The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  “Not your buddy Almoner?” Tony said quickly. “I saw in somebody’s column he was in town.”

  She refused to look surprised and shook her head. “Are you going to see him?” Tony said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you called him, he’d take the call? You know him that well?”

  “I guess.”

  He grinned and called, “Catch!”

  Taken by surprise, Amy received the ball against her stomach, but then threw it skillfully through the extended hoop of Tony’s arms. “Hey, good!” he cried.

  “I was the star on my high-school basketball team,” she said happily.

  They went dancelike along the sidewalk, tossing and retossing the ball. People watched. At her windowsill, an old lady watering a single geranium called shaky encouragement. Amy saw people she wanted to know, to whom Tony talked easily. A shabby wino, wearing pants split open wide along his rear, called her “Beautiful” out of a toothless mouth. Despite his stench, Amy touched him as they exchanged the ball. He went off after returning it. And except that he wore green undershorts, which were showing through his split, what else did she know about him? Their lives had not in any real way touched. That life could be repetitious and dull was evident in the faces she saw along these streets. Long ago, Jeff had said places made no difference. Anywhere, she was faced with fighting or accepting those two things. Here, colored lights and unusual clothes were only outward differences.

  Tony smelled of peppermint candy as he came closer. “Come on and go with me to a party, beautiful,” he said, close to her ear. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  “I have to go back uptown for dinner,” she said.

  “Oh no. You’re backsliding, Kansas City. I know, it’s Delton.”

  “It was important to go,” she said, instead.

  “Why’d you come down, if you’re going right back?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Come on. Go with me,” he said. “It’ll be a blast.” He circled her waist and pressed it winningly, drawing her close. Little girls across the street stopped their game to line the curb, balanced like little birds on a telephone wire. One screamed, “Tony’s got a girl!”

  “See. Out of the mouth of babes. You’re my girl,” he said, and unexpectedly moistened her ear with the tip of his tongue. Amy shivered. She gazed down toward the end of the street to pretend indifference; there, blood red as a peach stone, the sun was going down. Tony had felt that shiver, and tried again. Amy gazed fixedly at the reflective streaks of sun along the pavement, her ear being touched, before abruptly closing her eyes. Tony quickly began to urge her along the street, past the treachery of objects in the way, a shopping cart, a scooter, a baby carriage.

  Another couple flaunting courtship called encouragingly as Tony, still circling Amy’s waist, leaned around to kiss her. She let herself be pressed against a building. He leaned against her full length and kissed her harder. She resisted opening her mouth. But he knew enough to ask for sympathy and wiggled closer. He was not going to have his show at the YMCA. He was so unhappy! And she, being a writer, could understand. She was not easily enough swayed. Suddenly then, he simply told Amy she was going to the party and yanked her by the wrist. Caveman-like, he might have been yanking her by the hair on her head. Hooting and calling, the little girls suddenly came after them. The sun spilled along the way in pink tatters. Glimpsing herself in a store window, unable to see her feet, Amy felt fleet and buoyant, that she was flying. Heedlessly past outraged people, hand in hand, she and Tony ran away from the persistent children, who continued to follow, screaming gleefully. As a bus stopped at a corner, Tony suggested they get on. Amy agreed, for she was breathless. And not much longer could she elude anything, she had thought, by running.

  Telephoning, she gazed about the apartment of Tony’s friends, thinking it was a room like this she had wanted living with Nancy. A hand to one ear and trying to hear above the noise, she saw, tiny as a pinpoint, the girl she had been, struggling upstairs with her suitcases and fraught with worry over paying a cab driver. Ebony African statues stood starkly against white walls. A shiny zebra-skin rug was splayed on the hall floor. Sling chairs were dabs of color, obvious like spots of rouge on a pale face. Since it had nothing to do with her, she wondered why she had longed for this room. She imagined only because it had been different from what she had known, a reason that seemed silly now. Tony stood riffling through slick art magazines. With an aloof look, he kept his back to clusters of people. He was feeling inadequate, Amy thought, therefore looking defiant. She suddenly decided he deliberately put splotches of paint on his jeans. And why had he worn them when everyone else was dressed in usual street clothes? She had not been the odd-looking one, walking in.

