William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (26 page)

It happened then. Helen, with a knowing look and a terrible mock smile, beckoned Loftis from across the room. He pushed his way through the crowd to the telephone. “It’s a woman,” he heard Helen say acidly. And then, furiously reproaching Dolly, he watched Helen disappear up the steps. She never returned to the party. Loftis said good-by to Dolly angrily. Yes, dammit, kitten; he’d see her soon. The afternoon wore on, dusk came; Loftis tried to keep the party going, but something heavy and vindictive hung in the air. The guests sensed this. Most of them knew of the Loftises’ “trouble,” and some of them, at least, had been cheered when they noticed that Helen didn’t seem to be the withdrawn, tragic figure which gossip, for a long time, had made her out to be. But the telephone call had fixed all that. Nothing sends so chill a wind over conviviality as the knowledge of some approaching domestic unpleasantness; so the guests drifted out, leaving behind them, to sparkle with soapy rainbow hues in the twilight, their empty eggnog glasses.

It was at that moment, Loftis remembered, when the last guest (a young bachelor, very drunk, who had lingered to scrape moodily at the dregs in the serving bowl) had staggered away, that a wild sort of panic seized him. Where was Peyton? Why didn’t she come? What had happened? His beautiful, gay party had been instantly shattered, like a Christmas-tree globe trampled by wayward feet. For some unknown reason, he was almost sober. He wanted to kill Dolly, but instead he said, “I’ll be back in a minute, Edward,” and with a curious irrational remorse went upstairs, passing the room where Ella, laced and ribboned, with a sprig of holly pinned to her breast, was putting Maudie to bed. He knocked at Helen’s door; it was unlocked, and he entered. She was in bed. It was warm in the room and only a sheet covered her. There were no lamps on in the room; red fire, reflected from the snow, the sinking sun, had fallen upon the bed, and her folded arms seemed to gather this light to her breast like roses. Motionless, she lay in an attitude of death, a crimson marble sepulcher.

“You left,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered, looking straight upward.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why?” he said, more loudly. “You could have been a little less rude, you know.”

“I don’t know. I think I’m catching a cold.”

“Good God,” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he answered. He sat down in a chair beside her.

“When is Peyton coming?” she asked.

“About now, I hope,” he said.

“I want to see her,” she said indifferently.

“All right,” he replied. “Do you need any kind of medicine? Why don’t you take a hot bath?”

She didn’t answer him. Then, “Milton——” she began.

“Yes.”

“Do you think we can ever forgive each other?”

“For what?” he said.

“For all this business. This misery.”

“It’s not misery, Helen,” he replied, “unless you want to make it that way. I’m through trying to figure all this out.”

“Oh, yes, it is.” She stirred a little, and the fine red light poured in rivulets down through the folds of the sheet. “Oh, yes. No one will ever know what I go through. Isn’t it funny? Here I work hard for a week and I’m happy and maybe I know that people say, ‘Helen Loftis, look at Helen Loftis, look, she’s become reborn.’ Maybe they say that. But right now it’s as if I had never been born at all, or ever wanted to be.”

“Helen——”

“Oh, Milton, there’s something wrong with me——” She sat up in bed, pushing the sheets down around her knees.

“What can I do?” he said, looking into her eyes. “I’ve said I’ll go and you say no. I can’t go anyway. Maudie——”

“Maudie,” she said passionately. “Yes, Maudie. But not Maudie. Me! Here I’ve said to myself that it makes no difference anymore about love, or anything like that; we stay together like boarders or something and just hold together the formal things. All the rest doesn’t matter. Be boarders together, that’s all; all the rest doesn’t matter.” She paused, ran her hands through her hair, and coughed.

“Cover up——” he began.

