My American

by Stella Gibbons

  “Oh, I guess I frightened you, then. I’m sorry. You just tell me another time when I’m kissing you too much and I—well, I guess I’ll take my shower now.” And he turned away. Amy continued to pour milk into a saucepan, staring at it.

  “That doesn’t mean you won’t ever want to kiss me again, does it?” he asked, lingering at the door.

  “Oh, no! I said I liked it—only do please go and have your shower now!” she implored and still without looking up she waved the empty milk carton at him. He went off to the bathroom, and then the telephone bell rang.

  “Miss Lee,” announced the cheerful voice of Myrtle, “mah sister’s done had twins!”

  “Oh, Myrtle! Is she pleased?”

  “She sho’ is, Miss Lee, only mah brother-in-law, he’s on Relief just now, so they won’t have much fo’ the babies. They’se lovely babies, Miss Lee, they done weigh seven pounds each!”

  “Fancy, Myrtle! I’m so glad.”

  “Thank you, Miss Lee. Miss Lee, Ah was wonderin’—there’s such an old muss-up down here, all the little ones hoppin’ about without their breakfasts ’cause me and mah brother-in-law we been up all night at the hospital—Ah was wonderin’ if you could manage without me this mornin’? So’s Ah could stay with the little ones?”

  “Oh, yes, Myrtle, that’ll be all right, I can manage,” Amy answered eagerly. Indeed, she was relieved, for the tocsins of Mrs. Beeding had suddenly sounded in her memory, and what would Myrtle think if she arrived and found a young man breakfasting there? (People Are Always Thinkin’ Somethin’ had been one of Mrs. Beeding’s warnings. There may be nothin’ in it, but People Always Get Talkin’.) Amy shrank from having herself and Bob talked about.

  “You call me up again, will you, Myrtle, if you can’t come in to-morrow?” she added.

  “Mighty kind of you, Miss Lee, Ah surely will. How will yo’ manage fo’ yo’ marketin’, Miss Lee?”

  “Oh, I’ll call up the delicatessen, I’ll be all right. Good-bye, Myrtle,” and she hung up the receiver.

  She finished getting the breakfast, moving about with light steps in a happy dream. She had not known that it was possible to be so happy. She did not want to talk, not even to him; she only wanted to move about, lightly and silently, preparing the breakfast and feeling happiness in herself and all about her.

  Presently he called from the bathroom:

  “I wish I had a razor. Boone hasn’t got one stowed away, has he?”

  “I don’t know. There are some drawers and cupboards locked up. I should look, if I were you.”

  After a pause filled with the discontented rattlings of drawers—

  “No.”

  “Can’t you get a shave at the shop over the way after breakfast?”

  He did not answer.

  “You might let me lend you a dollar!” cried Amy, coming exasperated into the living-room with the grapefruit, and meeting him face to face as he came out of the bathroom, “Lou could pay me back this afternoon. Won’t you?”

  “Not a cent,” he said firmly.

  “Well, I owe you five cents, anyway!” she said recklessly, putting down the grapefruit on the table. “You might let me pay you back what I owe you!”

  He stood in the morning sunlight and stared at her.

  “You owe me five cents? What the heck do you mean? How can you owe me five cents?”

  “Well, you gave me a five-cent piece in mistake for a shilling twelve years ago, and I’ve still got it,” she cried, shaking from head to foot. “It was at Kenwood House in England one very cold Saturday afternoon in 1928, and it was my birthday and I asked you to lend me sixpence to get home with and you said you’d give me a shilling for a birthday present. But it wasn’t a shilling, it was five cents, with an Indian and a buffalo on it and I was so disappointed, I thought you’d done it on purpose. But you didn’t, did you?” she ended imploringly, standing on tiptoe and gazing up at him.

  He sat down heavily on the edge of the divan, and demanded:

  “Are we both crazy? I know you’re my Swimming Girl, and now you say——”

  “Wait—wait—I’ve still got it—I’ll show you——” and away she flew into the bedroom, leaving him staring after her.

