Take Me Home

Chapter 11

She could never remember leaving the room or descending the stairs or crossing the lobby. She could only remember being suddenly in the street, in her torn dress, in the cutting cold. It did not occur to her that she was doing a cowardly thing in running away to leave Henry, who had looked for her and found her and come to her in time to save her, alone and unarmed against a dangerous man with a knife. It did not occur to her, as it had not previously occurred to her that it was a wicked thing to attempt suicide in his bathroom, because she was blinded to the implications and effects of her action by the one imperative need to escape the circumstances that had closed upon her. She was not, in fact, merely running away from the sordid situation in the room she had left, nor was she running from the danger. Her flight was a symbol and a gesture. She was really fleeing the aberrant and threatening part of herself that made sordidness and danger probable, if not certain.

And so she ran, holding her tom dress together and carrying the constant threat with her, from one place to another. She did not actually run, but walked very fast, and she had no idea where she was going, either immediately or eventually, except that she must, in the first place, cross over at once to the other side of the street, for the street would somehow be a barrier between her and the proximate past. When this came into her mind, she was halfway to the corner of the block, but she turned with the thought, without slowing or thinking further or seeing anything whatever, stepping off the curb between two parked cars and walking blindly and imperiously into the traffic lane. At the last moment, just before she was struck, she looked around and through the windshield of the car, as if in the instant of this new and different danger she was mysteriously compelled to see from where and what it came. She was aware of a white and staring face, set behind glass in lines of virulent hatred, and she had in that final instant, before the bolt of pain and thunderous night, the most fantastic notion that it was the face of Lila...

But it was not the face of Lila at all, and it was absolutely absurd that she had ever thought so. The face was much older than the face of Lila, and set not in lines of hatred but of reassuring and disciplined kindness, and above the face was a foolish kind of white cap that Lila would never have worn. At first sight, the face appeared to be disembodied, hanging above her without support, and this was so clearly impossible that the face itself was impossible, and she shut her eyes and waited for it to fade away, but when she opened her eyes again it was still there. Now, however, there was also a body to support the face and give it credence, but the body was incidental and unimportant; the important thing was that the face was smiling and was obviously trying to say something.

“What did you say?” Ivy said to the face.

She intended to speak normally, and tried to, but her voice came out a whisper, and she couldn’t understand why this should be so.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the face said.

“Waiting for me? Why? Where have I been?”

“You’ve been unconscious. For quite a long time. Hew do you feel?”

Now that the question had been asked, Ivy realized that she did not feel right in several ways. In the first place, she did not understand where she was or how she had got there, and this was confusing. In the second place, apart from the confusion, she had a feeling of insecure cohesion, as though at any second she might fall into pieces. In the third place, she hurt. She hurt in her head and body, in flesh and bone, and the hurt was worse with her slightest move.

“I feel strange,” she said. “Why do I hurt so?”

“Don’t you remember? You had an accident. You were struck by a car.”

Then she remembered, and remembering, saw it all again in a split second as it had happened over a period of hours. She shut her eyes against it, trying to recover the deep and solacing peace of total darkness, and she lay for so long with her eyes closed that the nurse thought she had gone naturally to sleep, and was about to go away when the eyes opened.

“That’s why I thought at first you were Lila,” Ivy said.

“Lila? Is she a friend of yours?”

“She’s someone I know.”

“Well, now that you’ve recovered consciousness, you will soon be able to see your friends.”

“Has anyone been here?”

“Two people that I know of. The lady who was driving the car that struck you, and a young man. The lady is terribly distressed about the accident. She insists on assuming all expenses.”

“What does she look like?”

“She’s young and lovely. Like a fashion model. She has black hair.”

“Then it was Lila.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She closed her eyes and saw the white face behind glass and opened the eyes immediately to escape it. “Who was the young man?”

“His name is Henry Harper. He comes every evening.”

“Every evening? How long have I been here? This is a hospital, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s a hospital. You’ve been here three days. This is the third day.”

“I should like to see Henry.”

“You may see him soon.”

“How soon?”

“The doctor will decide. Perhaps for a little while in a day or so.”

“I want very much to see him.”

“I know. I understand. But now you mustn’t talk any more. You must go to sleep if you can.”

The nurse meant well. She was trying to do the right thing. Obediently, Ivy closed her eyes again and listened to the nurse move quietly away, and then she opened her eyes one more time before sleeping and looked out through a window at a black branch covered with ice, and the ice was like cold white fire in the sunlight, the black branch aflame against a patch of pale sky.

