He saw her coming out wearing her brown coat, and her felt hat was pulled down over her eyes. She was carrying her bag. A taxi was waiting. In a foolish way, to hide his eagerness, he smiled and said, “May I take the bag for you, madam?” He even made a little bow.
“No thanks,” she said, and she swayed the bag away from his outstretched hand, looking at him in that shy pleading way.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to take it?”
“Quite sure,” she said.
“All right,” he said politely, and he stood there trying to smile while she got into the cab, and when the cab actually moved off along the street, he stood there, worried and unbelieving, feeling there was no place to go.
But he went into the apartment and as he wandered aimlessly into the bedroom and looked at the empty dresser drawers his loneliness deepened, and he thought, “I tried to use some common sense anyway. She’ll come back. If I went on struggling with her like that all the time I’d never be able to hold my job. I’ll bet a million dollars she’ll be back.”
And he waited and was desolate remembering the shy pleading look in her eyes as she swayed the bag away from him on the sidewalk, and he listened for every small sound from the street, the stairs and the door; and when at last he heard the key turning in the lock he jumped up triumphantly and rushed to meet her.
She came in quietly with a timid, apologetic smile, and as she pulled off her hat she said in a bantering tone, “What were you doing, Jeff? What was keeping you up till this hour?”
“Waiting for you, of course.”
“You mean you missed me?”
“Sure I missed you. You know I did, too,” he said. He helped her off with her coat, begged her to sit down, rushed to the icebox to get a snack for them and his face kept showing all of his childish triumph. She was delighted to be waited on in this different way. Every time the broad smile came on his face she asked, “What are you laughing at, Jeff?”
“How does it feel to be free?” was all he said.
But when they were going to bed and she had buried her dark head in the pillow she began to cry brokenly, and no matter how he coaxed her, or how gently he spoke she would not be quiet. “Aren’t we happy now, Mathilde? Isn’t it all over now,” he kept saying.
“No, I’m not happy. I can’t bear it,” she said.
“You can’t bear what?”
“The way you let me go. No matter what happened I didn’t think you’d ever let me go. You wouldn’t have done it two years ago.”
“But you wanted to go, Mathilde, and if I thought you wanted to …”
“Two years ago you would have made me come back. You would have been afraid of losing me.”
“I knew you’d come back like a homing pigeon.”
“Yes, you were so sure of it. You were so very sure,” she said, and then she put her hands over her face and she turned her head away, mumbling, “I’m silly. I guess I sound silly. I guess I don’t know what I want,” and he could only see the back of her neck and her hand moving over her cheek.
As he walked around the bed, looking at her, he thought, “Why didn’t I stop her? Why can’t she see that knowing we love each other is better than worrying that we don’t?” but he began to feel terribly afraid. “Nobody loves insecurity,” he said, knowing his words sounded weak and apologetic. For a while he watched her, then went to speak, but he found himself shyly fumbling what seemed to be old words, so he stood there, silent, with his love becoming an ache, for it seemed a terrible thing that such words should sound strange just because they had grown used to each other. Then he knew that his fear had been that he would never be able to express all the feeling he had for her. And all he said was, “I had a glass of beer at the corner and I began to feel terrible.”
“Did you?” she said without looking up.
“I think I know what you’ve been missing,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“I couldn’t stay away from here,” he said. “I felt you’d be pulled back too.”
She looked up at him timidly for though the words he used were neither new, nor warm, nor strange, she began to feel his awkward shyness, she began almost to hear him thinking, “What happens that you can’t keep showing your love when it’s so strong in you?” She just waited there and grew shy too, and the feeling between them at that moment seemed so much deeper than any earlier time of impulse and sudden joy.
1935
ALL THE YEARS OF HER LIFE
They were closing the drugstore, and Alfred Higgins, who had just taken off his white jacket, was putting on his coat getting ready to go home. The little grey-haired man, Sam Carr, who owned the drugstore, was bending down behind the cash register, and when Alfred Higgins passed him, he looked up and said softly, “Just a moment, Alfred. One moment before you go.”
