Evergreen Page 5

  “Well, what did you think of Mr. Paul?” Mrs. Monaghan asks.

  7

  The vine grows imperceptibly during the night. In the morning it looks the same as it did the evening before. And then there comes a morning when one sees that it has grown halfway up the tree; how did that happen? It must have been growing all the while, because here it is, thick and strong, clinging so tenaciously that one can barely tear it away.

  It is so ridiculous, so shameful to be thinking about Paul Werner all the time! How did it happen? She doesn’t know a thing about him and she has no business knowing! He walks in one day, a stranger who scarcely knows that she exists, and he takes possession of her mind. Absurd!

  In the morning, straightening his room after he and his father have gone to the office in their dark suits and hard, round hats, she has to hang his dressing gown in the closet and arrange his brushes on the bureau. Her hands tremble. It troubles her so to touch these things, to smell them (hair tonic, shaving lotion, pipe tobacco?). Often she hears his voice from the floor below. Knocking at the door of the upstairs study, he calls: “Father? Father?” Then afterward in her mind’s ear the voice repeats, exact in tone and timbre: “Father? Father?” And all day long she hears it, while she is dusting the Porcelains, even while she is talking to Mrs. Monaghan at lunch.

  Mrs. Monaghan likes to gossip about the family. They have, after all, been almost her entire world for so long. She tells about the cousins from Paris who came visiting. She tells about the daughter’s wedding at the Plaza. “You should have seen the presents! It took a van to carry them out to Cleveland. We gave the bridesmaids’ dinner here at home; twelve girls, and every one of them got a gold bracelet from the bride. The ice cream came from Sherry’s, molded in wedding bells and hearts, oh, it was lovely!”

  Mrs. Monaghan would be only too pleased to talk about Paul Werner. Anna could easily guide the conversation that way, but she is too ashamed, not because of the old woman, but because of herself.

  When she looked in the mirror her face went hot with embarrassment. The house was full of mirrors. Ten times a day she met herself in apron and cap: a becoming cap, really, a lace coronet on her dark red hair which was now piled high because of course she could hardly wear braids anymore! Sometimes it seemed to Anna that she was a very pretty girl, and sometimes she thought she looked stupid in the cap and apron. Stupid like the organ grinder’s pathetic monkey in his cap. She felt anger inside. Why should he look at anybody like her? Why should he? He hardly ever did look at her, except at breakfast and dinner, and he was often out for dinner. She wondered about the places where he must go and the girls who would be there, girls in taffeta and feathered hats like the occasional daughters who came calling with their mothers in the afternoon. At breakfast he only smiled, “Good morning, Anna,” which he would have done if she had been Mrs. Monaghan. Well, what did you expect, Anna, foolish Anna? Mr. Werner always had some extra remark, some little pleasantry about the weather, all that cold stagnant winter, gray with snow: “Better put ear-muffs on if you go out today, Anna, or you’ll freeze your ears off.”

  But the son never said anything.

  Whenever she had to talk to him it seemed he must know her thoughts, that they must be visible in her face. The saying of her few words, the delivery of a message (Mr. So-and-So called and will call again at nine o’clock) were made to seem so much more important than they could really have been. Then his answer would sound in her head: (Mr. So-and-So, you said? He will call back at nine?)

  Why should one human being be drawn to another this way? Why?

  “You aren’t yourself,” Joseph observed after some minutes’ silence. They were having supper in the kitchen on Mrs. Monaghan’s Sunday out. Mrs. Werner, having met Joseph once in the basement hall, had remarked that he was “a very nice young man,” and that Anna was welcome to ask him to stay to dinner. “What’s brothering you? Aren’t you happy here?”

  “To tell the truth, I don’t like it so much.”

  “But you said the work was easy!”

  “Oh, it’s easy enough.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know, exactly.”

  “You’re awfully secretive, Anna.” Joseph’s eyes were troubled.

  She felt a wave of guilt because of her thoughts. He couldn’t know what she was thinking: dull, he’s gray and dull, no color in him.

  “You’re so good,” she said. “You’re so good. But don’t worry about me, I’m all right.”

  “I think I know what it is,” he said, brightening. “You’re worried about your brothers. You miss them. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “I miss them, of course I do. But they’re very well. Dan writes that he and Eli will be going to Paris with their boss the next time he goes.”

  Joseph shrugged. “Fine. But I can’t understand why they would want to stay in Europe when they could come here.”

  Anna said, “I heard Mr. Paul telling somebody on the telephone that if he could be born again he would either choose France or northern Italy. He says Lake Como is the most beautiful place in the world.”

  “Bunk! Why doesn’t he move there, then? The U.S.A. can get along without him, I’m sure.”

  “You don’t have to be nasty about it!”

  “I didn’t mean to be. But talk like that makes me angry. People should be proud of this country and appreciate it. Especially a fellow like him, living in a house like this.”

  “He didn’t mean anything, I’m sure.” She spoke eagerly; she could almost hear the eagerness in her own voice. “But I suppose when you’ve always lived like this you take it for granted. You don’t see how wonderful it is.”

  “Yes, after your family’s put a fortune into your lap you can afford to take it for granted.”

