His room.
How can I talk about, tell anyone of this tender rapture? Loving a man so for all these years. Now untied from the tie that binds, poor Pookie gone to Knoxville, Tennessee, and Melvin at college, my tie is to him alone. Together we can never die. A farm girl from Emporia: what would Papa say now? I sophisticated and fancypants, vice-chairman of the Red Cross and member in good standing of the Tidewater Garden Club too. Sweet and ruinous, Milton says, with a soft sweet corruption about the mouth. I love him so.
Wanting him for so long, holding off, having to, sitting back on these hips he says drive him frantic, like a saint yearning for perfect communion. Holding off. Having to because he says we’re both upcaught in the tragedy of a middle-class morality.
Still the gossip runs, but we go to his room, up there, now because he says he’s free of that succubus which has so long held him in bondage, free now, legally and without error, and the hell with the paltry petty ruck of envious people who can’t get shut of a virago or a jackass who holds them helpless, too. That’s what he says. So we go to his room now, up there. I know it well. There is something dear and sweet about it. It encloses you with the scent or maybe just the feeling of him: a male smell like heather or tweed, his shirts unwashed and hanging over things, shirts I take home to the apartment to carefully wash and iron myself. I love him so. Knowing he wants me, that’s what’s so good. …
He says I’m the dearest thing and age has made the fiber sweeter. And we are upcaught in the tragedy of a middle-class morality. We do not care, Milton and I, for that will all be over October twenty-first.
Sometimes I wish he’d get that faraway look out of his eyes. I worry. What is he thinking about? Sometimes I don’t know what he’s thinking about.
He says I’m the dearest thing. I think he loves me more than Peyton. Peyton is a bitch, although it’s not his fault, but the fault of that succubus who treated her so badly. It’s somehow Freudian, he says.
His room. We go there now and he pays the nigger a dollar to keep the hall door locked and because of this I can awake on Sunday morning before he spirits me out as he says and feel the sunlight on my face and think well Dolly Loftis you’ve come a long way for a farm girl and think too as he says in the soft morning sunlight that there are miles to go before we sleep and miles more to go before we sleep. …
A waiter appeared at Loftis’ side, mumbled something about New York on the phone.
“Thanks, Joe.” He arose still talking, terribly feverish, Dolly thought, reluctant to be unchanneled from his singing flow of words. “Well, I’ve forgotten about becoming a statesman. Content with working on bond issues. Content with everything.” A strand of celery had become caught in the back of her throat, dangled there itching against her palate. “Hell,” he said expansively, “I might even start back to church. I might …” But he didn’t finish the sentence for—perhaps because of the placid fading light, softening her face so that now, even more, she looked like a little girl—he seemed to understand that she had not been listening to him. Her wandering eyes, she sensed with sudden fright, had betrayed her, and he gazed down at her with an odd sad smile.
He must know. He must know.
“Milton——” she tried to say, but “What do you see in me anyway?” he had said, then turned, walked across the terrace and through the ballroom; she watched him until he disappeared behind a potted palm, and she lapsed back into her chair with a little groan, thinking: Oh something’s happening.
A wisp of music unspooled from the ballroom, saxophone, drums; and thunderheads like Christmas snow rose in disordered piles high above: they would go over, she thought, over the city. People around her talked softly together, laughed in low, gentle tones; all of them, she felt, were watching her, but the band, the moaning saxophone, made her think of a dance right here, long ago. Peyton’s birthday. The first time, after all the waiting, they had ever made love.
She waited. Then he came back and his face, gray as water, was full of agony and horror. He started toward her, but without a word he paused, turned and walked over to Sylvia Mason. The woman got up with a little cry, bracelets jangling, and put her great maternal arms around him. “Ahhh, Milton,” Dolly heard her say. “Ahhh, Milton.” People shuffled, turned about in their chairs; there was great confusion. “Ahhh, Milton,” said Sylvia, “I’m so sorry for you,” but Loftis said nothing, or if he did Dolly could neither see nor hear him, for his back, looming toward her, seemed to be slumped in pure despair against the whole vast evening sky.
