Stop-Time

by Frank Conroy

  The letter from Haverford was shorter. I was accepted unconditionally. They asked me only to indicate whether or not I was coming. I leaned back on the couch and smiled. It felt a little silly, sitting smiling into the empty air, but I made no attempt to control myself. I held the letter tightly, raising it into the air every few moments to read it again.

  That night, in the Select Cafe with John, a young English painter I hung around with, I wrote a letter to Haverford telling them I was coming. That done, we got drunk on vin chaud, and when my friend’s wife left work at three in the morning, we walked across Paris to Les Halles for saucisson and pommes frites.

  My sister lived in Reid Hall, a feminine enclave for foreign students off Boulevard Montparnasse. When I was broke I would go there for a meal and some animal warmth. Alison had no more money than myself, but as usual she managed better, and always helped when I was down and out. After dinner we would sit in the garden and talk.

  “Frank, you must get a haircut.”

  “Haircuts are a luxury.”

  “You got that remark from John.”

  “Well, it’s true. Anyway I’ve got a huge bald spot on the back of my head and this covers it up.”

  “What? Let me see.” She examined my scalp. “Oh, Frank. My God!” To my surprise she burst into tears. “What are we going to do? You should see a doctor and we don’t have any money. I’ll have to borrow from one of the girls.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of it when I get back to New York.”

  “But suppose you lose all your hair? We’ve got to do something!” She paced back and forth on the garden walk, tremendously upset, her face twisted with worry.

  There was something odd in her reaction, a certain lack of proportion, and I felt a flash of fear. “Take it easy,” I said. “It’s nothing to get worked up about. It’ll be all right.”

  “Oh God.” She sat down next to me and held her head as she cried. “I can’t take any more.”

  I put my arm across her shoulders. “Alison, it’s nothing. Really.”

  “We’re too young to be all alone.”

  “We’re not alone. And you have Jack. He’ll be there when you go back.”

  “I know. I know.”

  But she kept on crying.

  One afternoon at the Select, John handed me a small drawing. “You know what that is?”

  I smoothed the paper on the small table and looked closely. It appeared to be a machine of some sort, various cogs, levers, and bars against a flat surface. “You mean something in reality?”

  “Yes.”

  After a while I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s the lock on the Metro door.”

  I looked again and recognized it instantly. In a single moment I understood distortion in art. The drawing was highly complex, much more elaborate than the simple bar and catch I had watched interacting countless times on the Metro doors. What he had drawn was the process, the way the bar approaches the catch, slides up the angled metal, and drops into the locked position. He had captured movement in a static drawing. For a moment I was speechless. When I looked up he was smiling at me. “You see?”

  “Yes, I see,” I answered, very serious. “And thank you.”

  Embarrassed, he folded the drawing and put it in his pocket. “It’s nothing. A detail from my Metro painting.”

  In August I left Paris. I said goodbye to Alison, John and his wife, and a few acquaintances from the cafés, and spent my last night in the little room on rue Mouffetard writing letters. It was hot and I slept in short stretches, waking up each time with my mind abnornally clear, all senses alert, my consciousness reaching out in a last attempt to absorb the city. In the morning I picked up my duffel bag and suitcase and walked out the door.

  Alone in the bow of the lighter, I breathed the salt air and looked up at the stars. Going home. Going home. Behind me the other passengers moved in the darkness, their voices muted by the wind. Slowly, the boat swung around a jetty and out into the swell of the open sea. Dead ahead the huge ocean liner spilled light over the black water, its whole long side blazing under the starry sky. My skin tingled as our ship’s horn blasted the air. Moments later the liner answered with a deep, bone-shaking note—an immense sea-mother calling her lost child.

  The next day I exchanged my money. One of the coins I received was a half-dollar. I turned it over several times, not knowing what it was. The sensation was quite strange.

  20

  Unambiguous Events

  NOTHING had changed in my neighborhood. The R.K.O., Loew’s, and Grande movie theaters were showing pictures I’d never heard of, but the kids still screamed in the children’s section and the ushers still flashed their lights across the screen to signal each other. The bars on Eighty-sixth Street were filled with the same heavy men, Wright’s and the Automat served the same food, and the Salvation Army band showed up every Saturday night on the sidewalk. My favorite delicatessen smelled the way it always had and the man behind the counter nodded as if I’d never been away. Nothing had changed except myself. I wandered through the neighborhood with a great secret locked in my heart. “I’ve won. I made it. I’m starting a new life.” And it was true. Haverford College would give me the chance to start with a clean slate, and that was all I’d ever wanted. My acceptance into a good college meant I could destroy my past. It seemed to me to amount to an order to destroy my past, a past I didn’t understand, a past I feared, and a past with which I had expected to be forever encumbered. In the fact of this incredible good fortune life took on an hallucinatory brightness. It was like a religious conversion.

  At home I felt like a boarder, a one-night guest impatient to move on to the next town. My room seemed not to be my own. Touching forgotten belongings on the shelves, I felt the echo of another person and an earlier time. Dagmar had thrown out my seven or eight hundred paperbacks, but even that seemed unimportant. Nothing mattered from the past, neither the things I had loved nor those I had hated.

