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  4

  Summer and Fall, 1961: Jeremy

  These are some of the things that Jeremy Pauling dreaded: using the telephone, answering the doorbell, opening mail, leaving his house, making purchases. Also wearing new clothes, standing in open spaces, meeting the eyes of a stranger, eating in the presence of others, turning on electrical appliances. Some days he woke to find the weather sunny and his health adequate and his work progressing beautifully; yet there would be a nagging hole of uneasiness deep inside him, some flaw in the center of his well-being, steadily corroding around the edges and widening until he could not manage to lift his head from the pillow. Then he would have to go over every possibility. Was it something he had to do? Somewhere to go? Someone to see? Until the answer came: oh yes! today he had to call the gas company about the oven. A two-minute chore, nothing to worry about. He knew that. He knew. Yet he lay on his bed feeling flattened and defeated, and it seemed to him that life was a series of hurdles that he had been tripping over for decades, with the end nowhere in sight.

  On the Fourth of July, in a magazine article about famous Americans, he read that a man could develop character by doing one thing he disliked every day of his life. Did that mean that all these hurdles might have some value? Jeremy copied the quotation on an index card and tacked it to the windowsill beside his bed. It was his hope that the card would remove half of every pain by pointing out its purpose, like a mother telling her child, “This is good for you. Believe me.” But in fact all it did was depress him, for it made him conscious of the number of times each day that he had to steel himself for something. Why, nine tenths of his life consisted of doing things he disliked! Even getting up in the morning! He had already overcome a dread before he was even dressed! If that quotation was right, shouldn’t he have the strongest character imaginable? Yet he didn’t. He had become aware lately that other people seemed to possess an inner core of hardness that they took for granted. They hardly seemed to notice it was there; they had come by it naturally. Jeremy had been born without it.

  If he tried to conquer the very worst of his dreads—set out on a walk, for instance, ignoring the strings that stretched so painfully between home and the center of his back—his legs first became extremely heavy, so that every movement was a great aching effort, and then his heart started pounding and his breath grew shallow and he felt nauseated. If he succeeded, in spite of everything, in finishing what he had set out to do, he had no feeling of accomplishment but only a trembling weakness, like someone recently brushed by danger, and an echo of the nausea and a deep sense of despair. He took no steps forward. It was never easier the second time. Yet all through July, the hottest and most difficult month of the year, he kept attempting things he would not have considered a few weeks ago. He went at them like a blind man, smiling fixedly ahead of him, sweating and grim-faced, pretending not to notice that inwardly, nothing changed at all. He drew from wells of strength that he did not even own. And the reason, of course, was Mary Tell.

  Did she know how much courage went into his daily good morning? How even to meet her eyes meant a suicidal leap into unknown waters? “Good, good morning, Mrs. Tell,” he said. Mary Tell smiled, serene and gracious, never guessing. He held tight to the doorframe and kept his knees locked so that she would not see how they trembled. Face to face with her, he felt that he was somehow growing smaller. He had to keep tilting his chin up. And why did he have this sensation of transparency? Mary Tell’s smile encompassed the room—the dusty furniture, the wax fruit on the sideboard, and Jeremy Pauling, all equally, none given precedence. Her eyes were very long and deep. The fact that there was no sparkle to them gave her a self-contained look. It was impossible that she would ever need anyone, especially not Jeremy.

  Yet at night, as he lay in bed, he went over and over that moment when she had put her arms around him. She had needed him then, hadn’t she? Like an old-time heroine in one of the Victorian novels his mother used to read to him, she had come in desperation, with no one else to turn to—and out of shock he had responded only scantily and too late. He tied his top sheet into knots, wishing the moment back so that he could do the right things. He tried to recall the smallest details. He took apart each of her movements, each pressure of her fingers upon his ribcage, each stirring of breath against his throat. He turned over all possible meanings and sub-meanings. He wondered if he had made some magical gesture that caused her to think of him in a time of trouble, and what gesture was it? what trouble was it? What made women cry in modern times, in real life?

  But most of all, he wondered if it might ever happen again.

  Flat on his back in the dark, sleepless after his inactive days, he spent hours constructing reasons for her to turn to him. He imagined fires and floods. He invented a sudden fever for her little girl. Mary Tell would panic and come pound on his door, carrying an antique silver candlestick. He would be a rock of strength for her. He would go for the doctor without a thought, no matter how many blocks from home it took him. He would keep watch beside the sickbed, a straight line of confidence for her to lean against. Her hair would just brush his cheek. What color was her hair? What color were her eyes? Away from her, he never could remember. He saw her in black-and-white, like a steel engraving, with fine cross-hatching shading her face and some vague rich cloak tumbling from her shoulders. Her clearest feature was her forehead—a pale oval. In the novels his mother read to him, a wide ivory brow stood for purity and tranquillity.

  Oh, if only he had a horse to carry her away on!

  Mrs. Jarrett said, “That poor Mrs. Tell, she doesn’t get out much. Her friend hardly comes at all any more, have you noticed?”

