My Sister's Hand in Mine

by Jane Bowles

  “I feel grateful to you, Sis,” she said without explaining her remark. “You’ve done me a service. May I tell you that I admire your frankness, without offending you?”

  Sis McEvoy was beginning to wonder if Janet were another nut like Bozoe Flanner. This worried her a little, but she was too drunk by now for clear thinking. She was enjoying the compliments, although it was disturbing that they should be coming from a woman. She was very proud of never having been depraved or abnormal, and pleased to be merely mean and discontented to the extent of not having been able to stay with any man for longer than the three months she had spent with her husband.

  “I’ll read you more of Bozoe’s letter,” Janet suggested.

  “I can’t wait,” said Sis. “I can’t wait to hear a lunatic’s mind at work first-hand. Her letter’s so cheerful and elevating. And so constructive. Go to it. But fill my glass first so I can concentrate. I’d hate to miss a word. It would kill me.”

  Janet realized that it was unkind of her to be reading her friend’s letter to someone who so obviously had only contempt for it. But she felt no loyalty—only eagerness to make Sis see how hard her life had been. She felt that in this way the bond between them might be strengthened.

  “Well, here it comes,” she said. “Stop me when you can’t stand it any more. I know that you expected me to come back. You did not feel I had the courage to carry out my scheme. I still expect to work it out. But not yet. I am more than ever convinced that my salvation lies in solitude, and coming back to the garage before I have even reached Massachusetts would be a major defeat for me, as I’m sure you must realize, even though you pretend not to know what I’m talking about most of the time. I am convinced that you do know what I’m talking about and if you pretend ignorance of my dilemma so you can increase efficiency at the garage you are going to defeat yourself. I can’t actually save you, but I can point little things out to you constantly. I refer to your soul, naturally, and not to any success you’ve had or to your determination. In any case it came to me on the bus that it was not time for me to leave you, and that although going to Massachusetts required more courage and strength than I seemed able to muster, I was at the same time being very selfish in going. Selfish because I was thinking in terms of my salvation and not yours. I’m glad I thought of this. It is why I stopped crying and got off the bus. Naturally you would disapprove, because I had paid for my ticket which is now wasted, if for no other reason. That’s the kind of thing you like me to think about, isn’t it? It makes you feel that I’m more human. I have never admired being human, I must say. I want to be like God. But I haven’t begun yet. First I have to go to Massachusetts and be alone. But I got off the bus. And I’ve wasted the fare. I can hear you stressing that above all else, as I say. But I want you to understand that it was not cowardice alone that stopped me from going to Massachusetts. I don’t feel that I can allow you to sink into the mire of contentment and happy ambitious enterprise. It is my duty to prevent you from it as much as I do for myself. It is not fair of me to go away until you completely understand how I feel about God and my destiny. Surely we have been brought together for some purpose, even if that purpose ends by our being separate again. But not until the time is ripe. Naturally, the psychiatrists would at once declare that I was laboring under a compulsion. I am violently against psychiatry, and, in fact, against happiness. Though of course I love it. I love happiness, I mean. Of course you would not believe this. Naturally darling I love you, and I’m afraid that if you don’t start suffering soon God will take some terrible vengeance. It is better for you to offer yourself. Don’t accept social or financial security as your final aim. Or fame in the garage. Fame is unworthy of you; that is, the desire for it. Janet, my beloved, I do not expect you to be gloomy or fanatical as I am. I do not believe that God intended you for quite as harrowing a destiny as He did for me. I don’t mean this as an insult. I believe you should actually thank your stars. I would really like to be fulfilling humble daily chores myself and listening to a concert at night or television or playing a card game. But I can find no rest, and I don’t think you should either. At least not until you have fully understood my dilemma on earth. That means that you must no longer turn a deaf ear to me and pretend that your preoccupation with the garage is in a sense a holier absorption than trying to understand and fully realize the importance and meaning of my dilemma. I think that you hear more than you admit, too. There is a stubborn streak in your nature working against you, most likely unknown to yourself. An insistence on being shallow rather than profound. I repeat: I do not expect you to be as profound as I am. But to insist on exploiting the most shallow side of one’s nature, out of stubbornness and merely because it is more pleasant to be shallow, is certainly a sin. Sis McEvoy will help you to express the shallow side of your nature, by the way. Like a toboggan slide.”

