The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  Shootfire, that roast is cooking away, Joe thought. That cuss Almoner was almost as old as he was. Amy’s had everything in the world money could buy. What in the world did she want from him? Though if you studied Mallory long enough, you might finally figure it out.

  Amen. All spoke with finality. Like children saving dessert, they saved until last their most favored topic of conversation. Not until Dea brought in the cake was Amy mentioned. “I’m sure Amy’s looking for another job, though,” Edith said, as Mallory blew out the candles. “I want just a sliver of cake. I mean it.”

  “Of course, if she didn’t have any money,” Dea mused, “she would have to come home.”

  When Edith said, “You could take back her stocks, couldn’t you?” Dea nodded her head in satisfaction toward Joe, meaning, she had told him.

  “What good would that do?” Mallory said.

  “Of course!” Dea said, thinking she understood. “She might take it from—Get it someplace else, or something.”

  They definitely know, Edith said to herself morosely.

  Dea would tell him everything later, and Joe settled to football on television, while Mallory went to the bedroom to nap and the women cleared the table. Joe loved fall. Every year now though, when the leaves fell, he thought of friends who were gone, and every six months or so there was another.

  “He’s up there!” Dea cried, in a whisper, the minute the door shut her and Edith into the kitchen. “Amelia told me.”

  “Let me set these plates down,” Edith said, needing a moment. Instead of asking, Who? she said flatly, “Mr. Almoner.”

  “You don’t sound surprised,” Dea said.

  “I’m not.” Edith, weary of pretense, thought the moment she had sent him the letter had been like the one at the end of the day when she got her girdle off.

  “We should have known she’d write him,” Dea said, rinsing dishes.

  “Maybe she didn’t.” Edith lacked courage. “Maybe someone else told him, a well-wisher. I don’t blame Amy for wanting a different life from ours, Dea.”

  “My life’s not yours,” Dea said quickly. “You’ve had a maid as long as I can remember.”

  “Money’s not everything,” Edith said.

  “That’s what people who have it always say. Let me try having it, then I’ll tell you whether it is or not,” Dea said, drying her hands.

  “We need to try to understand what she’s doing,” Edith said, reaching for a dishcloth.

  “You just said she wasn’t doing anything!”

  “Doing being there,” Edith said, gazing at a dish. “She’s trying to find herself.”

  “Is this some kind of psychology mess?” Dea said suspiciously. “If it is, I just don’t believe in it. All it does is excuse people. Only yesterday, Rod Randolph blamed all his alcoholism on his mother’s not loving him when he was a child. Would I be to blame?”

  “Who?” Edith said.

  “Don’t you see The Doctor’s Hour on television every day? At two, this town comes to a standstill. It’s as real as life.”

  That’s too real for me, Edith thought. It was enough to have cried herself silly over Almoner’s books, which she had just read. She could not imagine anyone going through what he must have to write them. She guessed she’d just have to stick to ceramics. A band on television beat happily, saluting the glorious afternoon. Through covert fields opposite, a boy trailed, carrying a gun, and a spotted dog leapt after him. The opened cotton was blindingly white. Dea swirled around dishwater blue as the fall sky and said, “We got by without all that psychology mess. When we did something wrong, we got blistered. And look at us.”

  “Yes,” Edith said, holding up a dry dish. “Look at us.”

  “Boys,” Dea said, gazing out of the window and thinking of Bubba (Edith wondered if she had said “boys” pointedly), “boys might need to run wild a little before settling down. It sometimes shows up later if they don’t,” though she had thought it so nice to have Bubba graduate from the university and immediately settle down with a sweet little girl. Stirring up dust, crowded cars were passing along the road, and Dea drained the sink, thinking, If the Negroes were coming from church, it was late. “Seems like we been in the kitchen all day,” she said. She and Edith stood on the back porch and hung out damp aprons as ceremoniously as flags.

  “You don’t think then, it’s all right for them to meet?” Edith said.

  “No sir-ree bobbed-tailed cat, I don’t.” Dea knew she could change in some respects, but not all.

  “It’s—” Edith began.

