Across from the station, at the crest of a long landscaped slope, stood the tall shaft of Liberty Memorial. By custom, she paused on the sidewalk to look at it. This was partly in silent tribute and partly to get her bearings; she was turned around in the city. As she stood there, struggling to turn north to south, she thought of the day the monument was dedicated, when she stood for an hour, shivering with cold, to see the Queen of Roumania. Today the sun poured down the mall and made a lake of heat around the station.
“Lady,” said a voice, “if you don’t want a taxi, would you move out of the way?”
She looked at him haughtily. “I do want a taxi,” she said, abandoning the streetcar then and there. “The Muehlebach Hotel, please.” No skimping this time; she was going to have the best.
The rates were a little higher than she expected, but she had made up her mind. And indeed she felt very grand, sweeping into the room behind the bellhop and handing him a generous tip. It was a nice room with a thick carpet and lots of mirrors and a gleaming private bath. It was warm, but after all, this was summer. And she didn’t mind the noise from the street. That was part of the city, a welcome change from cackles and mooing. She sang to herself as she unpacked, walking about in her stocking feet, now and then surprised by her image on the bathroom door. She hadn’t seen herself full-length all summer! She sat down on the bed, facing the long mirror, and took out Kenny’s letter. She knew he was not at home at this hour, since he worked for his father during the summer. But she thought she might call and leave a message. With the telephone in her hand, however, she changed her mind. Perhaps she should wait and speak to him in person. Meanwhile, she could go out and buy a new dress and be all ready.
She washed her face, and for the first time that summer put on rouge and lipstick. Then, putting on her hat and gloves, she set out for Petticoat Lane, a street whose very name charmed her. After a leisurely stroll up one side and down the other, looking in all the windows, she entered one of the shops. Four or five shops later she found what she wanted—a dress of flame-colored crepe de chine, very clinging, with tiny rhinestone straps and a neckline so low in front that she felt naked. But it was the latest thing and, if she did say so, it was rather becoming. With a casual gesture, hoping the saleslady wouldn’t notice, she flipped the price tag over. Oh well. You couldn’t expect something like this for the price of a little school dress.
She tried it on again, back in the room, and pinned up the straps to raise the neckline. But then she took the pins out and let it stay as it was. This was the way they wore them these days. She would get used to it. By this time it was after five. Kenny would be home soon, but before she called she had time for a bath. She ran the tub full of water and made it rosy with bath salts. Sudsing herself idly, she wondered what they were doing back home. Mama would be filling the lamps about now; pretty soon she would start supper. The kitchen would be hot and stuffy and the kids cross and tired, and Papa would come in with the milk, tracking manure on the floor…while she lay here in a perfumed bath, waiting for a gentleman to take her out to dinner.
Though she would have to call him first. She got out at once, dried and powdered herself, and put on her blue silk kimono, saved for special occasions. As she dug into her handbag again for his letter, the package of cigarettes fell out. She considered a moment, then opened it and lighted one with a shaky hand. So that’s how they tasted! She made a small face. Her heart was beating as nervously as if she were doing something wrong. Pulling the kimono tight around her, she walked over to the bathroom door and stood in a stylish slouch at the mirror, one hand on her hip, the other waving the cigarette. What would they think if they saw her now! What would old Kenny think, even! He had tried all winter to make her take a cigarette and she wouldn’t do it. She frowned a little as she thought of him. A basketball coach had no business smoking, not even away from school. Kenny did a lot of things she didn’t really approve of. But he did work hard and he sang well and he was good-looking. Maybe when she saw him again, she’d like him better than she thought. At any rate, she could have some fun with him. She would adore to see a nightclub—with bootleggers and a Negro jazz band and sophisticated people! She took another quick puff and turned back to the telephone, reflecting at that moment that it wouldn’t do to appear too anxious. She had only just got here. Perhaps she would have dinner first and call after that. If he had gone out for the evening, there was always tomorrow. She had the whole week before her.
