The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  I want to see you too. I knew it suddenly this fall after I had been fishing. The road plunged; leaves overhung. And I saw your face, the way I remember it, though now it might not be right at all. It would not work for you to come here, which means subterfuge. Have I the right to start you on this? No. And so refuse if you want.

  I certainly don’t refuse. I want very much to see you and not to ask about short stories. I want to know about inanity and why everything is. Tell me where to come?

  The train station Monday at ten. Call if this is not possible and if I sound strange, don’t worry. I’ll understand your message.

  “But why, if you are meeting the girls for lunch, don’t you want to wear your new coat?” Edith said.

  Amy caught herself in time from saying that the coat was too dressy. It was not too dressy for the Forrester, where she had said she was going. “The coat’s just so pretty. I hate to get it dirty,” she said.

  “No sense saving it,” Edith said. “I’ve done that too much in my life. Put good things in the closet, waiting to wear them. The time never seems to come.” At Amy’s window, framed by chintz ruffles, Edith looked out, the seams of her pink robe grown tighter and giving.

  Was that the summing-up philosophy of her mother’s fifty years, Amy wondered: that the time never seems to come. She determined not to end up with it being hers and brushed her hair with strokes fearful and angry.

  The fine strands flung themselves about freely, and Edith suddenly wondered about Amy’s hurry. “Why are you going to town so early to go to lunch?” she said.

  Amy answered blithely, “To spend my Christmas money!” knowing that her mother would understand shopping, looking at her in a womanly and conspiratorial way. She must remember to bring home packages, Amy thought. “How long can I keep the car?”

  “I only have to run to the grocery later,” Edith said. “But you can’t go to the Forrester like that, in a skirt and sweater.” And no, she shook her head, not even if Amy put on high heels. Amy had held up a pair. Seeing her mother was going to be adamant about the way she dressed going to the Forrester, Amy, conceding, dragged from the closet a forgotten dress with a stand-up collar and a row of militarily marching buttons.

  “Why haven’t you been wearing it all along? Becoming,” Edith cried, knowing she was never going to understand her daughter. She held out the coat, determined Amy should wear it, and when the fur collar was fastened beneath Amy’s chin, Edith cried, “Oh, you look sweet as a little kitten!” She forgave Amy’s disappointed look when she had found it under the tree. At Christmas, Mallory was not tight with money and had not minded her buying the coat; he was jovial at the Christmas season about everything. Edith followed Amy to the door to remind her, “If you see anybody I know at the Forrester, don’t forget to speak.”

  Nodding from the car, Amy wondered if her mother had taken seriously that she was shopping and going to lunch with girls, or whether she had taken the easiest way out and pretended. Her mother might even find out the lunch had not taken place and never say so. Often, Amy thought, she longed to be confronted with things, as if someone cared. Why had Mr. Almoner been so secretive about their meeting? She supposed because he was married. But she wanted to know him as a writer, which had nothing at all to do with his being married.

  He appeared self-contained, though somehow aware of his own aloneness, sitting on a bench in the station. Unmindful of the crowd, Almoner stared at something on the ceiling. Probably he was astounded at all this ornateness for a train station, too, Amy thought, as she always had been. There were gilded frescoes and stone gargoyles, which she stared at as if for the first time. She hoped she and Mr. Almoner would think the same about a lot of things. Through arched remote windows came a celestial pale light giving the station interior a churchy feeling; despite the crowd, everything seemed hushed. Almoner was touched particularly by one shaft. Approaching him, Amy had the feeling she ought to kneel. Standing directly in front of him, she bent, half-whispering, “Mr. Almoner.”

  He quickly removed a package from his knees and stood, doffing a checked cap. “Miss Howard? I’m glad to see you.”

  In the station, servicemen were making goodbyes, while Negroes with bursting heavy-corded packages headed out a gate marked Chicago and old people watching them cried. One hand met Almoner’s; Amy brought her other hand to the fur collar as if to cover it.

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” she said, knowing the coat was overdone.

  While Almoner appeared well-dressed, on close inspection, his clothes were somewhat worn. That meant simply, Amy thought, that his mind was on more important things. His raincoat evidently did not even shed rain, for the sleeves were darkened alarmingly. She was sorry to have nothing to offer but to go back out into the day, which was awful. The station was worse: stuffy and full of smells and of people slunk down on benches sleeping with open mouths, homeless-looking and exhausted. Passing back through the room, Amy worried about looking privileged, feeling eyes turned toward her which were not. She only hoped, damn it, that Mr. Almoner did not think she was dressed up to prove something, noting his shirt had a frayed collar. Outside, on the station’s top step, they stared at the city as if it were a puzzle dumped all around them.

  “Where shall we go?” Amy said.

  Holding up his package, Almoner asked if it would be too much trouble to take it to his typist. That was his excuse for coming. He looked at her a moment as if wondering if she understood. Amy only said it would not be trouble and wondered what that Almoner asked could be. He was unbelievably modest. If only he had not had to think up an excuse for coming.

