I See You Page 15

  No one was even hurt.

  There was confusion, of course—cars stopping, policemen, questions asked, names and addresses written down.

  Not even bruised, Elizabeth was taken home in somebody’s car, and although she stayed abed a day, just for good measure, by the day after that she was up and at her sewing.

  It was all over. All but her blush of shame when she remembered what she had said.

  About a week later she found a letter from the stranger in her mail. He had happened to hear her give her name. He had written, he said, to hope she had suffered no harm in the near-accident. He expected, he wrote, to be in Pownal on the following Saturday. He wondered if he might venture to call upon her. He would like very much to ask her to dine with him that Saturday evening. He would have a car, he said, and he would reserve a table at the town’s best restaurant in the hope that she would agree. But if she were already engaged for that evening, she could at once say so when he appeared.

  It was a timid and tentative kind of letter. It breathed an air of feeling itself to be greatly daring.

  She was very much upset! She had never been so upset in all her life!

  For four days she could think of nothing else. She would feel furiously indignant. How dared he! For there were only two assumptions the man could make. One, and the most charitable, that she must have gone out of her mind and had not known what she was saying. The other, that she had been eying him sideways all along, and it was he, in person, whom she had in some foolish fashion made her hero. He must have taken it personally. Oh, how embarrassing!

  (The one thing he’d never guess was what she’d really meant to say, before it was too late. She’d meant to cry, “We, who were on the earth together … oh, all of us should have loved it and each other.”)

  But then, again, she would feel so excited, just at the adventure of it, pleasant or unpleasant, that she could barely do her work. As the news seeped about the house, subtle pressures were brought to bear upon her to keep the date. Her landlady’s excited scent of a wild romance. The scoffing disbelief of the daughter of the house. One thing and another.

  And when she remembered that feeling, the love of all life in which her unfortunate outburst had been rooted, she wondered if she dared deny, or avoid, or let pass any experience of life at all.

  So, believing that she could soon divine just how presumptuous he was daring to be, and soon put him in his place if that became necessary, she kept the date.

  She wore her second-best dress.

  He came and he was very courteous.

  They dined, and it was a complete fiasco.

  A demon got into her. She became so ladylike, so cool, so hideously well-bred and aloof, that she was hardly human. It was as if the demon of shame made her try to live down the slightest possibility that she could love anything. She looked like a stick and she acted like a stick and she couldn’t help it, although she soon saw he was a gentle and not a presumptuous man.

  But he was too shy or too inexperienced or too puzzled to get around this guard of hers. She couldn’t tell whether he wanted to. She found out he was a teacher and she realized that Joseph Harte was a cultivated man for all his hairy look. But as soon as they seemed launched upon some topic that would let them explore each other’s thoughts, the demon would pop up. It would cross her mind, for instance, that he might be a student as well as a teacher, that he was curious about her type, and she was a specimen upon a pin. So she froze up.

  It was dreadful.

  They dined in an atmosphere of total refinement at the best place in town. She was stiff. He was courteous. It was ghastly.

  She had rehearsed a thousand times some way to tell him what she had meant by that blurted statement in the bus … some smooth, amusing way. It was no use. She could not.

  Now and then he cleared his throat as if there were something he wanted to say, and he would moisten his lips. But he did not say it.

  Those awful words of hers hung over them and before the evening was far along she thought that if he dared to mention them she’d just have to stare and pretend she didn’t remember a thing about it.

  When they rose from the table she was ready to go home and bury her head (in what disappointment she couldn’t then imagine) and try to put the whole thing out of her mind forever. Whatever he had expected, he obviously hadn’t found it, for he agreed with a suggestion of relief that he would now take her home.

  So they set off, in the little two-door sedan. It was only five blocks to where she lived. They were nothing at all but embarrassed strangers, anxious to part forever.

  And so they might have done.

  But in the middle of one quiet block, as they drove along, suddenly a house door was flung open. The gesticulating figure of a middle-aged woman ran into their path. “Help! My aunt! She’s hurt herself! Oh, I don’t know what to do!”

