Everything is Nice

by Jane Bowles

  She promised herself that on the following day she would go down into the chasm a mile south of Camp Cataract, where descent was more gradual, and walk along the river bed. She reminded herself too that she had already gone three quarters of the way toward directing her life current, as she termed it, into a peace stream, in spite of her bad nervous system. "Camp Cataract," she said to herself, "is definitely carrying off the honors, and not my sister's apartment." This thought cheered her up and she started down the hall toward the parlor, where the girls were laughing and talking so loudly that they did not even notice her entering the room.

  Mr Cassalotti was there, Berenice and Rita—his oldest daughters—an aunt, and some of the younger children. Everyone was dressed, with the exception of Rita Cassalotti, who was wearing a pink wrapper made of an imitation thick velours. There were more ferns here in the upstairs parlor, just like the ones Laura had barely missed knocking over in the hallway. A linoleum stamped with a red and black design covered the floor. The chairs and the sofa were all occupied by the family, with the exception of one odd Victorian chair made of carved black wood in Chinese style, which stood near a window and was seldom used.

  Sally seated herself in this chair and folded her hands in her lap. "Now we'll see how far she'll go," she thought, fixing her eyes on Laura, and she felt elated without noticing that she did.

  Rita Cassalotti had a small head and eyes a little too close together but she was pretty. Her teeth were very even and the canines beautifully shaped. Men adored her but she was neither vain nor inclined toward flirtation or love-making. She loved the food she got at home, her bedroom furniture and her clothing. Her body was unexpectedly heavier than anyone would have guessed just from seeing her small head and slender neck, but she was not fat, merely soft and round, although only a sensitive man—even if a stranger—might have sensed the coldness lurking in her soft frame.

  "What brings you here this afternoon, Laura Seabrook?" Rita questioned her pleasantly.

  "I was so bored at Camp Cataract," said Laura, "that I thought the world was coming to an end. Then I remembered that you always cheered me up." This statement was true, at least partially. The Cassalottis did cheer Laura up, but she had forgotten that her original intention had been to pursue Sally and not to visit the Cassalottis.

  Rita let out a peal of merry laughter. She always reacted more strongly to what seemed to her the grotesque than to situations or states of feelings that might easily have been included in the content of her own life.

  "Do you have a sewing machine, there at Camp Cataract?" Rita asked with a twinkle in her eye.

  "No... I'm not sure," Laura answered her.

  Rita thought this was even more hysterically funny than Laura's first statement.

  "Rita! Stop being foolish—you sound like a dope." Her younger sister Berenice silenced her with a look from her big flashing eyes. She was a swarthy, short-legged girl with dark bushy hair and a raucous low voice. Her chin was delicately cleft and her nose was Roman and very beautiful. She was enthusiastic and tempestuous, with a warmth not often encountered in a young girl.

  "Why are you talking about machines?" she stormed at Rita.

  "Well," said Rita, not in the least disturbed by her sister's outburst. "She said she thought the world was coming to an end, and I thought that if she had a sewing machine she could make some dresses when she didn't know what else to do."

  "You're crazy," said Berenice.

  "No, I'm not," Rita answered, laughing merrily again. "What's crazy about a sewing machine? You're the one who's on the crazy side, not me."

  "Laura's got a lot of trouble," said Berenice. "She wouldn't get no relief from a sewing machine."

  "No?" Rita raised her eyebrows and looked questioningly at Laura. "Maybe not," she said with half-hearted interest. The conversation seemed to be losing its grotesque quality and turning on the serious. The very prospect of hearing about anyone else's trouble tired Rita and she yawned.

  Mr. Cassalotti, who had not bothered to greet either Laura or Sally, was sitting on a small cane chair and staring ahead of him with hands thrust in his pockets. Without warning he got up from his chair and started toward the door.

  "Poppa," said Berenice, "where are you going?"

  "I'm going to let the beer out and make raviolis. Come on downstairs and we'll have a little party." He looked back over his shoulder at Laura and nodded to her without changing his expression.

