Into The Night (3 page)

"Yes."

"I think you're right, what you said before. Soon as I have the strength for it I'll pack up her things. Instead of waiting for somebody to come for them, I'll just ship them back home to her mother. And I'll rent this room out."

Madeline nodded.

"But for now," the woman said, "spend what time you want here. Maybe her spirit's here, or a trace of it. Maybe you can have some kind of contact with her. There's stranger things than that happening every day of the year."

Madeline stood there motionless for a long time after, just where she'd left her. Listening to the echoing, inside her heart, of something that she'd said just now. Heavy and hollow, cold and lonely, sad and blue.

-It's tough to die when you're young. Like a stray dog-.

I must remember, and remember, and remember that, by the hour, she told herself. By the hour and by the day and by the week; yes, even by the year, if it should become necessary. Until I have at least partly undone this terrible thing that I've done to her. This thing that, try as I will, can never again be wholly undone.

After a while she took off her clothes, as Starr would have, here, in this, her room. She went over and selected a night robe from the things the landlady had left on the bed. Maybe it was the very one Starr had worn for her last sleep, on her last night on earth. But then she saw that it couldn't very well be, for it was freshly laundered and even mended a little in one place where it had frayed--unless the landlady had done that after her death (and why should she?).

She put it on and went and stood before the glass in it.

"Starr," she breathed, to the figure she saw in it. "Starr. I can see you now. And that's a form of living on."

She put out the light, moved over a chair, and sat down by the window, looking out. It was evening in the city, and evening in the sky. Below there were a thousand stars, above there were just as many. But the ones below were like human lives, just there for a night and then gone. The ones above were like human hopes and dreams, they glowed on there forever. And if one life failed and went out, then another came along and took up the hope, the dream, glowing there immutably above, glowing there forever.

As I am doing now, she thought. As I am doing now.

And peering at them, until they seemed to be reflected in the strained width, the glistening anxiety, of her eyes, she breathed softly, supplicatingly to them: You must have seen her sitting at this same window before me. You must have heard the heartbeats of her hopes and aspirations, clearly in the stillness of the night. Do you know what they were? Do -you?-

You open a valise--and a life comes back into view. A life that was already done with, locked up and put away. And as you spread it all about you in the room, on the bed, on the seats of chairs, wherever there is room, somehow you feel a little frightened at what you are doing, feel you have no right to do this. It's like trying to turn back the laws of nature and of God. Force a minor, two-by-four resurrection on something that was already at rest. You'd better watch out, you keep telling yourself; you'd better be careful.

A photograph of a man. Who was he? What was he to her? Where was he now?

Smiling at her. Smiling at the lens that had taken him, but it must have been she behind that lens that day, for it was a special sort of smile that you don't give just to the lens of a camera. Warmer than that, closer than that; saying, You're over there and I'm over here. But you were over here with me a moment ago, and you'll be back again a moment from now. We won't be apart any longer than that; we weren't meant to be; we won't let ourselves be.

"To my darling Starr, Vick."

Who are you, Vick?

Don't you even miss her? Don't you even know she's gone? The moment's over, don't you even wonder why she doesn't come across there, back to where you are?

Keep on smiling, Vick. Keep on smiling forever that way. You're smiling at empty space now, and you don't know it. She's gone from behind the lens of the camera. You remain, but she is gone. Gone and she'll never come back. Would you keep on smiling if you knew that?

In some quiet place--it looked as if it had been taken in some quiet place--she could almost hear the girl's clear silvery voice ring out again.

"Stand still now, Vick. Move back a little. No, just a little; that's enough. Now smile for me. That's it."

Smile forever, Vick. As long as the glossy paper lasts.

You can stop smiling now, Vick, she's not there anymore. You're smiling at vacant space, Vick. There's a hole in the world, behind the camera where she was.

She propped the photo up and sat looking at it.

The sun was going down outside and the room was getting dark.

