Eleven Kinds of Loneliness

by Richard Yates

  He looked at the floor just long enough to make his reply— “It’s awright”—and then his eyes stared into hers again.

  “I’m so glad. Please don’t let me interfere with your lunch, Vincent. Do go ahead and eat, that is, if you don’t mind my sitting here with you.” But it was now abundantly clear that he didn’t mind at all, and he began to unwrap a bologna sandwich with what she felt sure was the best appetite he’d had all week. It wouldn’t even have mattered very much now if someone from the class had come in and watched, though it was probably just as well that no one did.

  Miss Price sat back more comfortably on the desk top, crossed her legs and allowed one slim stockinged foot to slip part of the way out of its moccasin. “Of course,” she went on, “it always does take a little time to sort of get your bearings in a new school. For one thing, well, it’s never too easy for the new member of the class to make friends with the other members. What I mean is, you mustn’t mind if the others seem a little rude to you at first. Actually, they’re just as anxious to make friends as you are, but they’re shy. All it takes is a little time, and a little effort on your part as well as theirs. Not too much, of course, but a little. Now for instance, these reports we have Monday mornings—they’re a fine way for people to get to know one another. A person never feels he has to make a report; it’s just a thing he can do if he wants to. And that’s only one way of helping others to know the kind of person you are; there are lots and lots of ways. The main thing to remember is that making friends is the most natural thing in the world, and it’s only a question of time until you have all the friends you want. And in the meantime, Vincent, I hope you’ll consider me your friend, and feel free to call on me for whatever advice or anything you might need. Will you do that?”

  He nodded, swallowing.

  “Good.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her long thighs. “Now I must go or I’ll be late for my lunch. But I’m glad we had this little talk, Vincent, and I hope we’ll have others.”

  It was probably a lucky thing that she stood up when she did, for if she’d stayed on that desk a minute longer Vincent Sabella would have thrown his arms around her and buried his face in the warm gray flannel of her lap, and that might have been enough to confuse the most dedicated and imaginative of teachers.

  At report time on Monday morning, nobody was more surprised than Miss Price when Vincent Sabella’s smudged hand was among the first and most eager to rise. Apprehensively she considered letting someone else start off, but then, for fear of hurting his feelings, she said, “All right, Vincent,” in as matter-of-fact a way as she could manage.

  There was a suggestion of muffled titters from the class as he walked confidently to the head of the room and turned to face his audience. He looked, if anything, too confident: there were signs, in the way he held his shoulders and the way his eyes shone, of the terrible poise of panic.

  “Saturday I seen that pitcha,” he announced.

  “Saw, Vincent,” Miss Price corrected gently.

  “That’s what I mean,” he said; “I sore that pitcha. Doctor Jack-o’-Lantern and Mr. Hide.”

  There was a burst of wild, delighted laughter and a chorus of correction: “Doctor Jekyll!”

  He was unable to speak over the noise. Miss Price was on her feet, furious. “It’s a perfectly natural mistake!” she was saying. “There’s no reason for any of you to be so rude. Go on, Vincent, and please excuse this very silly interruption.” The laughter subsided, but the class continued to shake their heads derisively from side to side. It hadn’t, of course, been a perfectly natural mistake at all; for one thing it proved that he was a hopeless dope, and for another it proved that he was lying.

  “That’s what I mean,” he continued. “Doctor Jackal and Mr. Hide. I got it a little mixed up. Anyways, I seen all about where his teet’ start comin’ outa his mout’ and all like that, and I thought it was very good. And then on Sunday my mudda and fodda come out to see me in this car they got. This Buick. My fodda siz, ‘Vinny, wanna go for a little ride?’ I siz, ‘Sure, where yiz goin’?’ He siz, ‘Anyplace ya like.’ So I siz, ‘Let’s go out in the country a ways, get on one of them big roads and make some time.’ So we go out—oh, I guess fifty, sixty miles—and we’re cruisin’ along this highway, when this cop starts tailin’ us? My fodda siz, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll shake him,’ and he steps on it, see? My mudda’s gettin’ pretty scared, but my fodda siz, ‘Don’t worry, dear.’ He’s tryin’ to make this turn, see, so he can get off the highway and shake the cop? But just when he’s makin’ the turn, the cop opens up and starts shootin’, see?”

