She nodded, and went into the room. Inside, the room was dark. Bending over him, she said, “Charles, what’s happened to me?”
He looked up at her, “Hello, Edith,” he said. And then, “Well, you’ve won.”
“Oh, don’t say that.”
“Is Diana my child or his?”
“Don’t … don’t …”
He turned his head away. “Please go away now,” he said.
A few days later, Alan Osborn called at her house. “He thinks he could get better treatment if he were moved to a hospital in New York,” he said. “And of course he’s probably right. So, as soon as it’s possible to move him, I think he should be moved.”
“Yes.”
“Will you be going with him, Mrs. Blakewell?”
“No.”
“I see …” Alan Osborn said with a noncommittal, professional face.
Two weeks later, riding in a wheelchair, Charles boarded the Quebec Line steamer Guiana. A nurse accompanied him. By the time the Guiana reached New York, America was in the war.
Then there was that little family meeting in her father’s house. It was the last time Edith was inside Sans Souci until the time, years later, when she and Harold and Arthur and their respective wives went through the place dividing up the furniture after Meredith Harper died. She had told the family at the meeting that she wanted to stay in St. Thomas. They acted quite surprised. But after all, there was really no place else for her to go.
In the summer of 1918 she had a letter from Charles, postmarked from France, which was to tell her that he was safe and well, and that he had got into the war anyway—“as a soldier of sorts,” he put it—and was driving a Red Cross ambulance. That was the last she heard of him until September of that year when she was notified that a mortar had exploded beneath the ambulance, killing the driver and three civilian passengers.
His body was returned to St. Thomas for burial, and Mrs. Thomas Blakewell arrived from New York for the services—the same dry, brittle woman she had always been, only drier, brittler, ten years older. After the services she paid a brief visit to Edith at her house.
“Would you like to see your little granddaughter?” Edith asked. Diana was nearly five years old.
Mrs. Blakewell pulled on the glove which she had removed to shake hands. “I’d rather not,” she said in her husky voice. “I came mostly out of curiosity—to see the place where he was buried. It’s really a terribly ugly island, isn’t it? I had thought it would be prettier. Still, I suppose it’s where he belongs. He used to write me such enthusiastic letters about the place.” Then, turning to Edith, she said, “Blood tells, doesn’t it? I’ve always thought that the most absurd remark. But, like most absurd remarks, it turns out to have a lot of truth in it. A silk purse cannot be made out of a sow’s ear. Heaven knows what made me think it might be otherwise. But more than anything else I feel sorry for you, Edith—yes, sorry. It always seemed to me you had so much. I suppose it was a case of having too much. Was it? I don’t really care to know the answer. The only trouble is there won’t be any punishment—none good enough for you, in any case. Maybe the punishment will come in the next world. I hope so.” She turned and went out the door.
Old Nellie—young Nellie then—had come into the room and said, “Will you be having dinner alone tonight, Miss Edith?”
“What?” Edith said absently and then, suddenly, throwing her arms around the little housemaid, she cried, “Nellie! Don’t ever leave me, Nellie! Promise me you’ll never leave me!”
And the startled Nellie, clutched in the white woman’s frightening grip, said, “No, Miss Edith. I won’t leave you, Miss Edith. I promise you that.”
Sixteen
Very little of the morning has entered the hotel room—only enough to discover the worn stretch of carpet by the door, a thin film of dust on the dresser top, and the curls of smoke that float up from Leona’s lighted cigarette. She sits on the bed, tailor-fashion, with the top sheet pulled up around her shoulders, watching him as he moves about the room getting dressed. Now he pulls up the Venetian blind with a noisy rattle, and sharp sunlight floods into the room.
“Oooh,” she says, shielding her eyes, “did you have to do that?”
“Oh, sorry,” he says, starting to lower the blind again.
“No, leave it up,” she says. “It’s time to rise and shine.”
With his foot on the window sill he tightens the laces of one shoe. She smiles at him and says, “Good morning.” And then, after a moment, she says, “Are you going out?”
He looks at her uncertainly. “I thought I might play a few holes of golf,” he says. “Do you mind? It’s nice day. Can’t spend a nice day—”
“Of course I don’t mind.”
He pulls a blue cashmere sweater over his head. “Just a few holes.”
“When I was a little girl,” she says, “when I first began coming here, I remember it used to bother me. I’d wake up in the morning and look at the sky, and think: another nice day? How can it always be like this? Just one nice day after another—never any difference, never any foggy days or cold days, or snowy days, always the same.”
“How about some breakfast?” he says, moving toward the phone. “What would you like?”
“Nothing, thanks,” she says, carefully shaping the end of her cigarette against the rim of the already overcrowded ashtray. “And you—why don’t you pick up something, on your way, Arch.”
“I might pick up a bite.”
“As long as you’re all ready—to go.”
He hesitates, looking at her. “You want to come with me? Play some golf?”
She shakes her head. “No,” she says, “golf’s not my sport, Arch. You said the night I met you that we had a lot of things in common, but golf isn’t one of them. No, you play your golf, and I—” She looks up at him. “Well, Arch, I get the point.”
