The postman was gay and whistling still, despite stopping to tie a handkerchief around his neck to catch perspiration. Staring down, Edith thought Amy’s hair fine as a baby’s, with each separate strand gossamer in the sun. As Amy got up and came inside, Edith remembered the first pair of little kid shoes Amy had worn; scuffed, they were in a bedroom drawer now. She was determined Amy was going to have that beige cashmere coat in the Town Shop window, for then she would be all the same color, tawny. Maybe her eyes would not stare so from her face; maybe she would not do things like racing boyishly up the stairs yelling. Edith wanted to be sweet but, that moment, her blue sky reached her green grass and mingled. She said bitterly, “I can’t understand screeching. Who wrote you? Who?”
Her mother’s crossness doused her like a dampener a fire. Amy had been coming into the room, happily, holding the letter. “Almoner,” she said reluctantly. Edith’s face remained blank. “That writer Quill and I went to see.”
“My goodness. I thought somebody had sent you a million dollars,” Edith said. For a moment, Amy’s hangdog look had actually been gone. Edith had felt hopeful. Now, she saw the look return. Smiling and bubbly and cute, Amy had been for a moment like the other girls. Edith said, “You’re so much prettier smiling, Amy. You must remember that.” Maybe it was Amy’s age that made her turn sullen. “Why did he write you?” Edith asked.
A look of solitariness about her mother had made Amy consider for a moment that she might understand; now, pressing the letter against her and wondering how to escape the room, she said, “I had just written him first to say I enjoyed meeting him.” She went toward the door.
“What did he say in the letter?” Edith said, detainingly. She could not help staring at Amy’s hands, holding the letter against her. She sighed, supposing there was no sense making her have a manicure because she would not take care of her nails once she got back to that school.
“He just said he enjoyed meeting us,” Amy said. “But now I have his autograph.” If her mother mentioned her nails again, she was going to scream. She tried to divert Edith’s attention. “Isn’t that nice?”
“I guess so,” Edith said vaguely, trying to remember the man’s name. Still, Amy was going toward her room. “Remember what I said about smiling.”
“Mother, I don’t want to keep hearing about all that,” Amy said, feeling desperate for so much weightier advice. “Do you think I ought to write him again?”
“I wouldn’t bother the poor man to death. He’s probably busy.”
“I’m sure he’s busy,” Amy said. Though her mother was too fat, she seemed frail sitting in the washing sunlight by the window painting that terrible, numbered picture. And sensing how the orderliness and the silence in the house would intensify when she was gone, feeling devastated by the situation, that this was her mother and this was her mother’s life, Amy longed for another way to remedy the situation, not having produced grandchildren. “Mother, your picture is so pretty,” she said.
“Pretty! All streaky and with those red dots!”
“Well, they don’t matter,” Amy said hopefully.
“Of course they matter,” Edith said. She was already tired of watching squirrels run around the roof, her winter’s occupation. “You have your head in the clouds, or your nose in a book. You don’t know what matters. Why don’t you put white iodine on your fingernails?”
Amy was usually afraid to speak up for herself, but had not meant unkindness and feeling hurt again by her mother’s tone, she said in retaliation, “I know one thing that doesn’t matter is that coat in the Town Shop window.” She fled quickly to her own room, having sided with her father, who had said the coat was too expensive, though she found no joy in having done it. To wear that coat would be embarrassing. But as soon as the saleswoman had said, craftily, that soon the coat would be gone, for college girls came in constantly to look at it, her mother had decided she must have it, Amy thought, holding the letter close before opening it.
Dear Miss Howard:
I remember of course your coming. If nothing else I would remember your hair as the sun struck it just so, but I remember that your eyes were the color of violets, like something you wore, and that you said nothing: that perhaps struck me most. Silence is a commodity hard to come by; you did not gush, like most. I had thought you were going to be some book club woman; anyway someone altogether different. But I saw at once you did not want the usual from me. I looked at your face and thought of spring with violets, tiny wild ones, deep in the woods, not cultivated, but growing naturally, belonging. Some long winter was over and suddenly it was spring, shy Miss Howard.