  By this time the few members of the class who could bear to look at him at all were doing so with heads on one side and mouths partly open, the way you look at a broken arm or a circus freak.

  “We just barely made it,” Vincent went on, his eyes gleaming, “and this one bullet got my fodda in the shoulder. Didn’t hurt him bad—just grazed him, like—so my mudda bandaged it up for him and all, but he couldn’t do no more drivin’ after that, and we had to get him to a doctor, see? So my fodda siz, ‘Vinny, think you can drive a ways?’ I siz, ‘Sure, if you show me how.’ So he showed me how to work the gas and the brake, and all like that, and I drove to the doctor. My mudda siz, ‘I’m prouda you, Vinny, drivin’ all by yourself.’ So anyways, we got to the doctor, got my fodda fixed up and all, and then he drove us back home.” He was breathless. After an uncertain pause he said, “And that’s all.” Then he walked quickly back to his desk, his stiff new corduroy pants whistling faintly with each step.

  “Well, that was very—entertaining, Vincent,” Miss Price said, trying to act as if nothing had happened. “Now, who’s next?” But nobody raised a hand.

  Recess was worse than usual for him that day; at least it was until he found a place to hide—a narrow concrete alley, blind except for several closed fire-exit doors, that cut between two sections of the school building. It was reassuringly dismal and cool in there—he could stand with his back to the wall and his eyes guarding the entrance, and the noises of recess were as remote as the sunshine. But when the bell rang he had to go back to class, and in another hour it was lunchtime.

  Miss Price left him alone until her own meal was finished. Then, after standing with one hand on the doorknob for a full minute to gather courage, she went in and sat beside him for another little talk, just as he was trying to swallow the last of a pimento-cheese sandwich.

  “Vincent,” she began, “we all enjoyed your report this morning, but I think we would have enjoyed it more—a great deal more—if you’d told us something about your real life instead. I mean,” she hurried on, “for instance, I noticed you were wearing a nice new windbreaker this morning. It is new, isn’t it? And did your aunt buy it for you over the weekend?”

  He did not deny it.

  “Well then, why couldn’t you have told us about going to the store with your aunt, and buying the windbreaker, and whatever you did afterwards. That would have made a perfectly good report.” She paused, and for the first time looked steadily into his eyes. “You do understand what I’m trying to say, don’t you, Vincent?”

  He wiped crumbs of bread from his lips, looked at the floor, and nodded.

  “And you’ll remember next time, won’t you?”

  He nodded again. “Please may I be excused, Miss Price?”

  “Of course you may.”

  He went to the boys’ lavatory and vomited. Afterwards he washed his face and drank a little water, and then he returned to the classroom. Miss Price was busy at her desk now, and didn’t look up. To avoid getting involved with her again, he wandered out to the cloakroom and sat on one of the long benches, where he picked up someone’s discarded overshoe and turned it over and over in his hands. In a little while he heard the chatter of returning children, and to avoid being discovered there, he got up and went to the fire-exit door. Pushing it open, he found that it gave onto the alley he had hidden in that morning, and he slipped
outside. For a minute or two he just stood there, looking at the blankness of the concrete wall; then he found a piece of chalk in his pocket and wrote out all the dirty words he could think of, in block letters a foot high. He had put down four words and was trying to remember a fifth when he heard a shuffling at the door behind him. Arthur Cross was there, holding the door open and reading the words with wide eyes. “Boy,” he said in an awed half-whisper. “Boy, you’re gonna get it. You’re really gonna get it.”

  Startled, and then suddenly calm, Vincent Sabella palmed his chalk, hooked his thumbs in his belt and turned on Arthur with a menacing look. “Yeah?” he inquired. “Who’s gonna squeal on me?”

