The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  Jeff

  Dear March:

  I’m writing on Wednesday assuming it will reach there on Saturday. Are you still coming East this spring?

  Amy

  “And so,” Leigh said, “Almoner’s coming East to see you.” He was meticulous and had made his way carefully through early spring’s mud ruts. On the Vermont hillsides, gouges that were ski trails revealed lonesome-looking rocks. Forgetful, Amy had set her overnight case down on wet ground, where in places snow was accumulated and swirled through with dirt. Leigh, swinging her case to the overhead rack on the train, swung it carefully away from his overcoat with its beaver collar. Amy ducked beneath his arm to settle by the window. “Not to see me,” she said, looking up. “To see his publisher.”

  Leigh fit with difficulty long legs behind the seat in front of them and said, “How convenient. Just when you have a vacation.”

  “You sound like some old biddy from home!” Amy said, hissing.

  “Oh, Amy,” he said. “Are you really so naive?” He flipped open Time Magazine to the political section, sighing weightily, with no time now for anything lesser than the world situation.

  “He has to see his publisher,” Amy said, slowly and distinctly. How had she even in fantasy thought of marrying Leigh? In that coat and carrying an umbrella, he seemed slightly effeminate. She turned to a novel opened on her lap. But the landscape offered a deer delicately nibbling newly revealed grass and fields full of water warming in the spring sun; clumps of evergreens stood, drenched and dark-looking on the hillsides. Unhappily, she could not avoid her own face in the train window, or her staring eyes, looking out at a swollen stream tumbling over boulders. The stream, for some time, followed the tracks as the train, on and on, wound circuitously out of a valley. Watching, her reflected eyes in the window were never steady.

  Leigh, with some curiosity, looked up and said, “Where are you meeting him?”

  When she answered, “His hotel,” Leigh twirled an imaginary mustache and cried, “Ah-hah!” Amy grabbed her suitcase from his hand as they left the train. “See you on the milk train Sunday night,” he said, slipping off easily between commuters.

  She found them, however, an onslaught and herself in the way, with men breaking irritably past her, flinging aside their briefcases and their faces angry. She longed to have gone downtown to the party with Leigh and longed it more when she lost her way, having ducked into a tunnel which did not lead her, as she had expected, upstairs into her hotel lobby, warm and dry. Instead, she emerged onto a slushy street, where a taxi darted immediately from the curb, its driver turning his head as if not to see her and its tires spattering her coat. The hotel was so close she felt she had to walk, but had an oppressed feeling now. She went down the friendless block, convinced her hotel reservation would not have been held. And to tell herself that crying would not help did not make the tears stop.

  Ladies in the city, she noticed, wore tidy boots with openings for high heels, while she wore galoshes with buckles; they squished and flapped as she crossed the hotel’s marble floor. The lobby was full of the rapturous squeals of young ladies in silky clothes, greeting one another, and full of the mewling of a string quartet in the palm-leaved cocktail lounge. Amy began quickly to swelter, as she wore beneath her coat a heavy tweed dress whose pockets were puffed with notes from her last class. Always, she cried at inopportune moments. Though the clerk reassuringly presented a reservation card for her signature, she could do nothing about tears falling down her cheeks. In her pocketbook was a shredded tissue, which bore little resemblance to a Kleenex, but saying that she had a cold, Amy managed to blow her nose on it. Protesting that she had only one little bag, she was about to pick it up. The porter’s shunted face made it evident one did not carry one’s own luggage. Amy afterward tipped him too much, making up for her blunder, her own ineffectuality, hoping he would like her, she admitted.

  The desk clerk phoned her room to say that a message had been left previously by a Mr. Almoner, who was expecting her at six. Her suede gloves, with their sheepskin lining, lay on the dresser, and she could not go out wearing them; washing the mud spatters on her coat had left the nap rubbed-looking. Her mother would say, at its present length, her hair needed cutting. It did need to be set. Maybe she was wan from not taking her thyroid, though never before had she thought it mattered. Amy observed herself, unhappily, in the dresser mirror.