  Jeremy, watching television with the boarders, revived Mary Tell from a swoon and held a glass of brandy to her lips. He didn’t answer.

  “I had been hoping he was more than a friend,” Mrs. Jarrett said.

  “Who is this we’re speaking of?” asked Miss Vinton.

  “The gentleman Mrs. Tell was seeing. Remember? Now he hardly comes at all. Have you noticed him lately, Mr. Pauling?”

  Jeremy said, “Well …”

  After a while they gave up waiting for the rest of his answer.

  Nowadays his collages filled him with impatience. He became conscious of the way his eyes tightened and ached when he looked at them too long. He started wishing for more texture, things standing out for themselves. He had an urge to make something solid. Not a sculpture, exactly. He shied away from anything that loomed so. But maybe if he stacked his scraps, let them rise in layers until they formed a standing shape. He pictured irregular cones, their edges ridged like stone formations on canyon floors. He imagined the zipping sound a fingernail would make running down their sides. But when he tried stacking his scraps they turned into pads, mounded and sloping. He took them away again. He went to stand by the window, but his impatience grew and extended even to his physical position: his moon face gazing out from behind the tiny clouded panes, his hands limp by his sides, fingers curled, his feet so still and purposeless, pointing nowhere in particular.

  How did people set about courtships? All he had to go on were those novels. When he thought of courting Mary Tell he imagined taking her for a drive in a shiny black carriage. Or dancing across a polished ballroom—and he didn’t even know which arm went around his partner’s waist. Yet it seemed as if some edginess were pushing him forward, compelling him to take steps he would never ordinarily think of. He pictured a high cliff he was running toward with his arms outflung, longing for the fall, not even braced to defend himself against the moment of impact. Then maybe the edginess would leave him, and he could relax again.

  He returned to the collage. He slid colors ceaselessly across the paper, like a man consulting a Ouija board. Imaginary voices murmured in his ear. Scraps of conversation floated past. He was used to that when he was working. Some phrases had recurred for most of his life, although they had no significance for him. “At least he is a gentle man,” one voice was sure
to say. He had no idea why. Of course he was a gentle man. Yet the voice had kept insisting, year after year. Now that he was trying to concentrate, pushing away the thought of courting Mary Tell in an opera box, he absently spoke the words in a whisper. “At least he is a—” Then he caught himself and straightened his shoulders. Other voices crowded in. “If in any case and notwithstanding the present circumstances—” “I don’t know how to, don’t know how to, don’t know how to—” “If in any case—”

  Mary Tell sat beside him smelling of handmade lace and fine soap, lifting her mother-of-pearl opera glasses, but her dress was out of Jane Austen’s time and the opera she was watching had not been shown for a century.

  Monday morning Jeremy got up early, dressed very carefully, and went to Mr. and Mrs. Dowd’s grocery store, where he bought a pound of chocolates. They were left over from Valentine’s Day—a heart-shaped box, a little dusty, but Mrs. Dowd wiped it off for him with a dishrag. “Somebody’s found himself a sweetheart,” she said. Jeremy was still knotted up from the ordeal of making a purchase, and he only gave a flicker of a smile and kept his eyes lowered. He returned home by way of the alley, so that he arrived in his backyard. There wild chicory flowers were waving among a tangle of sooty weeds, and he squatted and began gathering a bouquet. This was something he had thought out the night before. He had rehearsed it so thoroughly that now it seemed he was picking each flower for the second time. In a shady spot by the steps he found glossy leaves that he inserted between the chicory, making a pattern of blue and green. Then he rose, hugging the candy box to his chest, and went into the house. Through the kitchen, through the dining room, straight to Mary Tell’s bedroom, where he instantly knocked. If he gave himself time to think, he would fail. He would run away, scattering flowers and chocolates behind him.

  When she opened the door she was wearing a bathrobe and she carried a hairbrush. He noticed that the hairbrush was a wooden one with natural bristles, which gave him a sense of satisfaction. How fitting it was! He could have said from the beginning that she would never be the type to use a nylon hairbrush. But this thought was chosen at random, to take his mind off his embarrassment. He had expected to find her dressed. He had chosen the day and the hour so carefully, knowing that she would be in now and the other boarders out or upstairs; and here she stood in her bathrobe—a pink one, seersucker. Though at least her hair was up. He hadn’t wakened her. The brush was apparently meant for Darcy, who sat crosslegged on the bed in a pair of striped pajamas. “Hi, Mr. Pauling!” she called out. Jeremy couldn’t manage a smile. “These are for, I brought these for the room,” he said. He thrust the bouquet under Mary Tell’s chin. It was terrible to see how his hands were shaking; all the flowers nodded and whispered. “I found them by the trashcans.”

  “Oh! Thank you,” she said. She looked at them a moment and then took them. Too late, he thought of the vase. Last night he had decided on his mother’s pewter pitcher from the corner cupboard in the dining room, but this morning it had slipped his mind. “Wait,” he said, “I’ll get a—” but she said, “Don’t bother, I’m sure we have something here. My, what a beautiful shade of blue.”