The soft, confident, quiet way in which Sam Carr spoke made Alfred start to button his coat nervously. He felt sure his face was white. Sam Carr usually said, “Good night,” brusquely, without looking up. In the six months he had been working in the drugstore Alfred had never heard his employer speak softly like that. His heart began to beat so loud it was hard for him to get his breath. “What is it, Mr. Carr?” he asked.
“Maybe you’d be good enough to take a few things out of your pocket and leave them here before you go,” Sam Carr said.
“What things? What are you talking about?”
“You’ve got a compact and a lipstick and at least two tubes of toothpaste in your pockets, Alfred.”
“What do you mean? Do you think I’m crazy?” Alfred blustered. His face got red and he knew he looked fierce with indignation. But Sam Carr, standing by the door with his blue eyes shining brightly behind his glasses and his lips moving underneath his grey moustache, only nodded his head a few times, and then Alfred grew very frightened and he didn’t know what to say. Slowly he raised his hand and dipped it into his pocket, and with his eyes never meeting Sam Carr’s eyes, he took out a blue compact and two tubes of toothpaste and a lipstick, and he laid them one by one on the counter.
“Petty thieving, eh, Alfred?” Sam Carr said. “And maybe you’d be good enough to tell me how long this has been going on.”
“This is the first time I ever took anything.”
“So now you think you’ll tell me a lie, eh? I don’t know what goes on in my own store? You’ve been doing this pretty steady,” Sam Carr said as he went over and stood behind the cash register.
Ever since Alfred had left school he had been getting into trouble wherever he worked. He lived at home with his mother and his father, who was a printer. His two older brothers were married and his sister had got married last year, and it would have been all right for his parents if Alfred had only been able to keep a job.
While Sam Carr smiled and stroked the side of his face very delicately with the tips of his fingers, Alfred began to feel a fright growing in him that had been in him every time he had got into such trouble.
“I liked you,” Sam Carr was saying. “I liked you and would have trusted you.” While Alfred watched, his pale eyes alert, Sam Carr drummed with his fingers on the counter. “I don’t like to call a cop in point-blank,” he was saying, very worried. “You’re a fool, and maybe I should call your father and tell him you’re a fool. Maybe I should let them know I’m going to have you locked up.”
“My father’s not at home. He’s a printer. He works nights,” Alfred said.
“Who’s at home?”
“My mother, I guess.”
“Then we’ll see what she says.” Sam Carr went to the phone and dialed the number.
Alfred was not ashamed, but there was that deep fright growing in him, and he blurted out arrogantly, like a strong, full-grown man, “Just a minute. You don’t need to draw anybody else in. You don’t need to tell her.” Yet the old, childish hope was in him, too, the longing that someone at home would come and help him.
“Yeah, that’s right, he’s in trouble,” Mr
. Carr was saying. “Yeah, your boy works for me. You’d better come down in a hurry.” And when he was finished Mr. Carr went over to the door and looked out at the street and watched the people passing in the late summer night. “I’ll keep my eye out for a cop,” was all he said.
Alfred knew how his mother would come rushing in with her eyes blazing, or maybe she would be crying, and she would push him away when he tried to talk to her, and make him feel her dreadful contempt; yet he longed that she might come before Mr. Carr saw the cop on the beat passing the door.
While they waited – and it seemed a long time – they did not speak, and when at last they heard someone tapping on the closed door, Mr. Carr, turning the latch, said crisply, “Come in, Mrs. Higgins.” He looked hard-faced and stern.
Mrs. Higgins must have been going to bed when he telephoned, for her hair was tucked in loosely under her hat, and her hand at her throat held her light coat tight across her chest so her dress would not show. She came in, large and plump, with a little smile on her friendly face. Most of the store lights had been turned out and at first she did not see Alfred, who was standing in the shadow at the end of the counter. Yet as soon as she saw him she did not look as Alfred thought she would look: she smiled, her grey eyes never wavered, and with a calmness and dignity that made them forget that her clothes seemed to have been thrown on her, she put out her hand to Mr. Carr and said politely, “I’m Mrs. Higgins. I’m Alfred’s mother.”
