Psyche (34 page)

Bel never forgot that spontaneous, affectionate gesture. It was as if her own illegitimate but passionately loved child had, instead of dying of slow starvation, grown up to find her, in some ways at least, more than adequate. “Who, me?” she said, reddening. “I'm just a dope.”

“No, Bel, you're not. And you'll be glad to know that I'm not going to play cards with the boys any more.”

Having voiced her decision, it became final, and that evening, instead of sitting in the bright, hot living-room, with a cigarette between her lips and a mounting stack of coloured chips in front of her, she went for the first of the long walks that were to become a habit with her.

Wrapped in the fleecy warmth of the loose grey coat she had bought that day, she walked down the corridor toward the living-room in time to hear a man's voice ask, “Where's the girlie tonight?”

For an instant it was as if time had rolled back, and she heard again Butch's deep, bull-like roar, “Where's my little rabbit's foot?”

Her eyes smarting with unexpected tears, she turned and, contrary to her original intention, sought the back stairs and the rarely used back entry. Mag had told her not to write for six months, and when she did, to enclose no return address. The six months were not quite up, but she knew as she came out into the crisp, cold night air, that she would write before going to bed. There would be no reply, but that would not matter. Her own letter would in itself be a small link forged with a past which seemed destined to be cut away from her, segment by segment, leaving her with nothing but the insufficient comfort of an immediate present.

Psyche liked walking, as she liked any kind of physical movement in which there was a definite rhythm, but it is doubtful if she would have walked as often or as far as she did during that winter had she not found a purpose in so doing.

Striking northward, unconsciously rejecting the dingy neighbourhood
to the south, she noticed almost at once how carelessly some people exposed their private lives to the passer-by. Many of the houses were curtained against intrusion, all evidence of activity within reduced to opaque squares of light; but an almost equal number displayed small theatre sets without sound track, flashing on the sight as one drew level with them, and extinguished by one's own forward progress.

Psyche's interest in these often static, often unoccupied stages was at first no more than the casual interest of anyone whose eye is drawn out of darkness into light. But after a time, with nothing else to think about, she began to speculate about the people inhabiting the houses into which she was allowed this partial admittance. Putting together what clues she could, she guessed at professions and hobbies, at degrees of success and the lack of it, at family content and discontent. There was no exact moment at which she added the question that was to turn this pastime from an idle amusement into an absorbing pursuit. She simply found herself thinking, “Would I fit in here? Is this a place where I would feel I belonged?”

It was a short step from there to a definite and purposeful search for a scene into which she felt she could move without the necessity for change or confession on either side. Merging her ideas of what she herself wanted to be with a wishfully perfect projection of her original home, she rejected one setting after another. And as these rejections mounted, so did the excitement that drew her on toward the next possibility, and the next.

It was late when she came back to Bel's place on that first evening, but as the winter progressed and she searched further afield, there were times when she did not return until after midnight.

Bel, ignorant of the purpose behind these long, solitary walks, sensed that somehow, in a way she could not fathom, they were part of a drawing away which, although she saw it as inevitable, nevertheless hurt her.

Watching for Psyche's return, she would greet her, and ask almost anxiously, “Everything okay, baby?”

And Psyche, perhaps shaking glistening particles of snow from
her glistening hair, would reply quietly, “Yes, Bel, everything's okay.”

Then, after talking with the boys for a few minutes, she would go up to her room to sleep and dream of a life as far removed from the life at Bel's as any life could be.

4

P
SYCHE
stayed on at bel's throughout that winter as a result of a conference at which she herself was not present.

Her own intention to leave unweakened, she had had several unproductive talks with Bel on the subject of what she could, or should, do, before the Sunday morning after Christmas when Bel sought the advice—for what it might be worth—of the girls.

