The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  “How do you know?” Quill said.

  “That man spit on the street, and Almoner wouldn’t,” she said. Pretending not to observe Quill’s exasperation, she told herself as he drove off erratically that he was anxious. She knew inwardly that Almoner would be tall and would seem protective and even if he were old and grey, he would seem dark and mysterious.

  She grew more anxious, staring with dread at two lines of sentinel cedars guarding Mrs. Decker’s old house. Her bitten fingernails were hard to keep clean. Amy dug at them as if they were soon to be inspected; her hands nervously touched her hair. Most often, she walked with her eyes looking down, so now saw paint peeling at the base of the house’s columns, though at eye-level they were more freshly painted. It seemed typical of the false front put up by Borden and his mother, who had lived for years in genteel arrears. Their thinking was that who they had been born made all the difference. Propped to the house against rain, old wicker furniture was mindful of hidden faces. This gave the place an uninviting air, despite crapemyrtle flowering gorgeously pink at the front windows. Quill twisted a brass doorbell, like winding a clock, which caused an alarmed ringing in the back of the house. Calling out as shrilly, Mrs. Decker came along the hall on tall thin spike heels, crying in time to their staccato beat, “Yoo hoo yoo hoo yoo hoo.” She threw her arms around Quill’s neck and her upturned face read, Wasn’t it delightful that she was so small? Did he realize the top of her head barely touched his chin?

  Her shoes were tiny as an elf’s and were dyed aqua to match her dress. Amy was more aware of her own sandals, broad and flat like a clown’s shoes. She abandoned the idea of ever being groomed and hugged her pocketbook against her chest. Mrs. Decker acknowledged her briefly. “You’re not,” she said, “making your debut and not even going to the luncheon? Surely, you didn’t give that up for this expedition!” However, she did not listen to Amy answering that she had. Instead, Mrs. Decker led Quill toward a velvet love seat in the living room.

  Left to follow, Amy glanced behind her and prayed the woman would not notice the yellowish dusty streaks she was leaving across her polished dark floors. She sank into a wing chair opposite the love seat and tucked her feet beneath it. But that moment Mrs. Decker saw them and wondered, Why those shoes? The thought quite clearly reflected itself in the puzzlement on her face. The eyes she lifted to Amy’s face admitted that Amy was pretty, but did she never change expression? Amy stared back at her with such fear in her eyes, Mrs. Decker felt she had to say something. “Your hair,” Mrs. Decker said, which caused Amy immediately to begin apologizing for its being stringy. One thing Mrs. Decker hated was for young people to interrupt, and in the way she bit her lip she made that quite clear. When Amy was silent, she was able to begin again. “Your hair,” Mrs. Decker said, “looks lovely there in the sunlight.” Then she looked at Amy a little queerly: what had made her so defensive? Again, she glanced briefly at the shoes, wondering why they were muddy. Quill’s, however, were polished and clean. She had not thought him the sort of boy to have gone off in the woods with some girl.

  “Thank you,” Amy had said shyly, drawing back into her chair. “My mother never thinks my hair looks nice.”

  “Well, now it looks like an angel’s,” Mrs. Decker said. “Howard?” she repeated. Did she know Amy’s family in Delton?

  Her parents had not been born in Delton, Amy answered, but had moved there from Arkansas when she was born.

  That accounted for things, Mrs. Decker thought, and Amy probably had not even been invited to the luncheon. Somehow, she made that thought obvious before turning her attention back to Quill.

  Not only had Mrs. Decker seen her shoes but the swooping ring left by Edith’s attempt to clean her skirt, and Amy drew her pocketbook over it. Trying to appear interested in Mrs. Decker’s conversation, she looked instead as forlorn as a child waiting apprehensively outside a principal’s office. Appearances kept up in this room were as fragile as the old china mustache cups collected on a side table. Mrs. Decker’s world, she thought, could be as easily shattered by a few hard facts as it could be improved by a little hard cash. How had Mrs. Decker acquired an air of total confidence? Amy wondered, staring at her liquor-mottled complexion. She tried to find some remainder of the unconventional girl Mrs. Decker must once have been, for early she had run away with an itinerant portrait painter and caused a scandal. Only Borden had come of the marriage and she had had to creep back home in shame; then her father died, having lost all the family money. Mrs. Decker, since, had painted cake plates and crocheted baby clothes and let herself be prevailed upon by her friends to sell them. She lived by pretense, Amy thought, staring around the threadbare room, and that was something she hated. The free spirit, the passionate heart Mrs. Decker must once have possessed were entirely missing in this purplish-faced woman. Staring at her, Amy felt fearful about her own rebelliousness.

