Ann Petry

by Ann Petry

  He thought, I, I, I, cuckolded as I am, worried as I often am, after a night with you, you, you, soft warm flesh, smell of perfume, toosweet, toosweet, toostrong, deep-soft-cushion feel of you, feel of the arms, the legs, the thighs, me incased in your thighs, all joy, all ecstasy, all pleasure, not caring, forgetting, completely forget, not forgetting, not caring, who else does this to you, defying Bill Hod, conquering Bill Hod and you and the world, even I, an old man, sorrowful sometimes, frightened always, living forever afraid that you will leave me, don’t ever leave me, even I can, could, walk for miles, could sing, could shout, could believe that I will live forever and ever, that I will never die, I am too alive, too filled with joy to die.

  He had to get up, get dressed, get back to the Hall. He left Mamie, sitting on the side of the bed, singing:

  Tell me what color an’ I’ll tell you

  what road she took,

  Tell me what color an’ I’ll tell you

  what road she took.

  Why’n’cha tell me what color an’ I’ll

  tell you what road she took.

  12

  * * *

  SUNDAY. Quarter past twelve. Powther put on his overcoat and his hat.

  “I’ve got to speak to Albert for a few minutes,” he said to the second man, who was his assistant.

  It would be at least a half-hour before he started to set up the dining room and he had just finished checking the entire downstairs. Everything was in order, everything polished, spotless, gleaming. Flowers everywhere.

  Al was not in the garage. He heard the slush-slush of water from somewhere behind the garage, so he walked outside to the area where Al washed the cars. Al was hosing down one of the station wagons, his face was red, and there was something violent in the way he manipulated the hose, as though he were beating the car with it. Powther wondered why he was washing it.

  He said, “It’s a nice sunny morning, Al.” Sunny but cold. Very cold. Too cold to be washing cars outdoors.

  Al looked up. “Hi, Mal,” he said and turned the hose off. He kicked at one of the tires, scowling at it. “Rogers must carry horse shit around in this crate all day. He’s got a stink in it that would choke you to death. It’s got my garage stunk up like a stable. So I’m out here, in January, hosin’ it down.”

  Rogers was the head gardener and Powther wasn’t the least bit interested in whatever it was he carried in the station wagon.

  He said, “I haven’t got much time, Al. I’ve got to get back and set up my dining room. What did you mean last night, when you asked me if I’d noticed anything wrong?”

  “Not wrong, Mal. Funny. Funny ha-ha and funny boo-hoo, too.” Al lowered his voice. “You know where my room is? Right in the front part of the garage? Upstairs, right over the doors?”

  Powther nodded. It wasn’t the Rolls-Royce, it couldn’t be, though people often began to tell you something by introducing the extraneous, the obvious, but he couldn’t somehow connect the location of Al’s room with the Rolls-Royce.

  Al laid the hose down. He said, “Well, from them front windows I gotta view of the drive, a clear straight view. And I been seein’ Camilo’s car come up that straight stretch of drive, night after night. For weeks on end now, she’s been stayin’ out half the night.” He hesitated for a minute. Then he said, “She must be doin’ eighty when she comes up that drive. Somebody oughtta tell her, Don’t drive like that, or she’s sure goin’ to have a smashup.”

  “How do you know it isn’t the Captain coming in late?” Scandal, Powther thought. Al isn’t interested in the rate of speed, it’s the scandal.

  “How do you know it isn’t the Captain?” he repeated. “Are you sure it’s Miss Camilo?”

  “Am I sure? Listen, Mal, she puts the car up herself. She always puts it up herself. She ain’t like some of them rich bastards I’ve worked for who could drive just as good as me but would leave their cars out in front of their shacks for me to put up because they were scared they wouldn’t get their money’s worth out of me if they put a car in a garage themselves.

  “For two nights straight I thought it was lightnin’ flashin’ through them Venetian blinds upstairs. It woke me up. Two nights straight. So the third night I decide it ain’t lightnin’ flashin’ in my face, not in December, three nights in a row, so I get out of bed and look down, out of the window. And there’s Camilo in the car. She’s got to wait for them doors to open up. Them automatic doors ain’t hooked up to go up in no split second.