  Janet stopped abruptly, appalled at having read this last part aloud. She had not expected Bozoe to mention Sis at all. “Gee,” she said. “Gosh! She’s messing everything up together. I’m awfully sorry.”

  Sis McEvoy stood up and walked unsteadily to the television set. Some of her drink slopped onto the rug as she went. She faced Janet with fierce eyes. “There’s nobody in the world who can talk to me like that, and there’s not going to be. Never!” She was leaning on the set and steadying herself against it with both hands. “I’ll keep on building double-decker sandwiches all my life first. It’s five flights to the top of the building where I live. It’s an insurance building, life insurance, and I’m the only woman who lives there. I have boy friends come when they want to. I don’t have to worry, either. I’m crooked so I don’t have to bother with abortions or any other kind of mess. The hell with television anyway.”

  She likes the set, Janet said to herself. She felt more secure. “Bozoe and I don’t have the same opinions at all,” she said. “We don’t agree on anything.”

  “Who cares? You live in the same apartment, don’t you? You’ve lived in the same apartment for ten years. Isn’t that all anybody’s got to know?” She rapped with her fist on the wood panelling of the television set. “Whose is it, anyhow?” She was growing increasingly aggressive.

  “It’s mine,” Janet said. “It’s my television set.” She spoke loud so that Sis would be sure to catch her words.

  “What the hell do I care?” cried Sis. “I live on top of a life-insurance building and I work in a combination soda-fountain lunch-room. Now read me the rest of the letter.”

  “I don’t think you really want to hear any more of Bozoe’s nonsense,” Janet said smoothly. “She’s spoiling our evening together. There’s no reason for us to put up with it all. Why should we? Why don’t I make something to eat? Not a sandwich. You must be sick of sandwiches.”

  “What I eat is my own business,” Sis snapped.

  “Naturally,” said Janet. “I thought you might like something hot like bacon and eggs. Nice crisp bacon and eggs.” She hoped to persuade her so that she might forget about the letter.

  “I don’t like food,” said Sis. “I don’t even like millionaires’ food, so don’t waste your time.”

  “I’m a small eater myself.” She had to put off reading Bozoe’s letter until Sis had forgotten about it. “My work at the garage requires some sustenance, of course. But it’s brainwork now more than manual labor. Being a manager’s hard on the brain.”

  Sis looked at Janet and said: “Your brain doesn’t impress me. Or that garage. I like newspaper men. Men who are champions. Like champion boxers. I’ve known lots of champions. They take to me. Champions all fall for me, but I’d never want any of them to find out that I knew someone like your Bozoe. They’d lose their respect.”

  “I wouldn’t introduce Bozoe to a boxer either, or anybody else who was interested in sports. I know they’d be bored. I know.” She waited. “You’re very nice. Very intelligent. You know people. That’s an asset.”

  “Stay with Bozoe and her television set,” Sis growled.


  “It’s not her television set. It’s mine, Sis. Why don’t you sit down? Sit on the couch over there.”

  “The apartment belongs to both of you, and so does the set. I know what kind of a couple you are. The whole world knows it. I could put you in jail if I wanted to. I could put you and Bozoe both in jail.”

  In spite of these words she stumbled over to the couch and sat down. “Whiskey,” she demanded. “The world loves drunks but it despises perverts. Athletes and boxers drink when they’re not in training. All the time.”

