Lie Down in Darkness (20 page)

“Well, no, I really don’t think—” The voice was more than hesitant: instantly shocked, defensive and afraid.

Helen broke in. “It’s very urgent. I have to insist——” How formal!

“But no——”

“Then it’ll have to be sometime else.” Very decisively—the gauntlet thrown down. “Today would suit me best if you’ve got no other plans.”

“I have to go to a——” Squirming.

“Then what day then?”

“All right, then. All right. The Bide-A-Wee?”

“Yes. I think—I think it’ll be in both our interests.”

“All right. Good-by.”

“All right. Good-by.”

So already she had frightened her. If nothing else, she had done that, gained an initial advantage, and she felt equipped to do battle. At eleven-thirty she instructed Ella about Maudie’s lunch and then took a bus into town, to the Bide-A-Wee Tea Room.

By noontime a broiling heat had fallen over the town, and at the tearoom she took a seat in a secluded corner, beneath an electric fan which like a monstrous black flower turned its face from the wall in drowsy half-circles, dispensing puny hot puffs of air. From a distance the shipyard whistle broke the midday quiet, heralding the arrival of the office men who soon came singly or in pairs, wiping their necks with white handkerchiefs—“Je-sus, don’t this beat them all?” But Dolly hadn’t come and so she merely sat there, a little fearful that some man might recognize her, and draw certain conclusions when Dolly arrived. They knew about Milton and Dolly. They knew. Or did they? Men … An enormous Negro woman brought her water in a glass, with which she printed wet circles on a tissue doily. At last she arose, prepared to leave, but from the hallway, in the mirror of a walnut hatrack, she saw Dolly open the screen door and stand looking around, warm and unhappy. Helen smiled a little and beckoned, and Dolly came over and sat down, averting her eyes, with an apology and a guarded remark about the heat. The waitress appeared with typed menus, mopping her brow.

“What’ll you have, my dear?” said Helen.

“Well, really. I’m not hungry,” Dolly said, smiling uneasily. “Just some iced tea, I guess.”

“Well, heavens, you have to eat,” Helen said lightly, “especially in the summer. I’ve heard that a person loses so much that—waitress, I’ll have the salmon croquettes and tea—that—what I mean is—” looking up—“you perspire so much, you see, that you have to eat to counteract that—the loss. Of course, that’s only one theory.”

“Yes,” Dolly replied, gazing around in misery, “this sure is some day.”

The waitress bent over. “You don’t want nothin’ else, ma’am?”

“No,” Dolly said, “no.”

“And how’s your committee?” Helen went on. “I haven’t been to the garden club in ages. I’m afraid——”

“Oh, fine. Oh, just fine.”

By one o’clock they had neared the end of their road of mutual interest, and the byways had been fully explored; Helen, doing most of the talking, thought pleasantly of her particular hatred for this woman. Furthermore, she felt already victorious, deliciously regal: she could administer the
coup de grâce
at any time, and without the degrading preliminaries. She was hot now, but vaguely excited. She reflected that in the years she had known Dolly, no matter how casually and with what hidden suspicion, it had always been this way, more or less. There are people for whom, when you see them after a long time, you begin to hoard up mentally all of the stray scraps of information which you know might be of common concern, for after these are used up there is nothing left to talk about, and then in-evitably the person will drive you to distraction. Such was Dolly, although now she didn’t seem to be prepared to say anything at all—being fearfully ill-at-ease—and Helen, in mid-sentence, looked around her, watching the men drift out one by one, satiated, drowsy, scratching themselves, leaving behind in the room the fragile blue scent of cigars. She and Dolly were alone. The traffic, quieted during the lunch hour, began to flow again sluggishly up the street. She lit a cigarette.

“Oh,” she was saying. “I remember Ellen Davison, she was the one whose husband left her, the Navy person, and it caused her all sorts of trouble. No one would speak to her. Well, she was truly a horrible person and you just might guess what it did to his career.”

“Yes,” Dolly said, and raised her head timidly, and Helen could see on her lip a faint beady mustache of sweat.

They were both silent then. Finally Helen said, “Don’t you want some coffee?”

“No, thanks; no, really, I’ve got to be going. Melvin’s going back to school on Monday and I’ve just got to do some shopping.” She ventured the first part of a smile, as if Helen’s suggestion about coffee had really indicated, marvelously, despite the telephone conversation, that this was a social visit after all. It was the smile of a reprieved prisoner, and it broadened upon her pretty face, and became suddenly a laugh of deliverance: “Honey,” she giggled, “we sure do have a time with our children, don’t we? Melvin’s just like his daddy, the fat old thing. Sixteen, imagine that, and I got to get him size-thirty-six pants.” She paused, smiled and looked at her watch. “Well——”

Now.