  “An old man and a young girl!” Dea cried, as if presenting on cue what she saw.

  Joe swung open the door and said, “Half-time. Got anything to eat?”

  Dismay already reflected on the women’s faces only deepened. Joe had waked Mallory calling, “Want a snack and to see the rest of the game!” Mallory called back that he wouldn’t mind a roastbeef sandwich.

  “I just been wondering,” Joe said. “Is Amy safe up yonder?” Night and the roads seemed to him no longer safe even at home.

  Her baby. How could she have kept her safe? “You talking about physically safe?” Edith said.

  Dea banged a glass to the table, while Joe stared. “Edith’s gone stark raving mad off on some psychology mess,” Dea said. “What kind of safe do you think?”

  “I thought you meant safe,” Edith said, backing down. “I’m sure she takes taxis if she goes out at night alone.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine her not having that much sense.” But Dea could not help adding, “Whatever other kind she’s got.”

  Joe would have expected a little fireworks, but the women, in resignation, only put back on their wet aprons. Dea picked up a stack of dried plates. Edith, feeling suddenly ravenous, began to cut the cake and nibble. Mallory had his shoes finally tied and came in and began to take up ice. The afternoon lengthened and soon it was dark.

  In softened ground and among peat-moss bags, a man knelt setting out white and yellow clumps of chrysanthemums. They seemed to blossom mindlessly, their shaggy heads bending. His shoulders sagged and sadly he mounded dirt about their roots, as if burying something which had breathed. Killing frost seemed imminently in the air. Only temporarily would his arrangement ease the monotony of the jaundice-colored building rising above him. The sun was a flamboyant gold seal directly overhead. Trees were wildly aflame in a park opposite, and there old people sat warming their knees. A young woman, leaping up the front steps, was about to pause and admire his flowers, then went on. His handiwork, the gardener thought, would last about as long as her smile had.

  Amy had wanted to make him happy about his flowers, he looked so downcast, but had been afraid to stop. Her buoyancy was too unusual, she was afraid of losing momentum, and so had plunged ahead toward the door. She felt, for once, absolutely come together, complete as a pie whose cut wedges, put back, make it perfectly round again. Her feeling might have been because of the day, which was gorgeous. Crossing the park and hearing music from a merry-go-round, she had first seen the possibility of believing in herself. Even stared at on the subway intrusively she had not minded, but had merely stared back levelly. Outside, a young nurse had given her a look confirming the chicness of the new suit. Amy had found it with a sense of miracle, along with the right accessories. She touched a silk scarf adroitly knotted at her neck and came with confidence out of a revolving quadrant of the door. Then she was brought up short by the uninterruptedly bland and curry-colored interior and by the stilted smell of food cooked and kept too long over steam. Oval aluminum carts were depressingly the size of babies’ caskets, being pushed on squeakless tires down a corridor straight ahead.

  The eyebrows of the receptionist were querying and rose as she glanced at Amy’s clothes. “Almoner,” she repeated, then scooted her chair backward to look through index cards. Rolling back to the desk with a suspicious look, she was aware that well-dressed but aberrant people were quite common in private hospitals. “We have no s
uch person,” she announced coldly.

  Amy turned wordlessly to recross the bland expanse of carpet. Feeling alive with good will and the right intentions, she had hoped to make up for other lapses by visiting, and perhaps it was right she was not to be allowed to. Set adrift, wondering if she had misunderstood the address, she was called from the door by Alex, who got off the elevator. When he had led her toward a colorless plastic couch, he handed her a package. “This arrived at the publishing house for you, in care of Jeff.” Seeing her puzzlement, he added, “Maybe he left it to be sent, and someone forgot until now.”

  “It seems strange he wouldn’t have brought it himself.” She held it tightly to open when she was alone. “But the receptionist said he wasn’t here.”

  “I put him in under an assumed name,” Alex said, “though I’m afraid even the doctor didn’t recognize his real one.”

  Amy wondered what everything was for, and turned her head to watch a man merely mopping the empty hall at its far end. Keeping slightly turned from Alex and plucking string on the package, she wondered if he thought it her fault Jeff was here. She said, “I’m so unhappy about Jeff. And is he unhappy? Permanently, I mean?”

