The Wintering (21 page)

Dea carried the plate of cakes across the room. She would certainly save the rest for her own family. Coming back to sit down, she said, “I don't get the impression, at all, that they've seen one another lately. Do you?” The others were forced to shake their heads. “I don't see, then, how what you suggest holds water. Maybe you don't realize, Amy could have made her debut.”

“I'm sure she's a very nice girl,” Amelia said. “But what does she want?”

Always, she had relied on the strength of others, Inga realized. But these two were going to go around and around the subject, and she was decisive. “There's got to be a reason they want to keep in contact, hardly seeing one another. Why? What is so strong between them? I'm going to find out.”

(Vy. Vhat, Dea repeated to herself.)

“I'd like to know how,” Amelia said, standing to indicate they must go.

Inga, plopping the pink hat on lopsidedly, said, “Let's put on our thinking caps.” There was, however, only one way: to face the girl, at last. Dea, reaching for Inga's elbow again, helped her across the doorsill. The Almoners, she thought, were the type to sue.

On the porch, Amelia touched a finger to a fern pot. “Your ferns are dry now,” she said.

This, on top of her remark about Amy, was inexcusable, Dea thought. “Maybe you don't have luck because you water yours too much,” she said. After slamming the car door, Amelia would have driven off without another word, except that the highway was blocked by a slow-moving line of cars. She stuck her head from the car window to stare. “They go by like that every Thursday afternoon and on Sunday,” Dea said. “Don't they think they're dressed up, though.”

A slow thought penetrated as Amelia realized that all the Negroes wore white. Coincidence? Surely, Jessie was too old and had too much sense to demonstrate. And she had said herself Negroes were too uppity for her these days. Jessie wouldn't just mouth what white people wanted to hear, would she? Suspiciousness, Amelia thought, had become quickly a habit. All these years she had been able to count on so little changing; now nothing seemed certain. She was not, however, going to put any stock in the Negroes' carrying on, or believe that Jessie was among them. But nothing on earth would make her pull out to the highway now, though once she would have gone, blaring her horn, expecting them to halt and let her through.

“Don't back out yet,” Dea said.

“I wouldn't dream of it,” Amelia said. Their fingertips had met on the windowsill. In the silence, summer throbbed, intense as a drumbeat all around them.

“You can't get a lick of work out of any of them on these days either,” Dea said. “Everybody says it. They'll take your money and give you the sorriest job they can.” When the line of cars had gone, their fingertips parted. Amelia started the motor. “Well,” she said, “I'll have to go without supper because of the cake, but it was worth it.”

As they drove back toward town, Inga was still sunk into silence. Amelia was considering the threat this girl presented to her way of life, as the Negroes carrying on threatened it. She had never felt before the need to marry. But if Jeff went off with that girl, she would end up with Inga, who did not seem to realize that in the long run you had yourself to depend on. She was surprised then. Inga said, “I'm going to see her on Saturday, if she'll see me. She probably doesn't work then.”

“Well, she'd certainly better see you!” Amelia said with hollow bravado. Entering the house, she began to hum some faintly remembered tune about unanswerable things.

Inga momentarily hid in the closet's darkness, hanging up the old pink hat. With all she had on her mind, her life possibly coming to an end, Amelia had no thought, except to sing.

Amy stared into her dim closet realizing that, as usual, she had nothing right to wear. As Amy looked blank, Edith stood behind her. “You never have the right thing like the other girls,” she said. “Now that you're working, you ought to buy some clothes.” This was not her mother's real reason for complaining, her face grimacing, her tone almost groaning, Amy thought. Shaken, Edith said, “Who else gets themselves into situations like this. Oh, why couldn't you have been like …”

“Because I don't want to be like the other girls.” Amy spoke out at last, flatly and finally, before going out of earshot, her heart not beating too fearfully.