“Listen here,” Helen said, bending forward. Again she couldn’t bring herself to repeat Dolly’s name. “I want to talk to you about something serious.”

Dolly turned, alert and intent. “Why, sure, what’s the matter?”

“I’ll get down to cases,” Helen went on, not smiling, but not betraying anger, either—controlling herself. “It’s my husband. Now listen—now I think you know why I wanted to see you. Listen—” she arched her eyebrows and, without raising her hand from the table, waved an admonitory finger—“I think really I’ve had just about enough, don’t you? You see, I have a family, which is very important to me, a
very
important thing. Also, there’s something else, the decency or indecency of the thing, if you know what I mean, and frankly—listen: Frankly, I’m tired of having these hints and rumors reaching me about the way Milton has been carrying on. Now, I know Milton isn’t beyond reproach, he’s got many faults like I suspect all husbands do, but I want to make it plain right now that I’m not going to let you carry on like this anymore.” While she talked she knew somehow that things were not going well at all; she seemed to have lost the advantage of surprise, her face felt suddenly feverish and, besides, Dolly had not become immediately crushed, as she had intended, but was only returning her gaze with receptive, placid eyes, and with her lower lip tucked thoughtfully between her teeth. “You see what I mean,” Helen went on in a level voice, “I’m not being vindictive. I’m right now offering you an opportunity to mend your ways and then we’ll say, all’s forgotten, live and let live, and so on. Do you understand?” What on earth had happened?

Dolly stretched languidly, all fear gone, as if now—having met the adversary—the apprehension, the pre-contest anxiety had vanished. Slowly she stretched, raising clasped hands to the ceiling, and made a small rude noise—like a belch—of apathy, of indifference. “Honey,” she sighed, letting her arms fall, “I just wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What do you mean—” Helen hadn’t foreseen this: the fury—“what on earth do you mean? What do you mean—don’t know what I’m talking about? I’ll tell you what I’m talking about very well. You know exactly. For six years I’ve known about you and Milton. Six years. That’s what. Watching you make a fool of him! Breaking up my family, that’s what! And you don’t know what I’m talking about! As God is my witness——” How disordered she had become, and how quickly her sure determination had gone astray! That subtle, secret weapon of Dolly’s—of indifference, of smug, easy denial—had thrown her attack into wild confusion. Swiftly she said, in a loud clear voice: “You see what I mean, don’t you? You’re breaking up my family because you’re a selfish, immoral, vicious woman. For six years you’ve worked your way with Milton and now that my daughter has gone off to school I need him even more and I won’t have it! Understand, I just won’t!” She wagged her forefinger, then stretched out her whole hand, trembling, casting anathema through the Bide-A-Wee. Old Mrs. Prosser, who ran the place, appeared at the door with a bevy of wild-eyed Negroes. “I’ll not suffer for six years,” Helen shouted, “and then plan—look forward to spent … spending the rest of my life in human bondage to your dirt-smut.”

Dolly had got up, collected her purse and umbrella. She looked down at Helen with a brief hard gaze. “You wait a while,” she said softly, “just you wait a while. I’ll put things right out in the open, which you’d never do. O.K. Listen,” she whispered, bending toward her, “if I’ve done wrong with Milton—wrong, as you put it—it hasn’t been any six years. It was two weeks ago, honey, at the country club at your dance. There, see, that’s a confession. And we’re going to keep on as long as Milton wants to. And I don’t care how much or where, honey, or how much people talk. Because I love him and that’s more than you do and you know it.”

She slipped the umbrella straps over her arm, slowly, without effort, as if she were going shopping, which in fact she was. “Now,” she said, “we’re making all kinds of noise, and I’d better go. Don’t talk about six years, ‘my dear,’ because it isn’t true. Just remember that whatever Milton does it’s because he’s just been lonesome. Remember that.” She threw a dollar on the table.

Then she wheeled and sauntered out with high heels disdainfully clacking on the linoleum, past Mrs. Prosser and the astonished waitresses, through the door. “Now——” Helen cried, half-risen from her seat, but her words fell emptily on the hot, still air, above the skittish noise of aprons and skirts and giggles, as the Negroes popped out of sight.

