Paul realized that since dinner had begun he had been looking at his uncle through Asher’s eyes. Now he tried looking at himself through Asher’s eyes. Just then Libby came back to the table, and so she was seen through Asher’s eyes too. When Paul tried to look at her through Jerry’s eyes, it occurred to him that that may have been how he had been looking all along. It was no longer clear in his mind whether he could consider himself a realist or a romantic.
“Are you all right?” Paul whispered, as he pulled her chair out for her.
“I just put some nose drops in to get some air,” she said, but he smelled a perfume on her that he had never smelled before. “I was talking to Claire and Jack in the lobby,” she said to Jerry.
“All this time?” asked Paul.
“Yes. They’re awfully nice,” she said to Jerry.
“They’re all a father could hope for,” Jerry answered, and from there he and Libby proceeded, for the rest of the evening, to discuss the theater. Jerry sat there, awed and charmed and won, while Libby’s fingers waved above her water glass, and her eyes in turn grew grave and puzzled and gay. In the hour that followed, Paul heard her say art, and he heard her say beauty, and he heard her say truth three times. Twice she said objective correlative. But, of course, it did not matter that she echoed him; of course she was still learning. She had come a long way already from the Pi Phi house, on whose steps he had found her a little less than a year ago. In courting her he had changed her, he had worked at changing her; but now he wondered if she would ever be the genuine article. Was she bright? Was she true? Would she grow? Trying to improve her had he only made a monkey of her? What a time to be asking himself such questions!
He tried to admire her for winning so completely the affection of his uncle, but he was not able to.
*
On the subway back to Queens he asked her how much it cost to have one’s hair set at the Carita Salon.
“Eight dollars.”
“Just to heap it up like that?”
“They wash it and they set it — and then there’s the tip. They have to tease my hair, it’s so straight.”
“Is the teasing figured into the bill, or is that free?”
“Did I behave badly?” Libby demanded. “Did I talk too much? I realized I was talking a lot. Oh Paul, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re not happy with me.”
“Don’t you think eight dollars is a lot to spend on hair?”
“… Yes.”
“Do you really, or is that to please me?”
“Both.”
“And don’t charm me, will you? I’m not Jerry.”
“Paul, what’s the matter? I did talk too much.”
“No.”
“Then what? Because I went to Carita? Because I talked about it with Claire? Please tell me.” She was a self-improver, and that strain in her character (which once he had loved and now suddenly it seemed he loathed) showed through her request. “Please, Paul, tell me,” she said.
“I didn’t know you had such extravagant tastes. My haircuts cost me a buck.”
“It was a special occasion.” She began to cry. “I’m sorry I did it. I am …”
“I can’t afford stuff like that, Libby. We’re going to have to live a frugal life. A sensible life. I’m beginning to wonder if we’re in agreement. I begin to wonder if you understand—”
“Oh honey,” she said, and put her head into his shoulder. “I’m stupid.” And she reached up for her mound of hair and pulled it down.
His heart lurched, but he kept his mouth shut; some pins clattered to the floor of the subway car, and she became the old Libby, hair to her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, Paul. Oh truly — I was putting on a performance to please everybody,” she moaned. “I feel like a windmill. I feel running and pursued and just like I’m bouncing all over the place. I’m just exhausted, and this cold won’t go away, and all I tasted all night were nose drops. Everybody said the wine was excellent and so I said so too.” She had buried her head in his chest and he was stroking her hair. He did it to comfort her; he got no pleasure from the spongy resilient quality of that black hair whose crowy smoothness had always expressed something to him about the simple desires, the solid yearnings of the girl he had discovered, and who had so quickly and so passionately become dedicated to him.
After a while she took his hand and held it in her lap. “Paul?”
“Yes.”
“—I don’t think I can wait until May, or June. If I’m going to marry you I think it better be now. We’ll move into your room and we’ll be married and all this will be over. I can’t stand it any more. Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry about my hair.” She kissed his five fingers to prove it. “I knew you were upset about it. I knew it was that.”
A Puerto Rican at the end of the car was reading a newspaper. He had looked up to watch the girl cry; now that she had pulled herself together he looked back into the paper again.
“Your uncle,” she was saying, “is so nice and everybody else is so awful, and he’s so unhappy.”
“And so are you.”
“And so am I, and so are you, and we’re perfectly nice people too. He hasn’t got anybody—”
“He’s got Claire.”
“Oh she’s a phoney!” Libby cried, softly. “And so am I,” she said. “I saw it in your eyes. Oh, you phoney, you were saying, why don’t you cut it out. And I couldn’t, Paul. I tried but I couldn’t. I hate your Uncle Asher!” she announced. “I hate him! He’s a disgusting man!”
“All right, Lib, calm down. Nobody’s paying any attention to him at all.”
She might have been hesitating, or she might have been calculating, but finally she whispered into his scarf, “You are.”
“I am what?” he demanded.
“I can’t talk without you getting some sour little look on your face. You’re not you.”
“You’re imagining it.” He sat up very straight, so that it became necessary for her to pull her face away. “You’re just upset.”
She was willing to be convinced. “Am I?”
“I think so.”
“Because he doesn’t even know me! Paul, Paul — what’s wrong with me? What does everybody have against me!”
“I shouldn’t have told you about him. Everything is all right.”
“Paul, let’s get married and go back to school tomorrow … Let’s go back married. Please.”
His immediate vision was of the two of them trying to live in his tiny room. Libby’s father would cut off next semester’s tuition; his own family would refuse to be present at graduation … But more pleasant visions followed. For it would only continue to be as it had been before: they would study together in the library and sleep together in his room. Only now Libby could move in the rest of her clothes and stay clear through till morning. They wouldn’t have to meet for breakfast; they would already be there, together. As for the families, they had obligations that they would finally admit to. And next year he would get some sort of graduate fellowship for himself; he had already sent off applications to Columbia, Penn, Michigan, and Chicago, well in advance of the closing date. Probably Libby’s father would continue to pay her tuition through her senior year—