Then I discarded people. I stopped answering the phone, no longer nodded to acquaintances, could not be waylaid in the grocery store. Skimming down the sidewalk, noticing someone I knew heading toward me, I felt my heart sink. I would cross the street immediately. I didn’t want to be bothered. They were using up such chunks of my life, with their questions, comments, gossip, inquiries after my health. They were siphoning me off into teachers’ conferences and charity drives. Before Selinda’s school play they made me waste twenty minutes, fiddling with my coat buttons and wondering when the curtain would go up. What did I have to do with Selinda, anyway? At this rate I would never get out.
I had some difficulty discarding what was in the studio and so I closed it off. I shut both doors and locked them. Sometimes when I was sitting in the living room I heard people knock on the outside door and call for me. “Lady? Picture lady? What’s the matter, aren’t you working no more? I been counting on this!” I listened, with my hands folded in my lap. I was surprised by how many people counted on my pictures. I was surprised by a lot of things. The flurry of my life had died down, the water had cleared so that finally I could see what was there.
But no one else could. My family pestered me, hounded me. They thought I had something left to give them. Well, I tried to tell them. I said, “You’ll have to manage on your own from now on.” They just looked baffled. Asked me to cut their hair, sew buttons on their shirts. Saul kept trying to start these pointless conversations. Really, he’d only married me because he saw me sticking with my mother. He saw I wouldn’t have the gumption to leave a place. Him and his I-know-you-love-me’s, I-know-you-won’t-leave-me’s; I should have realized. “This marriage isn’t going well,” I told him.
But he said, “Charlotte, everything has its bad patches.”
“I need to take a wilderness course.”
“Wilderness?”
“Learn to live on my own with no equipment. Cover great distances. In the desert and the Alps and such.”
“But we don’t have any deserts here.”
“I know.”
“And we don’t have any Alps.”
“I know.”
“We don’t even have snow all that often.”
“Saul,” I said, “don’t you understand? I have never, ever been anywhere. I live in the house I was born in. I live in the house my mother was born in. My children go to the same school I did and one even has the same teacher. When I had that teacher she was just starting out and scared to death and pretty as a picture; now she’s a dried-up old maid and sends Selinda home for not wearing a bra.”
“Certainly,” said Saul. “Things keep coming around, didn’t I tell you? You and I keep coming around, Charlotte, year by year, changed in little ways; we’ll work things through eventually.”
“It’s not worth it, though,” I said.
“Not worth it?”
“It takes too great a toll.”
He folded both my hands in his, with his face very calm and preacherly. Probably he didn’t know how hard he was gripping. “Wait a while,” he said. “This will pass. We all have … just wait a while. Wait.”
I waited. What was I waiting for? It seemed I hadn’t yet discarded all I should have. There were still some things remaining.
Jiggs reminded me of the P.T.A. meeting; he saw it on the UNICEF calendar. He was seven now and industrious, organizational, a natural-born chairman. “Eight o’clock, and wear your red dress,” he told me.
“I don’t have that dress any more and I don’t want to go to any meetings.”
“It’s fun, they serve cookies. Our class is making the Kool-Aid.”
“I have spent my life at the Clarion P.T.A. What’s the purpose?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure there is one,” said Jiggs. He peered at the calendar again. “The thirteenth is Muhammad’s birthday. The fifth was World Day of Prayer. Mother, did you enjoy World Day of Prayer?”
“I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t know they were having it.”
“You should have looked ahead of time.”
“My idea of a perfect day,” I told him, “is an empty square on the calendar. That’s all I ask.”
“Well, then,” said Jiggs. He adjusted his glasses and ran his finger across the page. “In the month of March, you’ll have three perfect days.”
“Three? Only three?”
I looked down at the back of his neck—concave, satiny. Very slowly, I began to let myself imagine his mother. She would ride into town on a Trailways bus, wearing something glorious and trashy spun of Lurex. I would meet her when she arrived. I would bring Jiggs with me. I would at long last give him up.
