In the Penny Arcade

A Protest Against the Sun

It was an absolutely perfect day. Her father at once objected to the word, looking at her over the tops of his glasses and nodding morosely in the direction of a loud red radio two blankets away. Elizabeth laughed, but she knew exactly what she meant. She meant the day was so clear that you could see all the way across the Sound to a tiny cluster of three white smokestacks on blue-green Long Island. She meant the far-off barge, moving so slowly it was barely moving. It was the rich dark color of semisweet chocolate. She meant the water, dark blue and crinkled out there, smooth and greenish brown between the sandbar and the beach. She meant that yellow helicopter, flying high over the water toward the Sikorsky plant. She meant that orange-and-white beach ball, that grape-stained Popsicle stick, that brilliant green Coke bottle half-buried in the sand. A white straw was still in it. She meant that precise smell: suntan lotion, hot sand, and seaweed. She meant the loud red radio. She meant all of it.

“Still,” she added, shading her eyes at the helicopter, “I suppose it would be even more perfect with a blimp. Do you remember that incredible blimp? Nanny from heaven? What in the world ever happened to blimps? At least we still have barges.”

It was her mother who took it up. “Oh yes: Nanny from heaven. I’ll never forget the look on your face as long as I live.” Her own face glowed with it; drowsy in sunlight, Elizabeth smiled. She was just exactly in the mood to be drawn into the circle of family reminiscence. But it really had been incredible: mythical. It was a summer day in her childhood. They had been on this same beach. She remembered nothing except the blimp. There it suddenly was, filling all the sky like a friendly whale — like a great silver cigar — like nothing on earth. It was better than balloons, it was better than a walrus. She had looked up, everyone had looked up, because really there was nothing you could do when a blimp appeared except look up. They always frightened her a little but they were so terribly funny: strange and funny as their name, which of course was the wrong name as her father patiently explained. But still. And so the blimp appeared. And suddenly, it was so wonderful, the sky was full of falling things. Swiftly they came slanting down out of the sky, and all at once the little parachutes opened up, green ones and red ones and yellow ones and blue ones: and slowly slanting down they fell far out in the deep water, and then close by in the shallow water, and then on the sand. People shouted, jumped up to catch them, ran into the water. Elizabeth wanted one so badly that she felt she couldn’t stand it; she wanted to cry, or die. But she stayed very still, she was in awe. And then one landed near her, the little colored cloth at the end of the strings came fluttering down, and she pounced. And it was hers. And it was bread. Two slices of white bread in a little package. And her father said, “Nanny from heaven.” And so she said, “Nanny from heaven.”

“Have you seriously failed to deduce the connection?” said Dr. Halstrom.

Elizabeth turned in amazement. “What in the world are you talking about?”

Her father raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You asked what happened to the blimps.”

“Yes? You know what happened to them? What happened to them?”

“Did something happen to the blimps?” said Mrs. Halstrom.

“You noted the absence of blimps,” said Dr. Halstrom, “and you noted the presence of barges. It occurred to me, in the best manner of contemporary thought, to draw the inevitable conclusion. Consider,” he continued, lowering his voice and leaning toward Elizabeth, “the shape of barges. Carrying off the blimps: you can bet your bottom dollar.”

“What?” said Mrs. Halstrom. “I couldn’t hear you. Bess! What did he say? Tell me what’s so funny! Did something happen to the blimps?” Then she too was laughing, because there was laughter; but they wouldn’t tell her what he had said.

It was a lovely day. The sun burned down. Elizabeth pressed her back and shoulders into the army blanket. Sand was wonderful: it was soft and hard at the same time. It was such a good idea to come to the beach. With momentary irritation she recalled how the trip had very nearly failed to come off. She was suddenly furious. The day had been on the point of foundering because Dr. Halstrom had a paper to finish. She had fretted away the whole morning, exasperated by the unexpected change of plan. It was unfair. He sat shut up in his study on a Saturday in August. It was outrageous. She had set her heart on it. He had been sharp at breakfast, sharp and withdrawn. By noon she no longer cared. She said she no longer cared, but she was desolate. But then he emerged at ten of one, apologetic and triumphant. They had thrown things in the car and left. The tide was out, but that was nothing. They had the whole afternoon.

Elizabeth lay on her own blanket but she had carefully made the edge overlap the edge of her parents’ blanket. She liked to lie down in the sun and they liked to sit on low beach chairs on their blanket while they read. The chairs were so low that her parents could stretch their legs straight out. But the books! It was absurd. Her mother had brought Persuasion. But she was afraid to get sand in it, because it was a present from Elizabeth, and so she had brought a library novel with a vase of red roses on the cover; she said it was awful. Her father had dragged along a fat seventeenth-century anthology, two collections of Milton criticism, and a library novel showing an airplane with a dagger going through it. She herself was no better: Théâtre de Molière, Volume II, and a paperback Larousse, really a ridiculous choice for the beach, and, because she had secretly known it was a ridiculous choice, a science-fiction thing called Dune, which Marcia had recommended, and which was even more ridiculous since she hated science fiction with a passion. But she liked Marcia. So she had brought Dune. It was all ridiculous. Her father had made a joke about carrying coals to Newcastle and Dune to the dunes. He had asked her how she was dune. I’m dune fine, she had said. Her three books lay in a neat pile near her straw beach bag and her father’s books lay scattered on the other side of her. It was ridiculous; absurd. She was lying on a sunny blanket in the middle of a library. Her mother had read for a while and then put aside her awful book, taking off her white beach hat with the broad brim and throwing back her head. Her beautiful hair in sunlight was the color of mahogany: but soft. And finally she had folded up her chair and lain down in the sun. Dr. Halstrom had continued reading, but at last he too had put his book aside, and sat with half-closed eyes looking out at the water. Elizabeth thought he was a dear to have come. He looked almost boyish with his little carefully groomed blond beard so lightly streaked with gray that you could scarcely tell. He had the fine smooth skin of a man not much exposed to weather. His face and forearms had color but his broad chest and upper arms were pale.

“You’d better put your shirt on, Dad. You don’t want to burn.”

“Oh, no. Thanks, Bess. I’m all right. I never burn, except with moral indignation. Plato was right: in a properly ordered republic, that radio would not be tolerated. The lack of consideration of that woman.”

“I can ask her to turn it down.”

“Unfortunately I believe in her God-given right to torment me. I was thinking, though, that your book looks rather forlorn. It ought to be called Forlorna Dune.”

“If you keep mocking my book I won’t tell her to turn it dune.”

And her father laughed, showing his boyish smile with the two handsome hollows in his cheeks like elongated dimples.

It was a lovely drowsy day. Elizabeth felt that her pleasure was probably excessive; her father said she shared with her mother a tendency toward the excessive. Even to Elizabeth the morning’s anger and desolation seemed a little excessive. After all, she was no longer a child. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t have gone to the beach the next day, or even the next. But it was already late in August; she would soon be away at school again; somehow these little family outings had a way of being too casually proposed and too easily abandoned. If she hadn’t fought for it, the day would have been lost. Lately, for no particular reason, Elizabeth had felt the absence of family occasions. Nothing whatever had changed at home: the treasured closeness was there. But she felt there was a carelessness, a danger, in just going on thoughtlessly from day to day. There were only a certain number of days in a lifetime, after all. She really didn’t know how to express it, but she felt that just by existing, just by letting the days flow by, they were all threatened in some way: as if deterioration were bound to set in. She couldn’t account for it. Maybe she was growing morbid. But there were times she felt like saying, as if she were old and they careless and young: don’t you realize that nothing lasts? That one day it will be too late? She had no idea what it would be too late for; she barely knew what it all meant. But she did know there were times when she needed to assert her family feeling.

Dark thoughts for a sunny day: she hoped she wasn’t growing morbid. It was so nice to lie all lazy in the sun. The blanket warmed by the sun made her think of pajamas fresh out of the dryer: she liked to press them to her cheek. Elizabeth felt porous: penetrated by warmth. She wanted to lie there all afternoon. She wanted to lie there forever, under the blue sky of August, filling up with sunlight.

But it grew too hot, and Elizabeth sat up, a little restless.

“I don’t know about you people, but I’m going down for a swim.”

Her father seemed to come awake. For a moment he had a dazed look before his dark blue eyes sharpened to alertness. “You go right ahead. I’m content to sit here in lizardly contentment. Lil? Bess is going for a swim.”

Her mother murmured something, half asleep, and Elizabeth, placing her hand on her father’s arm, shook her head: don’t disturb her.

“You be careful,” Mrs. Halstrom anyway said, half-sitting up with a worried look and shaking back her hair. They were none of them good swimmers. Elizabeth smiled. “I’m just going in for a wade. The tide’s out anyway.”

She stood up, feeling heavy with sun. Conscious for a moment of eyes on her, she strolled down toward the shallow greenish water. The sand was silky and scalding hot. He had said “content” and “contentment”: not a good sentence. He had not been fully awake. A man with a little mustache looked hard at her as she passed and Elizabeth felt pleased to draw his gaze. Then she felt angry at herself for feeling pleased. Who cared what some nasty little man thought of her? Let him rot. Let him die. But she was pleased anyway. The woman beside the man was thin and wore a red bikini. Elizabeth had a grudge against thin women in bikinis. She was a little heavier than you were supposed to be. She even knew the word for herself: buxom. She had known it at twelve. Skinniness was in fashion, so what could she do? She had big bones; she took after her mother. Her wrists were big. If she starved herself she would look awful. Flesh was no longer allowed, except in discreet doses. If your hipbones didn’t stick out you were through. You might as well lay down and die. Of course there were exceptions. Elizabeth knew she had a good figure. She wore a two-piece suit but not a bikini. Those were her phrases: good figure, and buxom. Another was: a woman with a little flesh on her. Her father had once said to her in Howland’s, “I like a woman with a little flesh on her.” And he had looked at her admiringly. One of the two boys she had slept with, before renouncing promiscuity, had said to her, “You do that well.” She hadn’t done anything at all, but suddenly she was a girl who did that well. But he had looked pleased with himself, saying it. She had decided not to believe him, except slightly. She wondered if all women carried around their little phrases. Handsome, though not beautiful. Small breasts, but nice legs. A really warm person. A good cook. She does it well. She certainly wasn’t fat, or even plump: just plain buxom. And she had a good figure. Men looked at her. And she was not a virgin. On her bad days she could look herself in the eye and say: well, at least you’re not a virgin. It didn’t help at all: but still. She supposed it was some sort of accomplishment. But she was fussy about falling in love. Men without charm, brilliance, and spiritual perfection need not apply.