  Suddenly a telegram arrived. Alison, who had planned to stay in Europe another year, was being sent home on doctor’s orders. She would arrive the next day at Idlewild airport.

  I drove out with my mother in a borrowed convertible. (An eccentric millionaire’s. He had taken a ride in her cab—she drove occasionally in the afternoons—and was so impressed he took her to the opera every now and then in a chauffeured Cadillac.) It was a warm, sunny day, so I had the top down. My mother was unusually quiet.

  “What I don’t understand is why they didn’t say what’s wrong with her,” I said.

  “Maybe she’s pregnant.”

  “Alison? Are you kidding?” I moved the big car into the fast lane. “No. Maybe it’s something they couldn’t diagnose. Some rare allergy or something.” It made me nervous not to know. I kept running over the possibilities in my head, avoiding certain ones instinctively.

  “You’re driving too fast.”

  “Only fifty.” I was suddenly annoyed. “Anyway I’m driving. Not you.”

  “It’s simple good manners to slow down if your passenger is uncomfortable.”

  I kept on at the same speed.

  At the airport I dropped my mother in front of International Arrivals, parked the car, and went inside. Alison’s plane was down, and a trim woman at the information desk told me the passengers were in customs. On tiptoes, I tried to spot my mother’s blond head in the crowd, but without success. I moved to the customs area and stopped at the barrier, leaning forward to look through the open doors into the next room where the inspectors were at work checking baggage. I saw Alison standing with her back to me in one of the aisles. Something was wrong with her hair. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted “Alison! Over here! Over here!” She turned around and saw me.

  I started to wave, but stopped. She was looking directly at me without the least sign of recognition. Her long dark hair puffed wildly from her head and fell over her shoulders and down her back. Her clothing was
wrinkled and food-stained, the buttons on her jacket done in the wrong order, and her lipstick unevenly applied. I stared into her eyes and felt my legs start to go. I held onto the barrier. Neither of us moved. After a moment a faint, quizzical frown appeared on her brow and she leaned forward as if to see me better. Her mouth opened and I realized she was talking to herself. The other people in her aisle hung back, giving her plenty of space.

  I went past the guard, ignoring his restraining hand on my shoulder, and moved toward her. From another direction I could see my mother approaching with a stewardess. We converged on Alison at the same moment.

  “Here’s your mother, dear,” the stewardess said gently. “Everything is all right. Just as I told you.”

  “You stupid bitch,” Alison said to the stewardess. “I hope your cunt rots off.”

  Mother put her arm around Alison’s waist and I picked up the bags.

  “You’re home now,” Dagmar said. “It’s all over. It’s all over now.”

  We began to walk slowly to the exit. I was aware of people looking at us, passengers from Alison’s flight point her out to the people who’d come to meet them. I moved closer to her side.

  “The plane almost crashed twice. They wouldn’t give me a life preserver.”

  “All right now. Don’t think about it,” my mother said. “Let’s just go home.”

  “There were two F.B.I. men sitting behind me. They tape recorded everything.”

  “Why would they care about you?”

  “Because of Jack. Because of his job in the army.”

  In the parking lot I stood next to Alison as my mother went around the car. “What’s wrong?” I asked softly. “What happened?”

  She didn’t answer and got into the car. I slid behind the wheel. She suddenly became haughty. “Nothing whatever is wrong. You think I’ve lost touch with reality? Just drive this strange car I’ve never seen before to eighty-one East Eighty-sixth Street.”

  I felt tears starting in my eyes and turned away as if I were checking traffic. I pulled into the highway and Alison lowered her head onto her mother’s lap.

  Alison slept in Mother’s bed that night. She lay for hours singing folk songs, her voice trembling when the words were sad. She switched accents for the lighter tunes, overdoing the Irish or Jewish to make Dagmar laugh. I paced back and forth through the hall, checking Jessica’s room every now and then to make sure she was covered, unable to stay still for more than a moment. I wondered if we should increase the dosage of Alison’s sedatives, and tried not to think of what would happen if they took her to a hospital. It was indescribably weird to hear them laughing and carrying on like two little girls at camp.

  Once my mother came out of the room for some water. I was standing in the hall by the bathroom.

  “You know,” she said, pursuing her lips and giving a series of quick nods (her everything’s-under-control look), “I think Alison is faking just a little bit.” She smiled, relieved and tolerant, as if it were a game she was willing to allow.

  Early in the morning, just before dawn, something woke me. I got up from the couch and went to the head of the hall. Halfway down the corridor, under the single light by the bathroom, Alison stood in a white nightgown with her fists clenched and her teeth bare, making a continuous hissing sound something like the noise of a steam radiator. I remained in the doorway until she caught sight of me and then began to advance. She raised her fists slightly as I came close, her lips drawn back like an animals, her whole head trembling, the tendons in her neck standing out like ropes. “Take it easy,” I said softly. “Just take it easy.” Her eyes watched me from another world. Expecting anything, I reached out for her. Her arm was hard as steel. “Better try and sleep,” I said.

