Just as he had decided on perhaps trying something of the sort, Sylvia appeared. And she was in his arms before he knew that it was really her. “It can’t be so bad, sweetheart,” he said softly, holding her as best he could. “Don’t cry, baby; it’s too cold to cry: you’ll chap your face.” As she strangled for words, her crying evolved into a tremulous, unnatural laugh. The air was filled with the smoke of her laughter. “Do you know what he said?” she gasped. “Do you know what he said when I asked for my dreams?” Her head fell back, and her laughter rose and carried over the street like an abandoned, wildly colored kite. Oreilly had finally to shake her by the shoulders. “He said—I couldn’t have them back because—because he’d used them all up.”
She was silent then, her face smoothing into an expressionless calm. She put her arm through Oreilly’s, and together they moved down the street; but it was as if they were friends pacing a platform, each waiting for the other’s train, and when they reached the corner he cleared his throat and said: “I guess I’d better turn off here. It’s as likely a spot as any.”
Sylvia held on to his sleeve. “But where will you go, Oreilly?”
“Traveling in the blue,” he said, trying a smile that didn’t work out very well.
She opened her purse. “A man cannot travel in the blue without a bottle,” she said, and, kissing him on the cheek, slipped five dollars in his pocket.
“Bless you, baby.”
It did not matter that it was the last of her money, that now she would have to walk home, and alone. The pilings of snow were like the white waves of a white sea, and she rode upon them, carried by winds and tides of the moon. I do not know what I want, and perhaps I shall never know, but my only wish from every star will always be another star; and truly I am not afraid, she thought. Two boys came out of a bar and stared at her; in some park some long time ago she’d seen two boys and they might be the same. Truly I am not afraid, she thought, hearing their snowy footsteps following after her: and anyway, there was nothing left to steal.
The Bargain (1950)
Several things about her husband irritated Mrs. Chase. For instance, his voice: he sounded always as though he were bidding in a poker game. To hear his unresponsive drawl was exasperating, especially now when, talking to him on the telephone, she herself was strident with excitement. “Of course I already have one, I know that. But you don’t understand, dear—it’s a bargain,” she said, stressing the last word, then pausing to let its magic develop. Simply silence happened. “Well, you could say something. No, I’m not in a shop, I’m at home. Alice Severn is coming for lunch. It’s her coat that I’m trying to tell you about. Certainly you remember Alice Severn.” His leaky memory was another irritant, and though she reminded him that out in Greenwich they had often seen Arthur and Alice Severn, had, in fact, entertained them, he pretended no knowledge of the name. “It doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “I’m only going to look at the coat anyway. Have a good lunch, dear.”
Later, as she fussed with the precise waves of her touched-up hair, Mrs. Chase admitted that really there was no reason why her husband should have remembered the Severns too clearly. She realized this when, with faulty success, she tried to arouse an image of Alice Severn. There, she almost had it: a rosy, gangling woman, less than thirty, and always riding in a station-wagon accompanied by an Irish setter and two beautiful, gold-red children. It was said that her husband drank; or was it the other way round? Then, too, they were supposed to be a bad credit risk, at least Mrs. Chase recalled once hearing of incredible debts, and someone, was it herself?, had described Alice Severn as just too bohemian.
Before moving into the city, the Chases had kept a house in Greenwich, which was a bore to Mrs. Chase, for she disliked the hint of nature there and preferred the amusement of New York shop windows. In Greenwich, at a cocktail party, at the railway station, they’d now and again encountered the Severns, that was all it had amounted to. We were not even friends, she concluded, somewhat surprised. As so often happens when one hears suddenly from a person of the past, and someone known in a different context, she had been startled into a feeling of intimacy. On second thought, however, it seemed extraordinary of Alice Severn, whom she’d not seen in over a year, to have called offering for sale a mink coat.
Mrs. Chase stopped in the kitchen to order a soup and salad lunch: it never occurred to her that not everyone was on a diet. She filled a sherry decanter and brought it with her into the living room. It was a green glass–bright room, rather like her too-youthful taste in clothes. Wind bustled the windows, for the apartment was high-up with an aeroplane view of downtown Manhattan. She put a linguaphone record on a phonograph, and sat in an unrelaxed position listening to the strained voice pronouncing French phrases. In April the Chases planned to celebrate their twentieth anniversary with a trip to Paris; for this reason she had undertaken the linguaphone lessons, and for this reason, too, she considered Alice Severn’s coat: it was more practical, she felt, to travel in a second-hand mink; later on, she might have it made into a stole.
Alice Severn arrived a few minutes early, an accident, certainly, for she was not an anxious person, at least judging from her subdued, ambling manner. She wore sensible shoes, a tweed suit that had seen its best days, and carried a box tied with scrappy cord.
“I was so delighted when you called this morning. Heaven knows, it’s been an age, but of course we never get to Greenwich anymore.”
Though smiling, her guest remained silent, and Mrs. Chase, keyed to an effusive style, was a little taken aback. As they seated themselves her eyes caught at the younger woman, and it occurred to her that if they had met casually she might not have known her, not because her appearance was so very altered, but because Mrs. Chase realized that she had never before looked closely at her, which seemed odd, for Alice Severn was someone you would notice. If she had been less long, more compact, one might have passed over her, perhaps remarking that she was attractive. As it was, with her red hair, the sense of distance in her eyes, her freckled, autumnal face and gaunt, strong hands, there was a distinction about her not easily disregarded.
“Sherry?”
Alice Severn nodded, and her head, balanced precariously on her thin neck, was like a chrysanthemum too heavy for its stalk.
“Cracker?” offered Mrs. Chase, observing that anyone so lean and stretched-out must eat like a horse. Her soup-and-salad skimpiness gave her a sudden qualm, and she told the following lie: “I don’t know what Martha’s making for lunch. You know how difficult it is on short notice. But tell me, dear, what is happening in Greenwich?”
“In Greenwich?” she said, her eyelids beating, as though an unexpected light had flared in the room. “I have no idea. We haven’t lived there for some while, six months or more.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Chase. “You see how far behind I am. But where are you living, dear?”
Alice Severn lifted one of her bony awkward hands and waved it toward the windows. “Out there,” she said, peculiarly. Her voice was plain, but it had an exhausted quality, as though she were coming down with a cold. “In town, I mean. We don’t like it much, Fred especially.”
With the dimmest inflection, Mrs. Chase said, “Fred?” for she perfectly remembered Arthur as the name of her guest’s husband.
“Yes, Fred, my dog, an Irish setter, you must have seen him. He’s used to space, and the apartment is so small, a room really.”
Hard days indeed must have fallen if all the Severns were living in one room. Curious as she was, Mrs. Chase checked herself and did not inquire into this. She tasted her sherry and said, “Of course I remember your dog; and the children: all three of their red heads hanging out of your station-wagon.”
“The kids haven’t red hair. They’re blondes, like Arthur.”
The correction was given so humorlessly that Mrs. Chase was provoked into a puzzled small laugh. “And Arthur, how is he?” she said, preparing to stand and lead the way to lunch. But Alice Severn’s answer made her sit down again. Delivered with no change in her placidly undecorated expression, it consisted of only: “Fatter.
“Fatter,” she repeated after a moment. “The last time I saw him, I guess it was only a week ago, he was crossing a street, almost waddling. If he had
