Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings Page 3

  The bus was going swiftly along between high dark buildings. Mr. Beresford, looking out the window, decided that they were in a factory district, remembered that they had been going east, and decided to wait until they got to one of the lighted, busy sections before he tried to get off. Peering off into the growing darkness, Mr. Beresford noticed an odd thing. There had been someone standing on the corner beside a sign saying BUS STOP and the bus had not stopped, even though the dim figure waved its arms. Surprised, Mr. Beresford glanced up at the street sign, noticing that it said E. 31 ST. at the same moment he reached for the cord to signal the driver that he wanted to get off. As he stood up and went down the aisle, the foreign-looking man rose also and went to the door beside the driver. “Getting off,” the foreign man said, and the bus slowed. Mr. Beresford pressed forward, and somehow the old lady’s shopping bag got in his way and spilled, sending small items, a set of blocks, a package of paper clips, spilling in all directions.

  “Sorry,” Mr. Beresford said desperately as the bus doors opened. He began to move forward again, and the old lady caught his arm and said, “Don’t bother if you’re in a hurry. I can get them, dear.” Mr. Beresford tried to shake her off, and she said, “If this is your stop, don’t worry. It’s perfectly all right.”

  A coil of pink ribbon was caught around Mr. Beresford’s shoe; the old lady said, “It was clumsy of me, leaving my bag right in the aisle.”

  As Mr. Beresford broke away from her, the doors closed and the bus started. Resigned, Mr. Beresford got down on one knee in the swaying bus and began to pick up paper clips, blocks, a box of letter paper that had opened and spilled sheets and envelopes all over the floor. “I’m so sorry,” the old lady said sweetly. “It was all my fault, too.”

  Over his shoulder, Mr. Beresford saw the man in the light hat sitting comfortably. He was smoking, and his head was thrown back and his eyes were shut. Mr. Beresford gathered together the old lady’s possessions as well as he could, then made his way forward to stand by the driver. “Getting off,” Mr. Beresford said.

  “Can’t stop in the middle of the block,” the driver said, not turning his head.

  “The next stop, then,” Mr. Beresford said.

  The bus moved rapidly on. Mr. Beresford, bending down to see the streets out the front window, saw a sign saying BUS STOP.

  “Here,” he said.

  “What?” the driver said, going past.

  “Listen,” Mr. Beresford said. “I want to get off.”

  “It’s okay with me,” the driver said. “Next stop.”

  “You just passed one,” Mr. Beresford said.

  “No one waiting there,” the driver said. “Anyway, you didn’t tell me in time.” Mr. Beresford waited. After a minute he saw another bus stop and said, “Okay.”

  The bus did not stop, but went past the sign without slowing down.

  “Report me,” the driver said.

  “Listen, now,” Mr. Beresford said, and the driver turned one eye up at him; he seemed to be amused.

  “Report me,” the driver said. “My number’s right here on this card.”

  “If you don’t stop at the next stop,” Mr. Beresford said, “I shall smash the glass in the door and shout for help.”

  “What with?” the driver said. “That box of candy?”

  “How do you know it’s—” Mr. Beresford said before he realized that if he got into a conversation he would miss the next bus stop. It had not occurred to him that he could get off anywhere except at a bus stop; he saw lights ahead, and at the same time the bus slowed down and Mr. Beresford, looking quickly back, saw the man in the light hat stretch and get up.

  The bus pulled to a stop in front of a bus sign; there was a group of stores.

  “OKAY,” the bus driver said to Mr. Beresford, “you were so anxious to get off.” The man in the light hat got off at the rear door. Mr. Beresford, standing by the open front door, hesitated and said, “I guess I’ll stay on for a while.”

  “Last stop,” the bus driver said. “Everybody off.” He looked sardonically up at Mr. Beresford. “Report me if you want to,” he said. “My number’s right on that card there.”

  Mr. Beresford got off and went directly up to the man in the light hat, standing on the sidewalk. “This is perfectly ridiculous,” he said emphatically. “I don’t understand any of it, and I want you to know that the first policeman I see—”

  He stopped when he realized that the man in the light hat was looking not at him but, bored and fixedly, over his shoulder. Mr. Beresford turned and saw a policeman standing on the corner.

  “Just you wait,” he said to the man in the light hat, and started for the policeman. Halfway to the policeman he began to wonder again: What did he have to report? A bus driver who would not stop when directed to, a clerk in a souvenir shop who cornered customers, a mysterious man in a light hat—and why? Mr. Beresford realized that there was nothing he could tell the policeman; he looked over his shoulder and saw the man in the light hat watching him, then Mr. Beresford bolted suddenly down a subway entrance. He had a nickel in his hand by the time he reached the bottom of the steps, and he went right through the turnstile; to the left was downtown, and he ran that way.

  He was figuring as he ran: He’ll think if I’m very stupid I’d head downtown, if I’m smarter than that I’d go uptown, if I’m really smart I’d go downtown. Does he think I’m middling smart or very smart?

  The man in the light hat reached the downtown platform only a few seconds after Mr. Beresford and sauntered down the platform, his hands in his pockets. Mr. Beresford sat down on the bench listlessly. It’s no good, he thought, no good at all; he knows just how smart I am.

