Fling and Other Stories

by John Hersey

  She walked into the shop and around to the glass counter on the left. She was glad to see Samantha Burrow at the cash register. Samantha’s face was half again as wide as anyone needed, her eyes were far apart, and her mouth was like a metal letter slot at the post office, but Myra thought her lovely. Some kind of survivor’s beauty came out from inside her. She was the daughter of summer people from out on West Chop, heavy drinkers; she was living on the island all year now, she didn’t want to be rich, she was a totally natural person—calm and kind and willing to listen. It figured that she would be a volunteer at the Thrift Shop.

  “Can I park these groceries here for a minute?” Myra asked.

  “Only if you’ll let me hold the baby while you look around,” Samantha said.

  “You got it,” Myra said, and she handed the baby over, waking it up in the process. She put the sling on the counter, beside the brown-paper bags.

  Samantha made cooing noises. The baby screwed up its face to cry, but then changed its mind and fell asleep again, its cheek against Samantha’s breast.

  Myra felt at home in the Thrift Shop, among all the objects that people hadn’t wanted to keep. First she drifted along by the lengthy display of chinaware and glasses and bits of bric-a-brac; some people might have said that these amounted to a lot of tacky junk, but Myra felt a sweet harmony in all the abandoned things. At the back of the store, next to the shelves of outgrown toys, there was a disturbing jumble of discards that hadn’t yet been sorted and tagged for display, which seemed to have been thrown in a heap in anger. She crossed cautiously—because she only had a few dollars on her—toward the racks of women’s clothing. As she went past the rows of dresses and pants, she put out her hand, now and then, just to touch. She was drawn toward the blouses. Grasping the hangers, she pressed this blouse and that one back against its neighbors to check it over, and suddenly she felt desperately lonely, sensing the crowd of women on whose shoulders these pieces of clothing had not seemed comfortable or pretty enough. Then she saw a blouse she loved. It was a pale, pale saffron color, simply cut, slightly fitted, with a tricot collar. She had a vague feeling she had seen it on someone and had thought that person beautiful. She took it over and held it up for Samantha to see.

  Samantha said, “Cool, Myra. How about bartering? The blouse in exchange for this lousy bundle, huh? Oooooh!” She squeezed the baby.

  “You’re not far off,” Myra said.

  The blouse cost four dollars. Myra stuffed it in one of the A & P bags. She felt better till she realized she had to walk all the way up to Greenwood and then over to Franklin to get home—if home was what you could call those two miserable little rooms her mother had rented for her at the rear of Mrs. Wickham’s house. By the time she got there, her legs and shoulders and arms all felt numb.

  She went around to the back of the house and pushed the door open with her shoulder. At once she heard her mother’s voice, beyond the door, saying, “Darling, I wish you’d lock up. On these back streets. You never know, even Vineyard Haven these days.”

  “Oh, Mom, thank God you’re here. Would you take these things?…You wouldn’t be in here if I locked up. You’d have had to go on home.”

  “I know, but I worry, darling,” Myra’s mother said. She leaned the broom she was holding against a wall and took the bags from Myra, one at a time, setting them on the small table at the center of the room. Myra saw that her mother had been picking up. She had washed the dishes from the night before and from breakfast, and now she’d been sweeping the floor. Myra thought, This is supposed to be my house.

  “Ah, look at ums,” her mother said. “Isn’t ums sweet?”

  “No, she’s not sweet. She stinks.”

  “Do you want me to change her?”

  “Mom, that’s so hypocritical. You know changing her makes you nauseous.”

  Myra put the baby on the drainboard by the sink, fetched the Pampers from one of the A & P bags, opened the box, and undressed the baby. Unable to watch, her mother went to the window. Myra cleaned the baby’s bottom with a rag and warm water from the sink faucet, dried the round places and all the little creases, shook powder on, snapped a new diaper in place, and then sat down in a wooden rocker in a corner. She hummed and rocked.

  “I’ve just come from the hospital,” her mother said. “I have bad news. Mabel—Mrs. Stritch, you know?—from Tashmoo Avenue?—Dr. Branford opened her up and found a huge big cancer in her stomach. I got talking with Mrs. Darkin, the nurse in the waiting room. She said what they took out, it was just like a big bunch of grapes. There wasn’t anything to do but sew her up again. I’ll miss her so.”

