Take Me Home

Chapter 3

It was determined by a distended bladder that she should not die. The bladder belonged to Henry Harper. Waking, he was aware first of the nagging discomfort that had broken his sleep, and then he was instantly afterward aware of the cold air coming in the open window. He could not remember having opened the window, and in fact he could remember, after a moment’s consideration, that he definitely hadn’t opened it. He had taken a last swallow from the bottle, and then he had lain down across the bed for a moment and had obviously fallen asleep, and in the meanwhile, while he was sleeping, someone lad opened the window and had covered him with a blanket, which was something else he could definitely remember not having done for himself. Then he thought of the girl in the other room who called herself Ivy Galvin and who was clearly in some kind of trouble, and he hoped that she didn’t start trying to be ingratiating about windows and blankets and things like that, for it would only make it more difficult to lack her out when the time came, which was not long off, but first, before doing anything else, he would have to get up and relieve the distension of his bladder.

He threw the blanket aside and sat up on the edge of the bed and held his head for a moment in his hands. His temples throbbed, and his eyes felt sore and hot under granulated lids. With the index finger of each hand he pressed against his eyes until the pain became unbearable, and then he removed the pressure and felt for a moment afterward, in the abrupt departure of pain, an illusion of clarity and well-being. Rising in the moment of illusion, he went over to the bathroom door and tried to open it, but the door seemed to be stuck, resisting his effort. He turned the knob as far clockwise as it would go and pulled again, and the door snapped open suddenly in a thin shower of tissue before a gust of gas. He saw Ivy Gavin sitting on the floor with her back against the tub in attitude of definitive peace, and in an instant the stuck door, the tissue, the gas and the girl all slipped into position in a significant relationship. He was always a little proud afterward, thinking back, of the decisiveness of his reaction. Lunging across the room, he closed the tap of the ring beneath the water heater, and almost in the same motion, with hardly a break or change of direction, he gathered up the girl and carried her into the bedroom. In his mind with fear and incipient anger was a small entity of compassion, the thought that she was so light, so very light, hardly anything at all in his arms.

Laying her on the bed in the cold air from the window, he listened with sickening relief to the ragged and reassuring sound of her breathing, and as his fear diminished with the evidence that she was not dead and would not likely die, he became proportionately furious that she had, with no consideration of him whatever, placed him in a position that would have been, without the sheerest good luck of a distended bladder, extremely difficult if not disastrous. He wondered if there were anything more that he should do to help her, but he couldn’t think what it would be, unless it were to loosen her clothing so that she could breathe more freely, and after thinking about it for a few seconds, in a kind of deliberate retaliation to the dirty trick she had played on him, he removed her dress and slip entirely, holding her with one arm in a sitting position as he pulled them over her head. The thinness of her body, he saw now, as he had guessed last night on the windy street, was truly the thinness of small bones. She was incongruously delicate and strong, childish and mature, and there was in the center of his anger, as he looked at her, an aching core that was not anger at all. Reluctantly, he covered her with the blanket and sat beside her to watch and wait until she recovered consciousness.

It seemed like a long time. It was very cold in the room because of the open window, and pretty soon he got up and put on his overcoat and sat down again. Later, when he felt that the gas was gone, or nearly so, he went over and closed the window, but the room stayed cold, although the radiator was hot, and so he went out into the other room and found the two windows there open also. He closed them and returned to the bed and sat down once more on the edge, and Ivy Galvin stirred and made a soft, whimpering sound and opened her eyes and immediately closed them again.

“I’m sick,” she said.

“It damn well serves you right,” he said.

She retched and rolled off the bed onto her feet and started for the bathroom. After three steps, she sank slowly to her knees with her arms reaching blindly for support.

She remained in that position, on her knees with her arms spread, and when he reached her and picked her up, her eyes were shut and her face reposed and her sickness apparently past. She was breathing quietly and deeply. Laying her on the bed and covering her again with the blanket, he stood looking down at her with a feeling of desperation. “Are you all right?” he said.

She shook her head, not so much, he thought, in answer to his question as to indicate that she wanted him to leave her alone. Well, he would leave her alone, all right, if that was what she wanted. He would leave her alone gladly until she had recovered sufficiently to dress and get out and go wherever she had to go, and that would be the end of her, and good riddance. Turning away, he was reminded by his bladder that he had not yet done what he had got up to do, and so he went into the bathroom and did it. Then he went back through the bedroom into the living room and sat down at the table and looked at his stack of manuscript. He wondered dully if he would ever in the world get it finished, and if he did, in time, if it would be worth the finishing. After half an hour, he went back into the bedroom and found Ivy Galvin lying quietly on her back with her eyes open. Turning her head on the pillow, she stared at him with undisguised malice.

“I suppose you think I ought to thank you,” she said.

