Lilith (8 page)

“Do you feel any better?”

“Yes. It feels wonderful.”

“Do you want any more brandy?”

“No, thank you.”

“Vincent, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I just want to hold you. You feel so wonderful, Laura.”

I put my arms around her waist and drew her body against me. She yielded stilly for a moment, and then I felt her lean away from me, her body tensing in withdrawal.

“You’re all wet, Vincent. It’ll ruin my dress.”

“Please, let me just hold you for a minute.” I clenched her suddenly close in my arms and pressed my face, still stained with watery blood, against her waist. “Laura, I want to love you,” I whispered hoarsely. “Please. Please let me love you.”

She put her hands on my shoulders and twisted her body in my arms. “No. Don’t, Vincent. Don’t.”

“Please. I want to love you. I have to, Laura. Let me, please.”

“No. Let me go.”

I dropped down onto my knees before her on the bathroom floor, my aims locked fiercely about her, burying my face against the cleft of her groin, breathing the buried musk of her body through the crushed cotton of her skirt.

“No. Don’t, Vincent. Stop. I won’t. It isn’t decent. I won’t ever do that until I’m married. It isn’t decent.”

She took my wrists in her hands, twisting and wrenching them until she had broken free, and backed away from me against the wall.

“Why did you have to do that?” she said. “It’s just horrible. I never thought you’d do anything like that.”

I knelt in front of her, naked from the waist up, my hair still dripping with watery gore, my face flushed with the intensity of shame into which my violent feeling had been suddenly transposed by her revulsion, watching her gather her skirt away from me in very formal, involuntary, clutching movements of her hands, like the oppressed heroines of silent movies. From the end of the hall her father began to call with feeble impatience in his old, trembling voice: “Laura . . . Laura . . .
Laura
. . .” She turned away from me quickly and went out of the bathroom. I snatched up the clean shirt she had brought me and left the house, thrusting my arms into the sleeves as I ran down the stairs and out the front door into the quiet evening.

I have as much need for dignity as anyone, and I should like to understand better why I was led in such a wanton manner to bring that ugly day to its even uglier conclusion by an act of savage mortification with a woman who was perhaps as old as my grandmother. Because that is what I did. Hardly pausing in my flight from Laura’s house, I set out down the darkening streets toward the house of the Mrs. Hallworth to whom, a week before, I had delivered a box of groceries. I walked quickly, my jaws clenched with bitter resolution.

The sky had gone scarlet behind the black elms and rooftops of the street when I reached the front walk that led up to the dark veranda of her handsome clapboard house. Behind the glider and the white wicker rocking chairs of the front porch there was lamplight inside the windows of the living room. I went up the walk without pausing, mounted the wide steps to the veranda and tapped with the brass knocker on the paneled white door. The fanlight above the door cast a faint downward glow in which I spread my hands while I stood waiting with a fierce impatience. There was still blood between my fingers. I scrubbed the back of my hand across my thigh and knocked again.

In a moment the door opened and Mrs. Hallworth, clad in a blue silk negligee that was stained with scattered red spots, peered out at me. She stood unsteadily, her greying hair astray, peering out at me with a look of confusion that changed slowly to one of faintly amused congeniality.

“Well, my goodness,” she said. “It’s the
grocery
boy! If this isn’t a pleasant surprise.” She smiled at me, lifting her hand to brush back from her forehead the stray strands of her hair. “Now what could bring you here at this time of night? I don’t suppose you’ve got any more
potatoes
for me?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, my resolution faltering suddenly. “I was wondering—I was wondering if maybe I made a mistake on your order the other day. I was wondering if you still had your order slip.”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t you come in, and I’ll see if I can find it somewhere.” She opened the door wider, clutching the knob to steady herself as she held it aside for me to enter. I went into the house and stood in the small foyer while she closed the door and stood for a moment with her laced hands dangling in front of her, regarding me with a look of curious, genial, concern.

“My goodness,” she said. “You look like you’re upset about something. You’ve got blood on your hands. Did you know that?”

