“Well,” said Elizabeth. “How’s your family?
“Fine. How’s yours.”
“Oh, fine.”
“Is there somewhere we could sit and talk?” Matthew asked.
She scratched her head. Then Mr. Cunningham rescued her. Her name creaked down the stairs: “Elizabeth? Elizabeth?”
“I have to go,” she said. “He worries if I’m not there.”
“Could I come with you?”
“Maybe you could just meet me somewhere after work.”
“I’d rather stay,” Matthew said. “I took a summer and seven hours getting here, I’m not going to lose track of you again.”
“Well, for goodness sake. Do you think I would just run off?”
Apparently he did. He only waited, blank-faced, until she said, “Oh, all right,” and turned to lead him up the stairs.
Mr. Cunningham lay motionless in his bed. He was nothing but shades of white—white hair and white pajamas, pale skin, white sheets—so pure and stark that Elizabeth felt happy to see him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cunningham,” she said.
“I called and called.”
“Here I am. Come in, Matthew. This is Mr. Cunningham.”
“How do, Mr. Cunningham,” the old man said.
“No, this is Matthew Emerson. You’re Mr. Cunningham.”
“Well, I knew that.” He raised his chin, sharply. “I thought you were pointing out another Cunningham. The name’s not all that singular.”
“You’re right,” Elizabeth said.
“I’m glad to meet you,” Matthew said.
Mr. Cunningham frowned at him. “Are you any kin?”
“Kin? To whom? No.”
“To me.”
“No.”
“Do I look like a man that would forget his own name?”
“No, you don’t,” said Matthew.
“I keep in pretty good touch, for my age. I’ll be eighty-seven in November.”
“That’s amazing.”
Mr. Cunningham turned his face away, irritably, as if something in Matthew’s reply had disappointed him. “I’d like more water,” he told Elizabeth.
“All right.”
“Believe you salted that egg too much.”
She poured the water and helped him raise his head to drink it. When he was finished she wiped a dribble off his chin. “I’ll just raise the shade now,” she told him.
“What’s it down for?”
“You were asleep.”
“You thought I was asleep.”
She rolled the shade up. Sunlight poured into the room. When she turned back, Matthew had settled himself on the cane chair at the foot of the bed and was watching her. She had forgotten how open his face looked when he was staring at something steadily. Other people, returning from the past, could make her wonder what she had seen in them; with Matthew, she knew what she had seen. It was still there, even if it didn’t reach out to her any more. He studied her gently, from a distance, puzzling over something in his mind but not troubling her with questions. All he said was, “I never expected to see you in this kind of job.”
“This here is a very good nurse,” Mr. Cunningham said.
“Yes, but—”
“When I’m well we’re going on a trip together. Get Abigail to arrange that, will you?” he said to Elizabeth. “Maybe Luray Caverns.”
“All right,” she said. There was no telling who Abigail was. She bent close to his ear, so that a wisp of his silvery hair feathered her lips. “Mr. Cunningham,” she whispered, careful of his dignity. “Would you like to go to the—”
“Later, later,” he said, with his eyes on Matthew. “I can hold out. I have a guest. Hand me my teeth.”
She passed him the glass. He dabbled in the water a minute with shaky fingers, but he didn’t take the teeth out. Maybe he thought he did; he rearranged his lips and gave her back the glass. “Now then,” he said. “Just imagine, a relation I didn’t even know about. How’s your family, boy?”
“Mr. Cunningham,” said Matthew, “I’m not—”
“Family all right?”
“Yes, fine,” Matthew said.
“Parents okay?”
“Oh, yes.”
Mr. Cunningham looked at him a minute, and then he gave a cross little laugh. “You ain’t exactly colorful, are you?” he said. “Are you shy? What grade you in, anyhow?”
Matthew threw a quick glance at Elizabeth—asking for help, maybe, or wondering how soon he could get out of this.
“Matthew is a grownup, Mr. Cunningham,” she said.
“Is that so. Why? How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” said Matthew.
