3
It was a Saturday morning, a little over a year ago, when I first saw Carol. We had a kids' matinee coming up at eleven o'clock and I was in the projection booth screening some stuff. I'd just made a change-over, and was putting a roll of film on the rewind.
Elizabeth waited for me to look around, but she finally saw I wasn't going to.
"This is Carol Farmer, Joe," she said. "She's going to stay with us."
"That's fine," I said, keeping my eye on the film.
"Our ladies' aid group is helping Carol attend business college," Elizabeth went on, "and she needed some place to cut down on expenses. I think we can use her very handily around the house, don't you?"
I still didn't look around. "Why not?"
"Thank you, dear," said Elizabeth, opening the door. "Come along, Carol. Mr. Wilmot has given you his approval."
I knew that she was laughing. She'd only brought Carol there to show me up. She didn't need my approval for anything.
Well, though, I passed old Doc Barrow, who runs the business college, on the street that afternoon; and he thanked me for being so generous in taking Carol in. I began to feel a little better, and kind of ashamed of the way I'd acted. Not on Elizabeth's account but Carol's.
She was about twenty-five and she'd spent most of her life on a two-by-four farm down in the sand flats, raising a bunch of brothers and sisters that ran off as soon as they got big enough to be any help. Her father was serving a five-year stretch for stealing hogs. Her mother was dead. Now, she was starting out to try to make something of herself.
We were changing programs the next day, and it was after midnight when I got home. But Carol was still up. She was sitting out at the kitchen table with a lot of books spread in front of her, and you could tell they didn't mean a thing to her. Not as much even as they would have to me.
She jumped up, all scared and trembling, like I'd caught her stealing. Her face got red, then white, and she snatched up a dish towel and began scrubbing at the table.
"Take it easy, kid," I said. "You're not on twenty-four-hour duty around here."
She didn't say anything; I don't guess she could. She stood watching me a minute, then she snatched up her books and sort of scuttled over to a corner and sat down on a stool.
She pretended to be studying, but I knew she wasn't. I knew it because I knew how she felt- because I'd felt the same way. I knew what it meant to be nothing and to want to be something. And to be scared out of your pants that someone is going to knock you down-not because of what you've done but because you can't strike back. Because they want to see you squirm, or they have a headache, or they don't like the way your hair is parted.
I opened the refrigerator door and took a look inside. It was full, as usual, with the leftover junk that passes for food with Elizabeth. Little plates of salad, bowls of consommй, sauce dishes of fruit, and nonfattening desserts. But way back in the rear I spotted a baked ham and a chocolate cake.
I took them over to the table, along with some bread and butter and a bottle of milk.
"You ain't-you're not supposed to eat that, Mr. Wilmot."
"Huh?" I almost dropped the carving-knife.
"Huh-uh. I mean, no, sir. Mrs. Wilmot said that was for tomorrow."
"Well," I said, "ain't that just dandy?"
"Yes, sir. There's some soup on the stove. That's what I-we-what we're supposed to have tonight."
I didn't argue about it. I just went over to the cupboard and got two plates, and I filled one of them so full it needed sideboards.
"Now, come over here," I said, "and eat this. Eat every damned bit of it. If there's any holler I'll say I did it."
Christ, I wish you could have seen her! She must have been empty all the way down. She didn't hog the food. She just sat and ate steadily, like she was going at a big job that needed doing. And she didn't mind my watching her. She seemed to know that I'd been the same way myself.
When she'd finished I told her to take her books and go to bed; and she said, "Yes, sir," and took off.
It made me a little uncomfortable for anyone to be so obedient, and yet I can't say I didn't like it, either. And it wasn't because lever thought about telling her to do anything, well, anything bad. I just couldn't see the gal that way. I couldn't see her at all, if you know what I mean. If there was ever a woman that you wouldn't look at twice she was it. Probably she still is. Because the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that I'm seeing something that no one else can. And it took me three months before I could see it. It was a Sunday afternoon. Elizabeth had taken her car and gone visiting, and I was lying down. We don't operate the house on Sunday afternoon. Local sentiment's against it.
There was a knock on my door, and I said, "Come in, Carol," and she came in.
"I just wanted to show you the new suit Mrs. Wilmot gave me," she said.
I sat up. "It looks very nice, Carol."
I don't know which I wanted to do most, laugh or cry.
She was a little bit cockeyed-maybe I didn't tell you? Well. And she was more than a little pigeon-toed. The suit wasn't new. It was a worn-out rag Elizabeth had given her to make over, and she'd botched it from top to bottom. And she had on a pair of Elizabeth's old shoes that didn't fit her half as well as mine would.
The blouse was too tight for her breasts, or her breasts were too big for the blouse, however you want to put it. They were too big for anything but an outsize. A good deep breath and she'd have had to start dodging.
I felt the tears coming into my eyes, and yet I wanted to laugh, too. She looked like hell. She looked like a sack of bran that couldn't decide which way it was going to fall.
And then the curtain rose or however you want to put it, and everything was changed.
And what I began to think about wasn't laughing or crying.
That tiny bit of cockeyedness gave her a cute, mad look, and the way she toed in sort of spread her buttocks and made a little valley under her skirt, and-and it don't-doesn't-make sense but there was something about it that made me think of the Twenty-Third Psalm.
I'd thought she looked awkward and top-heavy, and, hell, I could see now that she didn't at all. Her breasts weren't too big. Jesus, her breasts!
She looked cute-mad and funny-sweet. She looked like she'd started somewhere and been mussed up along the way.
She was a honey. She was sugar and pie. She was a bitch.
I said, "Come here, Carol," and she came there.
And then I was kissing her like I'd been waiting all my life to do just that, and she was the same way with me.
I don't know how long it was before I looked up and saw Elizabeth in the doorway.
4
I always stop at the Crystal Arms when I'm in the city. They know I pay for what I get, and no questions, and whenever they can do me a favor they don't hold back.
There wasn't anything in my room box but a few complimentary theater tickets. I gave them to the bell captain and took the elevator upstairs. The heat was just being turned on full, and the room was a little chilly. I dragged a chair up to the radiator and sat down with my coat and hat on.
I wasn't worried. Not too much. I guess I just had a touch of the blues. I had everything in the world to look forward to, and I had the blues. I got out part of a pint I had in my Gladstone, and sat down again.
The lights were coming on, blobbing through the misty night haze that hung over the city. Over in the yards a freight gave out with a highball. I took a drink and closed my eyes. I tried to imagine it was fifteen years ago, and I was on the freight, and I was looking at the city for the first time. And I thought, Hell, if you had to be blue why not then instead of now?
When I saw it was getting really dark I pulled myself together and changed my socks and shirt. I took the stairs down a couple of floors, and knocked on Carol's door. The ventilator was open, and I could hear her splashing around in the tub.