  "Just plain havoc, with no thought behind it," Sally was thinking. "That's what she likes, instead of the beautiful. She thinks it's exciting and adventurous to sit indoors in the afternoon with people eating raviolis and drinking beer. She doesn't know where real happiness lies. If she could only be persuaded to stay outdoors a little more. It would be at least a beginning."

  Laura was hustling the Cassalottis through the parlor door as hastily as she could, in her eagerness to get at the beer. The children remained always silent and strange whenever Laura appeared. They leaned against the wall looking after her with sober brown eyes.

  The Cassalotti sisters, followed by Laura and Sally, started down the steep stairway single file.

  "Gee, it's nice you came," said Berenice affectionately to Laura, who was behind her. She turned around and squeezed Laura's leg to emphasize her pleasure. "It will only take Poppa a little while to get the raviolis going, and we can drink beer while we wait anyhow ..." She gave Rita a little shove and pulled her hair. "Why don't you get dressed, you?" she said.

  At that moment Laura's joy at being among the Cassalottis reached its peak—and with it came a familiar chill at the bottom of her heart.

  "Oh, God," thought Laura. "I had almost forgotten for a moment. I wish I could be really here, having the kind of fun I think it is to be here."

  She was quite accustomed to this cold fright that gripped her heart whenever her pleasure was acute, but it was not fright itself that interested her. She was quite sure that most sensitive people were familiar with this feeling. What disturbed her more than the fright was the chain of questions it always awakened in her mind about whatever she was doing, so that she could never wholeheartedly enter into anything for more than a few seconds at a time.

  "How exhausting," she said to herself as she felt the chill settling like a thick fog around her heart. The tormenting question which followed in the wake of her anguish was this: should she consider the anguish to be the natural underlying side of life itself, that side which gives depth and gravity to the sense of living from hour to hour, and which is to be endured simply and accepted, or was it on the other hand a signal for a departure—a signal for a decision? It was this last possibility that she found so upsetting, for she was actually, in her thinking at least, a very conscientious person.

  They reached the landing and Laura stood for a second, uncertainly, with Sally waiting behind her on the bottom step.

  She wished she had the courage to go out the door onto the wooden porch and thence down the road through the pine woods, instead of sitting down to eat ravioli and to drink beer. The very thought that such an action was incumbent upon her made her feel faint.

  "A silly struggle over two silly alternatives—to eat ravioli or to walk in the woods," she whispered to herself, without believing it. She bit her lips hard and a happy thought struck her: "The Cassalottis would be very insulted if I left. How could I have overlooked it?" The relief she felt, having voiced this sentence to herself, was immediate. Her face lost its hunted animal look, and she took long strides in the direction of the dining room.

  The others had gone back into the kitchen behind the dining room and were watching Mr. Cassalotti, who was using the ravioli machine. He was very neat and very systematic in his cooking, being a great admirer of both American factory technique and sanitation. He had already selected four cartons and labeled them neatly with the names of friends. "You can take these back to Camp Cataract with you when you go," he said to Laura. "Tell them a ravioli present from Gregorio Cassalotti— a
nd remind them that Wednesday night is Chicken Cassalotti night. Chicken Cacciatore died when Chicken Cassalotti was born." He laughed to himself.

  He did not in any way resemble Laura's conception of an Italian, except physically. He was industrious and really only happy when he worked. The girls took the beer into the dining room and they all seated themselves near the glassed-in scene, including Sally, who sat with her chair exaggeratedly far from the table and turned sideways.

  "Pull yourself in," said Berenice.

  "No, thank you," Sally answered her. "I'm not going to eat or drink. I'm all right here."

  Berenice stared at Sally uncomprehendingly, but she felt herself so remote from the other woman that she could not, as she ordinarily would have done, urge her to join them in eating and drinking.

