Take Me Home

Chapter 6

...Christmas.

And now, he thought, it was almost another one, and between then and now, that Christmas and this, a great deal had happened and he had been many places, but all that had happened and all the places he had been seemed in retrospect to be more remote in his life than the things and people and places of longer ago. Something had somehow ended with the end of Mandy, a quality of intensity, an impressionability, something that was his that she took away. She had left the university at the end of the next year, and afterward he received several letters from her at longer and longer intervals, and finally the one, which was the last, in which she explained that she was getting married to someone she had known for a long time, long before their time, and in the last paragraph of the letter she said, with a kind of gaiety and bravado that must have been intended as a tear and a kiss and a flip of the hand, that she was so happy she had been able to please him, and good luck, and to think of her, please, sometimes.

Well, he did that. He thought of her sometimes. But after the last letter, which came in the spring of his third year at the university, it no longer seemed quite worth his while to stay where he was and do what he was doing, and so he left in June after taking his examinations and did not return. He pulled his hitch in the army instead, and one day in the hills of Korea, when he was thinking about what he would do next, if he lived to do anything, he decided definitely, like Saroyan, that he must be a writer or be nothing, and although he had worked at it very hard ever since on the side of a variety of jobs in various places, he sometimes thought, unlike Saroyan, that it was nothing that he would turn out to be.

And now it was almost another Christmas. And now he stood at the window and looked down into the street below, and the bell of the soldier of salvation rose and fell, rose and fell, and he felt the striking of the clapper that he couldn’t hear. Three people were crossing toward Adolph Brennan’s bookstore from the other side of the street. One man and two women. Their arms were linked, the man in the middle, and they picked their way carefully through the slush. One of the women was carrying a paper bag in the arm that was not linked with the man’s. “Someone’s coming,” Henry said.

“Coming?” There was a high note of alarm in Ivy’s voice. “Coming here?”

“I think so. Yes, I’m certain of it.”

“What makes you think so? How do you know?”

“Well, they’re crossing the street in this direction, and they happen to be three people I know, and so I assume that they’re coming here.”

“Who are they?”

“A man named Ben Johnson. He writes Western stories for slick magazines and makes quite a lot of money. And two women named Clara Carver and Annie Nile.”

“How do you happen to know them?”

“Well, damn it, I do know a few people, you know. Do you imagine that you are the only person I’ve ever met in my life? As a matter of fact, though, if you must know, Ben and I were in the army together. When I came here later, I looked him up. He lives in an apartment not far away. Besides writing Westerns for money, he writes poetry for the good of his soul. Clara lives with him, but they aren’t married. She’s very pretty and friendly but rather stupid. I like her.”

“What about the other one. What did you say her name is?”

“Annie Nile. Her father owns a shoe factory. She lives by herself and paints pictures, but fortunately it isn’t necessary for her to sell any in order to live, for she isn’t very good at it. Sooner or later she’ll give it up and go home and marry someone richer than she is, but in the meanwhile it amuses her, and so do Ben and Clara.”

“Do you amuse her too?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“God only knows. I’ve learned already that it’s impossible to know what you really mean by anything you say.”

“Why are you so sensitive about it? It was only a perfectly natural question. Do you think I give a damn if you amuse her, or what method you use in doing it?”

She was sitting erect on the edge of the sofa, and he was puzzled and a little concerned by the ferocity of her expression as she looked at him.

“Look,” he said. “Will you please behave yourself? There’s no need to be offensive, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t be.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t say anything to hurt the feelings of your precious friends. It may be interesting to watch their expressions when they discover me here. What do you suppose they will think?”

“They’ll probably think the same thing that Adolph and George think, thanks to your admirable compulsion to explain matters.”

“Do you think so? It’s very funny, isn’t it?”

They could hear the trio tramping up the stairs from the street. The sound of their voices in words and laughter rose clearly ahead of them.

“They seem to be gay enough,” Henry said.

“Or drunk,” she said.

“Both, probably,” he said.

He went over and opened the door in response to banging and his name called out. The two women came into the room ahead of the man. Both were wearing fur coats and fur hats to match. One of them was also carrying a fur muff, but the other one wasn’t. The one without the muff was carrying the brown sack, and it was obvious from the sounds that came from it that it contained bottles. The one with the muff was prettier than the one with the sack, but you felt almost at once, after the first concession to superior prettiness, that the one with the sack would be more attractive to most men in the long run. The prettier one was a redhead, the deep red known as titian, and the more attractive one in the long run was a brunette whose hair below the fur hat had the color and luster of polished walnut. There was about her, the more attractive brunette, an air of being present by accident in circumstances and company that she accepted in good humor. She leaned over the sack of bottles and kissed Henry on the mouth.

