“No, you haven’t, Inez. I was irritable the other night. I was thinking I’d never get work. I was thinking we’d never be able to get married. I was thinking I’d go crazy.”
“Did I ever complain?”
“No. You really didn’t.”
“You said yourself you were fed up.”
“I wasn’t fed up with you, Inez. I was fed up with borrowing money from you and letting you do things for me. It got so it was terrible having you buy coffee and things like that for us, don’t you see?”
“I didn’t say anything, but you kept yelling at me that I was discontented.”
“I meant I’d like to be able to be doing little things for you. That’s why I started to quarrel and shout at you.”
“You kept saying it so often now I believe it,” she said, taking a deep breath and then, sighing wearily, “Maybe I was discontented.”
“Did I really make you feel it was all hopeless?”
“Yes, you did.”
“Then I’m a nut. I love you.”
With her face turned away, as if she dared not listen, she started to go into the apartment house. She did not want him to see how bewildered she was. As she opened the door she said so softly that he could hardly hear, “Good night, Luther.”
“I won’t go. You can’t do a thing like that. Tell me where you were tonight,” and he pressed his face against the glass of the door, catching a last glimpse of her ankles and then her shoes as she went up the stairs. At first he was so resentful that he wanted to pound on the door with his fist, but almost at once he felt weak and spent, and he walked away and crossed the road so he could look up at her apartment.
Standing there, he waited to see her shadow pass across the lowered window shade as she moved around the room, but there was no shadow, nothing to show she was in the room. At last he noticed the faintest movement of the window drape, low down, at the corner, and then a little thin streak of light. Someone was there, peering out at the street. She was watching him, he knew, trying to hide, probably kneeling on the floor with her eyes level with the windowsill. He felt a surge of joy. Inez could not leave him like that. She had to watch him. She had to kneel there, feeling herself pulled strongly toward him, unable to go while he was looking up at her window.
But it was very hard to have her up there and not be able to talk to her. He felt now a vast apology in himself for anything he might have done to destroy the tenderness she had felt for him. It was so splendid to be able to hold her there, making her watch him, that he longed to be able to do something that would coax her back to him; and he kept growing more hopeful, as if he had only to keep looking at the window faithfully for awhile and the drape would be pulled to one side, the shade raised, and she would beckon to him. The same summer night air, the same murmur of city sounds, were there around them now as they had been on other nights, when they had felt so close to one another. If only she could hear him, how he would plead with her. He whispered, “I’m not sore, only you should have said you were going out with someone when I phoned.” He knew that she was kneeling there, feeling the struggle within her; all her restlessness and the bitterness of the last few days were pulling her one way, and something much deeper, that weakened her and filled her with melancholy, was resisting strongly. He said aloud, “That guy didn’t mean a thing, you just wanted a little amusement, right?”
As he kept looking up at the window, he grew full of persuasion, full of confidence because he still held her there. All the love between them that had been built up out of so many fine, hopeful, eager moments was offering too much resistance to the bitterness that was pulling her the other way.
Knowing her so close to him, he began to feel a new boldness; he felt that she must have been persuaded and had yielded to him. He began to move across the street, looking up at the lighted room.
But when he reached the middle of the street, it was as though the struggle had been decided: she had left the window he knew, for in the room the light was turned out.
Running ahead, he rang the apartment bell; he waited, and then rang again, and then kept on ringing. There was no answer, and he wanted to shout, “She thinks I’m crazy? All right. All right.”
He ran to the corner, his thoughts raced with him: “She thinks she won’t make a mistake. She thinks I’ll never get anywhere, I can’t show a girl the town, like that guy that rides in taxicabs. I’ll get money, I’ll get clothes, I’ll get girls, pretty girls.” These thoughts rushed through his mind as though he had become buoyant and confident. He reached the corner and stood looking up Seventh Avenue. There was no breeze, and the air was warm and muggy. He looked up the street as far as he could, and then he took a deep, tired breath.
