Lilith

by J. R. Salamanca

  “Yes.” I nodded solemnly.

  “Now, my brother, he was more fortunate than I was. I’ve got a younger brother, about your age, who was in the First Marine Division. They were out in your part of the world, I believe.”

  “Yes, they’d just pulled out of the ’Canal when we moved in. They were a great outfit.”

  “That’s the truth. They didn’t come any better. Nick had a fine war record. Done fine since he got out, too. I guess he still had a little bit of wanderlust, so he tried his hand as a traveling salesman, and turned out to be a real natural at it. You know what line he’s in now?” The pained, indomitable smile widened his gray lips; his eyes flamed with shallow fire behind their panes of anxiety. “Ladies’ underwear! Now I call that a pretty unusual line for an ex-marine! That’s what I say to him every time I see him: ‘Nick, I never thought I’d see you in ladies underwear!’ But, by golly, he’s making us laugh on the other side of our face; you know what he made in commissions alone last year? Thirty-six hundred. Now, there’s no joke about that!”

  “No, there isn’t,” I said with a strained smile.

  “My golly, it’s amazing how these light lines are opening up. People are buying. Of course you’ve got to be in on the ground floor to get the good territories and develop them. But I wish I’d gone on the road myself, sometimes. It’s a good life.” He glanced stealthily toward the open door through which Laura had disappeared, and turned to wink at me. “In more ways than one.”

  I grinned with mock relish, and we sat in silence for a moment while I stared around the room.

  “What kind of grass is that, in the vase there?” I asked finally.

  “Hm? Oh, those. I don’t know—pussy willows, or something, I guess. Laura puts them in there.”

  “She was always very good at arranging flowers.”

  “Yes, she’s right good at it. Right good at it.” He raised his head and stared at the open door for a moment, shouting suddenly, “Honey!” There was no reply. He waited, frowning with irritation, and then pushed back the cuff of his sleeve, staring at his watch dial and shaking his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he murmured.

  Laura appeared suddenly in the parlor door, her face composed in a mask of habitual offended patience. “Do you have to shout like that, Norm?” she said. “You know Mother’s trying to sleep.”

  “Well, I know, honey; but time’s getting away.”

  “Once she wakes up she can’t get back to sleep for hours. Keeping her up all night certainly isn’t the best way in the world to get her into a good mood.”

  His eyes darkened with a look of hostile vitality. “Well, I don’t think we have to go into that, honey. Now, how about some coffee?”

  “I wanted to ask you, Vincent, if you’d like some little cupcakes with it. I just made some little blueberry cakes this morning.”

  “Oh, no thanks, Laura. I don’t know if I ought to stay, really. I know Norman’s anxious to get away.”

  “Not a bit of it, not a bit of it,” Norman said with fiercely simulated protest, clapping his hand on my knee. “We want to hear all about you. Laura says you’re over at the asylum. Is that right, Vince?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, regretfully watching Laura disappear again toward the kitchen. “I’m working as an occupational therapist over there.”

  “Is that so?” His eyes became unpleasantly shrewd while he apparently estimated the importance of this profession. “An . . . uh . . . occupational therapist.”

  “Yes. We take patients out walking, play games with them and things of that kind. It’s just a sort of glorified attendant, really.”

  “Oh, yes.” He seemed both disappointed and encouraged by the modesty of this confession—disappointed, perhaps, by the degree of affability he had so far expended on me, and encouraged both by the thought that he would no longer be required to maintain it and by the relative superiority of his own position. This conclusion was supported by the faint but undisguisable tone of condescension with which he added, “That must be very interesting work.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Must see a lot of pretty funny stuff, working in a place like that.”

  “Well, yes, sometimes.”

  “I’ve heard it said that an insane person always attacks the one he loves best. Could you support that by any direct knowledge of your own?”

  “No, I don’t really know very much about it. I haven’t been working there very long.”

  “I always thought that was a very unusual fact.”

  I was relieved to see Laura reappear from the hallway, carrying a circular metal tray on which there was a coffee pot, cups and saucers and a plate of blueberry muffins.

  “I thought I’d bring some, anyway, in case you changed your mind,” she said, setting down the tray and removing these objects to the coffee table in front of us.

  “You’d better, Vince,” Norman said, raising his eyebrows genially. “These blueberry cakes are Laura’s supreme achievement. Isn’t that a fact, honey?”

  “Well, I guess some people would think so,” she said softly.

  For the next several minutes there was no sound but the clinking of teaspoons, the rattle of china, the gentle liquid throbbing of poured coffee and the rustle of paper napkins. The three of us stared with fascination, smiling in a paralyzed and painful way, while Laura performed the many actions which produced these sounds.