On Saturdays, most downtown shops and offices were closed. The nearly unpeopled streets had a funereal hush. They were like war-struck streets, deserted and dreading, after an air alarm had sounded. To dispell the quiet, Amy thought of blowing her horn, even without reason. When she started down the street, palsied heat waves danced ahead. Tanned from his honeymoon, but nervous and thinner, Quill was leaving his bank at its Saturday closing hour. Electric chimes saluted noon, whirring and ringing and playing the Londonderry Air, which sent a flurry of starlings over the drained streets, as if exulting to the music. Wanting to confide in Quill that she was meeting Mrs. Almoner, Amy thought that she could not. Though it did seem like fate to see him when they had begun everything together so innocently. Life seemed made up of circles and this the completion of one. Amy and Quill, acknowledging one another formally beneath the hotel's awning, inquired about one another's health and answered, in turn, that they were fine, thank you. Longing to say more, Amy's eyes sought Quill's, to find in them some signal that said go ahead. She met only a yellowish cast, as a pond holds scum, hiding what is beneath. Quill mustered a moment something of his old teasing manner. As Amy started indoors, he said, “Spending your Saturday afternoons in hotel rooms now, young lady?” Then he went on, having settled his hat at an even more correct angle.

What, Amy wondered, could be made out of two people sharing an experience and the life of only one being changed by it? In the lobby her attention turned to avoiding wet places on a marble floor, which a Negro was mopping. At the hour planned, arriving at the flower shop, she was surprised by the frail lady who rose, evidently recognizing her, and spoke.

“Mrs. Almoner?”

On the vulnerable-looking lady, neat coils of gold braid atop her head wavered as she nodded. The real depths of her eyes were obscured by dark glasses. She apologized for not removing them but daylight hurt her eyes. Amy, feeling overgrown, bent to hear the faint voice, having the wavery quality of a fine dangling silk thread. She was as glad not to have taken her mother's advice to wear high heels as she was glad not to be able to meet, clearly, Mrs. Almoner's eyes.

“May I take your arm?” Inga said. They reached the top of stairs leading down into the dining room, and she felt uncertain.

Amy, saying, “Of course,” received through her crooked elbow weight like a feather's. “Be careful,” she warned, “the steps are damp, too.”

When they stood in the doorway, holding arms, Inga shivered in cold air from the air conditioning. The hostess approached and Amy asked for a table sheltered from the draft. She guided Inga across the room and around tables and chairs. Curtains drawn against the bright day left only white tablecloths and summer zinnias, as centerpieces, to relieve the room's dimness. They settled, their order was given, and Inga shivered slightly again. “Too hot outdoors, too cold in,” she said.

Amy agreed. Their heads shook in mutual distaste over the stores already displaying fall clothes. “I'm still looking for white shoes,” Amy confided.

Inga had seen some on sale in a shop down the street. On a scrap of paper from her purse, Amy wrote down the store's name. A discussion of clothes continued until the waitress brought their order.

“It's nice,” Inga said, “that you're so tall and can wear those low-heeled shoes. I've always felt I had to wear such high heels. And lately, they make me feel off balance and dizzy.”

“That's too bad,” Amy said. “Could you need to have your glasses changed?”

“Yes, that does need to be done, too,” Inga said. “I'm always putting things off. For instance, I've wanted to meet you for a long time. Jeff thinks so highly of the possibilities of your work. I'm sure you have other things in common, too. Of course, what I want to know is, do you want to marry him?”

Amy sat back from the table in astonishment. Her lunch went untouched and the congealed salad began sadly to melt all over her plate. “No.” Not only had the abruptness of the question surprised her but that anyone had thought of the possibility of her marrying Almoner.

Puzzled, Inga pushed her glasses toward the bridge of her nose. “Then why do you want to keep seeing him?”

“His books mean so much to me. And I want to be a writer, too.” Amy looked embarrassed.

“It's my opinion that men have a change of life, too. At about fifty. I think that's happening to Jeff. But I don't understand why you want to see him if you don't want to marry him.”

“I told you,” Amy said. “Because I think he is a great writer. And I want to be one. If you wanted to be a painter, wouldn't you want to meet Picasso, or somebody like that?”

“No. I would see no purpose,” Inga said.

“I don't know how to explain then,” Amy said, surprised.

“I don't think a man and a woman can just be friends,” Inga said.

