They were married the middle of June in a double-ring ceremony. I acted as an usher, and the Judge was Riley’s best man. Except for the Henderson sisters, all the bridesmaids were society girls Maude had known at the University; the Courier called them beautiful debutantes, a chivalrous description. The bride carried a bouquet of jasmine and lilac; the groom wore spats and stroked his mustache. They received a sumptuous table-load of gifts. I gave them six cakes of scented soap and an ashtray.
After the wedding I walked home with Verena under the shade of her black umbrella. It was a blistering day, heatwaves jiggled like a sound-graph of the celebrating Baptist bells, and the rest of summer, a vista rigid as the noon street, lengthened before me. Summer, another autumn, winter again: not a spiral, but a circle confined as the umbrella’s shadow. If I ever were to make the leap—with a heartskip, I made it. “Verena, I want to go away.”
We were at the garden gate; “I know. I do myself,” she said, closing her umbrella. “I’d hoped to make a trip with Dolly. I wanted to show her the ocean.” Verena had seemed a tall woman because of her authoritative carriage; now she stooped slightly, her head nodded. I wondered that I ever could have been so afraid of her, for she’d grown feminine, fearful, she spoke of prowlers, she burdened the doors with bolts and spiked the roof with lightning rods. It had been her custom the first of every month to stalk around collecting in person the various rents owed her; when she stopped doing this it caused an uneasiness in the town, people felt wrong without their rainy day. The women said she’s got no family, she’s lost without her sister; their husbands blamed Dr. Morris Ritz: he knocked the gumption out of her, they said; and, much as they had quarreled with Verena, held it against him. Three years ago, when I returned to this town, my first task was to sort the papers of the Talbo estate, and among Verena’s private possessions, her keys, her pictures of Maudie Laura Murphy, I found a postcard. It was dated two months after Dolly died, at Christmas, and it was from Paraguay: As we say down here, Feliz Navidad. Do you miss me? Morris. And I thought, reading it, of how her eyes had come permanently to have an uneven cast, an inward and agonized gaze, and I remembered how her eyes, watering in the brassy sunshine of Riley’s wedding day, had straightened with momentary hope: “It could be a long trip. I’ve considered selling a few—a few properties. We might take a boat; you’ve never seen the ocean.” I picked a sprig of honeysuckle from the vine flowering on the garden fence, and she watched me shred it as if I were pulling apart her vision, the voyage she saw for us. “Oh,” she brushed at the mole that spotted her cheek like a tear, “well,” she said in a practical voice, “what are your ambitions?”
So it was not until September that I called upon the Judge, and then it was to tell him good-bye. The suitcases were packed, Amos Legrand had cut my hair (“Honey, don’t you come back here baldheaded. What I mean is, they’ll try to scalp you up there, cheat you every way they can.”); I had a new suit and new shoes, gray fedora (“Aren’t you the cat’s pajamas, Mr. Collin Fenwick?” Mrs. County exclaimed. “A lawyer you’re going to be? And already dressed like one. No, child, I won’t kiss you. I’d be mortified to dirty your finery with my bakery mess. You write us, hear?”): that very evening a train would rock me northward, parade me through the land to a city where in my honor pennants flurried.
At Miss Bell’s they told me the Judge had gone out. I found him on the square, and it gave me a twinge to see him, a spruce sturdy figure with a Cherokee rose sprouting in his buttonhole, encamped among the old men who talk and spit and wait. He took my arm and led me away from them; and while he amiably advised me of his own days as a law student, we strolled past the church and out along the River Woods road. This road or this tree: I closed my eyes to fix their image, for I did not believe I would return, did not foresee that I would travel the road and dream the tree until they had drawn me back.
It was as though neither of us had known where we were headed. Quietly astonished, we surveyed the view from the cemetery hill, and arm in arm descended to the summer-burned, September-burnished field. A waterfall of color flowed across the dry and strumming leaves; and I wanted then for the Judge to hear what Dolly had told me: that it was a grass harp, gathering, telling, a harp of voices remembering a story. We listened.
