And not only because you’re standing here on the stairs with a gun in your pocket, either. You’re always afraid when it comes to doing something. You’re even afraid of words if they’re the kind that make things happen. Bloodless rhetoric. Bunk. “I hope I see hell before I see this place again.” Surely you didn’t think it up all alone? “You tell your boyfriend to get dressed, and you get dressed, and both of you be out of here in five minutes, and stay out.” That sounds just like you; probably you said it and she didn’t hear you.
That was good wine Dick had; better than the stuff Erma gets. Mary got drunk and silly, and when Dick told her she looked like a Salvation Army exhibit, it made her so mad she got sober again. Probably that Christmas Day was the first time they’d spoken for a month. You got a little bit lit yourself, just enough to dance well. You were really damn near pickled; when Margaret was teaching you a new step she’d picked up in Harlem, you slipped and would have fallen flat if the table hadn’t been there. Jane said:
“What’s the matter, Bill, I never saw you so gay; have you suddenly got a crush on the winter solstice?”
“No, this is my rebirthday,” you laughed, and kissed her. Then you felt you had to kiss the others too, and Mary the little bitch took it standing up. Dick noticed her and gave her a laugh and she was so mad she could have killed him.
Margaret and her genius came back to town with you. He’s all right, only it’s hard to understand what he says on account of his accent. Late at night, long after midnight, you dropped them at Eleventh Street. On the way uptown Erma said:
“What?”
“I say, such exuberance couldn’t be for anything less than triplets. How did the sexes come out?”
“All modern conveniences. One and a half of each.” She laughed, but she was piqued and got nasty again. Good heavens, couldn’t she see that it was nothing to make conversation about? She’s never been stupid except about this—it’s her confounded curiosity. She’d cut you open to get it out if she thought it would be legible.
You slept that night, what there was left of it, like a top. The next day at the office there was no word from her; you thought there might not ever be any; you hoped not. You were worried about your clothes and things; you didn’t want her to have any excuse. Seriously now, after twenty-four hours and a night’s sleep, it appeared definitely done, and you considered calmly the small practical problems that remained; particularly you were uneasy of the suspense in the mere negative role of silence; she should be told, yes, it’s done for good. You didn’t want to write her—on the typewriter, unsigned? No, she’d answer it. The obvious way was the telephone. It could be done in three curt final sentences. You went out and down the elevator, and across the street to the booth in the cigar store. But you didn’t call the number; you couldn’t. At the thought of hearing her voice in the receiver you felt weak; there was a revulsion in your stomach. Simply you didn’t want ever to hear that voice again, and you wouldn’t; you returned to the office and walked back and forth from the desk to the door, and stood by the window looking down at the pygmies in the chasm below, and evolved a plan.
A little after five you left the office and took a taxi straight to Eighty-fifth Street; held up more than you expected by the traffic, you didn’t get there till a quarter to six and were afraid you might arrive too late to see her go out, but to your relief there was a light in the front windows. You had the taxi stop almost directly across the street, and sat there in its corner, in the dark. Only a few minutes had passed when the light in the windows was extinguished, and a few moments later the street door opened and she came out and down the stoop, alone, and started west toward Broadway. She looked droopy, you thought, untidy; it irritated you to see how she walked in little jerks. Oh well, you wouldn’t have to look at it any more. As soon as she was out of sight you rapidly crossed the street and ran up the stoop and the stairs and let yourself in. You called out, “Hello, anybody here?” and went to the bedroom. The beds were neatly made; you approached yours and pulled the blankets and coverlet back and saw that the sheets and pillowslip were clean and fresh; and from under the pillow peeped the edge of your folded pajamas.
“The hell you say!” you remarked aloud.
