The House on Coliseum Street

by Shirley Ann Grau

  The harsh rough words she had used made her feel better. Things cleared and shifted back into a sharper focus. Being tough and cheap made her feel happier.

  She lived for the moment in a world where such things happened all the time, were a part of life and nobody noticed. Nobody thought anything of it.

  “Look,” the policeman said, “go on home.”

  “I will,” she said, “but I’ll be back. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon. So you’ll know.”

  “Lady,” he said patiently, “take it easy.”

  “No guns… Anyhow, he ought to be nibbled to death by ducks.” She giggled. “But I want to find out who she is.”

  “Okay,” the man said, “okay.”

  “Nothing wrong in that. Perfectly legal.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Don’t let it get out of hand.”

  “I’m not exactly the type who goes wading around in blood up to my knees.”

  “You never know,” he said and went back to the patrol car.

  That struck her as so very funny she chuckled all the way home.

  She had found a way out now. Whenever she felt the quivering shaking uncertainty coming near her, she would go off by herself, where there was no one to hear. And she would say her little story out loud, using the crudest words she could think of. Sometimes she made up the images, graphic ones that struck her imagination. She told the whole thing aloud to herself. The quivering would stop and she would feel better. She would feel fine.

  A week or so later, Joan saw the raincoat, the green raincoat, tossed over a chair in the ladies’ room at the library. Beside it were two books. Joan recognized them as freshman English and math. She flipped one open, glanced at the name written across the flyleaf in crisp bright green ink. Then she sat down in the next chair, rummaged in her bag for a lipstick, and began methodically redoing her make-up, waiting for the owner to emerge.

  She came finally, a tall thin girl, with shingled black hair and pale lipstick and heavy eyes. She slipped into the green raincoat, belted it, picked up the books. She hesitated, turned back to the mirror, snapped open her purse and ran a tiny comb through her unruffled hair. Then she checked her teeth for lipstick and, turning, checked her seams carefully.

  Joan said: “I couldn’t help noticing that raincoat. I think it’s the loveliest I’ve ever seen.”

  The girl looked surprised, then smiled.

  “I’m sure there isn’t another one like it in town.”

  “As a matter of fact,” the dark-haired girl said, “I got a dressmaker to run it up from a coat pattern.”

  “Do you mind …” Joan touched one finger to a sleeve, brushing lightly. Smooth and curiously warm. As if it held body heat.

  “It’s Japanese silk,” the girl said.

  “Good heavens,” Joan persisted, “it is lovely.”

  “Well actually,” the girl gathered up her books and purse again, “it isn’t too practical; it isn’t very waterproof and I have to race between buildings to keep from getting soaked.”

  And from buildings to car, Joan said silently to the closing door.

  Joan went back to classes. And under the ironic glances and the wisecracking of her professors set about catching up. I’m not stupid, she told herself. I can do it.

  Working so hard kept her on campus most of the time and she could see the green raincoat pass back and forth. She kept track of it. The way you’d keep track of a timber in the surf. Losing it for long periods, seeing it finally bob to the surface again. But you keep tracking it because you want to avoid it. And you always know most about the things you have to avoid.

  It drizzled for weeks. Grey days streaked by the passing of a bright green raincoat.

  Without knowing it, without willing it, Joan got to know more and more about the girl. She knew which dormitory she lived in, that her classes ran from nine until one, that she had a psychology lab on Wednesday afternoon. That Michael picked her up after the lab ended at five o’clock; that they went out to supper.

  That they had three dates a week, which was all freshmen were allowed to have.

  The rains stopped and the cool clear days of late October began. The green silk raincoat disappeared. It was harder to keep track now. Without the coat she blended in with the other girls.

  So Joan took to waiting for them. She knew the freshman curfew hours; she parked her black Pontiac at the corner of the dormitory and waited. Whenever a watchman passed, she slipped down in her seat and the Pontiac was just another parked car along a public street. Anyway, the watchman never looked closely at the cars: they were nearly always full of necking couples.

  Afterward, she followed Michael back, saw him in his door. She felt very protective toward him; she could sleep better knowing that he was safely at home.

  She did not bother to think about it, she did not analyze. She only knew that after she had seen him home she was quite peaceful and curiously happy in a quiet way.

  It was Aurelie who suggested the psychiatrist. She did it one morning—as things were always done in the house on Coliseum Street—at breakfast. She popped her black-framed reading glasses over the edge of the morning paper and stared straight at Joan. “Why don’t you see Cousin Oliver, if you’re not feeling well?”

  Joan was idly squirting the juice from half-peeled sections of an orange. She was trying to outline the flower pattern on her plate. “Me?”

  “If you aren’t feeling well,” Aurelie said, “I think it would be a very good idea.”

  “I feel fine.”

  Aurelie folded the paper carefully and laid it beside her own plate. “You haven’t had a date in months. You come and go at all hours of the day and night.”

  “I happen to want to study,” Joan said self-consciously. “I’m just tired of wasting my time around here.”