  In a minute she was back at his side, eagerly showing him something cradled in her hand. He bent his head, taking her hand in his own to steady it, and saw with an ever-deepening astonishment an Indian’s head five-cent piece, dulled with age. It lay in a piece of crumpled paper on which was written, in a hand that he recognized as a more youthful version of the one he had seen last night on Amy’s manuscript:

  American coin given to A. Lee as a birthday present by Robert Somebody, an American boy from Vine Falls, Paul County, New Leicester, America, on the said A. Lee’s birthday, October 31st, 1928.

  “That was you, wasn’t it?” she demanded.

  “We certainly were in London in 1928, but I can’t remember—where did you say it was?”

  “At Kenwood House,” she said eagerly. “It’s a big historic old house on Hampstead Heath, just outside London.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember a thing about it, but it must have been me, because there couldn’t have been two of us, could there?”

  “And the address is right, isn’t it? I couldn’t catch your other name so that was why I put Robert ‘Somebody’.”

  He was silent for a little while, studying the coin and the paper while she wistfully watched his face.

  “I do wish you could remember if you gave it me for a joke,” she said at last.

  He smiled, still looking at the coin as if he were trying to make it show him the past, and put his arm around her.

  “It’s no use, I’m afraid I don’t remember at all. But what were you like, all that time ago?”

  “Oh, sort of little and thin and I had a white tam-o-shanter and I was very lonely and miserable.”

  He held her closer and said decidedly: “Then I’m sure I didn’t mean it as a joke. It was just a mistake. My mother always made us behave properly when we were kids and my father lammed the daylights out of Boone and me if he caught us hazing Stebby (that’s my cousin).”

  “So you wouldn’t have done a thing like that to a girl, would you?”

  “No, I don’t think I would. I was probably a fresh sort of kid, but I wouldn’t have played a lowdown trick like that on a little girl, especially a miserable little girl,” and he drew her gently to him and kissed her cheek.

  “Oh, I am so glad,” she murmured, “I’ve always wondered about it. Now you tell me why you said I was the Swimming Girl—oh, the coffee’ll be cold. Let’s have it now, and you can tell me while we’re having it.”

  “It’s so darned queer,” he muttered, pulling up a chair for her. “This time yesterday I’d never even seen you, and now I seem to have known you for ever.”

  “Do you take sugar?” said Amy quickly, looking across at him where he sat, a big, gaunt drawn-faced young man, opposite her. “I feel like that about you, too,” she added. “And—and I like being with you very much, as well,” she ended shyly. She suddenly felt so happy that her happiness must find expression, and the only way she could show it was in this prim and childish phrase.

  “So do I.” He was staring at her as if he could never tire. “You can’t imagine what it’s like, being with you after the last weeks.”

  “I wish you’d tell me what you did after you left Dan. My mother used to say it did people good to talk about things.”

  “Oh——” He drank some coffee and began to eat. “I walked about the streets all that day. I had ten dollars I’d won playing poker. Then I joined up with a man who was hitch-hiking to Saint Louis looking for work. He was very religious; every time we thumbed a car he prayed it would stop! Then I caught him trying to get away with money one night.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Shook him.”

  “I hope you hurt him,” she said fiercely.

  He glanced at her, a little surprised.
“Well, I was pretty mad. But he was’t a bad little rat. We got on all right after that.”

  “After he’d tried to steal your money?—”

  “Surely. We got to laughing about it. You get like that when you haven’t anything. I kind of despised him because he was a small time crook and he didn’t like it because he said I hadn’t any use for religion, but we got along.”

  “You don’t seem to hate anybody!” she burst out, clasping her hands together and raising her voice. “I can’t understand it! If anybody’d been beastly to me, the way Dan has to you, and that man, trying to steal your money, I’d—”

  “You can’t be mad at people when you haven’t got anything. You both feel helpless together, and weak, somehow. I can’t explain it. It’s just the other side of the fence, that’s all. One side, you can be quite sure what’s right and what’s wrong, but on the other side it isn’t like that. I can’t explain properly, even to you, because you haven’t been on the other side.”

