If Morning Ever Comes Page 21

“Don’t worry about it. You can send them to me later.” He felt awkward, just as he knew he would, standing empty-handed in the doorway with everyone staring at him. His grandmother was the first one to stand up. She came toward him briskly, her arms outstretched to hug him good-by, and he smiled at her and went to meet her halfway.

  “If you’d only told us, I could’ve made some cookies,” she said.

  “No, I don’t need—”

  “Or at least some sandwiches. You want me to whip you up some sandwiches, Ben Joe?”

  “I haven’t got time,” he said.

  The rest of the family was clustered around him now; Carol had her arms about one of his knees as if he were a tree she was about to climb. Behind his sisters stood his mother, with her face no longer surprised but back to its practical, thoughtful expression.

  “I suppose it’s about time,” she said. “Looked as if you’d forgotten school.”

  “We’ll drive you to the station,” said Lisa.

  “No, thank you, I’ve got plenty of time.”

  “But you just said you didn’t have—”

  “No, really. I feel like walking. Come kiss me good-by, everyone.”

  There was a succession of soft, cool cheeks laid against his. His grandmother held Carol up and she kissed him loudly on the chin, leaving a little wet place that he wiped off absent-mindedly with the cuff of his sleeve.

  “Look, Mom,” he said, when his mother stepped forward to hug him, “you tell Joanne good-by for me, okay? And Susannah. Tell Joanne I’m sorry to leave without—”

  “Of course I will,” she said automatically. “Try to get some sleep on the train, Ben Joe.”

  Gram kissed him again, with her usual angry vigor, and said, “Don’t buy a thing on the train if you can help it, Benjy. You never know how much they’re going to upcharge. Me, now, I have some idea, because I used to be a good friend of Simon McCarroll that sold cigarettes and Baby Ruths on the train from here to Raleigh some twenty years back. He used to say to me, ‘Bethy Jay,’ he says, ‘you’ll never know how they upcharge on these here trains,’ and I’d answer back, I’d say—” She stopped, staring off into space. It was her habit, when saying good-by’s, to lead the conversation in another direction and ignore the fact that anyone was leaving. Taking advantage of her pause, Ben Joe’s mother patted him on the shoulder and became brisk and cheerful, just as she always did at such times.

  “I know you’ll have a good trip, Ben Joe,” she said.

  “You got enough money?” Jenny asked.

  “I think so. Jenny, you tell Susannah to take good care of my guitar, will you?”

  “I will. Bye, Ben Joe.”

  “Good-by.”

  His sisters smiled and began turning back to their gin-rummy game. His mother led the way to the front door.

  “You’ll tell her too, won’t you?” he said to her. “Tell her it’s a good guitar, and a good hourglass and all. Don’t let her go forgetting—”

  “Oh, Ben Joe.” She laughed and pulled the door open for him. “Everything’ll take care of itself.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Everything works out on its own, with no effects from what anyone does …”

  He bent to pick up his suitcase and smiled at her. “Good-by, Mom,” he said.

  “Good-by, Ben Joe. I want you to do well on that test.”

  He started out across the porch, and the door closed behind him.

  When he was across the street from his house he turned and looked back at it. It sat silently in the twilight, with the bay windows lit yellow by the lamps inside and the irregular little stained-glass and rose windows glowing here and there against the vague white clapboards. When he was far away from home, and picturing what it looked like, this wasn’t the way he saw it at all. He saw it as it had been when he was small—a giant of a place, with children playing on the sunlit lawn and yellow flowers growing in two straight lines along the walk. Now, as he looked at the house, he tried to make the real picture stay in his memory. If he remembered it only as it looked right now, would he miss it as much? He couldn’t tell. He stood there for maybe five minutes, but he couldn’t make the house register on his mind at all. It might be any other house on the block; it might be anyone’s.

