The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  Without meaning to be rude, she drew her elbow away, having never liked anyone holding it when she was walking. “Quill?” she said. “No, he’s just a friend. I don’t have a boyfriend.” Sensing that Almoner wanted to know, whether he would have asked or not, she thought she might as well tell him.

  They stood, a moment, adjusting to the dim interior before crossing the room toward a booth. The waiter who had started out, Amy was thinking, had been Sill, whom she remembered from high school. She was surprised that he looked no older. So much time seemed to have passed since she had come here as a high-school girl and yet it had been, really, only a few years. Had she not changed at all, either? Certainly, this place looked the same. Outside, in one corner of the fence had been the same Budweiser ad she had stared at while letting, for the first time, a boy unbutton her blouse; discreetly those nights back in high school when she had been brought here to neck, the waiters had come and gone, setting up or taking down trays. And now inside, the green booths had their same sticky look of being freshly painted, though they had not been. Many of the scratched initials, evident on the tables and the walls, she remembered, all of them still imbedded with dirt and food. Colors from the nickelodeon swirled about the room in the same pattern of lavenders and greens, coloring her face and Almoner’s until they sat down. From the washrooms they had passed came the same odors of a pine-scented cleanser.

  Once they had given their order, Amy stared thoughtfully at her folded hands, unable to think of anything to say. Having criticized Quill for wanting to ask Almoner questions about his books, she did not feel free to do so; only by the river had she asked a few tentative ones. Almoner stared up at a clock on the wall. While digging at food in one of the scratched initials on their table, Amy thought how she hated being shy. She conceived of her insides as crying out to end her loneliness, knowing she might sit here endlessly, silent.

  As if it took effort on his part, Almoner said, “This fall, I almost came up to your school to see you.”

  Then her mouth dropped open a little, and Amy looked up in astonishment. “You did!”

  “Yes, and if I had, I was coming to call on a young woman. That’s why I didn’t come, because I didn’t know whether you would want me to.”

  “Everybody would have been thrilled,” she said, looking down at the initial again.

  “I wasn’t coming to play literary,” he said firmly. “I was coming to call on a young woman. You may even want me to stop writing you letters, not to complicate your life.”

  “How is your writing me letters going to complicate my life?” She looked up.

  “I might fall in love with you.”

  “Oh. That would be complicated,” she said softly, looking in relief at the waiter approaching, his tray high above his head, recognizing their order by her pink soda. She bent immediately to the straw when her glass was set down.

  “I may have to come to New York in the spring,” Almoner said, watching her drink. “Could you come down from your school to meet me? We could have good food and good talk in New York, and freedom we’ll never have here.”

  Amy, letting the straw go, looked at her lipstick mark on it, the same strawberry color as the soda. “I have a vacation at Easter. Would it be then?” she asked.

  “Yes, I think it would be then.” He smiled. “Did I tell you I like very much what you have on?”

  “I’m glad,” she said immediately. “For once, even my mother liked what I have on, and she never does.”

  He said, “Your nails, too, I like those. Not all painted like so many women’s, but natural. Your hands look older than you are. I don’t mean that unflatteringly, but they have a strong honest look about them.”

  “Good heavens,” she said. “My mother thinks they’re the very worst thing about me, my nails all bitten.”

  “And today your eyes are not violet at all. Look up a minute. No, they’re greenish like your dress. Do they change with the color you have on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No one’s ever told you?” he said. “There seems to be so much you’ve never been told.”

  “I feel I don’t know anything, despite college,” she said.

  “You don’t need college to be a writer,” he said. “Why don’t you give it up?”

  She had bent toward her straw and stared at him instead, her lips open. Then she sat back and said, “I’ve almost gotten my degree. My parents would die if I quit. My mother went to a finishing school. She’s horrified enough that I go someplace we can wear blue jeans to class. And my father’s horrified because he thinks everybody there is a Communist and that I’m going to be one. Everybody’s a Communist to him who’s not as conservative as he is. I’m sure you’d be one.”

