“Yes, maybe pruned,” he said. He was so eager to agree, so glad we were only going to look at Mother’s rosebush. But I led him on, with my arm hooked through his. I could feel the lumpy weight of his body resisting me, hanging back, although both of us pretended it wasn’t happening. We reached the yard next door. “Who does this belong to?” I asked him.
“What?”
“Who lives here now?”
“It’s been partitioned up, I believe,” he said. He raised his other hand to free his arm from me. I let myself be pried loose, but as he turned back toward the house I took hold of him again. “It’s a shame to see these old houses go,” I told him. “Why, I remember when those two up ahead were owned by a single family. The Edwardses, remember them? They had so many children they needed two houses to hold them all. Catholic. And now look. They’ve been turned into apartments too, I’ll bet you anything. Haven’t they?”
“What? Oh, yes.”
We had reached the end of the block, where we stopped to wait for a traffic light. Jeremy’s teeth were chattering and I wished now that I had brought his coat. Yet it wasn’t that cold. And he did have his sweater, his limp gray sweater with that single button fastened. I reached over and buttoned the others. Jeremy backed away from me and said, “I really think I should be going home about now.”
“Oh, as long as we’ve got this far,” I said, “wouldn’t you like to come the rest of the way?”
I took tighter hold of him and led him across the street. The light was still red but there were no cars coming, and I didn’t want to delay too long. By now he was resisting more, though still moving forward. “You surely are not scared to come,” I said.
He didn’t answer. I looked over at him. “Not a big grown man like you,” I said, teasing him. Then he did smile, but just a brief shy unhappy smile directed at his feet. Well, poor soul. There was an enduring look about him. He was trudging along so uncomplainingly, with those little saddle oxfords of his squelching in the puddles. “It’s for you that I am doing this,” I told him. “It’s out of concern for you. You know that, don’t you?” I could feel my strength flowing from my hand to his arm. Someone should have done this long ago, I thought — expended a little time and energy, that was all he needed — and brought him out of his cocoon.
We had reached the middle of the second block. Jeremy’s teeth were chattering so that I could hear them, and he seemed to be shaken all over by great long rolling tremors. I had no idea that he was so susceptible to cold. I said, “Fortunately the funeral parlor is overheated. You’ll be all right when we get there.”
“How, how far?” he said.
“Oh, just a few more blocks. Now, Jeremy. Please come on.”
For he had stopped. I tugged at his arm but couldn’t move him an inch. “I think that maybe I, I think that I—” he said. Or I believe that’s what he said. His voice came out wavery and chopped by the clicking of his teeth. I lost what sympathy I was beginning to feel for him. “Jeremy,” I said, “this is getting silly, now.”
Then I gave him a prod in the side, just to get him going, and he crumpled up. Just crumpled in upon himself and folded onto the sidewalk, where he sat in a heap and shook all over. Yet I swear I had no more than touched him. It wasn’t a shove or anything. “Jeremy?” I said. “What’s the matter with you? Jeremy!” For he was looking odder than I had ever seen him; I can’t describe it. His face was yellowish and his mouth hung open. He laid his head down upon his bent knees and stayed that way, shapeless and boneless, and all I could do was call out for help. “Oh, help, someone! Won’t someone please stop?” Cars hissed by, not even noticing. Then footsteps came clattering up behind me. “Help,” I said, turning. I saw Laura running toward us, her apron a flash of white flowers in the dark. And half a block behind her, Howard, with his shirttails out. “Amanda Pauling, I’ll never forgive you for this,” Laura said.
“But what’s the matter with him?”
Laura bent down and raised Jeremy’s head in her two hands. He only stared at her. She fished a handkerchief from her apron pocket and wiped his mouth, and by that time Howard had come up out of breath and bent to peer into Jeremy’s face.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
All I heard was Jeremy’s teeth chattering.
“I don’t see what’s going on. Is he ill?”
“You have no heart at all,” Laura told me. “I always thought that of you and now I know it.”
“Oh, Laura! How can you say such a thing?”
Laura tugged at Jeremy but he wouldn’t stand. It took Howard, bending over him from behind and raising him by the armpits. “There now, fellow,” he said. “Come along.”
“What did I do?” I asked Howard.
But Howard wouldn’t answer either. He gave all his attention to Jeremy; he stood him upright and turned him toward home, and then Laura took Jeremy’s other elbow. “Laura?” I said.
“I’m not talking to you right now,” Laura said.
Jeremy took a faltering step forward. His head was nodding. I saw it bobbing against the streetlights, up and down, up and down, as if it were out of his control.
I didn’t realize. I am not a cruel woman, I have never intentionally hurt a person in all my life. I said, “Laura, I didn’t realize.” But Laura just walked on with Jeremy, keeping him close to her, and I had to follow after. Nobody seemed to care whether I came or not. I walked six paces behind, all alone. Well, there are worse things than walking alone. Look at Jeremy, propped up on both sides, beloved son of Wilma Pauling. If that is what love does to you, isn’t it possible that I am the most fortunate of us all?
Once we had reached the house, of course, everything settled back to normal. Laura and Howard put Jeremy to bed while I closed up the house, and wrote a note for the milkman, and lowered the shades. I cleared away what clutter I could in the parlor and fixed us two hot water bottles, and when I got to the bedroom Laura was already stepping out of her dress. “Don’t let the wrinkles set in that,” I told her. (She tends to be careless in her personal habits.) “I suppose we’ll just have to sleep in our slips and make the best of it,” I said, all energy. And I took my own dress off and hung it up neatly. But then, just as I was sitting on the edge of my bed to roll my stockings down — oh, I can’t explain what came over me. Such heaviness, such an exhausted feeling. As if there were no point to moving any more. I looked at my muddy wet stockings and thought, I’ll have to wear these again tomorrow. Have to wash them out and wear them tomorrow, but they will never be the same again and anyway they are only lisle, not fit for church. And here I had put that brand-new pair in my suitcase! They hadn’t even been taken out of the cellophane yet! Quality hose, with fine seams. (We were raised to believe that no true lady wears seamless stockings, although I must say that nowadays people don’t appear to agree.) Now some burglar’s wife was probably trying my nylons on. I pictured her lolling on a brass bed in a red lace slip, one leg in the air, smoothing a stocking up her thigh while the burglar sat in an armchair smoking a fat cigar and watching. “Who did these belong to once?” “Oh, some old biddy.”
I know what I am. I’m not blind. I have never had a marriage proposal or a love affair or an adventure, never any experience more interesting than patrolling the aisles of my Latin class looking for crib sheets and ponies — an old-maid schoolteacher. There are a thousand jokes about the likes of me. None of them are funny. I have seen people sum me up and dismiss me right while I was talking to them, as if what I am came through more clearly than any words I might choose to say. I see their eyes lose focus and settle elsewhere. Do they think that I don’t realize? I suspected all along that I would never get what comes to others so easily. I have been bypassed, something has been held back from me. And the worst part is that I know it.