  She went along stiffly, still hissing. At the door to Mother’s room I stopped and urged her inside. Dagmar lay motionless under the blankets, fast asleep.

  “There’s the bed,” I said. “Just lie down and try to sleep.”

  She got under the covers and turned toward her mother. I stood watching them for a moment and then went back to the living room. In the darkness, I stared at the ceiling. After five or ten minutes I went into the kitchen and collected all the knives. I put them under a cushion on the sofa and slept on them.

  After a day or two it became clear that Alison would not have to be hospitalized. But she re-entered reality a different person from the one who had left. The responsible, self-sufficient Alison was gone. The new Alison was an infant—love-starved, grasping every available scrap of attention, physically passive as if her very bones and muscle had gone back to childhood softness, and utterly blind to everything but her own needs. More than once I saw her curled up on the sofa or a chair, sucking her thumb abstractedly. She hung on my mother’s skirts, constantly reaching out to hug and be hugged, to kiss and be kissed, simply to touch—joking all the while to cover the desperate importance of her desire.

  Jack obtained special leave from the Army and came directly to the house. He never faltered for a moment. Alison stayed more or less permanently in his lap and they began talking about marriage. The old Alison had hesitated, but the new Alison was eager, to say the least.

  And so the day came when I packed my bag and took the train to college. Jean had started a used-car lot in Florida, Alison was to marry Jack, and my mother and Jessica would continue at eighty-one. My trustee had paid my tuition and agreed to an allowance of a hundred dollars a month. I was rich and I was free.

  Stepping onto the station platform in Haverford, Pennsylvania, I took a deep breath and looked at what I could see of the town. A quiet suburban village. Tree-lined streets and clapboard houses. Some kids shouted as they rode their bikes down the hill into a tunnel under the tracks. A taxicab waited in the sunshine and I approached the driver, who stood leaning against the front fender.

  “Do you know where Haverford College is?”

  “Why sure.”

  “Is it far?”

  “No, but with that bag you better let me run you over.”

  “Okay.” I got in the back, my suitcase beside me, and lighted a cigarette. The driver adjusted his baseball cap and pulled away from the curb.

  “You a new freshman?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I figured. I took a few boys over already, today.”

  “Will it take long?”

  “Just a couple of minutes.”

  “I hear it’s very pretty,” I said.

  “You mean you ain’t never seen it?”

  “No. I’ve been away.”

  “Well, it’s pretty, all right. They got a big duck pond you can skate on in the winter.”

  I sat back in the seat and finished my cigarette.

  “This is the main entrance.”

  We drove between two stone pillars and a vast expanse opened before us. Across a long, open green I could see a small lake shining in the sun. Three swans moved slowly across the surface.

  “The whole place was planned by a gardener they brought over from England in eighteen something or other. Mr. White told me that.”

  “Who’s Mr. White?”

  “He’s the president. Nice fella.”

  We drove through a stand of elms and turned up a slight rise toward the main group of buildings. The smell of freshly cut grass filled the car. We pulled up under a huge oak tree. Two card tables were set up in the shade, and a group of young men sat on folding chairs, some with their feet up on the tables. I got out of the cab and paid the driver. As I reached for my bag one of the young men came trotting across the lawn. “Let me take that,” he called out. Smiling, he approached, picked up the bag, and held out his hand. “Hi. It’s nice to see you.” We shook hands and he laughed. “I know how you feel. It’s a little strange.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “My name’s Bob. Welcome to Haverford.”

  Epilogue

  ABOUT ten years later. England. 4:30 A.M. Approaching the village on a long straightaway, I braked down to ninety,
shifted into third, touched the brakes again, and took the turn into the town square at about fifty. There was a sudden rumbling under the car as the road surface changed from asphalt to cobblestone. My headlights lit the concrete fountain directly ahead, a fountain I sometimes passed on the left, sometimes on the right, depending on how well I’d taken the previous corner. I waited an instant too long, and as I eased the wheel over, the rear tires broke loose and the car began to skid.

  “Hooray!” I shouted, spinning the wheel to the left, into the skid. “Whee!”

  The car stabilized in a sideways position. I looked out the open window toward the fountain. It was coming directly at me, coming very fast as the car skidded broadside across the square. It would strike the center of the door and the car would bend like a beer can, with me inside. I was going to die. As the fountain grew larger I felt myself relax. I leaned toward the door. Let it come. Let it come as hard and as fast as it can. Touch the wheel, make an adjustment so it will strike right beside me. Here it comes! Here it comes!

  But the front wheel caught a low curb and the car spun around the fountain like a baton around a cheerleader’s wrist. I became disoriented, knowing only that something freakish was happening. The side of the car bumped very gently against the fountain, inches away from my face. Then, with a slight lurch, everything stopped. The fountain was a few yards behind and the car was pointed in more or less the right direction.