  “Certainly. A writer is always suspect. Well, I suppose if you’ve put three and a half years into it, you might as well get the degree. But do you have time to write, with all your studies?”

  She tied her straw into an intricate knot. “I suppose I do,” she said slowly. “But I never do write anything, except a diary. Or rather I write little things sometimes and throw them away because they always seem silly.”

  “They might not seem silly to me,” he said gently. “Why don’t you show me something you write. The same thing might come out of it that comes out of your letters. Something you’re not aware of yet.”

  “I’m really not,” she said. “It doesn’t seem to me anything could come out of them.”

  “When you’re older, you’ll know. I suppose I wish you’d never reach the point in your life of needing something, a new start, as I did. But since you are sensitive and intelligent, I’m afraid you will.”

  That moment, a patron put money into the nickelodeon, and Almoner sighed apprehensively. Then, to his relief, the music was soft. They were quiet again, listening to a Negro man sing, rather sensually, “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Looking at Amy intently, Almoner said, “That’s for you.”

  She had, unexpectedly, felt an emotion rise in her which she compared to jungle cats roaming restlessly around cages; the restaurant was near a zoo and frequently, on afternoon dates, she had wandered about there before being brought in here for something to eat. She was as distressed by Almoner’s words as when he had touched her in the car. He was no longer looking at her but staring into his empty coffee cup. And, unable to think of anything but ending the moment, she said, “What time is your train?”

  “At four,” he said quickly. “If that’s too late, you can take me now.”

  As quickly, she said, “Oh no. I wouldn’t dream of letting you wait in the station alone that long. But I don’t know anything else to do, do you?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m not much help to you.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to drive again,” she said, beginning to slide out of the booth. Their hands met reaching for the check.

  “Oh,” Almoner said, laughing. “Were you going to take me to lunch?”

  She said, “I did suggest eating, and you only had coffee.”

  “But don’t you realize,” he said, standing beside her now, “that I’m a famous author. Therefore, I must be rich.”

  “Well, good heavens then,” she said, laughing, “by all means, you pay.” But going along with him toward the cashier, she felt still worried, though the check was small, knowing that he made very little money from his books. That was one of the outrageous things she had somehow by her presence wanted to make up to him.

  Deserted now, the parking lot was an expanse of asphalt slick with rain, shiny as tar. The descendent grey afternoon had brought on lights in houses early. It seemed much later than it was. Though her bottom felt paralyzed with sitting, Amy climbed into the car, unable to think anything but that she would be glad to get home.

  They went along in silence for a while. Then Almoner said, “I almost wrote you first, you know. I felt I owed you an apology. I was going to get your address on some pretext from that Decker woman. And then when that blu
e envelope came, I knew it was from you. Now, I almost know what your letters are going to say before I open them. I think if you had come alone that first day, we would have talked right away and intimately, not as strangers.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve thought that, too. I was so sorry afterward I hadn’t come alone, I can’t tell you. I had thought about it, but I was afraid to.”

  “Amy, you’ll never get anywhere being afraid,” he said. “If I haven’t already told you that, it should have been the first thing I ever told you. And if I have no chance to impress anything else on you, let it be that.”

  “All right,” she said, thinking it was easy to be told, and to agree to not being afraid; but then how did you actually go about it? “Aren’t we, though, going to meet in the spring?” She glanced at him, wondering if he had forgotten suggesting it, or whether she had been so boring that he had changed his mind.

  “Let us meet,” he said.

  “But we had decided.” He sat a little queerly, his head dropped slightly. She looked at him cautiously. “We will meet!” she said brightly, glad that he sat up.

  She drove the most circuitous route she could to the station, passing time; they spoke mostly of the bad weather and of the increasing difficulties of ever finding a parking place in the city. At last, she found a place a short walking distance from the station and they started toward it down a block where, above them, now glitterless reindeer arched on their hind legs and met over the street, having been forgotten since Christmas. Walking along, she and Almoner glanced inside a dilapidated apartment building and both saw a Negro woman standing and pressing her hair; remarking on her expression, each found they had seen the same minute details in the room.