That morning Linus and Miss Feather were helping at the church bazaar; I had the place to myself. I sent the children to school and gave the house a final cleaning, dispensing with all the objects that had sprouted in the night—rolled socks, crumpled homework papers, and a doll’s toy dollhouse no bigger than a sugar cube, filled with specks of furniture. (I didn’t check to see what kind of furniture; I feared to find another dollhouse tucked inside that one.)
Then I took a bath and dressed in a fresh skirt and blouse. The mirror showed me someone stark and high-cheekboned, familiar in an unexpected way. My eyes had a sooty look and you would think from the spots of color on my cheeks that I was feverish. I wasn’t, though. I felt very cold and heavy.
The dog seemed to know that I was going and kept following me too closely, moaning and nudging the backs of my knees with his nose. He got on my nerves. I unlocked my studio door and pushed him inside. “Goodbye, Ernest,” I said. Then I straightened and saw the greenish light that filtered through the windows—a kind of light they don’t have anyplace else. Oh, I’ve never had the knack of knowing I was happy right while the happiness was going on. I closed the door and passed back through the house, touching the worn, smudged woodwork, listening to absent voices, inhaling the smell of school paste and hymnals. It didn’t look as if I’d be able to go through with this after all.
But once you start an action, it tends to bear you along.
All I could hope for was to be snagged somewhere. In the sunporch, maybe, circling the phone, waiting for news that Jiggs had a sniffle and was being sent home early. In the kitchen, taking forever to make a cup of instant coffee. Absently pouring a bowl of cereal. Something besides cereal fell from the box—a white paper packet. I plucked it out and opened it. Inside was a stamped tin badge, on which a cartoon man walked swiftly toward me with his feet the biggest part of him. And along the bottom, my own personal message.
Keep on truckin’.
15
We drove slowly, looking for a bank that stayed open Friday nights. We left Perth behind, entered the next town and then the next. These places were strung together like beads, no empty spots between them but ravelings of Tastee-Freezes, sea-shell emporiums, and drive-in movies. It was dark enough now so I could see the actors’ faces on the screens. But all I saw of Jake and Mindy was the gold line edging each of their profiles, sometimes lit other colors by the neon signs we passed. Mindy was craning forward, searching the buildings, biting her lower lip. Jake was sunk low in his seat like someone sick or beaten, and he hardly bothered to look out the window.
“Maybe in this state, banks don’t have Friday hours,” Mindy said.
Jake didn’t answer.
“Jake?”
He stirred. “Sure they do,” he said.
“How do you know? What if we end up driving all night, Jake, ride right off the bottom of Florida. Shouldn’t we stop and get a store to cash this thing?”
“Well, stores, now, they might tend to make more of a to-do,” Jake said. “Be more apt to remember us later.”
“But I’m tired! I got a crick in my neck.”
Jake let his head turn, following a likely-looking office building.
“If I don’t eat by six I faint,” said Mindy. “And look, it’s almost seven.”
“Well, there now, Mindy,” Jake s
aid absently.
“You know I got low blood sugar.”
“Really? You want some sugar?”
“No I don’t want sugar.”
“No trouble at all, Mindy, I got it right here.” He searched his jacket, accidentally poking me with one elbow. “Look at here. Domino sugar.”
The packets were worn and grimy by now. He held them out, a double handful. “Never say I don’t come prepared.”
“Jake Simms,” said Mindy, “don’t you know anything? It’s not sugar I need, that would be stupid.”
He lowered his hands. He looked over at me. “Can you figure that?” he asked.
“Well …”
“She’s got low blood sugar, but she don’t want to eat sugar.”
“She must know, I guess.”
He shook his head, looking down at the packets. “I just don’t see this, Mindy,” he said. “You don’t even make sense. How come you run after me so hard if it turns out there’s no way I can please you?”