To save time, so as to get in and out as quickly as possible, you had written the note at the office on the typewriter: I’m taking everything I want. The enclosed five hundred is my going away present. I don’t want to hear from you. Goodbye. You glanced in the envelope to make sure the bills were there, then slipped it under her pillow. On the floor you spread the newspaper you had brought along, and hurriedly made a bundle of the few articles you decided to take: silk dressing-gown, slippers, comb and brush, some shirts and neckties, a little bronze vase that you liked. Then you went to the front room and looked around, and returned to the bedroom, grinning, took the envelope from under the pillow and added a postscript to the note: You can have William the Conqueror. Let him sleep in the guest bed when there’s room. You put on your hat and coat and gathered the bundle under your arm. From the open door you looked back, thinking, this is the last time—oh hell; and a minute later you were down the stairs and in the cab on your way to Park Avenue.
“That’s that,” you said aloud, and repeated it, “That’s that.”
It annoyed you to find that you were tense and trembling. You wished the cab would go faster. When you got home you took the bundle to your room and dumped it in a closet, and mixed and drank three cocktails while you were dressing for dinner.
The first phone call was the next afternoon.
“Mrs. Lewis on the telephone.”
“Mrs.—Tell her I’m not in. Gone for the day.”
‘“Yes, sir.”
Mrs. Lewis! Why the devil couldn’t she say Mrs. Green? That was her name. So she was going to try it, was she?
The following morning she phoned twice; and when a third call came shortly after lunch you decided it wouldn’t do; you took the call.
“Well.”
“Oh—is it you, Will?”
“Yes. What do you want?”
“I don’t think it’s very nice of you—”
“What do you want?”
“Why I just want to know if you’re coming tonight—”
“Forget it. And cut out the telephoning.”
“But I have to telephone if you—”
You took the receiver from your ear and with her voice still faintly buzzing in it slowly hung it on the hook. After a minute or two you removed it again and spoke to Mrs. Carroll:
“Please tell the operators that if that Mrs. Lewis calls me again I’m not in. Or a Mrs. Green—Green. At any time. And don’t bother to send me a slip on it.”
Surely that was final enough, you thought. That was the way to do it. Erma would say, you should fold your arms and look masterful. All right, that wouldn’t hurt either. You didn’t give a damn about the gestures, the point was that for once in your life you were going to sit tight; if you’d kept that up much longer you’d have ended in a madhouse.
You half expected a letter from her, but three or four days passed without a sign. Not a sign, nothing. You were restless and uneasy and assured yourself that it was on account of the uncertainty as to what she might do. There were a dozen ways she could make a nuisance of herself, and she’d try all of them if she thought it worthwhile. She might begin telephoning Park Avenue, she might even go there, and what if Erma happened to see her and get started on her? What a morsel for her! Each evening when you went home you half expected Erma to greet you with that terrible little smile:
“The mother of the triplets was here today.”
But there was no sign. Irritated to find your uneasiness and restlessness increasing, you got into a state of nerves that became almost unbearable. You jumped when the phone rang; you could scarcely dictate a letter without flying out at Miss Malloy, unreasonably—then you would apologize and dismiss her, turn the letters over to Lawson and sit there at your desk looking out of the window.
One afternoon just after you had returned from lunch you stood at your window looking down into Broadway three hundred feet below, and found yourself thinking, “If I opened this window and let myself drop over the sill, I’d hit the pavement in two or three seconds. Maybe only one second. I’d never know what hit me. If I fell on anyone on the sidewalk, it would kill them too. Not long ago a man jumped out of a twelfth story window on Thirty-ninth Street and went right through the top of a sedan.”
You turned away abruptly and summoned Miss Malloy to tell her you were leaving for the day. Obviously you had better talk to someone and get hold of yourself. Taking the subway to Eighth Street and Broadway, you walked across to Jane’s house. She wasn’t there, but the maid said she was expected back at four o’clock, so you decided to wait, and found a book and an easy chair. Ray, your little godson, who has always been your favorite, came in, and you amused yourself asking him questions about school; then you went back to your book and he started the radio. Less than a minute of it exasperated you so that you shouted at him, “Turn that damn thing off!” With a look of surprise he did so, and turned away without a word; you resumed your reading. A little later the radio again suddenly smote your ear; glancing up, you saw Ray with his hand on the dial, looking at you with friendly roguishness. You sprang over to him, shouting, “I told you to turn it off, didn’t I?” and slapped him in the face, so violently that he nearly fell. Then you stepped back aghast, and stood trembling; he looked up at you, too amazed to be hurt, as amazed as if you had suddenly turned into a gorilla before his eyes. You wheeled about and went to the hall for your coat and hat and left the house, and strolled off up Fifth Avenue.