As she left the hotel, the sun was almost down, setting due east as it always did in the city. She turned her back on it impatiently and started up the street. Her step was less resolute than in the afternoon, for this time she wasn’t sure where she was going. She had not yet made up her mind where to have dinner. But it wouldn’t be dark for a long time yet and she was in no hurry. She would walk awhile, till she found some place she liked, something small and friendly-looking.
Around her, people were going home from work, everyone in a hurry. They brushed past her, running for streetcars, and one man almost knocked her down. She turned up a sidestreet to avoid them. It was emptier there, and she could window-shop in peace. Pausing once to peer in at some furniture—summer furniture such as she had longed for at the farm—she was aware that a man had stopped beside her. Without thinking, she looked up. He looked back and smiled, and she moved away abruptly, reflecting that it wouldn’t do to stand too long in one place, not at this hour and having no one with her.
She had never been in the city before without a companion, and she began to feel self-conscious, as if her aloneness might advertise itself. Though it was still broad daylight, she quickened her pace, looking in earnest now for a restaurant, so that she could have dinner and get back to her room. Hurrying up the street, she wished heartily for a friend, Carol or one of the other teachers, or just anyone she knew. She hated going into restaurants alone. Alone or not, however, she had to go in somewhere soon, as she had had nothing in her stomach since early morning except the Coca-Cola. She realized now that she was very hungry, and also very tired. She had been up since five o’clock. The yard was still blue-gray when she first stepped outside, and the sun just clearing the treetops on the east pasture (it stayed in its proper place at home). The air was so cool and soft at that hour of the morning, and everything smelled fresh, and the birds in the timber sounded sweet and far away. It all seemed far away now and terribly long ago. Was it possible that she had left only this morning? Pausing at a corner, she felt a momentary touch of the loneliness that used to afflict her as a child, when she was away from home and night came and she was sleepy. It passed quickly, but it left her with a puzzling sense of what-am-I-doing-here. She glanced about uneasily. The street was almost deserted. Which way was the hotel? She knew she could not be far away, but having wandered into a less familiar area, she could find no landmarks to get her bearings by. Turning, however, she glimpsed some distance away a massive gray stone church which she had often noticed before. Almost involuntarily, she started toward it, as if it were an unexpected friend met on the street.
She had no idea what she meant to do there, except that she had always meant to visit the church, as one would tour the cathedrals of Europe. As she approached, she caught the authoritative growl of an organ. Thinking hopefully that there might be a twilight recital going on, she climbed the steps and listened. Was any sound in the world more beautiful and noble! She gave the door a timid push. It opened, and she stepped inside.
It was cool inside and dimly lit by the afterglow of sunset through the stained-glass windows. Her vision adjusted, she saw that the church was empty except for a figure at the organ. It was a man—a young man, as nearly as she could make out with the length of the nave between them; he was in his shirtsleeves, like any laborer, intent on his work. The slim back moved busily, the arms shot out, the hips swung as he trod the pedals, and the powerful muscular tones of the organ expanded through the church as if they would push away the walls. She watched him in admiration.
How beautifully he played! And for a moment it irked her soul that it was not she who sat up there working her will on the stops and keys and pressing that glorious thunder through the golden pipes. But the pure beauty of it cleansed her of envy and she tiptoed to the back pew and sat down with the feeling of having reached a destination.
The music ended. There was an interlude of silence, and it began again, softly this time, curling out of the stopped diapasons with the sound of flutes. Serene and precise, it made a simple statement, repeated it with metaphors, and paused while a second voice made answer. Other voices joined in then, one after another, deep and benevolent, and they spoke back and forth. They gathered, thronging over one another, mingling, rising in sweet argument, until the lot of them sang together in loud accord and the flesh tingled on her arms.
O music,
O little word
That more than any other word is God!