A Tree of Night
and other stories
Master Misery
HER HIGH HEELS, CLACKING ACROSS the marble foyer, made her think of ice cubes rattling in a glass, and the flowers, those autumn chrysanthemums in the urn at the entrance, if touched they would shatter, splinter, she was sure, into frozen dust; yet the house was warm, even somewhat overheated, but cold, and Sylvia shivered, but cold, like the snowy swollen wastes of the secretary’s face: Miss Mozart, who dressed all in white, as though she were a nurse. Perhaps she really was; that, of course, could be the answer. Mr. Revercomb, you are mad, and this is your nurse; she thought about it for a moment: well, no. And now the butler brought her scarf. His beauty touched her: slender, so gentle, a Negro with freckled skin and reddish, unreflecting eyes. As he opened the door, Miss Mozart appeared, her starched uniform rustling dryly in the hall. “We hope you will return,” she said, and handed Sylvia a sealed envelope. “Mrs. Revercomb was most particularly pleased.”
Outside, dusk was falling like blue flakes, and Sylvia walked crosstown along the November streets until she reached the lonely upper reaches of Fifth Avenue. It occurred to her then that she might walk home through the park: an act of defiance almost, for Henry and Estelle, always insistent upon their city wisdom, had said over and again, Sylvia, you have no idea how dangerous it is, walking in the park after dark; look what happened to Myrtle Calisher. This isn’t Easton, honey. That was the other thing they said. And said. God, she was sick of it. Still, and aside from a few of the other typists at SnugFare, an underwear company for which she worked, who else in New York did she know? Oh, it would be all right if only she did not have to live with them, if she could afford somewhere a small room of her own; but there in that chintz-cramped apartment she sometimes felt she would choke them both. And why did she come to New York? For whatever reason, and it was indeed becoming vague, a principal cause of leaving Easton had been to rid herself of Henry and Estelle; or rather, their counterparts, though in point of fact Estelle was actually from Easton, a town north of Cincinnati. She and Sylvia had grown up together. The real trouble with Henry and Estelle was that they were so excruciatingly married. Nambypamby, bootsytotsy, and everything had a name: the telephone was Tinkling Tillie, the sofa, Our Nelle, the bed, Big Bear; yes, and what about those His-Her towels, those He-She pillows? Enough to drive you loony. “Loony!” she said aloud, the quiet park erasing her voice. It was lovely now, and she was right to have walked here, with wind moving through the leaves, and globe lamps, freshly aglow, kindling the chalk drawings of children, pink birds, blue arrows, green hearts. But suddenly, like a pair of obscene words, there appeared on the path two boys: pimple-faced, grinning, they loomed in the dusk like menacing flames, and Sylvia, passing them, felt a burning all through her, quite as though she’d brushed fire. They turned and followed her past a deserted playground, one of them bump-bumping a stick along an iron fence, the other whistling: these sounds accumulated around her like the gathering roar of an oncoming engine, and when one of the boys, with a laugh, called, “Hey, whatsa hurry?” her mouth twisted for breath. Don’t, she thought, thinking to throw down her purse and run. At that moment, a man walking a dog came up a sidepath, and she followed at his heels to the exit. Wouldn’t they feel gratified, Henry and Estelle, wouldn’t they we-told-you-so if she were to tell them? and, what is more, Estelle would write it home and the next thing you knew it would be all over Easton that she’d been raped in Central Park. She spent the rest of the way home despising New York: anonymity, its virtuous terror; and the squeaking drainpipe, all-night light, ceaseless footfall, subway corridor, numbered door (3C).
“Shh, honey,” Estelle said, sidling out of the kitchen, “Bootsy??
?s doing his homework.” Sure enough, Henry, a law student at Columbia, was hunched over his books in the living room, and Sylvia, at Estelle’s request, took off her shoes before tiptoeing through. Once inside her room, she threw herself on the bed and put her hands over her eyes. Had today really happened? Miss Mozart and Mr. Revercomb, were they really there in the tall house on Seventy-eighth Street?
“So, honey, what happened today?” Estelle had entered without knocking.
Sylvia sat up on her elbow. “Nothing. Except that I typed ninety-seven letters.”
“About what, honey?” asked Estelle, using Sylvia’s hairbrush.
“Oh, hell, what do you suppose? SnugFare, the shorts that safely support our leaders of Science and Industry.”
“Gee, honey, don’t sound so cross. I don’t know what’s wrong with you sometimes. You sound so cross. Ouch! Why don’t you get a new brush? This one’s just knotted with hair.…”
“Mostly yours.”