  The professor got out and the dressmaker followed. They found an old woman lying on the rug, moaning. She had fallen on the stairs. Her head was gashed and bleeding. But she was conscious and terrified. It was the bleeding that frightened her.

  Elizabeth knew a little first aid. She found that no bones were broken. The woman could move and stand. So Elizabeth staunched the head wound as best she could.

  Meanwhile, Joseph Harte called the hospital.

  In five minutes, they were in the car again. They put the old woman in the front, wailing and crying. It was Elizabeth who crawled the narrow way into the back, with the niece, who had gone all to pieces and whimpered uselessly. They would get to the hospital in minutes, once they started, but the frightened woman was rocking herself to and fro, although Elizabeth was doing her best to quiet her. It was going to be a most uncomfortable journey. The professor had the motor going.

  Then, in that moment of noise, of moans and cries, he turned, suddenly, and put his hand on the old woman’s cheek.

  He said to her, “Hush. I love you.”

  And like magic, she fell quiet. She pressed her cheek against his hand, briefly, and then as they started off, she let her head fall back quietly against Elizabeth’s cradling arms. It was strange, very strange, but she was easy and quiet all the way to the hospital.

  The old woman’s hurt was not serious. The niece would stay. Trained hands took over. Elizabeth went first, out to the car.

  When the professor followed, he found her weeping there.

  “I couldn’t believe you understood,” she told him. “I couldn’t believe that.”

  “I came tonight to tell you that I did,” he said, “but I could find no way to tell you.”

  And that was how it began, I suppose. How they discovered they were both in love with the whole world. How he came to have the air of a man who believed he could understand these things, and she the air of a woman who was absolutely sure that he could.

  Nothing could have been more attractive, don’t you see?

  9.

  I See You

  “Just a perfect fall day,” said the young woman in her gentle voice.

  “Very nice,” said Janet Brown.

  “Do you see the red tree, beside the yellow? Isn’t that beautiful?”

  “I see it.” But Janet, who was feeling contrary, thought, It is no more beautiful than green. Green trees are good enough, if it is beauty you want. Or a bare tree. Or any kind of tree.

  “The sky’s so blue.”

  Janet did not respond to this; she closed her eyes briefly. If she had her own teeth still, she would have ground them together. Well, this is the way the rest of it will go, she thought. Every suitable day, providing that I am judged able, some young Junior Leaguer, like this one, will wheel me into the open air and tell me that the sky is blue, the grass is green, the sun is shining. Or put me in a winter window and warn me that the snow is white. It is going to be a pretty fascinating and challenging existence, from here on out.

  “I am so glad, Mrs. Brown,” the girl said, “that you were brave enough to come outdoors today.”

&
nbsp; Brave? thought Janet. Dear child, I was desperate. She resolved, however, that she would insist upon being taken outdoors as often and for as long as she possibly could. After all, no matter who said so, the world outside was beautiful. Inside, the inhabitants of this Home were depressing to look at, almost as depressing as a glance into a mirror. I must see some beuuty, Janet thought. I would like to hear something of importance, too.

  Of course, she herself had been, so far, on her best behavior; she had watched her tongue. But not one of the inhabitants had said, so far, anything Janet considered to be worth the breath it took to say it. The nurses were all so cheerful and gay that it turned one sour, in some feeble redress of the balance of truth. These Junior Leaguers spoke to one as if one were feeble-minded. Watered down, thought Janet. Always patient, always kind. They wore an attitude like a uniform, all these kind young women who “gave up their time.”

  “You are having visitors, today?” said this one, whose name was Beatrice something-or-other. One was to call her Beatrice. She wore a wedding ring. She wore a woolen skirt and a twin sweater outfit that was perfectly matched to the skirt in an odd rosy color, and had no doubt cost a great deal. She had on medium-heeled walking pumps that seemed to be made of real lizard. Her fair hair remained smooth in the faint breeze; her fair skin was not made up, unless it had been done very skillfully, indeed. She sat on a bench beside Mrs. Brown’s wheelchair, with her hands folded gracefully in her lap. Well born. Well mannered. Well married, no doubt. Charitably inclined?