  “Well, I haven’t always had a lot of money, you know.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “No. My father used to earn six pounds a week. That’s quite a lot, but I didn’t get any of it.”

  “Thirty dollars. What did he do?”

  “He was in the advertising department on a boys’ paper.”

  “I thought—well, you’re so elegant, I thought you’d always been rich.”

  “Oh, no. I was very poor. Mrs. Beeding brought me up; she’s the baker’s wife, whose house we lived in. I worked in an office when I was fifteen.”

  “Did you?” he said gently, studying her. “Wasn’t there anyone to look after you?”

  “Oh, well, there was Mrs. Beeding and the girls, but I was fearfully lonely. As a matter of fact, I still am.” And Amy hastily drank some coffee.

  He said nothing, but continued to look at her as if he had not heard what she had said and as if he had forgotten that she was a human being, who could respond to his look with surprise at its length and intensity. Amy spooned the last drops of juice from her grapefruit without once looking up, but she was very conscious of his look, and at last she said:

  “I wish you’d tell me about the Swimming Girl.”

  “Oh!” Bob filled his mouth so that he need not answer at once. Then he said:

  “Well, it’s mighty queer, but you’re exactly like a girl I’ve dreamt about ever since I was a kid. We were always swimming together in a very blue sea.”

  “How lovely” she said dreamily.

  “It certainly was.” He drank some more coffee, deciding not to tell her that the Swimming Girl was naked. He could still see the fine black hair floating across her breast, sprayed out under the blue water. “I used to wake up very happy from those dreams.”

  “It’s all awfully queer, isn’t it?” Amy, turning quite pale, suddenly put down her fork. “Our meeting like that at Kenwood all those years ago, and my always remembering you, and your dreaming about someone just like me. It makes me feel rather frightened.”

  “It’s the queerest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he answered in a low voice. He suddenly looked deadly tired. “But don’t let it scare you. I’m glad about it, it makes me feel as if we belonged to each other.” He stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry, I guess I’ll have to lie down again for a while. I don’t feel——”

  He got up unsteadily and went over to the divan and lay down on his face. She half rose from her chair, but did not go over to him; she stood there, troubledly watching him, wondering what to do. Presently he lifted his head and smiled at her.

  “It’s all right. But I haven’t been leading a very healthy life lately, and I’m still starved. It’ll take time to get me right again.”

  “Oh!” she cried with a radiant face, clasping her hands. “Then you’re going home!”

  He nodded, watching her, smiling faintly.

  “Yes.”

  She came over and sat beside him, looking earnestly down at his fair untidy head.

  “Oh, I can’t tell you how glad I am! Now everything will be all right.”

  “Will it? I’ll be a mighty queer kind of doctor, if ever I get through my examinations.”

  “You’ll be a very good doctor,” she said confidently. “Because you’ll know how those poor people feel without any work and any homes.”

  “And the gangsters. I’ll know how they feel. And I’ll know that all the people with jobs and homes are just lucky, not hard-working or good. So what’ll be the use of trying to be hard-working or good, when it’s all luck?” he asked, his smile changing to a mocking one while he watched her.

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed, shocked. “It isn’t luck. God looks after the good people and punishes the wicked ones.”

  “You’re mighty down on the wicked ones yourself, aren’t you?”

  “People shouldn’t be wicked,” said Amy.

  “Hardly anyone is.”

  “Not even Dan?”

  “Dan! I told you, Dan’s all right. It’s all luck. No-one’s bad and no-one’s good. That’s the worst thing I’ve found out in these last weeks. That’s why I haven’t anything to hang on to now, except my work. People always get sick, and they’ve got to be cured. I don’t know why. I just feel that they have.” He was speaking half to himself, staring down at the cover on the divan.

  “Well,” said Amy, thinking hard, and also frowning down at the red cover on the divan without in the least realizing that it was red, as was the cushion under Bob’s shoulders, “if I were you, I should just hang on to that. That’s something you feel.”