His eyes evade hers. “Point? What point?”
“Signals, little signals. Not too many signals get across to people, but I’ve gotten all of yours. Yes, don’t worry. I understand. I’ll be gone when you get back.”
“Well, now, look,” he says. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Ah,” she says, “please don’t try to say anything gallant. I understand. I don’t mind. I’m even grateful.”
“You see,” he says slowly, “I don’t want you to care about me, either. It just isn’t in the cards for us. Maybe I wish it could be. But it can’t be.”
“I understand.”
He sits down in the chair facing her, and looks at his fingernails. “I don’t want to fall in love with anybody,” he says. “I don’t want anybody to fall in love with me. I’m just—not up to it any more. But you’ll find somebody. That is, I hope you will.”
“Yes.”
“Just promise me one thing,” he says. “Don’t start going from bed to bed. I’ve seen that happen to too many other girls, but that’s not for you. It’s no solution. So promise me—” He looks up at her thoughtfully, then gives her a brief smile. “Hell, you don’t have to make any promises to me,” he says. “I just don’t like to think of that happening to you, that’s all.” He stands up. Slowly he runs a hand through his stiff brown, crewcut hair.
By smiling fixedly at him it is somehow easier. Please, she prays, don’t let him ask to kiss me good-by. If he does that, all the screams that are inside her head will come flying out into the room, and that must never happen. Because the sad little secret she has just discovered is that she dreads, yes, dreads having him leave. Does that mean that she has begun to love him a little? No, it couldn’t, but perhaps she has begun to like him too much, or to count on him too much—this man she had sworn to take so dispassionately, as … as what? As a kind of medicine. As therapy. She cannot bear the thought of him leaving, nor can she bear the thought of him remaining for another minute in the room. Just let him go now, she begs. Let him go.
“If you do go,” he says, “where will you go?”
&nbs
p; “Oh,” she says brightly, “I have plenty of places to go, Arch, plenty of places. The whole world is my—home.”
“You’ll go back to your grandmother’s, I suppose.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
He turns, goes to the writing table and sits down. He fishes in the drawer for something. Then he takes out a pen and begins to write. It is a moment or two before she realizes what he is doing, and then she puts her feet quickly over the side of the bed and says, “No!”
“They know me here at the West Indies Bank,” he says. “They’ll certify this for you, if you like.” He turns in the chair and holds out the check to her. “Here,” he says.
“No, Arch.”
“Don’t be silly—please take it.”
“No,” she says rapidly, “tear it up, Arch. I don’t want it.”
“I may be a miserable bastard, but I keep my promises,” he says. “Go ahead—take it, Leona. You still want your gallery, don’t you?”
“Yes, but not this way.”
“Look, call it a loan if you want. You can issue me some stock in the gallery. I’ll consider it an investment—in you. So take it. I want you to have the gallery too.”
“To keep me off the streets? No—”
“What about this story Winslow’s writing? What if he says some of the things you told me about? What if the Harpers are wiped out? A little cash might help keep the old family ship afloat, don’t you think? So take it.”
“Don’t worry about the Harpers. We have great staying powers—we’re famous for that. We’ll survive.”
“Listen,” he says, leaning toward her, “I give my wife this much every year, and she means nothing to me. You do mean something. So please take it.”
She continues to shake her head. “No.”
“Don’t you understand? I know it’s only money. But it’s the best I can give you. In fact, it’s the only thing I can ever give you. And I want to give you something. Here,” and he tries to put the check into her hand, but she withdraws the hand.
“For a smart man, you’re not very perceptive, Arch,” she says. “I didn’t sleep with you for the money, don’t you know that? Don’t you know why I slept with you? It was because of the things you said to me on Sunday, after lunch, at the table. That was why I came here—not for the money. What is it the hysterical girl says in a melodrama when somebody slaps her face? “Thanks, I needed that.’” She laughs a little shrilly. “That’s the way I felt when you said what you said to me, and that’s the way I feel now, Arch. And I may sound a little hysterical myself, but I assure you I have never been more clearheaded. Now tear up that check.”
Looking at her now his eyes are sad. “Why don’t I leave this here, on the desk,” he says finally. “You think about it for a while.”
“‘Your three dollars is on the dresser, Gertie.’ No, I want you to tear it up. I’ll tear it up myself if you won’t, but I’d rather have you do it—so I can watch you doing it, and you can watch me watching you!”
“Please.”
She shakes her head and tries to speak, but suddenly no words will come. She tries a jaunty wave of her hand. “Oh,” she says, “can you ever imagine that there could be a reason for me being me?” Her throat tightens on the words, and she has to stop. She waves again. “Do it now!”
He stares at the check in his hand. “I think you’re crazy,” he says. “But I guess you’ve got principles. Crazy principles I don’t understand.” He tears the check in half and tosses the pieces in the wastebasket.
“Thank you. Now go—go play your golf.”
“Look, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want. I mean, you’re welcome.”
“Are you just trying to make me feel rotten? Please don’t. I can do that all by myself. Please just go. Before I say all sorts of things I don’t want to say, and won’t mean, and will just make you hate me. I can do that all by myself too, it doesn’t need your help.…”
“You’re sure there’s nothing—”
“No. Good-by, Larry.”