A few minutes later Helen boarded a bus at the corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Washington Avenue and, being deeply involved in thought, failed to notice that her nickel slipped past the coin slot and onto the floor. The driver glared at her briefly, but this, too, went unnoticed. She would just have to remain silent, she thought, as the bus bore her rocking gently toward home. There would come a working out. Of course, she herself had not been really sinful, she had only misjudged in too many cases, perhaps—been too impetuous. … Yes, remain silent, bear it all—and, above everything, try to keep out of her mind the abysmal mistakes, like just now——Oh, the shame! The humiliation! But then … forget it, forget it.

That night she was sitting in her garden alone when Milton returned from Sweet Briar. She told Carey later how Milton, after putting the car away and disappearing into the house for a moment—to go to the bathroom, she supposed—came out and sat down beside her.

“Well,” he said, shaking his drink, “our little girl’s a college woman now.”

“Did everything go all right?” Helen asked quietly.

“Oh, wonderful. What a kid! She’ll be the beauty queen. She sticks out like a jool in a coal pile, like the nigger says. Already.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, “I wish—I really wish I’d gone. I was sick last night. I really felt better this morning. I had a nice day, really.”

“That’s good,” he said, without much interest. “How’s Maudie?”

“All right. We went over in the playground with the swings this afternoon. She got a little tired.”

“Mmm-hh.”

They were quiet for a while. Then Helen said: “Did I hear you talking to someone in the house just now?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I was making a call.”

“Oh.” She paused. “I do hope Peyton makes good grades, not just the beauty queen business. If she’s going to be something——”

“Aw, Helen,” he said with a little laugh, “she won’t worry about that for a while. You know that. She’s got to worry about the boys. First. She’s a bright kid.”

“Yes. I worry about that, too. The boys.”

“She’ll be O.K.”

“I hope so.” Again they stopped talking. Finally Helen said: “Did she say anything about me—about me not going today?”

“Yeah, yes, she was mad. Hurt. She doesn’t understand you. I told her you were nervous—with Maudie and all. She knows all about that.”

Helen didn’t answer, and was surprised in a way—for they rarely came to her—that tears were running down her face. Milton stretched, yawned, stood up with a faint snapping of unlimbered joints. “Well—” he yawned—“I’m going to bed. I’ve got to go down to the C & O tomorrow and see Peterson about that draft. What’s wrong, Helen?”

She shook her head without answering and held out her hand, which he ignored, or didn’t see. “Good night, Milton,” she said, which was difficult, considering the swelling in her throat. “Forgive me.”

“What for, Helen?” he said softly.

“Nothing,” she said quickly, her heart pounding. “Everything.”

“Good night.”

Something in his voice told her that he was startled, even pleased, at her gentleness, her decency. Or just this weakness? But apparently, being surprised, there was nothing else he could say, and so he walked into the house. It was a very close moment, she thought, but not close enough for comfort.

Oh, how can he be that decent with me?

She blew her nose, a mosquito lit on her brow. She got up. Moonlight flooded her garden and the shadows sprang up, one by one, of dying flowers, the pomegranate, the patient, hovering trees. She knelt down by the flower bed. Even after one day, more dead petals littered the ground and she picked them up until she had a handful. She looked up. Above her the mimosa leaves were smooth, unhurried in the stillness, reflecting moonlight like pale hands of water: she thought of God—painfully—it was beyond reflection, like trying to picture your remotest ancestor.

Who is He?

From her hand the petals dropped away, dry ghostly husks; somewhere a door slammed and a bat, fluttering silently, swung down through the night and vanished among the eaves. I
will not yield,
she thought, I
will not yield.
Gray smoke from her cigarette in garlands, like hope, ascending eternally, rose through the darkness, and
I will not yield—
but it made no difference: the loneliness swept down around her, a mountain of withered grass.

Now, as Carey made a turn on the street, a row of houses facing on the bay appeared to the left of him. None of them were mansions but they were spacious and faced on neat lawns and here at midday, shaded by trees thick with the greenest of leaves, they all had the cool, withdrawn, silent look of nice houses on a summer day. The Loftis house was only a couple of blocks away and Carey drove on, hot and pensive and disorganized, beneath the shelter of the trees. Once the whine of a vacuum cleaner disturbed the silence, but faded, and somewhere a child, unworried by the heat, made a wild and momentous scream. Carey drove on, full of worry: what would he say to Helen? Now and then he looked at the houses, as if to take his mind off the matter at hand, but turned suddenly away, retaining only the small vision of things well kept and drowsy and heavy with summer: an old man prodding at a flower bed, the huge white cat that lay sleeping on a coil of garden hose—and there was a woman with a rag about her head, who paused to wipe her brow with quiet exhaustion, looking hopefully upward between the fading wilted leaves.