My Sister's Hand in Mine (23 page)

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At about five thirty on the following afternoon Miss Goering announced her intention of returning again that evening to the mainland. Miss Gamelon was standing up, sewing one of Arnold's socks. She was dressed more coquettishly than was her habit, with a ruffle around the neck of her dress and a liberal coating of rouge on her cheeks. The old man was in a big chair in the corner reading the poetry of Longfellow, sometimes aloud, sometimes to himself. Arnold was still dressed in the same fashion as the night before, with the exception of a sweater which he had pulled on over his pajama top. There was a big coffee stain on the front of his sweater, and the ashes of his cigarette had spilled over his chest. He was lying on the couch half asleep.

“You will go back there again over my dead body,” said Miss Gamelon. “Now, please, Christina, be sane and do let us all have a pleasant evening together.”

Miss Goering sighed. “Well, you and Arnold can have a perfectly pleasant evening together without me. I am sorry. I'd love to stay, but I really feel that I must go.”

“You drive me wild with your mysterious talk,” said Miss Gamelon. “If only some member of your family were here! Why don't we phone for a taxi,” she said hopefully, “and go to the city? We might eat some Chinese food and go to the theater afterwards, or a picture show, if you are still in your pinch-penny mood.”

“Why don't you and Arnold go to the city and eat some Chinese food and then go to the theater? I will be very glad to have you go as my guests, but I'm afraid I can't accompany you.”

Arnold was growing annoyed at the ease with which Miss Goering disposed of him. Her manner also gave him a very bad sense of being inferior to her.

“I'm sorry, Christina,” he said from his couch, “but I have no intention of eating Chinese food. I have been planning all along to take a little jaunt to the mainland opposite this end of the island too, and nothing will stop me. I wish you'd come along with me, Lucy; as a matter of fact, I don't see why we can't all go along together. It is quite senseless that Christina should make such a morbid affair out of this little saunter to the mainland. Actually there is nothing to it.”

“Arnold!” Miss Gamelon screamed at him. “You're losing your mind too, and if you think I am going on a wild-goose chase aboard a train and a ferry just to wind up in some little rat-trap, you're doubly crazy. Anyway, I've heard that it is a very tough little town, besides being dreary and without any interest whatsoever.”

“Nevertheless,” said Arnold, sitting up and planting his two feet on the floor, “I'm going this evening.”

“In that case,” said Arnold's father, “I'm going too.”

Secretly Miss Goering was delighted that they were coming and she did not have the courage to deter them, although she felt that it would have been the correct thing for her to do. Her excursions would be more or less devoid of any moral value in her own eyes if they accompanied her, but she was so delighted that she convinced herself that perhaps she might allow it just this time.

“You had better come along, Lucy,” said Arnold; “otherwise you are going to be here all alone.”

“That's perfectly all right, my dear,” said Lucy. “I'll be the only one that comes out whole, in the end. And it might be very delightful to be here without any of you.”

Arnold's father made an insulting noise with his mouth, and Miss Gamelon left the room.

This time the little train was filled with people and there were quite a few boys going up and down the aisle selling candy and fruit. It had been a curiously warm day and there had been a shower of short duration, one of those showers that are so frequent in summer but so seldom occur in the fall.

The sun was just setting and the shower had left in its wake quite a beautiful rainbow, which was only visible to those people who were seated on the left side of the train. However, most of the passengers who had been seated on the right side were now leaning over the more fortunate ones and getting quite a fair view of the rainbow too.

Many of the women were naming aloud to their friends the colors that they were able to distinguish. Everyone on the train seemed to love it except Arnold, who, now that he had asserted himself, felt terribly depressed, partly as a result of having had to move from his couch and consider the prospect of a dull evening and partly also because he doubted very much whether he would be able to make it up with Lucy Gamelon. She was, he felt certain, the type of person who could remain angry for weeks.

“Oh, I think this is terribly, terribly gay,” said Miss Goering. “This rainbow and this sunset and all these people jabbering away like magpies. Don't you think it's gay?” Miss Goering was addressing Arnold's father.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “It's a real magic carpet.”

Miss Goering searched his face because his voice sounded a little sad to her. He did, as a matter of fact, appear to be slightly uneasy. He kept looking around at the passengers and pulling his tie.

They finally left the train and boarded the ferry. They all stood at the prow together as Miss Goering had done on the previous night. This time when the ferry landed, Miss Goering looked up and saw no one coming down the hill.

“Usually,” she said to them, forgetting that she herself had only made the trip once before, “this hill is swarming with people. I cannot imagine what has happened to them tonight.”

“It's a steep hill,” said Arnold's father. “Is there no way of getting into the town without climbing that hill?”

“I don't know,” said Miss Goering. She looked at him and noticed that his sleeves were too long for him. As a matter of fact, his overcoat was about a half-size too large.

If there had been no one on the hill going to or from the ferry, the main street was swarming with people. The cinema was all lighted up and there was a long line forming in front of the box office. There had obviously been a fire, because there were three red engines parked on one side of the street, a few blocks up from the cinema. Miss Goering judged that it had been of no consequence since she could see neither traces of smoke nor charred buildings. However, the engines added to the gaiety of the street as there were many young people crowded around them making jokes with the firemen who remained in the trucks. Arnold walked along at a brisk pace, carefully examining everything on the street and pretending to be very much lost in his own impressions of the town.

“I see what you mean,” he said to Miss Goering, “it's glorious.”

“What is glorious?” Miss Goering asked him.