  Janet went over to her and served her a glass of whiskey with very little ice. Let’s hope she’ll pass out, she said to herself. She couldn’t see Sis managing the steps up to her room in the insurance building, and in any case she didn’t want her to leave. She’s such a relief after Bozoe, she thought. Alive and full of fighting spirit. She’s much more my type, coming down to facts. She thought it unwise to go near Sis, and was careful to pour the fresh drink quickly and return to her own seat. She would have preferred to sit next to Sis, in spite of her mention of jail, but she did not relish being punched or smacked in the face. It’s all Bozoe’s fault, she said to herself. That’s what she gets for thinking she’s God. Her holy words can fill a happy peaceful room with poison from twenty-five miles away.

  “I love my country,” said Sis, for no apparent reason. “I love it to death!”

  “Sure you do, Hon,” said Janet. “I could murder Bozoe for upsetting you with her loony talk. You were so peaceful until she came in.”

  “Read that letter,” said Sister. After a moment she repeated, as if from a distance: “Read the letter.”

  Janet was perplexed. Obviously food was not going to distract Sis, and she had nothing left to suggest, in any case, but some Gorton’s Codfish made into cakes, and she did not dare to offer her these.

  What a rumpus that would raise, she said to herself. And if I suggest turning on the television she’ll raise the roof. Stay off television and codfish cakes until she’s normal again. Working at a lunch counter is no joke.

  There was nothing she could do but do as Sis told her and hope that she might fall asleep while she was reading her the letter. “Damn Bozoe anyway,” she muttered audibly.

  “Don’t put on any acts,” said Sis, clearly awake. “I hate liars and I always smell an act. Even though I didn’t go to college. I have no respect for college.”

  “I didn’t go to college,” Janet began, hoping Sis might be led on to a new discussion. “I went to commercial school.”

  “Shut up, God damn you! Nobody ever tried to make a commercial school sound like an interesting topic except you. Nobody! You’re out of your mind. Read the letter.”

  “Just a second,” said Janet, knowing there was no hope for her. “Let me put my glasses on and find my place. Doing accounts at the garage year in and year out has ruined my eyes. My eyes used to be perfect.” She added this last weakly, without hope of arousing either sympathy or interest.

  Sis did not deign to answer.

  “Well, here it is again,” she began apologetically. “Here it is in all its glory.” She poured a neat drink to give herself courage. “As I believe I just wrote you, I have been down to the bar and brought a drink back with me. (One more defeat for me, a defeat which is of course a daily occurrence, and I daresay I should not bother to mention it in this letter.) In any case I could certainly not face being without one after the strain of actually boarding the bus, even if I did get off without having the courage to stick on it until I got where I was going. However, please keep in mind the second reason I had for stopping short of my destination. Please read it over carefully so that you will not have only contempt for me. The part about the responsibility I feel toward you. The room here over Larry’s Bar and Grill is dismal. It is one of several rented out by Larry’s sister whom we met a year ago when we stopped here for a meal. You remember. It was the day we took Stretch for a ride and let him out of the car to run in the woods, that scanty patch of woods you found just as the sun was setting, and you kept picking up branches that were stuck together with wet leaves and dirt.…”

  From the Notebooks

  The Iron Table

  They sat in the sun, looking out over a big new boulevard. The waiter had dragged an old iron table around from the other side of the hotel and set it down on the cement near a half-empty flower bed. A string stretched between stakes separated the hotel grounds from the sidewalk. Few of the guests staying at the hotel sat in the sun. The town was not a tourist center, and not many Anglo-Saxons came. Most of the guests were Spanish.

  “The whole civilization is going to pieces,” he said.

  Her voice was sorrowful. “I know it.” Her answers to his ceaseless complaining about the West’s contamination of Moslem culture had become increasingly unpredictable. Today, because she felt that he was in a very irritable mood and in need of an argument, she automatically agreed with him. “It’s going to pieces so quickly, too,” she said, and her tone was sepulchral.

