Desert of the Heart: A Novel Read online

  “For God’s sake, Mother, talk about something, will you?”

  Frances did. She discussed fund raising for the Episcopal Church, legal adoption, the Reno flood. The connection between one subject and another was superficial but skillful. If Frances was extravagant in her subject matter, she was not undisciplined. Ann offered an occasional question or comment while Walter ate his cold potatoes. Evelyn sat silent, trapped between the competing voices, irritated and oddly ashamed. When Virginia finally said goodbye and rushed back upstairs, Frances also stopped talking and got up to clear the dishes to a tea cart, which she then wheeled to the kitchen.

  “Thank you,” Walter said. He felt in his shirt pocket with his left hand and took out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

  “No thanks.” Evelyn’s head ached. Her throat was sour with the food she had eaten. She longed to have the meal over.

  “What time is it?” Ann asked.

  “Six. You’ve got an easy twenty minutes. Relax.”

  “Will you leave the car in the lot?”

  “Oh, I’ll probably come and pick you up.” Walter rose to take the last of the serving dishes away.

  “What time do you get off?” Evelyn asked, forcing a question against the candid look of sympathy Ann gave her as soon as they were alone in the room.

  “Three or three thirty. I’ll be off at three tonight. Sunday’s fairly slow.”

  “You must have to sleep all day.”

  “Oh, no. I’m always up by eleven. These hot days I get up earlier. There’s no point in a night job if you sleep the day away.”

  “I suppose not,” Evelyn said. She could not think of anything more to say that was not personal; and, because she herself disliked direct questions, she would not ask any. “I suppose not.”

  “It really isn’t usually as bad as this,” Ann said. “I’m sorry about … all that nonsense I was talking.”

  “Please …” Evelyn began but was troubled by the urgency in her own voice. What was the matter with her?

  “Do you drive?” Ann asked quickly. “Because I really don’t use the car much during the day. Walt takes it to work. Any day you wanted to, you could drop him off and just have the car.”

  “That’s very generous of you, but I …”

  “Don’t refuse. You’ll need things to do.”

  “I have plenty of work to do,” Evelyn answered, her voice quite under control, her eyes consciously and silently reminding Ann of the fifteen years that separated them.

  “I’m sorry again,” Ann said, her smile relieved and self-mocking. “It’s just playground tactics: if you won’t be mad at me, I’ll let you play with my car.”

  “I shouldn’t suppose anyone stays mad at you for very long,” Evelyn said, her voice still adult, but fond, as if to a child.

  Frances came in with a berry pie. Walter followed with the coffee.

  “Now you have plenty of time, Ann,” Frances said. “You’re to eat a piece of pie.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”

  “She never wants dessert,” Frances said to Evelyn. “She never did, not even when she was a little girl.”

  Walter imitated an expression of maternal concern. Ann looked down, demure. Frances, unnoticing, cut the pie with haphazard generosity, and they ate.

  After Walter and Ann had hurried off, Frances suggested a more peaceful cup of coffee in the living room. Evelyn raised the question of payment almost at once.

  “I charge sixty-five dollars a week.”

  “Fine,” Evelyn said, a little too quickly. She had not really put her mind to any fixed amount, but her only experience with room and board had been the price set for students in Berkeley. She was, therefore, startled. “Shall I pay you in advance?”

  “A week at a time. If you make other plans, just give me a week’s notice.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be quite comfortable here,” Evelyn said.

  “I’m glad. But sometimes … well … people change their minds.”

  “Do they?” Evelyn asked. “Well, yes, I suppose they might.”

  “Yes.”

  The silence invited Evelyn to say something about herself, her own situation and intention.

  “Let me get my checkbook,” she said abruptly.

  “That’s not necessary. Tomorrow’s plenty of time.”

  “I mustn’t keep you then, Mrs. Packer.” Evelyn got up.

  “Do call me Frances…. Of course, you want to unpack. You run along. If there’s anything you need, just let me know. I usually make tea around ten o’clock. You come down if you’d like to. Or before. I always like company; so don’t ever feel you have to be alone.”

