by Ann Petry
Powther contributed nothing to the conversation. He made himself think of something else. The Frenchman was a prima donna of a cook, not a cook, a chef—not a chef, an artist. Better than Old Copper’s Angelo, the Italian, because his flavoring was more subtle, and at the same time more unexpected. If Old Copper had ever had the chance to taste the Frenchman’s food, he would have kidnaped him. Old Copper always took what he wanted.
The cook at The Last Chance was even better than the Frenchman, his skills seemed to range over a wider area, included a greater variety of foods. He remembered the doughnuts, crisp outside, tender inside, flavor spicy, and not sweet. The wonderful texture had stuck in the roof of his mouth, in his throat, like glue, as he looked at Bill Hod, looked at him once, and not again, but dreadfully aware of him, and afraid of him.
He had never been able to forget that moment when he saw Hod sitting at the kitchen table, across from Mamie, not laughing or talking or caressing her, not eying her, just sitting there in his shirt sleeves, drinking a glass of milk. He had tried to drink a cup of coffee and had put the cup down because his hands had begun to shake, because of that man in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, shirt open at the neck, not looking at him, but aware of the predatory tomcat look of him, back alleys and caterwauling fights, claw your way up and out, use tooth and nail, knife and gun, written all over his face. Like Old Copper. You looked at Old Copper’s face, his eyes, his mouth, the lines about the mouth, and you knew that anything you could imagine about his past would not be as evil or as cruel as it must really have been to write the story on his face like that.
Yet he had liked Old Copper and Old Copper had liked him. That is, before he married Mamie, before Old Copper stared at Mamie. Then he had hated him, been afraid of him. He knew now that he had liked the old man only because he had never before had anything that Old Copper wanted, anything that Old Copper might take away from him.
Perhaps if it hadn’t been for Mamie, he, Powther, and the idea startled him, perhaps he and Hod might have been friends. He and Al were friends, incredible as it seemed. Under different circumstances, just possibly, he and Bill Hod might have been friends—could you be friends with a man like that?
Al said, “You put two and two together and it always makes four.”
“What do you mean by that, Albert?” Mrs. Cameron asked.
“I mean I got to go to work on Miss Camilo’s Caddy. It sure has took a beating these last few months.”
Powther watched Al get up from the table. “Put two and two together . . .” Al’s voice matched his size, his appearance, his personality. It was a big voice, slightly hoarse, because he smoked cigarettes all day long; an insistent voice, you could tell by the sound of it that once he got an idea in his head, it would be impossible to get it out. “It would be about here . . . I measured the gas . . . what’s down there?”
The River Wye was down there, in the direction that Al had been looking. So was the dock. So was Number Six Dumble Street. Oh, no, he thought. Impossible.
Why impossible? Put two and two together. After Al mentioned the nighttime trips he, Powther, had decided that Miss Camilo was in love, she seemed to have come suddenly alive, her face was animated, she was always laughing, her flesh had a kind of gleam. If Al was telling the truth about those trips, then her lover lived in Monmouth. Al had seen her car in Dumble Street. Sometime during the last two weeks, the love affair had ended. Miss Camilo was unhappy about it. She was too quiet, drinking too much. According to that senseless story in the Chronicle, she had accused Link Williams of attempted attack. “She’s been runnin’ with him for months now.” Add all of this up and “him” was Link Williams.
A shiver ran down his spine.
He had forgotten he was still sitting at the table in the servants’ dining room. Mrs. Cameron’s quiet voice startled him. She said, “Mr. Powther, you’re having a chill. Have you caught a cold?”
“It’s these sudden changes,” he said, shaking his head. “Yesterday was almost like spring, and today is like the middle of January. I’ve felt frozen all morning.”
