The Wintering (6 page)

Truthfully, she did not like being a farmer's wife and never had. She felt resentful, too, that Mallory had made money and Joe had not. Her hand strayed uncertainly over shelves, as she thought of Amy hellbent on finding the life she wanted.

“Hon, what's for dinner?” Joe called.

Dea felt that moment like crying and could not answer.

“
HON
, what are we eating?”

Thinking of what was in the icebox, Dea said, “Ham.”

And Joe murmured, “Again,” but meant to be heard. He strolled to the kitchen because there was a commercial on television. He saw by Dea's face that she did not want ham, either. He thought of things he ought to tell her, that he knew he had not come up to her expectations, for one thing. Almoner, now, might be able to put those things into words, and for that, he could envy the man. Inadequately, he tried to tell her everything by saying, “I love you. I sure do.”

“I know it,” Dea said, patting his hand. And she was grateful he meant she would never grow too old for him. Yet she was glad to be able to draw his attention to the window, having seen that Old Bess's calf had escaped into the road again. She watched Joe cross the yard to head the calf back to the side lot, admitting she felt envious of Amy and her young friend. Suddenly, she had a premonition of Joe's early death. She would live then in long loneliness, regretting even the passing of these days, Dea thought.

The town, Amy had thought, would have some look comparable to Almoner's greatness. She stared about it in disappointment. All the little stores, with flat roofs, seemed squashed together and faced a railroad station in the center of town. The tracks, from a distance, seemed to end at a crumbly red brick Court House with white pillars. In reality, they curved on beyond it and stretched across the flat Delta, following briefly a willow-banked, somnambulant and yellowish river. In all directions, parked cars fanned out from the station. Negroes, who congregated about it on benches, liked the might and windiness of passing trains. Few stopped. For the most part, they were expresses rushing on toward New Orleans. The silence which descended after a train had gone lay vastly heavy over the countryside. People pausing to watch the train had loose clothing blown about in its breeze and seemed to stand in frozen wonderment at the thought of other places. Now, at standstills and as if mesmerized, people who had watched the train pass remained. Even Quill's car, halted in its presence, seemed to quiver. The train sent back thin whistling cries as lonesome as the bearable loneliness of the countryside itself. And in its aftermath, pursuits resumed by those who had watched seemed negligible. An old man in a stationmaster's black suit came out, totteringly, to inspect flowers in a garden along the tracks, which was surrounded by a little white wire fence, like intertwined croquet wickets, of that height. His flowers grew voluptuously, though some straggled in a dark red line along the ground as if something wounded had gone by. Others were yellow blossoms on thin stalks as if the sun had graciously scattered pieces. It was high now and bright.

Unevenly along the end of one block were Negro stores with bluish-looking screen doors. Quill drove across the tracks. Amy could smell popcorn from a movie where already children had formed a Saturday-afternoon line. Some store windows held bent faded placards and tricolored bunting, heralding politicians, left over from the Fourth of July. A man, cutting diagonally across the street, seemed an artistic person, wearing a slouch hat and smoking a pipe. “That might be Almoner!” Amy cried. Neither of them knew what he really looked like for he had refused pictures for many years, even for book jackets. Immediately, Quill had clapped his foot to the brake, causing a number of car horns to blow behind them. “Oh no,” Amy said. “Go on. It's not.”

“How do you know?” Quill said.

“That man spit on the street, and Almoner wouldn't,” she said. Pretending not to observe Quill's exasperation, she told herself as he drove off erratically that he was anxious. She knew inwardly that Almoner would be tall and would seem protective and even if he were old and grey, he would seem dark and mysterious.

She grew more anxious, staring with dread at two lines of sentinel cedars guarding Mrs. Decker's old house. Her bitten fingernails were hard to keep clean. Amy dug at them as if they were soon to be inspected; her hands nervously touched her hair. Most often, she walked with her eyes looking down, so now saw paint peeling at the base of the house's columns, though at eye-level they were more freshly painted. It seemed typical of the false front put up by Borden and his mother, who had lived for years in genteel arrears. Their thinking was that who they had been born made all the difference. Propped to the house against rain, old wicker furniture was mindful of hidden faces. This gave the place an uninviting air, despite crapemyrtle flowering gorgeously pink at the front windows. Quill twisted a brass doorbell, like winding a clock, which caused an alarmed ringing in the back of the house. Calling out as shrilly, Mrs. Decker came along the hall on tall thin spike heels, crying in time to their staccato beat, “Yoo hoo yoo hoo yoo hoo.” She threw her arms around Quill's neck and her upturned face read, Wasn't it delightful that she was so small? Did he realize the top of her head barely touched his chin?