  “Have to be alone,” Evelyn thought as she closed the bedroom door behind her. If she had known how much she would have to pay—it worked out to almost four hundred dollars for six weeks—she could have stayed in a hotel. Three meals a day of the sort she had just survived would drive her mad. The hysteria, the awkwardness, the prying, the solicitude were unbearable. As she looked at her not yet unpacked suitcases, she thought for a moment that she need not stay, that she could simply close them, call a cab, and be gone. But, at the fact of escape, her imagination balked.

  “I can’t run away from running away.”

  Nothing was wrong, really. It was only Virginia Ritchie, a caricature of the wronged woman, who made the others behave as they did. She would be gone in three weeks’ time, perhaps sooner. Evelyn wondered why it had never occurred to her that, once in Reno, a woman might change her mind. Regret, yes, even terror, but like the suicide falling, no way out. But that was ridiculous. Evelyn herself had waited until there was no choice, but perhaps other people acted on impulse. Virginia Ritchie was, after all, not much older than Ann Childs.

  “All right. I admit it,” Evelyn said quietly in answer to a thought she was not allowing herself to have.

  Ann was almost young enough to be her own child. But only a parent could be allowed to feel tenderness for his own likeness. In a childless woman such tenderness was at best narcissistic. And Evelyn had learned the even less flattering names applied to the love a childless woman might feel for anything: her dogs, her books, her students … yes, even her husband. She was not afraid of the names themselves, but she was afraid of the truth that might be in them. This resemblance was, she knew, not a trick need had played on her; neither was it a miracle. Ann Childs was an accident; that was all. An accident, an illegitimate child, “sprung full grown and female out of our All Father’s racked brain.” Evelyn smiled.

  “And I shall feel tender toward her if I like.”

  As she crossed the room to open the drawers of the highboy, she noticed that, instead of the Gideon Bible Walter had promised, there was a small bowl of fresh fruit on the bedside table. Frances Packer was quite a nice woman really. She hadn’t been trying to pry. She had only offered the opportunity for Evelyn to ask for sympathy. And, if many of her guests had been like Virginia Ritchie, Frances’ friendliness was a calculated and saintly risk.

  “I must tell her to call me Evelyn,” she decided, as she folded nightgowns into the second drawer, trying to ignore the distaste she felt for such familiarity.

  When Evelyn had settled her belongings, it was only seven thirty. She was not used to so early a dinner. All evenings would be long. It was just as well. She had planned to do a lot of work during these six weeks. Already she missed her books. She had only had room for three or four in her luggage. If she had taken the car, she would have everything she needed with her. George would not use it, but she had refused to suggest anything that would threaten or anger him further. There were libraries. Perhaps she would go tomorrow after she had seen the lawyer. Or on Tuesday. That would give her something definite to do on Tuesday.

  Sitting down at the secretary, Evelyn made a list of the notes she should write. Evelyn’s correspondence, since her sister’s death two years ago, had dwindled to nothing very much more than Christmas letters to half a dozen old friends. Of these, Carol
was the only person she wanted to write to, but she must send some word to the others as well. It would hardly do to save the news of her divorce to include in Christmas greetings, Emily Post, or whoever did that sort of thing now, should produce a form letter or at least offer civilized suggestions for the announcement of a divorce. “Mr. and Mrs. George Hall take pleasure in …” Or “Mrs. Evelyn Hall”—that was the right form now, wasn’t it?—but not “takes pleasure.” Did she regret it? “Regrets the divorce of her only husband, George”? “Is ashamed”? “Unhappily admits”? For the contested divorce, the contesting partner could use “Refuses to admit …” Evelyn put her hand up to her eyes, refusing to admit quite sudden tears.

  She wanted a cigarette. She had none. Lovely. She would have to go out to buy some. It was only eight o’clock, still early enough to explore the immediate neighborhood.