But I don’t think it best for you to come here again. What can I tell you? You know a great deal more than I believe you think you know. But if you have some questions, write them to me and I will try to answer them. It is I who must apologize for being rude that day. And if I do not answer right away, don’t worry. You have time to wait for things.
Almoner
Beginning now, the first of October, I’m going to keep a diary. Not really because I want to but because my English professor says it’s a good way to practice writing. But nothing ever happens to me to write about. Except of course hearing from Almoner. Nothing ever happens to me to write about except, of course, that I heard from Almoner. The point of this is, I guess, to practice sentences. I have to remember and not just jot things down. But do you know what happened? It makes me so mad. The last Sunday before I came back to school I had a date with Quill and showed him A’s letter and then right before a crowd of people at the club he said, “Amy got a letter from Almoner. Boy oh boy oh, I don’t see old Almoner writing to me!” Then everybody laughed. Stupid insinuation. I can’t stand it! I kept saying, “But I wrote him first—and no one would listen. They kept on laughing and making jokes. Oh g—damn them all. I think Quill is as superficial as the rest, after all.
Here, I’m going out with Leigh and that’s all. I like him I guess but I don’t know why. Because he’s not like them in Delton I think. That’s not a sentence. Be careful! old Amy. He doesn’t know or care anything about sports; he never wants to sit around on Saturday afternoons and listen to football games. However he wants to listen to opera which I don’t like either. Maybe this is my trouble. What do I like? But I am trying to learn something about music and art from him since I don’t know anything. But yesterday I was humming a popular song and he said, “I think you must have been a typical American teen-ager in high school,” and I said, “Of course I was—why wouldn’t I have been?” And why wouldn’t I have been? Anyway, I’m glad I was. I wouldn’t want to have been like him. They lived in Europe then and he doesn’t know anything about what we were all interested in. Even if I want to be something better now and not like the rest of those girls I’m glad I went through that. I’d rather have been an American teen-ager than to be more cultured. Then I wasn’t trying to be anything more than what I just was, and it was so much easier. It’s hard to be something more; though even then I did feel different. It was as if always I was watching myself being.
Tonight Leigh and I walked down a road from school and through the grounds of an old people’s home and sat under a tree and leaves that were left were all dry and rustling, like dry whispers of the dying, and saying they were dying. But next October there will be leaves again and I thought they were asking me where I would be. Sometimes I think things do communicate with us. When I was much younger I thought Rusty could talk. I remember begging him to talk and promising that I would never tell anyone if he did. I remember always being so lonely; there seemed never to be anyone in the afternoons to play with but him. Tonight I thought of all those sleeping old people and of how young I am. It’s hard to be young but there is the ever-wonder of tomorrow and things to come.
Mother wrote me and said not to write Almoner any more. I think she suddenly remembered after I left I had said he did and she probably mentioned it to Aunt D. But my English professor says I ought to write him again, that
it’s fabulous he wrote me—which I think, too. So I do not know (as usual) what to do?????
I woke up today and it had been raining. Sprinkles have continued throughout the day. And suddenly I noticed all the bright red, orange, yellow leaves are gone. There are only a few dull gold ones left and all the others are dried brown. It’s windy. The leaves loosen from the trees and rise from the ground blowing in whirlpools and the landscape is desolate but nice, brown with purple coming down from the mountains. The river is skimmed with ice. Soon it will snow and then everything will seem so secretive. Yesterday I walked with Leigh to an old barn and on its front there was an old clock with hands stopped at a quarter to eight: daylight or dark? I wondered to whom it had meant something.
