The hero was winged by a bullet. He winced and dropped his gun. “Oh, the poor man,” said Mrs. Jarrett, serenely continuing her motions in the dark. Miss Vinton sighed. Mary Tell returned, flowing gracefully into the room, pausing to listen for her child before she sat down. Jeremy raised his head. He looked up at her and blinked, stunned by a flash that came from nowhere to fix her image on his eyes.
Here is Mary Tell, with the perfect oval of her face expressionless and her back beautifully straight, her smooth hands clasped in her lap. She knows how to sit without moving a muscle; she never fidgets. Her mouth is a wide curve and her eyes are very long and brown and level. Tears run down her face in silvery lines. While Jeremy watches, her cheeks grow wet and shiny, but she continues to stare directly at the television and after a minute, when his private flash has faded, Jeremy decides that he has imagined it all and he goes back to studying his knees.
3. Spring and Summer, 1961: Mary
You would think that once he brought me here he would feel responsible in some way. I try not to ask too much of him but having me come to Baltimore was his idea, after all, and for every one of my objections he had some reasonable answer. “But this is just — I’m a homebody,” I told him. “This is just not like me.” And he said, “Do you always do things exactly in character?” Oh, he knew what would win me. He knew to reach down and pat my daughter’s head and say, “Does she, Darcy?” so that Darcy would smile up at him, all trust and confidence. So one day we slid into his red convertible and rode off to Baltimore, with Darcy nestling between us and John’s arm lying across the back of the seat keeping a constant contact with my shoulder. We talked non-stop, making plans. His divorce was already in progress and he said mine would be no trouble at all; Guy could sue me for desertion. We talked about where we would live, what kind of life we would have, how many children. Our words tumbled out and stepped on each other’s heels, we had so much to get said. I never guessed that this would be the last time he would give me such a block out of his day.
Now I hardly see him. Darcy and I are staying in a shabby boarding house, the only place we could find that would take children. We have a downstairs room. I know every crack and cranny of that room by now, the stains on the wallpaper and the old-lady smell and the roses worn to strings on the carpet. I have spent whole afternoons staring at a ripple in the window glass, waiting for Darcy to wake from her nap. I have polished the furniture until it seems likely to melt away — not because I am such a good housekeeper, I never was that, but because there is nothing else to do. We sit for hours on the edge of the bed, neatly dressed, careful to keep our voices down, like guests who have risen too early. I am often irritable, and I cry a lot for no good reason. When Darcy gets whiny or boisterous I snap at her. I never used to do that. The most I ever did was shout, “Hey, quit that!” but here there is such a dead feeling, we are so much on our best behavior, that I scold her in a low hissing voice that no one else will hear and I threaten her between my teeth. Once I gave her a slap, something so unlike me that I wondered right away if I were losing my mind. She had been fiddling with the bureau knobs and one came off in her hand. I said, “Darcy Tell, if you don’t stop that fidgeting I am going to scream. Come over here and sit down.” She said, “I don’t want to sit down, I want to go out. When is John going to come take us out? He said he would.” Her voice was high and cracked; it tore at my nerves. I can’t describe it. I hauled off and slapped her, and for a minute she stared at me with her mouth open. Then she started bellowing. I shook her by the shoulders and said, “Stop that. Stop it this instant.” So she stopped, but she was trembling all over and I was too. I live in fear that she will remember that day forever. At night I go over and over it in my mind. Oh, let Darcy forget all this, please. Let this whole entire stage of her life just fade away and be forgotten, because it is just a stage, isn’t it? Things are going to get better, aren’t they?
We stay in the house so much because I am waiting for the telephone. I seem to be back in my teens, a period I thought I would never have to endure again: my life is spent hoping for things that only someone else can bring about. Some days he calls and says, “I can get away tonight. Be ready at seven.” Then I float through the morning singing, I take Darcy out for walks and smile at her a lot although I often fail to hear what she is saying, and far too early in the afternoon I bathe and figure out what dress to wear. I have only three: the one I came away in and two that John bought me after we arrived. We are going to buy more, but for now I am nearly without belongings — a peculiar feeling. Occasionally I find myself going through drawers—“Now, where is that gold barrette I used to wear? Where is my navy cardigan?”—and then I realize that I don’t have them. They are left behind. I am free.
On the nights we go out I put Darcy to bed early and ask Mrs. Jarrett to keep an eye on her. Then John and I go to dinner someplace and talk, although half my mind, of course, is always back with Darcy. That is the worst of this new life. The people I love are scattered, there is no way of gathering them snugly together where I can keep watch over them. When Darcy and I are alone I think about John; with John, I think about Darcy. I worry continually about my friends, my neighbors, my mother-in-law. Do they all hate me now? I wonder if Guy is very angry, and how he has chosen to explain the situation. “Here,” John says. He leans across the table to pass a hand before my eyes. “Are you with me?” “Of course,” I say. I smile at him.
We have no place where we can be alone. His wife left him before we even knew each other, but he is afraid that if he takes me to his house the neighbors will see and that will foul up the divorce proceedings. Sometimes I say, “Let them see. How could a divorce get fouled up any more than it already is?” But I know he’s right. And he can’t afford a house for us, and he knows too many people for a hotel room to be safe. He takes me to dark parking places in his convertible — another thing I thought I would never go through again. Then being out of the reach of a telephone makes me edgy and before too long I always say, “Oh, please let’s go back. I don’t know what Darcy will think if she wakes up and finds me gone.” So he starts the car in a bad temper and drives me home, leaves me at the door, and I find Darcy peacefully asleep after all and I regret coming in so soon and I stand at the window a long time looking out at the dark through the ripple in the pane.
Then sometimes he doesn’t call at all, not all day, or he does call and says he will not be able to make it. He has a business crisis, or a trip coming up, or his wife is stopping by for some belongings. I have never seen his wife. I believe that she must be very beautiful, because she works as a model for one of the department stores. When they were first married, John says, she was a homey type. She made all the curtains and cooked and kept house, but then she got restless. She took one of those courses you see advertised in the newspaper and became a model, and after that she was never home at all any more and she got a new set of friends and even her personality seemed to change. “Brittle, sort of,” he told me once. “Not at all like the person I married. I wanted a wifely wife, someone warm and loving that smells like cinnamon.” Which made me feel happy, because he always says I smell like cinnamon. But sometimes in low moods I stare at myself in the mirror, I see how enormously tall I am and how busty I have grown since the baby and how even if I lost weight, I would never have that chiseled look that models have. I haven’t the bones for it. And I think, Does John regret me? Does he wish I were Carol’s type? He did marry her, after all. I take down my hair and fold it under to see how it would look if I cut it. I stand sideways to the mirror and suck in my stomach. It is the days when I know I won’t see him that I go through all this. I have nothing else to do. I file my nails or sew on a button, during Darcy’s nap I open library books that I can’t pin my mind to or I leaf through magazines that I have already worn to tatters. When she wakes up, we go on long walks. I know this street now the way I know our room: every crumple in the sidewalk, every spindly tree, every turret and gable and leaded window of these endless dismal rowhouses. We take Mr. Somerset’s toast crusts and feed the pigeons. We go to the library, where Darcy dallies forever in the children’s section, choosing books and changing her mind and putting them away again. I never hurry her. What use is time now? We have so much of it. When she has decided on her books we walk very slowly home and then I read them to her, over and over, until my mouth is dry and my throat aches from imitating squeaky mice and growly bears. Darcy nestles under my arm, following the pictures with her great blue eyes. She has started sucking her thumb again. Four and a half is too old for that, I tell her, but I never really try to stop her. I figure she might as well take her comfort from wherever she can.