  “Ever since then I been lookin’ at her, out of the window, three or four nights a week. She comes in later than ever on Saturdays. I seen her, even in bad weather settin’ down there at the wheel of her car, the top down, her head lifted watchin’ them doors go up. Ain’t nobody else looks like her, or got hair like hers. It’s Camilo all right. On Saturday nights, she comes in about four or five in the mornin’, drivin’ like a bat out of hell.” He stopped talking and frowned.

  Then he said, “She—well, if I was the Captain, I’d, well, she looks like an angel, sittin’ down there in that car with her face lifted, watchin’ them doors open up.”

  Powther thought, No wonder the Captain has been looking so discontented. Even when Miss Camilo was away, the Captain had dinner with the Madam on Sundays. Lately the expression on the Captain’s face had made Powther wonder what was the matter with him. Now he understood what caused it.

  He, too, knew what it was like to lie awake wondering where a woman was, what she was doing, knew what it was like to pretend to be asleep when she came home at some ungodly hour, came home from God knows what, God knows where, and undressed and got in bed and relaxed into sleep almost instantly, knew what it was like to prop himself up on his elbow, cautiously, so as not to disturb the sleeping woman, to examine her face, study her face, try, in a room dimly lighted by the street light outside to figure out from that placid, relaxed, beautiful face where she had been, what she had been doing, because he would never dare ask.

  Al said, “Where’s she go?”

  “I don’t know,” he said sharply. “I wish I did know. I’ll probably never know.” Then he remembered that Al was talking about Miss Camilo. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I was thinking about something else. I haven’t any idea where she goes.”

  “This town closes up tighter’n a drum after ten o’clock. There ain’t no place for nobody to go. What’s Camilo doin’ out in a closed-up town till all hours of the mornin’? In all kinds of weather. She don’t know nobody in Monmouth.”

  “She probably goes to New York,” Powther said. He felt impelled to steer Al away from this affair which was none of his business. “Her friends all live in New York. Or Boston. Young people like to drive a hundred miles or more, to a party or a dance.”

  “No, she don’t,” Al said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I measure the gas. I don’t question she’s in New York on the weekends. But the rest of the time she ain’t. She don’t use a half-gallon of gas from here to wherever she goes and back here again. She goes somewhere right here in Monmouth. And she don’t know nobody in Monmouth.”

  Powther sighed. “Look, Al,” he said, “maybe she plays Canasta or goes to the movies or—”

  “There ain’t no movies open at three in the morning,” Al said stubbornly. “The Treadways ain’t never had nothin’ to do with the town. I been with them for twenty years and the widow don’t even buy her clothes in the town. Camilo don’t even know the names of the streets. There ain’t nothin’ there for her. What’s she doin’ there, Mal?”

  “She’s probably got friends in Monmouth,” he said firmly. “Well, I’ve got to set up my dining room now. I’ll see you later.”

  “Come on out when you get through and I’ll drive you to the car line, Mal.”

  “Thank you, Al,” he said. When they were driving to the car line he would have to somehow convin
ce Al that whatever Miss Camilo did or did not do was none of Al’s business. He wondered why if Al had known this, “for weeks on end,” he had kept it to himself up until now.

  He liked Miss Camilo. In many ways she was like the Madam, younger, of course, but with the same kindness and kindliness about her. Good people to work for. Thoughtful.

  As he moved about the dining room, he forgot about Al and Miss Camilo. He always set his own tables, because he enjoyed doing it. He prided himself on the result. For this intimate family dinner, he placed a small round table in the great bay window. The dining room faced west and by dinnertime, the winter sunlight would lie across the table like a spotlight. In his early days, he had trained under an Armenian, a peculiar man, totally unreliable and unpredictable but an artist at heart. He was always saying, “Now the food it is important, yes. But the dining room is even more so. You must set it up like a stage, Powther, like a stage. You must vary the setting to go with the food, and the hour of eating so that everything fits itself together.”