“He’ll tell Jane all about it,” you thought. “What in the name of heaven is the matter with me?”
At Thirty-sixth Street you stopped at a toy store and bought a fencing outfit (you had heard him tell Jane he wanted one), and sent it to him with a note: When you’re in practice you can challenge me to a duel if you want to. Apologies and love.
You were almost home when suddenly you stopped, hailed a taxi and gave the driver the Eighty-fifth Street address. You would satisfy yourself on one point at least. It took only a few minutes, across the park and a block downtown; as the cab slowed down and came to a halt you pressed your face against the glass and looked up. Ah, there was a light in the front room! She hadn’t gone, then—no, damn her, she was still there, sitting in your chairs and sleeping in your bed. As usual, she had neglected to lower the shades; you could see a movement; that must be her arm, taking something from the mantel. She hadn’t left, she was going to hang on, but apparently she had taken you at your word and decided to leave you alone. Good! Good enough, she had more sense than you’d given her credit for, the slut! You gave the driver the Park Avenue address and asked him to hurry, for you had just remembered that it was New Year’s Eve and you and Erma were supposed to dine with the Shotwells at their place the other side of Dobbs Ferry; there was to be a big party afterwards, a réveillon à la campagne, as Flo called it on the invitations; she would; and you and Erma were to stay over the holiday.
Everybody got soused; Erma came to bed with you that night; and how you wanted to sleep! That’s one time she knows enough to keep that smile off her face—well, after all, when you’re hungry—being cynical is all right after you’ve had a good meal.…
The day after New Year’s you didn’t get back to town in time to go to the office. The day after that, about the middle of the afternoon, the phone rang and you heard:
“Mrs. Lewis is calling.”
You were momentarily confused and replied, “I thought I told you if she phoned I wasn’t in.”
“No, not on the telephone, Mr. Sidney; she’s here, in the reception room.”
“Oh. Well. Tell her I’m out, gone for the day.”
So. She was there in the reception room just a few feet away…sitting there…in a minute she’d be gone.…
You forced your attention back to Lawson and the two accountants who were there to discuss the handling of income tax refunds on the reserve account. You listened to Lawson, trying to take it in, well aware of his opinion of your competence at this sort of thing. What the deuce, you thought, it’s a purely technical question, why do they bother me about it. One of the accountants, Perry, the little dark man with the big ears, kept kicking his foot against your desk as he crossed and uncrossed his legs, and it infuriated you.
The phone rang again; this time it was Miss Malloy, speaking from her little room back of yours.
“That woman, Mrs. Lewis, told Miss Dietrich in the reception room that she saw you come up in the elevator and knows you’re here and that she’s going to wait till you see her.”
“Yes. Thank you. All right.”
“—and if we made it a flat three point eight on the entire plant it would bring the net down to—” Lawson went on, reading from a paper one of the accountants handed him. You would have to take a position on this, one way or the other, at the Board meeting the following day; you closed your eyes and frowned; why did he have to talk so fast nobody could keep up with him?
It dragged along for another hour. When at length they had gathered up their papers and departed you pressed the buzzer, and Miss Malloy came in at once.
“I have to ask a favor of you,” you said. “Will you please go to the reception room and tell Mrs. Lewis I will not see her, now or any other time, and escort her to the elevator.”
“If she won’t go?”
“She will. Don’t make a scene. Just tell her that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Matter of fact and businesslike, with no sign of a knowing look in her intelligent brown eyes, she went. Good girl.
Almost immediately the door opened again and she reappeared. She’s already gone, flashed into your mind.