  Enormous flurry had accompanied Almoner’s receiving a personal call. Shifting the receiver to her other ear, Amy continued to wait, while the call was transferred from place to place in the publishing house.

  Lucky she had caught him, Jeff said when he was found. He had been about to leave for Alex’s. His voice was tender when he talked to her, but took on a harder note when she had spoken. It dropped a tone. Of course, he could understand she had forgotten having another engagement this evening. He had taken up too much of her time. “It’s natural,” he concluded, “for you to want to see someone your own age.”

  “That’s not it, at all,” she said. “I’d just forgotten about promising to go to this party.” She held the receiver from her ear. He would hear the noise. She had considered it better to lie than to hurt him by telling the truth. But the truth was, she thought, staring at Tony, who looked as if he had wandered in off the street, the truth was, she thought again, that she might have made a mistake. She shrank against the wall, out of the way of someone passing a tray. It was held a moment as if for shelter over her head. “Jeff, we’ll get together tomorrow. Won’t we?” she said.

  “If you want,” he said. “But I’ll wait for you to call me.”

  She hung up reluctantly, as he had spoken. And she remained there, hesitantly, at the edge of the room. This time she had meant to fit directly into the crowd. But the conversationalists had formed circles, their faces turned toward one another. They seemed to shut her out, like doors. Tony seemed skittering as a leaf, coming toward her.

  She accepted a drink. “This is a lousy bunch,” Tony said. “I don’t know why I thought it’d be a good party. I’m sorry we came.”

  “Maybe it’s us,” Amy said.

  He shook his head. “Let’s get out as soon as possible.”

  “But, maybe it is us,” she said.

  “This guy’s had a little success,” Tony said angrily, nodding toward the host’s paintings on one wall. “It’s gone to his head. He used to be a nice guy.”

  “He’s getting to have a name. That’s good. He’s our age, too.”

  “He’s got lousy liquor.” Tony thrust his glass up and stared at the bottom, as if hopeful of finding something like sediment. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “But shouldn’t we talk to somebody?” Amy said. “I feel dumb, leaving. I feel it’s my fault now if I can’t talk to people. We can’t say they’re all stupid.”

  “Hell, they are,” he said, starting her toward the door.

  “I think we ought to stay,” she said worriedly.

  “Then stay,” he said, heading for the door. Reaching out as if for his coattail, Amy followed. Picking up her purse, from among many left on a side table, she saw her face in a mirror and looked away. No one noticed their leaving. It had seemed a nice party, she thought. She went out automatically when Tony opened the door. She might have joined a group by going up and saying something first. Anything would have done, as an opener. Too often, she waited for people to make overtures to her. As the door closed and set them into abrupt silence, she thought that waiting was why her life might seem to consist so much of nothing happening. She settled, with simplification, on the thought that she must lear
n to start conversations.

  Though he used all his coaxing methods, tried pressing her again ardently against a building, himself onto her, Amy remained firm about not going home with Tony. He was angry, but surprisingly, for him, that mood disappeared. The next moment, he was all smiles and nuzzling. She thought, dumbfounded at not having had an argument, that perhaps Tony also wanted to change. They might be growing up, she thought, a little sadly over wasted time. And it must be true, for he was spending money. At an open stand, Tony insisted on buying two slices of pizza and presented her with one. The mixture began to slither off the crust, melting cheese and tomatoes and anchovies deliciously running into her hand. They were laughing and ate rapidly, despite the hotness. To walk along the street, laughing and eating, gave Amy one of her unexpected and fragmentary moments of happiness and well-being, which she and Jeff had discussed. Thinking that, the call to him bore down on her conscience again.

  Above them at her steps, the landlord’s window let out light in a thin stream, as she and Tony stood, kissing. She liked even the taste of pizza lingering on Tony’s breath, its warmth. He apologized, in a whisper, for his behaviour the time they tried peyote. That didn’t matter any more, Amy said, forgiving happily.

