The Cost of Living (17 page)

I sat with my hands in my lap and wished myself away. At last, because she didn't seem to notice me anymore, I got up quietly and went to my room. It was the first visit I'd had with anyone in Salzburg, except for the McColls.

That afternoon, I had to see Laura. Walt wanted us to be friends, so whenever she asked me over for tea, I took the bus in to Salzburg and listened to her complaints about Marv. Tea really meant having drinks. Laura would make sweet drinks for me, putting in lots of fruit and sugar so that I wouldn't taste the liquor, but I always had a headache coming home on the bus later on. Laura had a lot of time every day to think about her troubles. She had a maid, and a nurse for the baby, and the long autumn afternoons got on her nerves. She met me at the door, wearing velvet slacks and a pullover with a lot of jewelry. We settled down, and she started in right away about Marv. Although it was early, all the lights were on. They lived in a furnished apartment full of glass and china shelves, which seemed to take up all the air and light. It was the maid's day off, so the nurse brought in our drinks. She was young and thin and wore rouge. Laura watched her in silence as she carefully lowered a tray with bottles and glasses and a bowl of ice to a table near us. Suddenly Laura said, “Look at that bitch.” I must have seemed stupid, because she said, “I mean
her
,” and pointed with her foot to the nurse. “This bitch that Marv's brought in,” she said. “Wouldn't you think he'd have more respect for his own baby? That's what it is now,” she said. “He's not satisfied having them outside. Now he has to have them in the house.” I looked at the nurse, but she didn't seem to understand. “Oh, Cissy,” Laura cried, “he's got her in the house, to be around me, to look after my baby,” and she sent the bowl of ice flying across the room. I heard glass shatter and closed my eyes, as if I were still with Mrs. de Kende, hearing that awful praying. When I opened them, Laura was crying softly, and the nurse was on her knees cleaning up the mess. There was more color than ever in her cheeks. She was young, but she looked hard. Laura was hard, too, but in a different way. I suddenly felt sorry for Marv, caught between these two women—although, of course, he didn't deserve pity.

Usually, I never talked to Walt about Marv and Laura. When he asked about my afternoons in town, I would say that Laura and I had drinks and told each other's fortune with Laura's Tarot cards. He seemed to think that was a good way of spending time. But that night, I thought I had better tell him something. It had been such a terrible day for me, with the scene in the morning, and Laura in the afternoon, it seemed to me that he might listen and be sympathetic. When we were alone, after dinner, I started to tell him about Laura and the nurse. He cut me off at once. He said that Marv was his best friend, and that Laura had a lot of imagination and not enough to do. All right, I thought, you big pig, see if I ever tell you anything again. I sulked a bit, but he didn't notice. So then I remembered my headache from the drinks, and complained about it, which made him nice. I decided to remember that: If I'm sick, he'll be nice.

After that, the days went on as before. I walked and washed and heard the singer and saw the trays going up to her room. I never saw her. I never seemed to be around at the right time. She went to Vienna for a week, and the house was so empty I could have cried. Then she came back, and there was a great hustle on the staircase, maids running up and down carrying things to be pressed. Herr Enrich said that she was going home to America soon.

“Couldn't I just meet her before she goes?” I asked him. “Would you even just take her a note from me? Just a note?”

He explained all over again, as if I were a dim-witted child, that Miss West came to the farm in order to rest, and had given strict orders about intruders. “If I begin carrying messages,” he said, “she will never come again.”

“Maybe I could just leave a note in her door,” I said. “Then it wouldn't be your fault.”

“I cannot prevent you,” Herr Enrich said.

I went up to my room and began writing notes. The final note said:

I copied it out on the monogrammed paper my married sister had given me, and I went quietly up the stairs and pushed the note under Miss West's door. I waited around all day, but nothing happened. Walt came home, and then we went out to the movies with Laura and Marv. Laura told me in detail how to make a custard with brown-sugar sauce, even though she knew I never did any cooking at the farm. Marv and Laura seemed normal together—at least, they weren't fighting—and later on, when we were back at the farm, Walt reminded me of the story I'd tried to tell him about the nurse. “Laura's talk doesn't mean a thing,” he said. “Girls always talk about their husbands.”

