Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

“Let’s not go in,” he said and turned the girl around, shepherding her out of the door, pushing her gently out of the door, controlling an impulse to bury his face in her hair, thinking, That’s too long a jump for anyone to have to make, from the private dining room of a French restaurant in the Fifties in New York to Old One-One and The Moonbeam Café on Franklin Avenue in Monmouth.

  “Where will we go?” she said. She was looking straight at him, studying his face, just as he had studied hers, in the moment before he kissed her.

  He was silent, watching her, because she was deciding something. “Well?” he said.

  She took hold of his arm, put her hand in his. They retraced their steps, walking slowly along Franklin Avenue, then down Dumble Street. He could smell the perfume that she used, faint, sweet. He thought, Rooms, Dollar and Half a Night, shabby hotels, dingy rooming houses, rent a room on Franklin Avenue, one-night stand, smell of kerosene, dogs, people.

  He said, “This way.”

  They turned into Number Six Dumble Street, went up the steps. He unlocked the door. There was no sound at all, not even a faint click as the tumblers turned in the lock. Then they were standing in the hall, the only light came from what Abbie called the night lamp, an oldfashioned oil lamp, marble base, wired for electricity. In the dim light you could see the long carpeted staircase, the curve of it, see the polished parquet floor, he turned a little and he could see the gleam of the Major’s goldheaded cane in its usual place in the hatrack, gleam of the Major’s silk hat which Abbie brushed every morning, gleam of the walnut backs on the pair of Victorian chairs, chairs silhouetted against the striped wallpaper. He remembered how F. K. Jackson appeared to be addressing the wallpaper when she said, “The Major is dead—”

  He thought there was a movement, thought his eye caught the tailend of a motion, something moving, some gesture, something, in the deep shadows of the landing, and he looked up quickly. There was nothing. There was no sound at all, anywhere in the whole house. Perhaps it was the stillness that lay over the house, perhaps it was the careful way he had opened the door, but the girl had said nothing, still said nothing, even after he opened the door of his room, turned the lights on.

  Then she said, “I love you, I love you, love you.”

  They were in Harlem on Christmas Eve. It was snowing. They stopped to buy a newspaper and he turned and looked at her, at the snow falling on the soft brown fur coat, on the tip of her nose, on the pale yellow hair, on the scrap of black velvet that was her hat. Right there on 125th Street, corner of Seventh Avenue, he kissed the tip of her nose—because he couldn’t help it. The redfaced news vendor, who had been watching them, leaned out of the newsstand and said, “Mister, you got all the Merry Christmas a man could want standin’ right there by you.”

  Camilo smiled at the man and said, “Merry Christmas to you!”

  Link thought, We’re both at the stage where we love everybody, news vendors, and elevator men, and bus drivers, and charwomen, and beggars—anybody and everybody who doesn’t have the hold on ecstasy that we have. We keep wanting to spread it around.

  He reached in his pocket just as though he were a millionaire, just as though he plucked five-dollar bills from The Hangman every morning just before breakfast, and handed five bucks to the news vendor and said, “Buy yourself a drink. As a matter of fact, here’s another one, Mack. Buy yourself two drinks.”

  He said, “Christmas present,” to Camilo and kissed her again.

  She said, “Merry Christmas, darling!” and handed him a small square package, wrapped in dark green paper. It was tied with a silver ribbon, and there was a red poinsettia smack in the middle of the package.

  He held it in his hand, lightly, balancing it on the tips of his fingers.

  “Camilo, will you marry me?” he asked, voice soft, voice caressing.

  He wondered afterwards why he’d asked her. Was it the absolute envy in the eyes of the news vendor, as he leaned forward, watching them, his elbows on a pile of newspapers, his bulky figure silhouetted against the gaudy covers of the pulp magazines, hung all around the inside of the newsstand? Or was it the snow? Snow everywhere, even on the sidewalks, coming down so fast that it obliterated a footprint almost as soon as it was made, snow softening the brilliant redgreen of the stop lights, snow muffling sounds; turning Harlem into a place of enchantment, straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, no, Andersen’s, because the snow and ice were in Andersen. Few people on the street. No traffic. Everyman is at home with all the lights turned on; all the houses and the apartments are full of something strangely like hope, like delight, like love, and there are children—and Christmas trees—and piles of presents.

