She was as bitter as he about the changes, but she felt it would be indelicate for them both to reflect the same sorrow. It would happen some day, surely. A serious grief would silence their argument. They would share it and not be able to look into each other’s eyes. But as long as she could she would hold off that moment.
Lila and Frank
Frank pulled hard on the front door and opened it with a jerk, so that the pane of glass shook in its frame. It was his sister’s custom never to go to the door and open it for him. She had an instinctive respect for his secretive nature.
He hung his coat on a hook in the hall and walked into the parlor, where he was certain he would find his sister. She was seated as usual in her armchair. Next to her was a heavy round table of an awkward height which made it useful for neither eating nor writing, although it was large enough for either purpose. Even in the morning Lila always wore a silk dress, stockings, and well-shined shoes. In fact, at all times of the day she was fully dressed to go into the town, although she seldom ventured from the house. Her hair was not very neat, but she took the trouble to rouge her lips.
“How were the men at the Coffee Pot tonight?” she asked when her brother entered the room. There was no variety in the inflection of her voice. It was apparent that, like him, she had never tried, either by emphasis or coloring of tone, to influence or charm a listener.
Frank sat down and rested for a while without speaking.
“How were the men at the Coffee Pot?” she said again with no change of expression.
“The same as they always are.”
“You mean by that, hungry and noisy.” For an outsider it would have been hard to say whether she was being critical of the men at the Coffee Pot or sincerely asking for information. This was a question she had asked him many times, and he had various ways of answering, depending upon his mood. On this particular night he was uncommunicative. “They go to the Coffee Pot for a bite to eat,” he said.
She looked at him. The depths of her dark eyes held neither warmth nor comfort. “Was it crowded?” she asked.
He considered this for a moment while she watched him attentively. He was near the lamp and his face was raspberry-colored, an even deeper red than it would have been otherwise.
“It was.”
“Then it must have been noisy.” The dropping of her voice at the end of a sentence gave her listener, if he was a stranger, the impression that she did not intend to continue with the conversation. Her brother of course knew this was not the case, and he was not surprised at all when a minute later she went on. “Did you speak with anyone?”
“No, I didn’t.” He jumped up from his chair and went over to a glass bookcase in the corner. “I don’t usually, do I?”
“That doesn’t mean that you won’t, does it?” she said calmly.
“I wouldn’t change my habits from one night to the next,” he said. “Not sitting at the Coffee Pot.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not human nature to do that, is it?”
“I know nothing about human nature at all,” she said. “Nor do you, for that matter. I don’t know why you’d refer to it. I do suspect, though, that I at least might change very suddenly.” Her voice remained indifferent, as though the subject were not one which was close to her. “It’s a feeling that’s always present with me … here.” She touched her breast.
Although he wandered around the room for a moment feigning to have lost interest in the conversation, she knew this was not so. Since they lied to each other in different ways, the excitement they felt in conversing together was very great.
“Tell me,” she said. “If you don’t expect to experience anything new at the Coffee Pot, why do you continue to go there?” This too she had often asked him in the past weeks, but the repetition of things added to rather than detracting from the excitement.
“I don’t like to talk to anybody. But I like to go out,” he said. “I may not like other men, but I like the world.”
“I should think you’d go and hike in the woods, instead of sitting at the Coffee Pot. Men who don’t like other men usually take to nature, I’ve heard.”
“I’m not interested in nature, beyond the ordinary amount.”
They settled into silence for a while. Then she began to question him again. “Don’t you feel uneasy, knowing that most likely you’re the only man at the Coffee Pot who feels so estranged from his fellows?”
He seated himself near the window and half smiled. “No,” he said. “I think I like it.”
“Why do you like it?”
“Because I’m aware of the estrangement, as you call it, and they aren’t.” This too he had answered many times before. But such was the faith they had in the depth of the mood they created between them that there were no dead sentences, no matter how often repeated.
“We don’t feel the same about secrets,” she told him. “I don’t consider a secret such a great pleasure. In fact, I should hesitate to name what my pleasure is. I simply know that I don’t feel the lack of it.”
“Good night,” said Frank. He wanted to be by himself. Since he very seldom talked for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, she was not at all surprised.
She herself was far too excited for sleep at that moment. The excitement that stirred in her breast was familiar, and could be likened to what a traveler feels on the eve of his departure. All her life she had enjoyed it or suffered from it, for it was a sensation that lay between suffering and enjoyment, and it had a direct connection with her brother’s lies. For the past weeks they had concerned the Coffee Pot, but this was of little importance, since he lied to her consistently and had done so since early childhood. Her excitement had its roots in the simultaneous rejection and acceptance of these lies, a state which might be compared to that of the dreamer when he is near to waking, and who knows then that he is moving in a dream country which at any second will vanish forever, and yet is unable to recall the existence of his own room. So Lila moved about in the vivid world of her brother’s lies, with the full awareness always that just beyond them lay the amorphous and hidden world of reality. These lies which thrilled her heart seemed to cull their exciting quality from her never-failing consciousness of the true events they concealed. She had not changed at all since childhood, when to expose a statement of her brother’s as a lie was as unthinkable to her as the denial of God’s existence is to most children. This treatment of her brother, unbalanced though it was, contained within it both dignity and merit, and these were reflected faithfully in her voice and manner.
Friday
He sat at a little table in the Green Mountain Luncheonette apathetically studying the menu. Faithful to the established tradition of his rich New England family, he habitually chose the cheapest dish listed on the menu whenever it was not something he definitely abhorred. Today was Friday, and there were two cheap dishes listed, both of which he hated. One was haddock and the other fried New England smelts. The cheaper meat dishes had been omitted. Finally, with compressed lips, he decided on a steak. The waitress was barely able to hear his order.
“Did you say steak?” she asked him.
“Yes. There isn’t anything else. Who eats haddock?”
“Nine tenths of the population.” She spoke without venom. “Look at Agnes.” She pointed to the table next to his.
Andrew looked up. He had noticed the girl before. She had a long freckled face with large, rather roughly sketched features. Her hair, almost the color of her skin, hung down to her shoulders. It was evident that her mustard-colored wool dress was homemade. It was decorated at the throat with a number of dark brown woollen balls. Over the dress she wore a man’s lumber jacket. She was a large-boned girl. The lower half of her face was long and solid and insensitive-looking, but her eyes, Andrew noted, were luminous and starry.