“I don't,” I said.

“Not yet,” said Walt. He meant it for a joke, but I was hurt. When he came over to my bed that night, I pretended to be asleep. I felt wicked and deceitful. At the same time, I couldn't help being surprised at how easily it worked, and I was annoyed that he didn't try harder to wake me up. I was so confused about how I felt that I didn't know how to behave anymore. In the morning, I sulked and didn't speak, but Walt didn't even notice. As soon as he had gone off to Salzburg, there was a telephone call from Laura. She asked me to come over right away. She said that she and Marv had had a terrible fight after the movies, and that she had tried to kill herself twice. I went in at once, and found her looking about the same as always. She had been drinking, and seemed restless and depressed. I stayed with her all day, and by midafternoon she had talked herself out and seemed calmer. She sat in a chair with her feet tucked up and sipped a glass of brandy. She had done talking about herself, and suddenly seemed ready to start in on me. She looked at me over the glass and said, “You don't look too well either, Cissy. Anything wrong?”

“No.” I didn't want to tell her about Walt and the deceitful thing I had done. Besides, the whole story behind it—our marriage and Salzburg and my wanting a friend—was too complicated to explain.

But Laura kept on looking, and she laughed and said, “I'll bet you've started a baby.”

I cried, “Oh, no, no, no! Don't say that.”

Laura said, “Well, you will someday, you know. If you haven't already. You needn't be so upset.”

“Oh,” I cried, “I never will! Don't say that. I don't
want
to.”

“Christ, you don't have to want it,” Laura said. “Look at me. And look at the mess I'm in. If I hadn't had the baby, we wouldn't have needed a nurse. If we hadn't needed a nurse, Marv wouldn't have dared…”

She was off again, and, for once, I was glad, because it kept her from talking about me. A baby! My heart beat as if I had been running. How could I take care of a tiny baby when I wasn't ready to take care of myself, when I couldn't even wear high heels and dress like a grownup? All the way home, late that afternoon, I thought about it, and I realized what Walt's visits to my bed might mean. I don't know why I hadn't thought about it before. I'd taken it for granted that I was too young and unready, and that my real married life hadn't started, and that nothing would happen on that account. I knew better, of course. It was just that I hadn't given it much thought.

It was late November, and the days were short. When I arrived at the farm, it was already quite dark. I stood in the doorway, wiping my shoes on the mat, and looked through the hall into the dining room. There was Miss West's piano. There were the rabbity people and Mrs. de Kende, sitting by the stove. The lights were on. The clocks ticked. I could smell the
Sauerbraten
cooking for supper. It was the atmosphere of late evening, and I felt as if here, in this part of the world, one night ran into the next with no day in between. As I shut the door, Herr Enrich came toward me, smiling, holding out a pale blue envelope. I knew at once that it was from Miss West. I snatched it, and my hands shook so much that I tore into the note as well. It was a nice note, inviting me to have lunch with her the next day in her room. I folded the torn note carefully and put it back. I felt happy and curiously delivered. I thought: Here is someone whose room won't be dirty, who doesn't drink all day, who won't frighten me,
who hasn't got a husband
. The note had been friendly. I thought, I have a friend.

Herr Enrich stood there, waiting, curious. “I'm having lunch with Miss West,” I told him. “Tomorrow, in her room.” I wanted him to realize I had been right all along, that she had wanted to meet me.

“Tomorrow?” he said in his polite, smiling way. “That scarcely seems possible. Miss West has gone.”

“Gone where?”

“To America,” he said. “She took the afternoon train to Zurich. She flies from there.”

“But she left me this note,” I said. I can still see myself, somehow, as if I had been a spectator all along, standing in the hall with my camel's-hair coat and my cold bare legs and my childish bobby socks, looking at Herr Enrich, holding on to the pale blue note.

