Home from the Hill

by William Humphrey

  He raised the earring to her ear, as she seemed to invite him to do. He tightened the little screw carefully. “Oh, that will never stay on!” she said, and bringing her right hand up, she screwed it up to so cruel a pinch that he could feel it in his own ear, and a tear of sympathetic pain sprang to his eyes.

  “What was that?” she whispered, turning suddenly, her eyes wide with alarm.

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “There!” she said. “What was that? Oh dear, I mustn’t—”

  “I don’t hear anything,” he said. But now he did, and he knew what it was. It was the sound of people talking and scraping their feet; it was his mother returning with the Negro woman she had in on Saturday to help Melba with the cleaning, and with the extra one hired to help with the party mess.

  Outside the rain pelted down. He led Libby out into the hall. He could think of no safe place; the cleaning women would go everywhere.

  Everywhere except the attic.

  He held his finger to his lips and motioned her to follow. They went down the hall. At the bottom of the stairs he took her hand and set his foot upon the first step. He felt her holding back and turned. She was plainly in the throes of an indecision, a conflict. He realized what it was just as she resolved it. Whether her hesitation had been merely conventional or a more particular loyalty to her father, he did not know. Before he had time to register any offense, a faint blush of shame for her suspicions colored her face and she squeezed his hand and followed him up the steps.

  26

  The rain beat upon the roof, the only sound they heard, and they became aware of their aloneness and grew embarrassed and constrained. And so they began by wordless agreement to play a game. They must at all costs avoid the heavy suggestions of being adults alone together; they played the game of children in the attic on a rainy day.

  It was a big attic, and Mrs. Hannah was one of those women who never threw anything out. Sentiment prompted the saving of some things, but even when that was not the motive, once a thing got up to the attic years were liable to go by before she saw it again, by which time throwing it out was often more trouble than it was worth. Sometimes things had to be held on to out of shame of having them found even on one’s trash heap. Beaded and lamé gowns, georgette dresses or pongee with scalloped hems, cloche hats—women had thrown such things out only later to see the whole neighborhood being entertained by a parade of painted little urchins tripping down the public street in them.

  The attic was a tidy place, for Mrs. Hannah was neat in everything. There were clear lanes between stacks of cartons like rows of library shelves, with the contents of each listed in her plain, careful hand on canning labels pasted to their sides. The clothes hung on racks as in a department store, and the shoulders of each garment were covered with a cape of dusty, yellowed newspaper. It was an attic so plentifully stocked and with things so easy to get at that Libby entered genuinely into the spirit of their game. “Oh, look!” she cried, and, “Oh, just look at this!” But though she cried, it was in a whisper, and this made an intimacy that was thrilling.

  He found it impossible not to gloat over his triumph. What would her father say if he could see them now! And he was amazed afresh at Mr. Halstead’s suspicions of him. How far it was from his desire to take advantage in that way of this situation, so much more advantageous than any Mr. Halstead could have imagined in his fears. He turned to gaze at her. She stood beside the fan window, half lost in memories of her own which the sight of some old something had aroused, a stray skein of hair raveling across her still-damp cheek, and his confidence in his immunity received a shock. What he felt was a sudden strong desire to kiss her.

  She returned her attention to the clothes rack. She drew out and held up for his amusement a once-white, now yellow-brown linen suit with short pants. Behind a row of knickers he found one to show her.

  “Maybe you remember this one?” he said.

  It was linen also. It was his first long pants suit, and he had worn it first when they graduated together from grammar school. She did not remember the suit, but she remembered him on Elocution Day, when he must have worn it, reciting How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.

  In that tone-deaf, dog-trot, make-it-scan style approved for prize day, he reeled off:

  All I remember is—friends flocking round

  As I sat with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground;

  And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,

  As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,

  Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)

  Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

  “Poor Roland!” she said.

  “A finer piece of horse-flesh,” he said, “or a drunker, was not to be found between Aix and Ghent.”

  She realized quite suddenly what a very good time she was having, and she wondered what on earth had made her suppose he was dull? Simultaneously he wondered at himself. He had not suspected he had in him this kind of small-talk and ease with girls, or that it would please him to find that he had.

  Her eye was caught by a dress hanging among the clothes, whose glitter, though dulled, made it stand out from all the others. It was a gold-sequined dress, shorter than any that women had worn for years, and it was waistless like the dresses she had worn as a little girl. It rasped as she drew it out. It was tarnished now, coppery green, and one detached sequin dangled forlornly at the end of its pulled thread. She began to laugh at it. Seeing the look on Theron’s face, she stopped.

  That was a dress that suddenly stood out brightly in his memory from the rest of his mother’s dresses. He remembered when all those sequins lay as smoothly shingled as the scales of a fish, when they had glistened as though fresh-wet, and to him his mother had appeared a sleek, new-risen mermaid in that dress.

