Price Of Salt, The

by Claire Morgan

  Carol's eyebrows frowned, though she smiled a little.

  Therese felt that she thought of something so intensely, one might have touched the thought in the air between them. Then Carol slipped her hands under her shoulders, and bent her head down to Therese's throat, and Therese felt the tension go out of Carol's body with the sigh that made her neck warm, that carried the perfume that was in Carol's hair.

  "You're a child," Carol said, like a reproach. She lifted her head. "What would you like?"

  Therese remembered what she had thought of in the restaurant, and she set her teeth in shame.

  "What would you like?" Carol repeated.

  "Nothing, thanks."

  Carol got up and went to her dressing table and lighted a cigarette. Therese watched her through half-closed lids, worried by Carol's restlessness, though she loved the cigarette, loved to see her smoke.

  "What would you like, a drink?"

  Therese knew she meant water. She knew from the tenderness and the concern in her voice, as if she were a child sick with fever. Then Therese said it: "I think I'd like some hot milk."

  The corner of Carol's mouth lifted in a smile. "Some hot milk," she mocked. Then she left the room.

  And Therese lay in a limbo of anxiety and sleepiness all the long while until Carol reappeared with the milk in a straight-sided white cup with a saucer under it, holding the saucer and the cup handle, and closing the door with her foot.

  "I let it boil and it's got a scum on it," Carol said annoyedly. "I'm sorry."

  But Therese loved it, because she knew this was exactly what Carol would always do, be thinking of something else and let the milk boil.

  "Is that the way you like it? Plain like that?"

  Therese nodded.

  "Ug," Carol said, and sat down on the arm of a chair and watched her.

  Therese was propped on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a mélange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo.

  It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill. Then Carol came and took the cup, and Therese was drowsily aware that Carol asked her three questions, one that had to do with happiness, one about the store, and one about the future. Therese heard herself answering. She heard her voice rise suddenly in a babble, like a spring that she had no control over, and she realized she was in tears. She was telling Carol all that she feared and disliked, of her loneliness, of Richard, and of gigantic disappointments. And of her parents. Her mother was not dead. But Therese had not seen her since she was fourteen.

  Carol questioned her, and she answered, though she did not want to talk about her mother. Her mother was not that important, not even one of the disappointments. Her father was. Her father was quite different. He had died when she was six— a lawyer of Czechoslovakian descent who all his life had wanted to be a painter. He had been quite different, gentle, sympathetic, never raising his voice in anger against the woman who had nagged at him, because he had been neither a good lawyer nor a good painter. He had never been strong, he had died of pneumonia, but in Therese's mind, her mother had killed him. Carol questioned and questioned her, and Therese told of her mother's bringing her to the school in Montclair when she was eight, of her mother's infrequent visits afterward, for her mother had traveled a great deal around the country. She had been a pianist—no, not a first-rate one, how could she be, but she had always found work because she was pushing. And when Therese was about ten, her mother had remarried. Therese had visited at her mother's house in Long Island in the Christmas holidays, and they had asked her to stay with them, but not as if they wanted her to stay. And Therese had not liked the husband, Nick, because he was exactly like her mother, big and dark haired, with a loud voice, and violent and passionate gestures. Therese was sure their marriage would be perfect. Her mother had been pregnant even then, and now there were two children. After a week with them, Therese had returned to the Home. There had been perhaps three or four visits from her mother afterward, always with some present for her, a blouse, a book, once a cosmetic kit that Therese had loathed simply because it reminded her of her mother's brittle, mascaraed eye-lashes, presents handed her self-consciously by her mother, like hypocritical peace offerings. Once her mother had brought the little boy, her half brother, and then Therese had known she was an outsider. Her mother had not loved her father, had chosen to leave her at a school when she was eight, and why did she bother now even to visit her, to claim her at all? Therese would have been happier to have no parents, like half the girls in the school. Finally, Therese had told her mother she did not want her to visit again, and her mother hadn't, and the ashamed, resentful expression, the nervous sidewise glance of the brown eyes, the twitch of a smile and the silence—that was the last she remembered of her mother. Then she had become fifteen. The sisters at the school had known her mother was not writing. They had asked her to write, and she had, but Therese had not answered. Then when graduation came, when she was seventeen, the school had asked her mother for two hundred dollars. Therese hadn't wanted any money from her, had half believed her mother wouldn't give her any, but she had, and Therese had taken it.

  "I'm sorry I took it. I never told anyone but you. Some day I want to give it back."

  "Nonsense," Carol said softly. She was sitting on the arm of the chair, resting her chin in her hand, her eyes fixed on Therese, smiling. "You were still a child. When you forget about paying her back, then you'll be an adult."

  Therese did not answer.

  "Don't you think you'll ever want to see her again? Maybe in a few years from now?"