  The package was on the car seat between them like an unintroduced person and they drove several blocks before Amy dared ask, “Is it a new book?” Her breath, blown outward, hung about the car like odorless smoke and dissolved against the windshield, on whose exterior rain had begun to freeze. Holiday traffic moving at a snail’s pace was tangled because of the weather. Why does rain always make traffic worse? Amy had asked and fallen silent, thinking what an inane thing to have said to Almoner.

  But he said he had never been able to figure that out himself. It was certainly a fact. He returned a smile, though Amy’s had been relieved and small. To her, her remark seemed not so totally worthless.

  But staring out at the worsening streets, she was afraid of being responsible for Almoner’s safety. Perhaps he was not as bored as she had worried he would be. But suppose she had a wreck and Almoner was killed! Or, almost worse, suppose she had an accident which only caused their names to get in the paper and their meeting to be known. Juxtaposition with the famous Amy found exciting and wondered if she would really mind publicity lifting her above the crowd. Almoner was certainly old-fashioned and courtly, asking her permission to light a small cigar; she tried to imagine telling him he could not smoke.

  Until the moment Amy had asked him about the package, her voice timid and fearful, Almoner had thought them having a silence unusually companionable for strangers. “I hope it’s a book,” he had answered.

  Amy had wondered what that answer meant. Was it a book or not? She feared appearing stupid, asking him to explain, and put the answer down to a writer’s idiosyncrasy. She felt on tenterhooks because of the silence between them. Now that he was here, she could think of nothing to say, absolutely nothing at all, and felt resentful that being so much older and more intelligent, he did not keep up a conversation. She had circled, in silence, the typist’s building several times, without finding a place to park.

  He would have to run in while she was driving, Almoner said. Sorry to be a bother.…

  But he was not! Amy said, unable to imagine Almoner being a bother. She watched him disappear and the revolving door flash brass. She was tired, however, of driving these cold slushy streets. Would the typist have sense enough to be humble? And imagine that an Almoner manuscript had been on the seat beside her! That moment, Amy recognized a friend of her father’s waiting to cross the street. To avoid that
corner, she adroitly turned into a parking lot and went out its second entrance, surprising herself at how quickly she had adapted to secrecy and intrigue and deviousness. Hiding things, she thought sorrowfully, came too naturally to people. It was strange to be hiding in her own city, and she noticed alleyways and the dark entrances to little shops never noticed before. She could not help being irritated, coming repeatedly to the building’s entrance without ever finding Almoner at the curb. Then, driving on, she concentrated on two inward pictures: the girl out shopping that her parents saw and the girl she wanted to become, with a life far different from theirs.

  The rotund proprietor of a cheese store, whose window was full of his hanging wares, had begun to nod from his doorway, Amy came past so often. She thought that like this day with Almoner, this block of stores would be forever imprinted on her mind. A Negro in white spats swept the foyer of the typist’s building; a woman with bluish hair dressed mannequins in lacy black underwear that was not exactly nice. Forever preserved in her mind, these people would never grow older, though Amy felt pressured by the passage of time, despite being young.

  Almoner, dashing a hand against his cold nose, stepped hurriedly and apologetically into the car. Amy’s awe made her want to sacrifice anything for him; she did not want apology. “I haven’t minded driving around,” she said, “but where shall we go now?”

  “What is your wish?” he said, in his formal and old-fashioned way, which always struck her. She had no wish; she only wanted to do what he wanted. “I’m afraid,” he said, “I know so little about the city. But I think we should go someplace neither of us will be recognized.”

  Amy instinctively had already begun taking them from the center of the city. And now as they passed through a rather seedy section, she realized they were directionless. “Do you like the river?” she asked, at last.

  “Of course. And if I had thought of it, I would have known you did.” He looked away from her erect profile to gaze again through the rain-spattered windshield before softly confiding. “Once,” he said, “I wanted to go down the river willy-nilly in a boat, the way the wind took me.”

  “And you never did?” Amy said, surprised.

  “No.” His eyes were speculative, turned toward her again.

  “I’m going to do everything like that I want to,” she said confidently.

  “You’re young. Maybe you’ll choose the right life to enable you to do all the things you want.”

  She was puzzled by his voice, some tone of regret in it similar to one often in her mother’s. Surely Almoner, having his work, had a fulfilled life, she thought. They came, at last, from one of the city’s saddest parts to a bluff overlooking the river, which in the frost-ridden and sunless day appeared not only sluggish but totally without sparkle; lifeless and still, it lay as if it were a gorge only.

  “I’m afraid we’ll be cold sitting here,” Amy said, staring down.

  “Not too cold.” He spoke in a positive voice. Having stared in silence down at the water, too, he said, “Dawns and sunsets on the river are beautiful.”

  “I’ve never seen either,” Amy said. To see both over the river, she considered now a goal, watching frost melting on the windshield slide inward to form a heart’s shape. “We’re looking through a valentine.” Then, furiously, she blushed and thought what a stupid remark.

  “Yes, it has formed a heart,” he said. “The edges are like that lacy paper they put around valentines. I wonder if there is any significance?”

  Significance? Amy thought, trying to be totally mystified. “Look!” She drew his attention to the window. “See that barge. I’ve never been farther down the river than that. But I’d like to go down it to New Orleans. I’d like to go everywhere, I guess.”