  “Thank you very much,” I said finally, when she had completed her ministrations. “I guess I’ll try one of these after all, they look so good.”

  “That’s the way to talk,” Norman said. There was another extended silence, broken by the subdued sounds of sipping and munching.

  “Vince wants to know what those grass things are in the vase,” Norman said in a moment, waving his hand toward it, his voice oddly muffled by a mouthful of dough.

  “Oh, they’re just some sort of wild wheat or something that I pick,” Laura said. “I let them dry, and then dye them with Easter-egg dyes. I think they’re sort of pretty.”

  “Yes, they certainly are,” I said, staring admiringly at the vase. “That’s a very good idea.”

  “Did you think of that yourself, honey?” Norman asked.

  “No. Mother’s been doing it for years.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “How is your mother, Laura?” I asked.

  “Well, she’s pretty well. But she’s not getting any younger, you know. She has so much trouble sleeping—that’s the worst thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Old people need so much sleep, and she’s so cranky when she doesn’t get it. Some days I just think she’ll drive me crazy.”

  “Yes, they certainly need a lot of attention,” I said.

  “They certainly do. And most people don’t realize that. Most people are so selfish and thinking about themselves all the time that they just can’t be bothered with them. They’d rather let them die than give them a little bit of attention and happiness in their old age. I think it must be the worst thing in the world to get old and see everybody just sitting around waiting for you to die, so they can get whatever you have to leave behind.”

  “Yes, I guess so,” I murmured, somewhat disconcerted by the quiet vehemence of this opinion. I took another mouthful of muffin, nodding with exaggerated appreciation. “These are wonderful, Laura. I think Norman’s right about them.”

  “Yes, he’s a very good judge of anything to eat.”

  “I am, but I suffer for it,” Norman said, tapping his stomach regretfully. He lifted his coffee cup, drained it, and set it down with a heavy clatter that made Laura’s eyes dart bitterly toward it. She reached across to center it in its saucer as he swung his arm out suddenly, baring his wrist and looking at his watch with an expression of gratified concern. “Vince, old man, I’m afraid you’ve caught me on a bad night,” he said. “I’m going to have to run or I’ll miss this meeting.”

  I stood up hastily, crumpling my paper napkin. “Yes, I’
ve got to go myself,” I said. “Maybe I can walk along with you.”

  “No, no. No need for you to move. You’ve got to finish up these muffins. The cat’ll just get them if you don’t.”

  “Well, she can use them,” Laura said. “She’s got a litter of kittens to bring up.”

  “I sure hope you come back soon, so we can have a real chat,” Norman said, reaching across the table to shake hands with me. “It’s been real nice meeting you.”

  “It certainly has,” I said. “Thanks very much for everything, Norman.”

  “Don’t you mention it. I’m mighty glad you stopped by. It’s a pleasure I’ve been looking forward to for a long time.”

  “I have, too.”

  “Did you put the garbage out, Norm?” Laura asked suddenly.

  “Oh. No. I’ll get it when I come in.” His eyes darkened again at the sound of her barely audible sigh.

  She said in a wearily triumphant way, “That’s the third night in a—”

  “Well, I can’t think of everything, honey, I can’t think of everything. I’ve got more important things than garbage on my mind right now.”

  “Well, just leave it, then. You’ll wake up the whole neighborhood if you try and do it when you come back.”

  He stood rubbing his hands together for a moment, his eyes drowsy with a look of smoldering mortification, saying finally in a quiet, cold, almost meditative way, “I’ll let you know how that business tonight comes out, Vince; I think you’ll be interested in that.”

  “Yes, I will. Thanks very much,” I murmured. I stood while he went across to the door, taking a gray felt hat from the table as he passed. He paused to smile and nod at me from the hall. After a moment I heard the latch of the front door and through the open windows the sound of his footsteps receding along the concrete walk.

  “I don’t know how much business they do at those meetings,” Laura said, “but they’re certainly not in any pain while they’re doing it.” She looked up at me with a vacant, acrimonious expression of thought. “He wants to run for the town council now. Do you know anything about the council, Vincent?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I just wondered if you knew whether it was true that you have to be a householder to get on it.”

  “No, I don’t follow those things very much.”

  “Oh. You see, the house is still in Mother’s name . . .” She paused and smiled at me wryly. “But I guess you don’t want to hear about my problems. Why don’t you sit down and finish your coffee?”

  “All right. I can’t really stay very long, though, Laura. I’ve got some studying to do.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “Oh, it’s just in connection with my work. Some books I’m reading.”

  She stared softly into her coffee cup for a moment, reaching out to touch its handle with her finger tip. “I’m sure you’ll make a great success of your work, Vincent,” she said, looking up at me between the sentences. “I always hoped you’d find yourself some day.”

