18

My Name

It’s been two whole weeks since B. came to see me. Am I suffering out of injured pride? Or longing? I can tell myself the truth. Why should I hide it from myself?

But no, it’s not B. I’m in love with. Not B. I only love his love, and I only love it because I hate being lonely.

Rae spent the night in my room. We talked and talked until we fell asleep. She told me all about the girl who loves B. so much that—who knows if she’ll ever love another man again. Rae had tears in her eyes as she spoke of the girl’s hurt feelings. Poor—Rae!

In the morning we heard the sound of footsteps creeping up to the door to my room. Someone knocked.

I leapt out of bed, threw on my robe, and opened the door halfway. It was the landlady. “I thought you were still asleep. I came to wake you. You know what they say, ‘Work makes life sweet!’” she said.

“‘Work makes life miserable’ is more like it. But, either way, I do have to get up, so thank you for waking me.”

“You didn’t sleep long. You were sitting up until late.”

“Lying down,” I corrected her.

“But—you had company?”

“Yes.”

“And—who was it? Oh! I see!” The landlady smiled as she saw Rae through the half-open door. She had been trying to peer through the door the whole time she was talking to me. “I see now. And since everything is in order, I can tell you, just as though I were your own mother, that I’m glad to see it. You know how tongues wag. A girl should be very careful of her reputation. Since we’re on the subject, I have to tell you that people have been asking me, ‘Who’s been coming to visit your girl so late at night?’ I tell them that no one needs to worry their head about my girl. She knows how to protect her own good name.”

Who knows how long she’d have stayed talking about my good name if she hadn’t remembered that she’d left the milk on the gas stove.

A letter from B. His wife had a baby.

B. writes: “I’m in turmoil about the child. It arrived at a time when I wanted so badly to leave, and now I feel twice as tied down. I sit here by my wife and child and I think shameful thoughts: I want to be with you. I want to hold you in my arms like a child. I only want to love you, for I love you so! I look at my wife and child and a heavy dread fills my heart. Why didn’t I find you sooner? I could have been so happy now if only you, and not she, had been the mother of my child!”

He begs me to write to him and tell him how I feel and whether I’m longing for him as he is for me. But I won’t write. What would be the point? I’ll just congratulate him on the new baby, and nothing more. How could I bind myself to someone who is twice as tied down as ever?

How strange. You go around with an impression that someone is like a god, and then you suddenly run into him in the pouring rain with an umbrella turned inside out by the wind, wearing rain boots and with a nasty head cold, and you feel like the whole time someone’s been pulling the wool over your eyes.

That’s how I felt when I saw A. today on the subway platform.

My heart leapt into my throat and I tried to make myself invisible. But he approached me and stretched out his hand for mine, and I gave it to him.

“Where are you going in such weather?” he asked me.

“Uptown. You?”

“Downtown. How have you been? What have you been doing with yourself?”

“The same as always.”

“I stopped by a while ago,” A. said, looking me in the eye. “When I saw there was a light in your window I went up, but when I knocked on the door you didn’t answer.”

“I believe it was already late at night,” I said, trying not to blush. I remembered that evening when B. wanted to make the gas flame smaller and then put it out entirely. When I heard a knock on the door I couldn’t open it. My reputation—what would people think if they found me alone in the dark with a man?

“Do people have to come to visit you so early?” A. asked.

“Yes, the earlier the better.”

“I’ll remember that. I’ll come to see you next week!” he said, stepping onto his train, and he tipped his hat as he rode away.

When my train arrived I was distraught. Why couldn’t mine have come before his? During the whole ride, I couldn’t help but think that our lives will always be like our trains, taking us in two different directions.

Another letter from B.

He writes: “You didn’t write to me about your feelings like I asked you to, but I understand. I understand your silence. You’re suffering and you don’t want to show it. You care too much about these two weak creatures I might mistreat out of love for you. Do you know, my love, what I’ve done? I have given my child your name! Now I won’t have to look around to see if anyone has overheard when I call out your name. I can call your name out loud freely. Your name is the most beautiful name I could have given my daughter! I know what you’re thinking, ‘What if she finds out?’ But she’ll never know. Now I feel a painful joy over the secret buried in that name. And I will be more affectionate toward the child thanks to your name.”

My name . . . My name will make him love his child more. My name.