“Not at all,” he said. “You’ve made it perfectly clear from the beginning that you don’t believe in thanking anyone for anything.”

“Why can’t you mind your own business?”

“Well, I’ll be damned if you aren’t the most incredible female I’ve ever been unlucky enough to meet! I’d like to remind you, in case you’ve forgotten, that you’ve been imposing yourself on me in every way that suited you, and I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had enough. What the hell do you mean by trying to kill yourself in my bathroom?”

“I can do as I please with myself. It’s not your affair.”

“The hell it isn’t! And what was I supposed to do with you after you were dead? Dump you in the alley? Simply call the morgue to come and get you? By God, do you suppose a body is something that can be disposed of without any explanations or any trouble at all?”

The malice in her expression was replaced by a kind of surprised acceptance of his point, and he had the impression, fantastic as it was, that she had not considered previously for a single instant the enormity of the consequences to him of what she had tried to do to herself.

“I didn’t think of that,” she said.

“Of course you didn’t. You never think of anyone but yourself.”

“Well, don’t feel so abused about it. I’m not dead, thanks to your meddling, and it’s apparent that I’m in no danger of dying.”

“Not because you didn’t try.”

“Perhaps I’ll try again.”

“All right. Better luck next time. Don’t think for a minute I care if you die or not, just so you do it somewhere else. When you get away from here, wherever you go, you can do as you like with yourself, whatever it may be.”

“You’re a mean bastard, aren’t you?”

“I don’t like women who try to leave their dead bodies in my bathroom, if that’s what you mean.”

“All you can think of is the little bit of trouble it would have caused you. You don’t care in the least what may happen to me.”

“That’s right. Not in the least.”

“In that case, I’d better go away at once.”

“The sooner the better.”

“I’m sorry I ever came.”

“So am I.”

“It would have been better to sleep in an alley.”

“You can sleep in an alley tonight.”

She had been lying quite still, only her eyes and lips moving, but now she sat up abruptly and turned back the blanket. Instantly she was still again, caught and fixed in rigidity as she stared down at her nearly naked body. After a few frozen seconds, she lay back, covering herself, and he realized from the harshness of her breathing and the crimson stains in her cheeks that she was exorbitantly furious.

“Where are my clothes?” she said.

“On the chair over there.”

“Hand them to me.”

“Why should I? Get them yourself.”

“You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”

“Not at all. You’re nothing much to look at, you know.”

“If you know what’s good for you, you had better get out of here.”

“It’s my room, and I’ll get out when I’m damn good and ready.”

“I suppose it gave you a cheap thrill to take my clothes off when I couldn’t help myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve had more pleasure taking the panties off a lamb chop.”

“If you ever put your filthy hands on me again, I’ll kill you.”

“No danger. I never want to see you again, let alone touch you.”

His anger was at least equal to hers. She had imposed on him and put him in danger and was now accusing him unfairly of motives he hadn’t had, and he was confused, as well as angry, and desperately sick, besides, of her and her troubles, whatever they were precisely, and all he wanted was to be rid of her forever as quickly as could be. Retrieving her dress and slip, he threw them across the bed with a violence indicative of his anger.

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “I’ve only tried to help you when you needed it, which was a bad mistake, for all I’ve had from you is abuse and trouble and nasty allusions to your precious virtue, for the love of God, and if you want to do me a good turn for the one I tried to do you, you will get dressed and go find a place to kill yourself where no one else will be involved.”

He went out into the other room and sat down on the worn frieze sofa. He noticed in an ash tray the crushed butts of the three cigarettes Ivy Galvin had smoked, and he wondered if she had got up to smoke them in the night or if she had smoked them this morning after waking. He thought, wrongly, that she had probably smoked them in the night when she could not sleep for thinking about whatever it was that made her want to die, and he saw her suddenly with extraordinary vividness in his mind as she had not actually been, huddled alone in the dark in the room of a stranger that was the only place she could find in the end to go. Seeing her so, he felt his anger drain out of him, and he began to wish that he had not spoken to her with deliberate cruelty, or that he could, having spoken, take back what he had said. He cursed and closed his eyes and waited for her to come in, which she did about ten minutes later.

“Could you give me a little money?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“You could if you would.”

“All right, then. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I only have a little, and I need it for myself.”

“I suppose that’s so. You’re obviously very poor.”

“You said last night that you have some money at the place you came from. Why don’t you go there and get it?”

“I don’t want to.”

“You mean you’re afraid to?”

“No. Not exactly. I just don’t want to.”

“Where are you going?”

“When I leave here?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. Somewhere.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said with quiet despair. “You don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t have any money to get you there. What’s going to happen to you?”

“I don’t know that, either. Something.”

“Well, it’s not my fault. I’m not responsible for what you are, or what you’ve done, or anything that may happen.”

“That’s true. You’re not. I don’t blame you for not giving me any money, and I don’t blame you for being angry.”