  He said, again, “Camilo, will you marry me?”

  She touched his cheeks with the tips of her fingers, then put both arms around his neck and whispered, in his ear, “One of these days. Come spring. Time of the singing of birds. Yes.”

  “Why not now?”

  “People would swear that I’d married you to keep warm,” she giggled, “to keep my feet warm. And they’d be right.”

  They stood on the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, laughing; the snow was wet on their faces, the snow was cold on their faces.

  In love with love, he thought. Was that it? No. In love with CamiloWilliamsChinaMamiePowther? No. In love with Camilo Williams.

  10

  * * *

  SATURDAY, and Malcolm Powther was off for the evening, off early, too. He stood in the doorway of a side entrance to Treadway Hall, trying to raise his umbrella. The wind kept shifting, blowing the umbrella back against him and then swooping under it so that he very nearly lost his grip on the handle.

  He braced himself against the door in preparation for a further struggle with the umbrella. It was a strong wind. Almost a gale. The big-leaved ivy on the walls of the house rippled, moving back and forth in the wind. The electric lights on each side of the door gave the ivy a strange yellowgreen tinge. The color of the ivy, and the constant back-and-forth motion of it, suggested that moths, millions of them, had been pinioned to the walls, and were fluttering their wings in a desperate effort to free themselves, painful to watch because it was a silent struggle.

  Something eerie about the ivy tonight, he thought. First I think of moths but if I keep watching it with the wind making it quiver like that I shall begin to believe that it is not the ivy that’s moving but the thick stone walls of the house.

  He began his struggle with the umbrella again and then stopped because he saw Al coming up the driveway, heading for this same entrance. Al had his chauffeur’s cap on the back of his head, which meant the Madam wasn’t ready to leave yet.

  “You goin’ now?” Al asked.

  Powther nodded.

  “Come on, I’ll drive you to the car line, Mal. I’d take you all the way but the Widow’s goin’ to feed her face in Bridgeport tonight and I gotta have that crate waitin’ at the door of the shack the minute the outside air hits that mink.”

  They walked down the driveway together. The town car was parked in front of the house. Powther hesitated before he got in.

  “Do you think—” he said.

  Al interrupted. “I ain’t goin’ to let you walk to the trolley, not in no nasty weather like this. Come on, get in. I got time enough. The Widow’ll be gettin’ her tiara fixed on her head for a good ten minutes yet.”

  It was warm inside the car. He leaned back against the soft upholstery, listening to, and enjoying, the faint hum of the motor, the swish-click, swish-click of the windshield wipers. He was glad that Al had insisted on giving him a ride. A cold rainy night. Windy, too. He probably wouldn’t have been able to keep his umbrella up.

  Al went down the milelong driveway, fast. The big entrance gates were open so that he didn’t even have to stop to toot his horn, just slowed a little, and then went straight out onto the highway. A trolley was just coming to a stop.
They watched the conductor get out and change the position of the trolley pole.

  Powther thought, Well, now this is very nice. Drummond is the conductor tonight. We’ll have a chance for a visit.

  “That’s a job I sure wouldn’t want,” Al said. “Specially on a night like this.”

  “Neither would I.” Powther started to get out of the car.

  Al leaned toward him. “Wait a minute, Mal,” he said. “I got somethin’ I been wantin’ to ask you.”

  There was something unusual about the tone of his voice, something of relish, of gloating, that made Powther turn and stare at him. He said, “Yes?”

  Al lowered his voice. “You noticed anything funny goin’ on at the shack lately?”

  “Funny?” Powther repeated and frowned. None of the plate was missing, he always counted it himself. The maids? They were all doing their work and doing it very well. None of them was in the family way. “What do you mean?” he said sharply.

  “Well,” Al said and stopped. “Well, if you ain’t noticed nothin’ I ain’t got time to go into all of it right now.” He shoved the chauffeur’s cap straight on his head. “I gotta go, Mal. I’ll tell you about it the first chance I get. I gotta go pick up the mink cargo.”