  He said, “Your knowing Almoner, in fact, gave me an idea. I’m going to make a play out of Reconstruction. Would you show him the script?”

  He leaned so close that Amy had to lean backward to see him. Then in the inadequate light his face had its pointed look, like a fox’s. Despite his closeness, Amy spoke stronger than her normal voice.

  “Have you finished it?”

  “God, no.” He lifted meager shoulders. “I haven’t even started it. I wanted to know first if you’d show it to Almoner. I don’t want to do all that work for nothing.”

  “I don’t know him that well.”

  “I thought you knew him pretty well,” he said grumpily.

  Amy’s foot sought a step behind her. Rising, she teetered but kept herself carefully from Tony’s reach. “No,” she said firmly, “I don’t.”

  Even in the dim fake moonlight streaming from the landlord’s window, she saw dismay on Tony’s face. Having taken a step backward he stood below her like a waif; his arms thrown out were beseeching and scrawny. “I see. Well, see you, Amy.” His hands went into saggy empty pockets as he turned away. Impulsively, she thought of asking if he wanted back the quarter for the pizza. But he looked meek disappearing. She was sorry again for the times she had begrudged lending him money. Standing at the avenue, looking both ways, he seemed about to look back. Amy automatically lifted a hand to wave. He rounded the corner. Her hand dropped against her thigh, as if, all along, she had intended to strike herself.

  Never will I know what she’s doing walking uptown, but my feets ain’t going to make it. Jessie said, “Miss Inga, ain’t you tired?”

  She would find strength in her body to make it if it were the last thing she ever did, and Inga said, “No. I’m not tired.” She pulled nervously tighter the drawstrings of a crocheted handbag, already as tight as they need be. Having bought it from Mrs. Decker, Amelia had said, “It’s the new shade for fall,” meaning it as incentive for Inga to get up. Then she had rolled her eyes toward Amelia asking, For what? Jeff was gone.

  These sidewalks once had been wooden planks set above the road. They had walked them fearful of wasps’ nests beneath. No longer now around the station ahead were there any vacant lots. Still it was a lounging place for men, some now leaning against dusty car fenders. A car slowed. Its driver stuck out a ruddy face and said, “Give you a ride?” Turning on him a bright smile, Inga shook her head, despite Jessie’s eagerness. When he drove on, she apologized. “I’m sorry, Jessie. I just had to make this walk again. I made it so easily when I was young.”

  Well, she sho was foolish if she was going to try to act young again, Jessie thought. She had to undo the drawstring Inga had tangled. Stopping beneath a sycamore, Inga fumbled with the purse. The mirror she took out flashed in half-realized gleams along the shady sidewalk. Inga saw it had been a mistake to order over the phone. When the girl at Chester’s had read off “Light Suntan,” she had asked if that wouldn’t give her a healthy look. Then the girl had answered, “Yes, mam, it says on the label a healthy glow.” But the make-up was caked in creases along her face. Would nothing work out right as hard as she tried? Inga wondered. The Vaseline touched to her eyelids, instead of giving her eyes a shiny look, made her look as if she had been crying.

  “Who was that man?” Inga said.

  “Mister Vida, runs the bait shop out on the highway. I thought sho you knowed him, you looked so friendly.”

  “I get confused about who I know and who I don’t,” Inga said. “But wasn’t it nice he stopped?”

  “Anybody round here see anybody out walking in this heat going to stop,” Jessie said. “Miss Amelia would have carried us uptown.”

  “I hate to ask her with Latham at home. Queer to me why he wants to change around that old cabin out back.”

  Menfolks was queer. Never any telling what they would do. Looked like she’d know it by now. Jessie lagged passing the movie. Inga said, almost excitedly, “Cary Grant. I’d like to come to that tonight.”

  “No’m, don’t come tonight. You be’s tired to-night. Stay home.” Jessie then nodded her head, barely saying “How do” to a Negro man sweeping the sidewalk, who in return barely spoke. They looked away from one another quickly.