  He turned again and set off for the station. The night was growing rapidly darker, and his eyes seemed wide and cool in his head from straining to see. Occasionally he met people going alone or in two’s on after-supper errands, and because it was not really pitch-dark yet, almost all of them spoke cheerfully or at least nodded to Ben Joe whether they knew him or not. Ben Joe smiled back at them. To the older women, walking their dogs or talking to friends on front walks, he gave a deep nod that was almost a bow, just as his father had done before him. Two children playing hopscotch on white-chalked lines that they could barely see stepped aside to let him pass. He walked between the lines gingerly so as not to mess them up, and didn’t speak until the smaller one, the boy, said hello.

  “Hello,” said Ben Joe.

  “Hello,” the little boy said again.

  “Hello,” Ben Joe called back.

  “Hello—”

  “You hush now,” his sister whispered.

  “Oh,” the little boy said sadly. Ben Joe turned right on Main Street, smiling.

  People were gathering sparsely around the glittering little movie house, and he could see dressed-up couples eating opposite each other in the small restaurant he passed. Just before he crossed to head down the gravel road to the station, a huge, red-faced old man in earmuffs stopped beside him and said, “You Dr. Hawkes’s son?”

  “Yes,” Ben Joe said.

  “Going away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Funny thing,” the man said, shaking his head. “I outlived my doctor. I outlived my doctor, whaddaya know.”

  It was what he always said. Ben Joe smiled, and when the light changed, he crossed the street.

  The gravel road was just a path of grayish-white under his feet, but he could see well enough to walk without difficulty. Even so, he went very slowly. He stared ahead, to where the station house, with its orange windows, sat beside the railroad tracks. The tracks were mere silver ribbons now, gleaming under tall, curved lamps. All around there was nothing but darkness, marked occasionally by the dark, shining back of some parked car. Ben Joe shivered. He suddenly plunked his suitcase at his feet and after a minute sat on it, folding his arms, staring at the station house and still shivering so hard that he had to clamp his teeth together. He didn’t know what he wanted; he didn’t know whether he wanted Shelley to meet him there or never to show up at all. If she was there, what would he say? Would he be glad to see her? If she wasn’t there, he would climb on the train and leave and then it would be he who was the injured party; something would at last be clearly settled and he could turn his back on it forever. He looked at the blank orange windows, still far away, as if they could by some sign let him know if she was there and tell him what to do about it. No sign appeared. A new idea came; he could wait a while, till after his train had left, and then surreptitiously catch a local to Raleigh and take the later train from there. But what good would that do? The picture arose in his mind of chains of future wakeful nights spent wondering whether he should have gone into the station or not. He rose, picked up his suitcase again, and continued on down the hill.

  It was warm and bright inside, and the waiting room smelled of cigar smoke and pulp magazines. Nearest Ben Joe was a group of businessmen, all very noisy and active, who mulled around in a tight little circle calling out nicknames and switching their brief cases to their left hands as they leaned forward to greet someone.

  “Excuse me,” Ben Joe said.

  They remained cheerfully in his path, too solid and fat to be sidled past. He changed directions, veering to the right of them and continuing down the next aisle. A small Negro man and his family stood there; the
man, dressed stiffly and correctly for the trip north, was counting a small pile of wrinkled dollar bills. His wife and children strained forward, watching anxiously; the man wet his lips and fumbled through the bills.

  “Excuse me,” Ben Joe said.

  The husband moved aside, still counting. With his suitcase held high and tight to his body so as not to bump anyone, Ben Joe edged past them and came into the center of the waiting room. He looked around quickly, for the first time since he had entered the station. His eyes skimmed over two sailors and a group of soldiers and an old woman with a lumber jacket on; then he saw Shelley.