  “I do wonder what the future holds for you,” he said, in a way which surprised her; though what surprised her more was that he reached out and put a hand on her arm. Amy sat stone-still and embarrassed, wondering what the gesture meant. At her stillness, because of the resoluteness with which she kept her eyes ahead, he not only took back his hand but moved closer to the car door.

  Partially to gloss over the incident, partially to break the silence, Amy ran over in her mind, frantically, topics of conversation and found them all lacking. Finally, she said, “Most people I know wouldn’t care about coming here to sit. But I’ve done it a lot.” Only Quill would share such times; however, after considering, she decided not to mention his name. Then Almoner sat with a grave face, while Amy told him about walking around the block in the rain, once, and how everyone had reacted.

  “You’ll have to be tough, have a tough hide if you want to be a writer,” he said. “Believe in yourself, or no one will. You can’t worry too much about what other people think.”

  But did not worrying about what other people thought mean not to worry about hurting them? Amy wondered. Fearing that she ought to know, she was afraid to ask. She kept on roaming about in her mind for something else to say. Almoner, poking about in his pockets for matches to light the cigar he had stuck in his mouth, looked pensive. Amy considered that he was thinking merely about where he had put a light. However, he looked as thoughtful once he had pulled a packet of matches from his breast pocket, lit the cigar, and sent a spiralling roll of smoke to break open on the windshield. He sounded abrupt saying, “Miss Howard, your letter came at a time in my life when I needed it most. That day, I tried to think of something to compare it to. And I thought of wind through apple trees. I needed an image with great freshness, fineness, sweetness. Before your letter came, I had been going along feeling like a used-up—”

  Urgently, Amy looked at him and said, “You’re not used up!”

  “—bloke,” he finished, looking grateful and smiling at her. “You brought back something of my own youth.”

  “I was so scared about writing you,” she said, “I don’t know what I said.”

  “You told me,” he said, not daring to laugh, “a great deal. Even about a dog you had that got run over.”

  “Oh no! I couldn’t have.” She began to laugh. “I’m embarrassed.”

  He laughed quietly. “Yes, yes,” he said, like a low quick murmur, “you did. But I hope you’ll never be embarrassed with me.” He pinched the end of his cigar, looking down at it. “Assuming, that is, that you aren’t finding this meeting too unsatisfactory and that you’ll risk another.”

  Who, Amy wondered, would pass up a chance to meet Almoner? She had been wondering whether she could risk telling her friends at school about seeing him. They would not consider, first, that he was married. Since she was no one and he was famous, she could not see why that mattered; still, not wanting to face that fact, she knew that it mattered. “Yes, of course, I want to meet again,” she said, not looking at him; she stretched restlessly beneath the steering wheel. “I am getting very tired of just sitting here, and I’m cold. Would you like to have lunch, or do something?”

  “Lunch! I wasn’t thinking. It’s way past your lunchtime.” He had held close to his face, in a way which reminded Amy of her father looking at the phone book, an old-fashioned round watch. “At my age, I don’t eat much in the middle of the day. But where can I take you that you can get what you want?”

  “I don’t know where we can go that you won’t be recognized, or that I won’t see somebody I know. Except there’s a place near my old high school that has great cheeseburgers, and no one else will be there now since it’s vacation. Unless you want something better than that?”

  “Coffee will do me, Miss Howard,” he said. “Let’s go where you want.”

  As Amy started off, driving again back over the same slick wet streets, she wondered if his calling her “Miss” were a custom left over from his day of dating. He sounded entirely too quaint. She said, “Please call me Amy.”

  “All right. But then you have to call me something else. Either Jeff or Jeffrey. Which do you prefer?”

  She preferred to go on calling him Mr. Almoner, which seemed proper. She said,
however, “Jeff.”

  The air coming from the car’s heater had grown too hot. Amy lowered the heat and the car became gradually too cold. She then kept alternating the temperature, which would never adjust correctly, and that gave her an unsettled feeling. The day was more dismal with sleet falling now, and slush in dreary little globs was flung about by the windshield wipers.

  “Your fine letter deserves something better than this,” Almoner said quietly.

  And “this,” Amy thought, must refer to the day and their wandering around in it so aimlessly and to being cold; shivering for some time, she had tried to hide it.

  “It must have taken courage for you to write it,” Almoner said. He moved slightly toward the middle of the seat and again placed a hand on her arm. “It was fine, damn it.”

  She sat stiff as a board, wondering that her letter could have been so meaningful. And glancing once at her stolid profile, he took his hand away. She said, with a slight rush, “Remember Quill, that boy who came down there with me to see you? He got an A on his thesis about you.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” he said unconvincingly.

  Amy pressed a little harder on the accelerator and turned them with a bump into the drive-in. She glanced at the rickety fence surrounding it, with the same signs she remembered. A carhop started toward them but Almoner signalled that they would be going inside. Though he got immediately from the car and started around it, Amy met him by the hood. He supposed young ladies in this day and time did not wait to have doors opened for them. He did take her elbow, going up the steps to the entrance. “And is he—if this is a term you use today—your boyfriend?” he said.