  The train came blasting into the station; Mr. Beresford ran into one car and saw the light hat disappear into the next car. Just as the doors were closing, Mr. Beresford dived, caught the door, and would have been out except for a girl who seized his arm and shouted, “Harry! Where in God’s name are you going?”

  The door was held halfway open by Mr. Beresford’s body, his arm left inside with the girl, who seemed to be holding it with all her strength. “Isn’t this a fine thing,” she said to the people in the car. “He sure doesn’t want to see his old friends.”

  A few people laughed; most of them were watching.

  “Hang on to him, sister,” someone said.

  The girl laughed and tugged on Mr. Beresford’s arm. “He’s gonna get away,” she said laughingly to the people in the car, and a big man stepped up to her with a grin and said, “If you gotta have him that bad, we’ll bring him in for you.”

  Mr. Beresford felt the grasp on his arm turn suddenly into an irresistible force that drew him in through the doors, and they closed behind him. Everyone in the car was laughing at him by now, and the big man said, “That ain’t no way to treat a lady, chum.”

  Mr. Beresford looked around for the girl, but she had melted into the crowd somewhere and the train was moving. After a minute the people in the car stopped looking at him, and Mr. Beresford smoothed his coat and found that his box of candy was still intact.

  The subway train was going downtown. Mr. Beresford, who was now racking his brains for detective tricks, for mystery-story dodges, thought of one that seemed foolproof. He stayed docilely on the train, as it went downtown, and got a seat at Twenty-third Street. At Fourteenth he got off, the light hat following, and went up the stairs and into the street. As he had expected, the large department store ahead of him advertised OPEN TILL 9 TONIGHT, and the doors swung wide, back and forth, with people going constantly in and out. Mr. Beresford went in. The store bewildered him at first—counters stretching away in all directions, the lights much brighter than anywhere else, the voices clamoring. Mr. Beresford moved slowly along beside a counter; it was stockings first, thin and tan and black and gauzy, and then it was handbags, piles on sale, neat solitary ones in the cases, and then it was medical supplies, with huge almost-human figures wearing obscene trusses, standing right there on th
e counter, and people coming embarrassedly to buy. Mr. Beresford turned the corner and came to a counter of odds and ends. Scarves too cheap to be at the scarf counter, postcards, a bin marked ANY ITEM 25¢, dark glasses. Uncomfortably, Mr. Beresford bought a pair of dark glasses and put them on.

  He went out of the store at an entrance far away from the one he had used to come in; he could have chosen any of eight or nine entrances, but this seemed complicated enough. There was no sign of the light hat, no one tried to hinder Mr. Beresford as he stepped up to the taxi stand, and, although he debated taking the second or third car, he finally took the one in front and gave his home address.

  —

  He reached his apartment building without mishap, and stole cautiously out of the taxi and into the lobby. There was no light hat, no odd person watching for Mr. Beresford. In the elevator, alone, with no one to see which floor button he pressed, Mr. Beresford took a long breath and began to wonder if he had dreamed his wild trip home. He rang his apartment bell and waited; then his wife came to the door, and Mr. Beresford, suddenly tired out, went into his home.

  “You’re terribly late, darling,” his wife said affectionately, and then, “But what’s the matter?”

  He looked at her; she was wearing her blue dress, and that meant she knew it was her birthday and expected him to take her out; he handed her the box of candy limply and she took it, hardly noticing it in her anxiety over him. “What on earth has happened?” she asked. “Darling, come in here and sit down. You look terrible.”

  He let her lead him into the living room, into his own chair, where it was comfortable, and he lay back.

  “Is there something wrong?” she was asking anxiously, fussing over him, loosening his tie, smoothing his hair. “Are you sick? Were you in an accident? What has happened?”

  He realized that he seemed more tired than he really was, and was glorying in all this attention. He sighed deeply and said, “Nothing. Nothing wrong. Tell you in a minute.”

  “Wait,” she said. “I’ll get you a drink.”

  He put his head back against the soft chair as she went out. Never knew that door had a key, his mind registered dimly as he heard it turn. Then he was on his feet with his head against the door listening to her at the telephone in the hall.

  She dialed and waited. Then: “Listen,” she said, “listen, he came here after all. I’ve got him.”

  Still Life with Teapot and Students

  Come off it, kids, come off it, Louise Harlowe told herself just under her breath. She smiled graciously at her husband, Lionel’s, two best students, noticing with an edge of viciousness that they both held their teacups exactly right, and said lightly, “You’re going to have a pleasant summer, then?”

  Joan shrugged perfectly, and Debbi smiled back, as graciously as Louise had smiled, but with more conviction. “It will be about the same as the others, I guess,” Debbi said. “Sort of dull.”

  They’re both too well bred to tell me what they’ll be doing, Louise thought, and asked deliberately, “You’ll be together, of course?”

  “I suppose,” Joan said. She looked inquiringly at Debbi, and Debbi, who was the talkative one, said “We’re going to my family’s summer place, most of the time.”