  In conservative grey, Alex’s long legs were stretched ahead of him. He stared down at them. “I don’t think fixedly unhappy,” he said presently. “That’s not his habit, as you know. And I hope you do know that happiness comes from determining on it.” He glanced at her slyly. “Though, perhaps, you are still young enough to believe it’s something to be found?”

  “I’ve been looking.” Amy had spoken off guard and in embarrassment added, “I mean, I’ve tried to be happy.”

  However, Alex had not been fooled and gazed at her kindly. “Maybe I shouldn’t discourage you. Keep on looking, then. Maybe you’ll find it.”

  “Why should I?” she said. “I don’t deserve anything special. Someone like Jeff does.” And she sat still, realizing it had been childish to go off looking, that you could not find happiness as you found Easter eggs. Today, coming through the park, she had seen children with pirates’ flags and briefly searched beneath rocks with them, for gold. Now she gazed down the hall and sighed, looking at the man wringing out his mop.

  “If you want to see Jeff, you’ll have to hurry. Visiting hours are almost over.”

  At the elevator, Alex said, “He’s sedated and very groggy. I didn’t know what to do when I found him, except bring him here,” and had he fallen short, he seemed to be asking. “I’ve never dealt much with people in his condition.”

  For the moment, Amy felt older and wiser in the ways of the world. She felt capable, as Alex stood looking uncertain. Not trying to excuse himself, he said, “It may be good that I did bring him. He’s not at all well. Liquor has this effect on him partially because of medicine he’s taking. The doctor didn’t feel he drinks all that abysmally much.”

  “If only I hadn’t left him.” Amy tucked her hand into Alex’s and they shook firmly.

  “Call me if you need anything,” he said.

  “Do you think he’ll be out of here soon?”

  “I hope so, and it’s important this doesn’t happen again. Do you mind my asking, has he asked you to marry him?”

  “In a way, he has. I haven’t thought about it, but I have to. I know he wants me able to make up my mind. Do you think I should marry him?”

  “I would,” Alex said, “be very tempted if I were you.”

  Having rung for the elevator, he walked away. On the other side of the glass front door, Alex stopped and tipped his hat and gave a little send-off wave of his hand as if saying bon voyage or good luck. Touched, Amy nodded. She watched him go, recognizing he was on her side.

  In the elevator Amy unwrapped the package, and she held it open against her going down the corridor in search of Jeff’s room. There, white blinds had been drawn against the day, and with his silverish hair and pale face, a sheet drawn to his chin, he seemed a waxen figure on display. Only on the windowsill were there moving gold glimmers, for there the sun edged in. The room, heavily accented by some dulling drug, made her think of bees droning, of clover, of the sluggishness of midday on a Southern summer afternoon. The remoteness and secretiveness of their meetings in the woods came back to her also in this darkened room. Uncertainly by the bed, she repeated his name until he opened his eyes.

  “I was dreaming. I thought in the dream, you called.”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Amy.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had begun to grow up, but not in the way I meant. More and more, you were becoming secretive. I’d urged you to be frank.” He spoke haltingly, from the drug. “I suspect a young man. You should have told me.”

  “Is it my fault you’re here?” Bending close, as he spoke softly, she wiped perspiration from his forehead.

  “If only you had told the truth about not meeting me.” After a struggle, he focused on her face.

  “I‘m sorry.”

  “You always are,” he said. In the resultant silence, he closed his eyes, while Amy looked gladly toward a nurse who had come to the doorway and pointed to her wristwatch. Amy whispered, “I’m still here,” and the nurse had gone.

  “Is it the same day?” Jeff stared up a little blankly, before whispering, “Today, you are more like Amy. Softer. People are like animals. You’re secretive. A cat. Played possum too, hiding from things. I’m a mule. Stubborn. Wasn’t I persistent?” And he relaxed into half-sleep, smiling.

  A little sadly, she said, “Maybe you’ll be sorry now you sent it, but the manuscript came and means so much. Do you hear?”