“She is talking to Mr. Carr,” Miss Malloy said, “so I thought I’d better wait.”
“What! To Mr. Carr!”
“Yes sir. They are sitting on one of the settees, talking.”
“The dirty little bitch!—I beg your pardon.”
“Yes, sir,” Miss Malloy smiled.
You walked to the window, and to your desk and sat down, and then got up and went to the window again. Finally you turned to her:
“Please tell Miss Dietrich to send Mrs. Lewis in here as soon as she gets through with Mr. Carr.”
“Yes, sir.” She went to her room.
Paltry ass, you told yourself furiously, you might have known something like this would happen. A fine mess this was going to be. What could she be telling him? You could hear in fancy her slow dry thin voice, spilling the whole thing, pretending she didn’t know any better: “Mr. Sidney has been very nice to me.” Dick would laugh, without malice, “Sure, he’s a nice man.” At that, this was better than if she’d gone to the house and seen Erma. She would do that too; she’d do anything. You could have her arrested; you could get an injunction or something; you could give her a lot of money to go to Russia or Africa or somewhere.
Many minutes had passed; were they going to talk all afternoon? On the phone you asked Miss Malloy if she had delivered the message to Miss Dietrich. Yes, she had done so at once. At that moment the door opened and Millicent entered; from without the blue uniformed arm of the attendant silently closed the door behind her. She came directly across to where you sat at the table.
“You made me wait a long time,” she said.
For a moment you gazed at her speechless, helpless. You had a feeling that you had never really looked at her before. She was so obviously invulnerable; not as a rock, immovable; more like some elemental and indivisible atom for which no solvent or hammer could be found. Then suddenly your temples contracted and you savagely demanded:
“What did you tell Dick?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” she replied.
“You were talking to him for an hour.”
“Why no, I don’t think so. Only a few minutes. I was sitting there and he came through and I saw him glance at me and I stopped him and said, pardon me, aren’t you the Mule? He guessed who I was right away.”
So that was it, an accident. Fine piece of luck. He didn’t pass through that room more than once or twice a day. Was she lying? You could find out.
“So he sat down and we talked about old times. I don’t think he’s changed a bit. He’s very handsome.”
“What did you tell him you were here for?”
She chuckled. “I told him I was having a hard time, and I happened to meet you and I thought you were going to help me out.”
The phone rang; it was Lawson; they had the reports ready. Could he bring them in? You said you’d ring him back. You turned to her again and looked steadily into her unblinking eyes; all but imperceptibly their expression changed, and you lowered your gaze.
“Look here, Mil,” you said, “I haven’t got much time. I’m busy. You have got to stay away from here. You have got to let me alone. It’s all over. I’m done. If you need some money, anything within reason, you can have it.”
“Then for god’s sake what do you want?”
“Well of course I’ve got to have a little money. I’ve got to have something to live on.” She paused. “We ought to have a long talk about it.”
“What about your alimony?”
“He’s quit paying it.”
“How much do you need?”
“We ought to have a talk,” she repeated. “Can you come uptown tonight?”
“No. Not tonight or any other night.”
She raised her shoulders and dropped them; deep in her eyes you saw a momentary flash like a point in white fire behind a curtain of mud-colored smoke.
“You’d better come,” she said quietly. “You might as well come—you know you’re going to come.” She added in a tone of deadly finality that overwhelmed you. “What’s the use of fighting about it?”
The phone rang again; Mr. Upwater of the National City was waiting to see you.
What had she really told Dick? you asked yourself. If you did go up there—well, there was no way out of it. If you didn’t go what would she do? There must be some way of handling her. You couldn’t think, with her sitting there looking at you.…That damned phone.…
“I’ll be up after dinner,” you said. “Around nine.”
After you had opened the door for her, just before she went out, she looked around and said:
“I think your office is very nice.”