Mr. Carr was a bit embarrassed by her lack of fear and her simplicity, and he hardly knew what to say to her, so she asked, “Is Alfred in trouble?”
“He is. He’s been taking things from the store. I caught him red-handed. Little things like compacts and toothpaste and lipsticks. Stuff he can sell easily,” the proprietor said.
As she listened Mrs. Higgins looked at Alfred and nodded her head sadly, and when Sam Carr had finished she said gravely, “Is it so, Alfred?”
“Yes.”
“Why have you been doing it?”
“I’ve been spending money, I guess.”
“On what?”
“Going around with the guys, I guess,” Alfred said.
Mrs. Higgins put out her hand and touched Sam Carr’s arm with an understanding gentleness, and speaking as though afraid of disturbing him, she said, “If you would only listen to me before doing anything.” Her simple earnestness made her shy; her humility made her falter and look away, but in a moment she was smiling gravely again, and she said with a patient dignity, “What did you intend to do, Mr. Carr?”
“I was going to get a cop. That’s what I ought to do.”
“Yes, I suppose so. It’s not for me to say, because he’s my son. Yet I sometimes think a little good advice is the best thing for a boy when he’s at a certain period in his life,” she said.
Alfred couldn’t understand his mother’s quiet composure, for if they had been at home and someone had suggested that he was going to be arrested, he knew she would be in a rage and would cry out against him. Yet now she was standing there with that gentle, pleading smile on her face, saying, “I wonder if you don’t think it would be better just to let him come home with me. He looks a big fellow, doesn’t he? It takes some of them a long time to get any sense,” and they both stared at Alfred, who shifted away, a cosmetic showcase light shining for a moment on his thin face and the tiny pimples over his cheekbone.
But even while turning away uneasily Alfred realized that Mr. Carr had become aware that his mother was really a fine woman; he knew that Sam Carr was puzzled by his mother, as if he had expected her to come in and plead with him tearfully, and instead he was being made to feel a bit ashamed by her vast tolerance. While there was only the sound of the mother’s soft, assured voice in the store, Mr. Carr began to nod his head encouragingly at her. Without being alarmed, while being just large and still and simple and hopeful, she was becoming dominant there in the dimly lit store. “Of course, I don’t want to be harsh,” Mr. Carr was saying. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll just fire him and let it go at that. How’s that?” and he got up and shook hands with Mrs. Higgins, bowing low to her in deep respect.
There was such warmth and gratitude in the way she said, “I’ll never forget your kindness,” that Mr. Carr began to feel warm and genial himself.
“Sorry we had to meet this way,” he said. “But I’m glad I got in touch with you. Just wanted to do the right thing, that’s all,” he said.
“It’s better to meet like this than never, isn’t it?” she said. Suddenly they clasped hands as if they liked each other, as if they had known each other a long time. “Good night, sir,” she said.
“Good night, Mrs. Higgins. I’m truly sorry,” he said.
The mother and son walked along the street together, and the mother was taking a long, firm stride as she looked ahead with her stern face full of worry. Alfred was afraid to speak to her. He was afraid of the silence that was between them, so he only looked ahead too, for the excitement and relief was still strong in him; but in a little while, going along like that in silence made him terribly aware of the strength and the sternness in her; he began to wonder what she was thinking of as she stared ahead so grimly; she seemed to have forgotten that he walked beside her; so when they were passing under the Sixth Avenue elevated and the rumble of the train seemed to break the silence, he said in his old, blustering way, “Thank God it turned out like that. I certainly won’t get in a jam like that again.”
“Be quiet. Don’t speak to me. You’ve disgraced me again and again,” she said bitterly.
“That’s the last time. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Have the decency to be quiet,” she snapped.