  “You won’t be home, then?” Louise said to Joan, a remark first to one, then to the other; how perfectly they guided her.

  “Mom’s in Europe, of course,” Joan said. “I may go to my brother’s for a while.”

  Joan’s brother, Louise knew perfectly well, was the well-known painter. Her mother was the dress designer. Debbi’s father owned the meatpacking company that provided all the tinned meat Louise Harlowe bought at her grocery. Another of Lionel’s students was the daughter of the family that owned the newspaper Louise and Lionel read. Still another had a father who directed the movies Louise and Lionel saw when they could afford it. We must have been crazy to let Lionel take this job, Louise thought briefly, and smiled again at Debbi—was it Debbi’s turn?—and said, “Going to do any writing this summer?”

  Debbi grinned, her own grin and not the polite smile she reserved for tea parties with faculty wives. “I hope,” she said.

  It cleared the air a little; the question had been so patently ridiculous. Louise’s own picture of the summer Debbi and Joan would find so dull involved a montage of sailboats, country club dances, expensive evening gowns, and good scotch. What cleared the air was that Debbi and Joan knew she knew.

  “Okay,” Louise said. “You know I can’t offer you a drink. So you might as well drink tea.”

  “I’ll have some more then, if I may,” Joan said. No matter what happens, Louise thought, touching the teapot lightly with her hand to test the heat, no matter what happens, they can’t ask for more tea without the grace of those years of training, that subtle polish that comes from a lifetime of custom, in houses where nothing is finger-marked and nothing is chipped and the tea is always hot.

  “It’s not awfully warm,” she said to Joan, mocking herself for saying “warm” instead of “hot”; who do I think I am? she wondered—Mrs. Astor? My brother sells insurance in New Jersey.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Joan said. She accepted her cup and set it down on the table next to her; it doesn’t matter a damn, Louise thought, she just won’t drink it.

  “So?” Louise said, leaning back against the couch cushions.

  “So?” Debbi said. She and Joan looked at each other again, almost experimentally. Louise watched.

  “You still making passes at my husband?” Louise asked deliberately of Joan, and was gratified to see them both blush. “Well?” she said.

  “Look, Mrs. Harlowe,” Joan said with a mild little laugh. “You know perfectly well—”

  “I do indeed,” Louise said. She waited again, still watching. The girls were tense, but not as tense as she was; they showed it more because they were younger and unprepared, and all of their training had not taught them what to do when they were attacked, because none of their training had ever anticipated that they might be exposed for anything, anywhere, at any time.

  “Look,” Joan tried helplessly, again. “Mrs. Harlowe, there’s nothing between—”

  Debbi decided to attack in her turn. “I don’t think you have any right to say something like that to Joan, Mrs. Harlowe. After all—”

  Louise laughed. “Listen,” she said. “If I were someone like Ellen Thorndyke, Joan and I would be having a little heart-to-heart talk right now. Wouldn’t we?”

  Joan and Debbi both smiled reluctantly.

  “Not that that did much good,” Louise said, and then they all laughed aloud.

  “It didn’t, either,” Debbi said. “That girl Dusty was so mad after Mrs. Thorndyke told her to lay off that—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Exactly,” Louise said.

  “But, Mrs. Harlowe,” Joan said. “Really, Mr. Harlowe and I—”

  “Never mind,” Louise said, perhaps a little too quickly. “Anyway, I won’t be seeing either of you again, will I? I probably won’t be at commencement tomorrow, and after that…”

  “We won’t be doing any writing this summer,” Debbi said, with that same grin.

  “I just wanted you to know,” Louise said slowly, “that I’m glad you’re going, even if I like you.”

  “I know you are,” Joan said. There was a small silence, and then she went on. “I mean, I can see where you’d be glad to have—” She stopped, floundering.

  Louise laughed, her first genuine laugh since she had opened the door for them. “You won’t ever get out of that sentence,” she said to Joan.

  “Mrs. Harlowe,” Debbi began suddenly; Debbi had been thinking. “Can I ask you something? I mean, would you be offended?”

  “I don’t think so,” Louise said. Now it comes, she thought; now if I can’t carry it off, I’m through.

  Debbi searched for words, her alert, pretty face worried. “Why?” she asked. “Why don’t you and Mrs. Thorndyke and Mrs. Crown and all the others just ov
erlook it? I mean, the students all graduate and go away and there’s no more to it. I mean, it’s not anything serious, ever, is it?”

  Please God, Louise thought, in the split second she had before she answered. “No,” she said slowly, “it’s certainly never serious—at least not for the teacher. I know that Lionel has told me about you, Joan, without ever thinking I’d mind anything so harmless as his being obsessed over one of his students. I know that Ellen Thorndyke was concerned because she thought that the girl was getting seriously involved.” Louise remembered Ellen Thorndyke’s face and thought, I could kill all these girls. “And I suppose we all feel pretty much the same way. Even though many of us aren’t really much older than you are, we’ve all lived with these men for quite a while and we know a good deal more about them than you do, only seeing them occasionally.” Keep it light, she told herself; keep it faintly patronizing. “It’s very possible, you know, for a girl your age to get herself into serious trouble—with the college, with her family—”