Against the Season Page 18

  “That’s good soup,” Agate said, as she took Harriet’s and Peter’s empty dishes. “You finish it.”

  Obediently Amelia picked up her spoon again while Peter raised surprised brows at Harriet.

  “She bullies me,” Amelia said in a happy tone.

  Peter and Harriet, sensing Amelia’s abstraction, found themselves talking often to each other as if she were not even in the room. Agate watched her with guilty concern. “Child” she certainly had been, to dump like that on a frail old woman who’d had enough dumped on her in a lifetime to deserve a permanent vacation. And why in hell did Cole have to be so spooked about the green-eyed bank manager? Agate hadn’t taken to his arrogant formality the couple of times he’d come to the door with papers for Miss A to sign, but he was being pleasant enough tonight. At least Cole could have been there to help keep things going.

  “This is delicious food, Agate,” Harriet said.

  “It certainly is,” Peter agreed.

  “Kathy must have been a lousy cook,” Agate said.

  “She made good biscuits,” all three replied.

  In that amusement, Amelia seemed to recover, but Peter and Harriet stayed for only a cup of coffee after dinner.

  “For your first party, this is long enough,” Harriet said.

  “Well, soon again,” Amelia said, without protesting. “And I hope Cole will be here, too. Agate?”

  Agate was there at once, as if she’d been waiting in the hall.

  “Will you show Miss Jameson and Mr. Fallidon to the door?”

  “I’ll get my map,” Agate said.

  “We really can find our way,” Peter said, leaning down to kiss Amelia.

  “Agate likes to ruin all her own acts,” Amelia said, smiling. “She says it’s where her greatest talent lies.”

  At the front door, they complimented Agate again. Then Harriet said, “She isn’t really herself yet, is she?”

  “It’s the self you’d better get used to,” Agate said. “When you’ve been dropped on your heart from the height of seventy-two years, you don’t exactly bounce back.”

  “No, I guess you don’t.”

  Harriet and Peter didn’t speak until they were settled in the car.

  “It’s worrying,” Harriet said then.

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder why Cole didn’t come home. He couldn’t have worked this late, could he?”

  “No.”

  Miss Larson’s failing health and attention had depressed him, but Cole’s absence had modified the story he thought he was going to tell Harriet, the self-approval in it.

  “It’s early,” Harriet said. “Let’s go back to my apartment and cheer ourselves up a little.”

  “All right.”

  Peter was used to sitting across from Harriet where he could see her, but now the Larson chest had taken the place of that chair. The only comfortable place to sit was on the couch with her. Instead of talking, Peter brooded on his own self-absorption, which had excluded Cole from his imagination, excluded everyone, really, except Feller Hill, in whose admiration and gratitude Peter had become extravagantly generous, understanding, full of kindly platitudes about decency and human concern. He had even gone so far as to explain Feller to himself, his good fortune to be born into this kind of world, where his wife could be sent to a psychiatrist instead of to jail, where a boy could be returned to his ship with protective explanations rather than deportation orders.

  “Where do you go when you go away like that?” Harriet asked.

  “Go?” Peter asked, startled.

  “You haven’t said a word for ten minutes. You often do that.”

  “I was thinking,” Peter said, with that new rueful smile of his, “how self-absorbed I really am… and obviously demonstrating it at the same time.”

  “You’re worried about something.”

  “I wanted to tell you a very pleasant sort of story for the sake of showing you what a decent, kind man I am, how well I acquit myself. In fact, I haven’t spent a moment thinking about anybody but myself.”

  “That’s probably not true. Why don’t you tell me?”

  He did, but instead of the superior moral tone he had enjoyed anticipating, he used the whole range of emotions he had actually experienced from the surprise of finding Panayotis at his door to the worry he had begun to feel about Cole.

  “I am proud of you,” Harriet said.

  “Yes, well, that’s what I intended you to say.”

  “Do you think out conversations with me ahead of time?” she asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “And then they happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re bored to death.”

  “Not at all,” Peter said. “I’m reassured. I’m still in control. I don’t have to deal with surprises.”

  “Not even pleasant ones,” Harriet said. “Making up conversations with you does bore me. I’ve given it up. You should, too. You don’t need to be that safe. I’m not that surprising. But Grace Hill…”

  “She didn’t really surprise me,” Peter said. “I knew she’d do something.”

  “Why did Cole hit her? And why wasn’t he at home tonight? Do you think he could imagine that you really were… attracted to Panayotis?”

  “Why would he?”

  “Well, it occurred to me,” Harriet said. “And I would have hit Grace Hill, and I wouldn’t have known how to see you after that, and I don’t even feel guilty about loving you.”

  “Of course, any shy boy…” Peter began, and then he fell silent.

  “Now, don’t do that. Talk what you’re thinking.”

  “Have I been… stupid about Cole?”

  “I don’t know. Do you want another drink?”

  “I shouldn’t,” Peter said, looking at his watch. “I wish there were some way I could simply see Cole without having to set it up.”

  “Did you at all… want him?”

  “Who? Cole?”

  “No…”

  “Panayotis? No,” Peter said.