Suddenly she thought: Not lay down, but lie down.

The green-brown water between the beach and the sandbar was warm. Elizabeth turned and waved at her parents, who were watching her from the blanket. The nasty little man was also watching. Her mother was sitting in the chair again. Yes, watch me. Watch over me. Because one day it will be too late.

She waded up to her waist and stood for a while, turning her shoulders from side to side and dragging her fingertips along the top of the water. She half-remembered a game of her childhood, and cupping a hand she held it just under the surface. You tried to trap a little spot of sun. It was called a fisheye. She couldn’t remember how to do it. It didn’t matter, really. Maybe you needed a bit of seaweed. But even the seaweed didn’t seem to help. No: there it was. A spot of yellow floating in her palm: a yellow eye. The man had stared at her behind. She hoped he enjoyed it: she had a good one. Men staring at women’s behinds. She wished she had an eye back there: then she could wink at them. Just fine, thanks. And you? People standing around half-naked on beaches, looking each other over. Or pretending not to look, to be above it all. Boys looking over girls, girls looking over boys. But the real killer: girls looking at girls, women at women. It was the cruellest look she knew. A look of hungry, harsh appraisal. Her this is too that. Mine is bigger. Hers is better. One day she and Marcia had invented a wonderful new bathing suit. It would cover all the parts of the body left uncovered by old-fashioned bikinis, and expose all parts now covered. They called it the Negative Bikini. It was revolutionary. It was worth a fortune. It cracked her up.

Elizabeth waded out to the sandbar and walked along the wet dark shine to the firmer sand in the middle. A fat little girl was sitting in the mud, spreading it carefully over her arms. Even she was wearing a bikini. Two boys raced; the sound of their feet on the solid wet sand was beautiful. It sounded like softly clapping hands. Beyond the sandbar people were swimming; the water was breast-high. Elizabeth waded out and went for a little swim. She swam poorly, but at least she knew how to swim. She had never been much of a beach person. She wanted to get her hair wet, she wanted to be wet all over. She wanted to dry out in the sun.

She came back up the beach toward the blanket, glancing at the woman in the red bikini as she passed. The man lay on his stomach, his face turned away.

Elizabeth stood dripping on the blanket; water streamed from her hair. She rubbed her head hard with the towel.

“Here, Dad,” she said, and flicked waterdrops at him, laughing.

“Don’t do that,” he said sharply, jerking his face away.

“Did you have a good swim?” said her mother. “It’s such a lovely day.”

Elizabeth lay down in the sun. Farther up the beach, where a few scraggly trees grew in the sand, some boys were throwing a baseball back and forth. The smack of the baseball in the leather gloves, the shouts of children, the low waves breaking slowly in uneven lines and drawing back along the sand, soothed her like soft music. A faint tang of saltwater rose from her skin. She smelled delicious to herself. Her father had wounded her for no reason. A sharp word was a knife. She lay grieving in the sun.

Dr. Halstrom said, “The tide seems to be coming in now, if I’m not mistaken. It’s a good thing we didn’t lay our blankets down by the water. We saw you bending over in the water, Bess. Were you looking for something?”

Then it was nothing. She was too emotional. Excessive.

“No. Yes, in a way. I was trying to make fisheyes: you know, those spots of sunlight? I did it, too.”

“You used to think you could bring them back,” he said. “You tried to bring me one, once.”

“Oh, come on. I don’t remember that. Really?”

“Absolutely. You thought they were pieces of gold. You kept holding the water in your hands and running up the beach. But when you arrived it was all gone.”

“It sounds a little sad.” She felt sad. The poor child! Gold running through her fingers.

“Not at all. It was a generous, noble, and beautiful thing to have done. Your mother and I were extremely touched. I explained to you that it was sunlight, and not gold, but that in another sense, a more important sense, it was gold, and that you had accomplished what you set out to do.”

Elizabeth felt so full of love for this man, this father, who gravely called her noble and generous, that she knew she could only disappoint him. She was bound to let him down, in the long run. She felt that if he knew the truth about her he would never forgive her. And yet she had no particular truth in mind. It was just how she felt.

“A fine mouthful for a five-year-old child,” said Mrs. Halstrom. “Poor Bess! She didn’t know whether she was coming or going.”

“I’m certain she understood what I said to her.” As if aware of the sharpness he added, “Or else she pretended to.” He laughed. “But that would have been nobler still.”

It was an absolutely perfectly lovely day. The sun burned down, the baseball made smacking noises. The sun warmed her clear through, filled her with lazy golden warmth. She was a golden girl, lying in the sun. She thought of the slow barge lazily sunning itself like a great lazy cat of a barge, stretching out its great barge-paws, slowly closing its drowsy barge-eyes. Beside her she heard her father take up a book. The turning of a page was a beautiful sound. Under the hot blue sky Elizabeth felt a pleasant drowsiness. She felt more and more relaxed, as if some tightness were flowing out of her. She felt calm and clear as a glass of water. A page turned. The turning of a page was like a low wave falling. The sun shone down. To fall asleep in the sun.

Elizabeth seemed to start awake. “Good gracious!” It was her mother’s voice. Her father was staring at the water with lips drawn tight. Elizabeth sat up and saw.

A boy who looked about sixteen was walking along the beach down by the water. He wore heavy bootlike shoes, black denims, and a dark, heavy parka fastened up to his neck. His hands were thrust so hard in his coat pockets that he seemed to be tugging down his shoulders. He walked quickly, furiously. Sweat streamed along his dark-tanned cheeks. He had black hair and black furious eyes. His face was so taut with fury that his high sharp cheekbones seemed to be pushing through the skin. His tense tugged-down walk made him look as if he were holding himself tightly in place to keep from blowing apart. His black eyes looked as if a black bottle had exploded inside him and flung two sharp pieces of glass into his eyeholes.

“Imagine,” said Mrs. Halstrom, “wearing a coat like that in weather like this. What on earth do you suppose is wrong with him?”

“Don’t encourage him with your attention,” said Dr. Halstrom, turning a page harshly.

All along the beach people turned to look at the dark parka. The boy tramped with hard angry strides along the firm wet sand at the edge of the beach. Water slid over his boot-toes but he tramped splashing on the water, indifferent, wrapped in his rage. Sweat glistened on his dark cheeks. Two girls on a blanket exchanged smiles. A little girl in the water pointed at him and yelled with excitement. On a blanket crowded with teenagers a muscular boy in tight turquoise-blue trunks stood up with his fists on his hips, but did not move or speak.

Down by the water the boy in the parka tramped past. For a moment his furious black gaze swept the beach. Elizabeth saw his lips draw back in mockery, in disdain.

“Don’t stare at him,” said Dr. Halstrom.

“I’m not staring at him,” said Elizabeth, startled; angry. She was furious. Blood beat in her neck.

“It only serves to attract his attention.”

And suddenly an extraordinary thing happened. The furious boy reached back over his shoulders and put up his hood. He plunged his hands back in his pockets and stared out of his hood with black broken-glass eyes, mocking and furious. Sweat poured along his face and shone in the sun. He tramped past. Rage consumed Elizabeth. She was a black flame. She felt the hood over her head, she tramped on waves. Sweat poured down her cheeks. Sun-people on beaches: laughter in the sun. Glittering people on beaches laughing. She swept them with her furious black gaze. The beach glittered in the sun. Hate welled in her heart. It was all a lie. Out with the sun! People on beaches caught up in the lie of the sun. Deniers! She mocked them. She trampled the water. Hate raged in human hearts. The beach lied. She was alone in the dark.

“Beach like that.” Elizabeth was startled into her skin by her mother’s voice. Her heart was beating quickly, she felt a little faint. Sweat trickled along her neck.

“I find the entire subject—” her father was saying.

The dark, hooded figure was far down the beach. People lost interest in him as he moved farther away. The excited little girl was sitting down in the water, splashing about and laughing. Far down the beach he seemed a small, dark animal on a brilliant expanse of snow.

“But why would anyone behave like that?” said Mrs. Halstrom.

“He wished to attract as much attention as possible and he succeeded admirably. The subject is not interesting.”

When he reached the jetty he leaped up onto a rock and looked back at them: he was so far away that Elizabeth could no longer see his face. Then he climbed to the path at the top of the jetty and strode toward the parking lot. He was gone.

“I hope you locked the car,” said Mrs. Halstrom, turning her head and shading her eyes.

“The parking lot is policed. I suggest we drop the subject.”

“But why on earth,” said Mrs. Halstrom, still shading her eyes.

“He was clearly disturbed. I asked you to drop the subject.”

“I never saw anything like it. Never.”

“I said drop it.”

“He was mocking us,” said Elizabeth.

Dr. Halstrom turned to her angrily. “Just what do you suppose you mean by that?”

“There’s no call to be angry,” said Mrs. Halstrom.

Dr. Halstrom closed his book. “Well, my day is ruined by this constant squabbling.” His eyes were blue fire. Elizabeth felt tired.

“I meant he was mocking us — them — all this.” She raised her arm and made a slow, sweeping gesture, including the sand, the water, and the sky. For a moment she looked at her arm held gracefully against the sky. Far out on the water the barge had moved on, quite a distance.

“All this? I trust you can be a little more articulate.”

“All of it.” She dropped her arm. She looked at her hand lying on the blanket. “He was protesting.” It was impossible to go on. “Against all this. Against the sun.” She was a fool. She had no words. She felt drained.

“Good heavens, Bess,” said Mrs. Halstrom.

“Protesting against the sun, eh?” Elizabeth looked up. His voice was no longer angry. She didn’t understand anything. “Well by God he didn’t succeed very well.” He pointed. “It’s still there, I notice.”

“What a conversation,” said Mrs. Halstrom. She began to comb her hair.

“Though if it comes to that, I confess I agree with him. It’s hot as blazes.”

He laughed lightly, at ease, showing his boyish smile with the two handsome hollows like elongated dimples.

“Why don’t you take a little dip, if you’re hot?” said Mrs. Halstrom. “It’s a good time of day.” She pulled the comb slowly through her dark sunshiny hair.

“Your hair is so lovely,” Elizabeth said.

“Why, thank you, Bess.” She stopped combing. “What a dear thing to say. Yours is too.”

A line of low waves fell gray and green and white along the far edge of the sandbar. Low slow water fringed with white slid lazily forward, stopped in different places, and silkily slipped back. A little girl in a brilliant yellow bathing suit stood looking down at her feet.