“Darling,” she said, “where have you been forever? It’s shameful, the way you’ve been avoiding me, and I ought to be angry, but I’m not. As you see, I’ve come with Clara and Ben to wish you a merry Christmas.”

“He’s a genius, Annie,” Ben said. “It’s impossible to be angry with a genius.”

He was a stocky young man with a broad, homely face dusted across a pug nose with freckles. A thin, sandy mustache on his lips was just faintly discernible when the light was favorable. He removed his hat and coat and relieved Annie Nile of the sack.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if he could sell something and make a lot of money?” Clara Carver said. “Don’t you wish Henry had a lot of money, Annie?”

“Yes, I do,” Annie said. “It would make things much more pleasant and simple all around.”

“It isn’t expected of a genius to sell anything,” Ben Johnson said. “A genius is never appreciated until he’s dead. Everyone knows that.”

“If it’s true that a genius never sells anything, then I must be a genius too,” Annie said, “for I’ve painted pictures and pictures and never sold a one.”

“Darling,” Clara said, “you already have nearly all the goddamn money in the world. You must leave a little for the rest of us.”

“Nevertheless,” Annie said, “it would be encouraging to sell a picture as a matter of principle.”

“The only principal you need be concerned with,” Ben said, “is the one you draw your interest on.”

While they were talking, they were also disposing of hats and coats and dispersing a little in the room. Ben set the sack of bottles on Henry’s work table and sat down in Henry’s chair. Annie and Clara sat beside each other on the frieze sofa. Clara stretched her long nylon legs in front of her and stared at them with an air of appreciation. It was clear that she admired them and considered them her most valuable asset, which was a judgment just as clearly shared by Ben. Ben also stared at the legs with an air of appreciation.

Ivy stood quietly in a corner and was ignored. Everyone had seen her there, but no one had spoken or recognized her presence by any sign or word, and there seemed to be a conspiracy instantly in existence among then to establish the pretension that she wasn’t there at all.

“Ben,” Clara said, “why do you simply sit there staring at my legs? Why don’t you open one of the bottles and give us all a drink?”

“I prefer to look at your legs,” Ben said. “Let Henry open it.”

“It’s sparkling burgundy,” Annie said to Henry. “I prefer champagne myself, but Clara and Ben insisted on sparkling burgundy. It’s a peculiarity of theirs. Do you like sparkling burgundy?”

“I like it all right, but I hardly ever drink it.”

“Why don’t you drink it if you like it?”

“Because it’s too expensive.”

“Don’t forget he’s a poor genius,” Ben said.

“I don’t object to his being a genius,” Annie said, “but his being poor is a great bore. Henry, why must you be so depressingly poor? If you had a lot of money we could go to Florida or someplace for the winter and have fun.”

“Why don’t you pay the expenses?” Ben said. “Have people quit wearing shoes all of a sudden?”

“I’d gladly pay the expenses if Henry would go,” Annie said. “Henry, will you go to Florida with me if I pay the expenses?”

“No,” Henry said.

“You see?” Annie said. “He won’t go.”

“He’s crazy,” Ben said, “that’s what he is.”

“No,” Clara said, “he’s merely proud. Henry, I don’t blame you for not going. If Annie wants to sleep with you she can do it right here.”

“I’ll think about it,” Annie said. “In the meantime, Henry, please open a bottle. There are four of them, as you will see. It was our intention to have a bottle for each of us.”

This was the first oblique reference to Ivy, who still stood in the corner, and everyone turned his head to look at her in unified abandonment of the conspiracy of neglect. Ivy came out of the corner reluctantly and returned their looks with an expression of somewhat surly defiance. She had been prepared to be compatible if possible, for the sake of Henry, but it was now apparent from her expression that she considered compatibility, if not impossible, extremely unlikely.

“This is Ivy Galvin,” Henry said. “Annie Nile. Clara Carver. Ben Johnson.”