“That all you are? Call that grown up? The real growing up is between twenty and thirty. That’s what I meant. I knew you weren’t no child.” He hugged himself suddenly, as if he were cold. “How’s that pretty aunt of yours doing?” he asked.
“Uh, fine.”
“She should take better care of herself,” Mr. Cunningham said.
“I’ll tell her that.”
“Summer or no summer. Those skimpy little bathing suits are ruining the nation’s health. You can get pneumonia in August, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” Matthew said.
“Quick summer pneumonia, they call it. Now who did I—? Yes. Took my little brother when he was two. Not a thing they knew could save him. How old would he be today, I wonder? What was his name?”
He was about to start fretting over his memory again, Elizabeth thought. She leaned forward, but before she could change the subject he shook his head. “It don’t matter anyway,” he said. “He’d be an old man. What’s the difference? I want a piece of whole-wheat toast, Elizabeth.”
She had been hoping he would go on forever, wearing Matthew down till he left without saying what he had come for. So she tried not answering (he might forget) but Mr. Cunningham gave her a sharp look from beneath his pleated lids. “Toast,” he said.
“Buttered?”
“Dry, just dry. I want things back to simple.”
She nodded and left, and Matthew followed just as she had known he would. “You could stay here, if you like,” she told him.
He didn’t bothering answering that.
. . .
In the kitchen he said, “Where are your blue jeans?”
“Mr. Cunningham doesn’t like women in pants,” she told him. She heaved a cat off the breadbox.
“You look so different.”
She concentrated on making toast, plugging the toaster in and emptying its crumb tray and carefully rolling the cellophane bag after she had taken out a slice of bread. Matthew sat down in a kitchen chair. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked him.
“Everything about you has changed. I don’t understand it. There’s something muffled about you.”
“Oh well, I’m taking care of a very old man,” she said.
“Elizabeth.”
She jammed the toaster lever down.
“Look, this is such a waste,” Matthew said. “What are you doing in this hot little house?”
“I like being here,” Elizabeth said. “I like Mr. Cunningham. I’m going to miss him when I leave for school.”
“For school. You’re not coming back with me, then.”
“No,” said Elizabeth.
“Well, I knew that when I came, I guess. But I thought—and I never expected to see you like this.”
“Like what?”
“You’re so changed.”
“You said that,” Elizabeth told him.
He was quiet a moment, looking down at his hands. “Well, I didn’t want to fight about it,” he said finally.
“Who’s fighting?”
“I came to get things straightened out. I didn’t know what to think, way off in Baltimore. You weren’t much help. You don’t say what you feel, you never say what you feel.” He looked up, sending her one sudden spark of anger. “Why is it that sometimes the things I like most about you ma
ke me dislike you?”
“Oh, well, don’t let it bother you,” Elizabeth said. “Other people have told me that.”
What she liked best about him was that slow, careful way of doing things—tracing the rim of a plate, now, stilling his hand when she laid the toast down. He had treated people just as carefully. He had never crowded her in any way. Watching her once in an argument with his mother, he had held back from protecting either one of them, although she had seen him lean forward slightly and start to speak before he caught himself. She could remember that moment clearly, along with the sudden ache of love that had made her stop in mid-sentence to turn to him, open-mouthed. Now the only feeling she had was tiredness. She sat down in the chair opposite him and set her hands on the table.
“I know I should have written again,” she said.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t on purpose. I just seemed to be going through some laziness of mind.”
“Try now, then,” Matthew said. “Tell me why you left.”
She didn’t look at him. She waited till the words had formed themselves, and then she said, “That day with Timothy—” Then she raised her eyes, and she saw the fear that jumped into his face. What she had planned to tell him, relieving herself of a burden, was going to weigh him down. She changed directions, without seeming to. “That day after Timothy died,” she said, “I stopped feeling comfortable there. I felt just bruised, as if I’d made a mess of things.” She kept her eyes on his, to see if he understood. “Everything I’d been happy about before,” she said, “seemed silly and pathetic.”
“Do you mean me?”
“Well, yes.”
“Did you stop loving me?”
“Yes.”
“And you aren’t the type who’d just say that. Just as some kind of sacrifice to make up for, for anything that might have happened.”