“Oh, Daddy,” said Elizabeth suddenly, leaning back on the warm blanket and stretching out her arms along her sides, “do you know I can’t even remember what brand of bread it was? Isn’t that awful?”

“The tide’s coming in,” said Mrs. Halstrom, shaking out her hair. “You’ll feel much better, after a dip.”

“Silvercup,” said Dr. Halstrom decisively.

The Sledding Party

Catherine discovered that it was really two parties. The indoor party took place in the warm, lamplit playroom, with its out-of-tune piano that did not quite conceal a folded-up ping-pong table, and the outdoor party took place on the snowy slope of the Anderson back yard. From the top of the slope you could look down across the floodlit driveway to the dark, open garage at the side of the house. Under the floodlight the snow-lumped bushes, glazed and glistening, looked like crusted pastries with rich, soft centers. Now and then the inner door leading to the playroom would open, and there would come a burst of voices, laughter, and rock-and-roll, followed by sudden silence. A few moments later a shadowy, winter-coated figure would step from the garage into the glare of the floodlight, revealing itself to be Linda Shulick or Karen Soltis or Bill Newmeyer or Roger Murray or anyone else who might want to leave the hot, crowded room and come into the fresh winter night. The figure would cross the driveway, trudge up the hill, and join the group beside the willow for a smoke in the cold air or a ride down the path in the snow. The good thing about two parties was that you could pass back and forth between them. You never felt trapped.

The sledding path itself was simply a wonder. The path began at the top of the slope, beside the willow, and after a sweeping curve it headed sharply down. Then came a second, lesser curve, and a little more than halfway down, the path forked abruptly. You could steer to the right and continue down to the high snow and half-buried hedge near the bottom of the driveway, or you could steer to the left and pass the wild cherry and end up in the high snow near the mountain laurel in the flat part of the yard. From the bottom of the path you could look up at the yellow windows of the playroom. To everyone who arrived, Len Anderson explained that he and his father had shoveled the path all that day; and after dinner, when the temperature had fallen to twenty-six, Len had carried out pot after pot of water, coating the path carefully with a layer of ice. That was to ensure maximum speed. Mr. Anderson was a mechanical engineer, and Len always said things like “maximum efficiency” and “ensure maximum speed.” But Catherine thought it was a lovely path anyway. The snow on both sides was a foot and a half deep.

A new white Studebaker turned into the driveway, and at the same time, from the bottom of the hill, came shouts and laughter: Bob Carwin and Bonnie Baker tumbling into the snow. “Hey, Bobby boy, none of that, now!” “He did that on purpose.” The night sky was a rich, dark blue. It seemed to Catherine, taking deep breaths, that she smelled the richness and freshness of the dark-blue winter night. She wondered whether it was possible to know a winter night by its smell, the way you could know a summer night or an autumn night by its smell. The Studebaker stopped at the top of the drive, and under the floodlight Sonia Holmes got out. Perhaps it was possible to smell snow. It would be a white, cool, fresh smell, like the smell of a cool white sheet. Or was snow simply an absence of smell: of the sharp green aroma of grass, the faintly acrid smell of moist earth? Bev Carlotti came over to Catherine. “I can’t believe it. Do you see what she’s wearing?” Sonia Holmes went into the garage.

Roger said, “Have you seen my sled? I left it against the tree. It’s gone.”

“Oh, look!” said Catherine. She was stunned. “Was that a rabbit?” A little animal had gone hobbling across the dark upper yard.

“A cat, I think,” someone said.

“A rat,” someone else said.

“A skirt to go sledding in. Nylons; the whole bit. She kills me. She’s probably wearing heels. I suppose she thinks it’s the spring dance.”

“Well,” said Brad, “at least she didn’t come in a bathing suit.”

“Don’t bet on it. She gives me a swift pain I hate to say where. She ought to wear a sign on her chest: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

“It didn’t look like a cat,” said Catherine. “Unless cats hop. Cats don’t, do they?”

“They might,” said Roger, “in the snow. They might have to. Someone stole my sled. This isn’t a bad party. At least they let you smoke.”

“You sound like my father,” said Catherine. “This party is not unwonderful.”

“This party,” said Roger, “is very unbad.”

Sonia Holmes had come to the sledding party wearing nylons. Catherine imagined her long, sleek legs glittering in the moonlight as she sledded down the path, under the dark, rich-blue sky. It seemed festive. Why not?

“Maybe she isn’t planning to go sledding,” said Brad. “I hope she is, though. It might be worth watching — especially if she falls off.”

“I bet she came to the wrong party,” said Bev. “Whoops, ’scuse me, folks. I just stopped by to use your convenience. Can someone point the way to the powder room? Cath, what on earth are you doing?”

“I was looking at the moon. My eyes were closed because I was trying to see if I could tell whether the moon was out even if my eyes were closed. Parties make me feel a little insane. Listen, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll call Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes, a dreadful accident has occurred. Mr. Holmes, I regret to inform you that your daughter has lost her pants. She’s hiding in the cellar, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes, I know we can trust you to be discreet.”

“Well, could you?” said Roger.

“What are you talking about?”

“The moon. You said you were trying to tell if the moon — welcome, stranger.”

“Ride down with me, Cath?” It was Peter Schiller, holding a sled.

“Sure. But let me steer, all right? Listen, do you know what Bev said? She said Sonia ought to wear a sign around her chest: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”

“Ozymandias,” said Peter.

Catherine looked away in sharp irritation.

“She came in a skirt and stockings,” he said.

“We know.”

“But you don’t know what she said. When she came into the room Helen said to her, ‘Are you going sledding like that?’ She gave Helen one of her Sonia looks and said, ‘I didn’t think you had to go.’ That was how she said it: ‘I didn’t think you had to go.’” Peter laughed. “Well, come on. Have you done it with two before?”

“Not exactly.”

He put down the sled. “Well, it’s a little tricky.” He bent over the sled, pushed it lightly to the start of the path, and lay down. He looked over his shoulder. “Just think of me as a sled. Try not to get off center. I can’t steer much with my hands on the inside, but I can help a little. It’s better to get a running start, but we’ll ask Brad to push us off this time. O.K.?”

“I’ll just think of you as a sled, Peter.” As she said it, laughing, Catherine was startled at the cruel and mocking sound of her words, but no one seemed to notice. Peter lay on the sled in his heavy coat and tucked-in scarf. She lay down on top of him, shifted about, and grasped the outside of the steering bar. She felt awfully high up. Her boots kept sliding off his legs. “Put your feet on the sled, Cath, it’s safer. O.K., Brad. Give us a push. Easy.” Brad bent over them and eased them forward along the flat start of the path. He gave a light push and released them.

Catherine steered clumsily around the curve and felt herself slipping to one side, but she managed to stay on as they swung onto the downward path. The runners rushed over the glazed snow, and she felt herself still slipping to one side as they took the second curve and came to the fork. She turned sharply to the left, rocking the sled and feeling a boot drag against the snowbank. She jerked to the right, and suddenly they were rushing at the right bank; Catherine braced herself, but somehow they were back on the path. Half on and half off, they rushed past the wild cherry and came to an abrupt stop in the high snow. Catherine fell off. “Damn.” She burst into laughter, lying on her back in the snow. The sky was dark, radiant blue. The moon was so bright that it seemed lit from within. It reminded her of the eye of a great cat. The night was a dark blue cat with a mad moon eye. Snow burned on her cheeks and a soft powder of snow stirred in the air about her. She could feel a coil of hair on her snow-wet cheek. She stretched out her arms and began moving them back and forth in the snow, as if she were giving semaphore signals. Peter stared down at her. “You’d better get up, Cath. What are you doing?” “Snow-angels. Didn’t you ever do that as a kid?” He stared down at her and she burst out laughing. “Oh, Peter, you look so bewildered!” She stood up, dusting off snow.

They trudged uphill, Peter’s buckled boots jangling.

The second time it went much better: Catherine took the first curve smoothly, swung effortlessly onto the left fork, steered past the wild cherry, and never once felt herself slipping. She drove into their tracks beside the blurred snow-angel, and brought them to a stop five feet beyond their first mark.

She was exhilarated as they walked uphill. “Isn’t there something festive about snow? Festive and solemn. I can’t explain it. Oh, I can. It’s festive because it turns everything into odd shapes, and solemn because it’s white, like nurses, and hushed, and very smooth and formal, like a linen tablecloth.”

Peter laughed. “That’s wild. Have you got your scores back yet?”

“Not yet. Brad got 787 in Math.”

“Well, he can always join the Army.”

“He had to break the news gently to his mother. I hear Sonia got an 800 in posture.”

Peter burst into loud, nervous laughter.

The third time, it was Peter’s turn. Catherine lay on the sled and grasped the inside of the steering bar. “Watch out for that tree, Peter. Remember old Ethan Frome.” He pushed the sled, running behind as he bent over it, then threw himself lightly and easily on top of her as he took the outside of the steering bar. She could feel his chin pressing into her thick fur collar. They went much faster, took the curves well, rushed into the left fork, and flew past the wild cherry. At the bottom they came to a halt a few feet past their second mark — a record every time. She felt Peter moving her hair and kerchief away from her ear, and she heard him say “Love you” or “I love you.” She stayed very still. Nothing happened. All at once the weight left her body; she heard the jangle of boot buckles and a sharp crunch of snow.

When she was sure he was going away she looked over her shoulder and saw him walking across the driveway toward the garage.

Catherine dragged the sled up the hill and stood beside the willow. He had moved away her hair and said those words. She felt violated, betrayed.

Brad came over. “What happened to Peter?”

“Nothing. He got cold, I guess.”

“Would you care for company on the downward path to ruin?”

“Not now, Brad. I’ve had it, for a while.”

“Where’s Peter?” asked Bev.

“God, Peter Peter Peter. He just went inside. What’s all the commotion about?”

“Nothing. You’re standing there with his sled.”

“That is not a sled,” said Brad. “It is Peter, bewitched. Let us honor the memory of our late friend, Miss Carlotti, by sharing a ride.”

Catherine handed him the sled and walked through the soft, hanging twigs of the willow into the snowy flatness of the upper yard. Her red galoshes, black-red in the moonlight, sank almost to their furred tops. The black twig-ends of some buried bush stuck up out of the snow; a small withered leaf still clung to one of the twigs, and shook slightly. The sight of the trembling leaf disturbed Catherine, and she looked away. She came to a tall, broad pine that leaned to one side, as if it had begun to fall but had changed its mind. The long lower branches, heavy with clumps of snow, grew close to the ground. A few of the branches had been broken off, leaving an open space.