Each of the three, watching Ivy, nodded in turn. Clara looked curious and rather friendly, Ben looked faintly salacious, as though he were mentally dispossessing Ivy of her clothes, and Annie looked carefully and blandly remote.

“Ivy Galvin?” Annie said in a careful voice that matched her careful expression. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Henry mention you. Are you old friends? Are you old friends, Henry?”

“No,” Henry said.

“On the contrary,” Ivy said, “he picked me up on the street only two weeks ago.”

“How interesting,” Annie said.

“It hasn’t been so interesting, as a matter of fact,” Ivy said, “but it has been convenient.”

“I should think so,” Annie said.

“It isn’t what you think,” Henry said. “She had no money and no place to go.”

“Disregarding your assumption that you know what I think, Henry, darling,” Annie said, “it’s absolutely unnecessary for you to explain anything. It makes you sound as if you were feeling rather nasty about something.”

“Balls,” Henry said.

“I think she’s pretty,” Clara said. “Don’t you think she’s pretty, Ben?”

“In a famished kind of way,” Ben said, “she’s lovely.”

“Well, you needn’t be an extremist about it.”

“Damn it, I am not being an extremist. I only said that she’s lovely in a famished kind of way. I distinctly qualified my judgment.”

“The trouble with you, Ben, darling, is that you are constantly in heat, as I know better than anybody. It’s disgusting.”

“Heat? Do males get in heat? I thought it was only females who get in heat.”

“In your case, an exception has been made. Henry, will you please pour the sparkling burgundy? Ivy, you must sit down here beside me on the sofa where Ben can get a good view of your legs. It will keep him entertained. Henry went into the other room for glasses. Ivy sat down beside Clara and smoothed her skirt down over her knees. After a minute or two had passed, Henry came back with the glasses. He had been forced to rinse out the one that held the toothbrushes in the bathroom in order to get enough to go around.

“I only have water tumblers,” he said.

“I don’t believe I care to drink sparkling burgundy from a water tumbler,” Clara said.

“Who you trying to kid?” Ben said. “You’ll drink anything from anything.”

“Are you implying that I’m addicted to alcohol or something?” she said.

“Well,” he said, “it’s better than dope.”

Henry opened a bottle and poured sparkling burgundy into five glasses. He distributed the glasses and sat down on the arm of the sofa beside Annie.

“What have you been doing lately?” he said.

“Painting,” she said.

“She’s painting a picture of me,” Clara said. “It’s a nude. I’m absolutely naked.”

“It’s ghastly,” Ben said. “She looks like a skinned mink.”

“Are you saying, actually, that I looked like a skinned mink naked?” Clara said.

“Just in the painting,” Ben said.

“Ben has no artistic judgment whatever,” Annie said. “It’s an interpretation. You have to feel her.”

“I prefer to feel her as she really is,” Ben said.

“Besides,” Annie said, “how many skinned minks have you ever seen?”

“Well,” Clara said, “I think that was a sweet thing to say, just the same. The part about preferring to feel me as I really am, I mean. Ben, that was really a sweet thing to say.”

“I only said it because it’s true,” Ben said. “As you come naturally, you’re very feelable.”

“Oh,” said Clara, looking around, “isn’t he the sweetest thing?”

“I think I’d better pour some more sparkling burgundy,” Henry said.

He got up and gathered the glasses and filled them and distributed them again. He got them mixed up in the process, but no one seemed to care.

“This party is rather dull,” Annie said. “What we need is some music to dance to. Henry, why don’t you have a phonograph? If you are so damn poor you can’t afford a phonograph, I’ll give you one as a present for Christmas.”

“I have a phonograph,” Henry said.

“In that case, let’s put on some records and dance.”

“I don’t have any you can dance to. They’re all symphonies and concertos and things like that.”

“Long-hair stuff,” Clara said.

“What would you expect?” Ben said. “It’s characteristic of geniuses to listen to nothing but long-hair stuff.”

“Get off the genius kick,” Henry said.

“Why do you object to being called a genius?”

“Because I’m not one, and you don’t think I’m one. Just because you’re getting fat selling your stuff to the slicks, you don’t have to be so goddamn patronizing.”

“And you don’t have to be so goddamn sensitive either, when you come to that. If you’re going to get red-assed over a little joke, you can go to hell.”

“Merry Christmas,” Clara said. “A merry, merry Christmas.”

“Do you have a radio, Henry?” Annie said. “We could find a D.J. on the radio.”