  Borden came up the driveway in an old car, sitting with envious bravado on its high, outmoded seat. It might be the thing he wanted most in this world to be doing. The car door slamming in the small town’s stillness had an important sound. Borden dressed flamboyantly, seeking status, and wore now a pink shirt and a bright red tie, somehow blending with his carrot-colored hair. Waving a bottle in a wrinkled brown sack, he apologized for lateness. “I had to wait outside the pool hall for Cole to finish his game!” He and his mother caught hands ecstatically a moment, provided with another unsurpassable anecdote. Since the others were having a drink, Amy reluctantly agreed, as she would not hurry lunch by declining. But she cast a grateful look toward the dining room where Borden mixed drinks when he said they ought to go soon. Pouting daintily, Mrs. Decker agreed to tell Mary to hurry lunch.

  But later, nibbling a cherry from its stem, Mrs. Decker said whoever heard of only having one drink! Borden, indulgently, said that she might have a second, but she would have to take it to the table. Coming along after Mrs. Decker, Amy felt that Borden’s tolerance was something she lacked, which she must practice. She tried not to mind Mrs. Decker’s fingers drumming incessantly, like a pecking hen’s head, while she talked (and talked). Amy could not help but feel angry that people like Mrs. Decker and her own family, leading such uninteresting lives, were disparaging about Almoner, who had done so much for the world. Did they never think of the comparison? Maybe the bourbon was making her so hot and so sleepy. She would sleep at the table if they did not leave soon. Maybe it was only boredom making her eyelids want to close. The luncheon seemed it might stretch out the entire length of the hot summer afternoon. Amy opened her eyes wide and looked toward the window, hoping brightness there would keep her awake. She watched maids with their small white charges stroll past and return later eating ice cream. Borden and his mother kept on giving the endless details of things not important in the beginning, as her family did; looking back, turning her head from one to another, Amy wished Edith were in her place, she would so much enjoy the conversation.

  When Mary appeared with an asparagus souffle, Mrs. Decker commanded they praise it. Mary indulgently stood and stared beyond them, while they ooed and aahed. And though they were like fools, Amy thought, there was no way not to join in. She made little murmurs, then watched Mary swing back through the kitchen door, gladly. At least, eating stopped the continousness of the conversation, though with their mouths full, they had to stop and, again at Mrs. Decker’s command, exclaim over the rolls Mary brought in. Who else still made their own? they were asked.

  “Take two while they’re hot!” Mrs. Decker cried, as Mary circled the table.

  Tears welled up in Amy’s eyes. She did not want to live a life without meaning or purpose. Wavery yellow lines converged in darkness behind her closed eyelids, into nothing. At last, opening her eyes, she saw a possibility of the luncheon’s ending.

  Mary had come through the swinging door with strawberry shortcake. But this, Amy saw immediately, presented her with more difficulty. With hands able to crochet so deftly, Mrs. Decker, with one movement, lifte
d onto a small server a cake with a pyramid of strawberries and then a topping of whipped cream. All at once, the serving arrived safely on her plate. Amy knew she would not be able to manage and waited apprehensively for Mary to approach. And, of course, her cake did waver in midair. Mary obligingly lowered the tray. Amy looked up at her gratefully, but not changing Mary’s bland expression.

  Mrs. Decker had noticed that lowered tray. She glanced away politely. Amy stared at the others, already eating, before realizing she had nothing left to choose but a dessert fork.

  Mrs. Decker’s fork securely bore on its end a soft berry, waiting to meet her mouth. She said, “I don’t have time to read, but if I did, I wouldn’t want to read Jeff Almoner’s books! Depressing, I hear. Why read about what I’ve been around all my life? Maybe they’re good.” In a silent moment afterward, she asked them to consider another possibility, before poking the berry into her mouth and chewing mouselike at its seeds.