Catherine bent over and entered the prickly shelter of the tree. The outer parts of the branches were heavy with snow, but toward the trunk the branches showed their bark. She dusted off the bark of a thick branch and sat down, leaning back against the trunk and laying one leg along the branch. Through black and snowy pine-needles she could see the crowd by the willow, the bottom of the sledding path, and the open, dark garage.

It was not possible that Peter Schiller had said those words. It was so impossible that she wondered whether he had said something else, something that sounded like it. She tried to think of something that sounded like it, and began going through the alphabet: above, dove, glove — remembering, at “glove,” that in the ninth grade she had written an awful sonnet just that way, and wondering what had ever happened to that sonnet. Was it in the attic? Maybe he had said “I’m above you” or “A glove for you.” But she knew perfectly well what he had said. And he had walked away. He had said it and walked away. He had no right. And he knew it: he was ashamed. She and Peter Schiller were friends, they had been good friends for more than three years, but if they were good friends it was precisely because there was nothing more to it than that. She had never thought of him in that way. He was sweet, and irritating, and she could almost be herself with him; she liked to tease him about his horrible French pronunciation, and he had once written a limerick beginning “There was a young lady called Cath, Who was better at English than Math.” They were comrades. They hit it off. Catherine knew she had a playfulness about her, even a flirtatiousness, and she needed friends who were playful as well as intelligent. In the auditorium, where members of the National Honor Society were allowed to sit after lunch, she enjoyed a sense of light-heartedness, of pleasurable release from the routines and responsibilities of school, and not everyone rose to the occasion as Peter Schiller sometimes did. The fact was, they got on well together; and that was all. He was not her type. No one was her type. She had ridden down with him on the sled because he had asked her, but she would have ridden down with Brad or Roger or even Bill Newmeyer. They were all friends.

He had moved away her hair and whispered it. She had felt his finger on her ear. Suddenly she realized that he must have removed his glove. He had trapped her on the sled and said it.

Catherine heard a jangle of boot buckles; her stomach tightened, as if she were about to be punched. She wanted to run away, over the snow, into the sky, beyond the moon, but it was only Brad. He looked in at her, bending over and resting his gloved hands, leather and wool, on his knees. Bits of snow clung to his thick orange scarf, and a thread of snow hung from one eyebrow.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No, I’m just sitting here.” She gave a shrug and hugged herself. “I like it here. Did you make it down?”

“I think we went through the tree and came out the other side, but other than that. You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”

“I like watching from here. You have snow on your eyebrow. No, now it’s worse. You have snow on your glove.”

When he left, Catherine felt forlorn. Forlorn! The very word was like a bell. She was sitting alone in a cold tree, and everyone else was laughing, and sledding, and running up and down hills. He had said it, and there was no way he could unsay it. Catherine had vaguely expected to hear those words someday, just as she vaguely expected to hear “Will you marry me?”—she felt it was inevitable, there was no way around it — but they would be uttered by someone she could not even imagine. They had nothing whatever to do with anyone she knew, or with this town, or with this life. When she heard them, she would be somewhere else. She would not even be herself.

He had looked down strangely at her, lying in the snow. Now she would never know what he was thinking. She could never trust him. She wondered whether he had felt that way all of a sudden, or whether he had been feeling that way a long time. Once, in sophomore year, he had drawn a heart in the black wax of her dissecting pan. It had been a frog’s heart, with labels like PULMONARY VEINS and RIGHT AURICLE. He had drawn a feathered arrow going through it.

“Hey, are you all right?”

Catherine started; she had not heard Bev come up.

“Yes, I’m fine, I’m fine. What’s wrong with everybody tonight?”

“You’re sitting in a tree, Cath. Nobody else is sitting in a tree.”

“Well, I believe in Nature. I believe Americans ought to get back to Nature, like the Indians. God, can’t a poor working girl enjoy Nature without everybody having a conniption fit? Slaving in the factory nine to five, six days a week, ten children, my husband drunk every night—”

“Hell, honey, you think you got problems. My husband don’t drink, but I got ten drunk children. Listen, a bunch of us are going inside now, O.K.? I’ve had enough of Mother Nature for one night. Time to catch a little of the Sonia Holmes show. They’ve got Potato Frills, Cath. Suit yourself. I tried.”

Catherine watched them tramp down to the driveway and into the garage. The inner door opened, and she heard shouts and laughter and music: piano chords, not records. Only Roger and Bill Newmeyer stayed outside, sledding hard, over and over again, with a concentration and seriousness that seemed to her beautiful. Someone smoking a cigarette came up from the house — it was George Silko — and joined them for a time, but the spirit of pure, silent concentration had been broken, and soon all three went down to the house. Catherine was alone, in her tree.

She could never go down there, because Peter Schiller was there. He had pinned her to the sled and put those words inside her, and then he had gone back to the house and left her there with the words inside. It was as if — she tried to think how it was — he had suddenly touched her breast. She felt he had delicately wounded her in some way.

A light went on over the garage: the party had spread to the kitchen. Through a sliver of window between translucent curtains she saw someone pass clearly between blur and blur. Down in the playroom someone must have opened a window, for Catherine could hear the out-of-tune piano coming from the front of the house. A voice cried “I can’t find it.” There was a burst of laughter. The window shut.

For a moment she had been drawn into the warm room and the laughter, and now she was banished to her cold tree. She remembered standing at the top of the slope, feeling the moonlight pour into her face. It seemed a long time ago. Catherine felt that something strange was happening, that at any moment the house below might start slowly sliding away over the snow, like a great, silent ship with yellow windows.

She heard the piano again: someone was coming to get her. From the garage Len Anderson, wearing a sweater but no coat, stepped onto the driveway. He had his hands in his pockets, and he hunched his shoulders quickly against the cold. He looked up at the willow, and then at the pine, and walked rapidly across the driveway, stopping at the side of the hill. “Catherine?” he called. She wondered if he could see her through the dark branches. “Here,” she answered, feeling absurd. Len raised an arm and waved. “O.K.!” he said, and turned around and went back into the house.

She supposed they were all talking about her. Where was Catherine? Sitting in a stupid tree. Everything was strange, all the houses were about to float away, the moon was looking sorrowfully for Catherine, but no one was there.

She hugged herself in the cold, shivered dramatically, as if someone were watching, and tried to understand what had happened. She had been in one of her moods, wide open to the blue mystery of night and the festive, solemn snow. There were times when the world seemed to Catherine a whole series of little explosions, going off one after the other, and all she could do was stand transfixed, feeling it happening all around her. And so they had ridden down on the sled, and she had lain on her back in the snow, looking up at Peter Schiller’s bewildered face. And perhaps, without intending to, she had encouraged him to say those words. She had caught him in her wonder. She had bewitched him. She had offered herself to the night and the snow, and poor old Peter had misunderstood. It wasn’t his fault. And the longer she stayed in her tree, the more awkward everything was becoming. It seemed to her that she must go down to the house quickly, quickly, and set things right. She would behave as if nothing had happened. And then, in a moment when they were alone, she would explain that she had been touched by what he had said — really touched, Peter — but that she preferred to think of him as a dear friend. She hoped he would think of her that way too. She was not in love with anyone at all.

Catherine was so relieved that she clapped her gloved hands, sending up a faint snowspray. She felt that if she could see him quickly, and explain, then the words would go away, as if they had never been spoken. Everything would be all right between them. Nothing would have happened at all.

Catherine tried to hurry through the high snow. She had to take big, awkward steps, and snow got into her boots. She thought of the rabbit or cat she had seen at the back of the house. She wondered if it had found a warm, dry place, out of the snow. On the driveway she looked down at the little mounds of snow on her boot-toes and stamped each foot hard. As she entered the garage and passed along the side of a darkly gleaming car, a nervousness came over her, but she hurried on.

The inner door opened onto a tiny hall. Wooden steps covered with black rubber led up to the kitchen. Directly on her left was the dark red door of the playroom. On her right was a dusky workroom where, on a long workbench under a dim yellow bulb, dripping coats lay carelessly heaped.

“The mystery woman returns,” said Brad from the couch. He gave a little wave. The room was hot and dimly lit and full of smoke. She did not see Peter. She felt her cheeks tightening and tingling in the warmth, as if her face were being pulled carefully into place over her skull. Ned Toomey, seated at the piano with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and his eyes narrowed in the upstreaming smoke, was playing “Sloop John B.” Beside him, looking intensely at the music and holding in one outstretched hand an empty glass, stood Richie Jelenik, singing in a deep, mournful voice. On the other side Ken Jackson stood with one foot on the piano bench, playing the guitar and leaning close to the music as he looked back and forth quickly from the notes to his left hand. The two couches were full, people walked about, on the floor in a lamplit corner Roger and Bill Newmeyer were building a high tower with small colored blocks. “They said you were in a tree,” said Nancy Russell, and Catherine noticed that Nancy Russell’s eyebrows were not the same length. A bowl of Potato Frills appeared. A hand held out a paper cup of ginger ale. Catherine, glancing at a window, saw with surprise her surprised face. Through herself she saw brilliant yellowish snow and a yellow-lit lantern on a black pole. Ned Toomey and Ken Jackson came to the end of “Sloop John B,” and Richie Jelenik put his glass down on the piano. They began to play “Goodnight Irene.” Catherine moved across the room toward Brad. “I’m back,” she said, and sat down next to him as he shoved over. “Isn’t it awfully smoky in here?”

“It goes with the décor. We can have a tree brought in for you, if you’d like that. We could set it up by the piano.”

“I had a wonderful time in my tree, thanks. All it needed was a heater. Where’s Bev?”

“Upstairs, enjoying the absence of smoke, music, and teenage fun.”

“I guess Peter fled up there too.”

“I don’t know. He was here when we came in, moping in that corner. I thought he went out again. What did you say to him, cruel woman? Oh, they’re good at this one.”

Ned Toomey had broken off “Goodnight Irene” and had passed without pause into a series of climbing, suspenseful phrases with his right hand. There were shouts of applause. The phrases climaxed in harsh rock-and-roll chords, and Richie Jelenik sang deeply, soulfully, soaringly:

“Ah

Found

Mah

Thri-hill”

“Louder!” cried Brad. “Sing it, Richie babe!”

“Own bluebayry hih-ill”

“Go, Ned!”