  He looked at her without any light in his blue eyes. “There are places where the culture has remained untouched,” he announced as if for the first time. “If we went into the desert you wouldn’t have to face all this. Wouldn’t you love that?” He was punishing her for her swift agreement with him a moment earlier. He knew she had no desire to go to the desert, and that she believed it was not possible to continue trying to escape from the Industrial Revolution. Without realizing he was doing it he had provoked the argument he wanted.

  “Why do you ask me if I wouldn’t love to go into the desert, when you know as well as I do I wouldn’t. We’ve talked about it over and over. Every few days we talk about it.” Although the sun was beating down on her chest, making it feel on fire, deep inside she could still feel the cold current that seemed to run near her heart.

  “Well,” he said. “You change. Sometimes you say you would like to go.”

  It was true. She did change. Sometimes she would run to him with bright eyes. “Let’s go,” she would say. “Let’s go into the desert.” But she never did this if she was sober.

  There was something wistful in his voice, and she had to remind herself that she wanted to feel cranky rather than heartbroken. In order to go on talking she said: “Sometimes I feel like going, but it’s always when I’ve had something to drink. When I’ve had nothing to drink I’m afraid.” She turned to face him, and he saw that she was beginning to have her hunted expression.

  “Do you think I ought to go?” she asked him.

  “Go where?”

  “To the desert. To live in an oasis.” She was pronouncing her words slowly. “Maybe that’s what I should do, since I’m your wife.”

  “You must do what you really want to do,” he said. He had been trying to teach her this for twelve years.

  “What I really want.… Well, if you’d be happy in an oasis, maybe I’d really want to do that.” She spoke hesitantly, and there was a note of doubt in her voice.

  “What?” He shook his head as if he had run into a spiderweb. “What is it?”

  “I meant that maybe if you were happy in an oasis I would be, too. Wives get pleasure out of making their husbands happy. They really do, quite aside from its being moral.”

  He did not smile. He was in too bad a humor. “You’d go to an oasis because you wanted to escape from Western civilization.”

  “My friends and I don’t feel there’s any way of escaping it. It’s not interesting to sit around talking about industrialization.”

  “What friends?” He liked her to feel isolated.

  “Our friends.” Most of them she had not seen in many years. She turned to him with a certain violence. “I think you come to these countries so you can complain. I’m tired of hearing the word civilization. It has no meaning. Or I’ve forgotten what it meant, anyway.”

  The moment when they might have felt tenderness had passed, and secretly they both rejoiced. Since he did not answer her, she went on. “I think i
t’s uninteresting. To sit and watch costumes disappear, one by one. It’s uninteresting even to mention it.”

  “They are not costumes,” he said distinctly. “They’re simply the clothes people wear.”

  She was as bitter as he about the changes, but she felt it would be indelicate for them both to reflect the same sorrow. It would happen some day, surely. A serious grief would silence their argument. They would share it and not be able to look into each other’s eyes. But as long as she could she would hold off that moment.

  Lila and Frank

  Frank pulled hard on the front door and opened it with a jerk, so that the pane of glass shook in its frame. It was his sister’s custom never to go to the door and open it for him. She had an instinctive respect for his secretive nature.

  He hung his coat on a hook in the hall and walked into the parlor, where he was certain he would find his sister. She was seated as usual in her armchair. Next to her was a heavy round table of an awkward height which made it useful for neither eating nor writing, although it was large enough for either purpose. Even in the morning Lila always wore a silk dress, stockings, and well-shined shoes. In fact, at all times of the day she was fully dressed to go into the town, although she seldom ventured from the house. Her hair was not very neat, but she took the trouble to rouge her lips.

  “How were the men at the Coffee Pot tonight?” she asked when her brother entered the room. There was no variety in the inflection of her voice. It was apparent that, like him, she had never tried, either by emphasis or coloring of tone, to influence or charm a listener.

  Frank sat down and rested for a while without speaking.

  “How were the men at the Coffee Pot?” she said again with no change of expression.

  “The same as they always are.”