And Helen told him how she had gone upstairs with Maudie that night. She had turned brusquely and left the room holding Maudie’s arm and feeling Peyton’s and Milton’s silence and their bewilderment, like a sheet of fabric laid upended in the partitioning doorway, almost palpable, motionless at her back. Upstairs she had examined Maudie’s leg: there was a small greenish-blue welt below the knee where she had slipped against the newel post. Maudie giggled, as if she had no bruise at all.
It was then, bending over Maudie as she lay on her bed, that the shameful phrase occurred to Helen: not inadvertent, not inadvertent. The bruise was very small, and she had got out a poultice and iodine from the medicine cabinet, along with some aspirin, and perhaps it was this that further upset her—the dismal accretion of bottles and bandages around Maudie on the bedspread. Self-imposed, through some compulsion she had acquired over the years—this way she had of magnifying all out of proportion Maudie’s tiniest hurts and ills—now her enormous solicitude sought not only a cure but, in a sort of panic, someone to blame for this bruise. Of course. Again Peyton, whom she had momentarily forgotten. And she had said to herself not inadvertent, not inadvertent, and elaborating upon it as she salved the bruise with boric acid ointment: She by heaven was just going to show her independence, the little devil. Perhaps it wasn’t intentional, but it was not inadvertent, and here she drew a fine distinction between the two by assuming something that, even as it darted across her consciousness, she knew was vicious and false: that Peyton might not have planned to let Maudie fall, but by some subconscious process let her fall anyway, for revenge, or to show her independence, or something. But instantly she thought No, no, oh, no, and in order to distract herself from this thought (which by definition, she told Carey, implied she had been a rotten and cruel mother to Peyton) she hurried to the bathroom and with a great deal of trembling soaked cotton in hot water for Maudie’s bruise. Then she remembered that there was no need for hot water, the salve had already been put on, and so with a swift motion she threw the wad of cotton into the toilet, watched it spread and expand, and stood beneath the cruel, revealing bathroom lights gazing at herself in the mirror, the fading prettiness, and thought Somehow I cannot concentrate.
Oh, yes.
So then her mind was mostly blank. She walked back to the bed and undressed Maudie and put the brace in the corner and, after kissing her, slipped out and shut the door. She went to her own room and locked herself in. There was a strong chemical smell in here, and a heavy stuffiness, she remembered: she had sprayed Flit in the room just before supper, for now toward the end of summer the mosquitoes were active and venomous. She had watched them approach and had been prepared, patching up screens herself, arming the house with spray guns. The mosquitoes were big and brown, as big as mulberries, and they came in clouds at sundown, swarming out of the inlets and pools along the shore as if in one last onslaught before the advent of that deathly season already hinted at in chill, tentative winds, a subtle browning in the marshes. She snapped on a light and, holding her breath for a moment, threw up all the windows and then took off her clothes and slipped into a nightgown. Then she rubbed cold cream on her face, put up her hair, and got into bed. She lighted a cigarette and set the ashtray beside her on the coverlet.
All this time—it was odd, she told Carey—all this time she had been pressing back in her mind the confusion of the last hour, and it wasn’t until she had pulled the coverlet over her and had arranged herself against the pillows, settling a copy of Good Housekeeping in her lap, that she realized what strain the effort to not think had caused her, and how tense she was: she could hardly read the magazine, it was shaking so. She put the magazine down: for minutes she had been gazing vacantly at a colored advertisement of hamburgers soaking in a repulsive red sauce, and it occurred to her that it was making her ill. And then—again it was so odd, she said—her next thought was this: that she had been behaving remarkably well, with dignity; recalling the events of the past few minutes, she believed she had been properly curt and distant with Milton when, at the bottom of the stairs, she had told him she would have to stay here tomorrow. All this, while she lay there in bed trembling, passed through her mind in a warm, satisfying wave, with the pleasant tingle that the remembrance of small triumphs lends to reflection. It was so odd, and indeed, hadn’t this devil, or whoever he was, perhaps disguised himself in order to make her think such a vain mean thought? Although invisible, cleverly off-stage, wasn’t he prodding her just the same? Nonetheless, she felt most satisfied.
