Moving On (27 page)

She had her back against the car door and her arm across the top of her seat. Pete looked at her solemnly, and she expected him to say something else about the beating. Instead, he lifted one of his hands and put it on one of hers. The touch shocked her, and the shock did not stop with her hand but went through her. Her legs felt it, and her chest. “Oh, don’t,” she said. He smiled his quick wry smile but left his hand on hers. It was rough, much larger than Jim’s hand, and very much larger than hers. Her protest had sounded thin and strange and she didn’t repeat it. They looked at the windy playground and said nothing. For a minute the silence was very uncomfortable to Patsy, but then it ceased to be. The shock had diminished and it did not seem likely that the sky was going to fall. Because it was more comfortable she let her fingers entwine a little with his. He had not been offensive but had merely taken her hand, and it was restful enough to sit holding hands. The little ridge of sandy hair at the back of his neck was curly and led down into the rumpled collar of his blue denim work shirt. After the first agitation of the touch subsided a bit she saw that she had nothing to fear from Pete. He didn’t want to kiss her, he didn’t want to talk, he merely wanted to sit and hold her hand and watch the trash truck circle about the park. That was all right—it was even pleasant. Every time she had been with him she had tried talking and had ended up feeling shallow and frivolous. He had shocked her into silence, and once the shock diminished she felt more comfortable with him than she ever had when she had been trying to talk.

“Sure would have been a miserable day if you hadn’t come over,” he said, smiling tiredly, and Patsy felt even more at ease. He was really more worried and more worn down than he would have admitted, and it was flattering that such a strong man needed her, even if a crisis had produced the need.

She felt a sense of relief and with it a lightening of mood. The whole day had been strange, but she had suddenly begun once again to feel like her normal self. She felt quite friendly toward Pete, but at the same time she didn’t want to sit by the curb holding hands with him all morning. She straightened up and disengaged her fingers.

“Let’s go to a store,” she said.

“What kind of store?”

“A ladies’ store. I want to buy Boots a nightgown. She shouldn’t have to wear those pajamas.”

They went to one, and after some brooding Patsy bought a gown. She started to get a modest blue one, but decided Boots needed more cheer and finally bought a wilder yellow gown. Pete stood by uncomfortably, feeling badly dressed and awkward. They were in a large department store, and as they were passing the men’s shirts Patsy stopped and asked him his shirt size. She picked out a nice red shirt.

“I’m buying you this,” she said a little imperiously. “You’d look so nice in red.”

He started to protest but she walked off to the counter and paid for her purchases, amazed at her own daring. She seldom bought shirts for Jim. When the package was ready she gave it to Pete to carry.

“Let’s drive a little,” he said when they were back in the car. He drove out the road toward Denver, and after eight or ten miles turned and drove back to Cheyenne. As they were coming into town he noticed a two-minute carwash and wheeled into it on impulse.

“Roll up your window,” he said. “Boots ain’t had this car washed since we left Texas. We might as well freshen it up a little.”

“I’ve never been in one of these,” Patsy said, delighted. She had often meant to take the Ford through a two-minute carwash, just to see what it was like. They drove the car onto a kind of track, Pete put fifty cents into a coin slot, and they rolled up their windows as tightly as possible. After the breezy morning the car immediately seemed a little hot and close. Patsy took out a comb and began to comb her hair. Soon the washing mechanism started and moved them under a rectangular system of pipes. The pipes spurted very suddenly and a cascade of water broke over the car. The world vanished as suddenly as if they had driven under a waterfall. Water roared against the roof and sheet after wavering sheet streamed down the windows and the windshield.

“What a way to get a car washed,” Patsy said. She glanced at Pete and caught him looking at her and was very startled, for there was no mistaking what was in the look. Hunger was in it. Outside, she might not have noticed it, or might have ignored it, but they were not outside. The pouring water hid them from the world, and hid the world from them, and it was very different from sitting by the windy park, with mothers following their children around a few yards away. The constant pulse of the water over the car was the only sound, and it made a disturbing background to the silence between them. It was not a pleasant silence—it was too charged with what Pete wanted, which could not have been more obvious if he had leaned over and kissed her or put his hand on her body. It had been only a minute since the track had carried them under the water, and in less than another minute they would be out again, into the air and the wind, but for Patsy it was a long and dreadfully complicated two minutes. She clutched her comb and tried not to look flustered, but the water kept pouring steadily over the car, and Pete was there, a foot away, and she
was
flustered. She looked at her hands. The silence was so uncomfortable and the tension between them so unexpected and so intense that it held her suspended, mute and uncertain. She almost wished he would lean forward and kiss her if he wanted to so much. At least it would be a movement that might break the tension. But Pete looked away from her face and soon the Thunderbird rolled off the track, the sound of the water died, and the world came into view again through the streaming windshield. The stream thinned to rivulets. Patsy put her hands on her temples for a moment and then began to comb her hair back. She was flushed and very agitated.