Later that day the doctor came. He was an elderly man with gray and white hair brushed smoothly across his skull from a low side part. He also had a ragged gray and white mustache that needed trimming and had grown so far down over his upper lip that he could hold the ends of the hairs between his upper lip and his lower lip, and he did this abstractedly while thinking. His face and voice had the gentleness that comes from the kind of tiredness that is a final estate. He said his name was Dr. Larson. He told her that she had received a severe concussion and a simple fracture of the right arm, which she had guessed from the cast that was on it, and was lucky that she had, besides these, only bruises and lacerations. She was lucky, indeed, to be alive. He came that day, and the next day, and the third day, in the evening, she was allowed to see Henry. He came into the room looking awkward and shy and sit down in a chair beside the bed.

“How are you feeling?” he said.

“Much better,” she said. “I hurt much less than I did. How is the book coming?”

“All right. For some reason I feel confident now that it will be a good book.”

“It’s very generous of you to come to see me.”

“I haven’t come out of generosity. I’ve come because I wanted to.”

“It was cowardly of me to run away and leave you when you were in danger because of me. I’m grateful to you for saving me, however.”

“It’s all right. It came out all right.”

“I didn’t dream that you were so brave.”

“Oh, nonsense. Anyone will fight if it’s necessary, I paid your bill at the hotel and took your things home.”

“Did you? Thank you very much. I’m sorry that I’ve caused you so much trouble.”

“I also talked to the police about the accident. You’ll have to talk to them yourself, when you feel like it, but it will be only a formality.”

“It was Lila who did it, wasn’t it?”

‘Yes.”

“She did it on purpose. First she gave me too much sedative, and then she ran me down.”

“Listen to me. I doubt seriously that she gave you too much sedative, and she certainly didn’t deliberately run you down. There were witnesses to the accident, and they testified that you walked right in front of the car. She couldn’t have stopped or missed you.”

“It seems to me a great coincidence that it should have been Lila.”

“That’s what it was. You must believe it.”

“Why was she there? That’s something I’ve been unable to understand. She couldn’t have known where I had gone.”

“I’d arranged to meet her. We were going to look for you together. I’ll tell you all about it when you are better.”

“Well, I’ll believe that she’s innocent if you tell me to, but I don’t want to see her again. Not ever again.”

“That’s good.”

“If she comes here to see me, I’ll have them send her away.”

“She won’t come. I’ve told her it would be better if she didn’t.”

“Do you really want me to come back to you?”

“If you want to.”

“I want to, but I don’t know if it would be wise. How will it end?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think it will end well. I think so.”

“We’ll see.”

“How is George?”

“George is fine. He sends his regards. He’ll come to see you when you’re stronger.”

“I’ll be glad to see him. I would be glad to see Mr. Brennan too, if he cares to come.”

“Perhaps I can bring him one time.”

“Did you have any trouble over the fight in the hotel room?”

“No. No trouble. It didn’t last long. I knocked the man out, whoever he was, and when he came to, he went away. I took your things, as I said, and paid your bill. I had heard the ambulance in the street, but I didn’t know what it was for. When I got outside, they were just putting you into it.”

“I’ll tell you about the man sometime.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t care about him.”

“I’ve caused you a great deal of trouble, haven’t I?”

“Never mind that.”

“I can’t understand why you bother with me.”

“Maybe it’s because you remind me, for some reason, of someone else I once knew.”

“The girl you told me about that you were in love with?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad I remind you of her. She must have been very nice if you were in love with her. I hope that you get to be in love with me too, and I with you. I’ll try to make it come out so.”

“You tried once. Remember? It didn’t work.”

“I’ll try again.”

“It’s a good thing to keep trying.”

The hand of her unbroken arm was lying near him on the bed, and he took the hand in his and held it. They sat silently for a long time as the room grew dark in the short and sudden winter dusk.

“I’d better be going,” he said at last.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I’d better. I was told to stay only a little while.”

“I wish you could stay longer.”

“Perhaps I can stay longer tomorrow.”

“Would you be willing to kiss me before you go?”

“Yes.”

He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips and then stood up. She looked very small and frail, he thought, with her head in bandages and her right arm in a plaster cast. The cast gave her a kind of comic touch, an incitement at once to laughter and tears.

“Good-by,” he said.

“Until tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, “Until tomorrow.”

He went out and she lay quietly in the dark room. She thought for a while that she would surely cry, but she didn’t because she couldn’t, and pretty soon she went to sleep and wakened only once for a few minutes in the night, and in the morning, when she turned her head on her pillow and looked out the window, she could see the black branch aflame in the sunlight.