  So for these Sunday dinners, in winter, served at the unfashionable hour of three o’clock, he always used the Crown Derby and the old silver goblets, and the Versailles flatware. For the centerpiece he selected an Imari bowl, and filled it with chrysanthemums, because the reds and tawny yellows were like the coloring of the Crown Derby china. By the time he announced dinner there would be sunlight on the table, reaching into the room, shining on the Gainsboroughs, on the mahogany paneling, on the fireplace brasses, so that the entire room would seem to pick up and echo the colors used on the table.

  At quarter of three, he lit the fire in the dining room fireplace, and stood watching it, to be sure it was going to burn evenly. He kept thinking about Miss Camilo, found himself shaking his head, saying, Dear me, under his breath. He should have known this would happen eventually.

  One morning last summer he was walking past the garage, going toward the house, when he saw her backing that long red Cadillac out of the garage. She turned her head, watching where she was going, and he saw that her face was sharply impatient, set, not smiling.

  She waved at him, and said, “Oh, oh, oh. Where’ve you been, Powther?”

  “Home with my wife,” he said, and then, “It’s going to be a beautiful day, Miss Camilo.”

  She had looked up at the sky. “I suppose so,” she said. “Yes, I guess it will. Though sometimes they seem pretty much alike.”

  He had thought, Oh, dear me, as he watched her drive off, at your age and looking the way you do, with that shining silky hair and that lovely smile, you ought to be saying, Oh, it’s good to be alive on a morning like this, it ought to show in your face, the morning, the joy at being alive. You look as though you were neither dead nor alive, sort of half of each.

  It was one of those mornings when he felt like singing, like shouting, because Mamie had held him in her arms, half the night, and he had watched the car go down the driveway too fast, going faster and faster, flash of red disappearing around the curve, top down, silky yellow hair blowing back in the wind, not dyed, people thought she dyed it, but she didn’t; thinking, Oh, dear me, why can’t that youngest Copper’s wife die, so Miss Camilo can find the man she’s looking for.

  One minute of three. He opened the doors of the dining room, took one quick backward glance, sunlight in the room, fire burning quietly in the fireplace, red damask draperies in even folds at the windows, Gainsboroughs all straight on the walls, Persian rug free of lint. He’d done a good job. Big as the room was, your eyes went straight to the table, even at this distance away. All the sunlight was concentrated on the table, even the wood of the Adam chairs gleamed in the sun.

  At exactly three o’clock, he entered the drawing room, and announced dinner. He got the impression that all three of them, the Madam, Miss Camilo, and the Captain, welcomed the announcement, that they had been sitting there together, saying nothing.

  As he moved quietly about the dining room, serving them, he thought about the Captain, wondering why he had written the Captain off, that day last summer when he watched Miss Camilo go down the driveway. Written him off, just as though he didn’t exist. But then everybody did, all the servants, even the Madam.

  The Captain was handsome, a big young man, with a fine looking head and face. He was unquestionably a gentleman. But— Al said he was a tame cat. For once, Al’s description of some one really fitted. The Captain was too nice, too gentle, too wellbred. Powther thought, Well, he came from an old New York family, perhaps the blood line ran out, got too thin. Some of his ancestors should have married into lusty peasant families.

  But Miss Camilo— He studied her as she sat at the table, talking and laughing. She has become a raving beauty. There is a gleam about her, a gleam that competes with, no, it surpasses the gleam in this room. It’s in her flesh, her hair, her eyes. I know what it is, he thought, I saw the same thing happen to Mamie.

  He rarely ever followed the trend of a dinner table conversation, unless it was something very unusual; he was more concerned about the smoothness of the service. But today he listened to them.

  The Captain (poking at the nearest flower in the centerpiece with a forefinger, not looking at the flowers, but at Miss Camilo): The chrysanthemums are lovely, Mrs. Treadway.

  Once again Powther thought how strange it was that the Captain should call his mother-in-law Mrs. Treadway, not Elinor, not Mother, always Mrs. Treadway.

  The Madam: Rogers says it’s because we’ve had so much sunlight this winter. Everything in the greenhouse is flourishing.