  Amy was furious listening to her chew and regretted all the insincere compliments she had felt it necessary to pay Mrs. Decker: on the centerpiece of sweet peas and on all her old family things. And, infuriating Amy, Mrs. Decker had accepted all the compliments as if they were her due. Now, her fork plunged again at air. She let a word impressively hang. “I,” she had said. She waited until she had their attention. “I,” she repeated, “blame publishers, that’s who. If they wouldn’t publish depressing books, people wouldn’t write them.”

  “You read then only for entertainment?” Quill said.

  Amy, having wanted to ask the question, was annoyed that she had not had the nerve. Like an admonishing finger, Mrs. Decker’s fork wagged again. Amy wished to God she would put it on her plate and keep it there. “Yes, I do,” Mrs. Decker said. “Life is hard enough.” She stared around at them with almost wet eyes, meaning they would understand when they were older.

  Amy toyed with her fork, knowing that escaping things was one of her own tendencies. But she did not want to escape life reading books; she wanted to find out about it. What Almoner wrote was a mirror for her soul, Amy felt, and he had touched even corners of darkness which before she had feared.

  “Let’s don’t be depressing!” Mrs. Decker was crying. “Quill, whose debut did you think the prettiest?”

  “Lydia Fontaine’s,” he said.

  “Oh. So did Borden,” she cried, leading Quill from the table.

  Coming afterward with Borden, Amy inadvertently brought along her napkin. While waiting for her to return it to the table, Borden seemed to stare at her speculatively and as if also wondering about her clothes. Amy felt her sandals had grown looser and flatter, and they made slapping sounds across the floor. She stood in the living room before the blackened empty fireplace; imaginatively, she warmed her hands, listening to the conversation about Lydia’s party, feeling she had no invitation to join in. But neither had Borden been invited. Simply, she did not know how to fit herself into situations, how to belong.

  In this room, with its musty odor of wallpaper, while the others talked of the debut, Amy smelled the party’s aroma. It had been a satisfactory mingling of carnations and champagne and girlish odors of perfume and the more masculine scents of liquor and cigarettes. Enviously co-ordinated, the decorations all had been pink. Most memorably, Lydia had worn a wreath of rosebuds in her hair.

  Amy stepped obediently from the fireplace when Mrs. Decker issued an invitation to “the little girl’s room.” They went along a hallway overhung with paintings by Mrs. Decker, all of single magnolia blossoms broadly opened and flat to the canvas and with centers like staring yellow eyes. At night, it would seem cats stared from the walls, Amy thought. Insecurity and a longing to be liked compelled her to say how good the pictures were. In this instance, Mrs. Decker was not pretentious. Looking as if Amy were crazy, Mrs. Decker said, “My dear, they’re not good. They’re terrible. It’s only finger exercise for my arthritis.”

  Amy sidled into the bathroom, leaving Mrs. Decker at her dressing table. The day’s tenseness led Amy to sit unusually long on the coldish enamel toilet seat. To hide her noise, she thought of turning on the faucet, but was fearful of being chastised by Mrs. Decker for running up the water bill. She knew Mrs. Decker would be careful of hers, as Aunt Dea always had been. Amy emerged blushing. However, Mrs. Decker’s face, newly painted, revealed nothing. Passing Amy, she closed the bathroom door. Amy regarded in the dressing-table mirror her own smooth face, which needed no make-up. She stared at a wall holding pictures of Mrs. Decker when she was young. The same sorrowful feeling bore down on her, which she felt at Aunt Dea’s house: that time merely passed. Where had it gone? Mrs. Decker might have been asking herself, staring in the dresser mirror. Amy, seeing through a window that all the outdoors was dry, realized she had not imagined the length of the luncheon. For Mrs. Decker, it had been the high point of a day. Amy thought she did not want to live merely to die, and wished upon herself one fantastic adventure after another. She pulled stealthily open a dresser drawer, wishing her tendency were not to peek; even, she looked into other people’s medicine cabinets! The drawer contained only a lot of little jars, like Edith’s. Many had greasy tops, revealing Mrs. Decker was not thoroughly meticulous. Amy was glad for information about other people’s lives. It helped her understand her own.