“Me run after you?” said Mindy. “Oh, go ahead, gripe and groan. Blame it all on me. Then ask yourself what you told me last Fourth of July. Go on, ask yourself.”
He gave me a quick glance, sideways, from under his blunt lashes.
“What’d you tell her?” I asked.
He set his mouth, crammed the sugar back into his pockets.
“Told me he never had come to rest with anyone but me,” said Mindy. “Said he didn’t know why, it was just the way he felt. We were eating a picnic lunch, he had done right poorly in a demolition derby. I told him that derby didn’t matter a bit. ‘To my mind,’ I told him, ‘you will always be like the first time I saw you driving: real swift and fine, in your white western jacket that got tore up later in that derby over by Washington.’ And that’s when he said what he said. Asked if I would marry him.”
“I never did,” said Jake.
“Well, you said you could see that it might someday come to pass.”
“You just got it all twisted around to suit your purposes.”
“No, Jake,” she said. “Believe me, I do not. It’s you that twists. Can’t you see what spits you in the face? For every time you run from me, there’s another time you run after me, deliver yourself up to me. You say, ‘Mindy, I’m yours. You’re all I got.’ You call out under my window, you drive by my house in the night and I see your headlights slide across my ceiling. You get me on the telephone: ‘Everybody’s mad at me and the world don’t look so hot. Can’t you come on out and keep me company?’ ”
“You just like to exaggerate,” said Jake.
“What you said was, ‘I can see that we might someday find ourselves married.’ ”
“If I did, I don’t recall it.”
“ ‘Like, if you was to end up pregnant or something,’ you said.”
There was a silence.
“You said, ‘What do I want to keep buffeting back and forth for, anyhow? Why don’t I just give up?’ ”
In the sudden glow of a movie marquee Jake’s face appeared sallow, unhealthy. The skin beneath his eyes was a bruised color.
“Isn’t that the truth?” Mindy asked him.
“Hold it, I found us a bank. Pull over.”
She slammed on the brakes, throwing both of us forward, and veered into a parking space. Jake held himself upright with a hand on the dashboard. “There was something I was meaning to ask,” he said slowly. “All this crazy talk has put it right out of my head.”
We waited.
Then his face cleared. “How much money you got?” he said to Mindy.
“Is that all you can think about?”
“I mention it in case you want a hot dog or something, while me and Charlotte are in the bank.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, I got enough.”
“See that little diner joint? Meet you there in five minutes. Maybe ten.”
“You want me to order you two something?”
“Naw,” said Jake.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Oh, why, well sure,” he said, “but that hot dog is just to hold you, Mindy. After we get our money we’re going somewheres good. Isn’t that right, Charlotte. Charlotte?”
“A steak place would be nice,” said Mindy.
“Steak place, any place, I don’t care,” he told her. “Scoot.”
Mindy opened the door and slid out. We followed. Jake touched a finger to Mindy’s wrist. “Bye,” he said.
“Bye,” she said, and left, swinging her heart-shaped purse. It was a warm, buggy night that smelled of caramel. The streets were nearly deserted. To our right was a beige brick cube with aluminum letters across the front: SECOND FEDERAL. We climbed the steps and spun through the revolving door. My face felt tight in the sudden coolness. Tubes of harsh white light made us blink, and our feet were hushed by fuzzy carpeting. I took my place behind a man in a business suit.
“Why this here line?” Jake asked me. “This is the longest.”
Of course it was longest. I was going to be leaving soon and I didn’t want events to move too quickly. As if he guessed that, Jake moved in closer behind me. “Charlotte,” he said in my ear.
“Hmm?”
“I don’t want you pulling nothing funny. Understand?”
I nearly laughed. I wondered what he imagined I could do. Leap the teller’s grate in a single bound? Sign my check in some suspicious way? Charlotte Emory, hostage. The teller wouldn’t even raise her eyebrows. She would glance at my signature indifferently, as if I’d stated some natural condition or occupation. Oh, I knew better by now than to count on other people for help. “Don’t be silly,” I said to Jake. He must have seen that I meant it; he dropped back. His nylon jacket rustled. The man in the business suit left, folding a sheaf of bills.