Last week I wrote nothing down; it was just a week, a series of cold windy leafless days. I only remember the sky was repetitively blue. I cannot remember today at all. Only that it was day and now it is night, solid at the windows. If I had tried could I have made this day into something? Probably I shouldn’t have just let it pass. Yet Almoner says I have time to wait for things, though I don’t feel like I do; I want something to happen quickly. It was, after all, a day in my life. What is the purpose of my life? Can each person living have some significance when there are so many millions of people? Someone came to my door and knocked and when I did not answer went away. I’d rather ponder the mystery of who it was and what life she has lived and will live that I will know nothing about, though we will be under the same sky, than to know who it was. Only now that she has gone I’m becoming obsessed with wondering who it was and what she wanted? Oh damn; why do I have to wonder? Everybody else is down the hall having a birthday party; probably they wanted me to come; they are making so much noise. I wonder simply, gratefully, though I don’t want to go, Who thought of me? It’s too late; they’re going into their rooms; bedroom slippers scuffling all about. A train whistling is going by in the black valley between the dark mountains and I can hear it faintly and always that lonesome sound makes me think of going home, though I don’t want to be there. Or, always I want to go but then when I’m there I don’t want to be there. Why is that? That train is going the wrong way for home and it’s so different here with people at stations having red noses and wearing galoshes, which no one in Delton would do, even if the weather were bad. I bought a terrible-looking scarf but it’s warm. Edith sleeps all winter in those satin sleeveless gowns. She’ll be pulling her curtains now and creaming her face; immediately her cold cream’s smell has come. All my childhood is lost. I’m not sure I want to live. I want to go home until I’m there. I feel so lost.
It’s as if some second presence is always with me making me want to run away from wherever I am and do something different from what I’m doing. It’s the same as I wrote a few days ago about going home. Always I feel I am waiting for something. But what? And then I feel I’m not living life waiting. Suppose tomorrow I died? Does Edith ever see any lack in her life?
Since I wrote last, we’ve gotten a new dietitian; the other had to leave, and this one is an older man and I feel so sorry for him because he seems so lonely belonging neither to the faculty nor the students. He is always wandering around. Yesterday I passed him and I could tell he wanted to talk but I sort of looked down at my books and hurried on and I know I was flaunting not needing him and being young. And yet the whole time I was doing it I didn’t want to be cruel. So why did I do it????? I wonder if I’m like other people or not. As soon as I passed him, he began whistling. Oh my God, the sound was too lonely to be stood and I ran to the coffee shop. I’ll never forget that. Please God, don’t let me be cruel. I’ll promise anything if I’m not. Off the hall, doors keep opening into laughing and talking but I’ve shut my door again. I don’t want to think or hear the train whistle but there it goes again. Time goes so slowly. There are sights, sounds, dark insights muddled together like a kaleidoscope inside, all colors, but then Monday follows Sunday in never-varying stretches.
Guess what? I got another letter from Almoner! I had written him in November but I was afraid to tell even you for fear he would not write again.
Dear Miss Howard:
While telling me you did not know the exact questions to ask, you asked them. But they are questions not to be answered in a letter. All of them are things I most likely can never answer. Do you remember I told you that from the beginning? But they might be attempted when a man and a woman are at peace together. Don’t worry that you ask them at twenty, which is the age I assume you are, without quite knowing why; it is far better to ask them than to be a vegetable, like too many young people. And meanwhile, read Housman.
Almoner
I’m not sure what he means about a man and a woman being at peace together. Is it what I think? If so, that seems embarrassing for him to say.
I can hardly believe it’s almost the middle of December. We’ve had a lot of snow. My English professor said keep on writing Almoner. Copy below.
Dear Mr. Almoner:
Thank you so much for your letter. I really did not think you would write again and I’m so glad you did. And yes you were right in guessing twenty. But I’ve become twenty since seeing you. Twenty will not come again and take from seventy springs a score, it leaves me only fifty more.
See, I listened and I always will listen to you. What else should I read? Well, I do worry about having so many questions and it’s nice of you to say not to worry about having them. Somehow when you tell me you don’t know answers, you give them to me, as you said about my questions. And if ever I should know anything I would certainly want to tell you and to see if you don’t think so too. Do you think the happiness of knowing things you know and what you think is enough to make up for the unhappiness of knowing them?