ABSOLUTION
Jennie Hughes had been a steady customer at Jerry Mallory’s bar. She was about forty-five years old, the wife of a lawyer who had abandoned her ten years ago, but who still sent her money to pay for her room and liquor. At one time she had been active and shapely; now she was slow and stout and her cheeks were criss-crossed with fine transparent veins. When she had first come to the neighbourhood people called her Mrs. Hughes, but now everybody called her Jennie.
When she was not quite sober, if anybody in her street disturbed her, she was apt to yell and scream at the top of her voice. Neighbours, who at one time had felt sorry for her, were now anxious to have her move away. Jennie’s landlady, Mrs. Turner, had been trying for two months to get rid of her, but Mrs. Turner had been unfortunate enough to try to argue the question when Jennie was tipsy.
One night Jennie was wondering if Jerry Mallory would give her whiskey on credit. For two weeks she hadn’t paid him. She had been drinking in the afternoon and now felt it necessary to have a bottle for Sunday. There were only about two fingers in the bottle standing on the bureau. She put on her hat and looked at herself in the mirror. Though she was aware that styles changed, she didn’t seem able to keep up with them; now she was wearing a short skirt when everybody else was wearing their dresses long, and two years ago she had worn a long dress when other women were wearing short skirts. She heard somebody coming up the stairs. Turning, and staring at the door, for she expected her landlady to appear, she thrust her chin out angrily. “Come in,” she called out when there was a knock on the door.
A man over six feet came in, a big serious-looking priest with thin grey hair, a large red face, and a tiny nose. “Good evening, Mrs. Hughes,” he said politely without smiling.
“Good evening, Father,” Jennie said. She had never seen the man before and she began to feel uneasy, nervous and ashamed of herself as she looked at the bottle on the bureau. She said suddenly, and shrewdly: “Did somebody send you here, father?”
“Now never mind that,” the priest said. “It’s enough that I’m here and you can thank God that I came.” He was an old, serious, unsentimental priest who was not at all impressed by the fawning smile and the little bow she made for him. Shaking his head to show his disgust with her, he said flatly: “Mrs. Hughes, there’s nothing more degrading in this world than a tipsy woman. A drunken man, Lord knows, is bad enough, but a drunken woman is somehow lower than a beast in the field.”
Jennie’s pride was hurt, and she said angrily, without inviting him to sit down: “Who sent you here? Who sent you here to butt into my business? Tell me that.”
“Now listen to me, Mrs. Hughes. It’s time someone brought you to your senses.”
“You don’t know me. I don’t know you,” Jennie said abruptly.
“I know all about you. I know you ought to be looking after your two children. But I’m not going to argue with you. I want to give you a very solemn warning. If you don’t change your life you’ll go straight to hell.”
“You leave me alone, do you hear? Go on away,” Jennie said.
“And I’ll tell you this,” he said, bending close to her and lifting his finger. “If you were to die at this moment and I were asked to give you absolution I doubt if my conscience would permit me to
do it. Now for God’s sake, woman, straighten up. Go to church. Go this night to confession and ask God to forgive you. Promise me you’ll go to confession. At one time you must have been a decent Catholic woman. Promise me.”
“You can’t force me to do anything I don’t want to do. I know. It was that Mrs. Turner that sent you here. I’ll fix her. And don’t you butt in either,” Jennie said.
The big priest nodded his head with a kind of final and savage warning, and went out without saying another word.
As a defiant gesture Jennie drained the last inch of whiskey from the bottle and muttered: “Trying to drive me to confession, eh?” She decided to go to Jerry Mallory’s bar at once.
The drink of whiskey made Jennie tipsy. The old priest had said she would go to hell when she died, and she felt like crying. With a serious expression on her face she walked along the lighted street, a stout woman in a short skirt leaning forward a bit, her wide velvet hat too far back on her head. She tried to remember the faces of her two children, a boy and a girl. The priest had aroused in her an uneasy longing for a time she was hardly able to recall, a time when she had gone to church, and gone to confession too, when she was a much younger woman.