“There’s a table set in the bedroom.”

“A table set will do. If you would be so kind as to quit quarreling with Ben long enough to get it, maybe we could get this dull party on its feet.”

Henry got up and went into the bedroom, and Ben followed. Clara watched them go with an expression of concern on her pretty and rather stupid face.

“Do you suppose they will have a fight in the bedroom?” She said. “Ben has such a violent temper. He’s perfectly ferocious when he imagines he’s been offended.”

“Oh, hell. How could you have been sleeping with this man for ages without learning that he’s a perfect puppy? All you need to do is pat him on the head, and he starts licking your hand immediately.”

“Really? Honest to God, Annie, I admire you tremendously. You are so truly clever at analyzing people and knowing just how they are. What I would like to know, however, is how you know what is to be learned about Ben from sleeping with him.”

“What we had better do,” Annie said, “is combine our strength and move the furniture back for dancing.”

“You would do well,” Clara said, “to concentrate on sleeping with Henry and quit thinking about what is to be learned from sleeping with Ben.”

“Darling,” Annie said, “if you will get off your tail and take the other end of the sofa, I’m certain we can push it back out of the way easily.”

“It serves you right that Henry has taken up with someone else.” Clara turned to Ivy. “Is it true that you’ve been staying here with Henry?”

“Yes,” Ivy said.

“You see?” Clara turned back to Annie. “While you have been being so clever, Henry has taken up with Ivy.”

“She’s welcome,” Annie said. “Ivy, you are more than welcome.”

“It’s a practical arrangement,” Ivy said. “He has only given me a place to stay for a while.”

“Everyone keeps trying to explain everything,” Annie said. “It’s quite unnecessary.”

At that moment Henry and Ben returned with the radio. Ben had said that he hadn’t meant to sound patronizing, and Henry had said that it was all right, and everything apparently was. Ben got a D.J. program, the top tunes, and Henry began to push the furniture around. When a space had been cleared, Ben began to dance with Clara, and Henry began to dance with Annie. Ivy sat and watched. Clara danced beautifully, even in the congested area. She was not very bright, but she always did beautifully anything that was purely physical. Between one tune and another, Ben approached Ivy and asked her to dance.

“No, thank you,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “If you don’t, I’ll think you find me offensive or something.”

He had been a little drunk when he arrived, and he was now a little drunker on the sparkling burgundy, and she felt for a moment a powerful compulsion to tell him that she did, indeed, find him offensive, though not for the reason that he had been drinking or any reason that would have occurred to him, but she remembered that she had promised Henry to be good, which seemed little enough to be in return for what he had been to her, and she was determined to keep her promise if she possibly could.

“I don’t know how,” she said. “I’ve never learned.”

“All you have to do is move with the music,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

Rising, she began to dance stiffly, resisting his efforts to draw her close. It was not true that she didn’t know how, and she was really rather good at it, with a true sense of time and rhythm, but the dance was, nevertheless, somewhat more unsatisfactory than a simple failure. When the tune ended, she sat down in the place and position she had held before and was ignored again thereafter, except when her glass was filled and handed to her. Covertly, through her lashes, she watched Henry under the influence of the burgundy and the music and the two girls. Her own head was strangely light, and she had the most peculiar sensation of becoming detached from her familiar emotional moorings. It frightened her a little, but at the same time she was acutely aware of concomitant excitement. She wished with sudden intensity that the intruders, this man and these women whom she did not know or wish to know, would go away and leave her alone with Henry. They were drinking, she noticed, the last of the four bottles. Perhaps, when the bottle was empty, they would go.

Although Ivy did not know it, Henry also wished that his guests would leave. At first he had been pleased to see them, especially Annie Nile, but after a while he began to get bored and to feel unreasonably irritated by things that were said and done in all innocence and good humor. He had been, in the beginning, uneasy in the fear that Ivy would say something to offend the others, or that she might, even worse, deliberately and defiantly expose herself for what she was, but then, when she had stepped forward from her corner to be introduced, he realized suddenly that it was really she for whom he was concerned, for she was the vulnerable one, after all, who would certainly be hurt the most by casual affronts or her own inverted cruelty. He felt for her a painful possessiveness, an exorbitant desire for her to come off well, and he was not alienated even by her brazen admission to being picked up in the street, which was, he understood, no more than abortive defiance of anticipated rejection. Later on, after they began dancing, he kept watching her as she sat primly apart with closed knees and folded hands, and all at once her thin and vibrant intensity under a pose of quietude reminded him so powerfully of someone else that he was for an instant in another place: in another time, and the wine in his glass and blood was sweet port instead of burgundy.