Sincerely,
Amy
It keeps on snowing and I’m getting worried I might not be able to fly home for Christmas. I’m neither a woman or a girl. I’m nothing, nobody. Edith has said I’m an embarrassment. Suppose I do turn out to be some odd queer old maid like families keep in upstairs rooms? One time I walked around the block when it was raining. Then neighbors asked Mother why I was out walking around in the storm. Nobody could understand if you said you wanted to feel rain on your face. She said it had something to do with a science experiment at school, because people already thought I was queer! I didn’t make my debut when I could! My head needed to be examined, Mother said. She told my father and he drank four martinis before he said the neighbors ought to mind their business. Then at dinner I kept finding him staring at me and wondering why I had done it.
I spent the weekend reading Don Quixote. Almoner sent it! Isn’t that fantastic that Jeffrey Almoner writes to me and sent me a book. It was wrapped up badly in gift paper but I kept thinking, imagine that he had wrapped it up himself and for me! He enclosed a note saying he had written me a letter but had decided not to send it. I wonder why?
Dear Mr. Almoner:
We had so much snow at school they let me leave earlier for fear I would not get home for Christmas, and I did not have a chance to write you and thank you so much for the book. You were so kind to send it to me and I feel I should send you a Christmas present too but I just did not know what to send. Or whether it would be all right to anyway. Though I am trying not to worry about what other people think. I wondered if maybe you did not send the letter because it was a criticism of mine? If so, I would not care and would like to know what was wrong with it. I go back to school soon after the first and would love to see you again.
Sincerely,
Amy
P.S .I would not bring any other people.
P.P.S. Do you have a certain conception of what you think a short story ought to be?
I’m ashamed to say I’ve done nothing but go to parties and so haven’t had time to write in you at all. But I had to tell you about his coming in tonight with his face more pocked-looking and flushed and saying, “I’ve been made a deacon in the church!” And I said, “Why, Daddy, that’s great!
” That moment I thought, Mother sees. She stood in the doorway looking at him half-mad and half as if she pitied him and we looked at each other and looked away. I wonder if we’ll die without telling one another what we are thinking. Sunday morning he was there in his lintless grey suit, smiling at everyone, a white carnation in his buttonhole. Sunlight bearing colors of the stained-glass windows fell on us all in crazy confusion. “Hallelujah!” we sang. On the altar a red poinsettia suddenly shed a leaf; it bled for us all; it lay like a giant drop of blood on the expensively carpeted steps. He showed us to our seats. My daughter; my wife; my good soul! In her handbag Edith had his aspirin which he ate all during the service. He had meticulously gargled. But I could smell on him the left-over smells of the party, the same as the living room smelled this morning. And last night he put his arm around a neighbor and thought his hand was hidden beneath her arm and his fingers were feeling the edge of her breast. Oh God, why did Rusty have to die? He is my father and I couldn’t even say to Mother what’s the truth: he was made a deacon because they want his money. But does he think there’s another reason? That’s the point. That’s what all my life I’ll wonder and never be able to ask him. I promised to try not to be cruel. And since I can’t ask I’ll know my own father less well forever. Whatever he does on Saturday night is atoned for, he thinks, by struggling up for church on Sunday morning. Like Catholics and confession. One time a maid we had said to me, “White folks go to church on Sunday and Klan meeting on Monday; how come?” I guess she was not really expecting an answer because I was too young to know what she was talking about. So I just told him it was great he had been made a deacon as if I thought it was an honor he had acquired after hard work and he grinned and kept on brushing his suit. But I saw Mother in her room staring in the mirror as if she were putting on make-up, though it was already on. Does she feel something missing in her life after all? Once she told me a man ought never marry a terribly rich wife or inherit himself enough money to live on.
The Wintering Page 7
