The Price of Salt, or Carol

by Patricia Highsmith

  “You can’t just give me marching orders out of your life,” he said, flinging his long arms out, but there was a lonesome tone in it, as if he had already started on that road away from her. “What really makes me sore is that you act like I’m not worth anything, that I’m completely ineffectual. It isn’t fair to me, Terry. I can’t compete!”

  No, she thought, of course he couldn’t. “I don’t have any quarrel with you,” she said. “It’s you who choose to quarrel over Carol. She hasn’t taken anything away from you, because you didn’t have it in the first place. But if you can’t go on seeing me—” She stopped, knowing he could and probably would go on seeing her.

  “What logic,” he said, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eye.

  Therese watched him, caught by the idea that had just come to her, that she knew suddenly was a fact. Why hadn’t it occurred to her the night of the theater, days ago? She might have known it from a hundred gestures, words, looks, this past week. But she remembered the night of the theater especially—he had surprised her with tickets to something she particularly wanted to see—the way he had held her hand that night, and from his voice on the telephone, not just telling her to meet him here or there, but asking her very sweetly if she could. She hadn’t liked it. It was not a manifestation of affection, but rather a means of ingratiating himself, of somehow paving the way for the sudden questions he had asked so casually that night: “What do you mean you’re fond of her? Do you want to go to bed with her?” Therese had replied, “Do you think I would tell you if I did?” while a quick succession of emotions—humiliation, resentment, loathing of him—had made her speechless, had made it almost impossible for her to keep walking beside him. And glancing at him, she had seen him looking at her with that soft, inane smile that in memory now looked cruel, and unhealthy. And its unhealthiness might have escaped her, she thought, if it weren’t that Richard was so frankly trying to convince her she was unhealthy.

  Therese turned and tossed into the overnight bag her toothbrush and her hairbrush, then remembered she had a toothbrush at Carol’s.

  “Just what do you want from her, Therese? Where’s it going to go from here?”

  “Why are you so interested?”

  He stared at her, and for a moment beneath the anger she saw the fixed curiosity she had seen before, as if he were watching a spectacle through a keyhole. But she knew he was not so detached as that. On the contrary, she sensed that he was never so bound to her as now, never so determined not to give her up. It frightened her. She could imagine the determination transformed to hatred and to violence.

  Richard sighed, and twisted the newspaper in his hands. “I’m interested in you. You can’t just say to me, ‘Find someone else.’ I’ve never treated you the way I treated the others, never thought of you that way.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Damn!” Richard threw the newspaper at the bookshelf, and turned his back on her.

  The newspaper flicked the Madonna, and it tipped back against the wall as if astonished, fell over, and rolled off the edge. Richard made a lunge for it and caught it in both hands. He looked at Therese and smiled involuntarily.

  “Thanks.” Therese took it from him. She lifted it to set it back, then brought her hands down quickly and smashed the figure to the floor.

  “Terry!”

  The Madonna lay in three or four pieces.

  “Never mind it,” she said. Her heart was beating as if she were angry, or fighting.

  “But—”

  “To hell with it!” she said, pushing the pieces aside with her shoe.

  Richard left a moment later, slamming the door.

  What was it, Therese wondered, the Andronich thing or Richard? Mr. Andronich’s secretary had called about an hour ago and told her that Mr. Andronich had decided to hire an assistant from Philadelphia instead of her. So that job would not be there to come back to, after the trip with Carol. Therese looked down at the broken Madonna. The wood was quite beautiful inside. It had cracked cleanly along the grain.

  CAROL ASKED HER in detail that evening about her talk with Richard. It irked Therese that Carol was so concerned as to whether Richard were hurt or not.

  “You’re not used to thinking of other people’s feelings,” Carol said bluntly to her.

  They were in the kitchen fixing a late dinner, because Carol had given the maid the evening off.

  “What real reason have you to think he’s not in love with you?” Carol asked.

  “Maybe I just don’t understand how he works. But it doesn’t seem like love to me.”

  Then in the middle of dinner, in the middle of a conversation about the trip, Carol remarked suddenly, “You shouldn’t have talked to Richard at all.”

  It was the first time Therese had told Carol any of it, any of the first conversation in the cafeteria with Richard. “Why not? Should I have lied to him?”

  Carol was not eating. Now she pushed back her chair and stood up. “You’re much too young to know your own mind. Or what you’re talking about. Yes, in that case, lie.”

  Therese laid her fork down. She watched Carol get a cigarette and light it. “I had to say good-bye to him and I did. I have. I won’t see him again.”

  Carol opened a panel in the bottom of the bookcase and took out a bottle. She poured some into an empty glass and slammed the panel shut. “Why did you do it now? Why not two months ago or two months from now? And why did you mention me?”

  “I know—I think it fascinates him.”

  “It probably does.”

  “But if I simply don’t see him again—” She couldn’t finish it, about his not being apt to follow her, spy on her. She didn’t want to say such things to Carol. And besides, there was the memory of Richard’s eyes. “I think he’ll give it up. He said he couldn’t compete.”