You sat down at your desk to think, to try to straighten it out in your mind and decide honestly what was happening and what you meant to do. Then Miss Dietrich phoned to remind you of Upwater, and you told her to send him in. You wanted to go down the hall to Dick’s room on some pretext or other, to see what he would say; but by the time you were through, with Upwater and one or two other people, and Lawson with the reports, Dick had left. Remembering that there was to be a crowd for dinner, and hating the thought of that atmosphere of jocularity and inanity, you phoned Erma you couldn’t be there and found a mildly malicious pleasure in contemplating her indignant efforts to fill your chair on two hours’ notice. Let her get a surprise once in a while; it would do her good. But apparently you didn’t care to eat alone either; you phoned Jane, but they were dining out; finally you dragged Schwartz off to the club.
You had said you would be there around nine; it was a quarter to when you dismissed the taxi and started up the stoop. There was no plan in your head; you were floundering in a jelly of indecision. In the taxi you kept saying to yourself, this will be final, but you might as well have been repeating the alphabet or the multiplication table, it would have meant just as much. However, you repeated it going up the stairs, this will be final.
In the blue chair, under the reading-lamp, in her lap a little pasteboard box filled with small shiny metal objects, she sat. It was your first view of the blazing purple cheap velvet negligee, with the white ostrich feathers around the neck and cuffs and down the front hems, which, flaring open, exposed the wrinkled pink stockings and the dark brown felt slippers. Accustomed as you were to her taste, it seemed that this must be a calculated grotesquerie. Was this done to impress and seduce you? Doubtless it was funny, but you didn’t smile even to yourself, Significantly you did not open the door of the closet as you always had done, but instead put your hat and coat on a chair.
“Grace gave me a box of puzzles,” she said, “and I can’t work a single one of them. Look.”
You stood in front of her, lighting a cigarette.
“I didn’t come here to play with puzzles.”
“They’re stupid anyway.” She put the lid on the box and placed it on the table. “Only it makes me mad not to know how to work them. Grace is very clever at it. Aren’t you going to sit down?”
You pulled a chair up closer, at the other end of the table, and sat on it. You wished you hadn’t come; wished you had done anything rather than come. Words were so useless with her; you always felt either that she didn’t understand what they meant or that she already knew all you were saying, and much more. The two contradictory feelings were so blended that there was no separating them. You looked at her a moment in silence and then said quietly:
“Why don’t you let me alone, Mil?”
She returned your look without replying, and you went on, “Having a man here was stupid and indecent, but it’s not only that. I was ready to quit anyway. We’ve never really cared for each other. I suppose you’ve got a dozen men on the string. I’m not objecting, it’s none of my business, but I’m just saying you don’t need me too. We’re not alike, we don’t enjoy each other; there’s nothing to hold us together except a practice that probably doesn’t do either of us any good; it’s not natural. Why don’t you let me alone? If it’s money why don’t you be honest enough to say so, and I’ll—that is, we can talk it over; I thought I was being fair enough, leaving you everything here and that five hundred dollars.”
After a pause, “I don’t want any money,” was all she said.
“You said you did at the office, You said you had to have something to live on.”
“Well, I was just trying to scare you. I don’t want all this furniture and everything either. Of course I’m glad you’re rich because it makes it so much nicer.”
Helplessly you exclaimed again, “Then what in god’s name do you want?”
She chuckled. “You’re very funny, Will. I’m sorry about that man—truly it was the first time anyone was ever here and he said it was Christmas Day and he didn’t want to go home and Grace was out in Jersey to her aunt’s. He’s no good anyway. It was Mr. Martin—don’t you remember, he sells insurance, I told you about him one day.”
“I don’t care who he was. I’m not interested in him. I’ve told you that doesn’t matter. Of course you’re lying when you say it was the first time—but that doesn’t matter either. You haven’t answered my question: what do you want?”
In a new tone she said all at once, in a breath:
“I want my big brother.”
