He took off the Ace bandage and looked at her ankle. She had gotten the bandage wet walking home. He went to look for another one. He came back carrying the wrinkled job application. “I found this in the bureau drawer. You told me you turned your application in.”
“It fell in the gutter,” she said.
“Why didn’t you throw it away?”
“I thought it might be important,” she said, and hobbled over on her crutches and took it away from him.
* * *
They were late to the concert because of her ankle, so they didn’t get to sit with the Brubakers, but afterward they came over. Dr Brubaker introduced his wife.
“I’m so sorry about this,” Janice Brubaker said. “Ron’s been telling them for years they should get that central walk fixed. It used to be heated.” She was the woman Sandy had pointed at at the Tupperware party and said was Janice who loved Jesus. She was wearing a dark red suit and had her hair teased into a bouffant, the way girls had worn their hair when Elizabeth was in college. “It was so nice of you to ask us over, but of course now with your ankle we understand.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “We want you to come. I’m doing great, really. It’s just a little sprain.”
The Brubakers had to go talk to someone backstage. Paul told the Brubakers how to get to their house and took Elizabeth outside. Because they were late there hadn’t been anyplace to park. Paul had had to park up by the infirmary. Elizabeth said she thought she could walk as far as the car, but it took them fifteen minutes to make it three-fourths of the way up the walk.
“This is ridiculous,” Paul said angrily, and strode off the walk to get the car.
She hobbled slowly on up to the end of the walk and sat down on one of the cement benches that had been vents for the heating system. Elizabeth had worn a wool dress and her warmest coat, but she was still cold. She laid her crutches against the bench and looked across at her old dorm.
Someone was standing in front of the dorm, looking up at the middle window. He looked cold. He had his hands jammed in his jean jacket pockets, and after a few minutes he pulled something out of one of the pockets and threw it at the window.
It’s no good, Elizabeth thought, she won’t come.
He had made one last attempt to talk to her. It was spring quarter. It had been raining again. The walk was covered with worms. Tib was wearing her Angel Flight uniform, and she looked cold.
Tib had stopped Elizabeth after she came out of the dorm and said, “I saw Tupper the other day. He asked about you, and I told him you were living in the Alpha Phi house.”
“Oh,” Elizabeth had said, and tried to walk past her, but Tib had kept her there, talking as if nothing had happened, as if they were still roommates. “I’m dating this guy in ROTC. Jim Scates. He’s gorgeous!” she had said, as if they were still roommates.
“I’m going to be late for class,” she said. Tib glanced nervously down the walk, and Elizabeth looked, too, and saw Tupper bearing down on them on his bike. “Thanks a lot,” she said angrily.
“He just wants to talk to you.”
“About what? How he’s taking you to the Alpha Sig dinner dance?” she had said, and turned and walked back into the dorm before he could catch up to her. He had called her on the dorm phone for nearly half an hour, but she hadn’t answered, and after awhile he had given up.
But he hadn’t given up. He was still there, under her windows, throwing grapefruit slicers and egg separators at her, and she still, after all these years, wouldn’t come to the window. He would stand there forever, and she would never, never come.
She stood up. The rubber tip of one of her crutches skidded on the ice under the bench, and she almost fell. She steadied herself against the hard cement bench.
Paul honked and pulled over beside the curb, his turn-lights flashing. He got out of the car. “The Brubakers are already going to be there, for God’s sake,” he said. He took the crutches away from her and hurried her to the car, his hand jammed under her armpit. When they pulled away, the boy was still there, looking up at the window, waiting.
* * *
The Brubakers were there, waiting in the driveway. Paul left her in the car while he unlocked the door. Dr Brubaker opened the car door for her and tried to help her with her crutches. Janice kept saying, “Oh, really, we would have understood.” They both stood back, looking helpless, while Elizabeth hobbled into the house.
Janice offered to make the coffee, and Elizabeth let her, sitting at the kitchen table, her coat still on. Paul had set out the cups and saucers and the plate of cookies before they left.
“You were at the Tupperware party, weren’t you?” Janice said, opening the cupboards to look for the coffee filters. “I never really got a chance to meet you. I saw Sandy Konkel had her hooks in you.”