Her shoes were tiny as an elf's and were dyed aqua to match her dress. Amy was more aware of her own sandals, broad and flat like a clown's shoes. She abandoned the idea of ever being groomed and hugged her pocketbook against her chest. Mrs. Decker acknowledged her briefly. “You're not,” she said, “making your debut and not even going to the luncheon? Surely, you didn't give that up for this expedition!” However, she did not listen to Amy answering that she had. Instead, Mrs. Decker led Quill toward a velvet love seat in the living room.

Left to follow, Amy glanced behind her and prayed the woman would not notice the yellowish dusty streaks she was leaving across her polished dark floors. She sank into a wing chair opposite the love seat and tucked her feet beneath it. But that moment Mrs. Decker saw them and wondered, Why those shoes? The thought quite clearly reflected itself in the puzzlement on her face. The eyes she lifted to Amy's face admitted that Amy was pretty, but did she never change expression? Amy stared back at her with such fear in her eyes, Mrs. Decker felt she had to say something. “Your hair,” Mrs. Decker said, which caused Amy immediately to begin apologizing for its being stringy. One thing Mrs. Decker hated was for young people to interrupt, and in the way she bit her lip she made that quite clear. When Amy was silent, she was able to begin again. “Your hair,” Mrs. Decker said, “looks lovely there in the sunlight.” Then she looked at Amy a little queerly: what had made her so defensive? Again, she glanced briefly at the shoes, wondering why they were muddy. Quill's, however, were polished and clean. She had not thought him the sort of boy to have gone off in the woods with some girl.

“Thank you,” Amy had said shyly, drawing back into her chair. “My mother never thinks my hair looks nice.”

“Well, now it looks like an angel's,” Mrs. Decker said. “Howard?” she repeated. Did she know Amy's family in Delton?

Her parents had not been born in Delton, Amy answered, but had moved there from Arkansas when she was born.

That accounted for things, Mrs. Decker thought, and Amy probably had not even been invited to the luncheon. Somehow, she made that thought obvious before turning her attention back to Quill.

Not only had Mrs. Decker seen her shoes but the swooping ring left by Edith's attempt to clean her skirt, and Amy drew her pocketbook over it. Trying to appear interested in Mrs. Decker's conversation, she looked instead as forlorn as a child waiting apprehensively outside a principal's office. Appearances kept up in this room were as fragile as the old china mustache cups collected on a side table. Mrs. Decker's world, she thought, could be as easily shattered by a few hard facts as it could be improved by a little hard cash. How had Mrs. Decker acquired an air of total confidence? Amy wondered, staring at her liquor-mottled complexion. She tried to find some remainder of the unconventional girl Mrs. Decker must once have been, for early she had run away with an itinerant portrait painter and caused a scandal. Only Borden had come of the marriage and she had had to creep back home in shame; then her father died, having lost all the family money. Mrs. Decker, since, had painted cake plates and crocheted baby clothes and let herself be prevailed upon by her friends to sell them. She lived by pretense, Amy thought, staring around the threadbare room, and that was something she hated. The free spirit, the passionate heart Mrs. Decker must once have possessed were entirely missing in this purplish-faced woman. Staring at her, Amy felt fearful about her own rebelliousness.

Borden came up the driveway in an old car, sitting with envious bravado on its high, outmoded seat. It might be the thing he wanted most in this world to be doing. The car door slamming in the small town's stillness had an important sound. Borden dressed flamboyantly, seeking status, and wore now a pink shirt and a bright red tie, somehow blending with his carrot-colored hair. Waving a bottle in a wrinkled brown sack, he apologized for lateness. “I had to wait outside the pool hall for Cole to finish his game!” He and his mother caught hands ecstatically a moment, provided with another unsurpassable anecdote. Since the others were having a drink, Amy reluctantly agreed, as she would not hurry lunch by declining. But she cast a grateful look toward the dining room where Borden mixed drinks when he said they ought to go soon. Pouting daintily, Mrs. Decker agreed to tell Mary to hurry lunch.