Attempted attack, he thought. Midnight, corner of Dock and Dumble, no traffic, no passers-by. They would have heard the lapping of the river, and the street would have been dark all around them, in spite of the light at the corner. They were within sight of that red neon sign in front of The Last Chance, but they wouldn’t have been able to see the pink light in that upstairs bedroom at Number Six, and The Hangman would simply have been a dark bulk against the night sky, not really distinguishable as a tree.
Miss Camilo and Link Williams, painful to think of those two being connected in any way, stood on that corner, quarreling. Miss Camilo with her young trusting eyes, innocent face, pale blond hair, he wondered if she wore that ring with the diamond in it like the headlight of a car, a ring that said she had no business anywhere near Dumble Street, standing near Link Williams, who would have been hatless, probably coatless, too. The street light should have thrown a shadow across his face, a shadow like a scar, to emphasize the way in which his face with its thin-lipped cruel mouth resembled the face of a pirate, of an outlaw.
They must have quarreled to the hurting point. Miss Camilo was the hurt one. So it was about another woman. She probably threatened to ruin him, to get even, and he laughed, and then she stood there under that street light that could not dissipate the deadly darkness all around them, and screamed. The police came and she made the accusation and they arrested him. But he was already out on bail. The paper said so. Even if the charge was proved, and he doubted that it could be, he and Mamie had read so many of these cases in the papers, a charge like that, attempted attack, no witnesses, late at night, was too flimsy to hold up in court, and with Bill Hod’s influence, he wouldn’t even get a suspended sentence or a fine. Nothing.
I don’t believe it, he thought. Even now I don’t believe it. There’s some other explanation. Link Williams couldn’t have been her lover.
Al had said to the Frenchman, “You don’t believe me, huh? Well, what was she doin’ on the dock in Niggertown—”
Sweat broke out on his forehead.
He reached in his pocket for a handkerchief, mopped his forehead, asking himself why he kept refusing to believe that Link Williams had been Miss Camilo’s lover, why he so desperately wanted it not to be true, and remembered the feel of old, soft, worn handkerchiefs, handkerchiefs that he kept at the bottom of the pile in the top drawer of the chest, in the bedroom that he shared with Mamie.
He could see that tall imitation-mahogany chest, with grapes and tendrils, and roundbottomed cupids glued on the front of the drawers, chest he didn’t buy, didn’t pay for, see himself reach in the drawer. His hand had struck something cold, metallic, square, shaped like a box.
L.W. The initials picked out in small flawless diamonds. Even when he held the cigarette case flat on his hand, the stones had quivered, as though the blue-red-yellow sparks they encased were trying to free themselves, and so were never still. The gold of the case was beautifully worked, obviously made to order, by a master goldsmith.
“Put two and two together.”
Miss Camilo had given that cigarette case to Link Williams. Link had handed it on to Mamie. Monogrammed. Obviously his. He didn’t care if the husband saw it, the husband who didn’t count, didn’t matter, and never had or would; because he was a fool, and a coward, and everyone who ever saw him immediately recognized him as such, even Old Copper, a lecherous old man, knew that the husband would stand for anything, telling the new husband to his face, “If I was younger I’d give you a run for your money.”
Link Williams knew that the husband would put up with anything. So he told Miss Camilo, I’ve got another woman, a better woman. Powther supposed that Mamie was a better woman than Miss Camilo. Then he thought, appalled, This thing has already changed me. It would never have occurred to me to compare them, because Miss Camilo moved in a sep
arate different world. But Link Williams had made these separate worlds coalesce, collide. The princess of the fairy tales, all gold, was not gold at all, was flesh, human flesh, all too human, all too weak, capable of jealousy, of vengeance, capable of being ruined, like any other woman.
He was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of urgency. If Miss Camilo could fall in love with Link Williams, then Mamie—Mamie would run off with him. They might already have gone. He had to find out. Now. Tea or no tea. Nobody had as much at stake in this dreadful business as he had.
He went straight to the garage, leaving the table so abruptly that Mrs. Cameron frowned.
“Al,” he said, “would you do me a favor?”