  Deeply fearing salespeople, and particularly in New York, she nevertheless went back downstairs to an arcade of shops in the station’s basement. She was no longer sweltering, since she had changed into the dress with the military buttons and stand-up collar. However, her galoshes still clomped, making her cling to the thought that intellectually she was superior to salespeople; being intimidated by them, she always bought things she did not want. Were silvery-grey galoshes, with little tassels, really what other college girls were wearing, as the salesman said? She doubted it. But having tried on a pair, and thinking she heard a lining rip, Amy was afraid not to buy them.

  In a glove store, a haughty saleswoman said, “Young lady, I don’t think you know what you want,” the remark irritating since it was true. The woman’s aqua-tinted eyelids rolled up in her head, meaning that except for someone’s indecision, the store would be closing. So that, feeling she must buy something, Amy held up several pairs of limp gloves for the saleswoman to choose. “Which?” Amy said. Too late, she found out the gloves were all French kid and twenty dollars a pair. She knew that it was ridiculous to have been afraid, as ridiculous as wearing these gloves, with tiny difficult buttons reaching to her elbows. Turned loose on the world, standing on a moist curb, ineffectual and ill-at-ease, she again wanted to cry. The gloves, which had been smartly crushed at her wrists by the saleswoman, when Amy lifted her arm for a taxi looked only wrinkled.

  Almoner, opening his door, sent light fleeing from behind him into the corridor, where Amy stood. “Here you are,” he said. “In your coat I remember. May I take your things?” He reached for gloves she held wadded in one hand.

  “Here I am.” She stood hesitantly in the room. “It’s nice to see you.” She looked around in disappointment, realizing it was foolish to have expected anything but an ordinary hotel room; expectation usually led to disappointment, she was learning. He held out his hand for her coat. “Aren’t we going out?” she said cautiously.

  “We’re going, shortly, to a party my publisher is giving,” he said. “But it’s a little early.” He placed her coat on the bed.

  “I’m not very dressed up to go to a party with (almost Amy said grownups) your friends,” she said.

  “You look very nice. In fact, Amy, I see now you’re going to be beautiful. If you aren’t exactly yet, you will be.” He studied her attentively.

  She shook her head. “I’ll never be beautiful, but it’s nice of you to say so.” Though with a little more confident tilt to her head, Amy went to the window and stared down. Below, people seemed hunch-backed bent against the wind and while she was disappointed to have been privileged, which never seemed fair, now Amy was glad to be inside this room. Pensive, she had not realized Almoner had come up close behind her. When she turned, at his touch, he put his lips briefly on hers.

  And, “There,” he said, “did that hurt?” There had been, he thought, no more pressure than a flower but there was none in return.

  “No,” she said, not smiling.

  “Well then,” he said, “why do you look so troubled?”

  “Because you want to kiss me,” she said. “I’m afraid you don’t want us just to be friends.”

  “I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Amy,” he said, moving away. “I won’t kiss you, or talk of love if you don’t want that.” She continued to look out the window, her face turned slightly away. “Though I’ve wondered if you didn’t accept the possibility when you wrote me that first time, or at least when we decided to meet?”

  She shook her head somewhat petulantly, feeling accused. Then, needing to place g
uilt elsewhere, she thought of her mother’s saying that older men sometimes went out with young women to keep from feeling old. She said, testingly, “Maybe you just like me because I’m younger.”

  “It wasn’t your face in the train station that day,” he said. “I wouldn’t have recognized you if you hadn’t spoken first. I never really think that, in actuality, you are a schoolgirl. Now why do you look troubled?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know what to say when you talk about love. And everything troubles me, I guess.”

  “You’ll always know trouble.” Amy was toying with a tassel on the window shade, turned half away. “You’ve been so frightened by your past that you’ll always be hurt because you’re gentle and sensitive,” he said. She turned so that he could not see her face at all, and he suspected tears. “But I think you have a toughness, too, Amy. You can cope with just being hurt. But don’t be frightened. I wish I knew everything that had ever happened to you. I could help you better. Anyway, I’m here, if that helps.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Her voice was tiny, muffled against the window.