Approaching the bar, whose drawn blinds concealed the light inside, she wondered what she might say to Mallory. The doorman, who let her in, nodded familiarly without speaking, and she went through to the lighted barroom. No one paid any attention to her. Men and women were standing at the bar, sitting at the tables by the door, or at the small tables opposite the bar. Jennie sat down by herself. She could see Jerry, clean-shaven and neat in his blue suit, smiling affably at everybody and sometimes helping the busy young man, Henry, to pass drinks across the bar.
Finally Henry, looking competent with his sleeves rolled up and his bow tie, came over to Jennie and said: “Hello, Jennie, what’ll it be tonight?”
“I’d like a little gin, to take out with me,” she said soothingly. “And tell Jerry I’ll fix it up with him next week. How are you, Henry?” She hoped he could see how nicely she was smiling.
“I don’t know, Jennie,” he said doubtfully.
“Look here, you know I’ll pay at the end of the month.”
“It’s like this,” Henry said. “I’d do it. You know that. But the boss won’t let me.”
“Then let me speak to Jerry,” she said brusquely.
In a moment Henry returned and said: “Jerry’s awfully busy right now, Jennie. Maybe some other time. . .”
“I’ll sit here and wait,” Jennie said, folding her arms. “I’ll sit right here till doomsday and wait.”
“All right. But he’s awfully busy. He may not come.”
Jennie waited and nobody paid any attention to her. She felt tired. As she crossed her legs at the ankles and put her head back against the wall, she felt drowsy and dizzy. “I oughtn’t to have taken that last drink before coming here,” she thought. She tried to keep awake, muttering, “That old priest couldn’t scare me,” having the most disconnected thoughts about Eastertime and choir music. Soon she fell sound asleep.
She began to breathe so heavily that customers at the bar, turning, snickered. Looking over at her, Jerry Mallory frowned. She was an old, though difficult, customer, so he went over to her and shook her shoulder lightly. She stirred, waking. It had been very strong in her thoughts that the old priest had wanted her to go to confession and now, only half-awake, she mumbled uneasily: “Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”
“Hey, Jennie, where do you think you are? Bless you, old girl,” he said, starting to laugh.
“Oh, it’s you, Jerry. I forgot where I was.”
She was wide awake, so sober he thought she might have been deliberately kidding him. He laughed loudly. “You’re a card, Jennie!” he said. “You’re a grand old gal. And I’ll get you a little gin for old times’ sake.”
He turned and said to the three men at the bar who were nearest to him: “Did you hear what Jennie just pulled on me?”
Jennie was ashamed. She stood up, in her skirt that was too short, with her black velvet hat too far back on her head. The men started to laugh. Then they started to laugh louder and louder. The sound of their laughter at first made Jennie angry, with something of a fine woman’s disgust, and then, with humility, she felt herself reaching out toward a faintly remembered dignity. Erect, she walked out.
THE VOYAGE OUT
Jeff found himself sitting next to her one night in a movie house, and when he saw that she was neat and pretty he began to watch her furtively. Though she didn’t turn her head, he felt sure she was aware of him beside her. When she got up to go, he followed her out, and as she hesitated at the theatre entrance, drawing on her gloves, he began a polite, timid conversation. Then they walked along the street together.
Her name was Jessie and she worked in a millinery store and lived with her father and mother. Until one night a month later, when they were in the hall of her apartment house saying good night in the way they had so often done in the last weeks, he hadn’t thought he had much chance of making love to her. They were standing close together, laughing and whispering. Then she stopped laughing and was quiet, as though the shyness hidden under her warm affectionate ways was troubling her. She put her arms tight around him, lifted up her face, held him as if she would never let him go, and let him know she was offering all her love.
“I don’t want to go home. Let me go in with you and stay awhile.”
“All right— if they’re asleep,” she whispered.
As they opened the door and tiptoed into her place, the boldness he felt in her made his heart pound. Then they heard her father cough. They stood still, frightened, her hand tightening on his arm.
“We’d better not tonight,” she whispered. “They’re awake. You’d better go quick.”
“Tomorrow night then?”