  “Well, nobody’s gonna squeal on you,” Arthur Cross said uneasily, “but you shouldn’t go around writing—”

  “Arright,” Vincent said, advancing a step. His shoulders were slumped, his head thrust forward and his eyes narrowed, like Edward G. Robinson. “Arright. That’s all I wanna know. I don’t like squealers, unnastand?”

  While he was saying this, Warren Berg and Bill Stringer appeared in the doorway—just in time to hear it and to see the words on the wall before Vincent turned on them. “And that goes fa you too, unnastand?” he said. “Both a yiz.”

  And the remarkable thing was that both their faces fell into the same foolish, defensive smile that Arthur Cross was wearing. It wasn’t until they had glanced at each other that they were able to meet his eyes with the proper degree of contempt, and by then it was too late. “Think you’re pretty smart, don’tcha, Sabella?” Bill Stringer said.

  “Never mind what I think,” Vincent told him. “You heard what I said. Now let’s get back inside.”

  And they could do nothing but move aside to make way for him, and follow him dumfounded into the cloakroom.

  It was Nancy Parker who squealed—although, of course, with someone like Nancy Parker you didn’t think of it as squealing. She had heard everything from the cloakroom; as soon as the boys came in she peeked into the alley, saw the words and, setting her face in a prim frown, went straight to Miss Price. Miss Price was just about to call the class to order for the afternoon when Nancy came up and whispered in her ear. They both disappeared into the cloakroom—from which, after a moment, came the sound of the fire-exit door being abruptly slammed— and when they returned to class Nancy was flushed with righteousness, Miss Price very pale. No announcement was made. Classes proceeded in the ordinary way all afternoon, though it was clear that Miss Price was upset, and it wasn’t until she was dismissing the children at three o’clock that she brought the thing into the open. “Will Vincent Sabella please remain seated?” She nodded at the rest of the class. “That’s all.”

  While the room was clearing out she sat at her desk, closed her eyes and massaged the frail bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger, sorting out half-remembered fragments of a book she had once read on the subject of seriously disturbed children. Perhaps, after all, she should never have undertaken the responsibility of Vincent Sabella’s loneliness. Perhaps the whole thing called for the attention of a specialist. She took a deep breath.

  “Come over here and sit beside me, Vincent,” she said, and when he had settled himself, she looked at him. “I want you to tell me the truth. Did you write those words on the wall outside?”

  He stared at the floor.

  “Look at me,” she said, and he looked at her. She had never looked prettier: her cheeks slightly flushed, her eyes shining and her sweet mouth pressed into a self-conscious frown. “First of all,” she said, handing him a small enameled basin streaked with poster paint, “I want you to take this to the boys’ room and fill it with hot water and soap.”

  He did as he was told, and when he came back, carrying the basin carefully to keep the suds from spilling, she was sorting out some old rags in the bottom drawer of her desk. “Here,” she said, selecting one and shutting the drawer in a businesslike way. “This will do. Soak this up.” She led him back to the fire exit and stood in the alley watching him, silently, while he washed off all the words.

  When the job had been done, and the rag and basin put away, they sat down at Miss Price’s desk again. “I suppose you think I’m angry with you, Vincent,” she said. “Well, I’m not. I almost wish I could be angry—that would make it much easier—but instead I’m hurt. I’ve tried to be a good friend to you, and I thought you wanted to be my friend too. But this kind of thing—well, it’s very hard to be friendly with a person who’d do a thing like that.”

  She saw, gratefully, that there were tears in his eyes. “Vincent, perhaps I understand some things better than you think. Perhaps I understand that sometimes, when a person does a thing like that, it isn’t really because he wants to hurt anyone, but only because he’s unhappy. He knows it isn’t a good thing to do, and he even knows it isn’t going to make him any happier afterwards, but he goes ahead and does it anyway. Then when he finds he’s lost a friend, he’s terribly sorry, but it’s too late. The thing is done.”

