Part 42 (1/2)
”I care about signs.”
”Dollar signs you're supposed to care about!”
”If you gave up all hope-”
”I have, d.a.m.n it. Talk about signs, what's this bed?”
”The first time isn't typical.”
”I know what's typical and what isn't,” she threw out with a roar, ”for goodness' sake I'm no virgin.”
”Plainly,” he said: which softened her.
”The way a thing begins is a sign anyhow. I believe that The way it begins is the way it stays. So if you want a sign that I don't think of him you've had it.”
But it was not enough. He said again, ”If you gave up all hope of him-”
”I have! Go to h.e.l.l if you can't tell that I have.”
”No. You would give up all sign of him. That's all.”
”The child stays,” she said with a finality. ”She goes with me wherever I go and she stays with me, and that's all.”
”Because pt Nick. She's Nick's, there's the reason. Open and clear.”
”She's mine, that's why.”
”She's not mine. Just remember that. Don't have any expectations inconsistent with that”
”You don't have to tell me what to remember! I know what to remember without slogans!” she delivered up with the wrath of humiliation, and released from her covetous grasp the wrested puff of his weakling hair: it ascended on a thrust of draft from the open window like a horde of parachute-seeds preparing to fertilize the hotel-room carpet ”Don't think I don't remember things without your advice! I remember how I got her, I remember how and where and when. Brighton! You think I can forget Brighton just like that? You think it's easy to forget Brighton?”
”Naturally Brighton. Brighton would stick to you,” he answered, ”like an icicle. He left you to freeze and went to warm himself G.o.d knows where. Reminisce about freezing while you're at it.”
”I never reminisce,” she said proudly. ”I hate the past”
”Carpe diem. I married an American.”
”Don't talk foreign languages at me, it's gauche.”
”All I said was tomorrow we die.”
”That's how I feel. Entre nous, that's just how I feel about things, Enoch, don't you?”
He said solemnly, ”Let us vow to agree about everything.”
”Don't think I don't know when you're being sarcastic!” But she had subsided. ”All right. As long as I have my way in everything.”
”Oh, you will, you will,” he saluted her, and went his way, and let her have hers: so that it was difficult to see that their ways were divergent, they agreed so well. The next day he departed to resume espionage, his trade then, and she stayed to invent his future. ”His future” became the thing they agreed on. It suited them both, like an eclipse to watchers satisfied to see their equal moon-borne shadows cover the parts that had been too light to bear.
2.
Exposition of this latter scene was my mother's, when I finished reading her letters.
”Of course it was a fib-Enoch's saying he didn't have any ambition. That was his way of covering up. He always has to cover things up, he's terribly complicated. It's right in his temperament, being negative about things. Negative and proud. The more negative and proud he is the more he's craving something. I ought to know him by now! Take my word for it: he's got a hollow craving in him, more than anyone: more than I have. That's why he's the only person I could have married, logically speaking,” she concluded haughtily.
But this, I must be careful to explain, was afterward.
Also to be noted: before this statement, with all its rococo belligerence and artful defensiveness, she flung herself upon herself, she tore histrionically at her own skin; she performed, in short, a largeness of weeping, an avian elegance of screech; her elbows declared themselves two muses of grief.
But this too was afterward: after, I mean, I returned from William's office; and all because, arriving, I said I had seen William.
The significance of this was not at once plain to her.
”And what did you there? Frightened the mouse that was under the chair,” she sang out. It was night and half-past nine o'clock, but she was brilliantly dressed and cheerful; she was engaging Enoch in enforced judgment of a hat in the shape of a cowl. ”See? With the brim up I look like the Seven Dwarfs and with the brim down like Lady Macbeth. Which? Enoch, which?”
”Down,” he said, and stiffly down also went his mouth, bored.
”No really, pay attention. You're not paying attention. Up?”
”Up is fine.”
”You just said down! Because there might be photographers, and really I want to hide the ravagements just in case. From all that coughing I'm turned into a crone. Well h.e.l.lo, home is the hunter, home from the-look who's here. Wrinkled you are, the back of your skirt, what a pity you never give a minute to groom yourself. The least you could do for yourself. What do you think?” she greeted me. ”Brim up or down? Enoch can't make up his mind.”
”The Lady Macbeth way,” I offered.
”Well all right, better a murderess than a Mother Superior. Just so I don't get taken for a nun. They have such blank eyes, nuns, but they wear things on their heads exactly like this. It covers, that's the point. Where in the world did you run into William?” she took up.
”I didn't run into him. I went to his office.”
”On purpose? Oh I forgot, that's right, his boy's engagement party. That little Pettigrew sp.a.w.n. Was that today?”
I felt in awe of such omniscience. ”You couldn't have known about it?”
”Of course I knew about it.”