  I started to reply to her, but found that I could not speak, bowing over the coffee table and shaking my head slowly in a sudden hopeless spasm of grief.

  “What’s the matter, Vincent?” Laura asked.

  I went on shaking my head, pushing crumbs around distractedly on my plate. We sat silently for a few moments, and I could hear the big mahogany clock ticking on the mantel. It ticked with a hoarse, imperfect sound, as if it were on the point of expiration, just as it had done ever since I could remember.

  “You never got the clock fixed,” I said finally.

  “No. I don’t know why it sounds like that. Did you remember that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it funny, the things you remember?” She leaned forward across the coffee table and began to fold her paper napkin into diminishing triangles, creasing the edges of each fold carefully with her thumbnail. “Vincent,” she said rather shyly, “how did you really happen to come by tonight?”

  “I don’t know, Laura. I just seemed to come here sort of by instinct. I guess I thought it would be nice to see you again. I wanted to see how you were getting along, and everything.”

  “That’s very nice of you,” she said gently. “I thought you’d forgotten all about me. Or that you might be angry at me, or something.”

  “No, I don’t feel angry at you.”

  “Well, you see, I wasn’t sure how you felt after Norman and I got married. I mean, I thought you might be . . . holding it against me.”

  “Oh, no, I don’t feel like that, Laura. I guess when you find somebody that you just feel is made for you, why, you have to do something about it.” I realized, as soon as I had said this, that it could be taken as the vilest piece of irony, and fell into a confused silence.

  “It’s a funny thing, I’ve been thinking about you, too,” she said after a little pause. “I happened to see you downtown the other day; I guess that’s the reason.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember.”

  “No, I don’t mean that time when you said hello to me. I mean just the other day. You were with a girl.”

  “Oh.”

  “A blond girl, wearing dancing shoes. She was very pretty.”

  “Oh, yes; that was one of the patients. We bring them in town once in a while.”

  “Oh, one of the patients.” I did not offer any further information, and she went on in a moment, “It’s a funny thing: you know, I thought people were supposed to stop growing after they were about twenty; but it seemed to me that you must have still grown quite a lot. You looked much taller than you used to.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I guess there’re lots of things about people that you can’t really see until you’ve been away from them for a while.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” I said somewhat uncertainly. We both sat staring at the dyed grasses in the cut-glass vase for, I think, a full two minutes, after which she turned to me with a rather arch and—considering the subject—incongruous effect of pleasant reminiscence.

  “Do you know one of the things I remember most? That day when you killed the horse and came here all covered with blood and everything. I never saw such a sight in my life!”

  I dropped my head, mumbling, “Oh, yes,” and wondering for what barbaric reason she had chosen to remind me of this. “Do you remember that, Vincent?”

  “Yes, I certainly do,” I said, looking up at her somewhat reproachfully. “But I’m sorry you do, Laura.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I just think there are lots of nicer ways that you could remember me than that. It seems to me to be about the worst thing that ever happened between us.”

  She stared at me with gentle determination, her rather strained air of casual recollection changing slowly to a somber and candid one of revelation.

  “I guess you thought I was pretty scandalized,” she said softly.

  “Yes. I know you were. I’ve never forgotten what you said.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter any more.”

  “No, tell me.”

  Her voice had an insistent, soft, crucial sound that seemed to mesmerize me; I stared into her eyes and found myself repeating—as if in an ultimate, defiant attempt to cleanse myself of an ancient, unhealed mortification—“You said, ‘Don’t, Vincent. It’s horrible. I’ll never do that unless I’m married.’”

  “Oh, that,” Laura said. “Yes, that’s right; I did.” She dropped her eyes to the table and sat quite still for a moment in a mild contemplative pause which gave to her next words—spoken with such appalling gentleness—a doubly shocking, utterly ruthless quality. “But I am married now, Vincent.”

  I made no reply to this at all: only a startled look of despair, which must have been unmistakable in its significance, for I remember the silence into which she suddenly fell—the bitter, hypersensitive silence of a woman who has critically and futilely exposed herself. I remember very little more of our conversation —ind
eed, there was not much more to remember; it was mostly humble and hesitant expressions of gratification on my part and brief acidulous acknowledgments on hers, all of them exchanged in a hasty, harrowing atmosphere of misery. She came to the front door with me in a severe, perfunctory way, and I remember that as she opened it the odor of wistaria from the porch lattice swept in about us on the dark summer air—an overwhelming wave of remembered fragrance that made me close my eyes and slightly bow my head in grief.

  “Oh, that horrible vine,” Laura said suddenly in a tense, trembling voice. I saw that she was crying.

  “Oh, Laura.”