“What did you say?”
“Skip it.”
“Oh, I thought you said something. Anyway, like I was saying, I wish you didn’t have to go to that office and come home every day feeling cross and out of sorts. Personally, and I said this to Bootsy just last night and he agreed with me one hundred percent, I said, Bootsy, I think Sylvia ought to get married: a girl high-strung like that needs her tensions relaxed. There’s no earthly reason why you shouldn’t. I mean maybe you’re not pretty in the ordinary sense, but you have beautiful eyes, and an intelligent, really sincere look. In fact you’re the sort of girl any professional man would be lucky to get. And I should think you would want to … Look what a different person I am since I married Henry. Doesn’t it make you lonesome seeing how happy we are? I’m here to tell you, honey, that there is nothing like lying in bed at night with a man’s arms around you and …”
“Estelle! For Christ’s sake!” Sylvia sat bolt upright in bed, anger on her cheeks like rouge. But after a moment she bit her lip and lowered her eyelids. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to shout. Only I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”
“It’s all right,” said Estelle, smiling in a dumb, puzzled way. Then she went over and gave Sylvia a kiss. “I understand, honey. It’s just that you’re plain worn out. And I’ll bet you haven’t had anything to eat either. Come on in the kitchen and I’ll scramble you some eggs.”
When Estelle set the eggs before her, Sylvia felt quite ashamed; after all, Estelle was trying to be nice; and so then, as though to make it all up, she said: “Something did happen today.”
Estelle sat down across from her with a cup of coffee, and Sylvia went on: “I don’t know how to tell about it. It’s so odd. But—well, I had lunch at the Automat today, and I had to share the table with these three men. I might as well have been invisible because they talked about the most personal things. One of the men said his girl friend was going to have a baby and he didn’t know where he was going to get the money to do anything about it. So one of the other men asked him why didn’t he sell something. He said he didn’t have anything to sell. Whereupon the third man (he was rather delicate and didn’t look as if he belonged with the others) said yes, there was something he could sell: dreams. Even I laughed, but the man shook his head and said very seriously: no, it was perfectly true, his wife’s aunt, Miss Mozart, worked for a rich man who bought dreams, regular night-time dreams—from anybody. And he wrote down the man’s name and address and gave it to his friend; but the man simply left it lying on the table. It was too crazy for him, he said.”
“Me, too,” Estelle put in a little righteously.
“I don’t know,” said Sylvia, lighting a cigarette. “But I couldn’t get it out of my head. The name written on the paper was A. F. Revercomb and the address was on East Seventy-eighth Street. I only glanced at it for a moment, but it was … I don’t know, I couldn’t seem to forget it. It was beginning to give me a headache. So I left the office early …”
Slowly and with emphasis, Estelle put down her coffee cup. “Honey, listen, you don’t mean you went to see him, this Revercomb nut?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, immediately embarrassed. To try and tell about it she now realized was a mistake. Estelle had no imagination, she would never understand. So her eyes narrowed, the way they always did when she composed a lie. “And, as a matter of fact, I didn’t,” she said flatly. “I started to; but then I realized how silly it was, and went for a walk instead.”
“That was sensible of you,” said Estelle as she began stacking dishes in the kitchen sink. “Imagine what might have happened. Buying dreams! Whoever heard! Uh uh, honey, this sure isn’t Easton.”
Before retiring, Sylvia took a Seconal, something she seldom did; but she knew otherwise she would never rest, not with her mind so nimble and somersaulting; then, too, she felt a curious sadness, a sense of loss, as though she’d been the victim of some real or even moral theft, as though, in fact, the boys encountered in the park had snatched (abruptly she switched on the light) her purse. The envelope Miss Mozart had handed her: it was in the purse, and until now she had forgotten it. She tore it open. Inside there was a blue note folded around a bill; on the note there was written: In payment of one dream, $5. And now she believed it; it was true, and she had sold Mr. Revercomb a dream. Could it be really so simple as that? She laughed a little as she turned off the light again. If she were to sell a dream only twice a week, think of what she could do: a place somewhere all her own, she thought, deepening toward sleep; ease, like firelight, wavered over her, and there came the moment of twilit lantern slides, deeply deeper. His lips, his arms: telescoped, descending; and distastefully she kicked away the blanket. Were these cold man-arms the arms Estelle had spoken of? Mr. Revercomb’s lips brushed her ear as he leaned far into her sleep. Tell me? he whispered.