  “You come and go all hours of the night. Alone.” Aurelie shook her head. “For a young girl … Something is wrong.”

  “I don’t need a head shrinker,” Joan said.

  “Now that is rude.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “Something is bothering you.”

  “Just because I don’t want to be a featherbrain and an idiot like all the people you know…”

  Aurelie shrugged. “For your sake.”

  “You try to lift yourself, just a little bit, and everybody around here thinks you’re crazy.”

  “A young woman without an escort late at night,” Aurelie made a face of horror.

  “No escort,” Joan said furiously, “and you don’t have to keep fighting them off to defend your virtue.”

  Doris chuckled silently.

  “That is quite enough,” Aurelie said to her.

  “I would rather not go out with the slobs around here.”

  “Mercy mercy,” Doris said.

  “Leave the table,” Aurelie said. But she was looking at Joan, and Doris went on quietly finishing her breakfast.

  With her finger Joan moved the orange peels into a heap in the center of the plate. “Oliver is crazy.”

  “He is a very brilliant man.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “That,” Doris said, “is my line.”

  Aurelie glared at her younger daughter. “It must be my blood,” she said to no one in particular. “You all had different fathers and you all came out the same way. The exact same way.”

  “Not like her,” Doris giggled, “don’t tell me I’m like her. I couldn’t stand it.”

  Joan didn’t bother answering.

  “I think you should,” Aurelie repeated to Joan.

  “If my habits bother you,” Joan said formally, “I can always leave.”

  Aurelie sighed. “Back to that. If your idiot of a father had had any sense he would never have left you that money outright.”

  “But he did,” Joan said, quietly triumphant.

  “He was an idiot.”

  “I can afford my own apartment.”

  Aurelie sighed. “Dramatics,” she said, “I hate dramatic
s. Go away and let me finish my coffee in peace.”

  AFTER A FEW DAYS Joan no longer waited for Michael at curfew time by the dormitory. She joined their evenings earlier, followed them more closely: when they met, on the sidewalk outside Tilton Hall, she was watching. She followed them clumsily at first, then with practice more and more easily.

  For the next few weeks she trailed them about the city, silently, patiently, matter-of-factly. She did not feel upset, or angry. She felt patient; as if in a way she were only doing her duty.

  It seemed to her sometimes, as they formed an unknown trio, that they should leave marks in the night, like jet trails. Telltale marks. That would repeat aloud that the couple was not a couple after all. That there was a watcher.

  When she thought about it, it struck her as funny that she should be so happy in her role as observer. But she did not think about it very often.

  She had trouble only once. When she was waiting for them outside the Sahara Club, parked quietly a half block away, a man in a light suit had tried to open the sidewalk-side door. It was locked; she always kept them locked. He stood rattling the handle, while she hesitated. In a sudden anger, he began kicking the door, hard. She shifted quickly, and drove off. For a few yards the man held on to the door, lifted his feet and coasted along, stuck to the side like a monkey. But as she gathered speed, he dropped off. She saw him in her mirror, standing at the side of the highway, brushing off the front of his light suit.

  She drove down a bit, circled and came back. She made one quick trip through, checking to be sure that the convertible was still there. Then parked again, this time among the necking couples in the back lot. She wasn’t noticed.

  And when Michael came out of the door, she was waiting and followed them back.

  That Saturday they went on a sailing party. Joan recognized the boat. She had been on it several times, some two years past. It was an old Biloxi lugger, rigged as a party boat. Its hull was unpainted and scuffed by years of hard use. But its deck was screened, and all the cabin partitions had been pulled out to make one large room. It wasn’t seaworthy any more, but it had a very large ice chest, a very fine radio and a more or less reliable engine.

  They chugged out past the yacht club with the radio going full blast.

  Joan watched them over the horizon, then, as she stared out at the thin line of lake and sky, broken now and then with the little peaks of sailboats, she realized something. She had noticed, of course she had noticed, she just hadn’t understood. Until now.

  During the last few days they had begun sleeping together… Joan nodded to herself. She was sure. She had watched them too long and too carefully not to notice the slight difference now. A certain ease. Their figures were no longer wire tense. As they moved, they swayed gently, ever so slightly, tending together, delicately touching but not really touching.

  She knew it now.

  By five that afternoon it was clear that they were not coming back for supper. Joan went home.

  She showered and changed into a bright yellow dress and tossed a bright yellow sweater around her shoulders, because the evenings now were cool.

  She had a slow supper—alone, for the house seemed to be empty. How funny, she thought, I don’t even know what they’re doing any more.

  She finished, piled the dishes in the sink and drove back to the lake. Freshmen, she knew, on Saturdays had the same curfew hour as everyone else in the dormitories … two o’clock. So the boat would be coming back around midnight. She got to the harbor at eleven.

  She had figured correctly. First she heard the loud blaring of the radio and she wondered if they had bothered to turn it off at all during the long day. Then she heard the groan and rattle and thump of the engine. Finally she saw the chipped white hull swing into the circle of light from the clubhouse. And she heard the noisy mixture of voices from the deck.