“At the party you said you liked Jesus,” Elizabeth said. “Are you a Christian?”
Janice had been peeling off a paper filter. She stopped and looked hard at Elizabeth. “Yes,” she said. “I am. You know, Sandy Konkel told me a Tupperware party was no place for religion, and I told her that any place was the place for a Christian witness. And I was right, because that witness spoke to you, didn’t it, Elizabeth?”
“What if you did something, a long time ago, and you found out it had ruined everything?”
“‘For behold your sin will find you out,’” Janice said, holding the coffee pot under the faucet.
“I’m not talking about sin,” Elizabeth said. “I’m talking about little things that you wouldn’t think would matter so much, like stepping in a puddle or having a fight with somebody. What if you drove off and left somebody standing in the road because you were mad, and it changed their whole life, it made them into a different person? Or what if you turned and walked away from somebody because your feelings were hurt or you wouldn’t open your window, and because of that one little thing their whole lives were changed and now she’s getting a divorce and she drinks too much, and he killed himself! He killed himself, and you didn’t even know you did it.”
Janice had opened her purse and started to get out a Bible. She stopped with the Bible only half out of the purse and stared at Elizabeth. “You made somebody kill himself?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t make him kill himself and I didn’t make her get a divorce, but if I hadn’t turned and walked away from them that day, everything would have been different.”
“Divorce?” Janice said.
“Sandy was right. When you’re young all you think about is yourself. All I could think about was how much prettier she was and how she was the kind of girl who had dozens of dates, and when he asked her out, I thought that he’d liked her all along, and I was so hurt. I threw away the egg separator, I was so hurt, and that’s why I wouldn’t talk to him that day, but I didn’t know it was so important! I didn’t know there was a puddle there and it was going to sweep me over into the gutter.”
Janice laid the Bible on the table. “I don’t know what you’ve done, Elizabeth, but whatever it is, Our Lord can forgive you. I want to read you something.” She opened the Bible at a cross-shaped bookmark. “‘For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Jesus, God’s own son, died on a cross and rose again so we could be forgiven for our sins.”
“What if he didn’t?” Elizabeth said impatiently. “What if he just lay there in the tomb getting colder and colder, until ice crystals formed on him and he never knew if he’d saved them or not?”
“Is the coffee ready yet?” Paul said, coming into the kitchen with Dr Brubaker. “Or did you womenfolk get to talking and forget all about it?”
“What if they were waiting there for him to save them, they’d been waiting for him all those years and he didn’t know it? He’d have to try to save them, wouldn’t he? He couldn’t just leave them there, standing in the cold looking up at her window? And maybe he couldn’t. Maybe they’d ge
t a divorce or kill themselves anyway.” Her teeth had started to chatter. “Even if he did save them, he wouldn’t be able to save himself. Because it was too late. He was already dead.”
Paul moved around the table to her. Janice was paging through the Bible, looking frantically for the right scripture. Paul took hold of Elizabeth’s arm, but she shook it off impatiently. “In Matthew we see that he was raised from the dead and is alive today. Right now,” Janice said, sounding frightened. “And no matter what sin you have in your heart he will forgive you if you accept him as your personal Savior.”
Elizabeth brought her fist down hard on the table so that the plate of cookies shook. “I’m not talking about sin. I’m talking about opening a window. She stepped in the puddle and the worm went over the edge and drowned. I shouldn’t have left it on the sidewalk.” She hit the table with her fist again. Dr Brubaker picked up the stack of coffee cups and put them on the counter, as if he were afraid she might start throwing them at the wall. “I should have put it in the grass.”
* * *
Paul left for work without even having breakfast. Elizabeth’s ankle had swollen up so badly she could hardly get her slippers on, but she got up and made the coffee. The filters were still lying on the counter where Janice Brubaker had left them.
“Weren’t you satisfied that you’d ruined your chances for a job, you had to ruin mine, too?”
“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “I’m going to fill out my job application today and take it over to the campus. When my ankle heals…”
“It’s supposed to warm up today,” Paul said. “I turned the furnace off.”
