but not in motion at alclass="underline" becalmed, like a ship. She started awake (when
had she fallen asleep? She didn’t remember) and felt she was still in the
same place. Danny’s head against the seat back, eyes closed, mouth
slightly open: he seemed not to breathe. For an instant she couldn’t
recognize him, a large stranger close to her.
312 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
Then there was a sudden band of green, as though drawn by a
crayon, and a river to cross, they’d known it was to come but it seemed
to slice across their journey with both a greeting and a warning. After
that it was easy enough to see where they were supposed to go. Almost
as soon as the iron bridge was crossed there were signs for competing
places, billboards with pictures of linked rings, doves, hearts. It seemed
not to matter which one you picked, but she and Sylvia rejected the
first one that Bill tried to pull into, not feeling they had to give a reason,
and the boys didn’t argue. The next was worse, but the next, a white
cottage under tall slim gray-leaved trees, a little pretend steeple on top
and a picket fence, looked cheerful. It had a pretty rose-covered arcade
to enter by and a discreet sign in front that was welcoming and mild
and helpful and didn’t say Cut-Rate like the others.
“Here,” Diane said, and tugged Danny’s sleeve.
Later on, a long time after, when maybe she told the story of those days
to someone younger, Diane would try to think about having missed so
much that was so important to so many people, things that she too had
always thought, when she was a child, or a kid in school, would be
important. Getting married, after a long courtship; a proposal, and a
little plush box opened before her to show the ring and its promise
inside, to put on her finger forever; and the church, with the smiling
priest and the people and even the flowers seeming eager and impatient
and glad for her in her hampering white dress coming slowly, slowly up
to where he stood. Wedding night, and the gift of her innocence; hon-
eymoon; house. How could she tell them that it never seemed to her to
be a loss, or to be full of loss: not as it happened, and not as she looked
back on it. Because what was important then, in that time, was not so
much what you got as what you escaped. Escaping the worst was like
joy. It was joy. It was freedom, it was freedom from, and just then
that’s what freedom meant. She thought she had been lucky. She knew
she had been.
The two big hotels downtown were full and the others didn’t look
nice; at one a bellhop steered them to a place out of town that he said
would do right by them, he’d call up on the phone, and Danny gave
him four bits. They had some drinks and a steak dinner and it was
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 313
deep dark when they reached the place, Desert Courts. The sign said
modern comfort. telephone. flush toilets.
“That’s good to know,” said Sylvia coldly. Then, laughing: “Hear
about these Okies coming in from Arkansas or someplace, they’ve never
seen a flush toilet but think it’s mighty nice for washing your feet. Push
down the little handle and you get clean water for tother foot!”
Yes, everyone had heard that, and because everyone had heard it
Diane thought it probably had never happened. They turned in at the
gate. The tourist cabins were low and heavy, made of adobe; a long
trellis or breezeway sheltered their fronts and joined them like a happy
family, and vines grew up from big red pots to clamber over them, and
tall cacti too in bigger pots, fat and prickly. In the hot white moonlight
it looked like the land Krazy Kat lived in. The motherly lady at the
desk gave them keys and smiled on them all; Diane knew she was Mex-
ican but didn’t know if the others did: there was a cross on the wall
behind her desk wrapped in last Easter’s plaited palms. She and Danny
parted from Bill and Sylvia in a sort of hilarity of embarrassment, a
joke about getting some shut-eye, and then their door closed and she
was alone with her husband.
He turned on the little fan at the window and watched its propeller
whip the air. He was smiling as though at some secret thing.
“Danny.”
“So you promised,” he said, turning to her. “You’ll go to tell your
parents, as soon as we get back.”
“Yes. I will.”
She sat on the bed, on the broad red Indian blanket that covered it.
He came and sat by her. “Show ’em that picture of me,” he said. “The
one I gave you. They’ll like to see that.”
“Yes.”
“What were their names again?”
“Joe and Maria.”
“Oh right. And your brother’s . . .”
“Paul. He’s in the Army.”
“I’ll be glad to meet ’em all. Uncles and cousins too.”
She knew what she should say to that but she didn’t say it. She lay
back on the pillows and he turned to lie and nuzzle her, his arm across
her. She took his wrist to stop him.
314 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“Hey,” he said. “What.”
“I don’t know, Danny, please. It might hurt the baby.”
“What?”
“I mean if we.”
“Why? Who says?”
“It’s what I heard.”
“Aw no,” he said. “My kid’s bound to be tough.”
“Danny really.”
He put his hands beneath her white skirt. “Maybe we can give him
a little brother,” he said smiling. “Come out as twins.”
“Jeez, Danny. My God.” The bed was as though afloat, about to lift
and exit out the window into the desert night with them aboard; she
lay still to keep it still, but his hands kept on, and everything within
her flowed toward him.
“There’s things we can do,” he said. “Now that we’re married.”
“Oh Danny.”
“Baby I love you.”
“Just go gentle, Danny, you have to be very gentle.”
“I’ll sneak in. Just up beside him. Won’t even wake him. I promise.”
“How can you talk that way,” she said, but he stopped her with a
kiss, and stopped talking himself.
2
Somehow it was harder going back across the desert with the sun
at their backs, not an adventure now but only drab miles to
cover. It was cold till the sun rose high and Bill kept the win-
dows rolled up and drove stolidly on, leaning over the steering
wheel. Sylvia wasn’t telling them what she knew about the world and
people; once, pressed against Bill’s arm, she wept, Diane thought:
they’d soon be parted, and who knew what might happen then. Diane
didn’t weep: she felt herself to be living on a higher plane than Sylvia,
where not weeping was required no matter what you felt, a duty to
your man, your ser
viceman. Danny slept—she’d begun to think he
could sleep anywhere, that he did it out of boredom, like a cat with
nothing to mouse after.
For herself she was feeling sick, conscious of her insides in a way
that was new, of a queasy fullness that was in her stomach and not in
her stomach. She ignored it, or when she couldn’t, she tried to stay
calm and will it to pass by. But then, not rising or whelming but stab-
bing suddenly, she felt a new bad feeling, a real and distinct pain, not
just in her middle but along a line she could trace from here to there.
She shivered and made a sound, and Danny’s eyes opened.
What if she’d been right, and they shouldn’t have done what they
did the night before? For a moment she was sure, just sure, they