Psyche (28 page)

When she spoke her voice was steady, and her hands no longer shook. “Where am I to go?”

That she should make it quite so simple for him was more than he had had any right to hope. To have thanked her would have been to put himself in the wrong, which he was not prepared to do. Instead, he outlined his plan for her.

Chain-smoking, watching his lean expressive face through a shifting curtain of cigarette smoke, Psyche saw that she was again in danger of being partially hypnotized by a voice and personality capable of investing even the drabbest of prospects with glamour and colour.

When he had finished, she said, “This place you want to send me to, this Community Shelter, it sounds to me like one of those schools.”

Genuinely taken aback, because he had been at some pains to make the Shelter seem a great deal more attractive than it actually was, he said, “A reform school! Don't be idiotic, Venus. It's nothing of the kind. As I have already explained at some length, it's a place designed to help girls like yourself who need guidance and a temporary roof over their heads. You will be free to walk out at any time. It's entirely a matter of choice whether you stay or not.”

“You're quite, quite sure of that?”

“Would I send you there, if I weren't?”

Psyche's blue eyes were unfathomable. “You might.”

“Good God, Venus, what do you take me for?”

“I don't know, Nick. They'll find me a job, will they, and a place to live in?”

“That's what they're there for. Now, I've arranged for a taxi to be here at four tomorrow afternoon. Do you think you can be ready by then?”

“I can be ready,” Psyche said evenly. “I have to be, don't I?”

“I wish you wouldn't put it like that, Venus.” “What other way is there to put it?”

Her glance wandered from him to embrace slowly, item by item, the contents of the big room, the things she knew so well by sight and touch that they might have been her own. Even the stars, imprisoned in the frame of the great north window, seemed personal to her, a gift given only to be taken away, never to be seen again in that same pattern.

Hiding tears she did not want seen, she got up abruptly, and, without any further attempt to speak, went to her room. But when the door was closed behind her, and she leaned against it in a darkness which should have been protective, it was as if she had stepped instead into a black void, too immense, too terrifying in its limitless immensity for tears to be of any avail.

With panicky fingers she sought the light-switch, found it, and turned on the light. But the darkness remained. The darkness of a slowly wheeling universe where the tiny harbour of the known.
in which she stood, was threatened on all sides by the great tides of the unknown.

Dwight stared at the bill which, by some error, had found its way to his office desk
.

‘One pair of silver sandals. Size 8AA
. $32.00.'

Lines of unutterable weariness
etched themselves in his face, and sorrow dwelt in the keen, grey eyes. He had too often bought extravagant bits
of fur
and brocade for a
7
triple A to be able to persuade himself that he was making any mistake
.

More than six years now since Sharon had, to his knowledge, done anything like this. He saw again in retrospect another bill, and it was as shocking as it had been when first seen and comprehended. One doll's carriage. Grey leather
. $24.95.'

On that occasion he had been a coward: had told himself it was a present, even while knowing instinctively that it was not
.

This time he would have to face her with it. She must not be allowed to go on with a secret life which he could not but regard as extremely harmful to her, which might—he forced himself to think it in so many words—end by affecting her sanity
.

He waited until they were sitting on the terrace with cocktails in the late afternoon. Then he simply put the bill in her hand, and said, “This is something we must talk about, my darling.”

With only the most casual glance at the piece of paper which had upset him so much, Sharon put it aside and laid a quick, reassuring hand on his arm. “I've wanted to talk about it for a very long time, but was afraid it might worry you.” With a small smile, her blue eyes faintly quizzical, she added, “1 was right, wasn't I? It would have—in fact, does worry you, doesn't it, darling?”

“It isn't—healthy,” he told her slowly
.

Sharon's husky voice was quiet but decisive. “I am no more neurotic than you are, if that's what you mean, and yet in one particular instance we are neither of us entirely normal. We can't be. The door to her room is never locked, but you have not been
into that room since the night when she was taken away, have you? I know you haven't
.

“We are two different people, Dwight, dealing with a common problem as best we can to suit our different temperaments. You believe that we will never see her again. Don't deny it, dearest— this once let us be completely honest. And so, believing this, you try to put your hurt away where you can't see it, sealing all doors which might lead to it as tightly as possible
.

“I, on the other hand, believe that someday we will find her again. I can give you no reason for this, but nevertheless I believe it utterly. It would be impossible for me to go on with my life and believe otherwise, given no cause to think her dead.”

“But, Sharon——”

“You are going to say that there is still no excuse for buying skates, and prams, and dolls, and clothes, and push-toys and pull-toys—oh, yes, I've bought all that, and a good deal more— for a daughter whose very face is unknown to me.”

Sliding to the ground at his feet, she clasped her hands across his knees, and looked up at him
.

“You must try to understand this thing I do, Dwight. It is terribly important that you understand, and find me, if not reasonable according to your lights, at least entirely sane. A great many people, I quite agree, would not
.

“I am essentially a realist, and I know that the odds are against my hopes coming true. But it's not impossible, and so I—being me —can not remain inactive, doing nothing as the years slip by
.

“We lost a child, at the time scarcely more than a baby, who might return to us a girl, perhaps a young woman, or even—it God could be so cruel—a middle-aged woman. I am preparing myself for her. It isn't enough to say to myself, ‘She is eleven, she is fifteen, she is nineteen.' It has no meaning. So I provide myself with tangible proof that I have, somewhere, a daughter who is now almost nineteen years old. I must, of necessity, guess at her size, her colouring, and her likes and dislikes, but, because I have now read so much on heredity and because she did look so much like me when she was small, I think my guesses must be very close to the truth about her.”