  “She isn’t dead yet, Mom.”

  The baby, dry and clean, had begun to chirp like a sparrow.

  “Mrs. Darkin said there was no use even giving her a prognosis. Sometimes I think I’d like to be a Christian Scientist.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “For one thing, I wouldn’t have to worry about doctors’ bills anymore. I wouldn’t have to pay for Blue Cross. And anyways, it’s all in the mind, you know.”

  “Mother, don’t you dare. I hate to say it, but you’re getting on. Listen to these stories you keep telling me, about all your friends with embolisms and pancreatitis and malignant thises and thats. If you stop Blue Cross and get sick, that’d be one more thing on my back. To pay the bills you’d talked yourself out of.”

  “And where would you get the money?”

  And so, Myra thought, Mom has worked her way around to him again. Look at her eyes soften, and that hurt look. She loves me so much that she’d like to murder me. Myra tore her eyes away from her mother’s face and looked down at the baby. It had its mouth open, and its tongue was lolling out and back, and its ravishing dark brown eyes, with little distorted rectangles of window light laid out on them, seemed groggy with contentment. Myra thought angrily, Why can’t anyone around here feel what I feel? “Where would I get the money?” she asked with heavy irony. “Hey, Mom, that’s the best question you ever asked.”

  “Oh, honey, he’ll be back. You watch. After Labor Day, after all those pretty high-toned off-island waitresses go back to college, he’ll come back to you with his tail between his legs.”

  “And his wallet full of money in his back pocket, I suppose. I don’t want him back.”

  “Mylie! Mylie! You know you do.”

  “I do not. I hate him. You tricked me.”

  “I tricked you? How? You mean, into marrying him? Excuse me, darling, but what is that you’re holding in your arms? You do have a baby, you know. That’s the one and only reason you got married.”

  “It’s your fault I have this stupid baby. It’s your fault. You said you’d shoot me before you’d let me get rid of it.”

  “Myra, did I fill myself up with beer night after night and crawl in the back seat of his father’s Chevrolet with a selfish high-school boy? Did I? Let’s not talk fault, Myra.”

  “And his shitty mother. You would have to go to her and spill the whole thing, and she would have to go to the priest, and—”

  The baby had begun to whoop with joy. “Yawp!” it said. Its eyes blazed. “Wah!”

  “You were always such a good girl, Mylie, you were always so decent, so kind, so obedient, what happened? It gives me the shudders to hear you use words like that. Mrs. Thirrup is a wonderful woman.”

  “Don’t say ‘Thirrup.’ I hate that name.”

  “It’s yours now, dear.”

  There was a silence then as mother and daughter both drew back from what they had been saying and thinking. Myra’s anger seeped quickly away. She felt as if nothing strong held on in her anymore. She glanced down at the baby and saw that for the first time in its life it was looking deeply into her eyes. My God, she thought, she wants to know if I’m going to do her someday the way Mom does me.

  Her mother softly said, “Can I make you
a cup of tea, honey?”

  Myra sighed. “Why don’t you fix us some hot dogs? I just got some new ones in one of those bags.”

  “No, darling, I can’t stay. I promised Helen I’d be over. I told you about her knee with the fluid in it. I’ll set some water on for tea.”

  “It’s okay,” Myra said. “It’s okay. I can eat later.”

  Her mother left. Myra sat there quite a while. Then she took the baby into the bedroom, where she saw that her mother had made the bed. She put the baby down on it and went back to take the groceries out of the bags. As she picked the first bag up to fold it, she saw that her mother had tucked two twenty-dollar bills under it. She put them in the pocket of her jeans. The blouse was on top in the other bag. She held it up to the light by the shoulders and decided to try it on.

  She went in the bedroom, took off her shirt and her nursing bra, and threw them on the bed beside the baby. She put on the blouse and buttoned it up. She opened the bathroom door, turned on the overhead light, and looked at herself in the mirror over the basin.