  The Cassalotti sisters had brought to the table about fifteen bottles of beer. Laura, so recently released from her small but painful struggle, was giddy as a result of her escape. There still lurked a doubt in her heart but it was a muffled doubt, reserved for a little later. She was determined now to get drunk, and to have the Cassalottis share her renewed gaiety. With Berenice she did not concern herself, for this girl's gaiety, though of a completely different variety (with real joy as its source, rather than pained joy), matched her own. So it was to Rita she addressed herself.

  "Rita, do you like Sunday?" she asked her. Rita's face remained closed, and she appeared to have no intention of answering Laura's question at all. Often she did not answer Laura's questions with even so much as a nod of her head. This made Laura all the more determined to find out how Rita felt about everything. She tried formulating her question to Rita differently.

  "Do Sundays make you nervous?" she asked this time.

  "I don't know," said Rita, without the faintest expression in her voice.

  "I like 'em, good weather or bad," put in Berenice. "If it's good weather, I go fishing or hunting for berries and mushrooms, and if it's bad weather I listen to the radio. In the winter, of course, I don't go after berries or mushrooms."

  "Do you go after berries and mushrooms too, on Sundays?" Laura asked Rita, interrupting Berenice.

  Sally was exasperated with Laura for showing such a keen interest in Rita Cassalotti's Sundays.

  "Why doesn't she ask me what I do on Sunday, instead of asking that trollop? She certainly can't do much of any interest if she stays in her wrapper all day."

  "If only Berenice would keep her mouth shut for a minute," Laura thought. "I might then be able to drag something out of Rita." She was a little put out with herself for not being able to imagine Rita's attitude toward Sunday. But all the while Berenice continued to fill the glasses with beer the moment they were emptied, so that Laura very soon cared less and less about finding out anything from Rita.

  In fact, she was unpleasantly startled when Rita asked Berenice whether she remembered the Sundays at Felicia Kelly's.

  "Not as good as you do," said Berenice. "Because I was a little tyke."

  "That was ten years ago," Rita said. "I was twenty years old and you were ten. She had her bushes and trees growing so close to the walk there that we used to get soaking wet from the branches after the rain. I used to rub Berenice's hair with a Turkish towel when we got in the house—my own too. It's a mistake to plant them so close." Rita was actually addressing Berenice rather than Laura, for she was never certain that Laura could really understand much of what was said. Berenice, who was interested in almost any topic of conversation, listened attentively.

  "She made tutti-frutti ice cream for her family on Sunday, so she always served us some. It was very good quality. You could see the Old Man and the Old Woman on clear days from her kitchen window. I think you could see the Old Man from the parlor window too, but not the Old Woman. I'm sure you couldn't see the Old Woman from the parlor—no, you couldn't have, it wasn't facing right. Berenice used to get a kick out of that. We can't see any mountain peaks from here, just the valley and the woods. But Berenice could see those two peaks very clear from the Kellys', so she was pleased about that, I guess. Do you remember the Old Man and the Old Woman, Berenice?"

  Laura was thoroughly bored by the present turn in the conversation, but she felt compelled to question Rita further, since this account about Felicia Kelly's house was a roundabout answer to Laura's, original question "Do you like Sundays?", which proved that at least Rita had heard her question, and that the possibility of finding out more concerning Rita and her tastes was not entirely closed to her.

  "Did you like going to see Felicia Kelly on Sunday?" Laura asked her, trying to conceal her weariness by tossing her head back and smiling.

  Again Rita's face was closed, and instead of answering Laura's question she poured herself some beer very carefully so as to avoid its forming a head.

  "Rita doesn't go to see Felicia Kelly any more," said Berenice, and there was such warmth and radiance shining in her eyes even as she made this announcement that Laura felt recompensed, in spite of Rita's queer stubborness; and was not annoyed with Berenice for interrupting.

  "Really?" she said.

  "No. One Sunday she went all the way over there—it's about fifteen miles from here—and nobody was home, not even the dog. The cat was there but the dog wasn't. So she never spoke to Felica Kelly again."