I nodded abjectly. “I killed my horse,” I said. “He broke his leg and I had to kill him with a rock.”

“Oh, my Lord!” She clicked her tongue with dismay. “Oh, that must make you feel terrible! Why don’t you come on back in the kitchen and let me wash them off? It’ll make you feel a little better.”

“No, that’s okay,” I said. I looked down at my hands and rubbed the bloodstain between my fingers with my thumb. “I’m sorry to trouble you like this. Maybe I ought to come back some other time.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” she said. “You come on here in the living room and sit down for a minute while I look for that order slip.” She laid her hand gently against my back and guided me into the living room. On a side table beside one of the overstuffed dark armchairs there was a decanter of wine and a half-empty glass.

“You sit right down there,” she said. “And I’ll just see if I can find that order slip.” She moved across the room to a mahogany secretary that stood against the wall and tugged open a drawer. “I keep most of my records in here. Let me just see now.” She took a sheaf of papers from the drawer and turned back to me. “What is your name, young man?”

“Vincent,” I said.

“Vincent. Oh, that’s a lovely name. You have the name of a saint, did you know that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“And I suppose you have a saintly nature, isn’t that right?”

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“You
don’t
? Well, I’m surprised to hear that. When you were here the other day you certainly
behaved
like a saint. I was afraid I might have offended you, the way you took off from here.”

“No, ma’am, you didn’t offend me.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. Because I think what might do you a lot of good right now is a little glass of wine. Being as upset as you are about your horse.”

“I don’t drink wine, ma’am,” I said.

“You mean you never
have
drunk wine, or you don’t
intend
to drink wine,
ever
?”

“I never have drunk any,” I said.

“Well, why don’t you have just a little sip of it, right now, to sort of steady your nerves? I think you might like it.”

She came across the room toward me, shoving the file of papers into the picket of her negligee and bending down to take hold of the neck of the decanter.

“I’m afraid I only have this one glass, but why don’t we share it?” she said. “We can have a little loving cup.” She poured the glass full and handed it to me. “Now, you try that. I think it’ll make you feel a lot better. Go ahead, take just a little sip. It’s zinfandel, a very sweet wine. I think you’ll like it.”

I took the glass from her hand and after staring into the pale red wine for a moment I sipped it uncertainly, then tilted back my head and drank the wine to the bottom of the glass with a defiant, desperate haste. It was cool and sweet, and almost instantly I felt the glow of it in my belly.

“Now, isn’t that better?” she said. She took the glass from me and poured it full again, gazing solemnly into the wine for a moment.

“I know how you must feel,” she said. “Having to do such a terrible thing. When I was a little girl I had a little dog that I loved more than anything in the world, and he ran out into the street one day and got hit by a car. I just didn’t think I’d ever get over it. I don’t think I ever
have
got over it. I know how much children suffer. And I know much their suffering is misunderstood, or dismissed, by others. I know how sensitive they are.” She sipped from her glass and gazed at me over the rim of it. “I have a very great love of children,” she said. “They are the purest and finest members of the human race. I would do anything in the world to ease the suffering of young people. There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to ease their pain.” She put out her hand and laid it against my cheek. “And I think you have suffered greatly,” she said. “I think you’re a very sensitive young man, and it grieves me to know that you’ve been introduced to sorrow so soon in your life. I wish there was something I could do to ease your pain.”

Moved by some monstrous, inexorable impulse that was composed, I suppose, partly of indignation toward Laura, partly of gratitude toward this wonderfully sympathetic woman, partly of raw desire, I lunged out of the chair and found myself kneeling at her feet clutching her to me, as half an hour before I had knelt before Laura and clutched her rigidly unwilling body to my face. She set down the wine glass and stroked my hair.

“Now, don’t grieve, Vincent,” she said. “You’re such a beautiful boy. It’s just not right that such a beautiful young man should be so unhappy. Why don’t you come upstairs with me and I’ll see if I can ease your suffering a little. I think you deserve a little comfort. Now you get up and take my hand, and I’ll try to prove to you that the world is not full of only terrible things. Now get up, sweetheart.”

