Nothing That Meets the Eye

by Patricia Highsmith

  A big, softly lighted, pink and beige bar came into view almost immediately. And there were several women inside, she was relieved to see. Feeling strange and somehow very special, Mildred went in through the revolving door. Every table was in use, so she stood shyly behind two men at the bar, over whose shoulders she could see the barman now and then.

  “Whiskey,” she said, when the barman seemed to be looking at her.

  “What kind?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said cheerfully.

  Everybody in the place seemed to be having such a good time, it was fun just to watch them. She never gave such places a thought, yet they were going full blast all over New York every evening, she supposed. It occurred to her she was probably a more sophisticated person than she realized.

  She wondered if Edith still wore her hair in those stiff marcel waves. The last time she had seen Edith, she had looked like one of those dummies with wigs they have in beauty parlor windows. That wasn’t a nice thing to think about one’s sister, but Edith really had looked like them. For the first time now, Mildred realized that Edith was actually coming, that she would see her within minutes. She could hear Edith’s slow voice as clearly as if she stood beside her, saying, “Well, that’s fate, Millie,” as she often did, and as she probably would say about her daughter Phyllis’s marriage. Phyllis’s husband was only nineteen and without a job, and, according to a letter Cousin John in Toledo had written her a few weeks ago, without ambition, either. “Well, that’s fate,” Edith would say by way of passing it off. “Parents can’t boss their children anymore, once the children think they’re grown.” Mildred’s heart went out to her sister.

  The square-numeraled clock on the wall said only 6:17. Just about an hour ago, she had been on the bus going home. The crowded bus seemed suddenly dismal and hideous. It was as if another person had been riding on it an hour ago, not herself, not this person who sipped whiskey in a bar where dance music played, this person who awaited a train from Cleveland.

  One of the men offered her a high red stool, but she was so short, she decided just to lean against it. Then all at once it was 6:28. She paid her check, clutched her handbag, and dashed off.

  Now, really now, her sister was pulling into the station. She giggled excitedly. A bell went whang-whang-whang! A metal gate folded back. People rushed up the slope, people rushed down, among them herself. And there was Edith, walking toward her!

  “Edith!”

  “Millie!”

  They fell upon each other. My own flesh and blood, Mildred thought, patting Edith’s back and feeling a little weepy. There was confusion for a few minutes while Edith found her suitcase, Mildred asked questions about the family, and they looked for a cab. With a flash of pain, Mildred remembered the eggs on the stove at home. They would be burning now, aflame probably, the gas was so high. How did burning eggs smell? In the taxi, Mildred braced Edith’s suitcase against the jump seat with her foot and tried to listen to everything Edith was telling her, but she couldn’t keep track of anything for thinking of the eggs.

  “How is Arthur?” Mildred asked, one eye out the window to see if the driver was going right.

  “Just as well as can be. He has a new baby.”

  Mildred hoped every child in the neighborhood wasn’t cluttering the front steps. Sometimes they played cards right in the doorway. “Oh, a new baby! Oh, has he?”

  “Yes, another little girl,” said Edith. “Just last week. I was saving it to tell you.”

  “So now you’re twice a grandmother! I’ll have to send Arthur and Helen something right away.”

  Edith protested she shouldn’t.

  Mildred paid the driver, then struggled out with the suitcase, waving Edith’s assistance aside, and not waiting for the driver to help, because drivers usually didn’t. She realized too late that she might have added another dime to the tip, and hoped Edith hadn’t noticed. Pinching each other’s fingers under the suitcase handle, the sisters climbed the three flights. Mildred felt a rough corner of the suitcase tearing at her good stocking.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked cheerily as she felt for her keys, trying not to sound out of breath. She sniffed for burning eggs.

  “I had a snack on the train about five o’clock,” Edith replied, “so I’m bearing up, as they say.”

  “Well, here it is, such as it is!” Mildred smiled fearfully as she swung the door open for Edith, braced for any kind of odor.

  “It’s just lovely,” Edith said, even before the light was turned on.

  Mildred had flown past her into the kitchen. The eggs were turned off, resting quietly in their water. She stared at them incredulously for a second or two. “It’s just the one room and a bit of a kitchen this time,” Mildred remarked as she returned to her sister, for Edith, standing in the middle of the room, seemed to be expecting her to show her the rest. “But it’s much more convenient to the office than the Bronx apartment was. I know you’ll want to wash up, Edie, so just have your coat off and I’ll show you where everything is.”

  But Edith did not want to wash up.

  “As Father used to say, ‘I propose we have a wee nip in honor of the occasion!’” Mildred said a bit wildly, her voice rising over the roar of a passing truck on Third Avenue. She thought Edith looked at her in a funny way, so she added, “Not that I’ve become a drinking woman, by any means! I did have one while I was waiting for you in the station, though. Could you tell?”

  “No. You mean you went in a bar by yourself and had a drink?”

  “Why, yes,” Mildred replied, wishing now that she hadn’t mentioned it. “Women often go into bars in New York, you know. It’s not like Cleveland.” Mildred turned a little unsteadily and went into the kitchen. She did want another bit of a drink, just to continue feeling as calm as she did now, for it certainly was helping to calm her. She took a quick nip, then fixed a tray with the bottle and glasses and ice. “Well, down the hatch!” Mildred said as she set the tray down on the coffee table.