The last of the four bottles was empty at last, and he went, about midnight, into the bathroom. He did not go because it was necessary, but only because he wanted to get away for a few minutes by himself. Closing the door, he sat down on the edge of the tub and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The radio continued to play in the living room, and he heard a shriek of laughter from Clara in response to something that amused her, which would not need to be, for Clara, anything very amusing. He liked Clara, and she could be very amusing herself in certain circumstances, especially in bed, but he wished she would go home. He wished she would go home and take Ben with her, and that Annie Nile would go alone to wherever, leaving here, she intended to go. He knew that Annie had not, when she came, intended to go anywhere, at least not until tomorrow, and he felt in the knowledge a vague regret for something else lost that could not be recovered. He had met her about a year ago at a party Ben had taken him to, and his relationship with her since had been generally agreeable and sporadically passionate, but it could not be, after tonight, anything at all, and he did not care.

But Annie had behaved quite well in a difficult situation, he had to admit that. It was no more than the way he would have expected her to behave, though, and it was certain, aside from a slight sense of shame and humiliation, that she cared less, if possible, than he. She had liked him for her own reasons, and he had amused her and given her pleasure in his turn among other men who had done the same in the same period of time, but she had always considered him, as he knew, quite impossible for permanence or other purposes. She would not have cared in the least if he had made love to a dozen women besides her, for she was fair enough not to deny him what she allowed herself, but she would never forgive him for letting her intrude in a situation that was humiliating. She had carried it off well, though. You would never have guessed, not knowing, that she was a bit humiliated or had any reason to be. She would merely sustain the pretension, which she had already established tonight, that no intimacy had ever existed between her and Henry Harper, and soon it would seem actually incredible to both of them that any ever had.

Well, Henry thought, he had better get back to the others. Standing, he went out of the bathroom into the bedroom and found Ben Johnson in his hat and overcoat seated on the edge of the bed.

“Are you leaving, Ben?” Henry said.

“Yes,” Ben said, “you can stop stewing now. We’re going.”

“Cut it out, Ben. You know I want you to stay as long as you please.”

“Do you? I’d have sworn you began itching for us to get the hell out of here an hour ago. Not that I blame you, you understand. I must say, however, that you’ve played a damn dirty trick on Annie.”

“I haven’t played any kind of trick at all on Annie. Damn it, this is the first time in weeks that I’ve even seen her.”

“Oh, I know there’s never been anything between you and Annie except a night now and then, but that’s not the point. The point is, you let her walk into an embarrassing situation. You’ll have to admit it’s not pleasant to walk in with your shoes off and find someone else in your half of the bed.”

“I didn’t let her do anything of the sort. Will you kindly tell me how I could have prevented it when I had no idea you were coming?”

“I suppose that’s true. It isn’t fair to blame you when you couldn’t know. I wouldn’t be acting like a friend, though, if I didn’t say that I consider this a very questionable arrangement.”

“Thanks for acting like a friend.”

“Well, go ahead and be sarcastic. I can understand your bringing a girl home, and I can’t deny that I’ve done the same thing more than once myself, but do you think it’s wise to make an affair out of a pick-up?”

Henry understood that Ben meant well and was trying to be helpful, but he was only irritated by the necessity for making concessions to Ben’s good intentions. What he wished was that Ben mind his own goddamn business and not try to give advice in matters where his only qualification was ignorance. He had an urge to employ the shock tactics that Ivy herself sometimes found useful, and he wondered what Ben’s reaction would be if he were to spell out his arrangement with Ivy clearly.

“She isn’t a pick-up,” he said. “You don’t understand.”

“Sure. I know. She doesn’t have any place to go, and you’re only being a lousy Good Samaritan. Okay, pal. I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

“Look. I’m trying to tell you. She’s not like Clara. Not like Annie. You danced with her tonight, lover. Did she act as if she enjoyed it?”

“As a matter of fact, she made me feel that I needed a bath.”

“Well, there you are.”

“You mean she’s queer?”

