Desert of the Heart: A Novel

by Jane Rule

  “Yes, I did. Everything seems to be in order. Oh, he did say I’d need a witness. …”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Frances said. “I can do that.”

  “Frances,” Evelyn began tentatively, “Frances, are all divorces here so simple?”

  “Simple?”

  “I mean, the lawyer asked me just a few questions. It didn’t seem to me that I gave him enough information to make a case. And he says I don’t have to see him again until the Friday before the hearing,”

  “If it’s uncontested, it doesn’t take but a few minutes. I know. It doesn’t seem right somehow when you first realize, but the wedding ceremony isn’t all that much either, is it? Ann’s father used to say to me, ‘Frances, don’t prolong a thing just to make it seem important.’ He used to claim that nothing really important took longer than twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty minutes?” Then Frances had known Ann’s father.

  “That’s right. Conceiving, being born (we had our arguments about that), marrying, divorcing, dying.” Frances paused. “It didn’t take him even twenty minutes to die. …”

  “But what a long time passes between events,” Evelyn said quietly.

  “Ah … and that’s what a woman knows, time. Nothing takes us really by surprise, does it?”

  “No,” Evelyn said, “I don’t suppose so, really,” but she was out of her depth now.

  Whenever there were generalizations about women, Evelyn weighed herself against them and found herself insubstantial. And talking in the kind of generality that threatened to expose her private living did not appeal to her. Though her curiosity had been aroused about Ann’s father and the relationship that had existed between him and Frances Packer, Evelyn suppressed it. She chose, instead, to withdraw, reassured by Frances’ friendliness and therefore confident that she could spend the evening alone with her work.

  The desert island game Evelyn played with herself that night was only an amusement. The four books she had brought with her were not the ones she would have chosen, but she could make them last, like pans of rain water in a drought, perhaps two weeks. The game stayed an amusement because she could go to the public library in the morning.

  Both her amusement and confidence were shaken a little when she walked into the library. The single room, furnished with only a few tables and perhaps ten bookshelves, was empty except for Evelyn and a single attendant, a middle-aged woman who sat at a desk reading the want ads in the newspaper. The collection of books reminded Evelyn of college dormitory libraries, which depended on private and haphazard donations from students and on books the main library could find no use for. There was virtually no criticism, and she found only a few of the standard works she needed. But books of any kind delighted Evelyn, and she would have been tempted to spend an hour investigating and discovering the occasional hilarious or real treasure any library can produce if she had not been uncomfortably aware of the attendant, who had begun to watch Evelyn with frank suspicion. But, when Evelyn walked over to the desk with the six books she wanted, the attendant was suddenly absorbed in the card catalogue.

  “Excuse me,” Evelyn said. The woman ignored her. “I’d like to take out these books.”

  “Just a minute.” The attendant stopped to straighten some paperbacks on display and then walked around behind the desk. “Have you got a card?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Are you a permanent resident?”

  “No.”

  “That will be a dollar for the card, then, and three dollars for each book you want to take out.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A dollar for the card, three dollars for each book. You get the three dollars back when you bring the book back.”

  Evelyn looked down at the six books she had chosen. In order to take them home, she would have to pay nineteen dollars. She did not have nineteen dollars.

  “I don’t quite understand,” she said.

  “It’s a policy with transients. We lost forty per cent of our book last year. We can’t afford that.”

  “No,” Evelyn said, “no, I don’t suppose you can.” She looked into her wallet. She had a five-dollar bill and some change. But she needed the books, and she could have the money back. “I’ll have to write a check.”

  “We don’t accept checks.”

  “A traveler’s check,” Evelyn said.

  “We don’t accept traveler’s checks.”

  Evelyn looked up from her wallet into the indifferent eyes of the woman before her. Evelyn closed her purse, turned, and walked out of the library.