Dolly arose. “Milton,” she called, “what’s wrong——” but they were already walking through the ballroom. And the Mason woman had her fat arm around his waist. Dolly sank down again. She didn’t know what had happened, or where he was going. But she had the premonition. Funny little serpents, stars like minute flowers floated on her vision.
He doesn’t love me any more.
She fussed miserably with her handbag, her hat. Then she ran to the edge of the terrace and saw him drive away, alone.
It was just her woman’s intuition: Oh, please, God. Again. He’s going back to her. Again.
Now here at the country club in August, 1939—the time that Dolly remembered, that first time—Peyton had had her sixteenth birthday which, to call back ancient history, was the day before the war began. There was talk about a Corridor—and what was that?—but in Port Warwick, attuned to a mood the papers all called “festive,” thirty thousand people waved flags and cheered as the nation’s largest pleasure ship slid down the ways, soon to transport well-to-do folks to Rio and France. There was prosperity on that afternoon in Port Warwick, and on the terrace where they danced a five-piece band was playing and Negroes in white jackets hovered in doorways, behind columns, as from any of a dozen scattered lawn tables one could hear the chilly laughter of beautiful young girls and the sound of distant, captivating music. Helen went around and around, dancing with Milton in a dizzy blur of light, organdy, taffeta rustling about her, the young girls’ perfume sweet and innocent on the summer air. “Oh, Milton,” she said, “I’ll sit this one out. I’m hot.”
He smiled broadly. “But, honey,” he said, “we just started.”
She slid away from him.
“Don’t be a——”
Wet blanket. That’s what he’d say.
I’m so very hot. And tired.
Then he danced with Peyton; he danced with Dolly Bonner, holding her too close, and he danced with Peyton again. He laughed loudly, having, as usual, drunk too much. His fingers were pressed tightly against Dolly’s back. He is not deceiving me. He nodded left and right to the young people who danced around him.
Nor is it, she was thinking, sheer coincidence that she should be here. Because of Melvin she is here. Indeed. Not sheer coincidence. He is not deceiving me.
She was sitting alone in a chair at the edge of the terrace. Above was a clear blue sky, below, waxed flooring, which had been drawn out for the dance, slippery beneath her feet. At the far wall of the terrace was a long mirror in which, past the bright dresses shifting constantly before her, she could see the young girls dancing, eying themselves slyly as they tried to catch sight of the gardenias pinned in their hair. She saw herself, too, and in a paneled glass door behind the chair her whole back was reflected from the mirror, and the effect was not of one, but of two Helens sitting as if in a game of musical chairs, back to back. Sunlight fell upon her cheeks; she was a little past forty, but she looked much older. Somewhere long ago she had surrendered up most of her beauty, which had been considerable, to the passing of time, but a whisper of loveliness still lingered on her face. It was a face full of discontent and now, in repose, of sullen-ness, but there were fine lines in it, gentle arcs and swerves, prominences beautifully recovered into one agreeable symmetry. As she sat there, never allowing her eyes to stray above their level, but gazing only at waists, skirts and the mirror, her expression from time to time became unpleasantly clouded over: thoughts, ugly things, wrinkled her fa
ce. Yet now and then it would relax; a bright impromptu content would appear, and a sweet and casual loveliness.
And even now, as she looked up at the mirror, a waiter banged through the door behind her; the door swept to, flapping in and out, so that the twin-reflected Helens, blue-gowned, back to back in their musical chairs, swung wildly out into space above and beyond the dancing forms, multiplied endlessly against the yellowing slant of afternoon light.
I must see how Maudie is.
A young boy with acne and a smirk asked her dutifully to join him in a dance. She refused, shortly. She was watching. Peyton, she believed, had been drinking. Her face so flushed, too happy. The boy protested, urged. She made a polite vague noise, gazing past him at the river. He left, smirking, and the band played beneath the trees.