“I’d like to cash a traveler’s check,” I said to the teller. She looked bored. I signed my name with a chained ball-point pen and passed the check through the grate. In return she counted out a hundred dollars in twenties. I counted once more and then gave my place up to a red-headed lady who was dabbing her nose with a Kleenex.
Out on the street, Jake said, “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”
“No,” I said.
“Nothing to it.”
“No.”
We passed a shoestore, darkened now, and then a florist’s where ugly tropical flowers glowed behind glass. We reached the diner—a railroad car surrounded by a picket fence. Through one long, greasy window we saw Mindy with her back to us, her elbows on the counter, twisting idly on her stool so her skirt belled out and swirled. We stood watching as if we had nowhere else to go, no plans in mind at all. Jake gave a sudden, sharp sigh.
“I was fixing to leave her,” he said.
I nodded.
“But I can’t,” he said. “She’s right, you know. I have some ties to her.”
Mindy hoisted a hot dog into the air; she was wiping her face in the crook of her elbow, which from here seemed as delicate as a vine or tendril.
“I’m going to end up married to her, ain’t I, Charlotte.”
“Well, I guess that maybe you are, Jake,” I said.
“I’ve done myself in. Ain’t I? Just going to end up trucking along in that life she wants.”
I looked at him.
“Gold and avocado,” said Jake. “Patricia curtains. Babies. See what I’ve come to? What you staring at?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
It was money, as he could plainly see. Five new twenty-dollar bills. I had to fold his fingers around them. He said, “Charlotte?”
“I’m leaving now,” I told him.
His mouth fell open.
“I can’t stay on forever, Jake. You knew I’d have to go sometime.”
“No, wait,” he said. His voice had turned harsh and raspy.
“Tell Mindy goodbye for me.”
“Charlotte, but … see, I can’t quite manage without you just yet. Understand? I’ve got this pregnan
t woman on my hands, got all these … Charlotte, it ain’t so bad if you’re with us, you see. You act like you take it all in stride, like this is the way life really does tend to turn out. You mostly wear this little smile. I mean, we know each other, Charlotte. Don’t we?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And anyhow!” he said. He suddenly lifted his chin. He thrust the money in his pocket and stood straighter, teetering slightly from heel to toe. “I don’t know why I’m begging, you can’t leave anyhow. I’ve got your money.”
“You can have it,” I told him.
“Then how would you travel? Just tell me that.”
“Oh well, I’ll … go to Travelers’ Aid,” I said.
“And your medal!”
“What?”
“I guess you want it back, don’t you.”
“Medal? Oh, the—”
“Well, you won’t get it. I aim to keep it.”
“That’s all right,” I said.
I held out my hand. I didn’t want to just walk away without shaking hands. But Jake wouldn’t take it. His chin was still tilted and he watched me from across the two polished planes of his cheekbones. In the end I had to give up.
“Well, goodbye,” I told him.
And I turned and set off in the direction we’d come from, where it seemed most likely I’d find a bus terminal.
Then Jake said, “Charlotte?”
I stopped.
“Keep going and I’ll shoot you, Charlotte.”
I started walking again.
“I’m aiming now. Hear? I’ve took the safety off. It’s loaded. It’s pointed at your heart.”
My footsteps had a steady sound, like rain.
“Charlotte!”
I continued up the street, already feeling the hole that would open in my back. I passed an elderly couple in evening clothes. Still no shot rang out. I saw now that it never would. I released my breath, marveling at my slipperiness: I had glided through so many dangers and emerged unscathed. As smooth as silk I swerved around a child, passed a glass-boxed woman in front of a theater. I reached the end of the block and looked back. There he stood, surprisingly small, still watching me. His collar was raised, his shoulders were hunched. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets. Come to think of it, I wasn’t so unscathed after all.