  Powther stood in the rain, watching the red taillights of the town car diminish in size, grow smaller, then disappear, just as though they had been swallowed up by this dark rainy night. What was Al talking about?

  He ignored the rain, the wind, while he inventoried the rooms. Gainsboroughs in the dining room, yes, all of them; the Cellini peacocks and the Da Vinci trays, the Bateman tea set and the Paul Revere in the dining room; yes, all there; prayer rugs in the library, yes; Aubusson in the music room, yes. He thought of spots on rugs, irreparable damage to fine wood, moths in upholstery or rugs, snagged draperies. Perhaps someone had marred the photomurals in the entrance hall. No, they were perfectly all right.

  I should have gone back with Al and gone over the entire downstairs to see that everything was as it should be. Wine cellar? He was down there in the afternoon, right after lunch, checking the Château d’Yquem, the only wine the Madam really liked. But surely Mrs. Cameron, the housekeeper, would have noticed anything wrong or anything missing. They held a conference every morning. She had said, when was it? yesterday, that the house had never been more beautiful than it was this winter.

  Drummond, the conductor, stuck his head out of the trolley.

  “Mr. Powther,” he said, “is that you?”

  Powther said, “Yes.” He boarded the car, dropped a nickel in the coinbox.

  Drummond said, “It’s a sour night, ain’t it?” and looked a question at Powther.

  Powther said, “Yes. Funny, isn’t it? It’s pitchdark so all of us talk about the night though it’s only five o’clock.” He’s wondering why I was standing out there in the rain, ruining the crease in my trousers. “Rain in January is always worse than snow. It’s so devilish cold. Warm in the trolley though.”

  He helped Drummond reverse the seats. He could think better when he was doing something, and he liked Drummond, a talkative kind of chap, full of odd bits of information about the people who rode on his trolley.

  “How are you, Drummond? I haven’t seen you for a couple of weeks.”

  He only heard part of Drummond’s answer. Al had said, “You noticed anything funny?” Funny. Funny. But Al wouldn’t notice a scarred floor or a chipped porcelain vase. Al wasn’t interested in anything but cars. Al’s domain was the garage. There must be something missing in the garage, something queer in the garage. That was Al’s affair. Al was responsible for the garage.

  He thought, Isn’t it funny how you can get all upset about something that concerns you, but the instant you find out it’s the other fellow’s misfortune, you can relax, and look at it from a long way off, and think, Now isn’t that too bad. He had just used the word funny. Queer. Strange. Unusual.

  Drummond said, “When you get past fifty your legs kind of bother you.”

  “It’s good you’ve got a sitting-down job, on a trolley,” Powther said.

  Past fifty, he thought. He was past fifty but his legs didn’t bother him. He could walk that mile from the Hall to the car line, easily. He enjoyed it. Even in the rain. The driveway was always lighted at night, and it was like walking alone down a broad tree-lined boulevard. It offered beauty, fresh air, exercise, and time in which to think, all at once. In winter, snow clung to the arbor vitae, and the hemlocks, and it was like walking through a forest, a snowcovered forest; and in the spring, when the rhododendron and the French lilacs were in bloom, it was like walking through a florist’s dream of heaven. Al would never be able to understand why he liked that long walk. He was always insisting that he ride, would stop his own work to take him in one of the cars, often took him all the way to Dumble Street.

  Drummond said peevishly, “Trolleys are all right.” He started the car and he had to raise his voice against the clang-clang so that he sounded angry. He almost shouted, “But they sure beat the hell out of your kidneys after a while.”

  “I suppose so,” Powther said. “But I should think a bus would be worse. I hope it’ll be a long time before they get around to putting busses on this line.”

  “Same here. You got room on a trolley. The air’s better too. Sometimes I wonder what I’m goin’ to do when they get around to puttin’ the busses on. You’re lucky, Mr. Powther. You don’t know how lucky. Here I am gettin’ along on the other side a little further every day, and liable to be out of a job any time. But you’re set for the rest of your life.”

