The Bookman's Tale (4 page)

Then, fumbling in her handbag for her ticket to Charleston in a Penn Station full of a dozing rumble, ten minutes to midnight and train time on the dangling moon-clock, passengers on the way to muffled green-draped Pullman tunnels, tables on the Roman floor for navy-blue officials, envelopes, pencils, ticket punches, pale yellow diagrams for berths taken and free.

“You don't have to wait, Edward,” (to the handbag—to “Edward,” not “Eddie”), rather stiff. As she had been all evening: all week, or on the two times she had allowed herself to be seen. Alone in New York, the two of them, he to wind up loose ends after moving to Georgia, she on some errands of her own that he had taken as pretext for being with him. And then excuses: “Not tonight, Peggy's planning something” (whoever “Peggy” was—she seemed to be staying with “Peggy”), and “shopping with Peggy,” and “to the doctor with Peggy,” and he finally said, “All right, we'll go out to dinner and take ‘Peggy'.” “Oh, thank you, we couldn't do that,”—even the “thank you” distant.

And now, folded green ticket in her fingers, “Don't wait, Edward. Please. I'd rather you didn't.”

“You've been avoiding me.”

“What do you mean, Edward?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why avoiding me?” Seeming not to hear him, smiling at the conductor as she handed over her ticket as though to say she could smile if she cared to.

“But why?” from him as they waited, her eyes on the conductor's pale indoor hands tearing, marking, stamping. “But why?” when she showed no sign of hearing him, smiling again at receiving back what was left of the ticket, putting it away, glancing at her porter.

She moved off from the table, fingering for something in the handbag (or for nothing) than, halting, lifted her head and closed the bag with a snap that somehow carried over into her voice. “It's got to be more or less, Edward,” words level, eyes level, straight into his.

“And you are saying you want it less?”

“You don't want it more.—Go on now. Good-by.” Then, “What are you doing?” as he laid on the table his ticket to Baltimore.

“I'm on this train too,” her face becoming a complexity of dark anger like a sudden squall at the surprise of it, at the trick (who had tried to trick?—one of the long-lived questions), apprehension, uncertainty. “You're
what
!” He said he had to go to Baltimore, had an appointment with a doctor in the morning.

She seemed to hold herself still for the purpose of drawing a breath deep into her chest then slowly expelling it with, “You don't look very sick,” more suspicious than concerned, but with a glimmer of concern.

“Routine. A man named Goodwin. I've seen him before,” handing a porter the check for his suitcase and some money and pointing at the checkroom.

“And you don't act sick either,” voice stinging, eyes almost laughing.

“Routine.”

She studied him for long enough to be counting slowly up to five, then ten, the dozing hum of the station soft-falling like early snow, then said, “You win,” put her arm through his and they went down the iron stairs to the black train in step, to the compartment he had slyly taken (“drawing room” in those days).

Not yet daybreak in Baltimore, a shadow-streaked sharp October morning, the warmth of her arms still against his cheeks and ears, of her waist and back against his hands, the smooth hard-soft guitar-frets of her spine, of her guarded, pale, withdrawing face in the slice of the door closing as if the gripping brakes were closing it, features solemn to sad, then “End” as distinctly as a voice, quietly stated it—and never a word from her or sight of her for thirty years. Even after the accident, not a word (though, far away, she might never have heard of it; and so much time had come and gone).

But Isabel heard; phoned from Connecticut. And later phoned again: she could stop off for a day or two on her way to Florida if that was convenient. “Of course it's convenient, it's perfect.” (And adequate for his story when his turn came round? Told him by “a friend”?—imitating the Doctor's “colleague of mine,” probably also a red herring. Or by “one of our authors”?)

And there on the level deck with some of the others: “One of our authors, a man named Howard. About my age. Came to a fork in the road. Which way?”, the sea oily and smooth and warm and the bow steady against the bottom of the sky, the dream of the stormy days come true, and leaving you without a dream.

