Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings Read online

  Now, she thought, putting her shoulder up to hide the children. Now what are we going to do? There was nothing to do, turning to see if the children were still watching, nothing to do but what she was going to do anyway. “Might as well go ahead, then,” she said aloud, and stood up quickly, realizing when she was standing that the children were watching and her skirt was swinging mud against her stockings. “Nothing to do,” she said as loud as she dared, and started down the hill, hurrying, as she felt the children moving down slowly to inspect the rock where she had been sitting, possibly shouting something unkind after her.

  She knew how to go, and where, but she minded going with her hair uncombed and mud on her clothes. “They’ll have to get used to it,” she said, and felt her footsteps going slower on the pavement. There was no one around she knew; she might be going to call on someone in the city, or to the American consul in a strange country. The houses passed by her quickly; they registered faintly against her mind, trying to delay her. She had been inside many of these houses in three years; as she passed them, her mind swiftly set up a partial interior for each: one had heavy walnut furniture and antiques in a dark room; another was just a hall, with a copy of Life on a table; one was a room cleared for a fraternity dance, a punchbowl set on a bench against large windows, and lights around the walls.

  On the corner was the house she was going to, smaller than the others, but her mind refused this one, stopping obstinately with a picture of the front door set back in its narrow white frame, solidly closed around the familiar rooms within. “It will all be different now,” she said, and hesitated at the foot of the path across the lawn. No one had seen her; she could walk right on past, except then where would she go? Not back to the hill, and she felt the five children following her, so vividly that she turned and looked behind her, but there was nothing but the row of houses she had been in.

  I’ll look like a fool now unless I do, she thought, and walked up to the door, stopping to admire the front of the house as though she had never seen it before, had not come here many times in wonderful fear and excitement. In the small panes of glass on either side of the door she saw halves of herself; her untidy hair clouded her glimpse of the hall within, but the oak umbrella stand was still there. (“It makes me look academic,” he had told her once; they were reading Keats.) I’ll say I’ve been out walking, she thought, and rang the bell.

  He opened the door himself and she said “Hello, Mr. Harrison,” very timidly, not knowing if he would feel right about letting her in; realizing, suddenly, that she had come alone.

  He was pleased to see her, he said, happy she had come; they had returned only a week ago, he said, had she come only today? Ashamed to say that she was here to see them her first day back, she let him lead her into the living room, too quickly for her to be prepared to meet his wife again.

  Barbara was just getting up from the couch; she was wearing an unfamiliar blue dress. (Back in the dormitory, only last year, she had worn a tweed skirt and a sweater; she used to have a black dinner dress with a full net skirt.) “Gloria,” she said, “I’m so glad you came.” They had been reading; his book was open on the arm of his chair, and Barbara was putting her magazine down on the table. “You’ve no idea how happy I am to see you,” Barbara said. She looked at her husband, and then said, “Sit down, won’t you, Gloria?”

  For a minute it was easy to say, “I wanted to be the first to congratulate you. And welcome you back,” and then he was pushing a chair up to her and she sat down, suddenly, and there was a long silence.

  Barbara said, “I was hoping you’d come right away. I’ve been so eager to see all of you. But Stephen said…” And she stopped.

  “I was eager to come,” Gloria said. I sat on that hill wondering if I ought to, her mind went on.

  “Can’t we offer our guest some tea?” he said abruptly. “I’d like to have tea.”

  “Of course,” Barbara said, and stood up. “I’ll get it right away.”

  Gloria was beginning, slowly, to realize that the house was still the same: There was a bowl of asters on the mantel now, but the bookshelves still stood firmly on either side; the chairs were still wearing green-and-white chintz, although Barbara’s black leather pocketbook now lay on one; the windows still looked over the lawn to the college street. “It’s so nice to be here again,” she said, leaning back.

  “I’m always glad to get back,” he said. “Summers are fine for a week or two. Always happy to get away from enthusiastic young students.” They both laughed. “But I’m glad to be back,” he said. “I was out west all summer wishing I were sitting here in my own house.”