  Almoner slowed a moment and, looking around, said, “Is there a park near here, with a fountain?”

  “There’s one in the middle of the city,” Amy said, slowing. “A developer wanted to tear it down and build a shopping mall. A lot of old people got up a petition to save it, so he built all these modern buildings around it, and it looks stupid. Could that be the one?”

  “I suppose so,” he said. “And I’m sure it does look stupid. I hadn’t realized how much the city has changed. I’m not sure I should let you go back to the car alone at this time of day.”

  “It’s fine. I like it here,” she said, liking being somewhere no one else she knew would be, as she felt about going to the river. Then, several Negro children ran past them, laughing; flashing white teeth, their grins seemed to separate from their faces in the gloom.

  “Have you ever noticed,” Almoner said, “how their voices are not raucous like white people’s?”

  “No,” Amy said, carefully considering and wanting to know and to see everything as Almoner did. She was not, she thought, afraid of tangible things like dark streets, but all day, without courage, she had wanted to ask him a question and now forced herself. “Do you mind our long silences?”

  “I hadn’t noticed them,” he said. “There’s not enough silence.”

  They had been about to cross a street and suddenly Amy extended her elbow. He took it as the light changed. In the moment they hesitated, about to step off the curb, a man rushed from a building behind them and vomited into the street, spattering one of Almoner’s shoes.

  “Excuse me,” said the man afterward, throwing a handkerchief to his mouth and running back from where he came.

  “Now that man has really been raised politely,” Almoner said, grinning. “Imagine being sick and begging pardon.”

  “He certainly was sick a lot,” Amy said. As they started across the street, she looked protectively both ways.

  “Yes,” Almoner said. “Good metal at the bottom of his stomach. But I’m afraid I’ve brought you to a bad spot.”

  “No, I like it here,” she said, pressing his arm reassuringly. His humbleness, she thought, was part of his greatness; she could imagine how mad her father would be if anyone vomited on his shoe!

  Almoner, slowing, said considerately though, “Won’t you go back now? No need for you to see me onto the train.”

  To abandon him to wispy twilight, Amy felt, would be to abandon him to further loneliness, and she could not do it. “It doesn’t matter about its being dark,” she said. He came rather laggingly up the station steps, rubbing his lips as if guessing they had a bluish cast, while she waited. If they met ever again in Delton, there had to be something to do besides drive endlessly around, she thought. “Do you remember a letter you wrote me once but said you never mailed?” she said. “Why not?”

  At the top step, he had paused to catch breath. “If you have to ask,” he said softly, “you’re not old enough to know.”

  Inside, at the newsstand, he bought a paper. Amy stood before the array thinking that his smile had implied there was a great deal she did not know. She did want to know everything he did and wondered how she might learn it all; it was so much more difficult if one was a girl to have a free life, with any degree of wildness in it. Her hand had lingered over a news magazine, but as if of its own accord strayed to a fashion magazine. Almoner, glancing at the headlines of his paper, had started off toward the proper gate, without realizing Amy was not behind him. At the moment she closed the magazine, the aproned vendor leaned down with an extended hand.

  “Miss,” he said, “your father forgot his change.” His newsprint-blackened hand dropped the money into her mittened one.

  Almoner was turning, perplexed, as she reached him. “Did you think I had left without saying anything,” she said teasingly. “No, I’m not going to leave you. I feel responsible for Almoner. You’ve got to get safely on that train.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ve needed,” he said, looking happy. “Someone to take care of me. Perhaps our roles are to be reversed. You’re to be the teacher.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “You’re the teacher, but I can see to your safety for the world.” She dismissed the idea of repeating the vendor’s mistake and thought instead of the faces of young men, outside, which had bothered her; observing Almoner take Amy’s elbow, to draw her closer as they went across the street, the young men had made some joke among themselves, and one had looked back. She had been surprised, realizing she had no outward appearance different from girls who went out with older men to get from them what they could. Probably those young men had surmised that this coat, which she did not even want, was a reward.