He stands up slowly. “Larry? The name’s Arch, remember?”
She laughs. “Oh, but by calling you Larry, I’m making it a neat, clean break! Swift and clean. No looking back. Isn’t that what men want? Out of sight, out of mind. Not even a beautiful memory. I’m making you vanish. I’m giving you a whole new name, which is the same as no name at all.”
“Well,” he says carefully, “I’ll be here for a few more days. Maybe I’ll see you around—”
“Oh, yes, yes. Undoubtedly. I’ll see you around.”
“Well, then. So long, buddy.”
“Good-by!” she says. “So long! See you around!”
He pauses at the door, his hand on the knob. “I’m just not cut out for anything more,” he says. “My divorce taught me that. I’ll never marry again. That’s why—”
“Oh, please—I understand!”
“But I won’t forget you. Not for a long time. Because I like you, even in your veils. And maybe I’ve got a few veils of my own. That’s all I want to say.” His blunt, sunburned face is sad. “That’s all.”
She nods. “Good-by.”
“Good luck,” he says. “Take care of yourself.” He opens the door, steps out, and quickly closes it. She is all alone.
Leona continues to sit on the bed for a minute or two, and then the lighted cigarette bums between her fingers and she puts it out in the ashtray among the others. She makes a burnoose of the sheet and stands up and goes into the bathroom. For several minutes she brushes her teeth vigorously and thoroughly as though she were preparing them for an examination by the dentist, and when she rinses her mouth and spits out tooth-pasty suds into the bowl two tears fall into the swirling water of the bowl and she has a vision of her tears descending through the labyrinthine plumbing of the hotel, out into drains and sewers that will carry them at last to the sea. Then, looking up and seeing a bottle of Arch’s yellow sleeping pills—along with the masculine toilet things, razor, brush, shaving lotion, deodorant, talcum powder, she is swept with a wave of self-despair that is almost nausea, remembering the other time when she had thought of sleeping pills. It was with Edouardo—but had she thought of it seriously? Or only as a way to get even with him? She cannot help but think, with an inner smile, what a considerable embarrassment she could become by being the dead woman found in Arch Purdy’s hotel room. She scrubs her face with cold water and a cloth and, still wrapped in the sheet, she goes back out into the room. She picks up her purse and examines its contents: her checkbook, with its balance indicated; her return-trip ticket from St. Thomas to New York; and twelve dollars in cash. Then she finds the two unfinished letters.
Trailing the sheet, she sits down at the writing table and unfolds first one letter, and then the second. “This is known as a ‘What have I got to lose?’ letter.…” she reads. She faces these words for a while, then picks up the pen and writes a few more—slowly, pausing at the end of each. And then, for several minutes, her pen moves swiftly and she writes blindly, because she is all at once saying all the things she should have said, might have said, had wanted to say, had thought of saying, but had never said, long ago, to either of them.
Finished, she stands up and tosses the bedsheet from her shoulders. She picks up Arch’s silk robe from where it lies on a chair and puts it on, wrapping it tightly around her. She goes to the window and looks out at the hills and the green Caribbean. Which way is home? When she was little, she remembers standing on Granny’s big veranda, and asking Granny, “Which way is home?” Meaning which way was New York. Her grandmother had very carefully picked up Leona’s hand and pointed it due north, over Lee Hill, and said, “One home is that way, Leona.” And then, turning the hand so that it pointed directly at the front door of the old house, she had said, “And another is here.”
Leona returns to the bed now and sits down upon it. Pressing her knees tight together and holding her hands clenched into tight fists in her lap, she repeats, “Oh,
I’ve got plenty of places to go. Plenty of, plenty of, plenty of places to go.”
At eleven o’clock the telephone finally rings. Edith picks it up, and it is Alan at last. “Well,” he says, “I’ve found her. Or rather located her, Edith. She’s at the Virgin Isle.”
“Not with Mr. Winslow!”
“No,” he clears his throat. “The man’s name is Arch Purdy. His neck is on the short side. They share a room. Do you want the usual rundown on him? To begin with, he’s solvent.”
“Oh, never mind. Oh, Alan! How can she do such a thing to me!”
His voice on the other end of the line is dry. “What makes you think she’s doing anything to you?”
“She wouldn’t treat me this way if she knew!”
“If she knew what?”
“If she knew I was dying of cancer she wouldn’t treat me the way she does!” It is the first time, since that talk of hers and Alan’s two years ago, that she has permitted herself to use the word cancer, or even permitted herself to think that word. Pushed back in the very bottom of her mind, she has kept it where it belonged, out of her life and out of the world. And the utterance of that word just now, flinging it out where it has no right to be, so dismays and disorients her that she almost drops the telephone, and the long pain comes stabbing back, and she hears her own voice demanding, “Would she? Would she?”
“Perhaps not,” he says, and his voice is very cool.
“Oh, Alan—I’m sorry. Thank you for finding her, Alan. Alan—dear Alan—what would I ever do without you?”
Those Harper Women Page 30