  At once she realized who it was she’d seen in the blouse and thought so beautiful. Herself. “My God,” she said out loud, “I’m buying stuff from the Thrift Shop that I sold them. And I thought that girl in the A & P was dumb.” She remembered the anger, months ago, when she knew she was pregnant and had taken the blouse to the shop to get rid of it. Yet now she felt the best she’d felt all day. She was pleased by what she saw in the mirror. It was a neat blouse, and with her figure now she looked real good. She crossed her arms with her hands on her shoulders. The fabric was so nice and soft. She closed her eyes. She remembered the light touch of his fingers slowly undoing the buttons that first night, beginning at the top. One by one. No hurry. One at a time. “God damn it!” she shouted, and she left the bathroom and slammed its door.

  That started the baby crying. In a few moments it was tuned up to a sustained screaming, holding its breath and turning purple. When the baby was mad it looked like him. Everyone said it looked like him. Myra picked the baby up and took it in the kitchen. She settled in the rocker, facing the window, but rocking did no good. The little body was as hard as wood. The outcry came in gasps. “It’s okay,” Myra said, just as she had said to her mother. “It’s okay.” Then, in a kind of daydream, she started undoing the buttons with delicate care. She took her time. One by one. Like on those nights. When the buttons were all unbuttoned at last, she folded back the left side of the blouse and gave her breast to her child.

  The eager mouth took the bud and tugged at it in a rage of need. In a matter of moments, the hard little back eased itself into a curve, the hands came unclenched and brushed the breast with a light touch, and the cheeks faded from purple to a creamy pink. Myra felt a warmth in her chest as the mother milk flowed, and when she looked down at the silky fuzz of an eyebrow and the unbelievable upsweep of lashes that she could just barely see, the warmth spread farther, and even her hands and feet began to tingle.

  She raised her eyes to the window, and she saw the world. Slivers of dazzling light, slanting from right to left, winked on the leathery leaves of the oaks and were combed by the needles on the pines. Splashes of brilliance washed the trunks. The old pines had bark like alligator hide. She’d never noticed. There was moss on the shady side of the oaks. Then all the radiance out there began to shimmer at the edges, and Myra knew that no words had ever been made up to tell about what she could see just then.

  Without lowering her eyes, she lifted the right side of the blouse and covered her daughter’s legs.

  The Announcement

  “Mother’s a bit old-fashioned,” Gordon said. In spite of his confidence in Beverly, he couldn’t help feeling apprehensive about this first meeting. “Still wears hairpins, you know. I think they’re made of deer horn. She winds a braid around on top like a crown.”

  “You don’t have to…p-paint her,” Bev said. “I’m going to see her with my own eyes, right? How much f-farther?”

  “We’re not far now. Just the other side of Pleasantville.”

  He left the exact distance hanging. In a moderate hurry, he kept the rented Skylark ticking along at sixty. Beverly looked just right to him. She was all in black, in an off-the-shoulder taffeta cocktail dress, with a triangular black silk shawl, knotted in front, so that there were only glimpses of skin. Bev’s instincts were so unerring: his mother often chose black herself for cheerful occasions. Beverly’s curly dark hair was blowing in the breeze from her half-opened window. She had understated her makeup that morning—how much she understood!

  Gordon was especially nervous because his mother’s Thanksgiving dinner had had to be postponed by a day. As usual, brother Peter, coming from Minneapolis with his family, had made a mess of things; there had been some kind of slipup with their train reservations. Gordon knew that his mother, with her great gift of denial, would sit through the meal in style and wouldn’t show a single outward sign of distress. But Thanksgiving dinner on the day after!

  Thanksgiving meant everything to his mother. The resilience of the New England settlers was in her arteries—the grit and bend of those forebears, who could survive a first blizzardy winter, scrape at hardscrabble soil in a thin spring, plant a fish head in every corn hill, pray away drought and the crashing down of hailstones, and, at last, stack the surviving stalks and roll in the huge pumpkins and shoot a wild turkey, and then feast, and murmur in gratitude to a jealous God. That Puritan side was only a part of her, though. She was, as well, a sensuous family woman, and Thanksgiving dinners were her joy and her victory. As children, Gordon and his brother Peter had basked in the sunlight of her nurture: strange to think of that hot motherly effulgence, because she so liked shadowy places and somber clothes. She had devoted herself to her husband—dead now ten years—with a quirky tenderness that had some cold spots in it. She had quarreled with him often, perhaps to starch up a certain rumpled softness in him, and Gordon had come to see that she had always lost the arguments but had somehow won by losing.

