The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  “I’d adore it!” Amy cried.

  “Do you think Mr. Almoner would go?” he said.

  “I doubt that,” she said.

  But shouldn’t they ask him? the young man said insistingly, starting her across the room. Forced to introduce them, Amy repeated the invitation, which Almoner declined.

  “I’m sure you would like to go, though,” he said generously.

  “It’s all a bit indefinite,” the young man said.

  “It sounds great,” Amy said.

  “Mr. Almoner,” said the young man. “I run a literary lecture agency. You wouldn’t be interested in one lecture, or a tour?” He then ruefully threw out his hands, meaning he had anticipated Almoner’s negative reply. With another stiff bow, he retreated across the room.

  Was she still invited to go? Amy wondered, watching him. Almoner later was helping her into her coat, and she glanced across the room at the young man, who stood by the bar. He managed to miss that glance, turning quickly to have his glass refilled. More than she had wanted to go to the concert, Amy knew she had wanted to go out with that sophisticated young man. That made her too guilty to tell Almoner what she had learned, that night, about the ways of the world. How gullible she had been and how duped. When they went down in the elevator, she told him, instead, how often she had been questioned about knowing him. That the implications attached to the questions had bothered her hung explicitly in the air, though Amy did not say so.

  “Of course,” Almoner said understandingly. “Here, I’m lionized. People were curious. Why had I chosen you?”

  “Certainly not for my fascinating conversation,” she said wryly.

  “You had the guts to be yourself,” he said.

  “What’s myself, though?” she said.

  “Someone who is seeking something beyond what most people her age are,” he said. “You behaved like exactly what you are, a properly brought up young lady at her first big New York party (and frightened to death, he thought).”

  “Oh, was I awful?” she said, mortified.

  “Awful?” They had by now been bowed through the glass doors by the obsequious doorman and stood on the sidewalk. Her face, reflecting the city’s night lights, seemed to him a small white flower in danger of being trampled on. He said, “Amy, you were charming. And you are modest. Not many women are that any more.”

  Feeling unconvinced, and that she had been only stupid and shy, Amy felt exhausted by the evening. She pulled her coat tight about her and said, “I’m cold and tired. You’re so close to your hotel, you go on there. I can take a taxi alone to mine.

  “I’m sorry we’re not staying closer together,” he said.

  “I stay in rooms just for college girls,” she said quickly. “It’s cheaper.”

  “That’s a sound idea,” he said. “But I can’t let you go around in the city alone, at this hour.” At his whistle, a taxi leapt away from a curb as immediately as a horse reacting to a crop.

  Amy said agitatedly, “But I’ve often gone around by myself this late at night.”

  “I’d hate to face your momma, though, if anything happened when I was in charge of you.” He gave her a little tug toward the door he had opened.

  Amy determined, sitting back in her corner of the cab, that he was not going to get out at her hotel; glum and silent, she wondered how to keep him from it. She stared at the driver, humped over his wheel, feeling that the taxi was like a stealthy rat roaming these dark side streets, while everyone in the city slept. Then, the taxi’s tires slithered along the curb, as it drew to a stop. She reached immediately for the door handle. Almoner, in his corner, did not move and said, “Will you be sleeping late tomorrow?”

  She regretted having felt so meanly toward him. “No,” she said, “I don’t want to waste our time together sleeping.”

  They arranged a meeting for the next morning. The doorman had been patiently holding open the door, and she stepped out quickly. She watched the taxi go off, but Almoner did not look back through the rear window. The doorman had hurriedly crossed the sidewalk and seemed huddled against the building. Inside, a dance had just ended. There came down red-carpeted steps, toward the street, an outpouring of formally clad young people; not their faces, but wilted corsages of the girls, showed the lateness of the hour. One young man burst through the door as Amy started inside. Thinking she was one of them, he called out that she was going the wrong way. He made a grab at her but Amy escaped, then looked at him from the lobby. He stood on the sidewalk, looking back at her in surprise, laughing.