  Out on the street, because it was a pleasant evening and because the streets she had driven through were unpleasant, Evelyn turned east to walk farther into what must be a residential area. At first she was able to walk slowly, naming trees and flowers, feeling against her face and arms the fine drifts of spray from lawn sprinklers, a wavering pulse of sound everywhere, like evening crickets. She found a store before she wanted to, but, afraid on a Sunday evening that it might not stay open long, she went in. Waited on at once by a silent, tired woman, Evelyn bought several packs of cigarettes and a bottle of sherry. As she came out onto the street again, she was reluctant to turn back. Beyond the next intersection, the street she had been walking narrowed and steepened to block her view. Curious, she went on. At the top of the short hill, Evelyn stopped, oddly out of breath. The street fingered out from the main crossroad for just three short blocks of faded brick bungalows and no trees. At the end was the desert, sudden, flat, dull miles of it until it heaved itself upward and became the mountains. An irrational fear, as alien to Evelyn’s nature as heat lightning seems to a summer sky, struck through her body. For a moment she could not move. Then she turned quietly, refusing in herself the desire to run, and walked back to the house.

  Frances Packer was in the hall, but Evelyn refused the cup of tea she offered.

  “Would you like to take the paper up with you?” Frances suggested. “We’ve all finished with it.”

  “Thank you, but …”

  “Do,” Frances encouraged.

  It was little enough to accept; so Evelyn carried the unwanted paper up the stairs to her room. She glanced at the travel clock by her bed, picked it up and listened to it. She had not forgotten to wind it. It clicked at her ear with precise regularity. How could she have been gone only twenty minutes? She put the clock down impatiently and began to undress.

  Bathed and ready for bed, Evelyn stood by the window, looking out through the densely leaved tree to the sky, still transparent with the last, lasting light of evening. Safe now, the day like a door arbitrarily closed behind her, Evelyn could smile at herself. She could not remember a night in recent years when she had been in bed before midnight. Now, at not quite nine o’clock, like a summer child she struggled to keep sleep off until the darkness arrived. Why? She had every right to be tired. It had been a long day, this last day of the long sixteen years that had brought her here. Surely now she could sleep. There was no harm in it.

  2

  ANN LEFT WALTER WITH the car and walked up the alley to the employees’ entrance. Inside, the stale heat of the day smelled of brass ash trays and sweat and shoes. But the night shift employees, crowded around the board, lined up at the punch clock, sitting in the cracked leather chairs, were fresh from a day’s sleep, newly shaved or powdered, in clean shirts, pressed trousers, and polished boots. Noisy with stories of the night before, because it had been Saturday, easy about the night to come, because it was Sunday, they relaxed together, the change aprons, the key men, the cashiers, the dealers, and the floor bosses.

  “We’re in the Corral again, darling,” Silver Kay called from across the room by the Coke machine.

  “Out of the dollar machines, thank God,” Ann said, joining Silver and taking a sip of the Coke she offered.

  “All very well for you. You’re on the ramp again. I’m on the goddamned floor.”

  “You like it,” Ann said.

  “I like it. I like it. You’ve never been on the floor.”

  “I’m not tall enough,” Ann said.

  “You’ll do. You’re noticeable enough, love.”

  “Thanks,” Ann said, looking up at Silver, who was over six feet tall in her heeled boots, hipless and brazen bosomed, her hair bleached almost as white as the ten-gallon hat that rode on her shoulders like a rising moon, “but I’m not in your class.”

  “Why don’t you enroll?” Silver suggested. “It’s reduced rates tonight.”

  “Is it?”

  “Umhum.”

  “Joe out of town?”

  “And I’ve got a bottle of your favorite Scotch,” Silver said, smiling.

  “I might be tired,” Ann said, but she felt Silver’s eyes trace a teasing and relieving suggestion from her throat to her thighs. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “Sleep with me.”

  “You going down to the locker room?”

  “I’ve been.”

  “I’ll see you later then,” Ann said.

  In the basement Ann found Janet Hearle already there, the locker they shared open.

  “I’ve just been up to supplies and got you a better apron,” Janet said. “Here.”

  “Thanks. How’s everything?”

  “We’ve got a date for the operation. A week from tomorrow.