This was what she loved—music and churches and goodness and God’s love! And she had thought that if you believed in these, there were the just rewards. But maybe she was wrong. (Her mother and father loved Mathy best.) Maybe God Himself neither cared nor knew what she loved. It did seem that if He cared, He might have helped her a little more, since she tried to help herself. But maybe she went about it all wrong. Maybe one didn’t win the prize by going at it straight, but had to go at it the long way around, through pit and mire and degradation, till one came home to rejoicing. Home and heaven—there must be a way, she had to find it. She closed her eyes. Dear Heavenly Father—But how could she ask Him to help her to be bad!
She rose quickly and fumbled her way to the door. It was late, the church was almost dark, and outside the streetlights had come on. She hesitated on the steps, struggling with her poor sense of direction. Instinct pulled her one way, but there, in the other, shone the bright lights of downtown. She struck out doggedly, scurrying through the shadows. How far had she come? She paused at every corner, looking both ways in panic, till at last she saw the hotel. She went toward it almost at a run and reached the elevator with her heart pounding. Her hand shook so that she could scarcely unlock the door. She snapped the light on and without even taking off her hat went straight to the telephone and called Kenny’s number.
“Hello?” said a voice, which she took to be his mother’s.
Leonie took a long steadying breath. “May I please speak with Kenneth?”
There was a brief pause. “Honey,” the woman said in a tone of patient annoyance, “Kenneth is still in the Ozarks. Now I told you that yesterday when you called.”
“Oh, but I didn’t—”
“He’s gone fishing with his father and he won’t be back for another two weeks. I wish to goodness you girls wouldn’t keep calling him all the time. Aren’t you enough of a lady to wait till he calls you? It’s getting to be a nuisance the way—”
Leonie put the receiver down quietly, cutting off the accusing voice. She was furious with embarrassment, and red as a beet—she could see herself in the mirror. She had not called old Kenny yesterday! She didn’t even want to see him, and she was glad he wasn’t there. But she had staked the whole week on his promise of “a real hot time”! And what was she going to do now—wander around by herself all day and sit in her room all evening? She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved, whether to laugh or cry, so she kicked the bathroom door. It shut with a bang that jarred the furniture, and the full-length mirror cracked from bottom to top. Leonie stared at it aghast, her mouth wide open. Then she sat right down on the floor, still wearing her hat, and squalled.
Was there nothing in the world that she could do right? She couldn’t even be bad! And she hated trying. Even if they never knew about it, she just couldn’t do it. She picked up the cigarettes and flung them into the wastebasket. She didn’t want to smoke or wear indecent dresses or go wild. Those things were wrong. Not for other people, maybe, but they were wrong for her. She was brought up to believe it and she couldn’t change now. Let Mathy and Jessica run away and do what they pleased—what she pleased to do was be good, the way God and her father and mother wanted her to be. But she did wish they would love her for it.
She cried and cried. All the tears she hadn’t wept all summer seemed determined to get wept now. And after she had cried about everything else, she cried in exasperation. Here she was, in a fancy room that she couldn’t afford, scared to death to go out. And she was hungry. She began to laugh, giggling through her tears as she looked at herself in the cracked mirror. She felt like an idiot, sitting there on the floor with her hat on! Well, she’d got herself into this, how was she going to get out? She would call up Ed, that’s what she’d do! The thought struck her like a flash from heaven. She had forgotten he lived in town. With a little whimper of joy she reached for the telephone.
He arrived a half hour later, in his shirtsleeves, without a tie, and looking like a well-scrubbed bum. But he was homefolks, and she was never so glad to see anyone in her whole life.
He took her down the street and bought her a hamburger and a big thick malted milk. As the last drop gurgled through the straw, he leaned back and lighted a cigarette. “All right, Aunt Linnie, what’s the problem?”
“What problem?” she said, plaiting the straw.
“You look like a spanked baby. What have you been crying about?”
