Tale for the Mirror (27 page)

Mrs. Hazlitt sat down on it. If it were moved, into the study say, a few things out of storage with it, how sympathetically this flat might be shared. Nonsense, sheer fantasy to go on like this, to fancy herself embarking on the pitiable twin-life of leftover women, much less with a stranger. But was a woman a stranger if you happened to know that on her twelfth birthday she had received a copy of
Dr. Doolittle,
inscribed to Helena Nelson from her loving father, if you knew the secret, packrat place in the linen closet where she stuffed the neglected mending, of another, in a kitchen drawer, full of broken Mexican terrines and clipped recipes as shamefully grimy as your own cherished ones, if you knew that on 2/11/58 and on 7/25/57 a Dr. Burke had prescribed what looked to be sulfa pills, never used, that must have cured her at the point of purchase, as had embarrassingly happened time and again to yourself? If, in short, you knew almost every endearing thing about her, except her face?

Mrs. Hazlitt, blinking in the excessive light, looked sideways. She knew where there was a photograph album, tumbled once by accident from its shunted place in the bookshelf, and at once honorably replaced. She had seen enough to know that the snapshots, not pasted in separately, would have to be exhumed, one by one, from their packets. No, she told herself, she already knew more than enough of Mrs. Berry from all that had been so trustfully exposed here—enough to know that this was the sort of prying to which Mrs. Berry, like herself, would never stoop. Somehow this clinched it—their understanding. She could see them exchanging notes at some future meeting, Mrs. Berry saying, “Why, do you know—one night, when I was in London—”—herself, the vis-à-vis, nodding, their perfect rapprochement. Then what would be wrong in using, when so handily provided, so graciously awaiting her, such a comforting vis-à-vis, now?

Mrs. Hazlitt found herself standing, the room’s glare pressing on her as if she were arraigned in a police line-up, as if, she reminded herself irritably, it were not self-imposed. She forced herself to make a circuit of the room, turning out each lamp with the crisp, no-nonsense flick of the wrist that nurses employed. At the one lamp still burning she hesitated, reluctant to cross over that last shadow-line. Then, with a shrug, she turned it out and sat down in the darkness, in one of the two opposing boudoir chairs. For long minutes she sat there. Once or twice she trembled on the verge of speech, covered it with a swallow. The conventions that guarded the mind in its strict relationship with the tongue were the hardest to flout. But this was the century of talk, of the long talk, in which all were healthily urged to confide. Even the children were encouraged toward, praised for, the imaginary companion. Why should the grown person, who for circumstance beyond his control had no other, be denied? As she watched the window, the light in the small gray house was extinguished. Some minutes later the doorman across the way disappeared. Without looking at the luminous dial of the clock, she could feel the silence aging, ripening. At last she bent forward to the opposite chair.

“Helena?” she said.

Her voice, clear-cut, surprised her. There was nothing so strange about it. The walls remained walls. No one could hear her, or cared to, and now, tucking her feet up, she could remember how cozy this could be, with someone opposite. “Helena,” she said. “Wait till I tell you what happened while you were away.”

She told her everything. At first she stumbled, went back, as if she were rehearsing in front of a mirror. Several times she froze, unsure whether a sentence had been spoken aloud entirely, or had begun, or terminated, unspoken, in the mind. But as she went on, this wavering borderline seemed only to resemble the clued conversation, meshed with silences, between two people who knew each other well. By the time she had finished her account she was almost at ease, settling back into the comfortably shared midnight post-mortem that always restored balance to the world—so nearly could she imagine the face, not unlike her own, in the chair opposite, smiling ruefully at her over the boy and his gingerbread fears, wondering mischievously with her as to in which of the shapes of temptation the Old Nick visited Miss Finan.

“That girl and her
log
.” said Mrs. Hazlitt. “You know how, when they’re that young, you want to smash in the smugness. And yet, when you think of all they’ve got to go through, you feel so maternal. Even if—” Even if, came the nod, imperceptibly—you’ve never had children, like us.