  They’re your blue, Mary-blue, he wanted to tell her. The blue from a madonna’s robe. He had thought of that last night, but he had known all along that he would never dare to say it. Instead he looked over at Darcy, whose eyes—more chicory flowers—surveyed him steadily. “How come you brought them to us?” she asked.

  “Why, just, I thought—”

  “Never mind, Mr. Pauling,” said Mary Tell. “I know why you’re here.”

  Jeremy stood very still, breathing raggedly.

  “You just have to understand,” she said. “Financially, things are a little difficult right now. Very soon I should be able to pay you, but—”

  “Pay me?” he said. Did she think she had to buy the flowers?

  “Pay you your money. I know that Saturday has come and gone but you see, with Darcy not in school yet I have to find work I can do at home. Till then I was hoping you wouldn’t care if the rent was a little—”

  “The rent, oh,” Jeremy said. “Oh, that’s all right.”

  “It is?”

  “Why, of course.”

  He kept his eyes on the flowers. It was important to see them safely into the water. And then what? Was he supposed to leave? Yes, almost certainly, in view of the fact that she was wearing a bathrobe. Yet that would make the visit so short, and he wanted to be sure he did everything he was supposed to. He raised his eyes to hers, hoping for a clue. The brilliance of her smile took him by surprise. “Mr. Pauling, I just don’t know how to thank you,” she said.

  “Oh, why—”

  “You’ve really been very kind.”

  “Well, but I believe they should be put in water,” he said.

  Then she looked down at the flowers and gave a little laugh, and he laughed too. He had not expected that things would go so well the very first time. He watched her fetch a glass of stale water from the nightstand and set the bouquet in without disarranging a single flower, without upsetting his design. When she was finished she turned and smiled at him, apparently waiting for something. He drew in a deep breath. “Now I wish,” he said, “that you would call me Jeremy.”

  “Oh!” she said. “Well, all right.”

  He shifted his weight to the other foot.

  “And you can call me Mary,” she said after a minute.

  “You can call me Darcy,” Darcy said from the bed.

  That gave them something new to laugh about, only he laughed hardest and had trouble stopping. Mary by then had returned to her smile. It became a little strained and started fading at the corners, and from that he understood that it must be time for him to go. He was glad that he had managed to catch the signal. He held out his hand and said, “Well, goodbye for now, Mrs.—Mary,” and she said, “Goodbye, Jeremy,” Her hand was harder than his, and surprisingly broad across the knuckles. While he was still holding it he said, “Um, may I come back sometime?”—the final hurdle of the visit. “Well, of course,” she said, and smiled again as she closed the door.

  Although he had not had breakfast yet he returned to his studio, because it would have been awkward to run into her again in the kitchen. He went up the stairs on the balls of his feet, feeling weightless with relief. Not even the discovery that he still carried the chocolates—a warped cardboard heart plastered to his chest—could spoil his day. He only blushed, and then smiled too widely and sat down on his bed. He could always take them to her on another visit, couldn’t he? There were going to be lots of other visits. But while he was planning them he absently opened the box, and he took first one chocolate and then another and then a whole handful. They had begun to melt, and they stuck to the paper doily that covered them and left imprints on his palm, but they tasted wonderful and the sweetness seeped into every corner of him and soothed his stretched, strained nerves.

  He knew how these things worked. First you set up the courtship; he had just done that. Then there were certain requirements to be met—holding hands, a kiss—before he could propose. On television there were a lot of frills as well, people running through meadows together and pretending to be children at zoos and fairs and amusement parks, but he knew better than to try for anything like that. He wasn’t the type. She wasn’t the type. And after all, he had done very well so far, hadn’t he? He had completed the first step without any problems, and now he felt more confident about what was left.

  Only it turned out not to be so easy. For the next morning, when he had made a pot of percolated coffee and knocked at her room, she opened the door only halfway and it seemed as if some veil fell immediately across her face. “Yes?” she said.

  Today she was dressed. (He had deliberately waited fifteen minutes later than yesterday.) Even Darcy was dressed. Then why did she seem so unwelcoming? “I just made some coffee I wondered if you’d like some,” he said all in a rush.

  “No, thank you, I don’t drin
k coffee.”

  That possibility had not occurred to him. “Tea, then?” he said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well, maybe you’d just like to have a glass of milk with me.”

  “I don’t think so. I have a lot to do today.”

  He couldn’t leave. He had promised himself he would see this through. “Please,” he said, “I don’t understand. Have I done something to offend you?”

  Mary sighed and looked over her shoulder at Darcy, who was peacefully stacking dominoes on the rug. Then she stepped out of her room and shut the door behind her. She said, “Come into the parlor a minute, Mr. Pauling.”

  Yesterday she had called him Jeremy. He felt like someone deaf or blind, prevented by some handicap from picking up clues that were no doubt clear to everybody else. “Is it something I’ve said?” he asked, stumbling after her. “You see, I just have no inkling …”