“No, I’m not,” Elizabeth said.
Matthew sat back.
“I should have said it in that letter, I know,” she said. “Only I was trying to do it roundabout, and ended up making a bigger mess than ever.”
“Don’t you think you could change?” Matthew said.
“I know I won’t,” she said. “It’s permanent. I’m sorry.”
Then she was just anxious to have him go, to get the last little dangling threads tucked away. She watched him gather himself together too slowly, rise too slowly, scratch his head. There were things she wanted to ask him—Would he drive all the way back now? Was he angry? Was he all right? Even when she didn’t love him, he could still cause a stab of worry and concern. But questions would prolong his going; she didn’t want that. “I’ll see you to the door,” she said, and she walked very fast out to the hallway.
“I can find my way.”
“No, I want to.”
When they reached the screen door she went out first and held it wide open for him. He stopped on the braided mat to shake her hand. He held it formally, as if they were just meeting, but she couldn’t see his expression because the light was reflected off his glasses. They shone like liquid, the plastic rims pinkish and dulled with fingerprints. “Well,” he said, “I hope school goes all right.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you really going to school?”
“Well, of course.”
“I can picture you not ever getting out of here,” he said, and he gave her another long, stunned look so that she was suddenly conscious of her wrinkled denim skirt and the prison pallor of her skin. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime. Do you think so?”
“Maybe.”
“And if you ever change your mind,” he said, “or see things in a new light—”
“Okay.”
“I won’t have married anyone else.”
She smiled, and nodded, and waved him down the walk, but she could picture him married to someone else as clearly as if it had already happened. She saw his life as a piece of strong twine, with his mother and his brothers and sisters knotting their tangled threads into every twist of it and his wife another thread, linked to him and to all his family by long, frayed ropes.
Elizabeth never did go back to school. By September Mr. Cunningham was much worse, and he cried when he heard she was leaving and clung to her hands. She stayed on. She failed him more every day in their battle against the enemy. Then a year and a half later he died, on a weekend so that she wasn’t even with him. The last thing he asked, Mrs. Stimson said, was where Elizabeth was.
But she heard no more from Matthew. He never wrote her again.
9
1963
The trouble began on a Sunday morning in June. Margaret woke early, before her husband. She lay in bed feeling pleasantly hungry but too lazy to do anything about it, and she spent some time making pictures out of a complicated crack in the ceiling while she tried to remember a dream she had had. None of it came back to her. Only vague sensations—the smell of parsley in a brown paper bag, the feel of some rough fabric against her cheek. Then the crack in the ceiling dimmed, and she found herself looking directly into the face of her first husband. He was laughing at something she had just said. His black eyes were narrowed and sparkling; his mouth was open, lengthening his pointed chin. He had the carelessly put together look that is often found in very young boys. While she watched he stopped laughing and grew serious, but deliberately, exaggerating the effort, making a mockery of it, as if the laughter were still bubbling within him. He pretended to frown. All she saw in his eyes was love.
She buried her face in her pillow and started crying. Beside her, Brady stirred, and a minute later he had propped himself on one elbow and was trying to turn her over. “Margaret? Margaret?” he said. She kept her face in the pillow. She cried on and on, while Brady first asked questions and then watched helplessly. When her tears seemed to be used up, she stopped. She sat against the headboard and brushed away the damp hair that was plastered to her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”
“You don’t know? You’ve been crying for a quarter of an hour.”
“It must have been a bad dream,” Margaret said.
She watched him pacing the bedroom in his striped pajamas—a big, square, red-headed man with a kind face that screwed up into question marks when he was puzzled. In the sunlight, his hair turned orange and his eyelashes were white. He laid a hand on her forehead. “You sure you feel all right,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“I think you have a fever.”
“That’s just from crying,” Margaret said. Then she reached for a Kleenex and got up to fix Sunday breakfast.
