to head straight for Salt Lake City. They might stay there for a few days, Carol said, because it was an interesting place, and she was tired of driving.

  "Lusk," Therese said, looking at the map. "What a sexy sounding name."

  Carol put her head back and laughed. "Where is it?"

  "On the road."

  Carol picked up her wine glass and said, "Chateau Neuf-du-Pape in Nebraska. What'll we drink to?"

  "Us."

  It was something like the morning in Waterloo, Therese thought, a time too absolute and flawless to seem real, though it was real, not merely props in a play—their brandy glasses on the mantel, the row of deers' horns above, Carol's cigarette lighter, the fire itself. But at moments she felt like an actor, remembered only now and then her identity with a sense of surprise, as if she had been playing in these last days the part of someone else, someone fabulously and excessively lucky. She looked up at the fir branches fixed in the rafters, at the man and woman talking inaudibly together at a table against the wall, at the man alone at his table, smoking his cigarette slowly. She thought of the man sitting with the newspaper in the hotel in Waterloo. Didn't he have the same colorless eyes and the long creases on either side of his mouth? Or was it only that this moment of consciousness was so much the same as that other moment?

  They spent the night in Lusk, ninety miles away.

  CHAPTER 17

  "MRS. H. F. AIRD?" The desk clerk looked at Carol after she
had signed the register. "Are you Mrs. Carol Aird?"

  "Yes."

  "Message for you." He turned around and got it from a pigeonhole. "A telegram."

  "Thank you." Carol glanced at Therese with a little lift of her brows before she opened it. She read it, frowning, then turned to the clerk.

  "Where's the Belvedere Hotel?"

  The clerk directed her.

  "I've got to pick up another telegram," Carol said to Therese. "Want to wait here while I get it?"

  "Who from?"

  "Abby."

  "All right. Is it bad news?"

  The frown was still in her eyes. "Don't know until I see it. Abby just says there's a telegram for me at the Belvedere."

  "Shall I have the bags taken up?"

  "Well—just wait. The car is parked."

  "Why can't I come with you?"

  "Of course, if you want to. Let's walk. It's only a couple of blocks away."

  Carol walked quickly. The cold was sharp. Therese glanced around her at the flat, orderly looking town, and remembered Carol's saying that Salt Lake City was the cleanest town in the United States. When the Belvedere was in sight, Carol suddenly looked at her and said, "Abby's probably had a brainstorm and decided to fly out and join us."

  In the Belvedere, Therese bought a newspaper while Carol went to the desk. When Therese turned to her, Carol was just lowering the telegram after reading it. There was a stunned expression on her face. She came slowly toward Therese, and it flashed through Therese's mind that Abby was dead, that this second message was from Abby's parents.

  "What's the matter?" Therese asked.

  "Nothing. I don't know yet." Carol glanced around and slapped the telegram against her fingers. "I've got to make a phone call. It might take a few minutes." She looked at her watch.

  It was a quarter to two. The hotel clerk said she could probably get New Jersey in about twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Carol wanted a drink. They found a bar in the hotel.

  "What is it? Is Abby sick?"

  Carol smiled. "No. I'll tell you later."

  "Is it Rindy?"