  Therese shook her head. She smiled, but the tears still oozed out of her eyes. "I don't want to talk any more about it."

  "Does Richard know all this?"

  "No. Just that she's alive. Does it matter? This isn't what matters." She felt if she wept enough, it would all go out of her, the tiredness and the loneliness and the disappointment, as though it were in the tears themselves. And she was glad Carol left her alone to do it now. Carol was standing by the dressing table, her back to her. Therese lay rigid in the bed, propped up on her elbow, racked with the half-suppressed sobs.

  "I'll never cry again," she said.

  "Yes, you will." And a match scraped.

  Therese took another cleansing tissue from the bed table and blew her nose.

  "Who else is in your life besides Richard?" Carol asked.

  She had fled them all. There had been Lily, and Mr. and Mrs. Anderson in the house where she had first lived in New York. Frances Cotter and Tim at the Pelican Press. Lois Vavrica, a girl who had been at the Home in Montclair, too. Now who was there? The Kellys who lived on the second floor at Mrs. Osborne's. And Richard. "When I was fired from that job last month," Therese said, "I was ashamed and I moved—" She stopped.

  "Moved where?"

  "I didn't tell anyone where, except Richard. I just disappeared. I suppose it was my idea of starting a new life, but mostly I was ashamed. I didn't want anyone to know where I was."

  Carol smiled. "Disappeared! I like that. And how lucky you are to be able to do it. You're free. Do you realize that?"

  Therese said nothing.

  "No," Carol answered herself.

  Beside Carol on the dressing table, a square gray clock ticked faintly, and as Therese had done a thousand times in the store, she read the time and attached a meaning to it. It was four fifteen and a little more, and suddenly she was anxious lest she had lain there too long, lest Carol might be expecting someone to come to the house.

  Then the telephone rang, sudden and long like the shriek of a hysterical woman in the hall, and they saw each other start.

  Carol stood up, and slapped something twice in her palm, as she had s
lapped the gloves in her palm in the store. The telephone screamed again, and Therese was sure Carol was going to throw whatever it was she held in her hand, throw it across the room against the wall. But Carol only turned and laid the thing down quietly, and left the room.

  Therese could hear Carol's voice in the hall. She did not want to hear what she was saying. She got up and put her skirt and her shoes on. Now she saw what Carol had held in her hand. It was a shoehorn of tan-colored wood. Anyone else would have thrown it, Therese thought. Then she knew one word for what she felt about Carol: pride. She heard Carol's voice repeating the same tones, and now opening the door to leave, she heard the words, "I have a guest," for the third time calmly presented as a barrier. "I think it's an excellent reason. What better?… What's the matter with tomorrow? If you—"

  Then there was no sound until Carol's first step on the stair, and Therese knew whoever had been talking to her had hung up on her. Who dared, Therese wondered.

  "Shouldn't I leave?" Therese asked.

  Carol looked at her in the same way she had when they first entered the house. "Not unless you want to. No. We'll take a drive later, if you want to."

  She knew Carol did not want to take another drive. Therese started to straighten the bed.

  "Leave the bed." Carol was watching her from the hall. "Just close the door."

  'Who is it that's coming?"

  Carol turned and went into the green room. "My husband," she said. "Hargess."

  Then the doorbell chimed downstairs, and the latch clicked at the same time.

  "No end prompt today," Carol murmured. "Come down, Therese."

  Therese felt sick with dread suddenly, not of the man but of Carol's annoyance at his coming.

  He was coming up the stairs. When he saw Therese, he slowed, and a faint surprise crossed his face, and then he looked at Carol.

  “Harge, this is Miss Belivet," Carol said. "Mr. Aird."

  "How do you do?" Therese said.

  Harge only glanced at Therese, but his nervous blue eyes inspected her from head to toe. He was a heavily built man with a rather pink face. One eyebrow was set higher than the other, rising in an alert peak in the center, as if it might have been distorted by a scar. "How do you do?" Then to Carol, "I'm sorry to disturb you. I only wanted to get one or two things." He went past her and opened the door to a room Therese had not seen. "Things for Rindy," he added.

  "Pictures on the wall?" Carol asked.

  The man was silent.

  Carol and Therese went downstairs. In the living room Carol sat down, but Therese did not.

  "Play some more, if you like," Carol said.

  Therese shook her head.

  "Play some," Carol said firmly.

  Therese was frightened by the sudden white anger in her eyes. "I can't," Therese said, stubborn as a mule.

  And Carol subsided. Carol even smiled.

  They heard Harge's quick steps cross the hall and stop, then descend the stairs slowly. Therese saw his dark clad figure and then his pinkish blond head appear.

  "I can't find that watercolor set. I thought it was in my room," he said complainingly.

  "I know where it is." Carol got up and started toward the stairs.

  "I suppose you want me to take her something for Christmas," Harge said.