“Maybe— we’ll see,” she said.
Brushing her face against his, she almost shoved him out into the hall.
As he loafed over to Eighth Avenue, he was full of elation, and he thought, “She’ll do anything I want now. It came so easy, just like I wanted it to,” and a longing for her began to grow in him. He could feel her warmth and hear her urgent whispering. He grinned as he loafed along, for he had thought it would take a long time and he’d have to go slow and easy. Lights in the stores, the underground subway rumble, and the noise of the cross-town buses on Twenty-Third Street seemed to be made important by the marvellous tenderness within him. He wanted suddenly to lean against a bar or sit at a counter, hear men’s laughter, and feel his own triumphant importance among them, and he hurried into the restaurant where he had a cup of coffee every night after leaving her.
At this hour men from a local bakery, with the strong, sweet smell of freshly baked bread on them and their pants white with flour, came in and sat in a row at the counter. While ordering hot food they looked around to see who else was in the restaurant. There were two girls sitting at a table talking quietly. When Jeff smiled at the girls without any shyness, because a warm feeling for everyone and everything was in him, they shrugged in surprise and laughed at each other.
Sitting next to Jeff was a big, powerful, sandy-haired fellow wearing a little flour-marked cap. The others called him Mike, and Jeff had often seen him in the restaurant. Having finished his plate and wiped his mouth, he winked at Jeff and said, “Hello, kid. You around here again tonight? What’s new?”
“Nothing,” Jeff said. “I’ve just been feeling pretty good.” He looked so happy as he grinned that Mike puckered his eyes and appraised him thoughtfully, and the two girls at the table were watching him, too. To seem nonchalant, Jeff whispered to Mike, as he indicated the girls with a nod of his head, “How do you like the look of the blonde doll in the green hat?”
“That one?” Mike said as he turned on his stool and looked at the girls, who were whispering with their heads close together. “That one? She’s a cinch. Didn’t you see the glad eye she was giving you? A so
ft touch. She’d give you no trouble at all.”
“She don’t look like that to me,” Jeff said.
“If you couldn’t go to town with her in two weeks, you ought to quit,” Mike said. Then, as if ashamed to be arguing about women with a man who was so much younger, he added, “Anyway, she’s too old for you. Lay off her.”
Jeff kept shifting around on the stool, trying to catch a sudden glimpse of the girl in the green hat so he could see her as Mike had seen her, yet knowing that to him she still looked quiet and respectable. When she smiled suddenly, she seemed like any other friendly girl – a little like Jessie, even. “Maybe Mike could have looked at Jessie and known from the start it would only take a month with her,” he thought. Feeling miserable, he kept staring at the girl, yearning to possess Mike’s wisdom, with a fierce longing growing in him to know about every intimate moment Jessie had had with the men who had tried to make love to her. “If I had been sure of myself, I guess I could have knocked Jessie over the first night I took her out,” he went on thinking. The elation he had felt after leaving Jessie seemed childish, and he ached with disappointment.
The girls, who had become embarrassed by Jeff’s sullen stare, got up and left the restaurant, and when they had gone Jeff said to Mike, “I get what you mean about the doll in the green hat.”
“What did she do?” Mike asked.
“Nothing, nothing. Just the way she swung her hips going out of the door,” Jeff lied, and he lit a cigarette and paid his check and went out.
Jeff and his brother, who was a salesman out of work, had a small apartment on West Twenty-Second Street. As soon as Jeff got home, he realized that the sight of the food in the restaurant had made him hungry, and he went to the fridge and got a tomato, intending to cut some bread and make himself a sandwich. He was holding the tomato in his hand when there was the sound of someone rapping on the door. It was his brother’s girl, Eva, tall and slim with fine brown eyes, who was only about two years older than Jeff. She often came to the apartment to see Jeff’s brother. She was at ease with Jeff, and laughed a lot with him, and never minded him having a cup of coffee with them. But tonight she looked dreadfully frightened. Her eyes were red-rimmed and moist, as though she had been crying.
The New Yorker Stories Page 9