“Well, it’s cleaner than it was,” Pete said.

The fact that he drawled irritated her suddenly, and she was barely able to keep herself from saying something biting. Soon they were driving back through Cheyenne, the windows open, the wind cool. But Patsy felt very far from cool. Her emotions swirled: she felt foolish, she felt offended and angry, she felt bitchy, and yet she also felt apologetic and almost contrite. She didn’t know what was wrong, but the more confused she felt the more determined she was to be casual. She chattered inconsequentially and even began to talk about Niagara Falls, where she had not been since she was eight years old. But her own talk rang thin in her ear and she was very glad when they got to the hospital.

Boots was awake, or half awake, and was pathetically glad to see them. She cried over the yellow nightgown and Patsy found herself crying too. Boots’s gratitude made her feel guilty, and she avoided looking at Pete. The fact that they had held hands a few minutes seemed like a sordid secret, and she was glad when he left for Laramie. Boots drowsed and woke and drowsed and woke, and the afternoon passed as slowly as a season. When Boots talked it was generally of Pete, of how good he was to her and how much she wished her parents liked him better. Patsy scarcely listened. She felt a stranger to Boots, a stranger to Pete, and only wished she could leave the depressing hospital and the town and go back to her own motel and her own husband. She told herself again and again that practically nothing had passed between her and Pete, and that there was no reason for her to feel guilty and depressed about it. What little had happened had been the result of some accident of mood and meant nothing. But she continued to feel guilty and restless and depressed. About dusk, Boots went soundly to sleep and Patsy walked into the hall to get a Coke. She was wondering if she could risk a walk outside the hospital when Jim came into the corridor. He was fresh and cheerful and looked very glad to see her.

“Hi,” he said. “I thought I’d come sit with you. I’m sorry I was so grouchy this morning. I don’t think I was very wide awake.”

He seemed all sane and familiar, and everything else seemed insane and unfamiliar, but nevertheless his sudden appearance only put her the more on edge. She felt taken by surprise. Jim was alert and saw at once that she was nervous about something, and he had the good sense not to push. “Would you like to go out and eat?” he asked.

“That’s just what I’d like,” she said. “I’m sick of this hospital.”

In the Ford he said, “Something’s settled.”

“What?” She had not been paying him much attention, but when she looked she noticed that he seemed unusually cheerful.

“We can start back to Texas tomorrow,” he said. “I’m really tired of all this too.”

“Good,” she said, not very surprised. “Let’s go to a drive-in. I feel like a milkshake.”

The clouds had finally cleared away and they watched the last of a long afterglow as they sat at the drive-in. “Should we stay a few more days to help Boots and Pete?” Jim asked.

Patsy’s milkshake was so thick it clogged the straw. She ate it in globs, using the straw as a spoon. “Hum?” she asked. “Sorry. Hospitals make me so abstracted I can hardly listen. I’m really glad we’re going.” He repeated what he had said and she frowned. “I don’t think we’re needed,” she said. “Her folks are coming.”

Boots said the same thing when they told her they were going. She was glad to see Jim. He knew how to joke with her and they joked and chatted and again Patsy felt out of place. She was not bothered, but neither was she happy—she felt tired and out of reach of everyone. Pete came in, straight from work, smelling of animals and sweat. He thanked them for staying and walked with them to the Ford, chatting with Jim about routes.

Patsy avoided looking at him, as she had ever since they had left the carwash. He thanked her gratefully and gave her an awkward conventional pat on the shoulder as she was about to get in the car, but she looked away from him and responded just as conventionally to his thanks. It was only as Jim was backing the Ford out of the parking place that she looked at Pete. He was standing on the sidewalk slouching, his hands in his hip pockets, and he seemed very alone. His face was in shadow and she couldn’t see it, but the way he was standing touched her. Something made her want to cry. She put her hand out the window to wave, and then on impulse put her fingers to her mouth and threw him a kiss. He turned away just as she did it and she never knew whether he noticed or not; but she felt much better for having acted on the impulse, even though Jim noticed and was disturbed.