“Wait.” She laid her hand on his, and turned toward him, in the fading light, with her eyes moist and passionate. “I talk like that, you see,” she went on, “but that’s not thinking. I remember. Oh, listen——” She halted, drew herself close to him, and pulled the straps of her nightgown off both shoulders so that, noiselessly, it fell about her waist. “Look here,” she whispered, “look at me.” She placed her hands under her breasts and drew them up a little, and he was suddenly conscious of the smell of perfume. He gazed at her and a sad, gentle wave of memory ran through him, and he reached out and touched one of her breasts. It was hot and soft, very smooth and familiar. She covered his hand with her own and pressed it strongly against her. “Feel that,” she said, trembling; “haven’t I got love down there, too? Once you held me in your arms and kissed me. I remember the apartment. How we talked to each other so much then. All the time talking. And at night, Oh, love, you said, holding me. That’s what you’d say. Remember?” Her fingernails dug into his hand; swiftly she pushed his arm away and sank back into bed. Her breasts, still exposed, fell toward either side heavily, no longer youthful, rising and falling a little as with the effort of her breathing, and because she was shivering he covered her with the sheet. Again the crimson glow returned to envelop her, but it was almost night; light in the sky above the bay swam toward darkness, and so touched her body, the room, his still outstretched hand, with the softest shade of blue. He withdrew his hand and, leaning down, pressed his face toward hers, and even before their cheeks touched he felt the glow of her fever. “Helen,” he said, “you’d better—— You’re hot.”

“Don’t, Milton,” she said. “That’s all right.”

From below there came a slamming of doors, young happy voices, and then Edward’s laughter, too loud.

“There’s Peyton,” he said, drawing his face away from hers. For a moment they were silent. “She hates me,” she whispered. He took her hand in his and held it tightly. It was awful. A note of music, stark and persistent, sounding from nowhere, but filled with the sense of indelible pain, hovered in the air, and he shook his head, as if to cast it away from him, thinking of his children, of that old ecstasy no longer his but lost now, and of Maudie dying in another room. Beneath his fingers he felt the web of veins which lined her hand, and he pressed it to his cheek. “Oh, no,” he said, “oh, no, don’t say it.” But it passed. Sunk in resolute silence, she didn’t answer; she pulled her hand away, breathing deeply, and the music vanished. His pain was snatched up into the night, as if by an unseen hand.

He would recall later how that moment had expressed for the last time the tenderness that existed between them. It seemed the closest they could ever get. Why hadn’t something important happened, then? It was as if he—yes, she, too; how could he tell?—had just tried too hard. No one knows when the heart’s eye opens; theirs had opened wide for a moment and had gazed each at the other, then blinked shut as quickly. It was too late now, he knew; anything might happen, and he was prepared for an emergency. He got up.

“Do you want to see Peyton?” he said.

“No.”

“You said you did.”

“A little later. I’m tired now.”

“She doesn’t hate you, Helen. It’s you who hate things around here.”

“She has said to me,” she went on in a soft low voice, “she has said, I hate you.”

“Don’t be childish.”

“She said that to my face.”

It was no use. Damn Dolly anyway. Why had she called? And then it all came to him in a sudden bitter flash. He leaned over her, saying sharply: “Why do you have to take all this out on Peyton? Helen, what’s the matter with you, anyway? You’re not well. Let’s go to that Norfolk man like I said. I just can’t take any more of this.”

She stirred, sighed, a thin ugly phantom of a laugh escaped from her throat, and she murmured: “Old innocent Milton. How thoughtful.”

Yes. Good God, there was nothing to do. Some cold guilt crept up his back and he shuddered, saying quickly: “Helen, listen. Helen, I’ll throw up all this other thing, you know. If you’d just not antagonize Peyton. Oh, God, it’s so wrong! I thought this was going to be a fine Christmas, everybody saw how well you looked, and now see what’s happened.”

“All your fault, all your fault,” she said sarcastically and because it was dark now he couldn’t see her, but only heard the sullen rustle of bedclothes as she turned over on her side away from him.

That was all. He slammed the door as he went out, struck suddenly with a thought of his father’s:
My son, pure frustration can lead to the highest understanding, pluck at those bare addled bones, sniff around, confront the awful truth and if you faint not, in the words of our Lord, and suffer in your hot desire then perhaps you will understand, patience, my son;
but Papa just didn’t know. Papa could never realize that such talk was meant only for those who had no dilemmas anyway. He could never have foreseen this Christmas: how each minute that clicked past from the time he strode out of Helen’s room seemed charged with a violent inevitability, beyond the reach of platitudes: Loftis felt he could have halted the outcome only by dynamiting the house.