  This mysterious femininity, yielding yet powerful, Victorian yet Emersonian too, had been what Gordon had looked for in a wife the first time, when he came back from the war in the South Pacific; but marrying an apparent clone of his mother hadn’t worked. Sue hadn’t turned out to fit the mold, and Gordon and she had had a rough parting, four years ago, in the autumn when Eisenhower beat Stevenson for the second time. No kids, thank goodness. Badly burned, he had gone it alone for three and a half years, and then had fallen in love with this complicated Beverly, who was not in the least like his mother. He and Bev had long since decided to marry, but for some reason—perhaps it was because Bev was fourteen years younger than he—he had postponed bringing her to meet his mother until now, on the special occasion of a Thanksgiving dinner, when, he thought, his mother’s euphoria, as well as the sweet condiments in little bowls on her table (Beverly had a sugar-tooth), might ease the way on both sides. “Bev has a funny little stammer,” he had said to his mother on the phone after accepting for both of them, as if that would explain all about Beverly in advance.

  As they approached Chappaqua, Gordon’s familiarity since childhood with the shapes of the hills thereabouts, his memory of each rough-cut stone bridge on the parkway, his long acquaintance even with certain noble trees along the road, especially some of the huge willows in the low places—first of all flora to put out yellowy growth in the spring, last of all to trail their drying yellowy feathers in the fall—these mnemonics of homing stirred up in his senses a rush of remembered small pleasures: the sight of his mother unwrapping a stick of butter and leaning down to let Barabbas, the old Lab, lick the traces off the wax paper; the taste of cinnamon toast; diving into huge piles of leaves when his father raked them up on Saturday afternoons in the fall; deep sounds, of cello and bassoon, on the Capehart; the gentle sidling of Whitefoot, the only cat he’d ever liked, snaking against his calf with a flirtatious aftertouch of her tail
. All the years. He drove with care.

  Then they were there. “Good God,” Beverly said when they drove up under the darkness of the porte cochere. Gordon laughed. Yes, the house was a beast. Heavy-timbered, mouse-colored, surrounded by huge red maples which even with bared limbs fought off most of the afternoon’s hazy light, the house loomed as a reminder of an era of aspiration and complacency that was, thank heavens, long gone. This monument to Daddy—Gordon called his father that—was planted in that purportedly tranquil zone, discovered by self-made men in the nineteen-twenties, of the one-hour commute to town on the Harlem Division of the New York Central. Never mind. To Gordon, at thirty-eight, it was still home.

  Gordon gave one rap on the cast-iron knocker—a head, was it Samson’s or a human-looking lion’s?—and opened up the heavy door, which squealed its welcome on its long black strap hinges. He waved Bev in ahead of him. Here came Uncle Solbert and his wife, hurrying in good manners out of the living room to greet the newcomers.

  “Gordie boy!” Uncle Solbert roared with a second-drink cordiality. Did Gordon remember that Uncle Bert was partial to old-fashioneds?

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” Aunt Beth cried, already all too happy herself. She, too. Apparently everyone was going to pretend that they had gathered on the right day.

  “This is Beverly Zimmer,” Gordon said. Bev was blinking. Gordon saw that she had forgotten to straighten her blown hair. She looked wild. The delicate wrinkles in her forehead showed up as she stood right under the down-pouring light of the hall ceiling fixture.

  Now all the others, except for Gordon’s mother, came rushing into the hall in a stampede of curiosity. Here were brother Peter and his Molly, not the least bit shamefaced. Introductions kept Gordon busy. Here were his mother’s ancient dear friends, Miss Rankin and Miss Alderhoff. And here was Mr. Cannahan. Mr. Cannahan’s eyes did a little dance when he saw Beverly’s shawl slip to one side as she shook hands. “How beautiful,” he murmured. And here was awful Freddie, Peter and Molly’s son; was he still at Lawrenceville, or had he been kicked out? And sullen little niece Caroline, who, Gordon noticed, had remarkable breasts for—what was she?—a thirteen-year-old?