  “I thought Barbara would have this whole room changed around by now,” Gloria said.

  “She always did like it this way.” He seemed surprised. “I don’t know why it should be different.”

  “I was writing you a letter this summer. Just before Barbara’s letter came, with the news. Then I didn’t know whether I ought to write you or not, so I kept the letter.”

  “I’d like to see it,” he said. “What was it about? You could have sent it.”

  “I finished my long poem,” she said, watching him to see if he remembered. “I wrote asking if I could send it to you, or if you’d rather have me wait and show it to you this fall. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I kept the letter.”

  “Barbara wrote you?” he said. “She didn’t tell me.”

  “She wrote all of us,” Gloria said. “We were all very close friends last year in the sorority, and she thought we’d like to know.”

  “She should have told me,” he said. “So you finished the poem; when will I see it?”

  Barbara was coming into the room managing a large tray awkwardly through the doorway. Gloria lifted the magazine and an ashtray from the coffee table and stood holding them while Barbara put the tray down. “I thought you were going to drop it,” she said.

  Barbara, sliding onto the couch behind the table, nodded and said, “I thought I was too.” She began to pour the tea, eagerly, and as though she were very conscious of being a hostess. “Sugar?” she said, looking up at Gloria.

  “Please,” Gloria said, and Barbara smiled.

  “I remember, of course,” Barbara said. “Stephen?”

  Gloria balanced her teacup carefully; it’s important to Barbara now, she thought, remembering how they would put full cups on the floor of their room between books and ink bottles and never think about it, and she stirred her tea cautiously.

  “In Arizona,” Barbara began gracefully, “we used to have cocktails every day on the balcony of our room, because it was the only cool place we could find. Stephen, wasn’t that fun?”

  “Lemon?” he said suddenly.

  “How did you like Arizona?” Gloria asked. “Did you learn to ride a horse? Did she, Mr. Harrison?”

  “She learned to ride quite well,” he said. “Lemon, Barbara?”

  “I thought I brought some,” Barbara murmured, leaning forward to look over the tray. “I knew you wanted it, Stephen,” she said.

  He hesitated and then said, “Never mind.”

  “You got a beautiful tan,” Gloria said to Barbara. They both looked at him, pale against his dark hair, quiet, never dared by the sun. “Stephen never tans,” Barbara said gaily.

  “I was on the beach all summer,” Gloria said, “and lost it all after a couple of weeks in New York.”

  Barbara’s hand moved nervously from the teapot handle to the spoon in her saucer, then up to her hair, smoothing it back over her ears. “We were in New York for a few days.”

  He put his cup delicately on the table, and the small sound encouraged Gloria to put her cup down too, next to his. “I ought to be getting back. I haven’t even unpacked.” I came here right away, she thought, before I opened my suitcase.

  “Did you do any writing at all this summer?” Barbara asked. “We thought of you so often.”

  She looked at her husband expectantly, and he said, “We haven’t finished un
packing even after a week. Barbara shipped back boxes of junk from the west.”

  “Souvenirs,” Barbara said. “Everything they sell tourists.”

  Gloria stood up, feeling again the mud on her skirt, her hair still wild from the wind outside. “I went up and sat on the hill past the cemetery,” she said to Barbara. “It was cold and wet and horrible and a pack of kids chased me away.”

  “You’ll come to see me, won’t you?” Barbara said. “I want all of you to come.”

  She rose and followed Gloria into the hall, and stood waiting with her husband while Gloria hesitated, her hand on the door latch. “I’d love to come, if I may,” Gloria said. They looked incredibly married, she thought, standing there next to each other. “I’ll see you in class Monday, Mr. Harrison?”

  “Try to get to my office Monday afternoon,” he said, “and bring my letter. I worry,” he went on, “that Barbara is already afraid of being bored living as a faculty wife, out of touch with her old friends.”

  “Will you come see me?” Barbara asked urgently.

  “Of course,” Gloria said, smiling. “We all want to—Mrs. Harrison,” and realized as she said it how dreadful it sounded.