  Not necessarily, thought Janet, with more amusement than scorn. She is just doing a good work, because don’t they all?

  She had been well born, well married, well off, once, had Janet Brown.

  The girl was raising her voice, carefully and patiently, to repeat, “Are you having visitors today?”

  I heard you, thought Janet. “Yes, I am. My daughter-in-law and my niece are coming. Soon, I imagine.”

  “How nice,” said Beatrice, smiling a very pretty smile that did not push up the cheeks too far nor show the teeth too much. “And then you will want to give them tea, won’t you? That will be nice, I’m sure.”

  You’re sure, thought Janet.

  She looked at the blue sky, the brilliant clump of trees, the half acre of parklike slope. The city was blotted away. One knew it was there, beyond the trees and pleasant houses of this elegant suburb, but it did not intrude.

  Oh yes, very nice. Monica was coming for a decision. To find out whether or not Janet, after having tried it for a week, could bear to stay here. And Janet was going to announce that she could bear it. Oh, more than that. She was going to lie in the teeth that were no longer her own, and announce that she liked it very much.

  The fact is, I can’t bear to live with Monica, Janet was thinking. Not that the truth will be told. She did not dislike her daughter-in-law. She appreciated Monica’s “devotion,” quotation marks and all. But now that her son Eric was spending six months of the year abroad, the house seemed more Monica’s house than it had seemed before. And now that her old companion was gone, Janet had become Monica’s charge.

  Alas, Johannah was dead. Johannah ought not to have died, having been only sixty-three. Janet Brown was almost eighty, and ought not to have been the survivor. But … here she was.

  She thought, Sally Beth will be along for moral support, wearing her blue wool and her gold beads, I’ll wager. Monica will come in her beige suit, without her mink. I wonder if she knows why she never wears her mink when she comes to see me. She pities all here and she does not think it kind to appear too handsome, too prosperous, too obviously cherished. As a matter of fact, that mink stole makes her much too broad in the beam.… Oh come now, Janet, you must not think meanly of Monica, who is a good woman. Or of Sally Beth, who is simply a rather stupid forty-five and cannot help that. Nor must you think meanly of this place, or the world, for that matter.

  But she went on thinking, Monica will say that she will not consider going to France with Eric, the next time, unless I feel perfectly happy here. And it is true, that if I were to make a fuss, she would not go. But I shall say that Monica must go, that this is a lovely place, very well run. I shall point out that here, there are companions of my own age.

  Sally Beth will nod and beam and agree. She will think it is a great insight. Then we shall have tea. Monica will kiss me on the cheek and go creaking off in her girdle, almost sure that we have done the right thing. And I, if the truth were told, shall sigh in some relief.

  And the truth will have been told, in a way.

  But companionship I shall have, no more.

  She had grown very thin, in these last years, Janet had. Her body was a bundle of old bones. Her joints were just not quite hurting. None of them moved easily. The knuckles of her brown spotted old hands were gnarled. Her legs were unsteady and her balance poor. She could shuffle along indoors, on the tightly stretched carpets, but not again would she walk freely on these gravel paths, or run on the slippery grass, like that pack of children, streaming across the slope now.

  Sometimes her mind rested and ceased its turning and time passed in a dream. But her mind was turning much too fast and much too restlessly, today.

  “You are not cold, are you, Mrs. Brown?” said Beatrice solicitously.

  “No. No.” Janet was, in fact, feeling the chill a little. She was wrapped up in a woolen coat and she wore a hat, pulled well down, since her white hair had become so sparse on her head that the scalp showed. But there was no flesh to protect her bones, and her feet, in the ugly black shoes built to give support, were without sensation, already.

  “I should think those children would freeze,” said Beatrice.