  He nodded and moved a little towards her. “Right now I’m so tired I can’t feel anything except that you’re lovely.”

  Amy put her arm round his shoulders. “Let’s sit here quietly for a little while,” she whispered, putting her cheek to his.

  There was a long silence. Sounds came up clearly from the streets already burning in the sunlight, but the room, as it had been last night, was hushed as a tower in a fairy tale. The pictures on its white walls—a black and red lyre, some pale stone ruins where horses caracolled, a plate of dim fruits—glowed strangely with a life of their own, uncomforting, like windows opening on to uncanny landscapes. The real window, that had given last night on a witchlike panorama of quivering crimson lines and glittering symbols, now showed only ordinary roofs and walls against a dull hot sky where an aeroplane droned. It was nine o’clock in the morning in a modern city, where fear and money ruled the people as they have always ruled, yet along the hot ugly streets, side by side with the fear and the power of money, beauty and mystery walked as they have always walked, and at any moment a human being might step aside into them and stand still to dream, as Bob and Amy were dreaming now. But they only knew that they were in the midst of peace and silence and that it comforted them to be together.

  At last Bob moved, sighing, and said:

  “When did you say Lou was coming?”

  “I don’t know. She said she’d telephone me this morning about ten o’clock to arrange things.”

  “It’s a quarter of ten now,” he said, glancing at the electric clock. “I’ll speak to her when she does call up, if you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, do! It’ll be such a lovely surprise for her!”

  He laughed for the first time and asked, surveying her:

  “How old are you?”

  “I’ll be twenty-three in October. How old are you?”

  “I was twenty-three in January.”

  They looked at one another for a moment, then Amy glanced away and said:

  “I’d better wash up. Myrtle can’t come in, her sister’s had twins.”

  “Don’t you want to write?”

  Amy shook her head. Never had she been less anxious to write.

  “I’ll help do the dishes.”

  “You’d better rest, hadn’t you? There isn’t much to wash up, really.”

  “No, I’ll help.”

  While they were washing up the telephone bell ran
g, and Bob went quickly across to answer it. Amy came and stood at the kitchen door, with a cloth and a half-dried cup in her hands, and listened. A girl with knowledge of the conventions would have stayed in the kitchen, and a girl with natural tact would have found some task to occupy her in the bedroom, but it did not occur to Amy that she should not stand and listen, for Lou was about to have her delightful surprise; it was a happy occasion, not one for hiding in the kitchen.

  “Lou?” said Bob, and then Amy heard an excited exclamation at the other end of the line, sounding clearly in the quiet room.

  “Yes it’s me,” said Bob. “Yes, I’m all right.” His voice went on, replying in monosyllables to her questions, sounding tired and discouraged in contrast to his sister’s excited high tones. He did not turn to smile at Amy, and she began to feel that the occasion was not so happy as she had thought it would be.

  At last he hung up the receiver and turned to her. “They’re coming right over,” he said. “Helen too.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Sure. I want to see them both. And then I can fix about going home.” But he began to wander round the room, looking at the dim or brilliant pictures as if he were not really seeing them, and Amy went back into the kitchen and went on with the drying-up. She was trying to control her jealousy. She did not want to share Bob with anyone, for it seemed so long since he had knocked at the door last night that she felt she had always known him; she had forgotten that he had once been only a childish memory, and it seemed so natural for him to be alone with her that she dreaded the arrival of other people, even the members of his own family.

  Soon he came and stood by her as she was polishing the last plate.

  “I want to ask you something.”

  “All right,” said Amy, beginning to tremble as she carefully put the plate on to the dresser. She kept her back turned to him because she was afraid to look round, but he gently put his hands on her shoulders and turned her about until she faced him and stood looking up seriously into his serious face.

  “It’s so queer about you and me,” he said in a low tone, “that I can’t begin to talk about it, there’s so much to say. We’ll have to talk about it some time soon. But never mind that now. I must ask you something. I’ve never felt about anyone like I do about you. Do you feel like that about me? As if we belonged to each other?”