For a while they were silent. “Warwick!” said Mrs. Hazlitt then. “Years ago there was an actor—Robert Warwick. I was in love with him—at about the age of eight.” Then she smiled, bridling slightly, at the dark chair opposite, whose occupant would know her age. “Oh, all right then—twelve. But what is it, do you suppose, always makes old actors look seedy, even when they’re not? Daylight maybe. Or all the pretenses.” She ruminated. “Why…do you know,” she said slowly, “I think I’ve got it. The way he looked in my face when I was speaking, and the way the dog turned back and he didn’t. He was lip-reading. Why, the poor old boy is deaf!” She settled back, dropping her slippers one by one to the floor. “Of course, that’s it. And he wouldn’t want to admit that he couldn’t have heard it. Probably doesn’t dare wear an aid. Poor old boy, pretty dreary for him if he is an actor, and I’ll bet he is.” She sighed, a luxury permitted now. “Ah, well. Frail reed—Miss Finan. Lucky for me, though, that I stumbled on her.” And on you.

A police siren sounded, muffled less and less by distance, approaching. She was at the window in time to see the car’s red dome light streak by as it always did, its alarum dying behind it. Nothing else was on the road. “And there were the taxis,” she said, looking down. “I don’t know why I keep forgetting them. Veering to the side like that, one right after the other, and one had his light out, so it wasn’t for a fare. Nothing on the curb either. Then they both shot away, almost as if they’d caught sight of something up here. And wanted no part of it—the way people do in this town. Wish you could’ve seen them—it was eerie.” There was no response from behind her.

She sat down again. Yes, there was a response, for the first time faintly contrary.

“No,” she said. “It certainly was
not
the siren. I was up in a flash. I’d have seen it.” She found herself clenching the arms of the chair. “Besides,” she said, in a quieter voice, “don’t you remember? I heard it twice.”

There was no answer. Glancing sideways, she saw the string of lights opposite, not quite of last night’s pattern. But the silence was the same, opened to its perfect hour like a century plant, multiple-rooted, that came of age every night. The silence was in full bloom, and it had its own sound. Hark hark, no dogs do bark. And there is nobody in the chair.

Never was, never had been. It was sad to be up at this hour and sane. For now is the hour, now is the hour when all good men are asleep. Her hand smoothed the rim of the waste-basket, about the height from the floor of a dog’s collar. Get one tomorrow. But how to manage until then, with all this silence speaking?

She made herself stretch out on the bed, close her eyes. “Sam,” she said at last, as she had sworn never to do in thought or word, “I’m lonely.” Listening vainly, she thought how wise her resolve had been. Too late, now she had tested his loss to the full, knew him for the void he was—far more of a one than Mrs. Berry, who, though unknown, was still somewhere. By using the name of love, when she had been ready to settle for anybody, she had sent him into the void forever. Opening her eyes, adjusted now to the sourceless city light that never ceased trickling on ceiling, lancing from mirrors, she turned her head right to left, left to right on the pillow, in a gesture to the one auditor who remained.

“No,” she said, in the dry voice of correction. “I’m not lonely. I’m alone.”

Almost at once she raised herself on her elbow, her head cocked. No, she had heard nothing from outside. But in her mind’s ear she could hear the sound of the word she had just spoken, its final syllable twanging like a tuning fork, infinitely receding to octaves above itself, infinitely returning. In what seemed scarcely a stride, she was in the next room, at the French window, brought there by that thin, directional vibration which not necessarily even the blind would hear. For she had recognized it. She had identified the accent of the scream.

The long window frame, its swollen wood shoved tight by her the night before, at first would not budge; then, as she put both hands on the hasp and braced her knees, it gave slowly, grinding inward, the heavy man-high bolt thumping down. Both sounds, too, fell into their proper places. That’s what I heard before, she thought, the noise of a window opening or closing, exactly like mine. Two lines of them, down the six floors of the building, made twelve possibles. But that was of no importance now. Stepping up on the lintel, she spread the casements wide.

Yes, there was the bridge, one small arc of it, sheering off into the mist, beautiful against the night, as all bridges were. Now that she was outside, past all barriers, she could hear, with her ordinary ear, faint nickings that marred the silence, but these were only the surface scratches on a record that still revolved one low, continuous tone. No dogs do bark. That was the key to it, that her own hand, smoothing a remembered dog-collar, had been trying to give her. There were certain dog-whistles, to be bought anywhere—one had hung, with the unused leash, on a hook near a door in the country—which blew a summons so high above the human range that only a dog could hear it. What had summoned her last night would have been that much higher, audible only to those tuned in by necessity—the thin, soaring decibel of those who were no longer in the fold. Alone-oh. Alone-oh. That would have been the shape of it, of silence expelled from the mouth in one long relieving note, cool, irrepressible, the second one clapped short by the hand. No dog would have heard it. No animal but one was ever that alone.

