“And what do you wish when you see the first star?”
“I wish to see another star,” she said. “At least that is what I usually wish.”
“But tonight?”
She sat down on the floor and leaned her head against his knee. “Tonight I wished that I could have back my dreams.”
“Don’t we all?” Oreilly said, stroking her hair. “But then what would you do? I mean what would you do if you could have them back?”
Sylvia was silent a moment; when she spoke her eyes were gravely distant. “I would go home,” she said slowly. “And that is a terrible decision, for it would mean giving up most of my other dreams. But if Mr. Revercomb would let me have them back, then I would go home tomorrow.”
Saying nothing, Oreilly went to the closet and brought back her coat. “But why?” she asked as he helped her on with it. “Never mind,” he said, “just do what I tell you. We’re going to pay Mr. Revercomb a call, and you’re going to ask him to give you back your dreams. It’s a chance.”
Sylvia balked at the door. “Please, Oreilly, don’t make me go. I can’t, please, I’m afraid.”
“I thought you said you’d never be afraid again.”
But once in the street he hurried her so quickly against the wind she did not have time to be frightened. It was Sunday, stores were closed and the traffic lights seemed to wink only for them, for there were no moving cars along the snow-deep avenue. Sylvia even forgot where they were going, and chattered of trivial oddments: right here at this corner is where she’d seen Garbo, and over there, that is where the old woman was run over. Presently, however, she stopped, out of breath and overwhelmed with sudden realization. “I can’t, Oreilly,” she said, pulling back. “What can I say to him?”
“Make it like a business deal,” said Oreilly. “Tell him straight out that you want your dreams, and if he’ll give them to you you’ll pay back all the money: on the installment plan, naturally. It’s simple enough, kid. Why the hell couldn’t he give them back? They are all right there in a filing case.”
This speech was somehow convincing and, stamping her frozen feet, Sylvia went ahead with a certain courage. “That’s the kid,” he said. They separated on Third Avenue, Oreilly being of the opinion that Mr. Revercomb’s immediate neighborhood was not for the moment precisely safe. He confined himself in a doorway, now and then lighting a match and singing aloud: but the best old pie is a whiskeyberry pie! Like a wolf, a long thin dog came padding over the moon-slats under the elevated, and across the street there were the misty shapes of men ganged around a bar: the idea of maybe cadging a drink in there made him groggy.
Just as he had decided on perhaps trying something of the sort, Sylvia appeared. And she was in his arms before he knew that it was really her. “It can’t be so bad, sweetheart,” he said softly, holding her as best he could. “Don’t cry, baby; it’s too cold to cry: you’ll chap your face.” As she strangled for words, her crying evolved into a tremulous, unnatural laugh. The air was filled with the smoke of her laughter. “Do you know what he said?” she gasped. “Do you know what he said when I asked for my dreams?” Her head fell back, and her laughter rose and carried over the street like an abandoned, wildly colored kite. Oreilly had finally to shake her by the shoulders. “He said—I couldn’t have them back because—because he’d used them all up.”
She was silent then, her face smoothing into an expressionless calm. She put her arm through Oreilly’s, and together they moved down the street; but it was as if they were friends pacing a platform, each waiting for the other’s train, and when they reached the corner he cleared his throat and said: “I guess I’d better turn off here. It’s as likely a spot as any.”
Sylvia held on to his sleeve. “But where will you go, Oreilly?”
“Traveling in the blue,” he said, trying a smile that didn’t work out very well.
She opened her purse. “A man cannot travel in the blue without a bottle,” she said, and, kissing him on the cheek, slipped five dollars in his pocket.
“Bless you, baby.”
It did not matter that it was the last of her money, that now she would have to walk home, and alone. The pilings of snow were like the white waves of a white sea, and she rode upon them, carried by winds and tides of the moon. I do not know what I want, and perhaps I shall never know, but my only wish from every star will always be another star; and truly I am not afraid, she thought. Two boys came out of a bar and stared at her; in some park some long time ago she’d seen two boys and they might be the same. Truly I am not afraid, she thought, hearing their snowy footsteps following after her: and anyway, there was nothing left to steal.