  He remembered the first time he saw it.

  “Would you like to tell me?” she asked.

  He was eight, and supposed to be fast asleep; but the excitement and bustle downstairs of last-minute preparations for a party and his own sense of exclusion and neglect had kept him awake, kept him standing in his booteed pajamas holding the door open a crack, hoping for a sight of Mama when she came into the corridor. It had been like a vision. She shone, she glittered, she dazzled; the lights seemed to reflect her rather than she them. She had been Joan of Arc, resplendent in a heavenly suit of mail, and he had cried, “Oh! Mama!” She had scolded him in that tone which he knew for love rather than anger, and, blushing pleasurably, had spun herself about for his admiration, swishing metallically and scattering a shower of sparks of light about her, after she had tucked him into bed.

  Thereafter this had become his favorite of her dresses, and he pestered her to wear it all the time—though as a matter of fact she never wore it again, or if she did, he never saw her. Most distinctly he remembered an occasion two years later, when he was ten. She was to take him to a birthday party that afternoon. (“You were probably there too,” he said.) When he was ready he had come into her room to be approved. He had asked was that the dress she was wearing to the party and she had said yes, why, didn’t he like it, and he had said yes, he liked it, but not as well as he liked his dress; why didn’t she wear it? Oh, nobody wore that sort of thing anymore, she said. It was out of fashion. It never had suited her. She had not bought it. His father had bought it, and he had not liked it on her. Why, it was no longer in her wardrobe, even, but had been put away in the attic. He strove to appear grown-up and reasonable, but the thought of his beautiful dress consigned to the attic had saddened him and he moaned. He felt that together he and his dress had been betrayed. He felt jealous that she had worn “his” dress for grown-up affairs, evenings when he was tucked out of sight, and never for anything of his. She was just then straightening the part of his hair. When she lifted his chin and looked into his eyes, she grew serious. He turned aside, feeling sorry for himself, conscious that he was being childish, and fee
ling even more sorry for himself because he knew it. She sent him downstairs to wait for her. When she appeared, she was wearing his dress. He had been very proud of her, and had not failed to notice the astonishment and what he took for envy on the faces of the other mothers at the party that afternoon. He had forgotten all about it; but he had recalled it before and had realized how much embarrassment it must have cost his mother to appear among the townswomen at an afternoon children’s party in an old gold-sequined evening gown.

  A silence which seemed to portend an uncomfortable seriousness, the very thing they had set out to avoid, followed his reminiscence. She returned the dress to the rack, handling it with a new respect, even tenderness.

  “Did you make that?” she asked. She pointed to a model airplane hanging by a cord from the rafters. It was faded and tattered, showing its broken ribs through the holes in its body, and the propeller hung brokenly from its nose, for the rubber motor had rotted and parted.

  He nodded.

  There were other such things of his: a roller-skate scooter, a kite with a ball of twine, a cabinet full of lead soldiers—things which like all girls she had felt somewhat denied and was now at last being allowed to share.

  “Now what is this?” she said, holding up two round icecream cartons strung together.

  “What? Didn’t you girls ever make those? That’s a telephone.”

  “Oh, yes! I remember!” she cried.

  “Ssh!”

  She handed one of the phones to him and put the other to her ear. He stepped backwards away from her. “The string has to be stretched tight,” he said.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “It’s the vibration that does it,” he explained.

  She nodded, the phone to her ear, and in his, Theron heard a faint pop. She lowered the phone, frowning prettily, turned it up over her palm, and, smiling, held up for him to see, her earring. They now shared a private little joke about her.

  Returning the phone to her ear, “Say something,” she said.

  He put the cylinder to his mouth, pulling it to him to tighten the string, and he felt her light, answering tug, felt the vibrant pulsation connecting them.

  “What?” she said. “What did you say?”

  He cleared his throat. “(Excuse me),” he said. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing yet.”

  “Well? Say something.”

  He said, “Hello.”

  It came through a trifle static-y and underwater-ish, but she heard, and it tickled her. “Hello,” she said. There still clung faintly to the carton the sweet, summery smell of vanilla. “Who’s calling, please?”

  He had a thought—a serious, a disquieting thought. He said, “I suppose you get an awful lot of phone calls, don’t you?”

  “You have to speak into the mouthpiece,” she said, smiling.

  But, absorbed in his thought, and feeling the twinges of a new emotion, jealous already, he said nothing, either into the phone or aloud, so that at last she said, “Your receiver is off the hook.”

  He put it to his ear. “Hello?” he heard. “Tom?”

  “Who’s Tom?” he demanded.

  “Speak into the phone,” she said.

  “Who’s Tom?”

  “Oh, it’s John!” she said.

  “John who?”