After he was gone, she filled out the application. She tried to erase the dark smear that the worm had left, but it wouldn’t come out, and there was one question that she couldn’t read. Her fingers were stiff with cold, and she had to stop and blow on them several times, but she filled in as many questions as she could, and folded it up and took it over to the campus.
The girl in the yellow slicker was standing at the end of the walk, talking to a girl in an Angel Flight uniform. She hobbled toward them with her head down, trying to hurry, listening for the sound of Tupper’s bike.
“He asked about you,” Tib said, and Elizabeth looked up.
She didn’t look at all the way Elizabeth remembered her. She was a little overweight and not very pretty, the kind of girl who wouldn’t have been able to get a date for the dance. Her short hair made her round face look even plumper. She looked hopeful and a little worried.
Don’t worry, Elizabeth thought. I’m here. She didn’t look at herself. She concentrated on getting up even with them at the right time.
“I told him you were living in the Alpha Phi house,” Tib said.
“Oh,” she heard her own voice, and under it the hum of a bicycle.
“I’m dating this guy in ROTC. He’s absolutely gorgeous!”
There was a pause, and then Elizabeth’s voice said, “Thanks a lot,” and Elizabeth pushed the rubber end of her crutch against a patch of ice and went down.
For a minute she couldn’t see anything for the pain. “I’ve broken it,” she thought, and clenched her fists to keep from screaming.
“Are you all right?” Tib said, kneeling in front of her so she couldn’t see anything. No, not you! Not you! For a minute she was afraid that it hadn’t worked, that the girl had turned and walked away. But after all this was not a stranger but only herself, who was too kind to let a worm drown. She had only gone around to Elizabeth’s other side, where she couldn’t see her. “Did she break it?” she said. “Should I go call an ambulance or something?”
No. “No,” Elizabeth said. “I’m fine. If you could just help me up.”
The girl who had been Elizabeth Wilson put her books down on the cement bench and came and knelt down by Elizabeth. “I hope we don’t collapse in a heap,” she said, and smiled at Elizabeth. She was a pretty girl. I didn’t know that either, Elizabeth thought, even when Tupper told me. She took hold of Elizabeth’s arm and Tib took hold of the other.
“Tripping innocent passersby again, I see. How many times have I told you not to do that?” And here, finally, was Tupper. He laid his bike flat in the grass and put his bag of Tupperware beside it.
Tib and the girl that had been herself let go and stepped back, and he knelt beside her. “They’re not bad girls, really. They just like to play practical jokes. But banana peels is going too far, girls,” he said, so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. She turned to look at him, suddenly afraid that he would be different, too, but it was only Tupper, who she had loved all these years. He put his arm around her. “Now just put your arm around my neck, sweetheart. That’s right. Elizabeth, come over here and atone for your sins by helping this pretty lady up.”
She had already picked her boots up and was holding them against her chest, looking angry and eager to get away. She looked at Tib, but Tib was picking up the crutches, stooping down in her high heels because she couldn’t bend over in her Angel Flight skirt.
She put her books down again and came around to Elizabeth’s other side to take hold of her arm, and Elizabeth grabbed for her hand instead and held it tightly so she couldn’t get away. “I took her to the dance because she helped with the Tupperware party. I told her I owed her a favor,” he said, and Elizabeth turned and looked at him.
He was not looking at her really. He was looking past her at that other Elizabeth, who would not answer the phone, who would not come to the window, but he seemed to be looking at her, and on his young remembered face there was a look of such naked, vulnerable love that it was like a blow.
“I told you so,” Tib said. She laid the crutches against the bench.
“I’m sure this lady doesn’t want to hear this,” Elizabeth said.
“I was going to tell you at the party, but that idiot Sharon Oberhausen…”
Tib brought over the crutches. “After I asked him, I thought, ‘What if she thinks I’m trying to steal her boyfriend?’ and I got so worried I was afraid to tell you. I really only asked him to get out of weekend duty. I mean, I don’t like him or anything.”