  “Would you like a drink now?” Amy shook her head. Almoner mixed himself one, moving to a bureau across the room where there was a bottle and glasses. Turning from the window, she came further into the room. “I’m sorry you’ve had so much trouble in your life,” he said, watching her prowl about inspectingly. “But I’m satisfied in a way, too.” She stopped then to look at him questioningly. “You’ll find, eventually, that trouble didn’t hurt you,” he said. “Suppose your heart breaks; it’ll heal. It will be stronger. I know you want to be able to believe in people and life, to trust both.”

  “Shouldn’t I?” she said quickly.

  “I think so. Other people you’ll know in your life will tell you not to.”

  “That seems a sad way to live.” She perched, almost tiredly, on the arm of a chair.

  “Just don’t be afraid of being hurt. It’s inevitable if you’re going to reach out for experience. And that’s what you’re after, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, brightening. “I don’t want a life like my parents or most of my friends. Simply social, you know?”

  Crossing to the bureau, Almoner put more ice in his drink, that instant having wanted so desperately to touch the face he thought so tender. He leaned against the bureau. “Of course, I know. I turned my back on my past, too, didn’t I? Isn’t that partially at least what brought you to me, that you sensed it?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know exactly what brought me. Feeling in your books was the only name I had for it.”

  He started impulsively toward her and saw the frightened look on her face. “I’m sorry. I forgot again. I don’t want to put any more pressure on you.” He remained, however, close. “But you are my love, you are. I can’t help that. And I can’t believe my luck in finding you, or rather in having you find me.”

  She accepted being teased about that and laughed with him. Moving again to the window, she could see a crowded intersection, the surrounding streets black and emptying. Amy felt Almoner full of probing questions, sitting down behind her; and she would feel less fearful down there, with those strangers. What exposure about herself did she fear so much? When she looked back, her attention went quickly to a round table in the center of the room, holding an enormous basket of fruit and nuts. Going to it, she read an attached card. “The management sent you this! I’ve never known anyone that important before,” she said. Grateful for his kindness, she knew no other way of telling him. It seemed a shame that the fruit would go to waste, as he could not eat this much in a month. Feeling an obligation to the management which had been so nice, Amy began to crowd small things one after another into her mouth, raisins, kumquats, and nuts.

  Putting down his drink, Almoner said, “I think we’d better go to the party before you spoil your appetite.”

  He worried about her feet getting wet, but Amy, sensing the new boots were dreadful, insisted on leaving them behind. Often, at the movies, she wore gloves to keep from biting her nails but did not like wearing them, or to have her hand held when she had them on. Nevertheless, she left one gloved hand in his hand as they were driven up Fifth Avenue; he had taken it as immediately as they got into the cab. And once, pressing her hand hard, he said, “Amy, know this, that anything I have is yours.”

  She thanked him, wondering what he meant, supposing only money, though surely he knew she had enough of that. Knowing she could not attribute his remark to stupidity, she felt a vague sense of her own ignorance. That feeling carried over when she stood on the sidewalk and gazed at the lavish, monumental apartment building where the publisher, Alex Boatwright, lived. When Almoner had paid the driver, and they went inside, she sensed more how the party was going to be beyond her. A red-coated doorman opened polished glass doors into the subdued rich glitter of a mirrored lobby. They stepped from a quiet small elevator immediately into Alex’s apartment, which was a new experience for Amy and confusing. She had expected to step into a corridor of closed doors. Looking about foolishly, she thought that she stood a moment too long before understanding. All around her were blurred older faces. Rooted to the spot before the elevator, she heard the inaudible whisper going about the room: “Almoner’s come!” All eyes had turned their way.