  “Joseph, you’re envious, that’s all.”

  “Of course I am!” He leaned forward in the chair, all tense and tightly wound. “I’ll tell you something. I hope the day will come when my children will be able to take these things for granted. Only I hope they won’t do it. I hope they’ll have a little feeling for the father and the country that gave it all to them. Other than that, I don’t care what they do, raise chickens, for all I care.” He sighed. “Ah, when you have money you can do anything. Money is class and class is money, even in America. Because human nature is the same everywhere, and that’s the truth.”

  “I suppose it is,” she answered, not caring to hear his philosophy.

  “Anna, are you really all right?”

  “Yes,” she said impatiently, “I told you I was.”

  “Would you tell me if anything were wrong? If you were sick or anything?”

  “I would tell you, I promise.” She stood up, went to the stove and took the kettle down for tea.

  Last night in her room, while reading, she had come upon a word she did not know. She had looked it up in the dictionary. Obsession: persistent feeling which a person cannot escape. She thought now, pouring Joseph’s tea, handing the plate of buns, clearing the table, moving dreamlike across the room, Obsessed. I am obsessed.

  * * *

  Anna was still working in his room when Paul Werner came home unexpectedly one Saturday before noon.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll hurry, I didn’t know.”

  “That’s all right! You didn’t know I was coming back early,” he said considerately. “Oh! You’re interested in paintings?”

  She had left one of the enormous books opened on the desk. “Excuse me! I only—”

  “No, don’t close it! What were you looking at? Monet?”

  “This,” she faltered. A walled and fruited garden. A woman in a summer dress. Sunlight without heat: cool, fragrant and cool.

  “Ah yes, that’s a marvel, isn’t it? One of my favorites, too. Tell me, do you look at these often?”

  Might as well tell the truth, come what may. And he was young, not stern like his mother; he would not be very angry.

  “I look at that one especi
ally. Every day.”

  “You do!” he said. “And why that one?”

  “It makes me happy to look at it. To think that there is such a place.”

  “That’s as good a reason as any. Would you like to borrow the book, Anna? Take it to your room for a while? You’re welcome to take it, or any book you like.”

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, “oh, thank you very much.” Her hands had begun to tremble. She was sure he could see the trembling and she clasped them behind her back.

  “Don’t thank me. Libraries are meant to be used. Here, take it now.”

  “I haven’t finished sweeping the floor. Do you want me to finish?”

  “Go ahead, I don’t mind. I’ve a letter to write.”

  He sat down at the desk. She ran the carpet sweeper over the floor. Downstairs in the yard next door men were beating carpets hung over clotheslines. Thwack! Thwack! they went, frightening the sparrows, raising spurts of dust in the chill sunny air.

  “How is your young man?”

  She looked up, startled.

  “I said, how is your young man?”

  “My what?”

  “Your young man. My mother told me you have one. Is he a secret? Have I said something I shouldn’t have said?”

  “Oh, no! It’s just that—he’s only a friend. It would be too lonesome without any friends at all.”

  “I should think it would.” He put the pen down. “Do you see him often?”

  “Only on Sundays. On my day off he has to work.”

  “And which is your day off?”

  He hadn’t even noticed when she wasn’t there. “I go out on Wednesdays.”

  “And where do you go when you go out?”

  “Sometimes I visit my cousin downtown. Sometimes I walk in the park or go to the museum.”

  “You do! What museum do you go to?”

  “The Natural History. Or the art museum. I like that the best.”

  “What do you like there?”

  “It’s so big, I haven’t seen it all yet. But I liked the Egyptian things.… And last week I found Cleopatra’s Needle out behind the building. I had missed it before.”

  He shook his head. “I’m thinking, Anna, how strange it is that here we’ve been living under the same roof for all these months and we’ve never talked until today!”

  “Not so strange, when you think about it.”

  “You mean, because it’s my parents’ house and you just work in it.”

  She nodded.

  “Isn’t that artificial, though? Isn’t that stupid? But thank goodness that sort of thing is changing. People make friends where they find them nowadays, not just in the same little group that their families grew up with. Much better that way, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, much better!”

  “Tell me something about yourself, Anna.”

  “I don’t know what you want to hear.”

  “What your parents did, what your home was like, what made you leave it.”

  “But I can’t now. I have to go downstairs, I have work.”

  “Next Saturday morning, then. Or whenever else we can find the time. Will you?”

  They found the time, odd minutes of it, on Saturday mornings, or in the hallway after dinner—he standing in the doorway of his room, she standing by the staircase, whenever she happened to be going up or down on some errand or other. She told him about her village. He told her about their Adirondack camp. She told him about her father. He told her about Yale. She thought of their talk as a game, a ball going back and forth over a net. She was as breathless as though it had been a game. She sang as she went about the house, and had to catch herself. She laughed a lot and was aware of it.

  One day halfway through spring, he said: “Tell your friend not to come next Sunday. I want to take you to tea.”

  “But I don’t see how we can! I don’t think—”

  “What don’t you think? I want to talk to you, to sit down and have a proper talk!”

  She hesitated and felt a creeping fear.