And he recalled later how grown-up Peyton seemed, after a space of three months: she had let her hair grow and, sparkling with snowdrops, it fell in brown waves to her shoulders, somehow lending a new, saucy assurance to her face, which she held up to him for a kiss, grinning and breathless, and with winter’s lovely glow inflaming her cheeks. She shook the snow from her coat and, holding his hand, said no, no, she positively couldn’t stay for supper, Daddy, there was a dance at the country club in less than an hour, and she introduced him to Dick Cartwright, a slender, rather handsome young junior from the University, smelling of beer, who had a crew cut and an oversized pipe, which he ceased gravely sucking long enough to shake Loftis’ hand, with the condescending air of juniors. In one corner of the living room Edward stood morosely nursing a drink and he bent down unsteadily and turned on the radio; having greeted Peyton and Dick, he had retreated to some grandiose world of his own, and Loftis, taking in this scene, had only time enough to turn and ask Peyton, “Are you going to stay till New Year’s, honey?” before she had dashed up the steps, to dress, shouting back, “I don’t know, Daddy!”

A heavy disappointment filled him (Why won’t she stay home? he was thinking) and, with vaguely fearful, shadowy thoughts of Helen upstairs lying in the darkness, he turned to Dick Cartwright and offered him a drink, adding, “What branch of the service are you going into, son?”

The boy ran his hand through his cropped hair. “I think I’ll get my degree and then go into the Navy. I’m in the Reserve.” They all sat down.

“Better go into a man’s outfit,” said Edward humorously.

It fell flat. The boy made a nervous chuckle, swallowed part of his drink, and solemnly stuck the pipe back between his teeth. The lights on the Christmas tree cast a cheery glow through the room. Loftis tried to make conversation, but there were subdued sounds from upstairs—Peyton’s and Helen’s voices together, punctuated by silences, low and faintly ominous—and he found it almost impossible to concentrate. However, he did learn a few details about the Cartwright home on the Northern Neck, where Peyton and Dick had spent the first part of the holidays, and discovered that the boy’s father was the well-known Harrison Cartwright, a wealthy automobile dealer who had strange, nebulous connections with the Byrd machine. The boy was nice-looking and had precise good manners, but with a sudden odd sense of possession Loftis began to wonder what Peyton thought of him, whether they had maybe … “Have another drink, Dick,” Loftis said, and regretted the offer, for the boy already looked as if he’d had one too many on the road. Eventually Edward began to go on pompously and at great length about the coming campaign in the Pacific, and Loftis, hearing the voices grow louder upstairs, felt miserable, with a limping undercurrent of fury:
If Helen does anything, God damn her—
but then, taking the cue from Dick, he listened with polite resentment to Edward’s speech, which had begun to compete successfully with the radio and the quavering, envenomed voice of Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge.

Peyton came down finally, but she didn’t stop in the living room, and her evening gown made a soft diaphanous rustle in the hallway, then ceased as she stood, silent and mysterious, behind them. “Bunny,” she called.

He got up from his seat and went to her. She looked beautiful and he took her in his arms, gazing down into her face. Oh, Lord, he thought and, aware of the answer, asked, “What’s the matter, baby?”

She told him. He might have known. Helen had said, Peyton you must stay home. Had said, Christmas Eve is no time for parties, Peyton dear; Uncle Edward is here, you and Dick stay downstairs and I’ll get up and get Maudie dressed and we’ll all have a nice party right here. We’ll open all the presents.

Or something like that.

Had said (As she saw that her words had had little effect, Loftis imagined, Helen’s voice had risen a little here, and the old frantic glow come to her eyes): Peyton, dear, it’s so nice to see you again, stay, won’t you? You’ve already arranged … No, then? No? But really, dear—I’m so glad you’ve let your hair grow, it’s lovely, dear—I’ve tried to fix things up so nice for you, and now … No, then? No? Oh, you’ve promised? (Sinking back onto the pillow.) All right, all right, have it your way then. (Turning to look at her for a moment, bitterly, then gazing away at the ceiling, perhaps with her breath now coming in long, pained gasps, or then again, naturally and easily, being mistress of her emotions.) All right then. I guess your father thinks it’s all right. Go out, do what you want then. (Turning again.) Go on!

Dick Cartwright was assembling their coats and scarves in the other room, and trying nobly to pay attention to Edward. As Loftis held Peyton against him, she told him what had happened, in a remote wistful voice touched more with disappointment and regret than with anything else. She said, “I wanted to see Maudie, but—” and paused—“but I’m going, Bunny,” she added, not angrily, merely with a sort of placid acceptance of the fact that she was a woman now, and that the age of eighteen was made for fun, while rather sadly, “It’s too bad, isn’t it, that everything has to be like this?”