A patch of light lingered to the end, right there where she had the photo. Playing it up, making it stand out; making his face and figure on it seem luminous.

Tell me, Vick, she pleaded. Tell me while you still can.

The light contracted, swirled to a closing pinpoint, went out; like an iris-out on a motion-picture screen.

The photo was dark now, blended into the surrounding darkness of the room.

The train rushed from night into oncoming day, as though it were speeding from the heart of an hours-long tunnel on toward its steadily brightening mouth, coming nearer, ever nearer, far down along the track. Then suddenly it was all light outside, the scoured-aluminum color of first daybreak.

Suddenly there was a landscape, where there hadn't been before. A tall brick stack went by, with a full-grown shadow already. Suddenly there was today, where there hadn't been before. Suddenly there was now, and the darkness had become -then-. The whimpering of a little baby in its mother's arms, somewhere here within this same railroad coach, was the new day starting. As young as that, as malleable, as unstoried yet.

She hadn't slept. She hadn't wanted to, she hadn't tried. Sleep was for the purposeless, an interruption between nothings, to make them more separately bearable.

Head back against the sloping chair all night. Eyes half-lidded against intrusion but never once altogether closed; just as they still were now. Journeying, journeying, question marks for telegraph poles along the right-of-way. Journeying not into tomorrow, journeying into yesterday. A yesterday twice removed, at that. Somebody else's yesterday. A yesterday you skipped, that never was, once--to you--today. Ghost yesterday.

The man came to the door and said the name of a town.

She rose and took her bag down, and the train died under her as her tread moved down its aisle. It was dead already, when she reached the platform. Steam veiled the opening to yesterday, the car door, as she stepped down through it. Then it thinned and went away again, and left her--yesterday.

So this was it.

She glanced down at the cindery gravel needling her feet, and up at where the sun rode high in the sky, sending down rays like a chemical bath or solution, bleaching the world. And over at a weighing machine, with a round mirror that showed only sky though it was sighted directly at her own face. Probably because the glass was fitted into its frame unevenly.

And at a semidetached shingle hanging lengthwise over a passage entrance, that read "Baggage." And at a bench, of contour-curving green slats, set against the station wall, with no one on it. With only a folded newspaper on it, left behind by someone. And the shattered wrapping of a candy bar under it, like a little silver derelict ship, rocking lightly in the wind but never sailing forth across the cement platform-sea.

So this was it.

Here once you stood, Starr. Waiting for the train that was taking you away. Maybe right where my foot is now, as I move it out a little; to where that crack is in the cement. Maybe you moved your foot out too, to that crack, and covered it for a moment, looking at it but thinking elsewhere. Who stood with you? Did you stand alone? Did Vick stand here by you, perhaps his hand upon your arm in defeated remonstrance; most certainly his eyes upon your face in unavailing plea?

What was he saying? You didn't hear? Perhaps if you had listened, you would be alive now, instead of dead, at the thousandmile-away end of these tracks. Wouldn't it have been better to listen to stale, dull, homespun words of advice, and be alive today, than to throw them over your shoulder, and be dead today? You don't answer that, Starr. And I don't either. For I'm not sure what the answer is.

Did you look around you for the last time (perhaps over his shoulder, as his arms held you)? Turn your head, a little here, a little there, a little elsewhere, as I do now? See a mirror that doesn't reflect your face, a shingle reading "Baggage," a bench with no one on it? Were you glad? Were you heartsick? Were you frightened? Were you bold?

The bricks and pavings, serried cornices and building fronts, perspective-diminishing streets, of home.

You have come back, Starr.

There was a lunch counter inside the station. There always is, in every station. She went inside and across to it and sat down on a stool.

She hadn't eaten on the train. She hadn't wanted to then, she still didn't want to now. She didn't want food, she didn't want sleep. She had no time for distractions like that, she had a dream. She too had a dream now; bitterer, stronger, than any dream Starr'd ever had. But you had to pause, to swallow, to sleep, or you faltered.