“Own bluebayry hih-ill”

“These guys are too much.” Richie Jelenik’s eyes were closed, his head flung back, his face twisted in a parody of passion; and the tense fingers of his outstretched hands were hooked like claws. His cheek glistened, and Catherine was shocked: she thought he was crying. But she saw that he was sweating in the close, warm air. All at once she saw a bright green hill, covered with tall trees, ripe blueberry bushes, and winding paths. Sunlight streamed in through the leaves and fell in shafts onto the lovely paths; and all was still and peaceful in the blue summer air. It was as if the world were waiting for something, waiting and waiting with held breath for something that was bound to happen, but not yet, not yet. Suddenly Catherine felt like bursting into tears. She looked about. Her temples throbbed in the smoke-filled air; she felt a little sick. “I think I’ll go up and say hello to Bev,” she said.

“Tell her to come on down and join the party. These guys are terrific.”

Catherine escaped from the room and climbed the wooden stairs toward the kitchen. On her left at the top of the stairs was the dark, moonlit living room, glowing like an enchanted cave filled with chests of precious jewels. You were not allowed to go into the Anderson living room. In the bright yellow kitchen to her right, Bev was standing at the stove, gently shaking a black frying pan containing dark-yellow corn kernels. She thrust a large potcover over it and shook harder. Sue Wilson, Linda Shulick, and Joey Musante were sitting at the kitchen table. On the table stood a large bottle of 7Up, a bowl containing crumbs of popcorn, and a smaller bowl filled with thin straight pretzels. Catherine went over to Bev and, leaning close to her ear, said, “Boo.” Bev gave a little start. “God, you scared me. I thought you were hibernating for the winter. Do you know, Len thought you were angry at him? Come on, you guys, pop.” “Oh no, no. That’s crazy. Len?” Through a door in the kitchen Catherine saw the small dim den, crowded with people. Sonia Holmes sat on a couch surrounded by her courtiers. Her glittering legs were tucked under her skirt. You could not smoke in the den or kitchen, you could not play music in the den, you could not drink beer, and you could not set foot in the living room. You could use the top of the stove but not the inside. “It’s so hot down there,” Catherine continued. “Have you seen Peter around?”

“Peter? You and Peter are some pair.”

Catherine drew back her face sharply, as if she had been struck on the cheek. “Oh?”

“You go sit in a tree, and Peter goes home.”

“Peter went home?”

Sue Wilson said, “He didn’t even tell anybody. Janet saw him. She thought he went to get something in his car, but he got in and drove away. I call that rude.”

Bev said, “Peter isn’t rude.”

“He left his sled,” said Catherine. A restlessness came over her, and she thought how irritating and boring all these people were, and this kitchen, and this universe, and above all, above all, those little straight pretzels. Why weren’t they the three-ring kind?

“It’s about time!” said Bev. She tipped up the cover and Catherine saw a kernel burst into flower. Bev banged the cover down and shook the pan; there was a crack-crack-cracking. Catherine went over to the den and looked in quickly. Then she turned, walked across the kitchen, and went downstairs.

Through the half-open door of the playroom Catherine saw drifting smoke and the corner of a couch. She went into the workroom and put on her coat, fumbling with the plump buttons, shaped like half-globes. Pulling on her boots, and tying her kerchief under her chin, she strode through the garage.

When she stepped outside she saw that some of the party had returned to the slope. She had thought only of escaping from the house, and now she was standing in the floodlight, exposed. She felt like putting her hands over her face. The only private place was the leaning pine. She climbed the slope at the back of the house, away from the sledding path, and headed across the deep snow toward her tree. Under the moon and the dark blue sky the snow was luminous and tinged with blue.

Catherine stopped; in the open space of the pine she saw Bob Carwin, standing with one arm against the trunk as he leaned over Bonnie Baker, who sat on a low branch. Catherine turned back angrily into the upper yard. There was no place where she could be alone. There were people at the willow, people at the bottom of the sledding path, people in the pine. There were people in the playroom, people in the kitchen, people in the den. The party was spreading; soon it would flow across the yard, over the hedge, and into the next yard. It would flow across the town. It would spread into the dark blue sky, all the way to the snowy moon.

Catherine stood in the empty upper yard. She felt restless, yet there was no place to go. He had walked to his car and driven home. He had not told anyone he was going home. Catherine thought it was a strange, upsetting thing to have done, and all at once she felt an immense pity for Peter Schiller, and for herself, as if someone had done something to them and gone away. But it was Peter Schiller who had gone away. Catherine shook her head, as if to shake out the words. She looked about. Everything seemed suspenseful and mysterious — the blue snow, the deep boot-hollows in the snow, the floodlit black of the driveway, startling as spilled ink rushing across a table. It seemed to her that everything she looked at was about to change shape suddenly. But it all remained peaceful, suspended, still. And the sledders rushing down the slope were part of it too, as if their motion were only another form of stillness. A hill of summer blueberries, sledders in the snow. Catherine felt lifted up into stillness, as if things were about to shift slightly, or crack open like kernels, thrusting up inner blossoms. She felt a faint cracking inside her. In another moment she would understand everything. And as she waited, she bowed her head against the cold, as if in prayer.

A shout from the hill startled her. Catherine hugged herself, and shivered in the cold. It had slipped away, whatever it was. She felt tired, as if she had been running for a long time. It seemed to her that she had been set spinning, like a top that travels across a table, touches an object, and, still spinning, rushes off in another direction. The words had set her spinning to the tree, and from there to the playroom, and from there to the kitchen, and from there to the snowy wasteland of the upper yard. And once you were set spinning, who knew where you would stop? She was spinning, spinning, and now she was about to go spinning off again, because she could not bear to be alone. She no longer knew what was going to happen to her. She no longer knew anything at all.

Gravely, her head bowed slightly, Catherine walked down the hill.

But in the glow of the floodlight her spirits revived, and when she stepped into the smoky warmth of the playroom she felt so soothed, so enfolded, that she enjoyed the feel of her own smile as it pushed against her tightening cheeks. Bev and Brad waved from a couch; Catherine waved back. At the piano they were singing “Auld Lang Syne.” These were her friends, her dear friends who were waving to her and laughing and playing the piano and singing. There was a clatter of descending footsteps, and Catherine turned to the half-open door. Len Anderson entered, frowning as he lit a cigarette in cupped hands. “You’re leaving?” he said, looking up harshly. “Arriving,” she answered, and untied her kerchief. “And Len, I can’t tell you what a wonderful party it is.” Pleasure surged in her; and everyone was surprised when she gave him a big hug.

A Day in the Country

She had planned to continue further down the slope, but the slatted red bench in a sun-flooded bend of the path had proved too great an adventure. It was an adventure because it was there at all, demanding nothing, feigning indifference, and promising the secret pleasures of truancy. The wood was warm to her touch. The three hundred pages of The Machining of Plastics in their neatly tied folder remained unedited at her side, and in the late afternoon light, bright but no longer hot, Judith continued to look with pleasure through the opening in the trees at the sunny cliff with its gazebo of pale, peeled logs, and beyond to the dark green and light green and blue green of low hills. On the hills lay darker green patches that slowly moved: the shadows of clouds. They looked like carelessly strewn dark doilies. A young woman in faded blue jeans and a crimson T-shirt lay on her back on the cliff. Her boyfriend sat crosslegged beside her, drinking a can of beer that flashed in the sun. His shadow was so richly black that it might have been wet. They spoke, but quietly, as if hushed by the peacefulness of the view, and Judith would not have wished them to leave. It struck her, watching their stillness, that there was also a pleasurable truancy from play. One of the attractions of the place was its twenty-seven, or was it twenty-nine, scenic trails, and it was possible to feel much too responsible for covering the territory. She had been marching up and down trails all morning and half the afternoon, looking down at valleys with red barns and across at hills with little white houses, identifying fourteen wildflowers with the aid of Peterson’s Field Guide to the Wildflowers of Northeastern and North-central North America and a four-page pamphlet she had bought for ninety-five cents at the gift shop near the dining room, resting only for a few minutes in the rustic gazebos placed along the cliff trails before setting off again, and she realized, seated gratefully on her bench, how delightful it was simply to stop. Simply to stop. At her feet grew a purple wildflower, with four-petaled clusters arranged along the upper part of a thick green stalk, and she purposely refrained from opening her shoulder bag and checking in the purple section of the field guide. The warm sun on her face made her feel healthy and sleepy. Flower, tree, rock, sky — for a moment Judith longed for a world without detail. It would be enough.

She heard footsteps approaching along the upper path and turned to look. A woman, walking slowly, appeared around the bend, and as she did so Judith felt a little sharp burst of annoyance. It was their third encounter of the day. The woman — she couldn’t have been more than twenty-seven or — eight, though indoors she looked thirty — was wearing a black sweater and an ankle-length wraparound in dark blue, with purple and pale-blue swirls. Over her slumped shoulder she wore a large cloth pocketbook with two wide wooden strips at the top; the cloth was dull red with little dark green leaves all over it. A mane of black hair, lightly clasped at the neck, flowed down to the small of her back. She looked at Judith with large dark melancholy eyes that seemed perpetually to be making a mute appeal, and it was above all those eyes with their mute appeal that irritated Judith, who was suddenly afraid the intruder might want to join her on the bench. Indeed she had almost stopped walking and seemed to be looking tentatively at the unoccupied corner of the small bench, where Judith thanked God she had placed her manuscript and her bag. She was afraid the woman might ask if she could sit down, and then what hope was there? But she only looked again at Judith, who looked severely away. The woman had never quite stopped walking, and she now turned off the main path onto the narrow trail leading to the cliff with the gazebo. She stopped halfway, seeing the lovers, and stood for a few moments looking out at the view with one hand resting on top of her pocketbook. She then turned back and, without a glance at Judith, stepped onto the main path and continued down. Judith’s heart was beating quickly; she felt shocked by her own rudeness.

