“I didn’t know Mrs. Pearson had a sister,” she said. “How old is she?”
“Fifteen, sixteen. You can tell by the kind of cars the kids came in. Half of them are hot rods, old jalopies hopped up to go like hell.”
She seemed to be thinking that over.
“Sixteen,” she said at last. “That’s very young.” She turned suddenly and looked at him, not directly into his face the way ordinary people looked at other people. He realized with a start that she was staring right at his mouth, straight into it, feeling every crease of his lips and pore of his tongue with her eyeballs. His mouth jerked at the corners and went stiff. It disowned him; he wasn’t the boss anymore; it was some separate and complete thing that Beatrice had claimed for her own and might even take home with her to perfume and fondle in the dark.
“Sixteen,” she said. “You know what I’d do if I were sixteen again, Steve?”
“Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, in a minute. Don’t you want to hear what I’d do if I were sixteen?”
“Yeah, sure. I can listen and drink at the same time, though.”
It was only a few steps to the kitchen, but when he got there he was breathing as if he’d been running away from something. He took down a bottle of Scotch from the cupboard, handling it with fear and with hope, as if his escape wasn’t complete yet, but the Scotch might help him keep on running.
She didn’t stop talking. Her voice sounded rather dreamy, and she didn’t raise it to compete with the clink of glasses and the rattle of ice cubes. She didn’t seem to care whether he heard her or not.
He made a great deal of noise with the ice trays so he wouldn’t have to listen, but every word came through clear as a bell. She might as well have been standing beside him whispering in his ear.
“I’d try to be beautiful,” she said. “I mean I’d really try. I’d work at it. I guess that sounds silly to you, that anyone could be beautiful by working at it. Especially me. Or that anyone would want to do it enough to make a full-time job of it. But that’s because you don’t know what it does to a woman, not to be pretty. It’s queer how early the realization comes to you, when you’re just a baby, really, when people say, ‘She’s a bright little thing,’ instead of ‘Isn’t she cute?’ And once you know it, the thing starts growing inside you like an ulcer, and you have to give it a special diet so it won’t ache. The build-up, soothing-syrup diet. Every compliment, every glance, every whistle, you mull over and cherish and spread it around like butter, and pass it out wholesale to your friends or anybody who’ll listen.”
“I can’t hear you,” he shouted. “Would you mind speaking a little louder?” He jerked the top off the soda bottle viciously. Would you mind, Beatrice, going home or falling out of a window or stepping neatly in front of a ten-ton truck?
“Of course I could never have been pretty, I know that. But there were little things that would have helped. Two of my teeth are crooked. Did you ever notice?”
“No.”
“I could have had them straightened. Perhaps I could even have changed my nose, and learned things — how to be... to be that way. You know the way I mean. I don’t seem to be like that at all. If I were, you wouldn’t look at me the way you do, as if you wished I’d go away or I’d never been born.”
The drinks were ready. He stood, holding them and staring at the cupboard door. There was nothing he could say to Beatrice that would make her feel any better, nor anything Beatrice could say that would change him. So there it was. Hopeless. It was also pretty damn silly. He began to laugh, and in a couple of seconds she appeared in the doorway.
She was quite composed. “Need any help?”
“No, thanks.”
He handed her her drink. She took it, smiling. He noticed for the first time that her two front lower teeth overlapped a little.
“They’re not very crooked,” he said. “Anyway, that’s not the kind of thing that matters.”
“I guess not.” She sipped her drink. A couple of drops fell on her dress but she didn’t pay any attention. “Steve.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a soft man, aren’t you?”
“Whatever that means.”
“Well, you didn’t want me to come here tonight but you couldn’t say no.”
He looked angry. “Why in Christ’s name couldn’t I say no?”
“Because that’s the way you are. I know how you feel about me, Steve. I embarrass you. I even think that some of the time you hate me. No, don’t interrupt — it’s really perfectly natural that you should.”
A car rattled down the driveway, with the engine wide open and the horn blowing. They both listened, as if it were very important.
“All right,” he said finally. “Where were we? I hate you, which is really perfectly natural. Go on.”
“It happened to me once, too, so I know. There was a man who wanted to marry me. He wasn’t very attractive but he was clever and dependable and steady, just the kind of man I should have married. The point is I couldn’t stand having him around. Every time I looked at him I hated him because he wasn’t you.”
“And?”
“And I’m not Martha.”
“That’s a nice, simple explanation from a nice, simple girl. Now, how would you like to forget the whole thing? Where are your gloves?”
She was puzzled. “In my handbag. Why?”
“You go and put them on and get your coat and go outside.”
“But why?”
“Then you can knock on the door and I’ll let you in and we’ll start all over again. We’ll spend a nice, quiet, civilized evening getting plastered. No explanations, no character-probing, and no words over four letters. Okay?”
“I’ve never been plastered,” she said thoughtfully. “It might be interesting.”
“Yeah, it might.” Too interesting, he thought. Women like Beatrice couldn’t drink very well. No matter how much liquor they had, they never wanted to go home or pass out like gentlemen; they stuck around and got maudlin or weepy and told tiresome stories about their childhood. Oh, well.
He reached for her glass. Someone was walking along the driveway and he listened, the way he always did, to figure out who it was, half-hoping it was someone coming to see him.
A swift, heavy step. Brown, maybe. Maybe Brown was getting thirsty again.
“Are you expecting someone?” Beatrice said.
He laughed to cover up his annoyance. “No, I wasn’t. I’ve been away for so long, there isn’t anyone to expect.”
The doorbell rang. So it wasn’t Brown. Brown just knocked a couple of times and walked in.
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Beatrice said, a trifle acidly.
“Sure. Sure, I am.”
“If it’s anything personal, I can always hide behind the door and put my fingers in my ears.”
The bell rang again. Avoiding Beatrice’s eyes, he went out and crossed the living room. He heard Beatrice shut the kitchen door very softly behind him. The gesture irritated him. It made him feel furtive, as if he were dodging the police instead of merely having a drink with his own cousin.
He opened the front door. Martha was standing there. She had on a long black dress with sequins on it and a little black sequined hat. As if to counteract the sequins, she’d put on her glasses.
“Anything I can do for you, Mrs. Pearson?” he said.