But later, nibbling a cherry from its stem, Mrs. Decker said whoever heard of only having one drink! Borden, indulgently, said that she might have a second, but she would have to take it to the table. Coming along after Mrs. Decker, Amy felt that Borden's tolerance was something she lacked, which she must practice. She tried not to mind Mrs. Decker's fingers drumming incessantly, like a pecking hen's head, while she talked (and talked). Amy could not help but feel angry that people like Mrs. Decker and her own family, leading such uninteresting lives, were disparaging about Almoner, who had done so much for the world. Did they never think of the comparison? Maybe the bourbon was making her so hot and so sleepy. She would sleep at the table if they did not leave soon. Maybe it was only boredom making her eyelids want to close. The luncheon seemed it might stretch out the entire length of the hot summer afternoon. Amy opened her eyes wide and looked toward the window, hoping brightness there would keep her awake. She watched maids with their small white charges stroll past and return later eating ice cream. Borden and his mother kept on giving the endless details of things not important in the beginning, as her family did; looking back, turning her head from one to another, Amy wished Edith were in her place, she would so much enjoy the conversation.

When Mary appeared with an asparagus souffle, Mrs. Decker commanded they praise it. Mary indulgently stood and stared beyond them, while they ooed and aahed. And though they were like fools, Amy thought, there was no way not to join in. She made little murmurs, then watched Mary swing back through the kitchen door, gladly. At least, eating stopped the continousness of the conversation, though with their mouths full, they had to stop and, again at Mrs. Decker's command, exclaim over the rolls Mary brought in. Who else still made their own? they were asked.

“Take two while they're hot!” Mrs. Decker cried, as Mary circled the table.

Tears welled up in Amy's eyes. She did not want to live a life without meaning or purpose. Wavery yellow lines converged in darkness behind her closed eyelids, into nothing. At last, opening her eyes, she saw a possibility of the luncheon's ending.

Mary had come through the swinging door with strawberry shortcake. But this, Amy saw immediately, presented her with more difficulty. With hands able to crochet so deftly, Mrs. Decker, with one movement, lifted onto a small server a cake with a pyramid of strawberries and then a topping of whipped cream. All at once, the serving arrived safely on her plate. Amy knew she would not be able to manage and waited apprehensively for Mary to approach. And, of course, her cake did waver in midair. Mary obligingly lowered the tray. Amy looked up at her gratefully, but not changing Mary's bland expression.

Mrs. Decker had noticed that lowered tray. She glanced away politely. Amy stared at the others, already eating, before realizing she had nothing left to choose but a dessert fork.

Mrs. Decker's fork securely bore on its end a soft berry, waiting to meet her mouth. She said, “I don't have time to read, but if I did, I wouldn't want to read Jeff Almoner's books! Depressing, I hear. Why read about what I've been around all my life? Maybe they're good.” In a silent moment afterward, she asked them to consider another possibility, before poking the berry into her mouth and chewing mouselike at its seeds.

Amy was furious listening to her chew and regretted all the insincere compliments she had felt it necessary to pay Mrs. Decker: on the centerpiece of sweet peas and on all her old family things. And, infuriating Amy, Mrs. Decker had accepted all the compliments as if they were her due. Now, her fork plunged again at air. She let a word impressively hang. “I,” she had said. She waited until she had their attention. “I,” she repeated, “blame publishers, that's who. If they wouldn't publish depressing books, people wouldn't write them.”

“You read then only for entertainment?” Quill said.

Amy, having wanted to ask the question, was annoyed that she had not had the nerve. Like an admonishing finger, Mrs. Decker's fork wagged again. Amy wished to God she would put it on her plate and keep it there. “Yes, I do,” Mrs. Decker said. “Life is hard enough.” She stared around at them with almost wet eyes, meaning they would understand when they were older.