  Blinking against the bright cold morning, Amy said, “I don’t think there are any bars open on Sundays until one. You want a drink this early?”

  “At my age, it’s sometimes necessary after a night out,” Almoner said, surprising her since he had not had much to drink. “Walking may clear my head, if you don’t mind. I slept very little.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, seeing that he was pale. Taking his arm, she drew him toward her as if to take him from someone’s earshot. “I stayed awake awhile wondering about something you said. Why did you choose me?”

  “Why, I told you,” he said, looking better. “Someday, you may be beautiful.”

  “Seriously,” she said.

  “Though this morning, I think you may already be beautiful, Amy.” They were walking rapidly because of the cold, their eyes blinking against gusts of wind. She felt he had evaded her question. Sensing it, he was serious. “I think you were chosen for me,” he said, his arm tightening against hers. “Didn’t you know that? Call it fate or destiny or God or whatever you will.” Her face glistening with cold was bent toward him intently. Since neither cared in what direction they were going, he suggested they turn a corner and not face the wind. They walked more comfortably. “I don’t think persistence is your nature, Amy. But you persisted and wrote me that letter after I had rebuffed you. It seems a miracle, or something akin to one, that brought you back into my life again.”

  “It seemed that night that a voice did tell me to write it,” she said. “No. On my own, I wouldn’t have done it.”

  “I think I’m to act as a catharsis for you,” he said. “To free you from your past, to do whatever it is you want to do. Be a writer, if that’s it. Though, Amy, I have to tell you, sometimes I’m not sure you know what you do want.”

  “That seems to be a general opinion,” she said, lowering her head against more than the cold. “I guess that’s what causes so much confusion inside me.”

  “I see in your eyes so much that’s troubling you,” he said. “Lift your head and look at me. They’re bluish today. You must be wearing something that color. Yes, I see.” She had drawn aside her coat collar to reveal a bit of of her dress. “I went searching for violets today before I met you,” he said. “But I couldn’t find a florist open. I’ll find them eventually.”

  “Thank you for looking, anyway,” she said. “I do hate feeling always troubled. But Jeff, it’s not always about myself. I worry about the unfairness of your being unhappy and lonely. And”—she pointed to a man lying in a doorway, a discharge long as a watch chain hanging from one nostril—“I worry about people like that. Things I can’t do anything about.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Worry. You have to.”

  She let out a little breath of relief, which bounded ahead of them, whitely, in the air. “I’m so glad to know you,” she said, touching his cheek. “If only we were closer in age. Should I have been born sooner, or you later?”

  He caught the hand that had touched his cheek and held it against his overcoat for warmth; she wore no gloves. “At your age, I was too busy working, Amy. I wouldn’t have paid any attention to you if we had met then. It had to happen now, as it has.”

  “Most people say don’t worry about things you can’t do anything about. I thought that was dumb, but I wasn’t sure. Most people want only to be happy, to think about things that are happy. And I do think that’s being stupid.” She stopped. “Here’s a bar op
en now if you still need a drink.”

  He then drew his watch from his pocket and squinted at it. “I haven’t been thinking again. Probably, you’re hungry. Let me get a cab and take you someplace very nice. The Plaza?”

  “Heavens no!” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I like places like this much better. Besides, there are tables for ladies.”

  Inside at one, a woman sat with her head bent down to flattened palms. A sick-looking man leaned from the next table speaking to her in sad monologue. He glanced up as Amy and Almoner came past, then extended his conversation to them. “It’s nice to be remembered but what good does it do ya?” he demanded more loudly, since neither of the new customers spoke. “What good does it do ya?”

  “None,” Amy guessed.

  “Right!” he said happily and drank his beer.

  “I should not have ordered a whiskey sour in a place like this,” Almoner said, though he had drained his glass. “I suppose beer is the only thing.” She looked at the man who was sleeping next to his empty beer bottle, then twirled an orange slice in her Old Fashioned. “What will you be doing tonight after I leave?”