THE BARGAIN
(1950)
Several things about her husband irritated Mrs. Chase. For instance, his voice: he sounded always as though he were bidding in a poker game. To hear his unresponsive drawl was exasperating, especially now when, talking to him on the telephone, she herself was strident with excitement. “Of course I already have one, I know that. But you don’t understand, dear—it’s a bargain,” she said, stressing the last word, then pausing to let its magic develop. Simply silence happened. “Well, you could say something. No, I’m not in a shop, I’m at home. Alice Severn is coming for lunch. It’s her coat that I’m trying to tell you about. Certainly you remember Alice Severn.” His leaky memory was another irritant, and though she reminded him that out in Greenwich they had often seen Arthur and Alice Severn, had, in fact, entertained them, he pretended no knowledge of the name. “It doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “I’m only going to look at the coat anyway. Have a good lunch, dear.”
Later, as she fussed with the precise waves of her touched-up hair, Mrs. Chase admitted that really there was no reason why her husband should have remembered the Severns too clearly. She realized this when, with faulty success, she tried to arouse an image of Alice Severn. There, she almost had it: a rosy, gangling woman, less than thirty, and always riding in a station-wagon accompanied by an Irish setter and two beautiful, gold-red children. It was said that her husband drank; or was it the other way round? Then, too, they were supposed to be a bad credit risk, at least Mrs. Chase recalled once hearing of incredible debts, and someone, was it herself?, had described Alice Severn as just too bohemian.
Before moving into the city, the Chases had kept a house in Greenwich, which was a bore to Mrs. Chase, for she disliked the hint of nature there and preferred the amusement of New York shop windows. In Greenwich, at a cocktail party, at the railway station, they’d now and again encountered the Severns, that was all it had amounted to. We were not even friends, she concluded, somewhat surprised. As so often happens when one hears suddenly from a person of the past, and someone known in a different context, she had been startled into a feeling of intimacy. On second thought, however, it seemed extraordinary of Alice Severn, whom she’d not seen in over a year, to have called offering for sale a mink coat.
Mrs. Chase stopped in the kitchen to order a soup and salad lunch: it never occurred to her that not everyone was on a diet. She filled a sherry decanter and brought it with her into the living room. It was a green glass–bright room, rather like her too-youthful taste in clothes. Wind bustled the windows, for the apartment was high-up with an aeroplane view of downtown Manhattan. She put a linguaphone record on a phonograph, and sat in an unrelaxed position listening to the strained voice pronouncing French phrases. In April the Chases planned to celebrate their twentieth anniversary with a trip to Paris; for this reason she had undertaken the linguaphone lessons, and for this reason, too, she considered Alice Severn’s coat: it was more practical, she felt, to travel in a second-hand mink; later on, she might have it made into a stole.
Alice Severn arrived a few minutes early, an accident, certainly, for she was not an anxious person, at least judging from her subdued, ambling manner. She wore sensible shoes, a tweed suit that had seen its best days, and carried a box tied with scrappy cord.
“I was so delighted when you called this morning. H
eaven knows, it’s been an age, but of course we never get to Greenwich anymore.”
Though smiling, her guest remained silent, and Mrs. Chase, keyed to an effusive style, was a little taken aback. As they seated themselves her eyes caught at the younger woman, and it occurred to her that if they had met casually she might not have known her, not because her appearance was so very altered, but because Mrs. Chase realized that she had never before looked closely at her, which seemed odd, for Alice Severn was someone you would notice. If she had been less long, more compact, one might have passed over her, perhaps remarking that she was attractive. As it was, with her red hair, the sense of distance in her eyes, her freckled, autumnal face and gaunt, strong hands, there was a distinction about her not easily disregarded.
“Sherry?”
Alice Severn nodded, and her head, balanced precariously on her thin neck, was like a chrysanthemum too heavy for its stalk.
“Cracker?” offered Mrs. Chase, observing that anyone so lean and stretched-out must eat like a horse. Her soup-and-salad skimpiness gave her a sudden qualm, and she told the following lie: “I don’t know what Martha’s making for lunch. You know how difficult it is on short notice. But tell me, dear, what is happening in Greenwich?”