  The Captain (still looking at Miss Camilo): Let’s go for a ride after dinner, Cammie.

  Miss Camilo: A ride?

  The Captain: Yes, let’s go as far outside of Boston as we can go and still get back to Monmouth at a decent hour tomorrow morning.

  Miss Camilo: You mean spend the night?

  The Captain: Of course. At the first likelylooking inn we come across. We’ll play hunt-the-inn until we find a place that’s absolutely perfect, even to the Windsor chairs and the fireplaces (the tone of his voice changed, grew softer), the way we used to.

  The Madam: You’ll probably find snow along the way and the countryside is beautiful in the snow.

  Miss Camilo: You come too, Mother. You’ve never been on a trip with us.

  Powther watched the Captain’s face and he decided that the Captain was holding the muscles of his face in the exact expression it had had when he first spoke, but the eagerness, the young eager look, left it, the glow went out of his eyes.

  The Captain: Good idea. You come too, Mrs. Treadway.

  The Madam: I really can’t. I’ve got a nine o’clock appointment at the plant. Thank you for inviting me.

  Miss Camilo looked at the Captain, and Powther frowned, not meaning to, unable to prevent the frown, because the look Miss Camilo gave the Captain was a caressing, lingering kind of look, and Powther thought, She has a lover and because she is so happy, she is going to let a little of her happiness spill over on the Captain, and he will believe that it is he who has made her happy, but some day, some day—

  In the butler’s pantry, he waited for them to finish the second course. He thought about himself and Mamie.

  A year after he and Mamie were married he knew that there was something wrong, but he did not know what it was. He could read the evidence in the droop of her mouth, the infrequent laughter when laughter had been as natural to her as breathing, now there was a languor and an indifference that disturbed him. He had thought, If we had children, and she agreed. After Kelly and Shapiro were born she was like she used to be but by the time they were two years old, she was bored with them, cross with them, impatient with them, and then, about a year after that, she was a Rubens female again, her flesh glowing, the house always filled with the rippling sound of her laughter. She was always singing, and her voice acquired an added depth and richness, a beauty of tone that he e
xplained to himself by saying that childbirth wrought wondrous changes in women.

  He would have let it go at that except for the new clothes. He knew the contents of Mamie’s closet far better than most husbands do, he was always brushing her dresses, cleaning and pressing them, making minor repairs. He kept finding new dresses, new coats, new suits. The drawers of the chest were filled with new underwear and stockings, stockings by the dozen.

  He knew deepdown inside him that she had a lover, that some man had entered her life, came home unexpectedly one afternoon and found a man sitting in the kitchen. In his shirt sleeves. Starched white shirt. No necktie. Collar open at the throat. Sleeves rolled up. He was drinking a glass of milk. When Powther entered the kitchen, the man stood up, getting up quickly, all in one motion.

  Mamie said, easily, unselfconsciously, “Powther, meet my cousin, Mr. Bill Hod. Bill, this is Powther.”

  He saw a man put together like a statue, no fat on him anywhere, tall, broad of shoulder, narrow of waist, a man with a quick graceful body and a face like the face of one of the early popes, in a small dark oil painting that hung in Old Copper’s library, a cruel face, with eyes that saw everything and disclosed nothing, with a narrowlipped, cruel mouth, a shark’s mouth.

  He gave Powther one swift, all-inclusive glance, nodded, sat down again, and finished the glass of milk. He left right afterwards.

  Powther made cautious inquiries about Bill Hod and learned very little about him that any discerning person couldn’t have guessed just from looking at his face. In the barber shop, they said he was the owner of The Last Chance, that he was a gambler, an operator of houses of ill fame, a numbers king, probably nearer the truth, that nobody really knew what illegal enterprises he directed or controlled but that he was unquestionably a racketeer. He was reported to be blind in one eye but nobody knew which eye, both eyes looked equally blank, and nobody knew how he had lost the sight of the eye, assuming that one of them really was sightless. No one knew how old he was; looking at his face, just his face, you could safely say that he was an evil old man of eighty, but he had the thick black lustrous hair of a young man in his twenties.