  Counting the man in the car as one, the man coming along now, lifting his hat, was two. He was looking, wasn’t he? “How do,” Inga said. She could sound like them, every one, if she wanted and wondered whether white people here had ever realized how much they talked like the Negroes. In other days, men had looked at her first. “Jessie, whatever happened to that great big market basket I used to have?”

  Going down one side of the station and now heading for the other. My feets giving out. Jessie wondered, What was she shopping for? She said, “Honey, that basket done been gone, wore out with age.”

  In his little garden, still full of cinders after all these years, the stationmaster stood up and said, “Afternoon, Mrs. Almoner.” Seeing her come toward him, he had thought she had something to say. She only stared, a wet look to her eyelids, while the Negro woman with her sat down and eased off her shoes. “I was pinching my mums,” he said. When she only repeated, “Mums,” he realized Mrs. Almoner had nothing on her mind, after all. He suggested a tour of the garden.

  Inga found herself walking between flowery rows. The old man, whose hand was shakier than hers, guided her along the cinder-block path. It would be better, Inga thought, if she were helping him. She wanted to laugh despite everything. Afterward, waving to Jessie, and signifying her eventual return, she went on past an empty-looking feed store and to the post office. Outside there, a little boy lifted his puppy to drink from the bronze fountain. Thinking how listlessly the flag hung in the hazy autumn, only at the last instant did Inga think to count, “Three,” when the man coming down the post office steps lifted his hat. When he had gone on, looking a little miffed, for she had barely spoken in return, she recognized that girl’s uncle. He always wore the same perforated shoes. Inga made up for that lack by speaking over cordially to a Negro on his knees, polishing the post office’s brass spittoon.

  When she came in, the mail clerk slapped down the Delton paper. “’Fraid you didn’t catch another thing today,” he said.

  She said, feeling foolish, “No news is good news.” She tried to smile. As she turned away, he called, “Heard Mr. Almoner had left town. He didn’t leave instructions about his box. You want the mail, if any comes, for March Walsh?”

  It rang a bell, like a tinkle, as removed in memory as the long-ago bell that had sent her trudging up a hill to school.

  Inga shook her head, wanting no letters for any (whoever he was) March Walsh. It probably wasn’t really amazing that people lived together almost a lifetime without ever knowing one another. Inga went down
the steps again as delicately as a dancer, her toes in yellow shoes carefully pointed. Crossing back to the shade beneath oaks, she said, “Jessie, it’s taken more out of me than I realized. I think we’ll have to take the taxi home.”

  Praise the Lord; Jessie said, “I just seed Vern. He can carry us.” Catching sight of the old green car meandering past the Negro stores, she yelled, “Boy, come on over here!” He came only after turning his head and staring a long moment, then his green fenders shimmied, the car stopping, a drum’s rhythm in time to the motor’s overly apparent running. Stretching an arm along the seat, Vern watched Jessie open the back door, watched Inga get in. Her smile was so quick it seemed gone before it got there and her eyes were like blind people’s eyes. Don’t see me, he said to himself, his hand roving airward toward the steering wheel, without causing her to glance his way. “Be careful, you going to knock somebody in the head,” Jessie said. “How come you ain’t working?”

  “Ground’s too wet,” Vern said. In the rearview mirror, he saw Mrs. Almoner reading the paper, not caring who driving her long as somebody was. “Whoa, boy! Slow down,” Jessie warned. The car bumped a curb going around a corner. “What time the show start tonight?” Jessie said.

  “Seven,” Vern said.

  Only when they passed the movie did Inga look up to say, “Cary Grant. I’d like to come.”

  Who going to keep her from it? Vern wondered. Come on and come, he thought, I’ll sit next to you. Driving on as fast as possible, he saw her slide to a corner and hang on to a strap as if for her life. “Going to let you out before the gap,” he said. “I got meetin’ to go to.”

  “Us done walked uptown, guess us can walk from the gap to the house,” Jessie said, beginning to climb out. Inga, already out and waiting, said, “Jessie, I’m going to clean up Jeff’s study.”

  Jessie sat a moment, catching her breath. “Ain’t supposed to go in there when he ain’t home,” she said. “Us don’t need to do nothing this evening, but rest.”