Sunday morning, toward noon, always found all of them, in various degrees of dress and undress, sitting around the living-room drinking coffee, Kathie, in tailored shirt and slacks, would have been up for some hours correcting homework and laying out schedules for the coming school week. May, in a pink or a blue satin négligé, would have only just got out of bed. The others might or might not have been up earlier. Bel, who at one time had slept as late as any of them, had fallen into the habit of breakfasting with Psyche at ten, after which Psyche would go downstairs to spend the balance of the morning with the old lady.

“The kid wants to get herself a job,” Bel told them without preface.

“She must be nuts,” May remarked, yawning.

“What kind of a job?” Kathie asked curiously.

“That's the trouble,” Bel said, “she doesn't know, and no more
do I. I thought maybe some of you girls might have an idea or two, seeing you all work at something.”

Monique, having searched the radio dial for dance music, and finding none, was making the best of a bad job by jerking her hips in time to a hymn.
“Elle sait déjà bien danser
. With some more lessons maybe she could be an instructress.”

Bel snorted. “The kid's got brains as well as feet. She can do better than that.”

“I like that!
J'ai aussi——”

“We're not talking about you, hon,” May put in pacifically. May liked peace. She also liked the small jewelled hand mirror in which she was regarding herself. That the jewels were synthetic, she had yet to discover, and for the moment both the donor and his gift were enjoying her highest regard.

Ruth and her sister Joan giggled, for no apparent reason.

“She could look for a job in a store, maybe,” Ruth said.

“And where would that get her?” Violet asked acidly. “At best into a two-room hole in a wall filled with squalling brats and a man without enough take-home pay to bury himself decently.”

“She wouldn't get anywhere,” Kathie said slowly. “She's never been taught any arithmetic. She couldn't handle the money end of a job like that.”

“She does all the shopping,” Bel reminded her.

“When you're buying, people will wait. When you're selling— they won't,” Kathie replied. “It takes her several minutes to add two and two and arrive at a satisfactory four.”

“She's bright. She could learn,” Bel persisted.

Kathie got up and walked restlessly over to the window. “You have to learn first. That is the difficulty, Bel.”

“Maybe she could go to school a while,” Joan put in brightly.

It was Kathie's turn to snort. “And sit in the eighth grade—if she could qualify for it—with little children! Don't be a fool.”

Violet looked at no one in particular, and her blank amethyst eyes were as unrevealing as always. “She hasn't really got a chance. When you're down, you're down, and you don't ever get up again. You don't get any second chance.”

Monique's shrug was expressive. “Speak for yourself,
chérie. Moi
—I'm going places.”

May yawned, but she was not bored. She had been thinking. “With her looks, and being—well, you know—not really experienced, as you might say, I could probably get her as nice a set-up as a girl could want. Place of her own, real good address, and just the one guy to put up with. Real respectable”

Bel turned on her like a she-wolf. “You don't know what respectable is! You keep any ideas like that to yourself, you hear me?”

May's good humour remained undisturbed. “Just a suggestion,” she said lazily, and yawned again.

They went on discussing the problem for some time, but no matter what they said they always ended up against the same stumbling block. Psyche was not only untrained, but also basically untaught in any way which could be of practical use to her.

Bel's worried frown deepened. “She's got to learn things, things in books, that's the hell of it. She just don't fit in anywhere, the way she is. The trouble is the kid was meant to be a lady. Not one of your la-li-dah fakes that are only skin-deep, but a real honest-to-God lady. The kind that goes to church in her second-best duds, and doesn't kick a girl when she's down.”

Kathie, who had said nothing for a time, turned abruptly from the window, and spoke to Bel as if they two were alone in the room. “This means a lot to you, doesn't it, Bel?”

“Yeah. It does.”

“Does she want to learn?”

“She's crazy to.”

“If that's the case, I'll teach her,” Kathie said evenly. “If she's prepared to work, and work like the devil, I can teach her enough in four or five months that she will have a chance to make something of herself. Whether she does or not will be up to her.”