It was a week before she saw him again, a Sunday afternoon in early December. She’d left the apartment intending to see a movie, but somehow, and as though it had happened without her knowledge, she found herself on Madison Avenue, two blocks from Mr. Revercomb’s. It was a cold, silver-skied day, with winds sharp and catching as hollyhock; in store windows icicles of Christmas tinsel twinkled amid mounds of sequined snow: all to Sylvia’s distress, for she hated holidays, those times when one is most alone. In one window she saw a spectacle which made her stop still. It was a life-sized, mechanical Santa Claus; slapping his stomach he rocked back and forth in a frenzy of electrical mirth. You could hear beyond the thick glass his squeaky uproarious laughter. The longer she watched the more evil he seemed, until, finally, with a shudder, she turned and made her way into the street of Mr. Revercomb’s house. It was, from the outside, an ordinary town house, perhaps a trifle less polished, less imposing than some others, but relatively grand all the same. Winter-withered ivy writhed about the leaded windowpanes and trailed in octopus ropes over the door; at the sides of the door were two small stone lions with blind, chipped eyes. Sylvia took a breath, then rang the bell. Mr. Revercomb’s pale and charming Negro recognized her with a courteous smile.
On the previous visit, the parlor in which she had awaited her audience with Mr. Revercomb had been empty except for herself. This time there were others present, women of several appearances, and an excessively nervous, gnat-eyed young man. Had this group been what it resembled, namely, patients in a doctor’s anteroom, he would have seemed either an expectant father or a victim of St. Vitus. Sylvia was seated next to him, and his fidgety eyes unbuttoned her rapidly: whatever he saw apparently intrigued him very little, and Sylvia was grateful when he went back to his twitchy preoccupations. Gradually, though, she became conscious of how interested in her the assemblage seemed; in the dim, doubtful light of the plant-filled room their gazes were more rigid than the chairs upon which they sat; one woman was particularly relentless. Ordinarily, her face would have had a soft commonplace sweetness, but now, watching Sylvia, it was ugly with distrust, jealousy. As though trying to tame some creature which might
suddenly spring full-fanged, she sat stroking a flea-bitten neck fur, her stare continuing its assault until the earthquake footstep of Miss Mozart was heard in the hall. Immediately, and like frightened students, the group, separating into their individual identities, came to attention. “You, Mr. Pocker,” accused Miss Mozart, “you’re next!” and Mr. Pocker, wringing his hands, jittering his eyes, followed after her. In the dusk-room the gathering settled again like sun motes.
It began then to rain; melting window reflections quivered on the walls, and Mr. Revercomb’s young butler, seeping through the room, stirred a fire in the grate, set tea things upon a table. Sylvia, nearest the fire, felt drowsy with warmth and the noise of rain; her head tilted sideways, she closed her eyes, neither asleep nor really awake. For a long while only the crystal swingings of a clock scratched the polished silence of Mr. Revercomb’s house. And then, abruptly, there was an enormous commotion in the hall, capsizing the room into a fury of sound: a bull-deep voice, vulgar as red, roared out: “Stop Oreilly? The ballet butler and who else?” The owner of this voice, a tub-shaped, brick-colored little man, shoved his way to the parlor threshold, where he stood drunkenly seesawing from foot to foot. “Well, well, well,” he said, his gin-hoarse voice descending the scale, “and all these ladies before me? But Oreilly is a gentleman, Oreilly waits his turn.”
“Not here, he doesn’t,” said Miss Mozart, stealing up behind him and seizing him sternly by the collar. His face went even redder and his eyes bubbled out: “You’re choking me,” he gasped, but Miss Mozart, whose green-pale hands were as strong as oak roots, jerked his tie still tighter, and propelled him toward the door, which presently slammed with shattering effect: a tea cup tinkled, and dry dahlia leaves tumbled from their heights. The lady with the fur slipped an aspirin into her mouth. “Disgusting,” she said, and the others, all except Sylvia, laughed delicately, admiringly, as Miss Mozart strode past dusting her hands.