  “You were so nice to come,” Barbara said.

  Gloria felt the door close behind her; it doesn’t matter anymore how I look, she thought, I can go unpack now. She thought of the children on the hill perhaps still waiting, expecting her back, and it pleased her to disappoint them by turning down the street toward the campus.

  It doesn’t make any difference at all, she thought, as she walked quickly away from a house that was a warm living room full of books, past a house that was a hallway and a copy of Life on a table; he hated having her ask about my writing.

  The Lie

  Joyce Duncan’s decision to go back was crystallized by the receipt of a letter from her mother, saying, in part, “Dear, your last letter sounded so lonely and sad; remember they say that whenever a woman feels low she can always cheer herself up by buying a new hat or a new dress, or both, so am enclosing a small check. Buy yourself something silly.” The check was just small enough not to matter enormously against the rent or the phone bill, and just large enough to make the trip a reality instead of the dim temptation it had been for so long.

  “Jed,” she said, “I think I will go back. Just for a day or so.”

  “It’s your money,” he said, not even lifting his head to speak to her.

  Perhaps if I can explain somehow, she thought, relate it to something he understands; perhaps then when I come back there might be a way we can start to talk to each other, perhaps even start over…“You see,” she said inadequately, “everything is so wrong, somehow. Maybe if I went back to where I started from, just for a while…”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Maybe I’d be happier if I tried it,” Joyce said. “You see,” she went on, not wanting to explain but hoping that somehow it might make him turn at last and look at her, “there’s a sort of mix-up that happened a long time ago that I’d like to straighten out. A…a lie.”

  “I didn’t know one lie more or less mattered to you,” he said, and turned a page of his book.

  She knew by now that if she let the tears come into her eyes or her voice, Jed would only take his book and go into the bedroom to read. Helplessly she said, “I can’t help feeling that if I go back and straighten things up there, maybe things here will be better. Maybe I’ve been off on a wrong track all these years just because of that one thing. Maybe when I come back, maybe you and I can…”

  He stood up, his finger between the pages of his book. “Look,” he said tiredly, “maybe if you go back to that town, wherever it is, and un-lie yourself, you’ll cancel out every lie you’ve told since. You might even cancel out all the unkind things you’ve done since. But I doubt it.”

  “If you’d try to understand—” she began, but he closed the bedroom door so gently that he might not have heard her. I’ll leave early in the morning, she thought; I’ll leave before he’s up and he can make his own stupid breakfast, and when I come back…

  —

  In the car the next morning, headed finally back exactly the way she had come here nearly ten years before, she found herself almost chanting, in a rhythm made up partly of the sound of the car wheels on the pavement, and partly the pulse of her own excitement: I’m going back, I’m going back. I should have done it much much sooner, she thought suddenly; things wouldn’t have been as bad as this if I’d gone back before. Once it’s done, she realized with triumph, I won’t ever need to go back again. She tried to imagine what Jean Simpson’s face was like, and found she thought instead about the pictures on the wall of the office; she thought she could remember Jean Simpson’s voice, but all she could hear when she tried to think about it was her own voice, level and positive, saying “I saw her, it was Jean Simpson. I recognized her.”

  I will tell her, she thought, recognizing that although she was driving on a wide and nearly empty highway she was going very slowly; I will tell her that I am more sorry than I can say, that I was wrong, that I realize now the injustice I did her. I could offer a public apology, she thought, and then: No, why submit her to that?

  Milltown. Seventeen miles to Prospect, and it was barely ten-thirty. Perhaps Jean Simpson had moved away? Her family could not have afforded to leave Prospect; the only way a girl like that could get out of town was to move into a worse environment, and Jean had never been—this thought was oddly reassuring—a particularly good girl, not at all the sort of person one might be concerned about for the past ten years. She was not, actually, worth a second thought, but nevertheless Joyce Duncan, scrupulously honest, was coming back after all this time to right an old wrong.