  “I knew it was your voice.” His eyes gave up the effort to open.

  “Do you still want me to have the manuscript of Reconstruction? It’s come and means so much.”

  Stronger, managing to look at her, he said, “You’re the very person to have it. Not even I had thought of it.” His hand waved and lost direction. “That top drawer. There’s something for you. Said once you wanted it. Bought it that day the book was done. You never came. What we had deserves a better goodbye than it was getting.”

  “Goodbye?” Moving toward the top drawer, she turned, surprised.

  “Wasn’t that what you were trying to tell me?”

  “I hadn’t thought so.”

  “Then I’m confused,” he said, attempting to push himself up.

  “Yes, I know. We’d better talk another time. Jeff, the bell!” She had taken a small box from the drawer. The bell, gold, was not large enough to cap the end of her little finger. She held it out on a thin chain. “I thought you had forgotten.”

  “I’m able to forget so little,” he said, lying back.

  Following whim, chance, the less rational and the easiest way had not been goodbye to her, Amy thought, teetering on the curb outside. Though that assumption on Jeff’s part might have been kinder than others he could have made. She thought again that he was too kind to her, knowing herself to be capable of dishonesty. Stepping off the curb, she headed toward the park, though at evening it was too foreboding to enter. Evening had blackened buildings and gave their windows a void look. The city seemed to grow upward toward disappearing rooftops, the streets became funnels, the reverse of wells. Staring up, Amy saw the bland grey sky, a link between avenues, and thought how responseless the city seemed. To whom might she speak? Wells, at least, revealed one’s own wavery image. And she remembered suddenly the old barn near her school with the clock with the stopped hands, and the clock had not lied; time stood still. From the park, indrawn with dark, a man who had been selling balloons emerged. He stuck a pint of whiskey to his mouth a moment, the balloons on invisible strings motionless above him merged into an enormous greyish mass. Feeling herself colorless, Amy passed him and went along the block to the subway entrance, having too a feeling of being emptied, like the park. Was she responsible for her alienation? Trees dipped toward her and bore oncoming night as they might bend with rain. Glancing over her shoulder at n
o one, nowhere in particular, she thought of freedom and of its various degrees.

  The other evening, after Tony had traitorously turned the corner, she had found a note inside tacked on her door. To return a call to Connecticut. From there, Billy Walter shouted as if he were calling from overseas, his voice hale and hearty, enlivening the hallway’s gloom. Panes in the stained-glass window seemed to reverberate, and blithe yellow light shook like foil when she switched on a light near the phone.

  “Billy Walter! I thought you never were going to get up here.”

  “Honey, my back yard’s the closest I’ve ever wanted to get to New York,” he said. “This pretty weekend I’d be hunting, and I’m indoors freezing, instead.”

  “Freezing,” she said, laughing. “Billy Walter, it’s nice and only October.”

  “Shoot, the wind almost blew me off the streets of Hartford last night.”

  She spoke in a remembered teasing voice, “I wonder how you could get warm?” But suddenly her voice rose, as if near hysterics. “You are coming down here, aren’t you?”

  “Whoa, of course,” he said. “Sugar, would I come this far and not see you? Last night, I waited up half the night for you to call me back. Evidently, you didn’t come in. Shame. Want me to tell your daddy on you?”

  “He might not care, if nobody else knew.”

  “Don’t sell the man short. I’m sort of his emissary.”

  “What?”

  “I said, don’t sell your daddy short. The man wants you home.”

  Though not given to inner reflection, Billy Walter thought back to Amy’s father, as he had stood at the club’s bar one Saturday night, or had it been a Sunday? Nights there ran in memory similarly together. He only knew it had been that late hour when the neon tubing around the bar’s mirror had melded indistinguishably and blurrily into it, the whole glowing like a halo. Gaily and effusively, he and Mr. Howard had fallen onto one another, the older man giving him a hefty slap on the back. Here, Mr. Howard had announced loudly to anyone within earshot, was a good old boy! That pleased Billy Walter, being an epithet he bestowed on himself at his best moments, on his friends at theirs. He went hunting only with cronies who were good old boys.