They kept on their way, looking straight ahead.
When they were at home and his mother took off her coat, Alfred saw that she was really only half-dressed, and she made him feel afraid again when she said, without even looking at him, “You’re a bad lot. God forgive you. It’s one thing after another and always has been. Why do you stand there stupidly? Go to bed, why don’t you?” When he was going, she said, “I’ll make myself a cup of tea. Mind, now, not a word about tonight to your father.”
While Alfred was undressing in his bedroom, he heard his mother moving around the kitchen. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove. She moved a chair. And as he listened there was no shame in him, just wonder and a kind of admiration of her strength and repose. He could still see Sam Carr nodding his head encouragingly to her; he could hear her talking simply and earnestly, and as he sat on his bed he felt a pride in her strength. “She certainly was smooth,” he thought.
At last he got up and went along to the kitchen, and when he was at the door he saw his mother pouring herself a cup of tea. He watched and he didn’t move. Her face, as she sat there, was a frightened, broken face utterly unlike the face of the woman who had been so assured a little while ago in the drugstore. When she reached out and lifted the kettle to pour hot water in her cup, her hand trembled and the water splashed on the stove. Leaning back in the chair, she sighed and lifted the cup to her lips, and her lips were groping loosely as if they would never reach the cup. She swallowed the hot tea and then she straightened up in relief, though her hand holding the cup still trembled. She looked very old.
It seemed to Alfred that this was the way it had been every time he had been in trouble before, that this trembling had really been in her as she hurried out half-dressed to the drugstore. He understood why she had sat alone in the kitchen the night his young sister had kept repeating doggedly that she was getting married. Now he felt all that his mother had been thinking of as they walked along the street together a little while ago. He watched his mother, and he never spoke, but at that moment his youth seemed to be over; he knew all the years of her life by the way her hand trembled as she raised the cup to her lips.
1935
THE VOYAGE OUT
Jeff found himself sitting next to her one night in a movie, and when he discove
red that she was neat and pretty, he began to watch her furtively. Though she didn’t even turn her head, he felt sure she was aware of him beside her. When she got up to go, he followed her out, and as she hesitated at the theater entrance, drawing on her gloves, he began a polite, timid conversation. Then they walked along the street together.
He soon found out that her name was Jessie, and that she worked in a millinery store and lived with her father and mother. Until that night a month later when they were standing in the hall of her apartment house, saying good night in the way they had so often done in the last weeks, he hadn’t thought he had much chance of making love to her. They were standing close together, laughing and whispering. Then she stopped laughing and was quiet, as though the shyness which was hidden underneath her warm, affectionate ways was troubling her. She suddenly put her arms tight around him, lifted up her face, held him as if she would never let him go, and let him know she was offering all her love.
“I don’t want to go home. Let me go in with you and stay a while,” he pleaded.
“All right – if they’re asleep,” she whispered.
As they opened the door and tiptoed into her place, the boldness he felt in her made his heart beat loud. Then they heard her father cough. They stood still, frightened, her hand tightening on his arm.
“We’d better not tonight,” she whispered. “They’re awake. You’d better go quick.”
“Tomorrow night then?”
“Maybe – we’ll see,” she said.
Brushing her face nervously against his, she almost shoved him out into the street.
As he loafed over to Eighth Avenue, his nervousness left him. He was full of elation, and he thought, “Gee whizz, she’ll do anything I want now. It came so easy, just like I wanted it to,” and a longing for her began to grow in him. He still could feel her warmth and hear her urgent whispering. He grinned as he loafed along, for he had thought it would take a long time and he’d have to go slow and easy. Lights in the stores, the underground rumble, and the noise of the cross-town buses on Twenty-Third Street seemed to be touched and made important by the marvelous tenderness within him. He wanted suddenly to lean against a bar or sit at a counter, hear men’s laughter, and feel his own triumphant importance among them, and he hurried into the restaurant where he had a cup of coffee every night after leaving her.
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Page 17