  "Thanks, I'll give the things to her." Carol went up the stairs.

  They are just divorced, Therese thought, or about to be divorced.

  Harge looked at Therese, almost offered her his cigarette case, and didn't. He had an intense expression that curiously mingled anxiety and boredom. The flesh around his mouth was firm and heavy, rounding into the line of his mouth so that he seemed lipless. He lighted a cigarette for himself. "Are you from New York?" he asked.

  Therese felt the disdain and incivility in the question, like the sting of a slap in the face. "Yes, from New York," she answered.

  He was on the brink of another question to her, when Carol came down the stairs. Therese had steeled herself to be alone with him for minutes. Now she shuddered as she relaxed, and she knew that he saw it.

  "Thanks," Harge said as he took the box from Carol. He walked to his overcoat that Therese had noticed on the loveseat, sprawled open with its black arms spread as if it were fighting and would take possession of the house. "Good-by," Harge said to her. He put the overcoat on as he walked to the door. "Friend of Abby's?" he murmured to Carol.

  "A friend of mine," Carol answered.

  "Are you going to take the presents to Rindy? When?"

  "What if I gave her nothing, Harge?"

  "Carol—" He stopped on the porch, and Therese barely heard him say something about making things unpleasant. Then, "I'm going to see Cynthia now. Can I stop by on the way back? It'll be before eight."

  "Harge, what's the purpose?" Carol said wearily. "Especially when you're so disagreeable."

  "Because it concerns Rindy." Then his voice faded unintelligibly.

  Then an instant later, Carol came in alone and closed the door. Carol stood against the door with her hands behind her, and they heard the car outside leaving. Carol must have agreed to see him tonight, Therese thought.

  "I'll go," Therese said. Carol said nothing. There was a deadness in the silence between them now, and Therese grew more uneasy. "I'd better go, hadn't I?"

  "Yes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Harge. He's not always so rude. It was a mistake to say I had any guest here at all."

  "It doesn't matter."

  Carol's forehead wrinkled and she said with difficulty, "Do you mind if I put you on the train tonight, instead of driving, you home?"

  "No." She couldn't have borne Carol's driving her home and driving back alone tonight in the darkness.

  They were silent also in the car. Therese opened the door as soon as the car stopped at the station.

  "There's a train in about four minutes," Carol said.

  Therese blurted suddenly, "Will I see you again?"

  Carol only smiled at her, a little reproachfully, as the window between them rose up. "Au revoir," she said.

  Of course, of course, she would see her again, Therese thought. An idiotic question!

  The car backed fast and turned away into the darkness.

  Therese longed for the store again, longed for Monday, because Carol might come in again on Monday. But it wasn't likely. Tuesday was Christmas Eve. Certainly she could telephone Carol by Tuesday, if only to wish her a merry Christmas.

  But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The man looked at it, holding it carelessly between thumb and forefinger. He was bald except for long strands of black hair that grew from a former brow line, plastered sweatily down over the naked scalp. His underlip was thrust out with the contempt and negation that had fixed itself on his face as soon as Therese had come to the counter and spoken her first words.

  "No," he said at last.

  "Can't you give me anything for it?" Therese asked.

  The lip came out farther. "Maybe fifty cents." And he tossed it back across the counter.

  Therese's fingers crept over it possessively. "Well, what about this?" From her coat pocket she dragged up the silver chain with the St. Christopher medallion.

  Again the thumb and forefinger were eloquent of scorn, turning the coin like filth. "Two fifty."

  But it cost at least twenty dollars, Therese started to say, but she didn't because that was what everybody said. "Thanks." She picked up the chain and went out.

  Who were all the lucky people, she wondered, who had managed to sell their old pocketknives, broken wrist watches and carpen
ters' planes that hung in clumps in the front window? She could not resist looking back through the window, finding the man's face again under the row of hanging hunting knives. The man was looking at her, too, smiling at her. She felt he understood every move she made. Therese hurried down the sidewalk.

  In ten minutes, Therese was back. She pawned the silver medallion for two dollars and fifty cents.

  She hurried westward, ran across Lexington Avenue, then Park, and turned down Madison. She clutched the little box in her pocket until its sharp edges cut her fingers. Sister Beatrice had given it to her. It was inlaid brown wood and mother-of-pearl, in a checked pattern. She didn't know what it was worth in money, but she had assumed it was rather precious. Well, now she knew it wasn't. She went into a leather goods shop.

  "I'd like to see the black one in the window—the one with the strap and the gold buckles," Therese said to the salesgirl.

  It was the handbag she had noticed last Saturday morning on the way to meet Carol for lunch. It had looked like Carol, just at a glance. She had thought, even if Carol didn't keep the appointment that day, if she could never see Carol again, she must buy the bag and send it to her anyway.