  She was sitting in the far corner, next to the door that led out to the tracks. At her feet were two suitcases and a red net grocery bag. Ben Joe let out his breath, not realizing until then that he had been holding it, but he didn’t go over to her right away. He just stood there, holding onto the handle of his suitcase with both hands in front of him as if he were a child with a book satchel. He suddenly felt like a child, like a tiny, long-ago Ben Joe poised outside a crowded living room, knowing that sooner or later he must take that one step to the inside of the room and meet the people there, but hanging back anyway. He shifted the suitcase to one side. At that moment Shelley looked up at him, away from the tips of her new high-heeled shoes and toward the center of the waiting room, where she found, purely by accident, the silent, watchful face of Ben Joe. Ben Joe forced himself to life again. He crossed the floor, his face heavy and self-conscious under Shelley’s grave stare.

  “Hello,” he said when he reached her.

  “Hello.”

  Her dress was one he had not seen before—a waistless, pleated beige thing—and she had a round feathered hat and gloves the same color. So much beige, with her dark blond hair and her pale face, made her look all of one piece, like a tan statue carved from a single rock. Her face seemed tighter and more strained than usual, and her eyes were squinched up from the bright lights.

  “Ben Joe?” she asked.

  He sat down quickly in the seat opposite her and said, “What?”

  For a minute she was silent, concentrating on lining up the pointed toes of her shoes exactly even with each other. In the space of her silence Ben Joe heard the whispery sound of the train, rushing now across the bridge at Dublin Cat River and drawing nearer every second. Men outside ran back and forth calling orders; a boy pushed a baggage cart through the door and drenched them for a second in the cold, sharp air from outside. Ben Joe hunched forward and said, “What is it, Shelley? What’ve you got to tell me?”

  “I came by taxi,” she said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “I said, taxi. I came by taxi.”

  “Oh. Taxi.”

  He stood up, with his hands in his pockets. Outside the whistle blew, louder and closer this time. The two sailors had risen by now and were moving toward the door.

  “I got my ticket,” Shelley said. “And I’ve got, wait a minute …” She dug through the beige pocketbook beside her and came up with a navy-blue checkbook. “Travelers’ checks,” she said. “I don’t want my money stolen. We didn’t talk about it, but, Ben Joe, I want you to know I am going to get a job and all, so money won’t be any—”

  The train was roaring in now. It had a steamy, streamlined sound and it clattered to a stop so noisily that Shelley’s words were lost. All Ben Joe could hear was the steaming and the shouts and above all that the garbled, rasping voice of the loud-speaker. Shelley was looking up at him with her eyes glass-clear and waiting, and he knew by her face she must have asked a question.

  “What’d you say?” he asked when the train had stopped.

  “I said, I wondered, do you still want me to come?”

  She started lining up the toes of her shoes again. All he could see of her face were her pale lashes, lying in two semicircles against her cheeks, and the tip of her nose. When the shoes were as exactly even as they could get she looked up again, and it seemed to him suddenly that he could see himself through her eyes for a minute—Ben Joe Hawkes, pacing in front of her with his hands in his pockets, setting out in pure thoughtlessness toward his own narrow world while she looked hopefully up at him.

  “Course I still want you,” he said finally.

  She smiled and at once began bustling around, checking in her purse for her ticket, leaping up to push all her baggage out into the middle of the floor and then stand frowning at it.

  “We’ll never get it all in,” she said. “I tried to take just necessities and save the rest to be shipped, but—”

  “Come on.” He grabbed her two suitcases and left her to carry the grocery bag, which seemed to be filled with hair curlers and Kleenex, and his own, lighter suitcase. When she had picked them up, he held the door open for her, and they followed the straggling soldiers out into the cold night air, across the platform and up the clanging steps to the railroad car.

  “Passengers to New York and Boston take the car to the right!” the conductor sang out cheerfully. He put one hand under Shelley’s elbow to boost her up the steps. “Watch it there, lady, watch it—”

  A thin white cloud of steam came out of Ben Joe’s mouth every time he breathed. Ahead of them the soldiers paused, looking over the seats in the car, and Ben Joe was left half inside and half out, with his arms rigidly close to his body to keep himself warm. He looked at the back of Shelley’s head. A few wisps of blond hair were straggling out from under her felt hat, and he couldn’t stop staring at them. They looked so real; he could see each tiny hair. In that moment he almost threw down the suitcases and turned around to run, but then the soldiers found their seats and they could go on down the aisle.