She hadn’t intended to tell him. But she had to say something. She began with the broken mirror and worked back from there. He kept nagging and asking questions and before she knew it she had poured out the whole story of the summer. “I thought I was making them happy, but they hated it. They can’t stand me!” She buried her face in the paper napkin and wept.
“Now, you know that isn’t so,” said Ed.
“It is!”
“You’re just as mixed up as a lonesome girl can be. Don’t you know they love you as much as they did Mathy? They’d act the same way about you, if it had been you instead of her.”
“What’ll I do—kill myself?”
“That’s what you’re doing.” He exhaled slowly. “I’ve watched you down there this summer.”
“I was happy,” she protested, “most of the time.”
“Oh, sure, sure. A pretty girl down there in the sticks with the old folks and a couple of kids—you were happy as a lark.”
“Well, I thought I was.”
“Proves how stupid you are, Aunt Linnie. You don’t know what you’ve got—you’re too nice a kid to be goin’ to waste. You ought to be out and around and raisin’ a little dust. What are you going to do the rest of the week?”
“I don’t know,” she said woefully.
“Well, you ought to have some fun for yourself. Why don’t we do something tonight? Want to see a burlycue? What would you like to do?”
“I just want to go home!”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” He leaned back. “Okay, if that’s what you want, let’s go. Get your things and I’ll take you.”
“You mean clear home—tonight?”
“I can drive it in an hour and a half.”
“But I can’t go home, not till the end of the week! What would I tell them?”
“Tell ’em anything. Make up a story.”
“I can’t! Not another one! I’ve got to stay whether I want to or not. I can’t really afford it and I don’t know what to do and what am I going to do about that mirror!”
Ed laughed. “Tell you what,” he said; “you go back to the hotel and tell them about the mirror. Don’t say how it happened, just say the wind blew the door shut. Act like it’s an insult to a paying guest—you might have been cut by flying glass!”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that. It was my fault.”
“You don’t have to say so.”
“But there isn’t any wind tonight.”
“Oh, for the love of Mike!”
“I’d rather just pay for it and not have any trouble.”
“All right. If that’s what you want to do, pay for the damn thing and pay y
our bill at the same time. If you think you’ve got to stay in town all week, you might as well stay at my place. It’s no Ritz, but it won’t cost you anything.”
“You mean stay in your apartment?” she said, looking up with a teary face.
“I’ve got a couple of rooms and a kitchen. It’s right on the carline, you can get downtown in ten minutes.”
“But what’ll you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where will you stay?”
“I’ll stay there. What did you think?”
She looked down, feeling herself blush.
“God’s sake, Aunt Linnie!” He laughed. “You don’t have to worry. I’m one of the family, whether you like it or not.”
“I know that,” she said primly. “But what will people think?”
“What people? Nobody’s going to come nosin’ around. You don’t have to worry about that, up here.”
“Well…”
“I’ll bunk on the couch and you’ll have the other room all to yourself. In the morning I’ll be gone before you get up. The place is all yours the rest of the day. And if you’re scared to go out by yourself at night, I’ll be glad to go with you if you want me to. I imagine your Dad would rather you had me with you than nobody at all.”
She managed a sheepish smile.
“Come on now. You go up and get your suitcase. I’ll settle about the mirror.”
“Oh no!” She looked at him in alarm. “I’ll do it. I wouldn’t want them thinking that I—I mean that you and I—”
Ed shrugged his shoulders. “Lord!” he said softly.
4
She woke up early the next morning, before he left for work, and lay contentedly listening to him move about. It was nice not to feel all alone and afraid, and such a relief that today she could enjoy herself. She wished he would hurry up and leave so she could get started. She would ride down on the streetcar and return that awful dress, first thing. Then she could buy some school clothes. She’d look for some little surprise for the kids and the folks, and have a nice lunch at the Forum. If there was time in the afternoon, she would go to Jenkins for sheet music and listen to some classical records. She did wish Ed would hurry!
The Moonflower Vine Page 31