  “Nobody needs to know, if that’s what you’re worried about. Although there’s nothing to hide! I’m not asking you to do anything to be ashamed of.”

  They sat on gilded chairs with a screen of palms at their backs. A waiter brought cakes on a little cart. Violins waltzed.

  “You look really beautiful, Anna, especially in that hat.”

  He had insisted on buying the hat for her. When she had protested he had bought it anyway, a magnificent straw hat crowned with red silk poppies and wheat.

  “I can’t take it,” she had said. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Oh, damn the proprieties, how idiotic they are! Here am I, a man with plenty of money to spend, and here are you, a girl who needs a spring hat and hasn’t got enough money for a nice one. Why shouldn’t I make myself happy by giving it to you?”

  “You make it sound so simple,” Anna had said.

  “It is simple. Take it and wear it to tea.”

  So here she sat, the greenhorn Anna, in this vast perfumed room, watching the people come and go, all the tall, easy, graceful people who belonged here.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about you, Anna. You’re so young and already you’ve done so much with your life.”

  “What have I done? Nothing, it seems to me.”

  “But you have! You’ve taken your life into your own hands, coming across the world by yourself, learning a new language to get along in—”

  “I’ve never thought about it like that.”

  “While I have only been acted upon. You see what I mean? I was born in the house where I live now; I was sent to school, then put into my father’s, actually my grandfather’s, business. It’s all been done for me. I don’t really know anything at all about what the world is like.”

  “That’s what I think about myself!” Anna laughed.

  “You are absolutely lovely when you laugh. I go all over the city, and do you know, I never see girls as lovely as you?”

  “Why, right here this minute there are such beautiful girls! Look over there at that one with the yellow dress, and that one, coming through the door—”

  “Not like you. You’re different from them all. There’s wonder in your face. You’re alive. Most of these people wear a mask. They’re tired of everything.”

  Tired of everything? How could that be? You would need to live a hundred years to see everything you wanted to see, and then that wouldn’t be enough.

  The orchestra struck up a charming, spritely dance. “How I love the sound of violins!” she cried.

  “You’ve never been at the opera, have you, Anna?”

  “No, never.”

  “My mother has a ticket for the matinee tomorrow, but We’re all going to my great-aunt Julia’s funeral. I’m going to ask her to give it to you.”

  The music questions and insists. It asks Where? and answers Here! Asks When? and answers Now!

  She leans forward in her seat. Two large ladies in the row ahead have dared to whisper. She taps one on the shoulder, mighty in her outrage.

  “Will you be quiet, madam?”

  Ashamed, they stop talking and she leans back again. The music swells and rises. The angelic voice of Isolde soars above it. All grief, all longing, all joy are in that radiant song. Tristan replies: the shimmering voices twine and fuse into one.

  It is all here: the girl-child’s ignorant dream of love and the passion of the woman. It is all here: flowers, sunlight, stars, rapture and death.

  I know, I know, she thinks.

  She does not move. Her hands are clasped.

  It ends. The storm rests and the tension breaks. The final chords sound quietly and die.

  Her eyes are wet; she cannot find her handkerchief. The tears fall on her collar. The great curtain falls and the marvelous beings who have pretended to be Tristan and Isolde come before it, bowing and smiling. Applause clatters, people stand to clap. In the rear young men are calling: “Bravo! Bravo!” People are t
wisting into their coat sleeves. And Anna sits there, unwilling to return from the Breton coast and the summer sea, from dying Tristan, the clasping arms—

  The lady in the next seat is curious. “You liked it?”

  “I—pardon?”

  “I asked whether you liked it?”

  “It was—it was heaven! I never imagined there could be—”

  “Yes, it was a very fine performance.” The lady agrees, nodding pleasantly, and steps out into the aisle.

  * * *

  In the evening Mr. and Mrs. Werner paid a condolence call and Mrs. Monaghan went to the basement to iron her Sunday shirtwaist. Anna climbed the stairs to her room. When she came to the landing at the floor below it seemed entirely natural that he should be waiting for her there.

  She clung to him. The wall at her back, which was all that held up her weak legs, was warm and firm. The man was warm and firm, but soft, too; his mouth, wandering over her neck and face, was soft. Finding her mouth it fitted there with a long, long sigh.

  Her eyes shut; things spun in a luminous dark.

  He broke away. “You’re so lovely, Anna! I can’t tell you how beautiful you are.”

  She was dazed, re-entering the light. Gently, he guided her to the last flight of stairs. She thought, between fright and glory, that he was going upstairs with her.

  “We must—you must go upstairs,” he said gently, and went to his room.

  She stood for a long time looking at herself in the mirror. She raised her nightgown. Statues in the museum had breasts like hers. At Cousin Ruth’s she had seen women undressed; some had enormous, shapeless mounds; some sagged into long, flattened tubes; others had almost no breasts at all. She took the pins out of her hair, letting it slant across her forehead and fall over her shoulders. The hair felt warm on her bare shoulders. Music sounded in her head, a lovely flow, Isolde’s song. He would not have kissed her like that if he did not love her. Now surely a great change had come into her life. A greater change was coming. Now surely.