  “I’m going to get you another drink.”

  They talked then at some length about Cole, about shyness in people, about Ida Setworth and Carl Hollinger. Finally Peter got up to leave. Standing, he kissed Harriet on the mouth, a nineteen-forties’ movie kiss that embarrassed seven-year-olds and left the adults in the audience unmoved. Still, it was a beginning. Peter wasn’t at all sure it could ever be more than that if he hadn’t more help from Harriet than this, but perhaps in time he would.

  XV

  THE DOCTOR HAD GIVEN Agate his now standard lecture on overweight, and, though she’d joked with him good-humoredly enough about developing a convincing figure for having spent the summer in England eating potatoes and jam tarts, she was irritable by the time Rosemary was driving her back to the Larsons.

  “Anything you’d like to pick up in town?” Rosemary asked pleasantly. “I’ve plenty of time this morning.”

  “I get everything delivered,” Agate said. “Except me.”

  “That, too, in time.”

  “How long have you been getting your kicks with unwed mothers?”

  “Around six years,” Rosemary answered evenly.

  “I somehow thought it was longer than that. You didn’t have yours and then just not graduate, stay on at the old school, so to speak?”

  “No,” Rosemary said. “I was in the psychiatric side before I came back here.”

  “Is that where you learned to keep your cool?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Or I just don’t know over which tit the chink in the armor is.”

  Rosemary answered that with no more than a wry glance, and Agate turned away from her, resentful not so much of the person of Rosemary as of her lettuce-leaf trimness, her refined good looks, and her assigned authority. Rosemary knew that. Youngsters like Agate never threatened her temper. Quite the contrary.

  Agate’s transparent moods, her vulgarity and impudence, were a relief from the sullen frig
ht of so many of the others. If anything, Rosemary envied Agate her random assaults on other people’s privacy or prudery. Why shouldn’t she be irritable about the attempts to cut her down to size, in flesh, in uniform, in convention? Thank God for Amelia, who could not take such terms seriously either.

  “I amuse you,” Agate said.

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  “I find you mildly entertaining, too,” Agate said, in tonalities almost accurately Rosemary’s.

  “One thing I don’t understand, and that’s why you’re having this baby.”

  “Oh yes,” Agate said. “That’s a thing I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ve decided to give it away or sell it or whatever it is you arrange…”

  “All right. You need to sign papers.”

  “But there have to be some riders,” Agate said.

  “Riders?”

  “Yes. If it has more of anything or less of anything than expected, if it turns out to be an off-color joke of any sort, then I think we’ll entertain each other.”

  “Are you afraid of things like that?”

  “Not at all,” Agate said brightly. “Some of us prefer to be freaks.”

  “I’m sure your baby will be fine.”

  “Are you? I thought you’d already lined up a circus agent who specialized in crossed-up chromosomes.”

  “I was only trying to warn you about drugs. I didn’t mean to suggest…” Rosemary began, genuinely concerned.

  “What do agencies do with the Amelia Larsons of this world if they happen to be dropped by accident-prone kids like me?”

  “Lots of people are willing to adopt babies who, for one reason or another, have problems.”

  “Like, some people prefer two heads?”

  “Amelia’s a pretty good example of what it means to be crippled,” Rosemary said.

  “Okay. If I have a baby like her, I keep her.”

  “People who take such children are usually pretty special themselves. They often have children of their own. They have the money that’s necessary for doctor’s bills. They’re usually a bit older, more experienced. And, Agate, if there’s anything seriously wrong with a baby, it’s better, whether the mother can take care of it or not, to put it in an institution. It would be silly for you…”

  “I’m a silly person,” Agate said firmly. “It’s that deal or no deal. If you’re not interested, that’s fine. If it comes out dull and whole, I’ll sell it myself.”

  “Why do you feel so guilty?”

  “I don’t, and I’m not going to, ever.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be inventing punishments.”

  “This isn’t my invention,” Agate said, patting herself.

  “It shouldn’t be your punishment either.”

  “Don’t try to sell me painless morality until you’ve been kicked in the belly and the ribs for a couple of months yourself. I haven’t been playing with candles.”

  “Why weren’t you taking the Pill?”

  “I was, in an absentminded sort of way, and then, you know, it’s like smoking for some people, You decide to give up men for a while, but then you’re out drinking one night and you just absentmindedly reach for one, light him up, and there you are.”

  “Think about Amelia,” Rosemary said. By now they were parked in front of the house. “She had a good life partly because of all this, the security, the love…”

  “This is a paid commercial,” Agate said.

  “I suppose so,” Rosemary admitted.

  “Were you adopted?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your investment?” Agate asked. “I don’t read it.”

  “I haven’t one really. I just think you’d be much better off to give the child up, whatever happens.”

  “No investment,” Agate said.

  That got through to pain, but Rosemary didn’t give any indication of it. Agate wasn’t really interested in inflicting it; she’d take no real pleasure in being on target.

  “Think about it a little more.”

  “While the old ones have a wild game of bridge.”

  “Are they coming tonight?”

  “Yep, and for dinner, because I’m good for the gall bladder.”