“I’m not angry. I was angry in the bedroom, but I’m over it.”

“You were right to be angry. You’ve been very kind, and I’ve been a perfect bitch. I’m ashamed of myself.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be.”

“I am. I’m grateful and ashamed. Thank you for giving me a warm place to stay.”

“It’s all right. It was nothing.”

“I think I’d better go now. Good-by.”

Looking at her, his despair mounting, he knew already, although he was not ready to admit it, that he could not send her off to somewhere with nothing. He wondered, if she would try again to commit suicide, and if she would succeed if she tried. It did not seem possible that she could go on and on failing. He had a mental picture of her in the city morgue, a slim and childish body in a stark box that pulled out of a wall like a drawer. He had never been in a morgue and had no clear idea of what one was like, but he was certain that it would be bleak and cold and inhospitable to the dead.

“Look,” he said. “There’s no hurry about leaving. Sit down for a while.”

“I thought you wanted me to leave as soon as possible.”

“I was angry when I said that. I told you I’ve got over it.”

“Nevertheless, I ought to leave at once. It will only be harder to go if I delay.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“How long has it been since you’ve eaten?”

“I don’t know. Quite a while. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m not hungry.”

“I might be able to spare you a little money after all.”

“I wouldn’t want to take it. I’d be ashamed.”

“Oh, nonsense. I wish you’d sit down and stay a little longer. I’d like to talk with you.”

She shrugged and sat down in a chair facing him, smoothing the skirt of her wool dress over her knees. Her legs, he saw, were quite good, with slender ankles and clean lines curving nicely to the calves. She was, in fact, a pretty girl altogether, and she would be, he felt, even prettier if only she would take the trouble to make the most of what she had. It would be a pity if she were actually to come, sooner or later, to the bad end she seemed to be looking for. As he watched her, he was reminded suddenly of someone else he had once known.

“What is there to talk about?” she said.

“Tell me about yourself.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“There must be something.”

“Nothing interesting. Nothing you’d care to hear.”

“If you want me to give you some money or try to help you, you could at least tell me the truth.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“It’s pretty obvious.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Because you tried to kill yourself, and almost did. No one tries to kill himself over nothing.”

She folded her hands in her lap and sat looking at them. He thought at first that she was considering an answer, but after a long period of silence it seemed that she had merely decided not to make any answer at all.

“All right,” he said. “If you don’t want to talk, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Then she looked up from her folded hands, and he saw that his first impression had been right, that she had been considering an answer all the while.

“It’s evident,” she said, “that I tried to kill myself because I didn’t want to go on living. The truth is, someone I loved tried to kill me last night, and I saved my life by walking and walking and refusing to die, and then later, this morning, I decided it would be better to die after all, and so I tried, as you know, but it was no use. It’s rather silly, isn’t it, when you stop to think about it?”

“Who tried to kill you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather not tell you.”

“Because no one did?”

“No. It’s true. Why should I lie about it?”

“Why should you lie about anything? I’ve got a notion you’re pretty good at it. Maybe you think it’s fun. Maybe it’s essential to your ego.”

“If I tell you what happened, will you believe me? There’s no point in telling you if you won’t.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“All right, then. I’ve been living with my cousin. Her name is Lila Galvin. Her father, who is dead, was my father’s brother. She’s very beautiful and clever, and I loved her, and for a long time she loved me, but then I began to bore her and become a nuisance, and she doesn’t love me anymore. I don’t think she trusts me, either, and she’s afraid that I may destroy her. Or destroy, at least, the kind of life she has made for herself. It isn’t true, I wouldn’t do anything deliberately to hurt her, but she thinks I might, and that’s why she tried to kill me. Because she wants to be rid of me and is afraid of what I may say or do. Do you understand?”

She was looking at him levelly, holding his eyes, and he saw in hers an expression that he thought was composed of the pride and pain of masochism. He was convinced that she was deriving, now that she had begun to talk, a kind of intense and morbid pleasure from exposing in herself what he would surely consider shameful, even if she did not. And it was true that he did. He considered it shameful, and it made him sick. Not the aberrance itself, which was common enough, but the specific existence of the aberrance in this particular person — this thin girl with folded hands and pained eyes who was beginning to be someone he liked, and who might have become, with better luck on different terms, someone he could have loved.

“I think I do,” he said.

“Well, then,” she said, “that’s the way I am, and that’s what happened, and now I hope we needn’t talk about it any more.”

“How do you know she tried to kill you? Your Cousin Lila. What did she do?”

“Oh, it was very clever and almost worked, and it would probably have been much better if it had. It would have been so easy, simply a matter of going to sleep and never waking, and there was even music to die by. I wasn’t feeling well, very depressed, which is the way I often feel, and she put me to bed and gave me too much sleeping medicine and went away. You see how it would have been? She’d have come back and found me dead, and it would have seemed like suicide, and that’s exactly what everyone would have thought it was.”