  Carol struck her forehead with her hand. “Couldn’t compete,” she repeated. She came back to the table and poured some of the water from her glass into the whiskey. “How true. Finish your dinner. I may be making too much of it, I don’t know.”

  But Therese did not move. She had done the wrong thing. And at best, even doing the right thing, she could not make Carol happy as Carol made her happy, she thought as she had thought a hundred times before. Carol was happy only at moments here and there, moments that Therese caught and kept. One had been in the evening they put away the Christmas decorations, and Carol had refolded the string of angels and put them between the pages of a book. “I’m going to keep these,” she had said. “With twenty-two angels to defend me, I can’t lose.” Therese looked at Carol now, and though Carol was watching her, it was through that veil of preoccupation that Therese so often saw, that kept them a world apart.

  “Lines,” Carol said. “I can’t compete. People talk of classics. These lines are classic. A hundred different people will say the same words. There are lines for the mother, lines for the daughter, for the husband and the lover. I’d rather see you dead at my feet. It’s the same play repeated with different casts. What do they say makes a play a classic, Therese?”

  “A classic—” Her voice sounded tight and stifled. “A classic is something with a basic human situation.”

  WHEN THERESE AWAKENED, the sun was in her room. She lay for a moment, watching the watery looking sunspots rippling on the pale green ceiling, listening for any sound of activity in the house. She looked at her blouse, hanging over the edge of the bureau. Why was she so untidy in Carol’s house? Carol didn’t like it. The dog that lived somewhere beyond the garages was barking intermittently, halfheartedly. There had been one pleasant interval last evening, the telephone call from Rindy. Rindy back from a birthday party at nine-thirty. Could she give a birthday party on her birthday in April. Carol said of course. Carol had been different after that. She had talked about Europe, and summers in Rapallo.

 
Therese got up and went to the window, raised it higher and leaned on the sill, tensing herself against the cold. There were no mornings anywhere like the mornings from this window. The round bed of grass beyond the driveway had darts of sunlight in it, like scattered gold needles. There were sparks of sun in the moist hedge leaves, and the sky was a fresh solid blue. She looked at the place in the driveway where Abby had been that morning, and at the bit of white fence beyond the hedges that marked the end of the lawn. The ground looked breathing and young, even though the winter had browned the grass. There had been trees and hedges around the school in Montclair, but the green had always ended in part of a red brick wall, or a gray stone building that was part of the school—an infirmary, a woodshed, a toolhouse—and the green each spring had seemed old already, used and handed down by one generation of children to the next, as much a part of school paraphernalia as textbooks and uniforms.

  She dressed in the plaid slacks she had brought from home, and one of the shirts she had left from another time, which had been laundered. It was twenty past eight. Carol liked to get up about eight-thirty, liked to be awakened by someone with a cup of coffee, though Therese had noticed she never had Florence do it.

  Florence was in the kitchen when she went down, but she had only just started the coffee.

  “Good morning,” Therese said. “Do you mind if I fix the breakfast?” Florence hadn’t minded the two other times she had come in and found Therese fixing them.

  “Go ahead, miss,” Florence said. “I’ll just make my own fried eggs. You like doing things for Mrs. Aird yourself, don’t you?” she said like a statement.

  Therese was getting two eggs out of the refrigerator. “Yes,” she said, smiling. She dropped one of the eggs into the water, which was just beginning to heat. Her answer sounded rather flat, but what other answer was there? When she turned around after setting the breakfast tray, she saw Florence had put the second egg in the water. Therese took it out with her fingers. “She wants only one egg,” Therese said. “That’s for my omelet.”

  “Does she? She always used to eat two.”

  “Well—she doesn’t now,” Therese said.

  “Shouldn’t you measure that egg anyway, miss?” Florence gave her the pleasant professional smile. “Here’s the egg timer, top of the stove.”

  Therese shook her head. “It comes out better when I guess.” She had never gone wrong yet on Carol’s egg. Carol liked it a little better done than the egg timer made it. Therese looked at Florence, who was concentrating now on the two eggs she was frying in the skillet. The coffee was almost all filtered. In silence, Therese prepared the cup to take up to Carol.

  Later in the morning, Therese helped Carol take in the white iron chairs and the swing seat from the lawn in back of the house. It would be simpler with Florence there, Carol said, but Carol had sent her away marketing, then had a sudden whim to get the furniture in. It was Harge’s idea to leave them out all winter, she said, but she thought they looked bleak. Finally only one chair remained by the round fountain, a prim little chair of white metal with a bulging bottom and four lacy feet. Therese looked at it and wondered who had sat there.

  “I wish there were more plays that happened out of doors,” Therese said.

  “What do you think of first when you start to make a set?” Carol asked. “What do you start from?”

  “The mood of the play, I suppose. What do you mean?”

  “Do you think of the kind of play it is, or of something you want to see?”

  One of Mr. Donohue’s remarks brushed Therese’s mind with a vague unpleasantness. Carol was in an argumentative mood this morning. “I think you’re determined to consider me an amateur,” Therese said.

  “I think you’re rather subjective. That’s amateurish, isn’t it?”

  “Not always.” But she knew what Carol meant.

  “You have to know a lot to be absolutely subjective, don’t you? In those things you showed me, I think you’re too subjective—without knowing enough.”

