“You said once,” he said, “that you wanted to grow. Isn’t that always frightening? Doesn’t it always hurt?”
It was a question he was asking himself — of course; she turned toward him with a small, grateful smile, then turned to the painting again.
“I’m beginning to think,” she said, “that growing just means learning more and more about anguish. That poison becomes your diet — you drink a little of it every day. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t stop seeing it — that’s the trouble. And it can, it can”—she passed her hand wearily over her brow again—“drive you mad.” She walked away briefly, then returned to their corner. “You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we’re what we are.” He watched her face from which the youth was now, before his eyes, departing; her girlhood, at last, was falling away from her. Yet, her face did not seem precisely faded, or, for that matter, old. It looked scoured, there was something invincibly impersonal in it. “I watched Richard this morning and I thought to myself, as I’ve thought before, how much responsibility I must take for who he is, for what he’s become.” She put the tip of her finger against her lips for a moment, and closed her eyes. “I score him, after all, for being second-rate, for not having any real passion, any real daring, any real thoughts of his own. But he never did, he hasn’t changed. I was delighted to give him my opinions; when I was with him, I had the daring and the passion. And he took them all, of course, how could he tell they weren’t his? And I was happy because I’d succeeded so brilliantly, I thought, in making him what I wanted him to be. And of course he can’t understand that it’s just that triumph which is intolerable now. I’ve made myself — less than I might have been — by leading him to water which he doesn’t know how to drink. It’s not for him. But it’s too late now.” She smiled. “He doesn’t have any real work to do, that’s his trouble, that’s the trouble with this whole unspeakable time and place. And I’m trapped. It doesn’t do any good to blame the people or the time — one is oneself all those people. We are the time.”
“You think that there isn’t any hope for us?”
“Hope?” The word seemed to bang from wall to wall. “Hope? No, I don’t think there’s any hope. We’re too empty here”—her eyes took in the Sunday crowd—“too empty — here.” She touched her heart. “This isn’t a country at all, it’s a collection of football players and Eagle Scouts. Cowards. We think we’re happy. We’re not. We’re doomed.” She looked at her watch. “I must get back.” She looked at him. “I only wanted to see you for a moment.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when I do. Richard’s gone off, he may not be back for a couple of days. He wants to think, he says.” She sighed. “I don’t know.” She said, carefully, looking at the painting, “I imagine, for the sake of the children, he’ll decide that we should weather this, and stick together. I don’t know if I want that or not, I don’t know if I can bear it. But he won’t sue me for divorce, he hasn’t got the courage to name you as corespondent.” Each to the other’s astonishment, laughed. She looked at him again. “I can’t come to you,” she said.
There was a silence.
“No,” he said, “you can’t come to me.”
“So it’s really — though I’ll see you again — good-bye.”
“Yes,” he said. Then, “It had to come.”
“I know. I wish it hadn’t come as it has come, but”—she smiled—“you did something very valuable for me, Eric, just the same. I hope you’ll believe me. I hope you’ll never forget it — what I’ve said. I’ll never forget you.”
“No,” he said, and suddenly touched her arm. He felt that he was falling, falling out of the world. Cass was releasing him into chaos. He held on to her for the last time.
She looked into his face, and she said, “Don’t be frightened, Eric. It will help me not to be frightened, if you’re not. Do that for me.” She touched his face, his lips. “Be a man. It can be borne, everything can be borne.”
“Yes.” But he stared at her still. “Oh, Cass. If only I could do more.”
“You can’t,” she said, “do more than you’ve done. You’ve been my lover and now you’re my friend.” She took his hand in hers and stared down at it. “That was you you gave me for a little while. It was really you.”
They turned away from the ringing canvas, into the crowds again, and walked slowly down the stairs. Cass put up her hood; he had never taken off his cap.
“When will I see you?” he asked. “Will you call me, or what?”
“I’ll call you,” she said, “tomorrow, or the day after.” They walked to the doors and stopped. It was still raining.
They stood watching the rain. No one entered, no one left. Then a cab rolled up to the curb and stopped. Two women, wearing plastic hoods, fumbled with their umbrellas and handbags and change purses, preparing to step out of the cab.
Without a word, Eric and Cass rushed out into the rain, to the curb. The women ran heavily into the museum. Eric opened the cab door.
“Good-bye, Eric.” She leaned forward and kissed him. He held her. Her face was wet but he did not know whether it was rainwater or tears. She pulled away and got into the cab.
“I’ll be expecting your call,” he said.
“Yes. I’ll call you. Be good.”
“God bless you, Cass. So long.”
“So long.”
He closed the door on her and the cab moved away, down the long, blank, shining street.
Darkness was beginning to fall. The lights of the city would soon begin to blaze; it would not be long, now, before these lights would carry his name. An errant wind, a cold wind, ruffled the water in the gutter at Eric’s feet. Then everything was still, with a bleakness that was almost comforting.
Ida heard Vivaldo’s step and rushed to open the door for him, just as he began fumbling for his key. She threw back her head and laughed.
“You look like you narrowly escaped a lynching, dad. And where did you get that coat?” She looked him up and down, and laughed again. “Come on in, you poor, drowned rat, before the posse gets here.”
She closed the door behind him and he took off Eric’s coat and hung it in the bathroom and dried his dripping hair. “Do we have anything to eat in this house?”
“Yes. Are you hungry?”
“Starving.” He came out of the bathroom. “What did Richard have to say?”
She was in the kitchen with her back to him, digging in the cupboard beneath the sink where the pots and pans were kept. She came up with a frying pan; looked at him briefly; and this look made him feel that Richard had managed, somehow, to frighten her.
“Nothing very pleasant. But it’s not important now.” She put the pan on the stove and opened the icebox door. “I think you and Cass were his whole world. And now both of you have treated him so badly that he doesn’t know where he is.” She took tomatoes and lettuce and a package of pork chops out of the icebox and put them on the table. “He tried to make me angry — but I just felt terribly sad. He’d been so hurt.” She paused. “Men are so helpless when they’re hurt.”
He came up behind her and kissed her. “Are they?”
She returned his kiss, and said gravely, “Yes. You don’t believe it’s happening. You think that there must have been some mistake.”
“How wise you are!” he said.
“I’m not wise. I’m just a poor, ignorant, black girl, trying to get along.”