But she couldn’t help it. She had first seen her the night before. Judith had left the office at midafternoon on Friday and arrived barely in time for dinner in the great dining hall, with its thirty or forty small square tables and its darkening view of the hills. The long bus ride from Port Authority had tired her, and she had had to wait twenty minutes for the limousine that carried her and four others up the long, winding road to the Mountain Lodge. But as soon as the chateaulike building came into view, sprawling and turreted in all the exuberance of splendidly bad Victorian taste, the little irritations of the trip fell away from her. Her room was at the top of the south wing, in the rear. She had just enough time to drop her suitcase and take in the patchwork quilt in brown and blue and yellow, the dark, curving headboard with pineapple finials, the pale brown wallpaper with pale pink and pale green nosegays, and the view of blackening green hills under a fading sunset before hurrying along the carpeted corridor, past window nooks with cushioned seats, to the main stairway, with its thick and glistening banister. From the lobby at the foot of the stairs it was not far to the dining hall at the rear of the north wing. Dinner was served from six to eight, and it was seven-forty-five. Many guests still lingered at their tables, and Judith was pleased: she liked the combination of privacy and company provided by a reserved table in a crowd. It so happened that the tables in her immediate vicinity were unoccupied, except for one a few feet away, and at that table sat a woman with melancholy eyes and a mane of black hair. The absence of other diners nearby had the effect of throwing the two of them into accidental relation, and Judith noticed that she and the younger woman seemed to be the only ones dining alone. It was enough to set her, however unreasonably, against acquaintance. Those melancholy and mutely appealing eyes, which seemed to be seeking a soul mate with whom to share, in hushed tones, in a corner of lamplit darkness, intimate disheartening confessions, were only another reason for keeping between them a decent stretch of spiritual distance. With particular annoyance Judith noted the woman’s slumped, defeated shoulders. She longed to say: “Good God, woman, enough. Shoulders back — sit up straight — get a grip on yourself — it can’t be as bad as all that. And stop wearing your sorrow like a string of pearls. He isn’t worth it. Down with it.” She contented herself with studying the menu.

That was the first meeting, if silence and avoidance could in any sense be called a meeting. For Judith it seemed to insist on remaining no less than that. The melancholy woman finished half her slice of pecan pie, lit up a cigarette, and left in a cloud of smoke, without having ventured a syllable. But even the hoped-for silence managed to annoy Judith: it seemed too pointedly a reproach. It was as if it had been up to Judith, who at thirty-six supposed she was the “older woman,” to break the silence and launch them into gloomy intimacy. She, however, was planning to enjoy herself for a change. There was a certain kind of exasperating woman who never recovered from the world of the college dormitory, and spent the rest of her life longing for tragic confidences and cozy confessions in an atmosphere of leathery lounges, heaped ashtrays, and crumpled Almond Joy wrappers crackling faintly while the gray of early dawn showed through the many-paned high windows. The dark woman would probably go searching unhappily for that dormitory until doomsday. She ought to get on with it. But Judith’s good spirits quickly returned. After dinner she made her way back to the lobby, which led to the front lounge, and when she stepped from the side door into the darkness of the open veranda, she felt something expand within her. She walked to the handrail in front, overlooking the lamplit lake. On three sides the long veranda was built on piles over the water. A wicker chair creaked. Footsteps crunched in the graveled paths beside the lake. In the dark, shining water the reflections of windows broke into ripples of yellow as three ducks, forming a triangle, floated by. On the dry side of the veranda a flight of steps led to a path. Judith crossed the path by the side of the lake and walked partway up the dark hill on the other side. She looked across at the great porch and the tiers of yellow windows, and later, in an armchair in the lamplit lounge, when she sat with The Machining of Plastics beside her and the folded Times before her and paused over a five-letter word meaning “crest of a mountain,” she thought of the dark hill over the lake. The fourth letter was “t.” She looked up, as if hoping to find the missing letters in the air before her, and saw the melancholy woman passing slowly across the room. Her dark green sweater seemed to emphasize her slumped shoulders, her long black skirt hung as if despondently about her, and with the sound of a sigh she exhaled a long stream of swirling smoke while she looked around as if searching for someone who had failed to keep an appointment.

Judith rose early the next morning and came down to breakfast at seven-fifteen in jeans and hiking boots. Her melancholy companion was not there, and Judith had the wickedly pleasurable sense that she would drag herself out of bed with a headache a little before noon. It occurred to Judith that she did not much care for the company of single women; there had been a time when they were her only friends. After breakfast she set off at once along the steepest trail, which still lay in shadow. It led high above the lake to a stone tower with a view. Despite the early hour there were already many strollers on the path, and she smiled at a gray-haired couple whom she recognized from the dining hall. “Fine morning,” the man said, touching his fingertips to his temple in a little salute. His blue-eyed wife, whose gray bangs looked like a row of commas, at once remarked vigorously, as if in contradiction: “I think it’s a wonderful morning!” Suddenly Judith stepped into the sun. She felt like flinging herself onto the grass at the side of the path, she felt like rolling over and over, but instead she continued climbing. She burst out laughing: she had caught herself humming “Zippity doodah.” She wondered when she had last thought of it. With startling vividness she saw Uncle Remus with a bluebird on his shoulder. Judith rested in a sunny gazebo, where she looked down at the long, massive lodge and at the lake, half in sun and half in shade, that stretched along one wing and under the veranda, and then she continued up to the tower. In the bright grass at the foot of the tower six teenagers in patched and faded jeans, three boys and three girls, lay on their backs with their eyes closed. It was windy and their hair moved a little over their immobile sunstruck faces. Judith climbed the winding stone stairs to the top and emerged from a shelter in the center of the round tower. Half a dozen people were already there. At the parapet she looked down at the teenagers, the lake, and the lodge. In the lake a few rowboats were out. She watched one pass from shade to sun. She began to walk slowly round the tower for a view of the valley on the other side, and as she passed into the shadow of the stairway shelter she saw the woman in bright sunlight not ten feet away. She wore a black sweater and a dark blue wraparound with pale blue and purple swirls. She stood conspicuously alone, staring out over the valley with her hands resting on the stone parapet.

Judith made a motion as if to retreat, but stopped herself. It was too silly to sneak away; there was no reason for it. But still she hesitated, wondering whether to stride boldly over and look at the view. The woman remained strangely motionless, and the wild thought struck Judith that she knew she was being observed, knew in fact that Judith was there. But that was mad. The woman moved suddenly, but it was only to lean forward and place her forearms on the parapet, bringing one foot behind the other and balancing it on the toe. Judith stepped to a portion of parapet that did not give the best view of the valley and was separated by a good distance from her solitary companion. She stared fixedly down for what seemed many minutes, gradually leaning forward and placing her arms on the parapet. She became aware of her pose and irritably straightened up. The woman still leaned on the parapet, staring into the distance.

Judith spent the rest of the morning following a long trail that led deep into the wooded hills. Sometimes the trail grew so narrow that the overarching white oaks, beeches, and Norway maples, which she identified with the aid of A Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs, shut out all but a few trembling spots of sun. Sometimes it led her to the edges of sun-dazzled, perilous cliffs, where nothing grew but yellowing grass and pink thistles. On one such cliff Judith rested on sun-warmed stone. She stretched out her legs, leaned back on her hands, and lifted her face, with closed eyes, to the sun. The hot mid-morning sun, the richly blue sky, and the distant hills seemed to flow into her and wash her clean, as if she had accumulated an inner grime. When she opened her eyes she saw a white butterfly on her knee.

The trail did not end, but went in a great loop that led back to the lodge. On her return she began to pass more and more people, moving in both directions: the day crowd, already out in force. The noisy crowd irritated her, for it seemed a rude interruption of her peace, but as she came in sight of the great veranda, thronged with visitors, her impatience gave way to a sense of the festive. She was in too good a humor to spurn the crowd-energy she felt all about her. She walked along the gravel path at the edge of the lake and climbed the steps at the side of the veranda. Children ran up and down the long porch, stopping to lean over the rail and point at the water. A little girl in a pink dress and black patent-leather shoes was dragging behind her a clattering yellow duck on red wheels. A tall, thin, very pale man burst suddenly into deep, hearty laughter. Through the side door she entered the sunny lounge, where people strolled back and forth, talking and laughing. She saw the elderly couple that she had passed early in the morning and gaily waved. When she entered the dining hall she saw that it was filled, and she approached her table with a pleasurable sense of proprietorship. Her dark companion had not yet returned for lunch. In the crowded and lively room Judith felt both soothed and excited, and she ate hungrily the handsomely served items of her lunch: a cup of onion soup, slices of small sweet rye and pumpernickel, a crab salad, and a French pastry so shamefully sweet that she vowed to hike vigorously all afternoon. But it felt good to sit lazily over her coffee; her thigh muscles were a little sore. The table beside her remained empty, and it seemed to Judith that the woman was deliberately spurning the crowd — striking an attitude on some lonely cliff.

After lunch Judith sat in a sunny corner of the veranda. Her long hike had pleasantly tired her, and she was tempted to sit for hours in the cushioned wicker armchair, feeling the sun on her arms and face and listening to the sounds about her: the knock of heels on the wood of the porch, the shouts of children, the creak of wicker furniture, the opening and closing of the side door leading to the lounge. The temptation to remain was so great that she forced herself up, reminding herself that the next day was her last. Perhaps it would rain. She followed a trail in the opposite direction from her morning’s hike, one that led past the tennis courts and into the woods. The wooded trail led to a rushing brook; over it was a shady wooden bridge, flecked with sunlight. Judith stood on the bridge, looking at the bits of sun moving on her hand and at the stones under the clear water. She crossed over and continued on the trail. Here and there wooden benches were placed at the side of the path. A smaller path led off the main trail, and Judith turned into it. It was shady and quiet. The path wound in and out. As Judith rounded a turn, she saw the woman seated on a bench. Judith was so startled that she drew in her breath sharply, and the woman turned to look at her. She had been reading a book, which she continued to hold up in both hands with her arms pressed against her sides as she sat with her head turned a little awkwardly toward Judith, who for a moment, in her surprise and alarm, had come to a full stop. The woman’s eyes were melancholy and kind.

“You startled me,” Judith said, and broke into stride.

“I hadn’t meant to,” the other said gently, but Judith was already past.

She hiked in the woods for several hours before deciding to turn back. Her little encounter had upset her, and she hesitated to return along the path that led to the stream. She felt irritated at her hesitation, made up her mind that she didn’t care whom she passed, and was relieved to discover a new path leading back to the tennis courts. In her room she washed her face and lay down on the sunny bed for five minutes with her arm over her eyes. Then she picked up The Machining of Plastics and went down to the veranda. It was far too noisy for her to work. Consulting her map, she decided to take a twisting path that led down through a beech grove and a meadow to a pond. She had not yet come to the beech grove when, suddenly on her right, she saw a red-slatted bench in a sunflooded bend of the path.

The late afternoon sun burned against her face. Judith’s sense of pleasurable truancy, disturbed by the woman’s appearance and by her own rudeness, did not return. Her present mood eluded her. She felt not so much a restlessness as an unpeace-fulness, a dissatisfaction. It was as if a cloud had moved across an inner sun, darkening the green, peaceful, inner hills. The bench was uncomfortably hard, but it was no longer possible to continue down the slope, now that the dark woman had passed that way.