  “I’m to have dinner with Alex and several of his friends.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you won’t be alone. I was worried.” She chewed on the orange slice and tucked the peel into her glass.

  Almoner ordered a second drink which slid about the table in its own morose wet circles. He bent suddenly across the table. “Amy, I have no reputation to lose. But you are a young girl and not to be harmed. I’m afraid my family and yours can picture me as no older than my heart is telling me I am. Only you do. I’m afraid the risks you take in meeting me may be too great, after all. I don’t think you understand them.”

  Not understanding them fully, she said, “Of course I do. I want to see you.”

  He leaned back, his eyes urgently on her. “It’s almost impossible for a middle-class Southerner to be anything else. But you wanted to escape your background and since I had done it, I thought I could help you. I wanted to save you some of the knocks I knew. But I’m going to fall in love with you. Probably, I already have. I keep trying to warn you what it could mean if you keep seeing me.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said.

  “I almost didn’t answer your first letter for that reason,” he said. “I knew when I read it, this could happen. I dream of you in a way you don’t want me to, Amy. And I hope those dreams will come true. I see you don’t even want me to talk about it, and I won’t if I can help it.” He closed his eyes, then opened them tiredly. “I dread tomorrow.”

  “So do I! I have the most terrible French exam. I should have stayed at school and studied.” When he closed his eyes again, she stared at his face worriedly and admitted, “I don’t know what to say, Jeff, when you talk about being in love.”

  He said, “Don’t say or do anything then. You can’t help it if you don’t love me, as much, in return.”

  “I do love you in some ways.”

  “Do the best you can. Do you want another drink?”

  “I really think I’d better be going.”

  “You have time. Let’s talk about your future. That may have nothing to do with me. Alex says if you want a job when you’ve finished school to come and see him.”

  “That’s very nice of Mr. Boatwright.”

  “A job here might give you the same freedom as marriage, without saddling you with some champion of the middle class,” he said.

  That remark annoyed her; it was he who had not made the right marriage. She would make no mistake. And the sort of people she liked were not middle-class champions—Quill or Leigh. She did not go out with people who were dull and stupid. She said, “I do think I’d better go. I might have trouble getting a cab. You’re so close to Alex’s, there’s no sense your coming all the way down to the station with me.”

  “No sense to it, at all,” he said. “Except to be with you longer.”

  “Yes, but it wouldn’t be very long. And there’s really no sense to it.”

  “All right. If you’re meeting a young man, I can accept that.”

  “It’s only a boy who’s taking the same train back to school,” she said.

  While he searched for change to leave on the table, she went ahead to wait on the freezing windy street, drawing in breaths. When he came out, they sheltered themselves against a building and hunched into their coats as if they were inadequate, kin to bums they had seen huddled in doorways.

  “I’m to keep the postbox, then?” he said.

  “Yes, of course. And I’ll write on Wednesdays, so that it always gets there on Saturdays.”

  He said, “There.” He had touched her lips briefly and drawn back. “We’ve used the kiss a second time. Did it hurt this time?”

  She made herself smile. “No,” she said. But she turned quickly toward the street and hailed her own cab. It drove off swiftly through a light about to change. Having been directed toward the station, the driver looked into the rearview mirror, his eyes filling it. Amy’s glance met his there.

  He said, “You must be going off for a long time. Your father’s still standing on the curb, watching you go.”

  Almoner said, “I’ve put her into a taxi.” He came slowly off the elevator and stood in the foyer.

  “It’s late to be starting such a long trip,” Alex said.

  “Yes, it is.” Then not meaning to, Almoner said, “Alex, she’s modest and tender. Not many are any more, but she is. I’m afraid I’m too old for the responsibility of this incredible luck.”