T
HE
“A
UTHOR'S
” T
ALE

They watched her plane, Howard and his daughter, holding ears against the scream of it creeping up on the man with the beckoning torches like a scolded dog. “Perfect,” he had told her when she mentioned stopping off, but now confronting it, the pleasure of seeing her after so long became a dread of seeing what the years had done to her, of seeing that reflect what they had done to him—years that had crept up on him as gently as the plane, misreading his signals which meant, Stay where you are.

The plane then so suddenly silent it seemed to roll backward. And the years rolled backward too, with her easy descent of the landing stairs, not lightfooted—carefully, indeed—but coming down easily, hand on a rail but keeping her place with the others, cheeks and eyes in tissue-paper smile-wrinkles at seeing them, at being there, kissing them lightly, Howard then Emily, nothing in her face of funerals, cemeteries, condolences—ignoring, or not noticing, his still unmended leg.

And everything easy among the three of them back at home, as if the years had been too much occupied with changing surfaces to bother with the realities underneath; most of the changes in Emily anyway, changing kindergarten and Gracie Square for editor's desk and Madison Avenue. “Emily has to go back Monday morning, are you afraid to be alone in the house with me?”

She laughed, “Not in the least,” and he almost said, You were once, but changed it to, “I won't molest you.”

“Howard!—I'll be leaving Thursday.”

And Emily gone, easy between the two of them, comfortable in a loosely tied attraction, age-loosened, age-opulent. Open about herself as if speaking of someone else: children all married now, the youngest two months ago; she was selling her house, too much to keep up for one person, to heat, long hard Connecticut winters.

“Moving to Florida with your sister?”

“I love my sister, Howard, but I don't like Florida, and I can't stand my brother-in-law.” No, she had a friend who was delighted with a new project in Virginia, “apartments in a country setting for ‘retired people,' a nice way of saying ‘Old Folks'.” She had stopped off on her way down to see her. “And
it
. Some drawbacks of course. But I'm not going to live with one of my children. Or trek about the country from one to another.”

Howard thinking what a reciprocal problem it was to his own. And wondering if that had occurred to her when she said, “You're keeping this house, Howard?” (or, indeed, if she had thought of it when she proposed stopping off on her way). He said he didn't know, hadn't decided, said the real-estate agents were on his trail, he believed they watched the funeral notices keeping tabs on widows and widowers.

Easy filling-in-the-years talk—handfuls of pebbles to fill the Grand Canyon—easy silences, not much host-and-guest in it. Ora Mae serving them lunch at the usual two o'clock after his usual morning at the Typewriter (capital T), setting her place as a matter of course at Mary's chair, not Emily's—he thought of correcting it but let it stand, it didn't matter, so short a visit. No strain between them he could feel.

Even easy talk-and-silence over the steak she broiled one night, she apparently making no connection with the other talk-and-silence over the other steak, he connecting but wary of the interpretation she might put on his reminding her and saying nothing: Mary in Kentucky on a visit home and he rattling round in New York emptiness for five days then calling her number. “Are you free for a movie or something, I'm going crazy.” Come over about eight, she would do him a steak with mushrooms and mashed potatoes. And before he knew it, dishes in the sink, he was on his knees in front of her chair leaning into her lap with his arms round her waist. “You'd better go home now.” “What do you mean? I'm not ready to go home.” “Get your hat.” “But I've just finished dinner, Isabel. It wouldn't be polite. My mother always said—” “Whatever your mother said, you're going home,” and standing up. “But, Isabel—” “no ‘buts,'” kissing him firmly on the mouth and pushing him out. Pushing him in effect to the phone and a train next morning for Kentucky.—And this night, dishes in the sink, kissing lightly and closing her door at one end of the January-humming house and he closing his at the other.

Tuesday evening in the living room, in Mary's chair but with the lamp tilted at an Isabel angle, closing a book on her finger in a temporary way, “You see, Howard, there's something good to be said for not succeeding with your books as you'd have liked to. Success is not the same as happiness, though sometimes from a distance—”

“You mean the art of losing isn't hard to master?”

“I didn't say that.”

“A considerable poet did.”

“I wouldn't say it wasn't hard, Howard, but it has its good points.”