“That’s one word for it. She was living with a girl cousin and ran away. I happened to meet her, and she had no place to go, and I brought her here. That’s all there is to it.”

“Pal, it may be all there is to it, and it may not be. I always knew you were crazy, but not this crazy. You could get yourself involved in a pretty sticky mess.”

“That’s not your problem. If you want to do me a favor, you can keep this to yourself.”

“Sure, pal. At the moment I don’t feel a hell of a lot like doing you any favor, but I doubt that it would make very good conversation to go around telling people I’ve got a friend shacked up with a queer.”

“You can be a pretty bigoted, intolerant son of a bitch when you want to be, can’t you?”

“Thanks, pal, and a merry Christmas to all.”

“Maybe you’d better finish the line.”

“And to all a good night. Good night, pal.”

Ben stood up and walked into the living room, Henry following. Clara and Annie were standing near the door in their fur coats and hats, and Ivy still sat on the sofa in the posture of primness. Clara said good night to Henry, kissing him, and Annie said good night also, not kissing him, and Ben opened the-door and walked out into the hall and stood there waiting with his back turned.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Henry listened to the three of them go down the stairs, and then he walked over to a window and looked down upon them in the street as they crossed to the other side and moved away toward the corner where the black pot hung from its tripod. Behind him, Ivy continued to sit primly, her eyes downcast. No one had said good night to her, and she had said good night to no one.

“They didn’t like me,” she said, and her voice had a tone of arid acceptance.

“You didn’t give them much reason.”

“I admit I wasn’t very congenial, although I wanted to be and tried my best to be, but I don’t think it would have made any difference, however I was. They wouldn’t have liked me anyhow.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It’s not something I think. It’s something I feel. There’s a difference between us, and everyone feels the difference and knows that nothing can be done about it, even though no one knows what the difference is exactly.”

“You’re exaggerating. Most of what you say is only imagination.”

“Is that what you believe? I wish it were true. It’s kind of you, at any rate, to encourage me. Is that girl who was here in love with you? The dark one, I mean.”

“Annie? God, no. Whatever gave you such a fantastic idea? Annie loves only herself. Not even that. She loves the picture she has of herself.”

“I’m not so sure. I could tell that she was angry because I was here. She treated me very courteously on the whole, however. Rather she ignored me very courteously. I shouldn’t have been nearly so admirable in her place. I’m sure I’d have made an unpleasant scene.”

“Forget it. She isn’t in love with me, whatever you think, and never has been.”

“Are you in love with her?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been?”

“No. Maybe I thought I was for a little while, but I wasn’t.”

“Have you ever made love to her?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“Several times.”

“Where? Here?”

“Here and there. Her place, I mean.”

“I wish you’d never done it here. I don’t mind so much there.”

“I don’t see why you should mind at all. Besides, you’re far too curious. It’s none of your business, you know.”

“You didn’t have to tell me if you didn’t want to.”

“All right. You asked, and I told you.”

“She wanted to stay tonight, didn’t she? That’s what she intended to do, wasn’t it?”

“Possibly.”

“Would you have let her?”

“Probably.”

“You mean surely, don’t you?”

“Yes. Surely.”

“And now I’ve spoiled it for you. Are you angry?”

“No. You haven’t spoiled anything that wouldn’t have spoiled anyhow, sooner or later. It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m glad you’re not in love with her. Have you ever been in love with anyone else?”

“Yes. Once. A long time ago.”

“Who was she?”

“Her name wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“I’d like to know. Just to hear it. The sound of it.”

“Her name was Mandy.”

“Was she very young?”

“We were both young. In college.”

“What happened to her? Did she die?”

“No. She married someone else.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be. It got to be all right long ago. I only think of her now once in a while.”

“Was she pretty?”

“I guess so. Pretty’s a vapid word. You don’t think pretty about someone you love.”

“Tell me what she looked like.”

“I can’t. Most of the time I can’t see her myself. Only now and then for just a moment.”

“You could tell me the color of her hair and eyes. How tall she was and how she walked and held her head.”

“That wouldn’t be telling you what she looked like. You reminded me of her tonight, when you were sitting by yourself on the sofa with your knees together and your hands folded.”

“Did she sit that way?”

“No. It was something else. I thought it was a kind of intensity.”

“I wish I could love you. If I were able to love you, would you love me in return?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

“It would be wonderful to love you and be loved by you.”

“I’m happy that you think so.”