She stepped out onto the fire escape. There must be legions of them, of us, she thought, in the dim alleyways, the high, flashing terraces—each one of them come to the end of his bookings, circling his small platform in space. And who would hear such a person? Not the log-girls, not for years and years. None of any age who, body to body, bed to bed, either in love or in the mutual pluck-pluck of hate—like the little girl and her mother—were still nested down. Reginald Warwick, stoppered in his special quiet, might hear it, turn to his Coco for confirmation which did not come, and persuade himself once again that it was only his affliction. Others lying awake snug as a bug, listening for that Old Nick, death, would hear the thin, sororal signal and not know what they had heard. But an endless assemblage of others all over the city would be waiting for it—all those sitting in the dark void of the one lamp quenched, the one syllable spoken—who would start up, some from sleep, to their windows…or were already there.

A car passed below. Instinctively, she flattened against the casement, but the car traveled on. Last night someone, man or woman, would have been standing in one of the line of niches above and beneath hers—perhaps even a woman in a blue robe like her own. But literal distance or person would not matter; in that audience all would be the same. Looking up, she could see the tired, heated lavender of the mid-town sky, behind which lay that real imperial into which some men were already hurling their exquisitely signaling spheres. But this sound would come from breast to breast, at an altitude higher than any of those. She brought her fist to her mouth, in savage pride at having heard it, at belonging to a race some of whom could never adapt to any range less than that.
Some of us,
she thought,
are still responsible.

Stepping forward, she leaned on the iron railing. At that moment, another car, traveling slowly by, hesitated opposite, its red dome light blinking. Mrs. Hazlitt stood very still. She watched until the police car went on again, inching ahead slowly, as if somebody inside were looking back. The two men inside there would never understand what she was waiting for. Hand clapped to her mouth, she herself had just understood. She was waiting for it—for its company. She was waiting for a second chance—to answer it. She was waiting for the scream to come again.

W
HEN DR. BHATTA, THE
Hindu “neurologist,” acquired the old Kuypers estate, which no one else would buy, and installed there his entourage of two faded, Western lady secretaries, a number of indeterminately transient guests, and a faintly rotten, saffron breeze of curry, the neighbors in the other old houses strung along the riverbank absorbed his advent with little more than mild comment. The river road, though deceptively near the city, was part boundary line of a county that brushed shadowy patroon-descended towns to the north, still sheltered, in its gentle ranges toward the west, tribal remnants with tattered Indian red in their cheeks, and had weathered many eccentrics in its time. Something about the county’s topography of rear-guard hills, pooled with legend and only circularly accessible, of enormous level-land sunsets brought up short by palisades that dropped the river road below into darkness at four, had long since made it a natural pocket for queer birds, birds of privacy. Many of these were still there, appearing at yearly tax meetings as vestigially alive as the copperheads that sometimes forked before the nurserymen’s neat spades in the spring. It was a landscape from which individuality still rose like smoke, in signal columns blue and separate and clear.

More than one of the houses along the river road had had a special history, of the tarnished kind that often clings longer than honest coats of arms. Houses of wood, white, with endless verandas and gabled bedrooms framed in carpenter’s lace, they had been built by the dubiously theatrical or sporting rich of seventy or eighty years ago, whose habit had been to leave their trotting races on the Harlem of an afternoon, and to come, with a change of carriage, up the river, there to pursue, in champagne and blood and scandal, their uncloseted amours. And the capricious summer palaces they had had the native workmen build for them, though sturdy of timber, still showed, even in a new age, the shaky regality of seasonal money. From turrets made without ingress, balconies soared and died away. Iron weathervanes swung unheeded over “widow’s walks” on which no rightful widow had ever paced, and at the ends of the grounds there was often a tiny pavilion, lodged like an innocent white afterthought among the romantically unpruned trees.