  When the convertible pulled away she was in no hurry to follow. She knew where they would have to be going.

  She got to the dorm a few minutes behind them; the parking places were filled. She felt a sudden panic. There was the convertible. She thought she could see heads in it, but she wasn’t sure. And passing so close, she didn’t dare stop. She drove past, letting the tail of her eye catch a dark lump that might have been a couple or might have been a steering wheel, or a coat thrown over the back of the seat.

  She turned at the corner, into the campus, and found a parking place. She popped out, hurrying along the dark leaf-strewn and slippery walks. As she came around the corner of the building, at the top of the little rise, where the lawn sloped off down to the street, she saw the convertible move off, with a brisk impatient gunning of the motor.

  She was out of breath; she turned back into the shadow of the trees and sat down on one of the benches.

  It was a cool night, clear and crisp. At the street entrance to the dormitory there was a flurry of cars and flashing lights and muffled voices—as girls and their dates rushed to make the deadline.

  She did not know how long she had been sitting there—she no longer wore a watch—but her breathing was regular now and calm. In the dormitory the lights were off too, except for the little ones burning in the lobby and along the halls.

  A watchman sauntered past her, humming under his breath. In spite of her light dress, he did not see her, for the bench she had picked was half behind a thick low growth of azalea.

  She sat there very quietly, thinking about nothing, listening to the night birds and the sounds of little animals moving. It was nice to be outside, and alone, when everything else was dark and sleeping. Gave you the feeling of being the only one alive in the world. Your breathing was so loud. And you held your breath to see what it was like when you weren’t there.

  After a bit, when she got cold, she stood up and began to walk to her car. She left the paths and cut along in the shadow of the bushes, moving noiselessly. It was a trick she had learned when she was a child, spending summers with her father. It was part of a game of Indians then, and the chauffeur, who was a redbone, half Indian and half Negro, had played patiently with her… She could do it perfectly now. She left the night silence like water unruffled behind her.

  THAT SAME NIGHT she wrote the letter. She did not remember exactly when she sat down at her small machine and typed it out. She did know that she sat very still over it for a long while, staring at the typewriter keys, scratching with her fingernails at the smear of bright red nail polish along the top of the machine. The keys had polish on them too; she had always tried to type just when her polish was new and wet…

  She had carried the letter around with her for a whole day. A long white envelope in the bottom of her purse. Gathering lint and bits of tobacco and the scents of different perfumes. A faint smell of leather. Edges beginning to grey just a bit.

  Then, quite suddenly, she passed a mailbox and almost without thinking she opened her purse and dropped in the letter. And that was that.

  The letter said, in two lines: Do you think your parents would be interested in hearing that you are having an affair with M.K.?

  As she had expected, there were no more dates. She watched for a few days to be sure, and then no longer haunted the dark streets and parked alongside the dorms.

  In the early days of November, steady heavy rains began as they always did, bringing in the first of the winter weather. She wore boots now and a raincoat and carried an umbrella and when she stepped through the library door, that door was snatched out of her hand. When she walked, she walked leaning against a wind. She still parked her car at the far edge of the campus and as she went along, leaves and bits of branches would be tossed down at her, pasted against her oilcloths by the force of the rain.

  And where were the couples now, she wondered. Where would they go?

  The rain made her feel terribly old. Old enough to be their mother. Old enough to be through with the hot drive of mating.

  Old as the wet earth under her bootsoles.

  She felt herself get strong
er and stronger. Felt each muscle along her skeleton stretch and flex and tighten. Firmer, harder, impenetrable.

  I’ll never die, she thought one night as she reached her car. How could I?

  Her mood changed. She was no longer impenetrable; she was light. Easy and drifting.

  I can remember, she thought, when I was born. A lot of swirling waters and a beat like surf pounding.

  And do you remember dying afterward? Like that circle. Slipping in and out of life. And did an embryo remember dying? Did my seaweed child remember? Drifting and surf pounding…

  Empty inside and lonesome. Caverns and caves, echoing. The Holy Ghost now. Or the Shower of Gold…

  Being one is so lonesome. With another heart ticking away inside. A different beat. A ragged pattern. The little ticking heart. The soft floating seaweed bones…

  IV. WINTER

  A SUNDAY IN NOVEMBER. The bleak bare desolate look of a southern winter. Joan had been up early, had looked out, and come back to bed. She spent the day there, not bothering to eat, listening to the soft Sunday sounds of bells and quiet traffic. Muted, not quite real sounds.

  At five o’clock, when she was sure he’d be home, she called Fred Aleman. “I just wanted to apologize.” She did not bother saying hello. “I’ve been being a monster and I’m sorry.” She hung up quickly, before he could say anything.

  The flowers came, as she had known they would, about an hour later. Aurelie herself brought them up. “You make up with somebody?”

  “Yes,” Joan said, “Fred.”

  “That’s nice,” Aurelie said vaguely. “Do you feel all right?”

  Joan almost giggled at the sly eyes darting around the room, looking for some signs of disorder. “Some sort of bug,” she said, “kept me still all morning.”