When the deep purple falls
Over sleepy garden walls …
The terrace echoed to gay music, sad music, sad as a flute, and the air above, festooned with red bunting and white paper bells, was full of soft laughter and young sweet melancholy. She arose and walked through the dancing crowd. Milton went past, smiling down at Dolly—he is not deceiving me—but in the ladies’ room an odor of powder lingered, and the colored girl looked up with a grin, saying, “Mercy me, Miz Loftis——”
“Listen,” she said, “I want you to tell me if you see any of these girls drinking. Do you know my daughter?”
“Yes’m. I does.”
“You tell me if you see, hear?”
“Yes’m.”
“I suspect that some of them are drinking.”
“Yes’m, dat’s what I suspects too.”
“You tell me, hear?”
“Yes’m.”
The black devil. She won’t tell.
She opened the door, went out, and music swelled around her like tropic air. She returned to the terrace, sat down again, and a woman named Mrs. La Farge, whose son, Charles, was here, came up and sat next to her.
“Helen, such a lovely dance! Such a lovely girl you havel” She was a jolly person with a wide, jolly face, and she batted her eyes from time to time, which somehow gave her an air of vague and intermittent wonder.
Helen turned to her with a cheerful smile. “Yes, it is nice, isn’t it? But actually, you see, it’s not my doing. You see, Peyton and Milton planned it all. I just stood by and took care of some of the little details.”
“Oh, dear Helen, that’s a storyteller!” She reared back and laughed, displaying on her chest a mosaic of sunny freckles which cascaded down into the vast privacy of her bosom. “Oh, dear Helen.” She paused. “Charlie says Peyton’s going to Sweet Briar next month.”
“Yes.” She wished the woman would go away. She wished she herself might leave. The club, the noise, the music, as they always did, filled her with anxiety. What? Where? She was feeling a bit dizzy, very tired. Dr. Holcomb: he says I mustn’t strain myself like this. The word thrombosis made a resonant “gong,” like a threatful bell, in her mind. If I should get a thrombosis—Gong!
“That’s so nice,” Mrs. La Farge was saying. “I played on the hockey team at Hollins. The year we played Sweet Briar——”
Helen was nodding, smiling, saying “yes,” spacing these nods politely, and her eyes, she knew, were bright with interest. But she wasn’t listening.
What? Where?
It would soon be twilight. There would be the birthday dinner and, afterward, more dancing and maybe swimming. She felt sick; heat rose oppressively from the flooring—huge, moist, asthmatic. There were sailboats on the river. A luminous glow brightened the calm; the sailboats, motionless, seemed to rest on quicksilver. At this moment a shadow rushed down the grassy slope; offshore, the river took on a chill dusky hue as the cloud passed over. The sailboats tilted. Sails belled out like wings but then collapsed desolately, all at once. Afternoon light returned to the terrace, insistent and humid, with the promise of rain. Milton and Dolly were dancing again. And Melvin dancing now with Peyton. Taffeta and silk and marquisette swirled about her and eight notes of music exploded from a trumpet, splintering the air—boogie me, mama—a boy’s voice croaked and laughter, all young, all happy, settled around her in chill dwindling waves.
“We haven’t decided—” Mrs. La Farge’s breast heaved, shuddered; the sequins on her dress blinked like eyes—“decided … decided. Charlie’s so young yet … he’s such a steady, sober boy … V.P.I. most likely.”
Milton and Dolly. They are not deceiving me. Dr. Holcomb said emotional disturbances past forty can cause physical complications, the menopause, you see, makes severe demands, hormonic readjustment. Estro—
genic. That was the word.
Oh! it was a brutal thing. She lit a cigarette absently, forgetting Mrs. La Farge. “I’m sorry,” she said, smiling, offering her one from a case, but Mrs. La Farge said, “No, thank you, dear, I never touch the things. We’ve abstained for Charlie’s sake, both of us, Chet and I, because——”
Because——
Oh! it was a brutal thing. Because for six years it had been like this: Milton and that woman were having an affair. She knew. And did they expect her not to know? Just to be able to tell …
And what would she say? How?
“Mrs. La Farge, listen,” she might say, “I’ve not wanted to tell anyone because—because I have children, too, and you know—Listen, Mrs. La Farge, this has come to a head finally. Milton and Dolly Bonner. You might not have noticed. But I—it’s a matter of divorce. Yes, you mustn’t look so shocked, really. No, it’s come to a head.”