“What in the world?” he said. “I never saw you throw anyone a kiss before.”

“I’m different now,” she said. Perhaps I’ll throw many people kisses.”

“What will Pete think?”

“I don’t know. He just looked so lonesome.” She wiped her tears away covertly, with her knuckles.

Later that night Jim packed his photographic files. While he was in the bathroom Patsy poked among them and found a picture of Pete, one taken in Phoenix by the pool when he had been wearing the snipped-off Levi’s for a bathing suit. She looked at it guiltily and thoughtfully and slipped it back in its envelope, wondering what might have become of her and of them all if the man in the picture had kissed her that afternoon when he had wanted to.

18

O
N IMPULSE
, they started south that night. Jim had slept most of the day and wasn’t sleepy, and Patsy, though tired, felt so strangely wakeful that she could not imagine ever sleeping. She had looked forward to getting back to the motel, but once there she felt restless, and when Jim proposed that they start she agreed.

They had to go back through Cheyenne, which struck them both as a little absurd. For days, it seemed, they had done practically nothing but drive between Cheyenne and Laramie. They rode in silence. When they came in sight of Cheyenne Patsy began to fight an impulse to ask Jim to stop. She thought it would be nice to call Pete and say something, though she didn’t know what. She was sure he would like for her to call.

But Jim had gassed the car in Laramie and had no reason to stop. He was humming hillbilly songs, a habit he had picked up. They passed quickly through Cheyenne, and Patsy felt sad. She tried to think of an excuse to stop, but even if she could have thought of one she would then have had to think of an excuse to call; and if she had called she would have had to think of something to say. But she really had nothing to say, to Pete Tatum or to Jim, and nothing to give, either, it seemed to her. She felt timid and ordinary and cowardly and contrary, and said nothing about stopping.

“Denver next,” Jim said. The lights of Cheyenne were behind them. Soon they crossed a ridge and there was only darkness behind them.

“This is like in
On the Road
,” Patsy said. “All we’ve done is circle around. We are all a beat generation, I guess.”

“I’m glad I married someone literary,” Jim said.

“I’m glad I married someone who hums hillbilly music,” she replied, stung a little by his tone. She regretted not calling Pete and woke up still regretting it several hours later in Pueblo, Colorado. Jim had covered her with a blanket and was not in the car. The Ford was parked in front of a diner with a neon campfire on top. Patsy was hungry but she also felt rumpled and strange and didn’t want to go in. She lay with her head on her pillow, covered by a yellow blanket.

“What’s the matter?” Jim asked when he came out. “You look sad.”

“Nothing’s the matter. I wish I’d called Pete when we came back through Cheyenne. It’s miserable in that hospital.”

“We could make Uncle Roger’s by tonight. Want to stop there a day or two?”

“Sure,” she said. “I like him.”

By dawn they were almost below the Rockies. They stopped in Trinidad and Patsy had some milk and doughnuts and walked around a block while Jim was getting gas. It was cold and the tops of the mountains were still in cloud. When they went over Raton Pass Jim stopped and insisted they take a sky ride. The ride had just opened—the man who ran it could scarcely believe anyone really wanted to ride that early. It was so cold that Patsy had to rummage in her clothes for a pair of Levi’s and a heavy sweater, but when she got out, the keen air picked her up and she ceased feeling melancholy. The sky ride took them hundreds of feet above a green canyon. Patsy became afraid and gripped Jim’s hand tightly. When they got safely to the top she spent a half-hour looking through telescopes at snow-covered mountains, some of which were almost a hundred miles away. The telescope brought the mountains very close. They were snowy and golden with the morning sun and the sight of them thrilled Patsy to the core. She would have liked to stand in the keen air all morning looking at the beautifully colored mountains, but the telescopes worked on quarters and Jim refused to let her spend but a dollar and a half. Riding back down, the cable car dipped over the face of a cliff, and she felt scared again. She could see, very far away and small and white-tipped, a peak that had been close and golden through the telescope. She watched the mountain until the cable car was low enough that she could look down at the trees beneath her without being afraid.