  She allowed this somber note to reverberate in the silence of the room for a little while before she spoke again. “I won’t be able to forget this, Vincent. But perhaps, just this once, we can still be friends—as long as I understand that you didn’t mean to hurt me. But you must promise me that you won’t forget it either. Never forget that when you do a thing like that, you’re going to hurt people who want very much to like you, and in that way you’re going to hurt yourself. Will you promise me to remember that, dear?”

  The “dear” was as involuntary as the slender hand that reached out and held the shoulder of his sweatshirt; both made his head hang lower than before.

  “All right,” she said. “You may go now.”

  He got his windbreaker out of the cloakroom and left, avoiding the tired uncertainty of her eyes. The corridors were deserted, and dead silent except for the hollow, rhythmic knocking of a janitor’s push-broom against some distant wall. His own rubber-soled tread only added to the silence; so did the lonely little noise made by the zipping-up of his windbreaker, and so did the faint mechanical sigh of the heavy front door. The silence made it all the more startling when he found, several yards down the concrete walk outside, that two boys were walking beside him: Warren Berg and Bill Stringer. They were both smiling at him in an eager, almost friendly way.

  “What’d she do to ya, anyway?” Bill Stringer asked.

  Caught off guard, Vincent barely managed to put on his Edward G. Robinson face in time. “Nunnya business,” he said, and walked faster.

  “No, listen—wait up, hey,” Warren Berg said, as they trotted to keep up with him. “What’d she do, anyway? She bawl ya out, or what? Wait up, hey, Vinny.”

  The name made him tremble all over. He had to jam his hands in his windbreaker pockets and force himself to keep on walking; he had to force his voice to be steady when he said, “Nunnya business, I told ya. Lea’ me alone.”

  But they were right in step with him now. “Boy, she must of given you the works,” Warren Berg persisted. “What’d she say, anyway? C’mon, tell us, Vinny.”

  This time the name was too much for him. It overwhelmed his resistance and made his softening knees slow down to a slack, conversational stroll. “She din say nothin’,” he said at last; and then after a dramatic pause he added, “She let the ruler do her talkin’ for her.”

  “The ruler? Ya mean she used a ruler on ya?” Their faces were stunned, either with disbelief or admiration, and it began to look more and more like admiration as they listened.

  “On the knuckles,” Vincent said through tightening lips. “Five times on each hand. She siz, ‘Make a fist. Lay it out here on the desk.’ Then she takes the ruler and Whop! Whop! Whop! Five times. Ya think that don’t hurt, you’re crazy.”

  Miss Price, buttoning her polo coat as the front door whispered shut behind her, could scarcely believe her eyes. This couldn’t be Vincent Sabella—this perfectly normal, perfectly happy boy on the sidewalk ahead of her, flanked by attentive
friends. But it was, and the scene made her want to laugh aloud with pleasure and relief. He was going to be all right, after all. For all her well-intentioned groping in the shadows she could never have predicted a scene like this, and certainly could never have caused it to happen. But it was happening, and it just proved, once again, that she would never understand the ways of children.

  She quickened her graceful stride and overtook them, turning to smile down at them as she passed. “Goodnight, boys,” she called, intending it as a kind of cheerful benediction; and then, embarrassed by their three startled faces, she smiled even wider and said, “Goodness, it is getting colder, isn’t it? That windbreaker of yours looks nice and warm, Vincent. I envy you.” Finally they nodded bashfully at her; she called goodnight again, turned, and continued on her way to the bus stop.

  She left a profound silence in her wake. Staring after her, Warren Berg and Bill Stringer waited until she had disappeared around the corner before they turned on Vincent Sabella.

  “Ruler, my eye!” Bill Stringer said. “Ruler, my eye!” He gave Vincent a disgusted shove that sent him stumbling against Warren Berg, who shoved him back.

  “Jeez, you lie about everything, don’tcha, Sabella? You lie about everything!”

  Jostled off balance, keeping his hands tight in the windbreaker pockets, Vincent tried in vain to retain his dignity. “Think I care if yiz believe me?” he said, and then because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, he said it again. “Think I care if yiz believe me?”