  She did not leave the house again that day, nor did she notice with any interest or regret that Ann was not at home for dinner. On Wednesday, the day Evelyn had planned to go to the University, she did not go. Instead, she slept until almost noon and then stayed in her room, reading. The desert island was no longer a game. It was the new condition of her life. That other human beings were marooned with her made little difference. Seeing Ann at Wednesday dinner, Evelyn hardly spoke. And she did not stay with Frances and Virginia for coffee. In her room again, she did not allow herself to brood. She turned from Yeats to a journal.

  At first the passage of time, marked clearly by each recorded date, gave her half-conscious pleasure, but time in a book can pass through many days in an hour and still drag at the spirit as heavily and specifically as its own confining skeleton. There is no freedom in a journal. It is an accurate record of the prisoner. Even his greatest fantasies are only fantasies of a man trapped in time. A year had passed when Evelyn set down the book, but it was someone else’s year. She had not turned on the lamp of her own evening.

  She closed the book, got up, and lit a cigarette. At the window, beyond the great tree, searchlights made pale crossings against the evening light. They signaled no plane. From somewhere near the center of town, a used car lot perhaps, they swung their aimless way through the empty sky. Evelyn grew conscious of a sound that had been going on for some time. Across the hall, Virginia Ritchie sat alone in her room, crying.

  Nothing of real importance takes more than twenty minutes, nothing but the vast unimportance of life itself, which is just this … this terrible waiting. Before, it had always seemed a biding of time, her waiting to marry George, then waiting for the war to be over, then waiting for the child that did not come. Now she was no longer biding but killing time for the single ceremony, the little death of all her waiting. Evelyn turned toward the sound, dryly, almost viciously, whispering, “Don’t weep. Don’t weep. It’s already over.” But the weeping continued.

  Evelyn could not go back to her reading, and she would not cross the hall to speak to Virginia. There was nothing she could say. Frantic, she left her room and went downstairs to read in the living room, but Frances was there.

  “Cup of tea?”

  “Frances, have you got any whiskey?”

  “I do. Let’s both have a drink.”

  Frances went to the kitchen and returned with a tray. She put it down on a coffee table in front of Evelyn, a bottle of bourbon, an ice bucket, two glasses, and a bottle of soda.

  “It wouldn’t do you any harm to have several,” Frances said. “It’s the weather. I’ve never known it to be so muggy. Nobody can sleep. I could have offered you Scotch as well, but I got up at three thirty this morning and finished it off with Ann. She was in a terrible mood, but three drinks later we both went to bed and to sleep happy. It’s just what you need.”

  “You’re a dear, Frances. I’ll replenish the supply tomorrow.”

  “And if you want to read, you just go ahead and read. I’ve got my own magazine.”

  “I don’t really want to. I’ve read myself out, I think.”

  “You’ve been working too hard,” Frances said.

  “Have I? I don’t really know what else to do with myself.” Evelyn took a quick mouthful of almost straight whiskey.

  “You’re just like Ann. When she decides to work, she locks herself up in that terrible attic room
of hers, and not even Walter can budge her until she’s so exhausted she’s made herself sick.”

  “What does she work at?”

  “She’s a cartoonist, a very good one. You’ve probably seen some of her cartoons. She sells to all the magazines. You must ask her to show you some.”

  “I’d like to see them.”

  “I’m worried about Ann,” Frances said.

  “Are you? Why?”

  “I don’t know what to do for her. The trouble is, I don’t know what Ann wants out of life. She’s not nineteen any longer. She’s twenty-five. Most girls her age are married and having children. Ann’s such an attractive girl, she could have had half-a-dozen husbands by now, but she doesn’t seem to want even one.”

  “She must have seen a lot in Reno to discourage her.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Frances took a long drink. “I used to worry about that, too; but we all see a lot of dying, and it doesn’t seem to keep us from living. Reno’s no worse than anyplace else, really. If you want to find mistakes, you don’t have to come here. Walter and Ann have heard a lot and seen a lot, but it doesn’t have to hurt them, does it, to know something about the world?”

  “I’ve always argued that way about books,” Evelyn said, “but it never occurred to me to argue that way about life.”