  “You’re good for Amelia.”

  Agate shrugged, then hoisted herself out of the car and labored up the steps. Knowing that Rosemary was watching her, she thought of imitating Miss A’s gait, but that might strain her own heart. Rosemary Hopwood, taking graduate courses against pain and guilt and grief, hadn’t quite made it, surely. Or had she? Nobody with teeth like that could be quite dead, unless she avoided people who liked to be bitten.

  Ida Setworth had made up her mind.

  “Yes,” she said to herself in the mirror, as unlikely a Molly Bloom as she could imagine, in a new dress her friends would not like any better than they had the others she had bought recently. “Yes.”

  The foolishness of it made her a little giddy but she had no fickle temptations. Her decision had been set by very simple reasoning: at seventy-eight she was unlikely to live long enough to regret marrying Carl Hollinger. The novelty of it would only have time to wear off in the grave. But, if she refused him, she would certainly begin to regret that at once.

  The mechanics of change, which had troubled her at first, now seemed unimportant past telling Carl this evening on the way to Amelia’s and then, if he agreed, telling Amelia and Maud at once. Having faced that embarrassment, she could certainly deal with whatever ceremony Carl suggested and then simply move into town.

  She would miss the quiet of the country night, her view, the deep familiarity of her house, but those seemed small sacrifices for what Carl was offering her, a joyful companionship she had never admitted lacking, She hadn’t lacked it really until he offered and she had an opportunity to refuse.

  “Ida Hollinger,” she said. “Mrs. Carl Hollinger.” And thought to write out that name as any schoolgirl might.

  Carl had spent the day in his garden, something he had not done with pleasure since his wife died, but he had begun to feel that Ida soon would make up her mind to accept him, and he wanted to be ready for her. He had already repainted the guest room. He would not go as far as getting new slipcovers for the living room until Ida was prepared to choose the material.

  Harriet had said, when the month was up, he should ask Ida again, and tonight he intended to, not when he picked her up but when he took her home. He could be that patient. Then, if she agreed, they would go out of town directly, marry, and grow accustomed to each other’s company away from the amusement and curiosity of their friends. Ida was not going to refuse him. He somehow knew that.

  The town, as he drove through it, was gentle with evening light. It was not really a chore ever to go to get Ida, but he would be very glad of a day when he did not have to travel farther than a room or two to find her.

  The last stop light was red. He braked and looked at his watch. Six o’clock. He waited for the change. Green. A fist of pain, the weight of a falling planet, hit him in the chest. No instant of knowledge came with it He was dead.

  Ida, who had cried so bitterly at the irony of being loved by Carl, did not weep when she finally located the fact of Carl’s death two hours later by phone. In his car, at a stop light, dead.

  She had already told Amelia to go ahead with dinner. She did not like to phone again now, though she knew Amelia and Maud would be worrying. But probably they had finished what meal they felt inclined to eat. That hard thing, “Carl and I are going to be married,” did not have to be said now. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  Cole answered.

  “Could you put Amelia on?” Ida asked.

  “Yes, Miss Setworth, right away.”

  “Yes, Ida,” Amelia said into the phone, almost at once.

  “Carl’s dead,” Ida said. “A heart attack, in his car, at the last stop light.”

  “Cole’s coming out to get you,” Amelia said.


  I don’t really think…” Ida began. Then she said simply, “All right.”

  “He’ll be there in just a few minutes.”

  “All right.”

  Ida went out onto the terrace and sat down to wait. Dying was the only proper surprise any of them had to offer each other, one they were in some measure prepared for. She would not be the center of grief for this one. No one but Rosemary knew that Ida had been thinking of marrying Carl, and now she would not have to say so. Cole would take her to the Larson house to be one of the several mourning friends, as she had been for Beatrice. At the warm edge where she had always been. The only step for her to take, when the time came, was into the grave. Her brief holiday from that idea had not made her unfamiliar with it. But he had already taken it. Dead. Carl was dead.

  “Miss Setworth?”

  “Hello, Cole. I’ll be right there.”

  But he got out of the car and came to her, offering her his arm. She took it, simply glad of the boy, to whose support she had no more right than she had to special grief. Gifts.

  “You’re a good boy, Cole, to take care of so many old women.”

  “It’s hard to believe,” Cole said.

  “Is it?” she asked vaguely. “Yes, for you, young.”

  “He was… such a nice man.”

  “Yes… a good man. Did you have a chance to eat dinner?”

  “Yes,” Cole said. “Agate’s kept some for you.”

  “That’s kind of her.”

  And Ida imagined that she could eat, there with Amelia and Maud, while they watched and said the ordinary things that people say.

  “A younger man than Arthur,” Maud recalled, for no purpose.

  “At least his loneliness is over,” Amelia said.

  “I really thought he might marry again,” Maud said.

  “At his age?” Amelia asked. “Dying is probably an easier solution.”

  “You sound like your sister,” Ida said, cutting into a piece of ham.

  “We blur,” Amelia said, “as we age. And die.”

  “No,” Ida said.

  “Don’t be perverse, Ida,” Maud said. “It’s not a time to disagree.”