  “Into the phone. It must be Martin!” she said. She felt a delicious sense of power. He was jealous.

  “Maybe I have the wrong number,” he said. “This is Katherine, isn’t it?”

  “Who is Katherine?” she demanded.

  “Into the phone,” he reminded her.

  “Who is Katherine?”

  “Let’s start all over,” he suggested.

  “Katherine Lloyd?” she asked. “Katherine Rockwell? Katherine who?” The new thrill of finding that she herself could be jealous was even more delicious.

  “Want to start over?” he asked.

  “All right,” she said. For it was a joke, of course. She had begun it; he was only giving her tit for tat. But what—perhaps unconscious—had made him choose the name Katherine? She promised herself to come back to this one day.

  “Operator? Operator?” he was saying. “Operator, I have a very bad connection here.”

  She reached into the carton. The string was not attached to the bottom, only knotted so as not to pass through the hole. She pulled it out. He felt the tug. As she drew the string, smiling vampishly at him, he followed, delighted, until he was within six feet of her. She put the phone to her mouth. He put his to his ear.

  “Ting-a-ling-a-ling!” he heard. “Do you hear it ringing, sir?”

  He reached into his phone, drew out the string and drew her to him, drawing the string until none was left, until the two cartons touched, kissed. They looked into each other’s eyes. Speaking into her phone, her voice a whisper, she said, “Here’s your party now, sir,” and then, taking down the phones, his as well as hers, and looking deeply into his eyes, in her own voice she said, “Hello.”

  Across the small space separating them, their lips drew near. She closed her eyes. He could feel the soft warmth emanating from her skin, could feel her breath upon his face, could smell her faint perfume. Then with a start he awoke, drew back. The time and the place were wrong. They would regret it.

  With a flutter of the lids she opened her eyes. She seemed momentarily lost. Then she became aware of her surroundings. She understood. She was grateful to him. And with her smile she promised that there would be other times, other places.

  Meanwhile, something had to be said. “I’m a terrible dancer,” he blurted out. It took only half the load off his mind, because it did only about half justice to his dancing. It seemed the most serious and damaging confession he had ever made. His face was tragic.

  She could not help laughing. Her laugh cleared the atmosphere. “Goodness!” she said. “What time is it?”

  “It’s early,” said Theron.

  “First look at your watch, and then say,” she said.

  He looked at his watch. “Early,” he said.

  “It must be nearly noon,” she said.

  “Are you hungry? Let’s have a picnic. A picnic in the attic! I’ll go down and raid the ice-box.”

  “Oh, no. I have to go. No, really—What if you get caught?”

  “I won’t. Now, what do you especially like?”

  “But if you do? No, I simply must—”

  “I won’t. Now what do you like?”

  She hesitated a moment. Then, “Cream cheese and pineapple!” she said. It was a confession; apparently cream cheese and pineapple was an addiction.

  “Good. Don’t go away.”

  “Wait. Wait.”

  “Yes?”

  “Before you go, I want to ask you something—a question.” She blushed. “I’ll call you on the phone about it.”

  “Oh, just ask.”

  “No. Here.” She picked up the two cartons, handed one to him. “Further apart this time,” she said. “And don’t look at me while I ask you.”

  “But I like looking at you.”

  “Don’t you look. Because … because I’m ashamed of asking you this.”

  He laughed. He looked away. He put the phone to his ear.

  “Promise me you’ll tell the truth now,” she said.

  “I’ll always tell you the truth, Libby,” he said in a serious tone altogether out of key.

  “Oh,” she said.

  He laughed. “I thought you would want me always to tell you the truth,” he said.

  “I do. I do. Only …”

  “Only what?”

  “Only I want it to be the truth I want to hear. Now don’t you laugh! Don’t even smile. I know I’m being silly, and so don’t let on that you know it!”

  “All right, ask your question. I swear to tell the truth, the pleasant truth, and nothing but the pleasant truth.”

  “You’re not looking away. All right. Now. How many dances did you dance, and with how many different girls?”

 
“Can I look around now?”

  “Yes. Because I’m looking away now. How many?”

  “None.”

  “You’re lying. You swore. Is that the truth?”

  “Is it pleasant?”

  “Don’t tease me. Tell the truth. How many?”

  “Suppose I say—three?”

  “Who with?” she demanded. “Oh, that’s worse than if you had said too many lo count!”

  “It was none,” he said. “I didn’t have any fun—doesn’t it make you happy to know that? Not one. That’s the truth, nothing but the truth—and I hope, the pleasant truth.”

  She looked around, smiling broadly. “Really?” she said. “None?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “Not one? At your big dance? What did people say?” She was ecstatic.

  “I told them the reason,” he said. The memory of exactly what he had told them, and why, darkened his mind for a moment. But he was too happy now to dwell upon that.