I stood up and took her hand, gazing down with a kind of strengthless submission at the flowered carpet. I took her hand and she led me gently through the arch of the living room and up the carpeted stairs to the open door of her bedroom, where she turned to put her arms around me and kiss me on the mouth.

I remember that as I left her house, carrying with me indelibly its odors of wine, furniture polish, perfumed sheets, and Mrs. Hallworth’s moist and powdered flesh, I was, for the first time since my mother’s death, crying softly and soundlessly. I don’t think I would have been aware of my tears but for the sudden coolness of the evening air against my wet cheeks.

But however bewildered, however confusedly vindictive I may have felt toward Laura at that moment, it was not for that reason that the bitterness of which I’ve spoken earlier grew between us. After a period of reasonable reflection I could understand the revulsion she must have felt at the suddenness, shamelessness, and violence of my behavior, and I felt a growingly urgent obligation to apologize for it. But the thing for which I’ve never been able to forgive her, the thing whose peculiar and subtle cruelty I’ve brooded on for years, is what she said to me a few days later when I went again to her house to apologize.

I have said a few days—I think it must have been nearer to a few weeks, for I remember that as the weather was much warmer we sat in the steel-and-canvased glider in her back yard and that the wistaria tree above us had begun to bloom, opening its great purple blossoms softly and standing in that dark and mournful beauty which only these trees have. In all this time I had seen Laura only occasionally and distantly at school; she had not telephoned, or made any effort to see me, and I had begun to miss her greatly. In addition, I was beset with a growing feeling of remorse: I became convinced that I had shocked and offended her acutely and that I must make some effort to repair her wounded sensibilities. But however distressed Laura may have been at my behavior, she gave no indication of it; she greeted me with her usual composure at the front door and suggested that we sit out in the glider because it was such a nice evening. She had, in spite of my protest, washed out and ironed my soiled shirt, and she said that it was all ready, if I had changed my mind about accepting it.

“It would be a terrible waste to throw away a perfectly good shirt like that,” she said.

“All right. Thank you very much, Laura.”

“I was going to give it to the Salvation Army if you didn’t come back to get it.”

I stared at the ground for a moment and then said, “I guess you didn’t care whether I came back or not, after the way I acted.”

“I thought you might,” she said. “So I saved it for a while.”

There was a breath of evening breeze that made the big tree stir softly, and I looked up and watched the white curtains blowing out into the yard from the open windows of the upstairs bedrooms—a clean, blithe, gentle billowing which I have always loved for the sense of purification which it suggests: the cleansing out of old, fraught, winter-stale houses in a sweet, cool, vernal bath of air.

“How is your father, Laura?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s getting weaker all the time. I guess we just have to expect the worst.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He had another attack this morning. Mother’s upstairs with him right now.”

“That certainly is too bad.”

“It’s such an awful strain on her; that’s the worst part.”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause, during which I gathered the determination to make my apology.

“The main reason I came back, Laura,” I said, “was that I wanted to tell you I was very sorry for the way I acted the last time I was here. I’m very sorry about it, and I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings, or anything.”

“Thank you, Vincent. It’s nice of you to say that.”

“I don’t know why I did it, but I hope you don’t feel too—well, too disgusted with me.”

“No, I don’t, Vincent. I know you were very upset about your horse, and people do all kinds of things when they get very upset like that.”

“Yes.” I felt a vague sense of chagrin at the ease with which she apparently forgave me, and wondered, with a swiftly growing apprehension, whether I had really expected or desired it. The sense of guilt which my adventure had created in me lay like a monstrous weight on my heart, and I bore it with the terrible sensitivity of which only a boy of that age is capable. I felt unclean and vicious; and I think for this reason I experienced my sudden doubt as to whether I could ever decently resume my relationship with Laura: I was not worthy of her; I could no longer honorably enjoy her affection and companionship with so foul a secret on my conscience. I almost wished that she would refuse to accept my apology, or ever to see me again, and thus relieve me of the imposture—the feigned respectability—that I would otherwise have to make.