“And what do they add up to?” Dwight asked gently
.

“With any luck—the best of
you
and the best
of
me,” Sharon told him, and a brief smile touched her lips and eyes, a smile that mocked herself for a conclusion so obviously tailored to her wishes
.

“I won't pretend,” she went on, “that it doesn't hurt, and hurt intolerably, to go into a shop, and consider, and ñnally purchase —perhaps a coat
—from
a saleswoman who says, ‘Your daughter will look a dream in this blue, if she is as fair as you are, madam.' Sometimes I've wanted
to
scream, ‘You fool, you idiot—don't you know I have no daughter now!' But it. helps so much more than it hurts, because it makes her real to me, a believable individual, not a baby who no longer exists anywhere.” Her steady voice broken by a trace of urgency, she asked, “Does this make any sense to you, Dwight?”

It would not have been his way
of
doing things, but he realized now that it was, for her, an outlet which it would have been difficult to find in any other way. To be completely reassured, however, he had to know one more thing; so instead of answering her question, he asked, apparently without much interest, “What do you do with these things you buy, my darling?”

“I give them away, of course. What else would I do with them? When she was little, when the things were toys and so on, I gave them to the Neighbourhood Workers. Now I take them to the Community Shelter. Dwight—darling, you haven't answered me, haven't told me that you understand.”

Pulling her closer to him, he said, with deep tenderness, “It's all right, my dearest. I do understand.”

He not only understood, but was almost grateful that she ease her longing by identifying her child with the surroundings and way of life that should by rights have been the background of her growing up. For, although he had long since given up any hope that they might recover her, he could not bring himself to accept the fact that she might be dead. It was for this reason, more than any other, that he thought of her as rarely as possible, because, whenever that particular door in his mind blew open, he saw things he would much rather not have seen
.

Lost in thought, he suddenly became aware that Sharon had raised her head and was smiling in a manner that she reserved for him alone
.

“Dwight,” she said, “do you think you are capable of being excessively, recklessly, and indecorously gay? Have you the initiative to don white tie and tails in order to escort me to a place, sinful and glittering, where you might wine me, and dine me, and dance me off my feet?”

The gravity of his dark, good-looking face melted into an expression that made Sharon catch her breath
.

“If I ever understood you half as well as you understand me, you would be a very lucky woman. Ten dollars says I will be dressed and waiting at the door while you are still looking for the right lipstick and those preposterous silver ear-rings I hope you are planning to wear.”

P
SYCHE'S
second entry into the city lacked much of the impact of her first visit with Nick nearly four months earlier. this was not only because she had seen it before, but also because all summer long she had been aware of its proximity. on cloudy nights there had been a glow in the southern sky, the diffuse reflection of an earthbound constellation close-packed with myriads of ersatz stars. and when a south wind blew, it had brought with it the muted, unaccentuated echo of a ceaseless maelstrom of sound. although she had kept the idea far in the back of her mind, not wishing to examine it sooner than was necessary, she had known that her logical next step would in some manner take her into this never entirely quiescent stream of life.

Thus it was with some sense of pre-identification to support her that she found herself being carried by taxi deeper and ever deeper into the heart of a precisely laid-out warren of streets and cross-streets.

She would have liked to question the driver about the place for which she was bound, but glimpses, caught from time to time in the rear-view mirror, of a dour, tight-lipped face, did not encourage her to break through a barrier of silence that obviously suited him better than conversation.

Any hope she might have entertained that the Community
Shelter would be clothed in at least an outward semblance of beauty was slowly dissipated as they continued to peñérate increasingly narrow and congested thoroughfares.

Shrugging off her coat, feeling beads of moisture on her forehead, she became aware of heat that, drowsily pleasant in the valley surrounding the old barn, here was almost insufferable. Discovering, after some experiment, how to open the window beside her, she closed it again immediately, recoiling from the unaccustomed fumes of gasoline and oil, smoke and hot asphalt; from the concentrated odours of a place in which nature, as represented by anything other than humanity, maintained only the most precarious foothold.

One of Psyche's greatest strengths was a natural optimism, an instinctive refusal to believe that any situation, no matter how bad, would not in time improve. In spite of this, her heart began to sink as she observed the shabbiness and poverty of the neighbourhood they had reached. The houses, standing close against the sidewalks, were joined one to another in long dismal rows. Window-sills boasted greyed pieces of household linen, and doorsteps were adorned with souring bottles of milk. Sharp-eyed children, unreprimanded by slatternly women gossiping before their own or a neighbour's front door, played in the centre of the road and hurled epithets at the taxi as they reluctantly made way for it.

Up to this point they had been moving, both literally and metaphorically, downhill. But now, crossing a street-car line, they entered a district where the houses, although they showed no promise of affluence, yet clung to remnants of decayed grandeur. Gaunt, mid-Victorian structures with narrow windows, steep roofs, and discoloured brick walls, they seemed to brood over the passing of better days, casting an almost palpable aura of depression over the iron-railed park that they flanked.

There was no hint of squalor here, and poverty, if it existed, was well camouflaged; but Psyche experienced no lifting of the spirit, for not only were the houses old, but even the great oaks scattered across the park seemed, in spite of their heavy green
foliage, to have lived too long, to have lingered to throw lengthening shadows over a century to which they did not belong.

When the taxi came to a stop in front of one of these houses, she knew, looking at the blank inhospitality of the face it turned toward her, that if she had had anywhere else at all to go to, she would have gone there.

“That'll be four-sixty, lady.”

Unused to handling money, Psyche was nervous and uncertain. “I'm sorry. How much?”