Shelley was staring at him now, with her forehead wrinkled, trying to understand and not succeeding. When he saw that he wasn’t making sense he stopped, and spread his hands helplessly.
“Oh, well,” he said.
“No, I’m listening.”
“Well.” He paused, trying to arrange his words better, but finally he gave up. “Nothing,” he said. “So you go to Atlanta, and you see the damn electric socket, and you go to Philadelphia and you see the damn trolley cars. So what? They only turn out to be an electric socket and a trolley car, in the long run. Nothing to keep you occupied longer than five minutes, either one of them. Then, in the middle of being loose and strong and on my own, wherever I am, along through my mind floats this island of a town with my family on it, still smiling on the lawn beside their picnic baskets …”
Shelley nodded several times slowly, as if she understood. He couldn’t tell if she really did or not. He thought probably she didn’t, but what mattered more than that right now was whether she was still in that black mood of hers and whether she would tell him why. He looked across at her steadily; her face returned to its original blankness and she stared back at him.
“So you’re going back to New York,” she said.
“I guess.”
She was silent again. He began twirling the bourbon around in his glass, watching it slosh up and leave its oily trail along the sides.
“So you just come,” she said, “and then you leave.”
“Well, that’s what I’ve just been explaining to—”
“You’re not fair, Ben Joe Hawkes.”
He looked up. Shelley’s eyes were narrowed at him and she was angry. As soon as he looked at her she reached one hand up to her curlers again and then began pulling them down, with hasty, fumbling fingers, ripping them out and tossing them into her lap, where her other hand was clenched so hard that the knuckles were white. In spite of all his worries, in spite of being concerned at her anger and sad at the way this whole night had been, a part of Ben Joe wondered detachedly why she was taking her curlers out and why she was choosing this moment to do it. He watched, fascinated. Her hair without the curlers remained still in little sausage shapes around her head, and since she had no comb handy, she began raking her fingers through the curls in order to loosen them. But all the while her face seemed unaware of what was going on, as if this business with her hair was just a nervous habit.
“You come and then you leave,” she repeated, “just like that. You’re not fair. The trouble with you, Ben Joe Hawkes, is you don’t think. You’re a kind enough person when you think about it, but that’s not often, and most of the time you—”
“Don’t think about what?” he asked.
“Your coming and your going.”
“Shelley, for God’s sake.”
“And then on top of all that, there’s your sister.”
He stopped in the middle of putting his drink on the table and looked up. There was something nightmarish about this. It was like one of those dreams in which he was playing the leading role in a play on opening night and had no idea what the play was.
“My sister,” he said.
“Yes, your sister.”
“Which one?”
“Benjamin Hawkes, don’t you joke with me.”
“Well, but what sister?”
“What sister my foot. How can you—”
“I have six,” Ben Joe said patiently. He took another breath to go on and then suddenly, realizing what she meant, let his breath out again and sank back. Once more John Horner and Joanne stood looking at him on the porch steps, stood defensively close together in the Hawkes’s living room, and Ben Joe shook his head at his own stupidity. There was something about Joanne; the minute she met a man, that man seemed to belong to her. Even John Horner, whom Shelley had so definitely identified as her own, was associated in Ben Joe’s mind only with Joanne now that he had seen the two of them together. He had seen them first, after all, the night that Shelley had seemed to forget about John Horner completely. It was too confusing; he shook his head and said, “Lord, I’m stupid.”
“Why?” Shelley asked curiously. She seemed to have expected more of a fight, and now she was temporarily taken aback.
“Joanne, you meant.”
“Well, of course.” She put both hands together in her lap and stared down at them. “Mrs. Murphy told me,” she said. “Well, if it hadn’t of been her, it’d been someone else. This town knows everything. I know she’s your sister, Ben Joe, but I tell you she’s just wild. With a husband and a baby, even, she’s wild. She’s wild and no-count and after anyone who’ll pay a little attention to her. Anyone can tell you that. Doesn’t take a detective to figure it out. It’s just you that won’t listen. You don’t hear facts too good if it’s your own precious sister they concern.”
“I hear them,” Ben Joe said. He sat there, not looking at her, twisting his hands aimlessly between his knees.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to go mud-slinging …” Shelley said suddenly. For the first time that evening Ben Joe saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes. She looked up shinily, with her mouth blurred and shaky, and stared hard at a point just above his head to keep from blinking the tears onto her cheeks. Shelley was the kind of girl who cried often, and from years of experience he had learned that with her the best thing was to be cheerful and brisk and to pay as little attention to the tears as possible. The little anonymous voice in his head picked up the tune again and went cheerfully da-da-deeing along. He kept his eyes upon an empty knickknack shelf in the corner behind Shelley’s chair.
“Anyway,” he said finally. He kept his voice pleasant and reasonable. “At least we’ve got to why you’re angry with me.”
“Why?” Shelley asked, and bit her lip hard and went on staring above him.
“Well, you were with me and therefore John went out with Joanne. It was black magic. Once in college I was in love with a coquette. She had a cute little pony tail that bobbed on the back of her head every time she took a step, and I thought she was wonderful. I would go for whole weeks without even looking at other girls, not even looking at one that I just saw on the campus somewhere, because I thought that then she wouldn’t look at another boy. Sometimes it amazes me how superstitious I am. In the end, of course, she ran away and got married to this tuba player from Ditch 29, Arkansas—”
“You are just as lighthearted as a bird,” Shelley said. “I declare, every time a body gets sad, it’s a fact that someone’ll come along all cheerful and tell them their problems, which aren’t a bit more related—”
“I’m sorry,” Ben Joe said. “I thought it was related. I’m sorry.”
He began twisting his hands between his knees again, still not looking at her. When it seemed safe to start speaking again, when he was fairly sure that he hadn’t sent her off into a real crying fit, he said, “All I meant was, that’s why I’m to blame. Because it was me you were with. If you’re superstitious too, of course. But I surely didn’t mean to send John Horner off to my sister. God knows I—”
One of Shelley’s tears must have escaped. She was too far away and the room was too dim for him to tell for sure, but he saw her hand flicker up to her cheek and then back to her lap again.
“Oh, well,” he said, “you’re probably not superstitious at all. It’s probably nothing to do with that. But I’m trying to think what I’ve done and I can’t come up with anything—”