Startled, you looked at her, uncomprehending; then in a sudden swift flash you remembered that she had said to you one day, long ago in your room at college, “We don’t ever kiss or say we love each other, we’re just like a brother and sister except when we’re having fun. You’re my big brother.” At the time the infantile simplicity of it had annoyed you, but it had disappeared from your mind. Apparently with her it had been more than a momentary fancy.…
“I wasn’t lying, it was the first time,” she was saying. “I made him go right away, right after you left. I told him—”
“Good god I don’t care if he never went!” you cried. “Forget him!” You stopped, then meant to resume ironically, “So you’re in love with me,” but the words wouldn’t come, they seemed too absurd and incongruous. Instead you said, “So it’s me you want.”
She nodded. “And it’s me you want.” She said it not as a challenge or a claim; she just said it, calmly, a fact.
“Like hell I do!” you shouted, and stopped short; thinking, I must keep control of myself, I’m getting childish. You wanted to laugh at her, sneer at her. You leaned forward and looked at her and said more calmly, “Listen, Mil, we may as well be frank. I can’t stand you any more. You’re ignorant and silly and dumb as hell. Now I’m done. I was done before I found that man here; you were driving me crazy. I was getting so that when you touched me, it made my flesh creep. I tell you I was going mad! I’m done!” You tried to keep your voice calm, but gradually it had raised until you ended with a shout, “I’m done, do you hear! I’m done!” You had sprung to your feet, and finished standing close to her, bending over her. with flushed face and clenched fists.
She gazed up at you, steadily, without saying anything, and again you shouted, shouted that you had never wanted her, you wished you had never seen her, that she was filthy, perverted, evil, that she had nearly ruined you long ago, at college, before she was old enough to have any right to know what a man was, and that she was trying to finish the job now, but she wasn’t going to get away with it, you were done. You bellowed and yelled at her, pacing up and down the room, stopping in front of her chair and then going on, mopping your face with your handkerchief, stuffing it back in your pocket, pulling it out again. At last you stopped and stood in the middle of the room staring at her, hating her, trembling, silent.
She returned your gaze, but still she did not speak.
“You see, Mil,” you said in a shaken voice, “you see…you see.…”
Her voice was quite steady, with all its usual thin dullness:
“You’ve said some awful things.”
“Well…I’ve felt some awful things.”
“It’s not me that’s awful.”
“Oh yes it is. You’re damn right it is. It’s both of us.”
She shook her head. “You’re just afraid. I don’t mind what you say. I know you can’t ever really leave me, I know how you act, I know what you think.” The deep veiled flash came and went in her eyes. “I know how you feel when we’re having fun too, but you like it, and anyway,” she chuckled, “you’re my big brother.”
You were speechless with revulsion and disgust, and tired out. You wanted to yell at her again, tell her to shut up, to shut up, to let you alone. Was she right? Couldn’t you ever really leave her? Had you come here tonight knowing that? There were your hat and coat on the chair. Couldn’t you put them on and go out and never come back? Look at her, good god look at her!
“The hell I can’t!” you said, and senselessly you began to yell at her again, pouring epithets and insults on her, completely out of your mind, impotence gone mad. You kicked the footstool to one side and bent over her, your face close to hers, you seized her chair and shook it; words were not strong enough, but you went on flinging them at her, a harmless shower of verbal confetti dipped in dung. Amazing that you didn’t touch her, strike her, strangle her, as she sat there silent and imperturbable, breathing evenly, not shrinking from your threatening hands, unmoved by the cyclone of abuse and hatred. You spluttered, raving, your face almost touching hers, and all at once you saw two glistening drops of your saliva appear on her cheek, beside her mouth, but she did not lift her hand to remove them; they remained there, shining like silver bubbles. For an instant you gazed at them, fascinated; then, dropping your handkerchief into her lap and saying “wipe off your face,” you stepped back and stood there looking at her.
“You don’t need to spit on me,” she said. As though suddenly hypnotized into an immobility to match her own, you stood and watched the accurate and inevitable movements of her hand as she picked up the handkerchief, damp with your perspiration, and rubbed it back and forth across her cheek; always the same, the same as when she is eating the candy you bring her or unbuttoning your clothes.…