  "We drove all the way over there," said Rita, "and then we had to come all the way back without seeing anyone. Poppa was mad too. He used to drive us over there in the truck and call for us every Sunday. She didn't leave a note, either."

  "What happened to her?" Laura asked with some degree of real interest.

  "I don't know," said Rita. "I never talked to her again."

  "She called up once or twice but Poppa just told her Rita wouldn't talk to her, and then he'd hook the receiver on the telephone," put in Berenice.

  "Then you never knew why she wasn't home?" Laura asked Rita, looking at her with wonder.

  "No," said Rita. "I never talked to her again." She seemed pleased with the end of her story.

  At this point Laura gave up thinking about Rita because she was so much of a mystery to her that there seemed to be no hope of her ever understanding any more about how Rita felt than she did that afternoon, even had she persisted in questioning her for the next fifty years. In a sense it was satisfying to know that such mysteries existed and that she did not have to exert herself any further.

  Just then, Mr Cassalotti, came in with the raviolis. He had dished out the portions in the kitchen and now carried the full plates over to the table on a tray.

  "I got everything ready so all you have to do now is eat. Move your chair in," he said to Sally, putting a plate of raviolis down on the table for her.

  They had all forgotten Sally's presence, and looked toward her with surprise. She had moved her chair even further away from the table during the conversation about Felicia Kelly, although no one had noticed it.

  "No, thank you," said Sally, her aloof expression changing quickly into one of vivid revulsion. "I'm going home in a minute."

  "Not before you eat your ravioli," said Mr. Cassalotti calmly, and going over to her chair he got behind it and lifted her over to the table, where he set her down, chair and all, in front of her raviolis.

  Berenice had a hunted, frightened look in her eyes as she watched her father with amazement. Ordinarily she would have laughed heartily at such playfulness, but being extremely sensitive, she felt that Sally was not a person to be lifted through the air even in jest. Rita wasn't either worried or amused.

  "Oh, Poppa," she said. "If she don't want to eat don't force her."

  Mr. Cassalotti returned to the kitchen and there was silence in the dining room. Even Rita noticed the queer strained look on Sally's face, and she stared at her shamelessly while Laura and Berenice averted their eyes.

  Sally was so insulted by Mr. Cassalotti's gesture that, although she wanted to flee from the room, she remained rooted to her chair by such shame and by an anger so burning that it temporarily blot
ted from her mind its source, so that only the present moment existed for her. Her eye fixed on a red-and-white checked curtain on the wall opposite, and immediately she felt that to draw this curtain was her only hope against suffocation. Then the fear that she would not reach the curtain gradually stole the place of both her shame and her anger, imparting a more pitiful and appealing expression to her eyes.

  "It's so hot in here," said Berenice, whose sensitive nature was becoming more and more aroused.

  Sally heard the remark and now her heart started to beat with panic lest Berenice reach the window before she did. She felt it was absolutely necessary that she herself draw the curtains and not Berenice.

  With what seemed to her superhuman effort, she rose to her feet and then walked like a person lightheaded with fever over to the window. She drew the curtains aside with a shaky hand. Behind them was a black shade which Mr. Cassalotti had hung there so that no daylight would ever penetrate the restaurant. He thought that to eat by electricity was more elegant, and that all restaurateurs should equip their restaurants so as to appear in a land of perpetual night.

  Sally lifted the shade and there at last was the window. It had been pouring outside only a moment before, so that streams of rain were still sliding down the window pane. Through the pane the leaves of the elm, whose branches almost brushed against the side of the house, appeared larger and more glistening than they actually were. The grass, a brilliant green in the afterlight of the storm, seemed particularly so around the thick wet trunk of the tree.

  Sally felt that she was losing ground faster and faster every minute, a condition which she qualified at calmer moments as "going too fast for myself." But it was not because she was so much of a lady or even particularly dignified that Mr. Cassalotti's gesture had insulted her so deeply. The insult lay in the suddenness of the actual interruption, which had violated abruptly her precarious state of balance.