Tupper grinned at Elizabeth. “I try to pay my debts, and this is the thanks I get. You wouldn’t get mad at me if I took your roommate to a dance, would you?”
“I might,” Elizabeth said. It was cold sitting on the cement. She was starting to shiver. “But I’d forgive you.”
“You see that?” he said.
“I see,” Elizabeth said disgustedly, but she was smiling at him now. “Don’t you think we’d better get this innocent passerby up off the sidewalk before she freezes to death?”
“Upsy-daisy, sweetheart,” Tupper said, and in one easy motion she was up sitting on the stone bench.
“Thank you,” she said. Her teeth were chattering with the cold.
Tupper knelt in front of her and examined her ankle. “It looks pretty swollen,” he said. “Do you want us to call somebody?”
“No, my husband will be along any minute. I’ll just sit here till he comes.”
Tib fished Elizabeth’s application out of the puddle. “I’m afraid it’s ruined,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Tupper picked up his bag of bowls. “Say,” he said, “you wouldn’t be interested in having a Tupperware party? As hostess, you could earn valuable points toward…”
“Tupper!” Tib said.
“Will you leave this poor lady alone?” Elizabeth said.
He held up the sack. “Only if you’ll go with me to deliver my lettuce crispers to the Sigma Chi house.”
“I’ll go,” Tib said. “There’s this darling Sigma Chi I’ve been wanting to meet.”
“And I’ll go,” Elizabeth said, putting her arm around Tib. “I don’t trust the kind of boyfriend you find on your own. Jim Scates is a real creep. Didn’t Sharon tell you what he did to Marilyn Reed?”
Tupper handed Elizabeth the sack of bowls while he stood his
bike up. Elizabeth handed them to Tib.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Tupper said. “It’s cold out here. You could wait for your husband in the student union.”
She wished she could put her hand on his cheek just once. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
The three of them went down the walk toward Frasier, Tupper pushing the bike. When they got even with Carter Hall, they cut across the grass toward Frasier. She watched them until she couldn’t see them anymore, and then sat there awhile longer on the cold bench. She had hoped that something might happen, some sign that she had rescued them, but nothing happened. Her ankle didn’t hurt anymore. It had stopped the minute Tupper touched it.
She continued to sit there. It seemed to her to be getting colder, though she had stopped shivering, and after awhile she got up and walked home, leaving the crutches where they were.
* * *
It was cold in the house. Elizabeth turned the thermostat up and sat down at the kitchen table, still in her coat, waiting for the heat to come on. When it didn’t, she remembered that Paul had turned the furnace off, and she went and got a blanket and wrapped up in it on the couch. Her ankle did not hurt at all, though it felt cold. When the phone rang, she could hardly move it. It took her several rings to make it to the phone.
“I thought you weren’t going to answer,” Paul said. “I made an appointment with Dr Jamieson for you for this afternoon at three. He’s a psychiatrist.”
“Paul,” she said. She was so cold it was hard to talk. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s a little too late for that, isn’t it?” he said. “I told Dr Brubaker you were on muscle relaxants for your ankle. I don’t know whether he bought it or not.” He hung up.
“Too late,” Elizabeth said. She hung up the phone. The back of her hand was covered with ice crystals. “Paul,” she tried to say, but her lips were stiff with cold, and no sound came out.
MICHAEL SWANWICK
The Edge of the World
One of the most popular and respected of all the decade’s new writers, Michael Swanwick made his debut in 1980 with two strong and compelling stories, “The Feast of St. Janis” and “Ginungagap,” both of which were Nebula Award finalists that year. Since then, he has gone on to become a finalist for the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the John W. Campbell Award as well, and to win the Theodore Sturgeon Award and the IAsfm Reader’s Award, with intense and powerful stories such as “Mummer Kiss,” “The Man Who Met Picasso,” “Trojan Horse,” “Dogfight” (written with William Gibson), “Covenant of Souls,” “The Dragon Line,” “Snow Angels,” “A Midwinter’s Tale,” and many others – all of which have earned him a reputation as one of the most powerful and consistently inventive short-story writers of his generation.
Modern Classics of Science Fiction Page 71