“Sure. Just you name it, Mal.”
“I’ve got to go home in a hurry, home and back so fast that I still have everything ready for the tea this afternoon. The Madam is having the office girls in for tea.” Al knew that but he was much too upset to be able to think clearly. “And I have to be back, right away, but I’ve got to go home right now. I’ve got to go home.”
“Sure, Mal. Any time. You know that.”
“I’ll tell Mrs. Cameron that I’m going—”
“Ah,” Al said, and waved his hand, back and forth, dismissing Mrs. Cameron. “You ain’t got to tell that old bag nothin’. Just hop in one of them crates. Come on, I’ll use one of them goddamn convertibles. You can run like hell in ’em for the first fifty thousand miles. After that the motors ain’t worth a good goddamn.”
“No,” he said quickly. “She’ll have to keep an eye on Jenkins for me while I’m gone. It’s a big tea. We’ve quite a lot of people coming. It won’t take me a minute to tell her—”
He almost ran down Dumble Street, and up the back stairs, and into the kitchen. Just inside the kitchen door he stood still, astonished. Mamie was ironing a small blue shirt, either Kelly’s or Shapiro’s, humming under her breath. Just like any other wife, housewife, mother. She had a brilliant red scarf tied around her head, so she must have washed her hair. He had never seen her look quite so beautiful, so young, so appealing. She was wearing a green-and-white-checked dress, a fullskirted dress, that made her waist look very small, and made the curve of her breasts something to stare at in disbelief. A sigh rose in his throat.
“Pow-ther!” she said, smiling, mouth curving over the white even teeth, the smile enhancing the dewy look of her skin. “How come you’re home?”
“I forgot my keys,” he said, and gulped. “I went off without my keys. The keys to my wine cellar.”
“Now ain’t that a shame. You want me to help you hunt for ’em?”
“No,” he said, hastily. “I know where they are. They’re in my other pants.” He felt humble and apologetic. It seemed as though he ought to say so, to explain how he’d been falsely accusing her in his mind, picturing her as a destroyer of other people’s love affairs, tell her how he’d expected to come home and find the house cold and empty because she’d run off with another man. Instead here she was ironing in a warm clean kitchen, no dirty dishes in the sink; and she had mopped the linoleum, and waxed it afterwards, because the blue and white squares had a sheen, a kind of luster; and she had made gingerbread, he could smell it baking, spicy, fragrant, and over the smell of the gingerbread there was the strong, toosweet smell of her perfume.
He lingered in the kitchen, watching her, loving the bigbosomed look of her, thinking, I used to take it for granted that a married woman who has an affair with another man will have a depraved, wornout look. But they don’t. They grow younger and there is an emanation of happiness from them that can be sensed and felt by other people, and it makes them more beautiful. Like Mamie. Like Miss Camilo before Link Williams left her.
Then he remembered that Al was waiting for him over on Franklin Avenue, in the Lincoln, remembered the tea, and all the last-minute business of fireplaces, be sure about enough spoons, get the candles lighted, and the pianist had to be fed when he arrived, he was coming from New York.
He went into the bedroom, and opened the top drawer of the dresser, to make certain that that damnable, expensive, worth-a-king’s-ransom cigarette case was still there. After that night he discovered it, he had forced himself to stop thinking about it, stop conjecturing about it; he had never once permitted himself the luxury of finding out if it was still there.
It was gone. Mamie, who never bothered to put anything straight in a drawer, had lined up his handkerchiefs when she removed the cigarette case. It couldn’t have been anyone else.
Perhaps it had never been there. Of course it had been there. Nobody could dream up the existence of a golden geegaw that looked like a crown jewel.
He shoved the drawer shut with a blow of his hand, trying to smack as many of the cupids as he could. A childish thing to do. But they seemed to be leering at him, mouths open, eyes sunk deep in their heads, and he struck at them again. If furniture could talk, these fat hideous little figures could tell him what Mamie had done with that cigarette case. Perhaps she had returned it to its owner. Perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she kept it tucked inside the front of her dress, so that she would have something that belonged to Link always near her.