“All this.” Suddenly Arnold stopped dead. “Oh look, Christina, what a beautiful sight!” He had made them stop in front of a large empty lot between two buildings. The empty lot had been converted into a brand-new basket-ball court. The court was very elegantly paved with gray asphalt and brightly lighted by four giant lamps that were focused on the players and on the basket. There was a ticket office at one side of the court where the participants bought their right to play in the game for one hour. Most of the people playing were little boys. There were several men in uniform and Arnold judged that they worked for the court and filled in when an insufficient number of people bought tickets to form two complete teams. Arnold flushed with pleasure.

“Look, Christina,” he said, “you run along while I try my hand at this; I'll come and get Pop and you later.”

She pointed the bar out to him, but she had the feeling that Arnold was not paying much attention to what she was saying. She stood for a moment with Arnold's father and they watched him rush up to the ticket office and hurriedly push his change through the wicket. He was on the court in no time, running around in his overcoat and jumping up in the air with his arms apart. One of the uniformed men had stepped quickly out of the game in order to cede his place to Arnold. But he was now trying desperately to attract his attention because Arnold had been in such a hurry at the ticket office that the agent had not had time to give him the colored arm-band by which the players were able to distinguish the members of their own team.

“I suppose,” said Miss Goering, “that we had better go along. Arnold, I imagine, will follow us shortly.”

They walked down the street. Arnold's father hesitated a moment before the saloon door.

“What kind of men come in here?” he asked her.

“Oh,” said Goering, “all sorts of men, I guess. Rich and poor, workers and bankers, criminals and dwarfs.”

“Dwarfs,” Arnold's father repeated uneasily.

The minute they were inside, Miss Goering spotted Andy. He was drinking at the farther end of the bar with his hat pulled down over one eye. Miss Goering hastily installed Arnold's father in a booth.

“Take your coat off,” she said, “and order yourself a drink from that man over there behind the bar.”

She went over to Andy and stretched her hand out to him. He was looking very mean and haughty.

“Hello,” he said. “Did you decide to come over to the mainland again?”

“Why, certainly,” said Miss Goering. “I told you I would.”

“Well,” said Andy, “I've learned in the course of years that it doesn't mean a thing.”

Miss Goering felt a little embarrassed. They stood side by side for a little while without saying a word.

“I'm sorry,” said Andy, “but I have no suggestions to make to you for the evening. There is only one picture show in town and they are showing a very bad movie tonight.” He ordered himself another drink and gulped it down straight. Then he turned the dial of the radio very slowly until he found a tango.

“Well, may I have this dance?” he asked, appearing to brighten up a bit.

Miss Goering nodded her head.

He held her very straight and so tightly that she was in an extremely awkward and uncomfortable position. He danced with her into a far corner of the room.

“Well,” he said, “are you going to try and make me happy? Because I have no time to waste.” He pushed her away from him and stood up very straight facing her, with his arms hanging down along his sides.

“Step back a little farther, please,” he said. “Look carefully at your man and then say whether or not you want him.”

Miss Goering did not see how she could possibly answer anything but yes. He was standing now with his head cocked to one side, looking very much as though he were trying to refrain from blinking his eyes, the way people do when they are having snapshots taken.

“Very well,” said Miss Goering, “I do want you to be my man.” She smiled at him sweetly, but she was not thinking very hard of what she was saying.

He held his arms out to her and they continued to dance. He was looking over her head very proudly and smiling just a little. When they had finished their dance, Miss Goering remembered with a pang that Arnold's father had been sitting in his booth alone all this time. She felt doubly sorry because he seemed to have saddened and aged so much since they had boarded the train that he scarcely resembled at all the chipper, eccentric man he had been for a few days at the island house, or even the fanatical gentleman he had appeared to Miss Goering on the first night that they had met.

“Dear me, I must introduce you to Arnold's father,” she said to Andy. “Come over this way with me.”

She felt even more remorse when she arrived at the booth because Arnold's father had been sitting there all the while without having ordered himself a drink.

“What's the matter?” asked Miss Goering, her voice rising way up in the air like the voice of an excited mother. “Why on earth didn't you order yourself something to drink?”

Arnold's father looked around him furtively. “I don't know,” he said, “I didn't feel any desire to.”

She introduced the two men to each other and they all sat down together. Arnold's father asked Andy very politely whether or not he lived in this town and what his business was. During the course of their conversation they both discovered that not only had they been born in the same town, but they had, in spite of difference in age, also lived there once at the same time without ever having met. Andy, unlike most people, did not seem to become more lively when they both happened upon this fact.

“Yes,” he answered wearily to the questions of Arnold's father, “I did live there in 1920.”

“Then certainly,” said Arnold's father sitting up straighter, “then certainly you were well acquainted with the McLean family. They lived up on the hill. They had seven children, five girls and two boys. All of them, as you must remember, were the possessors of a terrific shock of bright red hair.”

“I did not know them,” said Andy quietly, beginning to get red in the face.

“That's very strange,” said Arnold's father. “Then you must have known Vincent Connelly, Peter Jacketson, and Robert Bull.”

“No,” said Andy, “no, I didn't.” His good spirits seemed to have vanished entirely.

“They,” said Arnold's father, “controlled the main business interests of the town.” He studied Andy's face carefully.

Andy shook his head once more and looked off into space.

“Riddleton?” Arnold's father asked him abruptly.

“What?” said Andy.

“Riddleton, president of the bank.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Andy.

Arnold's father leaned back against the bench and sighed. “Where did you live?” he asked finally of Andy.

“I lived,” said Andy, “at the end of Parliament Street and Byrd Avenue.”

“It was terrible around there before they started tearing it up, wasn't it?” Arnold's father said, his eyes filled with memories.

Andy pushed the table roughly aside and walked quickly over to the bar.

“He didn't know anyone decent in the whole blooming town,” said Arnold's father. “Parliament and Byrd was the section—”