And then (this, she said, she had pondered ever since and still had no explanation: maybe Carey would) then it was as if everything that had happened during the evening had come into focus, as if in the seesawing of her crazy moods she had slowly teetered and risen and fallen and had finally stopped, so that for one instant—did she have a fever?—all her thoughts rested at precise, unhurried equilibrium. She raised her hand to her brow, withdrew fingers watery with sweat; a pervasive scent like naphtha hovered in the air, and she sat stiffly upright in bed, scattering cigarettes, matches, ashes.
And thought: They don’t think I was properly distant, dignified or anything. They just think I’m queer. And thought, thrusting her face into her hands: God help me please, I’m going crazy.
There it was: the suspicion tangible and outrageous and, for the moment, hardly to be denied. What could she do? She looked around her: at the familiar yellow-capsuled nembutal in a bottle on her dresser; she gave the bottle short, casual consideration: ten, maybe fifteen of those would fix things up forever—but the thought passed quickly from her mind. She wanted to scream but … how silly. And just as these notions fled through her consciousness, so, she remembered, the whole idea of insanity was forgotten as too difficult and too gross a thing to contemplate for more than an instant, and with a sigh she stretched out her hot legs so that sheet and coverlet enveloped her body in a soundless rush of air, like a tent collapsing. She lay silent for a while with her eyes closed and then, for no apparent reason at all, arose and walked barefoot to the window. Now for a moment she felt, as she put it, “normal.” Most likely it was the fresh air, clearing her mind, but as she sat in a chair by the window the sweating and the trembling vanished. Below she heard music from the radio and laughter from Milton, vacant and loud and carefree, as if nothing had happened at all. Leaning forward with her elbows on the windowsill, she cupped her chin in her hands and looked down at the garden and the bay. Perhaps now, upon reflection, it was only the season that had made her unhappy: this tail end of summer, the September midpassage when the year seems sallow and emaciated like a worn-out, middle-aged countrywoman pausing for breath, and all the leaves are mildly, unsatisfactorily green. Everything then is waiting, expecting, and there is something in the air that promises smoke and burning and dissolution. One’s flowers bloom gaily for a while, but September is a quick, hectic month, bearing on the air seeds for burial, and making people feel tired and a little frantic, as in a station just before the train pulls out. But it was lovely, too; it had its loveliness. Night had come, but over the sky was spread a pale-gray afterglow in which the evening star, rising over the bay, rested like a solitary gem on a sea of smoke; the earth below exhaled an odor of grass and flowers, the mimosas were shaking in the wind. Beyond these and the willows at the edge of the water, dark ships were passing slowly out to sea. War. And again a wind, faintly chill, pressed against her cheek, bringing an odor of salt and the cool imminence of fall, and huge mosquitoes, tapping futilely at the window. She blew softly against the screen. The mosquitoes darted up and outward against the sky and returned, settling heavily in the dying wind. A branch fell to the ground, leaves scuttled across the driveway and became silent all at once, an army felled in its tracks. Noise from the radio ceased, the sleazy female voice strangled in mid-note as if it, too, had perished on the wind’s last dissolving sigh, and in the silence she thought of her imprisonment, her banishment.
The moon rose hot and orange, outlinin
g the flower bed, serpentine and shadowy with nodding blooms, dark willows and, beneath the mimosa tree, two forms—Peyton and a boy. Helen leaned forward, watching. They approached each other and kissed, and the wind must have rustled in the branches once more, for there was a wild, long whisper and leaves fluttered down around them like the wings of birds.
“Good-by, Peyton.”
“Good-by.”
“Come back, Peyton. Come back soon.”
“Someday.”
“Good-by … good-by … good-by.”