When he went into the kitchen, she took one look at his face, and laid the iron down. “Aw, Powther, you didn’t find ’em, did you? I’ll go look too.”
For one incredible moment he thought she was talking about the cigarette case, and he felt as though his face and neck had been enveloped in steam. Heat was rising all about him.
Then he remembered. “I’ve got them,” he said and pulled a bunch of keys out of his pants pocket. Her voice had sounded exactly like Drewey’s voice, like the voice of that big fat woman, sitting in the creaking rocking chair, in a rooming house in Baltimore, doing what she called hum-a-byin’, voice as soothing as a warm bath—now, now, now, everything is all right.
“I’ve got to hurry,” he said. He had to get back to the Hall, and check the number of napkins, make certain about the brand of tea—one of the smoky dark ones—and yet he wanted to stay here, to put his head down in her lap, to—
“You feel all right, Powther?”
“A little indigestion. It’s just that I came so fast.” And that ever since Bill Hod came into our lives, I have felt as though I were stumbling around in the dark, in a strange house, hunting for a door, fumbling for a door in an unfamiliar house that has no doors. More and more, of late, I have wished that Old Copper’s lust for women had not infected me, because it did, finally, so much so that I could not stop, would not stop, would not heed the warnings of my common sense, but went ahead and married you anyway. Because of that old man, who sat huddled in a red leather chair, licking his lips, staring at his paintings, oil paintings of bigbosomed, softfleshed women. And yet— I would really never have lived if I hadn’t married you because I would never have known what ecstasy is like.
“I’ll fix some soda for you.”
“No, no. I haven’t got time. Really. I’ve got to get back.”
“Okay, sugar.”
He couldn’t leave like this. He ought to say something else, but he didn’t know what. She had picked up the iron, was moving it back and forth, across another small shirt. “Where’s J.C.?” he asked.
“J.C.?” she laughed. “Crunch took him to the liberry with her. I think she’s educatin’ him but I bet it’s goin’ to work out the other way. Time she listens to that jaybird jabber of his, especially walkin’ right along the street with him for a half-hour, she’ll be talkin’ the same way he does. He come runnin’ up the stairs, tellin’ me Crunch said for me to change his clothes because he was goin’ out with her, and for me to put his new shoes on him, and that Crunch said for me to hurry up because she couldn’t wait. I told him, I said, Listen, J.C., I’ll change ’em this time, but you come up here just one more time tellin’ me what Crunch said I got to do and I’ll fix your seat so you won’t be able to sit on it for
a week. He looked real cute when he went back downstairs.”
She laughed again, head thrown back, round brown throat pulsating with laughter; and kept on laughing as though she were enjoying the rich mellow sound bubbling up in her throat. But she gave him a queer, sharp glance that made him wonder if the laughter were a screen for whatever she was thinking.
“Oh, my God!” she said suddenly, and put the iron down and hurried toward the stove. “I’m cooking with my ass again.” She took the gingerbread out of the oven. It was just beginning to singe along the edges. “I guess I got up off it just in time. Them two starvin’ Armenians are always looking for something to eat when they come home from school. So I stirred this up in a hurry, and then plum forgot about it.”
As he went down the stairs, hurrying again now, almost running, he heard her singing, not that song he hated about some kind of train her mother took, the words of this one didn’t make much sense but the tune was lovely and so was her voice, slow, clear, true, and he could hear the slap thump of the iron:
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’ncha tell me what color and I’ll tell you what road she took.
When he got in the car, Al looked at him queerly, too.
“Is there somep’n the matter, Mal?”
Without thinking, he said, “It’s my wife.”
“She sick?”
“Well—” he hesitated, “not exactly.”
“What’sa matter with her?”
He shook his head, frowning. “It’s—it’s her heart.”