  “You are lucky,” Alex said. “But don’t worry about it, just deserve it. I thought at first she was pretty. But later, looking at her, I discovered she’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, I’ve discovered it, too,” Almoner said. “Also, that she’s brave, and it breaks my heart.”

  “It should break your heart.”

  “I’m sorry to be a little unsteady. I was up half the night. I’m writing again, Alex.”

  “I thought so,” Alex said, smiling.

  “Let’s don’t talk about it any more.”

  “No, let’s don’t. Have another drink, instead.”

  French exam yesterday. Worst thing I’ve ever seen! I went to New York over the weekend and saw A. Had a nice time, but I should have stayed here and studied. God, just please don’t let me fail. I don’t think I did, but I didn’t do well. When I was coming out of the exam, I had a phone call and guess what? It was Almoner! I assumed the call was from the city when the operator said who was calling, so I picked up the phone and said, “How are you?” Then he said, “I’m here, in the village. At the inn.” He sounded apologetic, as if afraid I would not want him to be here, and in a lot of ways I did not want him to be, but I couldn’t let him think so. So I just said, “My goodness,” or something like that, and then he said all tumbling out, “I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t bear it.” And I said, “What?” Then he said he had drunk a lot at this party with Alex and couldn’t bear his hangover and so just got on a train and came up to school. Wasn’t that wild? He wanted to know if I would see him and I wondered how I could not have seen him; can you imagine my saying, “No,” when he had come all that way? While we were talking it had begun to snow, and I said could he believe it when at home forsythia would be budding. And he said the snow reminded him of me: unharmed as yet, gentle, soft, a little cold to the touch. And I said, “Oh dear, I’m sorry.” And he said, “You shouldn’t be sorry, you can’t help it, yet.” My past had made me the way I was, he said, and I had to get rid of all the Sunday-school morality I had been brought up on in order to be free to write or do anything. Was he saying that to get me to do what he wants??? Or because it’s right? I am trying not to be so afraid of everything if that’s what he means. But I had to tell him truthfully I’d love to see him the rest of the afternoon but I had to study at night for a history exam. Yes, of course, I would have to study, he said; that he was always forgetting that in actual fact I was a schoolgirl, th
at never from the first moment had I seemed it to him, and that was why he kept forgetting how much older he was. He sounded worried about his age so I said it didn’t matter to me. And he said, It didn’t? He kept worrying that it did. And would I lie? So, of course, I said, “No. I wouldn’t lie.” And he said, “Thank you for that.”

  I told him how to walk out from town and meet me at that old barn, where the clock is stopped. In June, daisies cover that field as high as my knees and now the snow was almost as high, with only a few slightly worn paths through, and with new snow lightly sprinkled over it, showing colors, as it snowed only an hour and then the sun came out. He had boots, I was glad to see, and he was there waiting in front of the red blank barn and with nothing else around but the field of snow and as I was coming along toward him, we could only watch each other, and for a long time it was as if we were never going to speak; he never did say anything until I said, “I’m glad to see you,” and then he said the same thing. There was nothing to do but walk. I said the fresh air would probably make him feel better. He said, to breathe the same air I did made him feel better and probably that was why he had come. The trees groaned so. That is an eerie sound, even in daylight, but I said that I liked it, did he? And he said, “No. Trees are our enemies; they wait for us in enmity and don’t care whether we live or die.” He thinks they hope we’ll lose our way in the woods among them. I’m so glad to know a grownup who thinks this way and talks this way; most older people don’t, or many people my age either; and I’ve always felt things had thoughts. But then suddenly he stopped and put his hand on my chin and said, “May I kiss you?” I felt embarrassed and walked on and he said despite what I had said on the phone, I must think he was too old. “That’s it,” he said, “isn’t it?” Then I felt sad and I was sorry he was older, but I’d never tell him that. I worry mostly about his being married. But I want so much for nothing ever to hurt Almoner; it would seem unfair; and I said, “It’s not it. I love you.” And, in many ways, I do.