There was a girl behind the counter. A single, thin stripe of turquoise-green bordered the cuffs, the collar, the pocket orifices, the upturned cap brim of her otherwise all-white garb.

"I want coffee."

"Anything else?"

"Coffee and nothing else," Madeline answered impatiently, as though she were bored even having to waste time with that.

The girl came back with it.

"Could I ask you a question?"

"I can't stop you," the girl said pertly.

"Have you lived here long?"

The girl gave her the look that meant, What's that to you? But she gave her the answer along with it, as well. "Always."

"Then did you know anyone named Starr Bartlett? Ever hear of anyone named Starr Bartlett?"

"Never heard the name." Local pride prompted her to add an oblique rebuke. "We're not so small here."

Madeline tasted her coffee. It wasn't good. Even if it had been good, it wouldn't have been good.

"How do you get to--how would -I- get to Forsythe Street?"

"There's a bus takes you. The driver will call it out for you, if you speak to him when you get on."

Madeline looked at her coffee-dulled spoon, then at the girl once again, hesitantly.

"Just one more."

"No, that's all right," the girl said, with equally formal politeness. Meaning, you haven't asked me anything I resent yet. When you do, you'll know it.

"Where would be a good place to stay? I'm by myself. Just came."

"Somebody like you--" The girl appraised her. The girl was a shrewd appraiser. "A girl who wants to mind her own business-- the Dixon is respectable. Awfully dowdy, but respectable. The respectable places always are dowdy, did you ever notice?"

Then, unasked and perhaps unwitting, she gave an insight into her whole philosophy of life. "It's not the hotel anyway. It's the person in it."

Madeline put her money down, left her cup three-quarters full, got down from the stool.

The girl called to her a little brusquely.

"Your coffee's only ten."

"It's on the big sign there," Madeline agreed.

The girl separated the excess, guided it a distance along the counter, with a stubborn set smile. "I didn't do anything to earn this."

"I asked you three questions, and you set up my coffee." She was really asking her why.

"I don't know; there's not the same kick in it. It's like taking something from yourself."

Madeline reclaimed the donation. She wanted the girl to enjoy herself; the job was dull enough.

No one answered the bell. After the first ring had gone unheeded a sufficient length of time, she rang a timorous second time. Then waited even longer, fearing to seem importunate, fearing to antagonize. And finally, fearful in the extreme, rang a third time. Still no one came.

She did not know what to do then. She could not summon up courage to ring any more. Either no one was in, in which case it was no use anyway, or else someone was in and did not wish to answer, in which case she would be antagonizing them, the very thing she did not want to do.

At last she turned and started down the stairs. She had not given up, she did not intend to give up, not if it meant she had to fold her coat on the floor outside the door and sit on it waiting, the rest of the day and all of the night. But what she intended to do at the moment was seek out and accost somebody outside on the street nearby, who might be able to give her some information. Even a child if possible--she had noticed some of them playing on the sidewalk before. In fact children were often the best sources of information, lacking in suspicion and reserve as they usually were.

Be all that as it might, she had only gone as far down as the landing below and was still within fair hearing distance, when she thought she heard the door open, and did hear, in this case without any doubt, a voice call out (rather hollowly, due to the enclosed hail), "Hello? Was there somebody here just now?" And then again (and she could tell it would be the last time, would not be repeated), "Hello?" She turned and ran back up the flight she had just descended, with utmost speed, so that she might not be cut off from the voice.

As her face, and then her body, sprang agilely up above the hall floor level, she saw that the door stood open. Not just aslant, but wide open, with light that was like incandescent smoke fuming out from it into the dim hall, which had no windows. And out in the middle of the hall, well away from the door, turning her head inquiringly first up this way, then down that, stood a woman no longer young. The woman who, somehow, she knew to be Starr Bartlett's mother.

It was strange that she could feel so sure at sight, because if she had formed any preconceptions of her, and she had of course, not one of them was accurately fulfilled. She was the opposite in almost everything Madeline had thought she would be.