  I’m being ridiculous about this, she thought, driving more slowly still past Milltown and East Milltown; I’m thinking in terms of a major disaster and it was only a trifle. Perhaps I ought to take her something, some small thing to show I hold no grudge, a pretty scarf, perhaps, or a box of candy? She could hardly expect me to give her money, but perhaps a couple of pairs of stockings? Better let it wait until I’ve seen her, she told herself; she may be angry still and not want anything from me.

  She had thought she would not remember this town after ten years, but she turned automatically onto the street that led to her old house without recognizing anything strange about her memory of it. When she stopped the car, she found it hard to look at the old house and imagine that it could have changed. “So that’s it,” she said, half aloud. “Still here, after all.”

  Until she stepped out of her car it was difficult to imagine herself as a stranger, trying to go back, but the minute she put her foot down onto the familiar sidewalk in front of her old house it was suddenly so surprising, so odd a combination of ten years gone and yet still present in her mind, that she had to turn and rest her hand upon the side of the car to steady herself. Joyce Richards, she thought, little Joyce Richards, not Mrs. Jed Duncan at all.

  She felt wary of going too close to her old house, although she had been anxious to see it again; perhaps if she came within its reach it would capture her again, and never let her go this time. Or perhaps it was only because she was embarrassed about being seen by people looking out their windows and telling one another, “There’s Joyce Richards come back. Thought she was doing so well in the city?” The sight of the house had reminded her of Mrs. Random, so she turned on the sidewalk and started up the path to the house next door. Once on the overgrown little path with Mrs. Random’s house ahead of her, she realized at last that this was indescribably real, and it seemed to her for a moment that perhaps all this time she had been living in unreality, and waiting to awaken here again, where things were solid and the colors of the sky and the flowers and even the path were actual, real, unfaded. The door of the house was blue, and she thought that for years she had not known how blue that color could truly be.

  Going up the path, she almost tasted the richness of color and form, an
d stopped—which she could never remember having done before—to look at, and finally touch, a rose, which bent slightly toward her and gave back to her touch a strong and soft pressure. She bent to see if it smelled as she remembered roses ought to smell, and it was heavy, rich, and lovely. Even the white doorstep amazed her eyes, and the knocker—had she ever seen another one like it?—was possessed of an actual weight of its own, so that it fell back from her hands and crashed loudly in the still morning.

  Waiting on the shiny doorstep—was there city dirt on her shoes to soil its whiteness?—she listened to the odd, echoing house inside, and thought that within the city there was never any sense, even though people lived so close together, of that intimate knowledge of walls and floors and ceilings, and she remembered the distant sharp sound of voices in another room when she was a child and supposedly asleep in bed. She heard a footstep inside and then the door opened.

  “Hello,” she said, wondering at the sound of her own voice, “it’s Mrs. Random, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” The eyes were not precisely suspicious; wary, rather, as of one who had dealt with personable salesladies and been taken in by supposed bargains.

  “I’m Joyce Duncan. I used to be Joyce Richards.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t you remember me?”

  “No.”

  “I used to live next door.”

  The information was taken in and discarded. “Did you?”

  “I used to play in your yard.” Desperately, she was spending information she had meant to use sparingly, dwelling on each remembered moment, hoping Mrs. Random might help her reconstruct her lost childhood. “Don’t you remember?”

  “So many people.” Mrs. Random waved vaguely at the house next door. “Can’t remember everyone, you know.”

  “Well, I remember you.” She looked again at the clean housedress, pink imprinted with thousands of small flower sprigs, and thought that in that long-dead time Mrs. Random had worn either this, or one astonishingly like it, and that the same wisp of white hair had been lying against her cheek for all these years; had Mrs. Random, she wondered, then been this vague-eyed creature, hiding nervously behind her own door? “When my mother was sick you brought us a little roast chicken, and you came over when my father died,” she said, unwillingly. She was forced into this conversational coin; one had always collected news of deaths and miscarriages and broken legs for Mrs. Random’s pleasure. She thought deeply. “I had pneumonia,” she added.