She turned away, again filled with unfocused anger. She went to bed and, face downward in a pillow, tried to pray—not for guidance, which seemed too vague and elementary, but rather that God please simply give her the logic to direct blame in the proper direction, for her own fear and anger: Dear Lord, I can’t hate my own husband; dear Lord, I can’t hate Peyton, my own flesh and blood—but she felt that something was wrong: as usual, her prayers seemed to be on a one-way line to heaven, and so, her ardor spent, she took two nembutals and finally sank into sleep, dreaming Good-by, good-by to the shadow-silhouette, the woman who flickered and vanished—while white blooms floated earthward, and through these she seemed to be bearing a letter: but to whom? She bent down close to see, saw marigolds, nasturtiums, poppies, shameful-red, and three black hairs which spelled out across her garden: SIN. She turned, frightened, but Milton said: “Here, baby, I’ll mail it for you,” and was gone with Peyton who walked in shorts beside him and held before her hips, as round as moons, the hat, a flowered crucible. “Good-by, good-by,” she tried to say, but both of them were in the sailboat with Dolly Bonner, borne in a dark squall with sails awash, hurricane-swift far out to sea. A torrent of leaves filled the air, torn like feathers on a blast of wind past the house, garage, all reckoning, but there was a thump and the wind subsided: Milton with a smile reappeared in the garden soaked to the skin, pounding on a tree with her trowel: “Helen!” he shouted. “Helen, Helen!”
She awoke. Milton was knocking on the door. “All right,” she called weakly, “all right. Just a minute.” She climbed from bed and walked to the door, unlocking it.
“My God,” he said. “What happened? I thought you’d fallen or something and knocked yourself out. How’s Maudie?”
“All right,” she said.
“You’re all sweating, honey.”
Standing there in the doorway. The two of them. Carey could see it all: the one shirtsleeved and fleshy, suntanned from a summer of golf, even now breathing a faint, pulpy odor of whisky as he looked with puzzled apprehension at the other, who was no longer overwhelming, but merely drugged and sick. Distantly, breakers swept up over the beach with a prolonged waaas-h, fell back silently into the night. And she was holding his hand, in a rare, voluntary caress touching him, trying through waves of nembutal to shake off fragments of dreams, gusts of wind, remembered rain, saying: “Milton, you musn’t be unfaithful to me.”
In a tone, most likely, that would unsettle any man.
And before he could reply, she went on in a flat monotone: “Everything’s breaking up. If it takes all the strength I’ve got I’m going to see that we all stay together. Milton—” and she stroked his hand, which must have further surprised him—“I know what you’ve been up to and I’m not going to let it go on. ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder’ “—a phrase recollected from the fathomless past, most inopportune at this point, Carey judged: that old litany of innocence which men forget and which women remember with the clarity of a nursery rhyme.
Then Loftis said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know.”
“What do you mean?”
“That woman.”
He flushed, wheeled abruptly—“Oh, the hell with you anyway—” and walked down the hall. At the head of the stairs he turned. “The goddam hell with you anyway!” Then he was gone.
It occurred to her then that although he had been rude before, and had used foul words, he had never sworn at her. Never. Well, no matter. She sat by Maudie’s bed for a long time, thinking. Maudie slept soundly. At ten o’clock the churchbell rang and she went into her own room and got into bed. Still a little later, as she lay there alone—determined to feign sleep when Milton came to bed—she heard footsteps on the stairs. She rose up on her elbow. “Peyton,” she said aloud, “Peyton dear.” But her voice was not loud enough; she had made the gesture at least, which, in the light of Milton’s nastiness, was perhaps, she thought, of no matter either.
And this finally (the events thereafter, foreshortened, lacking detail, seemed confused, and Carey filled in the rest): sleeping in the morning, long after Milton and Peyton had gone, she heard children’s voices breaking in upon her dreams like the chatter of remote, unknown birds, but loud, somehow appalling, and she awoke in fright. But it was just the sound of children after all: far off, laughter and the noise that bicycles make fading down a gravel road—and she sank back again with a sort of relief and gazed blinking through the clear oriole light at Milton’s bed, gritty sand on the sheets: he hadn’t washed his feet. After taking a Bromo-Seltzer to clear her head, she dressed Maudie, fixed breakfast, and then Ella came. Finally—it was ten o’clock by now—she made the telephone call, reflecting briefly in the process upon how calm and sure she was.
“Hello.” (Helen knew the voice, which was lucky. To have to say, “Is this Dolly Bonner?” would be a forced betrayal of intimacy which, no matter how slight, she didn’t want.)