“In Greenwich?” she said, her eyelids beating, as though an unexpected light had flared in the room. “I have no idea. We haven’t lived there for some while, six months or more.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Chase. “You see how far behind I am. But where are you living, dear?”
Alice Severn lifted one of her bony awkward hands and waved it toward the windows. “Out there,” she said, peculiarly. Her voice was plain, but it had an exhausted quality, as though she were coming down with a cold. “In town, I mean. We don’t like it much, Fred especially.”
With the dimmest inflection, Mrs. Chase said, “Fred?” for she perfectly remembered Arthur as the name of her guest’s husband.
“Yes, Fred, my dog, an Irish setter, you must have seen him. He’s used to space, and the apartment is so small, a room really.”
Hard days indeed must have fallen if all the Severns were living in one room. Curious as she was, Mrs. Chase checked herself and did not inquire into this. She tasted her sherry and said, “Of course I remember your dog; and the children: all three of their red heads hanging out of your station-wagon.”
“The kids haven’t red hair. They’re blondes, like Arthur.”
The correction was given so humorlessly that Mrs. Chase was provoked into a puzzled small laugh. “And Arthur, how is he?” she said, preparing to stand and lead the way to lunch. But Alice Severn’s answer made her sit down again. Delivered with no change in her placidly undecorated expression, it consisted of only: “Fatter.
“Fatter,” she repeated after a moment. “The last time I saw him, I guess it was only a week ago, he was crossing a street, almost waddling. If he had seen me, I would’ve had to laugh: he was always so finicky about his figure.”
Mrs. Chase touched her hips. “You and Arthur. Separated? It’s simply remarkable.”
“We’re not separated.” She brushed her hand in the air as though to clear away cobwebs. “I’ve known him since I was a child, since we both were children: do you think,” she said quietly, “that we could ever be separate of each other, Mrs. Chase?”
The exact use of her name seemed to exclude Mrs. Chase; fleetingly she felt herself sealed off, and as they went together toward the dining room she imagined a hostility to move between them. Possibly it was the sight of Alice Severn’s gawky hands fumblingly unfolding a napkin that persuaded her this was not true. Except for courteous exchanges they ate in silence, and she was beginning to fear there was not to be a story.
At last, “As a matter of fact,” said Alice Severn, blurting it, “we were divorced last August.”
Mrs. Chase waited; then, between the dip and rise of her soup spoon, said, “How awful. His drinking, I suppose?”
“Arthur never drank,” she answered with a pleasant but astonished smile. “That is, we both did. We drank for fun, not to be mean. It was very nice in the summer. We used to go down to the brook and pick mint and make mint juleps, huge ones in fruitjars. Sometimes, on hot nights when we couldn’t sleep, we used to fill the thermos full of cold beer and wake up the kids, then we would drive out to the shore: it’s fun to drink beer and swim and sleep on the sand. Those were lovely times; I remember once we stayed till daylight. No,” she said, some serious idea tightening her face, “I’ll tell you. I’m almost a head taller than Arthur, and I think it worried him. When we were children he always thought he would outgrow me, but then he never did. He hated to dance with me, and he loves to dance. And he liked a lot of people around, tiny little people with high voices. I’m not like that, I wanted just us. In those ways I wasn’t a pleasure to him. Now, you remember Jeannie Bjorkman? The one with the round face and the curls, about your height.”
“I should say I do,” said Mrs. Chase. “She was on the Red Cross committee. Dreadful.”
“No,” said Alice Severn, pondering, “Jeannie isn’t dreadful. We were very good friends. The strange thing is, Arthur used to say he hated her, but then I guess he was always crazy about her, certainly he is now, and the kids, too. Somehow I wish the kids didn’t like her, though I should be happy that they do, since they have to live with her.”
“It isn’t true: your husband married to that awful Bjorkman girl!”
“Since August.”
Mrs. Chase, pausing first to suggest that they have coffee in the living room, said, “It’s outrageous for you to be living alone in New York. At least you could have the children with you.”