  “Somehow I don’t worry so much about being wrong for Walter; he’s my own, and anyway he’s a steady sort of boy. If the world didn’t shake him up a little now and then, he’d be dull. He’s like me.” Evelyn smiled a protest, but Frances went on. “Ann’s not mine. I’ve taken care of her since she was ten, but I’m not her mother. I’ve never really tried to be.”

  “Is her own mother living?”

  “I suppose so, somewhere. But not for Ann. And her father’s dead. When he was alive, I didn’t have to worry about Ann. When he was alive, I didn’t worry about anything. But she hasn’t anyone but me now. And who am I? Frances, not really a mother, not really a friend, just a pair of hands and a familiar face.”

  “Do you think Ann’s unhappy?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Frances poured herself a drink and offered the bottle to Evelyn. “I think she ought to be unhappy, but then I don’t understand her. I’m not very bright, and she is.”

  “You’re a regular wise woman, Frances,” Evelyn said.

  “No, no, I’m not. I’m a very narrow, silly woman really. Even things I used to know I begin to forget. It makes me wonder if I ever really knew them. Things Ann’s father taught me. He used to say to me, ‘Frances, you collect conventions and clichés like old family china. Just pack them away now. Put them in the attic. If you leave them around here, they’ll just get broken.’ And, you know, while I lived with him, I never missed them; but now, when the house feels lonely, empty of him, like a public place, I catch myself bringing them out again. Walter doesn’t mind them so much, but Ann barks her shins on them every time. She’s like her father. She can’t live in a clutter. But I forget how I lived without it all those years. I did live, very happily, but now I seem to need something in my house to keep me company: memories, the old notions of my grandmother, incense in the bathroom. I haven’t any taste. I’m sentimental. Wall plaques, souvenirs. I’d like a great big plate with his picture in the middle of it. ‘Happiness,’ it would say at the top, and at the bottom, ‘Reno, 1943 to 1953.’ And I’d like widow’s weeds and a wedding ring. While a man’s alive, it doesn’t really matter to have anything but him. When he’s gone, that’s the time you want all the little things. And I do forget about him. Do you know, I sit and plan a beautiful wedding for Ann, thinking I want it for him? He’d turn in his grave to see me.” Frances smiled and shook her head.

  “Would he?” Evelyn asked. “Why?”

  “Because it’s not real,” Frances said. “One thing he taught me, one thing Reno taught me is that conventions can be a kind of trap. But you see, I forget. I want Ann to be happy, so I want her to have a beautiful, white wedding in church. And why? The only aisle I ever walked down led me to the divorce courts. The happiness I’ve had is ten years of ‘living in sin,’ whatever that means. But I slip back a little more each year now into a kind of respectability. I can’t help it. And it doesn’t matter very much for me. I’ve had what I wanted. ‘I’ve had a love of my own.’ (That’s a beautiful song.) I don’t know. Thinking about a wedding is really just a way of thinking about love, isn’t it? It’s love I want for Ann. I don’t think I really care very much how she gets it.”

  “Why does she work at Frank’s Club, Frances?”

  “Ask her!” Frances said. “I ask her and she just shrugs. She certainly doesn’t need the money. I don’t think it’s the place for a girl like Ann—oh, for a lark for one summer. But Ann should be someplace where she meets people of her own kind. Ann’s father was a lawyer. She belongs in a world like yours, Evelyn, among intelligent, creative people. Oh, she says, too, that she can get ideas there. There’s no other place where she’d see so much of the world go by. And maybe she’s right. But it’s terrible work, taking money from people. Don’t you think so?”

  “I don’t know much about it,” Evelyn said. “But the idea certainly doesn’t appeal to me. Did Ann go to college?”

  “Yes, for a while. That was my fault. I talked her father into sending her down to Mills when she was sixteen.”

  “Didn’t she like it?”

  “I think so really, but she was too much for them. She isn’t ordinary. She never has been. Her father wasn’t either, and he understood her.”

  “What happened?”