  The children, there were about six little girls, were running with bare knees flashing under cotton dresses that flared and fluttered below their skimpy sweaters. Ah no, thought Janet. They have a chill on the outer skin, on their firm cheeks, on the ends of their little noses, but the warm blood is racing, inside. She could remember.

  The children were suddenly in a knot and jumping, simply jumping up and down where they stood, as if they could not simply stand, and they were all screaming at the top of their lungs, each to be heard over the others.

  “It must be a school holiday,” said Beatrice, a bit anxiously. “Does the noise bother you, Mrs. Brown?”

  “No,” said Janet. It did not bother her, as noise. It seemed senseless, an unnecessary expenditure of energy. But it was better than to have been reduced to the necessary. It was that energy, so abundant as to be thrown away, that bothered her, by contrast. I, she thought, will strive with all my might, and for my vanity, I will lift the pot and pour the tea when my visitors come. Well, then, energy diminishes. It is the law. Janet watched the children.

  The noise stopped suddenly and the tallest little girl, who had been in the very center of the knot, went pelting across the grass with her long, straight blond hair streaming behind her. She wore a red plaid dress and a torn white sweater and dirty sneakers on her racing feet. But she was graceful, with the grace of seven healthy years. That free abundant grace. She darted like a bird. The rest of the children seemed to go tumbling after her, in a comet’s tail. Now she turned and came straight toward them.

  Beatrice said, with a slight defensive bracing of her body, “I suppose a holiday in the middle of the week is always great fun.”

  Not always, thought Janet, still feeling contrary. Sometimes, one doesn’t know what to do with it. Stolidly, she watched the leader swerve and sail away to the right. When the pack went whooping and wailing behind some shrubbery, Beatrice relaxed.

  “Shall I move you into the sun a little more, Mrs. Brown? I see you are in shadow. I don’t want you to catch cold.”

  Oh, come on, thought Janet grumpily. If I caught cold I’d be incarcerated with the others and you wouldn’t have to devote yourself to only one of us.

  “You are very thoughtful, my dear,” she said aloud. To herself she said severely, Come now, my girl, at a
lmost eighty, do you resent having landed upon this fine expensive shelf? Or are you resenting that fine new mechanism, that scampers upon the earth in fine new power? It is the law and you have never been a woman to complain.

  Beatrice had risen with the grace of being twenty-one-or-two, and now, with gentle control, she shifted the chair. “Is that better? Doesn’t the sun feel good?”

  “Oh yes,” said Janet. “Thank you.” Oh yes, she was thinking, the sun, the great and terrible sun, in all its majesty and lifegiving mystery, it “feels good.”

  Indoors, the old women would be swapping symptoms. Janet felt like weeping. She was not ill; she was merely old, and she had not chosen to be as she was, although she did not want to die. The trouble with you is, she scolded herself, you have not often been bored. Then you must get used to it.

  The girl’s hand came to touch her lapel and draw the coat more nearly closed over Janet’s throat. It was a pretty hand, unblemished, supple, and it drew away quickly.

  “Thank you,” Janet murmured. She knew very well that the young hand did not wish to touch her. She knew very well that she had not turned out to be, like some, a dainty pink-and-white old lady. Her ancient flesh was not attractive. No one would really touch her anymore, except a nurse, who was paid to do so, or a doctor, for his duty. It was another part of life that one outlived.

  But she turned her wrinkled face to the touch of the sun and she thought, Well, there is the sun and there is the sky, and they must speak to me.

  Suddenly the pack was on them. The child who led went by on the verge of the path, like the wind, and the others bumbled and bumped behind her.

  Beatrice stood up, moving quickly. “Children,” she called. “You, little girl in the red dress. Would you please come here?”

  The ringleader changed course and came around, leaning against the circle she was making, as if, with relish, she came to a meeting. Beatrice crouched to look into the flushed and somewhat haughty little face. They were not far away. There was nothing wrong with Janet’s ears.