  She was waiting politely near the hallway when Mrs. Decker came from the bathroom. Of necessity, their mouths formed smiles, and they had to say something. Mrs. Decker went out. “So much hot weather.”

  “Hasn’t it been hot,” Amy said, trailing along.

  “And September will be hot, too. It’s worse every year.”

  That exchange brought them into the living room where, as soon as Amy entered, Borden said, “Sorry, old girl, but you’ve been shot down in flames. I phoned Almoner. He says he’s not going to be home.”

  “He really doesn’t want to see anyone, I think,” Quill said.

  “Did you tell him who you were?” Mrs. Decker cried, astonished.

  While the boys nodded, Amy wondered what identification Mrs. Decker considered herself to have. Her own, vague as it was, had fled. She felt like crying.

  “Did you tell him you went to Princeton?” Mrs. Decker said.

  “Told him everything,” Borden said. “Mentioned Quill’s family. That we were Princeton tigers. Everybody’s one for always, except him, apparently.”

  “He only went to Princeton a year,” Amy said.

  Nevertheless, Borden’s shrug meant. “And I told him about Quill’s thesis.”

  “We told him a girl was here who wanted to be a writer,” Quill said.

  Amy turned toward him, angry he had said that in front of Mrs. Decker. It was too personal to have revealed to her. Quill gave her an apologetic look. He had told Amy not to be intimidated by the woman. It was not his fault she had been, his arched eyebrows meant. Amy shuddered when Borden suggested they play bridge instead. “I don’t play,” she said quickly, not caring about Mrs. Decker’s aggravated look.

  “If Amy just wants to meet a writer, there’s Agnes Jones here in town,” she said.

  “Momma! She writes about tuberous begonias,” Borden said. Even his patience had a limit. “We could just drive by and look at Almoner’s house.”

  That would be like getting out to stare at an automobile accident, Amy thought. Quill had agreed, and she would do anything to leave. She took Mrs. Decker’s flaccid hand.

  “Do come again, dear,” Mrs. Decker said.

  “I’d love to. I had such a nice time,” Amy said, turning up the corners of her mouth.

  The porch furniture seemed still in shame, turned toward the house. The day had grown jubilant in the sun; the tall cedars admitted its sparkle. Borden’s hair was a fiery gloss atop his head, as he stood asking if he might drive. When he raced the motor boyishly, Amy forgave him everything, seeing that he endured pretense for his mother’s sake. That was an admirable quality, and one she might lack, Amy thought. Knowing that she was too quick to judge people
, she exclaimed most cordially over the houses Borden pointed out and listened to the repetitious histories of the people who lived in them. Small-town people wanting to drive around and look at houses as an entertainment bored Edith. Often, she had not wanted to come to Dea’s for that reason. Amy felt expansive, pretending interest for Borden’s sake. Eventually, however, she ran out of platitudes. As if receiving some silent signal, Quill took them up. Amy glanced at him, gratefully.

  She was free then to draw inward, which was preferable, and visualized her school, near mountains turned purple at dusk, a cloudlike filminess descending from them. Nearby was a green and placid river, with a tamed quality different from the Mississippi. The first river made her want to dream along its banks. Here she felt torn in many directions like the stronger river on a rampage. Her environment had a hold on her from which she could not divorce herself, any more than the river could separate itself from its levees.

  Climbing from the car, being confronted unexpectedly by a breeze, Amy stared round as if this were some foreign land. One after another, the three went down the stony path toward the springs. There, water trickled from a grotto over speckled brown rocks, slickening them. They laughed at paying dimes for dented cups to drink the water, watching old people with angel-white hair seriously lifting theirs. Inside, the cups smelled of mildew. While Quill and Borden walked about exploring, Amy remained in one spot and felt how singularly alone, how small she was in comparison to the gigantic and unhindered sky, going on and on everywhere. Eventually all the old people went away. The Negro attendant sat sleepy and bored. Distantly, Borden and Quill were laughing. Amy kept staring at the thin trickle of water, as if it might grow, knowing she was always waiting for something to happen. While the Negro fell asleep, she stood beneath the expansive sky, thinking restlessly that what she wanted was the future.