  Alex Boatwright came, with extended hand, to the foyer to rescue them. He stared at Amy from what seemed a great height, giving her a queer feeling that he knew as much about her as she knew about herself. But would Jeff have mentioned her to Mr. Boatwright? Introduced, he nodded a great shaggy head and looked at her kindly. She went across the room between him and Almoner feeling safely maneuvered, occasionally nudged, like a little boat between larger ones.

  “What may I get you to drink?” Alex asked and bent to hear her when they reached the bar.

  “A martini would be fine,” she said.

  “A martini would be fine for this young lady,” he repeated, though the bartender had heard and already reached for a pitcher. She wondered why, with a little smile, Mr. Boatwright had repeated her order. Holding her glass, she stood between them like a child with something to pacify it, while they talked across and above her head. She was eventually separated from Almoner by other people crowding around to talk to him. When Alex’s attention was taken, too, Amy wandered toward windows, full-length at one end of the room. There, Almoner presently joined her, having noticed her alone; but he said nothing, as if he felt, too, the enormity of everything, as she did: not only of night and the city below them—simply of everything; that was the only word Amy could think of. They were forced, eventually, back into the room by others. As they went from group to group, he sometimes touched her elbow, guidingly. Irritated that she was so inadequate, she felt annoyed by his possessive touch. She wondered several times about Leigh and the party she might have chosen.

  Might he get her a refill? Almoner asked. Amy shook her head, guarding against losing whatever wits she had. Never before had she been to a party where women wore long dresses, unless it was a dance. She was so much the most underdressed female at the party that she forgot to worry about her appearance. She sat on a footstool near Almoner’s knee, considering herself hardly distinguishable from its pattern. She grew used to the fact that anyone who spoke to her was going to ask the same questions: How she had met Almoner and what she did? Oh, they then said, what school? without really caring. They wanted to know so obviously, she thought, not only more than she told them but more than they dared ask. At home, her father and his friends drank quickly, seeing how much they could “put aboard” before dinner. Without drinks, Almoner and Alex Boatwright sat now discussing a vague sonnet. Amy wished she could tell her mother about the ice sculpture and about the crepe suzettes for dinner, fantastically thin. She longed, in a burst of enthusiasm, to write her mother about everything!

  Almoner, tuned to her moods, said in a low voice, “I told you in New York we would have good food and good talk.”

 
; An exchanged glance between them acknowledged several things, that freezing day by the river when they had first risked meeting, that undeniably there would be more meetings, that truthfully no matter how nice it was here, they preferred their own part of the country. Almoner then went for coffee, thinking that the glance between them had been as intimate as one between lovers, wondering if he and Amy ever would be.

  As soon as he left the table, the woman sitting next to Amy said, “How nice that you know Mr. Almoner. How did you meet him?” Her rising eyebrows were dyed heavily, black as ravens’ wings. Amy watched their flight.

  “He’s a friend of my aunt’s really,” she said. She smiled innocently, believing the woman could not think there was anything between the shy, ill-at-ease girl she saw and the famous man. Surely the woman must see she had been brought along by Almoner as unthinkingly as he had brought his coat. The woman’s eyebrows lowered and her nose quivered. She was affronted by being lied to. She turned, as Amy did, to watch caterers who, as if they were magicians, folded away tables and transformed the foyer into a place for dancing. Beyond, Almoner had been stopped by admirers and stood uncomfortably, holding demitasses. Not even saying “Excuse me” the woman left the table. Conspicuously alone then, Amy was grateful when a youngish man came up, bowed, and asked her to dance. She rose, thinking that men just beginning to grey at the temples were handsome, always. He was not so old, either, probably about thirty, she judged. He turned out to be rigid and untalkative, however, and she began to wonder why he had asked her to dance. Unheedingly, he kept hitting her in the eye with a white carnation in his buttonhole. Assuming their silence was her fault, falling back on her mother’s advice, Amy talked wildly about whatever came into her head: how thin the crêpes had been, the ice sculpture, whether he had read any good books lately. He kept woodenly pushing her about until the music stopped. He then, unexpectedly, asked if she would like to go to a jazz concert in the Village the next afternoon.