“This is Helen Loftis. How are you?” And without waiting—“I wonder if you could meet me at the Bide-A-Wee at noon. I want to discuss something with you.”
“Well, no, I really don’t think—” The voice was more than hesitant: instantly shocked, defensive and afraid.
Helen broke in. “It’s very urgent. I have to insist——” How formal!
“But no——”
“Then it’ll have to be sometime else.” Very decisively—the gauntlet thrown down. “Today would suit me best if you’ve got no other plans.”
“I have to go to a——” Squirming.
“Then what day then?”
“All right, then. All right. The Bide-A-Wee?”
“Yes. I think—I think it’ll be in both our interests.”
“All right. Good-by.”
“All right. Good-by.”
So already she had frightened her. If nothing else, she had done that, gained an initial advantage, and she felt equipped to do battle. At eleven-thirty she instructed Ella about Maudie’s lunch and then took a bus into town, to the Bide-A-Wee Tea Room.
By noontime a broiling heat had fallen over the town, and at the tearoom she took a seat in a secluded corner, beneath an electric fan which like a monstrous black flower turned its face from the wall in drowsy half-circles, dispensing puny hot puffs of air. From a distance the shipyard whistle broke the midday quiet, heralding the arrival of the office men who soon came singly or in pairs, wiping their necks with white handkerchiefs—“Je-sus, don’t this beat them all?” But Dolly hadn’t come and so she merely sat there, a little fearful that some man might recognize her, and draw certain conclusions when Dolly arrived. They knew about Milton and Dolly. They knew. Or did they? Men … An enormous Negro woman brought her water in a glass, with which she printed wet circles on a tissue doily. At last she arose, prepared to leave, but from the hallway, in the mirror of a walnut hatrack, she saw Dolly open the screen door and stand looking around, warm and unhappy. Helen smiled a little and beckoned, and Dolly came over and sat down, averting her eyes, with an apology and a guarded remark about the heat. The waitress appeared with typed menus, mopping her brow.
“What’ll you have, my dear?” said Helen.
“Well, really. I’m not hungry,” Dolly said, smiling uneasily. “Just some iced tea, I guess.”
“Well, heavens, you have to eat,” Helen said lightly, “especially in the summer. I’ve heard that a person loses so much that—waitress, I’ll have the s
almon croquettes and tea—that—what I mean is—” looking up—“you perspire so much, you see, that you have to eat to counteract that—the loss. Of course, that’s only one theory.”
“Yes,” Dolly replied, gazing around in misery, “this sure is some day.”
The waitress bent over. “You don’t want nothin’ else, ma’am?”
“No,” Dolly said, “no.”
“And how’s your committee?” Helen went on. “I haven’t been to the garden club in ages. I’m afraid——”
“Oh, fine. Oh, just fine.”
By one o’clock they had neared the end of their road of mutual interest, and the byways had been fully explored; Helen, doing most of the talking, thought pleasantly of her particular hatred for this woman. Furthermore, she felt already victorious, deliciously regal: she could administer the coup de grâce at any time, and without the degrading preliminaries. She was hot now, but vaguely excited. She reflected that in the years she had known Dolly, no matter how casually and with what hidden suspicion, it had always been this way, more or less. There are people for whom, when you see them after a long time, you begin to hoard up mentally all of the stray scraps of information which you know might be of common concern, for after these are used up there is nothing left to talk about, and then in-evitably the person will drive you to distraction. Such was Dolly, although now she didn’t seem to be prepared to say anything at all—being fearfully ill-at-ease—and Helen, in mid-sentence, looked around her, watching the men drift out one by one, satiated, drowsy, scratching themselves, leaving behind in the room the fragile blue scent of cigars. She and Dolly were alone. The traffic, quieted during the lunch hour, began to flow again sluggishly up the street. She lit a cigarette.
“Oh,” she was saying. “I remember Ellen Davison, she was the one whose husband left her, the Navy person, and it caused her all sorts of trouble. No one would speak to her. Well, she was truly a horrible person and you just might guess what it did to his career.”