  Buckets of sand along the station platform held cigarette butts and ugly tobacco-juice stains; against one post a drunk loitered, while a legless drooling pencil salesman half-lay nearby. Yet in their midst and among the sooty grey stones, Amy felt her life expand. Her heart soared knowing Almoner. She watched him drop the change into the pencil man’s tin cup, noting that piecemeal light, filtering through the station’s platform roof, turned his hair silver. He removed his somewhat funny checked hat, his eyes grown serious.

  “No goodbyes,” he said.

  “All right. I won’t say goodbye.” She hugged herself against the cold. “Spring then. That’s not so long.”

  “It seems very long to me,” he said.

  Parting from someone, Amy always turned to look back. She waited but Almoner went on, unnoticed among workmen and women who had come to the city for after-Christmas sales and now dragged along, by upward-extended arms, small children who resentfully scuffed their shoes. What was the point of achieving? Amy wondered, watching him go. Why struggle, when people who never did anything had lives that turned out happier? His back seemed unnaturally erect; he was an alone figure in the crowd, disappearing. She wondered also why being deceitful worked. On the way home, she stopped at one of the city’s most exclusive shops and had a saleswoman pick out for her an expensive suit. At home, Edith was ecstatic and said it was the most becoming thing Amy had ever owned.

  “Except for my coat,” Amy said winningly.

  More pleased, Edith said, “I hadn’t been sure you liked it.”

  Lifting his first predinner martini, having inspected the suit
, her father meant it as a toast. “Well,” he said approvingly. “Well.” He was careful to avoid putting fingerprints on his frosted glass. At dinner, he stared at her with his eyes shining. Edith smiled continually from her place at one end of the table, beaming, and her look said plainly, Amy was learning to be like the other girls, at last.

  Mister Jeff laid on the sofa, say he got wore out in Delton and wasn’t going for the mail, so I had to be the one go. Sho would have to be Jessie bring home trouble. That letter on the hall table since noon. Miss Amelia been wanting to open it all day, curious as a cat. Finally, Miss Inga come down at suppertime and read it. Didn’t say nothing till they were eating. I could hear the forks against they plates and then this sound like that old bullfrog down in the pond at night, “Old goat old goat old goat.” Miss Inga kept on going. The do’ is swole open. I could see Miss Amelia looking from one to the other. “What’s going on?” she say. Miss Inga taken the letter out of her lap and act po-lite saying, “A friend have been kind enough to tell me my husband is running around juke joints in Delton with a young woman, very young.”

  “Juke joint!” Mister Jeff say. Seem like he always can find something to laugh about. “For heaven’s sake when?” Miss Amelia say. “The day he took his precious manuscript to the typist,” Miss Inga say. “All ten pages?” Miss Amelia say. Then he turn white. Seem like they oughtn’t do Mister Jeff that way no matter what.

  Jessie’s sister nodded.

  Then he starting off from the table, and Miss Inga held up the letter. “Don’t you want to read it?” she say. He look back and say, “There’s enough without having to read it at my own dinner table.” And Miss Amelia say, “Enough what?” And Miss Inga say with her head bowed, “Lying misery defeat.” Then Miss Amelia say, “Oh, shut up.” She the onliest one take dessert. So then he laid down some more with a book on his stomach but the whole time I cleared up, I didn’t see him turn no page. Miss Inga’s shadow was going all over the room and she walking up and down telling him she wasn’t going to put up with it and he not saying nothing. Usually he say something make her just shut up. Some reason he ain’t saying nothing. Then I thought, Mister Jeff care. He ain’t taking no chances on saying nothing because this time, Mister Jeff care. Seem like I be glad he be happy tell you the truth, though I see Miss Inga’s side. She got tired of talking to herself, finally. I had did mopped and they come in tracking up the flo’. Then Miss Amelia read the letter and say, “You know why Reba’s done this, don’t you? Because you didn’t invite her to that party you gave for Jeff’s publisher ten years ago. I told you she’d get even no matter how long it took.”