  Therese made fists of her hands in her pockets. She had so hoped Carol would like her work, unqualifiedly. It had hurt her terribly that Carol hadn’t liked in the least a certain few sets she had shown her. Carol knew nothing about it, technically, yet she could demolish a set with a phrase.

  “I think a look at the West would do you good. When did you say you had to be back? The middle of February?”

  “Well, now I don’t—I just heard yesterday.”

  “What do you mean? It fell through? The Philadelphia job?”

  “They called me up. They want somebody from Philadelphia.”

  “Oh, baby. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s just this business,” Therese said. Carol’s hand was on the back of her neck, Carol’s thumb rubbing behind her ear as Carol might have fondled a dog.

  “You weren’t going to tell me.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime on the trip.”

  “Are you very disappointed?”

  “No,” Therese said positively.

  They heated the last cup of coffee and took it out to the white chair on the lawn and shared it.

  “Shall we have lunch out somewhere?” Carol asked her. “Let’s go to the club. Then I ought to do some shopping in Newark. How about a jacket? Would you like a tweed jacket?”

  Therese was sitting on the edge of the fountain, one hand pressed against her ear because it was aching from the cold. “I don’t particularly need one,” she said.

  “But I’d particularly like to see you in one.”

  Therese was upstairs, changing her clothes, when she heard the telephone ring. She heard Florence say, “Oh, good morning, Mr. Aird. Yes, I’ll call her right now,” and Therese crossed the room and closed the door. Restlessly, she began to put the room in order, hung her clothes in the closet, and smoothed the bed she had already made. Then Carol knocked on the door and put her head in. “Harge is coming by in a few minutes. I don’t think he’ll be long.”

  Therese did not want to see him. “Would you like for me to take a walk?”

  Carol smiled. “No. Stay up here and read a book, if you want to.”

  Therese got the book she had bought yesterday, the Oxford Book of English Verse, and tried to read it, but the words stayed separate and meaningless. She had a disquieting sense of hiding, so she went to the door and opened it.

  Carol was just coming from her room, and for an instant Therese saw the same look of indecision cross her face that Therese remembered from the first moment she had entered the house. Then she said, “Come down.”

  Harge’s car drove up as they walked into the living room. Carol went to the door, and Therese heard their greeting, Carol’s only cordial, but Harge’s very cheerful, and Carol came in with a long flower box in her arms.

  “Harge, this is Miss Belivet. I think you met her once,” Carol said.

  Harge’s eyes narrowed a little, then opened. “Oh, yes. How do you do?”

  “How do you do?”

  Florence came in, and Carol handed the flower box to her.

  “Would you put these in something?” Carol said.

  “Ah, here’s that pipe. I thought so.” Harge reached behind the ivy on the mantel, and brought forth a pipe.

  “Everything is fine at home?” Carol asked as she sat down at the end of the sofa.

  “Yes. Very.” Harge’s tense smile did not show his teeth, but his face and the quick turns of his head radiated geniality and self-satisfaction. He watched with proprietary pleasure as Florence brought in the flowers, red roses, in a vase, and set them on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

  Therese wished suddenly that she had brought Carol flowers, brought them on any of a half a dozen occasions past, and she remembered the flowers Danny had
brought to her one day when he simply dropped in at the theater. She looked at Harge, and his eyes glanced away from her, the peaked brow lifting still higher, the eyes darting everywhere, as if he looked for little changes in the room. But it might all be pretense, Therese thought, his air of good cheer. And if he cared enough to pretend, he must also care in some way for Carol.

  “May I take one for Rindy?” Harge asked.

  “Of course.” Carol got up, and she would have broken a flower, but Harge stepped forward and put a little knife blade against the stem and the flower came off. “They’re very beautiful. Thank you, Harge.”

  Harge lifted the flower to his nose. Half to Carol, half to Therese, he said, “It’s a beautiful day. Are you going to take a drive?”

  “Yes, we were,” Carol said. “By the way, I’d like to drive over one afternoon next week. Perhaps Tuesday.”

  Harge thought a moment. “All right. I’ll tell her.”

  “I’ll speak to her on the phone. I meant tell your family.”

  Harge nodded once, in acquiescence, then looked at Therese. “Yes, I remember you. Of course. You were here about three weeks ago. Before Christmas.”

  “Yes. One Sunday.” Therese stood up. She wanted to leave them alone. “I’ll go upstairs,” she said to Carol. “Good-bye, Mr. Aird.”

  Harge made her a little bow. “Good-bye.”

  As she went up the stairs, she heard Harge say, “Well, many happy returns, Carol. I’d like to say it. Do you mind?”

  Carol’s birthday, Therese thought. Of course, Carol wouldn’t have told her.

  She closed the door and looked around the room, realized she was looking for any sign that she had spent the night. There was none. She stopped at the mirror and looked at herself for a moment, frowningly. She was not so pale as she had been three weeks ago when Harge saw her; she did not feel like the drooping, frightened thing Harge had met then. From the top drawer, she got her handbag and took her lipstick out of it. Then she heard Harge knock on the door, and she closed the drawer.