But the day I sat next to Carol, or rather, she found a seat next to me, it was raining torrents so, rather than walk in it and take a chance on catching cold, I went to the cafeteria for the first time, and as soon as I had sat down with my milk and bread pudding (the only decent things offered) she came, with her tray, and sat next to me.
Mama, she had to tell me who she was before I even knew her. She had to explain that she was Carol, the file clerk, who brought me the files I needed, and before I had finished my lunch and was ready to go back to my office, she had called me “Vincent” and said she was a lonely old maid of thirty-six, a year younger than I, which certainly proves to me that she had been reading my personnel file. I didn’t think about that then. I guess I was just grateful for her friendliness and my name.
She got to asking me, when she brought the files to my office that I had asked for, if I would be going to the cafeteria for lunch. She said she wanted to know and she would save a place for me next to her, although I explained to her that, unless the weather was inclement, which it all too often was during those late winter days (the “rainy season” they call it here) that I much preferred to walk.
That being a mistake on my part, my telling her that I walked, because she intercepted me one noon hour at the lower doorway and said she liked to walk too, which was very disconcerting. As you know, there is only one person with whom I care to take a walk... remember our walks, Mama, back home? How we kicked the fallen poplar leaves in the autumn and laughed together to see them dancing along the wide sidewalks — and in the spring we planned, as we walked, the flowers we would plant in the garden? By now, I suppose, the bridal wreath has bloomed and fallen, the tulips and crocus are dormant, and the roses, full-bloomed and heavy on the bush, wilt in the hot summer sun.
Mama, I didn’t want to leave and come here, except the people in the office back there were so friendly, at the last, calling me “Vince” and telling me to go. I am very lonely and don’t know what to do.
Well, Carol, here, was the only friendly one.
After all this time, I cannot describe her. I suppose I could go to the back bedroom and open the door and look. But I don’t want to do that either.
During one of our noontime walks, with her doing all the talking and me surreptitiously nibbling my milk chocolate bar, she told me about her house, and I am afraid that the idea of a house rather excited me after my one big room with the tiny kitchen and the b.r. in which I felt stifled, I must have imagined her house as being somewhat like ours back home — old, large and impressive, set in the shade of towering trees, especially since she said that the house had belonged to her parents, and now to her after their death.
But the house was not like that at all. Mama, you would never believe the way things are out here — everything new and gaudy and brash. I hope you come in answer to this letter, not so much to see the way things are, but to help me. I need your help, Mama, I need it greatly.
Carol drew a map of how to get out to her house. You need maps here all the time, Mama. You need a map to turn around. My big room with the tiny kitchen and b.r. was quite close to the office, but Carol lived out in what she called the suburbs. She invited me to her house on a Saturday, “Start early,” she said gaily, “so you have enough time to get lost in.” Well, I don’t think there is any gayety in getting lost, but I didn’t say as much.
You would have to see the freeways to believe them, Mama. There are signs up in the center with arrows that all point downward to show you which way to go, and if you are not accustomed to these signs, which I certainly was not, it is very easy to miss the freeway you are supposed to go on, so that you get off on another freeway, and a map doesn’t do you much good.
I have never had such an awful time in my life as I did on those freeways that Saturday — well yes, I guess the time right now is more awful. I do hope you come, Mama, and help me out.
I didn’t arrive at Carol’s house until dusk after driving those freeways all day! But even in the dusk I could see that the house was not as I had imagined it, on a street with a lot of other houses oh it... I remember the streets back home, especially ours — big, broad avenues, lined with poplars, the houses set back in wide lawns. Mama, I get so choked up with emotion just remembering that it is difficult to go on with this letter, but I shall...
I haven’t seen an old house, I mean an elegant old house, gabled, columned and pilastered, since I have been here. They tear down the old things and put up new atrocities. When I mentioned that fact, Carol said that her house certainly was old, twenty years old! I would have offered a sardonic chuckle at that had I not been a bit, cross after all the freeway difficulties.
Remember how it was when I got cross at home, Mama? You always knew and always had a roguish remark to make. “My boy’s feathers have been ruffled, but I have just the right thing to oil them,” then you crossed the flowered Aubusson in the dining room and poured me a wineglass of sherry. Mama, you always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do. I should never have left home.
I told Carol about home that night, Mama — about the velvet lawns, the clipped hedges, the old carriage house we use as a garage, and how the house always smelled of lemon furniture polish... and I don’t think she understood, but she listened carefully and I believe she finally realized that her modern house, which she has further modernized, even to installing air conditioning, was but a crass affectation to me.
I am glad now, however, for the air conditioning which, fortunately, is quite efficient?
That night, Mama, was a strange one. I never should have gone to that house, such a small excuse for the one I grew up in and love, but so much larger than one big room, a tiny kitchen and b.r. in which I lived here, so that I found myself reminiscing and weeping softly. Carol said that I was lonely and she propped pillows behind my head on the couch and made me hot lemonade — remember, like you used to do when I caught a bad cold and my sinuses hurt?
Since it was late spring by then and quite warm and I didn’t have a cold and my sinuses were not clogged, it must have been an incident of reminiscence that she was replaying to make me feel less lonely. She even turned the air conditioning up high while I drank the hot lemonade so that the cold air would tend to minimize the heat of the lemonade, which lulled me off to sleep — probably from exhaustion after being lost on those strange freeways.
When I awakened, it was just short of midnight and Carol asked how I expected to drive back to my room on the freeway with all the confusion of night lights when I couldn’t even do it during daylight? Then she suggested that I sleep in the back bedroom (where she is now) and I thought it the better part of valor to do so — but now I think I should have risked limb and life on the freeway...
Mama, I wish I had listened to you instead of those late friends at the office back home who called me “Vince”, and told me to go.
There was no lock on the back bedroom door, so I spent a wakeful night, but no more so, I suppose, than all those nights spent on my fold-down bed in my big room.
Carol has only one b.r., which is located toward the front of the house next to her bedroom (but not the bedroom she is now in), which was rather embarrassing not knowing whether or not she might be in the b.r. when I might wish to enter it.
She prepared a nice breakfast that next morning, except she soft boiled the eggs four minutes and you know I like mine boiled four and a half minutes exactly. The toast was all right, but she served jam instead of marmalade and orange juice instead of fresh tomato juice.