He kept a close eye on her all that day, and every time she caught him looking at her she smiled. By evening he seemed satisfied that she was all right again. He might have forgotten all about it, if it weren’t that from then on—every two or three days, just when neither of them were expecting it—the tears returned. She would be breaking an egg into a frying pan, and all of a sudden her face would crumple and she would sink into the nearest chair. “Margaret?” Brady said. “Honey? What’s wrong?” She never told him. She didn’t know what was wrong. Why should Jimmy Joe come back like this? (Even his name seemed unrelated to her.) Why just now, when she was finally settled and happy and in love with someone who loved her back? She kept picturing Jimmy Joe’s ducktail haircut, and the baggy, gray delivery coat he had worn the first time they met. Pieces of their apartment would suddenly appear before her—a dusty basement room in which they had lived out the five weeks of their marriage. Antimacassars on the sagging chairs, red checked oilcloth thumbtacked to the table. Turning the page of a book, she would see instead Jimmy Joe’s bony, childish hands, with the nails bitten and the shiny new wedding ring much too loose once it got past the bulge of his knuckle. She ate breakfast staring blurrily at the sugarbowl, which had turned into the music box he brought her in a Kresge bag the night that they eloped. Subway wheels spun out the sound of his reedy voice, mocking lady cu
stomers, asking Little Moron riddles, telling her he loved her. “Honey? Honey?” Brady said. She looked at him from a distance, unable to remember for a moment what he had to do with her.
She gave him lists of reasons to explain away the tears. She had a headache. She had her period. She must be coming down with something. Brady didn’t listen. He watched her constantly, wearing on her nerves until she snapped at him, which made her feel terrible and then she started crying all over again for a different reason. If she said what was in her mind, he would think she had stopped loving him. She kept it to herself. She began watching him as closely as he watched her. They were so careful of each other, so quick to protect each other, that even while she slept Margaret was conscious of a tense alertness arching between them in the dark. She would wake and reach toward his hand, or move to lay her head on his shoulder, and then stop herself. Let him sleep. One touch and he would spring awake, asking, “Are you all right? Are you happy?”
Over and over, Margaret’s mother clicked through a long-ago shaft of sunlight in the basement room. She wore a cream wool dress. She lifted an antimacassar to stare at it and then plunked it down again, lopsided. “Margaret darling,” she said, “I’m sure you think you’re in love. But you’re only children! If it were really love would you be doing things this way—hidey-corner, fly-by-night?” And Margaret was crumbling, particle by particle, inch by inch, while she waited for Jimmy Joe to make a stand for her. He didn’t. He never said a word. He sat on the arm of a chair with one sneaker propped on a radiator. His shoulders were hunched, his elbows were close to his sides, he chewed on a thumbnail and looked up at Mrs. Emerson beneath eyebrows that met in the middle. Other images—the music box, their dimestore goldfish, the pack of Marlboros by Jimmy Joe’s side of the bed—came and went fleetingly, sometimes no more than once. The scene with her mother returned, and remained, and left only to return again. Mrs. Emerson’s kid shoe prodded an issue of House Beautiful. Jimmy Joe chewed his thumbnail and did nothing, said nothing, allowed Margaret to be taken away from him and never saw her again.
“What you need is a trip somewhere,” Brady said. She started to disagree. Travel? When even in her own apartment she was feeling torn out by the roots? But then she saw his face, which was strained and tired. “You’re probably right,” she told him. They dragged out road maps and travel brochures and puzzled over where to go. No place looked just right. Finally they flew to California to visit friends, and they spent a week lying on beaches and smiling at each other too often. Brady got sunburned. His back peeled, his nose was bright pink, but there were still smudges beneath his eyes. And Margaret sat on a towel in a black bathing suit, her skin eternally a pasty white, and imagined Jimmy Joe stalking toward her across the sand. She began to feel angry; the anger was so strong it caused ripples in everything she looked at. Why was Jimmy Joe doing this to her? If he was going to hang around then why hadn’t he stuck up for her all those years ago, when she needed him? She could feel the hurt and the shock all over again; she could see her mother repacking her clothes while Margaret herself stood numbly by. “This we can just leave behind, I believe,” her mother said, and she lifted a black lace nightgown between thumb and forefinger and let it slip to the closet floor.