  Powther hoped another passenger would get on soon. He didn’t like to listen to a man feeling sorry for himself. It was probably the weather, that cold, fine rain, and so much wind. You couldn’t see anything out of the window. Pitchdark outside. Trolley rocking and swaying. A sour night. Lucky, he thought. I’m not lucky. I worked and studied and worked and studied to get where I am. Get where I am. Where am I? He frowned. He was about to do the same thing Drummond was doing, about to start feeling sorry for himself.

  Drummond brought the trolley to a stop. A big slowmoving man got on. He had a metal lunchbox in his hand. Powther thought, You rarely ever see a workman with a lunchbox any more. When you did you wondered why he had to pinch his pennies, wondered what kind of misfortune forced him to deny himself that small extra sum per week with which to buy his lunch. The big man sat down near the front, right behind Drummond, and they started talking.

  Drummond said, “How is she?”

  The big man said, “Oh, I don’t know. She ain’t no worse but she ain’t no better either. I don’t know what to think, Drummond. Here I am gettin’ older every day and I’m spending my old-age money for doctors and sicknesses.”

  “But if you didn’t have it,” Drummond said halfheartedly.

  “If I didn’t have it then I could get her treated free,” the big man said.

  Powther stopped listening to them. It was this unpleasant weather that had got them down. This sour night. Now that Drummond had someone to talk to, he could go back to thinking about Al and the garage. Perhaps something had happened to the old Rolls. It must be twenty-five or thirty years old, at least; and Al was always working on it, tuning up the motor, polishing it. He even replaced the side curtains every two years.

  He’d seen Al start the motor of the old Rolls and then get out, lift the hood, and stand listening to it, head cocked on one side, eyes half closed, just as though he were listening to a concert.

  Al had said, “Lissen to her, Mal. Lissen to her sing. They don’t make nothin’ like this no more. Nobody gives a goddamn what’s under a hood no more just so they’re ridin’ in a shined-up crate that’s long as a hearse. This baby will outlast all them Caddies them rich bastards is so crazy about.”

  Powther had nodded agreement. The car looked unfashionably high to him, though he supposed t
he lines were still good considering its age. Certainly you wouldn’t turn around and stare at it if you saw it being driven along a highway. He knew absolutely nothing about motors so he couldn’t agree or disagree as to the quality of what was under the hood.

  “You know,” Al said, and he put his hands on his hips, still looking at the car, still listening to the motor, “even if I wasn’t workin’ here no more, I’d come back here for just one thing.”

  “What would that be?” Powther asked. He knew what he himself would come back to Treadway Hall for, it would be to rub up the Cellini peacocks just for the sheer pleasure of handling them once again. But Al, who did not know one rug from another, one type of silver from another, one flower from another, what would he come back for?

  “I’d come back here, Mal, just to watch the Widow drive this crate through the park at the Fourth of July picnic. She sits in it, drivin’ it, and she’s listenin’ to the motor all the time. I’ve watched her and I know. She’s almost as crazy about motors as me. Only woman I ever see that was.”

  Yes, Powther thought, comfortably, something must have gone wrong with the old Rolls-Royce. But Al was a good mechanic. He would soon have it back in running order again. He liked Al, but there was a coarseness, a vulgarity about his speech that Powther found unpleasant. Al constantly disparaged the Madam, in small ways, without ever giving direct expression to his dislike. Powther felt that if you didn’t like the people you worked for, you shouldn’t take their money, you ought to find another job. Al referred to the Madam as the Widow; called Treadway Hall, that great stone mansion with its park and formal gardens and its magnificently furnished interior, the shack; and all of the Madam’s cars, the limousines and town cars, the station wagons and convertibles, were crates; and the Madam’s friends, whether they were gentlemen or ladies, were always rich bastards.

  Despite his disapproval of Al’s way of talking, they were friends. Al had given him a nickname, the first one he’d ever had, and he liked it. If anyone had told him that he and Al would be friends, he wouldn’t have believed it because when he first went to the Hall to work, Al was openly hostile. He was always staring at him. He had pale blue eyes that bulged, and those pale eyes showed they did not like what they saw when they rested on Powther. His hair was blond and cropped close to his head, revealing the roundness of his skull, emphasizing the roundness of his skull. A big man with a big tough face.