  Edith had refused the maroon-covered easy chair Mildred had offered her, and now she sat tensely on the couch and sipped her whiskey as if it were poison. She gazed off now and then at the windows—the curtains, Mildred admitted, were not so clean as Cleveland curtains, but at least she had brushed them down last night—and at the brown bureau that was her least attractive piece of furniture. Why didn’t Edith look over at the kitchen table where everything was lined up as neatly as a color photograph in a magazine?

  “The gladiolas are beautiful, Millie,” Edith said, looking at the gladiolas Mildred had set in a blue vase atop the bureau. “I grow gladiolas in the backyard.”

  Mildred lighted up appreciatively at Edith’s compliment. “How long am I to have the pleasure of your company, sister?”

  “Oh, just till—” Edith broke off and looked at the windows with an expression of annoyance.

  A truck or perhaps a cement mixer was rattling and clanking up the avenue. Suddenly Mildred, whose ears had adjusted long ago to the street noises, realized how it must sound to Edith, and writhed with shame. She had quite forgotten the worst feature of her apartment—the noise. The garbage trucks that started grinding around three A.M. were going to be worse.

  “It’s a nuisance,” Mildred said carelessly, “but one gets used to it. What with the housing—” Something else was passing, backfiring like pistol shots, and Mildred realized she couldn’t hear her own voice. She waited, then resumed. “What with the housing being—”

  But Edith silenced her with a hopeless shake of her head.

  A war of horns was going on now, probably a little traffic jam at the corner. That was the way it went, Mildred tried to convey to Edith with a smile and a shrug, all at once or nothing at all. For a few moments their ears, even Mildred’s ears, were filled with the cacophony of car horns, of snarling human voices.

&n
bsp; “Really, Millie, I don’t see how you stand this noise day after day,” Edith said.

  Mildred shrugged involuntarily, started to say something, and said nothing after all. She felt inexplicably foolish all at once.

  “What were you going to say before?” Edith prompted.

  “Oh. Well, what with the housing being what it is today, New Yorkers can’t be too picky where they live. I have my budget, and I didn’t have any choice but this place and something on Tenth Avenue when I wanted to move from the Bronx. Took me three months to find this.” She said it with a little pride that was instantly quelled by her sister’s troubled regard of the windows. Well, there weren’t any trucks passing now, Mildred thought a bit resentfully, and the traffic jam had evidently cleared up. What was she looking at? Self-consciously, Mildred got up and lowered the window, though she knew it would not help much to lessen the noise. She looked at her geranium. The geranium was nothing but a crooked dry stalk in its pot now, at the extreme left of the windowsill where the sun lingered longest. It must have been three weeks since she’d watered it, and now she felt overcome with remorse. Why was she always rushing so, she forgot all about doing the nice things, all the little things that gave her real pleasure? A wave of self-pity brought tears to her eyes. A lot her sister knew about all she had to contend with, the million and one things she had to think of all by herself, not only at home but at the office, too. You could tell just by looking at Edith she never had to worry or rush about anything, even to take a hard-boiled egg off the stove.

  With a smile, Mildred turned to Edith, and under cover of a “Hungry yet?” ducked into the kitchen to see about the hard-boiled eggs. She balanced the three hot eggs on top of the block of ice in the icebox, so they would cool as fast as possible.

  “Remember the time we took the raw eggs by mistake on the picnic, Edie?” Mildred said, laughing as she came back into the living room. It was an old family joke, and one or the other of them mentioned it almost every time they cooked hard-boiled eggs.

  “Will I ever forget!” Edith shrieked, bringing her hands down gently on her knees. “I still say Billy Reed switched them on us. He’s the same rascal today he always was.”

  “Those were happy old days, weren’t they?” Mildred said vaguely, wondering if she shouldn’t perhaps cook the eggs even longer. She made a start for the kitchen and changed her mind.

  “Millie, do you think it’s really worth it to live in New York?” Edith asked suddenly.

  “Worth it? How do you mean worth it?—I suppose I earn fairly good money.” She didn’t mean to sound superior to her sister, but she was proud of her independence. “I’m able to save a little, too.”

  “I mean, it’s such a hard life you lead and all, being away from the family. New York’s so unfriendly, and no trees to look at or anything. I think you’re more nervous than you were two years ago.”

  Mildred stared at her. Maybe New York had made her more nervous, quicker about things. But wasn’t she as happy and healthy as Edith? “They’re starting trees right here on Third Avenue. They’re pretty small yet, but tomorrow you can see them.—I don’t think it’s such an unfriendly town,” she went on defensively. “Why, just this afternoon, I heard the delicatessen man talking with a woman about— And even the plumber—” She broke off, knowing she wouldn’t be able to express what she meant.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Edith said, twiddling her hands limply in her lap. “My last trip here, I asked a policeman where the Radio City Music Hall was, and you’d have thought I was asking him to map me a way to the North Pole or something, he seemed so put out about it. Nobody’s got time for anybody else—have they?” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at Mildred for an answer.