  The car was full of smoke and much too hot. They maneuvered their baggage past dusty seats where all they could see of the passengers were the tops of their heads, and then toward the end the car became more empty. Shelley ducked into the first vacant seat, but Ben Joe touched her shoulder.

  “Keep going,” he said. “There’re two seats facing each other at the back.”

  She nodded, and got up again and continued down the aisle ahead of him. It seemed strangely silent here after the noise outside. All he could hear were the rustlings of newspapers and their own footsteps, and his voice sounded too loud in his ears.

  At the last seat they stopped. Ben Joe put their luggage up on the rack, and then he took Shelley’s coat and folded it carefully and put it on top of the luggage.

  “Sit down,” he told her.

  She sat, obediently, and moved over to the window. When Ben Joe had put his own coat away he sat down opposite her, rubbing the backs of his hands against his knees to get them warm again.

  “Are you comfortable?” he asked.

  Shelley nodded. Her face had lost that strained look, and she seemed serene and unworried now. With one gloved finger she wiped the steam from the window and began staring out, watching the scattered people who stood in the lamplight outside.

  “Mrs. Fogarty is seeing someone off,” she said after a minute. “You remember Mrs. Fogarty; she’s got that husband in the nursing home in Parten and every year she gives him a birthday party, with nothing but wild rice and birthday cake to eat because that’s the only two things he likes. She mustn’t of seen us. If she had she wouldn’t still be here; she’d be running off to tell—”

  She stopped and turned back to him, placing the palms of her hands together. “What did your family say?” she asked.

  “I didn’t tell them.”

  “Well, when will you tell them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She frowned. “Won’t it bother you, having to tell them we did this so sneaky-like?”

  “They won’t care,” he said.

  “Well. I still can’t believe we’re really going through this, somehow.”

  Ben Joe stopped rubbing his hands. “You mean more than usual you can’t?” he asked.

  “What?”
>
  “You mean it’s harder to believe than it usually is?”

  “I don’t follow your meaning,” she said. “It’s not usual for me to get married.”

  “Well, I know, but …” He gave up and settled back in his seat again, but Shelley was still watching him puzzledly. “What I meant,” he said, “is it harder for you to believe a thing now than it was a week ago?”

  “Well, no.”

  He nodded, not entirely satisfied. What if marrying Shelley meant that she would end up just like him, unable to realize a thing’s happening or a moment’s passing? What if it were like a contagious disease, so that soon she would be wandering around in a daze and incapable of putting her finger on any given thing and saying, that is that? He looked over at her, frightened now. Shelley smiled at him. Her lipstick was soft and worn away, with only the outlines of her lips a bright pink still, and her lashes were white at the tips. He smiled back, and relaxed against the cushions.

  “When we get there,” he said, “we’ll look for an apartment to settle down in.”

  She smiled happily. “I tell you one thing,” she said. “I always have read a lot of homemaking magazines and I have picked up all kinds of advice from them. You take a piece of driftwood, for instance, and you spray it with gold-colored—”

  The train started up. It gave a little jerk and then hummed slowly out of the station and into the dark, and the tiny lights of the town began flickering past the black window.

  “I bought me a white dress,” Shelley was saying. “I know it’s silly but I wanted to. Do you think it’s silly?”

  “No. No, I think it’s fine.”

  “Even if we just go to a J.P., I wanted to wear white. And it won’t bother me about going to a J.P.…”

  The Petersoll barbecue house, flashing its neon-lit, curly-tailed pig, swam across the windowpane. In its place came the drive-in movie screen, where Ava Gardner loomed so close to the camera that only her purple, smiling mouth and half-closed eyes fitted on the screen. Then she vanished too. Across from Ben Joe, in her corner between the wall and the back of her seat, Shelley yawned and closed her eyes.