“Perhaps you would kindly name one?”

“Why, you'd be out of work now, frozen in a reputation. Afraid to write anything, afraid of breaking something.”

He said the only good point in it he could see was you could lift out something you liked from one book and use it again in book after book and nobody complained or knew the difference. “I've done that.”

“I know you have. I didn't complain because I was glad to see it again,” smiling a moment then brushing it aside with, “God damn it, Howard, you always try to turn it off with a laugh!” pulling out her finger and going on with her reading—
Catherine the Great
, he remembered because he had said Mary had a copy and she said, “This is it. I found it in the bedroom. Bookmark in Chapter One,” holding it up, “a tape from the supermarket.”

“She hated supermarkets, one and all. Hated housekeeping.”

“Who doesn't?”

“Once she wrote PLEASE, ORA MAE! with her finger in the coating of dust on a bedroom mirror. I don't know how long it stayed there—why do you laugh?”

“It's still there. Or was. I fixed it.” (As much as saying—what? That mirrors weren't dusty in her house? That his mirrors wouldn't be dusty if she had charge of them?)

Telling her on Thursday as she was closing her suitcase he wanted her to have something of Mary's and handing her Mary's gold wristwatch. “No, I won't take that. But I'll take the book.—And the bookmark.”

Ora Mae said, “Nice lady,” serving him lunch at the empty table, and he said, Yes she was, school friend of Miss Mary's (using the old-style “Miss-Mary” business because that was the language he was brought up on, and Ora Mae too).

“So she said.”

“You-all had a visit?”

Oh yes, she drove to “the store” with her two or three times. “Wanted to know how you were getting on. I said you miss Miss Mary, we all did. She said you need somebody. I said, why don't you marry Mr. Howard, Miss Isabel?”

“
You didn't!
” knocking grains of rice on to the tablemat as from a clap of thunder. And after a gulp, two gulps, recovering the rice grain by grain, “What did she say to that?

“She said she suppose nobody could take Miss Mary's place.”

“I see. Well, you-all certainly did have ‘a visit'!”

And asking himself, Why not? It sounded like a rather halfhearted No; and reading the other ambiguities of her visit as they might be read (including the visit itself), might be hardly a No at all. Offering a solution for both of them that was like finding the key word to the puzzle? No more agents trying to sell his house from under him; no more seeking out homes for “Old Folks” in Virginia—or in Georgia. Everything would drop into place, the telephone drawing his eye as if it had rung.

Suppose he called her; not to settle such a momentous matter over the phone but, say, to ask her to have lunch with him in Atlanta on her way home? Yes, he liked that.…

He couldn't phone her! He didn't know her sister's name, didn't know the name of anyone who might know it. The children all with married names he didn't know—

Ray turning out his hands in finality, and stirring up an indignant chorus of: “He let her get away!” “Made for each other!” “Dumb cluck!” “She gave him every chance!” “Men!”

Becky said, “The bastard shouldn't have let her come down if he wasn't going to stuff her.”

“Please, Cousin!”

“No need to insult her.”

Ray said he believed the man was still grieving over the death of his wife, and Mrs. Hardly came to his support with, “Of course he was. A Japanese gentleman on the farm next to us—Mr. Yamamoto, Frank, (raised beautiful cucumbers)—he said when his wife died he died too. He needed a wife to help him with the cukes—”

“Help him with the cukes!”

“—but women didn't look like women to him any more, if you follow me.” (Cousin Becky laughing that she followed her.) “He went to a Japanese doctor in Denver—”

“You mean it wouldn't stand up?”

Mrs. Hardly answering only by fanning away a non-existent Colorado gnat and rolling up her eyes to the overhead racks of life preservers.

And Ray alone in the midst of them, alone with himself and ‘Howard' (and “Mr. Yamamoto”) in the January house with the furnace humming much the same tune as rose up now from the engine room, alone and sleepy, without the faintest desire to go back down the hall and tap on her closed door—beyond it the woman he had once knelt in front of, leaning into her lap with his arms round her body; who might not send him away this time. What was the matter with him?