  Mildred moistened her lips. Something in her struggled slowly and painfully to the surface. “I—I’ve always found our policemen very courteous. Maybe yours was a traffic officer or something. They’re pretty busy, of course. But New York policemen are famous for their courtesy, especially to out-of-towners. Why, they even call them New York’s Finest!” A tingle of civic pride swept over her. She remembered the morning she had stood in the rain at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue and watched the companies of policemen—New York’s Finest—march down the avenue. And the mounted policemen! How handsome they had looked, row upon row with their horses’ hoofs clattering! She had stood there not caring that she was all by herself then, or that the rain was soaking her, she felt so proud of her big city. A man with a little boy perched on his shoulder had turned around in the crowd and smiled at her, she remembered. “New York’s very friendly,” Mildred protested earnestly.

  “Well, maybe, but that’s not the way it seems to me.” Edith slipped off a shoe and rubbed her instep against the heel of her other foot. “And sister,” she continued in a more subdued tone, “I hope you’re not indulging more than you should.”

  Mildred’s eyes grew wide. “Do you mean drinking? Goodness, no! Why, at least I don’t think so. I just took these in your honor, Edie. Gracious, you don’t think I do this every night, do you?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean I thought that!” Edith said, forcing a smile.

  Mildred chewed her underlip and wondered whether she should think of some other excuse for herself, or let the matter drop.

  “You know, Millie, I’d meant to speak to you about maybe coming back to Cleveland to live. Everybody’s talking about the interesting new jobs opening up there, and you’re not—well, so deep-fixed in this job that you couldn’t leave, are you?”

  “Of course, I could leave if I wanted to. But Mr. Sweeney depends a great deal on me. At least he says he does.” She swallowed, and tried to collect all that clamored inside her for utterance. “It’s not a very big job, I suppose, but it’s a good one. And we’ve all been working together for seven years, you know,” she asserted, but she knew this by itself couldn’t express to Edith how the four of them—she had written Edith many a time about Louise who handled the books and the files, and Carl their salesman, and Mr. Sweeney, of course—were much more of a family than many families were. “Oh, New York’s my home now, Edie.”

  “You’ve always got a home with us, Millie.”

  Mildred was about to say that was very sweet of her, but a truck’s brakes were mounting to a piercing crescendo outside. She dropped her eyes from Edith’s disappointed face.

  “I’ve got some things I ought to put on hangers overnight,” Edith said finally. “And do you mind if I wash my white gloves? They’ll just about dry by morning. I’ll have to leave early.”

  “What time?” Mildred asked, in order to be cooperative, but, aware that her worried expression might make her seem eager for Edith’s departure, she smiled, which was almost worse.

  “The train’s at eight forty-eight,” Edith replied, going to her ­suitcase.

  “That’s too bad. I’m sorry you’re not staying longer, Edith.” She really did feel sorry. They’d hardly have time to talk at all. And Edith probably wouldn’t notice half the things she had done around the house, the neat closets, the half of the top drawer she had cleared for her in the bureau, the container of soft drinks Edith liked that she had thought of the first thing last evening.

  Mildred wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and went into the kitchen. She got the stew pan of boiled potatoes from the icebox and dumped them into the salad bowl. She separated the celery under running water, bunched it, and sliced it onto the potatoes. The old habit of rushing, of saving split seconds, caught her up in its machinery as if she no longer possessed a volition of her own, and she surrendered to it with a kind of tortured enjoyment. She hardly breathed except to gasp at intervals, and she moved faster and faster. The jar of olives flew into the bowl at one burst, followed by a shower of onion chips and a cloud of paprika that made her cough. Finally, she seized knife and fork and began to slice everything in the bowl every which way. He
r muscles grew so taut, it hurt her even to move to the icebox to get the eggs. The eggs had descended three inches or more into the ice, and she could not extract them with her longest fingers. She peered at their murkily enlarged forms through the ice cake, then burst out laughing.

  “Edie!” she cried. “Edie, come here and look!”

  But her only reply was the flushing of the toilet. Mildred bent over in silent, paroxysmic hilarity. If her sister only knew about the toilet! The toothbrush the plumber had dragged out that hadn’t even looked like a toothbrush!

  Mildred straightened and grimly wrestled the ice cake from the box. She shook the eggs into the sink, holding the ice with hands and forearms. The eggs had bright, gooey orange centers, but they were fairly cold. She hacked them into the salad, listening the while for Edith’s coming out of the bathroom. She was racing to have the supper ready when Edith came out, but what did it matter really whether she was ready or not? Why was she in such a hurry? She giggled at herself, then, with her mouth still smiling, set her teeth and stirred the dressing so fast it rose high up the sides of the mixing bowl.

  “Can I help you, Millie?”

  “Not a thing to do, thank you, Edie.” Mildred dragged the coleslaw out of the icebox so hastily, she dropped it face down on the floor, but Edith had just turned away and didn’t see.

  Within moments, she was ready, the table laid, the coffee perking, the pumpernickel bread—but there wasn’t any butter. She’d forgotten butter for herself yesterday, and forgotten it again today.