“Arthur wanted them,” said Alice Severn simply. “But I’m not alone. Fred is one of my closest friends.”
Mrs. Chase gestured impatiently: she did not enjoy fantasy. “A dog. It’s nonsense. There is nothing to think except that you’re a fool: any man that tried to walk over me would get his feet cut to pieces. I suppose you haven’t even arranged that he should,” she hesitated, “should contribute.”
“You don’t understand, Arthur hasn’t any money,” said Alice Severn with the dismay of a child who has discovered that grownups after all are not very logical. “He’s even had to sell the car and walks back and forth between the station. But you know, I think he’s happy.”
“What you need is a good pinch,” said Mrs. Chase, as though she were ready to do the job.
“It’s Fred that bothers me. He’s used to space, and only one person doesn’t leave many bones. Do you suppose that when I finish my course I could get a job in California? I’m studying at a business school, but I’m not awfully quick, especially at typing, my fingers seem to hate it so. I guess it’s like playing the piano, you should learn when you’re very young.” She glanced speculatively at her hands, sighing. “I have a lesson at three; would you mind if I showed you the coat now?”
The festiveness of things coming out of a box could usually be counted on to cheer Mrs. Chase, but as she saw the lid taken off, a melancholy uneasiness cornered her.
“It belonged to my mother.”
Who must have worn it sixty years, thought Mrs. Chase, facing a mirror. The coat hung to her ankles. She rubbed her hand against the lusterless, balding fur and it was moldy, sour, as though it had lain in an attic by the seashore. It was cold inside the coat, she shivered, at the same time a flush heated her face, for just then she noticed that Alice Severn was gazing over her shoulder, and in her expression there was a drawn, undignified expectancy that had not been there before. Where sympathy was concerned, Mrs. Chase knew thrift: before giving it she took the precaution of attaching a string, so that if necessary it could be yanked back. Looking at Alice Severn, however, it was as though the string had been severed, and for once she was confronted head-on with the obligations of sympathy. She wriggled even so, hunting a loophole, but then her eyes collided with those other eyes, and she saw there was none. The recollection of a word from her linguapho
ne lessons made a certain question easier: “Combien?” she said.
“It isn’t worth anything, is it?” There was confusion in the asking, not frankness.
“No, it isn’t,” she said tiredly, almost testily. “But I may have some use for it.” She did not inquire again; it was clear that part of her obligation was to be fulfilled by fixing a price herself.
Still trailing the clumsy coat, she went to a corner of the room where there was a desk and, writing with resentful jabs, made a check on her private account: she did not intend that her husband should know. More than most Mrs. Chase despised the sense of loss; a misplaced key, a dropped coin, quickened her awareness of theft and the cheats of life. Some similar sensation was with her as she handed the check to Alice Severn who, folding it, and without looking at it, put it in her suit pocket. It was for fifty dollars.
“Darling,” said Mrs. Chase, grim with spurious concern, “you must ring me and let me know how everything is going. You mustn’t feel lonely.”
Alice Severn did not thank her, and at the door she did not say goodbye. Instead, she took one of Mrs. Chase’s hands in her own and patted it, as though she were gently rewarding an animal, a dog. Closing the door, Mrs. Chase stared at her hand, brought it near her lips. The feel of the other hand was still upon it, and she stood there, waiting while it drained away: presently her hand was again quite cold.
A DIAMOND GUITAR
(1950)
The nearest town to the prison farm is twenty miles away. Many forests of pine trees stand between the farm and the town, and it is in these forests that the convicts work; they tap for turpentine. The prison itself is in a forest. You will find it there at the end of a red rutted road, barbed wire sprawling like a vine over its walls. Inside, there live one hundred and nine white men, ninety-seven Negroes and one Chinese. There are two sleep houses—great green wooden buildings with tar-paper roofs. The white men occupy one, the Negroes and the Chinese the other. In each sleep house there is one large potbellied stove, but the winters are cold here, and at night with the pines waving frostily and a freezing light falling from the moon the men, stretched on their iron cots, lie awake with the fire colors of the stove playing in their eyes.
SSC (2004) The Complete Stories of Truman Capote Page 19
