Strangers on a Train

Four

He walked home slowly, approaching Ambrose Street, where he lived, through Travis Street, which was shaded and still. There was a small fruit shop now on the corner of Travis and Delancey Streets, sitting right on somebody’s front lawn like a children’s play store. Out of the great Washatorium building that marred the west end of Ambrose Street, girls and women in white uniforms were pouring, chattering, on their way to an early lunch. He was glad he did not meet anyone on the street he had to speak to. He felt slow and quiet and resigned, and even rather happy. Strange how remote—perhaps how foreign—Miriam seemed five minutes after talking with her, how unimportant, really, everything seemed. Now he felt ashamed of his anxiety on the train.

“Not bad, Mama,” he said with a smile when he came home.

His mother had greeted him with an anxious lift of her eyebrows. “I’m glad to hear that.” She pulled a rocker around and sat down to listen. She was a small woman with light brown hair, with a pretty, rather fine straight-nosed profile still, and a physical energy that seemed to twinkle off in sparks now in the silver of her hair. And she was almost always cheerful. It was this fact chiefly that made Guy feel that he and she were quite different, that had estranged him from her somewhat since the time he had suffered from Miriam. Guy liked to nurse his griefs, discover all he could about them, while his mother counseled him to forget. “What did she say? You certainly weren’t gone very long. I thought you might have had lunch with her.”

“No, Mama.” He sighed and sank down on the brocade sofa. “Everything’s all right, but I’ll probably not take the Palmyra job.”

“Oh, Guy. Why not? Is she—? Is it true she’s going to have a child?”

His mother was disappointed, Guy thought, but so mildly disappointed, for what the job really meant. He was glad she didn’t know what the job really meant. “It’s true,” he said, and let his head go back until he felt the cool of the sofa’s wooden frame against the back of his neck. He thought of the gulf that separated his life from his mother’s. He had told her very little of his life with Miriam. And his mother, who had known a comfortable, happy upbringing in Mississippi, who kept herself busy now with her big house and her garden and her pleasant, loyal friends in Metcalf—what could she understand of a total malice like Miriam’s? Or, for instance, what could she understand of the precarious life he was willing to lead in New York for the sake of a simple idea or two about his work?

“Now what’s Palm Beach got to do with Miriam?” she asked finally.

“Miriam wants to come with me there. Protection for a time. And I couldn’t bear it.” Guy clenched his hand. He had a sudden vision of Miriam in Palm Beach, Miriam meeting Clarence Brillhart, the manager of the Palmyra Club. Yet it was not the vision of Brillhart’s shock beneath his calm, unvarying courtesy, Guy knew, but simply his own revulsion that made it impossible. It was just that he couldn’t bear having Miriam anywhere near him when he worked on a project like this one. “I couldn’t bear it,” he repeated.

“Oh,” was all she said, but her silence now was one of understanding. If she made any comment, Guy thought, it was bound to remind him of her old disapproval of their marriage. And she wouldn’t remind him at this time. “You couldn’t bear it,” she added, “for as long as it would take.”

“I couldn’t bear it.” He got up and took her soft face in his hands. “Mama, I don’t care a bit,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I really don’t care a row of beans.”

“I don’t believe you do care. Why don’t you?”

He crossed the room to the upright piano. “Because I’m going to Mexico to see Anne.”

“Oh, are you?” she smiled, and the gaiety of this first morning with him won out. “Aren’t you the gadabout!”

“Want to come to Mexico?” He smiled over his shoulder. He began to play a saraband that he had learned as a child.

“Mexico!” his mother said in mock horror. “Wild horses wouldn’t get me to Mexico. Maybe you can bring Anne to see me on your way back.”

“Maybe.”

She went over and laid her hands-shyly on his shoulders. “Sometimes, Guy, I feel you’re happy again. At the funniest times.”