And then she might say—
“Oh, if you’d known the brutal things I’ve borne these years. Were you at the Lenharts’ party Christmas two years ago? Yes, you were, weren’t you? Yes, I saw, though you might not have. The way their hands met and the kisses, all in fun. It didn’t matter that it was all in fun. I saw.
“I think they’ve met, too, in other places. I haven’t any proof, but I’m sure …
“Were you at the Paiges’ dance last year? In the vestibule I saw them, making their dirty plans. I know, and their eyes shining and the way their hands met there …”
But I shall never tell.
Mrs. La Farge giggled. “Oh, there’s Chester. I’ll have to go dance.” She heaved herself up. “See you later, dear.” Helen was alone. The horizon was full of black clouds, distant grumblings. Twilight was coming on. She felt sick, alone; no one since that pimpled boy had asked her to dance.
A frantic vision appeared to her, mingled all of a sudden with the music, the laughter, the day that seemed to be perishing with a gray and vanquished light all over the lawn: in bed at home, enfolded by darkness, she awoke to the sound of his footsteps. He stood by her bed, as he always did, looking down at her: Helen, Helen, this stuff just can’t last—with his cool, facetious little laugh—I thought things were working out again.
I feel bad, she said, thinking: I saw, I saw them both then, yearning. The way their hands met there …
I feel bad.
And thinking: Oh I want to love him. I do. Again.
He left her without a sound. And as he left, in this familiar reverie, so real, yet somehow airy and strange, she collapsed back into bed, or rather into absolute darkness, knowing that by one word—Yes or Forgive or Love—she might have affirmed all, released all of the false and vengeful and troubling demons right up into the encompassing air of night, and everything would be right again. But she fell back into darkness, the door closed, sealing off the rectangle of light which had intruded for a moment into the room, her home, sealing off indeed all intrusions so that now, dreamful, drowsing, yearning desperately for sleep, she thought of the old Army days, the distant, shrouding sound of trumpets on a parade ground long ago, and her father’s uniform, consoling just to touch, while longing in an endless sort of drowsiness to be surrounded by those strong and constant arms.
She looked up.
Peyton hurried toward her in a rustle of blue silk, sixteen, smiling.
“Mother,
Mother, don’t be a dope. Come on, dance.”
“What are you drinking?”
Blushing, Peyton looked downward. “Why, just punch, Mother.”
“Come with me.”
Peyton followed obediently and together they pushed through the crowd of boys and girls, through the smell of perfume, gay shouts of “Happy Birthday!” And in the powder room the colored girl, sensing something ominous, white folks’ trouble, left discreetly.
Helen turned. “Give me that glass.” She took a sip. Whisky. She wheeled about, poured it down a toilet.
“Your father gave that to you, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Peyton said meekly. “He said that for my birthday——” She was beautiful, she was young, and these two things together caused Helen the bitterest anguish.
“I won’t have it,” she said. “I’ve seen your father ruin himself with liquor and I won’t have it. Do you understand?”
Peyton looked at her. “Mother——” she began.
“Shut up. I won’t have it. Get your things. I’m going to take you home.”
For a moment Peyton was silent. Then she raised her eyes, gave her hair a wild, outraged toss. “I despise you!” she said, and was gone.
Flushed, trembling, Helen returned to the terrace. Milton smiled at her gaily. She turned away. A cloud scudded over the lawn, darkening the day like a shuttered room. Wind shook in the trees around the terrace, rustling the young girls’ hair, expiring with a tender sigh as the day returned in a rush of light: the shadow swept down the lawn, vaulted the swimming pool, vanished. Below, in a patch of sunlight, she saw a familiar figure.
Oh, Maudie dear.
Down the slope she hurried, holding her gown up. Maudie sat alone in a chair near the pool, eating an ice-cream cone, glittering braced leg outstretched before her as she gazed impassively out at the river and the approaching storm. Helen drew near her, bent down and looked into her face, saying, “Come on, dear. Come with me. We’re going home now.”