“Not when you're young maybe. When you're older,” Amy said confidently, “I think things must be different. Feelings I know change.” She was thinking how long her mother and father had slept in separate bedrooms.

“I do not consider myself at fifty too old to fall in love,” Inga said.

“Oh no! That's not what I meant,” Amy said, having meant that exactly. She had not meant to blurt it out meanly, having no desire at all to hurt frail Mrs. Almoner. It was sad, though that she had expectations of someone falling in love with her at fifty.

“Do you have a young man?” If Amy gave the correct answer, all her others would seem more trustworthy, Inga felt.

“Sort of,” Amy said. “A boy I knew at college is coming to visit me soon.”

Inga had not touched her own lunch but sat back, a hand grabbing her throat, as if relieved to have avoided choking. “Oh. I'm so glad to hear that,” she said. For the moment, they were silent. Inga stared at flowerlets of cauliflower on her plate, which were turning brown. Amy nibbled at a soggy potato chip and looked about at other diners, who seemed to be enjoying their food. Her table for some reason had no bowl of flowers. The lack created an expanse of white tablecloth between her and Inga. A little girl, leaving with her mother, ran along between tables. Having plucked flowers from her own, the child waved them once gaily toward Amy's face, like a flaunt.

“There's to be,” Inga said, her eyes wandering from the little girl, “a Fish-o-rama at the springs. Fly-tying contests, the kinds of things Jeff likes. Would you and your young friend come as our guests?”

“That sounds nice. He admires Mr. Almoner's work, too.”

The waitress looked apologetically at the untouched food, removed their plates and presented the bill. Amy and Inga bent over it, arguing slightly before agreeing to go Dutch treat. When they stood, Inga immediately took Amy's arm. Guiding Inga carefully back across the room, around tables and chairs, Amy felt in care of something as light and defenseless as a bird. To Mrs. Almoner there was a sweet air she could not help but find appealing, in some ways missed in her mother. Certain of mistakes she would never make, Amy wondered why the Almoners had not been able to get along.

She was positive it was Amelia waiting at the flower shop, though there was no introduction. The commanding woman, with a tortoise-shell comb stuck in the back of her hair, accepted Inga's weight by extending her own arm. On her face was a look of dismissal, which caused Amy to flee. Barely did she nod at Mrs. Almoner in goodbye.

Surely the two women watched her. Amy, trying not to run, feared her slip was showing. Sticking a hand into the collar of her dress, she pulled at a strap. A barbed remark from Amelia would not have surprised her. In fantasy, Amy replied with an innuendo about the choir director. Wouldn't, she thought, Miss Almoner be mad to know she knew about him!

She felt trapped an instant by the revolving door, before being flung freely to the street. There, the bells were striking untriumphantly and meagerly the half-hour. With a feeling of being letdown, Amy stood on the street. To the astonishment then of passengers on a bus going by, all of whom turned to the windows to stare, she bolted coltlike down Main Street, long blond hair bobbing on her shoulders. The sudden sense of freedom brought delight so that not even the heat mattered. Stores went by in a blur, like a solid front. Having wanted to do something the older people could not do, Amy ran block after block, until she was exhausted. She walked slowly back to her car, feeling overwhelmed at Mrs. Almoner's dependency on her. Never, Amy swore to herself, would she get old.

No, Almoner said, he had not known they were coming to Delton. He had been away on a fishing trip and entered the house as the phone was ringing.

Standing in a public telephone booth, Amy became increasingly aware that it had been used for more than telephoning. Yet, across the way, in a park resident above the river, was a small building with doors marked Men and Women. Did people choose to do what was forbidden because life was so dull the act of urinating in a phone booth gave it impetus? Phoning Almoner made her own heart beat excitedly, though she knew his wife was not at home.

“I'm sorry you had to go through this on my account,” he said.

“I didn't mind,” she said. “It's funny. I liked her.”

“She can be very charming,” he said.

Amy told of Leigh's visit and of Inga's suggestion they come to the Fish-o-rama. “I'm glad you and my wife have become such good friends,” he said, without humor.

“It's a way to see you,” Amy said, a note of apology in her voice. “I don't think I can before then.”