“The tomorrow was today,” Herr Enrich said, as if the triumph were his after all. “She left the note for you yesterday. But you went out in the evening, and then again this morning.” He spread his hands in mock despair, as if to say that I was always out.

I muttered stupidly, “But I never go out—” and then flew past him, up the stairs, up to her room. I flung open the door without knocking and turned on the light. A strong current from the window slammed the door behind me. The bed was stripped, the room was being aired. I opened the heavy wardrobe: a few hangers swayed on the crossbar. She had left nothing in the wardrobe, nothing in the chest of drawers. I went slowly down to my room and, in the darkened hall, saw Mrs. de Kende. She had come up from the dining room and was sitting quietly on a chair. Still sitting, she grabbed my arm and squeezed it.

“You told,” she said.

“What?”

“About my husband. About his being—you know.”

“I didn't,” I said. “Leave me alone.” I pulled away.

“He has just come in,” she said in a low voice. “He has lost two clients in Salzburg, both the same day. There could only be one reason. They found out. You told.”

“I didn't,” I said again. “Leave me alone.”

She didn't get hysterical but said quietly, “It is my fault. I wanted to trust someone. God is punishing me.” She got up and went into her room.

I could feel my heart in my breast, as hard and cool as a pebble. I sat down where she had been, in the dark, until I heard Walt come in. He spoke to Herr Enrich and then came up the stairs. “Walt,” I said. He stopped, looking around, and I flung myself at him and cried, “She's gone, the singer has gone home, it's all over and I'll never meet her, I'll never have a friend!”

Faces appeared on the stairs—white, astonished faces. I had always been so quiet. Walt said to them, “It's all right,” and he led me into our room. “Who's gone?” he said, shutting the door.

“The singer,” I said. I leaned against him and wept and wept. “I wanted to meet her. I wanted terribly much to meet her. I'm sick of this house. I'm sick of the woman next door. I'm sick of Laura. I don't want a baby.”

“Are you having a baby?” said Walt.

“I don't know.” I pulled away and went over to the chest of drawers to find a handkerchief. I dried my eyes and blew my nose. Walt stood by the door, watching me. His arms hung at his sides. He looked helpless.

“Are you having a baby?” he said again.

“I told you, I don't know. I don't think so. It was just something Laura said.”

“It might be a good thing for you,” said Walt.

“You mean a good thing like having an apartment?” I combed my hair, tugging at it. I think I hated him at that moment. Then I caught sight of him in the mirror; he looked helpless, and unhappy, and I remembered what Marv had said—that I was the first girl Walt had taken seriously, and how his friends had never thought he'd get married. I wondered if he was sorry he'd got married, and, for the first time, I wondered if being married was as hard for him as for me.

In the next room, Mrs. de Kende was muttering—praying, I supposed. I felt guilty about her, in a vague way, as if I had let her down; as if I were really the one who had told about her husband. But that was just a momentary feeling. Mrs. de Kende was old and crazy, not a young girl like me. I began to dress to go out. Walt and I were having supper with Marv and Laura, and then we were going to the movies. I didn't want to spend my evening that way, but I felt there was no stopping things now that I was married and had better take things as they came. The singer had gone. I'd have to manage without help, without a friend more important than Walt. I wondered if all of this—my crying, Walt being bewildered—was married life, not just the preliminary.

Walt moved away from the door and sat down on his bed. “What about this singer?” he said. “Was she going to give you lessons, or something?”

“It was just crazy,” I said.

“You'll be all right, Cissy,” he said. “Living out here has got you down.”

“I know,” I said. “When we get our own place.” We looked briefly, almost timidly, at each other in the mirror, and I knew we were thinking the same thing: the apartment will make the difference; something's got to.

Your girlhood doesn't vanish overnight. I know, now, what a lot of wavering goes on, how you step forward and back again. The frontier is invisible; sometimes you're over without knowing it. I do know that some change began then, at that moment, and I felt an almost unbearable nostalgia for the figure I was leaving behind, the shell of the girl who had got down from the train in September, the pretty girl with all the blue plaid luggage. I could never be that girl again, not entirely. Too much had happened in between.