That evening after supper Kathie went up to Psyche's room, a thing she had never done before, and never did again.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, she let her glance travel around the room. Her thin face pensive, her eyes shadowed, she remarked absently, “This was my room when I first came here. I
suppose you know that. It hasn't changed. Five years—five years. Dear God, is it possible?”

Psyche was not always at ease with Kathie. Her brooding expression, lit by the sometimes shocking brilliance of her eyes, and her lovely unhappy mouth, were compelling, but disturbingly so. Kathie's was a face that, while refusing sympathy, seemed overcast by foreknowledge of something so dreadful that one looked away for fear one might see it as clearly as she so evidently did herself.

Unable to divine the reason behind this unexpected visit, Psyche did not know quite what to say. “Did you hang The Blue Boy' there?” she asked, remaining on her feet.

A glimmer of real interest showed in Kathie's face. “Yes. Who told you what it was?”

“Nobody. I knew. I mean I recognized it, naturally.”

“It doesn't seem very natural to me, all things considered. How did you know?”

“Nick taught me about pictures.”

“Nick?”

“He is an artist,” Psyche said quietly. “I lived with him for”

Kathie interrupted her. “I'm not asking for any girlish confidences. Look, sit down, for heaven's sake, and relax. Find yourself a cigarette and give me one. I'm going to be here for some time. Now, how much do you know about paintings?”

Seating herself on the window-seat, a cigarette in her hand, Psyche regained her self-assurance. Smiling, she said, “It would take me several days to answer that question.”

“You think you know so much?”

“I know I do.”

“Name half a dozen of the Renaissance painters, and give me some of their principal works.”

“I can, but why should I?” Psyche asked.

Kathie pushed a curtain of dark hair back from her forehead. It was an impatient gesture. “I'm here to help you. I've been talking to Bel. I want to know what kind of material I have to work with.”

Grasping the unspoken implication, Psyche's defensiveness dropped away from her at once. “You mean—you'll teach me?”

“Of course. Why do you think I'm here?”

“I didn't know. You didn't say.”

“Sorry, I thought Bel would have told you. She says you want to learn. Do you?”

And Psyche, although she was not aware of it, answered with the exact words she had chosen when answering a similar question put to her years earlier by a man whose gift of a small dictionary she still used and prized. “More than anything else in the world.”

The pattern of their days established itself very quickly.

Kathie was a hard taskmaster, and Psyche had to rise at six in order to satisfy the increasing pressure of her demands and at the same time do as much for Bel as she had previously done. She had also to fit in two luxuries that she could not bring herself to give up—her walks in the late evening, and the hours she spent with a courageous old lady who never failed to treat her daily visits as unplanned and delightful surprises.

Handling the marketing and housework she had assumed with an ever greater efficiency, she spent less and less time actually in Bel's place, passing most of each day downstairs, either in the apartment that echoed to the whispers of a past magnificence, or in Kathie's large back room.

In spite of its size, and its pleasant furnishings, by day Kathie's room was not nearly as attractive as her own. For, when the curtains were open, one saw a weedy back yard, walled in by a broken board fence, and given over to garbage cans and scabrous cats. But she found she could work in this room with a far greater degree of concentration than she could in the room under the eaves. Even when Kathie was not there, some lingering trace of her presence remained to encourage her when she became depressed, to spur her on when she was tired. For Kathie, very soon recognizing in Psyche a pupil to complement her own so far more or less wasted talents as a teacher, drove them both to the limit of their endurance.

Although she often told Psyche to relax, she never did herself.

For a time she would sit beside her at the desk in front of the window; then she would get up and pace the room, pausing to lean over her shoulder and mark the work with sharp, strong pencil strokes.

Arithmetic and spelling were the only two specific subjects, and for the most part Psyche laboured over them alone. “It's a pity,” Kathie remarked, “that so much of your time and any of mine should be wasted on anything so elementary, but these are gaps that must be filled in.”