“How do you know she gave you too much sleeping medicine? How did you discover it? Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

“No. I didn’t imagine it. She had been angry with me and had said that I would be better off dead, and later, after she had gone and I was lying in bed in the dark with the music playing. I suddenly remembered what she had said, and I was certain that I would die if I didn’t do something to prevent it. I got up and looked at the bottle the medicine had been in, and the bottle was empty, and I had seen earlier that it was almost full. There was no question about it. None at all. She had given me too much, and I was dying painlessly, as she wished, and when I knew this, although I had no particular desire to live, it was somehow imperative that I not die. It makes no sense at all, does it? Anyhow, that’s the way it was, and I had heard that the thing to do was to keep moving and not, above all, to go to sleep, and so I dressed and started walking in the streets. After a long time I was too tired to walk any farther, and that’s when I went into the diner where we met. You were nasty and chintzy about the coffee.”

“Never mind the coffee. If all this is true, what do you intend to do about it?”

“Nothing. What is there to do?”

“Well, if this cousin of yours tried to kill you, you should at least report it to the police.”

“No, no. That’s not possible. Surely you can see that. Anyhow, it would do no good, and possibly a great deal of harm. I don’t want to cause Lila any trouble.”

“By God, if she tried to kill me, I’d want to make all the trouble for her that I could.”

“You don’t understand. You’re just like all the others I’ve known. You’re ignorant and bigoted and don’t understand in the least how things can be.”

“Look, now. Don’t start abusing me again. I have trouble enough getting along with you as it is. If this lovely cousin of yours tried to kill you, as you said, we’ve got to do something about it, and that’s ail there is to it. Would you like me to go and see her?”

“God, no! Why should I want that? What could you do?”

“I could scare the hell out of her, at least. I could give her as bad a time as she’s given you.”

“You leave her alone. Do you-hear me? Leave her alone. If I’d thought you were going to have a lot of crazy ideas about doing things, I wouldn’t have told you what happened.”

“Oh, all right. She’s your cousin, and it’s your life she tried to take. If it pleases you to be generous with a murderous queer, go right ahead.”

“And don’t call her names. Just keep still about her if you can’t speak decently.”

“I didn’t call her anything she isn’t. You’d better start learning to face the truth. And you’d better start learning to know who wants to be your friend and who doesn’t”

“Do you want to be my friend? Is that what you mean?”

“I doubt that anyone could be your friend. You wouldn’t allow it. You’re so damned abusive and offensive that you’d alienate anyone after a little while.”

“Is that so? I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

He grinned suddenly, and she grinned back, her small face lighting and assuming a loveliness that almost made it another face altogether, and then all at once they were laughing and laughing, together and at each other, and when they were done and quiet again, they felt relieved and much better and nearly comfortable.

“If we’re both difficult and offensive,” he said, “we at least have something in common.”

“Is it possible to be friends with a man? I hope so. It would be nice to be friends if he didn’t eventually want to be something more.”

“Maybe if you were good friends long enough you would begin to feel different about being something more.”

“Do you think so? It would make everything so much simpler and better if I could.”

“It might be possible. I don’t know. It seems reasonable to me that you learned to be what you are, and it’s just as reasonable, though probably harder, that you could learn to be something else.”

“It’s encouraging to hear you say so. I like you very much, and I’m sorry I’ve been so bitchy, even though I know very well that I’d be bitchy again and again if we were going on knowing each other.”

“Would you like to go on knowing each other?”

“I think so. I think I’d like to try. Would you?”

“Whether I would or not is beside the point. The point is, you don’t want to leave, because you have no place to go, and I’m not going to kick you out, because I’m not tough enough or mean enough or smart enough, whatever it would take to do it, and so you will have to stay here with me, and later we may be able to work something out. There’s one thing you’ve got to stop, however, and that’s thinking all the time that I’m about to ravish you, or some damn thing like that. I may want to, and probably will want to under the circumstances, but I won’t.”

“Do you really want me to stay?”

“Let’s not press the point. I’m willing to have you if you behave yourself and quit giving me hell for every little thing I do, or that you imagine. I haven’t enough money to buy you clothes or other things you’ll need, however. One of us will simply have to go and get what you have in the place you came from.”

“All right. I’ll go myself tomorrow. I’ll go and come right back. I’m determined not to be a coward about it any longer.”

She got up suddenly and sat down beside him on the sofa. Leaning toward him, very carefully not touching him the least bit more than she intended, she brushed her lips softly across his cheek, and he was aware of the enormous effort it required and the exorbitant concession that it was.

“Thank you,” she said. “I hope we can be friends. I’ll try very hard, honestly.”

“Oh, hell,” he said with quiet despair. “Oh, hell.”