I shall write you soon about the effect the war has had upon me. I have spoken to you about it, but you have never seemed to take it very seriously. Perhaps seeing in black and white what I feel will affect your opinion of me. Perhaps you will leave me. I accept the challenge. My Hotel Henry experience includes this risk. I got drunk two nights ago. It’s hard to believe that I am forty-seven, isn’t it?
My love,
Emmy
Now that I have copied this letter into my journal (I had forgotten to make a carbon), I shall take my walk. My scheme included a few weeks of solitude at the Hotel Henry before attempting anything. I did not even intend to write in my journal as soon as I started to, but simply to sit about collecting my thoughts, waiting for the knots of habit to undo themselves. But after only a week here — two nights ago — I felt amazingly alone and disconnected from my past life, so I began my journal.
My first interesting contact was the salesman in the Blue Bonnet Room. I had heard about this eccentric through my in-laws, the Moores, before I ever came up here. My husband’s cousin Laurence Moore told me about him when he heard I was coming. He said: “Take a walk through Grey and Bottle’s Department Store, and you’ll see a man with a lean red face and reddish hair selling materials by the bolt. That man has an income and is related to Hewitt Molain. He doesn’t need to work. He was in my fraternity. Then he disappeared. The next I heard of him he was working there at Grey and Bottle’s. I stopped by and said hello to him. For a nut he seemed like a very decent chap. You might even have a drink with him. I think he’s quite up to general conversation.”
I did not mention Laurence Moore to the society salesman because I thought it might irritate him. I lied and pretended to have been here for months, when actually this is still only my second week at the Hotel Henry. I want everyone to think I have been here a long time. Surely it is not to impress them. Is there anything impressive about a lengthy stay at the Hotel Henry? Any sane person would be alarmed that I should even ask such a question. I ask it because deep in my heart I do think a lengthy stay at the Hotel Henry is impressive. Very easy to see that I would, and even sane of me to think it impressive, but not sane of me to expect anyone else to think so, particularly a stranger. Perhaps I simply like to hear myself telling it. I hope so. I shall write some more tomorrow, but now I must go out. I am going to buy a supply of cocoa. When I’m not drunk I like to have a cup of cocoa before going to sleep. My husband likes it too.
* * *
She could not stand the overheated room a second longer. With some difficulty she raised the window, and the cold wind blew in. Some loose sheets of paper went skimming off the top of the desk and flattened themselves against the bookcase. She shut the window and they fell to the floor. The cold air had changed her mood. She looked down at the sheets of paper. They were part of the letter she had just copied. She picked them up: “I don’t feel that I have clarified enough or justified enough,” she read. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She had been so happy copying this letter into her journal, but now her heart was faint as she scanned its scattered pages. “I have said nothing,” she muttered to herself in alarm. “I have said nothing at all. I have not clarified my reasons for being at the Hotel Henry. I have not justified myself.”
Automatically she looked around the room. A bottle of whiskey stood on the floor beside one of the legs of the bureau. She stepped forward, picked it up by the neck, and settled with it into her favorite wicker chair.
Going to Massachusetts
Bozoe rubbed away some tears with a closed fist.
“Come on, Bozoe,” said Janet. “You’re not going to the North Pole.”
Bozoe tugged at the woolly fur, and pulled a little of it out.
“Leave your coat alone,” said Janet.
“I don’t remember why I’m going to Massachusetts,” Bozoe moaned. “I knew it would be like this, once I got to the station.”
“If you don’t want to go to Massachusetts,” said Janet, “then come on back to the apartment. We’ll stop at Fanny’s on the way. I want to buy those tumblers made out of knobby glass. I want brown ones.”
Bozoe started to cry in earnest. This caused Janet considerable embarrassment. She was conscious of herself as a public figure because the fact that she owned and ran a garage had given her a good deal of publicity not only in East Clinton but in the neighboring counties. This scene, she said to herself, makes us look like two Italians saying goodbye. Everybody’ll think we’re Italians. She did not feel true sympathy for Bozoe. Her sense of responsibility was overdeveloped, but she was totally lacking in real tenderness.
“There’s no reason for you to cry over a set of whiskey tumblers,” said Janet. “I told you ten days ago that I was going to buy them.”
“Passengers boarding Bus Number Twenty-seven, north-bound.…”
“I’m not crying about whiskey tumblers.” Bozoe managed with difficulty to get the words out. “I’m crying about Massachusetts. I can’t remember my reasons.”
“Rockport, Rayville, Muriel.…”
“Why don’t you listen to the loudspeaker, Bozoe? It’s giving you information. If you paid attention to what’s going on around you you’d be a lot better off. You concentrate too much on your own private affairs. Try more to be a part of the world.”
* * *
“… The truth is that I am only twenty-five miles away from the apartment, as you have probably guessed. In fact, you could not help but guess it, since you are perfectly familiar with Larry’s Bar and Grill. I could not go to Massachusetts. I cried the whole way up to Muriel and it was as if someone else were getting off the bus, not myself. But someone who was in a desperate hurry to reach the next stop. I was in mortal terror that the bus would not stop at Muriel but continue on to some further destination where I would not know any familiar face. My terror was so great that I actually stopped crying. I kept from crying all the way. That is a lie. Not an actual lie because I never lie as you know. Small solace to either one of us, isn’t it? I am sure that you would prefer me to lie, rather than be so intent on explaining my dilemma to you night and day. I am convinced that you would prefer me to lie. It would give you more time for the garage.”
“So?” queried Sis McEvoy, an unkind note in her voice. To Janet she did not sound noticeably unkind, since Sis McEvoy was habitually sharp-sounding, and like her had very little sympathy for other human beings. She was sure that Sis McEvoy was bad, and she was determined to save her. She was going to save her quietly without letting Sis suspect her determination. Janet did everything secretly; in fact, secrecy was the essence of her nature, and from it she derived her pleasure and her sense of being an important member of society.
“What’s it all about?” Sis asked irritably. “Why doesn’t she raise kids or else go to a psychologist or a psychoanalyst or whatever? My ovaries are crooked or I’d raise kids myself. That’s what God’s after, isnt’ it? Space ships or no space ships. What’s the problem, anyway? How are her ovaries and the rest of the mess?”
Janet smiled mysteriously. “Bozoe has never wanted a child,” she said. “She told me she was too scared.”
“Don’t you despise cowards?” said Sis. “Jesus Christ, they turn my stomach.”
Janet frowned. “Bozoe says she despises cowards, too. She worries herself sick about it. She’s got it all linked up together with Heaven and Hell. She thinks so much about Heaven and Hell that she’s useless. I’ve told her for years to occupy herself. I’ve told her that God would like her better if she was occupied. But she says God isn’t interested. That’s a kind of slam at me, I suppose. At me and the garage. She’s got it in for the garage. It doesn’t bother me, but it makes me a little sore when she tries to convince me that I wouldn’t be interested in the garage unless she talked to me day and night about her troubles. As if I was interested in the garage just out of spite. I’m a normal woman and I’m interested in my work, like all women are in modern times. I’m a little stockier than most, I guess, and not fussy or feminine. That’s because my father was my ideal and my mother was an alcoholic. I’m stocky and I don’t like pretty dresses and I’m interested in my work. My work is like God to me. I don’t mean I put it above Him, but the next thing to Him. I have a feeling that he approves of my working. That he approves of my working in a garage. Maybe that’s cheeky of me, but I can’t help it. I’ve made a name for myself in the garage and I’m decent. I’m normal.” She paused for a moment to fill the two whiskey tumblers.