On the cliff the boy set down his flashing beer can. It occurred to Judith that they had chosen that place in order to watch the sunset. All at once, as if he were bowing to the sun, the boy leaned slowly and gracefully over, untucked the girl’s crimson T-shirt, and kissed her on the stomach. Judith rose, picked up her manuscript, slung her handbag over her shoulder, and trudged up the trail.

Children, indifferently watched by parents, ran up and down the veranda. A burst of laughter came from one corner: four fat women, all wearing tight pants in pastel shades, were playing cards at a wicker table. Judith passed through the side door into the lounge, where people were walking in every direction. She remembered that tea was served in the dining room at four; perhaps it was not too late, though it was getting on toward half-past. But on the way she decided that she didn’t want tea. It wasn’t the Isle of Wight, for God’s sake. She went up to her room to work until dinner.

Judith felt better for the little work she had done, and on her way down to the dining hall she permitted the charm of the place to cast its spell again. She loved the wide window recesses with their cushioned window seats and the bookshelves on both sides, and she loved the dark, paneled walls hung with glass-covered photographs of the Mountain Lodge at the turn of the century, glass-covered photographs of bearded men in tweed caps and tweed knickerbockers, and glass-covered drawings of herbs and ferns carefully labeled in Latin and English. She loved the broad, thick-carpeted stairway with its sturdy and shiny old banister, whose thick balusters were shaped like bowling pins. She had showered and changed into a rose-colored blouse, beige slacks, and beige sandals, and as she entered the filled and festive dining hall, with its soaring paneled walls and the orange sunset through the tall windows, she felt not merely pleasure but gratitude. The diners, unlike the day crowd, were all here for at least the weekend, sharing the same gentle adventure. The Mountain Lodge was a great ship sailing into the hills, and they were all passengers. She recognized many faces: the tall, very thin man with the hearty laugh, two of the teenagers who had lain on the grass before the tower, the elderly couple who had spoken to her in the morning. They greeted her as she passed; Judith smiled at the woman and, turning to the man, touched the tips of her fingers to her temple. The table beside hers was empty, as were several others here and there in the hall, and when, halfway through dinner, Judith looked up to see the dark woman in her chair, it struck her as being so natural, so entirely without menace or meaning of any kind, that she could have laughed aloud to think of the absurd pains she had taken to evade this harmless creature with the slumped shoulders and melancholy eyes, who had been placed beside her by wildest chance and whom she was not called upon to elude or know. For each to the other was entirely a stranger.

And it was splendid after dinner to sit on the darkening veranda among quiet voices and the sound of creaking wicker. She looked at the sky above hills slowly draining of color. The darkening blue of the east turned to pale, pale blue above, to a blue that was almost white but gave off no light, like a darkness. It was growing cool. “Cheesecloth,” a man’s voice said decisively, and she tried to hear the next sentence, but his words were interwoven with sounds of footsteps, creaking furniture, a pipe knocking against a glass ashtray. “It’s getting a little chilly,” a woman said to her husband. A few older men lit up cigars. “I think I’ll go in and get my sweater,” someone said. “It’s this mountain air,” someone else said. And all at once, for no reason, the missing letters came to her: arête. The side door opened and closed, someone yawned loudly, people walked on the gravel paths lit by carriage lamps. The veranda smelled of lake water, cigar smoke, and damp wood. It was growing dark.

Someone cried out, then there were gasps and shouts: and the moon, large and fiery orange, rose slowly from the black hills. It was nearly round, except that one side was slightly blurred, as if someone had started to erase it before giving up.

Judith could almost hear the machinery hidden behind the hills, creakily hoisting the cumbrous old moon, which in a moment would probably tumble back down with a crash. But it detached itself from the hill and sat there, looking pleased with itself.

She decided to take a little walk in the lamplit dark before going inside. On the gravel paths by the side of the lake, couples strolled slowly, stopping now and then to look at the water. Judith walked along a path to the other side of the lake and began climbing the dark hill. She had hoped to sit in one of the gazebos on the cliffs along the way, but in each one she passed there sat a couple looking out across the lake. On a stretch of bare flat moon-brightened cliffs, a little distance from the paths, lovers sat and lay as if they were on a beach. Some had brought blankets and lay on their backs, staring up at the night sky. And an irritation came over Judith, at this invasion, this conspiracy of lovers to occupy the best places. The moon had climbed and was pale yellow now. Judith continued up the steep trail, hoping to exhaust the lovers. When she came to the next gazebo she saw a heavy man smoking a pipe, alone. She turned back down the path.

In the warm, lamplit lounge, in an armchair beside one of the big empty fireplaces, Judith sat reading a book about Victorian architecture in New England, which she had found in the small library off the Winter Lounge. In winter there would be fires blazing in all the fireplaces, and suddenly she longed for it to be winter, with logs snapping in the fireplace beside her and, through the bay windows, fields of smooth snow glistening under the moon.

“Hello there.” The voice startled her, and she looked up to see the elderly man who had saluted her on the path. His wife, who had spoken, stood beside him.

“Oh, hello,” Judith said.

“We saw you sitting here all by your lonesome, and we thought, now why don’t we just go over and say hello.”

“We saw you reading a book by yourself here. I told Bea, we shouldn’t disturb her, if she’s reading.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’m just sitting here, really. Soaking up the atmosphere.”

“Well, that’s fine,” said the woman. “It’s a fine evening. We saw you sitting alone, dear, and we just wanted to come over and say hello. We’ll be right across the room there, if you’d care for comp’ny.”

The woman pointed across the room. The man bent his head slightly, touched two fingers to his temple, and lifted them. Taking his wife by the arm, he turned and walked with her slowly back across the room.

A warm, tender feeling rose in Judith, as if the word “dear” had been a hand laid on her cheek. A desire came over her to follow the kindly couple across the room, to pull up an armchair beside them and recount the little adventures of her day: the fourteen wildflowers, the climb to the top of the tower, the red bench in the sun, her unedited manuscript, the three ducks in a triangle scattering the yellow windows, the wooden bridge over the stream. Perhaps she could even tell them about the dark woman, and about the beauty and grace of the boy as he bent over the girl. Then they would explain to her what everything meant. And the man would touch his fingers to his temple, and the woman would say: “That’s all right, dear. That’s as it should be, dear.”

Judith looked up, and saw a plump, bald man with the face of a child, who sat with his knees apart, his plump hands resting on his thighs, and his pants cuffs raised to show red-and-blue argyle socks. She saw a woman with blue-gray hair who sat stiffly upright in her armchair, raising her thin arm to pat gently at her hair while her ivory bracelet slipped slowly from her wrist to her forearm. In an armchair a girl of twenty in tight faded jeans and a burnt-orange sweater sat hugging her raised knees and staring over the tops of them as, flexing and unflexing her bare toes, she listened intensely to a young man with a short blond beard, black-rimmed eyeglasses, and bright blue eyes. Judith felt that she wanted to tell these people something important, something about how strange it was to be sitting in chairs in a lounge in the middle of the hills, how everything was startling and utterly unknown, how each of them was as wondrous as a giraffe or a rhinoceros, but her thoughts grew confused, the expansive, mysterious feeling passed away, and she saw before her a roomful of dull people, sitting around with nothing to do.

A tiredness came over her, and leaning back for a moment she closed her heavy-lidded eyes. The sun and the hiking had tired her; it had been a long day. It was already past nine. Tomorrow’s weather was supposed to be sunny and warm, with highs in the mid-seventies, possibly clouding over in the afternoon. She wanted to be up early: breakfast at six, or say six-thirty at the latest, and out in the sun by seven. She would set her alarm for five-thirty; she could be in bed by half-past nine.

When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see that several of the lamps were out. A number of chairs and couches were empty. She glanced at her watch: it was nearly ten. She must have drifted off. Across the room, the elderly couple was no longer there. She wanted to say good night to them, but they must have gone up to their room while her eyes were closed. She wished they would come back so that she could say good night to them.

Wearily Judith pushed herself to her feet. She would sleep well tonight.

In her room Judith changed quickly into her nightgown and set her alarm for twenty of six. In bed she picked up the book on Victorian architecture, but she could scarcely keep her eyes open. Her body was deliciously tired; there was no need to read herself to sleep. Turning out the lamp beside the bed, she closed her eyes and felt herself falling down, down, toward deepest sleep.

But something was wrong; she could not fall asleep. She turned from side to side, searching restlessly for sleep, as if it lay waiting for her in some precise portion of the bed. No doubt her nap — that disastrous little nap — had taken the edge off her tiredness. And yet she was tired, she longed for sleep. It was a mistake not to have read a little, as she always did. When she looked at the clock, she saw with dismay that it was eleven-thirty-five. Even if she fell asleep instantly she would get only six hours of sleep. It was hopeless. She felt doomed.

Judith turned on the bed lamp, grimly opened the book on Victorian architecture, and began to read. The sentences struck her as at once childish and pedantic, as if she were being lectured by a bright eighth-grader who had taken notes from a dubious encyclopedia. Instead of flowing from one to the next, the sentences stumbled against each other and walked off in every direction, rubbing their shins. The margins were comically wide. For the sake of the photographs the text had been printed on shiny stock, and the bedlamp glared on the print, which for that matter should have been two points larger. The stillness of the room, the whiteness and dryness of her fingers in the glow of the lamp, her blue leather suitcase standing stiffly on the rug, all these began to irritate her, to fill her with anger and unhappiness. Even the steady, monotonous beating of her heart exasperated her — she could feel it in there, drudging away, preventing sleep.

She slammed the book shut and sat up. It was nearly midnight. Oh, it was hopeless; she was making things worse by staying in bed. She needed to move about, to do something; and it came to her that she would return the book to the library.

Quickly she threw the covers off and changed into a sweater, jeans, and slippers.

Her eyelids were heavy but she felt restlessly awake as she walked swiftly along the dim-lit corridor past dark, slumbering doors. At the top of the main stairway she placed her hand on the smooth wood of the banister and hurried down the thick-carpeted stairs. At the bottom she saw light coming from the main lounge. Softly she walked over to the open doorway; she was surprised to see two elderly women reading quietly in armchairs. They did not look up, and Judith tiptoed away. She went back through the lobby, turned down a small corridor, and entered the Winter Lounge. A single lamp was lit; the lounge was deserted. The door of the library was open and a faint light streamed into the darkness of the lounge.

When Judith entered the library she did not at first see the dark woman. A single dim lamp was lit, on a little table beside an empty armchair with a flowered slipcover, and her gaze first fell on the lamplit pink flowers of the chair. The woman sat alone on a dark couch across from the lamp. She turned her head as Judith entered.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Judith said sharply. But of course the woman would be. She was everywhere.