  “I never really knew much about it. They wanted her to go to a psychiatrist. Anyway, she just didn’t go back. She went to the University of Nevada for a while, but she was restless. There was her sketching. She sold her first cartoons when she was nineteen. Oh, she’ll be all right. She’s fine. I sometimes wonder why I worry at her so. And why do I tell you all about it?”

  “I like to hear about Ann,” Evelyn said.

  “She looks enough like you to be your daughter.”

  “I know. It’s odd, isn’t it?”

  “You’re the sort of mother she should have had.” Frances got up and poured herself a third drink. “Come. Have another.”

  “I think I’ve had plenty,” Evelyn said, covering her glass.

  “One more will do just nicely.”

  “I’ll finish this first.”

  “What did you come down here for?” Frances demanded. “You came down to turn off your brain.”

  “Did I? All right then. One more.” Evelyn helped herself. “I really feel better.”

  “So do I,” Frances said. “It does me good to be able to talk like that now and then.”

  Frances’ speech had begun to blur a little, as much with tiredness as with drink. Her monologue had disintegrated, and, since Evelyn could not be primed, even by alcohol, to talk about herself, the conversation grew random and halting until it dwindled into a companionable silence.

  “Well,” Evelyn said, finally, “you’re right. I’m ready to sleep.”

  “Yes, so am I. Sleep well,” Frances said, patting Evelyn’s shoulder absentmindedly.

  “Thank you, Frances.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  In bed, Evelyn felt the effects of drinking too much too rapidly. She could not close her eyes. One cigarette and a poem or two would be enough to settle the room. She reached for the Yeats and turned the pages slowly.

  And may her bridegroom bring her to a house

  Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;

  For arrogance and hatred are the wares

  Peddled in the thoroughfares.

  How but in custom and in ceremony

  Are innocence and beauty born?

  Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,

  And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

  Frances offered up such a prayer for Ann. This poor, guilty non-mother of a grown child burned incense in the bathroom, worshiped a g
reat neon cross that hummed above the church door, and waited, idling among memories and wishes, to be redeemed by a dream out of The Ladies’ Home Journal. Not quite fair. It was a prayer that had caught Evelyn, too. She had wanted to be “rooted in some dear, perpetual place.” Why must sentimentality be culpable? It was Frances’ ex-happiness, Mr. Childs, who had prayed this world into existence for his child, where innocence was ignorance, where custom was the business of the thoroughfares. Iconoclast, petty devil, preaching anarchy and practicing law, he had uprooted the tree, preyed on his daughter, not for her. Evelyn closed her eyes and opened them again to restore her balance. She knew nothing about these people. Her rhetoric covered her own sense of guilt. All children suffered their parents’ worlds. If she had had a child of her own, would she have done any better? Where would the child be now? She was guilty, too, not of the imagined child, but of the image of herself in Ann. They were all guilty, every man and woman who came, of the world they found. It was time she stopped pretending to be victim of it.

  Evelyn dreamed lines of poetry, images, woke afraid and dreamed again. She was high above the city and could see far out across the desert the great stone images as they woke and began to move. Below her the old men on the river bank looked up and cried out, cursing and laughing at the desert birds that figured the sky in pairs. The water had turned to blood. The mist that rose was rank and warm as steam. Evelyn climbed down through it, hurrying. She came to a wood of petrified trees and ran. Far off she could hear the child calling, “Evelyn! Evelyn!” She could not answer, but she ran on. “Evelyn?” She made one terrible effort to whisper, “Yes,” and woke.

  “Evelyn?”

  “Yes?” Evelyn sat up. “Come in.”

  She watched the doorknob turn slowly and carefully. Then Ann was in the room, smiling for Evelyn but at the cup of coffee and glass of orange juice she carried. Still half caught in her dream, Evelyn could not quite take in what she saw, the quiet, familiar room, the quiet, unfamiliar Ann. She wore a dress the color of old pewter, which was the gray of her eyes. Evelyn had not seen her in anything but trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. Her slim hips and long legs boyish, she had stalked the space of a room in boots. Now, delicate stepping and unconfined, she seemed made in the image not of Evelyn’s nightmare but of Frances’ daydream.