  “That’s good news,” Ann said. “Have you got time off?”

  “Do you think I ought to ask, Ann? They might just say I needn’t come back.”

  “But you have to be with the baby,” Ann protested. “Ask Bill. He’ll understand. He can work it for you.”

  “I was late twice last week.”

  “So you were late.”

  “I can’t lose this job, Ann. I’ve got to have the money. And Ken can get off. He’s already checked with his boss. He can have ten days.”

  “Ten days isn’t enough, is it?”

  “No, but by then we’ll know. If he’s going to live, he’ll live.”

  “He’ll live,” Ann said.

  “Your name’s crooked.” Janet undid the plastic nameplate: FRANK’S CLUB INTRODUCES (a picture of a covered wagon) ANN. She repinned it neatly over Ann’s left shirt pocket. “There.”

  “You see Bill tonight. It won’t hurt to ask.”

  Janet nodded, uncertain. She closed the locker door. “Well, here we go again.”

  Ann would have spoken to Bill herself if Janet’s uncertainty had been a simple matter of time off, but ten days away from work meant a loss of about a hundred dollars. She and Ken had not finished paying for last year’s operation. They were buying their child’s life on the installment plan without so much as a thirty-day guarantee. Well, Frances was right. Ann did not like gambling, but the sort people indulged in at Frank’s Club, even when they lost more than they could afford to lose, was innocent enough. And at least, here, they knew the odds. Great signs in the lavatories announced, “Remember, if you play long enough you’ll lose.” And pamphlets handed out to customers carefully explained the varying disadvantages of each game. It was all a public relations stunt, of course, a way the Establishment denied that it was the House of Mammon in the City of Dis. But it was honest advertising. No university published the odds against learning, no hospital the odds against surviving, no church the odds against salvation. Here, anyway, people weren’t being fooled. They were told that no one was intelligent enough or strong enough or blessed enough to be saved. Still, they played.

  As Ann and Janet reached the top of the stairs, their way was blocked by a small crowd of employees, watching Silver give instructions to a new girl.

  “Look, kid, out on the floor it’s hell. Ask anybody. Isn’t that right, anybody?” Several nodde
d, amused. “For instance, it gets so crowded one woman passed out and had to ride two floors on the escalator before she had room to fall down. I’m not kidding. Am I kidding?” The others shook their heads. “One Saturday night some very cooperative customers helped us carry out ten drunks. We didn’t find out for an hour that those ten drunks were slot machines with coats and hats on. Tricky, eh? But what you’ve really got to watch out for is pickpockets. Now, do you know how to walk to keep off pickpockets?”

  The youngster shook her head. Watching Silver, she tried to cover her fear with a mild scepticism.

  “You hook your thumbs like this, see?” Silver demonstrated, her thumbs in her pockets, her hands cupped over her hip bones. “And use your elbows to keep them clear.” She walked half a dozen steps. “Now go ahead. Try it yourself.” The girl hesitated. “Go ahead, I said. You have to learn.”

  “She’s right,” Ann said. “You couldn’t learn from anybody better. Silver was a pickpocket before she came here.”

  “Only as a hobby,” Silver shouted above the laughter. “Only as a hobby.”

  “And she’s proud of her amateur standing, because next year she goes to the winter Olympics.”

  “Ann?”

  Ann turned to find Bill standing behind her. “Yes, Bill.”

  “I want you to take the new girl tonight.”

  “I like that!” Silver said. “Here I am, volunteering my long experience … but you’re in good hands, honey. Ann’ll take care of you fine.”

  “This is Joyce, Ann,” Bill said. “She’s got all her things. Her card’s in. Ann will show you just what to do, Joyce. And I’ll come by later and see how you are.”

  Joyce, rescued from Silver’s towering burlesque, turned to Bill’s protective, male height with gratefulness and relief. And, because she obviously did not want him to leave her, he walked across the alley with Ann and Joyce.

  “You mustn’t let Silver scare you to death,” he was saying. “It won’t be hard. Ann will show you….”