“Were you looking for me?” the other asked.

“No,” Judith said quietly, as if she were suppressing a shout. “I couldn’t sleep. I came to return a book.” She held up the book, as if to show that she wasn’t lying. She entered the room quickly and began looking nervously about, peering at the dark rows of books, searching for the proper space.

“Almost no one comes in here. I hope you won’t mind if I speak frankly. You see, I have feelings sometimes, deep within, and I trust what they tell me. This morning on the tower I felt so certain you wanted to speak to me.”

“To speak to you?” Holding the book in both hands, as if it were as large as a storm window, Judith turned to look at her.

“Yes, to speak. To me. I felt so certain that was what you wanted.”

Judith laughed lightly and, raising a hand in nervous irritation, smoothed back her dark hair. “I really think you — and you say you have these feelings?”

“Yes. I feel that you are so unhappy.”

The words burst into flame within Judith. She could scarcely breathe.

“I see. Thank you very much.”

“Please. There’s no need to sound that way. To hold things inside. Won’t you sit down?”

“I’m perfectly all right. Thank you. I came to return a book.” She thrust it between two books as if she had stolen it. “There. Thank you. I am perfectly fine.”

Judith turned and walked violently from the room.

She hurried up the stairway and along the dark corridor. Once she nearly stumbled, and gave a gasp that seemed as loud as a cry. In her room she locked the door and lay down on the bed. Her heart was beating savagely. Rage surged in her — the rudeness of that witch, the insolence. She was obviously insane. “You see, I have feelings sometimes, deep within.” She had spoken gently, calmly; she was insane. “I feel you are so unhappy.” How dare she feel anything at all? That demented woman had looked at her with pity. Judith sat up abruptly and walked over to the mirror on the door. In the dim lamplight her face looked pale and worn, her dark eyes mournful. She returned to the bed and lay down. Ah, how dare she? “I feel you are so unhappy.” The sentimental words burned in her — she was burning up in them. Unhappiness like a fire broke out in her. Alone in her room, Judith wept.

The tears shocked her; she couldn’t stop. She wept because the woman had looked at her kindly and with pity. She wept because she was alone in a place where lovers lay on the rocks. She wept because things had not turned out the way she had hoped. She wept because she had loved the wrong man, she wept because she was no longer young, she wept because she had started and could not stop. She wept like a child, passionately, with terrible conviction. Her tears seemed to burn a flaming passage through her life. But it was intolerable. She detested it — the banality of tears. Grief wasn’t a flame — it was riot, it was madness. It had sprung to life at a madwoman’s touch. There was no reason for it. But it had fooled her; it must have been waiting there all along. She wept again for her beautiful weak man, who had done such terrible harm. She had been his greatest accomplice. With his hands in his pockets he had come strolling into her life, looking nervously about. He had not been sure, he had never been sure. And she, overflowing with new powers of sympathy, had beautifully understood. She had blossomed with understanding, she had grown brilliant with it. And so he had settled down uncertainly, looking at her with his beautiful nervous eyes, and she had dared to be happy: she had done that thing. And he had left, in stages; he had shown weakness even in that, while she in her panic had spun round him glittering delicate threads of understanding. Judith wept for those glittering threads, and for the fire that had raged in her, and for the deadness that had slowly come over things. She wept at the waste of it. She shook with weeping, it poured out of her, she couldn’t stop.

As Judith wept, her unhappiness seemed to expand and grow more generous. She wept for the lovers on the sunflooded cliff, who did not know what lay ahead. She wept for the elderly couple, who perhaps woke in the night, trembling with death fear. She wept for the dark woman, who in the arrogance of her sadness had developed cruel gifts of divination. Judith felt herself dilate with unhappiness; and as she wept, her sorrow grew rich and darkly lovely, a black flower, opening petal by velvet petal.

For a while it seemed as if she would sleep. But again it struck her, shaking her like an illness. She got up from the bed and walked weeping around the nearly dark room. She felt ugly with sorrow, as if her tears were wearing lines into her face. Damn the witch. She was too tired for this.

She lay down, exhausted, and it flashed in her that this would end. It was bound to end. Everything ended. Tomorrow she would be sitting in sunshine on her red bench. She would eat dinner early, take the limousine to the bus station, and ride toward the city in the dark. In the morning she would be at her desk. There were letters to dictate, a meeting at ten with the three new trainees, and a luncheon appointment with the author of a college math text that proposed to teach the concept of number by using the history of number systems in different cultures. She wouldn’t have a minute to spare for sorrow, and if the thought of the tears now pouring from her came into her mind, they would seem as dreamlike and implausible as her father’s explanation, when she was a child, that the lawn on which they were standing was part of a great globe that was not only turning round and round but was rushing along like a ball shot out of a cannon.

But it was ugly; humiliating. She was helpless against it. She lay on the bed, utterly given over to grief. Her grief seemed to be growing stronger, as if it were gaining confidence. It was not ennobling, it was not even interesting. People suffered the way they loved — not with their hearts but with their stomachs. It bored her. But still it went on.

And again it struck at her, the ugly and humiliating thing. It overmastered her, ranging through her at will. Judith lay weakly on her pillow and felt herself slowly give up. She tried to remember if she had ever felt peaceful, and it seemed to her that long ago, in some other life, she had sat in sunlight. She no longer existed; she was only a lump of ugly suffering. She had no respect for these tears, these shakings. Weak, weak, she was weak. Weak! She despised weepy women.

The thought came to her that she might be having a breakdown. At the thought a terror came over her; calmed for a moment by terror, she forced herself up from the bed.

She walked over to the window and pushed aside the shade. She was startled to see her shocked face staring at her from the dark glass. Through her face she saw black hills and a dark blue sky rich with stars. Once when she was a child her father had taken her out at night to the top of the driveway and let her look through his telescope at the moon and stars. The telescope stood on a tripod and he had lowered the legs for her. He had told her that a long time ago people believed the sky was a bowl filled with little holes, and that the stars were those little holes, through which the sun was shining. He had explained gravely and carefully what the stars really were, but she had come away knowing that the night was a bowl with the sun shining through the holes.

A coolness flowed from the glass. Judith leaned forward toward the coolness and saw her pale face bowing to meet her. She pressed her burning forehead against the cool glass. The room seemed stifling, unbearable. The whole room was filled with sorrow. All at once she released the shade; it clattered as if she had hurled it against the glass. She went over to the bed and began to put on her hiking boots.

Struggling to pull her arm through a sweater she stepped into the hall. Her head ached and tears burned in her eyes. At the top of the stairs she stopped to button her sweater; it was black with black buttons. She placed her hand on the smooth wood of the banister and watched the hand slide down alongside her as she swiftly descended. At the bottom the hand swept up over the wooden globe of the stairpost and joined her again. From the lobby she passed into the empty lounge, where a single lamp dimly glowed. An old woman was asleep in a chair. Judith stepped through the side door onto the dark veranda, hurried down the steps onto the gravel path, and stopped.

The moon shocked her: it was burning white. It had burned the blackness out of the sky, leaving a radiant dark blue. She felt like breaking off a piece of the moon and pressing it against her forehead, plunging it into her mouth. She felt crazed. Tears streamed along her face.

She had come out with no plan except to escape the sorrow in her room, but as if she knew where she wanted to go she did not hesitate. The moon would light her way.

The twisting downward path was speckled with pale patches of moonlight. A stone cast a sharp shadow. She could see leaf shadows printed on the path. Overhead the night was so deeply blue that she refused to believe it; she was reminded of the fraudulent and enchanting skies of night scenes in old Technicolor movies. A nearby crackle startled her. She had read that there were possums, raccoons, and deer in the woods. Judith had never seen a possum. What if one leaped out at her? She wouldn’t even know what it was.

When she reached the bench at the bend of the path she stopped in surprise. It had no color, though the moon shone on part of it — it was only darkness and light. There, where she had been peaceful, she sat down.

On the brilliantly moonlit cliff the gazebo cast a hard-edged shadow. There were many parallel stripes and criss-crosses. Through the pale, radiant beams of the gazebo she could see diamonds and parallelograms of dark blue night. Near the pointed roof-shadow something gleamed, and she recognized the beer can. It threw a long shadow. At the very edge of the cliff, brightness turned into darkness. She tried to see the precise place where the brightness stopped.

She raised a hand to her face and was startled to feel wetness there. She remembered that she had been crying. The woman had hurt her. And at the memory it began again: something rose in her and she was shaken with it, she wept and bent her face into her hands. She took deep breaths, as if she had to reach far down to find strength for her sorrow. Her body shook, her ribs ached, her shoulders hunched old-womanishly.

She could not stop. She wept as if some deep restraint of pride or breeding had given way in her. She wept beyond shame, crudely and obscenely, as if grief were a form of ugliness she could no longer escape. She had no sympathy for the grief that filled her and shook her, that seemed too large for her, as if it did not fit her insides correctly. Her grief was the wrong size. It spilled out of her and left her far behind. It was larger than the Mountain Lodge, larger than anything; and it seemed to her that she had left her room and come out into the night because only the night was large enough.

Sick with sorrow, twisted with grief, Judith stumbled from the bench and struck for the path leading to the cliff. She wanted to run away from her unhappiness, to leave it behind. Trembling and weeping she emerged from the trees into a brilliance of moonlight. The moon hurt her tear-burned eyes. Now that she was out of the woods Judith advanced slowly, as if her hair had become tangled in the brilliance of the night sky — in twigs and branches of light. The moonlight tore at her hair. The blazing beer can stunned her, distracted her. She looked up at the moon. It burned out her eyes. She came to the edge of the cliff, where the dark place began.

She looked down, and the dark seemed to reach up and seize her ankles. A dizziness came over her. She felt herself falling into the soothing dark. Her hair streamed in the wind of her falling; and as she fell down and down, she felt her sorrow streaming from her like a wind. It was blowing out of her in all directions. It was spreading through the dark hills and valleys, flowing into the night sky, rising higher and higher, slowly filling the blue bowl of night.

Judith opened her eyes. She looked about. She stepped back suddenly. She was standing near the edge of a cliff. She looked at the edge of the cliff. She looked up at the moon. It was night. There was a moon in the sky.

Judith raised a hand and smoothed back her hair. She said: “My name is Judith Hahn. This is a rock. That is the moon. Shhh. It’s all right. Shhh. It’s over now. You can go back. Shhh, dear. That’s all right. Go back. Shhh.”

Obediently, Judith turned and went slowly back up the path.