The image of the real Joanne, seven years older, glimmered in the mirror. Ben Joe bent his head and laid his index fingers across his eyelids, just lightly enough to cool them, but the muscles of his throat stayed hot and aching with all those tears held back, pressing forward for no reason he could name.
“Headache?” the face in the mirror asked.
Ben Joe nodded silently.
“I’ll get you an aspirin.” She stood up and started for the door. When she was directly in front of him she stopped there — looking down at him, he guessed — but she didn’t say anything and after a minute she went on out.
She was gone long enough for him to be sitting up straight and whistling a little tune under his breath before she entered again.Soft as the voices of a-angels …
he whistled. Downstairs Gram’s voice, coming loudly and only a little indistinctly through three closed doors, tramped along with him.
“Here,” Joanne said. She handed him an aspirin and a glass of water.
“Thank you,” he said cheerfully.
He swallowed the pill with one gulp of water and set the glass down on the floor beside his chair. There was a frown on his face now; he sat with his hands clasped tightly together and tried to think of a way to help Joanne say what she wanted to.
“Um, if by any chance you changed your mind about leaving Kansas …”he said.
He paused, waiting without realizing it for Joanne to interrupt, but she didn’t.
“If just by chance you did,” he said finally, “I don’t know that I would call it going backwards instead of forwards. Sometimes it’s not the same place when a person goes back to it, or not the same …”
That little inner mind of his, always scrutinizing him as if it were a separate individual from him, winced. Ben Joe nodded and tipped his hat to it; the separate mind returned his bow and withdrew.
“Not the same person,” he finished.
“Oh,” Joanne said. She was looking down at her hands, acting as if this were a brand-new idea that would have to be given time to soak in.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. Her voice was relieved, and lighthearted. “That is something to think about, I guess …”
Ben Joe stood up. “Thank you for the aspirin,” he said.
“That’s all right. Bye.”
“Good-by.”
He bowed again, this time for real, and left, clicking the door gently shut behind him.
16
Ben Joe came downstairs as slowly and quietly as possible; his feet instinctively veered away from the centers of the steps, where the slightest pressure always brought forth a creaking noise. In his left hand was his suitcase, held high and away from his body so that it wouldn’t bang against anything. His right hand was on the polished stair railing. His whole face seemed to be concentrated on the sleek wood of it and the thin film of wax that clung a little to his skin. He lifted his hand and rubbed his thumb and fingers together, frowning down, and then abruptly dropped his hand to his side and descended to the next step. As yet he had not made a single sound. He could go all the way downstairs and out the front door without anyone’s ever knowing it if he wanted to. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to. If he left without saying good-by, could he really feel he had left for good? He switched the suitcase to his other hand and began descending more rapidly, still frowning at how silly he would feel to announce so suddenly that he was leaving. In the back of his mind he knew he would never leave the house without telling anyone; yet his feet still moved cautiously and he still held the suitcase carefully away from the railing.
Once in the downstairs hall, he moved quickly across the half-lit area between the stairs and the front door. There was a square of warm yellow light on the rug, cast through the wide archway of the living room, and the murmuring voices of his sisters were as clear as if they were out in the hall also, but nobody noticed when he crossed the yellow square. At the front door he stopped, setting his suitcase by his feet, and stood there a minute and then turned back and entered the yellow square again.
“Mom?” he said at the living-room doorway.
“Mmm.” She didn’t look up. She was sitting on the couch, sipping her after-supper Tom Collins and leafing through a Ladies’ Home Journal. Beside her Gram was reading Carol a chapter out of Winnie-the-Pooh, although Carol wasn’t listening, and on the other side of the room Jenny and Tessie and the twins were arguing over a game of gin rummy. The other two were out somewhere — Susannah with the school phys-ed instructor and Joanne with Gary, showing him her home town before they went back to Kansas in the morning. But those who were still at home looked so calm and cheerful, sitting in their lamp-lit room, that Ben Joe almost wished he could stay with them and forget the suitcase at the front door.
“Hey, Mom,” he said.
“What is it?” She looked up, holding one finger in the magazine to mark her place. “Oh, Ben Joe. Why don’t you come on in?”
“ ‘Many happy returns of Eeyore’s birthday,’ ” Gram was saying in her bright, reading-aloud voice. Carol sniffed and bent down to touch the bunny ears on one of her slippers, and Gram glared at her. “I said, ‘Many happy returns of—’ ”
“I’m going back to school,” Ben Joe said.
“ ‘Eeyore’s birthday,’ ” Gram went on, no longer looking at the book but just finishing the sentence automatically. “Where you say you’re going, Ben Joe?”
“To school,” he said.
“You mean, tonight you’re going?”
“Yes’m.”
His mother folded the page over and then closed the magazine. “Well, I don’t see—” she began.
“I just suddenly remembered this test I’ve got, Mom. I really have to go. I’m going to catch that early train …”
His sisters turned around from their card game and looked at him.
“Where’s your suitcase?” Jane asked.
“Out in the hall. I just stopped in to say good-by.”
“Well, I should hope so,” said his mother. “Why didn’t you tell us earlier? Now I don’t know what to do about those shirts of yours that are still in the laundry—”
“Don’t worry about it. You can send them to me later.” He felt awkward, just as he knew he would, standing empty-handed in the doorway with everyone staring at him. His grandmother was the first one to stand up. She came toward him briskly, her arms outstretched to hug him good-by, and he smiled at her and went to meet her halfway.
“If you’d only told us, I could’ve made some cookies,” she said.
“No, I don’t need—”
“Or at least some sandwiches. You want me to whip you up some sandwiches, Ben Joe?”
“I haven’t got time,” he said.
The rest of the family was clustered around him now; Carol had her arms about one of his knees as if he were a tree she was about to climb. Behind his sisters stood his mother, with her face no longer surprised but back to its practical, thoughtful expression.
“I suppose it’s about time,” she said. “Looked as if you’d forgotten school.”
“We’ll drive you to the station,” said Lisa.
“No, thank you, I’ve got plenty of time.”
“But you just said you didn’t have—”